The Revolutions (44 page)

*   *   *

Not air, but light, or forces more fundamental than light. Astronomers might talk—in that way they had, that made the universe sound rather ugly and cluttered—about rays, and spectroscopic something-or-other, and solar winds and so on. Or perhaps Atwood might have a better idea—perhaps the forces at play were more his sort of thing, telekinesis or the Odic Force or astral light or pure
vril.
Perhaps the conditions were peculiar to the Red Sphere. It was absurd and impossible to imagine bright blue Martians fluttering like a swarm of summer butterflies through London smog. Everything had its proper place. Hers was here, now, under the light of the red moon, high over the white city.

*   *   *

She swooped and turned between the towers, swiftly, effortlessly. The wings were weightless, buoying her up. When she tried to turn to see them behind her (so huge!) the result was that she rolled and fell, tumbling, laughing at the speed and the danger until she was able to catch herself on a thick rolling current of light and rise up again, soaring over a great grey dome. Something followed her across the stone below. It wasn’t until she was far past it that she realised it had been her shadow.

*   *   *

The tower-tops were above her now, and she could see pedestrians on the streets below. They were all looking up. At first she thought they were looking up at her, but of course there was nothing remarkable about what she was doing. Not here. Here, flight was no more remarkable than riding the omnibus. They were looking up at the red moon.

In the heart of the city there were crowds. It was an out-of-doors sort of evening on the moon. Martians leapt from window to window between the towers, and she was frequently forced to swerve to avoid collision—now
that
caused them to stare at her! They were negligently careless of collision, like Londoners striding out into traffic.

Long tower-shaped shadows unfolded beneath her and folded away again. There was pollen in the air. The flowers were upturned, open, expectant. Red light flickered on polished stone. From the air it resembled campfires; the armies of Greece beneath the beetling towers of Troy. Martians staggered through the streets, drunk on red wine—had they been Londoners, they’d have been arm in arm and singing. Others perched like gargoyles in windows or on rooftops—no, more like cats on the hunt, watching, and waiting. Beneath her the streets opened into a square where packs of Martians fought, charging and swooping at each other, skirmishing, cutting and parrying with their wings. Was it a riot? Some Dionysian carnival, a night of madness? No—on closer inspection, they were sparring—readying themselves. She felt an urge to join them.

The thrum and whine of their wings made messages.

~
Good luck!

~
Be ready!

~
Follow me! Follow me! Join us!

A flock of Martians surrounded her, beckoning. They had no idea who she was, no idea that she was not truly one of them. The thought was delightful. What were they doing? Where were they going? She followed them for a while, drifting from window to window of the high towers, where the flock perched, clamoured, rattled their wings, urgently beckoned out into the night. They were raising the alarm, rousing sleepers, rallying the city’s defenders. Against what? She hardly cared. Her thoughts were not entirely her own. She moved with the crowd, angry and joyful and wild—hardly even remembering why she’d fled the tutors’ tower, or what she was looking for; just one of the defenders of the ivory city against whatever was coming.

The flock wheeled around a horn-shaped tower—she didn’t see the signal and nearly turned too late—and then passed through another flock passing in the opposite direction, a thrilling cacophony of wings and signs all around her. Wheeling and banking again, she found herself in a part of the city that she knew. Old Piccadilly lived there.

She said
~
This way!

The flock ignored her. Whatever authority they recognised, she didn’t have it. She split off from them. They didn’t seem to mind, or even notice. She searched from window to window along the street until she found her friend’s window. She knew it was his because he was standing in it, leaning out to watch the preparations below. He staggered back as she approached, as if he’d seen a ghost—which, in a way, she supposed he had.

She entered through his window and stood before him, breathing heavily, her wings trembling with excitement.

*   *   *

Piccadilly occupied a room on the middle floor of a mostly empty tower, in a street of no particular significance. The room was as spartan as any other. Piccadilly had retreated from the window to stand in a dusty corner. He was trembling; he looked terribly old. In his sudden retreat from the window he’d spilled a crystal decanter of red wine.

There was something about him that was not so different from a pensioner in London. An old man forgotten in a dusty room. Threadbare wings. The drink. Memories of the dead.

She stepped forward. His wings opened in surprise and alarm, as if to shield himself.

~
Why are you here? Now? Tonight?

~
I don’t know what’s happening
, she said
. Everything’s moving—everything’s moving, so suddenly. I don’t know what’s happening. They taught me grammar, and philosophy, and science, and nothing I needed to know.

~
How did you find me?

~
Luck. I didn’t know I was looking for you. I thought I was looking for someone else. Can you help me? Will you help me?

~
Of course. Why now—I saw you at the window and asked, why now? But this is the night of the red moon, and everything is chaos. Anyone may find themselves swept up and whirled anywhere. Why not here?

~
I escaped.

~
That was a good place. That was where you should be. They said they would teach you. Make you strong.

~
At first, perhaps. But then all they did was ask me questions.

She saw that he was drunk. His lips were stained red.

~
I was glad when they took you away. I couldn’t look at you. It was harder than I expected. I’m sorry. Shall we talk now? After all these months? Now, on the eve of the red moon? Yes. I shall not last through another one. That’s well enough. I have lived to speak with an angel, and to see the dead wake. And for a little while, I was the leader of a school, and people listened to me because of it. That will do.

~
Who was she?

~
No one now.

~
How did she die? What happened to her?

~
You’ll see. Very soon now, you’ll see. You’ll see what they do.

~
They?

~
Our brothers and sisters of the red moon. They didn’t tell you?

~
No.

