Free Banner of souls by Liz Williams Page B

question without an answer, "who was that other child?
    What be-came of her? Was she the hito-bashira before me?"

    "Yes. She was your sister-in-skin. She was one of the ones who died."
    Lunae searched for a flicker of regret in the kappa's face, but there was none.
    "Did you look after her, as you care for me?"
    "No. The Grandmothers summoned me after her death. I replaced another genetic grower."
    "Would you miss me if I died?"
    "It is hard to say," the kappa mused. Lunae felt some-thing cold and pulpy rise inside her throat; she stopped walking and stared at the kappa. "Do not think I do not love you," the kappa said in sudden dismay. "I did not mean that. But your Grandmothers are compassionate, and will not let me fully feel. If anything were to befall you, they would extract my emotions, store them safely where I cannot find them.
    They are very kind."
    Lunae was doubtful. If someone else was the governor of your emotions, then what was the good of having them in the first place? Why not simply have them removed, like an overactive gland? But perhaps it was better for the kappa to believe that the Grandmothers had her best in-terests at heart. If, indeed, she did so believe, and was not merely dissembling.
    "And now," the kappa went on, "come with me. There are preparations to be made."
    Memnos

CHAPTER 1
    Mars
    The Animus hovered anxiously overhead, wings beating like a slow fan. It had taken over an hour of bargaining to allow him to have access to the Tower, and even then a squadron of scissor-women had accompanied him up the spiraling stairs.
    Beneath lay Yskatarina, strapped to a high couch. A doctor hovered nearby, with the Matriarch.
    They had re-moved her limbs, for fear that she might break free and damage herself or the equipment.
    She was now secured by straps at the waist and the throat. At first, she had protested. "Surely the treatment cannot be that difficult?"
    "It strips your neurons down to the level of the un-conscious. It ransacks the pathways that lead to the far-thest parts of your mind. Your aunt will, I know, have planted her seeds of affection very deeply."
    The Matriarch's face, looming above her like a pitted Martian moon, grew pinched. "She tends a cold garden, that one."
    Yskatarina was about to ask how well the Matriarch knew Elaki, for the words made her angry with unthink-ing affront. But then: I will be glad to be rid of this, a loyalty that I neither asked for nor desired .
    Let it burn and bleed out into the red night; let it be gone into the shadows of Memnos. She wondered where such emotions went, whether they seeped from the black-light matrix to sink into cold stone and colder air. She lis-tened to the walls of the Tower around her, yet heard nothing, only the Matriarchs harsh breath and the steady beat of the Animus above her, like the heart that anchored her to life.
    "This process," she said, before the doctor began to key the codes into the matrix that covered the wall and which drifted in cobweb filaments through the air. "How precise is it? What damage might it do?"
    She did not like this at all. It made her feel trapped and choiceless. Only two cultures had this kind of tech-nology: Memnos and Nightshade. She felt caught between the dark and the deep. She could not have this done at home, but there was always the thought that Memnos might implant something else in her brain, some treacher-ous seed that would only grow to fruition when the time was right, to burgeon and betray. She had spent the jour-ney here staring out at the spectral images of the Chain and weighing chances in the balance. Thoughts of losing the Animus had driven her to the final decision, but even that had been a close-run thing. If Memnos messed with her mind, Nightshade would have to put the damage right and she would also have to take the risk that Elaki would not notice that anything else had been interfered with. And now the guilt was kicking in with crippling force, whispering inside her head, aghast