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  “Come. We are returning to the cloister right now,” Grauel said. Her tone brooked no argument. Marika did not protest, though she did not want to go back. She did have to cling to the goodwill of Grauel and Barlog. They were her only trustworthy allies.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I

  Marika went from the gate to her tower, where she sat staring toward the tradermale compound. Several dots soared above the enclave, roaming the sky nearby.

  Grauel came to her there. She looked grim. “Trouble,” she said.

  “They have registered their protest already? That was fast.”

  “Not that kind of trouble. Home trouble. Somebody got into our quarters.”

  “Oh?”

  “After we turned in the weapons they gave us, we went up to clean up. My rifle was gone.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. The Degnan Chronicle had been opened and moved slightly. That is all.”

  “The most senior should spend more time here instead of talking about spending more time here.”

  Marika had noted that in Gradwohl’s absence she was treated far more coolly. She wished that most senior would move into Maksche in fact as well as name. Despite declarations of intent, she just visited occasionally, usually without warning.

  “I will not tolerate invasions of my private space, Grauel. No one else in the entire Community has to suffer such intrusions. Back off and give me a few minutes of quiet.”

  She slipped down through her loophole and cast about till she found a ghost she thought sufficiently strong. She took control and began roaming the cloister, beginning in places she thought were most likely to reveal the missing weapon.

  Finding it took only minutes. It was in the cloister arsenal, where some sisters argued it belonged anyway. A pair of silth were dismantling it.

  Marika returned to flesh. “Come.”

  “You found it? That quickly?”

  “It is not hidden, actually. It is in the arsenal. We will take it back.”

  “And I was right there a few minutes ago.”

  The arsenal door was closed and locked now. Marika had no patience. Rather than scratch, wait, ask permission to enter, and argue, she recalled her ghost and squeezed it down as she had done when she had destroyed the electronic box belonging to the tradermale. She shoved the ghost into the lock and destroyed the metal there.

  That made enough noise to alert the silth inside. They peered at her with fear and guilt when she stalked into the room where the parts of Grauel’s weapon were scattered upon a table. One started to say something. Marika brushed her soul lightly with the ghost. “Grauel. Put it back together. You. Where is the ammunition? I want it here. Now.”

  The sister to whom she spoke thought of arguing, eyed Marika’s bare teeth, thought better of it. She collected the ammunition from a storage box. After placing it upon the table, she retreated as far as the walls would allow. She choked out, “The orders came from Paustch. You will be in grave —”

  “Ask me how much I care,” Marika snapped. “This is for you to remember. And perhaps even share. The next meth who enters my quarters without my invitation will discover just how vicious a savage I really am. We invented some truly fascinating tortures to get nomads to tell us things we wanted to know.”

  Grauel cursed under her breath.

  “Is it all there?”

  “Yes. But they have mixed things up. It will take me a few minutes.”

  Marika used the time to glare at the two sisters till they cringed.

  She heard Grauel slam the magazine home and feed a round to the chamber. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Grauel said, sweeping the weapon’s aim across the silth. Her lips pulled back in a snarl that set them on the edge of panic. “I do suppose I should thank them for cleaning it. They did that much good.”

  “Thank them, then. And let us be gone.”

  Gradwohl might not have been present in Maksche, but her paw was firmly felt. Darkships began arriving, bearing Reugge whose accents seemed exotic. They paused only to rest and eat and further burden their flying crosses. Some of the darkships lifted so burdened with meth and gear they looked like something from the worst quarters of the city.

  “Everyone that can be spared,” Barlog said as she and Marika and Grauel watched one darkship lift and another slide in under it. “That is the word now. The cloister is to be stripped. They have begun soliciting workers from the city, offering special pay. I would say the most senior is serious.”

  There had been some silth, at the evening meetings Marika attended, who had thought Gradwohl’s plans just talk meant to form the basis for rumors that would reach the Serke. Rumors that would make that Community chary of too bold interference. But the lie had been given that view. The stream of darkships was never ending. The might of the Reugge was on the move, and impressive might it was.

  Mistresses of the Ship could be seen in the meal halls almost all the time. Bath — the sisters who helped fly the darkships from their secondary positions at the tips of the shorter arms — sometimes crowded Maksche silth out of the meal lines. Scores seemed to be around all the time. Marika spent all her free time trying to get acquainted with those bath and Mistresses. But they would have little to do with her. They were an order within the order, silent, separate beings with little interest in socializing and none in illuminating a pup.

  Three small dirigibles, contracted to the Reugge before the Brown Paw Bond elected not to support the offensive, appeared over the cloister and took aboard workers and silth and construction equipment. The cloister began to have a hollow feel, a deserted air. A shout would echo down long, empty halls. No one was there to answer.

  The dirigibles would all make for Akard, which the most senior wanted rebuilt and reoccupied. It would become the focal point of a network of satellite fastnesses meant to interdict any nomad movements southward.

  “I do not think she realizes how many nomads there are,” Marika told Grauel. “Or really how vast her northern provinces are. All that might is not a tenth enough.”

