Osiris

8 ¦ VIKRAM

The recruiting officer gave Vikram’s and Nils’s papers a fleeting glance.

“Sign here.”

His eyes never left Vikram’s hands as he wrote his latest pseudonym, then passed the list to Nils to do the same. When they had both signed the man pulled the piece of paper back, smearing the ink.

Their new employer typed a few words, presumably their names, into the ancient Neptune chained to the desk. “What’s that, an h? You dogs illiterate or what?”

Both men looked steadfastly at the mouldering wall behind the desk. Strips of plaster were peeling away. The wall might have been a colour once, although what hue it was impossible to tell. Now it looked like a jigsaw of damp clouds. Vikram continued to stare at it, finding shapes, patterns, anything to distract him from the dismal tap-tap-tap into the Neptune. He wondered how many other westerners had passed through here before them, standing on the same worn floor, staring at the same square foot of wall.

The officer stamped two fifteen-day passes to the City and grudgingly handed them over.

“Eight o’clock start. Be early.” He waved them out of the door. “Next!”

“Parasite,” muttered Nils.

At eight o’clock, when Vikram began work, the mist swaddled the world in milky white. From the moment he abseiled from the magnetized scaffolding to the morning’s site, he could see only his own limbs and the indistinct figure of Nils, a few feet away. When the fog lingered longer than it should, Vikram was jolted by fear that he was lost or had been left behind. The city had vanished; there was only this smooth glassy surface, on which he must crawl forever, with nothing but the tap and scrape of his tools for company. Then his nerves tingled. He looked to left or right and felt, rather than saw, another man passing up or down the scraper.

There were twelve of them on the project, all westerners apart from the foreman. They were repairing storm damage in the southern quarter. The cold gnawed through Vikram’s two scarves and his muffler; the scaffolding felt flimsy and unsafe, but it was paid work and the pay was in instant credit. At the end of each day their chips were topped up, no questions asked. He could use the credit to buy City goods, or exchange them for the western peng notes which continued to prove lucrative for the ex-skad profiteers who had invented them. He thought what a joy it was to choose something and buy it without haggling. Maybe he’d get a bag of oranges.

Once, through the window-wall, he caught the curious eyes of a child on the other side. Her fingers were gripped firmly in an adult hand, a father, perhaps, bringing his daughter into the office for a day. When she turned the other way, Vikram saw a red bow in her hair and he thought of the invitation to the Rose Night, discarded in a corner of his room. Westerners with workpasses were allowed to spend their evenings in the City, but few of them did. The one time Vikram had gone to a City bar he’d been stared at all night.

On the third afternoon, six of them were on a break for lunch, wedged in a row on the scaffolding. The men drank hot soup and rubbed their hands to revive the circulation. Vikram and Nils checked each other’s reactions. Vikram held up his hand. Beneath the glove the webbed skin was already cracking; by the end of the week it would be raw.

“How many fingers?”

“Four. No, I’m joking. Three.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” said Nils.

The rest of the group exchanged few words to start with. Vikram had been on similar projects before, and he knew the location was dangerous not only physically but mentally. Everywhere he looked he was confronted with evidence of the divide. This side of town, skyscrapers were softened with sweeps of vertical garden. Window-walls gleamed. As the shuttle pods streaked through glowing tubes, it was impossible not to imagine where they were going, all those sated stomachs in the surrounding towers, glutting on electricity.

It was only a few days, but already his visit to the marble Chambers seemed like months ago.

The lunch break was almost over. The soup had gone, and someone passed around a flask of steaming coral tea laced with raqua. Vikram took a grateful sip. The drink flooded his throat and warmed the pit of his belly. He handed the flask along to Nils.

“Looks like it’s going to rain,” said the man who had brought the tea. There was no direct response to this. It had been threatening to rain for the past three hours. Then another man said he had heard if you could find full-time work in the southern quarter, they would find you a room, or at least put you on the waiting list for one.

Nils snorted. “Sorry, but that’s bullshit. They’ll never give you a room, Stefan.”

“It’s worth a try,” Stefan answered defiantly.

“Anyway, what would it be, work like this? You wouldn’t last a year.”

“One year over here might be better than one year in the west. What with people getting restless and all.”

There were a few surreptitious glances inside, though the foreman could not hear them through the bufferglass. The man with the flask said, “Keep your noise down.”

“Maybe they’re right to worry,” Nils muttered.

“Why, have you heard anything?”

“Tell you what I heard.” Someone else chipped in before Nils could respond. “I heard Juraj is dead.”

“Dead?”

“Murdered. Ripped apart, I heard.”

“You’d hear anything,” Nils retorted. “If Juraj was dead, everyone would know. The rest of his people would be out nailing feet to boats. You heard anything about this Vik?”

“News to me.”

The other man shrugged. “Might want to keep it quiet. Might not want the Rochs to know, not with the manta trade.”

“The Rochs aren’t interested in manta, they’re buying up guns,” said someone else. “Friend of mine had a pistol. Kept it secret for years — well you don’t advertise you’ve got something like that, do you. So a few weeks ago he’s out, has a few too many drinks, and next thing he knows he’s handed it over for a few peng and a thermal jacket. The buyer was a Roch.”

“Well I don’t know about the Rochs or Juraj,” said Nils. “Been a cold spell though. Getting colder.”

Vikram glanced at his friend, but nobody replied, because they all knew what Nils meant. The last riots had been foreshadowed by an unprecedented period of cold weather.

Of course, he thought, whispers like this were always abound. Talk was not a precursor to violence; talk was everywhere. Silence was the sign. Three years ago, it was the silence that had warned Vikram to leave his room carrying a knife. He remembered the sound of quiet. It had rung louder in his ears than thunder.

In the afternoon, Vikram and Nils were stationed on the scaffolding with Stefan and his partner Ilan. Vikram began to talk to Nils about the hearing. He wanted Nils’s opinion. They could only just hear one another over the shree of the wind and the conversation was laborious.

“Probably just asked you there to make them feel good about themselves,” shouted Nils.

“That’s what I figured,” Vikram yelled back. “They’ll report it and it’ll make them look like they’re actually doing something. I told you they took my photo?”

“You’re probably on their newsreel.”

“Stars only knows.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“Don’t know. They’ll never let me inside that place again. Honestly, Nils, I’ve never seen anything like it. This huge, stone circle, like an acrobat’s ring, you know? And all of them sitting around—”

“Like circus clowns.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a fire-eating troop this weekend down at Market Circle. Drake reckons she knows one of the guys.”

In spite of the wind noise and the delay in hearing, Vikram felt as though the change in subject had been deliberate. But maybe it was just the wind.

“Drake reckons she knows everyone,” he shouted. His throat was growing hoarse.

“Probably does. You in?”

“Long as I don’t get sling-shot.”

“Yeah, those kids are little shits.”

A scream cut them off abruptly.

“What the hell—”

The cry came again. Vikram leaned over the edge of the scaffolding and saw Stefan dangling, twenty metres below, his mouth gaping in his face. He wasn’t wearing an abseiling harness, only a short line, and he couldn’t winch himself up.

Stefan’s feet scrabbled on the skyscraper wall. Impulse told Vikram to move, but it was impossible to move quickly along the icy structures without risking the same accident and Ilan was closer. Vikram and Nils started to climb anyway, gingerly moving down the scaffolding ladders.

Vikram saw Ilan reaching down to the other man. Their hands were over a metre apart. Ilan began to haul, hand over hand, grunting with the effort. Other men, realizing what had happened, were abseiling back up the tower towards Stefan. Ilan and Stefan’s fingers were almost within grasping distance. Their hands strained toward one another.

Something snapped. Stefan’s scream sounded for a second, horribly clear above the wind. Then he was gone.

Vikram and Nils, still two levels of scaffolding up, stared at each other in horror. All the colour was leached from Nils’s face.

“I cursed him,” whispered Nils.

Vikram felt a cold deeper than anything the wind could contrive take root inside of him. “Nils, don’t—”

“I said he wouldn’t last the year. I did it.”

After that, one of the men kicked up a fuss and said they weren’t being paid enough to risk their necks. The foreman said Stefan hadn’t secured his harness properly and the man who had complained was sacked. Nobody else said a word. They couldn’t afford to. The next day at break, there was a distance between Nils and Vikram and the rest of the workers. No more coral tea was passed around, only darting looks of fear. Vikram told himself Nils’s words were simply that: words, but guilt had recomposed his friend’s features and Vikram was contaminated by it. They never mentioned Stefan again.

The following evening, keen to drink and to forget, they shared a bottle of raqua and talked deep into the night. They discussed Drake’s new job on the ice-boat, the girl Nils had decided to stop seeing, possible work gigs, the unpredictable mood of the west. They mused over the things they wanted. Nils’s ambition was to own a bathroom. It was going to be lime green with bronze taps and a walk-in shower. And a spa, Nils said, relishing this prospect as he held in a lungful of cigarette smoke. And a mosaic ceiling, he added, exhaling. With a tiger in it.

“I just want somewhere with heating that works,” said Vikram. He was leaning against one wall of Nils’s room, which like his was little more than a nest of things to keep warm with. Boots kicked off, blankets at his back, his three pairs of socks were steadily thawing. “Think of walking out of the cold into a blaze of warmth. Imagine if you could have a fire.”

“You’d never leave,” said Nils. “How many rooms would you have?”

“Three would be good.”

Nils nodded. “Room for a bed, room for a bath, somewhere to eat. Nice.”

Already, Vikram could see Nils creating such an apartment, furnishing it with objects and colours. Vikram wished he had his friend’s certainty, the power to envisage the exact thing that he desired. But when he tried to imagine his own version, all he saw was the shadowy forms of unused furniture: a bed never slept in, cupboards with empty shelves. He changed the subject.

“Do you remember the time Keli went over the border with a fake pass?”

Nils roared with laughter, his blue eyes almost disappearing into their crinkles.

“Said she’d been in a shuttle line.”

A deck of playing cards littered the space between them. Vikram gathered them together. “I don’t believe her, do you?”

“Not a chance.”

“Bet she tried to talk her way through, though.”

“Well, that’s Keli for you. Never gives up beating a dead fish.”

They always talked about her like this, as if she was still alive. It was respectful. Vikram passed the pack of cards from hand to hand. Something occurred to him.

“What do they do with their dead in the City?”

“I think they have special bags. Pump them full of air so they float, and send them out to sea and then they burn.”

“I heard there’s a tower where they burn them. It’s called a crematorium.”

Nils looked dubious. “How can they join the ghosts if they burn under a roof?”

“Maybe they don’t become ghosts. Maybe it’s just people from our side.”

They both fell silent. Vikram thought of Stefan, and wondered if he had been given the burial rites, or if he had been sent to a crematorium, or if they’d found his body at all. He glanced at his friend and saw the shadow of guilt there, and felt guilty himself for leading Nils into this macabre contemplation. He tried to think of a way to change the subject. But it was too late. The larger shadow was already in the room. Eirik. Eirik’s body. What the skadi had done with it. What they hadn’t done with it.

When Nils spoke, his voice was quiet. “I saw you and Drake. We agreed we wouldn’t act.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“But when I saw you, I thought maybe you were right. We had to do something.”

“No, we didn’t. It was stupid.”

“It was too late for me then. I was too far back.”

“Good, or you’d be dead like me and Drake nearly were.”

“Then the gas got me.”

Vikram thought once more of the invitation. Perhaps if he went to the party, Adelaide Mystik would agree to help, and neither he nor Nils would have to rely on weak harnesses, and the skadi would stop using gas, and Nils could get his lime green bathroom.

The raqua must really be taking effect.

Hammering on the partition next door jerked them both awake. No one replied. More hammering. There was a brief quiet, then the sound of repeated blows as a door was kicked in. A woman screamed.

Vikram and Nils were on their feet, both tensed, each of them with a hand to their knives. Nils put his finger to his lips. Through the thin walls they heard a man shouting and the woman pleading.

“Who lives there?” Vikram’s question was soundless.

“Still Ari,” Nils mouthed back. “She’s got that kid. Her man walked out weeks ago. He was bad news.”

They heard the child crying, Ari trying to comfort it, then yelling at the intruder. The yells ceased abruptly.

They ran out into the corridor. Other people were gathered there, shapeless figures in the gloom. Eyes peered from behind doors pushed ajar. The door next to Nils’s had been kicked closed. Vikram glanced at his friend. From inside he recognised the bangs and crashes of systematic destruction. He stepped towards the door.

“Don’t—” said someone.

“What?”

“It’s one of Juraj’s men. We don’t want trouble round here.”

“I don’t care who it is,” said Nils. “That’s my fucking neighbour.”

Vikram shouldered the door. It collapsed immediately, swinging open on one hinge. Inside, the intruder had Ari by the hair. The child cringed against the boarded window-wall.

The intruder barely glanced at Vikram.

“Get out.”

“Leave her alone.”

“She owes Juraj. This isn’t your business.”

“The man who used to live here owes Juraj.” Nils spoke from behind Vikram. “He cleared out six weeks ago. She doesn’t have what you want.”

“Makes no difference to Juraj,” said the man. The knuckles were white where he gripped the woman’s hair. His face was obscured by greasy tangles. Vikram couldn’t read the man’s eyes but he saw the outline of a knife at his belt.

“I heard Juraj was dead,” he said evenly. The man stiffened.

“I guess you heard wrong.”

Vikram’s hand went to his own hip.

“Look, there’s no need for this to get ugly.”

The man did turn now, assessing Vikram, seeing Nils poised behind him. He gave the woman a last shove against the wall and walked out, kicking the broken door viciously behind him.

Vikram looked around. The room was in chaos. The child watched him with mute, swollen eyes from behind a thick dark fringe. Tear trails had made streaks in a dirty face.

Nils was helping Ari to her feet. A trickle of blood ran down her neck where her head had hit the wall.

“You’re hurt,” said Nils.

Ari pressed her fingers gingerly to the back of her head, and then her face. A bruise was coming up on her temple. “I’ve had worse,” she said.

Vikram set a table upright. “We’ll give you a hand with this.”

“I’m alright. Really.” As they lingered, unsure, she added, “I just want to sort this out. Please, leave me be.”

On the way out Nils pulled the door back into its frame. There were low mutterings from the spectators.

“Think you should stay at mine for a few days?” Vikram asked.

“What’s the point? If anyone bothers coming back, it’ll take them all of two seconds to find out where you live.”

“Alright. Keep an eye out though.” Back in Nils’s partition, the cards were still on the floor in a neat brick. Through the wall they could hear Ari rearranging the room, dragging things into place.

“What do you want to play?” Nils asked eventually.

“Start you with a hand of piranha.”

Nils scooted over the pack. “Juraj and the rest are getting out of hand. Soon they’ll be trying to impose tariffs on every quarter in the west.”

“If he is alive. More likely than not it’s his underlings cashing in before the news is out.”

“Makes no difference if he’s dead or not. There’ll be someone else in his place within the week.”

“Won’t stop with the gangs though. We’ll all get caught up in it.” He paused. “What was her boyfriend running?”

“Soft stuff, soap and sugar, at least publicly. But judging by the argument before she kicked him out, that was a cover. Sounded like he was dealing in weapons.”

“Through the skadi?”

“How else? The bastards aren’t incorruptible.”

Vikram shuffled, distributed, reshuffled. As game followed game, the inanimate faces of the cards took on strange personalities. The Jack of Spades fell into Vikram’s hand three times until he began to see its presence as an omen. Signs and portents were everywhere in this city. Some people said the sea itself was a judgement. That the city was cursed for its sins, past and present. And it was easy, when the lower levels were flooded for the fourth time in a month and children drowned in their own beds — it was easy, he thought, to wring your hands and blame the heavens, because nobody else was there to listen to your woes.

“Your deal,” said Nils.

“Yeah. Sorry.” He shuffled with a snap and cut the deck.

Now there was shouting from upstairs. Human clamour sounded loud to Vikram now; it used to be nothing to his ears. Naala’s boat, where he’d grown up, was both a refuge and a morgue. The first winter he could remember, three kids had gone to sleep and in the night they’d died. The others had woken to find them, curled up like shells, a greyish tinge to their hardened skins. After that he was afraid to go to sleep.

He remembered the first night he had spent in a building, feeling sick with stagnancy and wide awake. Through the night he heard the breathing of the other three more distinctly than ever before. Nils’s smokers’ rasp. Mik’s gurgles. Drake’s long clear inhalations.

Mikkeli never said what stunt she had pulled to get the room, but Vikram suspected it had to do with the packages she sometimes delivered for a man named Maak. She collected the packages from the shanty towns. She took them to locations whose owners never had names, only yellowed eyes and mouths that liked to argue over previously negotiated bargains. Mikkeli didn’t like Vikram coming along. He understood why the first time he saw a man pull a knife on her.

He had a feeling, looking back now, that Mikkeli’s packages had probably contained weapons too.

It was shortly after that Vikram began his stints on the illegal fishing boats. Decisions and answers came easily then. He realized, as time went on, that things had degrees. Degrees of hurt and degrees of shame.

The Jack of Spades was in his hand. It was his turn. He had no idea how long he had been lost in contemplation, but Nils said nothing and Vikram suspected his friend was similarly absent tonight. You make your own luck, he thought. He played the Jack. It was a reckless move. He lost the game.

The bottle of raqua was almost dry, and they gathered up the cards for the night. Then, because it was late and he was a little drunk, Vikram asked, “You ever think about getting out of here, Nils?”

“Out of where? Six-fourteen? “Course I do.”

“I meant out of Osiris.”

It was a question each of them had posed to the other, a number of times, over the years. The sea got inside your head. Its currents pulled you, this way and that way. That was why you had to keep people around you, at least one — to act as ballast when the tide got too strong. Nils glanced at him. His forehead creased.

