Snare

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he said.

  ‘No. What made you think that?’

  ‘Well, I’ve never been with someone like – uh, well – you’re going to have to tell me what you like.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to.’ She took another kiss. ‘Let’s go lie down.’

  Later, much later, as she lay drowsy in his arms and watched the shadows thrown by the lamps flicker across the room, she wondered if she’d done something dangerous, if she had finally found a man who threatened her desire to ride alone through her life. In a few more days they’d separate, each on their own road – in that, she felt, lay her safety. And if she never saw him again? What then? The thought made her flinch so sharply that for a moment she was afraid she’d woken him, but he sighed in his sleep and fell quiet again.

  She could neither foresee his death nor prevent it. Both of their fates lay with the gods, who had given them this brief moment of peace – like a tent safe and warm in the ocean of grass that made up the world. Thinking that, she could fall asleep, grateful.

  In the rising light of dawn, Soutan came staggering back to camp, so exhausted that Arkazo ran to meet him and take his heavy box of crystals. Warkannan, who had been kneeling on the ground to roll up his bedroll, sat back on his heels.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Warkannan said.

  ‘Not really.’ Soutan sat down nearby. ‘I can’t stop worrying about that damned spirit rider. She could ruin everything.’

  ‘Do you have any evidence that she’s trying to?’

  ‘If I could only find them!’ Soutan ignored the question. ‘They must be in Leen, or at least, inside some sort of building. The crystals can’t see through roofs.’

  ‘They can’t?’ Arkazo put the box down next to Soutan. ‘Why not?’

  ‘The crystals are only receivers. Those moving points of light in the sky? The ones you Kazraks call the Phalanx? They’re actually some sort of transmitter. We think they’re a type of machine called a satellite. They travel around the world above the atmosphere, and when they’re visible in the sky, they capture pictures of the ground below them and transmit them to the crystals.’

  ‘You’re not sure what they are?’ Arkazo knelt down beside Warkannan. ‘It seems like a lot of knowledge has disappeared.’

  ‘That’s certainly true.’

  ‘But you Cantonneurs have books, and you send your children to school. Why wasn’t it all written down?’

  ‘Therein, my dear Kaz, lies a tale. A very long one, but at root simple. The Settlers destroyed a great deal of their own knowledge to ensure we wouldn’t have it. It’s in the Landfall Treaty. They were trying to protect the ChaMeech on the one hand and placate your Mullah Agvar on the other. I understand the former impulse, but why they bothered with the latter, I don’t know.’

  Arkazo frowned and used his finger to draw in the dirt: a small circle above a long curve, and some dotted lines emanating from the circle to the ends of the curve.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Soutan said, grinning. ‘I think you’re about to ask the crucial question. Sometimes you amaze me, Kaz.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Arkazo paused, smiling as if he’d been given a splendid gift. ‘Why are your crystals so limited? Is that the question you mean? You can only see for a few miles in any direction, but if these satellites are in the sky, by rights –’

  ‘I should be able to see from horizon to horizon, yes. We don’t know why they don’t work that way. Somehow or other, the crystals have a limited range, and that’s that.’

  ‘But it doesn’t make sense.’ Arkazo glanced at Warkannan.

  ‘Yes, even I can see that,’ Warkannan said. ‘But we don’t have time to worry about it now. Soutan, if the spirit rider’s far away, then she can’t be sneaking up on us, can she? Or whatever it is you’re so afraid of.’

  ‘She doesn’t need to be close by to ruin my crystals,’ Soutan said. ‘That’s what you don’t understand. But it’s not just her. God in heaven, I forgot – I need to – I’d better scan again.’ He stood up. ‘Kaz, hand me that box.’

  ‘Damn it,’ Warkannan snapped. ‘We need to get on the road. That’s whatyou don’t understand.’

  Soutan clutched his box of crystals to his chest and walked away. Warkannan got up and started after him, but Arkazo caught his arm.

  ‘Uncle, if he scans now, it might save us time in the long run. If there’s some kind of trouble brewing, I mean, and he can see how to avoid it.’

  ‘You’re pretty impressed with Soutan, aren’t you?’

