Summer 612 PE
Sisterhood Chapter House, Planet Geseret
"So, MacLeod is not dead."
Giorgis did not respond to Tribune Achsah's statement of the obvious. The recorded display from a few hours ago clearly showed Connor MacLeod talking to a guard at the gatehouse. Another part of the com screen showed Achsah's visage.
"Fifty-six years ago," Achsah noted with irritated precision, "one of you Watchers reported that Connor MacLeod had lost his head."
Giorgis noted the implication of guilt by association but did not respond to that, either. Instead, she presented facts, plain words with no overtones. "The duel between MacLeod and Phan Huy had been registered with the Immortals' tribunal, and the Watcher saw both men enter the building. There was a quickening, and when Phan Huy emerged, the Watcher assumed MacLeod had lost his head. It now seems a third immortal was present; I'll be checking the chronicles today to try to determine who."
"The Watcher should have checked the body then."
Watchers were supposed to check the heads. Giorgis did not mention that. "Yes, of course, you're right, Tribune; that is standard procedure. Unfortunately, the building caught fire during the quickening and then collapsed, so there was no access. It's been a pile of rubble until six years ago, when a cooperative bought the property and began to rebuild."
"And MacLeod was trapped inside all that time." Achsah twitched with kinesthetic empathy then folded her arms across her body and tucked them inside her scarlet sleeves, stilling that response. "The gate guard says he was trying to find Mother Cassandra. A report from Terra says he was asking at our schools there, too. She took him as a lover, yes?"
"Yes, off and on for a thousand years."
The recording blinked white then began again, showing MacLeod walking toward the gate house with a steady stride and an alert gaze. He stopped two meters from the gatehouse and waited his turn.
Achsah examined MacLeod with a discerning eye, and Giorgis took the chance to evaluate this immortal she had studied but never thought to see. Images in the archives showed him with a variety of outfits and hairstyles, ranging in apparent age from late teens to fifty.
Today, MacLeod was choosing to appear as a young man, perhaps early twenties, with brown hair almost touching his shoulders and a beard clipped in the Andorian style, short on the sides and longer at the chin. Save for a single grey pearl earring and a hematite brooch at his shoulder, he wore no jewelry. His clothes were serviceable and unremarkable and well-worn, though his boots were crafted from Caladonian viper skin. His mantle was of blue wool with scuffed leather piping, worn over garnet silklose trews and a loose black tunic that was gathered at the waist by a woven belt, which also provided a home for a dagger.
She could see a knife tucked in a boot sheath, and a straight-bladed sword hung from a baldric at his left hip. The guard report had listed the results of the weapons scan: a thin blade strapped to his left forearm, five darts strapped to his right forearm, a strand of monomol coiled in one of his buttons, a tiny ceramic knife sewn into the hem of his mantle, and a stunner in his pocket. The hematite brooch carried an explosive charge.
"He does like his weapons," Achsah observed. "How long did he live on Andoria?"
"Only two decades, according to the chronicles. But he often dresses as one, since they are known for their weaponry fetish. He's also using an Andorian name: Sileni ni Davos."
Achsah gave a small hum of speculation as she finished her examination. "The guard said he refused our hospitality. Cautious, isn't he?"
"Every immortal who survives their first century is cautious. Connor MacLeod has nearly twelve hundred years."
"Since he won't come to us, we will go to him," Achsah stated. "Meet with MacLeod and find out how much he knows, Sister Giorgis."
"Today? Or make him wait?"
"Today. Since you bear bad news, promptness can be politeness."
"Instead of eagerness."
"Precisely." Her smile lasted only a second. "The Centribune and I will receive your report in person."
Giorgis hadn't been invited to the central chamber in decades, not since the last surviving female Immortal had lost her head. "Yes, Tribune."
"I'll order the team to shift from surveillance to security."
"He won't hurt me."
"Giorgis—"
"He's dangerous, yes," she admitted, "Well trained and very well armed. But he's a warrior, not an indiscriminate killer, and he won't attack an old woman."
"Even when you make him angry?" Achsah displayed a memchip. "I've read his Chronicles."
