In the morning he awoke feeling sore and frustrated. He expected Lady May to raise the subject of his dream last night, but she didn’t, as if daylight were not the proper time for such things. She did seem even more cheerful than she had yesterday, though. When Jordan awoke she had already hunted, for there were two pheasants near his head, which she indicated he should tie to his belt. She had also gathered several handfuls of mushrooms and some other roots he recognized as edible. At least they wouldn’t starve any time soon.
“Come,” was all she said, and they set out again.
He was content not to talk for most of the morning, but the warm sunlight and the shared exertion of the walk was bound to loosen his tongue eventually. She might have been counting on this. Even so, he cast about for a long time for a subject other than the dark vision he’d had last night, finally asking, “Why are we going this way?”
Lady May looked back, arching an eyebrow in apparent amusement. “It speaks,” she said. “That was a question you should have asked yesterday, Mason.”
He glared at the ground.
“We’re avoiding the people who are searching for you. I had my man say he’d seen you going south, but even so they may search north. But not this far into the forest.”
“Did Emmy hear that?” he asked sharply. “She thinks I ran away?”
“I don’t know what he told her,” she said. “He’s a compassionate enough man, if a bit of a libertine. I’m sure he wouldn’t hurt her by telling her that, if he thought he could trust her with the truth.”
Jordan chewed on that. Just how much could Emmy be trusted with something like that? He had to admit he didn’t know; she kept secrets pretty well, he thought, but what about the secret abduction of her brother? It made more sense to let her believe the lie everybody else had heard.
In which case she would believe he had abandoned her.
After a while he asked, “How can you know where we are? You say you aren’t a morph, but you’re not using a compass or anything. And you can see in the dark.” And you’re pretty strong, but he didn’t say that.
They were walking through an area of new growth now. Slender willows and white birch stood in startled lines all around, and the sun had full access to the ground. Very high in the sky, mountainous white clouds were piling up over one another.
Lady May squinted up at them. “Storm coming,” she said.
“What are we going to do when it rains? We’ll get soaked.”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “We should be under shelter in time.”
“How do you know that?”
Lady May sighed. “It’s rather difficult to explain,” she said. “And I really didn’t want to get into it yet. But you and I are going to have to make an agreement to work together, I mean really work together, and I’m going to tell you some things and you’re going to tell me some. Understand?”
He nodded. He didn’t want to talk about Armiger; even in daylight, he vividly remembered the embalming tent and the slot in the hillside, and the disturbing implication that he had been looking through the eyes of a corpse.
*
Calandria debated how much to tell the youth. There was no law as such against revealing galactic news to the isolated and backward people of this world. At worst, the various anthropological groups that studied Ventus would be furious at her for muddying their data.
There was little, however, that Jordan Mason could do with anything she might tell him about the wider world. He was a prisoner of this place, like all his countrymen. There was no prospect of rescue, or escape, for the people of Ventus; compassion dictated that she not even hint that Mason’s life could be other than it was.
She was going to have to tell him something, though. It might as well be the truth, as far as he was able to understand it.
They skirted the edge of an escarpment for a while. This path gave a great view of the endless, rolling forest, and of the towering thunderheads that were bearing down on them. Calandria sniffed at the air, feeling it change from dry and still to charged, anticipatory. There was no way they were going to get to the manse in time.
It was ironic, she thought. In idle time before landing she had stood at the window of her ship, the Desert Voice, and contempated this world. Gazing down at Ventus, the human eye lost itself in jewel-fine detail. Her eye had followed the sweep of the terminator from pole to pole, gaining a hint of the varieties of dusk of which this world was capable. Sombre polar greys melted into speckled brown-green forests, along a knee of coastline reddened by local weather, and in a quick leap past equatorial waters her gaze could touch on this or that island, each drawn in impossibly fine detail and aglow with amber, green and blue. Each, if she watched long enough, summoned into night.
She had wondered then if the original colonists had felt the way she did now. When they first beheld Ventus and knew that a chapter of their life was ending, and a new one beginning, had they felt the same unease? And the anticipation?
