Those goals were nothing less than the overthrow and destruction of all silthdom. A grand vision indeed, considering the iron grip the Communities had upon the world.
III
Marika’s first attempt to visit Braydic did not go well at all. Called out of the communications center, the technician met her with evasive eyes and an obvious eagerness to be away. Marika was both amused and pained, for she recalled who it was who had held the door guards at bay in the heat of crisis.
“No one saw you, Braydic,” she said. “You are safe. I doubt the guards themselves could identify you. They were on the edge of hysteria and probably recall you as being a demon nine feet tall and six wide.”
Braydic shuddered and stared at the floor. Marika was disappointed, but knew what that momentary commitment had cost Braydic. She had risked everything.
“I owe you, Braydic. And I will not forget. Go, then, if you fear having me for a friend. But I promise my friendship will not falter for it.”
Marika returned two weeks later. Braydic was no more sure of herself. Pained, Marika determined that she would not return again till she had attained some position of power, the shadow of which could fall upon Braydic.
She had begun to grow aware of the value and uses of power, and to think of it. Often.
That second visit, cut short, left her an hour free. She went to her away place in the tower.
Spring now threatened Maksche. The city lay under a haze from factories working overtime to fulfill production quotas before their workers had to report to the fields. Because of the shortening growing seasons, every worker now had to labor in the fields to get sufficient crops planted, tended, and harvested. Else the city would not make it through the winter.
This failing winter had been the worst in Maksche’s history, though it was mild compared to those Marika had seen in the upper Ponath. But succeeding winters would be worse. The Maksche silth were now driving their tenants, their dependents, their meth property, so Maksche would be prepared for the worst when it came.
A darkship rose from the square below. The blade of the dagger turned till it pointed northward. Once it was above Maksche’s highest structures, it fled into the distance.
From the date of the most senior’s arrival, darkships had been airborne every day the weather permitted, hunting nomads, tracking nomads, scouting out their strong points and places of meeting, gathering information for a summer campaign. The Reugge could not challenge the Serke directly. They had neither the strength nor proof other Communities would consider adequate. So the most senior meant to defeat their efforts by obliterating their minions.
She was tough and bloodyminded, this Gradwohl. She meant to fertilize the entire northern half of the Reugge province with nomad corpses. And if she could manage it, she would add several hundred troublesome rogue males to the slaughter.
The cloister was ahum with an anticipation Marika hardly noticed. She did not expect to become involved in Gradwohl’s campaign.
How long before Dorteka allowed her to explore Maksche? She was eager to be away from the cloister, to break for a few hours from this relentless business of becoming silth.
Maksche was odd, a city of marked contrasts. Here sat the cloister, all but its ceremonial heart electrically lighted and heated. One could get water simply by lifting a lever. Wastes were carried away in a system of sewage pipes. But outside the cloister’s walls few lights existed, and those only candles or tallow lamps. Meth out there drew their water from wells or the river. Their sewers consisted of channels in the alleyways, washed clean when it rained.
It had not rained all winter.
Meth out there walked, unless they were the rare, rich, favored few who could rent dray beasts, a driver, and a carriage from the tradermales of the Brown Paw Bond. Silth sisters going abroad in the town usually rode in elegant steam coaches faster than any carriage. If Dorteka allowed her out, would she be permitted the use of such a vehicle? Not likely. They were guarded jealously, for they were very expensive. They were handcrafted by one of the tradermale underbrotherhoods not part of the local Brown Paw Bond, and imported. They were not silth property.
The traders sold no vehicle outright, but leased them instead. Lease contracts demanded huge penalty payments for damages done. Marika suspected that was motivated by a desire to keep lessees from dismantling the machines to see how they worked.
A tradermale operator came with every vehicle. Outsiders were not allowed to learn how to drive. Those males obligated to the vehicles of the cloister lived in a small barracks across the street from the cloister’s main gate, whence they could be summoned on a moment’s notice.
When her hour was up, Marika went to Dorteka and asked, “How many more points do I have to accumulate before I can go into the city?”
“It is not a point system, Marika. You can go whenever I decide you deserve the reward.”
“Well? Do I?” She had held back nothing. Having been used as a counter in a contest she did not understand, for reasons she could not comprehend, she had gone all out to arm herself for her own survival. Dorteka could not have demanded more. There was no more she could give.
“Perhaps. Perhaps. But why go out into that fester at all?”
“To explore it. To see what is out there. To get out of this oppressive prison for a while.”
“Oppressive? Prison? The cloister?”
“It is unbearable. But you grew up here. Maybe you cannot imagine freedom of movement.”
“No. I cannot. At least not out there. My duties have taken me into the city, Marika. It is disgusting. I would rather not traipse around after you while you crawl through the muck.”
“Why should you, mistress?”
“What?”
“There is no reason for you to go.”
“If you go, I have to go.”
“Why, mistress?”
“To keep you out of trouble.”
“I can take care of myself, mistress.”
“Maksche is not the Ponath, pup.”
“I doubt that the city has dangers to compare with the nomad.”
