Guardians of Paradise

by Jaine Fenn

  The island they were heading for, Ipitomi, was close enough to make out details now. A low spine of land rose from the sea, the slopes covered in pale green vegetation. Taller, darker plants - palm trees - crowded into the space between the hill and the sea. They were inside the lagoon that surrounded the island before Taro spotted the landing stages and low well-camouflaged buildings under the trees. Further back he glimpsed more houses, small and square and apparently made of dried bits of plant.

  He was glad to be back on land again, though their journey wasn’t over yet. They piled into a waiting groundbus which drove them round the bumpy coastal road to the far side of the island. Taro made sure he got a seat on the outside and he watched the scenery unroll past the window: wide bays of sparkling white sand and tree-covered outcrops, and beyond it all the sea, bright as a jewel. They saw a few locals walking in the road, but no other vehicles. Most of them stopped to wave as they passed.

  The bus pulled over next to a pair of single-storey blockhouses and the visitors here to work - about half those on the bus - got off. Each block had four twin rooms, with a shared kitchen and bathroom. The whitewashed walls, bare floors and scuffed furniture almost made the hostel in Stonetown look luxurious, but Taro’d slept in worse places. They dropped their gear off, then walked down to the beach on a well-worn path through dense, untamed bush. The damp air felt heavier than in Stonetown, making movement more of an effort, and Taro’s nose was full of the rich scents of growth and rot. The plants around them came in every shape and every shade of green. Taro kept stopping to peer into the undergrowth where flowers - scarlet, violet, blue - made brighter splashes of colour in the gloom. When one of the flowers darted towards him he cried out, at first in shock, then in delight - it wasn’t a flower, it was some sort of animal, with a jewel-like purple-and-green body half the size of his clenched fist and wings that beat so fast they were a blur as it thrummed through the air.

  The beach, when they reached it, was an expanse of perfect pale sand that made him want to kick off his shoes and run down to the sea. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. The workers boarded their final transport, a half-boat-half-bus that took them across a shallow channel to the small private island where the wedding was being held. This place looked like one big garden, shaded by high palms and with stands of flowering plants arranged according to some grand scheme which included every colour in the world: all the natural wonders of Ipitomi, only distilled and tamed. Two bars, a restaurant and a complex of different-sized pools were reached by flower-edged paths across neat lawns.

  The workers reported to a rather less glamorous set of buildings hidden by tall bushes where the housekeeping staff put them to work on preparations for the wedding the next day. The main organiser, a stern-faced man the other staff referred to as the tuari asked his temporary staff about their previous experience. On the basis of their answers Nual was put to work in the kitchen while Taro was sent round the back to sort fruit to be made up into baskets for the guests. The shade wasn’t complete, and though the work wasn’t hard Taro found himself getting overheated. He quickly gave up on his shades, which kept sliding off his sweat-covered nose whenever he looked down. He was tempted to lose the gloves too, until a bug crawled out of the pile of yellow fruits he was working on. It was an amazing-looking beast, with eight long-jointed red legs and a tiny green body. He used a gloved finger to flick it into the undergrowth. By the time he’d gone through all the fruit, he’d encountered and redistributed a wide variety of the island’s creeping, crawling and scuttling inhabitants.

  Though the sun was sinking, work wasn’t over yet. He and one of the permanent staff members went out with a grav-trolley loaded with the completed fruit baskets, some of which were so big they needed two people to carry them into the guests’ rooms. The rooms were actually self-contained huts, like upmarket versions of the houses they’d seen when they first arrived on Ipitomi, decorated with wooden carvings painted in red, white and black. Inside, they were pure luxury, with beds that were wide expanses of white linen and washing areas that included miniature pools and cascades. Some of them were in the gardens, while others were reached by bleached wooden walkways that extended out over the lagoon. These huts had partially transparent floors and Taro found himself entranced by the evening light dappling the complex underwater world below his feet. As darkness fell the light-globes strung through the trees and bushes began to glow in soft pastel colours. When the day’s work was finished they returned to the kitchen for a spicy fry-up of rice and flaked fish.

  On the bus-boat back to Ipitomi it rained, a sudden shower that hissed into the sea and soaked them in seconds. The fat, warm drops were nothing like Khathryn’s thin drizzles. He felt tired, dazzled by beauty, and faintly resentful that he was only here to make things perfect for other people. The rain passed as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the air feeling fresher. When they landed they were greeted by the chirrups and rasps of unseen creatures calling in the night. Above them, the sky was already clearing.

  The path back to their accommodation was picked out by light-globes, though he was still glad of his good night-sight. Two of the three moons were just rising through the last of the clouds, and Taro kept stopping to look up at the sky.

  Mo said he was going to brew up some caf in the kitchen and invited them to join him. Nual declined. Taro said he might come along later.

