Lotus Blue Page 3

  Nene shielded her eyes with cupped fingers, studying the object’s angular trajectory, the way it stopped and started in a new direction. Lips pressed tightly together, she said nothing.

  The wheels kept up a steady pace. Benhadeer and Drover Jens were masters of their craft. Over the years they’d steered the Van through flash floods and creeping dunes. Roadblocks, earthquakes, and bands of starving, sand rat-munching refugees. Angel or not, the Van would keep on moving.

  The wagon tops were now dangerously overcrowded. A couple of decent jolts or potholes could send travellers tumbling over the sides, crushed by the wheels before they could so much as squeal. The Van was not designed to be so top heavy in motion. But nobody was budging. So long as that thing tore through the sky, nobody was going anywhere.

  Her sister was still staring up at it in silence.

  “Nene, what is it? Tell me!”

  A man pressed too hard up against Star’s side. “Show’s over. Move along,” Star snapped, digging him hard in the ribs when he didn’t respond. The fat man next to him pulled a string of worry beads from his trousers, rolling each nub beneath his fleshy thumb, mumbled prayers escaping his thick moustache. He wasn’t the only one. Prayers layered over one another in a dozen garbled tongues. Chanting stretching all the way back to the tail.

  Not everybody was making noise. Some stood in wary silence, staring at sky trails. The wind was taking its time to wipe them clean. Nene’s face wore an expression Star had never seen before. Not wonder or puzzlement, but cold hard recognition. Whatever she knew kept her rooted to the spot, despite the crush of bodies and jolting passage.

  The flaming thing continued its trajectory until it eventually vanished, presumably landing somewhere deep within the Dead Red Heart, the realm of tankers and other ancient, deadly things. Had they really seen what they all thought they’d seen?

  The lingering traces of Angel trail were finally dissipating. The wailing, praying, and singing began to grate on Star’s nerves. They should not be making so much noise. Noise attracted predators of human, animal—and other varieties. The surrounding dunes were still and silent, but that didn’t mean she trusted them.

  “Star!”

  Her own name was almost lost amongst the many voices. Remy again, veering as close to their wagon as he dared, rifle gripped and raised in his left hand—an ancient weapon, as were most the riders carried. Dogs danced around his camel’s feet.

  “Trouble up ahead,” he shouted, gesturing with the gun, then steering his mount back into position along the caravan. Star scrabbled for a foothold, then leaned over the side, craning her neck to see. They were approaching the Fists, a looming cluster of bare knuckle rocks signposting the outer edge of local warlord Barbaros’s realm.

  And there was something else as well: camel riders. A posse had been sent ahead much earlier to pay off the warlord’s troops. They were supposed to join the Van in Harthstone, but now were returning unexpectedly early, kicking up billows of hot, red dust. Benhadeer rode out to meet them, his red and purple embroidered sand cloak unmistakable, with Kristo, his ever-faithful right hand by his side.

  The Van began to speed up again. A good thing. Whatever the trouble, Drover Jens would push through hard and fast. She told herself everything was going to be all right. Fallow Heel was in their sights, portent or no portent. Fallen Angel or no fallen Angel.

  But the returning riders had not yet resumed their flank positions, armed to the teeth and evenly spaced; two per wagon, riding to protect the rest of them. Instead they slowed to a halt to confer with Benhadeer and Kristo in a cloud of dust. Star swore, wishing she owned a spyglass, but such things cost more coin than she would see across an entire year. Something must be up with Barbaros, but the riders were too far away for her to make out anything useful.

  She chewed her lip. Lucius would know what was going on. He always knew, she suspected, but the old tankerjack was out of range. Star waved but he didn’t seem to see her. When he took position on the left flank of wagon three, she pushed and shoved to the front end of four, planning to jump across and get close enough to him to shout. Lucius knew how to read the signs. One of the few she trusted without question.

