Mistworld was a white planet, snow from the tips of its poles to all the surface of the elliptical globe. Aerie had taken a last look at Golgotha when they left, and saw nothing but harsh artificial lights, dirty smoke, and industrial steel everywhere on the planet. Here it was all pure white snow, lovely as Faenya-Dail's sky in winter.
The snow swirled as they drew closer, as if all the world were trapped in a snowstorm. Aerie realised: mist, of course. Some patches were snow, for Mistworld was never without snow, but the mists shifted to show other colours. She saw glints of blue frozen rivers wide enough to see from miles up in space, like the tracery of veins in opal. There were brief flashes of dark green and brown forests in wildernesses people had barely explored, and strange aurora borealis on the northern ice cap that shone violet mixed with copper.
It was beautiful, and Aerie was glad that was her first sight. Next the mists parted to show a black blot on the snow, set more or less on the equator, spreading sickly-looking tentacles over the white landscape. Mistport, the planet's only city and spaceport. A place where they didn't have time for niceties such as clean air and plants.
A place where the Empire had no power to imprison people. The rebel planet, the only surviving one anyway. Aerie tried to smile. She should have dreamt of coming to a place like this, all along. Crowds of people still frightened her, but she remembered that her Uncle Quayle would have loved this. He shouldn't have died. It should have been her.
"I agree with your wonder," Xzar said. The other esper had come to stand with her. His warped black tattoos played across his face, making his shy smile look as if he grinned ear to ear. Aerie startled, jumped away from him, and strengthened her mental shields.
She'd seen more than enough of his mind to know he was mad. A roiling chaotic storm, impossible to understand or penetrate without becoming as utterly mad as he was. Aerie had heard of Xzar in her time with the rebels, though not by name, and he was someone her Uncle Quayle would have warned her about. Someone too insane to think about the collateral damage he inflicted on others, letting people die who'd nothing to do with how the Empire treated dissidents.
Ourawang and Imoen were at the comm system, talking down Mistport authorities. There were no visuals, only noise. They were haggling over bribe money, and organising themselves behind another ship full of desperate refugees that had just arrived above the planet.
"Over a hundred passengers who all need esper scans," a tired voice crackled through the radio. "Can't you wait in orbit? We're bloody short-staffed. Who the hell do you think you are?"
"Ourawang, child of Bhaal, recently outlawed. An enemy to the Empire and all it stands for," Owan recited. "With me are four Golgotha rebels. Three and a half, to be more exact." Aerie thought Montaron's scowl at that was frightening.
The voice representing Mistport security swore. "That won't cut ice with us. You're an aristo, and we've had enough of Golgotha rebels who think they know it all."
"C'mon, Phyl. You know me!" Imoen chirped. "I don't know it all! Just most of it...
"Plus, we're offering a really nice bribe," she said.
That seemed to smooth matters over. Owan's yacht flew planetside, preparing to land. The mists whipped past the ship like trailing ribbons. Fierce winds blew about them. Owan, standing at the controls, turned her head to look at each of them in turn, as if her dark eyes judged which weapon to draw for a coming battle.
"I have no choice," Ourawang said, and Aerie watched her like a bird drawn to a snake. They were all drawn to Bhaal's daughter now, even Xzar. "The Empress outlawed me, and I have no other place to seek shelter. I'll bring the whole damned Empire down. But I can't do that alone. I will find allies on Mistworld, build our cause, and strike the Empire where it's most weak and corrupt. I was shaped to be a warrior since before I was born.
"I've seen the way espers and outlaws and clones are treated in the Empire, and I can't look away from abuse and torture any more. Lionstone will learn that she shouldn't have looked away. We'll fight until the Iron Throne is torn down, and replace it with something better and stronger. The details can wait. We'll gather our first army on Mistworld, and start fighting back.
"This is what it means to have a child of Bhaal for an enemy. The Empire will find that out, in time."
After she spoke, Aerie heard empty air whistle through the ship. The silence was broken by Xzar, slowly clapping his hands.
"Destiny has you in her rotten clutches, struggle as you will," he said. "I've seen your taint, from the moment we met, clear to anyone who has eyes. She's taken you the syphilitic depths of her enseamed bed, and she'll strangle you between her leprous thighs. Destiny swallows you, daughter of Bhaal, and she won't vomit you out until you're dead. You'll drive toward your goals with a sword in hand, topple an Empire, and when it's over you'll die alone, far from friends or succour.
"And don't think you can escape from being with her," he told Imoen and Montaron.
Ourawang's confident stance hadn't altered. "Let me guess. Precog?" she said.
Xzar blinked vacantly, as if a light had blazed and then faded from his eyes. "It comes and goes."
"And you?" she asked Aerie.
"Minor-league t-telepath?" she stuttered.
"Not any more," Xzar said.
"They say I'm an esper now," Imoen said. "I'm not sure what kind."
The starship whirled and rocked in the sky. They had pierced the planet's atmosphere, and so fell down through screaming winds, an illusion that they flew faster than ever before. Aerie stared at the pale mists whipping around them. The Knucklebones came swift as a stone to planetside, like an avariel would pull in their wings and dive to the bottom of a cliff. Loud alarums went off, and Ourawang gave her full attention to the controls.
