Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  “Why don’t you ever smile?” she asked him.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Nobody smiles in the seditionist group—have you noticed? It’s a group of people trying to create a new world without pleasure, without smiles.”

  “We cannot be representations of the new world. We are only here to usher it in.”

  “Can’t you see that the attack on Lefebvre had the opposite effect? Rather than rouse the citizens, it resigned them to their own passivity. Anyway, how can we usher something in when we do not embody it?”

  The afternoon passed slowly, as the fishing boat bobbed up and down on the waters. As the afternoon light deepened, Caeli-Amur appeared like some dream-city shimmering across the water. To Kata it seemed as if she was looking back into the past, and Caeli-Amur lived still in the glorious prime of the ancients. There was no smoke in the air, no restless destruction and rebuilding; the white cliffs gleamed like marble, ancients dressed in togas promenaded along the waterfront. And then as night fell, the city slowly lit up with thousands of twinkling lights.

  “We’d better get going,” said the fisherman. “Looks like he’s not coming.”

  Kata looked down at the bobbing buoy. “We’ll come tomorrow.”

  They came the following morning to the buoy and waited. The long day passed without incident. Kata spent it watching cutters sailing out to sea, their great sails filled with wind, or else streamers churning through the water with their great wheels. When the afternoon light faded again, the fisherman said, “Looks like that’s the day.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Kata.

  Maximilian did not return the following day either and at the end of the day they fisherman said, “Listen, he’s not coming back. You know that he was never going to come back.”

  “He’ll be back tomorrow,” said Kata.

  At the end of the fourth day, the fisherman said, “He may come back. But I won’t. I’m just wasting your florens out here, and my time.”

  Kata looked at the bobbing waters, at the buoy, and despair as deep as the ocean rushed into her—first Aemilius dead, now Maximilian. She pictured Maximilian: his brown curly hair, the certainty of his own mission. In her heart, she felt he would not return. She felt like crying. She thought of their brief moment in the alleyway. That was all that she had of him. Everybody dies in the end, she thought. Everyone dies alone.

  That evening, Kata took to her mattress as soon as she returned to the base, and she lay there alone as others walked around and Ejan’s lieutenants yelled out, “Hurry up with the vises!” “Quick with the powder!” “This isn’t a game!” It was five days until Aya’s Day, and the end of open opposition to the Houses, the sudden quiet on the streets, had influenced many of the seditionists now. No matter Ejan’s assaults: two more officiates had been killed, Technis’s Fourier in his own home, clubbed to death by Josiane’s weighted chain in front of his own family; and Marin’s Dosois, drowned in one of the water palaces as other officiates ran naked down the steam-filled corridors for safety. Two of Ejan’s group did not return from the second assassination. Thierry was slain by Dosois’s philosopher-assassin bodyguard: the Cajiun bodyguard turned and spun and flipped across to the seditionist before driving a stiletto through Thierry’s eye. The others fled, but the middle-aged Mudge, excited by her sudden elevation from washerwoman to killer, moved too slowly. The philosopher-assassin had buried his stiletto into Mudge’s back before Josiane brought her weighted chain down on his head. The effect of these assassinations was unknown, for the citizenry of Caeli-Amur remained quieted.

  Kata was caught in her own sea of despair. At one point Rikard passed close by, turned, and squatted close to her. “Go away,” she told him.

  A little later Ejan approached. “Are you all right?” he asked, lowering himself down to his knees.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So he’s gone. Poor Maximilian.” Ejan placed a hand on hers, where it rested uncomfortably.

  “It was a stupid errand, a mad notion.”

  “We need you now. Will you help us?”

  “You don’t need me. Anyway, your notions are just as mad. You really think you can take on the might of the Houses with this puny force? They will come down upon you like the gods themselves and they’ll throw you into the sky, just as Aya did the moon.”

  “Us,” said Ejan. “Surely you mean they will come down upon us.”

  “I mean you,” said Kata. “I’m not part of your group. Not anymore.”

  “We’ll have to hold you here, you know. Until after Aya’s Day.”

