Syl stood frozen to the spot, watching in shock as Amera realized what she held, then dropped it, appalled, on the table beside the disemboweled cascid. The arm landed with a dull thud right in front of Syl and still she found herself immobile, unable to look away from what she knew she could never unsee. She took in the slim wrist cuffed in snug, gossamer-thin black fabric, and the pulverized joint where the limb had been severed from the body. The hand was golden and ladylike, yet it was also pounded out of shape and unnaturally twisted. Syl could make out the ragged nails on those rubbery fingers, digits that sagged inward as if begging, or trying to grasp something. She saw the dirt beneath the pale half-moons where she imagined the victim had clawed terrified at the ground of the world she was being ripped from, and she saw a row of little unpopped blisters crossing a red mark on the palm, an injury that looked very much like a burn, a burn remarkably similar to the one she’d witnessed Tanit inflict on the hand of a Novice drudge.
Then she knew.
She turned away, at last understanding why Elda had disappeared completely, for poor Elda had slipped forever into the jaws of this foul creature of the night.
And she understood too that the amulet Elda had entrusted to Syl’s safekeeping must be more than just a sentimental trinket.
CHAPTER 30
The horror of the find was all anyone could speak of. Amera disappeared from her duties, presumably too traumatized to teach. Classes were canceled, gossip flew, and stories became increasingly ridiculous and elaborate, sometimes even fantastical: the hand had only three fingers and belonged to an alien; the hand was merely a joke made of rubber; the hand belonged to Syrene, who had been absent for longer than anyone could previously recall. Others besides Syl started wondering if it was Elda’s hand—and if indeed they were Elda’s remains, why had she gone outside alone and unprotected? Was it suicide?
But Cale finally put a stop to the rumors. She called an impromptu meeting of all Novices and Half-Sisters. They were gathered together in the examination hall, for it was the largest chamber in the Twelfth Realm, a hollowed-out moon mountain with elevated windows that drank in the blackness and the stars beyond. Nobody had called for the main lighting to be activated, so the meeting was held by candlelight, and shadows pooled the walls. It seemed somehow appropriate to Syl, as though they were holding a vigil for their dead Sister.
“Silence,” said Cale. Her voice echoed throughout the cavern, and there was no disguising her fury.
“I speak to you now with the voice of Grandmage Oriel, who is still recovering following her recent illness,” she continued. “And yet when she should be recuperating, in perfect tranquillity, still the mutterings of these two Realms find her and disturb her peace. That is why you are here. I’m sure you have guessed that I have called you together about the incident in the biology laboratory. Frankly, we are ashamed of your conduct, Novices and Half-Sisters. Ashamed.”
The whispering turned to silence as the students took this in.
“In the Nairene Sisterhood—this esteemed order into which you all hope one day to be inducted—we pride ourselves on facts, not gossip, on truth and knowledge and the dogged pursuit thereof, not on unfounded speculation. Yet it has come to our attention that the hallways are awash with the sort of idle talk and scandalizing that we abhor. It will stop immediately. I shall now put an end to your unseemly speculation with the truth.”
The room rustled, but Cale ignored it.
“Our scientific division has analyzed the limb found in the belly of the cascid and, through genetic identification, we have determined that it is the remains of an insurgent from among our own kind—yes, from among the Illyri, though obviously not from within our beloved Sisterhood. This serves to remind us of what we must never forget: that there are those in the outside world—indeed, the outside worlds—who seek to bring about the downfall of our honorable order.”
There were cries of indignation, but Cale silenced them with a look and an impatient wave of her hands.
