Winterstrike by Liz Williams Page B

of the cell.
    The walls of the Mote were melting. It looked, to my astonished gaze, as if the stone had turned to wax and been held in a flame. The veins in the marble ran like blood, trickling down to the
floor, and the stone sloughed away in its wake. It was like ire-palm, but on a much larger and faster scale; it turned the place into a ruin.
    ‘What in the world?’ But the warrior was standing right before me, saying urgently, ‘You must go, now, before they see.’
    She was right. And I wasn’t known for succumbing to dazed stupidity. I went through one of the gaps in the wall and out through the blacklight chambers.
    The machinery of the haunt-equipment resembled metal lace, ancient and rusty, corroded almost to nothing, even though I’d seen it in action literally hours before. I touched a panel and it
disintegrated under my fingers. I couldn’t say I was particularly sorry about that. I pushed past it, slammed my hand against a door that collapsed, showering the floor with brittle
splinters, and went out into a passage.
    I could hear distant shouts: the Mote had become a hive in panic. I couldn’t blame it: looking around, the whole thing seemed to be coming apart. There were huge holes in the ceiling and
floor: I had to skirt around them in order to avoid falling through.
    But from my own condition, which was unchanged as far as I could tell, and the scurry of voices from somewhere up above, the weapon – if weapon it had been – did not appear to have
affected the humans in the Mote. I didn’t know of anything that could do that: it was no technology possessed by Winterstrike or, I was fairly sure, by Caud. But I’d heard of much older
devices that were able to destroy rock, even mountains: the Fused Cities of the Demnotian Plain gave some truth to those myths, although scientists now thought that this had been caused by some
natural phenomena. And the gaping hole where the tower of the old Memnos Matriarchy had once stood was yet another reminder.
    But what if they were wrong? And – since this was a strike at the heart of Caud – what if this had been a weapon from data that I’d just delivered to the Matriarchy in
Winterstrike?
    Hell, I thought. It was certainly impressive, whatever it was.
    I flattened myself behind a dripping pillar – the last remnant of one of the walls – as two exicissieres ran by. They were conversing rapidly, the wounds flickering across their
skin, and their scissor-weapons were out and at the ready. I did not fancy engaging them in conversation. I waited until they had passed and then I ran back the way they had come, reasoning that
they’d emerged from somewhere higher up in the Mote.
    This turned out to be correct. As I turned a corner I saw the warrior once more; she had vanished for a time, but now was back, looking ghastlier than ever. The dimming lights made her flayed
countenance appear drowned.
    This way?’ I asked her. She gestured assent. I ran around the corner and found myself in what might, an hour ago, have been the main hall of the Mote: a massive chamber lined with green
marble pillars, now melted into stalagmites. The place swarmed with excissieres and I ducked quickly back behind one of the decaying pillars, but they didn’t seem to see me. Some kind of
command and control was going on: an armoured woman stood on a platform, rips and tears flickering over the surface of her gear as though she was being invisibly attacked. Excissieres were
dispatched in all directions and just as the last group was leaving the chamber, the ceiling caved in.
    I was thrown to the floor underneath a shower of plaster. When I raised my head, the stars blazed through the shattered roof. I suppose I should have felt proud, or at least relieved, at the
notion that the information I had imparted to Winterstrike had caused the destruction of Caud’s cruellest institution. But I just felt numb. The degree of devastation horrified me. This is
what’s known as