Winterstrike Read Online Free PDF

dimmed. I rose, stiffly. My wrists were still bound and the chains had chafed the skin into a raw burn. I peered
through the little window set into the door of the cell. One of the scissor-women sat outside. Her armour, and the few inches of exposed skin, were silent, but her eyes were open. She was awake,
but not speaking. There was no sign of the majike and I was grateful for that: she’d probably have been able to tell what I was up to. I knocked on the window. I needed the guard’s
undivided attention for a few minutes and the only way I could think of to do that was by making a full confession.
    ‘I’ll talk,’ I said, when she came across. ‘But only to you.’
    I could see indecision in her face. It was never really a question of how intelligent the scissor-women were; they operated on agendas that were partially programmed, and partly opaque to the
rest of us. Her voice came through the grille.
    ‘I am activating the recording device,’ she said. ‘Speak.’
    ‘My name is Aletheria Stole. I am from Tharsis. I assumed another identity, which was implanted. I came here looking for my sister, who married a woman from Caud many years ago
    I continued to speak, taking care to modulate the rhythm of my voice so that it became semi-hypnotic. The scissor-women had programming to avoid mind control, but this was something else
entirely. As I spoke, I looked into her pale eyes and glimpsed her soul. I drew it out, as I had done so many years before, when I was a child and playing with my cousins Essegui and Leretui.
Leretui had been the harder of the two, I remembered, and I remembered wondering why, since of the sisters she was the weaker-willed. Odd, to think of that now in the depths of the Mote, but I
needed something to distract my conscious attention while my preternatural abilities operated, and nostalgia was preoccupying enough.
    The excissiere’s soul spun across the air between us, a darkling glitter . . . Leretui on the lawn of Calmaretto, her soul halfway out of her body, and I recalled that it had a peculiar
taste, bitter as aloes and stinging inside my head, so that I’d dropped it like a fumbled ball and Leretui had sunk back into the grass, staring at me with an oddly malicious triumph. Essegui
had been much easier and I’d got into trouble for that. You’re supposed to give stolen souls back; I’d kept hers for a while, watching her walk jerkily around the lawn with no one
behind her eyes. Eventually a dawning conscience had prompted me to return it, but by then my aunt Alleghetta had noticed something amiss and swooped . . .
    Here came the scissor-woman’s soul, like something crawling out of a burrow. The door was no barrier. I opened my mouth and sucked the soul in. It lay in my cheek like a lump of intangible
ice.
    The excissiere’s face grew slack and blank, just as Essegui’s had done so many years ago, but this time there was no conscience to trouble me.
    ‘Step away from the door,’ I said. My voice was thick, but she did as I told her. I bent my head to the haunt-lock and spat her soul into it, or that is what it felt like. It fled
into the lock, tracing its engrams through the circuit mechanisms, grateful to be free of me. The door swung open; I stepped through and struck the scissor-woman at the base of the skull. She
crumpled without a sound. My antiscribe was nowhere to be seen. I had not expected it to be, but there was a small communications array sitting on a shelf, a standard model, activated. I snatched
it up.
    Discovery was soon made. I heard a cry behind me, feet drumming on the ceiling above. I headed downward, reasoning that in these old buildings the best chance of escape lay in the catacombs
below. When I reached what I judged to be the lowest level, I ducked into a chamber. I found the warrior’s ghost before me. Her flayed face wore a grim smile. My guardian spirit, I
thought.
    ‘Where, then?’ I said aloud, not expecting her to respond, but once