  “She knows. I believe she is counting on the nomads having spent the best they had in the past few years. I think she expects it to be a job of tracking down remnants of the real fighting bands, then letting next winter finish the rest.”

  “I think she would be wrong if that is the basis of her strategy.”

  “So do I.”

  “We shall see, of course. Let us hope the answer is not savages in the cloister.”

  The early reports from the north told of a big harvest of nomads, of kills far more numerous than anyone expected. The numbers caused a good deal of uneasiness. They implied other numbers that might prove troublesome. For everyone agreed that there would be a dozen live and concealed nomads for every one dead.

  II

  The dream was a nightmare Marika had not known for several years, but it was old and familiar.

  She was trapped in a cold, dark, damp place, badly hurt, unable to call for help, unable to climb out.

  The dream had tormented her every night since her return from the tradermale enclave. She had told no one, but Grauel and Barlog sensed that something was torturing her.

  Marika wished she could go visit Braydic. The last time the dreams had come, soon after her arrival at Akard, following the destruction of the Degnan packstead, she had shared her pain with the communications technician. Braydic had been unable to interpret the dream. Eventually, she had agreed it must be Marika’s conscience nagging her because the dead of the Degnan pack had not gone into the embrace of the All with a proper Mourning.

  After the return of the dreams, she had asked Grauel and Barlog where they stood in regard to that unsettled debt.

  “We can do nothing now,” Barlog told her. “Someday, though, we will take care of it. Perhaps when you are important and powerful. The score is not forgotten, nor considered settled.”

  That was good enough for Marika. But meantime she had to endure the horror of h
er nights.

  Dorteka wakened her from this dream. She was early, but Marika was too fuddled to realize that till after they had been into their gymnasium routine for some time. “Why are we up so early?” she asked.

  “We have new orders, you and I. We are headed north.”

  “Up the river? To chase nomads?” Marika was astonished. It was the last thing she expected.

  “Yes. The great hunt is in full cry. The most senior is sending everyone who has no absolute need to remain. She sent a note saying that means us especially.”

  Just last evening word had come round that the most senior had ordered all patrolling darkships to destroy any meth they found upon the ground. They were to operate on the assumption that no locals had survived. No mercy was to be shown.

  “What is it all about, mistress?” Marika asked. “Why is Gradwohl so determined? I have heard that winter may not break this year, at least in the upper Ponath. That the ground will remain frozen. No crops could be planted there. So why fight for useless territory?”

  “Someone exaggerated, Marika. There will be a summer. Not that it matters. We are not going to send settlers into the Ponath. We are simply validating our claim to our provinces. In blood. Gradwohl is leading us in a fight against the Serke, and this is the only way we can battle them. Indirectly.”

  “Why are the Serke so determined, then? I am told wealth is the reason. I know about the emeralds, and there is gold and silver and copper and things, but nobody ever did any mining up there. It is a Tech Two Zone. There must be some other reason the Serke risk conflict.”

  “Probably. We do not know what it is, though. We just know we cannot allow them to steal the Ponath. Them or the brethren.”

  “You think the reason the tradermales will not help us is because they want to steal the Ponath, too?”

  “I expect the Brown Paw Bond would stand with us if they could. We have been close associates for centuries. But higher authority may have been offered a better cut by the Serke.”

  “Could we not impose sanctions?”

  Dorteka appeared amused by her naiveté. “Without proof? Wait. Yes. You know, and I know, and everyone else alive knows what is happening. Or we think we do. We suspect that the brethren and the Serke Community have entered into a conspiracy prohibited by the conventions. But no Community extant will act on suspicion. The Serke have Bestrei, and flaunt it. As long as the Reugge cannot present absolute and irrefutable proof of what is happening, no other Community faces the disagreeable business of having to take sides. They would rather sit back and be entertained by our travails.”

  “But if the Serke get away with this, they will be a threat to everyone else. Do the other orders not see that? Armed with all our wealth, and Bestrei besides...”

  “Who knows what is really going on? Not you or I. The other sisterhoods may be in it with the Serke. There are ample precedents.”

  “It all seems silly to me,” Marika said. “Will Grauel and Barlog be able to go with me?”

  “I am sure they will. You are a single unit in most eyes.”

  Marika glanced at her instructress, not liking her tone. She and Dorteka tolerated one another because the most senior insisted, but there was no love between them.

  Marika, Grauel, Barlog, and Dorteka, with their gear, boarded a northbound darkship about the time Marika should have begun her mathematics class. The bath, before going to their places at the tips of the short arms, made certain the passengers strapped themselves to the darkship’s frame. All gear went into bins fixed around the cross’s axis.

  Marika paid much more attention to the darkship and its operators this trip. “Mistress Dorteka. What is this metal? I have seen nothing like it before.” It seemed almost invisible when probed with the touch.

  “Titanium. It is the lightest metal known, yet very strong. It is difficult to obtain. The brethren recover it in a process similar to that they use to obtain aluminum. They fairly rob us for these ships.”

  “They make them?