“The insurgent came to Avila Minor by night in an attempt to infiltrate the Marque: signs of an unauthorized landing were logged by our automated systems some time ago. The insurgent’s nefarious intentions are demonstrated by the fact that she—yes, she, for our enemy was female—wore a darksuit to hide her heat signature: some of you may even have seen the remains of the fabric on the dismembered limb. The insurgent was torn apart by the Marque’s natural protectors, the ancient cascids, before she even made it to our doors. For this we are grateful. Unfortunately, one of the younger cascids also swallowed a piece of the darksuit, and the chemicals within the fabric poisoned it. Further remains of the darksuit have been found on the moon surface and are currently being analyzed in the hope of identifying the source of this act of terrorism. That is the end of the matter. May it be a lesson to our enemies.”
Her eyes swept toward Syl, though Syl wasn’t sure if this was intentional.
“As for the ridiculous rumors that the limb belonged to Elda Mallori, rest assured that she is safe and well. Most of you must have realized that she was not suited to our order. Thus it was no surprise when she was found hiding in the inner Realms of the Marque, and she was quietly returned to Illyr. Unfortunately, her dismissal brought some disgrace on her family, and Elda subsequently chose to go to one of the offworld colonies. We can only hope that she finds happiness and contentment there. Frankly, Novices, I expect more intellectual rigor from you. Where would poor Elda source a darksuit anyway, and why would she even be wearing such a thing?”
Why indeed, thought Syl as Cale brought the meeting to an end. Why indeed?
• • •
Syl sat on her bed in her locked room and took out Elda’s amulet yet again, just as she had for the past few nights. She weighed it in her hands, feeling the roughness of the engraving. She prodded at the hinge and gave the thing a little shake, but there was no give, no secret compartment, nothing. She looked again at the odd scratchings on the back—Archaeon? She stroked the letters, wondering anew what they had meant to Elda, then carefully studied the severe face of Elda’s mother, as if she could read Berlot Mallori’s thoughts, or unravel the secrets she might hold behind those hard eyes. After a while, Syl put Elda’s locket around her neck, where it settled against her skin. Then she wrote out a list of questions by hand—she could have used her tablet, but she knew that the Sisterhood’s IT system could access anything recorded on a Novice’s device, and she preferred to keep her thoughts private—yet each question just seemed to raise more.
Issues re Elda
1) Who was Elda really?
A spy? But for whom? And if she was against the Sisterhood, was she on the same side as me? Are other Illyri investigating the Sisterhood too? Who are they?
2) Archaeon? Is it a person? A place? A thing? Is it important?
It must be, for clearly it was important to Elda, and Elda is dead. But why? Check libraries.
3) Where did Elda source a darksuit?
Presumably from whoever she was working for. But she’d been here four years—was she a plant all along? Were there other plants?
4) What was Elda doing outside the Marque?
Leaving? Relaying information? Having a cigarette, ha ha ha . . .
5) Why didn’t the darksuit hide her from the cascids?
???
6) Why were the bones of her fingers so badly crushed that her hand appeared to be made from rubber?
???
It was these last two questions that caused Syl the most distress, as darksuits concealed heat signatures, and with it movement, and she knew firsthand how efficiently they worked, for hadn’t darksuits hidden her so well when she was on the run in the Scottish Highlands? She recalled with a pang how Paul had handed her a darksuit, and how it had tightened to fit her as if she were being enveloped by snakes, and she remembered too how he had given her an old sweater and waterpr
oofs to wear over the suit, how gentle he’d been with her when the other humans had been callous, even cruel. And then as they fled, even the cutting-edge technology in the Diplomatic ships hunting them hadn’t been able to detect them . . .
So if Elda had been wearing a darksuit, how then would a primitive cascid have tracked her as she sneaked across the nighttime surface of the moon? Perhaps she’d been extraordinarily noisy, but that hardly seemed likely given the trouble she’d obviously taken to leave the Marque in secret. Anyway, the Elda that Syl had known was masterful at slipping by silent and unnoticed. Syl now found herself rather in awe of Elda, or of this new notion of Elda and the ruse she must have pulled off for so long. Nevertheless, clearly the plan hadn’t ended as she’d hoped.