“Now that is crazy talk. You want to start fishing again? Not all those boats come back. Dangerous business, fishing.”

“Maybe they don’t go far enough.”

“They’re looking for fish, Vik. Anyone who went looking for land got eaten by sharks or drowned. Nothing out there to find.”

“They might’ve ended up on land, for all we know. What if it’s out there, what if it’s there to find… just waiting for us. Waiting for us to be brave enough.”

“And what if it is? What do you think you’d find? Rocks? Sand? You can’t eat sand. Can’t eat wind, either.”

“But you’d know. You’d know.”

He had a vision of wind blowing across an empty plateau. Not a creature in sight, just desiccated rock stretching on and on. Why was it so alluring?

“Wouldn’t you like to see the land your folks came from?” he asked.

“Vik. I know what it looks like. Everyone knows that whatever land is left, it’s toxic. Fire. Corpses. Plague and insects, man. Hell on Earth.”

Vikram nodded. He knew, but sometimes he couldn’t believe it.

Nils reached across and gave his arm a friendly shake.

“You’re drunk.”

Vikram couldn’t deny it. His limbs felt like cotton wool. Neither he nor Nils could afford to build up a tolerance to alcohol. Vikram reached into his pocket and pulled out the invitation.

“What’s that?” Nils asked. Vikram passed him the card. The Rose Night was two days away, he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer.

Nils looked at the card. He grinned.

“Where did you get this?”

“Linus Rechnov.”

“That guy you followed?”

“He’s Adelaide Mystik’s brother, isn’t he. Well, estranged brother. The other one’s most likely dead, if you believe what the krill say.”

“The twin was a nutter. Family probably did away with him. Why would Adelaide Mystik’s brother give you an invitation to some random party?”

“He said I needed a patron.”

Spoken out loud, it sounded even sillier than it had in Vikram’s head. Nils looked suitably dubious.

“It was you that followed him, right? So you caught him unawares. He probably thought you were out to assassinate him. He didn’t know what to do, so he’s palmed you off on his sister.”

Vikram shook his head. “No. It wasn’t like that. He’s—” He sought for a way to describe Linus Rechnov, but suitable words eluded him. “He’s too smart,” he concluded lamely.

“Smart? He’s a Citizen. Defective at birth.”

“Fine. So what if I go? And what if it’s a trick? Or a weird joke, I don’t know. At the time I thought he sounded genuine, but now…”

“No, you’re right. Citizens have reasons for everything. Still.” Nils turned the card over in his hands. He scratched the watermark with one nail. “It’s one hell of an opportunity.”

“To get myself chucked in jail?”

“More to spy,” said Nils. “Maybe this Linus guy, whether he realizes it or not, has a point. If we can’t beat them with guns and letters don’t get through, try something else. Try infiltration.”

“I’m not sure that’s what he meant either,” said Vikram.

“What does it matter? Go along, have a laugh. Eirik would love it.” Nils fell silent for a moment, but quickly recovered. “If you’re lucky, you’ll get to meet the mad bad Adelaide herself. Well worth a spell in jail.”

Vikram raised his eyebrows. Nils shrugged.

“Worth a day in jail?”

“Clearly you’ve never been underwater,” Vikram said dryly. Nils said nothing in response. He could not. The cell, with its green light and clogged porthole, was one memory they did not share. Time in a cell had made Vikram calm, dangerously calm. He had beaten down his anger so successfully that it had become an alien thing to him, unknown, and now unpredictable.

As the last few weeks had demonstrated. Perhaps, he thought, it was a warning. That for every hurdle put before him, there would always be a greater one behind it. At that moment, he knew that he’d always intended to go to Adelaide Mystik’s party.

9 ¦ ADELAIDE

“So tell me, Adie. Why exactly did you want to meet here?”

Tyr had to stoop to see into the mirror. He twitched the points of his collar carefully into shape, frowning slightly as he did so.

“Bit too dirty for you, is it?”

“I would have thought it was filthy by your standards.”

Tyr’s hair was sticking up in spikes. He scooped some water from the sink and smoothed it back. Each gesture made him a fraction more her father’s man. Adelaide hated the transformation. She stretched out languidly on the bed, aware that he could see her in the mirror.

“What a peculiar idea you have about me, Tyr. Seeing as you won’t come to my apartment—”

“Because it’s too much of a risk—”

“And as I can’t come to yours—”

“Similarly. Which is why we usually meet in dark bars or the back rooms of reasonably classy clubs, not dingy hotel bedrooms.”

“Are you complaining?”

He scratched distractedly at a bit of stubble. “Just commentating. Because I know the way your mind works.”

Adelaide offered him a brilliant smile.

“And that confirms it,” he said dryly.

“Alright,” she allowed. “We’re here because I have it on good authority that Sanjay Hanif’s office is across the water.”

She didn’t tell Tyr that she had grown impatient waiting for results, legitimately or via Lao. Nor that she had been calling Hanif’s office persistently for the last week. Each time she had met with the decided tones of Hanif’s secretary, and each time the secretary refused to tell her where the offices were located. Adelaide’s assurances of discretion had been unpersuasive, so she had recorded their last conversation and persuaded an acquaintance to trace it. The voiceprint located Hanif in a suite of low key, thirty-ninth floor offices in the industrial northern quarter, surrounded by greenhouses and factories, and directly opposite the Anemone Hotel.

She didn’t tell Tyr that she had already walked across the bridge four floors above and back down the stairwell of the scraper on the other side, gone to the floor above Hanif’s, worked out where his offices were, stood there imagining the discussions going on below, almost convinced, once, that she heard the burr of Hanif’s voice. She knew it would sound ridiculous. She didn’t know how to explain that she could not stay away; she had to do something, even if something was nothing.

Tyr went to the window, twitched aside the curtain, and looked across at the tower opposite.

“Shit.”

“Don’t fret. They have no idea I’ve found them.”

He let the curtain fall and turned back to look at the room with new eyes. She saw him register the supplies of Coralade and poppy-head crunches stacked on the bureau. A pair of Haakan binoculars propped on a chair. She half expected him to be angry. She had already prepared her response, but she saw only worry in his face.

“Adie, how is this helping? What can you possibly learn from sitting here watching them?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m here.”

Tyr sat on the edge of the bed. “Look. Everyone says Sanjay Hanif is very good at what he does. And equally as important, he isn’t corrupt. You have to trust him to do his work.”

“Tyr, I just want to know what he’s doing. I want to help. I’m the only one who believes Axel is alive, I know that. I can see it in your faces. Even you. But you’re wrong, you’re all wrong. Because I’d know if he was dead.” She pressed a hand between her ribs. “I’d feel it — here. You couldn’t understand unless you had a twin.”

Tyr’s hand came to rest, warm, on her ankle. She took his wrist.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But Hanif can’t operate on a hunch.”

“Unlike Tellers, I suppose.”

“Unlike Tellers.”

“And why should Hanif get access to the penthouse? What right does he have to go through Axel’s things? He doesn’t know Axel. I hate the idea of them going in there, touching things, when they haven’t even spoken to me — to anyone…”

“You think they’ll judge him.”

“They won’t understand him.”

“Can you blame them? Adie, he threw you out of your own apartment.”

“He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Because he was ill.” She glared at him until he corrected himself. “Is ill. Alright, let’s say he’s alive. What’s happened to him? Where do you think he is?”

“Maybe something scared him, maybe he’s gone into hiding. What if someone kidnapped him?”

“What for? There’d have been a ransom demand by now.”

“They might be playing a long game.”

“They couldn’t get in. The security on that tower is impenetrable to outsiders.”

Outsiders, yes, she thought. But not to someone who knew him. Or to an aerialist.

“What if they came in through the balcony? Abseiled, used a glider?”

“Now you’re in animé territory.”

“Am I?”

Tyr put his head in his hands. “I don’t know. But you’ll drive yourself mad wondering. You’ve gone through enough over Axel already, Adie, I don’t want to see you hurt any more.”

She placed her hands on his shoulders, massaging gently.

“Has Feodor said anything about the investigation?”

“You know I’d tell you if he had.”

“You could ask how it’s going.”

“It’s better if he confides in me. Trust me, I know your father well enough by now.”

She knew they were both thinking about the day she had come to the offices. The strange middle ground that Tyr walked between her and her father. She was suddenly afraid that the day might come when he had to choose, or when she had to choose. The truth was that all liaisons were a transaction at heart. With every intimacy gained, the ground was paved for what could be lost.

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his temple. “You don’t have to go.”

“I wish I didn’t.”

His tone was sombre and there was something in his expression that she wasn’t sure she liked. She took his face in her hand and turned it towards her, forcing him to meet her eyes. Her tone when she spoke was playful.

“Don’t say you’re feeling sorry for me, Tyr.”

He responded in kind.

“How could I? You’re a spoiled, selfish — shall I go on?” Adelaide threw a pillow at him. “—ruthless, soulless, grouchy bitch.”

“Grouchy?”

“Maybe not grouchy. But the rest.”

“Don’t forget it.”

Tyr brushed a strand of hair from her face.

“Believe me,” he said. “I won’t. Now I really have to go.”

After the door closed Adelaide listened to his footsteps fading down the corridor outside. Her bare legs felt cold. The hotel’s heating probably hadn’t been serviced in years. Adelaide pulled on her trousers, tucking in the candy-striped shirt and cinching the belt tight. She didn’t trust the shower. Besides, she enjoyed the feeling that they had marked one another; that each carried the other’s imprint. She liked the feeling of secrecy as she went back into the public world, on the shuttle lines, into the shops, the restaurants, wearing Tyr’s sweat on her skin.

She opened the curtains and picked up the binoculars once more. The Sobek Electronics logo blinked innocently from the top of the adjacent factory. Across the waterway, a blonde woman sat at a desk with a headset. Adelaide tried to decipher the glowing display on a large notice board behind her, but the zoom function on the binoculars was not quite powerful enough. She caught a brief glimpse of Sanjay Hanif. He was wearing black again. What were they discussing in there? Shouldn’t Hanif be out searching for Axel?

It had been fun, tracking down Hanif’s office. Fun inviting Tyr over. But Adelaide was angry with herself. Here she was acting as if her twin’s disappearance was some kind of game, a game that he himself had instigated. But it couldn’t be. The Axel who had disappeared was not the Axel she had lost. That man — that boy — was long gone. All she could hope to recover was his shadow.

She had to start thinking like Axel. What would her twin do? What had been going through his head in those last few weeks? If he had run away, then why?

The Rose Night was two days away. She would give Lao another week. If he had no further information, he would have to help her get into the penthouse. There, she would find clues that Sanjay Hanif and his secretary had no chance of deciphering. After all, Adelaide knew that apartment better than anybody. She used to live there.

10 ¦ VIKRAM

The doorman’s eyes flicked from the invitation’s inscription, to Vikram’s face, to his clothes and his shoes. He turned over the card and held it up to the light, examining the watermark. At last he straightened, and opened the door. A wave of music spilled out.

“Welcome to the Red Rooms, sir,” said the doorman.

“Thank you.”

He’d passed. Hoping his relief did not show, Vikram stepped inside and found himself in a hallway lined with mirrors and roses. At the end on the right was an archway. The music pulsed from the other side of it, the floor thrummed beneath his feet. Without pausing to check his reflection or allow himself second thoughts, Vikram walked through.

He was assailed by red, smoke, bodies and chatter. There were more flowers than he had ever seen in his life, all of them roses, all of them perfectly crimson. They were everywhere. On the walls, hanging from the ceilings, twined around furniture and plants and in sprays protruding from heads and corsages. Their scent infused the air, a light but sinuous perfume. The women’s costumes were also red, and so, he realized, was all the decor. Behind the people there were plush red backless sofas, soft red rugs, red meshing screens.

Adelaide Mystik’s legendary set, the Haze, were busy with drinks and cigarettes, their lips with newly chartered gossip. The women looked like an exotic breed of bird, encased in beaded corsets, flame-coloured feather skirts, shimmering stockings and jewelled sandals. Plumes erupted from their heads, making them taller than most of the men, who were a sleek contrast in black and white. Heads swivelled; they were continually looking over each other’s shoulders to check on new arrivals. Vikram edged to a corner.

Already he could feel sweat on the back of his neck. The room was vast but it was intensely, tropically hot. There were no air vents open. Near the entrance end, several people clustered around a large piano, their glasses resting upon its shiny black lid. At the other end was a mezzanine and beyond the mezzanine he could see an open doorway, where the apartment opened into other rooms. The prospect of so much space for one person was incredible.

“Olga! Darling! Been to Ilse’s yet?”

“On Tuesday, sweetie.”

“The opening was so charming, very select.”

“Oh? I was at the Weedy Seahorse.”

“That little nook Mino found? How is she? Still dallying with the Ngozi boy? Naughty.”

He listened a little longer but it was all names; who had done this, who had been there, who had taken that new lover. Vikram recognized faces he had only ever seen on display boards. There was the acrobat Lilja Aapo, chatting to the guy who had won the biking championship. A girl with blue hair whispered to another girl wearing a tiara of thin blossom branches that she’d found messages on Jokum’s Neptune. Of course she wasn’t meant to be looking, but she was sure he was seeing another mistress and did Idunn think she should confront him? Idunn didn’t.

Adelaide Mystik was nowhere to be seen.

For a few minutes he played the old game: guessing which Old World land each guest was descended from, imagining the landscapes where their ancestors had lived. He wondered if Citizens even cared about those places, or if it no longer mattered to them.

There was a relentless, kinetic energy about the party. Near the mezzanine, people were dancing. A DJ was up there. Vikram imagined these people would die rather than allow silence to fall between them. He lit a cigarette, because everyone else was, and almost ashed in a glass bowl before he realized there were petals and a ladle in it. A few glasses with the dredges of liquid were stacked beside. He looked about for a new one. A red jacketed man appeared, refilled the bowl with a pale pink liquid, replaced the used glasses with clean ones, and retreated.

“Thanks—”

The man had already gone. Vikram took a glass and ladled himself a drink. It was strong and very sweet. Heady too, or maybe that was the rose perfume, twining about his senses.

Now armed with the two essential accessories for the party, he made his way across the room. He knew that it was important to look purposeful. All of these people were actors; they might be Citizens, but Citizens had things to hide too. He found himself looking out for cats, remembering Mikkeli’s old tales about the City. She would have gone crazy to see this.

Under the mezzanine, a couple were entwined upon a sofa. The woman’s eyes met his over the man’s shoulder, thick lashed, boldly inviting. Imperceptibly, she patted the seat. Vikram moved on.

The next room was much smaller. A table made out of shiny dark wood was in the centre, and along the wall there were shelves lined with paper books and scale mosaics. At the table, a man shook out a line of milaine.

“Hello.” He nodded easily to Vikram. His pupils were dilated.

“Hi.”

The man cut the line with an invitation card identical to Vikram’s.

There were two doors leading out of this room. Vikram tried the first. It was a bathroom. The bath was full of ice and bottles. Vikram retreated.

The man lifted his head, sniffing. “There’s another bathroom through there.”

“Thanks.”

The man frowned. “Not seen you before. What d’you do?”

“I’m a biker.”

“Ah. Probably seen you at the races. From afar.”

“Probably.”

The second door took him into a sparkling chrome kitchen. A few people were leaning against the counters, smoking and chatting. Potted herbs lined the window wall. Vikram could not imagine Adelaide as a cook.

He passed straight through into a dining area, empty this time. Vikram exhaled shakily. It was the layout of the place that was making him nervous. With each room, he took himself further away from the exit, and escape.

He forced himself to survey the room rationally. Like everything else in Adelaide’s apartment, this space was elegantly beautiful. He counted eight chairs pushed in under the glass-topped table, but it was laid, inexplicably, for two people.

There was one more door. If Vikram’s judgement was correct, he must have made almost a complete loop of the tower. Which meant there should be only one room left.

He turned the handle cautiously. It gave onto a corridor. The corridor went off to the right and bent around a corner, presumably skirting back along the rooms he had just passed. Vikram was facing yet another door. This time, he was certain he would meet with a lock.

He glanced down the hallway. It was empty. He put an ear to the door he had just closed, and then to the door facing him. He could hear the muffled sounds of the music and people shouting over it. Nothing extraneous. When he tried the door it opened easily. He held it just ajar and peered through.

Adelaide’s bedroom glowed with faint, violet lighting. He listened again, wary that she might be inside. But the room was still. He slipped through and pushed the door shut.

It felt like dusk. He waited for his eyes to adjust. A subtle scent hung in the air, not floral, something more exotic. The bed dominated the space. The wall facing it was mirrored from floor to ceiling. The window-wall was bare and black — she looked out on the open ocean, a bleak view. There were no paintings. There were no roses either.

The table beside her bed was empty except for a lamp and a bottle of medication. He read the label with little surprise; they were sleeping pills. When he put them down his arm brushed against the lampshade and the bulb lit up, making him jump.

On her dresser was a teapot in the shape of a dragon. He picked it up. A thin trickle of green powder spilled from the spout. Hastily, Vikram replaced the pot and dusted off the dresser.

There was only one photograph. He had to angle the frame under the light to see it properly. The photograph was of Adelaide and her twin, aged about twelve. Their grins and their freckles were identical. Inside her hood, Adelaide’s hair was longer than Axel’s, but otherwise it would have been difficult to tell them apart. They were on a rooftop, and it was nighttime.

The picture was out of focus. It seemed an odd choice to have framed when there must be so many of better quality, but maybe that was the point. Vikram put it carefully back on the dresser. He opened a couple of drawers. They contained cosmetics and lingerie. He shut them. He looked around again at the bed. Its covers were pulled perfectly straight. He supposed she had a cleaner to keep the place in order.