  She was steeling herself for the jump when she felt a shift in the Van’s trajectory. A gentle thing at first, then the wagon began to tilt and swerve as the wheels began to slow. The swerve intensified, accompanied by three shrill whistle blasts. She froze. Three blasts meant detour. The Van was not continuing past the Axa flats. It would take the long way around the Fists, a detour that might cost them as much as a week.

  Star jumped as the Van continued in a wide arc, landing as skilfully as a cat beside a woman clutching a woven basket tight against her chest. The woman swore at her with spittle flying.

  Star ignored her. She called across to Lucius, waving until eventually he heard her over the screeching of the wheels. Preoccupied with the conferring riders and the road they would not be travelling.

  “What’s happening? Why are we going the long way round?”

  He pressed a finger to his lips, the severe inked lines upon his face accentuating his grim expression. Whatever he knew, he did not want the whole Van to hear it.

  But it was too late for silence. Back down the line, every point rider crouched in place with weapons at the ready. None were chatting or flirting with the dancers. All eyes were on the road.

  Star squinted for a glimpse of whatever obstacle blocked their regular passage, but could see nothing. No burning wagons, no angry riders swathed in clouds of dust. No listless, shifting mob on foot. No packs of half-starved dogs. Even so, this was not good. Not good at all. The detour would force them through Broken Arch, a well-known spot for ambush.

  Only that was not the worst of it, and neither was the fact that they’d be late into Fallow Heel, late enough to lose their Twelfth Man berth and dozens of important trade connections. Late enough for Star to lose her nerve. Broken Arch was contaminated. Broken Arch was full of ghosts and other unspeakable horrors. Whole Vans had driven into there and never driven out the other side.

  A hush fell across the entire thirteen wagons. The detour had been noticed. Regulars, understanding their predicament, began to speculate in earnest, whispering a potent mix of truth and superstition. The crowded wagon tops began to thin. Suddenly everybody wanted to cram back down below, out of sight and sniper range.

  A few snippets of potentially reliable information spread. Yeshie got it from Sven who got it from Chancey who claimed he got it from Kristo himself via his boy. That the riders had arrived to find Harthstone in flames. Barbaros murdered, another in his place. New warlords running rampant, taking whatever they wanted, burning what they didn’t, wounded ‘steaders fleeing for the Road. Downroad, not up, which meant the stretch along the Axa flats would soon be choked with them.

  Lucius still wasn’t saying anything. Everyone else, however, seemed to have an opinion to share. Angel lore in its nitty gritty; details growing wilder with the telling.

  “I tell you, spirits of the dead have fallen. Those sent back after failing to pass through.”

  “By Oshana, that’s fire we witnessed up there in the sky. Ever hear of a spirit catching fire?”

  Barbaros had always let them pass with a token consideration on account of what and who Benhadeer carried regular. Less stupid or foolhardy than some of the younger chiefs, he respected and obeyed Road Law, nodded at the white flag hanging limply off wagon number one, taxed them for the privilege of safe passage. A white flag signalled there were healers, shaman, medicine, and other useful services onboard. A white flag meant that if his people broke the rules, Barbaros was going to make them pay.

  Not the first time a detour had been forced, and it wouldn’t be the last. But it would be the last for Star—a promise she made to herself there and then. She would jump the Van when
it got to Fallow Heel—if it ever got there.

  Jump the Van. The three Sternpost princes—in the excitement she had forgotten them. Had they jumped the tail or hadn’t they? She secured her footing and peered back along the road just travelled, but there was nothing but dust, hard surface, and red-tinged distant dunes. She craned her neck but she couldn’t see anything. She might not know for certain until the Van berthed proper.

  The fallen Angel was being blamed for their predicament. It had poisoned the sky, turned the air a sickly yellow. With a sinking feeling, Star tugged her khafiya to cover her nose and mouth. Just in case. Better to be safe than sorry.

  = Four =

  Old Marianthe walked with a pronounced limp, the result of shrapnel wounds that had never had healed completely—a lie she offered to friends and strangers alike, although it was partly true: she had operated on herself in the aftermath of the battle of Crysse Plain.

