Part 11 (1/2)

'Will you fetch my bottle, please?' sniffed the s.h.a.ggat's son.

A Turach groaned. 'Fetch it yourself - the chain's long enough. Only I think you broke it, your daftness.'

Dri took a few staggering steps. The insect's bile stank beyond description. No one in Night Village was going to believe her. She should take back its head, or what was left of it. Then the hay bales moved.

She whirled. Pithor Ness was gaping at her, chin on the edge of the straw bale, not two feet away. One hand hung frozen above the broken gla.s.s. He was terrified.

'Guards,' he croaked.

'Careful ! Careful, you blary--'

His hand withdrew. She saw his lips curl, forming another word, and then she flew at him, sunk her knife through his cheek, and using it for leverage stabbed down through his jugular with her sword. Blood struck her in a torrent: she was practically inside the wound. He made a sound that was not the word she feared, groped at the crimson straw, and watched her in disbelief as he died.

She leaped once more. He took four bales down with him, gla.s.s and all.

It was four in the morning when Diadrelu reached the ixchel stronghold. Men and women who had known her all their lives fell back in astonishment. Blood soaked her from head to foot; even her hair was stiff with it; yet her only wound was a minor cut on the thigh.

Taliktrum appeared, surrounded by his Dawn Soldiers, the shaved-headed fanatics he had inherited from his father. He questioned her in a sharp, peremptory voice. Was it the rat-king again? Or Sniraga? Was there danger to the clan?

'Yes,' she said.

'Of what kind, Aunt?'

She looked at him, the nervous young leader of Ixphir House. She did not know where to start.

'You must answer my questions the same as anyone,' said Taliktrum, almost shouting. 'We survive through clan cohesion. We are not threads but a woven fabric, and discipline makes the weaving strong. Let it fray in one corner and the whole cloth unravels.'

'You don't need to recite children's lessons to me,' said Dri softly. 'I taught them to you, by Rin.'

The soldiers tensed. Taliktrum looked from one to another. 'My aunt is very fond of invoking Rin,' he said with a nervous sneer. 'As often as she does Mother Sky, or the Wanderer, or any other ixchel figure.'

Dri shrugged. A part of her was screaming at his weakness, this ugly groping for standing and respect. 'The tradition's old,' she mumbled.

'And taken from the giants, like certain drugs and diseases. Tell me, Aunt: is Rin a G.o.d or a devil for you?'

She sensed the aggression in his words and was appalled. He was displaying her to his fanatics: 'Here is one unlike myself, one I have risen above, despite our kins.h.i.+p.' It chilled her to the core to imagine what such tactics implied for the future of the clan.

Suddenly her other sophister sophister, Ensyl, rushed into the chamber. A thin reed of a girl with a prominent forehead, widowed before she could marry, Ensyl was quiet to the point of invisibility much of the time; but Diadrelu knew the iron at the heart of the reed. The girl elbowed her way through the Dawn Soldiers, shot one furious glance at Taliktrum, and led her mistress out.

In her own chamber, Dri let the girl tear off her ruined clothes, then sat as ordered in the herring tin that served as her bathtub. She did not speak as her sophister sophister poured bucket after bucket of cold water over her, scrubbing fiercely at the blood and insect substances. The girl had to hack some of it from her hair with a knife. poured bucket after bucket of cold water over her, scrubbing fiercely at the blood and insect substances. The girl had to hack some of it from her hair with a knife.

After several minutes Dri wet her lips. 'Ludunte,' she murmered. 'Didn't he make a report?'

'He tried, mistress. Lord Taliktrum was in the High Loft and would not see him. Skies above, lady, there's gla.s.s in your hair!'

That broken bottle had been a G.o.dsend. As she crept away the guards were already debating whether the death was an accident or suicide.

'But it was neither,' Dri said aloud.

'What was neither, mistress?'

She looked up at her sophister sophister. 'I killed a human,' she said.

The girl was quiet a moment, then nodded. 'I thought so.'

'He was afraid. I don't think he'd ever seen one of us.'

'If you did it, mistress, I know it was the right thing.'

Ensyl's faith stung worse than scorn. Dri hugged herself. Surely the word on his lips had been crawlies crawlies. What else did humans say at the sight of ixchel ? Surely his death was unavoidable.

Given that she had let herself be seen.

She thought of Talag. His brilliance, the mad strength of his quest. Reveal our presence and you condemn us all. If you can't kill to silence a giant's tongue you're not fit to leave the shelter of a House. Stay in Etherhorde and be hunted. Do not follow us aboard. Reveal our presence and you condemn us all. If you can't kill to silence a giant's tongue you're not fit to leave the shelter of a House. Stay in Etherhorde and be hunted. Do not follow us aboard.

The man she killed had spent nearly his whole life in chains.

'Mistress,' said Ensyl, wondering. 'You're . . . branded. There's a wolf burned into your skin.'

Dri nodded, covering her breast. Why was this happening, what was she doing here? How could she possibly keep faith with them all?

8.

Faith and Fire

8 Teala 941

The incubus hurled itself landwards through the storm. Every minute spent in this world was a torture, a p.r.i.c.king and burning as of a thousand acid-tipped needles in its flesh. Nothing existed here but hate: for the pale and wriggling humans, the rain that scalded, the black wind, the reeking sea.

The city loomed closer, its gas lamps hazy in the downpour. The celebrations had moved indoors, now: every tavern, temple, flophouse and cut-rate bordello had been swamped by revellers, still drunk on bad wine and universal brotherhood. The incubus lifted a ragged wing and veered north, over a corner of the wall. A figure appeared at the parapet: a sentry in helmet and ring mail, looking down on the sodden fields. The incubus did not stop to think: it let itself plummet onto the wall a few yards from the man, gasping, burning, freezing all at once, and when the man turned with a shout its bloodl.u.s.t rose and it flew at him.

The sentry raised his spear, but the demon struck like a frenzied cat. It dodged the weapon, gripped the mail in its claws, shredded the hand that groped for it, then rose to do the same to the detested face. The man was still alive when he fell from the wall, but he died before his body struck the ground.

The incubus lifted away from the falling corpse. Blood soothed it. Like many creatures whose souls extended beyond a single world it suffered immense change when dragged from one to another. In its homeworld it was a pa.s.sive domesticated animal rather like a sheep, though its keepers sometimes fancied they saw mischief in its eyes.

The rain stripped the blood from its body. Long before the creature reached the shrine the needles of acid were back.

A sceptre. A sceptre. A gold thing with a black crystal surmounting. The incubus could sense it ahead of him.