by David Gunn
In the middle of Enyo is a square. Here you find the largest houses. All have three storeys, and one house has four. Unlike the others, this house has its shutters closed against the afternoon heat.
The attic of the four-storey house stinks of goats and dung, smoke and shit. That’s not unusual. The whole of Enyo stinks of goats and dung, smoke and shit. What is unusual is the fire burning in one corner. It’s piled high with smouldering herbs that choke the air and make a young woman’s eyes sting. She’s naked to the waist, barefoot and wearing combat pants hacked off at the thigh.
She has small breasts, dark nipples and a leather sheath fixed to the small of her back by a complex webbing harness. Scars criss-cross her abdomen. Removing the webbing would make her cooler, but she’d rather die.
So she leaves the dagger in place, despite its hilt being hot enough to hurt when it touches, which is every time she turns.
It’s late afternoon and she’s exhausted.
Others offer to take her place, and quickly learn to mind their own business. She shits in a bucket, eats only what is put in front of her and shaves between her thighs, under her arms and across her skull each morning. The young woman barely notices she is doing any of these.
‘Paper.’
The word comes in a croak from the bed. That’s where a naked man is tied. As the young woman turns, the man jerks against his ropes and falls silent, his fingers bunching into fists as his eyes glare at someone she can’t see.
‘Paper,’ he repeats.
Spitting into the fire, the girl turns her back and leaves. She shuts the attic door with a slam. I know who she is. Know who that figure on the bed is too.
It’s me . . .
———
With the coming of that knowledge I cease to be able to stare down on wild birds as they circle above the city. And I lose my ability to stare through roofs into the rooms below. With this loss comes sleep. When I wake, it’s to a greyness that has no edges. This is death, I think.
Someone laughs, and it’s a tired and bitter laugh. ‘So,’ says a voice. ‘You’re back.’
‘Lieutenant Bonafonte?’
‘Haze, sir.’
Should have known. ‘Where am I?’
‘Which bit of you?’
‘The real bit.’
Haze snorts. ‘Your body’s on a bed in Franc’s room. She hasn’t left your side in three weeks.’ He hesitates, and decides to say it anyway. ‘You died.’
Not almost died, or were close to death.
‘What happened?’
‘Good question,’ he says. ‘The kyp brought you back, probably. Also you heal indecently fast.’
That I know, have always known. Wounds close, bones mend, and sinews knit themselves together. You can take me to the edge of death, and seemingly beyond . . . Given me some of the worst moments of my life.
‘If I’m there,’ I say, ‘what am I doing here?’
You can say one thing for Haze, he understands the question immediately. ‘Piggybacking a subset of Hekati,’ he tells me. ‘Damn near killing me keeping your memories in one piece.’ He is not boasting. His words are too flat for that.
‘Where’s my gun?’
‘Safe,’ says Haze. ‘I’m looking after it.’ The calmness of his answer makes me suspicious. He realizes that, because he adds: ‘That’s all. Nothing more . . . sir. Are you ready to return?’
‘Am I . . . ?’
‘It’s going to hurt,’ he says. ‘Even with whatever makes you mend.’ He pauses. ‘Franc still believes you’re going to die. She’s . . .’
‘I’ve seen how she is.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Chapter 26
SOMEONE HAS WIRED MY JAW SHUT AND I’M GETTING WATER through a tube. The sheet swaddling my legs is tied in place with a rope. I can see the rope if I squint hard enough. Although looking gives me a headache.
Haze is right. Being back hurts. It hurts like fuck, and then it hurts a bit more. I would go back to where I was, if I hadn’t just boasted I was ready to return.
‘Franc.’
She seems to be ignoring me.
Tapping the side of the bed might attract her attention, but my hands are tied and my strength is gone. I can barely turn my head, never mind break knots. It seems best to worry about that later because Franc is turning towards me. She approaches with all the patience of a wildcat pacing its cage.
Walks straight past. Then turns and walks back. I only realize this when she stands over me.
Her lips are cracked and her eyes ringed with dark circles. A bruise on one leg matches another above her hip. Looks like tiredness has her walking into things. Scabs crust the cuts across her gut, which is hollow.
