by Natasha Ngan
Akhezo nodded, averting his eyes. Cambridge walked past them as though nothing had happened and disappeared into the boat.
Domino pressed his mouth to Akhezo’s ear. His breath was hot and sour. ‘You’re to hide yourself near enough to see what’s going on between Cambridge and the Council member, remember. Not to hear,’ he added in a growl. ‘Just close enough to see. The Council member might have a spy of his own, so don’t draw any attention to yourself. If you think Cambridge is in danger, move closer to check, but do not act rashly unless it is absolutely necessary.’ He let go of Akhezo’s mouth. ‘Got all that?’
‘Yes, Domino.’
‘Right. Well, I’ll be waiting at the Nasir. It’s a cafe in that little arcade down there.’ Domino rubbed his hands together and licked his cracked lips. ‘They have a rum baklava I’m more than partial to. If all goes well on the boat, maybe we can get you one, ey?’
Akhezo raised his eyebrows. ‘Bakla-what?’
‘Ah, never mind, boy.’
After a quick scowl at Domino’s retreating back, Akhezo crossed the walkway that led from the dock to the boat. Giddy shisha scents filled the air. He made his way further into the boat, searching for Cambridge. The place was packed. Every inch of the blackened floors occupied by smokers. Some stood round tall shisha poles with multiple smoking funnels, while others sat on cushions next to bulbous pipes secured to the floor with metal, leaf-shaped cases. The pots of water at the base of each shisha bubbled noisily. Ornately carved lanterns hung from the walls, their coloured windows giving the whole place a gaudy, underwater feel, and the light glancing and shimmering off the mosaic-tiled walls and ceiling was mesmerising.
Akhezo went up to the boat’s top deck. A breeze brushed through the smoke-clouds hanging over it, cool and refreshing. He spotted Cambridge immediately at the back of the boat, sitting on a cushion in front of one of the flower-shaped shisha pots. Cambridge’s hood was low over his face. Opposite him sat – Akhezo presumed – the Council member Cambridge was meeting with. He was a thin young man with a shaved head that gleamed in the moonlight.
Akhezo took place at a shisha stand a few metres away. He tried to do as he’d been told, watching Cambridge and the Council member out of the corner of his eyes, but he’d never had a lot of patience. After just a few minutes, he found himself getting restless. He wondered what they were saying. Why not go listen? he thought. After all, I’m Cambridge’s personal assistant now. He’s gonna tell me what happened anyway.
Akhezo stepped off his stool. Edging round a group of chatting smokers, he crept towards an unused shisha pot behind Cambridge and crouched in the shadow of one of its large metal leaves.
Cambridge’s voice was just audible over the noisy bubbling of the shisha pot. ‘You can check on your birthchip trackers – their names are Silver and Butterfly. All their ID information is there.’
A pause, then a soft voice belonging to the shaven-headed young man from the Council. ‘We thought as much. I will have to confirm it for myself before we can finalise your payment, however.’
A group of smokers nearby burst into laughter and Akhezo missed the next part of the conversation. When they settled down he heard the Council member speaking again.
‘You don’t want money for this exchange?’ There was a tone of surprise in his voice.
‘No,’ replied Cambridge. ‘It’s, ah, slightly unusual, I understand. But this sort of information, if it got out to others … I thought you’d appreciate my secrecy in coming straight to you.’
‘Of course. What is it then that you want?’
‘Materials,’ said Cambridge simply.
Akhezo felt disappointed by this answer. He’d expected something exciting, something important. But Cambridge just wanted a bunch of dumb materials? For what, patching up holes in the skykungs or building new walkways? Those sorts of things were usually stolen or bought by the Pigeons’ salvage teams.
‘I would’ve thought a Limpets gang-leader has access to any materials he wants,’ the Council member said.
‘Yes,’ replied Cambridge. ‘But, not in the quantity we need.’
‘I see. What is this material, then?’
His heart thudding, Akhezo leant forward, eager to hear Cambridge’s answer –
A hand grasped the back of his T-shirt.
‘Hey!’ he cried as he was lifted into the air, forgetting he was meant to be undercover.