She had tried to picture what their imaginations brought to the pretty little islands that had caught her eye. Standing above this canvas, each must have painted it with his or her own colors, drawing the boundaries of new states and provinces. It would be irresistible, at a new world, to wonder what the forest looked like from underneath; how the rain smelled; what it would be like to sleep under the stars here.
At that time the skies weren’t as empty as they now appeared. The Winds were still visible, like gossamer winged creatures dancing above the atmosphere. All frequencies were alive with their singing and recitative. They were almost as beautiful as the planet itself — as intended — and they took human shapes to communicate with the colony ships. This was expected; they had been designed that way.
The Winds sang, and danced in slow orbits in time to their singing. In those last moments before the nightmare began, the colonists’ eyes must have beheld a perfect world, an exact embodiment of their dreams.
Thunder grumbled. It was so different when you were down here, she knew now. The invulnerability of space was a dream. Calandria found her steps quickening, not so much because of the coming rain, but because once again she was reminded that Ventus was not the natural environment it appeared to be.
They rounded another arc of escarpment, and there it was, right where the Desert Voice had said it would be: a manse. Jordan hadn’t spotted the long rooftop yet, obscured as it was by trees. Calandria smiled at the prospect of warmth and comfort the manse promised.
Jordan was ignoring the view. In fact, he seemed to be sniffing at something. She raised an eyebrow, and cleared her throat. “What are you doing?”
“Death,” he said. “Something’s dead. Can’t you smell it?”
Damn if he wasn’t right. She should have been more alert. Jordan had walked several steps off the deerpath, and now gingerly parted a spray of branches. “Lady May, look at this.”
She looked over his shoulder. In a dark, branch-shaded hollow of loam and pine needles lay a giant bloated object. It looked like nothing so much as a big bag of mangy fur. At the top was a kind of flower of flesh, which, she realized uneasily, had teeth in it. As if…
“What is that?”
“Looks like it used to be a bear,” whispered Jordan. Its mouth had folded back to become a kind of red-lipped flower atop the bag of flesh, and its eyes had receded into the skin. She looked in vain for signs of its four limbs; save for the vestigial head, it was little more than a sack of fur now.
A sack in which something was moving.
She stepped back. For once, Mason seemed unfazed. In fact, he looked back, caught her obvious distress, and grinned.
“A morph’s been here, maybe two, three days ago,” said Jordan. “It found this bear, and it’s changed it. I don’t know what’s going to hatch out of it, but… looks like several things. Badgers maybe, or skunks? Whatever the morph thought there was a lack of in this part of the woods.”
Of course. She’d been briefed on morphs, she knew what they were capable of. It was a very different thing to witness the result.
“They’ll come out full-grown,” said Jordan as he backed away from the clearing.
Thunder crashed directly overhead. Calandria looked out over the escarpment in time to see a solid-looking wall of rain coming at them.
“Come on!” she shouted. “It’s only a little farther.”
Jordan looked at the rain and laughed. “Why hurry?” he asked. “We’ll be wet in two seconds.”
He was right—in moments, her hair was plastered down on her head, and cold trickles ran down her back. Still, Calandria hurried them away from the disturbing thing that had once been a bear. They continued to skirt the top of the escarpment for a hundred meters, then came out near what might normally have been a good deerpath down the slope; it was a torrent of muddy water.
“What’s that?” Jordan pointed. Perhaps two kilometers away, warm lights shone through the shifting grey of the rain.
“Our destination. Come,” she said, and stepped onto the downward path. Her feet went out from under her, and Calandria found herself plummeting down the hillside in a flood.
*
Jordan watched Calandria May get to her feet at the bottom of the hill. “I’m soaked!” she shrieked, laughing. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh in any genuine way.
She was a hundred meters below him, with no obvious way back up. He debated turning and running—but he had no idea where to go. Doubtless she’d be able to track him down, even if he got a half-hour’s head start. He sighed, and started picking his way down the hill.
About halfway down he took a long look at the lights burning in the distance, and felt a chill greater than the rain settle on him. He ran the last few meters a bit recklessly, but arrived next to May still on his feet.
