‘A coup against what? Against a man who’s been dead for 200 years, if he was ever alive? Against a pornocracy? There’s no etat to have a coup against. There’s no government to overthrow.’
‘Those bastards down there have machine guns!’
‘And what would we have done without them, with just the officers and the displaced and a few fat old shopkeepers behind us? Stand in the streets and recite poetry until the city changes shape to keep up?’
For a moment, she imagined that working.
‘Red, listen to me. Prospero isn’t going to let himself be absorbed like Arkadin was, like all the other failures and losers. We have to show that we have a greater force backing us up. They’re my Round Table, my A-Team, my Holy Templars. Those men out there are North Americans and South Africans, British, European, Arabs, Australians, Israelis, Chinese –’
‘Mercenaries.’
‘Yes, mercenaries, but they represent the world. And no-one is going to get hurt.’
‘There are men with guns. People get hurt when there are men with guns. That’s what men with guns do, that’s what they’re for.’
‘Only if the worst comes to the worst.’
‘Okay, okay, if I accept that – which I don’t – there are how many of them? Fewer than 20. That’s not a superior force in a city this size. So that’s the worst of both worlds – you’ve just made a stupid threat you can’t back up. I don’t believe this! Do you think I would have wanted to come here if I’d known it was going to lead to this?’
Xan removed his mask and tossed it down on the corridor floor. Smiling, he was smiling. He was soft-voiced: ‘There’s another half dozen helicopters arriving tomorrow. That should quell any resistance. Prospero is bigger than you. I warned you of that.’
‘And who’s paying for Prospero?’
‘Your people and their friends. It’s an investment to them. It’s not even that. There’s enough cheap military surplus on the market, ex-Soviet, ex-American, from all the fallen empires, and these soldiers are the ancient mariners of the modern world.’ He snatched a look behind him, but his Templar Knights hadn’t followed. They were lower and deeper in the clubhouse, being settled into quarters he’d set aside secretly for this purpose. ‘This is marvellous. When I was a boy, I wanted to go exploring and end up as the ruler of a magic kingdom in the middle of nowhere. This is a dream come true.’
‘I’m not going to sleep tonight,’ Kay said.
‘You’re not,’ Xan replied, certainly.
Kay still wore her immobile cat-face. Keeping herself hidden and her expressions private seemed sensible. It insulated Xan from her anger but also from her fear. The physical terror inspired by the helicopter had been small and uncomplicated; now events seemed to be running out of her control, and that was genuinely frightening. Xan reached out and tickled her fake fur under the chin.
‘I know you,’ she told him. They’d reached the door to his quarters. He didn’t answer her straight away but gestured her through. The lights came on after her. This room was gaslit and the scent reminded her of petrol. This room was a firetrap, a gas-leak risk; she didn’t like the odds of sleeping in this room. She didn’t expect that Xan would let her leave. He was, after all, prince of this world now, even if that world didn’t know it yet.
‘You know me?’ Xan’s smooth voice mocked her. ‘Who am I?’
A dragon’s head lay waiting for them on the bed. Xan picked it up curiously, weighing it in his hands as if he was pondering wearing it as a crown, but the permanent smile flicked into boredom and he discarded it. Kay moved it carefully into a corner, turning its eyes towards the wall so it couldn’t watch them. It was light, foam rubber with a lizard-flesh finish, designed to cover the whole head. She couldn’t see where the eyes went, or the air.
‘When I was a very young girl,’ she told him, ‘I saw a car crash in the woods near where I lived. Fatal, but you know that. I wasn’t hurt, but it made an impression on me.’
‘That’s surprising. Nothing ever gets through to you. They think you’re cold, the girls in the office. They think you’re a robot.’ Again he tickled her under the chin. His other hand circled her face, fingers stroking her hair and the line of exposed skin. ‘You’re not cold,’ he said. ‘Unflappable, maybe.’