I know why my jaw is wired when pain explodes across my face. Pavel obviously kicked me in the head as a parting gift. And Franc’s slap is hard enough to make the room blur.
Shooting offence, I think. Before wondering, what was that for?
‘Pleasant dreams?’ she asks.
When my eyes refocus, Franc is on the other side of the room, forcing her elbows through the sweat-rotten straps of the singlet she wears under her combat jacket. And then, back still turned to me, she climbs into her trousers and buckles on her boots. She’s made her point.
There are four wires in all holding my jaw shut, and she snaps each, leaving me with a mouthful of blood and lengths of metal sticking from my teeth. Turning my head, as much as the pain will allow, I ask:
‘Shil? ‘
Has to be the first understandable word I’ve said. Franc’s expression is so dark it makes me think perhaps I was meant to ask something else first. And maybe I was. But then I wouldn’t be me. Shil is Aux, that’s reason enough to ask. ‘Well?’
‘Sergeant Neen went looking.’
Since when did Franc stick Sergeant in front of Neen’s name? Since his sister went missing, I guess. ‘He went alone?’
‘No, sir. The colonel went with him.’
Oh fuck . . .
‘When?’
‘Over a week ago.’
‘And the others,’ I say. ‘What about the others?’
‘Rachel’s downstairs,’ says Franc. ‘As for Haze, he spends his life field-stripping that gun of yours. When he’s not sitting over his bloody pad gibbering to himself.’
‘Franc . . .’
‘Fucking don’t, sir . . .‘
Maybe being thanked isn’t what she expects. Throws me too. But I died and so did she, back during that idiot test at the beginning of this mission. It gives us something else in common.
All the same, my voice is harder when I say, ‘Cut the ropes . . .’
She shakes her head. She’s about to explain why when steps on the stairs make her move away from my bed. I expect the local caudillo. Some broad-shouldered thug wrapped in a foul-smelling coat and carrying a rifle, probably with a dagger thrust through his belt. Probably my dagger.
Come to that, probably my belt as well.
What I get is an old woman. Grey hair waterfalls from a high forehead. She’s dressed in a shift that is white and almost clean. A string of pearls hangs round her neck, and a silver brooch fastens a cloak at her shoulders. I’m not sure how she can stand the smoke and heat in here, but she barely seems to notice them.
‘Ahh,’ she says. ‘My voices were right.’ Dark eyes examine my face, and she scowls when she sees the wires to my jaw have gone.
‘You died,’ she tells me.
‘I know.’
She looks at me closely. ‘How do you know?’
‘My own voices told me.’
Gripping my head, she turns it towards her lamp and stares into my eyes. Her gaze is unforgiving, and unexpected from an old woman in a rotting city on the edge of a stinking sea in a habitat that’s taking longer than it should to die.
‘He tells the truth,’ she says.
Franc nods. ‘He always does,’ she replies. ‘Not an endearing quality.’ She has to be quoting Haze or Vijay, no way would she c
ome up with a comment like that on her own.
The old woman smiles. Her name is Kyble. Or maybe that’s her title. Pulling a wineskin from her belt, she yanks off the stopper and holds the skin to my mouth. ‘Drink,’ she says.
‘Not if it’s going to send me back to sleep.’
She shrugs. ‘Die then.’ Putting the stopper back in her flask, she turns to leave the room.
‘Kyble,’ Franc says.
The woman looks back.
‘Please?’
With a sigh, Kyble gives Franc the flask.
The next three days pass in a haze of smoke, bitter wine and memories of Franc raking embers, rebuilding endless fires and stacking herbs onto burning coals until the smoke gets thicker and my memories uncertain. One morning Rachel appears carrying a tray of food for Franc.
Looking round, Rachel screws up her face.
And then, wandering over, she peers deep into my face. Maybe she thinks I’m unconscious. ‘How can you stand it?’ she asks Franc. She’s talking about the heat, unless it’s the smoke. Alternatively, it could just be the smell.
‘You get used to it.’
Rachel snorts.