“Don’t you know that’s a Wind manse?” he said, pointing at the distant lights. “If we go in there, we’ll be killed!”
She had that serene, unconcerned look about her again. “No we won’t. I have protection,” she said. Ahead of them, tall stately red maples stood in even ranks. The underbrush was sparse, as if someone regularly cut it back.
Jordan shook his head. They jogged through tall wet grass and into the shelter of the trees. Calandria pointed to a brighter area ahead. “Clearing. I guess there’s extensive grounds around this one.”
She led him on. After a minute he said, “So you’ve been in other manses?”
“Yes. I have a way of getting in.” She stopped and rooted around in one of her belt pouches. “This.” She brought out a thick packet of some gauzy material, which she shook out into a square about two meters on a side. “We wear this over us, like we’re playing Ghost.”
She held it out to him and he touched it. The material was rather rough, and glittered like metal. It crackled a bit when it folded.
“Stand close.” Reluctantly, Jordan did so. She pulled the sheet over both their heads. It was easy to see through, but a little awkward to walk with, as it tended to bell stiffly out. They had to take handfuls of the stuff and hold it close. “Put your arm around my waist,” she directed him when it became apparent they were not walking in rhythm. Jordan did so with the reluctance of someone touching a snake.
He forgot his wariness when they came out from under the trees. His hand tightened around her and he gasped. Calandria stopped as well, and smiled.
The forest was cleared here in a perfect rectangle almost a kilometer long. They stood at one end of a green, clipped lawn dotted here and there with artfully twisted trees. Square pools of water trembled now under the onslaught of the rain; under clear skies they would be perfect mirrors. Softened by the haze of rain, made shadowless by the cloud, a great mansion rose up at the far end of the lawn. Its pillars and walls were pure white, the roofs of grey slate. The windows were tall and paned in glass, which lit up every few moments with reflected lightning. Behind some of the windows, warm amber light shone.
Jordan indicated the lit windows with his chin. “They’re home. How can we get in when the Winds are home?”
“They’re not home.” She nodded sagely. “That’s part of the secret. The Winds never visit these places. You have a lot to learn, Jordan.”
“Everybody knows the Winds live here,” he said sullenly.
“I know they don’t. You may have a lot to learn, but you are going to learn it, never fear. Let’s call this a good first lesson for you. This way.” She stepped onto the lawn and led him along the edge. “Wouldn’t want to be hit by lightning on the way in,” she said.
There were no horses tethered at the front of the huge building. Though light glowed from its windows, Jordan could see no movement within. The marble steps leading up to the tall doors were well swept, but there were no servants visible. He hung back as May trotted up the steps; she took his arm and pulled him gently but inexorably after her.
He held his breath as she reached out to the door handle and turned it. She pushed the door open, letting a fan of golden light out into the blue-grey afternoon. “Come,” she said, and stepped in.
He hesitated. Nothing happened; there was no sound from within. Reluctantly, he put his head around the doorjamb.
“I’m soaked!” Lady May yanked the water-gemmed sheet off and tossed it down. “Look at this.” Her legs and backside were covered in mud.
Jordan stared past her uneasily. It was warm here, and dry. Light came from a great crystalline chandelier overhead. That meant there must be servants to tend the lights. They were bound to show up at any moment.
“Close the door please, Jordan.” He eased in, closed the portal but kept his back to it.
This place was bigger than Castor’s mansion. They stood in a bow fronted vestibule at least two stories tall. Two wide marble staircases curved up to either side. Ahead was an arch leading to darkness. There were tall wooden doors at the foot of both staircases. Everything looked clean and straight, but the style was ancient, as if he’d stepped into one of the etchings in his father’s book of architectural mannerism.
He looked up past the chandelier. Gold arabesques over the windows. The ceiling was painted with some torrid mythological scene, framed at the edges by ornate gold guilloches.
Lady May followed his gaze. “Derivative,” she said. “Venus restraining Mars.”
Jordan had heard of neither of them. He looked down. They were both dripping on the polished marble floor. Suddenly horrified at how wet, muddy and disreputable he must look, he said, “We have to get out of here.”