She gave a brusque nod and resumed her story. He took her hands and led her to the bed. She didn’t resist. She wasn’t sure when she would start resisting, if at all. All his charm was working on her and all his passion. I’m a robot, she thought, I’m cold. ‘I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me. It was the first big thing ever to happen in my life. For a long time, I thought I was alone there, but I wasn’t. You were there.’
‘I was?’
‘You were. There was a boy. I didn’t know him, but he was there and he saw it all. And that was you.’
‘You can’t be sure of that. What if I said I didn’t remember?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I know. I remember you very clearly. I see him in you. The way he looked and moved, that’s you, that’s what you looked like back then. It’s you.’
‘I wasn’t there.’ He was still humouring her. He sat on the bed, her hands still tight in his, but he waited before pulling. He wanted her to join him.
‘That’s the strange thing. You weren’t. You’re there in all my memories, but I don’t think you were there at the time. And the funny thing is, you weren’t in those memories until I came to Candida.’
He snorted. ‘You’ve lost me,’ he said, and released her hands so he could stroke her stomach and thighs through the fabric of her dress. She was smiling under the mask, imitating him, his cruel amusement.
‘A friend of mine told me that dreams are true here. She has a funny way of putting things, but when I look at you, I think, maybe that’s true. Maybe I dreamed you, and because I dreamed you, Candida brought you to life. You’re everything I want and everything I want to be. You’re my fantasy. You’re me.’
‘You’re mad,’ he said, lightly. She would have said the same, in his position.
‘You know I’m not mad.’
‘This city’s getting to you. We caught you just in time.’
Her fingers were folded comfortably below her navel, where the city had got her, where the fox had spilled his city-seed, where unthinkingly she had made her choice and picked her colours of loyalty.
Maybe it’s the other way round and I’m your dream, though I don’t feel like that’s true. Who’d dream me up? I’m not the product of your imagination, Xan.
She said all that. The sound of gunfire outside the door hid every word. Then screams – fury – and a bellowing chorus of gruff Afrikaans and other languages Kay knew not at all.
Xan turned away from her, perturbed not shocked, and went to the door. Out of his sight, she crumpled back onto the bed; there was a paralysed moment when she couldn’t breathe or think, when the fear was like a physical pain through her body.
‘You can come out,’ Xan called blandly. ‘It’s safe.’
He hadn’t seen her. She composed herself, gave herself a moment of independence to catch her breath, and ventured out after him into the passage.
It was impossibly full of bodies, most still living. She smelled meat, she smelled butcher-shop blood. Unmasked heads turned as she emerged; officers in evening dress, paramilitaries in sand-grey near-uniforms. They stared at her as though she was the real spectacle here, as if she was mildly less dull than anything else to hand. The blank walls were lined with a staccato of bullet holes – join the dots – and one was smeared with blood, a zigzagging trail sinking down the wall to the dead man. The mercenary had his hands clamped over the wound on his neck, struggling at his dying moment to keep the blood in. There was a large needle at his feet, a thin sliver, red all the way along its length. The rest of his blood had washed down the dress of a t
iny figure now struggling in the grip of three of his colleagues: the moon, the moon covered in dense green forest.
Kay recognised her through the mask. It took all her willpower to stay silent. She shrank back into the jamb, into the shadow of the cat.
Shit.
‘The witch,’ one of the mercenaries ventured, in halting, embarrassed English. ‘She come to kill you. She kill him with a stick, like a pig.’ He sounded vaguely ashamed of this admission. Xan reached for the moon’s false face, pulled it away and took her by the chin. She kicked and shrilled at him, but his men held her fast.
‘Tomorrow,’ he told her, ‘this will be a truly free city again. It will be free of people like you, and the wearing of your colours will be outlawed.’
Azure sprayed him with spit from her puckered mouth. He didn’t react.
‘We’ll take the witch somewhere quiet,’ he snapped. ‘Follow me.’ He threw an unreadable expression at Kay; grim, serious, but still the bastard kept smiling. He led a procession away, his prisoner still thrashing in the arms of her guards. Kay shrank into herself as they went past, hiding from Azure’s fury. The passage emptied as quickly as it must have filled, leaving Kay almost alone. The corpse watched her blankly from across the way, his empty eyes bulging in surprise at being killed in such a stupid way by such a tiny and pathetic human, by a child. The fresh smile across his throat was laughing.
