Glorious Angels

by Justina Robson

  Tzaban nodded. The scent of the Empress, soothing and heavy, filled his nostrils. He almost dozed and the words of his only significant question fell from his mouth like dislodged stones tumbling down a hill. ‘Why did you attack us?’

  ‘We didn’t.’ The Empress said. ‘You attacked us.’

  Tzaban lifted his head against the pressure of her, looked at her plain girlish face with its eightfold gaze on him. Paused.

  ‘You seem baffled,’ the Empress said.

  He had no answer. But if she was lying he could not detect it.

  Borze spoke, his voice gravelled with disuse, ‘Is it so impossible?’

  Tzaban nodded. ‘Only attack for trespass, or killing. Stealing maybe.’

  Borze looked at him, grim-faced. ‘Could you be mistaken?’

  ‘No.’

  The Empress nodded. ‘I have reason to believe you are right.’

  Borze shot a look of pure surprise at her. Only Hakka seemed unmoved by the news.

  The Empress waved her hands, a grey look about her. ‘Enough for today.’

  Borze began to protest but a flick of her finger cut him off mid breath. ‘I know, I know. Just go. We will meet again tomorrow.’ They left without a word.

  Once they had all gone she turned to one of her runners. ‘Give me half an hour and then bring Alide.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TRALANE

  Tralane lay awake into the night, staring at the dusty bed drapes overhead, thinking that one day soon she ought to get up there and unhook them for a good cleaning. The dust was actually collecting into balls in the glamorous dips of the red voile, balls that were even visible as spheres of shadow in the piercing light of Annasmoon.

  Ann was close today, on her third swingby of the year. Across the city, astrologers’ lights burned late into the night as they cast auspices for the followers of Anngwyn, laughing and dancing goddess of the moons. Annasmoon was the largest of the five Lilypads of Anngwyn and subject to the most intense prayers. Tralane could see the lights from her window and just hear music from somewhere between her house and the palace wall but the wind was in the wrong direction to bring any more stray news, be it melodies or cooking smells. Tralane kept an ear out for sounds of shattering that might signal the party in the Solar breaking important things, but so far only shrieking had pierced the calm of the house. She heard the cats walking around on the loose boards, making their nightly mousecapade runs. She listened for, but did not hear, the rattle and whirr of the elevator car from the street to the first floor which would have brought Isabeau home. But it wasn’t only this that kept her awake.

  She kept thinking about the crystals.

  If Alide was making weapons with them, he had to be getting the rest of the tech from somewhere, and why was she the one having to supply the key component? Anyone able to use, modify or access that kind of device had to be able to make recordings, didn’t they? The Empire was short on airships and small planes but not so short they couldn’t have used one to make the trips. Until now she’d mostly been so panicked about her situation as his little minion that she hadn’t done anything other than scamper to obey and pray he took no further interest in her daughters. But now she had the luxury of another sleepless night staring at drape dust it started to occur to her that this miserable little fiasco was more troubling than it looked.

  She battered her mind against it for half an hour, then as the bell towers softly chimed the night tones for midnight she gave up. Do her bit and get out or snoop, think and find more trouble? That seemed straightforward…

  She heard a tread that was heavier than a cat outside. One, two, the top of the staircase, three and creak… Up to her door. The knock very quiet in case she was sleeping.

  For a second she fought it out: lie awake following mental thought trains steaming in and out of hopeless, empty stations or derail everything until the morning and get at least some sleep? Oh, no contest. Especially since Jard could help her find Isabeau later.

  ‘Come in,’ she called out softly.

  Jardant let himself in and closed the door. ‘You should be asleep.’

  ‘So should you.’ Tralane flipped the bedcovers back and watched him as he undressed.

  ‘I had to wait until the bread was done.’ He posed unconsciously, making all the angles that showed off his muscular body, proud of himself as well he might be.

  ‘I see you got rid of those tan lines,’ she said. The curve of his buttocks was perfectly hemispherical and no longer clearly two-toned. Even in the violet shadows of the moonlight she could see it was a single colour and pictured the dark bronze with a sigh.

