Lotus Blue Page 6

  “All living things feel pain and experience suffering, Star. There’s never any excuse for cruelty.”

  “Templars are killing machines, Nene. Cruelty and suffering is what they were built for.”

  “You don’t know anything about them.”

  Lucius made a rumbling sound to clear his throat. “It’s dead—and we’ll wind up dead too if we don’t get on out of here.”

  “You never tell me anything. You have secrets but you keep them to yourself.”

  “Some secrets get kept for a reason. Trust me,” said Nene bitterly.

  “Trust you? How can I trust someone who’s keeping secrets half the time?”

  “Time’s not something you can take for granted,” said Nene. “Not out here. Not any of us.”

  The tone of Nene’s voice signalled that the conversation was at an end.

  The Van was nothing but a distant cloud of dust. Dark specks circled high above, stark against pale sky. Carrion birds returning to their meal—or looking for a fresher one.

  Nene had nothing further to say on the matter. Neither did Lucius. Their passage was bumpy and uncomfortable. The threat of contamination weighed heavily on Star’s mind. The whole Sand Road might be in trouble, yet somehow she was certain her sister was lying. She didn’t do it often but Star could always tell so when she did.

  They made it safely through the outskirts of Broken Arch, lagging farther back than was strictly safe, but the camel wouldn’t take them any faster.

  Clouds were beginning to streak with orange as light leached from the sky. Sand dunes stretched to the horizon, wind snatching up the finest particles and tossing them. Eventually, a familiar shape emerged, stark against the sand. The Vulture. To some, it resembled the skeleton of a giant bird, fashioned from metal that couldn’t be scratched, let alone smelted down and sold off. No matter what anyone did to it, that Vulture endured, its origins lost to time. Totally useless for shade and shelter, it did serve a decent purpose as a beacon. Even in the thickest storm, every traveller knew exactly where they were the moment they clapped eyes on that thing.

  Benhadeer would berth the Van on account of its best feature. An ancient Sentinel still in place, protecting this stretch of road from Dead Red storms. The Sentinel meant the Vulture had been important once.

  Star knew the drill. They would camp till dawn, then push onwards at first light. The safest option under the circumstances, seeing that they didn’t know what might be waiting for them once the Road wound around the Fists and reconnected with the farthermost stretch of the Axa flats.

  Ahead, the Van curved in its customary berthing arc. Lucius raised his glass, then passed it across to her. “Careful, girl—damn thing’s older than I am.”

  The instrument’s casing was dented and battered out of shape, the lens scratched and scored. But she could see enough. The Vulture’s substantial shadow-grey struts. Remains of a blackened campfire scattered across the sand. Other things not immediately identifiable. Bits and pieces. Shrouded shapes. Scuffed sand, dark and stained. Blood or wine? Blood most likely. Wine was not for wasting in these parts.

  Snipers were positioned on the wagon tops. Point riders investigated the debris, wary of ambush, watching each other’s backs. No shots were fired. Whoever had been here last was long gone.

  When Star passed the glass back to Lucius, she looked beyond his inked and weathered face to the Road behind, to the dregs and rubble of a settlement that had once reached halfway to the sky.

  = Nine =

  The tanker lumbered slowly across the stony ground. Slow and steady, it had quickly become Marianthe’s favourite, travelling the same route, week in, week out, circling in an elliptical orbit encompassing both Crysse graveyard and the Temple of the Dish. The tanker did not allow other creatures to ride upon its back—only her. Sections of its left hand side had been hacked away and healed in rough jagged segments, making it possible for Marianthe, in her damaged state, to climb up and cling on, despite the sand barnacle encrustations. For all she knew, this tanker had been a troop carrier once, long ago in a lifetime half remembered. Perhaps this was why the machine-beast stopped and started at her command, somehow sensing she used to be a soldier, remembering its tasks and duties in a former life. Nothing else made sense, but whatever the reason, she was mighty grateful. She could not walk far unaided. Most people were terrified of tankers—and not without good reason, but she had come to trust this one in its stoic, persistent orbits. Perhaps one day it would break away and join the others of its kind in their rough rambles across the open sand.

