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The warrior gave a slow nod. "I know her. She and I grew up in the clan house together. We do not make bonds, as you know, but she and I are not wholly antago-nistic, except insofar as is natural. I had heard that she was sent to Earth. I don't know anything of her return."

"Do you know the ones who sent her?"

"Of course. They are the Memnos Matriarchy, who govern us all. They will know what has become of her." The warrior paused. "How did you become separated?"

"It's a long story." Lunae was thinking of the words of her future-self:
Do not trust the Matriarchy
.

The warrior nodded. "Very well. As you can see, it is dark, and I am hungry. I have had no food for three days. They would not remove the gag, in case I summoned my armor."

"There may be roots or berries, perhaps," the kappa ventured. Knowledge-of-Pain gave a hiss of disapproval and rolled the body of a hyenae over with her toe.

"Nonsense. There is plenty of meat." She plucked a knife from some inner fold of the armor and tossed it at the kappas feet. "Start gutting."

Earth

Dreams-of-War ran backward until she was up against one of the stone pillars. The crowd kept up its muted sound, almost a low growl. It did not sound like anything that should come from a human throat, and perhaps, Dreams-of-War grimly reflected, it did not. The change-tigers were prowling, playing, paying little attention to her. They bore a faint resemblance to the hyenae of the Martian mountains: of similar height, but less bulky, products of an-cient and whimsical engineering, crude soldiers for an-other age. Dreams-of-War had to admit, however, that they were impressive. Upright, the rib cage was massive; she could see the complex weave of bone beneath short, shaved fur. The legs bent forward at the knee, like a human's, but the jaws and skull were long. They moved with blurred speed, almost faster than she could track, occasionally dropping to all fours and bounding. One of them pranced up to her, tail coiling, jaws agape.

"Get away from me," Dreams-of-War hissed, and struck out with the gutting knife.

"Oh no," the tiger said, low and purring. "That would be no fun at all."

Some kind of mechanism whirred and clicked in its throat, permitting speech. Its eyes were noon-bright, filled with amusement. It batted Dreams-of-War with a casual clawed hand, a blur of stripes. She dodged away, shifting aside from the feint, but the next blow sent her sprawling. The change-tiger turned and loped away. Dreams-of-War scrambled to her feet.

The second tiger was sitting in a neat heap between two pillars, energetically licking a hind foot.

Dreams-of-War stole a glance at the crowd. Sek stood, arms folded, with the dour woman at her side.

The faces of the crowd were impassive, and Dreams-of-War realized with a shock that this was not some frenzied audience baying for blood. This was just an ordinary night out for them. The muted howling was the equivalent of polite applause. They did not really care who killed what, as long as killing was done and they got to see some blood at the end of the evening, to puncture the tedium of their everyday lives. And if by chance she killed the change-tigers, what then? They would only capture more, and the same scenario would be replayed until Dreams-of-War was torn to pieces or the crowd became bored.

But what option did she have? Flight was next to im-possible and so was strategy, of which Dreams-of-War was not in any case enamored. No, it would have to be direct battle, she decided with relief. She uttered a yell and rushed forward.

One of the change-tigers, still coiled in a knot to wash, glanced up with mild yellow surprise, and rose languidly to its feet. It towered above her, perhaps seven feet or more. Telling herself that it was no different from the hyenae, Dreams-of-War feinted, darted aside as the tiger swiped, stabbed again, leaped aside. She fought with grim determination; the tiger had not even begun. It grinned at her, tolerant, a human adult confronting an angry child. Dreams-of-War fought as though the whole of her concen-tration had become focused upon this single foe, as if the odds against her had caused her to grow desperate. She fought as though there was not a second beast, sidling up behind her, discernible from scent and shadows and the growing, expectant hush of the crowd.

Ghostly claws, like some monstrous shadow puppet, appeared on the pillar before her, cast by the flickering light. The beast before her grinned again, made a small, mock pounce. Dreams-of-War dodged, and without look-ing, stabbed back in a sweeping arc with the gutting knife.