So had Giorgis. "He won't kill me," she amended.
"Probably not. Which means, if he does attack, the security team will have time to rescue you. And capture him." In the recording, MacLeod bowed politely to the guard then walked out of view; Achsah stopped the recording before it began yet again. "When MacLeod does discover the truth, Giorgis, it can't be from us."
"Of course not, Tribune Achsah. Watchers observe and record—"
"—but never interfere," Achsah completed with her, and they shared a smile along with memories of training sessions and sleepless vigils, back when they had both been young and newly sworn. "The Sisterhood, however, exists—"
"—to serve." Giorgis was the one to join in this time. That vow was older, and it bound them all. She and Achsah bowed to each other, and then the com screen went dark.
Giorgis closed her eyes for a moment, marshaling her thoughts and her energy, then turned to the task at hand. She copied some files about Mother Cassandra on a memchip, cleared her schedule for the day, and linked her com to the Surveillance track on Connor MacLeod. She maneuvered herself to her feet and made her way to the front door.
From the clothes rack in the hall, she selected one of the many simple black robes, instead of the gray with scarlet trim she usually wore. As she pulled the garment on, Giorgis cursed at the stiffness in her joints instead of merely sighing, and she paused to examine her anger.
She was old and her body was failing, and now she was about to meet MacLeod, eternally youthful and hale. It wasn't fair. But she couldn't afford rage or resentment in this interview, so she ran through the usual exercises and relinquished her emotions. Then she went to the armory, where a scarred veteran and a young acolyte helped her finish getting ready: a dagger tucked in her right boot, a stun gun in her left sleeve, a taser ring, an extremely sharp stick to secure her white hair in a bun, and a few other things. From the rack on the wall, Giorgis selected a cane with a curved handle and a titanium ferrule.
Then she set out to meet Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod.
Connor was nearly finished with his meal in the marketplace when he spotted the witch approaching him. That was quick. Either she had bad news or the Sisterhood wanted something from him. Or both.
He ate the last bite of his empanada, wiped his hands clean, then waited in the shade of the arcade that bordered four sides of the octagonal plaza. She moved stiffly, leaning on a black cane for support and taking small steps. People bowed and got out of her way, except for one little girl who ran to her and held up a flower for a blessing. The witch paused to touch the child's hair then kept coming.
She stopped three paces away from him, hanging the cane from a loop on her gown. Her face was lined, and white hair glinted in the shadows of her hood. She folded her arms across her center and tucked her hands into her copious black sleeves, as nuns used to do when Connor had been a boy.
Those nuns, however, had been Christian, sworn to celibacy and poverty and obedience to priests. Male ones, of course. Cassandra's sisterhood had a very different set of vows. They had their own priestesses, and their studies ranged from politics to the Kama Sutra. Some trained as assassins. All of them knew how to kill.
And some of the sisters, Connor knew, became Watchers. He was hoping this woman was one of them. Not that he liked Watchers, or trusted the Sisterhood, but they could be useful, and right now, he needed help.
The old woman bowed. "I am Giorgis," she told him. "A sister of the Chapter House."
That simple title gave away nothing or her rank or training, nor did the plain black of her gown. She was old enough to hold the rank of Mother, perhaps even one of the nine Tribunes. But the sisterhood didn't advertise unless it suited their purposes. "Sister Giorgis," Connor greeted her as he politely inclined his head and pressed his palms together, the left on top of the right, in the Andorian fashion. "I am Sileni ni Davos." It was a name he had been using on Earth some five decades ago, the last time he had seen Cassandra.
"I heard you have questions," Giorgis said.
"Do you have answers?" he countered.
"Yes." She glanced at the busy marketplace. "Where do you want to continue this conversation?"
He raised an eyebrow. "My choice, is it?"
She raised both of hers. "Would you go to any of mine?"
"No."
Giorgis smiled at that then unhooked her cane and leaned on it, ostentatiously radiating calm patience.
Connor looked around the marketplace for a place to hold a private conversation, while also checking for more watchers, witches, and spies. He'd spotted three earlier today—a pair of young lovers and a middle-aged woman knitting socks, but they were gone now. This overt conversation with Giorgis gave the Sisterhood more reason for covert surveillance, not less. "Where's your bodyguard?" he asked her.