  Arkazo shrugged and turned a little away. ‘Not so much impressed with him,’ he said at last, ‘as with the stuff he knows. I’ve always liked learning how things worked.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Warkannan could remember endless childhood questions, most of which he hadn’t been able to answer. ‘Let’s get the horses saddled up and ready.’

  Apparently, however, Arkazo had hidden talent as an oracle. Soutan came rushing back in just a few minutes.

  ‘Oh my god!’ Soutan stammered. ‘It’s a very good thing I did take a look around. Kaz, you don’t dare ride into town today. It’s crawling with zhundars. They’re looking for Kazraks.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Warkannan said.

  ‘Because one of my crystals can pick up sound. I heard them talking in the outdoor market.’

  ‘Wait,’ Arkazo broke in. ‘If these satellites are above the atmosphere, how can they pick up people talking?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Settlers were immensely advanced. We think that –’

  ‘Stop worrying about the lousy Settlers!’ Warkannan stepped in between them. ‘We need grain for the horses and food for ourselves. How are we going to get it? That’s the only problem we have time to worry about right now.’

  Much to Warkannan’s surprise, Soutan nodded his agreement.

  ‘We’ll have to stick to the back roads and buy from farmers,’ Soutan said. ‘Eventually, I suppose, the zhundars will start searching the countryside, but since I can see them coming, we should be able to avoid them. It’s going to add a lot of miles to our journey, but if we all get arrested, the delay could be permanent.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Arkazo said. ‘Why are they looking for Kazraks?’

  ‘Because of me. They know that I’m riding with a pair of them.’ Soutan turned dead-white and began to sweat. ‘I told you I had powerful enemies. Somehow or other, they know I’m back.’

  Loy Millou, tenured professor of ancient history at the College of Sarla, swept into her office at the guildhall and slammed the door behind her. She threw the book she carried, a copy of The Sibylline Prophecies, onto her desk so hard that a pile of student essays slid and cascaded onto the floor. The unlit candles wobbled, but she caught the silver candelabra before it fell.

  ‘Oh damn it all!’

  She pulled her brown robe over her head and hung it on the hook beside the door. Her white shirt had ridden up, as shirts did under robes. She yanked it down over her saurskin leggings, then flopped into the swivel chair behind her desk. Late afternoon sunlight poured through the unglazed window and fell across the tiled floor. Dust motes danced in the shaft of light, and so did a swarm of yellabuhs, flying endless figure eights.

  ‘You never get anywhere, do you?’ Loy remarked. ‘I’m beginning to feel the same.’

  A knock on the door, which opened before she could call out – Wan Mendis stuck his timid bald head into the room.

  ‘You must have heard the news,’ Wan said.

  ‘About Yarl Soutan? Yes, unfortunately. The foetid stinking nerve of the man!’

  Wan came in and shut the door behind him. When Loy waved in the direction of the extra chair, he sat down, glancing at the pile of rushi on the floor. He bent over and began gathering the essays.

  ‘Thank you,’ Loy said. ‘What I really wonder about is the pair of Kazraks that are riding with him.’

  ‘Me too,’ Wan said. ‘Old Onree’s report said the older one rode like a cavalry offic
er.’ He sat back up and laid the rushi sheets onto the corner of the desk. ‘Student work?’

  ‘Final exams in Settler history.’

  Wan frowned at the top rushi. ‘Their Tekspeak is very bad.’

  ‘They’re first years, that’s why. They’ll get you next term, and you can whip them into shape.’

  Wan smiled, then let it fade. ‘It must strike you particularly hard,’ he said, ‘Yarl’s return, I mean.’

  ‘After what he did to my daughter? Oh yes. I have fantasies about killing him, you know.’

  ‘I can’t blame you. Er, how is Rozi, these days?’

  ‘Still lost somewhere in herself.’ Loy felt her throat tighten. ‘Still doesn’t laugh at anything, still doesn’t want to eat.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Still. She believed in his impossible scheme, you know, heart and soul. She thought he was going to save us all. That’s what made it so horrible.’

  ‘Well, it’s a very attractive premise, a distant paradise that should by rights be ours.’

  ‘And he milked it for all it was worth, the rotten bastard.’