For a girl who could have bought anything in the city, it was a curiously impersonal room.

Voices the other side of the door alerted him. He crossed the room silently. Laughter sounded in the hallway outside. The handle turned. Behind the door, Vikram froze.

A rectangle of light spilled onto the pale carpet.

“Oops,” a girl giggled. “Looks like we’ve found Adelaide’s boudoir.” She rolled the last word around her tongue, loading it with innuendo.

“Not a bad pad, is it?”

“We could…”

A set of painted fingernails curled around the door frame. Vikram shrank back.

“Not if you want to be invited again.”

“Mm, maybe you’re right. Where shall we go?”

“Down here. I know the place better than you.”

The hand withdrew. Vikram’s heart was thudding. He waited for their voices to fade, then stepped outside.

“Hello.”

A girl was standing in the corridor, observing him. Her arms were folded. Her jet black hair shone almost blue and a pink feathery tail fell between two curious eyes.

“Hi.” His throat was as dry as sand.

“It’s okay. I’d want to see it too, if I hadn’t before.” When he didn’t answer, she let her lips part in a mocking smile. “What’s the matter, catfish got your tongue? I’m Jannike Ko. Adelaide’s best friend. You can call me Jan.”

Vikram tried to speak casually.

“Where is Adelaide? I haven’t seen her.”

“Oh, everyone wants to know where Adelaide is. Hiding somewhere, you know what she’s like. Forever mysterious. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose so.”

She laughed. The pink feather tail bobbed up and down.

“Why don’t you come with me instead? I don’t bite you know. Actually I’m sapphic. I should say, I’m dying for your outfit. It’s so ironic. And pioneering, I don’t think anyone’s done western rag yet. You should talk to Mino. What was it you said you did again?”

“I’m a biker.”

“A biker? You must know Udur then?”

“Not really. We’re at different levels. Excuse me, I must find the bathroom,” he said quickly. “It was nice to meet you.”

He made his way back through the apartment, fuelled by an urgent desire to be near the exit.

In the main room, the noise and the scent of roses were overwhelming. He looked for Adelaide but could not see her. Now he wondered if he had missed an opportunity — could that awful girl have been his way in? Why hadn’t he gone with her?

He refilled his drink and headed back towards his original observation post. A man and two women were grouped in intense conversation around a table. A low-hanging lantern cast shadows on their faces, giving them a slightly furtive air. Vikram leaned against the wall and sipped casually at the pink stuff.

“—done well this year, hasn’t she?”

“Of course, she always does.”

“Yes, but I mean, considering the circumstances.”

“Bound to be difficult.”

“The not knowing—”

“Yes, my dear, but the suspicion is something else again. After all, people talk.” The woman speaking looked pointedly at each of her companions and gave a little laugh. The others joined in self-consciously but then the other woman, who was younger, said in a hushed voice,

“Why, what have you heard?”

“All sorts of things. Speculation, I dare say. But one can only imagine there is a reason dear Adelaide split from the Rechnovs…”

The man unhunched his shoulders in a slight shrug. “Can’t be too big a rift if she’s living in a place like this.”

“Yes, but can you imagine the scandal if they’d cut her off? It was already bad enough with… well, you know…”

The younger woman looked at her in slight confusion, and the man mouthed something.

“Did you know him?” she whispered back. He shook his head. The older woman checked over her shoulder, before saying, “I did.”

“What was he like?”

“Oh, he was a funny one. Bright, I suppose. Almost too bright — he’d walk off right in the middle of a conversation, terribly rude. The family said it was a health issue but I was never convinced; there was something odd about the whole affair.”

“I’ve heard people say he might have—” The man made a circular motion with his hand, as if he did not want to be any more explicit. The older woman raised eyebrows elongated to the edges of her face. “You know,” he muttered. “Done it—himself.”

The woman responded sharply. “That’s a filthy lie and you tell anyone that says so.”

“Alright, alright…”

“I heard they had fifty boats out looking for him,” the girl chirped. “Fifty! Viviana Rechnov must have pulled every string in the Reef. And that’s not all. They had entire squads of divers.”

“That may be. But we shouldn’t really talk about him at all—she doesn’t like it.”

They all shared a private smile. The young woman leaned forward to take a sip of something violet, and Vikram found himself in her line of sight. She stared at him curiously.

“Hello?”

The other two turned around.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Vikram.”

“Vikram…” The man ran the name over his tongue as though he was testing it for toxicants, then finding it clear, shook his head in bafflement.

“Vikram who?” the older woman asked. Her eyes darted all over him.

“Vikram Bai,” he said.

“And you are here for…?”

He was thrown by the question for a moment, and then wondered if she thought he was with Adelaide’s staff.

“For the party,” he said, and waved his invite, the magic talisman.

“Oh!” Her expression did not quite clear. “Adelaide’s taken you up, has she?”

“Not exactly,” Vikram said, remembering he had promised not to mention Linus’s name, and now seeing that might be problematic. “I hope she will,” he said.

“We all hope for that,” said the man fervently.

“Don’t be silly, Kristin, you’ve been on Adelaide’s list for months. Oh Tyr! I didn’t see you arrive.” The woman’s greeting, directed over Vikram’s shoulder, was suddenly girlish.

“I was here early, Gudrun.” The newcomer turned to Vikram, who saw the reason for Gudrun’s change in tone. The man was classically handsome and perfectly streamlined in features and physique. Unlike the other guests, the shirt beneath his jacket was red. He wore the clothes with easy, nonchalant grace. His eyes were a surprisingly deep shade of grey beneath hair the colour of dry sand. They travelled over Vikram, searching. Vikram knew with absolute surety that even if he had the same access to credit as one of Adelaide’s crowd, he could never look like that. The man was wet with money.

“Hi,” the newcomer said finally. “My name’s Tyr. Don’t think I’ve seen you before?”

“No. It’s Vikram.”

“Would you mind coming with me? There’s someone who wants to meet you.” Tyr slung an arm around Vikram’s shoulders and was leading him away before he had a chance to say goodbye. The group looked momentarily surprised, and then reformed as though nothing had happened.

Tyr steered Vikram expertly into the mirrored hallway. It was quiet compared to the fracas inside.

“So, this is the first time you’ve been to one of Adelaide’s parties? What do you think?”

“Good party.” Vikram stayed neutral.

Tyr laughed. “They always are. Now do tell me, Vikram. Which of the krill are you working for? Because you sure as hell don’t belong in here.”

Vikram glanced back through the archway. Two girls had climbed onto the piano and were swaying from side to side as they sung, the weight of their headpieces threatening to unbalance them completely. No-one was paying any attention to him and Tyr.

“I’m not here for any newsreel,” he said. “I’m here to see Adelaide.”

“That’s funny,” said Tyr. “Because you’re not on her guest list.”

“I know that,” Vikram said, wary now. He didn’t know Tyr’s background, but nor did he doubt a stranger’s capacity to throw a punch. He felt his own body tensing in anticipation. There was a growing part of him that would love to get in a fight. “Look,” he said. “I’m from a political reform group. Horizon. I spoke at the Council recently. I just wanted to see Adelaide. To ask if she could help us.”

Tyr stared at him as though he was crazy. “I don’t know who you are, or who you’re working for, but you’re leaving right now.”

“It’s alright, Tyr. He’ll go quietly.”

The voice was at once layered and laden, cold and charged, honey and steel. Composed as it was of so many disparate keys, it had no right to be any one thing. Vikram looked to its source and caught his first glimpse of Adelaide Mystik. She was wearing a dress the colour of clotting blood. It rippled around her body as though she was a strand of seaweed caught by the waves. In her hair were black roses and black lines ringed her green eyes, brilliant in a pale, pointed face.

“Adelaide,” he said. The words clustered on his tongue. He was ready, at that moment, to tell her everything. About Mikkeli, about Stefan, about the other people who were going to die this winter, about the fishing boats and the unremembered quarters, the coldest he’d ever been, and the way the sea sounded at night with the window open in the summer months, fierce but strangely comforting, even about the underwater cell. He was ready to tell her all of this, and despised himself for the impulse, but he could not stop. “I need to talk to you—”

“Yes,” she said, and now her voice was sanitized: stripped of all pretence at kindness. “Thank you for coming. Goodbye.”

The door opened. The doorman beckoned. Adelaide turned away. Vikram glared at the velveted figure, furious with himself, furious with Linus and Linus’s bitch of a sister. Tyr stood with a smile which Vikram could only construe as amusement. With every second that passed he felt his options dwindling. He could fight. He could rage and swear at them. He could get arrested, and spend another few months in jail underwater. He could walk away. Once again, he could walk away.

They were encouraging him towards the latter. It had been so neatly done. Extracting him from the guests, Adelaide bidding a cordial farewell. He wanted to rob them of that victory, to make a mess and a scandal, bring blood to these exquisitely papered rooms. He was longing to break Tyr’s jaw. He saw the other man’s face as a mangled pulp, and was almost shocked by the intensity of his desire to make it happen. Even that would only give them more meat to feed off. He had lost all around.

Outside, he read the gold plated sign on the closed door: Adelaide Mystik, The Red Rooms. He vented a fraction of his frustration on the wall, denting the panelled corridor. The doorman took a step away from his post.

“Don’t,” said Vikram. Something in the expression on his face halted the man, and Vikram walked away.

11 ¦ ADELAIDE

From her hiding place up on the mezzanine, Adelaide surveyed her party critically. The room was full. Hired barmen moved subtly through the red-dressed guests, replenishing cocktail bowls where the tidemarks fell low. Beside her, the DJ was brewing a potent cloud of sound to fuel the dancers. But Adelaide was distracted. There was a man present at her party who was not meant to be here. She knew he was not meant to be here because he was talking to Gudrun, a veteran member of the Haze, and Gudrun looked bemused. Gudrun was never bemused.

Loathe to create an unnecessary scene, she found Tyr chatting to Freya Kess, a tiny girl with a pixie face and hair that descended in corkscrew curls. Adelaide surveyed them dispassionately before interrupting.

“Do you have a minute, Tyr?”

“Nice to see you, as always, Adelaide.” His tone, as usual for their public meetings, was just short of sarcastic.

“Now?” she said imperiously.

“Excuse me.” Tyr turned to Freya, rolling his eyes. He followed Adelaide into the crowd. “What is it?” he said in an undertone.

“We have a gatecrasher.”

“Where?”

“Behind me, by the interior wall, two o’clock.”

His eyes flicked over her shoulder. “Black shirt, terrible hair? Talking to Kristin and Gudrun?”

“That’s the one,” she said. “Do you recognize him?”

“No. You?”

“Not a clue. Do you think he’s dangerous?” With her back to the gatecrasher, Adelaide felt her sense of intrigue rising. The breach in security took her aback though. Her invitations were watermarked like pre-Neon banknotes. They weren’t just quaint; they should be impossible to forge.

“No idea. Looks oddly familiar though. Stay here, I’ll deal with it.”

“Thank you.”

The second that Tyr moved away her attention was claimed by Lilja. Adelaide gave the acrobat a full half of her attention. The other half shadowed Tyr as he approached the stranger and escorted him through the archway. Adelaide excused herself and moved to where she could listen without being seen.

“I’m not here for any media. I’m here to see Adelaide.”

The gatecrasher sounded strange. It was a gruff voice, but hoarse too, she thought. It wasn’t an accent as such — what was an accent nowadays anyway? Everyone spoke Boreal English. Even her grandfather had forsaken his childhood Siberian; she had only ever heard him speak it on those occasions when Axel had asked. She edged closer.

“That’s funny,” Tyr was saying. “Because you’re not on her guest list.”

“I know that.” There was a pause. A new track started and Adelaide strained to hear over the music. Why did this man want to see her? She knew most of the krill by voice if not by sight. She was forever changing her scarab code to evade them.

“Look,” the gatecrasher said. “I’m from a political reform group. Horizon. I spoke at the Council recently. I just wanted to see Adelaide. To ask if she could help us.”

This was unexpected, and disappointing. Of course, it was possible the man was lying, but she sensed not. That was what was bothering her about the voice. It held the unusual ring of truth.

“I don’t know who you are, or who you’re working for, but you’re leaving right now.” Tyr evidently had no such concerns.

Adelaide judged it time to put an end to the intrusion. She stepped out.

“It’s alright, Tyr. He’ll go quietly.”

The opposing walls of mirrors multiplied the two men’s reflections, producing the illusion of spectators on either side. Tyr, calm in his red shirt — only Adelaide would know that his body was tensed in apprehension. And the stranger — up close she was surprised by his appearance. He was younger than the sandpaper voice suggested, perhaps not much older than herself. His eyes were the colour of cocoa, almond shaped, striking, but the whites were bloodshot. His hair was dark and shaggy. She ignored the clothes, her gaze stripping away the cheap layers of clothing to the sinewy physique beneath. Tall, and thin like wire. No, she thought idly. Not unattractive.

But still. Too still, as if he had practised. Even his blinking was slow, each sweep of the eyelashes seeming to reinforce some careful screen. It was a little unnerving.

“Adelaide,” he said.

I must put a stop to this, she thought.

“I need to talk to—”

“Yes. Thank you for coming. Goodbye.”

An odd expression crossed the man’s face. There was anger there, clearly, but it was more than that. It was accusatory. Almost a look of hatred. For a moment she thought he was going to do something wild, and wondered if her assessment was way off track and he was dangerous after all. She let her smile drop into that tension, leisurely, the way he had looked at her, before she turned her back.

Behind her, quick footsteps marked the stranger’s eviction. Nobody had noticed anything. She waited, aware that Tyr was at her shoulder.

“We’ll have to find out who he is,” she said.

“I know who he is. The westerner who went to Chambers — I saw his photograph on the newsreel. Stars knows how he got in.”

“Stars indeed.” She frowned, but put the gatecrasher aside. “Balcony?”

“Five minutes.”

She moved away and was instantly claimed by a newly blonde Minota. It was a lucky collision. Minota was diverting but so caught up in her own cleverness that she paid little attention to anyone else. Over Minota’s shoulder Adelaide saw Tyr disappear into the next room. Minota was relating a story. She gave it little glosses, doll-like hands gesticulating. There was a pet goose in the story, and the conclusion was something to do with the goose attacking one of Minota’s lovers in her bed. Adelaide laughed and calculated the mental time for Tyr to make his way through the study, the kitchen and the dining room, and from there into her bedroom. Minota looked pleased with herself.

“Really, though, you should have been there. It was too brilliant.”

“I can only imagine.”

Minota caught her arm, eyelids stretching. “Oh honey, I hate to ask, but do you have anything? I’m so dry, I can barely afford a line.”

“There’s a brass pot in the drinks cabinet.” Adelaide gave Minota’s hand a conspiratorial squeeze. “Why don’t you help yourself?”

Minota giggled. “You’re so generous, Adelaide.”

Minota’s discovery was met with shrieks of delight and delving into handbags for suitable paper. Masked by the commotion, Adelaide slipped back into the hallway. She checked over her shoulder, then arranged her fingertips in a pattern against the glass. There was a little click, and a panel of the mirror slid across. Adelaide eased through the gap. The panel slid back behind her. She was in her private bathroom.

It was abruptly quiet. Adelaide smiled to herself. Her grandfather had incorporated some useful innovations into the Rechnov properties.

She opened the door into her bedroom, knowing Tyr would already have entered from the other side. She took a slip of milaine from the dragon pot and a thick, heavy coat from the wardrobe. Heat rose to her face with the additional layer, evaporating the moment she opened the balcony door.

She shut the door behind her, and stopped, mesmerized by the cold. The emptiness. There was nothing out here but the occasional light from a passing patrol boat, and beacons shining seven miles away at the ring-net. Just the dark, endless ocean. Another world.

Tonight especially she felt that dislocation. The night was acute with absence. Absence of wind, rain, absence of everything except the hiss of her lungs, the thud of her heart, and Tyr, breathing, a few metres away.

“You escaped,” he said.

“I told Minota where to find the milaine.”

“Good diversion.”

They moved at the same time. At once he was kissing her, her back pressed against the glass wall, their lips the only warmth in a frozen world. She was stunned, as always, how much she wanted him. In five years of illicit sex they had never spent a night together. She knew disparate parts of him, could bind them together to make the man he might show to other lovers. But it was an imaginary picture; a concept of boundaries that she would never know. And so it was new every time, dazzlingly, incredibly new. She felt these moments in the marrow of her bones.

“Wait,” he said.

“Wait?” She put a bite of anger into her voice. He responded at once, swinging her around and pushing her against the balcony. She grabbed the railings. Vertigo collided with adrenalin. She was dizzy with altitude. The hundred floor drop and the crashing waves. Tyr against her, inside her, only Tyr’s hands to save her if she slipped. This was world’s end, a sight to drive you mad. That madness was vented in their need for each other, in its heady savage haste. When he pulled away she felt almost sick with it.

“You could stay,” she said.

He shook his head. “Too risky.”

One of them always held back. She shook a fat line of milaine onto the rail and they raced to snort it before some disturbance in the air dissipated the fine green particles. Their heads collided in the centre; she met his eyes and giggled. He grinned back, sniffed.

“Hang on…”

She brushed a trace of powder from the stubble of his upper lip.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”

“Yes. You go back first.”

“Don’t fall off.”

“I won’t.”

She watched him go with a kind of wrench, as though he was already back in her father’s office. He had never admitted it, but she knew Feodor had sent him to the Haze to spy on her. Tyr bridged two worlds.

For a few moments she let herself surrender to the strangeness of the night. Scorpio and Lupus glimmered brightly. She imagined the scientists upstairs training their telescopes. The dryness in her throat, heightened by outdoor air and milaine, reminded her that she must return to her guests. She was no longer worried about getting caught; quite the contrary, she knew that she and Tyr were too clever for that.

