Osiris

18 ¦ VIKRAM

The hallway outside the penthouse was silent. It was four minutes past three in the morning, and the lifts were still, poised on different levels of the skyscraper. Vikram crouched in front of the yellow-barred door, his eyes level with the second keyhole. He selected a slim metal pick from a set and inserted it into the lock. He liked to think of this as a skill rather than a profession, but there had been enough occasions where he’d helped Mikkeli on the break-ins of her later career.

Just busting a lock was enough to push the memories forward. The dripping green cell. The porthole. He felt too large for the door and its frame, as though he had grown and the corridor had shrunk. He closed his eyes, used his ears instead. Metal scraped on metal. Now he began to feel the personality of the lock, its strengths, its lines of weakness. Gently he manipulated the pick this way and that.

“Will you hurry up?” hissed a voice behind him. “We haven’t got all day.”

Vikram sucked in a breath and told himself, very sternly, not to respond. It had taken precisely forty-four seconds to break the first lock. That wasn’t quick enough for Adelaide, who had moaned and cursed and once, poked him with the plastic sheathed toe of her shoe. Anyone else pestering him like this would have received a black eye for their pains. Today, he had no choice but to be with Adelaide.

He had told her that if they got caught, he would take her down with him. Realistically, he knew there wasn’t a chance. If they got caught, Vikram was as easy a scapegoat as ever she could find. That was the only reason she had agreed to the deal.

He twisted the pick twelve degrees left.

“I mean, really, how long does it take?”

Her impatience was a physical scald on his back. He sensed her fidgeting behind him. He twisted around and scowled up at her. She was practically on top of him, arms folded across her chest and both eyebrows elevated. Her red hair was tucked under a woollen hat. He supposed this was her idea of a criminal outfit.

“It’s a science,” he said. He tapped the deactivated bar. “Your money might have got us the swipe card for this, but it won’t buy you a picklock. So shut up and give me some space.”

Adelaide’s eyes narrowed but she took half a step backward. Vikram returned his attention to the lock. Twenty seconds later he heard it — a whisper of a click. The door popped ajar. Vikram sat back on his heels. His satisfaction was tempered with a stab of fear; he’d done it now. Second offences sent you plummeting toward the seabed without a trial.

“Aren’t you the clever one?” Without waiting for him to move Adelaide ducked under the yellow bar and disappeared inside.

“You better hope that alarm doesn’t work,” he said.

Her voice floated back to him. “It’s disabled.”

“I hope you’re sure.”

“I told you. There was a code to change the code. Only me and Axel knew it.” Vikram heard the sound of a cupboard door opening all the same. Then Adelaide’s smug tones. “I was right.”

For about the fifth time that night, Vikram wanted to strangle her. He didn’t bother telling her that if she’d been wrong they would have known by now, just glanced back at the empty corridor behind him — the final curl of the stairway rail, the red carpet, dimly lit, and the security camera trained on Axel’s apartment. It was off. Adelaide’s bribe had given them fifty-nine minutes to get in and out. They had about fifty-four of those left. He’d assumed she’d got some minion to do the actual bribing, but she had reacted to this implication in amazement. I’m hardly going to trust anyone else, she said. It made sense. She had a cajoling voice; with the additional seduction of money it was no doubt irresistible.

He slid the set of picks back into his jeans pocket, feeling a rush of gratitude towards Drake, who had sourced the tools for him without asking any questions. He followed Adelaide inside and shut the door behind him.

He was in a rectangular hallway. A row of identical pot plants marched along the right hand wall. They were ordered in ascending height, with about an inch between each. Their withering leaves pointed in the same directions. Vikram counted: there were twenty-two. A watering can sat at the end of the row. He peered in. Any water had evaporated.

Stacked against the other wall were columns of shoeboxes. Each had the same label, neatly aligned in the bottom right hand corner. Vikram checked his gloves a final time and eased the first lid open. A pair of stout brown boots rested inside. He checked the soles. They were unworn. The next box contained the same shoes, also unworn. He prised out a box from the middle of the stack and raised the lid, knowing by now what he would find. He pushed the box back again.

“I’ve set the window-walls to one-way,” called Adelaide. “So we can turn on the lights.”

“Great,” he mumbled. The we was anything but reassuring.

He expected to find more neurotic ordering in the next room, but instead walked into a scene resembling traders’ day at Market Circle. The room was crammed with cabinets. There were open shelf units, cabinets with glass doors, trunks with metal bolts, sets of drawers and a wardrobe with the doors thrown open. The wardrobe bulged with bolts of material, stacked in alternate reds and yellows. Adelaide was on her hands and knees, peering underneath it, her trousers stretched over the seat of her pants. Vikram allowed himself to enjoy the spectacle, and the silence, for a moment. He had no idea what she expected to find.

“What’s all the material for?” he asked.

“How should I know?”

“Well, what are we looking for? We haven’t got much time.”

“I told you. I don’t know yet.”

Vikram tried a few drawers. Their contents varied. One was entirely full of cans, the same fizzy Coralade, crushed to flat silver disks. Another contained thermometers. He found a third brimming with model horses; wooden, plastic, stone, even cardboard. He showed it to Adelaide. She picked up one of the horses and turned it over between gloved finger and thumb, frowning slightly. Then she put it back and shut the drawer. Vikram’s curiosity was piqued. He wanted to ask what was special about horses, but did not expect to be graced with an answer.

“When were you last here?” he said instead.

Adelaide prised open a drinks cabinet and cursed as a landslide of rubber bands poured out. Vikram went to help her pick them up. She didn’t thank him but after a minute she said, “It was a while ago.”

“So you won’t know if anything’s changed. Since Axel’s been gone, I mean.”

“I’m not assuming anything has.”

Vikram gathered up the last of the rubber bands. Between them they eased the cabinet shut.

“Then why are you here?” he asked.

“Because I can read what they can’t,” Adelaide said. She uncurled her hand. A miniature plastic horse was in her palm, legs gathered up as if it was galloping.

“Horses,” she said.

The penthouse was similarly structured to Adelaide’s apartment, with room collapsing into room like a pack of dominoes. Vikram walked into a room containing only a table, exactly centred. There was something about its solitary positioning that reminded him of the table he had seen in Adelaide’s dining room, beautifully laid but unused.

He didn’t switch on the light but went over to the window-wall, checking out the view. Despite the hour and the haziness, Osiris was a network of light on black. A shuttle streaked through its glowing shell, reminding him of the traces left by sparklers on midsummer night. The ocean was invisible and the city felt rootless. Vikram rapped the bufferglass with his knuckle, taking some comfort in its tensile strength.

He found the kitchen, and then the bathroom, which were both cleaner than everywhere else. The bathroom cupboard was full of medication. The bottles were organized in order of label colour. He took one out, tossed it in the air and caught it. The bottle rattled. It was unopened. So were the rest.

“Your brother had a lot of doctors,” he called to Adelaide, who was in the next room. She appeared sharply. She ran her index finger along the rows of prescriptions.

“Well, that has no effect… haven’t tried that. Interesting, nothing from Radir…”

Vikram had already learned that the best time to interrogate Adelaide was when she was distracted, and was therefore more likely to volunteer information. It meant pretending you weren’t really there, but since Adelaide was so self-obsessed this was remarkably easy.

“Who’s Radir?”

“His last shrink.”

“How many did he see?”

“Just about everyone in Osiris, I think… I never knew they gave him that… My father insisted.”

He didn’t push the issue any further. Whatever illness Axel had suffered from, two things seemed clear. The doctors did not agree on it, as none of the prescriptions matched, and nor did Axel, who had not been taking any of them. He left Adelaide peering at labels, mouthing their formulas to herself.

In the next room there was a broken clock on the wall. He stood looking at it, trying to decide why anyone would keep a broken clock. He checked his own watch. They still had over half an hour. If he listened, he could hear the watch ticking.

He found himself straining for noise. The twins’ reputation might have been wild, but the penthouse was not somewhere he could imagine holding a raucous party. It was easier to imagine his own friends here than it was Adelaide’s Haze. He wondered what Nils would say about it. Shake his head and laugh, Vikram decided, then remind Vikram that the penthouse’s owner was, after all, related to “that celebrity bitch.” Laughter was Nils’s reaction to most things: defusing agent and first line of defence. When Vikram finally told him about the deal he’d cut, Nils’s laugh was there. He’d had a warning, too. Watch out for her, he’d said. Don’t worry, Vikram had responded. I’ve not lost my head yet.

A laugh would sound strange in here.

The weirdness of being in a dead man’s home was steadily seeping into his consciousness. When people died, they were found and somebody mourned them and then their living space was recycled. What came with loss, unacknowledged and unspoken, but still there, was continuity. The penthouse held nothing of renewal, only endings. Death of the body. Worse than that, he thought. Death of the mind.

Adelaide strolled out of the bathroom with the sound of rushing water. She was doing up the buttons of her trousers.

“What?” she said. “I needed a piss.”

Vikram had a feeling the vulgarity was for his benefit.

Then she saw the clock. Her hands stilled at her waistband. He was going to ask its significance, but he saw her face, just for a second, succumb to something like fear.

She began her examination of the rest of the room. Her methods were erratic. She pressed her hands flat against the walls. She listened, with the shell of her ear close to the wallpaper, her face expectant. There was a white strip of skin between her glove and the sleeve of her shirt. She didn’t wear a watch. The foolishness of relying on one timepiece struck Vikram at the same time as he noticed how thin her wrists were.

When she twisted her head to look at him he thought of all the images in those paper magazines. A few strands of hair had escaped the confines of her hat and stuck to her face. He smiled to see the plastic sheaths over her feet, her long legs cut off so abruptly by the blue bags. Now he had to laugh.

“What’s funny?” demanded Adelaide.

He pointed. Adelaide frowned, then gave a reluctant smile. She raised her knee and extended her leg sideways in a slow motion kick. He imagined her muscles flexing beneath the loose black trousers.

“Sexy, aren’t they,” she said. She balanced for a moment, at once athletic and comic, before dropping her foot. For the first time he saw the charm of the girl. But he wasn’t going to tell her that.

“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

They came to the last room. The lock was broken, presumably the key was with Axel. Adelaide turned the handle and stopped. Vikram peered over her shoulder.

The room smelled, not damp exactly, but chill, like old ice. It had been papered. Every inch of wall, floor and ceiling was covered in hot air balloons. Even the window-wall had been claimed. Repeated over and over again was the upturned pear shape, the coloured segments of the balloon envelope. There were prints, photographs, technical drawings, mathematical formulas. Here and there were swatches of yellow and red material. They were glued, taped, nailed or tacked, but they fluttered from their moorings as if stirred by an invisible breath. Vikram looked at the ragged edges of the cuttings. Axel’s handiwork was evident in illegible scrawls. He imagined the frenzied tearing, the hammering in the night. He felt cold.

He tapped Adelaide’s shoulder. She jumped.

“Do you want to go in?”

She shook her head and motioned to the floor. A minefield of nails stuck out of the dust.

“Looks like your brother was planning to skip town.”

“What kind of person thinks about making a hot air balloon?”

Vikram did not reply at once. He was thinking of an old western story, a legend about a balloon.

“Maybe the sort of person who thinks there’s something worth finding,” he said slowly. They were speaking in whispers. Vikram forced himself to raise his voice.

“We should go,” he said. “The hour’s almost up.”

All the same they stayed. Vikram could not dispel a niggling sense of premonition. By stepping into this man’s apartment he had crossed another border with it, one of obligations and no returns. He glanced at Adelaide. There was no doubt about it this time, she looked scared. Her hand bumped against his. She did not immediately move her arm away.

Noise startled both of them. First an erratic, then a regular drumming. Adelaide’s head snapped up. Vikram turned silently. Then he realized it was just the rain, rain breaking on windows covered in paper trails.

He looked at his watch.

“Shit, we’ve got three minutes, come on!”

Adelaide didn’t move.

“Come on!” he repeated. He took her arm but she thrust him off. He ran back through the penthouse. He thought she was right behind him but when he turned she was dawdling, opening a drawer, a cupboard door. They had two and a half minutes.

“Adelaide! Get out!”

The porthole loomed once more. He saw the skadi banging on his door in the middle of the night.

“Adelaide!” he yelled.

Still she lingered. He saw her touch a broken rivet on the wall.

“Fuck!”

Tiny but ominous on her finger, Vikram saw a bead of blood. His eyes snapped to the broken glass, which now carried the indelible mark of Adelaide’s DNA.

“Wipe it off! Use your sleeve, clean it!”

She obeyed. He hauled her forcibly through the domino rooms of the penthouse, past the broken clock, the cabinets, past the plants and the stacks of shoeboxes, out the front door into the hall. Adelaide slammed the door shut. He checked his watch. Sixty seconds.

“Lock up!” hissed Adelaide. “You have to lock up. Otherwise they’ll know!”

A string of expletives exploded in Vikram’s throat. He ripped the picks from his back pocket and with fumbling fingers shoved the first into the lower lock. He couldn’t see it. He could only see the porthole. His hand shook. Adelaide ran. He heard her footsteps clatter down the first ten steps and knew she was safe. At that moment he hated her.

Forty seconds. The corridor was shrinking again. He closed his eyes and listened to the lock. Tiny movements. Forget the porthole. Forget Adelaide. Forget everything but the way the metal works.

Listen. Just listen.

The lock clicked. He whipped the swipe card through the yellow bar and threw himself into the stairwell. Out of camera range. Six seconds. He counted, slowly, as the slender hand completed its circuit. When it reached the twelve he looked up at the buried mole of the camera in the ceiling. A red light blinked, just once, as if the tiny machine was waking up.

Adelaide crouched further down the stairs, her face electric. Their eyes connected. The tension between them was like the trembling space between polar magnets.

She ran.

That’s right. Run. Because if I get my hands on you now—

The thought prompted his body to move. It was only in motion that he realized the full extent of his rage. He hurtled down the stairs, chasing after her. In their efforts to make no noise they moved in contortionist shapes, half flying, half falling. Above his own straining lungs he heard the intake of her breath, the faint squeak as she grabbed the banister rail and vaulted a corner. Her blue overshoes landed with a crackle of plastic.

Thirty-one floors down she skidded to a halt.

“I thought we weren’t going to make it,” she said. Her face was pink with exertion.

“We?” he repeated.

Adelaide was bent double, breathing dramatically. Her face stretched in a grin. It was a game for her, he thought. He kept a deliberate metre away, trying to slow his own breathing. Cross that border and he might not be able to stop his hands from fastening around her neck.

“You ran,” he said. “You fucking ran.” His throat ached with the effort of keeping his voice down. If anyone came out and questioned him, he had fake ID and no City pass. He had to get somewhere safe.

“Of course I ran,” said Adelaide. “I’m not going to get caught.”

“Except for your blood.” That shut her up, but only temporarily. He could see her mind working, figuring out how to turn the situation around. He didn’t give her the chance. “We’d better get out of here.”

“There’s a storm started, genius. I can’t take the boat back to my scraper now.”

“Great. We’re stranded.”

His temples were splitting. Adelaide stretched up again, hands over her head, her spine arching.

“You might be,” she said. “I’m going to the tea parlour on floor sixteen.”

“Fine.” He didn’t care where they went as long as it was down, as far away from the penthouse as it was possible to go. “Then we’re taking the lift.”

“You can go home if you want,” said Adelaide.

Vikram jabbed the call button. Deep in the belly of the skyscraper, he heard a distant rumble as the lift started its journey.

“I’m not going anywhere until my side of the bargain’s settled,” he said. “I’ve risked enough for you today. How the hell do you think I can get over the border at four in the morning?”

Adelaide shrugged.

“The Undersea?”

“The Undersea doesn’t stop here. If you’d ever taken it you’d know that.”

“Why would I want to take the Undersea? Anyway, you can’t stay at my apartment.”

Vikram gave her an insincere smile. Clearly she hadn’t thought things through. The mechanics of it. What she was going to do with him in the lag time between her side of the bargain and his. For his part, he’d had no intention of spending any more time with her than necessary. But if he could bear it, an opportunity presented itself: to get even.

“Afraid I’m going to have to,” he said.

“Nobody stays at my apartment.”

“Then I’ll be the first. Don’t worry, I won’t rob you.”

There was a low ping and the lift doors slid open. Vikram stepped inside. Adelaide stayed still, her mouth set.

“You getting in or not?” he asked.

She got in. Once again they stood side by side, repeated in the mirrors. Their faces echoed the rigid stance of their bodies. He was a head taller than her. This small, biological victory gave him some satisfaction.

Perhaps noticing the same thing, Adelaide’s scowl deepened.

“Don’t think you’ve won,” she said.

“I wouldn’t think anything so childish,” he shot back.

Adelaide’s tea parlour had the dreamy, slow-motion atmosphere of a daylight facility still operating in the middle of the night. Purple lanterns hung in clusters, illuminating the low level tables, cushion seats, ink paintings on silk and the dividing mesh screens. Around a corner was an adolescent girl, folding paper napkins into a menagerie of birds. Adelaide gave the girl a wide berth. The old man near the entrance wore a full tuxedo, and glanced up nervously at every clink of a spoon. A woman in a large green hat, ostensibly reading a newspaper, would now and then recount some portion of it to the rest of the room. On the other side was a man with a cat on a lead. The cat had its own glass.

Vikram and Adelaide sat opposite one another in one section. Nobody seemed interested in them.

“The red coral tea, sir.”

The deferential did not go unnoticed. Vikram smiled his thanks. Adelaide fixed the proprietor with cold eyes. The proprietor, a tiny Asian woman with her hair in a chignon, ignored the look and placed a tray carefully on the table.

The teapot was flat and heavy with an s-shaped spout. It was accompanied by a small bowl of powdered ginger. Adelaide, very deliberately, took the pot and poured tea into one of two round-bottomed glasses. The liquid was pale amber. She blew ripples across the top of it before allowing a tentative few drops over the barrier of her lips.

Vikram poured and gingered his own tea. The scorching temperature did not affect him; hot beverages had kept him alive on many nights. Despite himself, his anger was fading under the dual influence of warmth and relief. They hadn’t been caught. The aroma of fresh tea, the soft drifts of rising steam and the intermittent sounds of human habitation relaxed him. He was safe. Even Adelaide’s pettiness with the tea seemed trifling. It was good tea too, the sort that would find its way onto the black market in the west.

“Me and Axel used to come here,” she said. “It was our local. Axel loves the Chinese because they keep their Mandarin, and he’s always been into Old World languages. Do people keep their languages in the west, Vikram?”

“Some do. But it makes it harder to get by.” And why make it harder than it already is, he thought.

“Axel used to speak bits of Mandarin with the servers and then we’d sit and make up stories about everyone else. You get some right crazies in here. You know, I can’t help wondering if he’s ever come back without me. Where would you hide, Vikram, if you wanted to escape?”

“Depends what you mean by escape.”

“Disappear, then.”

“When people go missing in the west they turn up dead or not at all, which generally means they’re being eaten by fish. I guess that’s one way to disappear.”

