by Andy Graham
“Some parents gave more care than others,” he said.
Rose’s head dropped.
“That may be so,” Vena continued. “But in our case, I took upon my shoulders the mantle of primary caregiver. As dutiful as it may have been, never have I undertaken a more thankless task. Baby poo can be endearing.”
Stella smiled.
“Adult excrement is vile.”
Ray grimaced.
“To compound my frustrations, the more time I spent with our mother, the more Bethina filled what she saw as a power gap. It wasn’t much at first. A signature here, a waiver there. A few minor reforms to go with a changed lock in a few places. A new office chair to go with a new picture. Then she had that ridiculous Folly Tree of hers installed into her office, and it went downhill from there.”
“From mighty dreams sprout wings of ambition, carried to great heights on the winds of other people’s failure,” Rose said. “A playwright from Mennai once said that,” she added quietly.
“A touch melodramatic but a suitable quotation for my plight.”
“Are you still in touch?”
“Of course, Ray. She’s family.” Vena’s eyebrows rose. “We meet regularly. I think she needs the meetings more than I do.”
“Does she know about you and the Resistance?”
“Of course not. She may be family but she is still the president and does not do well with rebellion. I’m not stupid.” She tittered. “It sounds so exciting, though, doesn’t it, the Resistance. You need better quarters, Rose. These towers are a bit grimy and, after what happened here, I’m surprised you dared move in.”
“What happened here?”
“Later,” Rose said.
“Kayle?”
“What she said.” Kayle pointed to Rose. “Doesn’t bother me, anyway.”
“It doesn’t bother you, Kayle?” Vena asked. She pointed to the freshly cracked skull on the wall map. “Why do you think that skull only had one eye open? Because he couldn’t bear to see what the curse of the Salt Gods would bring next.”
“Oh please,” Stella cut in.
“Don’t pull faces, Dr Swann. I know of your dalliance with the Famulus and her seven elements in the Ward. A body is more than a collection of cells and electrical impulses. Society is more than a collection of statistics and categories.”
“You know about the Ward, too?” Stella asked, exasperated and annoyed.
“Either that or I’m a very good guess. My, I really am talking around the towers today. Where was I?”
“The Resistance.”
“Thank you, Kayle.”
“My family, maybe?” Stella said icily.
Vena stared dreamy-eyed through a dirty window. “The Resistance needs a den, a lair, a headquarters. Somewhere with secret tunnels, cells with iron bars, underground rivers and boats. You need timed knocks on doors.” Her knuckles rapped on the table — rat tat tat . . . rat tat . . . rat. “A plethora of passwords and code names. The Night Phoenix would be mine, Ray. And you absolutely must have one slow dripping leak you can never fix. Plink . . . plink . . . plop.” She mimed the dropping of water with her fingers.
“It needs vintage folding cameras and ear trumpets cobbled together with thick wires, crocodile clips and circular-keyed typewriters to make hi-tech computers. Cheery, chipper folk who can make anything from nothing. The outcasts come good. The reluctant teenage hero who saves the world. The mentor who teaches the teenage hero to save the world, and whose death galvanises the child into action and gives her the self-belief she needs. Your Resistance, Rose, is looking a little shabby. It needs a carefully dressed-down glamour to add shine to your cause.”
“War sounds glamorous for those who have never had to live through its bloody, shit-stained hell,” Ray said.
A fidgety silence settled across the room.
“I do apologise,” Vena said, irritated by the shift in mood in her audience. “I’m not normally so garrulous. I haven’t had a crowd to play to for months.”
“Why are you betraying your sister?” Ray asked. “Why should we trust you?”
“Do I need a reason?”
“Every action has a reason.”
“Good people are never questioned over their motives. Why should those with less desirable motivations be questioned so? I’ve spent many years now caring for a dotty old lady whose mental faculties were ebbing like the sea. One day the tide was in, the next it was out. One day it washed up a pearl of a memory, the following it brought a sludge of mixed-up effluent. And, by dictate of my sister and the ban on twins, it was difficult to seek help.”
