Banner of souls (6 page)

"Because it is thereby easier for us to see what the Mis-sion might be up to. And we have learned from them, too. Our enemy has been making swift progress, and this proj-ect, always important, has now become a matter of ur-gency." Left-Hand nudged Right. "Do not tell her so much."

Dreams-of-War stared at the Grandmothers, who stared unblinkingly back. She could feel depths and mys-teries. She did not believe for a moment that they had told her the truth. Dreams-of-War scowled. "I dislike secrets."

The Grandmothers grinned in unison. "And you, a creature of Memnos?"

"That is why I dislike secrets."

"You should have learned to live with them by now. Enough of this. There are arrangements to be made."

"Very well," Dreams-of-War said through gritted teeth.

"You say that both Lunae and the woman disap-peared?"

"For no more than a fraction of a second. But as you know, that can be deceptive." Dreams-of-War hesitated. "I was angry and alarmed. Perhaps I misperceived the situa-tion. Who knows how long they were really absent, wher-ever they were? Who knows what might have taken place?"

"Go," the Grandmothers told her. "Take her to the kappa and get her hand attended to. Then bring Lunae to us."

Dreams-of-War climbed the endless flights of stairs to the tower, to find her charge sitting up in bed, looking pale.

"Lunae?" Dreams-of-War asked. That
feeling
again: all fright and anxiety and concern.

Dreams-of-War fought it aside and took refuge in anger. "What were you thinking of? I told you never to go beyond the house." She paused. "How did you get out, anyway?"

"I climbed a tree."

Dreams-of-War felt a swift flicker of pride and shoved that away, too. "You should not have done so."

"1 wanted to get out of the mansion." Lunae stared at her, defiant.

"Well, now you have your wish," Dreams-of-War said. "I've spoken with your Grandmothers.

They're going to send you away."

Excitement flashed across Lunae's face.

"Where? Somewhere far?"

"I don't know yet."

Dreams-of-War sat down on the edge of the bed and studied the girl. It was obvious that Lunae had aged overnight. The planes of her face were different, more ma-ture, and Dreams-of-War could see the curves of her breasts beneath her night robe. Silently, Dreams-of-War took stock of the months from the hatching pod. Lunae had her lessons, as prescribed by the Grandmothers, on three occasions every week. That made it nearly one hun-dred and twenty times that Lunae had now folded time, slipped through the cracks into
elsewhere
, cheating the rules of the continuum. Dreams-of-War thought of herself going under the blacklight matrix, of the doctor's voice as she spoke of the Eldritch Realm. Beneath the armor, Dreams-of-War suppressed a shiver.

But the success of the project was clear. Lunae was ag-ing as predicted by the schematics drawn up by the Grand-mothers, and unlike her previous sisters-in-skin, showing no signs of cellular degeneration or mental instability. And it could not be good for her to be kept cooped up in this an-tique mansion.

Angry and scared though she had been, Dreams-of-War could not blame Lunae for escaping.

When Dreams-of-War had been Lunae's age, she had felt as though she owned half of Mars: the Demnotian Plain running red to the horizon, as far as the ragged mountains and the great cone of Olympus. Dreams-of-War's earliest memories were of that plain and those rocks, glimpsed from the reinforced windows of the clan house. She had spent her days outside, left to run wild with Knowledge-of-Pain and the other girls, ice crackling be-neath their wind-skates as they hurtled across the Sea of Snow toward the towers of Winterstrike; the brief summer heat causing the maytids to crawl out from their cocoons in the soil and be snap-roasted in the firepits; the feel of her
keilin
mount under her as they charged through the Tharsis Gorge…

Dreams-of-War wished that Lunae could have had such a childhood, felt the lack of it even if Lunae did not. Now, looking at the girl and seeing the end of that child-hood already upon her, Dreams-of-War was filled with an uncomfortable sensation: a mingled guilt and unease, so unfamiliar to her that she did not know what to do with it.

Lunae saved her from the inconvenience of her emo-tions. "You said that woman was a Kami. She did not look alien to me, only strange, as if unfocused."

"From what we know of the Kami, they do not have bodies. They possess the bodies of others, usually those who are of a weak mind."

"But who are the Kami?"