  They were halfway home, the dish clearly in sight, when an object came streaking through the sky. A silvery thing encased in a halo of fire. She estimated a speed of 30,000 kph before it slowed. An Angel warsat, it seemed more than likely.

  How curious.

  Her drones began twittering with fresh collected data. She shushed them, shading her eyes with her free hand to see where the flaming thing had come to rest. Not far away, but too far for her to bother with.

  Marianthe’s followers were waiting when she and the drones disembarked on their faithful ride. Her followers kept a wary distance from the grinding, clanking tanker, not daring to move until it lumbered on its way, churning up great plumes of reddish dust. They clustered together in its wake like a flock of bleating sheep, frightened by the sounds it made, frightened by the sky and its streaky contrails. Desperate for Marianthe to assure them it was safe.

  Nothing had been safe for centuries—that was the truth of things. But an Angel hurtling down to Earth was neither here nor there. A sign, perhaps, but she wasn’t firing up her hopes on that account. Plenty of signs had flared across the years.

  “Get back to work,” she snapped, arms raised to shoo them away. A young girl handed her a stave and she hobbled across the cracked cement, into the welcome shadow of the Dish.

  It was not Marianthe who had named this place, but them, the ones who had crawled out of the desert begging for water. The wretched and the dying, refugees from a thousand different wrongs. Shipwreck survivors of the cruel Obsidian Sea, escaped slaves from islands dotted throughout it. People fleeing justice—or the abject lack of it. Tainted ones cursed with malformed limbs. Folks with nowhere else to go. Marianthe welcomed all of them, so long as they worked and refrained from killing one another. Occasionally she had to raise a hand or a fist, or wield a blade to put some poor unfortunate out of their misery.

  She thought they’d come for sanctuary, and perhaps they did at first. But sanctuary wasn’t enough to keep them here. No, they stayed for promises whispered from the Dish itself. The Temple of the Dish was not like any other temple standing. Cylindrical and solid, three storeys high, made of two-tone ochre brick inset with windows, each one edged in white. A massive dish of tarnished silver rested on the top, incomplete—sections had been eroded by the elements, leaving a dark fringe of spikes stabbing skyward like the skeleton of a leaf. Over the years, she and her followers had surrounded the temple with clusters of low, flat dwellings made of whitewashed mud brick. The dish towered high above them all, inspiring them with strength and purpose.

  Inside the temple was the place she named her Sanctum. Marianthe’s private domain. The place where she kept her precious things, chief amongst them memories themselves.

  Altars, formerly consoles and computer banks, now draped with hand-embroidered cloth. Upon the cloth, alongside tallow candles, sat faded photographs in frames, frozen moments stolen from forgotten pasts.

  On occasion she would let her flock inside to gawk at her precious curios. They would sit cross legged on the cold stone floor and she would read them poetry and show them images projected. They would stare in wonder, gasp, hold their collective breaths, and sigh at the idea that the world had ever been so lush and green.

  She had taught the tainted and the broken
to feed and clothe themselves, but she could not get them to comprehend the enormity of what the world had lost.

  Instead, they worshipped what they could not understand, made themselves useful in the kitchens, laundry and plantation gardens, caught skinks and rats for that drover boy’s great thunder-lizard with its insatiable appetite—not surprising considering its size. Fortunately the surrounding sands were crawling with tainted vermin, dirty scuttling things not hard to trap. Even baby sandskates, if the catchers were quick enough about it.

  In the beginning, so many of those who had come to her were women, but not lately. Daughters weren’t as easy to come by as they once had been, back in the tough times, the leanest years when the Sand Road coiled around the townships like a sickened, emaciated serpente. Too many mouths to feed, not enough to put in them. How easily people parted with daughters then.