"The kind who betrays her own sort," Xzar said, staring at his fingers. "I know what you did to us all."
"You're a fucking terrorist. What do you know about what anyone else did?" Imoen said, and there was an edge to her voice that frightened Aerie.
"I can read your mind. You told the Widowmaker everything he needed to know to come down and kill us all," Xzar said. His voice was soft, and surprisingly lucid now.
"You're not in the rebellion because you believe in it. I know what your kind's like, you use the underground as an excuse to get your sick jollies off corpses. You'd work for anyone who let you do that." Imoen clenched her fists at her side. Something dark and cold was in her face.
"Everyone else can treat us like property and worse, and so they do. For that reason, I have not betrayed the rebellion," Xzar said. He wasn't even looking at Imoen.
"She w-was tortured. We all were," Aerie said. Their bodies healed in the regeneration machine, but that could not destroy the memory.
"I'm an esper. I know what torture feels like," the mad esper said.
"Like you joined the rebellion for anything other than yourself," Imoen said, breathing heavily now. "You hurt people and play with their corpses because it's your idea of fun."
"I want to see the Empire toppled as much as anyone here," Xzar said. "The whole corrupt edifice will crumble, one of these days. The new shiny galaxy you hope to build will never happen. We will do no better than Lionstone's kingdom. But when we've torn it down, I'll enjoy dancing in its ashes." Xzar laughed. It echoed weirdly around the ship, merging with the sound of the Mistworld winds.
Owan was swearing something, too busy with the controls to do anything. And Montaron grinned, amused. I should do something to make them stop it, Aerie thought. She was on Imoen's side; she'd touched her mind. She didn't know what to do. She was weaker than any of the others.
"But, Imoen, since you betrayed us," Xzar said, "who knows how many more corpses we'll have to play with before that day?"
Imoen leapt forward, and punched him. He was thrown back the full length of the Knucklebones' bridge, hitting a spar that jutted out from the wall. Xzar clutched his nose, which was bleeding.
"You bastard. You utter bastard," Imoen said, and then: "That felt good!" She clenched her first. Aerie stared. A row of yellow fires were alight along Imoen's knuckles. She flung back her head and spoke skywards, to everyone. "It looks like I've found my esper powers. Pyro it is!" she cried. "Watch out, I'll set you on fire!" The flames crackled around Imoen's hand, and then she seemed to bring the blaze back under control. "Don't wait up for me, sister, I've got a lot to do!"
Owan glanced at Imoen with that look like she was choosing a weapon, but she said nothing. She guided the ship in, above the AI's complaints that the starport practically ran off chewing gum and wire. The Knucklebones ground to a halt. Mists blanketed the ground in white.
"When do we meet, Imoen?" Owan asked.
"When I feel like it. Don't bother looking for me," Imoen said, and brought herself out. She was too fast for Aerie to follow her.
"You tell the crazy esper to stop cross-dressing," Montaron said. "Even on Mistworld he'll probably be lynched on the streets. I wasn't even a rebel to begin with. I hate espers and as far as I'm concerned clones are unnatural bastards."
"S-some of my best friends are clones ..." Aerie said.
"If ye don't mind, ladies, I'm out of here," Montaron said sardonically.
"You'll freeze your bollocks off before you've gone five paces alone," Ourawang told him.
"Warm clothing's in the second locker to the right," Turandot chimed in, helpfully.
Montaron grunted, going for one of Owan's coats. "If you can make it on Golgotha streets, you can make it anywhere."
Aerie didn't want to, but she stood over Xzar. Blood dripped from below his hand and the red trace of a burn showed on his face, below the writhing black tattoos.
"I can help," she said. "L-let me see ..." She reached out a hand, cautiously. His arm snapped out and caught her.
"No. Don't touch me." There was madness in his eyes. He certainly wouldn't die from what Imoen had done. Aerie tried to get free of him, back away and go, but he spoke. "Just don't touch me, and I'll show you the sights of Mistworld," he said. "Every esper ought to want to come here. Can't you feel the others already, the kaleidoscope of their bright souls, the psionic strength that holds this world? We're free."
No. Freedom is wings, and the skies of Faenya-Dail, Aerie thought. She'd never go home.
"I brought you here, and I won't abandon you," Owan said, from the look of it speaking mostly to Aerie. "But there are some things I must do alone. You're a supercharged esper. You'll be fine here."
—
Mistport seemed a city where mind-your-own-business was the law. No one looked at them as they moved along the streets. Aerie pulled her hood further over her face. She always hid herself as much as she could. Even on Mistworld she'd be a gengineered oddity. She lurked by Xzar, not sure whether she followed him or vice versa.
Hawkers yelled and ragged children screamed at each other as they played in the streets. Aerie marvelled at a scarlet-bordered sign offering esper services in the open, with a special discount for telepathy. The streets were cobbled, very different to Golgotha's black plascrete. Aerie wouldn't even have known how to describe the uneven stones if not for histories she'd read. Cobblestones, from a time long before avariel existed. You dragged them from quarries and shaped them with hammers and picks. These were slippery, and covered with a film of all sorts of things.
