David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Zeus looked in the grass for Maggie’s shoes. They were gone, along with the dishes from last night.

“Too bad you slept late,” Herm said. “The object of your desires came by earlier and retrieved her footwear. You must have made a great impression on her. I suspect that if she saw you now,” Herm looked pointedly at Zeus’s crotch and his green eyes flashed, “she wouldn’t be merely impressed, she’d be astonished.”

“Ah, I’ve nothing she hasn’t seen,” Zeus chuckled.

“Really?” Herm said, raising a brow: “I thought Hera caught you last night before you began waving it around.”

“Nice timing, that,” Zeus said, unable to hide his annoyance. “Did you spy for her? Did you fly about, keeping watch?”

Herm grinned. “And interfere in your affairs? No.”

Zeus eyed Herm, growing angry with the winged man. Herm affected his slightly superior smile, and his lidded eyes concealed more than they revealed. Certainly Herm hid something.

“I think you’re lying,” Zeus said. “You’re plotting against me. I could kill you for that.” Zeus raised his right hand threateningly, palm out. He stood but ten feet from Herm, a bit far to throw an electric shock, took a step closer.

Herm stiffened in fear, watched the hand. He held his gun loosely, dared not move.

“I’m sorry you think so ill of me,” Herm said, “me, your oldest and dearest ally. Why would you believe I’m against you?”

“I can tell, you’re hiding something!”

“Dear brother,” Herm whispered, his voice smooth and oily, “what has got into you? You threaten me? How many times have I acted as your messenger when you wanted to make a tryst? How many times have I lied to Hera on your behalf? Do you believe I’d side with her now?”

Zeus held his arm steady, studying Herm’s eyes, waiting for him to say more.

“If you want to know,” Herm said at last, “I spent the evening abed, recuperating from this rather severe wound gotten, I might add, in your service.” He held up his arm, displaying the bandage, reminding Zeus of the skog he’d killed, part of which Zeus had fed to Maggie last night on his amorous escapade.

“You’re still hiding something.” Zeus could seldom read Herm’s face, yet the winged man frequently held secrets.

“A surprise,” Herm said. “I haven’t told you everything about this morning: I got up early, to hunt skogs,” he held up his pistol, “and I spotted Maggie here in the fountain, as naked as you are now! She said she’d come to retrieve her shoes, but I think she came for more.”

Zeus wanted to leap for joy, but still didn’t trust Herm. “You’re just saying that.”

Herm grinned at his expression. “I assure you, it’s true.”

“Odd,” Zeus considered. “She seemed tame last night.”

“Perhaps she needed to warm to the idea,” Herm said. “But she’s interested in you, now. She asked me to bear a message.”

“Which is?”

“She says she has work to do today, preparing for Felph’s return. But she wants to meet you tonight, here. She said she will be naked, and wants to see you similarly attired!”

“Hah!” Zeus laughed, unsure whether to believe such good fortune. It seemed too much, yet Herm had borne similar messages for Zeus to women here on Ruin. Never had he lied before. He would not do so now. “Hah! A wild one, eh?”

“It seems so. Will you do it?” Herm smiled.

“Meet her here, naked? I … I don’t know. Have you told anyone else-Hera?”

Herm shook his head. “Only you. Maggie left not half an hour before you got here. She asked me to stay.”

“So no one else knows of this?”

“No one,” Herm said.

Zeus decided to trust the winged man. “Tell no one. In fact: tell Hera you spoke to me and you discovered I have a tryst with Maggie tonight-in her rooms. That should drive her mad, trying to discover how to interrupt us in the lady’s private chamber.”

Herm smiled wickedly at the ruse. “Very good, my brother.”

When Maggie woke shortly after dawn, she lay abed for a long time, missing Gallen, staring at the spirit mask he’d left propped in a corner.

Such an odd thing, with its vacant eyeholes, watching her: the surface of the mask seemed to be of leather, lacquered and painted. A base of dark browns and blacks lay under silver, filigreed in fascinating curlicues. Tiny pictographs were filigreed above the silver lines. Over all this lay splotches of dark blue and purple paint, weaving about in confusing jumbles.

Other bits of silver had been engraved into “teeth” on the mask, where it fit over a Qualeewooh’s own teeth, lending them strength. These little metal teeth were carefully notched, forming serrated edges, and were then filed to incredible sharpness. Maggie thought the teeth cruel, frightening.

On inspecting the mask, Maggie could not decide what color she thought it to be-blue, purple, silver. The odd mix of colors made it so that the hues seemed to meld and flow, rivers of color, blending together. The mask seemed alive with movement.

As she stared at the mask, perhaps she slept. Perhaps it was only the gradual sinking of her tired eyes, but suddenly she thought the mask did move, that it wrenched aside. She imagined dark eyes, staring from the holes.

Maggie found herself suddenly alert, heart pumping madly, terrified of the mask. This is silly, she told herself. I shouldn’t be lying here, frightened of some piece of leather. But it was more than leather. It was a receiver. Gallen had put it on, seen … something.

I should investigate , Maggie thought. What kind of technologist would I be, if I didn’t investigate?

Strengthening her resolve, she grabbed her mantle from beside the bed, put it on, then grabbed the mask, examined it.

The sensors on her mantle could detect no emanations of heat or light coming from the mask. Maggie studied it under magnification. She could discern wood and pulp mixed into a heavy black resin. The base of the mask was leather, with tiny dimples in it, the remains of small feathers.

With a jarring sense of revulsion, Maggie realized the leather was not just a piece of some dead animal-the leather was Qualeewooh skin. This poor bird’s face had been plucked, then the mask painted on in the form of a black resin. Once the mask hardened, the silver had been inlaid over the resin, and the whole thing painted again. Maggie detected no electronic components, no nanoware. She had her mantle test the air around the mask, listening for electronic signals on every frequency. She picked up radio traffic from AIs sending bursts of binary language, music and holovision signals from Devil’s Bunghole. She listened desperately for some message from Gallen, though she knew he was far to the north, out of her range.

Nothing more.

Maggie picked up the mask, looked inside.

Skin. Nothing in the mask but dried skin that smelled faintly oily. Maggie held her breath, put on the mask.

Think nothing, expect nothing , she told herself, clearing her mind. She didn’t want to imagine she’d received a message. She inspected the mask’s interior, saw the wrinkled gray leather within the mask, smelled its oily scent, like the dried skin of a snake. Nothing should happen, she thought. This isn’t real technology.

Yet as she drew the mask on, time seemed to slow. The act of pulling it over her face seemed almost impossible, as if she moved through honey. She could breathe easily enough, found her heart beating at the same pace. Her muscles moved normally.

But her thought quickened. That seemed the answer. Her mind seemed to race far faster than it ever had before, as if she suddenly had all the time in the universe to ponder.