They sat in silence, with a warm wind carrying sounds and a slight sourness from the canal through Mary’s open window. The orchids were new, the paper open on her bed was that day’s issue. Someone was obviously looking after her.
“Anyway,” said Mary, into the silence. “Enough about me. Tell me about you. Are you married? What’s Tokyo like as a place to live? Do you have kids?”
There was no easy answer to any of those. So Kit told her about Neku instead. About how cos-play dressed and how his bar had been a drinking club for bozozoku. And how he’d finally worked out the reason he liked Tokyo so much was that everyone spent most of their time pretending to be someone else.
“You met this child on the street?”
“In a Roppongi doorway. I gave her coffee. She cried.”
“And now you’ve got her at the flat in London?”
“It’s not like that,” said Kit, explaining what it was like, as Mary listened intently or asked the occasional question, until she had what she needed to know.
“So you’re using this girl to repay a debt you owe me?”
Kit nodded.
“I can live with that,” she said.
The metal tub in Mary’s bathroom had clawed feet and stood in the middle of the room, on boards that had been sanded back to bare wood and then painted white, very crudely. A single curtain-less window looked up at sky.
“Not too hot,” said Mary, smiling when Kit tested the water with his elbow, as he’d once seen Yoshi do before bathing her nephew. Mary was far thinner than he remembered, her vertebrae sharp beneath his fingers as he soaped her back.
“Wash me thoroughly,” she said, kneeling up.
Kit did his best.
By the time he finished, the bath water was tepid and every inch of Mary’s body had been soaped and scrubbed clean. As a final gesture, he let the water drain away and used a hand showerhead to rinse her body. After that, he dried her carefully.
“Thank you,” she said. “I can’t persuade Sophie to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Too invasive,” said Mary. “We’re lovers,” she added, when Kit looked puzzled. “Well, we’re meant to be. It’s been a while…”
After he’d helped Mary back to bed, Kit spoke more about Neku and then about Tokyo, and he found himself telling her about the stand off at the building site in Roppongi. Somehow that led to him telling her about Yoshi and the fire, not really being married, and the night Neku killed a man.
“No one fights like that,” said Mary. “Unless it’s what they know.” Her voice was tired and her lips trembled, but she spoke with the certainty of someone facing death and refusing to look away. “She comes from where I come from,” Mary said, before Kit could ask how she knew. It was the only time he could remember her mentioning Kate’s profession.
“Ask yourself who really gains,” said Mary. “Ask yourself how many of the things you believe to be true are lies. Find out what really happened that night…”
“I’m sorry,” said Kit.
“Yes,” said Mary. “Me too.”
Neither was talking about her family, Japan, or the fact Mary was dying. “About the bath,” she said. “Don’t tell Sophie.”
“I won’t,” Kit promised. It was the last thing he said to her.
CHAPTER 58 — Nawa-no-ukiyo
She had betrayed herself, her family, and Luc d’Alambert, every one of these by accident. So much for Lady Neku to remember, so much to forget…
“How does that work?” Luc had asked, finding himself standing in High Strange, beside a recently regrown pod. He meant the fact that he was standing there at all.
“Who knows?” said Lady Neku.
One second they were in Schloss Omga, the next Luc was asking his question and Lady Neku was doing her best not to look smug. “I mean,” she said, “how does High Strange stay up and what makes sky sails change colour if the sun flares?”
“They’re made that way,” said Luc. “And we’re high enough above the ground to stay here.”
“No we’re not,” she said. “I’ve checked. We’d need to be at least three times this height to stay in orbit, and then we’d have to circle the planet.”
Luc smiled. “You really are strange,” he said.
Lady Neku sighed.
“I should go,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Lady Neku. “You should.” She watched him limp away, his yellow cloak tangling with his heels as he walked. His foot, his lopsided smile, that tic in his right eye—small problems. Lady Neku was pretty sure he’d have them fixed if she suggested it.
“It’s time you dressed,” said a voice in Lady Neku’s head.