When she got back to the party Minota was in the middle of recounting the same anecdote about the goose and the lover to a giddied circle. A mirror was on the table. Tyr lounged on the other side, his long legs stretched out, laughing. There were new arrivals. The apartment was heaving, most people now standing, many dancing.

“There you are, Adelaide!”

It was Jannike, with two glasses of pink punch. Jan’s hair supported a spectacular headpiece that curled over her forehead in a furry cerise tail. Adelaide had a flashback of Axel two years ago, solemnly fixing a dried seahorse to Jan’s head and assuring her it was the latest trick.

“Darling, the most incredible party!” said Jan. “You really have surpassed yourself this time, absolutely everybody’s here. I met this rather handsome but most peculiar boy outside your bedroom. Said he was a biker, but Udur doesn’t know him. And Linus! What a surprise!”

The mention of her brother distracted Adelaide from Jannike’s previous comment.

“Linus? He’s not here?”

“Yes, over there. How on earth did you lure him out?”

“He never said he was coming.” Adelaide scanned the room until she found her brother. He had clearly come straight from work, dressed in a formal suit with no flair to it at all. People moving in his direction swerved away when they clocked who it was. Adelaide was not surprised. Linus was hardly stimulating conversation and besides, everyone knew the siblings shunned one another. “What does he think he’s doing here, Jan?”

“Well, darling, he was chatting away — maybe not chatting exactly, but when I asked him something he responded with words. Maybe there’s hope for him yet, what do you think?” Jannike pursed her lips, assessing the situation.

“I suppose I ought to talk to him.” Adelaide stared at her older brother with equal fascination. Yes, she had sent him an invitation, but that was a long running, only half funny joke between them. She could not work out whether to be angry or amused.

“Give him a line,” Jannike suggested. “Say, he doesn’t even have a drink. I’ll get him one, what does he take?”

“Get him a Rose Infusion. He needs sweetening up.”

“Never fear, angel. Janko will come and save you in a minute.”

Skirting the window-wall, Adelaide managed to cross the room unmolested. Linus caught her eye as she reached the halfway point. His eyes creased with amusement. She reminded herself that the Rechnovs were game players; his presence must be approached as a challenge.

“Evening, Adelaide. Made it through the hyenas?”

“I’d prefer jaguars, if Osiris had any,” she said. Reaching up to his collar, she undid the necktie, pulled it off, and tossed it onto a nearby plant. “Better. Don’t you know it’s cabaret night?”

“I thought it was rose night.”

“Rose night, cabaret theme. Anyway, this is a rare sighting. What brings you to this end of town?”

Linus looked bemused, perhaps by the disappearance of his necktie. “You sent me an invitation, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but you chuck my cards in the recycler.”

“Not always. Sometimes I find a more appropriate use for them.”

Adelaide gave him a suspicious look.

“Tell me,” said Linus. “How much does it cost you to host these things? Or should I say, how much does it cost us?”

“Why, does the bottomless pit of family bank have a previously undiscovered floor?”

“Not as far as I know. Dmitri guards the accounts. If he gets in touch, you’ll know bankruptcy is imminent.”

“I’ve not seen Dmitri for months.”

“Then I dare say you have a few more parties’ worth.” Linus retrieved his necktie from the plant. He rolled it into a neat snail shell and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Adelaide frowned.

“I hope you aren’t going to be admonishing tonight. I’d have to effect your removal.”

“I promise to behave,” he said. “If only because I’m too scared of your security detail.”

“I thought I sensed a latent air of terror about you.”

“I like the decor, by the way. Very dramatic. Although I can’t help feeling a little sorry for all the women getting second-rate flowers, now that you’ve used up a month’s worth of rose stock.”

Adelaide scoffed. “Old World values.”

“So why did you choose roses for tonight?”

She looked at him. Was he serious? “Aesthetics.”

“Your Rose Infusion, sir.”

Jannike stood before them, grinning. She held aloft a selection of cocktails balanced enticingly on a tray. The tray was angled, with the pink concoction sloping towards the rim of its glass and Linus.

“Oh — thank you, Jannike.”

“You’re welcome.” Jannike performed a curtsy. The tray skidded away, skimming over the tops of heads like an adolescent flying saucer. Adelaide and Linus watched.

“So. Did you like your gatecrasher?”

“You heard about him? Did you, by any chance, send him?”

Linus smiled. “Now why would you think that?”

“Nobody else would give away an invitation.”

“Well, I might have.”

“Rude of you, dear brother. But he was evicted quickly.”

“Did you listen to anything he said?”

The sudden switch in conversational direction annoyed Adelaide. She had been rather enjoying their backhanded banter. Now she had a strong urge to put Linus in his place.

“Why would I want to listen to one of your spies?”

Linus extracted a rose petal from his cocktail and looked for somewhere to put it. Crossly, Adelaide held out her own glass. He dropped it in. “Don’t be absurd. Vikram is trying to encourage the Council to put through a few reforms for the west. You have influence, I thought you might help him.”

Adelaide’s laugh rang out. Several people glanced over as if they might approach, then seeing Linus, retracted the impulse. His presence was beginning to dampen her party. She needed him gone. “Linus, you have a very odd idea about my priorities.”

“You wouldn’t like to annoy the Council?”

“Even if I did, I have other things to think about right now.” They were talking without looking at one another, but his next words changed that.

“Like getting into Axel’s apartment?”

Her eyes narrowed. “So now we get to it.”

“Get to what?”

“Why you’re here. Did Feodor send you?”

“Nobody sent me, Adelaide.” Linus dropped his voice. “I decided to come and talk to you. This investigation is a delicate thing. People are making accusations. The Daily Flotsam has even suggested we’ve done away with Axel ourselves because he was an embarrassment.”

“For all I know you might have done,” she said distantly.

Linus’s eyebrows drew together. “It would be a mistake to think I don’t care, Adelaide. He was my brother too.”

“He was nobody’s brother by the end of it.”

“In any case you can’t go around establishing your own private battleground. You’ve got to let it go. We all have.”

She bestowed an insincere smile upon him. “Anything you say, Linus.”

“You’re impossible.” He kept his voice low but it was strained with anger.

“It’s been said before.”

“And you should stop screwing around with Tyr as well.”

She saw the regret flash over her brother’s face a second after he had spoken, but it was too late. Her eyes flicked involuntarily across the room. They were playing poker at the table now. Tyr had a stack of chips in front of him. He was toying with them, letting the disks slip through his fingers in a series of clinks. It was chance, perhaps, that made him catch her eye at that moment. But it might have been something more elusive and unqualified. Understanding sprang between them. Tyr looked away.

Linus lit two cigarettes and passed her one without speaking. The first inhalation grated on her throat. He smoked something different to her. It tasted grey. She drew twice, deeply, before allowing herself to speak.

“How long have you known?”

“I’ve suspected for a while. Tonight confirmed it.”

A cloud of laughter floated up from the poker table. Jannike had appropriated one of the barmen’s jackets. She bent over in mock imitation of a waiter, cocking her head so that the crimson tail dangled over her ear. “Raise you five hundred,” said Kristin. Minota stripped off her bracelet and threw it down. In the corner, one of Adelaide’s musician friends had opened the piano and was playing pre-Neon baroque, oblivious to the DJ or anyone else in the room. Olga was lounging across the top, blowing smoke rings.

There was something awful, she thought, about the idea of prolonged wondering, of surveillance. She would almost rather have been caught in the act.

“You know if our father finds out he’ll be fired,” said Linus.

“I know.”

“You’re selfish.”

“I always have been.”

“There’s too much on the line.”

“For me, too.” She hardly knew what they were saying.

“For everyone. This is an unstable time politically.” Linus lowered his voice. “Adelaide, you must know that the City is on the verge of a resource crisis. Bufferglass and solar skin reserves are all but gone, now we’re having problems at the mining station. This is not a time when the family needs distractions. Now please — if you aren’t prepared to reconsider, let’s just go back to how things were. We’ll stick to our business and you stick to yours.”

Not trusting herself to speak, she stared directly ahead. Linus sighed.

“I have to go. I’ve got a meeting at nine o’clock in the morning and I need to be awake for it.”

“Of course. Thank you for coming.”

Many hours later, when the party was over and she was sitting alone in its debris, Adelaide would have to admire the finesse of Linus’s attack. He might have played his trump card too early. He had played it well nonetheless. But watching him leave, all she felt was sick, as if every last gasp of oxygen had been squeezed from her body.

12 ¦ VIKRAM

“So Vik does his spiel, tells her how we’re all living in shit, dying of cold and drowning down here, and Miz Adelaide Mystik goes, get this, she goes, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming! Can you believe it!” Nils laughed until it turned into a spluttering cough. He tapped the passing bar girl on the shoulder. “Get us another jug of that, will you?”

The boarded-up den was packed and beginning to get rowdy. Vikram, Nils and Drake hunched on either side of the makeshift table: a door propped over empty kegs. Drake had her feet up. She was wearing her prized boots, huge and chunky, their soles two inches thick and ridged like a series of fins. A naked electric bulb swung overhead, casting wild shadows, making the drunk feel drunker.

“Stuck up cow,” said Drake. She drew luxuriously on a skinny roll-up and sighed out an equally emaciated trail of smoke. “Surprised you didn’t punch her, Vik.”

“I was tempted,” Vikram said.

“Thank you for coming.” Nils put on a high pitched, whiny voice. “What a bitch.” He shook his head admiringly. Nils’s reaction was predictable. He was disappointed Vikram had seen so little of Adelaide, but she was exactly as Nils had imagined.

Drake elbowed a man who was trying to inhale the smoke from her cigarette. “So, did you get a good look at her apartment? I bet it’s massive, right?”

Vikram shook his head. “You can’t imagine.”

“Oh, I can imagine. I can imagine the whole thing.” There was a derisive, bitter tone to Drake’s voice. Vikram understood it completely, but he wished suddenly that it was not there.

“I talked to this one girl,” he said. “She seemed alright.”

“Alright?” Drake gave a snort of disbelief. “How alright?”

Vikram couldn’t say that Jannike hadn’t given him away without explaining that he’d been in Adelaide’s bedroom, so he just shrugged. Now he thought about it, perhaps she had given him away.

The bar girl came back with a cracked jug and dumped it in the middle of the bench. Some of the contents splashed over.

Nils jumped to his feet. “Hey, watch what you’re doing!”

Vikram reached up and put a hand on Nils’s arm until his friend sat down. The bar girl stalked off without a word.

“That Miz Mystik could take a leaf or two out of her book,” Drake commented.

“Maybe she already did,” Vikram tried, half-heartedly, to join in on the joke. He had given his friends the bare facts. He’d told them about the extravagance of the Red Rooms, his brief conversation with the guests, what Tyr had said at the end. He hadn’t told them about western rag. He could not explain the chagrin he had felt. For Nils, Vikram’s expulsion was a great escape, to be recounted and exaggerated in company. It was not an unflattering version, but every time Nils retold the story, it echoed falser in Vikram’s mind.

The wind banged against the boarded bufferglass. Above them, the light bulb flung back and forth.

“Whipping up a ghost-grabber,” Drake said, hooking one ankle over the other. She widened her eyes spookily. Vikram glanced at the window-wall. Watch out, the orphanage boat-keeper used to say, or the Tarctic will get you.

“Better not be,” Nils grumbled. “We’ll be stuck here all night.”

“Better get another jug.” Drake stuck her arm into the air and twisted her face into an expression of mild pain. “Oy, waiter! Are you there?” She and Nils convulsed.

A heavy-set man in a woollen hat paused by their table. His face was familiar but Vikram couldn’t place him.

“Drake. Thought I heard your voice.”

“Hey, man, good to see you. Working the Friday shift?”

“Maybe, maybe. You?”

“Same as always.”

The man nodded to Nils and Vikram and moved on before they had a chance to return the greeting.

“Who was that?” Vikram asked.

“Rikard. You remember Rikard? He was with us three years ago.”

“Think Keli knows him,” Nils added.

Rikard. The face sharpened into memory; their paths must have crossed. It was possible he had never even spoken to the man, but there had been so many people back then.

“I didn’t realize you were still in touch with that crowd,” he said.

“I’m not. He’s started crewing the boats occasionally, I ran into him a few weeks back.”

Vikram looked at the soles of Drake’s boots, the ridges packed with waterproof wax and fish scales. He was terrified that one day she would be caught on an illegal fish run and either killed or flung underwater, but it was pointless voicing that fear. Instead he asked, “What happened to your tooth?”

He thought she had lost one of the front ones, but when she grinned he saw that the tooth had turned entirely black.

“Some bastard tried to nick my boots while I was asleep.”

“I’ll buy you a gold one for midwinter,” Nils offered.

“You’re so generous, you. I’ll have a pair of ruby earrings while you’re at it. And maybe a bunch of, what was it, roses too — for my hair.” Drake screwed up a handful of wiry curls. “What d’you think?”

Vikram drained his mug.

“Yeah, yeah, very funny you two.”

When they left the den, much later, the wind had dropped and they had finished several jugs. Vikram stepped outside ahead of the others. The first bridge, thirty floors up, was a rumpled construction lashed together out of planks, boards, squares of fibreglass, broken bufferglass panes, metal sheets and whole and partial boats. Dirty water welled in the pit of a kayak, dripping erratically down.

Vikram climbed easily over the treacherous walkway. The bridge rocked beneath him, regularly, like a pendulum. He sensed movement in the sky above, the clouds scudding away on high winds. A glimmer of light drew his gaze south. He followed it, found clear sky and there, on the horizon, a phenomenon. Ribbons of gauze undulated in the stratosphere: green and yellow, flickering, shimmering. The lights always meant something. Sickness. Death. Was that where his failure to engage that lofty girl would end? He was afraid, but the strange evanescent beauty drew him in spite of his fear. He could have sat on the bridge for hours, with no company but the sea hissing somewhere below.

The others came out, giggling. Drake couldn’t walk properly. She had her arms out wide. She was flapping them. Nils steered her.

“Stars!” Nils stopped, gazing up. “Look at the lights!”

“Aura Australis,” said Drake expertly. She hiccoughed. Only an innate sense of balance was keeping her upright.

“How d’you know that?”

“Someone told me.”

Drake misjudged a step. Her boot stuck in a hole. Nils hauled her out.

“Who?”

“Dunno. Someone… educated.”

She moved close to Nils and whispered something in his ear. Nils shook his head. Drake whispered again, more urgently.

“What’s up?” Vikram called.

Nils cupped a playful hand over Drake’s mouth.

“She’s pissed.”

They reached Vikram. He took Drake’s other arm and they progressed slowly along the bridge. Behind him, the Australis lights pulsed. But the dizzy laughter of the others swept him onward, pulling him back into the mesh of the group, where he belonged.

Vikram lay awake for the rest of the night, listening to the wind and thinking about the three of them, bound together by strange layers of history. They had once been five; they should always have been four. He tried to imagine what Mikkeli would have done. Keli wouldn’t have accepted defeat, and nor could Vikram.

“Now you know what you’re up against,” she’d say. “So work out how to fight it.”

He had thought, in the first bewildering days when he was released from jail, that he would miss her all the time. But it didn’t happen like that. She intruded on his thoughts at specific times, with specific actions. He found that he missed her more outside. In boats, always, and when he caught a glimpse of a mismatched, roguish face. Sometimes he told himself that it really was Keli, and as long as he didn’t follow her, she would stay alive. He realized that the dead didn’t go away. They lingered.

Vikram had made her a promise. He had done it with rites, made an incision in his own skin and sealed it with salt. As much as to himself, he owed it to Mikkeli to pursue every avenue.

In the dirty bufferglass reflection he saw her nod approvingly. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re not going to let that bitch get the better of you, are you?”

When the labouring work came to an end Vikram began his research. He went first to the recycling depot. The caretaker was old, with soft indoor skin and a frostbite scar where one ear was missing. He was mostly deaf, but insisted on taking Vikram on a tour of the depot. They looked into room after room full of City junk, the old man mumbling things that Vikram could not understand, pointing at the piles of unsorted plastic and broken parts that were waiting to be disassembled, melted down and returned to the Makers that had produced them.

When they reached a room of discarded Neptunes, Vikram stopped. Some of the machines still worked. He pulled up story after story about the Rechnovs on the cracked screens. The old man peered curiously over his shoulder. He touched a creased fingertip to the fuzzy picture of Adelaide, stroked the line of her hair.

“They call her the flame.”

His voice was like crackling paper.

“Yes. Yes I’m looking for stuff on her. Can you help me?”

The caretaker grinned, showing blackened gums, and beckoned. Vikram followed his shuffling progress to a room where discarded paper newspapers and pamphlets, which had been a fad for a few years in the City and were still used in the west, were piled high in precarious stacks. The caretaker let him take what he wanted.

Back at 614-West, he holed up in his room. The papers were thin and had curled with the damp air. Some were full of holes where small creatures had chewed through. He ran a finger down columns of print, marvelling as always that something so flimsy could come from something as solid and compact as rock.

At first Vikram tried to organize the information, making notes in the margins of articles, scribbling ideas on a patch of the wall. The krill loved Adelaide: she was a tabloid goldmine. Vikram couldn’t say exactly what he was looking for, but he wanted to extract some nugget of truth from the speculation. The cuttings grew too many; soon they made an overflowing pile on the floor.

He wanted to dismiss her. She had everything. She was clever though; she had all but renounced her family without losing any of her inherited privileges. Then she had established her reign as undisputed leader of the Haze. The parties grew bigger and wilder and still the city forgave her. The media chronicled her exploits in tones of indulgence, the Daily Flotsam with a more malicious glee. She never gave interviews.