"I assume they're near," she answered with a vague lift of her fingers. "Guardians don't share operational details."
He couldn't stop the Watchers, but he could block their view. "We'll go inside, to that hotel." Connor and Giorgis proceeded slowly across the street and into the lobby of the Silver Apple hotel.
"Are you staying here?" she asked.
"No." Connor rented a room for an hour, reflecting that he'd never done that with a nun before. The ground-floor room held a bed, a storage unit, a small table, and two chairs. Neither he nor Giorgis sat down.
"Should I call you Per Sileni?" Giorgis asked. "Or would you prefer Per MacLeod?"
A Watcher. Good. And Connor liked the straight-forward approach, especially in a woman. It saved so much time. "MacLeod."
"I was told you're looking for Sister Cassandra," Giorgis said next. "That you've traveled here from Planet Earth."
"Yes." He'd been traveling—or working to get money for traveling—ever since he'd crawled out of that damn prison-tomb of a building six years ago.
"Telling people your apparent age is due to cryosleep must be a useful cover story."
Easier than pretending to be your own son or grandson, which is what he used to have to do. But this Watcher-Witch knew that, just as she knew about his visit to the school on Earth, and what he'd told the guards, and that he and Cassandra had known each other for a millennium. Giorgis was stalling. "Yes," he allowed, "when necessary." But it wasn't necessary with her, so he pushed that point home. "Why don't you have any Watchers on Earth?"
"We are spread far and wide these days." She turned her head to look at the artwork on the wall, a painting of green flowers and red leaves. "As are Immortals."
Connor had noticed. He hadn't met a single one these past six years. Space was vast, and planets and populations were scattered, but even so... "How many are left?"
She turned back to him. "How many were there fifty years ago?"
"A hundred, give or take."
Her smile held no humor. "There has been a lot of taking, especially these past twenty-five years."
"The Gathering?" Connor asked immediately.
"It may well be."
While he'd been buried underground, instead of in the Game. The Game that would leave only one alive. The dread that always crouched within him began its cold uncoil. "Where is Cassandra?"
The old woman's eyes were soft with sympathy and a kindness Connor had no use for. "I am sorry, Per MacLeod."
The dread lashed out, a punch of pain to the heart. No surprise, not really, no hot and searing acid on the wound. Just a brutally cold emptiness, a hollowing out of the soul. It hurt to breathe. Connor forced himself to let air out and take more in before demanding, "Who took her head?"
Giorgis was carefully seating herself on a chair, and only when she had let go of the armrests did she look up at him. "Per MacLeod," she began, a slight quaver in her voice, "Cassandra listed you as her next of kin, and so the Sisterhood has informed you of her death. The Watchers, however, observe and record, but nev—"
"Never interfere," Connor finished for her, his words a growl, taking refuge from grief in rage. Damn all Watchers! Sneaking cowards, hiding behind their oath and their walls! He'd come this far and hunted this long, and there she sat, smugly virtuous with her secrets, with the information she knew he needed, and he wanted to just beat it out of her and—
—and Giorgis had planned for that, he realized abruptly. She'd assumed a position of supplication, old and fragile and weak, and Connor couldn't hit her. Not over this, anyway. He wrenched himself into stoic patience before he sat down in the chair facing hers. "Will you tell me when?"
"Yes, that's public record. Cassandra was killed fifty-one years ago."
Now came the scald of surprise, a vicious slap of realization. He'd never had a chance of finding her. She'd died just five years after he'd left to seek the head of Duncan's killer. That morning, Connor had asked Cassandra what she foresaw in the fire of the rising sun. "You," she'd answered reluctantly, and he'd known she'd foreseen death as well. He'd been willing to accept his. He hadn't expected the death to be hers.
Because Cassandra lived on Holy Ground, and she never issued challenges. Ever since the Immortal Tribunal had started acting as referee some five hundred years ago, both immortals had to agree to fight. She wouldn't have agreed. There had been no duel; Connor was certain of that. "Was her killer executed by the Tribunal?"