  “I’m not yours to control.”

  Ejan leaned close to her, his impassive face frightening. “Oh, but you don’t understand—you are.”

  Later, Quadi, who had spent these last days examining the machines, squatted next to her.

  “I’m going back to Tir-Aki,” said Quadi. “I’m going home.”

  “I thought you hated the place.”

  “I never said I hated the place,” said Quadi. “I said I could not bear it any longer. But now I have ended my exile and my fasting. I’m going back, to change it, in my own way. Why don’t you come?”

  “I have work to do here,” said Kata.

  “What work do you have to do? Look around. It’s Ejan’s group now. Anyway, Aya’s Day is likely to be a failure. The citizens have become quiet, passive. Aceline argued that other day that they’re waiting, preparing themselves for a demonstration. She has contacts out in the city, who say it’s true. But I think it’s unlikely.”

  Kata looked away and blinked rapidly.

  Quadi shrugged. “It’s never been of interest to me anyway. But you know that Maximilian is not going to return. You can’t rely on him.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of him,” said Kata.

  “Then who?”

  “You should go as soon as possible. It’s not safe here anymore.” The thoughts of what Kata was about to do shook her deeply. She had come to believe in this group, or in what it stood for. But things had gone awry. Like a guttered candle, she was surrounded now by darkness. She could still look after herself. It’s what she’d always done. She would return to the real powers in the city. She would return to Boris Autec and House Technis, that power that had always controlled her.

  In the morning, Quadi and Kata slipped out of the base together, past Ejan’s sleeping guards. Dawn was breaking over the fog-shrouded city, the sun a burning red ball over the sea. They walked toward the cable car and the Arantine, coming finally to Via Gracchia, where they stopped. Together they looked across the thoroughfare, down an alleyway, and over the cliffs in silence. Around them, the city was beginning to stir. Pedestrians were appearing on the via, stopping into the opening cafés for their early-morning shots, quickly stroking a cat or two before hurrying on.

  Quadi said, “I’ll miss this city. But now I must return home. It’s been waiting for me.”

  They embraced briefly. Quadi took a few steps, turned around. “Oh, would you like this?” He held out his pouch of weed and grinned.

  Kata laughed. She could almost smell its fetid odor even though it was unlit. “Go!”

  Quadi strode away through the early morning. Kata watched him as he walked past the cafés. Several cats danced out behind him, then dashed away again. At first she could see him clearly, despite the other pedestrians, out in the early morning, who cut across his path. He looked much smaller than she remembered—a true New-Man—in an alien city. Slowly he became a little blot of gray moving among passersby, until finally he was lost in the growing multitude.

  Kata walked through the waking city toward the Technis Complex. Farther on and to her right lay the factory district, which she could clearly see as she walked along Via Gracchia, the smoke from the factories merged with the now-dissipating fog. Her apartment lay there, waiting for her: a place where she would be alone again.

  She turned left and cut through the streets of a well-to-do area. Elderly couples drank coffee at tables in the
front of their little white-painted houses. Children were already playing. Odd, thought Kata. For some, life moves on, as if nothing had changed.

  When she came to a T-intersection, Kata stopped briefly as fear gripped her chest: she was being followed. She turned right again, this time away from the Technis Complex, across Via Gracchia and toward the cliffs. She could not risk looking behind her, but she had a good idea of the identity of her shadow. She feared a confrontation, hoped it would not come to blows.

  Kata came to the edge of the cliffs, found one of the narrow pathways—half stairs, half goat-trails—that descended. To her right the precipice was sheer. The slightest false step would result in a fall to the death far below. But death did not seem the worst fate for her now.

  At times the path opened out almost to the width of a cart-track, but then narrowed again so that she had to place her hands against the rock wall to her left, for there was room only for the width of one foot on the path. When the trail turned around a rocky outcrop, she stopped, leaned against the rock wall, and drew her knives. Not long afterwards she sensed a presence on the far side of the outcrop, though she could not see her pursuer. The sun had risen over the ocean and blazed against the white cliffs. Already it was hot and promised to become hotter still. The sky was a cloudless and brilliant blue. To Kata, everything was sharp and clear and alive, as if this were the morning of the world.