“What’s the point?” she said. “I’m only going to take it all off again. I could always…”
“No,” said the voice. “You couldn’t.”
The cloak was black, the dress was black, as was her belt and the shoes decorated with tiny beads. A black-bladed dagger hid inside a black velvet scabbard, the leather of its retaining thongs being the obvious colour.
“And the others?” Lady Neku asked.
“Already dressed,” said the kami. “Going over the final arrangements. Do you want to see?”
Her brothers were in her mother’s study, at the southern tip of the spire. Amber walls like frozen honey, a steel throne and a trio of wooden stools set neatly around it. Lady Katchatka wore a dress cut from spiders’ silk, the light-swallowing kind she professed to despise.
The boys wore doublets and cloaks sewn with black pearls. Petro was alive, looking pale and unsteady on his seat, Nico and Antonio supporting him at each elbow, neither prepared to meet their mother’s eyes.
“You know what to do?” asked Lady Katchatka.
All three boys nodded.
“Nico moves first,” said Lady Katchatka. “Until then, everyone behaves.”
Petro got ready to protest.
“Nico does it,” she told him. “You’re weak as a baby and Antonio is too slow. We strike fast, and hard. With d’Alambert dead the cripple will be useless. Antonio can have him. After that, kill anyone you want.”
“And the ships?”
“Old men and children,” said Lady Katchatka. “We deny them air and food unless they surrender…” She smiled at Nico’s raised eyebrows. “All right,” she said. “We’ll deny it anyway.”
“What about Neku?” asked Petro, from a throat wet and barely formed.
“She’ll get over it,” Lady Katchatka said.
The marriage ceremony was simple, the bedding embarrassingly crude. Mostly in the thinness of the mattress, the hardness of the actual bed, and the wide-eyed enthusiasm of d’Alambert’s retainers. As a sop to Lady Neku’s modesty, Lord d’Alambert had allowed her a sheet. It came, almost inevitably, in a vile shade of yellow.
“We must talk,” said Lady Neku, as Luc slipped a robe from his shoulders and climbed self-consciously into bed beside her.
“Later,” he said. The boy was shaking, body taut as a karman wire.
“Now,” said Lady Neku, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck and drag him close enough to bury her face in his hair. One of the retainers started clapping, and Lady Neku heard Nico groan.
“It’s a trap,” she whispered.
Luc pulled back. “What is?”
Grabbing his hair, Lady Neku yanked him down again, to general laughter from her brothers and a sigh from Luc’s father. Only family were allowed close, retainers being kept at a decent distance by silken ropes.
“All of this,” whispered Lady Neku. “Stay next to me at the banquet, I’ll protect you.”
Startled eyes stared down at her. Luc wanted to demand answers, he wanted to scramble away. It was all Lady Neku could do to hold the boy in place.
“Whisper,” she said.
Luc leaned close and someone started clapping again. “What’s a trap?” he asked, turning his head as Lady Neku’s hands twisted into his hair and dragged his ear to her mouth.
“Everything,” she said. “All of it.”
“Why?”
Lady Neku met his eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve only just found out. But you’re in danger.”
“My father…”
Shaking her head, Lady Neku felt her face against his. “Too late,” she said. “It’ll be all I can do to save you.” A half dozen members of each family stood watching, a hundred servitors waited behind a silken rope. The boy clung to her, his body protected only by the sheet. Anyone could have killed him with a single thrust; she should be grateful her brothers had spared her that.
“We have to go through with this,” said Lady Neku.
Luc’s eyes widened. “I can’t.”
“Everyone’s watching,” she said. “You must.” If you don’t, thought Lady Neku, then Nico at least will know something is wrong and it will be much harder for me to protect you.
His lovemaking was angry and brutal, as if it was her fault everything had already begun to go wrong. This was High Strange, once called Katchatka Segment. What did he expect?