"No one really knows. They started appearing on Earth only a few years ago, shortly after the establishment of the Nightshade Mission, but they have been on Night-shade for much longer. There were a few terrorist attacks on the Mission by Kitachi Malaya insurgents. But the Kami were like ghosts who manifested themselves in human bodies, and in no form other than shadows in the midday sun. And the Mission itself: impregnable, made of an un-known substance that withstood all attacks and that no spy device has ever been able to penetrate."

"What interest can they have in us?" Lunae wondered. "Where do they come from?"

"I've told you, no one knows. They are close to Night-shade; that is all that is known. At first, people thought that the Mission was undertaking some kind of mind-control, but the Kami made themselves known. Lunae, it is time for you to get up."

She studied Lunae as the girl dressed. The process of aging had brought out the bones of Lunae's face, a sharp-ness to cheekbone and chin that was suddenly familiar.
She does not look like the people
of Fragrant Harbor, this East-ern ancestry, except in the tilt of her eyes. She looks like a Mar-tian

, Dreams-of-War thought, and wondered that the notion had not struck her before.

But her own people tended to have pale hair, the silver-blond of the Crater Plains, whereas Lunae's own was that strange dark red. Like a Northern woman, from Caud or Tharsis. Did Lunae have Martian genes?

She found herself looking at Lunae with a newly ap-praising eye.

"Am I to have lessons today?" Lunae asked.

"No. The Grandmothers wish to see you, however. But first you are to go to the kappa and have your hand at-tended to."

Lunae looked up, alarmed. "Are the Grandmothers very angry?"

"They are not precisely delighted." Dreams-of-War suppressed a shudder. She had seen the Grandmothers take information from the mind: the lightning tendrils arc-ing out, too swift to be seen by the naked eye, but visible later on the monitors that the engineers of Memnos had built into Dreams-of-War's armor. The Grandmothers used a technology that Dreams-of-War did not understand; she did not want to admit that it alarmed her. She was a Mar-tian warrior, she told herself, not someone to be unnerved by two ancient women.

"Come, Lunae," she said, more sharply than she had intended. "Do not keep the Grandmothers waiting."

Nightshade

She was apart from the Animus now; he remained in her chamber, chained to the bed by Isti.

Yskatarina was painfully aware of the lack of him by her side and she frowned as she walked across the bitter hall of Tower Cold, to where her aunt awaited the boat sent by the Matriarchs of Memnos.

Stepping into the elevator, she watched the hall grow small beneath her as she ascended. A hundred stories, two hundred, three…Then the hall was invisible except as a tiny dark square, and Yskatarina rose out into the darkness above Nightshade. The Sunken World lay before her. She could see the frozen peaks and summits, the craters and gouges made by meteor strikes. At the farthest point, be-tween the Horns of Tyr, was the sun: a little, blazing star. Above, to the north, Dis hung in the heavens, and then there was nothing but the great gulf, only debris and dust until the beginning of the outer systems, light-years distant. Only the boats went farther, filled with the canopies dispatched by the mourn-women and the Steersmen Skull-Faces—bodies embalmed in ultrasleep, gliding through the Eldritch Realm for whatever systems lay beyond the abyss.

Yskatarina closed her eyes to the dark, thought of the Animus's sharp touch, and was glad when the elevator slid to a silent halt at the top of the tower.

The Elder Elaki's chamber was round, with windows like portholes. Here, when she was not in the laboratory or the haunt-tech chambers, Yskatarina's aunt sat out her days, her unhuman eyes fixed on things that no one else could see. She said nothing when Yskatarina entered, only flicked a hand at a kneeling-chair. The great eyes, owl-yellow, veined with broken blood vessels, blinked with an almost audible snap.

"Has the ship that is to take me to Mars arrived?" Yskatarina said. Near-worship flooded through her at Elaki's proximity. She bowed her head before she knew it, then thought of Elaki's overheard threat and grew cold.

"Not long. It approaches down the Chain." The Elder Elaki gestured toward a window and Yskatarina could, in-deed, see a star coming, rattling fast into the silvery shadow of the Nightshade maw of the Chain. "As you know, you have a task to perform very soon." Elaki frowned. "You appear discontented. Why?"

But Yskatarina loved her aunt beyond love, and so, bitterly, said nothing.

"Your Animus will accompany you. I have impressed upon you the importance of this task, Yskatarina."