Someone from an upper floor flung a bucket of liquid and rubbish down into the streets, and the crowd of people surged to get out of the way. The houses were no more than three storeys, even looking far away. But instead of a misty sky to look at above them, black smog belched across the city, filling the air with its smell and tiny choking particles. A ferocious din of people everywhere echoed in Aerie's ears. She wished she was alone, but it didn't seem that anyone could be alone in Mistport.
"Hey, you!" Xzar shouted to someone across the street. It startled Aerie. A middle-aged woman wearing a scarlet hood tried to cross the street to somewhere far away from them, but he sprinted after her.
"Where is the esper union?" he called. The frayed black cloak that was once someone's dress blew out behind him. "We just want some directions!"
No one intervened as he closed in on the poor woman. Aerie hurried to stop whatever he planned.
"You're a Siren!" Xzar lectured excitedly. "Rare trait, but probably not here. We're after the esper union—"
The woman opened her mouth, sang a note, and Aerie felt her world shake. Xzar's ears were bleeding. No one else even seemed to notice.
Xzar lunged forward, put a hand on the woman's forehead, and—
"Don't hurt her!" Aerie cried, grabbing him.
He turned on her. "I wasn't trying to! Only after information this time! Mistport social custom—prove how good you are ..."
The woman stepped backward, against the wall. A pretty normal reaction to being chased by a lunatic. Then she stopped moving, while the other esper's power held her in place.
"Now we've established that," Xzar said, cold and towering tall above both of them, "can you think of the esper union?" He nodded after a moment. "Guilds Quarter, on the river Autumn. Follow the gatherings of minds. Silly of me not to do that. Thank you!" He stepped back. He'd wrenched himself out of Aerie's grip, and he released the esp hold he'd placed on the woman.
"You're new to Mistport," the Siren said, her voice low and piercing. Xzar had already turned away from her. "You'll learn the hard way or not learn at all." She spat. It hit Xzar's cheek, though he didn't turn. Aerie hurried off with him, before he could accost anyone else.
It was evening, with a quickly-darkening sky. The mists mixed with smoke were heavy and still, impossible to see through. Some sort of half-liquid half-solid substance coated the ground, and Aerie didn't much want to look down. The River Autumn was nearby, frozen over in most places for the winter. The ice was brown with dirt and waste from the city.
Xzar cocked his head to one side, listening for psychic voices. Aerie could do the same, if she wanted: lift her mental shields for a trickle of awareness to flow through her, glancing at the nearby minds and how they could affect her. When she tried it, there was light all around her. She'd never been in the same place as so many espers before. Their thoughts were rainbow and quicksilver, and they flowed into pockets of cooperation where thoughts flew like comets between willing mindmerges.
"Over t-there?" she suggested. She understood Xzar had information for other rebel espers. Maybe she could help. If she tried to leave him, he would probably find her anyway. He followed where she'd pointed.
"D-do you think Imoen will come back? M-Montaron?" she asked. She missed Imoen. Imoen was brave and strong and a legend already in the underground. She was a hero, the real kind. What she'd done under torture wasn't her fault, and Xzar had driven her out—after she'd hurt him in return. Montaron seemed sane at least.
"Monty would never desert us. We're friends!" Xzar said. Aerie tried not to think too loudly that Montaron didn't seem to agree. "He saved my life in the starport. He'll come back."
The wide street had narrowed. Even though the walls were low, the creeping mists made Aerie feel trapped. She should try and go back to Owan's ship for shelter.
"Isn't this amazing?" Xzar bent down and snatched at something on a patch of mud. "This city. The cold air of freedom. And this..." He opened his hands. It was large, almost the length of a finger joint, and the black segmented body writhed unpleasantly in his hand. "This is a free ant!" Then the mandibles closed over his skin. He cried out, released the ant, and sucked on the bite.
Aerie concentrated on the road ahead—never mind his lack of sanity, she told herself. She was here to go to the espers' union and make sure Xzar didn't hurt anyone on the way.
"Might as well use your psionic invisibility here," Xzar added. "Plenty of minds here. This place is a rabbit warren. And I don't think that the rabbits are all nice rabbits."
Notice me not, Aerie prayed. Uncle Quayle taught her this. Walk completely unseen, as long as no one already knew you were there. She knew a dangerous street when she saw one. The people here must be frozen to death. They walked past a group of ragged men and women. Some of them were no more than children, but all carried weapons of some sort. Knives, chains, and clubs. Aerie shivered as her foot slipped on a cobblestone. She felt the noise carried. People turned their heads as if they were looking for her.
The river and the press of minds guided them. Xzar grinned to himself and hummed under his breath, his eyes bright and wondering. Aerie opened her mind, a little. There was pain and gnawing hunger and fears of something nameless in the air. She saw not freedom but despair on this cold world. But, somewhere near, many minds gathered with a power beyond anything she had ever glimpsed.
The esper union headquarters was in the open, an amazing defiance compared to the rest of the Empire. It was a large wide house with a few red flowerpots set in the windows. Its thick walls were painted a warm brown that only barely started to peel. The door opened before Aerie could knock, of course, and a forbidding-looking butler showed them to a lobby. They waited alone for someone else to come, in a wide room festooned with plants and heavy smells.
Aerie felt the pressure of the many minds near, even without meaning to. It was like hearing the harmonies of a symphony played next to her ear. Xzar had no restraint, and reached out beside her.