She looked again at the fifth question, tapping her finger on it: so why didn’t the darksuit hide Elda from the cascids? The only explanation that made any sense was that it had been damaged, compromised. Perhaps she’d torn it as she fled. That had to be it. But what was she fleeing?
And that led Syl to the question that played on her mind most of all. Why were Elda’s finger bones crushed, yet the skin on the hand was unbroken? The image was seared onto her memory, the golden skin, the fingers floppy and pliable as caramel. It was as if the skeleton had turned to rubble, each digit pounded to a series of joints and breaks where there should be none, then stuffed back inside a glove of skin. Then there was the torn wound where the limb was ripped from the body, the bones like white splinters spiking from the stump, as if someone had shoved handfuls of toothpicks into the forearm. Yet cascids had sharp cutting pincers and strong, machete-like mandibles that would surely slice neatly through bone, not reduce it to shards no thicker than straw. The incongruity nagged at her, a tickle in her brain, something she needed to remember.
She hid her notes with the keys again and went to dinner.
• • •
That night, just as Syl was drifting off to sleep, a thought came to her.
“Oh!”
She sat upright, switched on her lamp, took out her hidden list, and added one more question.
7) If Elda was spying here for four years, WHAT DID SHE FIND OUT?
As she replaced the list, Elda’s amulet swung free and bumped against her arm. She touched it like a talisman before shutting her growing collection of secrets safely away again.
That night she dreamed of dark worlds, and to each she gave the name “Archaeon.”
CHAPTER 31
“I’m going to the library,” Syl told Ani as she came out of her bedroom the next morning. Ani was sleepy-eyed and still in her pajamas, but she stopped short, horrified.
“Oh, no! I didn’t forget a project, did I?” she said.
“No. I just want to look something up.”
“Oh, thank goodness! You’re very dedicated. What is it?”
Syl looked around the room, then shut the door to the hallway outside.
“Those were Elda’s remains inside that cascid, Ani. I have no doubt. I recognized that last burn Tanit gave her.”
Ani winced. She hated to be reminded of the violence the blue-robed Novices could so casually dish out.
“No, Syl. It’s not possible. Cale said so.”
“And what else would Cale say: that a Novice had somehow been attacked and killed by a cascid? That would raise questions about what Elda was doing outside the Marque to begin with. I think Elda was much cleverer than anyone suspected—too clever simply to walk into the wilderness and hope for the best. She had planned her escape. Look; she left this in my locker, with a note.”
She scooped the locket and the note from under her robes and placed both in Ani’s hand.
“Elda asked me if I could get the locket to her mother back on Illyr.”
Ani read the note, then turned the locket over in her hand, opening it and tracing the markings on the back, just as Syl had done so many times before her.
“‘Archaeon?’” she read aloud. “Is that a thing?”
“I don’t know, but now Elda’s dead, and that locket was important to her. That’s why I’m going to the library. I want to find out what Archaeon is.”
“But I still don’t understand why Elda would have been outside? Cale said it was a spy that was found. She was even wearing a darksuit . . .”
“Ani! Elda was the spy, and I suspect they know it. All that stuff about her going back to Illyr and then being sent off to one of the outlying colonies, it’s just lies.”
“But why would they be lying?”
“I don’t know! I only know what I think, but I have no proof.”
Syl rubbed her head, frustrated.
“Well, tell me what you think you know then,” replied Ani, and she sat down and patted the couch beside her encouragingly.
“All right then,” said Syl, throwing herself onto a cushion, “but you’re not going to like it.”
And she told Ani what she believed: that far from being a simple Novice, and an incompetent one, Elda had been much more complex. Elda was a spy, planted in the Marque to find out the secrets of the Sisterhood, but when her time came to flee, something had gone wrong. As a precaution in case she was caught, or something worse, Elda had left the locket for Syl, the only Illyri in the Marque whom she believed she could trust.