Cambridge and the Council member looked round at his shout. Akhezo caught the hard-edged look in the shaven-headed Council member’s eyes before he was spun in mid-air and found himself face to face with an enormous woman. Her dark skin was adorned with gold tattoos. Her bulbous lips, painted a gaudy purple, stretched into a smile.
‘Calpol!’ The woman held Akhezo out for another woman wobbling towards them. She looked almost identical to the one holding him, but instead of purple her lips were painted orange. ‘Look what I’ve found!’
‘Oh, Lemsip, my dear,’ simpered the woman in a shrilly voice, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘A street urchin, by the looks of it.’
These must be the fat wives Domino told me ’bout, Akhezo thought, glaring at them. He’s right – they are fat. They look like they’ve eaten their own husbands.
‘A street urchin on the finest shisha boat in all Neo?’ said the one with purple lips. ‘We simply cannot have that!’
The women bristled, their chins wobbling in agreement.
‘You know what we do with street urchins, don’t you, my dear Calpol?’
‘Of course, dear Lemsip!’ The orange-lipped one lunged towards Akhezo, her fat lips stretched in a nasty smile. ‘We throw them overboard!’ She trilled the last word, grabbing the boy from the other woman and wobbling to the side of the boat.
Akhezo squirmed in her arms, but her fingers were tight, pinchy things, and before he knew it he was being held over the side. The last thing he saw was the glassy black water of the river below before he was thrown into it, splashing and screaming and cursing, and wishing he’d learnt how to swim.
16
Butterfly’s Ghosts
Midnight, the Outside. Voices scratched in the still and darkness of the night.
‘Careful. Stay low.’
‘Do you think they’re asleep? Looks like it. That boy’s snoring.’
‘Yes, it seems so. Keep your voice down, we don’t want to wake them. Search the ground for anything they’ve got with them. Take away any weapons.’
Butterfly stirred, waking from a dreamless sleep. He knew instantly there were people around him. He felt rather than saw their shapes in the darkness, and he heard a man with the lilting accent of Eastern Mainlanders say, ‘If she has a knife, he might have one too.’
Butterfly’s hand went straight to the knife he’d slid into the belt of his jumpsuit before going to sleep. He glanced over to where Silver lay beside him. It looked like she was asleep, but then she opened her eyes. In the moonlight, the whites shone bright and glassy. Her eyes flicked to the side, towards where the voices were coming from, and Butterfly gave a tiny nod. He knew exactly what she meant.
The next moment, the two of them sprang to their feet. Butterfly brandished his knife as Silver grabbed one of the people, closing her arm around their neck, a knife also clutched in her other hand. There was scuffling as the other person backed to the opposite side of the pit, then a click. Light speared the darkness.
‘Wait. Please!’ shouted the man across from them in the Eastern Mainland accent Butterfly had heard earlier. He was tall, a curly beard covering half his face, and had dark, deep-set, intelligent eyes. He levelled the torch as Butterfly rounded on him. ‘We are not here to harm you.’
‘Then why are you taking our weapons?’ growled Butterfly, squinting against the torchlight.
The girl Silver had locked under one arm spoke. ‘Let me go. We can explain.’ She was young, just ten or eleven, but there was a hardness in her voice that made her seem mature beyond her years. Long red hair curled round a
soft, pretty face.
Butterfly knew he wouldn’t be able to hurt her. ‘Let her go,’ he said to Silver.
As soon as she was free, the girl scampered over to the man on the other side of the pit. He bent down, curling an arm round her.
‘Thank you,’ he said, looking up at them. He hesitated. ‘I have to ask – are you from Neo?’
‘Yes,’ said Butterfly.
‘Then are you here to kill us?’
Silver’s sharp intake of breath was loud in the quiet of the night. Butterfly felt his own heart clench.
‘No,’ he answered quietly.
The girl edged forward, tugging on the man’s hand. ‘I think they’re telling the truth, Yasir. They don’t have the face-mask things and they only have knives. No guns or anything.’
The man nodded. ‘But we can never be too sure.’ He gestured towards Butterfly and Silver. ‘Your clothes remind us of them.’