“Find the lavatory,” she said.
“No, what are you saying? They’ll catch us!” He fought a rising tide of hysteria, which clicked in his throat.
“Jordan,” she said sharply. “There is no one here. No one to take notice of us, anyway, as long as we keep this with us.” She held up the silvery gauze square. “It disrupts their sensors.”
He shook his head. “The chandelier—”
“—needs no tending,” she said. “And is tended by nobody. There are things here, and I suppose they’re servants of the winds, but they’re just mechal beings. You know mecha?”
He nodded guardedly. “Flora, fauna and mecha. Like the stone mother. But those are just beasts.”
“And this is like a hive for some of them. It looks like a human house for reasons it would take hours to explain. It’s not a Wind place; just a mecha house.”
“Then why are people killed who try to enter?”
She sighed. “The same reason people are killed when they enter a bear’s den. They protect their territory.”
“Oh.”
“Come on. Let’s find the lavatory.” She picked up the gauze, half wrapped it around herself, and walked dripping up the stairs. Jordan hurried after.
The halls upstairs were carpeted luxuriantly. Lady May indifferently trailed mud footsteps through the red pile. Jordan walked in her footsteps so as not to soil it even further. His heart was pounding.
Lady May found a huge marble-sheathed room full of fixtures and appliances somewhat familiar to Jordan, but more ornate and absurdly clean. As she entered light sprang up from hidden lamps near the ceiling. Jordan started and stepped back, but she ignored the indication that their presence was known, and went to a large black tub. “Aaah,” she sighed, letting her cloak slide off her shoulders. “I need this.” She began let water into the tub from somewhere.
“You’ve been here before,” he accused.
“No. This is just a very familiar building plan.” She began to unlace her shirt. “I am about to bathe,” she said in her slow drawl. “We must both remain close to the sensor sheet, so do not leave the room; but I would appreciate it if you turned you back while I disrobe.”
Embarrassed, Jordan turned around. “What you might do,” she said, “is clean my clothes for me. I’ll do the same for you while you bathe.” A sodden bundle of cloth and leather hit the marble next to Jordan with a splat. “Just dump the cloth in that hopper there, and put the leather in the one beside it for dry-cleaning. The boots can go in there too. The mecha will clean them for us.”
“Why would they do that?” he asked as he went to comply.
“The mecha keep this house for inhabitants just like us. They have ever since the beginning of the world. The manses were to be the estates of the first settlers here, as well as libraries and power centers. Their tenants never arrived—or at any rate, they didn’t recognize them when they did arrive. So they wait. But they’re more than happy to fulfil their household functions as long as they don’t think we’re intruders.”
“And this cloth somehow fools them?”
“Yes. It’s a machine.” He heard her stepping into the water. “Aaah. Do you know machines?”
“Yes. Machines are a kind of mecha.”
“Other way around, actually. Mecha is a kind of machine.”
He puzzled over that, as he sat down cross-legged facing the still-open door. The hallway was dark; he heard the sound of rain tumbling against distant windows.
“When we’ve bathed and eaten, Jordan, I will explain to you why I had to take you away from your family, and just what your dreams about Armiger mean.”
“You know why I’m having them?”
“I do. And I can end them. If you cooperate. That’s why I came to you.”
“But—” he started to say for the tenth time that he knew nothing that could help her, but a sound from the hallway stopped him. He scrabbled backward on hands and knees. “What was that?” he whispered.
Lady May was sitting up in the tub, one arm across her breasts. Steam wreathed her. “Probably some mechal thing. Cleaning the carpet, I’ll bet. Here, come close and get under the sheet.” She drew it up from the floor and draped an end over herself.
Jordan hurried to comply. They could hear a delicate clinking sound now, like wine glasses tapping one another, and then a long slow sliding sound, like a rough cloth being drawn across the ground. Jordan was terrified, and huddled next to the tub. Lady May sank back under the water, just her face showing. The gauze fell into the water and made a flat floor across it.