Kay put her hands to her face, to cover it deeper. That was no good; they were shaking.
Azure.
I’d do anything to stop them, she had said, nights before. Trust me. I’d kill them.
One of Xan’s followers remained at the scene, not a mercenary but a guest, one of the officers. He stripped off his jacket and lay it inadequately over the face and shoulders of the dead man. Then he stood there idly, shivering in his shirtsleeves. He licked his lips under his mask, waiting for words that wouldn’t come. He noticed Kay slowly, and by now she was calm enough and steady enough to talk.
‘What will he do to her?’ she asked.
The fox shrugged. ‘What would you do?’
Chapter Seven: Riders on the Storm
‘When I was at school,’ Xan said, ‘there was a girl who claimed she used to be a boy until a wizard kidnapped her, locked her in a tower and cut off her dick. As you do.’
We must have gone to the same school.
Because that was me. I was the girl who told that story, and it was nonsense; a silly, meaningless, spur-of-the-moment invention meant to impress or frighten the other bored kids in my class. The idea that Xan is someone I dreamed up, someone Candida brought to life out of my dreams, is a piece of the same daft nonsense. And yet –
She tried to think like Xan, to imagine what it was like to walk around in his skin, as if he really was a cast-off part of her. She tried not to close her eyes, for fear that she would sleep and dream, and that would make it true. She was afraid for Azure, and afraid that she would dream of terrible things. Her eyelids were heavy and they drifted shut of their own weary accord, and she stayed ferociously awake, not dreaming, imagining.
She imagined herself growing younger and male, becoming the boy watching the car crash from the verge, watching her girl-self back through the flames. Lust flared in the heart of Kay-the-boy, fuelled by the fire and Kay-the-girl’s submerged fear. He ran from her, afraid she would reject him if she recognised him. He would be her drive, her ambition, her will to power. He would ride her life. He would master her, and through her, he would master her world.
A silly, meaningless story.
Somewhere in this building is a sealed door, and Xan is behind it and Azure with him.
Kay didn’t know what to do. The stress of the party and its aftermath had left a knot in her chest, thumping next to her heart and half as big. The clubhouse had emptied, leaving its greying rooms and greying corridors strung with party-remains, broken glass, trails of crumbs, dirt everywhere she looked. She wondered who was going to clean up the mess. She could do it herself in the morning. She would go down on her knees and scrub if she had to. Not tonight though, not tonight; she was too tired; there was nothing she could do.
She wouldn’t sleep. Xan had been right about that. Somewhere he had Azure trapped and helpless. Azure had killed a man with a needle. A small army, hidden in rooms around her, was planning to take the city by force. These facts made no sense. They didn’t belong in Kay’s universe. They were eruptions from another, stranger world. She went to her old office, found a kettle and made a pot of tea.
The fox loped after her and stood at the door until she asked him in. She kept him waiting, not maliciously. As she made the tea, he undid the complicated knots of her mask and helped her out of it. She returned the favour. They left their faces on the floor.
‘It’s not a real cat,’ the former fox corrected her, ‘or a real fox, for that matter. They’re what we’d look like, if we went feral. Not real animals at all.’
‘Milk?’ she asked, blandly. ‘Sugar?’
‘Do you think I’m talking rubbish?’
‘I preferred it when you didn’t talk at all.’
‘That’s what I was thinking about you. No, you’re okay. She’s been a funny night.’
‘Ha,’ she said, dryly, ‘ha.’