He spoke without thinking and expected an angry glower, but Adelaide was looking up at the misty windows. The rain still pounded on the exterior walls. Her cheeks were flushed.

“No, he’s alive.”

The question was too obvious not to be posed. Besides, Vikram was curious. He had made up his mind even before the break-in that Axel must be dead; seeing the penthouse had only confirmed his thoughts. One way or another, the boy had found his way to the sea.

“Why do you think he’s alive?”

“I don’t think. I know.”

She was staring at him now with an air of expectancy, almost as though she wanted evidence of his disbelief. Something to pounce on. Her fixed gaze was like that of the cat on the lead. She had a cat’s detached nonchalance, he thought, a curious immunity to violence. She put her associates unquestioningly in the position of the mouse.

“How can you know?” he said. Adelaide clicked her tongue.

“Intuition. He’s my twin, so I know. We have a connection. It isn’t like a connection that you have with other people. You just — know.”

Vikram thought of the photograph in her bedroom.

“What’s he like, your brother?”

Adelaide smiled. For the first time, it was a genuine smile.

“He was clever,” she said. “Really smart. Maths, oceanology — he was great at those things. And he was smart when it came to people too, especially the family. I used to get angry with them, but Axel always calmed us down. He’d know before I did when I was about to flip. He was always there. The two of us, it needed two of us, really, against the rest of the tribe.”

She ran a restless hand through her hair. The woollen hat was tossed aside on a cushion. She seemed embarrassed, almost cross about what she had said, and he suspected that she did not often talk about Axel. Strange that she should choose him — but it had been a strange night. “Anyway,” she said lightly. “He changed.”

“What happened?”

“He forgot things. Small things at first. He started mixing up names, and dates. Then it was bigger things. People. Places. Oceanology. It all seemed to happen very quickly. But it stemmed from the Incident.”

He looked at her questioningly. “The Incident?”

“Oh… It was my mother’s birthday party. A big, public, Rechnov event, on an extremely large boat.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you can imagine. We were sixteen. We always hated those events, but we tolerated them, I suppose. But this time, Axel was acting oddly. He was making no effort to be polite. He kept staring at people in a very fixated, very intense way, as if there was something wrong with them. I thought it was funny to start with, but he kept — staring. Then just walking off when someone was talking to him. And later — there was the speech.”

She sighed. Not wanting to deter her, Vikram said nothing. Adelaide stirred her tea for a moment before continuing.

“Feodor was about to make one of his pompous speeches. He was standing at the head of the boat, my mother at his side, the picture of respectability. He never got the chance to speak. Axel leapt up in front of all these people, pushed our parents aside — it was almost comical, in a way—‘Ladies and gentlemen’, he began. Very proper. He winked at me, and I laughed. I remember, I did laugh. But then he started talking about all of these other things, things that made no sense, things even I had to admit sounded crazy… it was awful. When he finished, he bowed, three times. You can imagine the silence. Finally, he took this running leap, and he jumped off the boat.”

“He jumped off the boat?”

“Into the sea, yes. It was so cold. We could hear him, whooping, splashing the water. They had to send someone in to pull him out. He was drenched — that beautiful suit, completely wrecked — shivering all over — and he was still laughing. He came and hugged me. It was like hugging an ice sculpture. ‘Oh A,’ he said. ‘Look at their hopeless, broken faces. Did you ever see such a desolate sight?’ I took him home. He was hospitalised with pneumonia the next day.” She frowned. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“So why are you?”

“I don’t know.” She took a sip of tea, and set the cup back without a clink. “What about your girl? Mikkeli, wasn’t it? What was she like?”

He felt indebted to answer. “She wasn’t my girl,” he said. “Not like that. We grew up together. She looked out for me. She was smart, too.” He smiled wryly. “Not like your brother. She was a thief.”

Adelaide smiled back. “I like that.”

“Anyway, she died.” Vikram almost said too, but caught himself in time. He stretched out his legs under the low table and realized that both of them still had the plastic sheaths on their feet. He removed his and discreetly stuffed them into his boots.

The girl with the origami was taking her booty from table to table, depositing a napkin bird on each polished surface. When she reached them, Adelaide spoke sharply.

“We don’t want that.”

The girl ignored her and placed a bird on a saucer. She moved dreamily onto the next table. Vikram picked up the offering. Its folds were clean and crisp. “What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t like birds.”

“You don’t like—” He glanced at her and grinned with the realization. “Oh. You’re scared of them.”

Adelaide scowled blackly.

“It’s alright, you’re not the only one I’ve met with a phobia.” He tucked the origami into his pocket. “I won’t tell.”

The girl, having finished her rounds, paid for her tea and left.

“Where do you think Axel is?” Vikram asked bluntly.

“He may have gone somewhere. Somewhere he feels safe, until I can find him. That could be anywhere, with Axel.” Adelaide hesitated. She checked around them and lowered her voice. “But I have to consider the possibility that he’s been taken somewhere. By someone who wants him out the way.”

Stars, he thought, the girl’s deluded.

“Then I hope it’s the first option,” he said.

Vikram’s certainty was equally strong. The way he saw it, Axel’s death could have been accidental or deliberate. If it was deliberate, presumably the Rechnovs had decided the boy was too much of an embarrassment, and had him removed. They were an important family with a big reputation at stake. Vikram had no doubt that they were capable of it. Or, Axel had chosen to die, in which case it was better for all the Rechnovs if his body was never found.

Osiris was not a kind city, but to choose to opt out was the strictest of taboos. In the severest cold spells, Vikram had spent the nights with friends, talking through the long dark hours, pinching one another at the first sign of drowsiness, because if sleep came there was no guarantee of ever waking up again. Every sunrise was a miracle. On days like those, you didn’t think about why, or what for. You just clung.

Perhaps that was why Adelaide was so adamant that her brother was alive. To avoid the shame if he had taken his own life.

“You saw something in the penthouse.” Adelaide changed the subject. “Not about Axel. It was the balloon room. When you saw that, you thought of something.”

He was surprised that she had noticed.

“It’s not important,” he said. “You’d think it was silly.”

Denial was a sure way to catch Adelaide’s interest. She poured herself another glass of tea and then topped up his, absently or on purpose, he wasn’t sure which.

“Tell me,” she said.

“There’s a story about a balloon flight.” Vikram shrugged, trying to impress upon her its insignificance, although the tale resonated with him. “When I saw that room, I was reminded of the story. That’s all.”

“Go on.”

She wasn’t looking at him but he sensed the beam of her attention, bouncing off the windows and lancing him in the chest, where another voice was stirring. He felt Mikkeli sit up, shake her spiky mess of hair out of its hood.

“There’s a legend,” he said. “When the rain began in the year of the Great Storms, a balloon set out on a journey to Osiris. There were two passengers. One of them was a girl — an important girl. Some people say she was a ruler or a princess. Others say she was some kind of star.”

A smile flitted over Adelaide’s face.

“Like me.” She raised her coral tea to her lips and sipped without looking at the glass. He had earned her concentration.

“Well,” he said. “More like me, actually. They’d be refugees, wouldn’t they? Anyway, she has different names. She’s also blind. The other passenger is a man. Her guide.”

He heard Mikkeli’s voice in the quiet parlour. Come on, Vikram, you can do better than this! Where’s the drama? He couldn’t do her exuberant speech, her exaggerations, but they were both speaking as he continued, because Keli had loved this story and narrated it many times, whispering to Vikram from the bunk above his on nights when the orphanage boat rocked on frightening waves, and Naala’s off-key, drunken singing was drowned by the wind.

“The girl relies totally on the guide. He flies the balloon. He has promised to take her to a safe place — to Osiris, he says.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Nobody knows. Some say south where the ice is, others say deep in the deserts, far up north. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, the man isn’t who he says he is. He’s an assassin.”

Adelaide made an ooh shape with her mouth. Vikram paused, making a show of sprinkling a finger-and-thumb full of ginger into his tea. The tiny grains floated for a second, then sank.

“Well? Does he kill her?” Adelaide demanded.

“He poisons her. And then he discovers that she isn’t who she says she is either. She’s a double. An illusion of the real target.”

“So who wins?”

“Nobody wins. He poisons himself in remorse. The legend says there is a cure in Osiris, but they haven’t got here yet. The balloon is still flying. That’s why it’s called the last balloon flight.”

Adelaide licked her index finger and dipped it into the ginger. She sucked thoughtfully.

“They’d be dead,” she said. “Or old. Ancient, by now.” She fell quiet.

“It’s a story, Adelaide.”

“I know,” she said quickly.

“People talk about it mostly when they’re thinking about getting out. You could say it’s like an alarm bell.”

“Maybe Axel heard it.”

“I don’t know. It’s a western thing.”

“He might have thought he could take that flight.”

He did not reply to that because her words rang uncannily close to Mikkeli’s. His best friend, leaning forward over the oars of a rowboat as they scuttled from tower to tower, lit only by the moon. Just imagine, Vikram, that it was true. Would you take that flight? Keli would have. She’d have jumped on board without a glance back, just to get that close to the clouds. And then they’d hop out the boat and bust a lock.

“I said your tea’s gone cold,” said Adelaide.

She was staring at him. He wasn’t sure why he had told her the story. It felt like a betrayal. As if he had given away a piece of the west, its fragile, ethereal psyche. He wanted to take the story back, to tell Adelaide that she wasn’t worthy of their superstitions. Her side of the city had safety; they did not need hope.

Vikram looked at the windows. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “The rain’s stopped anyway.”

19 ¦ ADELAIDE

Adelaide reached across and groped on the bedside table. Her fingers closed around the plastic body of the stolen horse. It was no more than a few centimetres long, a child’s toy, crudely made. She moved it up and down, emulating the motion of waves, the way she imagined a real one might run. Shadows of her hands and the horse rippled over the walls and ceiling. It was dark outside; the light within the colour of a bruise.

She turned the model over to look into one of its black eyes. Dr Radir, last in a long line of Axel’s psychiatrists, had been the first person to mention horses. According to Radir’s assessment, the hallucinations had begun months, even years before. He said Axel had theories about the horses; elaborate hypotheses about storm omens and contact from outside Osiris.

Rat-a-ta-tat. Rat-a-ta-tat. The music of drums: Axel’s fingers. Sounds like hooves, A. Adelaide sat up. She saw him in the room, standing by the dark pane of the mirror, a shadow in a pool of shadows. He didn’t move. He never moved. He was looking for the balloon.

Where are you, A?

The balloon was gliding through cumulus clouds. Adelaide was back on the balcony, high above the sea, staring over the edge. The sea below fell into a giant crater. At the bottom, so far away she was no more than a speck, Mikkeli was a chromium mermaid. Her tail swished and clicked in the mud. Adelaide looked for Tyr, but he wasn’t there, only Vikram was. She reached for Vikram’s hand. His eyes were murky whirlpools. She wanted to tell him that Mikkeli was there, down in the crater, but her tongue would not work. She had never felt so cold before, and she wasn’t sure she could stand it.

Her eyes flew open. She must have been dreaming. Her skin was tight with goosebumps; the horse was imprisoned in her linked hands.

“Where have you gone?” she whispered. “Damn it, Axel, where have you gone?”

On the other side of her apartment, Vikram was sleeping on the futon under the mezzanine. She imagined his breathing as a tiny hum that ran through the woven rugs, under the doors and along a crack in the floorboards to her ear. What would Feodor say if he knew she had a westerner under her roof? Reduced to terriers, Adelaide? That’s scraping the seabed, even for you.

She hadn’t locked the door. She didn’t like locked doors, and she wasn’t worried by Vikram’s presence. Vikram assumed she thought all westerners were scum, but he didn’t know her. If he did, he would know she never thought about the west at all.

Best, though, to let Vikram think he had won this round. Sometimes impulse led down strange avenues; she had learned to accommodate herself to life’s twists and forks. She heard movement. Perhaps Vikram was still awake, or the scientists were at work upstairs. Then she realized that it was not an interior noise but the rush of rain against the window.

She curled deeper under the duvet, listening. Some people, like Linus, said the rain was changing. They said it sounded more consistent than it used to. When people were desperate they found omens in the blue, pulling boats from the horizon and now balloons out of the sky. Vikram understood this; he had told her the story of the balloon.

Adelaide had lost count of nights passed with only the rain for solace. She knew every version of rain: ice-bound rains and fresh bold showers, rattling hailstorms, delicate snowfalls. It gave her a feeling not of fear but of safety and enclosure. Axel had never understood this snugness, and perhaps in truth she only felt it now, since he was gone, and the rain had become her companion.

She thought of the Roof, frying saufish, drinking Kelpiqua, meeting Jan. She and Axel, drenched and shaking on a towertop after a storm. When they were still living at the Domain, the twins used to go there every night, until Goran caught them. They’d been happy there.

The rain was passing. Linus and the anti-Nucleites were wrong; it came and went according to its own whimsy.

The little horse lay in her upturned palm. She imagined Axel locked inside in his balloon room, sewing bolts and bolts of material. He would have spent hours studying the paths of the winds, devising instruments for navigation; some part of him must remember his love of science. Axel had been preparing for a journey, but to where?

20 ¦ VIKRAM

He lay on Adelaide’s futon, a rug pulled over his body — not because he needed it for warmth in her apartment, but to feel the soft luxurious weight of the material. The lights were dimmed, the glass walls darkened, but he could not sleep. He was hot, conscious of a thin sheen of sweat. There was a decanter of water on a table beside him. He poured himself a glass and choked when he discovered it wasn’t water at all, but voqua.

He thought of the coldest he had ever been, trapped in the unremembered quarters on the very edge of the west, certain he was going to die. The towers had fallen into such disrepair that they were more of a sea barrier than a living space. No electricity. Broken bufferglass. Ghosts. One of the towers leaned sideways; monolithic, charred. It had burned once and people had burned in it. It was said that something nameless lurked in its depths, gorging on the foundations.

Stars knew what he’d been doing there; he must have been about twelve. He remembered a tarpaulin. Huddling under it, shaking, his fingers blank with cold. He remembered the rivulets of water that eased their way through the cracks, only to halt as the molecules contracted and froze. The floor inside a maze of glittering snail trails, outside, the sky sagging. It had been too cold to snow.

Snow, in Adelaide’s world, was nothing but a pretty white blanket.

Vikram knew the layout of the apartment. There were only three rooms between himself and the Architect’s granddaughter.

He made himself recall the day Eirik was drowned. He remembered seeing Adelaide and her father, closer than a westerner could have imagined but impossible to reach. Adelaide was unprotected now. He could take her hostage. He could, if he wanted, go into her room, put his hands around her neck, and throttle her. He could strike a fatal blow to Feodor Rechnov right now, here, tonight.

Stop it.

He shoved the idea away in horror. It was as far from Horizon’s ideals as the stars; he could hardly believe the thought had crossed his mind.

But it was an opportunity — he could not deny that. He would never have a chance like this again. Now — while she was sleeping. It wasn’t what Horizon had been about, but hadn’t that all changed? And he couldn’t trust Adelaide, she had told him that herself. Now she’d got what she wanted, what guarantee did he have that she would carry out her side of the bargain?

She almost let you get caught tonight. She could turn you in just because she feels like it. Sticking with her isn’t worth the risk.

For all you know, the skadi could be on their way over right now.

Eirik, Mikkeli — they would have thought about it. There was no doubt that to many in the west, the act would make Vikram a hero.

Stars, what was he thinking! And yet…

Go on, another part of him urged. Do it. It’s what they all want.

He pushed aside the rug. He could feel his knife sheath where it lay against his thigh. It could be done bloodily or it could be done with bare hands. For a more poetic justice, he could drown Adelaide Rechnov in her own bath.

That would be the best way. A clear signal to the City. Explicable, and understandable.

For a moment his own coldness froze him. And then he saw Mikkeli in her yellow hood. She came in through the window-wall and she walked across Adelaide Mystik’s floor and sat on the piano lid. She was still twelve.

“You’re not going to let that bitch get the better of you, are you?” she said. Foam dribbled from her lips. Her voice was as dead and as empty as surf.

You know it’s what they all want. And it’s so easy.

He sat up and walked silently through the study into the kitchen, closing each door behind him to block off her escape route. Moonlight fell across the white tablecloth and crystal glasses in the dining room. The outline of the next door was a grey line around its pale panels.

He stood looking at it. The only sounds he could identify were the thud of his heart and the drumming of his pulse in his ears. If he went through that door, he would be taking a step that could not be reversed.

The door opened. Adelaide came out, one hand rubbing her eyelids. When she saw him she stopped.

Their eyes met for a long time.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“I need some water.”

He saw Eirik, in the tank, his mouth open. Perhaps she did too.

She said, “Do you want a glass?”

“Yes, please.”

She walked around the table. She passed within a few inches of him. He recognized the effort it must have cost her, because she had seen his face. He turned and followed her into the kitchen, watched her bare legs crossing the tiles. She opened the fridge door. The light flooded her slender body, crouching naked beneath the slip of lilac. She took out a jug and poured two glasses of chilled water. Face averted, she placed one on the sideboard for Vikram.

“Sleep well,” she said. She took her own glass of water and went back through the empty dining room and shut the door.

21 ¦ ADELAIDE

She slumped against the bedroom door. Her legs shook. Five minutes passed before she could stand, walk to the bedside cabinet, take out the gun, and go back to sit by the door.

He was going to kill me.

She kept the thought there, wrapped with her the way her fingers wrapped around the grip of the gun.

He was actually going to kill me.

And he’s still here, in my apartment, right now.

22 ¦ VIKRAM

Silently he opened the door that Adelaide had just shut. He knew that she would not hear him. He stood barefoot outside her bedroom. It was so quiet that on the other side he could hear her breathing, long and shaky.

Minutes passed. He stood there, motionless. He took out the knife. He turned it over, noticing the network of scars on his hands and forearms, old and recent, in places overlapping.

Adelaide, and people like her, had given him those scars. Whether she knew it or not, she was guilty.

He sensed the west behind him, urging him to revenge. It was a simple emotion. He could not deny that he wanted it. Gently, he closed his fingers around the door handle.

There was a tiny tremor in the metal, as though, sitting against the door, she was shivering.

He hesitated. It was the briefest flicker of concentration, but within that second he felt his resolution slip away.

Putting the knife back, he padded back through the apartment to the futon. He lay down and pulled the rug up to his neck. The soft fleece gathered at his throat like a noose.

He let out a long, muted sigh. His heart was beating wildly. He was covered in sweat. The relief that flooded his body only mirrored the horror at what he had almost done. The footsteps made to Adelaide’s door and back felt like those of a stranger.

“It was me who found you in the unremembered quarters, Vik. Nils dared you, remember? It was a stupid dare.”

Mikkeli was waiting for him, hunched over, her feet skimming the piano keys.

I’m sorry, he thought. I forgot.

It was true; Mikkeli had found him. She’d shone a torch on his face. Or maybe that was a different occasion. There were so many other times, anyway; lying on the edge of starvation, his body sabotaged by hypothermia. Time losing all logic whilst he waited for warmth.

Mikkeli climbed off the piano and stalked out of the window-wall, back to wherever she had come from. He remembered hugging her to him, trying to press some warmth to that lifeless body, but he’d had none to give, or she had taken it already.

