Banner of souls (2 page)

And it was the Animus who learned with Yskatarina, upon the eve of her nineteenth birthday, that it was to be her task to seek out one girl from the teeming billions of Earth and Mars and the inner worlds.

To seek her out and slay her.

Mars

Two days before her departure for Earth, Dreams-of-War left the Memnos Tower and made a short journey across the Crater Plain to Winterstrike, in order to register her depar-ture documents, undergo a necessary modification, and take a medical assessment for her suitability to withstand the temporal forces of the Chain. This last was merely a for-mality; Dreams-of-War was in excellent physical shape. She knew, however, that at least once a week some luckless passenger was found shriveled and wizened at the end of a voyage, ruthlessly aged by the forces that governed travel within the confines of the Chain.

It was, after all, a form of haunt-tech, and thus little understood except by the technicians of Nightshade and presumably by the Kami who had given it to them. It was alien and could not be trusted, at least if you were Dreams-of-War. The only piece of haunt-tech with which she was prepared to deal was the armor, and that only because its previous occupant had been such a great warrior. And while Dreams-of-War trusted the armor's spirit, it still oc-curred to her to wonder whether this was wise.

She further distrusted the prospect of the modifica-tion that she was about to undergo—more alien tech— and she did not care much for Winterstrike, either. The city was ancient, dating back before even the Lost Epoch. Its black-and-crimson mansions and narrow streets were a testament to its age: basalt, iron, stone—old materials for an old city The more recent buildings rose up around the edges, etched metal towers and turrets connected by hang-ing bridges.

Dreams-of-War took a rider, crammed with standing passengers, in through the southern gate of the city, past the clan holdings and mansions, and finally past the sunken fortress of the meteorite crater that had given Win-terstrike its name. She looked neither right nor left, though when the rider rumbled by the great lip of the crater, her head involuntarily turned and she gazed into the pit: a caldera of garnet stone, pockmarked with holes and rifts. The fortress rose up at its center, a place of shat-tered spires, half-ruin, half-home to the city's dispos-sessed, of which there were many.

The fortress was a grim place, but better this, thought Dreams-of-War, than the Crater Plain and the moun-tains. There, the ordinary women who were not warriors would not fare well against the men-remnants: the hyenae and vulpen and awts. Better they remain here, living off the verminous birds that infested the pits of the crater wall.

The fortress passed by; Dreams-of-War once more stared ahead. This long, winding street, fringed with en-gine shops and child-supply emporia, was the road to the spaceport. She would be coming this way again tomorrow, in the cold early light, to take a ship for the Chain and Earth: the city known as Fragrant Harbor. She had been told little enough about her mission. There was a child, it seemed, and the need to guard her.

Dreams-of-War had done her best to find out more, by devious routes she disliked pursuing, but she had failed. This in itself was disquieting. Memnos only both-ered to keep closemouthed about those secrets that were a danger to the bearer, and they had seen fit to tell her noth-ing. Thoughtfully, Dreams-of-War jostled her way to the front of the rider as it approached the next stop, and stepped down onto the street.

The medical evaluation was carried out in a Matri-archy building: a weedwood-and-basalt tower behind thick walls. Dreams-of-War sensed the prickling discom-fort of weir-wards over the exposed skin of her face as she walked through the gate, but she passed through with-out incident. Inside, she presented her credentials, but it seemed that they were already expecting her. A woman wearing a doctor's robe and high red hat ushered her through a hushed corridor into the blacklight cham-ber. The doctor's hands had been modified, Dreams-of-War noted; a scalpel blade shone briefly beneath one fingernail.

"You'll have to take that off," the doctor said, barely glancing in the direction of Dreams-of-War.

"Very well." Dreams-of-War stood at the center of the room, before the flickering glitter of the blacklight matrix. "Armor!"

The armor flowed smoothly from her body, forming for a moment the gaunt figure of its previous owner. "No, that won't be necessary. I don't want to talk to you. Just keep out of the way."

She watched as the armor folded itself into a small, curdled sphere, no bigger than her fist. It struck her, somehow, as sad. She glanced down at her own exposed skin. Tattoos covered her arms and breasts: spirals, spikes, the mathematical gematria of Memnos. The small child-markings were a faded indigo around her wrists.