"I can't tel—"
"Please, Sister," he asked, leaning forward in the chair, hands open and eyes beseeching.
She took her time considering, but finally answered. "No. And you should know: the Immortal Tribunal disbanded some forty years ago."
Giorgis wasn't exactly interfering, but that was definitely a warning. Immortals had gone back to the brutally simple rule: survive. "Thank you," he said, meaning it, yet also hoping the courtesy would encourage more information.
But Giorgis simply placed a memchip on the small table between them. "This contains news articles from that time and also Cassandra's personal portfolio: artwork, writings, and the like."
The articles would be a start in finding her killer, though the trail would be cold. He could look at her portfolio later. Connor picked up the chip as he stood.
"You're welcome to stay at the chapter house as long as you like," Giorgis offered. "The guest house is on holy ground."
A safe haven was always tempting, and free room and board would be helpful, but traps were baited for a reason. Besides, Connor wanted to be alone, away from sympathetic glances and prying eyes. "Thank you," he said again, a formality this time. "But no."
"We have rooms in the city, too."
"No."
"As you wish." Giorgis got to her feet then paused with her hand on the back of the chair. "May I ask: who did Phan Huy kill in that building fifty-six years ago?"
"Watcher ghouls," he muttered.
"Who was it?" she persisted, ignoring the insult.
All take and no give. Watchers hadn't changed. "You tell me something first," Connor bargained. "Is Phan Huy still alive?"
"Per MacLeod, Watchers can't—"
"—interfere," he finished for her. Again. "So neither will I." She could do her own damn research, just as he had to.
Her eyes glinted with knowing amusement before she bowed her head in acceptance. She went to the door but paused there and turned to him. Her expression had softened again, and she even reached out and touched his arm. "I am sorry for your loss."
Losses. With more to come, he was sure.
"Are you sure you won't stay?" she offered again.
"Yes." He needed to be alone, before he dared to face the loneliness. And he wanted to be outside, under open sky, away from tall buildings of metal and streets of stone.
He escorted her out of the building and back to the marketplace, where she told him, "Weaving is a hobby of mine," and went into a shop that sold yarn.
Cassandra had liked to weave. She'd made him a kilt, when he'd been new to his first widowhood and just coming out from the Highlands. Four centuries later, also in Scotland, after all his children were dead and his grandchildren were lost to him and his life had shattered, Cassandra had made a blanket for their bed. He'd sheared the wool from their sheep, and together they had carded and dyed and spun it by hand. They had spent nearly a decade producing the yarn, but they had no need to count years. For an immortal couple, time was a gift, instead of the curse he and his wives had known it to be.
Cassandra had spent a season weaving, and the blanket kept them warm that winter. When spring came, they'd said farewell to each other, then left the blanket and the house and the sheep for a young couple who purchased the farm. He'd left Earth soon after and hadn't seen Cassandra again for nearly two hundred years.
There would be no more reunions.
Connor went to a shop, bought a new shirt, and then went to a bathhouse on the plaza.
"Would you like to choose an additional service today?" the desk clerk offered, displaying a blue binder with topics in a neat row down the side: Massage, Music, Pedicure, Storytelling, Kittens, Tonsorial Art and Depilation… "Or perhaps an intimate companion?" The green binder was labeled Sex.
"No." Connor handed over money. "A single room with a full-body decontam. And then a private webport."
The clerk set the binders aside. "Certainly. The baths are on this level, and the webports are on the top floor."
In the bathing room, Connor stripped, gritted his teeth through decontam, and relaxed under the various cycles of the shower spray. He ended it with cold water on full power for a minute and a half. It lacked the brain-pounding invigoration of a Highland waterfall, but it still felt good.
He left his old shirt there, in case Giorgis's touch had placed a tracker, then dressed. He took the stairs to the webports, where he chose a cubicle with no windows. He wouldn't risk his own tricorder to access the memchip Giorgis had so kindly provided.
As he read the articles describing how Cassandra had died at her Cloudrise School, Connor set aside emotion, calling on centuries of practice in staying focused in battle. Rage could wait. Grief could wait. A patient numbness, a suspension of belief ... those were what he needed now.