Lying on Adelaide Mystik’s futon, staring at her ceiling mural, Vikram promised himself he was never going to be that cold again.

23 ¦ ADELAIDE

“So the first thing you have to understand is how the Council works.”

It was late morning. They sat on opposite sides of the table, the polished lake of wood between them. At one end, a pot of coral tea on a ceramic base steamed gently. Outside, heavy fog obscured the city entirely. The apartment felt like an oasis.

Adelaide’s eyes were sore with tiredness, but the day’s agenda was full. She had people to see. She tied back her hair as though she was preparing for hands-on work. The action focused her mind. If she was going to help Vikram, and for today at least, that illusion must be maintained, then she had to dive deep into the recesses of memory. She must recover incidental conversations between her parents, old lectures from Linus. She must listen once more to her grandfather’s calm unhurried voice.

When the dawn came she had dozed for an hour or so, the gun still resting in her hand. She thought about barricading herself in until Vikram went away. But it was light. He had let her live. She put back the gun. This morning Vikram was uncommunicative; both the strange intimacy of last night and the nightmarish tension in the kitchen had all but vanished.

Adelaide reached behind her neck and unclasped a string of onyx beads. She arranged the necklace in a half circle. Then she took a ring off her middle finger and placed it under the arch.

“Here we have the Council, and here—” She touched the ring. “Is the Speaker. You probably stood on the podium just in front of him, right?”

Vikram nodded.

“The Council is like any other group. It has factions.” She unhooked an earring and put it at the left end of the beads. “Here sits my illustrious father Feodor, and his cronies.”

“Yes, I remember your father. I think he might remember me too.”

Abruptly Adelaide recalled the day she had gone to see Feodor. Hadn’t he said something about a westerner? The idea gave her a turn, almost as if they had met before, unwittingly. She tapped the earring with her forefinger.

“Feodor doesn’t like anything to disturb the perfect order of his world. And he has to think about saving face. When the Council first established the border, Feodor was one of the Councillors who spoke out strongly for it. Any step towards unification, however small, will be an admission that they, and he, made a mistake.”

Vikram’s eyes were watchful. She knew that he wouldn’t miss anything.

“Why did they do it?”

“What, divide the city?”

“Yes.”

Adelaide kept her tone brisk. “You know why, Vikram. The west got too violent. After what happened at the Greenhouse, the City didn’t have a choice. Harvests decimated, working citizens stabbed — I mean, there were children in there for stars’ sakes. Only three of them came out intact.”

Vikram scowled. “Conveniently.”

“What do you mean, conveniently?”

“I mean it’s convenient that when the ’seventy-seven riots started, the Council decided it was a great idea to let school parties wander round public buildings. Don’t you think?”

She stared at him. “You can’t accuse—”

“I’m not accusing.”

“What are you saying then?”

“I’m saying that it was a long time ago. You can’t know what really happened at the Greenhouse.”

“And I suppose you can’t know what really happened at Osuwa University, either. Perhaps that was allowed to happen too?” She strove to keep the anger out of her voice. Who was he to be lecturing her?

“No,” he said. “That was a few individuals in a militant group called the New Western Osiris Front, which got out of hand. But I can tell you exactly what happened afterwards. The sk — the Home Guard let Citizens into the refugee camps. They even loaned them some guns. And your people used them. Like toys. I don’t suppose anyone noticed if there were children around then.”

She picked up the onyx beads and let them clatter back, pointedly.

“Well, as you so rightly pointed out, I wasn’t there. You can’t blame me for what other people did. You asked me why the border was created and I told you.”

Vikram’s expression was almost mocking now.

“I know the official line. I’m interested in why your father came to that decision.”

“That depends upon who you ask,” said Adelaide. She was happier discussing her father. Feodor was easily culpable. “According to my brother Linus, there was a huge debate over the issue and Feodor felt some glimmer of guilt about it — they were refugees, after all, it wasn’t like the Council could ship them off somewhere else. But if you ask me, it was easy for Feodor. He was doing what he always does — protecting his interests. Now I’m telling you this, Vikram, not because I care, but so you know what you’re up against.”

“We’re,” he insisted. “What we’re up against.” He grinned. The expression was slightly startling. “You’ll be the next Grete Kaat.”

She dismissed this as too idiotic for words. “Grete Kaat was a criminal. She conspired to assassinate Alain and Helene Dumay. The parents of my compatriots.” Not that she had anything to do with the Dumay offspring, but Vikram did not know that.

“Grete Kaat was never proved guilty.”

“You believe she was innocent?”

“Do you really believe she was guilty?” he countered.

Adelaide gave him her blandest look. “Kaat is celebrated every year in the west for what she did.”

“I’m sure that’s what they tell you. Actually she’s celebrated for what she didn’t do. Kaat died in jail of pneumonia. The only reason she was locked up in the first place is because she’d expressed sympathies with the west in the past — the perfect scapegoat. That was the so-called evidence.”

Adelaide decided not to comment. She had better weapons at her disposal.

“I’ll tell you something ironic, shall I Vikram? My grandmother was a refugee. Second Grandmother that is. The first one died when Feodor was a child.”

Vikram’s face contracted. She had rattled him at last, although she was not sure now that it had been her intention. This kept happening with him, she thought. Things slipping out that she had not meant to say at all.

“Is that some kind of secret?”

“I’d hardly tell you if it was a secret. Don’t forget, west and City wasn’t an issue then. But imagine when Grandfather’s son grew up and joined the segregation movement. I think it broke his heart. Having said that, I didn’t see him jumping to live on the other side.”

“Didn’t he contest it? Your grandfather? Surely when his own wife—”

“No, no. My grandfather is the Architect, he was never on the Council. Feodor started that little dynasty. And besides, I don’t suppose Grandfather felt there was much choice, if they wanted to preserve anything of Osiris. Quite funny, really, isn’t it?”

She was speaking faster. It must be lack of sleep. After all, she had spent the night with a gun in her hand, it was hardly surprising if she was a little on edge.

Vikram looked at her straight on.

“Answer me something,” he said. “Do you honestly believe the border is right?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

“Humour me.”

“I’m helping you, Vikram, because you helped me. But I’m not getting into discussions about morality with you.” She conjured her best mocking smile. “That’s not my style. Now, moving on from Feodor’s section—”

She slipped off a bracelet and laid it further along the beads.

“Here we have what I call the Executors — the departmental heads. Always look at the second row. That’s where the Board of Four sit, the top Ministers. First Security — supervises the Home Guard and the ring-net and the civilian police. Then Finance — responsible for maintaining the credit system, including the anon cash chips given to westerners, seeing as you’re not properly registered. After all, you can only get so far on peng.”

“Which is another thing that could be sorted out if the border went.”

“Are you listening to me or not?”

“I’m listening. I was just wondering how long you’d last if you had to barter for your fancy jewellery, that’s all.”

If he was trying to rile her, he was succeeding. But she refused to show it, and replied in her sweetest voice. “Luckily for both of us, that’s unlikely ever to be an issue, is it? Getting back to the Executors — after Finance comes Resources, who looks after greenhouse production, parts manufacture, and the mining operations.” She had an uneasy flashback to Linus’s speech, cast it quickly aside. “And then there’s Health and Science — self-explanatory. But also responsible for the meteorological facility up there.” She pointed to the ceiling. “You’ll notice that these four Ministers always get the people in the front row to speak for them. They don’t like getting their hands dirty.”

Vikram raised his eyebrows, pointedly.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just, coming from you…”

Was that a joke? She wondered.

“Actually, I don’t mind dirt. It’s people who piss me off.”

“You should come to the west some time,” he said.

“Maybe if we win.”

“Deal.”

“I think we’ve made enough deals, don’t you?” One look at his face told her this time he was definitely joking. “Oh. Very funny. Anyway, the Executors tend to be the ones to suggest any new laws, but it doesn’t happen often. They’ll be violently against you.”

Vikram rested his chin on one hand, looking at the beads.

“Do Citizens hate the west that much?”

The question surprised her. “Not hate, no. We don’t really think about you.” She considered for a moment. “I suppose it’s seen as a lost cause. We’ll have to pull out a few sob stories, Vikram, get the newsreels on side. Maybe you should tell them about Mikkeli. Do you have a photograph of her? A drawing?”

Vikram looked uneasy. He shook his head. His silence indicated her transgression more clearly than any words would have done. Adelaide took off another ring and placed it next to the bracelet.

“The liberal set. But rivals of Linus. They’re Nucleites — they believe we’re the last city on Earth,” she explained. Her other earring went beside the ring. “And Linus and co. Who are anti-Nucleite. They believe—”

“In survivors outside Osiris.” Vikram looked at her. “What are you?”

“Pro, of course. It’s only Linus who’s gone on this wacky spiritual kick. Why, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I don’t see things quite so black and white. Things are different in the west.”

Adelaide thought about Linus’s strange weather experiments. Less than a year ago she would have said he was mad, without question, but she knew better than anyone that madness could not be qualified.

“I suppose you think we should renew expeditions too.”

Vikram picked up the earring she’d just set down, toying with it. “That’s an interesting idea. Is that what your brother wants?”

“I don’t know what Linus wants,” she admitted. “But I can tell you one thing. Whatever he says or does, there’s an ulterior motive behind it.”

“How do you know all this, anyway?”

“It’s amazing what you hear once you’ve become an alcoholic.” Adelaide spoke flippantly, although she thought once more of her grandfather, and his patient, determined explanations to the twins. They used to have lunch once a month. But Leonid had grown frailer, he ventured out less, and then everything with Axel… their lunches had become infrequent.

She missed him.

“Can I have your watch?” she said.

Vikram undid the clasp and handed it over wordlessly. The steel links sat heavy in her palm. She placed the watch at the other end of the arch.

“My grandfather’s contemporaries. Old and mostly deaf, or they only hear the bits they want, which is my personal theory. They saw the City finished. They built it, really. And they don’t like it threatened.” She paused. “Have you thought about what you’re going to call yourself?”

“Yes. The New Horizon Movement.”

He said the name hesitantly, with a hint of shy pride. It must be important to him.

“Very ambitious,” she said. “And are there more of you?”

“There were. There will be.” He did not explain further. “How will you get me an address?”

She smiled serenely. “I have a plan.”

Vikram sat back and folded his arms, clearly appraising her. His watch ticked gently amongst the glittering collection of jewels. Neither of them had touched the tea.

“Are you helping me to get at your father?”

Adelaide was getting used to his directness. She thought about confronting him about his intentions last night, but did not quite dare. Today he needed her, but who knew how he would feel tomorrow?

“Sadly, getting at him usually means helping out Linus in some way. So it’s a catch-no-fish situation.”

He nodded, smiled to himself as though he found something funny. “Should have figured.”

She set up an account for Vikram on her Neptune and showed him the o’vis catalogue for when he got bored of working on his presentation. He displayed some signs of interest in that, asking her if she had Neon Age filmreels and what she would recommend. She found his enthusiasm oddly touching. She left him in the apartment and went to see Radir.

On the shuttle journey she thought about what she had uncovered so far. Axel was not in the hospitals; according to the official investigation, he was nowhere to be found in Osiris. A westerner had come to see him, an airlift. Axel had been planning something. He intended to make a balloon. She thought of Vikram’s story about the last balloon flight. A western thing, he said. Her brother must have heard the story from the airlift. No doubt the horses had told him to do it. Axel had gathered all the resources, but something had interrupted his plans.

Radir was the next card in the deck.

The psychiatrist’s office was in the northern quarter, on the tenth floor of a low rise scraper. It was a surprisingly industrial area for a private practitioner. The squat, adjacent pyramids housed on one side botanical gardens which grew the plants for cosmetics and anaesthetic, and on the other a reef farm.

The reef farm had been Adelaide’s favourite haunt as a teenager. She used to go there when she was angry. Axel used to go with her, although he would inevitably wander off to talk to one of the wardens or marine biologists. Not for the first time, she considered the irony that his last psychiatrist had been there all along, seeing patients in the tower next door.

The receptionist was easy. After a sharp knock on Radir’s door, Adelaide announced herself. “Good morning, Doctor.”

The psychiatrist, a large man with an arched nose and fair hair who had so far repelled all of Adelaide’s efforts to flirt with him, looked up and sighed. He did not seem surprised to see Adelaide. On the contrary, he had the expression of a man resigned to his fate.

“Good morning, Miss Rechnov.” His voice was mid-range, the sort of voice you trusted without asking why, although if Adelaide had been asked, she would have said she trusted his eyes. They were blue and turned down at the corners. Seeing him again in the flesh, the lack of resemblance between Radir and Sanjay Hanif could not have been more marked.

Adelaide slid into the seat opposite him with a charming smile. It was not returned. That was another reason she trusted Radir. She had no effect on him.

“You can call me Adelaide,” she said. “I told you that before.”

“Miss Rechnov,” he said implacably. “I must remind you that I have patients to see.”

“I’m aware of that, Doctor. I’m also aware that this is your lunch break. Now don’t think me amiss, but your receptionist was kind enough to get me a glass of water and I confess I did take a look at your appointment book whilst she was gone. You’re free until half fourteen.”

Radir tapped the activation strip of his Neptune with an air of finality, abandoning whatever he had been working on.

“I should also remind you, Miss Rechnov, that in light of the current investigation, I’m not sure you should be speaking to me.”

“Right,” said Adelaide. “Now we’ve got the formalities out the way. You may be wondering why I’ve come.”

“I have an inkling.”

“Well, Doctor, I suppose I want your opinion as to what has happened to my brother.”

She sat back casually, as though she had just remarked on the rising price of raqua, and crossed one leg over the other, waiting.

“I cannot possibly conjecture. My sessions with Axel were cancelled six months before he disappeared. Over that period, his state of mind may have undergone a drastic transformation, or none at all. You will remember our last conversation.”

Radir had said he felt sorry for her, a statement she had viewed as unforgivable at the time. The psychiatrist watched her, his face contemplative above his steepled hands. Adelaide found she did not care any more. He could think what he liked. He could pity her, if it would make him answer.

“Axel’s last session,” she said. “Were there any signs that he might be planning something?”

“You’ve had the report, Miss Rechnov. Your entire family has had the report, albeit via five separate requests.”

“It’s not the same as hearing about it. He came to see you here, didn’t he?”

Radir swivelled slightly in his chair so that he faced away from her. He might have been recalling the visit; he might have been absolving himself of responsibility for what he was about to say.

“Your girl, Yonna. She brought him. He exhibited no signs that it was under duress, appeared willing to be here. He was — as he always was with me — at times lucid and capable of maintaining a conversation. He called me Doctor, but did not know my name, or if he did, he chose not to use it. And then, as if a switch had been pressed, he would become completely absent for minutes at a time. Lost in his own world. Unresponsive.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Ordinary things, never specific people. The weather. The ocean. He often talked about the ocean, he said he liked to listen to its voice late at night.”

“Did he mean the horses?”

“I suspect it may have been one and the same to him.”

“Is, Doctor. It is.”

“My apologies, Miss Rechnov.”

“Did he ever mention a balloon?”

“Not that I recall.”

“You’re frowning, Doctor.”

“The balloon… Something about that word rings a bell. But not from my sessions with Axel. Perhaps another patient.”

“Did he — did he ever talk about leaving the City?”

“Not directly. I would say that Axel was aware of the City’s limitations, even in an abstract capacity. Osiris is too small, he said once. We think we’re free but we’re not.”

“What do you think he meant by that?”

“Feelings of entrapment are a common theme among those I see, Miss Rechnov. But I might add that we live in a quarantined city. Human beings are not designed for confinement, however vast and exquisitely made the prison; the explorer in us will out.”

She sat for a moment, considering this. What if Axel had met the airlift through Radir?

“Doctor, do you ever see airlifts? Ex-westerners?”

“I cannot give you information on my clients.”

“You know my family think he’s dead.”

Radir looked at her. She could see him selecting his words.

“Miss Rechnov, I am — saddened that I could not help your brother. As I have explained in the past, I could offer no diagnosis; Axel fit no specifications. Over the years I have seen patients who have, through various causes, withdrawn in some way from typical social interaction, for a longer or shorter period of time. Those who suffer post-traumatic stress, for example, following injury or a shocking incident, but sometimes there is no obvious trigger. The condition is a more common occurrence than you might expect, though it is rarely spoken of. Citizens of Osiris are survivors, are we not?”

His tone as he uttered that final sentence was gently ironic. Adelaide looked at the single picture on his wall, a swaying kelp field on the edge of the Atum Shelf.

“Is that not a positive trait, Doctor?”

“For some, doubtless. There are others who find it a source of pressure. In any case, whatever happened to Axel seemed to be an extreme form of this kind of internalization, and that, I feel, was a loss. To society as well as to the family.”

She nodded. In spite of the formality of his tone, she believed Radir was genuine. She folded her hands tightly.

“I know he’s alive. We have a connection, you see. Do you understand that, Doctor? Do you think it’s possible?”

She hated the plea in her voice, but she could not hide it. Radir showed no signs of sympathy. She was grateful for that.

“I believe that there are things which will never be mapped by science,” he said. “There are many that were once mapped and are now lost. But I also think, Miss Rechnov, that our society can be harsh, perhaps more condemning, of certain acts, than might be fair.”

Adelaide’s face went hot and her body chill.

“If you mean to imply, Doctor, that my brother might have committed—” She forced herself to speak the taboo. “Suicide—you are very much mistaken. Axel would never humiliate himself in that way. And he would never leave me.”

She sensed that there was a weight of things behind Radir’s blue eyes. Things that he might or could have said, if pushed. Those unspoken words chased her as she scraped her chair back, got up, stuck out a formal hand and pressed her wrist to his too hard for politeness. They followed as she walked out of the office. They followed her into the lift where she punched in level twenty-four, stood rigid for the fourteen floors up to the Obelisk shuttle line, and stalked onto the platform.

Why not? said the voice. You left him.

She felt muddled and angry all the way to the Southern Quarter. In transit it seemed that the shuttle pod stood still and the city itself was rushing towards her, pyramids, steel and bufferglass all flying upon the ocean surface, but the speed was not enough to abate her turmoil. She took out her anger by sending Lao an o’voy.

Any news? Am I not paying you enough?

She did not expect a reply but to her surprise, her scarab flashed almost instantaneously.

Paying me to be discreet. Therefore will contact only when news. I’ll be in touch.

She replied:

Been to see Dr Radir. Check his client list. He might have seen a westerner.

There was no return message. Moving her bag to accommodate another passenger, Adelaide struggled to assemble her thoughts. This next negotiation required careful handling. She had to put Axel aside, for now.

“Excuse me?” It was the woman who had sat next to her. “Can I have your signature?”

Adopting a gracious smile, Adelaide signed her name in green ink.

“I loved that garden you designed for the medical school,” said the woman. Adelaide was tempted to tell her that the garden had come from a series of doodles on restaurant napkins whilst she was waiting for Jannike, nothing more, but if the woman wanted to think of Adelaide as a landscape designer, so be it. Adelaide liked plants. She liked the feel of earth crumbling in her fingers; she liked its dank alien smell. Plants behaved as you expected them to.

