When We Have Wings

by Claire Corbett

  After a while Peri disengaged and splashed herself in the river. Jay stood and stretched himself, then began grooming his ruffled feathers.

  ‘So, about that bracelet?’ Peri said, sluicing herself with water.

  Jay kept grooming his feathers. ‘Answer’s still no, sweetheart.’

  Later that night Peri woke into darkness. A chill had stolen across all of them sleeping there; she saw Finch shudder in her sleep and burrow down into her feathers. She had puffed them out, the way birds do in winter, to trap air in them to insulate her from the cold.

  Peri was hungry. After checking Hugo was still asleep, she padded down the path to the river, to the larder. A bit of far cloud obscured the stars, very high, and she could just make out the outline of a flier bending over the pool in the water. Who could it be? She did not recognise the figure. It was thinner than any of the Audax fliers.

  Peri halted, her body knowing instantly she mustn’t make a sound, not a leaf crunch, and before thought could form, a wave of horror flooded her. The figure turned and Peri felt a scream rise but shock froze her.

  The flier was devouring food, hands and mouth dripping, a ragged, hairy vulture with stringy muscles and a raw, haggard face: the ferocity of its expression beyond or below the human. The shine of its eyes terrible in the dark. A horrible falling blankness. A thing lost.

  Peri could hear low breathing, a hissing growl through bared teeth. Something mechanical in its hostility. The automatic rumble of aggression was unfocused. She gagged on its rank, heavy stink. This mixture of human and other was not lovely. It was dire. It was all that had been feared: werewolf, vampire, succubus. The horror had been lurking there for all time; we always feared it. So easy then to lose the human—this thing so much worse than if it had never been human.

  It did not look at her. Wild animals don’t. She was not part of its world. It melted away along the river towards the cliff edge.

  There was a rustling in the bushes and two fliers stepped into the clearing: Jay and Raf.

  ‘Did you see it?’ Peri gasped. ‘It must have come straight past you!’

  ‘What?’ said both at once.

  Peri tried to describe what she had seen.

  Jay whistled. ‘Fuck. I was sure there weren’t any around here. You saw a Wild.’ The two men sprinted back along the path, crashing through the brush, not caring how much noise they made. Peri heard the rush of air as they took off into the night.

  Peri ran back to the overhang, where everyone still slept. She sat up until Raf and Jay reappeared.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jay. ‘We redouble our watch from now on.’

  Peri moved next to him. ‘What does it want?’

  ‘What does anything want? Food. Somewhere to sleep. The real worry is if there’s more than one. If there’s a group they’ll want territory. You saw the country on the way to Diomedea. Most of the land out there wouldn’t support them. If we can survive here, so can they. Though we have access to resources they don’t have.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep,’ said Peri. ‘Can I watch with you?’

  ‘No,’ said Jay. ‘I never put you on watch or patrol with me.’

  ‘You think I’ll distract you.’

  ‘No,’ said Jay. ‘I know you will. Stay here with Hugo. You need your sleep.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Not so much. Two or three hours a night will do me and I can go without for periods of time. It’s useful to have soldiers who don’t need to sleep much. One of the things that shortens our lives. Now get some rest.’

  Peri lay down next to Hugo, who was so deeply asleep he didn’t move as she nestled him into her feathers. She lay so she could look out of the overhang and watch Jay’s outline against the sky until she fell into a shallow, troubled sleep.

  By the time I reached the hospital Thomas had been revived. I sat next to him on the bed in the cubicle in Accident and Emergency, holding his damp hand as Lily spoke to Ruokonen. Thomas was pale and breathing heavily.

  Lily put her slick away and turned to me, triumphant. ‘Ruokonen says the drugs are not responsible for Tom’s episode. Still, she says she’ll be down in an hour or two to check on him, see if the dosages need finetuning.’

  This made no sense. If the drugs were not responsible, why would the dosages need to be altered?