That was unnervingly easy. It didn't seem real.
Connor removed the chip then connected to the web to search the archives. He found reports of forty-three more beheadings from fourteen different star systems in the last fifty years. Ten seemed to be mortal accidents, two he'd already known about, seventeen were likely immortals kills, eight made him nod with satisfaction, and six made him swear. He used paper and pen to take notes in code.
Searching for the surviving immortals was harder. Their aliases and locations changed all the time, and though face-rec algorithms helped, these immortals were experienced enough to be camera-shy. He found a few, then noticed one using his own eyes. Methos had attended Elena Duran's funeral on Earth, and the image showed him at the back of the crowd, partially hidden behind Elena's twin boys. But Connor knew that face, and deeper searching provided an alias from that time: Simon Reynard.
A listening fox. Of course.
Foxes were also good at disappearing. Connor found only a single reference after that: Reynard had gone through planetary customs three months later, which was (Connor checked his list of beheadings) only two days after a man had been decapitated in Ecuadoria. It seemed Methos had avenged Elena before leaving Earth.
Just as Connor would avenge Cassandra. But first…
He accessed the memchip again, then sat there looking at the icon titled Portfolio. He would have preferred to wait, to savor each item slowly, to delay the last new thing he would ever have from her, to hold off that final farewell. But he couldn't keep or copy the memchip; he was sure the Sisterhood had infected it somehow. So Connor opened Cassandra's portfolio and slowly scrolled through her artwork (paintings of plants mostly, a floorplan for a temple, pencil sketches of landscapes, a young woman near a fountain, a still life of knife and orange). She'd written a few poems (adequate) and a short story about a butterfly (not very good). He listened to the audio file of her playing the harp, but when she started to sing, he had to turn it off.
Not now. Not here.
Connor sat, eyes closed and breathing deeply, setting emotion aside once again. He deleted all the files on the memchip, cleared his search history (even though it had probably already been copied), and then stood and gathered his notes. On his way to the transport station, he dropped the memchip in a delivery cart that would travel all over the city. The Sisterhood would still spy on him, he knew, but he wasn't going to make it easy.
Connor took the kinorail out of the city and away from the chattering hordes, and when the countryside turned to grassland instead of farmland, he got off the transport and began to walk.
When he had the rhythm of the land, he reached out to align his quickening with life on this planet. He found familiar links with distant sheep and horses and chickens, livestock brought here by humans, but he also felt winged creatures and crawling things he had no names for. Some were cold, and some were sleeping. One was hunting, intent and ruthless. He broke contact quickly, so as not to get pulled in. As the sunshine faded, Connor found a sheltered hollow to spend the night. He set a quickening-ward around his bivouac and fell asleep under the open sky.
Connor woke near midnight, as usual, and lay for a time in the darkness designing constellations for the unfamiliar stars, while letting his mind fill with the thoughts of the beetles nearby. Then he slept again, only to be wakened by rain just before dawn. He laid on his back with his arms outstretched and caught raindrops on his tongue. This world tasted different from Earth. More metallic. Sharper.
He stood to watch the sunrise, a brightness behind the clouds, then set off walking. The clouds burned away, and the harsh sunshine settled heavily on his shoulders. After midday he arrived at the death site.
This was real, Connor let himself remember. He was not yet ready to let himself feel.
"Arson at Cloudrise School!" the title of the news article had blared, and pictures had shown a blackened field of twisted metal and cracked stone. "No survivors." But the burned buildings had been razed and carted away decades ago, and the site was quiet and beautiful, with orange plumes of the seed heads bending to the wind, purple flowers here and there, a line of trees tracing the path of a creek into the distance.
A narrow dirt path led to the memorial stone, a great lump of misshapen rock vitrified by the heat of the fire. A plaque had been affixed to the smooth surface, engraved with the logo of the school and thirty-eight names. Cassandra hadn't died alone. Most of the names Connor didn't recognize, even as aliases. He touched the four he'd known.
