“There is, but it will only get there a few days from now,” said Maxwell.
“What about the siege?” said Kiran. “Won’t that affect communications?”
“They might cut the wires,” acknowledged Maxwell, “but there’s always the birds. That’s what they used before the new technology came in. I prefer the birds, myself. Much more reliable.”
Elke asked for pen and paper and wrote a long letter to Dolly, reminding her of all the loose ends she could think of, including Missy Cloete.
She tried to start a letter to Isabeau and Ndlela several times, but in the end, she gave up, unable to find the words for everything she wanted to say. She gave her letter to Maxwell, asking him to send it to the Eye.
After that, Elke and Kiran went for a walk outside, on the mountain into which the Carsera had been carved.
This was dreamlike too. Elke had to remind herself that there was an entire city just below her feet, crowded with workers, guards, clerks, and slaves, all going about their lives.
Mell and Betina were down there, if they were still alive. Tiptin too, and all the other people she had met.
Elke and Kiran walked along paths that wound between rock formations. Fragrant shrubs grew there, and small trees, all malformed, bending in the direction of the prevailing winds.
Meisje ran out ahead of them, nose down and tail up, occasionally scaring up a bird, or sending some small creature scuttling into the undergrowth. Birds swooped and soared, riding the wind. Clouds rushed past above, and the sea stretched out to the horizon, flecked here and there with foam.
Somewhere out there, Noor was travelling with the menha. Elke wondered if she would ever see the girl again.
That was another piece of unfinished business. She’d have to come back here, as soon as she was able.
“You know,” Elke said at last. “With everything that happened, we never asked Maxwell about his connection to Jinan Meer.”
“Maxwell knows Jinan?” Kiran shot Elke a surprised look. “I thought he looked a bit rattled, when he heard that she was dead. You’re sure?”
“He definitely knows her. Knew her, I mean.” Elke bent to caress Meisje’s ears. “That whole plan of hers, for infecting the Real, that was Maxwell’s idea, originally.”
“Huh.” A crease formed between Kiran’s brows as she looked out at the sea. “You going to take him up on that?”
“No.” Elke shook her head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Do you?”
“Definitely not.”
“I want to come back here, though,” said Elke. “That’s a bit of unfinished business I’ll have to deal with.”
They pushed through the undergrowth until they’d gone as far as they could. The ground ended abruptly, plunging to the sheer cliff face. The wind whipped their hair around their faces.
“This is nice,” said Kiran, squinting into the wind. “You can taste the spray even all the way up here.”
“We should probably head back.” Elke glanced at the sun, which was dipping towards the horizon.
Once they were back indoors, Maxwell was out of his chair again, heaving the panels aside to expose the portal.
“Got everything?” Kiran asked Elke.
“I don’t really have anything to get,” Elke said.
“Got your patches on?” Kiran pointed at her wrist, visible through the transparent biosuit sleeve.
“Yes.” Elke rotated her wrist to show the patch to Kiran. According to Maxwell, their supply of patches would last two months, by which time they’d either have to organise more, or leave the Fata.
“Nervous?” said Kiran.
“Yes, actually.” Elke tried to smile.
“Me too.”
They looked at the portal, which had reached its undulating stage.
“Nearly time,” Maxwell said, standing back. “You ready? You won’t have much time, once it’s open.”
“Where’s Meisje?” said Kiran.
Elke looked round in panic, but Meisje was right behind her. “Oof,” she said, hand on her heart.
“Sorry.” Kiran gave weak smile. And then, looking at the portal. “Um. I think it’s just about ready to blow.”
The portal was shimmering and sparking all along its edge.
Elke’s heart hammered. She made herself take a deep breath, and saw Kiran do the same.
As suddenly as before, the portal’s whine cut off and the surface irised out. Beyond it, impossibly, stretched moss-green turf, walled in by dark boulders. Elke caught a glimpse of sky, rose-pink and streaked with gold.
“Go!” shouted Maxwell.
Elke checked that Meisje was at her heel and grabbed Kiran’s hand.
She drew a deep breath.
“Let’s go!”
The three of them stepped through.
Epilogue
Two months later.
Isabeau went pelting down the stairs so fast she might almost have been falling.
“Ndlela!”
A man swore as he dodged out of her way, but Isabeau was already past, running between the can-stacks of Short Storage to Dolly’s new office.
“Ndlela! Mom!”
Thandeka looked up as Isabeau barrelled into the room. “Isabeau! What’s all this noise!”
“Hugin’s back.” Isabeau danced in place. “And he’s got a message. From Elke!” She looked around. “Where’s Ndlela?”
“Hugin’s back again?” Thandeka pushed her chair back. “I better let Dolly know.”
