She was waiting. Listening. And soon she heard it: the slowly swelling sound, the baying of the pack, their screeching. They were up there, on the dreadnought. She couldn’t see them, but she knew they were there. They didn’t call to her as they had in the past. They keened and howled to each other instead. But their voices provoked in her a desire to be with them, to join them in the feral simplicity of the hunt. To be a sister to them, and be enfolded in the warmth of their community. She was always in between, not quite human and nowhere nand nowhear Mane. She felt the lonely ache of separation.
A hand touched her shoulder, and she turned. Standing there, dressed in thick furs, was someone she’d never thought to see again. The man who’d been with her that day when the Manes came, who’d tried to protect her when her own courage had failed. Who’d saved her from the Invitation by killing the Mane that caught her.
His hood had been thrown back and his mask hung on a strap round his neck. Thick black hair framed a plain and honest face.
Rinn.
She hugged him, surprising herself. He was the last person she saw before she died. It was important to her that he was here.
His arms folded around her with uncertain reverence, then he clutched her tightly. There was longing in his touch. The pilot had always felt something for her that she never had for him.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.
‘No more dead than you are.’
She let him go. ‘They took you?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘What happened?’
‘After you ran into the snow, I tried to follow. But I was alone, and two of them caught me. There was no one to help me.’ He smiled. ‘Now I’m glad of it.’
Jez searched his face. He seemed like the same old Rinn: solid, reliable, relentlessly normal.
‘What’s it like?’ she asked.
He shook his head slightly, as if to say: you wouldn’t understand . He held out a gloved hand to her.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
And then, in the way of dreams, they were elsewhere.
They stood inside a huge cave of ice. At their feet, the ground fell away in sharp steps, cut out in great squares and rectangles that descended towards a narrow shaft in the centre. Excavation machinery, brutal claws and drills, sat among the ladders and scaffolding, their surfaces rimed with frost. The wind blew outside, but within the cavern was a vast quiet, and the air was still. It felt like an abandoned temple.
‘Remember this?’ Rinn asked.
‘I hardly ever came up here,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know they’d dug down so far. amp;rsquoso far.
‘The Professor was warned. He knew it was coming up to blizzard season, and that was when the Manes went raiding along the coast of the Poleward Sea. But he was obsessed. He was convinced there was an Azryx city buried under this spot, and he couldn’t wait.’
She studied the excavation. ‘I knew it too,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t really believe the stories. But all that talk about the Azryx’s wonderful advanced technology, this utopian civilisation lost beneath the ice…’ She discovered that she was wearing a fur-and-hide coat, the same one she’d been wearing the day she died, and she drew it close about her even though she wasn’t cold. ‘Sort of romantic,’ she said. ‘Making history. I wanted to be part of it.’
‘But there was nothing down there in the end,’ he said.
‘What happened to the Professor?’
‘He was killed,’ said Rinn. ‘When we came for him, he surrounded himself with men with guns. We don’t like that.’
Something in his voice had changed. Jez turned to look at him. He was gazing back at her with sunken, blood-coloured eyes. His teeth had sharpened to points. His face was gaunt and hollow. None of it disturbed her in the least.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked.
‘To warn you. You’ve been testing your abilities, Jez. Pushing your boundaries. But you don’t know the cost involved. The more you use them, the more you unlock, the more you’ll become like us.’
‘I thought the Manes had agreed to let me be.’
‘We have done. The Manes don’t want the unwilling. That’s why I’m telling you now. It’s you who’s doing this.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’
‘You could say that.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Do nothing. You’re a half-Mane. Be content with that.’
She nodded to herself. Suddenly, she was tired of the sight of the excavation, and a moment later they were outside the ice caves, on the glacier, looking down over the town and the dreadnought hanging over it. She could see its decks now. They were empty, but she could still hear the singing of her brethren, and it tugged at her.
‘What if I’m not content with that?’ she asked.
‘Then you’ll be welcome among us, beloved,’ said Rinn, now wearing rags, his skin like parchment, his voice breathy and hoarse. His thick hair had become a greasy straggle, and his lips had peeled back to show yellowed and daggerlike fangs. ‘But if you choose that way, you’ll walk a fine line. We can think because we used to be human. The daemon you have inside you, it doesn’t think in any way you can comprehend. It’ll change you if you let it. It can’t help itself. Bit by bit, you’ll become more like us and less like them.’
‘Is this how it works, for those who refuse the Invitation?’ she asked. ‘You let them go, so they can make their own way back? Because you want them willing?’
‘We’re not so devious. The choice is yours.’
‘But I bet they all come back in the end, don’t they?’
‘Most do. Some don’t. The others…’
‘They kill themselves,’ said Jez.
‘Yes.’
Jez could understand. She’d never contemplated it herself, but the terror of the Manes and the temptation of their call could have easily driven her to madness in those early days. A more delicate soul might have ended themselves rather than risk succumbing to that.
She surveyed the scene. The snow was falling more heavily now, and the far side of the town was becoming obscured. ‘When do I wake up?’ she asked.
‘That’s up to you.’
She thought about that. Then she walked over to a hillock of ice and sat down. ‘I reckon I’d like to stay a while yet. Chew things over. Will you stay with me?’
Rinn was Rinn again, pink-cheeked and healthy, clad in furs and hide. The man she’d known when she was alive. He sat down next to her.
‘I’d like that,’ he said.
Crake stood in his makeshift sanctum at the back of the Ketty Jay ’s cargo hold, his hand on his bearded chin, and regarded the relic with deep suspicion. It sat on the floor inside a protective summoning circle, amid a jumble of cables and detecting devices. The black case was open, showing the jackal emblem inside the lid. The double-bladed weapon lay in its finely-wrought cradle. He hadn’t dared to touch it.
But then, as it turned out, he hadn’t needed to.
He checked the readings on the oscilloscope again. There was no question.
Something was very wrong here.
He frowned. The damned thing was so alien. The long, narrow blades at either end of the handle were made of some material he’d never seen before. They had a crisp, dry ceramic quality, and gave off no reflection. The way they curved in opposite directions resembled no ancient weapon he’d ever seen. Admittedly he was no authority, but he knew his way around a museum.
Then there were the symbols, cut with exquisite precision into the handle and blades. Faintly suggestive of language, but if so it was a long way from any he recognised. And there was the question of its age. They had only Crickslint’s word that it was ancient. It might have been fashioned yesterday, judging by its lack of wear.
But most puzzling of all was the daemonism. It simply defied his analysis. He couldn’t hope to penetrate its complexities with the equipment he had. All he’d gleaned were clues, and they would have to be enough.