The change-tiger was too close to avoid the blow. Dreams-of-War felt hot, wet satisfaction, as thick as the blood that spattered her bare spine. She ripped upward with the gutting knife, almost losing her grip on its han-dle. She did not glance back to see what had become of it; she saw the shadow go down.

The beast before her uttered a wailing snarl and dived forward. Dreams-of-War stepped with precision into the widening pool of blood and slid, fetching up with her back against the pillar.

The tiger turned and threw itself upon her. She did not think it cared any longer if it lived or died. In all the old stories, the cunning warrior-maiden would have turned the tale around: spoken softly to the tiger, offered it inducements to flight, fled with it into the mountains, away from the people who exploited it. But Dreams-of-War knew she did not possess the necessary guile. She brought up the gutting knife as it leaped. It speared itself, burying her in a tide of blood and torn skin and fur. She felt its final hot breath wash across her face, stinking of old meat. It winked at her as it died: a last cat-joke.

The crowd surged forward with a howl. Dreams-of-War thrust the corpse away, sprang to her feet, and ran for the nearest door. If the crowd were in the way, she thought as she ran, so much the worse for them.

Behind her, a terrible baying filled the air. At first, she wondered if it might be one of the tigers, not dead as hoped, but a swift look back told her that it was the nor-mally languid Sek: head thrown back, eyes tightly shut, mouth open in an animal howl. Dreams-of-War decided not to waste time on what this might mean. Thrusting the scattering crowd out of her way, she kicked open the door and was through.

Hours later, Dreams-of-War stood on the edge of a head-land, staring out across the ocean. It was not long since dawn and the maw of the Chain glittered in the west, catch-ing the light of the rising sun like a skein of captured stars. Dreams-of-War chafed cold, scraped hands and cursed be-neath her breath, but inwardly, she exulted. She had thrown off her pursuers at some point in the night, running through the tangle of forest behind the combat ground.

Sek's howls still echoed in her head. Dreams-of-War frowned.
Memnos has a new Matriarch now
.

What did that imply? Nothing good, surely. At least she no longer had to suffer Yskatarina's creature's crawling presence.

Somewhere out there was Lunae, floating in those green waves, tossed by the world's tide.

Dreams-of-War's exultation faltered and faded. Whatever her current state of freedom, she had failed, and Lunae's loss bit at her, sharper than a tiger's tooth. She did not like feeling so helpless. Instinct told her to go on searching, but Dreams-of-War knew that in this case, instinct lied.

You do not mourn the dead. They are gone, and will not thank you.

The Martian way was to remove all traces of the per-son: warriors insignia melted down, images destroyed, the name never mentioned, even to oneself. There were, of course, exceptions, relating principally to armor and weapons, but that was a legacy of haunt-tech rather than any ingrained stoicism in the face of mortality If the spirits of the dead can be used as a source of power, then that power must be contained and limited. Dreams-of-War knew that it was not so superstitiously simple as that, but she still could not help but believe.

Lunae is gone. You mourn a memory. Your emotions are a product of your modification,
nothing more.

She squinted into the sun, imagining that the flash and glare of its light was scouring her mind clean, leaving behind only what was necessary. And then she turned and began walking along the cliff, heading west, as the Chain spun into shadow overhead.

It was close to dusk before she realized that she was be-ing followed. She had made her way along the headland, following the coast, hoping to come across some village from which a boat or flyer could be procured. Dreams-of-War had little compunction about stealing from the locals. As far as she was concerned, the planet was Martian prop-erty Once she had transport, she planned to return to one of the cities—not Fragrant Harbor, as they would be watch-ing out for her there, but one of the other coastal centers. There was nothing, however—no villages or settlements, just the endless coast and a thundering sea rising up against the cliffs in clouds of spray. The only sign of habitation was the gradual turn of the Chain's maw, thousands of miles above her head. Dreams-of-War trudged on into a steamy afternoon, longing for Martian cold.

Apart from the gulls and the flies, she saw only one other living creature: a small, doe-eyed beast that stood tremulously at the edge of a clearing. It stared at her with dreaming innocence, to which Dreams-of-War swiftly put paid with a throw of the gutting knife. The animal fell without a sound, to lie twitching on the forest floor. Dreams-of-War stripped it of its skin and ate it raw, saving a leg for later.

