Banner of souls by Liz Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

away."
    Excitement flashed across Lunae's face.
    "Where? Somewhere far?"
    "I don't know yet."
    Dreams-of-War sat down on the edge of the bed and studied the girl. It was obvious that Lunae had aged overnight. The planes of her face were different, more ma-ture, and Dreams-of-War could see the curves of her breasts beneath her night robe. Silently, Dreams-of-War took stock of the months from the hatching pod. Lunae had her lessons, as prescribed by the Grandmothers, on three occasions every week. That made it nearly one hun-dred and twenty times that Lunae had now folded time, slipped through the cracks into elsewhere , cheating the rules of the continuum. Dreams-of-War thought of herself going under the blacklight matrix, of the doctor's voice as she spoke of the Eldritch Realm. Beneath the armor, Dreams-of-War suppressed a shiver.
    But the success of the project was clear. Lunae was ag-ing as predicted by the schematics drawn up by the Grand-mothers, and unlike her previous sisters-in-skin, showing no signs of cellular degeneration or mental instability. And it could not be good for her to be kept cooped up in this an-tique mansion.
    Angry and scared though she had been, Dreams-of-War could not blame Lunae for escaping.
    When Dreams-of-War had been Lunae's age, she had felt as though she owned half of Mars: the Demnotian Plain running red to the horizon, as far as the ragged mountains and the great cone of Olympus. Dreams-of-War's earliest memories were of that plain and those rocks, glimpsed from the reinforced windows of the clan house. She had spent her days outside, left to run wild with Knowledge-of-Pain and the other girls, ice crackling be-neath their wind-skates as they hurtled across the Sea of Snow toward the towers of Winterstrike; the brief summer heat causing the maytids to crawl out from their cocoons in the soil and be snap-roasted in the firepits; the feel of her keilin mount under her as they charged through the Tharsis Gorge…

    Dreams-of-War wished that Lunae could have had such a childhood, felt the lack of it even if Lunae did not. Now, looking at the girl and seeing the end of that child-hood already upon her, Dreams-of-War was filled with an uncomfortable sensation: a mingled guilt and unease, so unfamiliar to her that she did not know what to do with it.
    Lunae saved her from the inconvenience of her emo-tions. "You said that woman was a Kami. She did not look alien to me, only strange, as if unfocused."
    "From what we know of the Kami, they do not have bodies. They possess the bodies of others, usually those who are of a weak mind."
    "But who are the Kami?"
    "No one really knows. They started appearing on Earth only a few years ago, shortly after the establishment of the Nightshade Mission, but they have been on Night-shade for much longer. There were a few terrorist attacks on the Mission by Kitachi Malaya insurgents. But the Kami were like ghosts who manifested themselves in human bodies, and in no form other than shadows in the midday sun. And the Mission itself: impregnable, made of an un-known substance that withstood all attacks and that no spy device has ever been able to penetrate."
    "What interest can they have in us?" Lunae wondered. "Where do they come from?"
    "I've told you, no one knows. They are close to Night-shade; that is all that is known. At first, people thought that the Mission was undertaking some kind of mind-control, but the Kami made themselves known. Lunae, it is time for you to get up."
    She studied Lunae as the girl dressed. The process of aging had brought out the bones of Lunae's face, a sharp-ness to cheekbone and chin that was suddenly familiar. She does not look like the people of Fragrant Harbor, this East-ern ancestry, except in the tilt of her eyes. She looks like a Mar-tian
    , Dreams-of-War thought, and wondered that the notion had not struck her before.
    But her own people tended to have pale hair, the silver-blond of the Crater Plains, whereas Lunae's own was