  ‘I went up on the secondary decks,’ he said. ‘Clearing out those sheds up there like you suggested. Not too overlooked, seemed a shame not to lie out there.’ He left his clothes at the end of the bed and climbed in, a familiar ease she so loved to see moving his limbs effortlessly into position over her, his knees knocking hers apart with friendly insistence. He was already hard and risen.

  She pouted at him and he grinned, relenting, ‘Oh all right.’

  His pretend reticence amused her. She never knew if he was kidding or not but he moved up the bed easily and looked down, making pleased nonsense noises as she let his warm, heavy cock batter her lips a few times in play before licking all of its deliciousness into her mouth. She missed the heady thrill of having a lover she was in love with but Jard’s easy affection was butter and sugar, caramel-good and the delight of this pleasure and his generosity was enough to be grateful for.

  When she had satisfied herself on him he settled down on his elbows and they shared a smile as he penetrated her. Jard and she had an expert ease about it now; he made it effortlessly to full embrace in one move. She wrapped her legs around his waist. With him all there, so hard and real and loving, she couldn’t think about anything but how good it felt; she forgot everything, exactly as planned. They shared kisses of fondness, moving together, until it grew too intense and then she luxuriated in gazing at his handsome face and body as he worked and she laid back in the pillows, lazily bringing herself up to orgasm with her fingers as she watched him. He timed it so that he hit his peak a few moments after her, drawing hers out with his. She wondered briefly about the runner, but didn’t ask him. As he rolled his heavy weight to the side and withdrew to lie on his back and catch his breath she stroked him gently on his chest and arm.

  ‘Thank you.’ She was always polite.

  He smiled, eyes closed. ‘Most of the stuff in those sheds was salvaged for raw materials. What’s left isn’t much more than slag. I’ve separated it out by whatever it seems to be made of and later I’ll go through and pull out any rare metal or crystal. What about the rest?’

  She couldn’t care less at that point in time, wondering how he always managed to get back to work so fast. ‘Sell it for meltdown. You can keep forty per cent, for your labour.’

  He reached over and took her hand in his. ‘I guess it isn’t the market values of scrap keeping you awake.’

  ‘Isabeau isn’t back yet.’ She rubbed his thumb with hers gently. ‘And I got a letter inviting me to a meeting with Borze.’

  ‘Oh, the army must have got wind of your research.’ Jard squeezed her hand briefly. ‘Or they want to take your Flit.’

  Tralane actually hadn’t thought of that. Now that she did she frowned. ‘Because of the Karoo, surely?’

  ‘How many Sircenes do you know still actually getting their hands dirty on salvage?’ he said.

  Now she thought of it, not too many. ‘You’re supposed to take my mind off things, not put more on it.’

  ‘Want me to go look for Isabeau?’

  Tralane stared up at her dust balls. No, she wasn’t going to be one of those precious magi mothers keeping tabs on her grown daughters’ every move. ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Sure she didn’t go back to her old web?’

  ‘No. But she didn’t send a message.’

  ‘Any clues?’

  ‘Am I
being a fool? She could easily have gone back to the Sorority of the Star and forgotten to write.’

  He didn’t reply immediately, then said, ‘I’ll walk over there and see. If not, what should I do?’

  She felt stupid. ‘No, don’t. I don’t want them thinking I don’t know where she is.’

  Jard sighed and rolled over. ‘Where else would she have gone?’

  ‘The Library.’

  ‘Shut hours ago.’

  ‘Then I’ve no idea.’ There. She’d admitted it. Every piece of foolery was exposed. She both cared too much and didn’t know enough. Crossly she got up and pulled on her clothing, realising only as she was zipping it up that she’d put on her flight silks.

  ‘You’re flying at night?’

  ‘Easy with those goggles. Now, where are they?’

  ‘Think you’ll find them in the observatory with whatever’s left alive of Minna’s party,’ Jard said, yawning.

  ‘Oh, what idiot gave them to her?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Stay here and keep things warm. I’ll be back.’