At the massacre, the authorities said, at least three perpetrators had drugged and beheaded ten teachers and twenty-eight children. The youngest had been four years old. The attackers had tied their victims to a chair one by one and methodically sliced through skin, blood, and bone. The heads had been neatly piled in a corner, a pyramid of death. Speculation as to motive for the Cloudrise Massacre ranged from sadism, jealousy, a cult of misogynists, or religious ritual.
All of those were possible. But if it had been an Immortal, he might have left some traces behind.
Connor sat on the ground and closed his eyes as he laid his hands on the soil, extending his senses out and down. In the topsoil, he found roots, larva, worms, and a myriad of tiny creatures. Not far down he hit an empty zone of sterile earth, charcoal, splintered rock, and bits of metal and glass, the footprint of the fire. But it wasn't dead; gossamer lines of energy twisted and tangled all through it, a Gordian knot of old quickenings, spreading all around him. Frantic hands clutched and clawed at his own. Dying screams skewered his eardrums while lightning sliced through his eyes. In that mingling he tasted terror and rage and pain, but also lust and joy.
He pulled away and staggered to his feet, feeling sick and tasting bile.
But he knew the motive now: the Prize. An immortal and two henchmen—or maybe two or even three immortals—had come here, infiltrated the school's security with poison gas, and slaughtered immortals and pre-immortals alike, enjoying themselves along the way. They'd killed the children, let them revive as full immortals, and then taken their heads. Even a youngster's quickening offered power.
"How could you let this happen?" he demanded of the names on the stone. Preimmortals and young ones were always targets, but to put so many in one place and then not protect them... Cassandra knew better. Urushan sure as hell knew better; he and Connor had worked security together. And Chelle should have seen it coming. She should have prepared. "How," Connor demanded in rage and despair, "could you all have been so stupid? How could you fuck up that bad and let them die?"
He slammed both fists on the stone, as if that could make the dead talk, but he already knew the answer. In the past—and not just once—he'd missed seeing the dangers. He'd been stupid and blind. He'd fucked up, and people had been hurt, or died.
Friends and students. Lovers. His wife and his daughter...
The grief was rising within him, cold and terrible, fed from a deep well. He couldn't see, he couldn't hear, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't move. Panic began to bubble through those frigid waters, and he was desperate to do something, to fight or flee, to delay or deny.
But Connor had learned, over the centuries, that this war had been lost the moment it began. So he surrendered, and he let himself feel.
The grief burst forth in a tsunami of pain, crushing him with loss, drowning him in anguish. Wave after relentless wave slammed into his heart, and rage pulled him down in a brutal undertow, carrying him far asea. He let himself drown, he went into the darkness and the pain, and he stayed there, empty and broken, until he could once more feel the earth and see the sky and breathe in the air, and he was tasting the saltwater of tears.
His friends and his lovers were dead. They were gone. He would never see them again, never laugh with them or argue with them, never touch them. He knew this, believed it, accepted it. This was real.
He drew a deep, shuddering breath and got to his feet. The grief wasn't finished, he knew that too. Grief was a tenacious general with unlimited forces and tactics at its command—night skirmishes, silent assassins, traps in every home, ambushes in poems and songs, sieges that went on for years. But the tsunami was done, and the heavy tide would eventually lessen, while it slowly washed away the bitterness of loss to leave the sweetness of memories behind. With time.
And as an immortal, he had a shitload of that.
Connor placed his hands palms down on the stone and spoke aloud his own litany of names: Mother and Father. Heather, Brenda, Alex, Farine. Rachel, John, Sara, Colin, Melita. Rebecca, Tomas, Pierre, Duncan.
Duncan was dead.
That loss was old, not a fiery whiplash of surprise, but it was black and empty and huge, a hollowing of the soul, and Connor knew it would never completely heal. Immortality healed the body; the real pain you bore inside.
But that was the way of it. That was the Game. Those were the rules he had lived by all these years. He was alone, and the Gathering was well underway.
At least, Connor realized with brutal grimness, he wouldn't have to kill any friends.
So he continued the spoken litany. Amanda. Elena. McCormick. Karla. Then he read aloud the names on the stone—Urushan. Raven. Chelle. Cassandra.
The wind carried them all away.
Connor was left in the silence, alone.