  ‘One reason that men go into the prophet business seems to be the women.’ Wan paused for a sigh. ‘Look at all those stories about Mullah Agvar and his followers’ wives.’

  ‘True. But Rozi wasn’t a woman then. She was a girl.’

  ‘Yes. I’m so sorry.’ Wan arranged the pile of rushis on her desk. ‘So very very sorry. But if the authorities catch him, the guild has to execute him legally, you know.’

  ‘I told you my murderous impulses were fantasies. But when they hang him, I get to watch.’

  ‘No one would deny you that.’

  ‘If the authorities catch him.’ Loy looked away and watched the yellabuhs, endlessly dancing. ‘They did a rotten job last time.’

  ‘Things are different this time. We know about the mask now, and Commiz Duhmars has been told what to look for.’

  ‘No more hiding in plain sight? Well, let’s hope.’

  ‘Speaking of Duhmars, the guildmaster sent me to ask you something. He would have come himself, but there are zhundars in his office. They’re taking a statement or some such thing.’

  The point of this talk, at last! Loy looked back and found Wan leaning forward, his eyes solemn.

  ‘The commiz wants to issue a trans-canton warrant for Yarl’s arrest. He needs a formal complaint, of course. Master Zhoc and I thought of you immediately.’

  Loy felt herself smile. ‘How kind,’ she said. ‘How very kind of you both.’

  ‘I thought you’d enjoy having your name on the thing.’ Wan got up. ‘I’ll just go tell the master. The commiz will want to meet with you tomorrow.’

  ‘Not today?’

  ‘He needs to sound out his fellow authorities first. That’s really why he’s here, to get the guild to send the transmits for him.’

  ‘Daccor, tomorrow, then. Tell him any time but noon. That’s when I hand back these exams. Which I’d better start reading right now.’

  By the time Loy left the guildhall, the sun hung low behind summer clouds, turning the sky as scarlet as the lace-leaf trees that decorated the central square. Students in their pale yellow robes wandered past, talking in groups or walking hand in hand in pairs. The Loremasters Guild owned most of Inner Sarla, the precinct built by the Settlers out of their mysterious flexstone. Around the square stood glossy white buildings, most three storeys high, inset with windows made of some clear substance that no one remembered how to make or even name. Unlike glass, it never shattered, never scratched, never popped out during the worst earthquakes, even when the buildings swayed and groaned and the wood partitions built by the descendants of the Settlers split and fell.

  Sarla, the second-biggest city in the Cantons, stretched out around the college. Tall hedges of dark red thornbush and golden tree-ferns set the precinct apart from the rest of the town, where the buildings were mostly woven from sturdy pink hill bamboid and dark purple lake rushes. In the clear light of summer the effect was nauseatingly sweet, or so Loy found it, as if the town were a tray of petits fours baked by giants. Her destination, however, down in the centre of town, had been built by the Settlers, though for some long-forgotten purpose. Behind a reflecting pool stood a dome of white flexstone, so magnificent that it seemed a logical choice for a synagogue once the Church of the One God had established itself.

  Above the door, painted directly onto the flex, was the blue six-pointed star of King David, enclosing the smaller gold cross of Joshua the Martyr. Here the rabbis taught their congregations the Torah and Dorya, the law and the gifts, the service owed to God as explicated by the prophets and the hope of Heaven as promised by Joshua. A gravelled path led around the dome to a scatter of outbuildings, some white, some pink and purple. One long, low flexstone building, Loy’s destination, sat in the middle of its own garden, protected by a wall woven from brass wire and orange thorn vines. On the gate a chain held a big brass bell. Loy picked it up and rang.

  In a few minutes Sister Taymah, wearing her long, white habit, her hair tucked into a blue headscarf, came out of the building. When she saw Loy she waved and jogged over to open the gate.

  ‘Hello, Loy,’ Taymah said. ‘Come to see Rozi?’

  ‘Yes. How is she today?’

  ‘A bit better. She’s in the chapel, but we’re not having formal service or anything. Come in, come in.’