‘Remember Ilseville?’ Franc’s voice is flat. When Rachel doesn’t answer, Franc says, ‘I do. He kept you alive. He kept me alive. Haze would be dead if it wasn’t for him.’
‘That’s why you’re doing this?’
‘One reason.’
‘What’s the other?’
‘None of your fucking business.’ Stripping dried berries from a branch, Franc busies herself arranging the berries into small heaps. After a few seconds, Rachel leaves. Next morning Kyble cuts the ropes tying my legs. ‘Move your toes,’ she orders. So I do. ‘Now try your whole feet.’
I can move those too.
We work our way up my body. My ankles will twist and my knees will bend, but lifting either leg is near impossible. My fingers work, my wrists turn.
‘Who made this?’ Kyble asks, tapping my prosthetic arm.
‘A woman.’
‘Someone like her?’ asks Kyble, nodding at Franc.
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Someone like you.’
It’s the right answer. Although it invites more questions. These need answers before she will leave me alone. I am tempted to tell Kyble to shut up, fuck off and take her curiosity elsewhere. But in answering questions I pay a debt. And Kyble is not my enemy, or I would be dead and the rest of the Aux too. I have a good idea, though, whose enemy she is.
‘Caudillo Pavel,’ I say.
She spits from instinct. ‘The only person who calls Pavel caudillo,’ Kyble says, ‘is Pavel himself.’
She sees me smile sourly.
‘So,’ I say. ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend?’
‘In your ejército also?’
‘Also in my ejército.’
Shaking hands involves gripping wrists while folding back one finger. Kyble doesn’t mind that I fumble the greeting. ‘Clean him, feed him and bed him,’ she tells Franc. ‘Any order you like. Although cleaning him first might be best.’
To me she says, ‘They’ll be back today. Your caudillo, and your angry little servant.’
When Kyble lets herself out, she’s chuckling.
‘Who is she?’
‘Someone who hid you,’ says Franc. ‘When the Silver Fist swept through this city and everyone else wanted to give you up.’
Chapter 27
WALKING OVER TO THE WINDOW, I FIND MYSELF FACING ROTTING canvas. So I rip it down and toss it on the fire, which doesn’t improve the smell. But that doesn’t matter, because opening the shutters lets in the afternoon wind.
Two young women glance up from the square and look away, probably because I am naked. About the only thing you can say for Enyo Square is that it isn’t full of goats. There are no trees, no flowerbeds, no statues . . . None of the things I’ve come to expect from a square.
And I am looking down onto the sloping roofs of the other houses. They’re made from crumbling red tiles patched with sheet metal. An upper window in a building opposite lets into a bedroom where a woman is breast-feeding a baby. She must be precog, because she turns to meet my gaze.
A second later her shutter shuts.
‘Sir . . .’ Franc leads me away from the window. A second after that, she pulls what is left of the canvas from the fire and stamps it out with her bare feet. ‘Poppy,’ she tells me. ‘You’re feeling the effects of poppy.’
She’s wrong. I’m not feeling anything at all.
Certainly not as much as I expect to feel, given the raw skin covering my lower gut, which is puckered at the edge and sunburn pink. ‘Franc,’ I say. ‘About Colonel Vijay. You know he’s . . .’
‘We know who he is, sir.’
‘I’m sure you do. You’d have to be dumb not to. What I want to know is how he ended up joining Neen’s hunt for Shil.’
‘Originally, sir, the colonel intended going on his own.’
I make her repeat that.
‘Neen insisted on going,’ she says, knowing how absurd that sounds. Neen is a sergeant. Colonel Vijay outranks us all.
‘He told Neen to stay and then changed his mind?’
‘Yes, sir. That’s exactly what happened.’
Never issue an order you know will be broken. Never threaten punishment you don’t inflict. Never make promises you can’t keep. Sounds to me like Colonel Vijay is learning.
———
I wash myself, because I can’t see why Franc should. And I’m rinsing off the soap when Haze wanders into the attic, carrying my pistol. Without looking at me, he puts the SIG carefully on a table. After a second, I realize it’s because I’m naked. He is a strange boy, and I mean more than the braids twisting from his head.
