"Liz Williams - The Age of Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Liz)

"Nothing."

She grunted and pushed me on, but as they took me toward the vehicle I stole a glance back and saw
that the warrior was gone. It occurred to me that it might have led the scissor-women to me, but, then, in
the library, it had helped me, or had seemed to. I did not understand why it should do either.

They took me to the Mote, the matriarchy's own prison, rather than the city catacombs. That suggested
they might have identified me, if not as Hestia Memar, then as a citizen of Winterstrike. That they
suspected me of something major was evident by the location, and the immediacy and nature of the
questioning. Even Caud had abandoned the art of direct torture, but they had other means of persuasion:
haunt noise, and drugs. They tried the haunt-tech on me first.

"You will be placed in this room," the doctor on duty explained to me. She sounded quite matter of fact.
"The blacklight matrix covers the walls. There is no way out. When you are ready to come out, which will
be soon, squeeze this alarm." She handed me a small black cube and the scissor-women pushed me
through the door.

The Matriarchies keep a tight hold on the more esoteric uses of haunt-tech, but everyone will be familiar
with the everyday manifestations: the locks and soul-scans, the weir-wards that guard so many public
buildings and private mansions. This chamber was like a magnified version of those wards, conjuring
spirits from the psycho-geographical strata of the city's consciousness, bringing them out of the walls and
up through the floor. I saw dreadful things: a woman with thorns that pierced every inch of her flesh, a
procession of bloated drowned children, vulpen and awts from the high hills with glistening eyes and
splinter teeth. But the matriarchy of Caud was accustomed to breaking peasants. I had grown up in a
weir-warded house, filled with things that swam through the air of my chamber at night, and I was used to
the nauseous burn that accompanied their presence, the sick shiver of the skin. This was worse, but it
was only a question of degree. Fighting the urge to vomit, I knelt in a corner, in a meditational control
posture, placed the alarm cube in front of me, and looked only at it.

After an hour, my keepers evidently grew tired of waiting. The blacklight matrix sizzled off with a fierce
electric odor, like the air after a thunderstorm. From the corner of my eye, I saw things wink out of sight.
I was taken from the chamber and placed in a cell. Next, they tried the drugs.

From their point of view, this may have been more successful. I cannot say, since I remember little of
what I may or may not have said. Haunt-tech is supposed to terrify the credulous into speaking the truth.
The mind-drugs of the matriarchies are crude and bludgeon one into confession, but those confessions
are all too frequently unreliable, built on fantasies conjured from the depths of the psyche. When the drug
that they had given me began to ebb, I found my captors staring at me, their expressions unreadable.
Two were clearly matriarchy personnel, wearing the jade-and-black of Caud. The scissor-women
hovered by the door.

"Put her under," one of the matriarchs said. She sounded disgusted. I started to protest, more for the
form of it than anything else, and they touched a sleep-pen to my throat. The room fell away around me.

When I came round again, everything was quiet and the lights had been dimmed. I rose, stiffly. My wrists
were still bound and the chains had chafed the skin into a raw burn. I peered through the little window set
into the door of the cell. One of the scissor-women sat outside. Her armor, and the few inches of
exposed skin, were silent, but her eyes were open. She was awake, but not speaking. I could not see if
there was anyone else in the room. I knocked on the window. I needed her undivided attention for a few
minutes and the only way I could think of to do that was by making a full confession.