  Marianthe paused beneath the shadow of the dish, domestic concerns weighing heavily on her mind. Most urgently the need for a new supply of goats. That new, upstart warlord who’d taken over the Saint Agnes well wanted way too much for his animals, the skanky, matt-haired distempered creatures that they were. She didn’t like the new arrangements. Bartering even the most dim witted and useless of her Temple flock left a sour taste in her mouth. No, the fledgling warlord would have to go, along with his retinue of Knartooth bodyguards. It was an ugly tribe with ugly customs, carving their fearsome weaponry out of bones. Human or animal, whichever lay close to hand. She’d have to deal with it—and with them. But later. Right now there were more pressing matters than goats and fierce men.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a most unpleasant sound, more discordant than the sonic screaming of the tankers. It came from her followers, helpless and animalistic in tone. Marianthe hated it, had told them repeatedly to pull themselves together. Showing fear to your aggressor was the worst thing you could ever do about anything.

  Half her flock were cowering in the dust, having dropped their baskets and barrows, contents spilled. They were pointing upwards at the sky and whimpering. Covering their faces with their arms.

  A burning orb. A second one falling to the sand, moving fast, then slowing. Impacting deep within the Dead Red sands. One falling Angel could be caused by many things, but two? Two was evidence of control.

  Marianthe made shushing, clucking noises, told them all to go about their business, reminding them that if the olives were not harvested soon, the crows and wild dogs would get them. Reminding them that dates would not pick themselves.

  “Is it a sign?” asked a wide-eyed girl, her basket clutched so tight against her chest that it looked like the thing might snap and scratch her arms.

  “It’s a piece of junk, broken like everything else in this cursed place,” said Marianthe. Words she did not herself believe. Words that caused her to make her way to the Temple’s inner sanctum where she could meditate further upon the situation.

  = Ten =

  Beside the Vulture, the communal fire was lit and warming, but everything else was in disarray. Light faded and the stars were coming out. People who should have been snatching sleep wandered aimlessly, still in travelling kit, starting up arguments with neighbours they’d been riding alongside amiably for days.

  Weary travellers clustered in groups of three or four, some sitting, some standing, dark shapes beyond the fire’s illumination. Most refused to shrug their sand cloaks, and stuck close to the wagons. No sign of Remy, thankfully, just a mass of faces Star didn’t know, mixed in with others so familiar she knew them better than her own reflection.

  The big pot was warming, ember bread baking snugly in the coals. Dinner was late and Star was hungry. Excited yelps of dogs being fed behind the wagons didn’t help.

  A swarm of travellers surrounded Benhadeer—the type of people his right handers usually kept out of his way. But this night, people weren’t taking no for an answer. Snatches of conversation hung clear and audible in the crisp twilight air.

  “We must press on, it is not safe in this cursed place!”

  “Too many portents and omens!”

  Star noted how many were gesturing at the sky to make their point, even though the Angelfall was hours back, its contrails long since dissipated.

  “We are safe here for the meantime,” announced Benhadeer in his aggravated, booming voice. He splayed his fingers and patted the air as if trying to sooth it. When that didn’t work he pointed to the Sentinel.

  That shut some of them up—but not for long.

  “If I miss my supplier in Heel, I’ll lose a fortune!”

  “Those lizards are downwind of us—what’s to stop them charging out of the ruins?”

  “Why do we linger here in the middle of nowhere? Why do we not press on?”

  That last voice. Star would know it anywhere. Kian and his friends were in the thick of it, arguing against decisions they could have no part in making. Not used to their concerns being dismissed so easily.

  She wanted to hear what Kian was saying, to find out why he was in such a hurry.

  But before she could move, an arm hooked through her own.

  “Need to talk to you,” said Nene, a serious expression on her face.

  Star stepped back and yanked her arm free. “I’m busy. I’ll do the bark tomorrow, first light.”

