Luna: Moon Rising

by Ian McDonald

  The throb of noise in the lobby becomes a roar as the court is opened to the public. Eager spectators cling to each other as they totter down the treacherous steps, jostle and shove in the narrow aisles as they fight for seats. By the time the doors are closed the crowd is squatting on the steps, standing five deep at the back. Court Five beats like a drum: then there is silence. The judges have entered.

  * * *

  Preceded by their zashitniks, Judge Rieko Ngai, Judge Valentina Arce and Judge Kweko Kumah take their seats at the bench. Judge Rieko surveys the packed court.

  ‘Court of Clavius in final settlement of Sun versus Corta versus Corta,’ she says. ‘All parties are present or represented?’

  Mumbles from the three respondents and Madrinha Elis.

  ‘Case to be tried under the mutually agreed judgement of Nagai, Arce and Kumah?’ Judge Arce asks. Ayes, nods of the head. The spectators take breath. The informality shocks them: ninety per cent of them have never been inside a court, even to agree a marriage-nikah.

  ‘And it is also agreed this is to be settled by combat,’ Judge Kumah says.

  The spectators exhale. A rumble of assent.

  ‘The bench is compelled to note that this is not the first time that the Cortas have settled a case by violence, and deplores it,’ Judge Rieko says. ‘It is atavistic and demeaning and the Court of Clavius is disappointed that a family with as noble a history as the Suns have been drawn into this monstrosity. However, the legalities have been observed, we as judges are tied by our contract, so it will be settled the old-fashioned way.’

  A tense purr runs through the spectators. It’s on. No retreat, no escape. Knives out. Blood on the stones.

  ‘I believe the Sun/Corta case will resolve first?’ Judge Arce says. ‘Who represents Lucas Corta?’

  Mariano Gabriel Demario rises from the bench. The purr becomes a murmur. All Nearside knows the legend of the School of Seven Bells. The incongruous gripshoes beneath his neatly turned-up pant cuffs tell that he is dressed for fight.

  ‘Tamsin Sun?’

  ‘Amanda Sun has indicated…’ Tamsin Sun begins. Lady Sun’s claw hand descends on her shoulder, grips like famine.

  ‘Jiang Ying Yue will represent Amanda Sun,’ she says.

  Tamsin Sun snaps around in her seat. Her face is hollow with incomprehension. We agreed to withdraw, she says on the private channel. The public, sensing a departure from the script, mutters and chatters.

  ‘It was agreed that we would…’ Jiang Ying Yue begins.

  Lady Sun raises a hand and a sheathed knife is passed down the tiers of legal assistants, hand to hand to hand to Jiang Ying Yue’s hand.

  ‘Lady Sun…’

  ‘You have a question?’

  ‘Lady Sun, with respect, I am no match for Demario.’

  ‘You failed my family at Hadley,’ Lady Sun hisses. ‘You humiliated us before the Mackenzies. You must correct that fault. You will show the world that there is honour and courage still in the Palace of Eternal Light.’

  ‘Madam Sun, what are your intentions?’ Judge Arce asks from the bench.

  ‘We are ready,’ Tamsin Sun says.

  Fear hardens to resolution on Jiang Ying Yue’s face. She returns the knife to Lady Sun, for zashitniks by long tradition do not carry their own weapons down to the pens, and steps down into the arena. The courtroom floor opens and she descends into the dark. Court Five is thick with silence.

  ‘Seconds,’ Judge Kumah says. Lady Sun hands the blade to Amanda.

  ‘Do your duty.’

  ‘Die in screaming agony, you withered crone.’ Amanda Sun snatches the blade and crosses the floor boldly to the judge’s bench. Knives must be examined by the judges for any non-negotiated toxins.

  * * *

  Across the arena Lucas Corta nods to his Iron Hand. Alexia lifts the valise. As she turns on to the steps she catches Wagner’s eye. He cannot look.

  Alexia’s heart pounds as she crosses the fighting floor. Gods but it’s treacherous. This whole Colosseum is treacherous. Every one and every thing is on trial in the Court of Clavius. Some petty infraction, some oversight or offence to an injured party and the knives would sing out of their sheaths and serve justice on her.