‘We’re not here to kill you,’ said Silver, stepping up. ‘Or anything like that. We just want to find my parents. They were taken from Neo about a week ago. Neo-Babel, I mean. The city. Have you heard anything about them, or seen anyone come through here?’
‘A few new villagers have arrived in the last week,’ said the man. ‘But they are Mainlanders. I wouldn’t have thought –’
‘No,’ she said quickly, shaking her head. ‘It’s not them.’
‘Well, perhaps they know something,’ the man suggested.
Silver turned to Butterfly, her eyes bright with hope. ‘It’s worth asking,’ she whispered. She turned back to the man. ‘Could you take us to them?’
He seemed to think about it for a moment before nodding. ‘Of course.’ He bowed curtly. ‘My name is Yasir. This is Emeli.’
Silver and Butterfly gave them their names, returning Yasir’s bow.
‘Wait,’ said Emeli. ‘Did you say Butterfly?’
Butterfly nodded. ‘It’s a little unusual.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s just … my big brother was called Butterfly. But we left him in Neo when I was a baby.’
Coldness like a fist of ice clenched Butterfly’s stomach. He stepped back, his eyes fixed on the girl. Red hair, ten or eleven years old, and a name, a name he had forced himself to forget.
It can’t be.
When Yasir had said the girl was called Emeli, he hadn’t given it a second thought. It was a fairly common Mainland name. But as he took in her appearance, the baby in his dreams, in his memory, shifted and grew, turning into the beautiful little girl in front of him.
‘Emeli,’ Butterfly whispered. ‘Emeli.’
The girl turned to Yasir. ‘He’s acting weird.’
‘Emeli,’ Butterfly said again.
Silver, who had been watching the exchange with a confused look on her face, suddenly clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my gods,’ she breathed. ‘No, it can’t be. She’s … she’s got to be a ghost.’
The girl put her hands on her hips, looking indignant. ‘I’m definitely not a ghost!’
‘Emeli,’ said Butterfly, taking a tentative step towards her. ‘What are your parents’ names? Can you tell me?’
The girl looked back at him, her eyes widening. She twisted her hands together, shifting uncomfortably. Her voice was quiet when she finally answered, but Butterfly still heard what she said as though she had whispered it right into his ear. ‘My father, he … he died a few months ago. But my mother’s name is Eleanor. We call her Leanor.’
It was as though everything else in the world had fallen away. Butterfly stared at her, unable to process what was happening, and felt a dropping sensation in his stomach. ‘Leanor,’ he whispered. ‘Mum.’
And then he fell backwards, spinning into black.
When he came to, Butterfly felt the warmth of blankets and the softness of a mattress beneath him. The air was sweet with a strangely familiar floral fragrance. A patch of coolness ran across his forehead, and he lifted a hand to feel a wet towel someone had placed there.
‘You’re awake, then.’
He opened his eyes.
The ghost of his mother sat beside the bed. She looked just as he remembered; milky skin, a bob of red hair curling down into large, clever blue eyes. A round chin that curved like the underside of the moon.
‘You’re dead,’ he said.
The ghost smiled, and her eyes filled with tears. They trembled in the tender yellow light of the lantern hanging from the ceiling. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, sweetheart, I’m not.’
It took Butterfly a long time to process what his mother told him. He had spent ten years believing his family were dead. He’d been to their funeral, seen the blast of the explosion bursting from the condominium, felt its heat on his face. He couldn’t help thinking of his mother and sister as ghosts, even though they were here in this village, alive.
By the time he’d got over the initial shock of it all, the day was full and bright, honeyed light streaming in through the window above him where he sat on the bed. His mother sat beside him. She had spidery lines around her eyes now and had lost weight, but otherwise she was exactly as he remembered.
‘So someone came to warn you about the bomb?’ Butterfly asked.
He was looking down at his mother’s hand lying atop his. The gold wedding band round her wrist was cold on his skin. It made him think of his father, and he was sad that he’d not had the chance to meet him again, that he’d just missed him by a few months. But he’d spent so many years believing his father was dead that it didn’t hurt too much now to keep thinking of him that way.
‘Yes,’ Leanor replied. ‘Just after you left. A young boy, no more than thirteen. Walked straight into the flat as though it was his own and told us we had to leave immediately.’
