Prologue
Aviz panerVekin sat straight up in her bed, gasping aloud.
For a moment, she sat quiet in the dark, breath rasping in her ears, too disordered to reach for an illumination—
“Aviz?”
The room light snapped on, chasing every shadow.
“Are you ill?” asked Kawli, her sister. She stood in the doorway, one hand on the wall plate, the other holding a reader against her hip.
“No . . . ” Aviz said slowly. She squinted ’round the room, her breathing back to normal now, chilly with the memory of the touch . . .
“No,” she said again. “It was a dream.”
“A dream,” Kawli repeated, her tone neutral.
“I was being . . . stalked,” Aviz said, feeling after the dream, though already it was beginning to fade. “Most unsettling.”
She turned to meet her sister’s eyes. “I beg pardon, for disturbing you at your studies.”
“I had just finished the chapter,” Kawli said, considering her out of shrewd brown eyes.
“Come downstairs, why not? I’ll start the kettle for tea.”
“Yes,” Aviz said, throwing back the blankets and reaching for her robe. “A cup of tea will do me good.”
Nersing carnYllum got up from behind his desk and crossed the room to the balcony door. He pushed it open, stepped out—and snatched the metal rail to steady himself. Eight stories below him the midday commuter had stopped at the station. The debarking passengers looked very small.
Nersing bit his lip, and glanced over his shoulder, into his office.
He had been writing the synopsis of the feasibility study for a proposed new train line out from Arthenton Vane in the warehouse district, to Peck’s Market, at the edge of the Grid.
The project fairly crackled with political tension, as did any project or program that hinted at collaboration between Wilderness and Civilization. It had taken his office three years just to get approval and funding for the feasibility study. Now the results were in and it was his task to present them clearly and without bias, all the while he fervently hoped that the project would be approved at last.
He had left strict instructions at the front desk that he not be disturbed for anyone, be it the Warden himself. All such system alerts and rail-traffic memos that would normally come to him had been put on hold, so that he could concentrate.
And he had been concentrating. To the exclusion of everything else, his mind wholly on his task, until he had come to himself, one step onto a three-step-wide balcony and walking briskly forward.
Once more, he looked down at the trains, the traffic, the pedestrians and shops so far below his vantage. Then, he turned, and carefully walked back into his office.
He locked the balcony door, crossed to the comm, and called building maintenance. Then, feeling somewhat foolish, he called Security.
While he waited for the two individuals he had summoned to arrive, he reviewed the . . . incident.
It would require an in-depth reading from Security, but he thought—he was very nearly certain—that he had heard . . . something. Nothing so unsubtle as a voice, but . . . something, a whisper that had acted directly upon his muscles, bypassing his busy brain.
That, he thought, was . . . worrisome.
Uneasy, he went over to his desk, filed the report he’d been writing and blanked the screen. He was just straightening up when a buzzer sounded. He touched the intercom switch.
“Security Chief calpakVernil is here to see you, sir,” his secretary said, somewhat breathlessly. “At your request.”
“Thank you,” he said, his own voice not quite steady. “Please send the chief in.”
Geritsi slentAlin sat on the damp sward, her knees drawn up under her chin; Dosent, her sokyum, stretched beside her, thoroughly asleep. Overhead, the stars were a scattering of blazing pinheads, visible where the brilliant swirling arms of The Ribbons thinned in the progress of their eternal dance with the void.
Geritsi sighed gently, listening to the music of the dance. Tonight, too, the ambient glittered and sang, though they were still more than a month from the Festival of the Seedlings. If it kept on like this, she thought, the festival would be one for the ages.
She closed her eyes, the better to listen—and that was when she heard . . . something—else. Not the music of the stars or the mutter of systemic rubbish. Not the self-satisfied humming of the ambient.
No, this was a . . . voice, and it was talking . . . not to her, not to the brilliant night. Perhaps, it spoke to itself. Perhaps, she thought, straining to hear more clearly, it was speaking into a note taker—it had that kind of flatness about it. Beside her, Dosent growled, flexed her claws, and raised her head.
Teeth grit, Geritsi leaned into the ambient, allowing the voice to flow directly into her memory, bypassing her understanding altogether. Someone would have to sift them out, which might be embarrassing, but she felt instinctively that these words—these intentions—were of vital importance to the Haosa.
The voice paused; there was a sense, as of attention sharpening. Geritsi made herself as small and insignificant as possible, curling up inside her own shadow; shivering as she felt the cold regard pass over her—and linger . . .
. . . on Dosent.
Geritsi gritted her teeth even as the cat’s growl deepened.
There came a flutter of what might have been—amusement.
An animalΩ.
The words were quite clear—and quite clearly dismissive. Contemptuous.
Then, the sense of another presence was gone, leaving Geritsi and Dosent alone on the hillside. Above them, The Ribbons danced, obscuring the stars; the ambient hummed no longer, as if it, too, were trying to escape the attention of . . . whatever—whoever—was overlooking them.
She’d best tell someone, she thought, even though she’d get in trouble for being out so late by herself.
Rising, she made a small light and, Dosent at her side, walked up the hill. She paused at the summit, gazing down at the village, noting the unusual number of lighted windows in this hour of the night. Had the voice woken everybody in the Off-Grid?
From below came a shout—another—and the sudden sound of youngers, crying. More windows brightened; doors slammed; an illumination bloomed over the square, back-lighting the shapes of the projectors, dashing across the square to the news-tree.
Geritsi and Dosent began to run.