Winterstrike
Authors: Liz Williams
WINTERSTRIKE
TOR
To Veronica, Ken and Trevor
Contents
ONE
The coldest night of the year in Winterstrike is always the night on which the festival of Ombre is held, or Wintervale if you are young and disdain the older dialects. The
Matriarchy knows how to predict these things, how to read the subtle signatures in snowdrift and the length of icicles, the messages formed by the freezing of the breath upon the air, the crackling
of the icy skin of the great canals.
In the centre of Winterstrike, Mars’s first city, in the middle of the meteorite crater that gave the city its name, stands the fortress: a mass of vitrified stone striped as white as a
bone and as red as a still-beating heart. It has a shattered turret, from some long-forgotten war, in which verminous birds fight and nest and cry. And on one particular night, at the top of the
fortress and on the eve of war, at the summit of another tower so high that from it one could see out across the basalt walls to the dim, shimmering slopes of Olympus, stood a woman. She was
surrounded by four glass windows: crimson, white, black, and transparent. She stood before a brazier and beneath a bell. She wore triple gloves: a thin membrane of weedworm silk, then the tanned
leather of vulpen skin, then a pair of woollen mittens knitted by a grandmother. In spite of this, and the spitting coals of the brazier, her hands were still cold.
When the night froze below a certain point, and the signs were relayed to her by antiscribe, she turned, nearly overthrowing the brazier in her haste, and rushed to the windows. She threw them
open, letting in a great gust of cold air which made the coals crackle, then struck the bell three times. It rang out, fracturing the chill. The woman ran down the stairs to the warm depths of the
tower before the echo had even died. One by one, the coals hissed into silence as the bell note faded.
This all took place shortly before dawn, in the blue light before the sun rose. The woman was myself, Essegui Harn. The day was that of Ombre. And all Winterstrike could hear the bell, except
for one woman, and except for one woman, all Winterstrike answered. I knew that across the city, women were throwing aside their counterpanes, rushing to the basins to wash, and then, still dressed
in their nightclothes, running upstairs to the attics of mansions, or to the cellars of community shacks, to retrieve costumes forgotten over the course of the previous year, all six hundred and
eighty-seven days of it. From chests and boxes, they would pull masks depicting the creatures of the Age of Children and the Lost Epoch, the long muzzles of cenulae, or the narrow, inhuman faces of
demotheas and gaezelles. They would try them on, laughing at one another, then fall silent as they stood, masked, their concealed faces suddenly foolish above the thick nightdresses.
By Second Hour the robes, too, would have been retrieved: confections of lace and metal, leather and stiffened velvet, scarlet and ochre and amethyst, sea-green and indigo and pearl. Above
these, the masks would no longer appear silly or sinister, but natural and full of grace. Then the women of Winterstrike would set them aside and, frantic throughout the short day, make sweet
dumplings and fire-cakes for the night ahead, impatient for the fall of twilight.
After my stint in the bell tower I was in equal haste, rushing back to the mansion of Calmaretto, which lay not far from the fortress. I hurried through the streets, pounding
snow into ice under my boots and churning it into powder against the swing of the hem of my heavy coat. I was thinking of the festival, of my new friend Vanity, whom I was planning to seduce
tonight (or be seduced by, even more hopefully), of my cousin Hestia, vanished from the city a week ago and rumoured to have gone to Caud.
I didn’t like to think about that. Caud was gearing up for war, over yet another territorial matter of a disputed sacred site, and given Hestia’s occupation – a matter of some
subtle conjecture – that city wasn’t a safe place for her to be.
But thinking about Hestia was still easier than thinking about my sister. It was difficult
not
to think of her, especially when the walls of Calmaretto rose up before me: black weedwood,
glittering with silver and frost. The tall arched windows were covered by heavy drapes, ostensibly to keep out the cold but in reality to conceal the house from the eyes of the peasantry, which, to
my mothers Alleghetta and Thea, meant most people.
When I reached the main entrance I did not hesitate but put my eye to the haunt-lock. The scanner glowed with blacklight, an eldritch sparkle, as the lock read my soul-engrams through the hollow
of my eye. The door opened. I stepped through into a maelstrom of activity.
Both my mothers were shouting at one another, at the servants, and then, without even a pause for breath, at me.
‘. . . there is not enough sugar and only a little haemomon? Why didn’t you order more?’
‘. . . Canteley’s best dress has a stain, she refuses to wear it even under her robes . . .’
‘And Jhule cannot find the tracing-spoon anywhere!’
Thea started to wheeze and put a plump hand to her heart. Alleghetta’s proud face became even frostier with contempt. She’d had her hair done for Ombre and it laced her head in a
series of small, tight curls as if she was wearing a helmet; Thea, on the other hand, had chosen a loose, piled-up style which did not do a great deal for a round countenance. Her hair was starting
to descend.
‘Do
stop
fussing,
Thea!’ Alleghetta snapped.
Thea’s mouth turned down, heralding tears.
It was
always
the same. My head started to pound. I said, ‘What about Shorn?’
Immediate, tense silence. My mothers stared at me, then at one another.
‘What about her?’
‘You know very well,’ I said. I was speaking too loud, too fast, despite my best efforts, but I couldn’t help it. ‘You have to let her out. Tonight.’
