The Children of the Sky

I wonder what the pack is up to right now, tonight? A frivolous thought perhaps, since “real time” views from the system were a strange and scattered thing. Nevertheless, Ravna made the request. Several seconds passed. Range was the great weakness of this system. Beyond the local area, reception became extremely ambiguous. Fortunately, Flenser had been out of the area only a few times in ten years—a very good consequence of Woodcarver’s strict hold on the fellow. The reports from the infestation were forwarded in unsynchronized driblets across the nearly random locations of devices that previously had been shed from the pack’s members. Sufficient data to build one picture might take a thousand seconds—and then less than one second for the next image.

Sometimes important adjustments would show up later and Oobii would revise the image stream in really strange ways.

Tonight, reception was poor, but as Oobii’s signal-processing software struggled with clues, the pictures gradually became clearer, more colorful, brighter. There were a few moments of motion and then the stream froze again. Ravna fiddled with the parameters.

Flenser was somewhere in the sub-basements of the Old Castle. He went there two or three times a year. Several years ago, Ravna had concluded that Flenser did indeed know where Woodcarver’s spy cameras were located. That was a scary conclusion, but then she realized that most of these trips “downstairs” were just part of Flenser’s hobby of enraging his pack parent.

There were exceptions; Flenser had some things he really didn’t want Woodcarver to know about. For instance, Woodcarver had forbidden Flenser to try to rehabilitate his creation, Steel. In that, Woodcarver had reneged on her peace treaty with Flenser. It was the only such incident Ravna knew of. The remains of Lord Steel were allowed to live, but as a slobbering, slashing threesome. The madpack had been kept in isolation, at the veterans’ fragmentarium.

For a time, it had looked like Flenser might restart the war over Woodcarver’s broken promise. Instead, he used the issue to win a number of concessions—including repossession of the Old Castle. But Ravna knew that the wily Flenser had not given up on Steel. In the early years, Flenser had often come down to these sub-basements to meet with Carenfret, a broodkenner at the Fragmentarium. That pack was unquestionably loyal to Woodcarver, and probably opposed to every one of the Old Flenser’s horrific experiments. Flenser and Carenfret had been conspiring all right, but only to persuade Woodcarver to make Steel whole. Maybe they would have succeeded eventually. Unfortunately, Steel’s problem was a torment from within; the poor wretch had fought itself to death, rendering the conspirators’ plans moot.

Ravna was certain that Woodcarver would not see things so forgivingly. Meeting down in the Old Castle catacombs was itself the stuff of treason. The chambers were steeped in horror. Woodcarver had once attempted an inventory of the place. Her packs had found at least five levels, with many fallen tunnels still unsurveyed.

In recent years, the catacombs had become much too intriguing to the Children. When they got to be ten or eleven years old, they just had to take a crack at exploring “Flenser’s Caves of Death.” If you counted natural erosion and rock falls, there were plenty of entrances, a new one discovered every few years. Sooner or later, some kid was going to fall down a hole and get killed. That and the onshore cliffs had been Ravna’s biggest day-to-day worries, until this Denier cult thing.

In tonight’s expedition, most of Flenser was carrying solar cell lamps. The light was scarcely brighter than tar torches, but it didn’t consume oxygen or make smoke. Ravna recognized the low-ceilinged cavern Flenser was passing through. Some kids had gotten lost here just last year. It was—she hoped—the most grisly place they would ever see. She remembered how it stank, even after all the years. The dark floor was punctuated with stone plugs that looked like small manhole covers. In the view Oobii synthesized from Flenser’s various heads, she could see the hexagonal pattern of dozens—hundreds—of covers stretching off into the darkness.

The picture stream froze. Oobii was waiting for signal or—more likely—had fallen behind in its analysis. Ravna didn’t rush it. She wanted the high-resolution video, and if it took a while for the clues to dribble in and be interpreted, that was fine. In fact, this sequence seemed usable. Sometimes, no matter how long she waited, all she could get was ambiguity.