Windrunner's Daughter Read Free

centre a raised dais; on it a table and six chairs. Five were occupied. The sixth sat askew, achingly empty, a missing tooth in an adult mouth.
    “Where is he?” Wren blurted, unable to stop herself.
    A thin man, his features twisted like twine, raised his eyes. Beside him his flat chinned companion gawped. “It’s one o them Runners,” he sputtered. “What’s he doin’ out of Avalon?” He lurched from his seat, slab feet slapping on the panelled floor. “It’s Kiernan’s Day,” he snapped. “Have some respect!”
    “Are you blind Hawkins? That’s no he .” One of the Councillors was a woman. Wren blinked, surprised. “It’s one o their Sphere Mistresses.”
    “No - too young,” Twine-face suggested. “A nothing then. Too female to be a Runner, too young to be a Sphere-Mistress.”
    “What’re you here for?” The woman leaned forward and raised her voice to speak slow and loud, as though Wren were deaf, or stupid. Her pendulous breasts squashed against the table top. “Want to petition to get into the Women’s Sector?” Her chuckle shook the chair beneath her.
    The men around her sniggered. “Would you let her in, Tee?”
    “No–one would have her to wife, but we always need fertile wombs for the exchange programme.” The woman smiled. “Is that right, Runner-girl, are you sick of running errands for fly-boys, do you want to come and join Tee’s noble girls?”
    “Shut up!” The words, flung into the air, seemed to float between them, shocking red. Wren’s eyes widened. “I mean, please , I do have a petition, but not that.”
    “And why should we listen?” A third man spoke, his voice rasping, like tearing skin. “Send your Patriarch, or your Sphere-Mistress.” He turned his back on her, as if she’d already left.
    “I need to use the communicator.” Wren called. “It’s-”
    Laughter rolled through the hall; loud as cannon fire, it ricocheted from the low ceiling and surrounded Wren, mocking her trembling fingers and reddening ears.
    “The nothing wants the use the communicator!” Hawkins thumped the table, making the water jug in the middle jump.
    “What’s wrong? Got a boyfriend you want to talk to? Won’t the other fly-boys carry yer love notes?” Tee nudged the frowning man on her left and he barked in acknowledgement of her joke.
    “Use the communicator !” The final man, whose beard covered half of his face shook his head as the laughter petered out. “Even if it wasn’t a fragile piece of equipment with irreplaceable components that are breaking down, even if we didn’t have to save it for essential use only, why on Mars, would we allow someone like you to use it? You’re just a girl. What possible reason could you have?”
    Wren opened her mouth.
    “That wasn’t an invitation to speak.” Tee sat straight. “You Godless Runners believe you’re more important than us. You think the rules of the colony don’t apply to you. If we let you play with the communicator and it breaks down, what happens when an adult actually needs to send an important message? What then?”
    “This is important.” Wren lurched forwards, her fists clenched.
    “I’m sure you think so.” The bearded man, who Wren now realised was the colony Smith, nodded indulgently. “Let a Runner take your message, girl. They might not charge you more than a kiss.”
    “You have to vote.” Wren was horrified to find that tears made her voice almost unrecognisable. “That’s the rule, you have to vote in response to a petition.”
    Hawkins sighed. “Let’s vote.”
    “You can’t do it without Win. Where is he?”
    They ignored her. First Tee, then Hawkins, then all five, closed their fists around their pendants and lifted them into the air.
    Black, black, black, black …
    The smith looked at her with something approaching sympathy and, for a moment, Wren’s heart rose. His hand closed around one of his pendants, the other remained in his shirt; she couldn’t see which he had