Only the narrow human sense of category had lumped it together with the Marauders, as though the Clans were unwilling to grant it in their language the status of a preserve beyond and above the well-known pillagers of human destiny. Though they knew of vast mech cities, of bewildering constructions and enterprises unfathomable, something in the human spirit drew back from assigning a name or emblem to the unreachable heights a Mantis might imply.

No one had ever seen anything like a Mantis scavenging or navvy-policing or hunting the assets of other mech cities. It was not from a class of laborers. Unlike Marauders, it did no apparent work. It had no known interest but human-hunting. Killeen’s own father had sighted something resembling the Mantis a few years before and lived to report it. Clannish legend spoke of various seldom-seen mechs, striding down through centuries of obliterated foraging parties and terrifying moments when many-legged silhouettes scrambled across a distant horizon. These higher orders left broken lives and widestrewn suredeath, but even more tangibly now they bequeathed to the Families a tradition of inherited horror, both ghostly and undeniable, living in the dry sure images of Aspect memory as well as in rumored encounters which few humans ever survived.

It was impossible for Killeen to believe all this could be due to the Mantis.

Killeen’s own father had carefully laid out for his son the whole litany of Marauder types, the slow, resonant precision of his voice bespeaking the high human price that learning each facet had cost—and, if forgotten even for a terrible moment, could cost again.

Killeen now knew each Marauder signature from experience in the open ground. But even more strongly he felt it in the remembered mournful way his father’s voice had lowered as he gave over to his son the ancient folklore and skills. Thing about aliens is, they’re alien, he had said innumerable times. With a gravelly chuckle he would add, Plan on bein’ surprised.

The most terrible fact of all was that Marauders killed only as a side task. Even Lancers, the vicious, darting, smalleyed protectors of factories, would attack humans only at the factory site.

Only the Calamity contradicted this rule. Perhaps it was fitting that his father had fallen at the Citadel Bishop, for that had ended an era. Killeen had not seen his father’s end, had caught only scattershot words over the comm while himself fleeing with Toby, and heard later the lists of those gone. So the details, perhaps best not known, had mingled with so many other questions, lingering in the twilight of all things unfathomable.

In the freshening air of halfmorning they harvested the property of the dead. Killeen found himself a bubble pack made of some shiny mechstuff he had never seen before. It saved him kilos of carrymass and caught snugly at waist and hips and shoulders. Each of the dead yielded up their compacted food and water flasks, by far the most useful of the mute legacy.

Killeen stood and chewed on a wad of tough gum that Old Robert had been carrying. He watched Cermo fit himself with a carbo-aluminum set of shank compressors, clasping the mechmetal so it snugged into his flared-out boot cuffs. Others wore makeshift hip shock absorbers and double-walled helmets, loading themselves up with equipment Killeen full well knew they would spend a week discarding as it proved heavy or vexing. Killeen preferred to carry food and fluids and forget the extras. Twice he had broken ribs in falls because he’d worn no chest protector.

While others hammered and fitted, Killeen rested, using only his web-jacket as a pillow, and hooked a derisive eyebrow at the softrolls some toted to sleep on. He had to stop Toby from trying to load on a cook-kit. It was a marvelous little thing, subtly shaped from flexmetal by some ancient hand. It would flare into life with bluehot flame. But it gave the boy too much packmass and Killeen had no idea how to find the fuel for it. He seldom ate cooked food anyway. Marauders could sniff the fumes halfway around Snowglade, he suspected.

The Families slowly pulled themselves together as morning stretched into noon. Ledroff and Fornax consulted their Aspects and argued over what route to take. Killeen stayed out of it. Jocelyn invariably backed Ledroff’s ideas, and gave other small signs that her relationship with Killeen was now cool at best. Killeen shrugged this off, though it hurt a little.

The Families were listless, the emotional backwash of yesterday leaving them pensive and slow. He felt some of it himself. It mingled with his hangover, from a small transparent vial of aromatic fruit wine he had found on the body of Hedda, a woman of the Rooks. He had shared it out with three Rooks and Shibo. Even a cup of its amber silkiness held a vicious punch. He had not sipped much but still he was ashamed that he had fled into drink again. A thickening headache spread across his brow and burrowed into his eyes. That reminded him of his trouble seeing detail at long distances, so he went in search of Angelique.

She seemed to welcome his asking, and broke out her tools. Killeen had always rather liked the feel of being worked on as the camp commotion around him gradually quickened. He relaxed into the softness of humanity, the implicit reassurance of daily ritual.

He was sitting rock-still when he noticed the woman nearby. Angelique was tinkering with the farseer at the back of his neck. He couldn’t turn his clamped head but he did shift his eyes a fraction. The woman was unnaturally still. He swiveled his eyes farther. Even this made Angelique grunt and hoarsely swear at him. She was the last Bishop who knew anything about farseers. She made a few adjustments in his neck, slapped the fleshmetal cover closed, and poked him sharply in the ribs with her fibertool. Killeen yelped.

Angelique said coolly, “Just checking your reflexes. Seem fine.”

“Like hell.”

“Next time sit still.” Angelique grinned and walked away, her chromed leggings reflecting crisp Denix-light.

Killeen massaged his neck and tested his eyes by closeupping the woman nearby. She was a Rook, young and well muscled. Her black hair swirled up from her temples like an ebony firestorm, poking jagged teeth into the air. He zoomed in on her eyes and saw there blueblack threads entwining with crimson blood vessels. She sat stiffly, unmoving, head canted as if she were listening to someone unseen.

She was. Her lips moved rapidly, soundlessly, as she tried to give voice to the torrent of Aspect talk that raged through her.

Killeen had not seen anyone so possessed in a long time, not since the retreat from the unfolding disaster of Big Alice Springs. Drool formed on the woman’s lips. Her left hand began to jump. In a moment a twitching around her right eye seemed to answer the hand.

Killeen sent a signal to Fornax. It was his job to take care of his own. Toby came ambling over, his pack already mounted, and stared at the woman. “Jazz, a clowner,” he said.

“Don’t call them that.” Killeen said, watching the woman carefully.

“She’s really goin’.”

“Be okay.”

“Don’ look it.”

“Gotta expect some of this.”

“I don’t’spect it.”

“Aspects die if their hosts die, y’know. They got a righta be scared.”

“What’re they doin’?”

“If they get panicked, they start talking all at once.” Killeen felt awkward apologizing for somebody else’s Aspects.

Toby stared with the unashamed fascination of the young. “Can’t she turn ’em off?”

“Not if they’re all goin’ at once.”

“Why’re her eyes rollin’ up?”

White showing all around her irises. Lips pulled back in a rictus from yellowed teeth.

“Damn! Where’s Fornax?”

Killeen touched the woman’s face. It felt clammy, spongy.

“Lookit her hands.” Toby didn’t know to be worried.