Читать книгу Banner of Souls - Liz Williams - Страница 16

CHAPTER 3

EARTH

Upon their return to Cloud Terrace, Dreams-of-War had gone straight to the Grandmothers and informed them of what had taken place. It had not been an easy discussion.

“She stood there, in the street, while that creature held her hand?” the Grandmothers demanded, speaking as one. “Disgusting! Is she injured?”

“Her hand is hurt a little. That appears to be all.”

The Grandmothers’ eyes gleamed. They shifted on the bed: two women, joined to each other at one side, with only two arms between them. Left-Hand Grandmother was wizened, with black eyes in a mass of wrinkled skin, and the hand that rested on the counterpane was gnarled. Right-Hand Grandmother appeared no more than eighteen, hawk-faced, with a coil of white-streaked dark hair, though Dreams-of-War knew that the two were the same age. “Do you think it learned anything?” It was Right-Hand whose voice was clearest, but Left-Hand echoed all that she said.

“Who can say?” Dreams-of-War replied, endeavoring to keep the coldness from her voice.

Typical of the Grandmothers to exhibit outrage: They were the ones to enjoy control, to slink or barge into a person’s mind and body, commit all manner of violations before retreating, but woe betide anyone else who tried such a thing.

“If the Kami now know she is the hito-bashira,” the Grandmothers said, “they will not suffer her to live.”

Dreams-of-War frowned. “Why not?”

“You would not understand.”

“If you only told me what is meant by hito-bashira, perhaps I might,” Dreams-of-War said, exasperated. “Is it to do with this thing she does, this folding of time? Three times a week I watch as she flicks the minutes forward, turns seed into flower or fruit, then back to seed. I watch, and yet I have no idea what she’s really doing, because you won’t tell me. I assume that the term hito-bashira has something to do with her talents, but what? The girl asks and asks, and what can I tell her? She pesters both myself and the kappa for answers. We feel obliged to pretend, for otherwise we look like idiots. It is time all of us are told.”

“No! And you are nothing more than a hired hand. Do not presume.”

But Dreams-of-War was unwilling to be stopped. “And what is to be done now? Can she turn back time in order to change it?”

“Not yet. And so we must send Lunae away, now that the Kami know she is here. It is no longer safe. We can hide her no longer; we must find a safe place for her.”

“Then why raise her here, in the city of the Nightshade Mission, where the Kami are known to be present?”

“Because it is thereby easier for us to see what the Mission might be up to. And we have learned from them, too. Our enemy has been making swift progress, and this project, always important, has now become a matter of urgency.” 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 mysteries. 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 disappeared?”

“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 situation. Who knows how long they were really absent, wherever 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.”

“I 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 mature, 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 hundred 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 black light 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 aging as predicted by the schematics drawn up by the Grandmothers, 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 antique 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 beneath 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 childhood 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 emotions. “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 Nightshade 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 unknown 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 Nightshade; 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 sharpness to cheekbone and chin that was suddenly familiar. She does not look like the people of Fragrant Harbor, this Eastern ancestry, except in the tilt of her eyes. She looks like a Martian, 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 appraising 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 attended 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 arcing 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 Martian 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.”