‘And you believed him?’
She nodded. ‘Your father knew who he was, though he didn’t say at the time. He just looked at me with Emeli sleeping in my arms and said we should follow the boy.’
‘But where did you go?’ Butterfly shook his head. ‘I saw the explosion. I felt it.’
Leanor squeezed his hand. ‘Not far. We’d only reached the first floor when it happened. The boy led us out a backdoor and down a staircase to the ground. We escaped across the gardens. After that, he gave us some money and told us to find someone called Little Mae in the Limpets. He said she’d help us leave Neo.’
‘And that’s it?’ asked Butterfly, his voice rising as he felt a twist of anger. ‘You just left? You didn’t want to take me with you? You didn’t want to say goodbye? I’ve spent the last ten years thinking my whole family was burnt to ashes.’
‘Oh, my caterpillar boy,’ Leanor whispered.
Butterfly’s stomach tightened. Caterpillar boy was the nickname his parents had given him when they’d been informed of the Council’s plan to give Butterfly wings. No one had called him that in ten years. Even Silver, who’d used the nickname when she was younger, had stopped after the explosion.
‘You have every right to be angry with me, sweetheart,’ said his mother, taking his hands in hers. ‘I was angry for years. I kept thinking there must have been a way we could’ve taken you with us, or at least told you we were alive.’ She brushed his cheek. ‘But we couldn’t have endangered you. We thought that if we tried to come back for you, the Council would kill you. As long as we knew you were alive –’
‘But how? How could you know?’
Leanor smiled. She reached into the pocket of her dress and brought out a thin object with a red dot glowing in its centre. Butterfly recognised it at once as a birthchip charm. They were rudimentary trackers, showing only whether the birthchip linked to the charm was still activated; that the person whose birthchip it tracked was still alive. Young couples in the city often wore each other’s tracker on chains around their necks.
‘Where did you get it?’ he asked.
Birthchip charms weren’t easy items to obtain. You had to apply directly to the Council with a request, or look to shady street sel
lers for cheap imitations that the majority of the time were just ordinary lights. But this one had lasted ten years. It had to be a Council-supplied one.
‘The boy who saved us from the explosion gave it to us.’
Butterfly looked up. ‘You said Dad knew who he was?’
Leanor nodded, reaching out and squeezing Butterfly’s hands. ‘It was your Elite senior, sweetheart. It was –’
‘Cobe,’ breathed Silver. ‘Cobe.’
Butterfly and Silver were walking away from the village, towards the dark line of trees that ringed the clearing. Butterfly was sweating in his Elite uniform under the midday sun, but he had needed to get away from the village quickly. He couldn’t spend one more second there. He felt terrible that he couldn’t simply accept his mother and sister’s existence with the happiness the occasion deserved, but it felt too strange talking to them, their white skin unblemished by fire-stains, their bodies unbroken and healthy. And finding out about Cobe’s involvement in their escape had just made him feel worse.
‘That night on the rooftop, he said that he knew Little Mae had helped someone escape before,’ said Silver. ‘I can’t believe it was your family.’
‘He never told me,’ Butterfly said coldly.
She looked at him. ‘You’re angry with him?’
Butterfly avoided her eyes, walking on in silence. When they passed into the shade of the forest, he stopped abruptly. He felt that if he took just one more step he’d explode. He pressed his head against the cool bark of a nearby tree, breathing deeply.
‘Cobe saved your family’s lives!’ Silver said behind him. ‘He –’
Butterfly spun round. ‘He knew, Silver! He knew that my parents were alive, and he didn’t tell me. All those years thinking my family was dead, and he could’ve stopped it. Stopped the pain.’
‘Butterfly, he –’
‘He what?’ Butterfly let out a frustrated growl. ‘Cobe could’ve told me at any point. And he knew about the Council!’
Silver blinked. ‘What about them?’
‘They set up the explosion,’ explained Butterfly dully. ‘Mum told me. Apparently my dad had been told some top-secret information about the Council, and he’d warned them about it. He’d thought the person had been lying about the things they’d told him. Can you believe it? He’d wanted to warn the Council. But turns out it was all true, and they couldn’t have Dad knowing about it and risk him telling other people.’