“Where’s Ndlela?” insisted Isabeau.
“He’s out with Tomas and Danger,” said Thandeka. “They won’t be far. Is Hugin coming here?”
“He is.” Isabeau was at the door again, looking out. “Where’s Dolly?”
“I don’t know,” said Thandeka. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon. She’ll want to talk to Hugin, anyway.”
Dolly’s new office had a better view than the old one, which had been squashed in between the can stacks deep inside the level.
The new office was not exactly spacious, but was big enough to fit two desks—one for Dolly and one for Thandeka. It looked out onto the open area near the entrance to Short Storage.
Now that the quarantine was lifted and the trains running as normal, Short Storage was once again bustling with activity.
“There they are!” Isabeau waved. “Ndlela! Tomas!”
“Not so loud,” said Thandeka, but mostly to herself, knowing that Isabeau would ignore her. She went to join her daughter at the door, resting her hands on Isabeau’s shoulders.
“Why don’t you put the kettle on so we can have tea by the time Hugin shows up.”
“Okay,” said Isabeau, still leaning out the door.
“Tea, Isabeau.” Thandeka tugged Isabeau inside.
The kettle was hissing on its little gas flame by the time Ndlela arrived, with Tomas and Danger on his heels.
Isabeau watched as Tomas felt his way up the single step to the door. Things were sinister, so he could not use the diadem-link with Danger.
“Hugin’s back,” she told them. “He says he’s got a message from Elke.”
Tomas had recovered from his illness, but when the medics took the bandage off, he’d found that he was blind. After the initial shock, Tomas had adjusted rapidly. He had Danger, and the diadem-link that let him see through the gardag’s eyes.
The two of them were still learning how to cope, and there were the frequent sinister phases in the Eye, when all electronic equipment, including the diadem-link stopped working.
Isabeau listened as Tomas and Ndlela quietly discussed how Danger might become even more useful to Tomas. Ndlela was designing some kind of harness for Danger, that would make it easier for him and Tomas to move together.
The friendship that had sprung up between Tomas and Ndlela was one of the unexpected consequences of Tomas’s blindness. These days, it seemed to Isabeau, the two of them were hardly ever apart.
The kettle came to boil, pulling Isabeau ou
t of her thoughts. She was just pouring the water onto the tea-leaves when Hugin’s tall form blocked the door.
When everyone had finished hugging, shaking hands, and exclaiming, Hugin found a chair and sat down.
“Thank you,” he said as Isabeau handed him his cup.
“Where’s the message?” asked Isabeau.
“I’ve got it right here,” Hugin said, patting his pocket.
“You saw Elke?” Ndlela wanted to know. “Is she okay? Did you see Kiran too?”
“Only Elke.” Hugin took a sip from his tea.
“At Maxwell Jali’s place?” Ndlela said. “You didn’t go to Fata Morgana, did you?”
“No,” said Hugin. “Elke was able to make a brief visit back to Maxwell’s side of the portal, coinciding with my visit. She only stayed a very short time.”
“But where’s the message?” insisted Isabeau.
“Isabeau!” Thandeka frowned at her daughter, but Hugin was already fishing in his pocket.
“Here we go. She’s expecting a message in return.” Hugin looked at Thandeka. “I told her about the, uh, plans you have in progress, and she had so many questions, I had to promise I’d get one of you to report back.”
“Mom can do that.” Isabeau wanted to show that she knew what Hugin was referring to. “I think she knows more than Dolly, even.”
When Thandeka had first arrived in the Eye, she’d been adamant that they should immediately shut down all human trafficking through the Eye. It had taken all of Dolly, Diesel, Mack Jack and Argent’s combined arguments to convince her that they needed a subtler approach. Something they called a “sting operation”.
Dolly had said that they needed to know who was in charge of the trade, and not just people like Pawel Pestcontrol, who were small-time players.
“They’ll just reroute things through Bifrost,” Isabeau had overheard Diesel explaining, before the grownups had realised she was listening. “I’m guessing most of the trade already goes through there, and we’re just getting the dribs and drabs. But we might be able to use that to our advantage.”
Isabeau hadn’t heard more than that. All she knew was that the plan was so secret that nobody would tell her any of the details. Thandeka had given her an extremely stern warning not to talk about it to anyone, not even among themselves.
Hugin handed Thandeka a small, silvery oval.
“What’s this?” Thandeka held it up.
Isabeau and Ndlela were already crowding in behind her, trying to see.
“Put your thumbs on either side,” said Hugin. “That’s right.”
The little oval flickered, and an image appeared between Thandeka’s thumbs. A charcoal-and-silver ghost of Elke, smiling out at them.
“Oh!” said Isabeau. “Look at her horns!”
