by lacquer walls, Lunae had listened to the multiple babble of Cantonese, Kitachi Malaya, and the Lost Tongues of the north, smelled smoke and kimchi and lemongrass, the odors of the tea stalls, and the blood that ran from the slaughter-racks of the meat market. She had been unable to catch even a glimpse of the world around her. But for once, Dreams-of-War and her kappa nurse had been in agreement with the Grandmothers’ dictates: Lunae should not be exposed to the view of the general populace. Lunae did not understand why this should be.
But now rebellion rose in Lunae’s breast like the silk-moth in its captive web. She knew only her home, loved the kappa, respected Dreams-of-War, and obeyed her Grandmothers, but she so greatly wanted to see what it was like elsewhere, to witness the world beyond the weir-wards and the oreagraph. With sudden longing, she remembered the junk running in from the north.
“When am I to be allowed outside?” she asked once more, for her guardian had not yet replied.
“Not today,” Dreams-of-War replied, simultaneously fanning and withering Lunae’s hopes. Frustration rose to choke her.
“When, then?”
“When you are ready.”
“I would love to travel the Chain,” Lunae ventured.
Dreams-of-War laughed. “Would you? My home of Mars, perhaps, the Nine Cities of the Crater Plain? Winterstrike and Caud? Or would you prefer to ride the links all the way to Nightshade, see the sun as nothing more than a pinprick star?” She added after a moment, “Not that one can enter Nightshade space. The lab clans won’t allow it.”
“Everything,” Lunae said, wide-eyed. “I want to see everything.”
“Well, you have spirit, I’ll give you that,” Dreams-of-War answered.
When Dreams-of-War had gone, Lunae rose restlessly from the window seat and made her way down the twisting stairs. Her footsteps clattered on the boards, for all that she tried to be quiet. The Grandmothers always told her off for making a noise, and when she told Dreams-of-War how hard she endeavored to keep silent, the Martian merely snorted and said that the floorboards were made deliberately creaky, so that the Grandmothers would always hear who was coming. Lunae did not find it at all difficult to believe this explanation and she took additional pains to walk softly.
She passed the door that led to the Grandmothers’ chamber and paused, but no sound came from within. The hallway smelled musty at this point, as though something old and forlorn had leaked beneath the door and permeated the atmosphere. Lunae hurried on, seeking fresher air. Soon she found herself in the narrow kitchen. The stove had been lit, which made the room smoky. Lunae sneezed once, then went to the back door. She was not allowed to go into the garden without the kappa or Dreams-of-War, but she tried the door handle anyway, half-expecting the weir-wards to shriek up. They did not, suggesting that the kappa was already outside. It would surely be permissible, Lunae told herself, to go in search of her nurse. Stealthily, she opened the door and stepped out into the garden.
The back of the mansion was overhung with trees—maple and oak, which towered up above the lower storys of the building. The skeins of moss that hung from their branches cast the garden beneath into a wan green light. The air was humid. Lunae made her way between overgrown rows of hibiscus, crimson flowers rearing out of the gloom, stretching long furred tongues toward her. A dragonfly, jade and armored, hummed past her ear and Lunae smiled, reminded of Dreams-of-War. She could see the kappa now, bending over a pile of compost some distance away and digging industriously in it with a small sharp tool. She did not see Lunae, who was about to call out before she checked herself. Instead, she slid past until she was concealed from the sight of the kappa by the hanging moss.
At the far edge of the gardens stood a great oak, ancient and gnarled. Only a fortnight before, Lunae had stood under it in the company of Dreams-of-War and had noted, idly, that she was too short to clamber up to the lowest branches. But she had grown since then. Without stopping to think, she reached up and clasped the branch, then swung herself up into the tree. It was not easy, dressed as she was in an ankle-length robe, so when she was in a more secure position, she reached down and tucked the robe up into her sash. Then she inched out along the coiling branch that grew in the direction of the wall.
At the end, she looked back. The kappa had risen from the compost with a snort. Lunae held her breath. The nurse picked up a basket and began to waddle back toward the house. Lunae looked ahead once more. She could see the crackle of the weir-wards along the wall, a black-and-silver sparkle. They were intended to keep out intruders, linked as they were to the mansion’s black light matrix, but they were also designed to keep the occupants inside. An adult would not have been able to crawl under the black light sparks, but Lunae was not yet fully grown. She crawled to the very end of the branch and ducked beneath. The wall was wide enough for her to lie balanced across it. She could hear the snap and sizzle of the weir-wards above her head. She swung her legs around, grasped the edges of the wall, and dropped down.
It was a much longer drop than she had anticipated and it knocked the breath out of her. She sat down on the curb, momentarily winded. But she was out of the house, and the realization hit her almost as hard as the fall. She had not really meant to escape. She looked back up at the wall. It was smooth and vitrified, with no handholds. If she were to get back into the mansion, she would have to go round to the front gate. The Grandmothers would be furious. Dreams-of-War would grow even colder and icier. Lunae thrust these images from her mind and concentrated on the present. If she went straight back to the house, she would still be punished. She might as well make the most of the experience.
She scrambled up from the gutter, rearranged her robe, and hurried down the street. Here, she was surrounded by the other great houses that she had glimpsed from the tower: sprawling, decaying mansions topped with moldering cupolas, half-gilded, roofs askew, porches slipping into the mass of undergrowth, starred with flowers that grew in profusion over what had once been formal gardens. The air was filled with the scent of blooms and rot. Lunae, fascinated, longed to explore, but something held her back. The interiors of the mansions were dark, save for a few. Even though it was still afternoon, lamps burned in some of the upper windows, casting a sickly light out into the foliage.
At the end of the street, Lunae looked back. She could see the tower room rising above the oaks. Ahead, a long street sloped down to become lost in the teeming maze of the lower Peak. The spy-eyes would surely be watching, but perhaps she might see a little, at least, before she was spotted. Lunae hesitated for a moment, but the prospect of investigating the streets that she had only experienced from the interior of a litter was too alluring. She thrust thoughts of the spy-eyes from her mind and ran down the road, heading for the maze.
Little by little, the mansions gave way to narrower, more crowded streets. The great houses were replaced by tenements, rising in tottering columns up from the roadway, covered with rickety balconies filled with vegetation. The tenements looked like great vertical gardens. Birds sang from cages, captive crickets whirred. Crowds of women in the traditional black, red, or jade jackets thronged the streets, wheeling ancient bicycles, leading cats on leashes, carrying mesh shopping bags that bulged with vegetables. No one took any notice of Lunae, who felt happily invisible. That this was clearly just an ordinary afternoon for these people made the day even more special. There was a heady, complex smell of spice and shit, smoke and dust. Lunae made her way slowly along the road, poking into baskets filled with seeds, dried snakes, cat food, laundry powder. Then, at a little junction, someone stepped out into her path.
This person was a small woman, clearly of Sheng origins, with a moon-face and blank black stare. Her mouth was slack, releasing a string of spittle. At first, Lunae thought that she was having difficulty in focusing, because the woman seemed blurred and out of phase. But then she realized that everything else in the street was clear.
“You
