Glorious Angels

by Justina Robson

  Soft and peaceful in the afterglow she looked on her men with love, and wished such love on everyone in her care. Pleasure and love together, only that, and afterwards gentleness and peace and more of the same, on and on…

  She began to fall asleep, building up walls against the seven to keep them out of this, her space. She didn’t care what they thought of her here, or about it. This was hers.

  Torada waited alone with Jago as Eth and Hakka took themselves off to the bath. Runners came and set the lamps low, cleared and prepared the light evening food, the chilled carafes of fruited water and wine, tea and heated water on the night burner. They opened the garden wall and set the hanging veils and the darklight vigil torches so that the cool high breeze floated into the room over the hot stones and warmed earth, the plants and their heavy freight of blossoms before gliding into the room and over the bed. Insects, attracted and redirected by the darklight torches, remained unharmed outside.

  Jago moved closer. He had a mistrust of the garden’s open roof, though it was watched by clockwork gargoyles of Sircene making who were more than capable of raising an alarm or capturing intruders. Like the Illathil and the rest of the human races outside the Empire, he had a deep mistrust of all things mechanical. His dislike was even greater than for all things magical. Combine the two and it made him serious and grim, permanently bad-tempered. She’d always hoped this was why she felt such dislike from him; because she forced him to accommodate these things in his life, rather than for the necessity that he exist under her permanent observation and have his natural affections directed by her. She wasn’t even sure how much he understood of that. She had taken such pains not to push anything that was not already underway, like rolling a rock downhill.

  She missed Night abruptly. Night always knew how much of anything it would be wise to tell. Her advice was invaluable. She had told Torada in no uncertain terms that revealing the truth of his situation to Jago would be a disaster. So when she watched him now, adjusting his position to cover the open wall, she suspected that it was not his dislike but her own guilt that created the uncomfortable wedge between them. She wanted, as every night, to somehow make up to him the things she’d stolen away.

  ‘Jago’, she whispered.

  ‘Empress,’ he said, watching for the return of Hakka and Eth. Across the winding glitter of the stream the lights of the bath house were visible. Lanterns glowed with colour along the winding path between.

  ‘What do your people do when they discover traitors but have no evidence?’

  ‘Strangle them in their sleep,’ he replied without hesitation.

  ‘But what if it turns out later that they were innocent?’

  ‘A week of mourning is appropriate. Payments are made.’ His voice growled softly.

  ‘Do you investigate the mistake?’

  Jago shrugged indifferently. ‘That’s Lords’ business.’

  ‘You are a Lord’s son.’

  ‘I was a Lord’s bastard, Highness. I am elevated further now as your creature than I would ever have been there.’ His tone remained factual though she tried hard to detect gratitude in it.

  She listened to his armour creak as he moved. She hoped Eth would take a long time bathing Hakka. It was rare she spoke to Jago alone. Her daring and the moment overcame her sleepy exhaustion. She felt an opportunity, but to gain what, to go where, she didn’t know. She felt she could easily make a silly mistake.

  ‘If you could have the life you wished, Jago, what would you have?’ Thinking maybe one day she would give it to him, if it was within her power.

  ‘I don’t dream, Highness. That’s the business of Angels.’

  She wondered if it was humility made him say it, or simply lack of imagination and a desire to go unnoticed and unpunished.

  She said, ‘Is everything someone else’s business, Jago?’ but before he could answer she heard Eth’s laugh and then saw a shadow bound across, blocking the lanterns out in sequence. He ran through the veils, trailing them over both shoulders, and leapt on to the bed beside her in an effortless bounce, landing lightly and flopping down on his belly on the sheet. Torada imagined, briefly, because it was painful, that he was her man come to play. She wondered what that was like. But even the notion of having someone… She turned it aside. It was useless and, worse, it was weak. Empresses were alone. To want otherwise was to be unfit for the position. She was unto herself sufficient. She must be.