It was a teeming sky the size of many planets, and flocks of birds flew together while strange giant things swooped down. The minds near the lobby examined her and Xzar. Aerie knew her secrets were laid bare—she'd tried not to betray the underground, she'd tried and she knew very little anyway—and she hoped that their searing gaze would not destroy her.
Stare into the sun too long, and it will burn you to ash ...
Xzar didn't take warning. His mind was needle-sharp, questing for the hidden meanings behind the espers' probe. He flitted to hidden areas, seeking an opening. He bounced back, surprised, from the heavy shields.
Don't do that, a ringing psychic voice said, like a vast Aerdrie-bird looming above worms. Xzar tried to escape, but they got him effortlessly.
His mad mind was a protection of sorts, Aerie understood, and perhaps even Mistworld espers couldn't unravel him. But they could easily destroy him if they chose.
Told you not to do that, a voice said. It echoed against itself, as if it was not one but many in harmony. These shields protect our people from the outside, and the outside from them. We have some who travelled too far and saw the face of the medusa.
The Mistworld espers came against them, overwhelming in their power, and Xzar's mind folded back into his body.
Someone will be with you in a moment, they said, and the mental voice was thick with the combined smugness of a hundred planets' worth of senior secretaries.
(Avariel culture never had bureaucracy. Aerie was pretty sure this was a good thing.)
Xzar fidgeted, paced, and methodically shredded the leaves of a clinging vine in a plant-pot until another esper came to the door. He promptly straightened.
"The Empire has a new stardrive and I've seen it," he said, "and she's the avatar of the Mater Mundi."
The Mistworld esper was a tiny woman, with a round flat face like a peeled nut. An old electrode burn marked the left side of her forehead. Her scarlet cloak looked like it was made for someone much larger than her, trailing on the floor like a veil.
And she snorted. "Your girl'd be the twelfth Mater Mundi this month. It's the most common esper con in Mistport."
"Don't be stupid. You should be able to see she's been touched," Xzar said. "I wonder if ..."
"D-don't talk about me like that!" Aerie begged. The two minds reached out, circling around her outer shields. "Leave me alone!"
Xzar hadn't even tried to break down Aerie's shields before, though she was a weak esper. Now he acted, dragging the Mistworld esper with him. Her name was Ruth Hawthorne—her mind was brown and sharp, like a small scaled creature with teeth—and she was curious enough to follow.
Aerie panicked. What they wanted to do with her—the torturer stuck cold fingers inside her skull—she had to stop them.
She lashed out. She didn't understand what her own mind did, only that it was mixed with a scream.
She struck at Xzar in much the same way as he'd done to her, and she caught a shriek from his mind.
don't touch me don't touch me DON'T TOUCH ME
He fell across the room, hit hard against the opposite wall, and dropped to the floor. A thin line of blood ran from his nose. But when he looked up below his tousled hair, he was smiling.
"Something touched her, sure," Ruth Hawthorne said. She'd taken a step back. "Can't tell what it was." She wrenched her mind over to other things. "New alien stardrive? Now that's something we need to know about. Last year, for preference."
Aerie waited, safely in the background, as the espers gathered Xzar's information. They used old-fashioned pens and paper here to draw diagrams and write rows of ink-splattered figures. A crowd of people bustled in and out.
"I saw it, touched it with my mind, and fainted," Xzar said. "It's alien. You can't stare into the sun for long. But I remember. She would remember much more."
I don't remember anything. He's mad. "L-leave me out of this," Aerie begged.
"The most important thing is why the aliens crafted their stardrive," Xzar said. He sketched something on the paper before him with his left hand, an overlaid ink pattern in shapes that Aerie couldn't name. "They wanted to escape. They fled from terror. It destroys worlds. And if the aliens' power is so much greater than ours, then how much worse their doom?"
"Empire scaremongering propaganda," another esper muttered, "they feed the sheep lies about hostile aliens to keep their control over us."
"Truth is a cruel thing," Xzar said. "No, that connection's wrong—I can show you how it was. Look."
It was dawn when they were finally done with him. As far as Aerie could tell, Xzar's face was tired below the black markings, as if they'd drawn out all the information they could and left him with nothing.
"We're through. Here's a note for Ribald Barterman," Ruth Hawthorne said. "He owns the Blackthorn, Thieves Quarter. He'll put you up for a day or two."
"T-thank you," Aerie said, when it was clear no one else was going to be polite.
"On Mistworld we all pay our own way. You'll have to make your own living," Ruth said. "Any skills?"
"I want to work in a hospital," Aerie said, all in a rush. "Uncle Quayle taught me how to treat wounded people. I don't have qualifications, but I can help."
"They're always looking for volunteers. Hope you have a strong stomach," Ruth said.
"T-thank you."
Ruth snorted. "Tell them you're the Mater Mundi, and they'll crowd around you to beg for miracles. Do you want to be a goddess?"
The Misport esper's mind was open. Aerie saw a vision. Something powerful had touched Aerie's mind, and she couldn't go back to what she was, no more than a butterfly could return to its chrysalis. When others found out, Ruth Hawthorne thought, they would come and beg for miracles.