  The main sanctuary of the temple lay under the white dome, but around the back stood a private chapel for the sisters of the Order of Judith. Chairs woven of purple rushes filled most of the sanctuary, but up on a dais stood the Ark and the bimah, both beau-tifully constructed of true-oak wood. When the worship of the One God had been revived, the founders had been profoundly puzzled by one rule of temple design: seating the Ark on the wall facing Jerusalem. Jerusalem, they knew, existed back on Old Earth, its precise direction impossibly lost. However, it lay somewhere in the galaxy that rose every evening in the east, and a rising star meant hope, and so the Ark now stood against the east wall in every sanctuary.

  On the west wall hung a gold cross with a crown of thorns centred upon it, a memorial to the prophet Joshua bar Josef, who had died trying to free his people from the power of those priestly hypocrites known as the Fairasee. At their bidding the Romai Khanate had nailed him to a wooden cross to die; now his symbol reminded the Cantons that powerful khanates were not to be trusted. His students had gathered his sayings, and a book of them lay on the small lectern across from the bimah.

  In the front row Rozi was sitting, wearing a white dress but no headscarf. Her long dark hair hung straight down to her waist, and her face – her poor little face, as Loy thought of it – was so thin that her cheekbones bulged, sharp under the skin, and there were creases at the corners of her mouth.

  At the sound of footsteps coming down the aisle, Rozi turned, saw Loy, and smiled with real pleasure. In the light from the oil lamp that burned perpetually in front of the Ark, her hazel eyes looked green, deep set – entirely too deep set. ‘Hullo, Mama,’ she said. ‘Exams must be over.’

  ‘Yes, pretty much. I’ve got one last job lot of grades to post.’

  When Loy sat down in the chair next to her, Rozi kept smiling but went tense. She could stand to have no one touch her, not ever her mother, and Loy had long since given up trying to hug her daughter.

  ‘So,’ Loy said. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Pretty good. I uh – well, I’ve made a decision.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want to join the order. I want to become a neophyte here.’ Rozi hesitated, gulped a breath, and went on. ‘I don’t want to go to university.’

  ‘Oh Rozi!’ The words had spoken themselves, and Loy could hear the hurt in her own tone of voice. She forced out a smile. ‘I mean, you know your own mind best. But are you sure?’

  ‘Very sure, Mama. I knew you wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Well, whether I like it or not, it’s your decision to make.’ Loy manag
ed to get control of her voice at last. ‘I mean that, darling. It’s your life, and if you want to spend it here, well, then, that’s the way it’ll be.’

  Tears welled in Rozi’s eyes and spilled down her gaunt cheeks. ‘Thank you,’ she stammered. ‘I’ve been so afraid to say anything, but then I realized, I was just afraid of everything, not really of you. So I decided I’d tell you as soon as I saw you.’

  ‘And, darling, I’m not angry, no. What does Mother Superior think?’

  A side door opened, and Mother Superior herself swept in, draped in white from headscarf to robe to sandals, just as if she’d been lurking there, waiting for a cue. ‘Taymah told me you were here, Loy,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind me interrupting you.’

  ‘Not at all. Rozi just told me about her decision.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mother Superior’s wide grey eyes grew even wider. She had a round face, touched with pink on the cheeks, and smooth, thin, grey eyebrows that Loy suspected her of plucking in secret.

  ‘She says it’s all right.’ Rozi twisted around in her chair and beamed. ‘She says she’s not angry.’

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful! Thank you, Loy.’

  Loy smiled, shrugged, and felt like an utter hypocrite, every bit as bad as Joshua’s hated Fairasee. She wanted to scream, you’ve stolen my daughter, you bitch! But she made small talk, chatted with both Rozi and Mother Superior, chatted with Taymah as well when the girl joined them, and smiled or looked serious as the chat demanded. At last, she felt, she’d martyred herself enough.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ Loy said. ‘I know you have your evening services soon.’

  Mother Superior walked Loy to the gate. For a moment Loy paused, looking back at the dome, rising white against the darkening sky.

  ‘I’m glad for Rozi’s sake that you’re supporting her in this.’ Mother Superior’s voice was always calm, her vowels always round and full. ‘But it must be a disappointment to you.’

  ‘You’ve got sharp eyes. I hope I haven’t been rude?’