The Daily Flotsam offices were undersea and windowless and smelled of perspiration overlaid with heavy perfume. At sixteen o’clock, the place was a tip. Dirty Neptunes balanced on desks overflowing with Surfboards, wrappers, BrightEye pills and mouldering tea glasses. A screen on one wall showed the latest feeds from rival press groups. Nobody recognized Adelaide when she first walked in, then the whole office reacted towards her; a sea of sunk conversations and swivelling heads.

“I’m looking for Magda,” she said.

One of them moved. Over the years their faces had changed, but the avaricious hunger had not. Adelaide no longer cared what they wrote about her. She only cared about what they had done to her twin. Odd lines — the things she hadn’t been able to avoid, still stuck. Is Axel Rechnov sick in the head? That was one of Magda’s. Looking about, she was able to match each headline to its creator.

Silence endured until the door to the inner office opened and Magda Linn looked out. When she saw Adelaide a smile spread across her face, slowly, like clotting butter.

“Well, well, well,” she said. “Little fishy’s come to play with sharks.”

Magda’s office was surprisingly clean. Her Neptune had a bright red frame and was unadorned. The editor sat at her desk and waved an arm at the chair opposite. Both women crossed their legs.

“Adelaide.”

“Magda.”

“What can I do for you?”

For a woman with a penchant for character defamation, Magda Linn looked remarkably innocent. She was small and neat, with straight black hair and low eyelids. Her right hand sported a scratched glass ring with which she toyed incessantly. Adelaide hated every inch of her neatly proportioned features. It was difficult to look Magda in the face without conveying this, so Adelaide examined the wall behind her.

“I heard you wanted access to a few events.”

“And I dare say I’ll get it.”

“I don’t know. The Haze has had enough security issues recently. This season we’re really clamping down.”

“My reporters will have to become more ingenious.”

“Maybe so. But they’ll have to be remarkably wily to get into Jannike Ko’s twenty-second.” Adelaide paused. “Private party,” she said blankly.

For a brief moment, Adelaide felt bad about offering up her friend as bait. But Jan could handle it.

“Jannike Ko’s twenty-second,” Magda said slowly. Her smooth face could not help but flicker at the thought. Adelaide knew she was imagining the newsreel, constructing, already, the headline copy. Jannike Ko, last of the Haze to come of age, could supply Magda with enough subreels to keep her afloat for the next year. Then Magda’s face closed down again.

“What do you want, Adelaide?”

“I want you to do what you are best at, Magda. I want you to lie.”

“I see. And what type of lying might you require?” Magda tapped her ring against the edge of her desk. “Some light slander before breakfast? How about a nice little libel case?”

“No, that doesn’t serve my purpose. I’m after something simpler. The Council will be holding a convention next week to discuss the implementation of western aid schemes. I’d like you to announce it.”

Magda’s expression was pure disbelief.

“The Council?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Since when have you been interested in the Council?”

“Since today, Magda.”

“And why would you be interested in aid schemes?”

“I don’t see why that would concern you. The request is simple enough, is it not?”

“You’d give me access to Jannike Ko’s twenty-second in exchange for a little article on aid schemes?”

“A big article, Magda. A headline article. I’ll be invoking the Ibatoka Clause — you can say that too.”

Magda laughed. “The what?”

“Why don’t you look it up?” Adelaide suggested.

“If I don’t know what it is it’s not headline material,” Magda shot back. “You coming to my office asking for help, now that’s headline material.”

“Come on Magda. You know you love the Council. Miserable old octopuses, promoting unprecedented aid schemes. You’re telling me you can’t make something juicy out of that? Spin it whichever way you like, I don’t care.”

Magda scraped the ring against her front teeth.

“Jannike Ko only turns twenty-two once,” Adelaide mused.

“Well, I suppose we could run with a riot containment theme. There have been… flickers. A profile of one of the Home Guard might of interest.”

“No Home Guard. How about a neglect and sob story piece?”

“Yes, thank you, I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job.”

“Do excuse me. I’ve been the subject of your job for so long, sometimes I feel I know it as well as you do.”

Both women sat back, assessing one another.

“What guarantee do I have that you’ll keep your word?”

“I don’t give guarantees,” said Adelaide.

“I could turn this whole industry against you.”

Adelaide pretended to give this a second’s thought.

“I doubt that. On the other hand, I could get you fired in the time it takes to do this.” She snapped her fingers. “Still a Rechnov, Magda. Now. Do we or do we not have a deal?”

Magda gnawed on the ring.

“Make sure you check the morning feed.”

“Good.” Adelaide stood up. “I’ll see myself out, shall I?”

The knock at the door was insistent. She went to answer it, muttering to herself about people who couldn’t wait. Axel stood grinning in the corridor. He strolled into the apartment, a half-smoked cigarillo dangling from his lips.

“Is that the time?” he said. The cigarillo waggled comically in his mouth. “Must have been gone longer than I thought.”

“Months, actually,” she said. “Where were you, the western quarter or what?”

“Oh, this and that. Baiting Linus. Annoying Dmitri with my expenses. Why, A, did you miss me?”

She woke with a jolt and found herself on the futon, fully dressed. For a minute she thought it was raining again, but it was just the noise of Vikram’s fingers on the activation strip of her Neptune.

“Evening,” he said.

“Did I sleep?”

“Yes. You got about halfway through telling me about going to the Daily Flotsam. Linus called, by the way.”

She rubbed her eyes. They were prickly with sleep.

Hell’s tide! She was beginning to wake up. Last night this man had wanted to kill her. Today she was falling asleep in the same room.

But she wasn’t scared any more. She sensed that a line had been crossed.

“What did Linus want?”

“To let you know he’d had a message from some woman called Linn asking about a conference.”

She smiled at that. “Good. We’re going to force their hand.”

And why are you trying to help him, Adelaide?

“There’s some fresh coral tea if you want.”

“What’s the time?”

“Twenty-one thirty.”

“Shit. Said I’d meet Jannike for dinner. You coming?”

“I’ve got a presentation to write.”

“It’s your call.”

Vikram hadn’t woken her for Linus’s message. She could not decide if that was a good thing or not. She perched on the futon to pull on her boots, sneaking surreptitious glances at his thin angular figure, tensed over the Neptune. Her laces were tangled and it took her a few minutes to work out the knots.

There was no time for tea so she took a shot of voqua, aware that Vikram’s eyes were on her, nervous in a way she could not pin down. If those eyes held a different light, they might draw her right in.

Better pull yourself together, girlie. You might not be as strong as you think you are.

The lift came almost immediately when she called it, from the floor above. The man inside held the door for her.

“Good evening, Miss Rechnov.”

She noticed a funny motif on the collar of his shirt; a white winged insect. One of the facility crowd. What the hell did they do up there, anyway? Was it really astronomy, or some kind of dubious experimentation? She felt the voqua burn down her gullet and wondered if the man could see it, like a red streak down her neck.

“Evening,” she acknowledged.

“Please, give my regards to the Architect.”

She nodded. The lift plummeted. It was a good thing Vikram wasn’t coming. He was too unpredictable. She would have to babysit him all night and besides, Tyr was going to be out. She was conscious of an overwhelming desire to have Tyr’s arms around her while he told her that all would be well, that everything would work out, as he had the day after Axel evicted her from the penthouse. She felt as though she was carrying the weight of a colossal secret, and yet the truth was she knew nothing at all.

24 ¦ VIKRAM

Vikram stretched his arms above his head, relishing the solitude and the peace. A week had passed while he worked in the Red Rooms, preparing for his presentation and watching Adelaide’s magical filmreels. Adelaide had just left, slamming the door of her apartment shut with a small implosion. It was not an aggressive sound; she always slammed doors. Vikram had got used to her. On this day of the Council address, though, he was glad of these last few minutes alone to prepare for the debate ahead.

He lifted his gaze from the Neptune to the window-wall. The sleek silver towers stretched away like sentinels. If it weren’t for the year of storms, the entire city would have looked like this, and Vikram might not have been here at all. The sight stirred up a rare well of nostalgia within him. He examined the feeling, turned it over, tested its value toward today’s proceedings. Once more he read through the notes he had made.

Adelaide had been surprisingly, even shockingly useful. She knew all the intricacies of the Council. The more they talked, the more he realized that as an ally she would stretch far beyond this initial appeal.

There had been times when working with the girl was actually fun. They ran ideas past one another, tentatively at first, but grew increasingly frank in their discussions. Together they had pored over legal documents. They looked at records of previous appeals to the Council, from the Western Repatriation Movement’s first address, to the threats issued by an emerging NWO. Adelaide was quick to spot the inconsistencies in a piece of legislation. With her caustic commentary, she made him laugh more than once, and if she wasn’t expected at some soirée or other, they could quite easily sit arguing late into the night. Her energy reminded him of Eirik, although he could never tell her that.

Neither of them ever mentioned that first night.

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. He did not register the noise at first. Nobody ever came to Adelaide’s flat. Then it sounded again. He raised his head. Definitely a knock. It had occurred to Vikram, before now, that his and Adelaide’s cavalier attitude to the Council might well have made them enemies.

His hand went to his ribs but he was not carrying a knife. He went to the kitchen, picked out a paring knife from the block and slipped the blade into the back of his belt.

In the hallway he listened. The knock was not repeated. There was no other sound. He caught a glimpse of himself in Adelaide’s mirrors, a bundle of tensed muscles camouflaged by a suit. He opened the door.

Standing in the corridor, a good metre back, was a short woman in a bulky coat. Her hair was flecked with grey. She had a scarf around her neck and her cheeks were flushed, which told him she had probably travelled by boat. Vikram knew instantly that she was a westerner. As always, it was the eyes that gave her away. She was good though; the expression almost but not quite repressed.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m looking for Adelaide Rechnov.” She spoke quickly, a gruff voice.

“She’s not here at the moment.” Vikram kept one hand on the door. “Can I help?”

The woman brought her hand up to her hair, as though she might smooth out the frizz, then dropped it again.

“No — no. I need to see her directly.” She did not move, all the same. Vikram’s apprehension evaporated; he was caught between irritation that she might delay him, and curiosity. What connection could another westerner have to Adelaide’s glamorous life? Perhaps she was — what did they call it over here, an airlift.

“Can I take a message?” he persisted. “What’s your name?”

Her eyes wavered. He thought she might bolt. With the speed of sudden decision, she removed a haversack, unzipped it, and took out an envelope.

“I was told to bring this here if Mr Axel went away. He’s not here now so I guess that means he’s gone away. So here I am.” The last words were almost incomprehensible, her voice trailing downwards with her lashes.

“Would you like me to deliver it to Adelaide?” he asked. She hesitated, still a metre away, the envelope gripped tight in her fingers. Instinctively, he knew if she left now, she would never come back. Vikram recognized that fear; he knew the effort it must have cost to come. “I’m going to see her very soon,” he said gently. “In about an hour, in fact. If you want to leave it with me I’ll make sure she gets it.”

“Alright,” she said finally. “You’ll tell her what I said. I — meant to come sooner. But I don’t want anything more to do with it — with them. These people. You understand.”

He knew then that she had recognized him as well.

“I’ll tell her,” he said.

She held out the envelope abruptly. He stepped forward to take it. The smell of outside was on her. Her fingers clasped the paper for a moment longer, then yielded. She zipped up the haversack and settled it firmly across both shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said.

She hurried away down the stairs and he guessed she would call the lift a few flights down, out of sight. As soon as she had gone, Vikram realized how much he had failed to find out. He hadn’t even asked who she was.

He shut the door and looked at the envelope in his hand. The letter A was written in green ink. The envelope was bumpy. There was something more than paper inside.

He put the envelope under the bowl where Adelaide kept her scarab o’comm and her keys, and went back to the study. He read through his notes a final time, enunciating each word clearly in his head before some part of his nervous system admitted he was taking in none of it and his legs took him back to the main room.

Fifteen minutes before he needed to leave. He glanced down at the bowl. The keys were there, the big brass one and the smaller silver, on a large metal ring with a red enamel rose. Vikram bent to pick up the keys and straightened with the letter in his hands.

That’s more like it, he heard Mikkeli saying. For a minute there I thought you were going to leave it.

The ink on the envelope was blurred, as though the writer had scratched the A hastily and the nib of the pen had snagged, spattering bright green gobbets. No, he thought. I can’t read this. In the same moment he was walking towards the kitchen, knowing exactly what duplicitous trick he was about to perform, and unable to summon the willpower to stop himself. He filled the teapot with water and put it on the heat. When it began to whistle, he held the envelope over the plume of steam and carefully prised apart the seal. Inside was a letter, intricately folded, written in the same green ink. Something else fell out: a necklace, with a charm, smooth and ivory coloured. It looked like a shark tooth.

He read the letter twice.

The teapot was screeching. Automatically, Vikram moved it and switched the electricity off. Steam lent the windows a temporary mistiness. It was misty outside too and his own vision seemed to slide out of focus. He refolded the letter back into its original shape. It looked to him roughly the shape of a horse’s head. A conversation with Adelaide flashed into his head. What was he like, your brother? He was clever. It was the only time he had heard her refer to her twin in the past tense.

Even as the implications of what he had read settled upon him, Vikram realized he had no time to ponder the consequences. It would be insanity to give Adelaide such material minutes before they appeared before the Council. He slipped the envelope and the necklace inside his jacket pocket. He would reseal it later.

In the hallway he paused, catching his reflections once more. A young man in a smart suit met his gaze, clean shaven, his dark hair combed neatly back, a necktie at his throat. Vikram stared at this stranger. The clothes had done their work; he did not appear, at first glance, like a man with a history of violence. Truth was in the eye, wasn’t it? He moved closer to the mirror. His breath, quicker than usual with nervousness, made a patch of condensation. He looked deep, but found no history there. The belief that you were able to see a person’s soul in their eyes was false after all. The eye was only matter. Axel Rechnov had known that, once. Just another example of human frailty.

25 ¦ ADELAIDE

She looked at all the fish in the elevator aquarium and chose the angelfish. It was an old game. If it followed, they would have good luck. As the lift doors closed, the nose of the angelfish edged up. It looked for a moment as though it might launch, then dived suddenly down into the depths of the scraper. The lift began to move.

At level fifty-four a man intent upon his Surfboard got out and a young woman in a long skirt got in. Her glance took in Adelaide’s costume, then floated, as those dull, earnest types always did, up to Adelaide’s face. Adelaide stared blandly back.

She knew why she was helping Vikram. It was because she was bored. And boredom in Osiris was dangerous, boredom was a one-way ticket to insanity. Liaising with a westerner, on the other hand, could not be described as anything other than reckless.

As the lift rose she was overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo, a sense that her involvement was about to become far bigger, far wider than she had accounted for. Level eighty-one. The lift doors paused, the doors parted. There was still time. She could get out now. She could walk away.

But she didn’t. Adelaide had been accused of many things, but no-one had ever said she was a coward.

26 ¦ VIKRAM

He waited in an aisle approaching the podium, just out of sight. The Chambers looked different today. The viewing balconies bulged with noisy spectators whilst below, the crescent rows of seats were unoccupied and expectant.

In his jacket pocket, next to Axel’s letter, was a pine needle. He had taken it from one of the conifer trees in the lobby, for luck, and he could still sniff the aroma of the trees; the scent of mystery and far away places. Adelaide stood beside him. She was wearing a white trouser suit and tinted glasses and she’d done something to her hair, a new fringe that fell to her eyebrows. Vikram could not have imagined a more unlikely partner.

She pointed to the balcony.

“Your new fan base, that’s the Haze, are installed up there. The Council will be shuffling in shortly. So tell me, Mr Bai, how does it feel in the green room?”

Vikram grinned in spite of himself, and the tie at his throat felt a little looser. Today, Adelaide’s irreverence was a tonic.

Behind the podium, a gowned man was enthroned in a circular turret about two metres high. The Speaker, Vikram thought.

Three long, sonorous notes flooded the Chambers. There was a rustling as everyone on the balcony got to their feet. The great wooden doors of the Chambers swung open. One by one, the Councillors filed in, silent and solemn faced. They wore purple surcoats over their suits which swished on the pale marble floor.

“These public events are so theatrical,” whispered Adelaide in Vikram’s ear.

He nodded, nervous, but his eyes were more astute now. He looked around the filling rows and he could divide the Council into their five, distinctive segments. On the left, the reactionary heavyweights, second generation, responsible for implementing the border thirty-nine years ago. He found Feodor Rechnov straight away and studied him closely. Feodor’s face was entrenched with lines, but there was Adelaide’s perfectly straight nose, her strong brows, the set of her shoulders. It was a predator’s face, but not a reckless predator. Feodor Rechnov was like a high soaring bird, manipulating the thermals to scan all possible territories. Vikram knew he had to emulate that clear sightedness.

Taking his seat, Feodor leaned over and muttered something to the man next to him, who nodded. Next along were the Executors, as Adelaide called them. He located the Board of Four in the second row, where their position enabled them to lean forward and whisper the things they wished to be announced into the ears of their subordinates.

“That’s Security on the left,” murmured Adelaide. “After her it’s Finance, and after him Resources, then Health and Science at the end.”

Behind them gathered other departmental heads. Adelaide pointed out Climate, Education, and Estates. The Executors were not communicating much between themselves, but each of them looked ready to do battle. Opposite and over to the right were the two factions of liberals, the Nucleites and the antis. Vikram spotted Linus speaking very quickly to the man and woman behind him.

“There’s Dmitri,” Adelaide said. “In the second row, wearing a red-striped necktie. Doesn’t look much like the rest of us, does he? If I didn’t know my mother, I’d say she’d had an affair.”

“She never wanted to join the Council, I take it?”

“She was too busy designing invitations. Actually, she’s a better politician than any of them, but she prefers to exert her influence over raqua and dessert.”

“That might not be such a bad idea,” Vikram said drily.

He had forgotten the way the pale stone of the Chambers whispered. Scuffles and muttered words chased one another around the indoor amphitheatre. As the Council settled with a flurry of surcoats, his gaze was drawn to the final faction on the far right. The first generation Councillors were stooped, always one of them shaking, like so many pine needles disturbed by a breeze. Their hair was as white as snow. The women’s coiffeurs were cropped short or drawn into wispy buns. Their earrings were bright chandeliers against the soft folds of their necks. The men had jackets under their surcoats in moss green or mulberry red. Many wore glasses that both magnified their eyes and disguised them. Adelaide had warned Vikram not to be fooled by their antique appearance; a lack of sharpness, she said, only increased their obduracy.

Despite their inevitable antipathy towards him, it was these veterans that interested Vikram the most. As their hair had gained streaks of grey and finally was bleached of all colour, they had watched their city change. They had witnessed it pass from elite, technological masterpiece, to benevolent rescue centre, to reluctant tyrant. Finally they had seen it become two cities. Perhaps that wall gave them the illusion that the thing they had created retained its beauty and its integrity, but Vikram doubted it.

The three notes sounded again. Only when the entire Chambers had hushed did the Speaker begin.