"And
that
," the doctor remarked, glancing at the bands of her black rubbery underhamess. "And we'll need to do something about your hair." Without asking, the doctor seized a handful of Dreams-of-Wars pale hair and bundled it up into a knot. Dreams-of-War jerked away, snatching the coil from the doctor's probing fingers.

"Don't touch me!"

"Stop
complaining
."

Dreams-of-War stood, fuming, as the doctor made the final preparations.

"Why couldn't this be done in the Memnos Tower? They have a more extensive matrix there."

"It's off-limits for now," the doctor said. "They have a client coming in who wants something special."

"Special?"

"Someone all the way from Io-Beneath, apparently. You know that the matrices can be hired."

Dreams-of-War gave a snort. "For the right price."

"Of course. Now lie down. No, not there. With your feet facing the wall."

Dreams-of-War did as she was instructed. The black-light matrix sparkled over her, causing an itchy crackle to cross her skin and raise the hair on the back of her neck.

"Are you all right?" the doctor asked, clearly caring lit-tle as to the answer. "Not scared?"

"Of course I am not scared! I do not like the sensation, that is all."

"No one living is supposed to like it. It brings you close to the Eldritch Realm, to the spirit dimensions."

"I've faced death many times," Dreams-of-War said, affronted.

"That is not what I meant. It is a neurophysiological reaction. In the case of we the living, consciousness is welded to body and brain, until the point of physical death when the particulates that compose the spirit detach from the shore-surface of the brain and leave the interface between the dimensions. You're not about to die; you are, in fact, a long way away from it as a healthy young person.

But now your spirit is trying to tug free, drawn by the ma-trix, and that is why you're uncomfortable."

Dreams-of-War squinted up at the doctor. "And if it did tug free, what then? Would I die?"

"Yes. Body and soul would part company, and then your essence would drift into the blacklight matrix and be snapped through into the Eldritch Realm. This is what be-falls you when you enter the Chain, except that in there, people are held together by the internal structures. Usu-ally. But nothing like that is going to happen to you now. I'm going to put you under—"

"Oh no, you are not!" But before Dreams-of-War could utter another word of protest, the doctor touched a sleep-pen to her neck. Dreams-of-War fell, snarling, be-tween the warp and weft of life and death, and knew no more.

When she awoke, it was dark outside. She was lying on an ordinary metal bed, her head supported by an iron pillow. The armor reposed in a glistening lump on a table by the bedside. The doctor was nowhere to be seen.

Shakily, Dreams-of-War sat up. She could not see her underharness, but no matter.

"Armor!"

Instantly, Embar Khair's armor uncurled itself from its resting form and flowed across her outstretched hand. Soon she was covered in familiar gleaming green. Dreams-of-War stood up, supported by the armor. She felt no different—at first. But when she looked into her-self, she was conscious of a new, sore spot inside her head. Dreams-of-War probed it, imagining fingers gingerly touching, and the result was a flooding anxiety, an adrena-line rush that made her gasp. She closed her eyes, and had a sudden disquieting image of the interior of her mind. Normally as dark, hard, and resolute as metal, her inner self now contained a small hole, pink and tender from re-cent bleeding. The sensation was as compelling as a stolen tooth.

The door opened. The doctor's face was disapproving beneath the high scarlet hat.

"You should not be on your feet! And who told you that you could get dressed?"

Dreams-of-War took a single stride across the room and seized the doctor by the throat.

"What have you done to me? What have you put in my head?"

"Rather," the doctor said faintly, scrabbling at the hand around her neck, "you should be asking what it is that we have removed. Now let me go."

"Removed?"

The doctor was gasping. The scalpel blade shot out from beneath her fingernail. Desiring answers, Dreams-of-War let go and experienced a curious and unfamiliar sense of relief.

"This is what I have done," the doctor said, massaging her neck. "There is a psychological callus that is grown on the mind of a warrior, that increases day by day after your release from the growing-skin. It is that callus that enables you to act fearlessly, to make your goals your only focus, that permits you to go forth and slaughter your enemies with as little compunction as I feel when I swat a weed bug down from the wall at night. That emotional callus makes you everything that you are, and now it is gone. You will feel as a normal made-human feels. You will feel love, af-fection, need, and anxiety for a child."