Something moved in the doorway; Jordan held his breath, eyes wide. He thought he caught a glimpse of golden rods rising and falling, of glass spheres cradling reflected lightning, and then the thing was past, tinkling on down the hall.
He let his breath out in a whoosh. Lady May sighed, and her wet hand rose to clutch his shoulder. “You’re safe, Jordan, much safer than you realize. Safer than you were in that village, after you started dreaming.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“Your worst enemy is yourself,” she said, and her hand sank back again.
*
They ate well in a dining hall of royal proportions. Jordan had spent the most luxurious half hour he could ever recall bathing in the marble tub. His clothes were now clean and dry, and Lady May had lit a fire here in the hall, in a large hearth with stone gargoyles on the mantelpiece. It looked as though no one had ever lit a fire there before. Warmth against their backs, they contemplated the rain-streaked darkness of the windows, and Lady May told him the names of some of the people on the painted ceiling.
“The stories those paintings tell are traditional stories, older than Ventus itself.”
“How can a tradition be older than the world?” he asked.
“Mankind is older than this world,” she said in her measured, confident voice. “The Winds made Ventus for us to use, but then they rejected us. Have you never heard that story?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking down at his plate. “We made the Winds, the Winds betrayed us and trapped us. They teach us that at chapel lessons.” His fingers traced the perfect circle of the china; he was here, and alive, in a place of the Winds. “It always seemed very remote from real life.”
“You’re very lucky to be able to say that,” she said. “Listen, when did you start to dream about Armiger?”
“A couple of days… a day before Emmy ran away, I think. Was it you who did that to me?”
Now it was her turn to pretend to examine her food. “Yes, but I had no idea it would be so traumatic for you. And it wasn’t originally our plan to kidnap you this way. But let’s go back a step or two. How do you think I was able to get you to dream about Armiger?”
“You said he put something in my head,” he said. “But why should I believe that? I never felt it before. I think you put it there, that night.”
“You believe what you want,” she said with a smile. “Meanwhile, I’ll tell you my version anyway. Armiger did put it there, probably six years ago, when he first arrived on this world.” He looked over quickly. “Yes,” she said, “Armiger is not from this world.”
“What other world could there be?”
“We’ll get to that,” she said. “Armiger came from another world. And when he came to Ventus, he made you and a number of other people into his spyglasses. He could see through your eyes, hear through your ears, all these years.”
Jordan suddenly lost his appetite. He put a hand to his forehead, thinking of all the minor shames and crimes of his youth.
Lady May went on indifferently. “He didn’t care about you, or what you did, of course. He was looking for something.”
“What?”
She sat back, her mobile face squinched into a speculative look. “Not sure. But we think he came here to conquer the Winds.”
Jordan shot her the kind of look he reserved for Willam’s less-successful jokes.
“Hmm. I guess it would sound crazy to you. Tell me, what specifically did you dream about Armiger?”
Any former reluctance he’d had about revealing his dreams was gone; Jordan now hoped May would be able to remove them, the faster the better he satisfied her. He began with the first dream, and she listened patiently as he described Armiger’s death and burial.
“You remember him writing his name in the mortar? That was real, not an actual dream?” Jordan nodded; he felt he could tell these visions from dreams.
“Strange. He’s faked his own death. I wonder why.”
“Tell me what they mean!”
“Okay.” Lady May turned her heavy wooden chair around to face the fire, and stuck out her boots. They listened as something clittered by in the outside hall, and her hand hovered near the protective gauze until it was gone. “In the first dream, you say you saw a great battle, which the Winds interrupted.
“If that was a true vision, he has been defeated here, just as he has in space. Maybe Armiger only just received a transmission telling him about the greater defeat offworld. You see, a little while ago a battle was fought among the stars. I was there. And I helped destroy a creature rather like the Winds. A thing that went by no name, only a number: 3340.” Firelight caressed her features as she spoke. “This creature had enslaved an entire world, a place called Hsing. There are other worlds, Jordan. Other places than Ventus where men walk.” He shook his head. “Well, anyway, 3340 has been destroyed. But some of his servants survive. One of these servants is Armiger.