  Her flesh was pocked and scared and gouged, but hidden below flowing robes, suitable attire for any desert dweller. Those who knew or half suspected her secret dared not speak of it. The limp slowed her down but it had never stopped her. No one had ever managed to stand in Marianthe’s way.

  There wasn’t much recognisable left of Crysse; a tangled thatch of shattered tanks and fused exoskeletons dulled by centuries of relentless wind and grain. The soldiers who had worn such armour were long dead, forgotten by everyone except for her. Suicide squads who had not stood a chance against the superior skills, strength, and ordnance of the Templar forces.

  The drone she’d christened Flaxy buzzed annoyingly around her face like a fly. She shooed at it, swearing in a language she largely no longer remembered how to speak. Just the swear words. Such was the way of things.

  The tombstones she had placed herself had been half obscured by sand. She dug them clear with her bony hands, each one fashioned from jagged shards of exploded infantry carriers and hybrid all-terrain vehicles. The names she’d etched upon them had been illegible for decades. She could no longer decipher them, nor picture the faces of the fallen soldiers.

  Yet she still came out here once a month for the purpose of continuity. Even the vaguest trace of memory was important with so much of the old world dead and gone.

  Dead and gone. Dead and gone.

  She left the blessing of a crashed helicopter’s shade, picking her way unevenly across the stretch of sand and stared, speaking commands to summon her familiars. Little Flaxy came scudding back, having not gone far when she shooed it off earlier. Just Flaxy, Hopper, and JuJu, her companions for today. The rest of her drones stayed back at the Temple of the Dish, scouting the perimeter, keeping an eye on the gardens. All except for little Ditto, who’d been banged up in repair shop since that Knartooth barbarian winged it with a rifle so ancient she’d assumed it had been purely for show. Somebody had started manufacturing guns again, she’d realized—either that or digging up fresh caches from the Red. Not good. Not good at all. An indicator that those blasted fortress cities were waking up.

  Her drones cast bitter, stony shadows, dulled, scored casings half heartedly reflecting glare. She walked to the end of the hard-packed sand, stepped out, her uneven footfall muffled by soft grains. Kicked off her sandals to walk barefoot. The sand was already warm, but not too hot.

  She could hear the tankers grumbling in the distance, reverberations rippling through the sand to her stomach’s core. Nausea building like a wave. She never got used to their terrible sonics, not even after all these years.

  The tankers knew her by her limp. Read her heat signature, perhaps. She’d never been sure how well the tankers could see.

  Marianthe remembered some things clearly from the time before the Ruin. That the fringe of this battlefield had once housed a research station, built between the wars. White-coats had slept in the state-of-the-art bunkhouse that was nothing but a pile of rubble now.

  Back in the day, there’d been hangars for the fleet of shiny all-terrain vehicles. So many kinds: land, sea and sky. The surrounding landscape had been a different colour then. Sometimes when she shut her eyes, Marianthe could still see it all the way it used to be. Ghostly structures overlaid. Before the seas swelled up and the farmland fried. Before the governments scrabbled to sell off what little they still possessed. Before the overland barges overloaded with toxic garbage, human refuse clinging to the sides. Before the endless stream of poison barrels sunk deep into outback fissures. Half-life, they used to speak of the radiation. Half-life and all death.

  Marianthe stumbled, tripping over her skirts. The picture was spoiled. A memory glitch. Now all she could see was sand and sun and glare off the tanks and crawlers: equipment broken down and virus-frozen in attack formation, half buried beyond the fused mess of exoskeletons, stretching to the horizon or perhaps infinity. She’d never walked far enough to learn the truth of it.

  That sound again.

  She had taught herself to tell each tanker by its individual sonic signature. All noise to others, but to her, they were songs, each one different and beautiful, if not painful. Deadly if the damn things took a dislike to you.

  She stood very still and shut her eyes. A far-off keening that might have been the wind—but wasn’t. More tankers talking to each other. The mecha-creatures spoke but they never listened. No one listened anymore, which was why she’d become so insistent on routine, on patterns and behaviours she could learn by rote and repetition. Body memory was how she taught the refugees new skills. Do something enough times and the way sinks in, no matter if you’re too traumatised to speak. She preferred silence to speaking, busyness to idle hands, past to present, memory to truth.