  They pulled the screens on the windows closed before he turned the lights on: unlike the luxury bungalows, their sleeping block didn’t have sonic bug-shields to deter the wildlife. Several small lizards had already found their way in and now waited, silent and watchful, around the walls. Nual said, ‘I think they hunt insects.’ They watched one that was loitering at eye level raise one tiny foot, wait, then dart forward, almost too fast to follow, jaws snapping. They both laughed at once and Taro felt a slight lessening of tension. They were finally alone, in their own space. If she would just apologise, tell him she’d never again do anything like what she’d done . . .

  The moment passed and she didn’t say anything. Finally he said, ‘Reckon I’ll take Mo up on that caf after all.’

  When he got back Nual was asleep. Looking at her, he couldn’t make the link between this beautiful, peaceful woman and the Angel, the Sidhe, the killer who’d taken dozens of lives, and irrevocably fucked up his.

  He raised a hand, wanting to reach out to her, just once more. Then he made himself turn away. He wondered if he ever would touch her again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Nual understood Taro’s revulsion, even as she remembered her experience with the pilot with guilty pleasure. Guilt: such a very human emotion, though one she had discovered for herself even before she met Jarek. She still shied away from that memory, the part of the story Jarek didn’t know. As she’d said to Taro: we can never go back.

  She had apologised to Taro, but of course that was not sufficient for him. Even if she told him what he so desperately wanted to hear it would not change what she had done, nor alter the fact that she would do it again if there were a good enough reason.

  Jarek had been concerned about the possibility of conception when he told her about the close relationship between Sidhe and humans – a revelation, which, now she had had time to digest it, reassured her somewhat, caught as she was between the two races. His fears had been unfounded: when she’d tested herself in the Judas Kiss’s med-bay, the test had come up negative; she’d also found and used a one-shot treatment that would act as contraceptive and inoculation against most sexual diseases for the next year. But there had been other, unexpected, consequences of her congress with the pilot. She had been in minds at the moment of death before, when she had acted as the Minister’s executioner back in Khesh, and she had relished the sensation because it was a moment with no barriers, no illusions. The pilot had been different: that contact was much deeper, more lasting than any she had experienced with her previous victims.

  She had, in more than one sense, taken his life.


  For several days afterwards she had found memories surfacing that were not hers, her choices infected by reactions she had never experienced and opinions she had never held. She had to stop for a moment to recall where she ended and where the life she had absorbed began. It helped that the pilot had left his name and human identity behind some years ago, though in the end she had taken even that. She wondered if she would one day come to think of this knowledge as her own, rather than information ripped from a dying mind.

  The act she had committed had changed her in other ways. Since leaving the Sidhe she had repressed her powers in order to fit in with humans. What had happened with the pilot had been her first attempt to develop and stretch her abilities, and her success had surprised her.

  Which brought her back to Taro. He was, in many ways, a victim of those abilities. If she wanted reconciliation, she would have to lead the way. She didn’t blame him for sleeping with Jarek to spite her, but his pain and anger remained undiminished, and that, combined with his jealous streak and his stubborn nature, ensured that the first move had to be hers. After their argument in the hostel she had thought long and hard about whether reconciliation was truly what she wanted, and if she did, whether she was wise to want it.

  The day working in the kitchen at the resort had left her with a satisfying physical tiredness that had freed her mind to think clearly, and as she lay there she reached her conclusion.

  The next morning she awoke before Taro to the sound of a raucous dawn chorus from the local birds. Today concerns that went beyond her emotional life would come to the fore and she could not afford the distraction of having to block out Taro’s projected pain whenever he was near her.

  She waited until he was up and dressed, then said, ‘Taro, this cannot go on any longer.’

  He looked startled, then nodded.

  She said, ‘I have to know whether you can forgive me, and accept what I am.’

  The harsh early light made him look older than his seventeen years. ‘I can forgive you, if you’re truly sorry.’

  ‘For hurting you? I am. I have said that, and I meant it. For doing what I did? No, because it was necessary, and because it was in my nature.’

  ‘To fuck him or to kill him?’

  ‘Both.’

  He flinched at her admission. ‘And could you’ve chosen not to kill him?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Then why the fuck did you?’ His anger was rising again.

  ‘Because that was our deal.’

  Taro threw his hands up. ‘But if you can control yourself like that, then why the fuck did you refuse to sleep with me? Why lie to me over that, and then screw that smoky arsehole? Or were you just waiting for someone who was used to doing it with a Sidhe to come along?’

  She forced herself to ignore the insult. ‘I wasn’t lying to you, Taro. I did not know what would happen when I had sex.’

  ‘And now you do?’

  She hesitated. ‘I know what I am capable of.’

  ‘What the fuck’s that’s s’posed to mean?’ He was shouting now, and for a moment Nual worried that they would be overheard. She briefly considered dealing with that potential crisis, but solving one problem like that would lead to many more.