The forest grew more densely here, and she was forced to slash and hack her way through the vegeta-tion, becoming so absorbed in her task that at first she failed to notice the new sound that had snaked its way through the cries of birds and the hum of insects. When she noticed it, however, she froze.

It was a steady, throbbing pulse, reverberating from the trees and seeming to deaden the air.

Dreams-of-War's head rang with it, but not so painfully that she did not dis-cern the other sound that lay beneath it: the quick snickety echo of scissors. She turned, snarling, with the knife at the ready, but it was already too late.

Excissieres burst into the clearing, clad in waxy armor that slid over their skin in a multiple patterning of scales, eyes bright behind black visors, the sharp blades of their scis-sors clicking and hissing. Both bore prominent and unmis-takable insignia. The Memnos Matriarchy had found her.

Mars

Lunae tried not to think of their meal as flesh that had, however far back in genetic history, been human, but it was hard. The kappa seemed to have no such difficulties, and Knowledge-of-Pain wolfed down the scraps and sinews without bothering to cook them over the fire.

"Good," she said when she had finished. "And it is a cold night. The rest of the meat will keep. We can butcher it, divide it into parts for the journey"

"The journey?" Lunae questioned.

Knowledge-of-Pain stared at her. "To the Memnos Tower. That is where you wish to travel, I thought? To seek Dreams-of-War?"

"Are you intending to guide us?" the kappa said.

"I am intending to return there in any event. It is where I am based. It is the base of all members of the war-rior clans when they have left the clan houses. I thought you would know this."

"In one tower?" Dreams-of-War had given Lunae the impression that there were many warriors within the Memnos Matriarchy.

"In the complexes, not the Tower itself. And many are in temporary residence in Winterstrike and the cities. Be-sides, I do not wish to insult you, but how would a girl and an amphibian fare on their own?

Already you have met the hyenae, and there are worse, by far, roaming the Crater Plain, especially this close to the beginning of win-ter. All manner of things hunt now, to store food for the colder months."

Lunae could not imagine what that must be like. The night was already chill, forcing her to huddle close to the hyenaes blaze, and she could tell that the kappa was shiv-ering. Her future-self had told her not to trust the Matri-archy. What, then, of this offer of aid? But they could not roam Mars alone, searching fruitlessly for answers, and her future-self had told her that if the flood was to be held back, it was at Memnos. Yet it was also at Memnos that her future-self had been captured… Lunae swallowed fear.

"You come from a warmer climate?" Knowledge-of-Pain asked.

"Warm and humid."

"You will find little of that here. Mars is a cold world, good for the flesh and the spirit both."

"I see no virtue in cold," the kappa remarked, discon-solately.

Knowledge-of-Pain laughed. It reminded Lunae of the hyenaes bark. "And I none in warmth. It must make you soft, vulnerable, overly secure."

"Perhaps the cold merely numbs," the kappa said.

"And what's wrong with that?" Knowledge-of-Pain asked, frowning once more.

They slept close to the fire, with the armor keeping watch. Lunae woke once in the night to see it standing above her. It had retained its human shape and was a mer-curial gray in the light of the moons.

Its face swam out of the liquid depths: the visage of a proud and angry woman, no longer young, with a hooked blade of nose and arched eyebrows. The face came and went, emerging from shadow. It was, indeed, like watching a ghost. Lunae regarded it for a few minutes before lapsing back into sleep.

They awoke to a chilly dawn and a thin band of light above the horizon. Shortly afterward, the Martian day grew on, light spreading over the red rocks and casting solid-seeming shadows over the ridges of earth and stone. Lunae lay blinking in the new light, watching as Knowledge-of-Pain opened her eyes and rose immediately to her feet. The kappa lay like a boulder on the other side of the fire.

"First we eat. Then we move," the warrior said.

She turned, summoning the armor with a flick of her hand. Her back was a mass of scar tissue. Lunae could not help gasping.

"What?"

'Your back…"

"What of it? Old wounds. Vulpen in the hills, wanted my spine as a trophy. He did not get it," she added need-lessly "Instead, I removed his own backbone and had it gilded. It hangs on the wall of my chamber."