“She looks well,” said Thandeka.
Even in the tiny image, it was easy to see that Elke was relaxed and healthy. Her horns had grown out to three times the length Isabeau had seen them last, elegant and sharp.
“Shh!” said Ndlela. “I want to hear.”
“Hi there,” said Elke’s voice, speaking from the oval. “I hope this is recording— Hugin? Okay. Hello. Hugin tells me you are all well.
“Thandeka, you’ll want to know this first. Esseret Sadh hasn’t heard directly from Noor, but some of the menha saw her recently, and she’s alive and well. She’s fine. That’s all we know so far. As soon as Kiran is stable enough for me to leave her for more than a day, I’m going to come back here to Dasch again, to find Noor, and see what help she needs.
“Isabeau and Ndlela, I was so worried about the two of you, but it turns out if it wasn’t for you some really bad things would have gone down. Hugin told me all about Missy Cloete. I’m sorry you had to go through that. That must have been tough. I guess she felt it was better to end her own life, than to lose her freedom again.
“But I’m getting off track. You want to hear about Kiran. Kiran’s doing fine. This recording thing only has another minute or so space, so I can’t tell you the whole story, but we got to Fata Morgana and found somebody to help her. One of Hugin’s contacts.
“Turns out, the viral lathe she was exposed to is what they call a slow lathe, which is a good thing. Otherwise she’d have died in a few hours, instead of hanging on for so long. But it also means that the thing is pretty thorough.
“The guy who’s helping us—I’m not allowed to say his name, sorry— He’s all excited, apparently it’s a pretty sophisticated virus. That is good news because it means he’s willing to work on Kiran without having to be paid. That helps. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to earn money over there.
“But I’m getting off track again. The virus is basically taking all of the bio-hacks that Kiran had, her gills, everything, and intensifying them. So the long story short is that while she’s okay at the moment, we don’t really know what’s going to happen.
“She’s changed a lot—don’t worry, she’s fine, but these days she’s much more comfortable under water than out of it. She can only breathe for a short while in the air.
“I set her up in her own tank, she’s in there pretty much all the time these days. Not really ideal, but we’re hoping that once she’s stabilised, we can get her out into a river, or maybe the ocean.”
Elke smiled again, although it seemed to Isabeau that there was a touch of sadness in her eyes.
“We keep joking that we’ll build a special boat, so we can go travel together. A sort of submarine, maybe. There’s always the chance that they can edit her again, so she can be more comfortable out of the water. But that will all have to wait until the changes settle down.
“The guy who’s helping us says it might still be several months, before that happens. But anyway. She’s fine, she sends her love, to all of you. Okay. That’s it! I’m going back now. Look after yourselves.”
The little screen flickered and went dark.
“Is that all?” said Isabeau. “Is that the end?”
Hugin took the little recorder from Thandeka. “That’s all.” He tucked it into his pocket.
“Where are you going to next?” asked Thandeka. “Are you going out to see Crosshatch again?”
Hugin nodded. “That’s right. He’s not going to budge from the Muara, so if I want to see him, I have to go out there myself.”
“You’re going out to the Muara?” said Isabeau. “Can we go too, this time?” She turned to her mother. “And Tomas and Danger—they’ve never been there.”
Thandeka looked questioningly at Hugin. “Only if Hugin really doesn’t mind.”
“No, of course, absolutely.” Hugin drank the last of his tea. “Let them come. Otherwise it’s just us two old men, grumbling at one another.”
“And Tomas? You can get leave to go?” asked Thandeka.
“I’m sure I can,” said Tomas. “It’s up to Dolly, though.”
“Excellent,” said Ndlela. “It’s going to be easier for Tomas without this damned Eye cutting his electronics all the time.”
“That’s decided, then,” said Hugin. “I’m going tomorrow morning. First gate. I’ve got some more errands to run now. I will see you then!”
Hugin left, shortly followed by Tomas and Ndlela, who wanted to continue whatever experiment they were busy on.
Sitting alone with her mother in the office, Isabeau felt the excitement drain from her.
“I wish Elke was right here, right now,” she said with a frown. “And Kiran too. And Noor. Why can’t everyone just stick around?”
“Oh, sweetie.” Thandeka smoothed Isabeau’s hair. “I feel that way too. And you know, pretty soon, you’ll be flying away too, and Tomas and Danger, and Ndlela too. Flying away into the world, just like all the rest of them.”
She flung her arms around her mother and hugged her fiercely. “Well, maybe.” Her voice was muffled in Thandeka’s shoulder. “But not any time soon.”
Thandeka laughed, and hugged Isabeau back. “That’s right, sweetheart. That’s r
ight. Not for a long time yet.”
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