“On the second Thursday of the month of Mae, I declare witness to the gathering of the Osiris Council, guardians of the city of Osiris, one hundred and forty-five years after the founding of the Osiris Board, the city being now in its seventieth year as an independent state. This session opens at the hour of two minutes past eleven hundred. This session is held in the domain of the public eye, although the public shall not contribute to the issues discussed today which are for the consideration of the esteemed Councillors and them alone. As Speaker, I invoke the Eleni Clause which orders that all words spoken in this session are words of truth.”

The Speaker drew a long breath and continued. Up in the balconies Vikram saw yawning faces. Even the Councillors looked peevish and uncomfortable under their purple robes. Finally, the Speaker introduced Adelaide.

“Miss Mystik has invoked the Ibatoka Clause. I remind all present that the Ibatoka Clause may be used by Citizens to speak on a matter which they feel, if not addressed, shall have detrimental consequences for the future of Osiris. Miss Mystik represents the New Horizon Movement.”

Adelaide gave Vikram’s hand a tiny squeeze before she stepped up. Cheers and whistles from the Haze accompanied her progression to the podium. First generation members of the Council shushed disapprovingly. Feodor Rechnov’s face was rigidly neutral.

“Hello, esteemed members of the Council.” Adelaide’s voice was a river of milk. “I thank the Speaker for his words. I, however, am not so good with speeches, and I therefore present Mr Vikram Bai, who has addressed you once before, to present the matter of my grave concern.” She gave a little bow. Vikram noticed her glasses slipped a fraction down her nose as she did so. She turned to step down, then turned back. “Regarding the west,” she added.

A murmur ran through the Chambers. Adelaide winked at Vikram. They exchanged places. As he climbed up he felt more than ever like an appearing puppet. Then he looked around the sweep of Councillors. I can name you now. There was muscle in a name.

“Esteemed Councillors,” he began. “I am exceedingly grateful to have this opportunity to stand before you once again.” He waited a beat. “And I hope it shall prove a more profitable exchange of our time than on the last occasion. Forgive me if I reiterate a few things. I feel it is important that the facts stand fresh in our minds, and I hope also to enlighten those who were not present at my last address.”

He glanced up to the balconies, where curious faces crowded at the rail. He glimpsed surprise there, and smiled to himself. They had not expected a westerner to sound so formal. Vikram wanted to remind the Council that they were under surveillance. Public debates were rare, and he was certain they did not like it.

“This is a very beautiful room,” he declared, now letting his gaze roam the marbled walls, the elegant pillars. “It is also a very warm room. Nobody on this side of the city has much occasion to dwell on warmth — and why should you? Our city was built to make such day-to-day necessities invisible. And yet, on the other side of a line that a past Council has decreed a boundary, people die daily from cold. I’ve seen it many times. It comes when you’re long past shivering, long past feeling the pains of frostbite, past recognizing the threat. You freeze, quietly, into a quiet sleep. So quiet, that there isn’t going to be any waking up.” Vikram paused. “How many? That’s a difficult question, because as you know, there is no accurate census in west Osiris, no way of telling how many deaths. The informal numbering process affected by the Home Guard—” He almost said skadi, but caught the word in time, “—is inexact, not to mention clearly delineating westerners as different from yourselves, who after all are only one or two generations further from your own Old World origins. But I can assure you that the number of deaths is certainly in the hundreds, and more than likely in the thousands.”

He let this figure resonate. With so many present, the Chambers were growing increasingly hot. A couple of first generation Councillors flapped ineffectual hands to try and stir the air. Vikram focused on this odd sight: the elderly weakened by heat.

“It is unforgivable,” he said. “Unforgivable that this is still happening in our city. The potential for electric heating is here, at our fingertips, in the very fabric of the buildings, and yet we lack the necessary connections to access it, whilst the connections we do have are temperamental and unreliable. How many of those thousands of lives could be saved by the flick of a switch?”

Vikram sensed the fickle sway of his audience’s attention, now present, now absent. The spectators listened keenly, the Councillors grudgingly, aware that they were on display and unable to retract too far into their private worlds. He judged it was time to push.

“But these things, these apparent feats of engineering, are for the future. I come before you today with a simpler request. Winter approaches. Many citizens of the west will spend the coldest months of the year on boats, with no protection from the cold or the storms. The young and the elderly are particularly at risk, if not from hypothermia than from starvation. Complete catastrophe could be averted with the establishment of a number of overnight shelters and boat kitchens. These are very basic things, ladies and gentlemen, but they require good will and funding. We need insulation works. In the future, we will also require an investigation into the undersea levels, many of which are flooded and uninhabitable, depriving the west of further accommodation.

“A few words on health and sanitation. The single hospital in the west is overcrowded, understaffed and unhygienic, no surprise as we have one to your five. It serves as little more than an accident and emergency unit. There are no provisions for those with long term illnesses, many of which could be averted if vaccinations were available. The most basic vaccinations, which I believe Citizens receive at the age of two, would save further lives.”

Vikram looked slowly around the room, trying to catch each Councillor’s eye.

“It seems logical to adopt a two-stage programme. The first stage, that is, shelters, boat kitchens and vaccination centres, to be implemented immediately, whilst structural repair works should be investigated in the spring. Councillors, the choice is yours. Act now, or condemn thousands.”

He made no appeals. He offered no vote of confidence in the Council’s humanity, or in their ability to make the right decision. Guilt was best eked from silence. It came out of the gaps and the spaces, the things not said, the things left hanging. He took a step back, and gave the Speaker a nod to show that he had finished.

“Thank you, once again, Mr Bai. That was, again, enlightening.” The Speaker’s voice erred just the safe side of sarcasm. The Councillors were keeping quiet. Only a small susurration of whispers indicated unrest. “Are there any questions for Mr Bai?”

A woman from the liberal camp stood to speak.

“I have a question for Miss Mystik.”

Vikram moved over to allow Adelaide space on the podium. Pandemonium on the balconies greeted her second appearance; Vikram was certain that most of the press had come in anticipation of an Adelaide show. The Speaker’s hammer banged furiously. The Councillor raised her voice.

“May we take it, Miss Mystik, that you speak on behalf of this group, this—”

“The New Horizon Movement,” Adelaide supplied.

“Yes, yes. Are you, in fact, an active member of the group?”

“I am,” said Adelaide serenely.

Exclamations flashed around the balconies. Journalists tapped frenziedly into their Surfboards. The Speaker shouted for silence. Vikram looked at Adelaide and found her perfectly composed, her lips curved in a slight smile, the sheared fringe brushing her demurely lowered lashes. He did not care, at that moment, what her motives were. She had given her name to the west, knowingly and absolutely. Glancing across to Feodor Rechnov, he saw that the Councillor’s cheeks were tinged with red.

“Then do you have anything to add to Mr Bai’s statement?” the woman pressed.

Adelaide’s smile blossomed.

“I feel Mr Bai has explained the situation clearly enough. I only hope that the subject matter is not too distant for our esteemed Council. After all, many of you do not step outside over the course of twelve months.”

Vikram saw the Minister of Resources lean forward and tap the shoulder of the man in front. The man got to his feet.

“I can hardly imagine that the cosseted lifestyle Miss Mystik enjoys includes outdoor excursions in adverse conditions.”

“On the contrary,” said Adelaide. “I regularly waterbike as far as the ring-net. Without the insulation of my bike-suit, I would probably die of hypothermia. As Mr Bai has explained, there are no such suits in the west, in fact, there is barely any heating. It does strike me as somewhat unfair.”

“Forgive me if I say this is a very abrupt demonstration of concern,” said the man. Adelaide was unfazed.

“Indeed it is, Councillor. I confess until I met Mr Bai, I was entirely ignorant of these circumstances. Now that I have been enlightened, I am compelled to support his cause.”

Vikram stifled a laugh. There was shuffling amongst the Councillors, and the Minister of Resources tapped her spokesman on the shoulder again.

“May I request we open to the floor, Speaker?”

They don’t like dealing with Adelaide, Vikram thought. She disarms them; she knows the language. He looked for Linus. Adelaide’s brother’s face was serious, but Vikram had no doubt that beneath the calm exterior lurked a satisfied smile.

“Granted,” said the Speaker’s voice overhead.

This time, there was no rush to stand. Then the woman Linus had been speaking to earlier rose.

“It seems a reasonable request,” she ventured.

The word reasonable was the spark. At once the left side of the crescent were on their feet, arguing over what could be considered reasonable, questioning the criteria for the demand, the lack of available resources. It was difficult enough to keep the City in good repair. Where would the money, or the materials, come from for the west? The liberals jumped up in response. Dmitri Rechnov said nothing. Linus was vocal. The demands, he argued, were so basic as to be almost unreasonable in their conservatism. They should be doing far more. Through the debate, the voices of the first generation Councillors sounded like thin, disconsolate reeds.

An elderly woman turned to the podium.

“Mr Bai, I recall that the last time you were here there was some incendiary talk of demilitarization. May we assume you have dropped that aggressive stance today?”

Vikram leaned both hands on the podium. “I hardly consider it an aggressive stance,” he replied. “Rather the opposite. I won’t say that my opinion has changed, but today I am here purely to request funding for a winter aid scheme.”

“You have not mentioned costs in all of this, Mr Bai,” said a balding man who Vikram recognized as the Minister of Finance. “I assume you have some form of budget in mind.”

“A figure of fifty thousand credits would comfortably encompass the schemes I have mentioned. Thirty-five thousand would be the absolute minimum required.”

Exchanges fired through the ranks of the Executors. Vikram exchanged a glance with Adelaide. They had agreed the asking price should be high, but now he wondered if they had pushed too hard. Adelaide clasped her hands and brought them to rest upon the podium, her white cotton sleeve brushing against his arm.

The Chambers quietened. Feodor Rechnov was rising. His eyes were riveted on Vikram. He did not spare his daughter a glance.

“Mr Bai,” he said, and the Chambers hushed further. “You have made an impressive case, an — emotive, case. I congratulate you on the almost inconceivable improvement. You must realize, however, that you are asking this Council to supply you with a large sum of money on the basis of your word — and your word alone.”

There were murmurs of approval from the reactionaries. The Councillor of Finance was nodding.

“I take your point,” said Vikram calmly. “The reason I am standing here today, is, very simply, because there is nobody else to represent my side of the city. There are no westerners, ladies and gentlemen, in your assemblage. The labyrinth of administration with which this Council surrounds itself makes it almost impossible to gain a hearing. As to my qualifications — I can only tell you my own experience. I am, however, happy to escort any Councillors who wish for further proof on a tour of the west, and there I can show you all of the disease and poverty of which I speak. I’d advise you to wrap up warm.”

A ripple of laughter from the liberals.

“Perhaps you’d like to go, Councillor Rechnov,” called out a girl from the balcony. Vikram recognised the voice as Adelaide’s friend, Jannike Ko. Feodor’s face remained impassive, although Vikram thought that the red spots in his cheeks intensified.

“I believe the Council would prefer a more scientific assessment of the situation,” Feodor countered. “Rather than the rhetoric of a westerner.”

There was a collective gasp from the balcony, purely theatrical, as Vikram doubted there was a single person in the room who was not secretly thinking what Feodor had voiced. Vikram crushed his own anger. He even smiled. Adelaide had already supplied him with all the ammunition he needed, and now Feodor had given him the incentive to use it.

“Councillor Rechnov,” he said. “Forgive me if I have my facts wrong, but didn’t your own father, the Architect, remarry a refugee? Surely you feel a degree of responsibility towards the west, even if you do not feel compassion?”

Uproar followed. Vikram saw Feodor’s jaw clench, and the red spots burned brighter for the paleness that infected the rest of the Councillor’s face. Vikram did not take his eyes off the man, but sensed, at his side, Adelaide’s initial surprise melting into expectancy as she, too, sniffed the resolution that had to follow.

The Speaker asked for a vote. Vikram watched the hands raise and hover in midair, swaying in an impossibly complicated semaphore whilst the Speaker took his count. There were too many hands, a hopeless number. The hammer rapped. In the commotion from the balcony, the Speaker’s words were swallowed. Councillors were on their feet, imperial surcoats swinging. Vikram’s heart went numb. We’ve lost, he thought.

As he stepped down from the podium a surge of people gathered around. Hands clapped his back, pummelled and tugged at him. He was aware of voices, offering congratulations, hollering questions through the clamour. He blinked in a barrage of camera flashes. How did you meet Adelaide, Mr Bai? Adelaide, why are you helping the west? He heard his lie of a surname repeated over and over, and thought dizzily that in the last half hour he had managed to become someone he was not.

Vikram turned to his accomplice. Her face was ablaze. He realized, finally, that they’d won, and he felt his face split in an answering grin. A wing of pure joy trembled in his chest. It rose to his throat, filled it, had to fly out. He grabbed Adelaide and lifted her shrieking off the ground. As he spun her around she was pressed against his smart new jacket and her brother’s letter. He put her down. Her smile was a solar beam. Then, in full view of the Chambers and the krill, she kissed him.

27 ¦ ADELAIDE

Her eyes opened. It was not yet light, and she was very still. At first she thought she’d had a nightmare that had frozen her muscles. But then her lungs expanded and she realized the restraint was physical. A pair of arms wrapped around her upper body, pinning her against the hard heat of the man’s chest. Her heart beat faster, in confusion, and anger, that she had allowed this to happen. The hands that were not hers were nonetheless familiar; she had seen them manipulating her Neptune, peeling an apple with a penknife in one long strip, unfastening the strap of a watch. And now they were warm on her skin.

Vikram’s breath fluttered on the back of her neck. She shifted, hoping the movement might dislodge him. He only paused between inhaling and exhaling, and his grip tightened as his breath trickled out. Adelaide thought back to yesterday. She remembered the victory afterparty, the Haze running rampage over the Red Rooms, the dancing and the octopya. She remembered kissing him at her bedroom door. She remembered locking the door. After that, memory failed her.

She twisted her head to look at Vikram. His head, pressed against the top of her spine, fell into the alcove just below the pillow. She prised his arms away and turned to study him properly. Dim light and sleep had softened him. Tiny veins tracked the half moons of his eyelids. His lashes shivered, betraying his subconscious, active in dreams. She traced a finger down the length of his back. His mouth twitched. She wondered what he was dreaming.

Fuck. They must have had sex.

She sat up and pulled the sheets around her shoulders, exposing more of his naked body. He was so thin. There was nothing beneath his skin but lean muscle and bones. She examined every blemish, every flaw, as though she could read last night’s actions in the history of his skin. There was a nick above his right eye. A long scar bisected his side. The white streak ran beneath the ribcage and into the shadow where his stomach met the sheets. She could not help imagining the quick silver slice of the knife and her eyes widened with the shock of the idea. She reached out to touch, but withdrew. She’d probably done that already.

Her head heaved with recollection. Stars only knew how many people remained in her apartment. She cast aside the sheets and got up to find out. At the door, she stopped. She did not want to know. She stood there, fingers on the handle, her next move perilously unclear, when the man on the bed moved. He yawned, stretched, and rolled onto his back.

“What time is it?”

The question threw her completely.

“It’s — before dawn.”

“Come back to bed then. Nobody else will be awake.”

Adelaide complied, to the point of coming to sit on the end of the bed. Vikram scratched at the stubble just beginning to darken his jaw. His eyes were bleary.

“You’re not meant to be in here,” she said.

“You didn’t leave me much choice.”

She glowered at him. He met her scowl with a smile. She opened her mouth to tell him not to, but he pre-empted her.

“You fell asleep on me.” Now he sounded smug.

“What?”

“You fell asleep,” Vikram repeated. “You were very tired. And exceptionally drunk.” And when her lips parted again he added, “I’ve got no reason to lie.”

“I never sleep,” she said.

“Alright. You passed out. Drunk, a dead weight, soon as we lay down and your head hit the pillow.”

It was possible. It explained, at least, the lack of memory. Adelaide felt the cold sting of humiliation.

Vikram yawned again, and flopped back onto the pillows. His face was unlike any man she had ever known. There were lines in that face that would never be erased, lines made by the early tiredness of poverty. But they had faded beneath the light of a new expression.

“You look happy,” she said accusingly.

“I am happy. We won.”

She had almost forgotten the events that had lead up to last night’s fiasco. They came back in a flood of sound and image. She saw Vikram standing in the Chambers, his face arrested, his voice pooling into the basin of their scepticism. Suddenly she smiled.

“Alright.”

He reached out a hand, and when she took it, he pulled her back against him, hugging her. They lay in silence. The windows were tinted with violet, the world outside a shadowy place, as though without the distinction of time it must remain embryonic. She thought of another face and another man. Possibilities gathered on the edge of her brain, things that could or might or should have been. She thrust them away from her.

“How did you get that scar?”

“Which one?”

Adelaide turned over, resting her arms and her chin on his chest. She traced a tentative finger along the disfigurement. It felt like embossed lettering. “This one.”

“My friend — Mikkeli — she used to take these deliveries to people.” His voice was low and reminded her of summer rain. “She worked for a dealer called Maak. It was dangerous work. The sort of thing where your luck only holds out for so long. One of the jobs went wrong. The buyers came after Keli at home. There were four of us living there. Only two of them but six people with knives in a small room… it was messy.”

It was the most information about himself he had ever volunteered. She kept her eyes on the scar, away from his face, not wanting to discourage him.

“Why did only two of them come?”

“They didn’t think we’d protect her. Loyalty in the west is — pretty easily compromised.”

“And you didn’t compromise.”

“No.”

“So what happened?”

“We killed them. Then we left the tower and we never went back.” He gave her a twisted smile. “This is my souvenir from that night.”

Once more she heard the whisper of knives in the dark. She bent her head and gently kissed the scar. She left her face buried. How much time passed whilst she stayed there, she could not tell. Vikram’s lips brushed her shoulder. She met his mouth in sudden haste, overcome by pity, and her need to block out that other face.

28 ¦ VIKRAM

The waterways were quiet. It was an achingly cold but clear night, and Vikram could hear the motor hum as his boat cut through the waves, uninhibited by other traffic. He ran a hand over its sides. He’d had the boat for six weeks and he still felt a frisson of ownership with the touch.

As he steered through the western quarter, graffiti-covered slopes loomed and receded, the vivid images bluish in the moonlight. From the far side of the city a cheer went up, followed by the crackle of fireworks. Vikram looked up, trying to find the umbrellas of light amidst the sky’s star-studded pane, but he saw only a fading glimmer over to the east. The race must have begun.

He fumbled in a pocket for his Sobek scarab. It was slippery in his glove as he switched it on and spoke Adelaide’s name for the second time that evening.

“Hey, it’s me. Look, sorry I can’t make it — but enjoy the show.”

These small appeasements had become regular. They were for him, not her, although she did not know that. Axel’s letter haunted him. Right now, it was concealed beneath the lining of a locked drawer, and Adelaide, unaware of its contents, unaware even of its existence, was urging on her favourite glider with no notion that her brother waited for the white horse to speak.

He would tell her. When it was right.