  She sets the valise on the judges’ desk. The locks click loud. A strange sound, part gasp, part moan, goes up from the arena as she lifts the knife and presents it to the judges. Light gleams along the edge of the blade as they pass it from hand to hand, pretending to examine it. Clever machinery embedded in the desk does the sniffing and tasting and analysing.

  ‘Meteoric iron,’ Judge Kumah says.

  ‘Where is its twin?’ Judge Arce asks.

  ‘This is an unclean thing,’ Judge Rieko says. She almost tosses the knife to Alexia in her haste to get it away from her skin. ‘It reeks of blood.’

  Maninho guides Alexia to her second’s position. She glances across to Amanda Sun. She could vomit. She could weep with fear. She has never hated anything more than standing here in a Coco Chanel suit with a knife in her hands. Yet she stands. The floor opens, the fighters emerge. The crowd rises in thunder.

  Wagner’s head is bowed, face in hands.

  Jiang Ying Yue takes the knife from Amanda Sun, tries it for heft and balance. She is fit, leanly muscled, athletic in capri leggings, crop top and squeaky, fresh-printed gripsoles. Alexia can see at once that she knows nothing of the way of the knife.

  Mariano Gabriel Demaria has stripped down to black shorts and gripsoles. His body is the way of the knife incarnate, sinews and knots, wires and scars. He carries himself with the easy grace of the fanatically competent.

  He turns dark eyes to Alexia, she offers the valise. He lifts the Corta blade. A voice cries out. A child’s voice.

  Luna Corta marches on to the fighting floor.

  ‘You don’t touch my knife!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Luna is small and exposed and utterly defiant and there is not a note of condescension in Mariano Demaria’s voice.

  ‘That knife can only be used by a Corta.’

  Mariano looks to Lucas. A nod. The zashitnik returns the blade to Alexia. The crowd exhales slowly. A sheathed blade slides across the fighting ring; Mariano scoops it up, unsheathes it. He holds it, inspects it in the hot hard light beating down on to the arena. He dips his head in a small bow. From the far side of the arena, the hidden side, Dakota Kaur Mackenzie returns the courtesy.

  ‘With your permission?’

  ‘I have no objection,’ Tamsin Sun says.

  The judges’ appraisal is perfunctory.

  ‘We have endured enough interruptions and theatrics,’ Judge Rieko says. ‘If this type of justice is necessary, it is best done swiftly. Proceed.’

  Alexia’s heart skips. It’s blades now and nothing but blades will decide this. There will be blood on the stone. And she realises that she is a coward. When the Gularte’s left Caio for dead in a drainage channel in Barra, when they broke his future, she swore justice. She went to Seu Osvaldo; had him visit terrible deaths on the brothers. She was satisfied, she did right, and she was no different from the bloody justice she condemns here.

  ‘Seconds out,’ Judge Arce says

  Alexia returns to her seat. No: there is a difference. All the difference. She did not have the courage to deliver that justice with her own hands.

  ‘Approach,’ Judge Kumah says.

  Mariano Gabriel Demaria and Jiang Ying Yue move to the centre of the fighting floor. They raise blades before their eyes in salute.

  ‘Fight,’ Judge Rieko says.

  Blades blur, bodies dance at sex-close distances. Blood sprays, Ying Yue’s blade slides across the shimmering stone. She stands, shivering with shock, breath fluttering, blood streaming from her bicep across her wrist to drop from her spasming fingers.

  The crowd is silent. This is not what they expected. They are not entertained.

  * * *

  Beija Flor pings. Dakota Kaur Mackenzie, private channel.
<
br />   He will leave the de Tsiolkovksi woman in steaming chunks on the floor.

  Yes, Ariel answers.

  Fire her. Hire me.

  No.

  Dakota Kaur Mackenzie leans forward.

  ‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing?’

  Ariel looks over at Lucasinho, ash-faced, terrified among the court zashitniks. Wagner’s face is buried in his hands. Alexia is pale with dread. Madrinha Elis has pulled her hood low to conceal her features.

  ‘Always.’

  * * *

  Ying Yue staggers across the fighting floor towards her knife.

  ‘Leave it,’ Mariano says. Ying Yue picks up the knife in her left hand, launches herself across the killing floor at Mariano Gabriel Demaria. He sidesteps easily. With a despairing cry, Ying Yue swings at him. He sways away from the knife like thought. Quicker than thought. Like instinct.

  ‘Stop this,’ he says.