He went to the window, stiffening as he passed her. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him, the way she would have hugged her father when she was a child. But she didn’t know how the old Martian might react, what that gesture might mean to him. And then it was too late—he was standing at the window.

~
They should have told you
, he said.
Perhaps they were afraid to tell you. Afraid of what you would remember—afraid of what she would remember. Do you remember?

~
I don’t know—I feel afraid, and angry. Our brothers and sisters of the red moon—brothers? Sisters?

~
Have they told you how we fled Mars?

~
I don’t understand.

~
The way was hard. Only the strongest survived. And some were lost. Some drifted. Some fell to the red moon. Isn’t that how it is? We are blown here and there. I am old enough to know. Why did you come to me, of all people? I could ask, but why not?

~
And what happened to them on the red moon?

He shrugged.
~
A hard world. Harder even than ours. It moves too quickly, and it drives them mad. They have no good leaders and they have forgotten how to live. And so they steal from us. Whenever the red moon comes close enough to cross.

~
To cross?

~
They have ways. Perhaps they remember some things we have forgotten. When the moons are close it’s almost as if we are one again. And then there are currents, and they can cross.

He stood at the window and looked up.

*   *   *

The moon was huge in the sky, occluding the face of Mars. The air throbbed with its presence.

On the red surface of the moon, a scattering of black dust—a faint shadow, like soot on a lamp—grew slowly at first, and then faster, becoming a curl of smoke. Then, moments later, a flock of distant black dots, which next became cross-shaped, a thousand tiny letter X’s—as big as flies, as big as bats, as big as birds; wings like a fleet of sails along a red river. Black sails swept along by lunar currents. An armada, sailing on a river of red light.

They were hateful; they were the enemy. It was a strong, clear, joyful hate, a good hate. It was no sin to hate, not here.

The city rippled its wings, tensed its muscles.

The enemy’s final descent was so fast, so sudden, that Josephine didn’t realise they were
there
, in amongst the people of the city, indistinguishable from them, until she heard fighting. The snap and crack and slash of sharp wings. Falling and running and hissing. The noise came from above and from below. Something sliced through a tendril overhead and it fell like a cut washing-line. Flowers scattered, some drifting in through the window.

In the next moment, one of the enemy landed in the window. Josephine leapt back. Piccadilly was too slow. A wing lashed out and struck open his throat.

Chapter Thirty-one

The killer leapt across Piccadilly’s body and into the room. It crouched, reaching for the spilled decanter, which leapt from the floor into its harpy-claw hand. The killer lapped at the red dregs, then dashed the decanter against the wall. It glared at Josephine and hissed.

She realised with horror that it was trying to speak. To threaten, gloat, mock. The people of the red moon Abyss spoke with their voices. That struck her as barbaric, disgusting, an animal behaviour. They could hardly communicate very much that way—hooting and hissing. No wonder they’d descended into barbarism.

The killer’s outstretched wings blocked her view of Piccadilly’s body, but not his blood: red, thinner and paler than the blood of an Englishman, and an extraordinary amount of it. In the instant he’d died, his wings had stiffened, snapping beneath him when he fell. Somehow that was more gruesome by far than the blood.

Josephine noted sorrow, and anger, and fear, as if they were outside of her, filling the room.

She retreated to the wall. The killer’s eyes shot to the door and back again. It tensed, ready to jump, and she tensed to meet it.

To meet
her
. The killer was a woman. Little more than a child—tiny and half-starved. Wings dull, mottled, and mute; bony chest so thickly scarred that she looked scaled. She wore a belt around her wasp-thin waist, braided from something bright. It resembled snakeskin. A Fury, dripping with blood, wild-eyed.

There was no possibility of communication, and nothing to say. Josephine, who’d never in her life lifted a hand in anger against anyone, was as eager for confrontation as the killer was.

The belt, she realised, was made of the bright fibres of severed wings.

The killer’s own wings shifted. Veins darkened and lightened again as muscles tensed and blood pulsed. Their sharp, fern-like edges rippled. Dull meaningless patterns formed and unformed.

The killer was playing with her, feinting. She felt it probing at her mind—a nasty vicious whispering, looking for weakness—trying to confuse and distract her, to panic her.

Jo looked away, and down at her feet.

The killer leapt, and Josephine leapt a half-second later. They met somewhere near the ceiling, slashing and clawing at each other. Their wings scraped together with a terrible screech.

The killer was surprised. Her dead eyes lit up for a moment. The killer flicked her wings, rolled upside down, and leapt off the ceiling—an elegant motion that Josephine couldn’t possibly mimic, so instead she fell, clumsily, which was perhaps for the best: her clumsiness confused the killer, made her unpredictable. The killer lashed out with the long edge of her wing, but missed wildly. Josephine circled and struck; they clashed, then passed each other. Cuts bled on Josephine’s face and leg. The killer was unwounded. The killer hissed; Josephine was silent. A claw reached for Josephine’s eye—she swung her head away. She parried, sharp teeth scraping her wing. It was an extraordinary, agonizing sensation. She stepped back and the killer followed. Wings struck against wings, cutting and parrying, a flurry of violent colour and light and motion. She parried by instinct. Then, suddenly, her wings and the killer’s wings were enmeshed, interlocked, and they were struggling together, both trying to pull free. The muscles of her back screamed and nearly tore with the effort. Then Josephine’s wings were free and for a moment she was airborne, her wings brushing against the ceiling, while beneath her the killer took an unsteady step forward, screamed, and stumbled. Jo wasn’t sure why at first; then she saw that the killer had cut open her foot on the broken decanter. She struck quickly before the killer could stand again.