  My slick. Now was hardly the time to work but there was Lily, distracted, answering a colleague, and we were all just waiting around. Henryk again. Furtively I read his message. M’s go-see flushed B out. B such an amateur, makes call instant M leaves. Don’t know who B called but will soon. Blasts him, says not want anything happen 2 L, want 2 scare her. Stupid prick. In way over his head.

  I replied: Saw MP in B’s office, Harris Waterhouse. Origins. Check him out? I thought this was worth drawing to Henryk’s attention because Brilliant and Waterhouse seemed to have such a weird relationship: friendly in private, hostile in public.

  I looked something up, sent another message: Hermes not just messenger. God of thieves. And fertility. Also crossroads.

  My other hand still held Tom’s. ‘We’re not scared, are we, Dad?’ he said. I squeezed his hand.

  Neither Richard, Lily nor I had any idea what had caused Tom’s incident. ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc,’ said Richard, coming in with cold water for Lily. For Lily! That’d be right. Thomas was the one who’d been unconscious but Lily made damn sure Richard was looking after her. ‘A common fallacy,’ Richard added complacently. He’d recovered his composure with indecent haste.

  You can take your Latin tags and shove them up your arse, I thought, turning away from Richard and putting my arm around Thomas. Richard thought I had no idea what he was talking about. That Lily had picked him to replace me was, I felt, a calculated insult.

  ‘We can’t stop the treatments now,’ Lily said.

  ‘How can you risk his life so casually?’ I demanded.

  Lily rounded on me. ‘He’s fine,’ she said, quivering with rage that I dared question her concern for Thomas. ‘Look at him, he’s fine!’

  I stared at Lily. Incensed, she said, ‘Are you a doctor? What the fuck do you know about anything? Going to withdraw your permission? Just you try it, you’ll see how far you get.’ Passing orderlies and nurses stared at us. Lily wasn’t yelling but there was an intensity that alarmed them. Lily had always understood that attack is the best defence. There was no winning a fight here. I’d have to speak to Ruokonen myself.

  On Thursday, when Vittorio heard I was going out for dinner, he insisted on babysitting Frisk. Relieved, I accepted and drove to Henryk’s, reflecting that I’d become too used to driving around for convenience on this job and as no more fat payments would be coming from Chesshyre, I’d better break myself of the expensive habit.

  I’d spent half the day trying to reach Ruokonen and when I’d finally managed to speak to her, her reassurance over Thomas was brusque. ‘He’s just a little kid!’ I wanted to yell at her. But what could I do? Either I let the juggernaut set in motion by my permission continue or I had to bring all my power to bear to stop it in its tracks, and even that might not be enough. To say nothing of earning Tom’s undying disappointment, if not outright hatred. No half-measures were possible, Ruokonen informed me crisply. No waiting and seeing. Not now. I wasn’t sure if I believed this but my opinion didn’t matter; in this, reality was whatever Ruokonen said it was.

  Chesshyre was still trying to contact me, so persistently that I wondered if I could threaten him with a restraining order. The constant hounding was intolerable. The fact was, even if I’d wanted to speak to him, there was nothing more to say. Henryk had said there was no result from the initial efforts he’d made to locate Peri and Hugo. I didn’t know if they were dead or had just disappeared and it seemed to me that the best I could do for Peri now was to help Henryk nail Luisa’s kil
ler.

  As the car bumped and clattered through the backstreets, I reflected that tonight was the one oasis in this horrendous week made bearable so far only by the recovery, in both senses, of Frisk. The only other thing looming in my future was SkyNation, hovering on my mental horizon like a comet, fascinating and ominous.

  Henryk and Vivienne had moved to a redeveloped neighbour- hood within the City called Zen Estates. Shocking to think Henryk moved to the Estates over three years ago and yet this was the first time I’d visited him there. In my busy, middle-aged mind the few years had fallen away with gathering speed.

  At the gate of the high-walled compound I waited as guards confirmed I was expected. After running a security sweep on the car, they waved me through to the car park. A low wooden bridge curved over a lotus pond, the path of stepping stones leading away from the bridge lit with stone lanterns.