Lady Neku whimpered and sighed, closed her eyes, and clung to her new husband, burying her head in his hair. It was a command performance. So unexpected that she impressed even herself. When it was over, the face she presented to her family was streaked with tears. And the tears, at least, were real.
You did this, she told them, inside herself. You took away my friendship with Luc. You made him hate me.
Tradition allowed her to miss the banquet. In fact, tradition allowed her to hide her face from public sight for three days. Time for a new bride to live down the trauma of her public bedding. It was a d’Alambert family tradition. Lady Neku wasn’t remotely impressed by what it said about them.
“You’re sure you want to attend?” Lord d’Alambert stood with a cloak, ready to hide Lady Neku’s nakedness. A moon-faced servitor, moist-eyed in sympathy for the tears drying on her new mistress’s face, stood ready to escort Lady Neku to a waiting ship. “It would give you time to…”
Lady Neku smiled her sweetest smile. “I want to be with Luc,” she said, and all of the old man’s resistance crumbled.
The cloak he offered her was a faded shade of red, with slivers of amber sewn in patterns around the hem. It was lined with yellow silk and weighed so heavily that Lady Neku’s knees buckled as Lord d’Alambert draped it around her bare shoulders.
Having shown her mistress how to fasten the collar, the moon-faced servitor led Lady Neku to an alcove, so she could dress properly and compose herself. Of course I’m shaking, Lady Neku wanted to snarl. You’d shake if you knew what was about to happen.
“Leave me,” she demanded.
The servitor looked doubtful, which was interesting. Had the woman been from High Strange she’d barely have dared lift her eyes from the floor.
“I need time.”
Confusion, sympathy, and apologies…Lady Neku looked around the empty alcove and sighed. Struggling into her wedding dress, Lady Neku wrapped the ridiculous cloak around her shoulders and looked for the dagger she’d left under her folded clothes. It was gone.
“Oh great,” she said, just as Luc appeared in the doorway.
He blinked. A second later, Luc’s father was standing behind him, concern on his face. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Lady Neku, squaring her shoulders. It was only as she walked from the alcove to the candle-lit grandeur of the banquet that Lady Neku began to wonder how Luc’s anxiety had produced his father in the door behind him, with no words being exchanged. She should have paid that thought more attention.
The major domo had excelled itself. A white tablecloth spread the length of a table. Silver candle sticks and oil lamps flickered and gutted smokily in the breeze from a recycling unit. Overhead lights could have been used, and food could have been pulled from the Drexie boxes, but this was a banquet so fresh meat had been killed and old bottles had been opened.
Katchatka and d’Alambert, on the surface it was a triumph of diplomatic negotiation. Two families who had barely talked to each other in the time that anyone in the room had been alive now sat at the same table, preparing to celebrate their new alliance.
At one end sat Lady Katchatka, with Lord d’Alambert at the end opposite, in a chair of exactly equal size. Luc and Lady Neku were on d’Alambert’s right. Antonio, Petro, and Nico on their mother’s right, with Petro in the middle, so his brothers could support him discreetly, should Petro’s new body prove too weak to cope with the meal.
It was the seating that protocol demanded.
“Lady Neku,” said Lord d’Alambert, raising his glass. “Who will always have a place in our family.”
Raising her own glass, Lady Katchatka readied herself to make some equally facile reply and Lady Neku tensed, but all that happened was that her mother toasted Luc’s strength and intelligence, and lowered her glass again. One course drifted into two and then three, bottles of old wine emptied and were replaced, until the room began to blur slightly and Lady Neku forced herself to drink only water.
Could she have misunderstood?
The image of her mother and brothers in the Amber Study felt so real that Lady Neku was still wondering when her mother nodded to Nico. “If you would,” she said. “We should give Lord d’Alambert his present.”
Lurching to his feet, Nico staggered to a side table and grabbed what looked like a cushion. Only, when he returned, Lady Neku could see that the cushion supported a tiny battered-looking bowl.
“I understand,” said Lady Katchatka, “that you are interested in antiquity. This is the oldest artifact we possess. It is now yours.”