“It is not danger to your flesh I fear, Marika. It is your mind that concerns me.”
“Mistress?”
“You do not fool me. You are not yet silth. And you are no harmless, eager student. A shadow lives behind your eyes.”
Marika did not respond till she carefully stifled her anger. “I do not understand you, mistress. Others have said the same of me. Some have called me doomstalker. Yet I do not feel unusual. How could the city harm my mind? By exposing me to dangerous ideas? I have enough of those myself. I will create my own beliefs here or there, regardless of what you would have me believe. Or could it harm me by showing me how cruelly Reugge bonds live so we silth can be comfortable here? That much I have seen from the wall.”
Dorteka did not reply. She, too, was fighting anger.
“If I must have company and protection, send my packmates, Grauel and Barlog. I am certain they would be happy to accept your instructions.” Her sarcasm was lost on Dorteka.
She and Grauel and Barlog had been at odds almost since the confrontation with the most senior. The two huntresses had been making every effort to appear to be perfect subjects of the Community. Marika did not want them to surrender quite so fast.
“I will consider that. If you insist on going out there.”
“I want to, mistress.”
The great ground-level gate rolled back. Grauel and Barlog stepped out warily. Marika followed, surprised at their reluctance. Behind her, Dorteka said, “Be back before dark, Marika. Or no more passes.”
“Yes, mistress. Come on!” She ran, exulting in her freedom. Grauel and Barlog struggled to keep pace. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“It stinks,” Grauel said. “They live in their own ordure, Marika.”
And Barlog: “Where are you going?” Already it was evident that Marika had a definite destination in mind.
“To the tradermale encl
osure. To see their flying machines.”
“I might have guessed,” Barlog grumbled. “Slow down. We’re not as young as you are. Marika, all this obsession with flying is not healthy. Meth were not meant for it. Marika! Will you slow down?”
Marika glanced back. The two huntresses were struggling with the cumbersome long rifles they carried. “Why did you bring those?” She knew Grauel preferred the weapon she had gotten from Bagnel.
“Orders, Marika. Pure and simple and malicious orders. There are some silth who hope you’ll get killed out here. The only reason you get a pretense of a bodyguard is because you have the most senior’s favor.”
“Pretense?”
“Any other silth would have at least six guards. If she was insane enough to come out on foot. And they would not be so shoddily armed. They would not have let us come except that we are two they won’t miss if something happens.”
“That’s silly. Nobody has been attacked since we’ve been here. I think all that is just scare talk. Good old grauken in the bushes.”
“No one has been foolish enough to walk these streets either, Marika.”
Marika did not want to argue. She wanted to see airships. She pressed ahead. The tradermales built machines that flew. She had seen them in her education tapes and from her tower in the nether distance, but it was hard to connect vision screen images and remote specks with anything real. The airfield lay too far from the cloister for examination from her tower.
An aircraft was circling as Marika approached the fence surrounding the tradermale enclave. It swooped, touched down, rolled along a long concrete strip, and came to a halt with one final metallic belch. Marika checked Grauel and Barlog for their reactions. They had seen nothing like it before. Servants of the silth saw very little of the world, and tradermale aircraft were not permitted to fly near the cloister.
They might have been watching carrion birds land upon a corpse.
“Let’s get closer,” Marika said. She trotted along the fence, toward a group of buildings. Grauel and Barlog hurried after her, glancing over their shoulders at the aircraft and at two big transport dirigibles resting in cradles on the far side of the concrete strip.
The advantage of being silth, Marika believed, was that you could do any All-bedamned thing you wanted. Ordinary meth would grind their teeth and endure. She breezed into an open doorway, past a desk where a sleepy tradermale watched a vision screen, dashed down a long hallway and out onto the field proper, ignoring the startled shout that pursued her. She headed for the freighters.
The nearest was a monster. The closer she ran, the more she was awed.
“Oh,” Grauel said at last, and slowed. Marika stopped to wait. Grauel breathed, “All bless us. It is as big as a mountain.”
“Yes.” Marika started to explain how an airship worked, saw that she had lost both huntresses, said instead, “It could haul the whole Degnan pack. Packstead and all. And have room left over.”
Tradermale technicians were at work around the airship’s gondola. One spotted them. He yelled at the others. A few just stared. Most scattered. Marika thought that was amusing.
The fat flank of the ship loomed higher and higher. She leaned back, now as awed as Grauel and Barlog. She beckoned a male either too brave or too petrified to have fled. He approached tentatively. “What ship is this, tradermale?”
He seemed puzzled by that latter, dialect word, but got the sense of the question. “Dawnstrider.”
“Oh. I do not know that one. It is so big, I thought it must be Starpetal.”
“No. Starpetal is much larger. Way too big for our cradles here. Usually only the smaller ships come up to the borderlands.”
“Borderlands?” Marika asked, bemused by the size of the ship.
“Well, Maksche is practically the end of the world. Last outpost of civilization. Ten miles out there it turns into Tech Three Zone and just gets worse the farther you go.” He tilted his ears and exposed his teeth in a way that said he was making a joke.