  As I walked along the path I stared at the Japanese gardens on every side, rooms laid out under the cobalt sky of evening. One garden gleamed, gravel raked in waves that ran up against a large irregular rock, island in a sea of pale stones. I passed boulders dark with moss and groves of maples, their shelving tiers of leaves glowing green with their own internal fire in the fading light. A jungle crow flapped onto a maple branch, its wings a fall of autumn night in the summer dusk.

  The path led to a reception hall; I approached the concierge and gave her the number of Henryk’s house.

  The concierge smiled up at me. ‘Walk past the temple then follow the middle path as it curves around to your left.’

  ‘The middle path?’ Ah, should’ve known I’d be following the middle path here.

  ‘Keep walking for fifteen minutes,’ she said, ignoring my implied joke. ‘You’ll see the houses on your right looking out over the City as you walk.’

  I thanked her and set out. The Estates were bigger than I’d expected. I passed the main temple complex, which fronted its own rice paddy, and paused to listen to the monks within chanting the Kannon Sutra, deep voices resonating, the rhythm hypnotic, the chant competing with the evening wall of sound arising from frogs and crickets in the rice paddy. Lantern light glowing through ricepaper walls outlined the silhouettes of the monks and for a moment I wanted to join them in their deep well of chanting.

  By the time I arrived at Henryk’s house, I’d left the City behind, entered another world. My breathing slowed, my awareness of the crises entangling me blinked out of existence, clearing my mind of guilt and anxiety for, oh, seconds at a time.

  Henryk, wrapped in an indigo yukata and looking for all the world like a Buddhist poet rather than a middle-aged cop, stood at his latticed front door. The twins, James and Juliana, rushed out to greet me, then ran into the garden.

  ‘You didn’t tell me about this place,’ I said as I took off my shoes.

  ‘You would’ve laughed. You’re living the authentic life, ap- parently, in your crumbling flat with live music and street life all around you.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ I said, as Henryk showed me around, pointing out the way views revealed themselves, disappeared, slivered into odd angles with the slip of a door, the raising of a screen, ‘but kind of fake, isn’t it? Zen kitsch, manufactured, sanitised. Oh, hi, Vivienne,’ I said as we passed the kitchen.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Henryk as we headed for the deck at the back of the house where I could see we were high on the side of a hill, looking back towards the centre of the City twenty klicks away. A rare plane descended, lights flashing; as it sank, it revealed the summit of Cloud City, looming over all the other towers. The silver-green up on its prow would shush in the night, lone and wild as if the grasses waved on a distant prairie.

  ‘Maybe it is fake, though the monks are real. I don’t give a damn. I’m a middle-aged man with two small kids and I’m getting tired. I deal with reality every day and you know what? It’s too fucking real. Broken children, rapes, murders, contract killings. Remember? I just want to come home somewhere calm, and if that calm owes as much to guards and walls as to the monks, well, so be it.’

  I nodded. Yes, I knew exactly what he meant, especially after the last few days.

  ‘It’s breathtaking,’ I said, looking at the view over the City. ‘And your tame monks? Are they expensive?’

  Henryk smiled. ‘No. Zen Estates built the temple and we all chip in for the upkeep as part of our maintenance fees but the monks manage their own living expenses, begging for food, growing rice, teaching meditation. Every home should have one.’

  I shook my head, smiling with a mixture of envy and mockery. Envy had the upper hand.

  After we shared a noisy dinner with the kids Vivienne withdrew, pleading exhaustion, and since she’d spent dinner jumping up every few minutes to fetch James a cup of water or a tea towel to wipe up a spill of Juliana’s, it was understandable.

  Henryk handed me a beer and we walked back out onto his deck overlooking the garden and the distantly blinking City. The moon, silver woven through black pine, seemed to flood us with scent from unknown flowers. A bamboo water feature knocked water intermittently into a pool below us, observed by a mossy Buddha.

  Henryk handed me a bottle of insect repellent. ‘Slap that on,’ he said. ‘Not safe outside at night anymore. Bloody City’s a tropical swamp. Dengue mosquitoes are supposed to bite only in daytime but apparently this new strain didn’t get the memo. We still kid ourselves the City is “subtropical”. What a joke. Fifty years ago, maybe.’ Henryk took the bottle of repellent and put it on the table as he sat down.