‘Haze . . .‘ I say.
Turning back, he hastily looks away. So I tip what remains in my jug over my head and dry myself on a sheet taken from the bed. Believe it or not, that does improve matters.
‘You’ve lost your head dressing . . . ?’
Haze checks to see if he’s in trouble. He’s not. ‘Kyble knew,’ says Haze. ‘Told me not to be ashamed of what I was.’ His words come out in a rush.
‘And were you?’ I ask.
He nods.
When Franc returns, Haze leaves.
The bread is stale and the fruit spoilt, apart from the figs, which are unripe as bullets. I eat the lot because I’ve eaten worse. And worse is better than none at all, and I’ve eaten that too. As I wipe crumbs from my mouth, Franc steps back to strip off her singlet, unbuckle her boots and climb out of her combats.
‘Kyble’s orders?’
Franc nods and I laugh.
She is straddling me when Colonel Vijay comes into the square. Although Haze must say something, because the colonel shouts from outside, and then waits for a minute, before beginning to climb the stairs. By this time, I’m wearing the sheet I used to dry myself and Franc is back in her clothes. Well, mostly.
He barely looks at her.
‘Tracked Pavel to a city in the mountains,’ he says. ‘It’s walled, bigger than this, with guards on the gate. Looks locked down to me. So either they’re expecting us, or they’re expecting some other kind of trouble.’
His voice is clipped; it takes me a second to realize he’s angry. Another, to realize it’s with me.
‘Sir . . .’ I begin.
‘No,’ he says. ‘You’ll listen.’ Stamping to the window, he glares out at the square and then stamps back again. ‘You,’ he says, nodding at Franc. ‘Leave us.’
Saluting, she heads out without needing to be told twice.
‘Three points,’ says the colonel. ‘One, you cost us a trooper. Two, we have lost a week because of you. And three, you don’t commit suicide in my time. Neen’s on the edge of going rogue.’
He turns, scowls at me.
‘And I don’t blame him.’
He means it. The little fuck is siding with Neen.
‘You think you’d be
alive without me, sir?’
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’
‘Let me repeat it.’
‘Sven . . .‘
‘Sven nothing, sir. You’d be dead.’
I’m seconds away from putting him through a wall. Here I am on some fuckwit habitat in Uplift space, on a mission so secret that no one’s prepared to tell me what it really is. Because, sure as fuck, it is not about finding a missing U/Free. At least, not just that.
I’m pretty sure Colonel Vijay knows.
‘One,’ I say. ‘Shil disobeyed a direct order to retreat. Two, you almost blew the entire fucking mission with your little meltdown in the hub. And three, I’m bored shitless babysitting some little fuck with a chest full of medals for battles he didn’t fight.’
The colonel flushes.
‘Must be hell, sir,’ I say, ‘having Jaxx for your father. All that money, all those houses.’
‘You have no fucking idea.’
‘You’re right,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t. Never met my real father.’
‘Surprise me,’ he says. ‘I take it your mother was a whore?’
‘No, sir.’ I say. ‘That must be yours.’
Blocking his punch, I step back. Everyone has buttons; it’s just finding the right ones to push. All the same, for the first time, Colonel Vijay seems to know what he is doing. So I take another look and realize his face is thinner, his eyes harder. Wind has turned his skin to leather. ‘Some fancy tutor teach you to fight?’
‘A sergeant,’ he snaps. ‘No one you’d know.’
‘Horse Hito?’
He steps out of my reach. ‘You know Hito?’ Colonel Vijay sounds surprised.
‘Yeah,’ I growl. ‘Horse gave me the knife I used on Paradise. Went with me to have my arm fitted. Introduced me to General Jaxx. One of life’s good guys . . .’
Colonel Vijay is reassessing.
I’m not at all sure I like being reassessed by some smug little shit. Only the smug little shit is fading before my eyes and someone else is taking his place. Guess all Vijay Jaxx needed was to get out from under his father’s shadow.
‘So,’ I say. ‘How do you know him?’