  Jard yawned and nodded, rolling his eyes at the same time as he snuggled into the pillows.

  Tralane left the door ajar in case Isa came back and needed to find someone in, then marched towards the observatory, taking the staircases two at a time in an effort to wake herself up when her body was grumbling that it would much rather be asleep. She let herself into the observatory as quietly as she could, some part of her wanting to sneak up and find out what was going on even though it would annoy Minna. Because it would. She paused in the doorway when she found the lights out. There in the dark as she expected the rugs and corners were lumped up with various pairings from the web, quietly into each other or playing card games, drinking, their hands alone lit by the glowfly magelights of their minor powers.

  She was caught by the sight of Minnabar, seated in the command chair beside the astroscope. She was lolling there, kicking one foot, the goggles strapped to her face. Her head was thrown back, staring out into the night sky through the long slit of the observatory’s gaping roof hatch. A long, smoking cigarillo dangled in her fingertips, sweet fumes giving away its relative innocence – hard drugs were for master alchemists or those of sterner constitutions than a Sircene adolescent’s. Her other hand was slowly adjusting some of the dials on the side of the goggles. Her mouth was partly open, lower lip bitten in concentration. A pang went through Tralane at seeing her alone there, but it was the alone of choice, not exile and the pang felt like pride. She stepped quietly forwards and made some noise as she got closer.

  ‘Minna, I need my goggles back.’

  Minnabar jumped, sat up suddenly and cracked her forehead on the low overhang of the astroscope’s eyepieces. She cursed and pulled the goggles off her head. ‘Mom! What the frack?’

  Tralane held out her hand and Minna dumped the heavy item into it, getting up, rubbing her forehead, scowling. ‘Where are you going anyway? What’s with the…’ She paused, realising the eyes of the web were upon her, at least those able to look her way. Tralane saw her hitch up her poise and smoothly correct herself. ‘Take them. Your beast man is very beast-laaaay.’ She drew out the last syllable a long way, mocking him and Tralane both with it, withdrawing herself entirely from any group that might have an interest in such a boring creature.

  ‘Glad you won’t be wanting them again, then,’ Tralane retorted without a second’s hesitation and walked out. Outside the room she leaned on the closed door, eyes shut. One day she’d realise she wasn’t supposed to compete with her own daughters. One day. Then her self-pity annoyed her and she stood up, snapped on witchlight with her fingers and followed the halls and turns to the elevator and on up into the heights of the Array.

  It was colder higher up and she was glad to get into the leather flight suit’s outer casings and stuff her hair into the heavy helmet. She set the goggles over the top, firmly, and it was only when the Flit was out of the shed and sitting quietly in the storm’s aftermath of light winds that she reached up and wondered what it was that Minna had been looking at.

  Without adjusting the controls she set the eyepieces in place and lifted her head to look at the sky. There was a lot of light from the city’s glowing werelit spires and all the high antennae that winked in reds and greens, but this was cut back to a glow at the edges of vision. Beyond that, where her naked eyes would have seen the familiar constellations, she saw a vast blackness, but judging by the tracking speed and run numbers she was looking very far out – the distance finder when she located it at last, after an age of squinty prodding, revealed it was focusing light from over twenty klicks out. She would have expected that for stargazing. Then her finger slipped and there was a pop and whirr from the goggles and a sudden rising high-pitched whine that was the sort of noise that never sounded good. The viewfinder gibbered visually, flashing and sparking.

  ‘Oh come on!’ Tralane muttered in desperation searching to press any key, any place, that would restore them. She feared with horrible, impending dread that she’d broken the damn things. Then there was a low clunk, which she felt, as if something had clicked over inside them. Something the size and colour of a silver coin whizzed across the viewfinder and was gone. She tried to track back and it whizzed past the other way at high speed. After a few moments of neck-aching effort she managed to make her moves so small she was sure that it was an object very far away she was looking at and finally, by leaving the Flit and bracing her head at a painful angle against the wall in the lee of the old flight tower, she was able to gape up at the thing hanging there against the ink black of the night.