  Dirt had told her it was common for her age to feel such indulgent whims – but in time it would pass. She understood implicitly, without any of them mentioning it, that there was even among the Eight, a hierarchy. Dirt was stronger than Spire. Wit was stronger than Beckons. She felt certain she was the weakest so far, along with Murmur, but in the same way she knew that she felt that there was a potential in her to become the strongest. She looked at Eth and saw he was utterly in her power. He grinned at her, flushed with the warm results of Hakka’s lovemaking and his anticipation of more of it and she closed her hand hidden under the pillow.

  It would be so much easier to crush than preserve. What she spread from this room – all these bonding, soothing, calming plans – was subtle and uncertain compared to Jago’s solutions: crush, command, destroy, intimidate. Could she really convince herself that this was the path to follow when all seven said it was simple romantic stupidity, her youth and inexperience, her unwillingness to accept the truth of human nature spread all around them?

  She smiled at Eth as he returned and looked at her, questioning her silence. She opened her hand, slipping it out towards him to tickle him on his flank and make him laugh. Jago relaxed at the sound, polearm clinking. She ate up Eth’s happiness, his sexy, self-contented daze, and spread it out, through the veils, into the garden, beyond the gargoyles and over the city, down and down in scentless clouds; one night-blooming flower.

  She fell asleep to the sound of Eth and Hakka’s quiet talking.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TRALANE

  Tralane Huntingore woke up with a headache to end all headaches, body sore and stomach growling. She stared for a few moments at her own worn carpet before understanding there had been a dislocation. She recalled falling unconscious on the cold paving of the Flit shed and expecting to wake up there. After that, blank. She closed her eyes but nothing improved except the fact that she didn’t have to think about taking the carpets out for a good beating one of these fine days because, really, they were beyond that.

  She decided to leave the issues that were biting her until a little later on, when she felt less like volunteering for an early grave. Unfortunately her appalled inner self would rather play back the horrific descent to the flight deck, complete with telltale magical interference in a nonstop loop as it tried to inspire bleating panic. Tralane had never been one for bleating or panic however, so she let it carry on in the background whilst she dealt with the more pressing task of how to get off the couch and to the medicine cabinet. Her effort to get up seemed to go well at first. She swung her legs off the sofa and felt her boots hit the floor. Something fell over. As she sat, resting on her elbows, she saw it was the cup of water someone had thoughtfully placed beside her, alongside a plate holding honey biscuits and pain tablets. She swallowed the caps dry, forced a biscuit after them and lay down again to wait for them to have an effect.

  When she was able to get up she stumbled back up to the flight deck to check the Flit. She saw the marks of several boots in the dust on the stairs and someone had swept off the banisters that curved under the disapproving family portraits. The doors were all closed, but not locked. The lift had been left with the door half open. She sensed the hand of carelessness at work and automatically thought of Minna, but Minna couldn’t carry her. The Flit was scarred in the colours of the infomancers’ curse but whole. The fuel tanks were empty. She bent down to the earth floor where she had laid, studied. A man’s boots.

  Who the hell had been here with Minnabar in the middle of the night? She wanted to think it
was Best, but she knew Best had left the house to look for Isabeau. One of Minna’s friends? She couldn’t imagine those youths doing it, not without supervision or the gift of a hernia. Still, she didn’t have any other idea and she was, aside from the hangover, unharmed.

  She closed up carefully and traced the route, looking for clues. She thought, only then, about the goggles, and stopped, but a patting found them heavily lodged just over her forehead, which explained the tight feeling. The gun, an image of it, passed through her mind. She recalled the thonk and clunk of it landing in the cupboard where she’d tossed it. Pausing only long enough to shed her flight suit and stuff it roughly into place, she descended into the workshop and went to find it and reassure herself of its concealment.

  Twenty minutes later the workshop floor was filled knee deep with clutter and she was still gunless. She looked at her clock – six. Dawn was here. No gun. She stepped over a low wave of half-melted smartblox and took a final glance at the worktop in the hopes of seeing the crystal core left there by some ignorant thieving hand but the worktop was bare. A sick and horrible feeling rose in her throat. She considered, then hopped to the door and went down, thinking maybe Best had come back and already taken it to safety, not really considering that she hadn’t told Best about it in the first place.