  Memory intruded as she stood there in the sun, eyes closed, soft winds teasing the hem of her skirts, sand skinks dodging around her shadow. Visions of great reliquaries of old tapping the deep, hot rocks beneath the ground. Blasting fissures in the brittle crust, sucking up their heat and oil and ore.

  Clandestine bases swarming with quicksilver drones, zipping overhead to missions in far-off territories. Emblazoned with the insignia of nameless foreign corporations. Swarms of human misery moving from county to county, stripping and consuming greenery like locusts.

  Big reds bred mean to patrol the razor wire perimeters. Replaced in time with barriers of lantana raze, a particularly virulent form of weaponised weed, coded feral when the government defaulted on suppliers. Genes programmed with a killer switch, once initiated, fated to grow forever, consuming everything in its path.

  The land became exhausted, eventually stopped giving and started taking back. So the white-coats panicked, manufacturing strange new plants and animals tailored specifically to suit the harsh terrain. New soldiers too. Stronger, tougher. Better. TEMPLARS, they called them—she couldn’t remember why, even though she knows she is one of them herself.

  Her scars ache whenever she recalls the name, thinks of the production lines blending flesh with mecha, creating perfect killing machines. Soldiers, vat grown, seeded and refined.

  And then came the war to begin all wars. The war that the dregs of Templars were still fighting to this day. From the Angels in the sky to the tankers barrelling leaderless across the land. Tribe by tribe, leaf by leaf, everything on or above this land had been built to kill.

  He had lost his life in this place. There was no grave to tend because there had been no body, and yet he was dead, she knew he was, probably. Her one true love, her best and dearest friend. Dead and gone for two hundred years. Leaving just she, Marianthe, one-time Templar warrior, keeper of the Temple of the Dish. The last left standing. The last of all of them, soldiering onwards, picking up the pieces.

  = Five =

  The first breath of uncanned air hit Quarrel like a suckerpunch, bringing on a rush of memories too furious and jumbled to make sense of. How many years had passed since he had seen the sun? He squinted up into its painf
ul brightness, trying to remember. He had become accustomed to the Nisn Temple’s dull luminescence. Small flames flickering. Moody, repetitious chants, ambience still and quiet, lulling this old soldier into a state of zero contemplation.

  Outside was different, stark and sharp. Wide horizons and clear, clean air. Too clean, like all the life had been blasted out of it. Dead air, some said: dead, spoiled and poisoned. He thought it tasted fine. Too much raw sky, sand and sun. Too much of everything—especially the light.

  The priests had awoken him from his half-dream state with a shot of something that sent his extremities tingling. Next, gut spasms and a surge of cold had enveloped his torso, groin, and thighs. Uncertain first steps, he’d kicked over votive candles and other offerings piled around his feet, his kneecaps groaning, unaccustomed to weight distribution brought on by the process of ambulation.

  More shots, followed by a barrage of tests that stung, itched and occasional sent him into convulsions. Two hundred years had passed since his last deployment in the field. Two hundred years of being worshipped like a statue, memories relegated to the realm of dreams.

  HQ was not as he remembered it. Once shiny consoles were now shabby and run down. His newly calibrated and enhanced vision revealed rodents and insects in every corner, infesting the innards of machines, building nests amongst tangled, disintegrating wires. Webs coated cracked cement. Mould climbed along the walls, lichen spores in the damp air infecting the throats of those who wheezed and coughed behind the consoles.

  The white-coats were fretting about his reflexes and whether or not he could still regenerate damaged limbs. They were sending him out on a critical reconnaissance mission. Those sending him were pale and weak, but they didn’t want him breaking down in the field. He was, apparently, the best of what was left. The only almost-fully-functioning Templar supersoldier alive, no longer super, just a soldier now with a head full of jumbled memories and dreams.