He found a ten-page feature on the Rechnov family. Here they were lined up in a formal portrait: the Architect and his wife, now deceased, Feodor and Viviana Rechnov, the four children. The same proud, haughty faces, an extended version of the representation at Eirik’s execution. Vikram thought this quite naturally, and realized with a shock that he was able to consider the execution almost abstractly. It still enraged him, and the guilt remained, but Eirik’s death had become part of a sum; immersed into a greater mission.

In the older pictures, Adelaide was always beside her brother, identical with their oversized shades and their smiles full of open confidence. Here they were at some party or other. Getting out of a shuttle pod, late at night and drunk. Axel in a hang-glider. Adelaide jet-skiing. The pair of them on the roof of the Eye Tower, preparing to abseil past the Council Chambers. Vikram thought of the single photograph in Adelaide’s bedroom.

Something very odd had happened to Axel. Vikram had never paid much attention: these people were fairy tales to him. Now he examined the pictures with renewed interest. In one photo, Axel’s eyes were averted from the lens while his sister stared directly, accusingly ahead. Was there something protective in the way she stepped forward before Axel, her fingers at his elbow as though she’d just let go his arm?

Vikram tossed the photo aside. He was forgetting his original mission: to find Adelaide’s weaknesses and work out how to use them. He settled down with yet another article and began to read.

Hours later, the window-wall had drained of light but he had gathered several pieces of information that he could assume were factual. His eyes strained. Lost in thought, he had barely noticed the onset of dusk. He took a pinch of salt from his tin and threw it at the window.

What to do? By all accounts, Adelaide Mystik was particular in her habits. She opened her flat once a year for the Rose Night. Other than that, the Red Rooms were closed off to visitors. As an honorary member of the Gardeners’ Guild and a sporadic landscape designer, Adelaide was occasionally seen on botanical sites. For lunch, she frequented four or five select restaurants, and she dined late at night from an equally exclusive list. She was glimpsed in the famous bars and nightclubs of the Strobe. She took a lot of milaine and she drank.

Crucially, Adelaide was inaccessible without the aid of credit. Vikram didn’t have credit, so he was going to have to tackle her at home. There was one detail that had caught his attention. It was in a magazine interview with one of Adelaide’s alleged rivals.

Adelaide’s an insomniac, he read. That’s why she parties all night, because she can’t sleep. It’s nothing to do with stamina.

The by-line was attributed to a journalist called Magda Linn. The rest of the interview was useless; if Vikram hadn’t seen the sleeping pills beside Adelaide’s bed, he would have ignored it.

The next morning, when he reviewed his plan in the light of day, it seemed flimsy. Tangling with Adelaide Mystik was getting into political games; games whose rules he did not know and whose outcomes he could not predict.

He did not confide in Nils. He was probably wasting his time anyway. Linus’s idea was a good one but impractical, exactly the sort of thing a Citizen would suggest. Maybe Vikram should stop trying to decipher the bizarre world of the Rechnovs and go back to what he knew: to protests and waterway violence. He understood violence. Its mechanics, its randomness. Its lack of mercy. He thought of Drake’s casual hello to Rikard and wondered if there might be anything more to the connection than she claimed. He dismissed the idea. They’d known a lot of people back then; it was impossible to avoid running into a face from the past.

He began to work out the practicalities of the plan. His pass had expired, he would have to sneak across the border. By Undersea or by boat? Either way he’d have to bribe someone.

Night, then. Night held his best chance. From a practical viewpoint, there would be fewer people about. But he also reasoned that Adelaide, on some level, must be like everyone else. At four or five in the morning, furthest from the warmth of the sun, her body would be at its lowest ebb. Her heart would slow, her lungs shallow. In those hours, dark thoughts often invaded the mind. This was the time to find her, when she was vulnerable.

13 ¦ ADELAIDE

The curtain, a waterfall of white velvet, was lifted at one side by an invisible hand. The assistant extended his arm silently, inviting them to go through. Adelaide folded her arms and gave Jannike a pointed look.

“Off you go.”

“Come on, Adie. I paid three hundred lys for this appointment.”

“Three hundred lys! For a single consultation! It says here she’s only been Guild ratified for the last five years.” Adelaide pointed to the Teller’s certificate, prominently displayed on a stand. “You’ve been conned, Miss Ko.”

“I haven’t, she’s the best. She has contacts outside Osiris.”

“Who with, the ghosts?”

“No! Anyone can contact the ghosts. She finds living souls, on land.”

“Then she’s definitely a fraud.”

“What if she could contact Axel?” Jannike said boldly. Adelaide stared at her, so intensely that she might have unnerved another woman. Jannike’s brown eyes gazed back, unperturbed. There was little that could rattle Jan. The hidden hand holding the curtain jostled it, a reminder that time was booked and bookings were money.

Adelaide and Jannike stared at one another for a fraction longer. Then both girls ducked under the curtain. It swung back into place behind them. Adelaide blinked, surprised by an intense brightness.

There was only one visible source of light. It was star-shaped, sunk into the floor, and emitted a silvery glow that steeped the tent. As Adelaide’s eyes adjusted, she realized they were in a triangular enclosure lined with the same velvet drapes. Sitting on the other side of the star-light was the Teller. Her legs were crossed. She was clothed in a pyramid of folds.

“Sit,” she said.

The two girls perched obediently, echoing the Teller’s pose.

“There are two of you,” said the Teller.

“I’ve just come to watch,” Adelaide said.

“Your hand,” instructed the Teller, and Jannike put hers forward promptly. The Teller reached for it. Her hand brushed past Jan’s before connecting with it. As she leaned forward over the star-light Adelaide saw her eyes. They were milky white, blank inside of blank. Adelaide had an unnerving sense of pitching forward into water. Her vision grew cloudy, as though she had swum into the unplumbed depths of a kelp forest, chasing the tail of a fish which each time she neared it shot further away into the weed.

The woman was blind. She was young, too, without lines or wrinkles, the youngest Teller Adelaide had ever seen.

Beside her, Jan tensed as her hand was enclosed.

“There will be deceit,” said the Teller.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Look to those close to you. Your friends shall become stronger but so shall your enemies.”

“How about me?” said Jan. “How about all the beautiful sirens out there waiting for me to swim into their lives?”

“You are impatient,” said the Teller.

“Yes I am.”

Adelaide half listened as the Teller predicted Jannike’s near future; read her palm lines and the channels of her wrist veins, then handed her a salt vial and told her to scatter the grains. The whited out tent was soporific.

“And you, my sister.” The Teller’s hand trembled, midair, seeking what her eyes could not. “You have already been told your fate.”

Adelaide realized she was being addressed.

“I’ve been told many fates,” she said. “None of them match.”

“It has been spoken, sister, spoken in the salt. The place you shall go to. Not yet, perhaps. It cannot be forced. But when you are ready, you shall go willingly.”

“Where’s she going?” Jannike asked. The Teller’s head bowed.

“It has been spoken.”

“What about Axel?” Jan nudged Adelaide. “Go on, ask!”

“For the boy, nothing.”

Adelaide was taken aback by the abruptness of the response.

“What do you mean?” She leaned forward, eager now, and gripped the woman’s hand. It was incredibly thin. She could feel the web of bones shifting in the scoop of the palm. “Can you see where my brother is?”

The Teller’s eyelids lowered in a mockery of demureness.

“Has Axel left Osiris?”

“Nobody leaves Osiris.” The Teller’s voice took on a chanting quality, and a higher harmonic pierced the low hum, eerily, so that it sounded as though two voices emerged from her swathed throat. “Osiris is a lost city. She has lost the world and the world has lost her. Thus it was ordained, thus it is.”

“That old rant,” said Jannike. Adelaide knew that Jan’s eyes were rolling upwards, although she also sensed the other girl’s interest in what had not been said. Adelaide was equally annoyed by the retreat into seer speech.

“If he hasn’t left, then where is he?” she pressed. She turned to Jan. “I want to see her alone.”

“I thought she was a fraud?”

Adelaide stared at her. Jannike got awkwardly to her feet. Adelaide waited until the white curtain had descended behind her friend’s back.

“I’ll pay you double what she did. Triple. A thousand lys, untaxed credit. Tell me what you know about my brother.”

“My knowledge is no greater than yours.”

“I’m a Rechnov. I’m ordering you.”

“Tellers obey a higher order.”

“Just tell me if he’s alive, at least tell me that. Please, I need to know.”

But the Teller would say no more. She shook off Adelaide’s grasp with an irritated gesture and her hands disappeared into the folds of her garments. The curtain lifted behind Adelaide. The brightness inside the enclosure diminished and she had a brief glimpse of the Teller under normal electric light, the shadows of tiredness on her young face. The man who had ushered Adelaide in beckoned her out.

Adelaide’s scarab was glowing. She checked the screen, looked for Jannike and spotted her friend browsing salt tins at a craft stand. Adelaide walked over to the opposite side of the hall where a plasma display depicted the history of Tellers through the ages.

“Yes?” she spoke into the scarab.

“I hear you’ve been staking out Sanjay Hanif’s office.”

Adelaide spoke sharply. “I’ve been trying to contact you.”

“At first I thought you were being extraordinarily stupid, but then I decided it may work in our favour. After all, if they know you were camping out across the way, it detracts from any possible connection with me.”

“Have you been following me?”

“I’m aware of your movements.”

“How thoughtful of you. And do you have any information about my brother, or did you just contact me to explain how you’ve been misusing my funds?”

“At this stage I have no concrete evidence to report. The witnesses’ stories all corroborate Hanif’s versions.”

“So there’s nothing.”

“I said nothing concrete. I have a potential lead. The maid you employed — Yonna — she mentioned seeing an unfamiliar woman leave the penthouse one day before she started work. She was able to give a rough description.”

“A woman? What kind of woman?”

“Unlikely to be a sexual liaison, if that’s what you’re thinking. The maid said it was a plain woman who looked to be in her forties. Possibly an airlift.”

“And you think you can find her?”

“I’m looking. If she is an airlift, it will make it all the easier. Ex-westerners are distinctive whether they wish to be or not.”

“Call me when you do. And whilst you’re talking, there’s something else.” She lowered her voice. “We need to get into the penthouse where my brother lived.”

“Can’t do it. Possible crime scene, Hanif’s put high security on the entrance. His people won’t be bribed.”

“I’m sure in your line of work, Mr Lao…”

“Absolutely not. Forget this idea.”

“But I need to—”

“I’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead.

“You’d better be,” she muttered. Masking her fury at Lao’s insouciance, she stood in front of a looping documentary about Seela Nayagam, the first official Teller to work in Osiris. Footage from 2372, read the caption. The images were forty-five years old. Everyone visited Tellers, whether they heeded them or not. Axel used to wind them up. Adelaide had always felt more ambiguous.

Jannike was haggling when she returned. She held out her prize for Adelaide to examine; an oval tin with crocodile pattern etchings.

“Nice,” Adelaide agreed.

“So did she say anything? Why did you ask if Axel had left Osiris?”

Adelaide thought of Axel’s last words, of the balloon. “Just a whim,” she said. The Teller’s words echoed in her head. Nobody leaves Osiris.

“You never talk about him, not even to me. I know you miss him, I know you must be miserable. And he was my friend as well, you know. Remember when we used to sneak out to the Roof and drink Kelpiqua? Remember when we stayed out in that crazy storm for a dare?”

“Axel was furious.”

“Of course he was, that was a proper Tarctic. We could all have died.”

“Or one of us.” He was afraid of us being separated, she thought. More than the storm. “There’s no point in talking about it, Jan. There’s nothing to be done.”

Jannike sighed. She took Adelaide’s hand and squeezed it and let go. Briefly Adelaide considered telling her about Lao, and what she had paid him to do, before dismissing the notion. She loved Jan, but her friend was a liability.

“I’d rather drink,” she said.

“Come on, then. I’ll take you to a new place.”

They went to the neon emporiums of the Strobe. The towers threw out light and noise and the whole was cut by laser lines from the Rotating Towers central to it all. Every night, packed with frantic pulses, the Strobe’s towers vibrated with renewed intensity. Hour after hour, from east to west, they branded the darkness until the grey light of day stripped it of all effect and nudged the ravers home. From boats, even from beyond the ring-net, people said you could see it beating like a great cold heart. They said it woke the ghosts.

Autumn lingered. The ice season was drawing near. They danced, and they drank. They split a bag of milaine along the length of the bar, made patterns in the jade green powder, took turns to imbibe. More people came. They danced, and they drank; they drank and they danced some more. By midnight, the world had become an inchoate place. Neither Adelaide or Jannike could stand straight. Adelaide knew that it did not matter. They were young, and they cared for nothing, because nothing in Osiris cared for them.

14 ¦ VIKRAM

He heard the door handle twist. In the second the door swung open, anticipation dried his throat.

Adelaide Mystik’s face was clean and angry. She was wearing a see-through kimono over something made out of silk and lace. Both garments stopped at her thighs. She did not look like someone who had just woken up, although Vikram had been knocking persistently for the past ten minutes.

“Hello,” he said. “Is this a good time?”

“Who the hell are you?”

She did not look especially vulnerable either.

“My name’s Vikram. I met you once before. Well, not met exactly. Actually you threw me out.”

Her eyes narrowed into mossy crevasses. “Rose Night,” she said. “Linus’s spy. I thought you’d got the message. Now fuck off before I call my security.”

She slammed the door.

Vikram waited. The corridor was impossibly quiet. He could hear his own breathing. He reminded himself that it was almost four in the morning; on this side of the city, people were sleeping, and silence the norm. The twist of apprehension loitered nonetheless.

He plunged his hands into his coat pockets to stop himself fidgeting with a new rip. It was not an unpromising start; it looked as though his insomnia theory was correct, and Adelaide had given him an ultimatum before actually calling for security. He assumed. Noise distracted him, a faint progression of clicks like the second hand of a watch magnified tenfold. It seemed to come from the ceiling. He looked up. The chandelier shone dimly. Who lived above Adelaide Mystik?

Five minutes later he banged on the door again. This time it flew open immediately.

“Who the hell do you think you are? I said fuck off.” She glared at him.

It was the aggression of the girl which convinced Vikram he was safe. Brazen, but theatrical. It lacked the edge of promise.

“Aren’t you curious about why I’m here?”

“No. Double fuck off.”

The door started to shut. Vikram wedged his foot to block it. Through the gap, Adelaide stared down at his dirty boot. Her attitude changed. She arranged herself against the mirrored wall of her hallway, delivering an evil smile. Her lack of fear was almost insulting. He supposed it came hand in hand with her arrogance — as the Architect’s granddaughter, she’d never had to be afraid.

“Have you ever been in jail, what was it — Vikram?”

“For a number of days. And yes, it’s Vikram.”

“What’s it like down there?”

He ignored this. “Contrary to what you might think, I’m not a spy. Not for Linus, or for anyone. I’m here for my own reasons.”

“To be arrested?” she enquired.

Vikram remembered Linus’s reaction the first time Vikram had sought him out. There were similarities between brother and sister, and not just their looks. Confidence rose from them like a costly, seductive perfume.

“That’s up to you,” he said.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “It is.”

She surveyed him speculatively. Something had given him the edge of advantage. She had not called for backup, as he had thought she might. There was a reason for that; she might be unafraid, but presumably she wasn’t stupid. Perhaps she did not trust her own people.

Perhaps she was just bored.

“I’m here because I think you’re the only one who can help me,” he said.

Adelaide cocked her head.

“That’s entirely possible. But you’re missing one crucial element. Why would I want to help you?”

He shrugged, following instinct. “Because you’d be doing something you’ve never done before.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You’d be helping people.”

She looked unimpressed.

“And it would make you look good,” he added.

“I don’t have an issue with the way I look, do you?” she said sweetly, and if he did not meet that gaze he had to look at the rest of her, which was no doubt what she intended. There was only one way to play this game. He stared at her openly for a good ten seconds before replying. The posters did not lie: she was that beautiful.

“Not especially,” he said.

“Good.” There was a pause, and he wondered if he had read her right. Then she said, “Two minutes then.”

Vikram looked past her into the apartment. A lone red petal wilted on the floorboards of the mirrored hallway.

“Can I come in?”

“I’m fond of the doorstep.”

“Fine. But I don’t think you’re very hospitable.”

Adelaide’s eyes snapped with apparent delight at this game. “You’ve lost a good twenty seconds already.”

Inside his coat pockets, Vikram crossed his fingers.

“Listen,” he said. “This city has everything. It wouldn’t take much to give some aid to the people who need it. I know it doesn’t affect you now but one day it might. People are angry, over there, in the bit you forget about. But we do exist. There will be more riots and one day the violence will come here and then you’ll wish you did something about it before. But if you used your influence like Linus said you could—”

“Leave Linus out of it,” Adelaide interrupted. “More. Seconds. Lost.”

He looked at her for a moment, not as he had before, but as though he was searching her out. Testing her. He doubted anyone had ever looked at Adelaide Mystik this way before, and he was not sure how she might react. But she seemed to lean into his gaze. She did not break the silence.

“Have you ever seen anyone dead?” Vikram asked.

“Yes,” she said. “My grandmother.”

“Did you see her die?”

“She died in her sleep. I saw her afterwards.”

“It’s different when you watch them die.”

“Is it.”

“You should know,” he said. “You were at the execution.”

She stared back at him in a way that should have been frank, if she had been capable of frankness. He sensed catacombs beneath her expressions.

“You knew that man?” she asked. “Eirik 9968, you knew him?”

“Not personally.” Once again, a flutter of guilt accompanied the lie. It was impossible to tell whether she believed him.

“Then who died on you? Death seems important to you, so who was it?”

“I’ve known a lot of people who died.”

“It’s never about the many. Nobody’s that philanthropic.”

“Her name was Mikkeli,” he said blankly.