  Pitching her voice low she said, ‘I know what I can do, when I am in control.’

  ‘And with me you wouldn’t be? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘That is precisely what I am saying.’

  ‘So what’s the big difference?’

  ‘I think you know.’

  His voice dropped and he ground each word out slowly. ‘I want you to tell me.’

  She did, without hesitation. ‘Because I love you.’

  He closed his eyes, and tears spilled out of them.

  She watched him until he opened his eyes again, then carried on, ‘But that doesn’t change what I said. So, I ask again: can you forgive me, and accept what I am?’

  His voice small, he said, ‘I don’t know.’

  She continued, before her emotions got the better of her, ‘If you cannot, then I will end this.’

  He looked at her. ‘What d’you mean, end this?’

  ‘Taro, you know that our feelings are the result of the contact we had in Khesh, firstly when I healed you, and then the unity we shared in the Heart of the City.’

  ‘So what if they are? It’s still the way I feel.’

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be. I made this love. I can break it.’

  ‘You can stop me loving you?’

  She nodded. ‘I believe so. I am finding out more about what I can do all the time.’

  ‘I . . . I need to think about it.’

  ‘Of course.’ Part of her demanded that she influence his thoughts, dispense with giving him the choice: make his love unconditional, giving them both what they wanted. She quashed that urge.

  Mo called them to breakfast soon after. Taro was quiet throughout the meal and on the journey over to the resort.

  When they reached the island they were split up. Taro’s unusual looks meant he would be working behind the scenes, whilst Nual and the other more presentable labourers were given smart green and white uniforms and instructed by the tuari on how to ensure the guests never wanted for anything. As he was explaining which beverages would be served for each section of the day’s festivities, a large aircar came in to land on the pad at the edge of the gardens and disgorged dancers and musicians, men and women garlanded with flowers and wearing skirts woven from multi-coloured grasses. They had anklets of shells which rattled as they moved, and their chins and eyelids were stained in dark patterns. The musicians carried small drums and even smaller stringed instruments. Some of the men formed up in a line facing the landing pad, while the women and the musicians joined Nual and the other servers in the clearing where the ceremony was to take place. This was an open space shaded by palms, with chairs ranked in a half-circle around a small dais on the seaward side. The dais was shaded by a cupola of live blossoms. The serving staff had been told to wait in front of another impressive floral display at the back, which hid the drinks and food they would be dispensing. The display picked out the symbols of the two ngai participating in today’s ceremony: a leaping fish in green on blue and a breaking wave in dark blue and white. The scent the flowers exuded was so sweet as to be cloying.

  The guests began to arrive. Most of them came by aircar, which, given the restrictions on flying vehicles, indicated how important they must be. They were greeted by the costumed men, who performed what looked like a cross between a dance and a ritual challenge, with lots of whooping, stamping and exaggerated gestures. When the new arrivals reached the main area they were entertained by softer music and the delicate, sensuous movements of the female performers. The servers moved up with trays laden with iced drinks and delicate nibbles served on shaped leaves or seashells.

  Nual’s job required her to pay attention to what was going on around her, but it also gave her the opportunity to read some of the new arrivals. She picked up nothing unexpected: most looked forward to the sumptuous celebration, though she also registered some mild and unfocused misgivings, generally from the more formally dressed guests, many of whom wore subtle brooches, pins or hair decorations displaying the logo of their ngai. This was apparently not a union that had universal approval. Many of these individuals also had the chin and eye patterns she had noticed on the dancers, intricate and abstract tattoos that looked odd to her outsider’s eye, as did the use of bright, highly patterned fabrics in the executives’ smartly cut suits.

  She saw no weapons, nor any overt security. She had no idea whether their employer had checked deeply enough to find out that she and Taro were registered assassins; if they had then they were obviously not overly concerned by this fact. Politics here was not the extravagant and deadly game she was used to, though that didn’t mean that there were no hidden agendas and dark secrets.

  After a while people began to take their seats. Finally a woman in an i
mpressive headdress of blood-red flowers and iridescent green feathers came forward to stand on the dais. She welcomed the guests in the name of the Lord of the Sea, and wished them joy and good fortune. Her speech was peppered with words in the native language.

  She fell silent, and a few moments later the bride and groom approached the dais from opposite sides. They wore masks of green leaves and heavy cloaks. When they met under the cupola and turned their backs for a moment Nual realised the cloaks were made of feathers, with geometric patterns picked out in black, green and gold, each subtly different. The priestess took their hands and led them round to face the congregation. Attendants came forward and lifted off their masks. As she saw them clearly for the first time Nual picked up their emotions: nervousness from both of them, and a deep love from the man. The woman’s feelings were more complex, tinged with regret, apprehension and guilt.