  Slipping in the pooling, thickening blood, Ying Yue stumbles towards Mariano Gabriel Demario, slashing wildly.

  ‘Enough.’

  Mariano drops his knife, steps inside Ying Yue’s guard and snaps her wrist. The crack rings from the stern pillars, the lowering, chaotic ceiling.

  ‘Do you have satisfaction?’ he says to Tamsin Sun. He is not sweating. There is no trace of any distress, much less exertion in his body. ‘Are you satisfied?’ Tamsin Sun glances at Lady Sun. The old woman shakes her head.

  ‘I am satisfied!’ Amanda Sun’s shout carries from the killing floor to the stone gates of Court Five. ‘I am the complainant, not my legal advisers, not my grandmother. And I have satisfaction.’

  ‘Then by the contract entered into by the combatant parties, I dismiss Amanda Sun’s claim to custody of Lucas Corta Junior,’ Judge Rieko says. A stuttering moan of consternation goes up from the spectators, echoed and redoubled moments later by the crowds outside; pulsing through Meridian’s quadras, taken up in turn in hotshops and bars and offices and homes, in trains and rovers and on private suit-helmet feeds from Rozhdestvenskiy to Queen of the South, St Olga to João de Deus.

  The Suns have lost.

  Medics converge on Jiang Ying Yue, standing bloody and shaking, arms crippled, on the fighting floor. Patches take away the pain, staples staunch the blood loss, tubes and lines counteract the shock. Taiyang medics escort the bot-gurney into the undercroft of the Court of Clavius.

  ‘Can we agree a thirty-minute recess to clear up this mess?’ Judge Rieko says with clear distaste. Ariel is on her feet.

  ‘If parties concur, I would like to move to final resolution immediately.’

  Now comes the gasp. Abena opens a private channel: Tumi to Beija-flor.

  What are you doing?

  Follow me, Ariel says. No questions, no hesitations. Can you do this?

  I can do this.

  ‘Senhor Corta?’

  Lucas gets to his feet. The babbling gossip ceases.

  ‘If Mariano is fit to fight?’

  ‘I am,’ the zashitnik declares.

  The judges are still for a moment, conferring on their private channels.

  ‘If both parties agree, we would not disagree,’ Judge Kumah says. ‘Senhor Corta, I take it you will keep the same representative?’

  ‘I will.’

  Judge Arce turns to Ariel’s team.

  ‘Who represents you?’

  A long pause, then Rosario stands.

  ‘I am Rosario Salgado O’Hanlon de Tsiolkovski, contracted zashitnik of this party.’

  ‘Step forward please.’

  ‘Not so fast.’

  Ariel steps to the edge of the ring.

  ‘Who represents is one thing. Who fights is another. Luna.’

  The girl has been cued. She skips down the steps to Ariel’s side.

  ‘If you please.’

  Luna unwraps the ritual blade. Ariel snatches it up, there is an audible hiss as the edge cuts the air.

  ‘By the legends of my family, this knife may only be borne by a Corta who is bold, great-hearted, without avarice or cowardice, who will fight for the family and defend it bravely. I am that Corta, and I will fight you, Mariano Gabriel Demaria.’

  Court Five explodes.

  * * *

  Alexia suspects her mouth is open. She feels her eyes are wide and her heart is hammering and there is a high-pitched noise in her ears. Like everyone else in Court Five.

  You clever, clever woman. If Lucas refuses the fight, he surrenders the case. If he fights, he sets the moon’s greatest blade against a disabled woman who barely knows which side cuts. His own sister. With the whole of the moon looking on.

  ‘Senhor Corta?’

  ‘Mão de Ferro,’ Lucas says. He holds out his hand. ‘The blade.’

  Alexia sets the knife reverently in Lucas’s palm. No questions, no hesitation, no explanations. He orders, she obeys. Leaning on his cane, Lucas gets to his feet.

  ‘Bold, great-hearted, without avarice or cowardice,’ Lucas says. ‘A Corta who will fight for the family and defend it bravely. Stand down Senhor Demaria. It is time for me to take the blade.’

  He levels the blade at the judges.

  ‘Are we agreed?’

  ‘The bench has no objection,’ Judge Rieko says.

  ‘Sister?’