  “Willow bark can wait.” She stared out across the breadth of the encampment. “Been a hell of a day,” she added, more to herself than to Star. “Hell of a day and we still have far to go.”

  Star nodded, both cautious and surprised. The camp did not feel right. The Van people should have been invigorated by the promise of the big port up ahead—even if they did have to swing around the Fists. There should have been laughter, music, noise. Wafting smells as people stared using up the last of their supplies. Talking up the fortunes they expected. The kind of hope that ports like Fallow Heel always restored.

  “Too many omens,” said Star.

  Nene didn’t believe in omens, but for once she didn’t argue, just stared into the middle distance, coughing to clear congestion from her throat.

  “Walk with me.”

  They moved until they were out of earshot of all but the camels and the dogs.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Nene, that serious expression still affixed to her face. “Been going over the books. Our debt to Benhadeer is almost paid.”

  “Almost paid? Really?”

  Star tried her best to look interested. Keeping track of what they owed and what they paid was Nene’s business. Nene, who knew how to write and count and keep accurate tally of such things. Things she had attempted to teach Star to no avail.

  “And what’s the sly old dog to say to that?”

  “He’s a fair man, Star. Many other things besides, but fair. When we’ve paid the last coin, we’ll be free to go. Another month or two and we’ll be done.”

  Star considered the implication of her words. “Go where?” Her sister had no love for Fallow Heel, with its ostentatious merchant caste, its reliance on tanker hunting and the types attracted by that brutal industry. Nene saw dark alleys where Star saw well paved streets. Exploitation where Star saw easy living.

  Nene chewed her lower lip. “That big construction back in Solace? New buildings taking up an entire block—remember it?”

  Star nodded, even though she didn’t. If there was ever a place more wrongly named . . . Solace, once a shanty town dug up from the raw sand. Networks of bunkers had lain beneath, remnants of some skirmish long forgotten. Nobody cared about history. Shelter was shelter, so the bunkers got dug up. Bunkers some said had once been torture chambers. Or secret laboratories where men and women dressed in white concocted poisons, stripping life from the land. The dreams and desperation of refugees added colour, if not comfort, over time. They called it Solace, even though the sun-ba
ked concrete warren reeked of boiled roots and melon pulp.

  “The town’s pitching in to build a hospital,” said Nene cautiously. “Biggest one you ever saw. Not even Sammarynda can compare.”

  Nene utilised her hands when speaking, expansive gestures that always drew attention. Her eyes shone as she spoke. “Those Harthstone refugees escaping downroad—most of them will wind up Solace way. No one else will take them in—not permanently. The old relic hunters’s graveyard, remember how they used to call Solace that? Seems like one of those old relic hunters unearthed a fortune. Blood money, most like. Old world ordnance—but so long as its being used for good, I’m not complaining.”

  Solace.

  The realisation hit Star like a slap across the cheek. Solace. Nene couldn’t be serious. Not Solace. Anywhere but there.

  “But it’s the farthest point from anywhere on any kind of map! We could live in . . . Sammarynda!” The first place name that came to mind. The place where Kian and his two friends most likely hailed from. Most of the merchant princes came from there. “Or Fallow Heel—what’s wrong with the port that’s waiting right in front of us?”

  Nene smiled dismissively. “Sammarynda wouldn’t let us through the gates, and Fallow Heel already has medics aplenty, charging outlandishly to patch up crushed and bloodied tankerjacks, sending them back out to risk their lives again.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Such a waste. A pointless waste.”

  Star stared at her sister’s oval face, the deep lines etched around her dark brown eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Star. I know you dream of big town life, but there’s no purpose for us in a place like Fallow Heel. Between the blood and carnage of the open sand and relic trade lies little but crumbs for honest folk.” She placed her hand on Star’s shoulder.

  Star brushed it away. “You could set up a clinic anywhere. Anywhere—people would come—you know they’d walk a hundred miles. You could help them and I could find . . .” What was she looking for, exactly?