Their masks and costumes were lost property. Their party clothes were labelled with the names of tailors – some famous – from the world beyond Candida. They must have drifted in on the invisible current, like the people, like all the Appeared. Kay imagined the city as a Kraken with a vast open maw, swallowing up all the cargo and oddments caught by its slipstream. Its belly must be full of floating suitcases, stuffed not just with clothes but masks, food and money, anything that could be taken and hoarded. That was the secret of Xan’s success, she realised: knowing what to collect. He was a Jonah or a Gepetto in the belly of the whale, poling his boat across an acid-lake stomach and plucking out the choicest items with his gaff.
She concentrated on making the tea, two mugs. They sat on either side of her desk, the cat and the fox, Kay and Esteban, staring at each other across the gap, through bleary eyes under wan electric light. His sperm was dying cold and lifeless in her uterus, no targets presented, no targets hit, but still a connection made, an irreversible decision taken. His face, which she’d remembered as being boyish and petulant, was now waxy, as if it were just another mask under the foxskin.
‘So, Captain …’
‘Milo.’
‘Milo. What do you get for killing someone in Candida?’
‘Ostracised.’ He had heavy eyes, too dusty to be joking. He shrugged. ‘It depends, really. The law is … inconsistent.’
‘You surprise me.’
‘We never thought we were perfect. Even Doctor Arkadin didn’t aim that high. I don’t know how we’ll treat Azure.’
‘Why not?’
‘Two things.’ He paused. ‘No, three things. It’s the third that bugs me. First, she’s from the old free house, and they’ll want to sort out their own without interference from the city. Second –’ and he paused then, with his eyes closed, accounting for something in his head or his conscience. ‘Second, this is an invasion, and technically she did what you might call defence of the realm.’
‘She’s not an officer.’
‘So? She’s voladora. Third reason, them-out-there have got her. Whatever happens to her next is up to them. They’ve taken the decision out of our hands.’ He took a mouthful of tea and swallowed. She watched his face for signs of distaste. She didn’t drink from her own mug. The rituals of making the tea were comfort enough.
‘You know what I wish?’ Esteban asked, once his mouth was empty.
‘What?’
‘That I’d never taken her bloody bike for that bloody duel. Then she wouldn’t be mixed up in this. It’d just be you and me now. I could cope
with that. She wouldn’t be in trouble. Everything would be simpler. Do you think we could stage a rescue?’
‘Grow up.’
‘I don’t mean charging in like the three musketeers. Two musketeers. We can still do something without getting ourselves killed. You have influence with these people. You could at least make sure she’s being treated properly.’
‘You have influence too.’
‘Not as much as you. Even the officers who’ve been in on this from the start, even they … hah! They thought we were getting into power. Now we’re a spare wheel. We’ll be lucky if that lot leave us alive at the end of it all. You’ll have a fight on your hands, you know? Ernesto de Broca, you remember him? He’s a tosser, but he’s a good man. He’ll be against you. He’ll get organised. You’ll have resistance, you’ll have a war in the streets and you don’t have numbers on your side.’
‘Six more helicopters coming in tomorrow,’ Kay told him, flatline.
‘Shit.’ Esteban swatted his mug aside. It toppled over, upending its contents on the surface where Kay had once stacked the Prospero reports. That would be a huge, sticky stain in the morning, its outline irregular and infinitely complex, a fractal.
‘Do you have a smoke?’ she asked. He produced a half-empty packet from the lining of his coat – more cargo – selected one of the tubes carefully and placed it in Kay’s waiting mouth. It took him longer to find a lighter, and he filled the gap with pointless smalltalk.
‘This is how the CIA were going to assassinate Castro. They were full of crazy shit. They used to advertise for ideas in the back of superhero comics. Exploding cigars! Why not wait? All that tobacco’s going to kill him stone dead in the end. The fact of the matter is, if you hold on long enough, most people are going to die anyway. Murderers are just too impatient. Relax.’
When he chattered, his voice became reedy and confused, almost pleading with her to find the hidden sense. She wouldn’t have tolerated it if she’d been more alert, but she was at a low ebb and she found it endearing, almost encouraging. When he finally produced a lighter, it took three attempts to spark it into life. ‘I didn’t realise you were a smoker.’
Force Majeure Page 14