  Kata waited. The pursuer did not emerge. She continued to wait. Still the pursuer hesitated.

  “How long do you plan to wait on your side?” Kata leaned against the cliff beside her, touched her face to the cool rock. Far beneath them lay the city. Miniature figures moved along its streets, steam-trams chugged along its boulevards. Kata yearned to be among them, far from this cliff with its promises of death.

  “It seems we are at an impasse,” said Josiane.

  “It seems you are at an impasse. Not I.”

  “Oh, but you are,” said Josiane. “Where have you to go? To your masters at whatever House you work for? No, we’re going to return to Ejan, and there you will meet justice.”

  “There is no justice,” said Kata. “Not in this world.”

  “It grieves me, but I knew you never cared for the cause. There was always something calculated about you. You never cared for anyone but yourself.”

  The words struck Kata like a physical blow. Her legs trembled. “That’s not true.” She had loved the seditionist group. She had loved Maximilian. She hated the entire House structure.

  “You can’t fool me.”

  Kata turned and scampered along the track like a mountain goat. There were tears in her eyes and the path blurred before her, yet on she ran, up and down the little rises and falls, over the rocks that occasionally jutted from the white earth.

  She came to a steep rise, where the path rose up a series of natural rocky steps. At the top she stopped, aware that Josiane must be closing on her. Instead of running, she turned. The blinding sun hovered over the water, turning the sea into a molten white. She squinted as she looked back.

  Josiane had reached the bottom of the incline. In one hand her length of chain hung menacingly. In the other she held a short-sword, longer than either of Kata’s daggers. She stepped forward lightly, like the athlete she was. “Running away as usual.”

  “Let’s not do this.” Kata did not have the strength for another killing.

  “I have principles worth dying for. What do you have?” Josiane took few steps up the incline. With a rapid movement, she dashed up the track, swinging the chain quickly.

  Kata leaped backward, but too slowly. The chain wrapped itself around her left leg. With a tug, Josiane pulled Kata’s leg toward her. Kata fell backwards, hit the ground, and was dragged down the steps. She sat up, and threw one knife instinctively. It flew through the air but Josiane released her chain and ducked beneath the flying dagger. She leaped toward the Supine Kata, who, in an instant, raised both feet and connected with Josiane’s chest. Josiane was thrown backwards, even as her short-sword plunged toward Kata. The tip cut into Kata’s stomach, a sharp shallow incision. As the older philosopher-assassin flew backwards, Kata sprang to her feet. Dust billowed around her. The sun flared with light and heat.

  Josiane hit the ground and scrambled up, but the edge of the path crumbled over the precipice beneath her right foot. In an instant, her right leg gave way, and she collapsed to the ground, trying to avoid toppling over the cliff. But it was no good: her weight was unbalanced and she slid, dropping her sword and scrabbling with her hands for something to hold on to. One hand clasped a dry, dusty vine, long dead. It pulled away from the dirt for about a foot and then, with Josiane swinging well over the side of the cliff, held.

  Kata untangled the chain from her leg and rushed down the incline. Several feet below the cliff’s edge, Josiane held on to the vine, her dusty face grim with determination.

  Kata dropped to her haunches and hung the chain over the edge. “Grab on.”

  But Josiane was too far out of reach. She dangled, her body spinning freely.

  “You’ll have to climb up the vine,” said Kata.

  One of Josiane’s hands reached up and she clasped higher up the vine. She pulled herself up, reached again, took hold of the vine once more—now only a couple of hand-spans from the dangling chain—and pulled.

  The entire vine’s root system gave way and in a split-second the dried-out plant ripped from the earth. Josiane plunged toward the ground without uttering a sound. In an instant, she was halfway down the cliff-face. She twisted and turned in the air, crashed against the cliff-wall, spun like a top, arms and legs akimbo.