But Syl kept from Ani the fact that she also had a set of keys: Cale’s keys. After all, the Gifted might well be able to read Ani’s mind when she opened it to them during their special lessons. It was dangerous enough to have shared so much with her already.
“And, Ani, I’m sorry it upsets you, but you do know how cruel Tanit and her gang were to Elda. They bullied and persecuted her. They torment anyone who crosses them. They practice their skills on the other Novices—no, don’t interrupt! You know it’s true. The little burns, the rashes, the unexplained pains, the bleeding, the things that fall at strange angles and hurt those that offend the Gifted. They’d love to torment me too, but”—she almost said that she could protect herself, but Ani knew nothing of her skills, so she corrected her words at the last moment—“well, you know that Syrene told them off for bothering me when we first arrived. She sees me as a trophy, a sign that Lord Andrus of the Military does the Sisterhood’s bidding. I mean, what a coup, giving them his own daughter!”
He had even waved her goodbye, smiling as if his heart would burst with pride. Syl swallowed hard, fighting back sorrow, but still tears filled her eyes. Ani reached out a hand and squeezed her oldest friend’s fingers, and Syl squeezed back.
“The Gifted were always hurting Elda, Ani. Nemein gave her spots and boils, and Mila and Xaron definitely used their powers to throw things at her without ever lifting a finger. And Tanit burned Elda. She burned her face and her right palm. I know because I was there, and Elda showed me. There was a burn just like it on the hand they took out of the cascid’s stomach. It was a right hand: it was Elda’s hand. It was Elda who died out there . . . Perhaps, in the end, they killed her.”
Ani looked stricken. Mila and Xaron liked to show off their telekinetic talents, and who could forget the day in the canteen when Elda’s tray of food had suddenly lurched upward and slammed the girl in the face, the hot stew in her eyes and nostrils making the usually silent Novice scream in pain? But she didn’t know if she dared tell Syl about their other talent, the combined one, because together Mila and Xaron had the ability to burst blood vessels and puncture organs, their needlelike minds pricking holes and popping veins as if they were balloons.
Ani bit her lip, shaking her head.
“Poor Elda. But I don’t believe that they would have killed her, Syl. You’re wrong about them. Yes, they can be cruel, but they’re not murderers.”
“Are you sure about that? Did you notice how the bones in her fingers had been crushed, Ani, yet the skin was undamaged, unbroken? How could a cascid do that? You saw its mouth, its pincers. It’s
just not possible. A cascid couldn’t inflict that kind of damage, but I think a mind could. A dark, vicious mind.”
And Ani knew the truth of it.
“Sarea,” she said softly, sadly. “I think Sarea could do that.”
Syl turned to face her friend on the couch, then swung her legs round and tucked her feet under Ani’s bottom just as she used to on chilly evenings at Edinburgh Castle. She listened in silence as Ani told her everything she’d seen in her private classes with the other blue-robed Novices, all the things that she was sworn to secrecy about under threat of punishment or banishment. It was like a floodgate opening as she explained in more detail about the powers the Gifted had, the psychic skills and mind tricks they were encouraged to practice over and over. She told how Nemein was taken to hone her disease-causing talents in private on live laboratory animals, for how else could the progress of the maladies she created be monitored? The seclusion meant the others wouldn’t be upset by the squeals of the unfortunate creatures as disease devoured their flesh, chewed through their organs, and snuffed out their vitality, but records were kept by proud tutors charting their protracted demise, and they were only too happy to encourage the other Blue Novices with tales of Nemein’s growing prowess.
Sarea was routinely given dead animals to play with—both those killed by Nemein, and then others specially freighted in—and she shrieked with amusement as they crumpled to pulp before her, until they resembled nothing more than bags of skin and fur stuffed with flakes of bone and gore. Yes, she could make the bones pierce through the skin, but this hidden, highly controlled shattering—the breaking of bones without damaging the skin—was a new mastery of her skills, and one of which she was most proud.