  “Yes.”

  “I would think it something we would do for ourselves. Why do we let them rob us?”

  “I am not sure. Maybe because to argue is too much trouble. We do buy them, I think, because their ships are better. We have been buying them for only about sixty years, though. Before that most of the orders made their own. There was a lot of artistry involved. Most of those old darkships are still in service down south, too, around TelleRai and the other big cities.”

  “What were they like? How were they different? And what do you mean, buy? I thought the tradermales only leased.”

  “Questions, questions, questions. Pup... They do not lease darkships. We would not let them get away with that. In some ways they have us too much in their power now.

  “The old ships are not much different from those you have seen. Maybe smaller, generally. They were wooden, though. A few were pretty fanciful because they were seen as works of art. They were pawcrafted from golden fleet timber, a wood that is sensitive to the touch. The trees had to be at least five hundred years old before they could be cut. They were considered very precious. The groves are protected by a web of laws even now. So-called poachers can be slain for even touching a golden fleet tree.

  “Every frame member and strut in the old ships was individually carved from a specially selected timber or billet. The way I hear, a shipbuilder sister might spend a year preparing one strut. It might take a building team twenty years to complete a ship. No two darkships were ever alike, unlike these brethren products. These things are plain and all business.”

  All business maybe, but hardly plain. This one was covered with seals and fanciful witch signs that, Marika suspected, had something to do with the Mistress and her bath.

  “You say those old ones are still around?”

  “Most of them. I have seen some in TelleRai that are said to be thousands of years old. Silth have been flying since the beginning of time. The Redoriad museum at TelleRai has several prehistoric saddleships that are still taken up once in a while.”

  “Saddleships?” Here was something she had missed in her search for information on flying.

  “In olden times that sort of silth who today would become a Mistress of the Ship usually flew alone. Her ship was a pole of golden fleet wood about eighteen feet long with a saddle mounted two-thirds of the way back. You would find the Redoriad museum interesting, what with your interest in flight. They have something of everything there.”

  “I sure would. I will find out about it if I ever get to TelleRai.”

  “You will get there soon enough if Gradwohl has her way.”

  “Then I suppose the reason for buying metal ships is because that is easier than making them.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Are there any artisans left? Sisters who could build darkships if necessary?”

  “I am sure there are. Silth are conservative. Old things take a thousand years to die. And about darkships there are many still devoted to the old. Many who prefer the wooden ships because the golden fleet wood is more responsive than cold metal. Also, many who feel we should not be dependent upon the brethren for our ships.

  “The brethren keep taking over chunks of our lives. There was a time when touch-sisters did everything comm techs do now. Their greatest bragged that they could touch anyone anywhere in the world. That far reach is almost a lost art now.”

  “That is sad.”

  The darkship was fifty miles north of the city already. Ahead, Marika could just distinguish the fire-blackened remains of a tradermale outpost. Kharg Station. It marked the southernmost flow of nomad raiding for the winter. Its fall had been the final insult that had driven Gradwohl into the rage whence this campaign had sprung. Its fall had come close to costing Senior Zertan her position, for she had made no effort to relieve the besieged outpost.

  “I think so, too. We live in the moment, we silth, but many long for the past. For quieter times when we were not so much dependent upon the bret
hren.” Dorteka eyed the ruins. “Zertan is one of those. Paustch is another.”

  The darkship moved north at a moderate pace. After marveling at the view of the plain and the brown, meandering Hainlin, Marika slid down inside herself. For a time she studied the subtle interplay of talent between the bath and the Mistress of the Ship. These were veterans. They drew upon one another skillfully. Fatigue would be a long time coming.

  Once she thought she understood what they were doing, Marika began cataloging all she knew about her own and others’ talents. She found what she was seeking. She returned to the world.

  “Dorteka, could we not make our own metal darkships? Assuming we want to produce the ships quickly? We have sisters who could extract the metal from ore with their talents. It could not be difficult to build a ship if the metal was available.”

  “Silth do not do that kind of work.”

  Marika ran that through her mind, looking at it from every angle but the logical. She already knew the argument made no logical sense. She must have missed something because she still did not understand after trying to see it as silth. “Mistress, I do not understand.”

  Dorteka had forgotten already. “What?”

  “Why should we not build a metal darkship if it is within our capacity? When it is all right for us to build a wooden one? Especially if the tradermales are working against us.” There was some circumstantial evidence that a tradermale faction was supporting the ever more organized efforts of the rogue males plaguing the Reugge.

  Dorteka could not explain in any way that made sense to Marika. She became confused and frustrated by her effort. She finally snapped, “Because that is the way it is. Silth do not do physical labor. They rule. They are artists. The wooden darkships were works of art. Metal ships are machines, even if they perform the same tasks. Anyway, we have tacitly granted that they fall inside the prerogatives of the brethren.”

  “We could have our own factory inside the cloister...” Marika gave it up. Dorteka was not interested in a pup’s foolish notions. Marika invested in a series of mental relaxation exercises so she could clear her thoughts to enjoy the flight.