Here it comes
, Yskatarina thought.

"And if you should fail, I will have to take him away from you." Elaki spoke with a twist of the mouth.

Yskatarina looked up at her numbly. Love for the Animus poured through her, and love for Elaki also. She felt torn in two.

"I will not fail, Aunt." Her voice sounded as though it came from the bottom of a well.

"Then the Animus will stay with you, of course."

"I am grateful," Yskatarina managed to say.

"Yskatarina? Are you all right?" Elaki asked impa-tiently.

Yskatarina managed to mutter, "When will I be leaving?"

"As soon as I see fit. And now, there are things I have to tell you."

Yskatarina's gaze once more traveled to that traveling star, brighter now, blazing like a captured sun as it was whisked along through the maw of the Chain. A few mo-ments later, the blaze sharpened, then faded. The boat sent by the Memnos Matriarchs was docking.

Yskatarina knelt before her aunt, head still forcibly bowed, awaiting her orders.

Earth

For once, it was hard to track the kappa down. Usually the nursemaid hovered protectively near her charge, but now, perhaps not wanting to distract Dreams-of-War, the kappa seemed to be keeping out of sight. Lunae trudged through the house, eventually locating the kappa in the long chamber at the heart of the house, attending to the growing-skins.

Steam rose from the vents in the walls, each config-ured in the form of a gargoyle's head. Cross-eyed faces opened mouths to emit plumes of mist; Lunae took care not to go too close. Along the metal-ridged floor, the racks of feeder orchids turned their faces toward the moisture, their petals swelling with water. Bronze walls dripped and ran with a rainy haze. The air smelled damp and hot, rich with loam and a meaty undernote of stagnation that only served to enhance the perfume of the orchids.

Lunae al-ways felt safe here, though she did not like to look at the skins, which occasionally bulged and writhed as if the contents sought escape. Lunae knew, however, that she herself had come from one of those fleshy bags, and per-haps this was why she felt so secure in this room.

She watched as the kappa wafted the mist over each skin. In the heat of the chamber, the mist swiftly accumu-lated into droplets, which ran down the outside of the skins before bouncing into the trays beneath, in an atonal accompaniment to the kappa's movements. Lunae gave a delicate cough, remembering Dreams-of-War's countless instructions not to interrupt people when they were busy The kappas head moved ponderously around, swiveling on the twisted neck. The toes of her wrinkled feet gripped the floor; the kappa found it hard to keep her bal-ance on the lacquered boards of the mansion and the metal floor of the hatching room alike. Lunae could not help feeling a twinge of pity, which rang as plangently as a waterdrop inside her mind.

"We are above such emotions," Dreams-of-War had told her in her first weeks out of the
hatchery. "You are a made-being, even if your ancestors practiced bloodbirth, just as the lowest
orders do. You are therefore superior, as I am."

"Are you a made-thing, too?" Lunae said.

"I?" Dreams-of-War replied, with a disdainful tilt of her head. "Of course. And so is your
nurse, when it comes to that. But the kappa is a slave and to be treated as such. Do not waste
emotion upon it."

"I see," Lunae had said, but though she was then nothing more than a weeks-old child, there
seemed something wrong with this picture. It seemed hard on the kappa who was her nursemaid,
who walked as if her feet hurt her, and who seemed so encumbered by her heavy shell-like skin.

And if the kappa were supposed to serve, then why did so many other folk seem bound to the
factories and wage-shops of the city? Perhaps it was different elsewhere. Yet Fragrant Harbor
was rumored to be a good place. It did not seem good to Lunae.

Now the kappa said mildly, "You are in disgrace."

"I know. Dreams-of-War has had much to say on the subject." Lunae looked down at her hand, at a row of bloody dots that were the legacy of her encounter. "She sent me to find you, to bind this up."

The kappa looked at Lunae's hand and made a small scratchy sound of disapproval. "You should never have gone out of the house."

"1 know."

"The Grandmothers want to see you. They are not pleased, Lunae."

"1 know." It was beginning to sound like a mantra. "I'm sorry, kappa."

The kappa reached out and gently touched Lunae's hair. "1 was very worried, Lunae. We all were.

Terrible things could have happened to you."

Lunae gave an unhappy grimace. "Perhaps terrible things
did
."