  I leaned against the railing of the deck, beer cold in my hand.

  ‘So, you said you were going to work fast,’ I said. ‘Whoever Brilliant was talking to, you think he’s the one had Luisa killed?’

  ‘Brilliant certainly seemed to think so.’

  ‘And the information I gave you on the church projects, the stuff from Cam?’

  ‘Well, you won’t be surprised to hear Perros was a foster child, and thank god her file was one of the ones Cam was able to get hold of.’

  I thought of my conversation with Cam the night I got back from RaRA-land. I’d given her Perros’s name then. She must have pulled out the file the very next day.

  ‘Not only was Perros fostered like Peri, but this is the really weird bit, Zeke—one guess who took her.’

  ‘No idea,’ I said.

  ‘Origins.’

  ‘No. No, that’s just . . . You have got to be kidding me.’ I felt queasy, just as I had when I realised Waterhouse was an Origins MP. ‘Who’d let those nutcases foster kids?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. They look after dozens of foster children. Batches of them.’

  ‘They’re criminals.’

  ‘Not guilty, remember? As if you could ever forget. No, they offer a wholesome, ordered, stable environment anchored by strong values. Strong values means they beat the crap out of the kids, as you know only too well.’

  ‘So poor Perros is fostered by Origins, has two kids for Brilliant, gets wings.’

  ‘Then ends up dead.’

  ‘Any closer to knowing why?’ I set my beer on the railing.

  ‘Well, that’s where your information comes in. I’ve got a forensic accountant looking at the stuff you gave me. As you said, a lot of money is changing hands on these deals.’

  ‘You said Brilliant told whoever he called that he’d just wanted to scare Luisa.’ I straightened up from where I leaned against the railing. Something fell, or jumped, into the pond below. Sound of water. Frog, I suppose. The splash seemed to make things fall into place in my mind, like a row of tumblers clicking in a lock. That most pleasurable feeling in all the world now flooded my brain: pieces of a puzzle suddenly resolving into a picture. I get it.

  ‘Think I’ve got something,’ I said. ‘Peri told me that Luisa saw a girl that she’d known when she was a kid. Said s
he was all upset because the girl pretended not to know her and that she was going to dig around, try to find out more about what was going on with her. Said there were others. You said she was fostered by Origins. So this girl she knew, Luisa must have known her from when she was with Origins.’

  Henryk was staring at me. ‘They wanted to scare her off.’

  ‘From digging around about Origins. About Origins sending girls to the City. Those are the others, Henryk, the others are other girls, the girls being fostered by Origins, then sent to the City. Then handed over to Little Angels for whatever fliers want to use them for. Little Angels gets them their work permits and gives them their cover stories—nannies, maids, whatever. Some of them would be above board. The other stuff is probably only part of their business but the most profitable part. By far.’

  ‘And Little Angels knows all about them,’ said Henryk.

  ‘Even worse,’ I said, ‘I’d bet Little Angels actually decides which girls to target, because they know their backgrounds, including their medical histories.’

  ‘So, this Hermes project of the church’s, all this money, you think this is what Luisa was poking her nose into, realising that what she thought was just some deal she made was actually going on with other girls, that she was part of a trade?’

  ‘I think that’s what you’ll find. You know where to look to find out where the money’s ending up. It’s trafficking, Henryk.’

  ‘Yeah. Suppose they’ve got to do something to keep Trinity in solar yachts. You said yourself on the Charon case that they’ve got very deep pockets.’

  The Charon case.

  ‘Do you think there’s a connection with that case?’

  Henryk shrugged. ‘No idea. Defending it cost them dearly. I do still wonder why they kidnapped those two girls. Now it occurs to me that perhaps they staged a hunting expedition to the City. Probably done it before, who knows how many times? They didn’t know what they were getting into, didn’t know whose daughters they were. Just nice-looking girls, you know? Charon was a pretty rough place. They had every reason to think girls hanging around there weren’t well protected.’