Dying children, burn-blind men, hungry weeping women, worshipping, begging in groups of hundreds. There was never any shortage of the desperate on Mistworld. They'd swarm on any hint of a promise, pleading for succour. Ruth Hawthorne had seen many things in her time, and she knew the truth of her vision. It frightened Aerie.
It was almost dawn in Mistport when Aerie and Xzar left the esper union. Thick ropes of fog hung on the streets, dimmed by faint grey light. Slippery frost coated the cobblestones with silver, and dulled the smell of the raw sewage. The air was still and cold, and the clamour on the streets had quietened to subdued murmurs.
"What she s-said," Aerie spoke. "You knew since you saw me. Do you think the Mater Mundi makes me s-some sort of goddess?" She snuck a look up at Xzar. It wasn't easy to keep up with his long-legged stride.
"Ask someone who believes in gods," he said.
"If she's a goddess, she's cruel!" Aerie said. "I felt her kill many women, all at once. They were clones and their souls were all different. She made them die, just by thinking about it. It should have been me who died."
I deserve to. It should have been me, not Uncle Quayle, Aerie thought.
His footsteps slowed. "You're very strange. I understand there are things worse than death—ask an esp-blocker. But to wish to die now, when you're free? I don't understand. And yet you seem to mean it."
Aerie meant it. It was her body who killed all the women, and she was no better than a murderer. Quayle would never have done anything like it.
"I r-remember, in the underground," Aerie said. "People believe in the Mater Mundi. She gives them hope. But now I've known her. She's p-powerful enough to be a goddess."
"Let's call her a powerful entity. Such are to be no more trusted than the Empire," Xzar said. "She fascinates. For each esper she helps, ten hundred thousand and more go unanswered. You should wonder at her motivations ..."
"S-she's not a god I believe in," Aerie said. They followed the line of a frost-encrusted wall. The fog made it seem she and Xzar were alone in the world. "Avariel believe in a world soul. A planet and everything on it, all bound into the same life." She shivered. Mistworld life was very cold. "All that lives is holy."
"What, even Lionstone?" Xzar needled.
"And Uncle Quayle taught me to believe in Christ the Sorrowing," Aerie said. "The Man who wept with lepers and outcasts, the lowest and least, and died as a criminal. That faith gives people strength ..."
"What about strength to your psionic invisibility?" Xzar asked. He wasn't trying to make a point; he sensed something. He cocked his head to the right. "Listen to the rabbits over there. Make sure they don't see you. Mistport never really sleeps."
Aerie's ears soon echoed his esp's perception. She heard human footsteps on the frosty ground, irregular gaits moving together. She shrank back against the wall, holding her mental shield. These passersby would probably see nothing but a bare wall. Perhaps they were not even malevolent, for wasn't she also out on the streets at this hour with good intentions?
Then she opened her mind's eye. The group of other minds were crudely linked together, a gestalt stronger than the sum of its parts. At least one of them was an esper, Aerie couldn't tell which. The low-level esp joined them into one mass. One mind would be easy to hide from, but as a whole they hungered for any prey.
Blood blood BLOOD, they chanted, the one word all that concentrated their minds—
Blood addicts. Wampyr were gengineered Imperial shock troops with inhuman power, created by killing men and pumping a synthetic cocktail into their dead veins. The Wampyr fed on human blood. Some Wampyr offered an exchange: blood from a willing human, in return for a sip of the Wampyr's own potent blood. This created a master-slave relationship, addictive and deadly. Wampyr Blood was sold as a black market drug, that gave its victims temporary power and strength and speed; but ordinary humans were not made to handle its potency. Blood addicts were pitiable, desperate, and very dangerous.
Blood addicts in Mistport would be still more so.
This gang roamed the street, ignoring the freezing cold even though their last dose of Blood was almost impotent inside them. Frostbite and hunger gnawed them. They needed trinkets, coin, tech, anything that could be exchanged for Blood. If they couldn't find these, then inflicting violence would occupy them instead.
Aerie stood next to Xzar against the wall, close enough to feel his body heat. His mental invisibility to others was effortless. Hide, she lectured herself fiercely, while the group mind drew closer.
An esper can't hide from another esper, in the end. They came close enough to be visible through the fog: twenty or so men and women, gaunt and ragged, armed with clubs and blades and broken glass. The gestalt pressed down, hunting any signs of life foolish enough to be in this place at this time. They would kill and rob, not necessarily in that order, and could not be turned by empathy or reason.
Aerie's psionic shield bent, and then shattered. And the trail of her mind led them straight to Xzar as well.
The man in the front of the crowd groaned and gestured. The ragged gang turned as one. They surrounded their prey.
Xzar grabbed at Aerie's arm, three fingers tight around her sleeve. It was too quick and harsh for her to get away. "If I threw you to them," he suggested, "the Mater Mundi would probably protect you. That would be interesting. But ... maybe not now."
He forced her behind himself. He conjured up a psi storm with his power. Cobblestones rose from the road, tiles from nearby houses flew down. Xzar held the gang back with the power of his mind, a storm that tried to shatter all that lay before him—and left the space behind him unharmed.
But against the ravening hunger he didn't stand a chance. There were too many of them, and the gestalt stood together. One lone mind couldn't make any difference to their goal. Xzar reached his limits quickly, exhausted. Blood dripped from his ears.