The quiet struck him again. A lone gleam of light in the distance became a single tower, lanterns glowing at the window-walls. Vikram peered ahead through the shadowy maze of scrapers, and found what always followed such a display: fire on the water surface. They were committing the tower’s dead to the deep.

He switched the motor off and let his boat drift. He could see the bodies piled upon rafts, some already ablaze, others drenched in oil, their foreheads banded with salt so that the ghosts would recognize them as Osiris’s people. There must have been a power-cut, or a flash epidemic.

The mourners threw torches onto the pyres. Flames leapt high. When they were all alight, boats would tow the pyres to the ring-net and cast their cargo out to burn. Vikram had always thought that would be the most terrible of duties, escorting your loved ones to their unsettled grave, the stench and smoke of their passing rich on your tongue.

Now a chorus of voices echoed over the water, keening their grief without words. Heard from afar, the singing did not sound entirely human. The wind was in it, the waves. Out at the ring-net, the ghosts would be gathering.

The pyre blaze grew smaller. Vikram let out a breath he had not realized he was holding. He switched on the motor, welcoming the mechanical hum.

The shelter covered three floors of 307-West. The bunks were eight or ten to a room, narrow with thin mattresses, but they had pillows and blankets, and the rooms were warm. The second floor housed a medical room and the canteen. When Vikram arrived, no one was eating, but the lights were on and he could hear dishes clattering behind the serving hatch.

He found Shadiyah sitting on the end of a bench, both hands around a steaming mug, talking to their single security guard. The Resources division said they could not spare anyone else, although Vikram had noticed an increase in the skadi on the border over the last month.

“What are you doing here?” Shadiyah said. “You’re not on call tonight.” He thought she looked pleased to see him nonetheless.

“Nothing better to do,” he joked. “How’s things?”

“Alright. We had to break up a fight earlier and that raving old dear turned up again. Took offence to one of the nurses, decided she was a Council spy. Calmed down now. We’re full for the night but we just had two kids come in. Brother and sister, I reckon. Boy’s got a nasty knife wound.”

“Shanty kids?”

“Likely as not. I’m going down to the med room now, want to come?”

“Sure.”

They walked down the corridor together, filling one another in on the minutiae of the day. The corridor walls had been painted pale yellow. They were still peeling, but they were cleaner and brighter. Disinfectant masked the underlying stenches brought in with the very poor.

A door to one of the dormitories opened and an old man shuffled out. He had rags wrapped around his feet.

“Osuwa,” he mumbled. “Bright lights — over again. Was the searchlight caught him in a dark hole.”

“Alright, Mr Argele?” called Shadiyah. “Are you looking for someone?”

He peered at them from under bushy eyebrows. His face was a garden gone wild; hair, beard, even his eyelashes seemed overgrown.

“Turn off the searchlight, young woman,” he ordered Shadiyah. “They’ll be here soon. Don’t you know your discipline?”

He retreated and shut the door. Vikram and Shadiyah paused, listening for signs that he might have disturbed the other men. But there were no sounds from inside. Just the muffled rumble of the laundry room a few doors down, as the dryers turned in their final cycles.

“Young woman,” echoed Shadiyah. “First compliment of the day.”

Vikram had found his colleague on a boat frying up kelp toast for hungry kids. It was her hands that struck him first. She had been wearing fingerless gloves. Her fingertips were rough skinned, their nails short and slightly yellowed, a blister on her left thumb from the spitting fat. Her hands brought back a jumble of memories: hours spent in line at soup kitchens or fry-boats, waiting to beg for scraps at the end of the day.

Shadiyah told Vikram her story whilst smoke from the grill drifted out of the boat window. She received a negligible amount of funding for her tiny charity. It was a tough business. Her fry-boat was raided every month for its stock. Shadiyah had a sharp mouth and a discerning eye; she was able to distinguish the hungry from the starving.

“And sometimes it’s a fine line,” she’d said, leaning out to hand down a sizzling, paper-wrapped kelp square to one of her beneficiaries. “After all, who this end of town ain’t hungry?”

She turned down his offer of a job instantly. He hadn’t thought that his exposure to the City would show so soon, but perhaps it had already begun to tint him. He came back the next day, and the day after. It took time to persuade her.

It was time well spent. Once she had agreed, Shadiyah took practical charge of the shelter, creating a model on which future projects would follow. Walking through their allotted floors, they had planned everything together from the layout of the building to an information campaign. They printed flyers and people handed them out on the aid scheme boat kitchens.

Shadiyah knocked before entering the medical room.

“It’s only me and Vikram,” she said briskly.

The children’s heads snapped up. Their faces were wary and hard as ice. The boy was perched on the single bed, his toes grazing the floor. In one hand he clutched what looked like a bundle of rags. Vikram realized the medics had cut his jumper away. A clump of t-shirts were peeled back and one of the doctors was applying stitches to a ten centimetre gash across his shoulder, whilst the other held a tray of needles and gauze. The sight of the pinched flesh brought back Vikram’s own knife injury in a flash; he struggled not to avert his eyes.

The girl slunk back against the bed curtain. Her hair was chopped as short as the boy’s. She had a bowl of soup at her mouth and her tongue poked out, mid-lap. Her eyes darted; Vikram, the doctor, the door, the needle, the door, the boy. There was a fading bruise on her cheekbone and scratches on her neck.

“Hey,” said Vikram. “Everything okay?”

At the sound of his voice the girl jerked backwards. The soup slopped in the bowl.

“We’re alright,” said the doctor holding the tray. “It’s a nasty cut, but it’ll heal. Just make sure you keep it clean,” she told the boy. “We’re going to give you some pills and an antibiotic spray. I want you to use it twice a day. Okay?”

There was no reply. All of the muscles in the boy’s shoulders were tense as the other doctor hooked his needle in and out, gradually knitting the exposed flesh together. Anaesthetic must have curbed the pain but not the desire to bolt. Vikram could see the outline of a knife at the boy’s hip. He knew that if anyone tried to take it, the boy’s hand would snap to his side in a second.

“You give it me,” said the girl suddenly. Her voice was a tiny rasp like a match being struck.

“What’s that, puffin?” said Shadiyah.

“Gimme the anti-whatsit. They won’t find it on me.”

Vikram caught the subtle interplay between brother and sister; the boy’s quickly masked glare, the girl’s concealed shrug.

The female doctor, Marete, spoke to the girl. “It’s very important. Don’t give it away, you understand? And don’t sell it. Not to anyone. Or your brother will get really sick.”

For answer, the girl held out her palm. Marete hesitated a moment and looked at the other doctor, who gave a curt nod.

“We’ll go get it,” said Shadiyah. “Standard issue, Hal?”

“Please.”

Vikram and Shadiyah went next door and swiped into the medical supplies room.

“How old do you reckon they are?” he asked.

“The boy says thirteen but I reckon ten or eleven.”

“Did he say how he got the cut?”

Shadiyah raised her eyebrows to suggest what a ridiculous question this was and Vikram nodded. She was right. He could guess — he could even ask, but he would not find out. They were shanty town kids, by the half-starved look of them. Somebody owned them — one of the dealers, one of the pimps or the gangs. They were lucky to have survived this long.

Vikram opened the medicine cabinet but did not immediately take out the prescriptions.

“I saw a funeral, on my way here.”

She nodded. “Bad business. The skadi raided a tower last night. Suspected insurgents, you know the lines. People resisted. It got messy.”

“No one told me.”

“They wouldn’t, would they.”

He checked the list supplied by the doctors.

“Do you remember Osuwa, Shadiyah?”

She gave him a quick, measured glance.

“Of course I do. I was twelve, I was on the waterbus. I heard the explosion first. Then boats started speeding past. By the time I got to Market Circle everyone knew what had happened.” She sighed. “And that it was only a matter of time before the reprisals. I’m not surprised Mr Argele raves about it, a lot of people went mad after those few weeks.”

“Worse than the last riots?”

Shadiyah leaned against the work surface, her hands wrapped awkwardly around the edge of the bench. “Different. Because it wasn’t just the skadi, and it wasn’t just violence. To give citizens guns, that was a terrible, awful vengeance. The corpses we saw hadn’t just been killed, they were barely people.” There was a brief silence. “I suppose you want to know if I agreed with Osuwa.”

The room seemed a little darker, a little narrower.

“Do you?”

“No, Vik, I don’t condone arbitrary killing. But I won’t deny that there was a part of me, whilst they were hunting us like rats, there was a very large part of me that said they deserved everything they got.”

She straightened, adjusting her headscarf with her usual deft touch.

“They is such an elusive term,” she said.

Vikram found the prescriptions and made a mental note of what they were running low on. After they had delivered the medication, Shadiyah made up two bedrolls in the laundry room whilst Vikram checked the dormitories. In each bunk he made out the hump of a sleeping body. Snores and rattling breath filled the rooms, but tonight everyone was still. Vikram heard Mr Argele mutter a few blurred words in his sleep. He was one of the shelter’s regulars.

They left the children alone to settle in their bedrolls. In the canteen, Vikram reconvened with the doctors. Marete was filling in the record book. He peered over her shoulder.

“You can’t record them as brother and sister.”

“Why not?”

“Population control laws,” said Shadiyah.

“Shit, yes of course.” Marete tore out the page and started again.

“Only one of them is legally entitled to aid,” Vikram reminded her. “We’ve got to be careful. They’ll slash our funding if they know we’re supporting multiple offspring.”

When he left the shelter, the sky was pitch dark with cloud. It felt late, but his watch told him it was only twenty-two thirty. The tarpaulin over the boat was covered in frost. It shimmered like a half-submerged iceberg. He hauled off the tarp and folded it, noticing a man observing him from the window of a tower across the water. The surveillance was unapologetic. He sensed other eyes too, hidden in the darkness of waterways and decking. He knew in that instant that he had become that incalculable thing: an airlift. Something to be watched.

As he turned the ignition key and the boat purred into life, he decided to do something he should have done a long time ago.

The decking around his old tower was thick with boats. He circled until he found a gap to park, secured the boat and because he did not intend to linger, stuffed the tarp into the storage space under the seat. The tower doors parted and a man staggered out, holding his arm and cursing. Two others followed.

“Want to say that again, mate? To my face?”

Vikram slipped past them into the unlit passageways of the building. The shouts and blows of the fight were cut off as the doors slid shut.

Inside, a rancid stench crawled up his nostrils. He tried the lift. There was a clanking sound. He thought at first that it had been fixed, but realized the sound came from another lift much further up. As he began the familiar, gruelling climb, he felt the hierarchy of his senses shifting. He had become too dependent on sight. The smell separated into parts: fish, wet kelp, cigarettes and manta, dirt, mould, old blood, placebo chemicals. Every couple of floors he passed a shadowy form going in the opposite direction, or the backlit tableaux of two people talking in an open doorway. Kids shrieked as they chased one another blind up and down the steps. Vikram moved instinctively, one hand brushing the walls. He could not tell if the bodies he stepped over were catatonic or dead.

Floor thirty-five was dark and quiet. He stepped up to his old door with the key, before he realized that it was ajar.

He pushed the door. It swung open, slowly and noisily. He saw bodies lumped in the gloom, heard the hiss of breath. A figure scrambled to its feet, pale steel in one hand. Cold sliced along his old scar.

“Get out.” The voice was female.

Vikram stood still.

“I said get out,” she repeated. She levelled the knife.

“I don’t mean any harm,” he said. “I used to live here. I left some things.”

He caught a glimpse of white eye, smelt the fear on her. She would not hesitate to sink that knife.

“I never saw you before,” she said. “And if you wake my kids I’ll see no-one else does, either.”

“Okay,” he said softly. “Okay. It’s your place now, that’s fine. There’s just one thing I wanted — my salt tin.”

There was a pause. He saw movement in the sleeping forms beyond her and he sensed her dual attention on them and him.

“Weren’t any salt tin when I got here.” The knife shook but she did not drop her wrist.

“It was a silver thing, about the size of a fist.”

“I said it weren’t here. Think I’d lie? Not likely to be angering the dead when I’ve got four mouths to feed, am I? You get out of here now.”

He backed away, hands raised. She pushed the door to. He knew she was waiting on the other side, listening for his departure.

The door did not close properly. He never had repaired the lock. The woman had broken in, or someone else had before her. She was entitled to the room.

Ten floors down there was a glow under Nils’s door. For several minutes Vikram stood in the corridor, uncertain and not sure of the reason for it. Finally he knocked. The door opened and Nils gave a roar of surprise.

“Vik! Wondered when you’d turn up. Come in, come in. Meet Ilona. Ilona, sweetheart, it’s Vikram, I told you about him, remember?”

Nils’s room was a pool of warmth. He had a heater burning, an unusual extravagance. Vikram realized it must be for the benefit of the girl. She was enveloped in one of Nils’s jumpers. A bleached wing of hair fell across her face.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“Hey,” he said.

Nils hauled him into the room and shut the door by leaning on it. Vikram realized his friend was on the way to being drunk.

“Have a drink, have a drink. We’re celebrating tonight, aren’t we Ilona?”

Ilona did not say anything more, and exactly what they were celebrating was left unclear. Vikram sat on the floor and took the proffered bottle. Greasy papers were balled up in the corner, but the smell of food couldn’t quite mask the stale ash and human reek beneath. He had never noticed those things before. He had a sudden desire to join Nils in his inebriation. He took a draught from the bottle.

“I just went up to the old place.”

Nils gestured to a corner.

“Your stuff’s there. Figured you might not be back for a while so I broke in before anyone else did.”

Vikram looked at the little bundle. His salt tin was there. He felt a flush of guilt.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly.

“Don’t be stupid, you’d have done the same for me.”

“I should have been round weeks ago.”

“Been busy, from what I heard. I knew you’d be along sooner or later. C’mon, have a drink, tell me how it’s been going.”

Seduced by the rough edge of the liquor and the heater’s warmth, Vikram filled Nils in on the past six weeks. Ilona maintained her silence, watching him from behind the dyed curtain of hair. There was something about her, something obvious, that was eluding Vikram.

“What do you think?” he asked, when he had finished. “Have we made any impact?”

He was eager to recruit his friend. Straddling two communities was a lonely position; he needed allies. Nils, with one arm draped around Ilona’s shoulders, looked thoughtful.

“It’s early days.”

“That doesn’t sound positive.”

“No — it’s just… It’s going to be a hard winter, Vik. Of course people need food and shelter. But there’s so many of them now, I mean, where do you even start.”

“I think people are scared to ask for help.”

“And Adelaide Mystik — that might have been a good thing and a bad thing. She’s a bit of a joke this side of town. I mean, you know that, right.”

“Nils, I needed her.”

“Sure, it was the only way.” Nils leaned forward, his eyes glittering. “But there’s talk, Vik. First the fishing bans. One of our boats got gunned down by fucking skadi last week for so-called illegal hunting. They didn’t even have any fucking fish. Skadi raided a tower last night, said there was a threat to the gliding race but we all know that’s bullshit. Now there’re rumours of another kelp shortage. You’ve got contacts now, you tell me Vik, is it true?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard.”

But if it’s true, he thought — then we’re already too late.

“You want to help? I could use a good man, Nils.”

Nils hesitated. “I’ve got — a few things to take care of.” Vikram waited but Nils did not elaborate. Instead, he reached forward to punch Vikram on the arm. “Keep a hotspot for me, though.”

“I will.” Vikram was disappointed. He glanced at Ilona, who dropped her eyes. “I should be getting back. You have company.”

Nils squeezed the girl’s shoulder affectionately. “I do.”

They stood up. Vikram noticed, at waist height behind Ilona, a large hole hacked into the wall. Copper wires dangled from it. Vikram pointed.

“What—”

Nils waved a hand. “Oh, that, that. Trying to find a vein.”

“Well don’t fucking electrocute yourself.”

“No.” Nils scowled at the hole. “Got the wrong damn spot. Current’s to the left.” He put a hand on Vikram’s shoulder. Vikram felt his friend’s weight, too light for a drunk man. Nils’s eyes were beginning to glaze.

“Anyway. We won’t abandon you. If it all goes wrong, there’s backup. You should know that, Vik.”

A tremor crossed Ilona’s face. It was so fast, Vikram thought he might have imagined it. Her hair obscured any expression.

“Backup?”

His friend offered only a lazy smile.

“Always,” he said. “What d’you take us for? Night, Vik.”

Vikram angled the water directly onto his face, powered drops battering his eyelids and cheeks. He turned the temperature up one setting, then another, until it was almost too hot to bear. He emerged ready to embrace what remained of the night. Adelaide had called and he’d told her to come over.

A Sobek o’vis lay in its box. Linus Rechov had sent it to him as a home warming gift. Vikram poured himself a mug of chilled water and settled down to unpack its mysteries. He had unrolled the screen and attached it to the wall when Adelaide arrived. The flickering images provoked a squeal of excitement. Vikram swilled out his only other mug and opened a bottle of raqua whilst Adelaide settled on the lone square of carpet.

She pointed to the animé; a human diver with scaled skin undulating through still water.

“They asked me to do the voice for that.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It was when Axel — when he started forgetting.”

Vikram sank into the sofa and muted the o’vis. They clanked mugs.

“How was the race?”

“Oh, predictable. I won some money. It might get you another boat.”

There had been one collision, she said, the wings got tangled but nobody died. She gave a little hiccoughing laugh when she said this, and he wondered if she was ever scared going to the races, after what had happened to the Dumays. As she talked her eyes roved the room, checking for changes.

“New salt-tin?”

“Old salt-tin,” he corrected, and in answer to her raised eyebrows, “I went back to the western place.”

Adelaide clapped her hands and drew her legs into a lotus, her attentive pose. “You went back! That explains it. I knew you were preoccupied.”

“Mm.”

“Was it strange? Ghosts of the past?”

“A few,” he acknowledged.

“You never did tell me what happened to her.”

“Who?” Vikram stalled.

“Your friend,” she said. “Mikkeli.”

It sounded odd, Keli’s name, on Adelaide’s lips. She pronounced it like a talisman.

“She was shot,” he said. “The skadi killed her.” He glanced at Adelaide. The lamp’s shadow bisected her face. He was inclined to talk, but he looked away again. “It was towards the end of the riots. The Guards were driving us back tower by tower. They’d cut off the lines to a desalination plant. Everyone was worn out, we knew they’d won, though nobody wanted to admit it.”

He stared at the folds of the curtain.

“Anyway, Mikkeli said we’d try one last thing. If she could sneak in and turn the supply pipe back on, we could make a final push. It was a mad plan, but Mik was like that. Me and Nils both said we’d do it, but she insisted she had the best chance, and she was usually right. She got inside the control tower. The rest of us were nearby, waiting for her signal. I was meant to be getting her away. It was before dawn so everything was grey, you couldn’t see much. I waited, but no signal came. And then she appeared.”

He saw it again. The way he saw it almost every night in his dreams. He watched Mikkeli exit the tower and walk to the edge of the decking. Her yellow hood obscured her face. In one hand she had a gun. She stayed there, motionless. Why didn’t she move? She was exposed.