“Armiger was sent here six years ago by 3340, who hoped to find a way to enslave the Winds, and thus take all of Ventus as its own. And Armiger sent out his machines to try to find the Achilles’ heel—the secret vulnerability—of the Winds.
“I’m sure you know the Winds destroy all machines that are not of their own devising. They did this to Armiger’s first probes. He tried hiding some probes in animals, but the morphs discovered them and took the probes out. But he had learned that the Winds do not change humans the way they do other life here. The morphs can kill, but they do not change people, do they? Only animals. So he realized he could hide his probes in people. And he did so. One of those people was you.”
“I would remember,” he protested.
“No, it was done in your sleep, using very small mecha. That’s all the probe is, a mechal infection on your brain. Nanotech, we call it. And for six years he roamed Ventus, casting a wide net to learn as much as he can about this world. In order to learn how to conquer the Winds.”
“You can’t conquer the Winds,” he said. “The idea is absurd. Armiger must not be very bright.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” She shrugged. “His master had enough power to spare to send him on a mission that had no guarantee of success. But what if he did find a way?”
She left the question hanging. Jordan stared at the fire, and tried to imagine the sovereign Winds bowing to another power, to the thing that had scratched its own name on the inside of its tomb.
“Armiger,” Lady May said, “wanted to become god of this world. But he had a master, from whom all his power came. Armiger is only a spy, possibly an assassin. And he has learned that his master is now dead.” She steepled her hands and glared into the fire. “So now what? Is he free to pursue the plan on his own? Your story suggests he’s gone mad, but he may just be going to ground, dropping from sight, which would make sense if he suspected we were going to come after him.”
Jordan blinked at her. This was too strange to question; he could not fit any of it into his understanding of the world.
Lady May seemed to sense his confusion. “The rest is simple,” she said. “All 3340’s agents are being hunted down and killed. Axel Chan and I have come to find Armiger, and destroy him. Destroy it; Armiger’s not a human being like you and me.”
“But he died.”
“And you went on receiving from him after he died? He’s not dead, although he might not realize it himself yet, if he has gone insane. When we came here, Axel and I could not discover Armiger, but we found you. And we found there was maybe a way to use you to find him. Our intention was to hire you away from your father, as an apprentice. I travelled with Turcaret for credibility’s sake, to negotiate that with Castor. Castor would have none of it, though; maybe it was Turcaret poisoning his mind about your sister, he realized he couldn’t shatter the whole family and chose Emmy. We were stuck until your sister ran into the woods. You see,” she shot him a conspiratorial smile, “it was the perfect opportunity, and I really had no time to explain.”
“So you made me dream.”
“I’m not sure why that’s happening. He seems to be broadcasting a signal to his eyes and ears. Trying to summon them home, maybe. A good happenstance, since we still can’t track Armiger directly through your implants. But you can tell us where he is. Better and better.”
“For you, maybe.” He stood up and walked away from the fire, to peer out the rain-runneled window. Instead of telling him something he could make sense of, she’d prattled a tale of insanity. “You’re telling me you’re from the stars, too.”
“I am.” She laughed. “Oh, Jordan, I’m sorry we had to meet this way. Our intention was to hire you, and you were to receive all the benefits of our knowledge and skills. We were going to pay you better than in coin for your service, and you would return home equal to Castor or any of the monks in your wisdom. You see, we did plan to tell you something about the world you live in—the truth, not the myths you were raised on.”
He heard her stand and approach. Close behind him, she said, “And I will still honor that intention. We have more to make up for now, but I promise you we will make it up. Money is the easiest thing; I can pay you in knowledge, and wisdom.”
Jordan had lost the safety of his village and family. Calandria May had told him a tale which, in the normal course of things, would have sparked his imagination; it made a good tale, people up there in the sky, fighting nameless gods and stalking a demonic assassin across the plains and mountains of the world. Now, though, he could only shake his head dumbly, and try not to think at all.
For a while they stood looking out at the storm; when he glanced at Lady May again, her eyes were hooded, her carven features masklike. But she caught his eye and smiled, not with her usual harsh amusement, but with sympathy. In that moment she was beautiful.