He shrugged, ended the psi storm, and ran toward the gang. It shocked Aerie as much as it did them. People weren't supposed to commit suicide like this, running headlong and unarmed into the middle of the fighters. Their attention snapped to the victim in their midst. Xzar rushed up to one of the bigger men, who swung a length of heavy chain between his thick hands.
And then a long sharp knife appeared in Xzar's hand, and arced to cut a deep red smile across the man's throat.
Espers could feel the pain of others. Espers weren't violent. Aerie screamed at the man's painful death, and the cry drew attention to her. Xzar fought, the long knife striking without pity. He used a glinting surgical blade, that cut like memories Aerie could not bear.
Aerie could only avoid her enemies. The gang was numerous enough to stumble against each other, and she was light-footed. It couldn't last. But she had guardians by then.
The man Xzar killed stood up and fought. The esper controlled him. The dead man flung his chain around the neck of one of the thugs chasing Aerie, and pulled it tight. The strangled woman flung herself in front of Aerie. A sword impaled her, passing through her already dead body, but she did not fall.
A blow caught Aerie's side. She wasn't hurt but her belt and purse fell, and for a moment they scrabbled for the coins instead of her life. Xzar was almost hidden from her now, lashing around like a dervish in the midst of a shapeless crowd.
A ragged figure stood, and attacked Aerie. Aerie tried to run, but there was nowhere to run to. She hit the wall with her elbows. A dirty knife blade lanced toward her.
And a dark man, so fast that he was a blur, leapt down upon their enemies. Aerie saw none of his features but a glint of horrible green eyes, artificially bright like a monster out of legend. He wielded a heavy sword. Fresh blood coated the cobblestones, steaming warm above the frost. This wasn't a man, for no one could fight like this. This was another monster, killing everything that stood in his path.
The fighter broke the circle around Xzar, leaving him alive on the ground. The gang had no chance against this enemy.
"FOR BANE!" the fighter howled a wild battlecry. Aerie could barely understand the words. The voice was inhuman, a painful buzzing sound, a cruel rasp that never came from any mortal throat. She watched, terrified.
Some attacked this new monster and he cut them down. He leapt after those who ran away, and he killed them anyway. In the middle of all the dead Aerie went to Xzar. The esper still held his knife though his arm bled, and his right hand was closed around the wound. He would live, despite the pain and death all around them.
The figure returned to stand over them. Would he kill them as well? He was broad and muscled and eerily shirtless in Mistworld's cold, and plates of golden metal were embedded in his bare torso. His unnatural green eyes burned with some strange inner fire.
He spoke in that same rasping, pitiless voice. "Are you companions of Ourawang, the outlawed child of Bhaal?"
"Yes," Xzar admitted, looking up at him. "I've never seen a Hadenman before. Awfully interesting. I never thought a person's mind could be so much a machine."
Hadenmen. Aerie paused, shocked. They were before her time, but they were the Enemies of Humanity then. One of the reasons why the Empire feared gengineering so. Men who made themselves into more than men, led by the fearsome Lord Bane, cyborgs who swooped down on their golden ships to destroy planets and force humans to become like them. Gods of the Genetic Church, who slaughtered ordinary people like flies. Be good, or the Hadenmen will get you.
"I am Adam," the Hadenman rasped. "I watched you, and knew that you would need protection. In payment, you will take me to the Child of Bhaal. For she holds the key to lost Haden."
"Tell me, do you rust?" Xzar got up slowly. "How do you reconcile basal urges with the layers of binary code in your brain? How do you ..."
Aerie felt pain. Besides Xzar, there was another person wounded and alive—and they were in agony. She hastened to the figure on the ground, still breathing laboured breaths. Both legs were cut off at the knees, but she was still alive.
Her ragged furs had made her seem twice her size, but now it was clear she was a child. A dark girl with a gaunt pinched face, barely in her teens, and dying. The craving for her drug, Blood, was still in the front of her mind.
All life is holy, and a child was dying because of her. Aerie staunched the bleeding, pinching off arteries and drawing the girl's clothing into tourniquets. She had a chance; there was still life.
"Ourawang!" Aerie used her comlink. "We need help, we need your regeneration machine!" But the child of Bhaal wasn't responding. Static crackled on the line. "Xzar," she called, "help me carry her!" She scooped up the severed limbs. Regeneration machines could not recreate lost parts, only heal what was there.
Adam spoke over Xzar's flood of questions. "Do not press me, esper. I see to your safety only because it suits my goal."
"I said, come here!" Aerie shouted. The men looked down at the small body.
"She tried to kill you," Xzar noted.
"She's a child," Aerie insisted. "Owan has a regeneration machine on her ship. I can't reach her now—maybe you can find her mind—but the AI will know us. Let's go."
"You talk about a regeneration machine on a public Mistport street?" the Hadenman rasped. He stood back; he wouldn't help. Xzar knelt down, and looked at the dying girl with only a cold interest.
"She will die before that," he said. "I know death. Quick is better than slow."
"No," Aerie said. "If what you say is true, I have power. And I'm a healer."
She remembered the Mater Mundi in all her glory, scouring her out from within with breaking power. She'd stared into the sun. The Mater Mundi had killed, but her power could be used to heal.