Nico put Yoshi’s bowl on the table in front of Lord d’Alambert. And in that moment, as the old man’s eyes fixed on fragile clay and Lady Neku began to rise from her seat, Nico struck, burying his dagger deep into Lord d’Alambert’s heart.
At least, that was what was meant to happen. What Lady Neku thought had happened.
Only the old man took the blade through his wrist, wrenching the dagger from Nico’s grasp with a single twist of his injured arm. From the expression on Lord d’Alambert’s face he’d already moved beyond pain.
And as Antonio cried out and Petro tried to stand, Nico died, his chest opened in a single slash that sprayed d’Alambert with blood. It was a miracle the old man could see to reach for Nico’s heart.
Lord d’Alambert killed Antonio with a single throw, catching him below the jaw and returning him to his seat. Petro died at the hands of Luc, who simply leaned across the table to slit the throat of the man opposite. Petro being too weak, drunk, or both to defend himself.
Sex and killing sounded the same, Lady Neku realised. All wet sucking and the slurp of broken vacuum. It even smelled the same, salt and sweet and shitty enough to leave her queasy.
“Wait,” she shouted, when Luc moved towards the final chair.
“She betrayed you,” he said. “She traded you for a chance to kill my father. Why should she live?”
Because she’s still my mother.
“How did you find out?” asked Lady Katchatka, with the calm of someone already dead.
“Your daughter told us,” said Luc.
Maybe he meant to be cruel, or perhaps he simply meant to tell the truth. Lady Neku watched her mother’s composure falter. “Wonderful,” Lady Katchatka said. “Betrayed by the family idiot. How did she find out?”
“A kami told me,” said Lady Neku.
“AIs don’t…” Cold eyes fixed on the girl. “I should have drowned you at birth,” said Lady Katchatka. “Make it quick,” she told Luc, her daughter already forgotten. “Quick and clean.”
“Was that the death you intended to give us?” The voice behind Luc was thin with the pain of a skewered wrist.
“Yes,” said Lady Katchatka. “It was.”
The corridor was empty, the statues silent, dust drifted in tiny eddies across the floor. It was cooler than Lady Neku remembered, which had to be the cause o
f her constant shivering.
“Go on,” she said, as she spun a handle. “Open.” But the airlock door in front of her remained steadfastly closed. “Just open,” said Lady Neku. “How hard can that be?”
“It’ll kill you,” High Strange said.
“That’s fine with me.”
“And everyone else in the habitat.”
“Even better,” said Lady Neku, twisting the handle. When the great metal ring jammed in one direction, she reversed the spin, until it jammed in that direction as well. “Open,” she demanded, dashing tears from her eyes. “Stop fucking me around.”
The wound in her shoulder looked bad, but the truth was Luc had pulled his blow the moment Lady Neku threw herself in front of Lady Katchatka. Bleeding to death would take longer than Lady Neku was prepared to wait, assuming it was possible at all.
“Please,” she said. “Just open this door for me.”
“There are a hundred and thirty-five people on the habitat.”
“No there aren’t,” said Lady Neku.
The voice gave her a list. It was right, of course, provided you counted servitors and retainers. She stood in the duct below the audience chamber, reached by the helix of stairs behind the unicorn. No one had seen her pull aside the tapestry and hide herself; they were all too busy watching Lady Katchatka die.
“Open,” demanded Lady Neku, more to banish this thought than any real belief High Strange might listen.
“And if I do?” it said.
“We die,” said Lady Neku.
“That’s what you want?”
Lady Neku nodded her head.
“Say it,” the voice said. “Name the people you think should die.”
“I don’t know all their names,” said Lady Neku crossly, as she rubbed knuckles into her eyes and folded her cloak tight, to hide the sight of blood which was beginning to make her feel sick.
“So you’re saying you want people killed, but you don’t actually know their names?”
Yes, that is exactly…well. Lady Neku thought about it. Maybe not exactly.
End of the World Blues Page 32