"I have no intention of having a child!"
Sitting by a growing-skin for months while someone
congealed within, fol-lowed by years of restriction and worry? No thanks
.

"No, but you will be looking after one. An indif-ferent guardian is no guardian at all. You have to care. And Memnos is determined to
make
you care. I do not under-stand you warrior clans. What is wrong with having emo-tions?"

Dreams-of-War stared at her. "Nothing at all. Emo-tions are a fine and necessary thing—pride, aggression, loyalty… As for caring," she added, bristling, "my duty as a warrior should be enough."

"It seems Memnos does not think so."

"How much have they told you about this child whom I am to guard?" Dreams-of-War asked.

"They have told me very little. In all probability," the doctor added, "as little as they have told you."

"And what about me?" Dreams-of-War asked uneasily. "If this—this cork in my psyche permitted me to function as a warrior, to kill without qualm, what will happen now that it is gone?"

"Since you have just recently embarked upon my throttling," the doctor said, rubbing a bruised throat,

"I wouldn't worry too much about
that
."

Earth

Tersus Rhee waddled slowly through the chamber, check-ing with thick fingers the drip-feeds that led to the growing-skins, monitoring the minor changes and alterations that might token an incipient systems failure. They had already lost the previous children. If this one, too, failed, the Grand-mothers had told her, then the project might have to be terminated. And that would be a great shame. The Grand-mothers had gone to an immense amount of trouble on be-half of the child in the growing-skin. The services of Tersus Rhee herself had been procured. A Martian warrior was now on her way, at no small difficulty and expense, to guard the child.

Tersus Rhee, for various reasons of her own, did not want the project to be terminated. The Grandmothers had told her little enough about this line of made-humans, this special strain to whose care she so diligently attended. But then, despite her skills, she knew that she was nothing more than the hired help to the Grandmothers, just an-other kappa, indistinguishable from all the rest of her kind. She did not expect to be told a great deal. She knew only that the child in the bag was known as the
hito-bashira
, the woman-who-holds-back-the-flood. She had her own suspicions as to what this might mean.

But speculation had already run rife throughout the clans of the kappa when it was learned that she, Tersus Rhee of Hailstone Shore, was to be sent all the way south to Fragrant Harbor to serve the Grandmothers.

How much do you know about the Grandmothers?" the clan leader had asked Rhee.

"Very little." Rhee shuffled her wide feet in a supplica-tory gesture and spread her webbed hands wide.

"Unsurprising. No one knows anything of them, it seems—who they are, where they come from.

Now, they keep to their mansion of Cloud Terrace, but it is not known how long they have been there.

They squat above the city like bats. Then, suddenly, they send word to me, asking for a grower, a carer.

An expert."

Rhee frowned. "Why are you telling me this? Am I to be that expert?"

The clan leader gave a slow frog blink. "Just so."

"But what about my duties here?"

"This is more important." The puffed eyelids drifted shut and tightened. Rhee knew that she would say nothing further.

"When am I to leave?" Rhee asked in resignation.

"On the third day of the new moon, when the time is auspicious. Take what you need."

And so, with a hired junk waiting in the harbor below, Tersus Rhee had packed her equipment: the box of scalpels, the neurotoxin feeds that, if carefully applied, would alter genetic development to the desired specifica-tions, and a handful of the starter mulch that had now been in her family for seven generations, nurtured and handed down like a precious yeast. For all else, she would be obliged to rely on the Grandmothers of Cloud Terrace, and the thought did not please her.

The journey south pleased her even less. She would be traveling not as an expert hired by Cloud Terrace, but incognito, as a hired help. This was so commonplace for the kappa as to be unremarked. It was, after all, they who provided most of the worlds drudgery. Rhee traveled in the communal hold of the junk but spent most of the day on deck, watching the peaks of the Fire Islands recede into the distance until they were no bigger than pins against the lowering skies. From then on, the journey was un-eventful: only ocean, like so much of Earth, wave after endless rolling wave. Rhee passed her time in the passive, contemplative trance that was the default mode of her people, and made doubly sure that no one noticed her. The kappa spoke little among themselves, anyway, when away from the clan-warrens.