It was a lugar-brained scheme… and Maia felt fiercely determined to make it work. At least once that phase was over, she wouldn’t be alone anymore. Maybe the rads would have an idea or two of their own to offer. Maia cast around the room one last time for weapons. She only found a small knife, embedded in the wooden post of one of the bunk beds, which she wrestled out and slipped into the coat pocket.
She was halfway up the ladder when the door suddenly swung aside, spilling light upon her face and outlining a large figure. Maia could only stare upward in dismay.
“
The silhouette turned, leaving Maia blinking in surprise. Hurriedly, she followed, hoping to catch the reaver from behind while they were still out of view from the Reckless. At the doorway, however, Maia’s heart sank upon spying four other women on deck. They were wrestling open a sealed box, pulling out long gleaming objects.
Rifles, Maia realized. They seemed well-supplied, this bunch. Even the Guardia at Port Sanger wasn’t better armed. Maia was past being shocked, however. It is the victors who write history, she now knew.
“Well? Come on!” The first woman called to Maia, who shuffled forward unwillingly with her head averted, eyes downcast. She concealed her surprise when three of the slender, heavy weapons were thrust into her arms, and clutched them tightly, not knowing what else to do.
“Don’t forget to bring enough ammo, Racila,” the leader told a slight, scar-faced pirate, who pounded the crate shut again. “All right, you lot, let’s get back, or Togay’ll have us eatin’ air for a week.”
Maia tried to take up the rear, but the leader insisted that she go ahead, tromping with the others down the gangplank, onto the pier, and then along thumping, resonant wooden slats toward where bright sconces cast twin pools of brilliance on both sides of the sanctuary entrance.
Loaded rifles, shouted calls, groups of anxious women hurrying through the night. This was surely no Farsun Eve celebration. What in the name of the Founders was going on? For Maia, the worst moment came as they climbed spacious, cracked steps and passed under the fierce electric dazzle of the sconces. When she wasn’t denounced on the spot, she realized it hadn’t been darkness that saved her, back at the ship.
The possibility of playing such a ruse—pretending to be her sister—had naturally occurred to Maia. Only it had seemed too obvious, too risky. All Stratoin children, whether clone or var, learned to notice subtle differences among “identical” women. Leie no doubt wore her hair differently, carried distinct scars, and would acknowledge with a thousand disparate cues that she knew these people who were utter strangers to Maia. Besides, what to do when Leie herself showed up?
Maia had finally chosen to try the subterfuge only if stealth utterly failed.. Now there was no choice. She could only try brazening it out.
“This dam’ hole is big as a scullin city!” One short, rough-looking var in the group told Maia
Shrugging like an unrepentant schoolgirl caught playing hooky, Maia muttered in mimicry of the other woman’s sour tone. “You can say that again! I never signed up for all this runnin’ around. Had any luck yet?”
“Nah. Ain’t seen beard nor foreskin o’ the vrilly crett since watch shift, despite the reward Togay’s offered.”
That confirmed Maia’s dawning suspicion.
The entrance showed signs of that long-ago battle that had shaken Jellicoe with blasts from outer space. A rough-cut, makeshift portal of poorly dressed and buttressed stone led from the shattered steps into a vestibule that might once have been beautiful, with finely fluted pilasters, but now bore jagged cracks. Rude cement repairs had peeled under attack by salt and age.
These effects ebbed as the group passed into the sanctuary proper, where thick walls had sheltered a grand entrance foyer. From there, broad hallways stretched north, south, and east. Strings of dim electric bulbs cast islets of illumination every ten meters or so, powered by a hissing, coal-fired generator. Beyond those light pools, each passage faded into mystifying darkness, broken by brief glimpses of occasional bobbing lanterns. Distant, echoing calls told of feverish action, nearly swallowed by the chill obscurity.
At first sight, the place reminded Maia of her first imprisonment—that smaller, newer sanctuary in Long Valley—another citadel of chiseled passages and thick, masculine pillars. Only here, the scent of ages hung in the air. Soot streaks and daubed graffiti on the walls and ceilings told of countless prior visitors, from hermits to treasure hunters, who must have come exploring over the centuries, torches in hand. By comparison, the pirates were well-equipped.
There was another difference. In this place, the walls were lined with a deeply incised frieze, running horizontally just above eye-level. As far as Maia could make out, the carved adornment ran the length of each hallway, snaking into and out of every room, and consisted entirely of sequences of letters in the eighteen-symbol liturgical alphabet.
Taking the center route, which plunged deeper into the mountain, Maia’s party passed through a stately hall where flames crackled in a spacious, sculpted hearth, underneath gothic vaulting. There was no furniture, only a few rugs thrown on the ground. Bottles lay strewn about, along with mugs and gambling equipment, all abandoned in apparent haste. “Seems an awful lot o’ trouble,” Maia probed, choosing the nearby short var who had spoken before. “I don’t s’poze anyone’s suggested we just set sail, and leave the vril behind?”
A wide-eyed glance from the husky little reaver told Maia volumes. The spoken response was barely a hiss. “Go suggest it yerself! If Togay ’n’ Baltha don’t quick make ya swim like a lugar, I may say aye, too.”
Maia hid a smile. Only loss of their chief prize would provoke such wrath. Although this would make Maia’s own task of finding Renna harder, it was nevertheless great news to hear that he had given them the slip.
Abruptly, Maia recalled what she was carrying in her arms—long, finely machined articles of wood and metal and packaged death. The weapons gave off a tangy smell of bitter oil and gunpowder. Apparently, after hours of searching, someone had decided that which cannot be recaptured must not be lost to others.
The anomalous frieze helped distract Maia from her nervous dread. As the group passed room after empty room, they were accompanied by that row of stately, engraved letters, punctuated by occasional, ill-repaired cracks. Now and then, she recognized a run-on passage from the Fourth Book of Lysos, the so-called Book of Riddles. Other stretches of text seemed to parrot nonsense syllables, as if the symbols had been chosen by an illiterate artist who cared more how they looked next to each other than what they said. The effect, nevertheless, was one of grand and timeless reverence.
Certainly males were welcome to worship in the Orthodox church, which even attributed them true souls. Still, this wasn’t what you expected to find in a place built solely for men. Perhaps, long ago, males were more tightly knit into the communion of spiritual life on Stratos, before the era of glory, terror, and double-betrayal leading from the Great Defense to the toppling of the Kings.
The group continued past gaping doorways and black, empty rooms, which must have already been searched hours ago. Finally, they arrived at another vast foyer, encompassing six spacious stone staircases, three descending and three ascending, again divided among the directions north, south, and east. It was a monumental chamber, and the running frieze of enigmatic psalms expanded to glorify every bare surface, seeming all the more mysterious for the stark shadows cast by a few bare bulbs shining angularly across deeply incised letters. All this grand architecture might have impressed Maia, if she did not know of greater vaulting wonders that lay just a kilometer or two from here—secret catacombs containing power unimaginable to these ambitious reavers. The reminder of her enemies’ fallibility cheered Maia a little.