“Ah. A girl.” Adelaide twirled a strand of red hair between two fingers. “And is that why you want to help your people, for this dead girl?”

Her words were probing fingers, digging through his hair and his skull to root around inside. Vikram told himself it did not matter what he said now. Adelaide could have what answers she wanted as long as she helped him.

“Something like that.”

“Something like that,” she repeated. Her gaze idled up and down him. Vikram matched it.

“Yes.”

“And what exactly do you want to do for your westerners?”

“Food. Warmth. Jobs. Hope. Is that concise enough?”

“I’m not sure,” she mused. “I suspect it might turn out to be rather more complicated than that.”

“I could tell you more, but it might take longer than your two minute allocation.”

“You are insolent.” Adelaide toyed with the lace of her nightclothes. “What are you going to do for me in exchange for my voice?”

“What do you need?” He kept his face expressionless. A smile lit up her beautiful, flawless features.

“I’m sure I can find something. Let’s just call it an i.o.u. for now, shall we? Meet me at The Stingray on Friday. Fourteen o’clock. Don’t be late.”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

She reached out, past the doorway for the first time, ran her finger lightly along the edge of his jawline. Her face was close to his. She looked incredibly young; only the traces of lines in their making showed she had left her teens behind. Perhaps it was that that made her so unreadable, like a slate yet to be written.

“You know it won’t bring her back,” she said.

It wasn’t a compassionate line. He wondered why she had said it.

“I think I know that.”

“Goodnight then.”

“Goodnight.”

The door shut. There was no sound from the other side, or from upstairs. Vikram stayed for a minute, memorizing the patterns of the wood, and those of the girl behind it.

He waited another hour before the first Undersea train of the morning. He had bribed a man to smuggle him over the border by barge, a quarter of the credit from the two weeks work. The man had hidden him in a cupboard-sized compartment, and when they reached the checkpoint, Vikram had heard skadi guards banging up and down the length of the barge and his heart had leapfrogged. It irked him that Adelaide hadn’t asked how he had got to her, hadn’t cared, even if it was better she didn’t know.

The Undersea was dark and virtually deserted. Vikram had earmarked a hiding place in his carriage, but no one checked the train going back west. When he finally reached 614-West it was still dark and he was burning with a low exhilaration. He debated banging on Nils’s door. Nobody liked to be woken before dawn, though, and he hadn’t decided what to tell Nils when he did see him. Out of habit he tried the lift. Its OUT OF ORDER sign had been graffitied long ago. Vikram was tempted to add his own mark: an affirmation of the night’s work, but he had nothing to scratch or spray with.

He ran up the first couple of flights, then slowed, stopping every few floors to catch his breath. After thirty-six floors he felt leaden with tiredness. He fumbled with the key in the lock — still weak — and collapsed onto a stew of rugs and clothes. He pulled everything over him. He expected to sleep instantly, but his brain thwarted him, spinning into action. He replayed each moment of his conversation with Adelaide. Was she lying awake now, or was she sleeping? If she was sleeping, what was she dreaming? Did she have ground-dreams like everyone else?

Vikram’s dream was always the same: a stretch of golden sand. A beach. He walked along it, at first near the surf where it was damp, and then inland, past tufts of vegetation. The vegetation gave way to waving grasses. Where the grasses grew through the sand there were pebbles, smooth and white. In the dream he picked one up, one by one, and dropped them into a bucket that never filled.

Vikram lay awake a little longer. Sounds dulled by memory now crept back to taunt his hope of sleep. An itinerant banging from the floor above. The stamp of footsteps up and down stairs. Shouting. Always a dispute somewhere that could only be resolved when one throat grew too hoarse to continue or a raised fist brought an end. Beneath it, the ever present chatter of a city that had not known unconsciousness for a long time. Osiris articulated itself in waves of vocals, rising, falling, meandering through his subconscious like the disparate moods of the sea.

He was woken by persistent hammering. Dozy with dreams, he stumbled to the door. A flashlight temporarily blinded him, then dispelled the darkness of the room. Behind the torch he made out the faces of Nils and Drake. Drake’s wayward hair was squashed beneath two woollen hats and a hood. She was grinning.

“How d’you fancy collecting an iceberg?”

Vikram stared at them both.

“What time is it?”

“Dunno. ’bout nineteen o’clock?”

“Shit.” He’d slept right through the day. He rubbed his eyes, replaying Drake’s previous words. “Iceberg? You mean?”

“I mean there’s a space on the boat if you want…”

She wiggled the flashlight helpfully. Vikram located the water bucket. It was still a quarter full. He splashed his face, pulled his own coat out of the bedding and slung it over his shoulders. “I’m in.”

Twenty minutes later, they were aboard a motor boat in pursuit of three industrial barges. Above them, the Moon moved in and out of its cloud cover. The sea was calm and dark. Vikram stayed by the rail with Nils, keeping out of the way of the crew. There were six of them including Drake, but no one else he recognized.

“Can you hear it?” Nils whispered.

Vikram listened. Beyond the engine motor, he heard a metallic susurration, like the sound of pooling chains. Ahead of them, high above sea level, a line of green lights stretched to left and right. He nudged Nils and pointed. It had been years since either man had passed the ring-net, but Vikram knew that Nils was thinking the same thing as him, that those were no lights: they were the glowing eyes of the dead.

The net was invisible in the darkness, but the windows of one of its watchtowers shone. The fleet of barges approached. Heavy clanking told Vikram that a curtain of the ring-net was lifting. The barges slid past the watchtower, slipping under the gap in the net. The smaller western boat followed in the swell. As they passed beneath, Nils’s and Drake’s faces were bathed in the green glow from the capping beacons. Vikram held up his hands. His gloves were tipped with the same green. The chains clinked in a tug of wind. Then they were through, the other side of the boundary.

Osiris waters lay behind them.

Vikram felt suddenly hollow. Who knew what had really happened to all those boats that left the city and disappeared? If only they had left a trail, a length of string that could be followed, hand over hand, by those that might wish to go after. Vikram leaned forward, straining his eyes. The Moon had gone behind a cloud.

The boats drove out for twenty minutes before they began to slow. Everyone on board fell silent. There was no noise except the sea, the humming motor, and a dull creaking.

Ahead, the sea turned entirely white.

“Is that…?” Vikram murmured.

“Yeah,” said Drake. “That’s it.”

The phosphorous island stretched away beyond the barges’ searchlights. The boats continued cautiously and came to rest at a point where the ice cut away smoothly, a sloping three metre cliff rising from the waves. Searchlights trained upon it. The air filled with the whirr of gears and engines.

Two platforms extended horizontally from the first of the boats. They were crowded with men and machinery. When the platforms reached the ice field, the workers clambered onto it, unloading their equipment with practised efficiency. Against the ice they looked like busy black insects.

Vikram watched in fascination as the process he had heard explained but never seen began. The crew dragged giant lasers into position. Through the night they would cut the ice sheet into many separate pieces, then tow them inside the ring-net. The freshwater bergs would relieve the load of the desal plants, which guzzled energy.

The lasers began their work, with a noise like metal plates scraping together. A shout went up on Drake’s boat.

“That’s it! That’s our bit!”

Everyone on board ran to the rail. The boat keeled. The deck juddered underfoot as two small harpoons, trailing cables, fired across the water and embedded in the ice.

“Who’s first?” yelled the skipper.

Drake gave Vikram and Nils a harness and a head-torch each. “Go on,” she said. “I’ve done this before. Don’t let go unless you fancy a dunking.”

They exchanged grins. Vikram fastened the strap of the head-torch and switched it on. A pale beam illuminated the rail and the cables. Another member of the crew showed him how to hook his harness onto the cable. Vikram climbed over the rail and pitched forward.

A shove sent him swinging across the gulf. Air rushed at his face; he was flying. The head-torch picked out the wave trenches and the foam-flecked caps. His boots dipped the water. He brought his knees to his chest. The ice loomed. He stuck his feet out in front and landed with a crunch.

Nils’s boots thudded down a second later. Vikram reached over and grabbed his friend’s hand. Holding onto the cables, they clambered up the remainder of the slope, and stopped.

It was as though they had stepped onto the surface of the Moon. The ice was pitted and cracked, sheer blank slates giving way to hillocks and gaping craters. Fifty metres away, the laser beams were working their way across the sheet, a flicker of lightning marking their progress. The noise was phenomenal.

Vikram stamped on the ice. It was rock hard. Beneath the groan of the severing pack, he heard water lapping against its edges. Land must sound like this.

Others had joined them. Drake took a running leap and skidded eight metres before landing on her arse. Vikram whooped. They moved, at first cautiously, then throwing themselves around the ice. Their head-torches made peculiar shadows of the uneven surface and their own figures. They twisted to make even weirder, eldritch shapes. The ice glinted pale blue. The Moon came out from behind a cloud and turned it greenish yellow. It smelled raw and new, of the untouched and the untouchable. It had never held human imprints before.

Nils shouted. He’d found a long, sheer slope. The three of them sat in a row at the top, Vikram in front, then Drake, then Nils. They yelled a countdown.

“Three — two — one — go!”

They flew down the slope, as one, then as three, as Drake lost her grip and Vikram shot on ahead. At the bottom they curled up, toppled on their backs, helpless with laughter. The sky above was a jigsaw of cloud and stars. They regained their breaths slowly.

For as long as Vikram had known, since the beginnings of Osiris, the ice had come. Legend told of a land beneath it, a land free from storms and safe from flooding. It had a name, so rare, so precious, it was never spoken above a whisper. ’Tarctica. The southern land. It would cast off its frozen shell and one day, when all the ice had gone, the Citizens of Osiris would find a new home. So the legend went.

The laser rays continued their work. At last, with an ear splitting crack, the segment claimed by Drake’s boat broke away. A fissure yawned, then it was a chasm, then a valley of ocean. Drake’s boat was already towing away the section of ice, heading back inside the ring-net and leaving the flotilla of barges to continue their dismantling work until dawn.

The ice was moored between two towers on the outskirts of the western quarter and that night there was a carnival. Westerners came out in droves. People danced and performed theatrical charades. A band of acrobats tumbled, stood on their hands, and walked across a tightrope that had once been somebody’s clothesline and still had a pair of leggings pegged to it. Statues, crude and artistic, were sculpted out of the hillocks. Fry-boat kitchens chugged out of the city to set up shop around the edge of the ice. The vendors leaned out of their hatches, shouting their wares of squid or saufish in amicable rivalry. Other westerners arrived in tiny skiffs, hacking off blocks of ice with pickaxes and towing them back into the west.

Nils produced a bottle of raqua and the three of them wandered about the ice, passing the bottle back and forth and admiring the spectacles. They settled at the edge of a crater where a crowd had gathered around a group of musicians. In the centre, a heater was wedged into a small pit. The smell of frying saufish and kelp dispersed through the foreign scent of the ice and skinny dogs came to lap at the meltwater.

Through the remainder of the night and the daylight that followed, Vikram almost forgot about his private mission. Sometimes, whilst they were laughing at each other’s drunken antics, he felt the pang of a missing part, because Mikkeli should have been there to complete their quartet. And then Adelaide Mystik drifted back into view, her green eyes becoming the lights from the ring-net, the gaze of the dead.

“Look out!”

They had been on the ice for twenty-four hours when Vikram saw a man at the edge of the field hurl himself to one side. A moment later, a harpoon sunk a foot deep in the patch of ice where he had been standing. A second harpoon struck the ice five metres along, then another.

Nils got unsteadily to his feet.

“Fucking hell, it’s the fucking skadi.”

They could see the boats crouched a little way from the ice field. Struck by panic, other revellers leapt to avoid the deadly spikes. Some fell into the water. Hands reached down to rescue them but some were pulled in after and washed away from the field, caught by invisible currents. In the darkness, Vikram heard their cries growing fainter and fainter.

“Come back! Come back!”

In the confusion, it was a minute before Vikram realized that they were moving away from the towers. Already a stretch of freezing water lay between the ice field and safety. Some of the revellers refused to move, or were too intoxicated to perceive the danger. They leapt and cartwheeled, hurling fire beacons into the air. Dogs barked, small bodies racing up and down the field. The skadi fired a second wave of harpoons. Beneath the yells and clinking chains and the noise of straining ice, Vikram heard something new: a deep, rhythmical thudding.

“Drake! Where’s your boat?”

“I don’t know! I can’t see it!”

The fry-boat kitchens were unhitching and pulling away. A man threw himself onto one of the roofs. He slipped and crashed into the sea with a shriek. Other than the abandoned torches subsiding on the ice, there was no light. But Vikram could hear the sea. The gap between ice field and towers was widening.

A figure lurched towards them, arms whirling overhead.

“It’s the end of the world! Swim, swim, the ghosts are coming, swim for your lives!”

Vikram turned to Nils and Drake.

“Come on, we need a boat.”

They ran towards the nearest fry-boat, whose vendor was clumsily packing away her wares, catching one another as they stumbled over abandoned bottles or melt holes. Again Vikram heard that deep, rhythmic thudding. It sounded like drums. The sound was metallic, a clanging, resonant thunder, accompanied by throaty cries.

With no warning, the sky lightened. The sea and the ice turned to shimmering gold. Instinctively all three of them dropped. Belly down, Vikram peered out across the water.

From between two towers emerged a monster of fire. Its flames shot three storeys high into the air. Smoke spewed from its core. The fug billowed before it, reaching over the ice. As it moved forward, ash rained down on the ocean.

It was a boat, and it was entirely aflame. From the prow of the thing protruded the effigy of a colossal shark fashioned from wires. The wires glowed white with the heat. Flames jetted from the gaping mouth.

“Lights of australis,” whispered Drake. “What is that?”

“Its Juraj’s gang,” said Nils softly.

The burning barge had an escort. On either side, nine rafts rode low in the water. Each platform was stacked with drums upon which their crews hammered out a relentless beat. Vikram felt each boom in the ice beneath his stomach.

“That’s not all,” he said. “It’s Juraj. What’s left of him.”

Mesmerised, they could only stare. As the blazing craft drew closer, Vikram saw that the carcass of one boat had been dragged on top of another. At its peak, the gang lord’s body was strapped to a crudely erected mast. As the flesh shrivelled and peeled away, Juraj’s skeleton emerged like a warped chrysalis, the bones black and distorted.

He had no limbs. They had been removed. In place of limbs he had crude prosthetics, longer than arms and legs could be, and spouting fire.

Tapers of flame fell upon the raft drummers. They kept beating. The rest of Juraj’s gang were dancing maniacally on the rafts as they accompanied their dead leader to his final grave. As they approached the ice field, their yowls filled the night. The drums grew louder and louder, faster and faster.

“They’re catching up,” said Nils.

Vikram swore. “They’re sending it at the skadi.”

The skadi, at last realizing their danger, began to shoot. The pyre glided forward. The rafts let out a shrilling chorus of ai-ai-ai! The drums pounded. Now the skadi were frantically trying to retract their harpoons. But the spears were embedded and the tow ropes were metal chains. The skadi barges were tethered to the ice field. The pyre was moving faster than they could tow.

The drummers whooped.

Ai-ai-ai! Ai-ai-ai!

Almost leisurely, two crafts drifted towards one another.

Juraj’s pyre ploughed into the first skadi barge. The flames reached out. Vikram clapped his hands over his ears.

The explosion was deafening.

Debris rained on top of them. Burning embers sizzled where they hit the ice. He curled into a ball, arms protecting his head, feeling the sting as something struck his back.

Vikram was the first to recover. Ears ringing, he helped the others to their feet. Drake was bleeding. Vikram led them to the edge of the ice field, ducking the sprays of gunfire. In a matter of minutes, the sea would be swarming with skadi boats.

He saw a stray shot catch one of the fry-boat vendors still struggling to unmoor. The woman was flung backwards in a spray of blood. Bent double, they ran towards her boat.

Nils started up the motor whilst Vikram and Drake hauled the dead woman out onto the ice. There was nothing they could do for her now. As they steered away from the ice floe, he heard bolts striking the boat roof. The night blazed with fire and searchlights. The drums and the cries grew ever more frantic. The ice, gleaming yellow beneath the flames, was spotted with inert bodies.

As they pulled away from the battleground, Vikram saw something like a comet streak through the air from the rafts and explode alongside another skadi boat.

Drake was visibly shaking.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

They were drawing near to the first tower when dazzling white light blinded Vikram. A speeder lay directly in their path. Vikram veered the boat sharply right. The searchlight followed. He increased their speed. The light lost them momentarily, then switched off.

He could hear the drone of the smaller, higher performance motor as the speeder approached.

Grimly, Vikram began to lurch the boat in a zigzag pattern. It was large and unwieldy and he could hear its sides groan with the strain. The sea was getting choppier too. Bad news for the speeder and worse news for them. The fry-boat was not designed to be out on open water, and now they were a good half kilometre from the towers, moving further away from the fire fight.

Nils swore as he leaned out of the hatch, watching for the speeder.Shadows scooted past. He thought it was the other boat, but now it had vanished entirely. The noise of the waves masked the two motors. He could sense the other boat out there. Waiting. Listening.

“Vik, I can’t see them.” Nils whispered this time. He came to stand beside Vikram. Drake took up position at the hatch.

“Where the hell are they?” muttered Vikram.

He reduced the engine power. They were almost drifting now. So was the speeder.

Residue noise from the fire fight echoed across the water. From a distance, it looked like a strange ritual, a dance between flames on the water surface. Vikram could not tell who was winning.

“Why don’t they just open fire?” hissed Drake.

“They want prisoners,” said Vikram. “Juraj’s gang are so crazed they won’t stop until they’re all dead. The skadi need examples.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Run for it.”

Nils nodded. “It’s our best chance.”

“Hang on tight.”

