Her finger hovered over the press-stud. She’d only ever dealt in small-scale secrets before. The news about the Awakeners was enormous. Big enough to topple governments, start wars, save or destroy hundreds of thousands of lives. She was afraid to let it loose.
But it was like Malvery said. What they do with the information ain’t my business.
She began to tap, and with each touch the light on the side of the cube flashed. When she stopped, it began to flash back.
So the negotiations began.
Slag had found a thing.
He found it in the vents, behind one of the grilles that led out into the big world where the big creatures lived. How it got there, he didn’t know. It hadn’t been there before.
He’d sensed it from some distance away, on his journey up from the depths where the rats scuttled and scampered. Like a discordant sound just on the edge of his hearing, unpleasant and nagging. Now he’d located it, the sensation was stronger. It was out of place, in some deep, instinctive way that he didn’t understand. And it needed investigating.
He padded closer. The corpse of a rat dangled from his jaws. It was a feeble specimen, but quick, and it had given him more trouble than it should. Once, he’d have pinned it and broken its neck before it knew what was happening. But he’d been slow, his aching muscles responding a fraction too late, and he’d missed his pounce. Catching it had worn him out, and he still hadn’t fully recovered. Where was his energy?
Every day he slept longer, moved more stiffly. Every day his strength diminished. He’d held off the depredations of age for a very long time, but he couldn’t hold them off for ever. Time was taking its toll, and the price was the heavier for avoiding it.
But this wasn’t the day. Not today. Today, he could still fight, and run, and kill. Today, he was a warrior, as he had been every day since kittenhood.
He dropped the rat to the floor of the vent, padded forward and sniffed at the curious object. It was a large grey metal casket. There were decorative grooves and etchings on its surface, but it was firmly closed. Slag had no idea of its purpose, but he understood that this object was only a container, and that whatever interested him was inside. He circled it warily, but after a thorough inspection, he was none the wiser as to how to get inside.
A sound. In the gloom further down the vent, he saw the glitter of eyes. She was there, also drawn by the thing. She crouched at the sight of him, unsure whether to run or stay. Her eyes went to the dead rat lying on the floor between them. Calculating whether she could snatch it before he got to her.
He moved towards her slowly, eyes narrowed: a sign of peace, a sign he meant her no harm. She backed off, confused, ready to bolt. He paused, let her relax, then moved forward again and gently picked up the rat in his jaws. Still she hovered, wavering on the edge of flight. She was hungry. She had the smell of it. A cat from outside, from beneath the sky, who didn’t know the ways of the iron warrens.
He approached, moving closer still. She jerked back, halfway to fleeing; but she didn’t. He saw the fear in her. One more step and he’d lose her.
He lowered his head and laid the rat on the floor. An offering. Then he retreated, backing away down the vent. He sat back on his haunches and watched her carefully.
She sniffed at the rat. Took an exploratory step forward. Then, with a lunge, she snatched it up in her jaws and flurried away down the vent in a scrabble of claws.
The scent of her lingered in the air after she was gone. Slag gazed down the empty shaft.
No, this wasn’t the day. But soon.
Jez awoke in her bunk, alone.
Again, the loss. But this time it was so much sharper, so much deeper. There was no disorientation, no need to collect her thoughts. She remembered everything that had happened in the Awakener base. She’d chewed it over in the dark places of her unconscious. And she knew. Pelaru was a half-Mane; now she understood everything.
She’d been tricked. Tricked by her feelings. She thought she’d fallen in love. At last, after a lifetime, she’d fallen in love.
But it wasn’t love. Not in that way. It was something she’d brushed against in other times, something she’d yearned for but never dared to seize. The love of the Manes, the sense of connection, of integration, of truly knowing another being and being accepted by them. A companionship more intimate than any she’d felt as a human.
No matter which way she turned, the Manes were there. Once she’d feared to become one. Later she thought she could exist as a human, with her Mane side held in abeyance. Later still she decided to explore it, drawn by the promise it held. Meeting Pelaru had been a reminder of what she’d give up if she left her humanity behind, the last moment when she might turn aside from her path.
But she’d been fooling herself. She’d struggled and fought and agonised over the years, but since the day she was given the Invitation, her course had been decided.
How could her heart possibly hurt this much? It was only a muscle, and it didn’t even work.
She got up. She was muddy and blood-spattered and stank. It didn’t matter any more. Manes didn’t care for outer beauty.
Once, she’d been a human cursed with being a Mane. Somewhere along the line, she’d become a Mane playing at being human.
She slid open the door to her quarters. There was nobody out in the corridor. She could hear them all over the Ketty Jay, and some of them outside. She caught snatches of their thoughts. Ashua was angry about something. The Cap’n was embarrassed and befuddled. The only one she couldn’t sense was Pelaru. But then, she’d never been able to hear his thoughts.
She walked down the corridor to Crake’s quarters, where they’d put their Thacian passenger. She could hear his heartbeat inside. It was quickening: he was aware of her. She knocked on the door, and he opened it.
Even knowing what she knew, it didn’t make a difference. The sight of him filled her. She’d thought it was his face that attracted her, his noble Thacian features, firm and beautiful like a hero from some ancient legend. But it wasn’t that. It was the kinship of daemons.
‘So you know,’ he said. He seemed sunken and diminished somehow.
‘Yes.’
He stepped aside, and she went in.
Crake’s quarters were more cluttered than hers, which had almost nothing in them at all. The upper bunk was a bookshelf, with tomes of daemonism secured in place with a cargo belt. She stood there awkwardly for a moment, acutely aware of her proximity to Pelaru. Then she sat down on the bunk, and Pelaru closed the door and sat down beside her.
‘How did it happen?’ she asked him.
‘I was in Yortland,’ he said. ‘It was in the early days, when I was making connections, when I had to go and meet people face to face. I had a meeting on a prothane rig off the north coast. It was my bad fortune that the mists came while I was there.’
‘But they didn’t take you.’
‘I refused them.’
She watched him keenly. No, he wasn’t lying. ‘You refused the Invitation?’
‘As did you,’ he pointed out.
‘Only because the Mane was interrupted. If it hadn’t been. .’ Her eyes were far away. ‘I doubt I could have resisted.’
A sour expression passed over his face. ‘I couldn’t resist them entirely. I’m still. . infected.’
She was surprised at his tone. ‘You hate what they’ve done to you.’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘And I hate them.’
‘But you loved Osger.’
‘But it wasn’t love!’ he cried. ‘I thought it was, but then I met you, and I felt exactly the same! Don’t you understand? I thought I loved him, but they cheated me!’