“Let me show you something,” she said.
*
She led him from the dining hall to another giant room. Though there was no fire, it was just as warm in here, almost too warm. Jordan had seen lights coming on as they entered other rooms, so he was ready when those strangely steady spots of illumination pinioned scattered armchairs and tables. He wasn’t ready for the vista of the walls around them.
“Books!” Castor had a library, but it must amount to a twentieth of this bounty. The ornately decorated wooden shelves rose to three times his height, and they covered all the wall surface. “There must be thousands!”
“Yes,” she said. “A tiny portion of the knowledge of the human race as of one thousand years ago—when Ventus was settled.” She strolled along the shelves, trailing one hand along the spines. “Ah. Try this one.” She pulled a thick volume out. “You can read, can’t you?”
“A little.” The book she handed him was well-made, leather bound and solid. It had a title written in letters he knew, but the words made no sense: Baedeker’s Callisto, it said. He flipped the book open to a random page.
“What language is that?” she asked.
“Not sure…” He puzzled over the text, which was perfectly inscribed. Actually, he recognized a lot of the words, and with a bit of puzzling, he could make out what it said. “It’s a description… of some place where you can eat?”
She looked over his shoulder. “Ah, yes, the Korolev restaurant strip. I don’t think that exists any more, but the city of Korolev does.” She flipped the page for him; Jordan found himself looking at a colorful map of roads and towns, all on a surface strewn with circular formations.
“This is a tourist guide,” said Calandria. “For another world. It’s written in an archaic version of your language. Now, why would the Winds have books? Aren’t they omnipotent and all-knowing?”
“I… don’t know.”
“Books are for human readers,” she said. “As are armchairs, and lamps. This manse was made for you, Jordan. But the makers and maintainers no longer know that.”
He flipped to another page. This one held a photograph, of much better quality than those hanging in Castor’s great hall. It showed a white landscape under a black sky. There was a moon in the sky, but it looked all wrong: orange, banded and huge.
“There is much to the world,” said Calandria May. “And there are many worlds. Come, it’s time we slept.”
Jordan remained awake long after they bedded down in a room opposite the marble washroom. He lay staring at the canopy of the great bed that had swallowed them both. He was afraid to sleep lest he open his eyes in a cold tomb, but also he was aware of a deep current within himself, bringing a change he was not ready to face. The lady had told him a fabulous story, and he wanted none of it. He wanted his home, his work—even Ryman would be good company right now.
He had been stripped of that—and stripped of the only other thing he knew, which was the certain safety of his own mind. And yet he still breathed, and walked and ate. Then who was he? He no longer knew.
There were demonic Winds in the mythology known to Jordan, who gave and took away. In one story he knew, such a creature granted immortality to the generalissimo who craved it—but only after removing his sight and hearing. These Winds often gave and took away, but sometimes they only gave, and the torment of the recipient of the gift took the form of doubt: why should the demon give me this if demons only harm? In some stories, the gift’s recipient came to hate and fear the gift because no harm had come from it, where everything they had heard told them some should. Suspicion ate these people from within.
It was easy to see Calandria May as such a gift-giving Wind. It was clear what she had taken away; at the same time, her words placed Jordan in the middle of a tale so wild and fabulous he could not believe it. But when he closed his eyes they opened in Armiger’s face, and she was the only one who made that experience sensible to him.
He tossed and turned, and also lay at times looking at her. She seemed to sleep like a stone—the sleep of the just? Her ability to sleep soundly was another sign of her arrogance, he felt. But in sleep her features softened, and he told himself that maybe her true character was revealed now, maybe she was gentle at bottom, maybe he could trust her.
She seemed to trust him, for he was neither drugged nor bound tonight. Although, where would he run?
At length, still wide awake and needing to relieve himself, he rolled to the edge of the bed and groped underneath for a chamber pot. There wasn’t one. Maybe it was on her side. He crawled out into surprisingly warm air, and rooted around past her boots. There was no pot under the bed. What did these people do if they had a need, he wondered, then remembered that no actual people lived here.
