have had a long time to learn,” Yskatarina said, watching the Matriarch’s face with care as the truth slowly dawned. “A hundred years of feedback, from the haunt-tech that is already here.” Fully aware of the Memnos prohibitions about physical contact, she put an iron-and-glass hand on the Matriarch’s sleeve in seeming reassurance, and watched with satisfaction as the Matriarch snatched the sleeve away. “Do not worry. I am here to help.”
“You are here to sell,” the Matriarch hissed.
“Yes, and you knew there would be a price. Just like the previous version of haunt-tech.”
“It was a witches’ bargain.” The Matriarch’s face was still as stone. Once more, her hand drifted to the phial at her throat.
“But we are witches, your kind and mine, are we not? We hold the keys, here and now, to a world of transformation. With this new technology, updated, you can mine the past. You can revive ancient forms of being, converse with their unaltered consciounesses, uncover all the secrets that they hold. And you can raise an army, not just spectral fancies.”
“And the price,” the Matriarch said, bitter as frostbite. It was not a question.
The gaezelles were wheeling away to the north. Yskatarina watched them through the binoculars, the powerful red legs stirring up the dust, the long hair that streamed down their backs, their small curled hands. She sighed to see such grace.
“Ah, the price.” Yskatarina drew the Matriarch aside. “Elaki wants information. All the genetic data that you unearth must go to her. She is true to the original aims of Nightshade: the ultimate perfection of the sentient form.”
“She would appear to be some distance away from that,” the Matriarch said, with a dubious glance at Yskatarina.
“She wants your help, too, in another, related, matter,” Yskatarina said, forcing herself to ignore the slight. “But there is something else that I want.” The thought of betraying Elaki tore at her heart with implanted passion, artificial regret. If it had not been for that small, pure undercurrent of hate, Yskatarina would not have been able to continue. She added, in a gasping whisper, “Something you must do for me.”
CHAPTER 7
EARTH
Lunae stepped through the door into the shadows of the Grandmothers’ chamber. The air was musty with the smell of old lamp oil, pungent with narcotic snuff and a salt-weed odor that reminded Lunae of her single cloistered visit to the shores of Fragrant Harbor. The walls were made of driftwood, a palace of drowned trees, the beams and rafters black and twisted, as though burned. Yet there was soft fur beneath her feet: a striped dark-and-gold skin, bright as a flame and perhaps fifteen feet in length. She thought of Kamchatka, where the kappa had come from, of the Fire Islands. She studied the knots and the warp of the ancient wood, the striped pelt beneath her feet, not wanting to look toward the bed where her Grandmothers lay.
“Come closer,” two voices said, speaking as one. Lunae forced herself to glance up. The lamp that hung above the bed had not been lit, so that the voices came from the hidden midst of the drapes. Lunae walked to the foot of the bed and halted. “Stay there, child,” the voices said sharply, “where we can see you.” Then the lamp flared up and the Grandmothers’ faces peered out from between the curtains: one old, one young. Lunae often thought that it was as though Right-Hand, with her sweet voice and caressing manner, was slowly but surely draining the life from her companion until there would be nothing left of old Left-Hand but a husk. She remembered the chrysalis, turning to moth and back again, and shivered.
“Where is she?” Left-Hand asked querulously, though Right-Hand’s lips also moved in silent accompaniment, and when Right-Hand answered, “Why, she is standing before you, blind old thing, do you not see her?” Lunae heard a whispered echo of the words from the other side of the bed. She concentrated on their faces, not wanting to glance down and catch a glimpse of the joined flesh. She had seen it once, when the robes that the Grandmothers wore had slipped aside to reveal a mass of scar tissue, almost as knotted as the wood of their chamber, revealing lumps and bulges.
“Why would anyone want to be linked in such a way?” she had asked Dreams-of-War the next day, fighting back revulsion, and the Martian woman, evidently just as bemused, had replied, “I cannot say. For me, to touch another person is difficult enough.”
So Lunae had once asked the kappa why they had been joined, and the kappa had told her that she did not know, but in her opinion, it was more likely that they had not so chosen, but had come connected from the growing-bag and were incapable of separation.
“Such things are not uncommon. Sometimes the children are returned to the mulch, sometimes not. It depends on the family’s wishes, and there are many views on these matters.”
As she stood before the Grandmothers, Lunae was suddenly conscious of her own flesh and the boundaries of it, her separateness from everyone else in the room, and she had to force herself to remain where she stood rather than take a shaky step back. She wanted suddenly to remain just as she was: not to alter, never grow old. She felt a sudden kinship with the kappa, and wondered if this meant that she, too, were nothing more than an inferior kind of human. She supposed that the thought should have made her feel guilty.
“You were disobedient,” the Grandmothers said now. “What do you have to say for yourself ?”
“I wanted to see the city beyond the mansion. I grew tired of being cooped up.” Somehow, she had expected to hear herself sound like a whining child, but to her surprise, the voice in which she spoke was adult, a person worthy of consideration. The Grandmothers stared at her, and when they replied, the tone was distinctly more conciliatory.
“Perhaps that is understandable. But it was unwise, nonetheless. You were spotted, by one who is an enemy. It is no longer safe for you to remain here.”
“Dreams-of-War said that I am to be sent away.” Lunae glanced down and saw something beneath the bed: a twist of tubes and glistening fluid. She fixed her gaze on the wall, seeking patterns in the wood. “Where am I to go?”
“Dreams-of-War and the kappa will be instructed. It is best if you yourself are not told until the day of your departure.”
“Will they be going with me?”
“Of course,” the Grandmothers said. “And you must obey them, and not be so disobedient this time. Much depends upon it.”
Lunae, swallowing hard, glanced at the nurse and saw that the kappa was becoming visibly agitated, wringing her thick fingers together as if confronted with a stubborn piece of laundry. The Grandmothers paid the kappa no heed. Their gaze remained fixed on Lunae: two pairs of dark, impenetrable eyes.
It was the kappa’s distress that prompted Lunae to say, “What if I choose a place to go?” It was a foolish thing to say and she knew it, but suddenly she wanted to see just where the boundaries lay, what smaller victories might be within her grasp.
“Choose?” the Grandmothers said together. Lunae felt as though the air were becoming sluggish and slow, curdling around her. It was suddenly difficult to breathe. The tapestries that hung around the bed loomed larger, so that she could see every detail of the weave, then retreated, as though she peered through the wrong end of a telescope.
“There is no choice,” Right-Hand said, oil-smooth, amused. “No choice for any of us. The sooner you come to understand this, the easier things will be. Do you not agree?”