He took a firm grip himself as he swung the boat back towards the city and hit full throttle. Instantly the searchlight flickered back on, some hundred metres away, and began roving the waves.

The boat lurched forward, jamming into the encroaching waves. Vikram wrested the craft first one way, then the next. Crates of kelp and fish shunted from side to side. His elbow cracked against metal, sending bolts of pain up to his temples. Spray dashed in his face. In seconds he was drenched.

“Where are they Drake?” he yelled. Drake hung precariously out of the hatch.

“Right on our tail, seventy metres,” she yelled back.

“Watch out now, you’re coming into the city.” Nils, clinging on beside him, could see a little better.

“You’ll have to direct me.”

He was steering blind now. He could only trust Nils’s directions. He sensed the first towers looming up on either side as they barrelled back into the maze of the city. A shot glanced off the roof.

“Fifty metres!” Drake shouted.

“Shit.”

Vikram began to weave. Their only chance now lay in using the towers as cover.

“Listen. You two have to get out. I’m taking this over the border.”

“You’re what?” Nils hung on as the boat lurched.

“I have to get over the border tonight. I can’t explain.”

“It’s that bloody girl, isn’t it? That Rechnov woman?”

“This is the best chance I have. All the skadi are back there, the border will be as close to unguarded as it ever is.”

“Vik—”

“Just do it, will you? They won’t follow you.”

“Yes, they’ll follow you, you idiot — we should stick together!”

“Come on,” said Drake. She staggered up the boat. “Nils, come on. Tell us when, Vik. And good luck.”

Nils was shaking his head, plainly furious, but Vikram had no more time. As they approached Market Circle, he choked the throttle, slowing the boat just enough to skid past a decking. Nils and Drake leapt from the hatch and dropped flat to the decking. Vikram powered ahead once more. He risked a glance back and saw that the speeder had followed him. Nils and Drake were safe.

Now it was just the two boats. Vikram’s only advantage was that he knew the western waterways. He closed his eyes momentarily, allowing instinct to take over. Through Market Circle. Out the other side. This part of the west was quiet. He was following the route taken by the waterbus on the day he went to the Council. As he approached the border, the speeder was hard on his tail, but his assumption had been correct — there were only two skadi boats stationed at the checkpoint.

Setting the boat on a direct course through the gap in the border net, Vikram ducked low. The shooting came late; the border guards had not expected his clumsy vehicle to charge. He hurtled straight through, searchlights sweeping overhead.

He was in the City.

The speeder was chasing him, and now one of the border boats as well. He kept the fry-boat straight. He had to get out fast, but they would not be able to shoot so easily deep in Citizen territory. He chose a residential tower — swung the boat in close and leapt from the fully powered vehicle. He hit the decking hard, hurting his ankle, and rolled. Jumping to his feet, running to the doors, he pounded the open button. The doors slid apart and Vikram darted inside. He heard a shout as the skadi spotted his exit, and then the doors slid shut.

He was inside a clean, low lit lobby with four lifts. He ignored them and ran into the stairwell. The skadi would be following.

He raced up the stairs until he heard the sounds of them entering the building. Now he had to be silent. He removed his dripping shoes and socks and carried them. He moved on up in bare feet, as quietly as possible, unaware if his pursuers were doing the same. His heart was pounding so fiercely he was sure they must hear it. There was no shortage of electricity in the City; every floor had the same low night lighting. No dark corners to hide in.

Ten floors up, he came out of the stairwell and ventured into the corridors. He limped past the numbered doors of apartments. He was acutely aware of his appearance, tattered and soaked. He had a fresh cut on his temple which he could feel now was bleeding. His only hope was that at whatever time of night it was, the Citizens who lived here were all sleeping.

And then he saw it — so simple, so easy. The fire alarm.

He kept going, through the heart of the tower, looking for a stairwell on the other side. First he needed somewhere to hide. With every step, he felt the fear of capture heighten. Sweat lined the inside of his clothes. He didn’t dare look back. What if there were cameras? What if they were lying in wait?

He kept going up until he found what he was looking for — a cleaning room, full of mops and buckets, with enough space for a skinny man. He limped back into the corridors. The fire alarms were posted at every level. He took a deep breath, glanced once around the silent corridors, and smashed it with his good elbow.

The noise was shrill and instant. Vikram ran back to the cleaning room and slipped inside, pulling the door to. From his tiny prison, he listened to the sounds of the tower waking up. Running footsteps pattered on the carpets as people evacuated their rooms. Their voices were groggy and confused.

“What’s happening?”

“Where is it, where’s the fire?”

“Orla, get back here now, don’t run!”

They streamed past him. An age seemed to pass before they had all gone. When the noise had faded, Vikram slipped out and continued back up the stairs. He had no doubt that the fire fighters would be investigating that floor within minutes. The skadi would guess who the culprit had been, but the confusion had bought him time.

He kept going, fighting a great flood of weariness, until he saw the sign for a bridge. He urged himself on. Just as far as the next tower. Walking across the closed, windowless bridge he felt trapped and nervous, and hurried through the tunnel as quickly as he could persuade his exhausted limbs to move. In the morning he was going to have to find himself some clothes that would pass in the City, and track down Adelaide’s restaurant — but for now all he wanted was a bolthole to curl up in for the night.

He took the lift. When it reached the first level underwater he felt the hairs raising on the back of his neck, but he doubted the skadi would expect him to go down; they knew the horror underwater held for ex-prisoners. The Undersea station was silent and deserted. Vikram ran down the giant escalators, feeling the damp chill of tunnels blasted out of rock below the seabed. Salt trails ran down the cracks between display boards flashing up taglines for skating exhibitions, electro recitals, the annual gliding race, gold-level Guild ratified Tellers, the annual gliding race. They were all months out-of-date. On the dusty screens, the letters scrambled themselves and fingers beckoned. Adelaide Mystik’s virtual eyes followed him as she lifted a Sobek scarab in the palm of her hand, her lips o-shaped to blow him a kiss.

The dripping walls of the platform were streaked with lichen. The weight of the ocean bore down upon him, and his head pounded. The idea of spending more than a few minutes minutes here was terrifying, but he needed to hide. He jumped onto the tracks and walked into the tunnel.

15 ¦ ADELAIDE

It was after midnight, and everything outside the penthouse was the same except for the yellow security bar bisecting the wooden door. Adelaide reached past it and deliberately twisted the handle. It was locked, as she expected. She took out her old key and pushed it into the keyhole. It didn’t fit. Axel had changed the locks. She sat down in front of the door and waited for someone to come.

Two years had passed since she had stepped out of the lift to find this same door, her own front door, wide open, a gateway for the landslide of her possessions. The way in had been blocked with a cabinet. When she clambered over one heel snagged and her foot slipped out of the shoe. She grabbed the door frame for support. The trail continued into the penthouse: shoes, clothes, pictures, cosmetics. She heard glass smash.

“A?” she shouted. “Is that you?”

The tinkling sound reverberated on and on. Then there was silence. Adelaide abandoned her shoes and wriggled into the hallway. Not knowing who she was about to meet, she padded through the ransacked rooms. The door to her bedroom was ajar. She pushed it cautiously.

Her twin crouched in a myriad of broken glass. Shards winked at the ceiling and each other and Axel. He was sucking on one finger. A line of blood ran down his wrist and his shirt sleeve was scarlet. Adelaide looked at the wall where her mirror had hung. The rivets that had held the glass were still there, with clinging fragments of silver.

“Axel?”

He stared at her. Scratches marked his face. For a moment she thought he didn’t recognize her. Then his features bunched.

“What are you doing here?”

“What?”

“You don’t live here.”

She almost laughed. “What are you talking about, A?”

“I said you don’t live here.” Axel raised himself slowly. A shower of glass fell from his clothing.

“You’re bleeding,” said Adelaide.

Axel glared fixedly at the ground. He began to trace a deliberate circle around the room. Each step destroyed another remnant of the mirror. On the floor near the bed, Adelaide saw a hammer.

“I think you’d better go to the bathroom,” she said, louder this time. “Axel. Come on. Get cleaned up, I’ll fix us a drink and you can tell me what happened.”

He stopped pacing. His eyes flicked up. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“This is our apartment, Axel,” she said carefully. “Not yours. Ours. Neither of us had a problem with that before. If something’s changed, now’s the time to tell me.”

He barged past, slamming her into the wall. Anger flooded her. She chased him to the kitchen. He began to pull pans out of the cupboard and throw them onto the tiles in a discordant opera of noise. Adelaide put her hands over her ears.

“For fuck’s sake, what are you doing?”

Utensils and machines followed. A bottle opener flew past her head. The blender cracked on the floor. Axel opened the glass cupboard. Adelaide darted forward and grabbed his wrist. She felt his blood on her skin, wet and slippery.

“Oh no, you don’t.”

Axel shook her off and reached for the nearest glass. She moved — an amalgamation of leap and unkind embrace, pinioning his arms to his sides. They fell to the floor together. Metal struck her elbow. Her entire body twanged with the pain. For whole, excruciating seconds she was paralysed. Axel was struggling to get up. Gathering her strength, she tackled him. They fought viciously, a tangle of limbs, childhood tactics made newly cruel. He yanked strands of hair from her scalp. She got both hands on his arm and twisted. They scratched and kicked. Pots and pans skidded over the floor. Then his hand struck her forehead. The blow sang inside her skull. She grabbed the nearest utensil and thrust it between them in panic.

“I’ll do it, A, I’ll really hurt you if I have to—”

His body went slack. His head fell to one side as though he was listening intently, and his fingers drummed the ceramic tiles. A repeated tattoo, like hooves. Then he got up without looking at her and walked out of the kitchen. She lay gasping on her back. Her face and body smarted with bruises. She stayed there for twenty minutes, listening to the sounds of her twin evicting her. Second by second, her courage seeped away.

“Miss Rechnov?”

Adelaide opened her eyes. The door was obscured by a pair of black trousers, neatly ironed. The shoes beneath them were highly polished, but looked worn-in, comfortable. Sanjay Hanif.

“It’s Miss Mystik,” she said.

“I apologize. According to official records your name is still Rechnov. Would you care to explain what you are doing here? This is an investigation scene.”

“I’m not on the investigation scene.”

Hanif crouched, bringing his face closer to her level. He had dark eyes. Intelligent eyes, she thought. He was a man used to making quick assessments, yet now he was forced to take the long slow path of unmatchable clues. How could anyone make sense of Axel?

“You tried to get in,” he said, and pointed to a high corner behind her.

“I knew it was locked,” she said. “And I know you have a camera there. I’m not stupid.”

“I don’t think you are, Miss Rechnov. Which begs the question once more, what are you doing here? Some might consider trespassing on Council territory an act of extreme stupidity.”

“I was looking for you,” she said.

Hanif clasped his hands, resting them upon his knees. He balanced easily in such an awkward position. She wondered if this was how he interrogated criminals.

“You have my attention,” he said.

“Axel’s my twin. I have a right to know what you have discovered.”

“I understand. But as I have already explained to your father, the family must be excluded from the investigation until we have ruled out the possibility of foul play.”

“You mean murder.”

Hanif’s face remained still. She wondered if he was aware of the underground activities of people like Lao. If he had any inkling that Adelaide had hired her own man. She wondered whether Hanif knew about the airlift.

“It is customary to explore all avenues. In my experience, well-known people do not go missing for no reason. When was the last time you saw your brother, Miss Rechnov?”

“You’ve seen my statement. A month before Yonna found him gone. He came to my apartment.”

“And you’re positive you did not see him again?”

“Of course I’m positive.”

“Did you come here?”

“No.”

“Did you make any effort to see Axel?”

“No, I — no.”

“Did you ever feel angry with your brother, Miss Rechnov?”

“Are you interrogating me now?”

His mild expression did not alter.

“We both have our questions, Miss Rechnov. You have yours and I have mine. If you do not believe that I wish to solve this riddle because I care about what happened to your brother, at least believe I will do so because it is my job.”

She stared at him. “Everyone gets angry with the people they love.”

“Of course.”

“You should trust me,” she said. “I knew him. The rest of my family had no interest in Axel after he changed. He was an embarrassment to them. A problem.”

“It’s late, Miss Rechnov,” he said quietly. “You should go home.”

He called the lift. She understood that it was for her. Not far above them, the huge wheels started to turn and the cables rushed through their bindings. They waited, each intent on the incalculable drop beyond the glass doors. People said Hanif was a good man. His quiet manner, his level tone, all were suggestive of a man of integrity. But everyone was corruptible, and the Rechnovs had more money and influence than anyone in Osiris. How far could she really trust him?

The roof of the lift swept up. The doors parted. She stepped inside. As the lift started its descent his calm unhurried face vanished, then his torso, and finally his polished shoes.

Adelaide curled up on the futon. The wall opposite flickered with a continuous projection of black and white films, but the sound was off, and she did not really see the images.

A week after her eviction from her home, Axel turned up at Jannike’s apartment where Adelaide was staying. He was distracted. He asked her to come back but she refused; she was scared of him. Axel could not understand why she wouldn’t come back, and she was too humiliated to tell him. After that, the visits stopped. The rift cut like acid.

The Red Rooms were her home now. So she kept telling herself.

Four in the morning and Osiris was quiet. She knew the night’s fluctuating dynamics, the grace notes that marked a creaking machine from the floor above or the generators shifting to beta mode. By four o’clock, Osiris was always quiet.

She refilled her voqua glass. Clean, clear, uncomplicated.

In less than twelve hours, she was due to meet Vikram. Although she had made the appointment with no intention of keeping it, something about his face, his stillness, lingered with her. He was the angriest and the calmest person she had ever met. It was like stumbling upon a ticking device; the horror of what might happen was only equalled by her desire to see the mess. She imagined him waiting at the restaurant tomorrow. Today, now. Had he drawn up a plan of action? Was he running through the arguments he might use?

He’d lost someone too. Mikkeli. The name burned, as though Mikkeli’s vibrancy in life had passed into a flame that needed no oxygen, only a vessel. Adelaide did not know how tall Mikkeli was, or the colour of her hair, but the girl was present with the ghosts circling the city. She hid behind wave crests. She lay supine in troughs.

Axel is alive, Adelaide told herself. Otherwise I would see him like I see that girl. With salt in his lungs and frozen crystals in his hair.

Occasionally, when she was very drunk, Adelaide wondered if other cities had been like Osiris. If other great metropolises ate away at sanity by hurling people through their gates, more and more people, an overdose of life, until the crowds became drugged with their own gluttony. She studied photographs of lost civilizations and touched the imprints of the people in them and in her head she moved them to Osiris and watched their faces change. And sometimes she moved herself from Osiris to those long gone places and watched a different Adelaide walking on streets. That Adelaide had the same eyes, lips, hair. She had the same indolent walk. But the ground was different. It pressed onto her feet and sometimes it tripped her and sometimes it hurt. But she felt it. She knew it, with the witless intimacy and the trust offered only to a stranger.

Ground-dreams. Everybody had them. Adelaide poured herself another splash of voqua. Osiris was clever. Osiris made you think too much.

She sank back against the cushions, her eyes half-closed. The projection played out its muted scenes. Vehicles with silent wheels and boats that flew. Moving stairways held rivers of people. Their eyes forward. Their eyes all-knowing, knowledge in every part of them, injected into their blood, in the machines that lived in their heads. Now steps lead to a door: a house with four walls. How functional. Trees leaning out of the ground. Wind moving the arms of the trees, the vehicles rushing past them, careless of the ground, of roots or earth.

The whirrs and tics of everyday life in some other world. Worlds, she reminded herself, that had failed.

Out in the ghost-sea, the girl Mikkeli breathed. She had a message for Adelaide. Don’t give up. Keep looking. Follow the silver fish.

/ / /

In the morning, a whim sent Adelaide across the city to see Linus. He was in a meeting when she arrived. She busied herself reading the news headlines on her Surfboard. Home Guard arrest key Juraj gang members in all night fire battle. Council announce budget increase for western perimeter reinforcements…The moving text made her dizzy. She stopped reading.

After ten minutes her brother appeared. He escorted her directly to his office, glancing around the reception area as though she might have inflicted unmentionable damage in the short time she had been waiting. The room was smaller than Feodor’s, but meticulously organized. She supposed this was the impression Linus wanted to create: geometric and clinical. His walls were covered with incomprehensible graphs.

Linus sat behind his desk and indicated the chair opposite.

“To what to I owe the pleasure, Adelaide?”

“Sarcasm already? You know I am still very angry with you, Linus.” But she didn’t want to talk about Tyr, and added quickly, “Any Council gossip?”

“We steer clear of that.”

“Oh.” The chair had wheels. Adelaide used one foot to propel her in circles, aware that he was watching her. “I wonder why you do it,” she mused.

“I’m not going to explain myself for your entertainment. You have no idea what’s going on in Osiris.”

She paused spinning. “Have you and Vikram formed some sort of conspiracy?”

“You’ve met him again, have you?”

“I had a visit.”

“And?”

On the Neptune, a long-finned angelfish swam forward until it filled almost the whole of the oval oceanscreen. Its mouth opened and an envelope floated out.

“You have Reefmail,” said Adelaide.

“So I see.”

The angelfish swam back and forth.

“Seems important,” Adelaide commented.

“It can wait. When did you see Vikram?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not going to help him.”

Linus propped one arm on a filing cabinet. “He’s right, you know.”

“Of course you think that.”

“Look, you and I have grown up with this divide. But that’s not an excuse to accept it. Our parents’ generation won’t talk about it, they feel too guilty. It’s up to us.”

“They’re the ones that did it, Linus, let them sort it out.”

“They’re tired, Adelaide.” His voice was earnest now. “They can’t imagine a way to reverse that decision without a massive backlash. And they’re right, it won’t be a smooth transition. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.”