Mikkeli’s hands lifted, very slowly, to her head. She still clutched the gun. He realized what was happening. Someone else was on the decking. They had Keli hostage, but she wouldn’t give up her weapon. What was their plan? To flush out the rest of the rebels? But Keli would have a plan too; she always had a plan. Vikram urged his boat closer.

It was the music he heard first — an assault of bass driven metal. A motor boat skidded around the corner. It was thronged with skadi. Their guns were a fifth limb. In the predawn light they seemed to dance, all five limbs contorting in crazed shapes. The music splintered the cold, cold day, like breaking glass. Gunshots cracked. Mikkeli dropped instantly. She toppled into the water and gunfire peppered the sea and her body. The skadi hurtled on with whoops and cheers.

Vikram threw himself over the side of the boat. The cold was shocking. The waves fought him as he splashed through the freezing water. He reached Mikkeli at last, wrapped his arms around her body and hauled both of them onto the decking. He put both hands on her chest and pumped. Blood and seawater leaked from her mouth and nose. He put his mouth to hers and forced his breath into her. For an incredible second he heard her gurgle, but it wasn’t her, or if it was it was the last sound she made.

A gun clicked at his head and he willed the skad to shoot before rage and grief ignited and he moved so fast he caught the man behind him by surprise. Punched him hard across the temples. They fought briefly. More figures spilled from the tower. Hands seized Vikram, wrenched his arms behind his back, shoved him forward until his chin struck the decking. Handcuffs nicked his skin. He heard the words western and scum and he felt their kicks, each a fresh pool of acute pain but he was beyond it, so far beyond.

Silver bars of frost were already forming on Mikkeli’s lashes.

“I got her out of the water,” he said. “But she was already dead.”

Adelaide’s face was intent. Her eyes glistened with tears or reflected light. She leaned forward to put her hand on his knee. “There was nothing you could do.”

“Maybe.”

“Sometimes you lose people and there’s nothing you can do.”

“It was a stupid plan. We should never have agreed to it.”

Adelaide was shaking her head.

“Ifs,” she said. “Ifs are no hope. They are the things Osiris has decided cannot be, and yet we dwell on them as if they were ever possibilities.”

“You talk about this city as if it’s the world.”

“It is the world.”

“Your brother didn’t believe that.” He spoke without thinking and Adelaide looked at him sharply. “Why else would he want a balloon?” he said quickly. “He wants to leave. He must do.”

She said nothing. He felt the weight of Axel’s letter. Tell her. Now’s the time. He needed to ease his mind of at least one burden. On the brink of speech, he paused. But when he spoke, the words altered.

“I promised Mikkeli, you know. That other people wouldn’t have to die…” He broke off. “I think she might have preferred vengeance.”

The look they exchanged, a ghost of a smile, was neither happy nor sad. Vikram reached out and pulled her to him. He slipped his hands under the silk of her shirt, over the contours of her ribcage. Her head fell back and her eyes closed. He unhooked the clasp of her bra. It was a body that had never known hunger, had barely known cold. Sometimes he despised her for its ignorance. He kissed the hollow of her throat, her navel, the boundary of lace at her hips. Whilst their limbs tangled and her body shuddered he wondered if his hate might show. In eyes or touch, or distance. In the air between their lips. Only when she was still did he embrace her. He was wide awake and he suspected that she was too, though her eyes remained closed. Neither of them moved.

The animé had finished. An archive reel played out on the o’vis in black and white.

Later, when Adelaide had fallen sleep, he carried her to the bed and pulled the covers over her hips. She mumbled something and rolled over. She hated to be held. If he fell asleep holding her he would wake to find she had shrugged him away, as though she feared the slightest and most human of constraints would cage her indelibly. He admired her resolution; he scorned her for not knowing the value of physical warmth.

Adelaide’s hair was screwed up under her cheek and against the bed. Looking at her, Vikram realized what had been bothering him about Ilona. It was her hair. Bleached, sheerly straight, it had been deliberately cut and coloured. The only place where girls wore their hair like that was on the shanty town boats. Which meant that Ilona belonged to somebody and Nils was playing a dangerous game.

Vikram rolled onto his side and gazed at Adelaide’s squashed, sleeping face. Now he felt a rush of tenderness. She lay on her front, limbs akimbo, stomach caving into the muddled sheets. He pressed his ear to the hollow between her shoulder blades and listened to the stubborn pulse of her heart. Adelaide was like the rainbow-fish whose tails she said glowed in the dark. The bright things were always hunted in the end.

“Morning, Vikram.” His assistant popped her head around the office partition. She was bulked up in coat, earmuffs and hat. Her eyelids were heavy with sleep.

Vikram glanced up from the Neptune and caught sight of the clock. Nine already. He had been in over an hour. “Morning Hella.”

“Did you see the race?”

“I missed it, actually.”

“Oh.” Her expression faltered. “It was interesting,” she settled. “You want a tea?”

“You’re a mind-reader.”

“Aren’t I?” she said. Still a bit shy.

He heard her putting the pot on in their cupboard of a kitchen, and the clink of a spoon as she prepared the glasses with ginger. Hella was another airlift. They were both nervous to begin with. The first week there was a major misunderstanding over transport arrangements for the boat kitchens. Seven crates of squid were lost to raiders. After blaming one another and shouting it out, they seemed to be settling into a rhythm.

Vikram stretched his arms over his head and felt his bones click. The figures on the Neptune gazed blandly out. He had never dreamed the Council would want so much administration. It seemed pointless in light of what he could be doing; scouting a location for the next shelter or recruiting staff, even handing out kelp rations on one of the boat kitchens. Adelaide said that this was their way of keeping him in check. She was probably right.

Hella entered with two steaming glasses. She gave one to him and cupped the other.

“So how was your evening?” she asked.

Last night’s events seemed unreal. Even Adelaide, whom he had left sprawled on his bed, sex and raqua lingering on her breath.

“It was a long night, actually. I dropped by the shelter. Mr Argele was there.”

“Oh, Mr Argele. What did he have to say for himself?”

“He called Shadiyah ‘young woman.’”

Hella giggled. “Bet she loved that.”

“I think she did, actually. How were the gliders?”

After they’d dissected the race from start to finish, Hella with hindsight, Vikram with imagination, his assistant went back to the other side of the partition. She took off her earmuffs, put in the earpiece, and put the earmuffs back on. The o’comm did not buzz that often. Most of their calls were outgoing.

He had an inkling that Hella had applied for the position because she could not quite reconcile her good fortune in escaping the mire. It was guts and hard work that had got her out, but that was not enough to shift the guilt. He knew because he felt it too. Every morning, they crossed the border to this cramped fifty-ninth floor office just inside the western quarter. Every evening, they could return to safe ground. Hella led a quiet life. She told Vikram she never saw her old friends.

Shadiyah called him mid-morning.

“Your birds have flown.”

“At least they came.”

“I hope they don’t get punished for it. Someone’s going to see the stitches and ask questions. If they take those antibiotics away, he’ll die within weeks. That’s if frostbite doesn’t do for him. Or pneumonia. Or hypothermia. Or the flu.”

Vikram leaned back in his chair.

“Shadiyah,” he began. “Why—”

“Don’t,” she said.

“What?”

“Don’t ask. I know what you’re thinking. I’ll end up alone, frozen to death, or drowning in some flooded cell. But there’s community here, on our side, if you make it that way.”

The morning edged onward. One by one, lights in the opposite tower winked off. Vikram thought of Nils, who would probably be curled up with the girl, sleeping off his hangover. He thought about the choices he had made in Mikkeli’s name, in Eirik’s name, and wondered who they were really for, what they really meant. But they were past choices. This was his life now.

29 ¦ ADELAIDE

Her father’s man Goran was waiting for her in the hall of the Domain. His huge, pudgy hands were folded in front of him. When he smiled she felt every patch of her exposed skin prickle: shoulders, face, the small of her back. That same smile used to curl Goran’s lips each time he discovered the twins’ latest hiding place.

“Welcome home, Miss Rechnov.” His voice was as soft as ever.

“It’s not home,” she said.

“Home is where the heart is, isn’t that the Old World saying?”

Goran held out a hand to take her cape. She repressed a shudder as his fingers folded around its velvet weight. He led her up the main staircase, past her grandfather’s rooms, and up again. She was struck anew by the richness and secretiveness of the Domain. It corridors were low-lit and full of real wood. They passed alcoves housing shell lanterns, doors with ebony handles, Afrikan sculptures, chandeliers, paintings from Veerdeland and Alaska.

There were hidden passages too, crawling under and over other rooms like a subterranean maze. It was a mysterious place. Once it had been a magical place, but the twins had promised one another they would never set foot in it again. Adelaide had not been back in six years. She would never have answered this invitation if Vikram had not been there when it arrived. You’re not scared of them are you?

Of course not, she’d said haughtily. She could have said that the relationship between herself and her family was more complicated than simple fear or estrangement. That it was tied up with a history and a hatred of lies; that the bad blood between herself and her father could not affect her love for her grandfather, but neither could that love compel her to reconciliation; that of all the Rechnov children her mother had always and only adored Axel, and the Incident had only hardened her further against the rest of them; that Adelaide did not quite understand herself the tenuous links she had forged with Linus, and that all of the above was now tempered with far more frightening suspicions: she could not have said with certainty that any one of them was incapable of removing Axel to preserve the family name. She could not say this to Vikram. He did not have a family. The only person who understood the Rechnovs as Adelaide did was Tyr, and she could not tell Vikram that either.

In a passing mirror she glimpsed her reflection: pale skin in an emerald dress. Goran stepped quietly ahead, the third eye on the back of his neck watching her all the way. Every instinct was telling her to run. I’m not afraid, she told herself. I can do this.

At the greeting room, Goran moved aside, then put a hand on Adelaide’s back and propelled her through the door. Her skin crawled.

“Miss Adelaide Rechnov,” he announced.

Conversation died away as they all turned to look at her. A satin clad lady raised an eyeglass to inspect Adelaide more closely, her wispy brows knitted as she peered through the silver disk. One by one they came up. Some Adelaide recognized from childhood events, others were new recruits to the Rechnov clan. Each guest extended their arm, presenting the inner wrist upward so that she could press her own against it. Her wrist tingled horribly.

“Delighted to meet you at last.”

“My, how you’ve changed!” The woman with the eyeglass had pale gums and a quavery voice. “I remember you as a little girl, playing the Steinway at Viviana’s birthday. Such a sweet child.”

“She’s divine, Viviana.” A man spoke over her head. “Really, quite exquisite.”

Her mother came forward, placed her hands on Adelaide’s shoulders and dabbed her lips to each cheek. Adelaide smelt her cloying lavender scent. Viviana’s eyes were searching. It felt as though her mother were running a flannel over her face, softly the first time, but gradually peeling away layer after layer of skin until she unwrapped the flesh beneath.

“Welcome home, Adelaide,” Viviana said finally. There was something formidable about the easy elegance of Viviana’s stature. Adelaide was aware that side by side, they made everyone else in the room look plain, but there was no pleasure in the knowledge.

“Where’s Grandfather?” she asked.

“I’m afraid that he is unwell.” Feodor joined the growing throng around mother and daughter. “And unable to join us tonight. Adelaide.”

He put a hand on her waist and steered her towards the windows. The familiarity of the action unnerved her. Both of her parents were treating the situation as though she had just returned from a week-long holistic retreat in the northern quarter. She felt sweat forming under her dress.

Viviana approached, carrying a stained-glass container, the shape of a lantern, with a steepled lid. She placed the pot in Feodor’s hands. He removed the lid and handed it back. They exchanged subtle, not-quite smiles. The room hushed.

Feodor took a pinch of salt from the pot. He drew a deep, slow breath, then he flicked his wrist and scattered the salt. It was quiet enough to hear the grains skitter against the glass.

“To the dead,” said Feodor.

“To the dead,” the guests intoned solemnly. A theatrical shiver ruffled the room.

It was the melodrama that Adelaide despised above all. The way that everyone present conspired in the act, dressing it up as philanthropy, as though they were above such fundamental fears as ghosts at the window. Then they turned away, huddled over their grape-crushed wines.

Adelaide went to stand where the salt had fallen. Vikram had thrown a pinch over her shoulder earlier, to give her luck. She had met his eyes across the salt tin. Brown eyes should be warm, but Vikram’s eyes were too complicated for pure warmth. They swirled with other things, with sadness, and responsibility. She’d had a fleeting urge to take his face in her hands and tell him he must not be so sad, he must not let Osiris work its deep, malicious magic.

Did the ghosts feel abandoned by the salt ritual? Did it hurt them to be thrust away into the night? The windows gave no answers, only her flimsy reflection.

“Adelaide. Enchanted. My name’s Ukko.”

It was the man who had called her exquisite. He gave her a glass of grape-wine and started to talk about next year’s Council elections. He was running for a seat in Resources. She could tell by his pitch, nasal and overly confident, that he expected to get it. She sipped at the wine. She remembered the taste, rich and mellow, but sweet too, overly sweet, and she found that she no longer cared for it.

On the other side of the room, Tyr was engaged in discussion with Dmitri. They had to be careful tonight, more than usually careful, especially with Linus present. Her brother was chatting to Zakiyya Sobek. Her parents networked. Feodor’s most expansive smile was in place. Every now and then she sensed his surveillance, but there was no sign of the telltale tic. In fact, her father seemed remarkably at ease.

A nasty idea seeded in Adelaide’s mind. Was it possible that the twins’ great escape might have been less of an escape than she had believed? The Rechnovs had foreseen this day. They had let her and Axel go, always assuming that they would have to come back.

Viviana clapped her hands.

“And now, dinner!”

The guests murmured their appreciation as they entered the banquet hall, footsteps ringing out on the chequered floor. Feodor and Viviana took their places at the head of the oval table. Each place was laid with a symmetrical display of crystal and cutlery. Adelaide’s grandfather should have been opposite, but in his absence Dmitri took that chair. His fiancée, a banker, sat next to him. A chair was pulled out for Adelaide. She sat, strangely aware of the air and space at her back, the nebulous movements of the servers. She found herself directly facing Tyr.

They had first met at a banquet like this, weeks before she left. They kissed behind a tapestry, giggling, each caught by surprise. She had run at Tyr like any other obstacle, unafraid of implication or of consequence.

When she met his eyes he looked away.

A hand reached from behind her to fill her weqa glass. As the server continued around the table, the man on Adelaide’s left turned to her. He had greying hair and a hooked, distinctive nose. It was the Councillor of Estates, a man Feodor was no doubt eager to court.

“Delighted to meet you, m’dear,” he said. “Such a close family, you Rechnovs. I’m sure Feodor is delighted to have you back.”

What had Feodor told people?

The man complimented Adelaide on her bone structure.

“Nice to see a Rechnov girl. Great men in your family, of course, quite a line, but few women. Which would you prefer, a boy or a girl?”

Adelaide took a demure sip of weqa.

“I hear the abortion rate is very high these days,” she said.

The Councillor looked surprised, but nodded. “A valid fact. Pregnancy is a serious notion for any young woman.”

She was not sure whether he was hinting at her as a potential breeder, or trying to gauge her attitude to the practice. She offered no response. The Councillor tried again.

“I’m told you have a fascinating little outlet of your own on the outskirts. Do you ever find it lonely living with such a view?”

“I like my own company,” she said.

“If I might recall the popular saying, Miss Rechnov: a Rechnov dreamt the City, a Dumay built it, and an Ngozi lit it. I propose that you, Miss Rechnov, are a dreamer.”

She felt the hooks digging in. It would start here, over a five course dinner. The tug would start with tonight.

On her other side was the Councillor of Netting, a man it would also be useful for the Rechnovs to forge an alliance with. Since the population control laws were introduced twenty years ago, choosing a mate had become a matter of vital importance. She noticed that Tyr had been seated between two influential women. On his left was Zakiyya Sobek, and on his right was Hildur Pek, Councillor of Assessment, who had lost her husband in a shark attack many years ago and had formed an almost pathological obsession with the ring-net ever since. Feodor must be incredibly sure of Tyr’s loyalty to consider setting him up like that.

She turned her gaze to Linus. Did Feodor have anyone in mind for him? Linus was devoted to the Rechnov line, but he had independent political ideas which Feodor would prefer to curb, not least of all his anti-Nucleite stance. And Linus’s support for Vikram and the west had no doubt been a contentious subject in the domestic core.

“Guava dressing, Miss Rechnov?” The Councillor of Netting indicated the platter hovering beside them as though he had produced it personally.

“Thank you.”

She wanted to push her chair back and stretch out her legs, but not wishing to brush against either man, she kept her elbows in and her knees pressed together as she ate. The Councillor of Netting was discussing the state of the kelp forests with his neighbour—“It won’t be a good year for weqa, my dear”—whilst across the room, Hildur Pek had cornered Tyr with horror stories. Elsewhere, Adelaide overheard snippets about the educational syllabus. A small group including Linus were debating the relevance of taught history.

“—essential to have a world understanding—”

“But in the current climate, practical and sociological issues are far more important. Osiris must remain strong—”

“But informed.” That was her brother.

“What about the south? What about Tarctica… surely we should be considering…?”

“Still decades away.”

“And it could act as a terrible temptation. I mean, technically, we’re still under quarantine.”

“Precisely. Any eventual excursion would have to be heavily supervised — not to mention kept under wraps.”

“Personally, I believe quarantine is a technicality that should have been lifted years ago. The idea that it’s actually illegal to leave the City is absurd in this day and age, and as for the map ban, it’s quite simply ludicrous.” Linus was in argumentative mode. Adelaide wondered, suddenly, what he would have made of the balloon room.

“That law keeps people safe. We don’t have a seaworthy boat left in the City and everyone knows it. Start bandying Tarctica about and I tell you, people will be tempted to make rash decisions.”

“Then again, we do have a population problem. Maybe these futurists shouldn’t be disencouraged?”

“That’s a rather cynical view — you don’t really think?”

“Oh, of course not. Just a little gallows humour.”

Low laughter.

“Well, we’ve already got an issue with psychological containment trauma.” The voice was lowered but Adelaide just made out, “Everyone knows the — well, that particular rate is high enough already.”

The debate rescinded. Suicide was not a dinner party topic. The woman who had spoken flushed, aware of her mistake. Adelaide, remembering Radir’s last words to her, felt her own colour rising. Surely nobody else imagined Axel could have taken such a course?

The second course was brought out. Around the table, glasses chinked in private toasts and engraved cutlery scraped on plates. In Adelaide’s ear, the Councillor of Estates was praising her family’s architectural skill.

“I understand the Osiris Board never really considered anyone but Alexei Rechnov. And wisely so. Through his and your grandfather’s great work, the city has endured. And this residence is — quite spectacular.”

Grandfather calls it a house, Adelaide felt like saying, but she did not, because that was a personal piece of information. Tonight would be the only occasion that she had been in the Domain without her twin. He had always stood between her and them, fighting her fights, sharing the blame for her mistakes. There had been no mention of Axel. It was as if he had been whitewashed.

Adelaide’s hand shook as she cut into a rainbow-fish fillet. She put down the knife to hide it.

“Delicious,” said the Councillor of Estates. “Highly cunning of Feodor to slip this dinner in before the official ban goes through.”