“I thought I hailed from the last outpost,” Marika countered in a bantering tone. “North edge of the Tech Two.” If she could overcome his awe, he might have something interesting to say. She did realize that most meth considered Maksche the end of the world. It was the northernmost city of consequence in the Hainlin basin, the limit of barge traffic and very border of Tech Four-permitted machine technology. It had grown up principally to service and support trade up the Hainlin, into the primitive interior of the vast and remote northern Reugge provinces. “Well, savagery is relative. Right? We are civilized. They are savages. Come, Barlog. Grauel.”
“Where are you going?” the tradermale squeaked. “Hey! You cannot go in there.”
“I just want to look at the control cabin,” Marika said. “I will not touch anything. I promise.”
“But… wait…”
Marika climbed the ladder leading to the airship’s gondola. After a moment of silent debate, Grauel and Barlog followed, shaking visibly, driven onward only by their pride. A Degnan huntress knew no fear.
Dawnstrider was a freighter. Its appointments were minimal, designed to keep down mass so payload could be maximized. Even so, the control cabin was bewildering with its array of meters and dials, levers, valves, switches, and push-buttons. “Do not touch anything,” Marika warned Grauel and Barlog for the benefit of the technician, who refused to leave them unsupervised. “We do not want this beast to carry us away.”
The huntresses clutched their weapons and stared around. Marika was puzzled. They were not ignorant Ponath dwellers anymore. They had been exposed to the greater meth universe. They should have developed some flexibility.
She did not remain impressed long. Dawnstrider was a disappointment, though she could not pin down why. “I have seen enough. Let us go look at the little ships.”
She went down the ladder behind the technician, amused by the emotion betrayed in his every movement. She was getting good at reading body language.
She did not sense the wrongness till she had moved several steps from the base of the ladder. Then it was too late.
Tradermales rushed from beneath the airship, all of them armed. Grauel and Barlog snapped their weapons to the ready, shielded Marika with their bodies.
“What is this?” Marika snapped.
“You do not belong here, silth,” a male said. “You are trespassing on brethren land.”
Marika’s nerve wavered. Yet she stared the male in the eye with the arrogance of a senior and said, “I go where I please, male. And you mind your manners when you speak—”
“You are out of line, pup. No one comes into a brethren enclave without permission of the factors.”
He had the right of it. She had not thought. There were compacts between the Reugge and the tradermales. She had overlooked them in her enthusiasm.
A stubborn something within her refused to back down, insisted that she up the risk. “You better have these males put their weapons aside. I do not wish to harm anyone.”
“I have twenty rifles, pup. I count two on your side.”
“You are speaking to a darkwalker. I can destroy the lot of you before one trigger can be pulled. You think about dying with your heart ripped out, male.”
His lips peeled back in a snarl. He was ready to call her bluff. The set of Grauel’s shoulders said that the huntress thought her mad to provoke the male so, that she would get them all killed for nothing.
Fleetingly, Marika wondered why she did provoke almost everyone who ever challenged her.
“We shall see.” The tradermale gestured.
Marika felt an odd tingling, like that she experienced around high-energy communications gear. Something electromagnetic was being directed at her. She spotted a tradermale in the background aiming a boxlike device her way.
She dived down inside herself, through her loophole, snagged a ghost, and slammed it into the guts of the box. She twisted that ghost and compressed it into an ever more rapidly spinning ball, all wi
thin an instant. She watched it shred wires and glass.
She came back in time to watch the box fly apart, to hear the technician’s startled yelp. He raised a bleeding paw to his mouth.
Fingers strained at triggers. The leading tradermale betrayed extreme distress. “You see?” Marika demanded.
“Hold it! Hold it there!” someone shouted from the distance. Everyone turned.
More males were running along the airstrip. In a moment Marika realized why one seemed familiar. “Bagnel,” she said softly. Her spirits rose. Maybe she would escape the consequences of her own stupidity after all.
The instant she began to see hope, she started worrying about the consequences that would follow the report that would reach the cloister. There would be a complaint, surely. Tradermales were said to be militant about their rights. They had struggled for ages to obtain them. Their organization was by-the-rules where those were concerned.
Marika was mildly amazed to discover she was more afraid of Dorteka than she was of this potentially lethal confrontation.
A few tradermale weapons sagged as they awaited those approaching. Tension drooped with them. Grauel and Barlog relaxed, though they did not lower their weapons.
Bagnel rushed up, puffing. “Timbruk, what have you got here?” He peered at Marika. “Ha! Well! And I actually thought of you when they told me. Marika. Hello.” He interposed himself between Marika and the male he had called Timbruk. “Can we have a little relaxation here, meth? Everybody. Put the weapons down. There is no call to get anyone hurt.”
Timbruk protested, “Bagnel, they have trespassed…”
“Obviously. But no harm done, was there?”
“Harm is not the point.”
“Yes. Yes. Well, Timbruk, if they need shooting we can do that later. Put the weapons down. Let me talk. I know this sister. She saved my life in the Ponath.”
“Saved your life? Come on. She is just a pup. She is the one who…?”