Upstairs, in the windowless heart of Calmaretto, my sister Shorn Harn sat alone. Her birth name was Leretui, but she had been told that this was no longer her name: she had
been shorn of it, and this verb was the only name she could take from now on. She would not know that it was the day of Ombre, because the sound of the bell rung by her sister, myself, had not
penetrated the walls of Calmaretto. Nor would she be able to witness the haste and bustle outside in the street, the skaters skimming up and down Canal-the-Less, because she was not allowed to set
foot in a room which had windows. She was permitted books, but not writing materials or an antiscribe, in case she found a way to send a message.
At this thought, my mouth gave a derisive twist. There would be little point in composing a message, since the one for whom it would be intended could not read, could not be taught to read, and
was unlikely ever to communicate with someone literate. But my mothers would not countenance even the slightest possibility that a message might be sent, and thus Shorn was no longer allowed to see
our little sister Canteley, as Canteley was young enough to view the scenario as romantic, no matter how many times our mothers had impressed upon her that Shorn was both transgressor and pervert.
Shorn was occasionally permitted to see me, since I pretended to be of a similar mind to our mothers.
I usually only put my head around the door once a week, though Shorn found it difficult to estimate the days. Even so, I think she was surprised when the door hissed open and I strode through,
snow falling in flakes from my outdoor coat.
‘Essegui?’ Shorn turned her head away and did not rise. She looked older than she was: not a surprise, given what had befallen her. She could have been my own age, a full five years
older. Her long dark hair, a clone-mark of Alleghetta and Calmaretto, streamed down her back and I could tell that she hadn’t bothered to brush it for several days; it had knotted into locks.
For a moment, I longed to sit behind her and comb it through, as we’d done when we were children. Her face, so like my own and those of Alleghetta, Hestia and Canteley, stretched white over
its bones like snow on broken ground. Blue shadows had pooled in the hollows of her eyes.
‘What is it?’ Shorn said, dully.
‘Ombre falls today. I’ve told our mothers that you are to be allowed out, when the gongs ring for dusk.’
Shorn’s mouth fell open to reveal her silver-latticed teeth, an affectation Alleghetta had insisted she adopt when our mothers were still trying to marry her off. She stared at me.
‘Outside?
And they agreed?’
‘They hate it. But it is your last remaining legal right, ancient custom, and they have no choice.’
Shorn said, slowly and disbelieving, ‘I am to be allowed out? In the mask-and-gown?
Tonight?
This is mockery.’
I leaned forward, hands on either arm of the chair, and spoke clearly. ‘Mockery maybe. Understand this. If you use the mask-and-gown as a cover to flee the city, our mothers will go to the
Matriarchy and ask for a squadron of scissor-women to hunt you down. The city will, of course, be closed from dusk onward, and they will know if anyone tries to leave. Or if any
thing
tries
to get in.’
‘I will not try to leave,’ Shorn whispered. ‘Where would I go?’
‘To that which brought you to this plight?’
Shorn gave a small, hard laugh like a bark. ‘I repeat, where indeed?’
‘True enough. To the mountains, in winter? You would die of cold before you got halfway across the Demnotian Plain. And the mountains themselves, what then? Men-remnants would tear you to
pieces and devour you before you had a chance to find it.’ I grimaced. ‘Perhaps
it
would even be one of them. I’ve heard that all women look alike to them. And that’s
without taking into account factions from Caud. We could go to war very soon, you know. Everyone thinks so.’
War with Caud?’ Shorn looked disdainful. ‘What is it this time?’
‘Some dispute over Mardian Hill. They were holding talks, but it just escalated. If war does break out, you’d be best off here in Winterstrike, in spite of—’
In spite
of everything.
Shorn lowered her gaze. There was a moment’s silence. ‘I should reassure you, then, that I will not try to escape.’
There is a mask waiting for you,’ I told her, then turned on my heel and went through the door, leaving it open behind me.
I did not expect her to leave the chamber immediately. She must have been dreaming about this day ever since the evening of her imprisonment, six hundred and eighty-seven days ago. Ombre then
was like every other festival for her, a chance for fun and celebration. She did not expect to meet what stepped from under the bridge of the Curve.
The mask was one that I remembered from our childhood: the round, bland face of a crater cat. It was a child’s mask: for the last few years, Canteley had been wearing it.
Now, however, it was the only one left in the box. I watched as Shorn pulled the gown – a muted grey-and-black brocade – over her head and then, slowly, put the mask on. The cat beamed
at her from the mirror; she looked like an overgrown child, no longer the woman they called the Malcontent. She twitched aside the fold of a sash, but the box was empty. There was no sign of the
other mask: the long, narrow head, the colour of polished bone, mosaiced with cracks and fractures. She searched through the draperies.
‘You won’t find it,’ I told her. She did not reply.
As we turned to go downstairs, a gaezelle danced in through the door.
‘Tui, is that you? Is it?’ The gaezelle flung her arms around Shorn and held on tight.
‘It’s me. But don’t call me Tui.’ It sounded as though she was spitting. ‘That’s not my name any more.’
Canteley had grown over the last months: she was almost as tall as me now, though her voice was still as shrill as a water-whistle. I felt as though an icy mass had lodged deep in my throat.
‘Are you coming? Essegui said our mothers are letting you out for the Wintervale. Is it true? You should run away, Tui. You should try to find him.’ This last in a whisper.