  Ariel is smiling. Has she planned this? Did she know the only way out of the trap was for Lucas to take up the blade? A long exhale: Alexia realises she has been unconsciously holding her breath. Her and all of Court Five. This has stepped from insanity into mythology.

  ‘I will fight you, Lucas,’ Ariel says.

  ‘Best get to it then,’ Lucas says. ‘Second.’

  And Alexia is again on the killing floor with Lucas handing her his jacket, his suspenders, his tie and his shirt. He undresses neatly, folds his clothes before passing them to Alexia. Across the ring, Ariel has seconded the ghazi. She takes off her Adele List hat, kicks off her Ferragamo shoes, shucks her Charles James jacket, lets the skirt fall. Beneath the fashion suit is the timeless uniform of the fighter: short trunks, a crop top. A hiss passes over the court: the spinal link; the smooth plastic, the puckered livid scar tissue. Lucas tests the fighting surface, then slips off his own Oxfords. He is an unwieldy wedge of old muscle softening into mass. Bulk in the wrong places: massive thighs and calf muscles to kick against terrestrial gravity; muscles banded around his spine to hold him upright. This is what Earth does to a moon-born body and what the moon does with that when that body returns to its proper environment. The build of a superhero, walking with a cane to protect his eroded knee joints.

  ‘Please.’ Lucas passes the cane to Alexia. He studies the knife. ‘Have you any idea what to do with this?’ he asks his sister.

  ‘You try to kill me with me it,’ Ariel says.

  The judges hurry through the formalities. Lucas and Ariel raise their blades in salute, step back, circle each other.

  ‘We are ridiculous,’ Lucas says. ‘Human wreckage playing with knives.’

  ‘Someone has to make the first move,’ Ariel says.

  ‘Yes,’ Lucas says. ‘They do.’ He drops to a crouch and with all his strength drives the Corta blade into the fighting floor. Polished olivine cracks and chips; meteoric steel shatters halfway to the hilt. A flying shard lays Lucas’s cheek open. Ariel dips her head to him in salute; reverses her grip on her blade and stabs it into adamant stone. The tip snaps, flies; the stone stars. And Court Five is on its feet.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ Ariel shouts through the babel of voices; ecstatic, abusive, enraged, thrilled, non-comprehending.

  ‘No,’ Lucas shouts back. ‘Let’s deal.’

  * * *

  The bots and drones have been less than scrupulous cleaning the zashitnik stables underneath the court. The rooms are small and dusty, the air stale. Lucas Corta perches on the edge of a stone dressing-shelf. Ariel has the sole chair. Alexia has thrown Lucas his shirt and he buttons it with the care and respect of a man who understands clothes. He is still barefoot. Th
e court above is still in uproar, the noise a sonic ceiling to the tiny room.

  ‘A telenovela could not have played it more melodramatically,’ Lucas Corta says.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You took the mother of risks.’

  ‘There was never any risk. Family first…’

  ‘Family always. What’s your deal?’

  Ariel is still dressed in her fighting garb. As one who spent lunes remapping his body in the gymnasium of the Saints Peter and Paul, Lucas appreciates the definition of her arms and upper body. The last time he saw her she was in a wheelchair. Before that, in the dark time, she had only that Jo Moonbeam to help her – what was her name? He can’t remember. She had a closet up in Bairro Alto, strung with lines so she could swing herself from room to room.

  That’s discipline.

  That is the politics of the body.

  ‘You’re staring.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Lucas had not been aware that his eyes had strayed to her spinal link and remained there. ‘I can’t get used to it.’

  ‘Would you have preferred the old prosthetics?’

  Lucas sees again the hideous, clicking things; servos and actuators picking and tapping. He sees again his sister in the bed in the João de Deus med centre, pushing herself upright in her trauma bed to berate him for attempting to negotiate his son’s nikah.

  ‘Is this…’

  ‘Permanent? Unless I can find six spare lunes for the university to regenerate the nerve tissue.’

  ‘I would have aimed for it,’ Lucas says. ‘If it had come to blades.’

  ‘It’s the logical target.’

  ‘Your deal?’

  ‘Let’s not fool ourselves here. Lucasinho can walk and smile and charm every heart in Meridian but he is a long way from legal independence,’ Ariel says. ‘I have something you want. You have something you don’t want.’

  ‘The Eyrie?’

  ‘The Eyrie.’

  ‘You don’t want the Eyrie.’