He had almost grown used to this place. There was nothing threatening in this room, and the gauze draped over their covers guaranteed their safety. Still, he wasn’t about to venture out of the room without it. The washroom was right across the hall. No harm would come to Lady May if he walked across and back carrying the gauze; he would be able to watch the doorway from the washroom. Gently, he drew the gauze off the bed and folded it once around himself. Then he padded to the doorway and peeked out.
Nothing. Quickly he hurried across to the marble room and felt about in the dark for the toilet. He pissed hurriedly, feeling exposed the way one does in the woods.
He heard a faint gasp. He frowned and turned to look to the doorway, and as he did Calandria May screamed.
“No no no!” He ran out into the hall, but stopped in the doorway to the bedroom. A thing was on the bed, and its great golden limbs bounced from the canopy and down again as it tried to stab Lady May. She was holding onto the yellow blades at the end of the thing’s arms, and was raised and flung down repeatedly as it tried to get past her hands to stab her. Blood ran black down her wrists, and from her throat. She was still screaming.
Jordan stood frozen in horror. It could not have crept past him as he stood in the lavatory, he would have seen or heard it. That meant it had been in the room all along, either on top of the canopy, or… under the bed.
He backed away. He had the gauze—he could make a break for it now, and nothing in this place could touch him. If Lady May wasn’t dead she would be in moments. He could escape.
And run until he had to sleep? And then to awake with Armiger in his tomb? What, now, could he escape to?
One of the golden thing’s legs was right at the edge of the bed. Jordan tried to shout—it came out as a choking sound—and running forward, he kicked at that leg. The thing lost balance and toppled past him onto the floor.
It rose in a flurry of hissing, whirring limbs. He expected it to attack him but it didn’t, instead moving around him to remount the bed.
“No!” He dove onto the bed, raising the gauze above himself. Terrified, staring into glass curves and white metal, he still heard Lady May moving behind him. “The sheet,” she croaked.
The mechal thing’s arm struck past him. It lifted Calandria May and tossed her across the room in one motion as though she weighed nothing. She broke an ornate side-table in her fall, and skidded on into the wall. The thing went after her.
Before it reached her she was on her feet, eyes and teeth glinting in the faint light from the window. “Bastard!” she hissed, and Jordan didn’t know whether she meant it, or him for abandoning her to it.
It struck at her but she ducked out of the way and came up with a piece of the table, which she swung like a club. She hit it and the bit of table shattered. The mechal killer fell back.
“The sheet!” she screamed. Jordan leaped off the bed and ran to her. They hunkered down under the thin stuff. It seemed a suicidal maneuver to Jordan, like closing one’s eyes to danger. But the golden thing paused, glass globes whirling this way and that. And then it reached down and picked up part of the ruined table—and another part, and more, piling wooden flinders in its arms. It was cleaning up.
Lady May groaned and slumped against the wall. Jordan took her hands and opened them, expecting to see her cut to the bone, and her tendons severed. She had numerous long thin gashes on her palms and up her wrists, but nothing very deep. And the wound in her throat was also shallow; it had nearly stopped bleeding, though the thin shirt she had worn to bed was soaked.
“How—?” Jordan snatched his hand back from the examination. She opened her eyes and smiled faintly at him.
“No bruises, no deep cuts. I know. I wear armor, Jordan, but under my skin, not over it. I can’t be cut deeply. And in my blood is a substance that goes rigid for an instant if it is shocked. Getting thrown across the room is… nothing.” She coughed. “Almost nothing.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
She stared at the golden creature which was tidying up the bed now in a fussy manner. “Actually, yes, let’s.”
They gathered their shoes and clothes from under the bed. As they staggered out of the room she said, “Next time you have to go, use the chamber pot.”
He started to protest that there hadn’t been one, then thought of the golden thing hiding under the bed. Incongruously, the image of it putting the chamber pot into his groping fingers came to mind. To his own horror, Jordan chuckled, and wonder of wonders so did she, and then they were both laughing out loud, and it felt good.