  It was roughly spherical, silvery grey. It had angular designs on its surface. It had a receiver dish. It had antennae, short and stubby. There was an odd glowing field around it, a larger sphere, that flickered occasionally in the same way as a bad electrical connection. It was absolutely and unmistakably a piece of engineering. She fumbled, trying to find the record controls, but then, a smarter and more self-preserving bit of her mind made her take the goggles off slowly without moving her head. She held them at her side and found herself looking up at Makto, Saint’s Star, which had for lifetimes upon lifetimes been a minor part of the small constellation Agvan, Priestess of Memory. It was a small star, almost invisible to her from here, in the city.

  She looked a few more times. To be sure. To know, for certain, what nobody else knew or had ever suspected. Then, because she already had planned it, she pushed the Flit out, braced the wings and pushed it to the runway. She reset the goggles to see in reduced light, taking out the diffusions of the city’s blur, until they tracked her pupils and focused with her, on the streets of the Gleaming below or even the landbound parts of Glimshard far beneath.

  It bothered her, as she circled slowly, that Makto was only apparently forty thousand klicks out. She knew that no stars could be so close. It was ridiculous. But then, so was being able to see that far away. In fact, she was minded to think it was impossible. These two things alone were fascinating. But to have a star become a small, created piece of technology – THAT was beyond her ability to comprehend right now. So, instead of trying to, she let it alone and took a route that avoided the palace air flight patrols to scan the streets below and pretend that she was not looking for Isabeau, was not about to fly over the barracks and see if the Karoo was out under the moon, howling, or whatever he did on a night. Probably sleep, said her wiser self. Probably fast asleep.

  But as she soared, finding the thermals coming out of the alchemical works, she was able to look over the side and take her time to enjoy the view. Her control of the basic instruments was second nature to her hands and feet, and the goggles, connected to her aetheric bridge, tracked her intent with precision.

  Thus it was that she watched the late night raking of the parade yards and the slow, steady return of the general to his lit apartments overlooking the same. He passed alone in his heavy formalwear, with the ease of a man far from war and in no way wo
rried about whatever infomancers might be trailing him. She wondered what kind of a headworld he lived in to feel so secure and for a moment envied him ferociously. Then she turned towards the white curlicues of the Sou’Western end, where Isa would be if she had gone back to her web full of those icy, frigid bitches… Tralane caught herself. No, they were not. They were nice, pleasant and slightly overacademic women who had decided to channel everything into their hunt for knowledge and the recovery of lost skills. It was noble and nearly saintly. She was almost one of them, and still she wanted to puke every time she saw Isabeau in those pretentious grey robes… Her hand on the control rod juddered and the Flit, always unforgiving, went into a port slew that she irritably corrected, lining herself up with other towers to be sure not to hit anything while she ogled away.

  There were no people in the streets of that district. They were all abed, she thought, of course, or else taking light snacks and educational conversations before retiring. Belatedly she recognised the grumping of her stomach as envy. Why should she be envious? Because her house rotted while theirs prospered on? She was her own mistress. But so were they. And their magic and their skills were evident across the city written in hard light and the smooth function of every civil piece of infrastructure from the stem to the elevators and even the drains, while she grubbed her attics and came up with, well, with goggles and a gun, and some weapons of mass destruction.

  Anyway, there was no sign of Isabeau. She had to admit she had never really believed there would be. If she was in the Sorority house she would be asleep in her cloister well out of sight. At least, Tralane felt, she had managed to prove there were no people out lying dead or assaulted. But even this effort was a weak failure at covering her embarrassment at her own anxiety. The cause of that was not the sisterhood of course. It was Alide.

  Her turn towards the Ministry was automatic. She glided smoothly across the quads of the colleges, the rising pomposity of the administrative architecture that had been cut off by the previous Empress and rendered into large gardens instead of a bulky fortress. There she saw a black group marching purposefully and amid them the small, hustling form of the man she detested. They were moving towards the palace road and runners were with them. An official summons then. Rather late. She wondered why.