Her fingers, more bone than flesh, tightened around the mug. Ray began to suspect Bethina was not the only Laudanum with a ruthless streak.
“So my reasons for helping you noble people?” Vena said. “You can put it down to petty revenge, or sibling rivalry if you like, though I find such base emotions distasteful. But after several traumatic years of watching the woman who brought me up waste away, her mental faculties shrivelling like a pea in the sun, I don’t want revenge, I want something else. I want fun.”
“Fun?” Stella said, her face aghast. “My family is being held captive by a psychopath and you want fun?”
“Well, yes. I want to help you, too, my dear. But when the capital city was still known as Effrea-Tye, we had cinemas, theatres, art galleries, libraries, parks and playgrounds. There were independent exhibitions and real book stores that existed purely for art’s sake.”
“These things existed when I was a kid,” Martinez said.
“No, my dear. What you had was a famine compared to the feast I grew up with. The arts had been ravaged by economics and competition by your time. When I was young, art and literature were not judged purely on how much money they could generate. You could read a book, listen to a song, look at a picture, go to a play, a concert, a gig even, or the ballet. I did use to love a good old-fashioned poetry throwdown, all that loquacious riffing got me right in the vernacular. You did it because you enjoyed it, because it was fun. Art didn’t need to be worthy. Life was raw and interesting. There was more to living than a constant battle to improve yourself or have meaningful experiences that change you for the better. Then readers and concertgoers became customers and consumers. Money muscled in and it all changed. People wrote and played for fame not for fun. Before that, people had fun. I had fun. I’m bored. I’m old. Oh, give over looking at me like that. I’m only sixty-eight. I’m not old old but I’m the oldest I’ve ever been, and that for me is old. I’ve done my bit for the nation and my family. I don’t want revenge. I just want to have fun. I want—”
Tears were slipping down Stella’s face.
“Enough,” Ray said. “As fun as this is for you, we can’t stay and chat over tea. As soon as the chopper is ready to go, we’re leaving.”
“Don’t pull faces like that, Ray. I want some fun, is that so bad? You Franklins have always been so po-faced. Taking yourselves so seriously, the entire brood. Your grandad, Frederick, was the only one with a bit of levity to him. Everyone plays games with everyone, it’s just a matter of scale and perspective. My sister and I started out fairly well-matched. As we’ve aged, she’s hardened and I’ve softened, as have our games. I suppose we’re still collectively well balanced, a form of nice-nasty neutral.”
“And this is supposed to help us?”
Vena pulled out a manila envelope. “This might. I have never fully understood why the fate of your family is so intractably intertwined with mine. It appears there are some secrets that my impish good lucks can’t help me with. This may have some answers. While you’re off playing heroes, Rose and I can discuss it. Over tea.”
She blinked. Rose was staring at the envelope hungrily. Kayle, a mixture of admiration and bafflement in his eyes, hovered at Vena’s elbow.
“Oh my.” The back of Vena’s hand floated to her forehead. “I have been wittering on some. Please excuse me. I haven’t had much real company for the last few months. I s
uppose we need to see about rescuing Dan and Jake.” Her face split into a toothy grin that matched the skull’s on the wall. “Now, that really does sound like fun.”
23
Bricks, Puppies & a Fisher Gull
Rose and Vena were arguing over something in hissed whispers. Whatever the information was that the president’s sister claimed to have, Rose wanted it now. She’d chase the wind if she thought it would give her an answer, and there were times those answers deafened her to anything else, sometimes before she’d even heard them. Ray felt a flash of guilt when he realised he didn’t really care what the two women were arguing about. He should. His family’s past had lead them to this point but there were more pressing things to deal with.
“The past should be a slave to the present, not the other way round.” It was that child’s voice again. This time wearing a mask that looked like Lenka.
Martinez stuck his head round the door to say the chopper was still being prepped. “We’ll wait here,” Ray replied. “It’s as good a place as any.” He settled into a chair, resting his foot up on the map table. The movement tugged at the gossamer-thin threads of pain in his ankle.