Something wondrous. Something terrifying. You're fascinating. Something divine. Touched by things outside yourself. A powerful entity, to be no more trusted than the Empire. Do you want to be a goddess? Tell them you're the Mater Mundi, and they'll crowd to beg for miracles.
Aerie called into the depths of her mind, begging the Mater Mundi to come once more and light her up from within.
Nothing answered back.
She laid hands on the dying girl, felt her agony, and prayed for a miracle. Nothing. I'm not the Mater Mundi, Aerie thought in despair. She knew Xzar was reading her mind. You were wrong.
Xzar, she asked, will you do it? Please?
The dying girl's mind surrounded Aerie. Her name was Rebekah. She craved the immortal-fierce-invulnerable taste of a few drops of Blood, just a few all she needed. There were older memories, better memories, and Aerie tried to let them cover Rebekah's pain. She held hands with her sister around a summer harvest bonfire, on one of the outlying farms. Too many mouths to feed drove her away on her own, and so she drifted into Mistport.
Aerie saw a child in the forest on a rare sunny day. Rebekah saw the glimmer on a low hanging branch, and stood still and quiet and scarcely breathing. The butterfly unfolded its jewel-bright wings. Let a moment of beauty come in the midst of pain, let her forget.
An avariel child had the same memory, but it was on another planet and another butterfly. Rebekah watched the butterfly in the tree. And then she saw something else in the forest. Another little girl with long fair hair, who looked about the same age and watched the same butterfly. She had wide white wings, and had fluttered down unseen into the forest.
Their eyes met in the mindscape.
"Fairy princess?" Rebekah asked. A strange familiarity overlaid the words. The child-Aerie waited, and the human girl reached out a curious hand to her. Rebekah's eyes widened in wonder as the strange winged girl turned out to be real. They touched, mind to mind and heart to heart. It was a comfort.
The sun set over the forest, though the evening was strangely still warm. Streaks of soft darkness spread across the world. It was always easy to rest after a long day of work.
Now I lay me down to sleep ...
The darkness grew, kind and peaceful. Aerie had forgotten what she was and for what she had come. She would fall asleep with her friend Rebekah, and that would be the end of it.
Then she heard a loud, harsh whistle, and a pinecone hit her on the back of her shoulder. She looked up. A boy sat in the tree, tall and lanky, tossing another cone up and down in his left hand. Like a prisoner, he wore loose clothes held together by soft ties. A dark mark crossed his left temple, a burn.
"Fool," he said. "Don't you know not to merge with a dying mind? She drags you in her wake. Toward her wake, in fact. The wake of the dead."
Suddenly the boy was in front of her, plucking at her sleeve. Aerie was afraid. She did not know his face, and he was no avariel, too tall and gaunt with long harsh bones.
"Come with me," he said. "You should not die." The boy brought discord into the Mistworld forest. He was a quick sharp creature with a mad look in his eyes, made for a prison and not a wilderness. But in him was life.
Don't leave me, please, Rebekah asked.
Xzar pulled on Aerie's arm, painfully, and in that pain Aerie touched his mind. A mad tangle of threads with no rhyme or reason; but there was a vivd ever-changing vigour to them, a fervour that could not easily die. He flared with curiosity, enthusiasm, a wild love of his freedom.
Aerie was caught between the two voices. She wished to stay with Rebekah's quiet dreaming. If she wished anything she wished that.
I did what you wanted, Xzar told her. He placed a firm hand on her wings. The child-Aerie screamed. Where he touched, her white wings rotted away. Infection ran loose inside them, and they withered into nothing. Her shoulders burned with old painful scars.
"This is what's real, fairy princess," she heard, and with a sudden snap she was back in the cold Mistport street, crying over the body of a dead child.
Xzar had obeyed her. He used his telekinesis to reach inside the girl's body and stop her heart, quickly and painlessly. Rebekah. Her name was Rebekah.
"I h-hate Mistworld!" Aerie sobbed. "This s-shouldn't have—it's wrong! She was j-just a child, and Mistport addicted her to Blood. We killed her. And you—" She couldn't help her horror as she looked at Xzar. "You're an esper. We feel others' pain. But you k-killed them—helped kill them all."
"You didn't get very far into the underground, did you?" Xzar said.
"Your coin purse," Adam rasped, and threw it on the ground in front of her. "Do not linger."
Aerie said nothing as the Hadenman led them away. The cold air froze her tears. The Blackthorn tavern was a heavy dark building in the heart of Mistport, taller than any structure around it. The thick walls made it look squat, like a black slug crouched on the landscape.
A burly man was running a cloth over the bar when they entered. A few scattered drunks slept in the corners of the tavern, but for the most part it was deserted. A fire burned heartily at one end of the room, and the heat was a furnace compared to the streets. Dark circles showed under the bartender's eyes, as if he never slept, and the look in his face as he saw the Hadenman wasn't friendly.
"We have a chit from the esper union for a room," Xzar said.
The man scanned the note carefully, then crumpled it up. "First floor, second to the right. You pay your own meals and drinks, and no esper scams."
"T-two rooms," Aerie added.
"And a bowl of boiled water, a needle, and—I would guess catgut thread, here," Xzar said.