  Kata closed her eyes. When she opened them, Josiane was gone from sight, somewhere at the base of the cliff, among te vegetation down there, or perhaps the roofs of the Artists’ Quarter. Kata stood and looked away from the sea, a sheet of brilliance under the cruel sun.

  Armand guided Kata into Director Boris Autec’s grand room, which made her pause. Autec was right: He had risen in the darkness of the night. But she had not risen with him.

  Though Autec was absent, standing on the huge balcony was a woman with the lushest raven black hair tumbling down her back that Kata had ever seen. Kata approached the woman, noticing the wonderfully defined muscles on the woman’s back, the hourglass figure. Kata stepped onto the balcony and leaned against the railing next to the woman. Kata was taken aback by the Siren’s alien beauty: her enormous emerald eyes, the unnatural fullness of her lips, the proportions all wrong, as if some child had drawn her. There was something repulsive about the Siren’s strangeness. Anxiety and fear rushed into Kata; she felt as if she were standing before a carnivorous beast. A torc inlaid with two crimson gems hung around the creature’s neck. Like the Xsanthians, she was a prisoner.

  The Siren said, “The madness that this age has brought upon us.”

  Kata looked out over the city. She didn’t want to look at the creature. “Indeed.”

  “One day I’ll escape this city.”

  Kata turned and looked at the Siren. “I wanted a villa near the coast, a little place away from all unhappy events. Perhaps I would raise horses or grow grapes.”

  Now the Siren turned to Kata. Their eyes met. Buried beneath that alienness, Kata saw a oneness with herself.

  “And I back to Taritia,” the creature said.

  For some reason, Kata leaned forward and embraced the Siren, and they stood there, arms around each other, strangers somehow united. It was so long since Kata had held someone like that—a pure comfort in the maelstrom. When Kata stood back, she found that she could not speak. She lowered her eyes in a shame she couldn’t make sense of.

  The doors opened and Director Autec entered the room. “Kata!” he cried. “Finally! Come.”

  He sat behind his desk, shuffled some papers on the desk ineffectually. “In front.” He gestured to the space in front of his desk.

  Kata walked around the desk and stood before him.

  “Come a bit closer.�
��

  She stepped forward.

  Autec leaned over the desk. “Now, tell me. What news? Where is this seditionist base?”

  “I can draw you a map and give instructions. There’s a passageway hidden by thaumaturgy, but it is not hard to find,” said Kata.

  Autec smiled. “Truly excellent. I have to admit, I was worried you’d disappeared. After that incident with the scrying ball. And with Aya’s Day only four days away, I wondered…” Autec laughed. “Now we shall grind them like a bug beneath our shoe. First the seditionists, then whatever stragglers protest on Aya’s Day. My agents assure me it will be only the few troublemakers. And Armand has visited the Collegia to ensure they’re on our side. Now: you shall return, so as not to arouse suspicion. But expect a raiding party this night, or before dawn tomorrow.”

  Kata nodded. “And my reward?”

  “Armand,” Autec called out. “Organize a villa for Kata will you? In the hills to the south, I think.” To Kata he said, “Yes, it’s nice there. Quiet. Away from the main roads to the city.”

  On the balcony, the Siren stood looking at the horizon.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Kata returned to the seditionist base as the sun was descending. She passed the barricades, which had been built close to the exit to the city. There two guards sat, playing dice. They jumped to their feet at her approach, but recognized her and returned to their game. In her pocket were a ring of keys and a small map that showed directions to her villa. Armand had handed to them as she left. The villa was standing empty. It had belonged, he said, to Officiate Matisse, who no longer needed it.

  As she entered the hideout, Giselle eyed her watchfully from the doorway to Ejan’s laboratory. Kata stared back, her face carrying all the heaviness of betrayal. Giselle needed no more encouragement; she nodded once in understanding and wandered toward the corner of the room where her mattress lay. She squatted, slipped several small objects into her pocket, bantered with a few seditionists, and wandered toward the entryway to the hideout. She, at least, would escape.