“Will we? Won’t we?” those threads whispered. “Trust me, trust me not? Are we going to pull your ankle out from underneath you just when you need it most?”
His ankle was functional but numb. Whatever Stella had given him had done the trick. He hoped the drugs (or maybe it was just the belief the drugs worked that did it, he could imagine her saying) continued to work later that evening when they went back to the capital. And for Stella’s sake, they needed to go soon.
She was staring through a window. Beyond her, moonlight pinched the tips of the waves. The tall, confident, straight-backed woman Ray had rescued from an unwelcome suit in the Kickshaw looked like she was slowly collapsing into old age, being smashed between the hammer of fear and the anvil of helplessness. Her family’s now was more important than the Franklin family’s then. The then would always be there, but before long that now would also be gone.
And what of Brooke? (Her name came wrapped in the pulsing crimson that had echoed around the chambers and tunnels under the Donian Mountains. It was a name he had whispered into her ear as they lay trapped in the dust, sweat and lust that had consumed them above and within those mountains.) Lieutenant Karlyne Brooke of the 10th Legion, formerly of the Donian tribes: proud and humble, fierce and innocent, with hands that could be eye-wateringly tender. Stella’s family mattered. Brooke, if she was alive, mattered. Their future mattered. The past was buried for a reason. Maybe it should stay that way.
Vena’s voice cut through the chatter in his head. “I will tell you what I know, my dear, but it is not much more than unsubstantiated rumour.”
“Tell me now. As much as you know. Leave nothing out.” Rose grabbed Vena’s arm. The bags under Rose’s eyes were years deep. The fight within her was slowly corroding her away from the inside out. Kayle, his beret jammed down on his forehead so hard it scrunched the skin up into puckered lines, took a step back.
“Rose,” Ray said to himself. He’d tried calling her Mum, or Mother, earlier. It didn’t fit. That shoe had a stone in it. As juvenile as it may be, she had to earn back that title. Parenthood was a privilege, not a right, especially for those already with kids.
The women were huddled in a corner, their shadows thrown into caricatures on the wall map. Rose’s height advantage was lost by her conspiratorial hunch. The shadow was hemmed in by whispers and secrets. It aged her, cracking the mystique that had surrounded her throughout Ray’s childhood. It diminished her in the same way that Vena’s straight-backed, graceful shadow augmented her.
Fragments of their argument floated over.
No, the president didn’t suspect her sister’s involvement in the Resistance.
No, Vena hadn’t been followed.
Yes, she was sure.
No, they weren’t going to freshen the sea towers up anytime soon, why would they? They were going to let the wind and the salt have their way with them.
Yes, she was going to see her sister soon.
Yes, they were going to plan the extraction of Swann’s family carefully.
No, not tonight.
Yes, they had time.
No, you have to tell me the rumours now.
Yes, to that.
No, to this.
Rose snatched the envelope that Vena offered her and beckoned Kayle over. He strode towards them (within that stride Ray smelt the hint of a scamper) and bowed his head to join the secret war council being held in full view of the two people who it concerned the most: Ray and Stella.
Stella, dry-washing her hands, was waiting for the women and Kayle. Kayle, in turn, was waiting for the women. The expression on the Donian warrior’s face set Ray’s teeth on edge: respect masking subservience.
The botched rescue, Kayle’s expression, his mother hoarding secrets like squirrels hiding nuts in an eternal winter. Nothing had changed. There was a tortuous, slow-pulsing aneurysm within the Resistance that was dragging it under the waves, threatening to burst and drown itself in its own idealism. It was a long way from the hushed whispers traded on the corners of the capital’s streets, full of an equal mix of awe, hope and fear. Rose’s Resistance was an organisation sucking life out of a legend that was strutting around in trousers when it should still be in shorts.
The hopeful softening towards his mother hardened. The fight she had carried within her may be corroding her spirit, but her old habits were rusted shut.
“Rose,” he said.
Rose flapped a hand at him to be quiet.
“Rose.” The metal legs of his chair rasped on the floor.
“What now?”