“What, you want to integrate now?”

“I think we should demilitarize the border, yes.”

“And get us all killed,” she scoffed.

“I didn’t say it’s not a risk. But we’re sitting on a time bomb. Remember the riots three years ago, all those people killed at the desalination plant. A plant, I might add, which is now functioning at forty per cent.”

Adelaide looked ceiling-ward. There was no dust here, no places for small creatures to hide. “Are you trying to scare me, Linus?”

He sighed. “Maybe I am. But there’s an even bigger issue at stake. Even you must know what it is.”

She fell quiet. The Neptune hummed. The angelfish still swivelled around the flashing envelope. She could not resist a glance at the window, where misty rain sheened the glass.

“You mean this idea that the weather’s changing,” she said finally.

“So you have noticed something.” There was a shift in his voice — surprise? Satisfaction?

“People talk. I’m not convinced. Anyway, grandfather hasn’t said anything and he’s been here longer than anyone. He’d know.”

Linus rapped the wall graph behind him. “Facts, Adelaide. This proves it. We’ve been experimenting — making forecasts. Not far ahead — but it’s often accurate. That’s a sign that the atmosphere is settling.”

“Is that what they’re doing above my apartment? Weather telling?” She looked away. “Doesn’t seem right.”

“Right or wrong, it’s going to happen. It has to, for what must follow. What I was telling you before, at your Rose affair — no, don’t sigh, it’s not a joke. Osiris has a very real problem. There are many things in this city we can make — we can grow foods and medicines and bioplastics, our Makers produce complex parts — but there are crucial things we can’t. Like bufferglass. Solar skin. Those are Afrikan technologies, and we’ve used up our reserves. Now there’re reports that the water turbines are breaking down. Next time a hyperstorm hits, it could do terrible damage, not to mention making a serious dent in our energy capacity. Our only option to repair this damage would be to leave the City.”

She turned back, shocked.

“Leave the City! Are you insane?”

Linus looked pleased with himself. Perhaps he was just trying to rattle her.

“On the contrary,” he said. “I have never been more serious. We will have to renew expeditions.”

“What about the storms?” she countered. “Even if you designed this amazing weather teller, how would a tiny expedition boat escape the storms? It would be ripped to pieces.”

“As I said before, Adelaide, the climate is adjusting. It’s a natural process. Besides, Teller portents favour journeys. The political time is right, and the necessity is there. Sooner or later, the Council must acknowledge it.”

“But there’s nothing out there. There’s nothing to find.”

“You’ve taken Osiris doctrine too much to heart. This is my contention with Council policy. Education should be about stimulus, about questions, not rote. We shouldn’t stop asking. Or hoping.”

“Hope is a fool’s errand, Linus. You’ll only alienate people when you can’t deliver what they want.”

His lips curved. “You sound like Father.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I couldn’t be less like him.”

She was thinking of the last communications ever recorded before the Great Silence. They had arrived by boat. A refugee had carried the images all the way from the northern hemisphere, on a Neon Age hologram that now sat in the Museum. It might be upsetting, the teacher had warned them. But every pupil has to see. Otherwise you will never understand.

It wasn’t the images of destruction so much as the last radio broadcast that Adelaide always thought of: the voice, quietly desperate, speaking knowingly to people that would never come. Everyone in the class cried. The teacher was crying. Even Axel, if he wasn’t a boy, would have been crying. Everyone except Adelaide. She had suspected then that something was wrong with her. She couldn’t cry; she could only watch the images of those doomed people unfold one by one and feel hollow inside. Something had died in her that day. Maybe Linus was right — it was hope.

“Adelaide? You must see my point.”

“You’re deluding yourself, Linus. Everyone loves the idea of land. But it’s only an idea. It’s — what did Second Grandmother used to say — over the rainbow.”

He looked at her sympathetically, and she knew they were chasing different shadows.

“We have to find out,” Linus said. “It’s imperative that we know what is left. We must think ahead.”

“No-one will listen to you.”

“They will. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but eventually. Because unlike you, a lot of people share my hope.”

“Poor fools.”

He laughed. “You’d fight me all day. I wish you’d understand how influential you could be. If you only converted that cynicism, people would follow you.”

“You want me to lie.”

“No.” Now he sounded troubled. “No, I don’t want that.”

Idly, Adelaide tapped the desk. “It wouldn’t be a problem. Technically I’m a very convincing liar.”

“Incorrigible.” Linus fell silent, as though he had reached the end of his persuasions, and yet they had not quite achieved the conclusion he had sought. For a moment Adelaide felt sorry for him. She had never considered his belief in an outside world to be quite so integral to his character, but there it was, in blunt appeal, inextricably woven into the fabric of his political career. It struck her as odd that he might spend years campaigning for something so dreamily insubstantial.

She felt the same, nudging impulse that had brought her here.

“I’ll meet Vikram,” she said. “But I make you no promises.”

“Don’t underestimate what you’re embarking on.”

Adelaide stood and sent the chair wheeling under the desk with a backward kick of her heel. “Brother dear. When have you ever seen me in over my head? We may have different methods, but I’m quite as capable as you. If not more so.”

He gave her a crooked smile. She saw a flash of Axel in his face. Something in the way the eyes creased. She was so accustomed to warring with Linus, she tended to forget they shared a genetic code.

“As always, that alarms me more than anything else,” he said.

“I’ll send you an invite to the next soirée. I don’t expect to see you there.”

“I’ll ensure that my schedule is full.”

She nodded. Linus, at least, understood that collaboration was not reconciliation. At the door she paused.

“One thing, Linus. If you’re so worried that we’re running out of bufferglass, why would you support repairing towers in the west?”

He smiled. “Think about it. The thinner our resources are spread, the sooner the crisis looms…”

“And the sooner you can push for your expeditions.” She thought about it. “Yes. Clever. But it won’t work, you know.” It had been a successful whim, she thought. Linus thought she was doing something worthwhile, so he would keep quiet about her affair with Tyr. Neither had he guessed Adelaide’s agenda. What with Lao’s refusal and her abortive meeting with Hanif, she had realized it was impossible to get into Axel’s apartment. Impossible without help, that was, and if necessary, someone who could take the fall.

She checked her watch. If she hurried, she’d only be forty-five minutes late for Vikram.

16 ¦ VIKRAM

“Good afternoon, sir. Do you have a reservation?”

“Yes, it’s under Adelaide Mystik — or Rechnov, it could be Rechnov.”

“Ah, Miss Mystik,” said the waiter, drawing out the syllables as if there were many things he could impart about Adelaide. “Yes, she’s reserved for two o’clock. She isn’t here yet, but if you’d like to come through?”

If Vikram’s dishevelled appearance perturbed the waiter, there was no trace of it in his face. It had taken all of Vikram’s nerve to walk into the changing room of the watersports centre, and walk out again wearing a mishmash of stolen clothes, expecting at any moment to hear a shout of discovery at his back. He checked his watch, looked back once at the entrance to The Stingray. No sign of Adelaide.

“Sure.”

He followed the waiter through a stone archway. Inside, the restaurant opened out into a glittering cave. The tables were scattered a discreet distance apart, round with turquoise cloths and almost all of them occupied. A female pianist was playing something light and fluid. The waiter led him to an empty table with a single rose laid at each of the two places. He pulled out a chair and took Vikram’s coat. Vikram sat awkwardly.

In this place he felt every minor injury with ten times the intensity he would have anywhere else. The previous night was a blur of fire and drums and the distant rumble of engines which he had woken to in the tunnels. His head ached. He was covered in bruises whose origins he could not recall; even his face was scratched.

“Is this the first time you have visited us, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I trust you will find everything to your satisfaction.”

“Thank you.”

Was he supposed to say anything else? The waiter bore his stolen coat away. Vikram looked about him. The walls and ceiling of the restaurant were covered with mosaics depicting fish of every imaginable size and shape. The mosaic was beautiful but he barely saw it because in between the tiles were large portholes with external lights that revealed the real ocean.

The hairs rose on the back of his neck. His nerves were so frayed he almost jumped up and fled; he had to press his hands against his knees to stay put. He reminded himself that Adelaide had never been in prison. She could not have known about the portholes. Even if she did, she did not know what they meant to Vikram.

The waiter returned with a menu and a glass of something green, which he said was complimentary.

“While you’re waiting, sir. We always look after Miss Mystik’s guests.”

“Is she usually late?”

“I’m sure you know better than I do, sir.”

There was no answer to this, so he perused the menu in silence. It was, as the decor suggested, primarily a seafood restaurant, but Vikram hadn’t heard of most of the dishes listed. He tasted the green drink. It tingled, hard and bright down his gullet; he imagined he was swallowing diamonds.

He glanced at the other diners under pretence of studying the menu. He didn’t recognize anyone from the Rose Night, but his time there had been limited. The clientele seemed less effusive than Adelaide’s set. Conversation was quiet and intimate. Vikram felt like an impostor. He touched the gleaming set of cutlery before him. It left a smeary fingerprint. He put his hands beneath the table, feeling guilty for ruining the aesthetic perfection, and then guilty for feeling guilty.

A woman at the table opposite was talking earnestly about the Colnat Foundation. Vikram hid a smile. He had never read Colnat’s report, but he knew that it described the standards of living in the west as poor (an understatement but a statement at least), and that it had sparked off a minor “save-the-west” movement in the City.

Eirik had spoken enthusiastically of Colnat. The Citizen was an idealistic man, a man Vikram had admired at the time. Colnat had had visions of redeveloping the west. He wanted to set up schools. For a year or so he was a common sight, crouched in the prow of a boat, scribbling notes with industrious fervour. He was accompanied everywhere by his dog, a great scruffy animal. The dog contracted a disease and died; it was said that Colnat never recovered from the loss. At any rate, he went back east not long before the riots and was not seen again.

The woman opposite was talking as though the initiative was still running.

“Of course schooling is the key to it,” she said. Her voice was low, urgent. “If Palenta could just be persuaded to support the motion, we might have a chance of pushing it through…”

“Under what clause?”

“I don’t know. The Aek Amendment. Even the Ibatoka.”

“Have you heard Palenta speak?”

“Oh, I don’t know him personally, darling. This looks delicious, doesn’t it?” The couple’s knives and forks clinked, and their conversation reverted to trivia.

Vikram didn’t have any education; it was Mikkeli who had taught him how to read and write. Now and then, those days adopted his thoughts like driftwood. Hazy recollections of Naala’s boat, with its fumes of alcohol and icy sweat. Keli hoarding books, her index finger running under the lines whilst the letters loomed large and slowly familiar.

A fish swam past the porthole. Where the hell was Adelaide? Was she even coming? His stomach was rumbling with hunger. He felt more and more ill at ease. He found himself checking for exits, wary of a trap.

The couple opposite had reached dessert. The woman was lingering over a concoction in a tall glass, dipping the spoon with delicate, precise movements.

“Loviisa wants gliding lessons, but I think water-skiing is more beneficial, don’t you? Gliding’s such a hassle. But she will go on.”

“I know. Toi’s been nagging me for a waterbike since last midsummer.” The man leaned over and tapped her hand. “But let’s not talk about them. It reminds me of her.”

They weren’t really a couple, Vikram realized. Not officially, the way people did things this side of town, where relationships were ratified by Tellers and salt. And something else: they were in love. He supposed guilt and grief were common luxuries here. He thought of the girl with the red bow in her hair. She was part of it. So was Adelaide Mystik. He could not condemn the City as false outright, but none of it seemed real to him. It was too brassy, too effusive. How could you trust the sadness of someone who had never seen that cold could kill? Who had never seen a gun fired, never been afraid to sleep?

He checked his watch. Adelaide was already twenty-five minutes late. Vikram drained the green drink, and as the waiter passed, held up his glass. He might be here for a while.

17 ¦ ADELAIDE

Vikram was putting on his coat, about to depart. Adelaide congratulated herself on her timing.

“The waiter said you’d be late,” he said. “Personally, I’m amazed you showed up at all.”

She heard, subdued but not quite disguised, the note of contempt. She refused to be bothered by it.

“I wasn’t going to,” she said.

“What made you change your mind?”

“I have my reasons.”

A waiter appeared at their table. “Good afternoon, Miss Mystik. Will you be dining with us today?”

Adelaide scanned the menu. “Yes, I believe we will. I’ll have the rainbow-fish. With karengo squares on the side. Vikram? I’ve kept you waiting, I owe you lunch.”

“What do you recommend?” he asked the waiter.

“The chef’s special is excellent, sir. Marinated swordfish fillet.”

“That sounds great.”

“We’ll take a bottle of my usual,” said Adelaide. “But first, aperitifs.”

“Octopya, madam?”

“Exactly.”

With a slight bow he moved away, taking several empty glasses of Vikram’s with him. Adelaide placed one hand on top of the other.

“Now,” she said. “Business. I assume you can break into an apartment?”

“What makes you think that?”

“If I remember right you’ve been in jail.”

“Not for breaking and entering.”

“What for?”

“Assault,” Vikram said.

The waiter arrived with two conical glasses containing blue liquid and a metal appliance. Over each glass he balanced a slotted spoon with a sugar cube. Spigots from the metal appliance dripped water slowly through the sugar. Adelaide watched, silent, until the process was complete. She pushed one glass toward Vikram and sipped her own. It was the hit she needed. Fire and ice in one gulp.

“I love the first taste,” she said. “The doorway to possibility.”

Vikram tried a mouthful and made a face of disagreement.

“You were saying about your conviction,” she prompted.

“I was involved in the riots three years ago,” Vikram said. His voice was chilly as a Tarctic wind. She had never met anyone so unforgiving. “I did a lot of things like a lot of other people and I hit one of the Guards.”

Adelaide nibbled on a crystallized apricot. “How did it feel?”

“Like the beginning,” he said.

“How long were you in jail for?”

“Two years.”

“That’s a long time underwater.”

He leaned forward. Shadows made his eyes dark. A nerve flickered in his throat. “Why does this matter to you?”

She smiled. “Just curious.”

“I don’t care for your curiosity. Where I come from there’s no place for it. Tell me where you need to get into.”

A thought occurred to her.

“You’re not an Osuwite, are you?”

He looked at her coldly.

Adelaide’s plate slid neatly in front of her. “The rainbow-fish, madam.” The fish, belying its name, was a warm rose colour. “And the swordfish.”

The waiter filled both their glasses with weqa and placed the bottle on a stand, withdrawing discreetly.

“It’s wild swordfish, by the way,” she said. “They catch their seafood fresh every morning. Probably confiscated from an illegal fishing boat.”

She prised a segment of rainbow-fish from the delicate spine.

“My grandfather told me that when Osiris was first built, these fish were all they ate. But they were vastly overfished. And now, they’re exceptionally rare… you have to stalk the shoals for hours. But you know how they catch them?” She waited, but Vikram did not offer a guess. His fork was poised over his plate. “Their tails glow in the dark,” she said.

“That’s ridiculous.”

Adelaide’s reaction had been the same the first time she heard the story. Now she shared some of her grandfather’s indignation. She took a bite.

“Delicious. Enjoy your swordfish.”

“I will.”

He cut into the fillet with quick, precise movements. Adelaide lingered over her fish, watching him surreptitiously. His dark hair was overlong. The ascetic planes of his face seemed inadequate for those whirlpool eyes. Haunted eyes? She wondered. Or just wary?

“So where is it?” Vikram asked.

“Top floor of three-zero-one-east.”

“Sounds expensive. Who lives there?”

“Nobody, at the moment. My brother used to,” she clarified. She sampled the weqa. It tasted saltier than usual and she pulled a face. Vikram sighed. He sat back and met her eyes squarely.

“Your twin brother, right? The one there’s a huge investigation about?”

“Axel. Yes.”

“A crime scene.”

“He’s not dead.”

“But you get my point. I’m guessing it’s somewhere secure.”

“Otherwise I wouldn’t need to break in, would I?” Adelaide squeezed a lime quarter over her fish. “Would you like a karengo square? They do them well here.”

“I’ll pass.”

“On the karengo, or the break-in?”

“The seaweed. As to the break-in, I think you’re fucking crazy. You know it’s instant jail time if we’re caught? Are there cameras?”

She nodded. “And a security bar. I can bribe someone for a swipe card and to cut the cameras, but I need you for the locks.”

Vikram shrugged. “Your money.”

“My family’s money,” she agreed.

“Fine. I’ll do it. In exchange, you’re going to get us a second address with the Council and persuade them to start a winter aid programme.” He paused. “I’m assuming you’ll want your part done first.”

“Of course,” she said serenely.

“In that case, I want your word that you’ll keep helping me until I’ve achieved my own ends.”

Adelaide speared her few last flakes of fish.

“Let’s be honest with one another, Vikram. My motivations are selfish, and I don’t care about your people. You certainly can’t trust me. On the other hand, I’m probably the best chance you’ve got.”

He was silent, but his fingers tightened around the stem of the weqa glass.

“There’s a song in the west about prison,” he said eventually. “They’ll put you underwater where the sun will never rise. And the mud will take your tongue because you’ve told too many lies. That’s how it starts. And in the end, you lose your head.”

She looked at the untreated cut on his right temple and thought, what in hell’s tide am I getting myself into?

Vikram hadn’t finished.

“I could never explain what underwater’s like to someone like you,” he went on. “But I do promise you, if we get caught, I’ll drag you all the way with me. So do we have a deal?”

Adelaide met his eyes, those watchful eyes. Below the chink and chatter of the restaurant, the pianist spilled her rippling chords, notes like surf and jetsam. She thought of her grandfather’s piano, out of reach in the brocaded rooms of the Domain. Out of reach, like Axel. But the penthouse would hold the answers she so badly needed.

“I believe we do,” she said.

Vikram clinked his glass to hers. Neither of them blinked.