  The first door she checked was her own. Her bed was as she left it, cold and empty. A twist and a few doors further on she opened Isa’s door and saw a blonde head on the pillow, immaculate grey robes puddled on the floor… But there was time to consider this small anomaly later. Closing that door she snuck onward to Minna’s room and came up with an empty. The signs of tempestuous haircare and dressing littered the made bed. Party, she thought, and went back to the solar observatory. There she found most of Minna’s web slumbering in piles, but no daughter.

  Trying not to feel that options were running short she took the fastest route down to the kitchen. On the way she passed the guest rooms and had gone beyond them several metres before backtracking and looking down that hall again.

  There, sitting with her back against the wall, knees propped up against each other and head hanging to one side, was Minnabar. Her hands were balanced on her knees, arms stretched, and in between them, dangling from her loosely curled fingers, was the gun. The barrel was pointing down towards her feet now, but obviously it had once pointed at the door in front of her. This was shut. Tralane took this all in slowly, and then walked up, her attention on the door, and on the gun. Minna’s mouth was half open and she was deeply under. Tralane prised the gun gently off her, thinking that it wouldn’t wake her but at the movement Minna started suddenly, muttering. She blinked up at Tralane and glared at the door, then back up. Seeing Tralane’s finger against her lips she stayed silent and jabbed her finger repeatedly at the door. Tralane signalled with a nod that she got it.

  Minna got to her feet stiffly and whispered quickly in Tralane’s ear, ‘It’s Zharazin Mazhd.’

  Tralane took this in for a minute and felt the cogs slowly chunking around in her head, each chunk accompanied by a steady beat of pain in her temples. She couldn’t think why she knew the name, but she did. Infomancers. Oh, no… She stalled out at that point. How the hell could he have got here so fast? It wasn’t possible. Nothing added up. She erased everything and went back to the facts. Her daughter was holding a gun on a locked door. The door wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was whoever was inside the room, unless Sircene blood ran in their veins and she doubted that. She beckoned Minna to go with her and led the way to the kitchen. On the way there it occurred to her that the reason Minna would be there doing that must be fear. Why?

  In the kitchen, she closed the door and looked at her daughter’s bleary, exhausted face. Minna was about half the girl who had sat staring at the sky through the goggles. She looked twelve years old again and Tralane felt a stab of fear go through her, wondering. ‘What happened?’

  Minnabar had the face on that said she wanted to lie but wasn’t. ‘I was using the farscope. I didn’t know you were out until… You know that the flight deck is linked into the scope systems, right? Well, I saw it tracking something. I was trying to see out to those weird things in the sky, but when the activation clicked on I thought I’d just look and see what was going on.’ She looked down and squirmed, holding on to the edge of the table as she sat herself down, leg tucked under her, and then lay flat over the tabletop, head on her arm, looking at Tralane with big eyes.

  Tralane just nodded. She knew soft soap when she saw it but the time to pursue the details was later. ‘Go on.’

  Minna bit her lips together, chewing slightly, then said, ‘It was you. In the Flit. I saw you, guessed you were looking for stupid Bo-girl as well, as if she’d be caught dead with you finding her.’ A snort here and then, carefully. ‘And I saw the shot… Was it a shot?’ Her eyes flicked up to Tralane’s and there was that scared little girl again, waiting.

  Tralane located the hard liquor from the bottom cabinet, took out a bottle, uncorked it and poured two shots. ‘Yep.’

  Minna swallowed hard and looked at the glasses. ‘Who’s shooting at you, Mom?’

  ‘I made a stupid mistake,’ Tralane said, slamming the cork back in with a blow of the side of her fist. She shrugged and sipped. It tasted like burning embers. ‘Crossed infomancer air.’

  ‘What was that flare?’