Kayle’s eyes slid from mother to son and back again. Vena hid a smile behind a slender-knuckled fist.
“We leave now, Rose.”
“No. We need to plan it. Work out the best way. It’s too dangerous.”
“The longer we leave them, the worse our chances. You can sit here and ferment in the past, I’m going to get Stella her future back.”
“Oh, I like that. That’s very dramatic,” Vena said to Kayle in a stage whisper.
There was a flutter of wings and the stray fisher gull landed on the window. Head cocked to one side, one black eye poked out of its elegant rainbow feathers. The remains of a seagull were clamped in its beak.
“I’m going, too.” Stella’s voice wavered but held.
“No, it’ll be dangerous. We’ve spoken about this already. I’ll be more efficient on my own. I’ll take Martinez, he’s ex-10th Legion, he knows the drill. He can show me this safe house, they’re bound to have equipment there I can use. You’d be better off—”
“You’d better watch what you say,” Stella cut in, her voice ramrod straight. “I’ll let you open doors for me. I’ll accept that as chivalry over chauvinism. I will not let you get away with any more. The VP’s got my son and my husband. I’m going with you. You special forces teams always have a medic with you, I read that somewhere.”
“Not the same, Stella, those medics are legionnaires first.”
“Have you forgotten what I did for you, Rhys?”
The cold drenching that name didn’t reach the vicious heat behind her eyes. The subtle shifting of the sea tower stilled. The fisher gull pulled its beak out of the seagull’s belly. Glistening red strands slid to the sill as it watched the show unfolding.
Ray took Stella’s shoulders in his hands. “This is not a matter of chivalry. This is pure practicality. You need to stay here and look after Emily, your daughter.”
“We’ve been through this. We’ll take her, leave her in the safe house. She’s tired. She’ll sleep for hours.”
The fisher gull cawed. “And if it doesn’t all go well?” it seemed to ask.
“Who’s going to look after her?” Ray asked.
“Your mother can look after Em,” Stella said, the faintest of pouts on her lips. “She owes the world a crap-
ton of childcare.”
Rose stiffened as her role of principled Resistance leader was neatly remoulded to nanny.
“That’s not a debt I would want repaid just yet,” Ray said. “Rose doesn’t have a good track record with kids. Let her start on something smaller and less breakable first. Something that requires less attention: like a puppy, or a brick.” The fisher gull threw its head back and cawed shrieks of laughter. Rose’s face flushed. “If you stay here, Martinez and I will be faster. We’ll take Kayle and a few of the others.”
The room was filled by a guttural belly laugh. The fisher gull cawed its agreement, flipped its beak up to the sky and swallowed the remains of the sea gull’s wing. Feathers and red gobbets splattered onto the glass.
“Tino Martinez is a wonderful man,” Stella said once she had calmed down. “He has a sense of humour, loyalty and fair play that make up for a hundred of the so-called ‘real men’” — she hooked her fingers around the words — “that parade around the streets with their strap-on stubble and bubble muscles.” She grabbed Ray’s shoulders, squeezing them in a mirror image of his grip on her. “But Martinez has only one full leg. One well-aimed kick to his crutch and he’ll be hopping his way through this rescue. And your ankle and your back are being held up by the drugs that I gave you.” She smiled sweetly. “So, former Captain Franklin, exactly which bit of you being faster than me don’t I understand?” She turned to Rose. “I’ve been trapped in this tower for far too long. We leave now.”
That was the moment, Ray realised later, that he decided he was going to do something which would potentially make him an enemy for life.
24
AWT in EBT
Ray fanned the hammer of the antique pistol with the edge of his palm. Bullets thundered over the open water. Seagulls scattered. A fisher gull plummeted out of the moonlit sky. It snatched a bird out of the air in a rain of feathers. Settling on the tower opposite, it snapped the other bird’s neck with a quick jerk. The pistol made Ray feel sun and sand on his cheeks rather than sea and salt. He fought back the urge to spin it. The movement wouldn’t be the same without a broad-brimmed hat to tip back from his forehead with the muzzle.
