Ammonite

According to her wristcom, it was still early, hours before dawn. She could just keep on walking out here, forever, until she was exhausted. The snow would cover her tracks. She would probably die of hunger and exposure before Aoife found her. Maybe dying was better than staying here, like this, like some domestic animal kept for its breeding potential—its ability to bring fresh blood, new genes to the pool.

Breeding potential. She laughed out loud as she walked and the laugh was swallowed by the soft snow, the same empty dark that waited to swallow her. The dark was many things: the cold, the alien world, the virus, her own fear. Her FN-17 would not last forever. But if she managed to escape, she would die of cold or be caught. She stopped walking. Snow fell on her face, her hair. But if she stayed here, she might die anyway. She walked again. But if she ran, they might send Uaithne after her, with her knives that cut off toes and fingers and tongues…

She sat down in the snow, careless of the freezing cold, and pulled out her wristcom. She would externalize her thoughts. She was a rational woman. All she needed to do was list her options, then make the most sensible decision.

“Problem: the long-term survival of SEC representative Marguerite Angelica Taishan. Options: to give up and stay here in the camp of the Echraidhe; to attempt escape right now; to attempt escape at some point in the future when the Echraidhe may be less vigilant. Pertinent information to be considered: One, assuming escape is possible, where does she go? She’s lost. Even if, by some miracle, she managed to reach Port Central before the experimental vaccine is all gone, she might still die. However, medical facilities will be available.” She paused, thought a moment of the conversation with Lu Wai about the virus. “The most important thing to consider, direction-wise, is that she must be under shelter when the vaccine runs out and the virus hits.”

She pulled the FN-17 from her pocket, tipped the softgels carefully into her palm, and counted them one by one back into the vial. “Assuming the incubation period is thirty days, and reckoning in a safety factor, estimated onset of the virus is approximately four moons from now. If, therefore, she attempts to escape, she should head for the nearest shelter, wherever that may be.”

It was too dark to look at her map, but she had examined it many times before. It did not help much. She had tried to estimate the distance covered on horseback from the ringstones to the Echraidhe camp, but she had spent much of that journey upside down over a saddle and without access to her compass. The camp could lie anywhere within a circle whose radius might be seventy or more miles. Using a discarded leather thong, carefully marked to her map scale, she had measured possibilities. From everywhere but the most southwesterly segment of the circle, Ollfoss, or at least Moanwood, was closer than Holme Valley. Practically, then, it would make sense to head north and east, to Ollfoss. How far north, and how far east, depended on her exact position, which she did not know.

“Second consideration: should she wait out the onset of the virus here, in the camp of the Echraidhe? Borri seems to be a competent healer. Weighed against this is the danger posed by the tribeswoman Uaithne.”

Her legs were going numb. She closed her eyes, took the three deep breaths that triggered light meditation, and sent blood pumping around her veins, squeezing into the capillaries in her fingers and toes. Her legs began to warm. She shivered.

“Third consideration…”

The wristcom blinked amber: no chip space left. She stared at it. It carried on blinking. She turned it off, put it in her pocket, took it out again. Maybe this was a dream, too. She touched RECORD. The tiny amber light blinked, making her fingertips glow orange. It blinked for nearly a minute, then automatically shut itself down.

Marghe sat in the snow thousands of millions of miles from home, alone. Now there was nothing left. She did not weep: this far north, her tears would turn to ice and cut her cheeks.

Moon of Knives.

Marghe and Aoife rode less often. Even with extra clothes on under her overfur, Marghe froze. Now she understood the moon name: the cold slashed at her lungs like a thousand knives. Aoife made her a snow mask, a pad of taar felt to fit over her nose and mouth. It was still hard to breathe, but she went out as often as possible. Whenever the fire glowed in the yurti, she saw her dream of Uaithne, and of blood. Out here she could forget Uaithne for a while, gaze into the endless white and the ever-changing sky, listening to the soft crunch of their horses’ hooves, the creak of leather.