  ‘Tracer fire. I got rid of it but… Obviously too slowly.’ Tralane rubbed her head. She looked around for sugary things and located stale buns that the web had made the day before. They probably didn’t want them any more. She started to eat one, tossed one to Minna. ‘So, you saw the shot and then?’

  Minna swerved her gaze by turning her attention to the bun. She began to pick it apart with her fingers. ‘I thought you were going to crash.’ Emotion made her lip tremble but another, more pragmatic, determined urge, made her bite it still. ‘I thought maybe they’d come after but probably that you’d make it and maybe crash and I didn’t want to see it so… I had to go up there but I was too scared to go without something… So I went to the workshop first and it was just there, on the workbench.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘What? Of course. It was right there. And those power crystals were scattered around it like… Most of them didn’t fit it so I guess you were looking for the right one. Anyway, I could see which one would work and I figured obviously it needed a focus, so I put in the one lying next to it, took off the safety and hoped it had enough juice to blow the shit out of… I mean… Well, it’s a gun right?’

  Tralane realised she was halfway to grinning even though her mind circled firmly down on the point about the bench. The gun was on the bench. Not in the cabinet. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Yeah so,’ Minna cleared her throat and sneaked her glass to herself, sipped it, made a face, ‘I went up on to the roof… that lift is a bloody deathtrap by the way, but yeah, you know that so… I went up on to the roof and I saw a light inside the shed. I thought it was you but then… When I got closer I realised it wasn’t the right colour. So I sneaked up and that’s when I saw him bending over you. Mazhd. I thought he was gonna – I didn’t know what he was doing so I…’ She stretched out her hands, fingers the gun now, pointing it, ‘At his head and made him take you inside instead.’

  Well that answered the carrying question, Tralane supposed, taking another swig from her glass. She eyed Minnabar and the gun, then slid the gun along the table towards her. ‘Take it apart.’

  Minna frowned but her hands left the remains of the bun and moved to the weapon almost automatically. Without hesitation she turned it around, opened the seals, popped the clasps and released the magazine crystal, then the power splinter. She laid these neatly aside and undid the catches that held the barrel to the stock before looking along the barrel and checking it for damage.

  Tralane watched her in silence, pleased and slightly alarmed. ‘Why stay outside the door?’

  Minna looked up at her and then back down at the barrel.
‘I couldn’t remember if that door locked only to us or… I thought maybe he’d make a fuss and someone would let him out. Or… he…’ She staggered to a halt in the sentence, flustered. ‘He’s very tricky. I didn’t trust him.’

  Tralane finished her drink and looked longingly at the bottle but she left it alone. ‘You’re probably right about that but I don’t think blowing him to bits is going to solve any problems. Clean that and put it back together and then take it back to the workshop and lock it up, would you?’

  ‘Sure.’ Minna cleared her throat a little, hesitating.

  ‘And then get to bed. It’s four in the morning.’

  ‘It’s six.’

  ‘Do you know what time Bo got in?’

  ‘Ten minutes before Bestie. About two.’ Minna absently recalibrated the stock, flicking through its various attunement options and barrel fittings. ‘You have more barrels for this?’

  ‘Only found that one so far,’ Tralane said, now certain she had missed a trick in not employing Minna sooner. Weaponry – who knew? She frowned but that hurt so she had to stop it. ‘I can’t face interrogating that man now. Let’s leave him until later.’

  Minna nodded, her attention absorbed with her new toy. Tralane left her there and heaved her tired bones back upstairs, wondering whose great idea it was to live inside a tower. She stopped at the prisoner’s room and opened the access panel in the door. She could see in, but he would have no idea about it. She saw, dimly, that he was stretched out on the bed, no, in the bed. He was snoring lightly, at about 2000 rpm, she thought, smiling because it sounded like a very powerful but extremely distant engine passing behind a row of short but significant hills. There was a book open on his chest. Well, he wasn’t trying to sneak out. He was sleeping. That was good. She could too.