"Dripping blood on my floors gives you a cleaning charge," Ribald the bartender said. Xzar was still holding his left arm. Aerie saw now that the black cloth was thick with blood. He was a living creature in pain, and he'd been wounded defending her.
"Let me help," she asked. Xzar sat in the room, cutting his own sleeve away from the wound. It was a long, jagged cut, still bleeding. He was lucky that it was not worse. "I'm a healer, I t-told you."
"I remember telling you not to touch me." He reacted like a hunted animal, quick and sharp. He grimaced as he cleaned the wound for himself, rinsing away blood and dirt. The pain didn't stop him.
"I don't want to touch you. I don't want anything to do with you." The words were cruel, but Aerie didn't want to stop herself. She hated everything that had happened to her. "You're an esper who kills. You use knives, and you're cold inside. You understand death." Aerie couldn't stop her growing horror. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "When you worked for the Empire, who did you work for?"
Espers were property in the Empire. Aerie knew that espers had horrible things done to them, and were made to do horrible things in turn.
The cold man reached inside her brain with filthy fingers, and he took up one of his knives.
"You're wrong there," Xzar said. His long fingers twitched their way up his wounded arm. "I never did the Empire's dirty work. I used to do aristocrats', which is the same principle except that they're honest about their ambitious desires. I was an experiment, but not the cold hands in your nightmares. No, not that."
She almost believed him. "Aristocrats aren't allowed to have espers," Aerie said.
"Have you ever tried telling an aristocrat no?" Xzar said. "They stitch up rabbits, they make their own weapons. They taught me to sew, but it was mostly dead flesh. If you want the corpse to look alive, subcutaneous stitches on the parts which show; surface stitches fine on the hidden ones. Figure-of-eight stitch, lowered mattress, subcuticular ..." He babbled, drawing the needle to his own arm.
It's a defence, Aerie realised. A mad mind had become protection against others delving into it, and now Xzar was trying to distract himself from pain.
"You're a fool!" Aerie told Xzar, and stood too close to him on purpose. Adam the Hadenman watched them silently, his arms folded across his chest. "You can't suture your own arm. It d-doesn't matter what you're afraid of. I h-hate confined spaces, because all avariel do and because of the c-cage. I grew up in a cage at the circus. But, when I have to, for p-people I care about, I've ..." She took up the needle herself. "Hold still," she said.
"I said, don't touch me," Xzar muttered, but he looked away and did not resist. "You're crazy. Not that I hadn't already noticed. Did you notice how strange she is, Hadenman called Adam? Your mind is curiously well shielded."
"In the wars," Adam said, "we Hadenmen had no use for espers. We killed them on sight and disintegrated their remains. Even your organs are useless to us."
"Because we could disintegrate your synapses with a stray thought?" Xzar asked cheerfully.
Aerie did her best to ignore the men. Uncle Quayle taught her how to heal people, a long time ago now. Her hands soon found their rhythm. All that lives is holy. Even Lionstone, even Xzar. The man was quite ashen below the black markings that moved across his skin. He talked nonsense to himself as a distraction, and his eyes twitched back and forth from her hands on his arm.
"T-these won't fall apart like normal stitches," Aerie said, "b-but they should be easy to take out when the time comes ... or we can use Ourawang's regeneration machine." They should have used it for the child they killed, instead.
"That's a coffin," Xzar said, "I'm not going in there." He stood, turning on his heel and pacing the small room. Aerie cleaned up, preparing to leave.
"Wait." He grabbed at Aerie's sleeve, suddenly turning her to face him. "Come with me. Something you should see."
She should have refused, and Aerie made some muttered protests, but Xzar's outburst of feverish energy pulled her on. He mounted the Blackthorn's steps—steps he had not seen before in his life, either—and went up to the highest floor, which had a small dusty passage to the rooftop.
Chilled, smoke-tainted air swirled around them. The sun was just visible behind the horizon, burning a weak blue-tinted light through the mists. People had begun to walk the streets in the low light, and the sewage had thawed enough to start to flow across the cobblestones. A Mistport morning, savagely cold. At least Aerie was in open air, away from most people.
"At the starport ..." Xzar said. To humour his madness, Aerie glanced where it glittered in the distance. It was just visible from the Blackthorn's height, faint silver metal shining by the dawn's light.
"No. Up there," Xzar guided, and Aerie's avariel sight saw clearly past the clouds.
An esper flew.
Weightless, soaring by her mind's power, scarlet scarf spinning behind her, riding the winds and guarding Mistport from above. She wasn't the only one. Other espers swooped beyond her, a formation of birds in the sky, swift and sure. Aerie had not known that was possible.
On Faenya-Dail, avariel spread their wings and flew above shimmering glass bridges. Aerie lost that world forever. She thought that she would never see flight again.
But Mistworld was strangely beautiful. Here, espers flew. She gazed at them as the sun rose, never looking away.
Then Xzar spoke low, behind her. "Light bones, low gravity world, additional scapulae. Wing dimensions limited by bone structure. The juvenile form is the only one I can guess at, but even so, growth would have been limited. I'm learning about your bones, and I don't think it's surprising that you are an esper." He laughed to himself. He wasn't the only one to probe Aerie's bones. A chill ran down her spine.
"Don't spoil it," Aerie said, and went to her room to rest.
—