Serpent's Reach

Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren. She was a long-boned and rangy fifteen, having likely all her height. Ilit blood mixed with Meth-maren had contributed that length of limb; and Meth-maren blood, her aquiline features. She bore a pattern on her right hand, chitinous and glittering, living in her flesh: her identity, her pledge to the hives, such as all Kontrin bore. This sign a majat could read, whose eyes could read nothing of human features. Betas went unmarked. Azi bore a tiny tattoo. The Kontrin brand was in living jewels, and she bore it for the distinction it was.

The tendril fell last, burned through. She clipped the gun to her belt and smoothly rose, pulled up the hood of her sunsuit and adjusted the visor to protect her eyes before leaving the shade. She took the long way, at the fringe of the woods, being in no particular haste: it was cooler and less steep, and nothing awaited her but studies.

A droning intruded on her attention. She looked about, and up. Aircraft passing were not unusual: Kethiuy lake was a convenient marker for anyone sight-navigating to the northern estates.

But these were low, two of them, and coming in.

Visitors. Her spirits soared. No comp this afternoon. She veered from the lab-ward course and strode off down the slope with its rocks and thread-bushes, tacking from one to the other point of the steep face with reckless abandon, reckoning of entertainments and a general cancellation of lessons.

Something skittered back in the hedge. She came to an instant halt and set her hand on her pistol: no fear of beasts, but of men, of anything that would skulk and hide.

Majat.

She picked out the shadowed form in the slatted leaves, perplexed to find it there. It was motionless in its guard-stance, half again as tall as she; faceted eyes flickered with the slightest of turns of its head. Almost she called to it, reckoning it some Worker strayed from the labs down below: sometimes their eyes betrayed them and, muddled with lab-chemicals, they lost their direction. But it should not have strayed this far.

The head turned farther, squaring to her: no Worker…she saw that clearly. The jaws were massive, the head armoured.

She could not see its emblems, to what hive it belonged, and human eyes could not see its colour. It hunched down, an assemblage of projecting points and leathery limbs, in the latticed play of sun and shade…a Warrior, and not to be approached. Sometimes Warriors came, to look down on Kethiuy for whatever their blind eyes could perceive, and then departed, keeping their own secrets. She wished she could see the badges: it might be any of the four hives, while it was only gentle blues and greens who dealt with Kethiuy—the trade of reds and golds cha

Nor was it alone. Others rose up, slowly, slowly, three, four. Fear knotted in her belly—which was irrational, she insisted to herself: in all Kethiuy’s history, no majat had harmed any within the valley.

“You’re on Kethiuy land,” she said, lifting the hand that identified her to their eyes. “Go back. Go back.”

It stared a moment, then backed: badgeless, she saw in her amazement. It lowered its body in token of agreement; she hoped that was its intent. She stood her ground, alert for any shift, any diversion. Her heart was pounding. Never in the labs had she been alone with them, and the sight of this huge Warrior and its fellows moving to her order was incredible to her.

“Hive-master,” it hissed, and sidled off through the brush with sudden and blinding speed. Its companions joined it in retreat.

Hive-master. The bitterness penetrated even majat voice. Hive-friends, the majat in the labs were always wont to say, touching with delicacy, bowing with seeming sincerity.

Down the hill a beating of engines a

She edged backward, judged it finally safe to look away and to start to run…but she looked now and again over her shoulder.

And the aircraft were on the ground, the circular washes of air flattening the grasses near the gates, next the lakeshore.

A bell rang, advising all the House that strangers had come. Raen cast a last look back, funding the majat had fled entirely, and jogged along toward the landing spot.

The colours on the aircraft were red striped with green, which were the colours of the House of Then, friends of Sul-sept of the Meth-marens. Men and women were disembarking as the engines died down; the gates were open and Meth-marens were coming out to meet the visitors, most without sunsuits, so abrupt was this arrival and so welcome were any of Thon.

The cloaks on the foremost were Thon; and there was the white and yellow of Yalt among them, likewise welcome. But then from the aircraft came visitors in the red-circled black of Hald; and Meth-maren blue, with black border, not Sul-sept white.

Ruil-sept of the Meth-marens, with Hald beside them. Raen stopped dead. So did others. The welcome lost all its warmth. Save under friendly Thon colours, neither Ruil nor Hald would have dared set foot here.

But after some delay, her kinsmen stepped aside and let them pass the gates. The aircraft disgorged more, Thon and Yalt, but there were now no welcomes at all; and something else they produced—a score of azi, sunsuited and visored and anonymous.

Armed azi. Raen stared at them in disbelief, nervously skirting round the area of the landing; she sought the gates with several backward glances, angry to the depth of her small experience of Ruil, the Meth-marens’ left-hand line. Ruil had come for trouble; and the guard-azi were Ruil’s arrogant show, she was sure of it. Then would have no reason.

She put on a certain arrogance as she walked in the gates. Sul-sept azi closed them securely after her, leaving the intruder-azi outside in the heat. She wished sunstroke on them, and sullenly made her way into the House, the whole day spoiled.

ii

It was a lasting strangeness to see Ruil-sept’s black among the white-bordered Sul cloaks—and as much so to see Hald red-and-black; and incredible to find them admitted to the dining hall, where House councils and di

Raen sat next her mother and found security in her—Morel, her mother, who had gotten her of an Ilit who himself was bloodkin to Thon; she wondered if any of these present were distant relatives. If it were so, her mother, who would know, said nothing, and deepstudy had given her no clues.

Grandfather headed the table…more than grandfather, but that was shortest, eldest of Meth-marens, theMeth-maren, who was grey-haired and bent with the decades that he had lived, five hundred passes of Cerdin about its suns eldest of all Sul-sept, of Ruil too, so that they had to respect him. Raen regarded him with awe, seldom now as he came out of his seclusion in west-wing, rarely to venture into domestic concerns, more often to Council down at Alpha, where he wielded the power of a considerable bloc of votes. Meth-marens, unlike other Houses whose members were scattered from world to world across the Reach, stayed close to home, to Kethiuy. Of the twenty-seven Houses and fifty-eight septs within those Houses that composed the Family, Meth-maren Sul was the only one whose duties rarely took him elsewhere, away from Cerdin and the hives. The Family’s post was here, between the hives and Men, while Meth-maren Ruil hovered about the area of Alpha and guested where they could, Houseless since the split.

Hald remembered that day, that Meth-maren and Meth-maren had fought. Hald had bled for it, sheltering Red assassins; and it was a powerful persuasion that brought Halds and both septs of Meth-maren again under the same roof.