“What ban?” she asked.

“Oh, you don’t know?” The Councillor looked pleased at this opportunity to repair Adelaide’s ignorance. “Rainbow-fish is on the danger list until the stocks rebuild. Along with a few of the bigger staples. We’ll all end up vegetarian by the end of it.” He gave her a wink. “Of course, there are ways around these little rules, if you know the right people. In fact, I sometimes hold soirées of my own. Nothing on this scale — just a few, intimate acquaintances.”

Adelaide turned to the Councillor of Netting on her other side. “When you said it is going to be a bad year for weqa, Councillor, did you mean, just the weqa? Or did you mean, the kelp harvest as a whole?”

Her voice, which carried clearly in the vault of the banquet room, was louder than she had intended. She saw Feodor glance in her direction. The Councillor of Netting looked uneasy, but rallied.

“There are always good years and not-so-good years, Miss Rechnov. That is a perfectly normal and healthy state of fluctuation. It may be one of our not-so-good years, but the next shall improve.”

“And with that and the new ban on certain fish stocks, do you anticipate food shortages this winter?”

“Not in my household,” murmured the Councillor of Estates.

“Supplies will be adequate,” said the Councillor of Netting firmly.

“Forgive me,” said Adelaide. “I’m something of an amateur in these matters, but wasn’t the last major crop shortage three years ago?”

“I believe it was, and, as you see Miss Rechnov, we survived to live another day.” He gave a little laugh.

“Yes,” she said. “It didn’t stop the riots, though.”

Now she saw the spots of colour in Feodor’s cheeks. The look he gave her this time was pure warning, but the Councillor of Netting had misunderstood her tone.

“I assure you, my dear, you have no need to fear for your safety. The Minister of Security has everything in hand, is that not the case, Ailia? Any hint of violence from the west shall be swiftly crushed.”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it? If the supplies were adequate, westerners wouldn’t feel the need to riot, would they?”

“I don’t think you quite understand, my dear,” said the Minister of Security kindly.

“I understand that three years ago, food supplies were stockpiled unnecessarily in the City and withheld from the west. Is that what’s going to happen this time?”

“You’ll have to forgive my daughter’s passion,” Feodor interrupted. “The west is her latest whimsy.”

“It’s not a joke—”

“Of course, of course, very admirable — and you have been championing that young man with the schemes, have you not? It’s an excellent cause.”

“He won’t fail.”

“Yes. Yes, well, we all hope for that.”

The words filled Adelaide with unexpected rage. I was at that address too! she wanted to shout. You weren’t all so complacent then.

“Perhaps you should take the west more seriously,” she said.

“I doubt anyone takes the west more seriously than the people in this room,” said Feodor. “After all, we all witnessed the scenes at the execution.”

Viviana, perhaps anticipating a showdown between father and daughter, clinked a spoon vigorously against her crystal glass.

“Goodness, aren’t we all bored of talking shop? I thought you ladies and gentlemen had enough of this political claptrap in the Chambers!”

Laughter and a few claps echoed her regaling, and Feodor’s brow relaxed as the servers stepped forward to clear away. He needs her, Adelaide thought. He needs my mother back on form and she appears to have gained it. Viviana was talking now to the Minister for Finance — a big coup at a dinner party — motioning to a server to refill their glasses, nodding with intense interest whilst half an eye skimmed the rest of the table.

The mourning period is done, she thought. Was that what she had come to find out?

Feodor stood, raising a glass of rich, golden weqa.

“Ladies and gentlemen, before we enjoy our next course, a few words, if I may. Tonight is a special night for myself and Viviana. We are delighted to have our daughter Adelaide back with us.” Viviana inclined her head, the picture of modest support. Feodor’s eyes rested upon Adelaide. She could read the duality, even if the rest of them could not: tension in the jaw, tolerance masking reprimand. Now mention Axel, she pleaded silently. Say just one thing.

“I had long hoped to lure her into the mysteries of politics and cannot overstate my joy that someone else has achieved this seemingly impossible conversion. Of course—” Feodor’s gaze roamed the room, a wink of humour now present. “I had hoped we would have similar objectives. We teach our children the art of independent thought and what does it beget us?” Laughter from the guests. Adelaide’s hands clenched under the table. “What can I say. We must give them their heads. Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed colleagues — a toast. To those that follow, and the great City that we bequeath them. May they too guard Osiris with a watchful eye and a strong heart.”

“To those that follow,” the table echoed.

“And to those who cannot,” murmured a voice. It came from Hildur Pek, whose eyes, no doubt in memory of her own loss, were wet. Hildur’s words accomplished what Feodor’s had not. Adelaide’s vision was no longer clear. As the servers re-entered the banquet hall, she stood up, muttered an excuse to the Councillor of Estates, and left the room.

Behind the closed door the noise of the diners faded. She held her wrist against her eyes and blinked quickly, catching the moisture before it could smudge her make-up. Closing her eyes, she drew long breaths.

“Are you alright?”

It was Tyr. She averted her face. She could not look at him.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Feodor sent me.”

“That’s ironic.” Not quite as ironic as Feodor’s speech, embracing one delinquent child as he erased another. In sudden anger she said, “How can you stand it?”

He cupped her face, turned it gently towards him. “I have to work, Adie. I’m not like you. I don’t come from a great family.”

“You’re part of one now. One way or another. Aren’t you glad?”

“In some ways,” he said soberly.

She knew she should draw away but found herself pushing into his hand. When she spoke her lips moved against his palm.

“Cover for me? Ten minutes and I’ll be gone.”

“Is that wise? Your being here tonight is an olive branch to Feodor. It will be worse than reversed if you leave now.” His grey eyes were concerned.

“Tyr,” she pleaded.

“Alright,” he said softly.

She kissed his palm and felt him tense. They stood there in the empty lamplit hallway, equally aware of the currents conflicting one another. Their situation was what it was; she had never thought of it as unjust, because she could not imagine permanence with anyone, not even with Tyr. The heat of her own breath came back to her lips, trapped by his palm. Why was tonight different? She felt close to giving up. She was ready to ask. Let me come over later, let me stay. I don’t care if they find out.

Tyr dropped his hand.

“Better go,” he said.

The words she might have said edged away. She took off her shoes and ran. She did not look back. Vikram had fastened the shoes earlier, when her hands were shaking. He had sat her on the bed and said give in a voice that brooked no argument. Watching his hands do up the buckles, one part of her mind had warned that this was not part of the bargain; it was not sex and it was not information. It was something else.

She ran to the end of the hallway. Heaved the doors open. The floor was slippery in her stockings. She passed the drapes, the alcoves, the Alaskan paintings. Old friends, old enemies. Here was a favourite hiding place, there a tunnel exit where the twins had been caught, Adelaide’s sandal sticking out under the curtain. Goran found them. He always did. He grabbed her foot and hauled her shrieking into the corridor whilst Axel hung onto her arms, Adelaide screaming, Axel yelling, no, don’t, don’t hurt her!

Goran would be loitering nearby. She picked up speed down the galleries. She couldn’t let him catch her. An archway neared on her right. A silk curtain sighed in its frame. Flouting all reason, her feet slowed. Behind that curtain was a passage to the twins’ old bedrooms. The twins thought they had discovered all the secrets of the Domain, but what if they hadn’t? What if the family had Axel right here, under her nose? What if he was straitjacketed, sedated, unable to call out?

Close to the ground, the silk wavered. Adelaide’s heart beat faster. The swelling folds gave way to the triangular head of a large orange cat. Its nose wrinkled as it sniffed the air. She sighed.

“Oh, you.”

Out of habit, she scooped the animal up, hugging it awkwardly with one arm, her shoes gripped in the other hand. The cat was warm and heavy; it had grown fat. The feel of its soft fur alleviated her panic. Now she felt silly to have been running, silly for her ideas. What could the family do to her, anyway? She wasn’t mad.

They reached the second floor unscathed. There was a strip of light under the door of her grandfather’s study. Quietly, Adelaide turned the handle. Leonid was in his favourite armchair. He wore a tartan dressing gown over his flannel trousers and his bare feet were propped up on a stool. A book lay open on his lap. His spectacles had slipped down the bridge of his nose.

She lowered the cat to the floor and gave it an encouraging nudge. It stalked inside. She pulled the door gently back. Soon, someone would come to look for her. Goran was patrolling. She could not stay.

“Who is it?”

She paused, the door ajar. “Feodor said you weren’t well.”

Her grandfather’s eyelids lifted. “Adie?” A smile pulled his lips back from his teeth. “My back’s been playing up a little, that’s all. I have some injections for when it gets difficult.”

“You mean morphine,” she said accusingly. His face had lost weight; the papery skin stretched taut over the egg of his head. “It must be bad.”

“I don’t need them often.” He patted the arm of the chair. “Why don’t you come and sit a minute.”

She curled her fingers around the door frame, reluctant to enter when she had been about to make her escape. Then she came in, shutting the door behind her. The room had not altered. It still smelt of tobacco and pine cones; it was still crowded with blueprints and piano scores.

Adelaide glanced to the piano in the corner, which her grandfather had played often when she was a child and less often as she grew older and his hands grew arthritic. The cat had slumped upon the stool. Its stomach began to rise and fall in contented waves of purrs.

“I’m amazed he’s still alive,” she said.

“I think he will outlive me,” her grandfather replied.

She went to sit at the foot of the armchair.

“You should renounce the rest of the family, Grandfather.” She tilted her head back, smiling. “Hiding out here, complaining of back pain… I think you’re trying to escape.”

He chuckled.

“It is the duty of the young to rebel. I am too old for all that, Adie. I need my pipe, and a good bottle of octopya.” He gestured to the table. “Perhaps you will do the honours.”

She prepared two measures of liqueur. Her grandfather inhaled deeply before taking a sip. Adelaide nestled her glass between her knees. She had always loved this room. It felt both old and ageless. A thing treated with attentive care. A thing from a time before Osiris. Now the room seemed smaller too, or herself too large for it.

“This house is my bequest to you all,” said her grandfather softly. “But you, Adie. I know what the Domain means to you. You feel as though you have surrendered your agency. You prefer to live in a cage of your own making rather than one designed by somebody else. Tell me, what brings you here tonight?”

The heater was warm on her face and neck. “I don’t know, Grandfather. It’s a peace gesture, isn’t it. And partly for information — Vikram thought it would be useful. And… Axel. I suppose I thought it might help, to come back.”

“Did you?”

She fell silent.

“You don’t believe Axel is dead,” he said.

Careful, she thought. She realized then how far she had come. This was her grandfather who she loved and trusted.

“I don’t feel that he is,” she said. “In my heart.”

“Sanjay Hanif will find out. He is a good man.”

“So everyone says.”

The marmalade cat woke, arched its back so that all of the hairs separated along its spine, and hopped off the stool. It regarded Adelaide with blank eyes. She stroked its head automatically.

“I find it hard to believe that the boy would go away without any communication to you, Adie. Even through his delirium, he was aware that there was someone he should remember.”

“You saw him after Radir’s last session, didn’t you?”

“Yes. That was the last visit I made and he was very secretive. There was one room in the apartment which was locked. Axel did not respond when I asked him what was inside. Now, I think perhaps he was planning something.”

Oh, he was. He was.

“I should have gone,” she said. “I just — I couldn’t.”

“You took care of him in other ways.” He paused. “The bond between you twins was so strong, a break was bound to be dramatic. If he had regained his mind, I suspect the reunification would have been as abrupt.”

She imagined the scene: Axel’s return, healthy, jubilant. But almost at once another image replaced it: Axel in a balloon, at the heart of a storm, flung this way and that. Her grandfather packed another layer of tobacco into his pipe and lit it.

“Bring me the photograph, Adelaide.”

She knew at once which photograph he meant and went to get it from a drawer in the cabinet. The image was faded with age but the construct was still clear: a man, a woman and a small child standing in front of a huge stone building. The building was hewn out of a mountain, and the mountain rose upward in striates of grey and green.

Leonid held the photograph in both hands.

“Do you know where this was taken?”

“Yes, grandfather. That’s the Osiris Facility, in Patagonia.”

“I was born in that town. For a few years, the whole of our family lived there whilst the City was under construction. Imagine it Adie, to see the pyramids rising from the sea for the first time — what a sight that must have been!”

Adelaide leaned on the arm of Leonid’s chair, resting her chin upon her hands.

“I wish I could have seen it.”

“As do I. As do I… but much of the footage was lost. A great tragedy. I often wonder how they first found the site, those entrepreneurs of the Board. There were old sea maps, of course, but even then, navigation was almost impossible. The sea was ravenous. The winds were wild. Instruments ran haywire, driven mad by all the broken currents in the atmosphere — oh, it must have been an adventure, Adie. But they found it — the fabled Atum Shelf.”

A wistful expression occupied his face and Adelaide knew that he was seeing those strange, wonderful visions from decades ago. The cat’s purrs reverberated against her legs, a warm, steady rhythm that reminded her of time moving on. But she could not tear herself away. Not yet.

“Tell me more about Patagonia, Grandfather.”

“Ah, Patagonia… it was a beautiful place. Yes, I remember land. I remember the rocks, especially. The sound of the waves crashing on the shore. Of course, even then the storms were terrible and pirates were forever raiding the local towns. My grandparents died there, they were too nervous to take to sea. So they never saw Osiris. But I believe they were happy, and proud.”

He pushed the photograph abruptly towards Adelaide.

“All those people will be dead now,” he muttered.

“But some of the refugees must have come from Patagonia?”

“They came from everywhere, Adie, everywhere. Every place was destroyed. You’ve been taught all of this.”

“Yes, I know.”

He passed a hand over his face. Adelaide put the photograph back, afraid that it was distressing him. She regretted now that she had kept him talking.

“You still miss Second Grandmother, don’t you?” she asked quietly.

“Every day. I miss a lot of things, Adie.”

“Land?”

“Land, yes. The things that were… the things that should have been.”

She waited, aware that there was more, not wishing to rush him. The pipe clacked between his teeth.

“Osiris was an experiment,” he said. “To herald a new era. Osiris was meant to reunite nations in a way that had long been lost. To bring the hemispheres together again. That was the intention.” He was silent for a moment. “But the world changed too quickly to see if it worked. And the City has changed because of that.”

She looked at him, not understanding. He said, “Your generation is the evidence of it.”

The words were gentle, but without comfort. Adelaide felt as though he was trying to explain something to her, something important, but he wanted her to work out what it was for herself. She was ashamed to ask; to confirm her ignorance.

“I should leave before Feodor finds me here,” she said.

“Come and visit again some time.”

She crouched, and took her grandfather’s mottled hand.

“You could always visit me.”

He chuckled. “At your fancy apartment? I hope you are enjoying it, by the way. But no. I can keep an eye from afar. I follow your adventures rather avidly in the feed of — what is it, that rag — the Daily Flotsam.”

“Magda Linn.”

“That’s the woman. She has a void where some of us have a semblance of moral integrity. One has to admire her for it.”

“Admire, and destroy,” said Adelaide, standing. She dropped a kiss on the top of his head. “I really must go.”

Leonid’s hand curled around hers, holding it fast. The joints were swollen. They looked painful.

“Before you go,” he said. “I would like you to promise me one thing.”

“What is it?”

“You’re a smart girl. Young, impulsive. You must be wise as well. Don’t be too quick to judge, when the time comes. Don’t be too quick to judge me.”

“Why would I judge you, Grandfather?”

He squeezed her hand with his trembling one.

“Adelaide.” Her name alone seemed to cost him a great effort. She was startled to see the change in his expression — as though he were abruptly battling great pain.

“Grandfather, do you need the morphine? Where is it?”

The words rushed out of him.

“Adie, the truth is this family has done some terrible things. Terrible things.”

“Do you mean the execution, is that it? You mean the west?” Her heart pounded. “Axel?”

Leonid shook his head, impatiently. Still clinging to Adelaide’s hand, he pulled her very close. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

“I have to tell you something, Adie. I have to tell you. There was a boat. Years and years ago. Long before you were born. But after — after the Silence. There was a boat.”

A tingling sensation spread from Adelaide’s scalp, to her neck, one by one down her vertebrae. When she spoke, she struggled to keep her voice steady.

“I don’t understand. There were no boats after the Silence. There was no contact.”

There couldn’t have been.

“That’s what they all think. But there was one. It came many miles — an inconceivable feat of seafaring! They had been at sea for over two hundred days. And they got almost as far as the ring-net. And then — everyone on board — every one of them — killed! Shot in the dark. The boat was sunk, out beyond the Atum Shelf. We couldn’t let them go. We couldn’t bring them in. It was a great secret, d’you see, a secret. No-one can ever know about that boat. No-one. No-one can find out.”

He’s starting to ramble, she realized. He’s old. He’s old, and his imagination is bringing dark things into the room. That’s what it is. It must be. And yet—

“Where was the boat from, Grandfather?”

There was an almost cunning look about the old man now.

“The Boreal States,” he whispered. “From Siberia. They came to look—”

A cough seized his throat.

“Grandfather.” Her own voice was trembling now. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Nothing more to tell.” He coughed. “Nothing but the white—”

His eyes bulged. Adelaide ran to get him a glass of water. She held it to his lips, but the coughs still hacked at his throat, and he could not swallow.

“I’ll get someone—”

“No.” He grabbed her wrist. “No — no.” The fit subsided. He drank a little water. The gulps resounded in the room. The cat’s purrs grew stronger. “Nothing but the white fly,” Leonid muttered.

“You’re talking in riddles, Grandfather. What is the white fly?”

He interrupted. “No, that’s not important. Not what I meant to say at all. What I meant to say is, whatever our family has done, they would not hurt Axel. No one would ever hurt your brother. Believe that, if you believe nothing else.” His face was open again; relaxed and smiling. She could not quite believe that the last couple of minutes had been real.

Leonid tapped her hand. “Goran is upstairs. I know his tread. Go now, Adie, if you don’t want them to find you.”

“But the boat—”

“What boat? What are you talking about?” He looked confused. “Remember, my girl, my darling girl. No decision is lightly undertaken. Reversal is — impossible.”

“I’ll remember.” She was worried and frightened, and wanted to say more, but there seemed no conceivable response. She doubted her own sanity. She needed to get out. “I promise. Goodbye, Grandfather.”

She checked there was nobody in the corridor outside before shutting the door behind her. She was no closer to finding out what had happened to Axel; if he had left or if he had been taken. And now, it appeared, there were other secrets that her grandfather wanted her to know — secrets, if he was to be believed, too terrible to speak. Secrets that had walked the deepest trenches of his mind for years, the way cantering horses had followed Axel across the waves.

There was no sign of Goran.

Barefoot, Adelaide ran down the staircase. The Domain was quiet, as though it awaited a long overdue arrival. Or a departure, she thought.

“Axel?” she whispered. Her voice echoed back at her: Axel Axel Axel Axel. She called again, louder.

“Axel!”

Nothing. She stepped out of the front door and was faintly surprised, as always, to find the lift before her. The cables clunked. The glass car began to rise. Adelaide slipped on her shoes, leaving the straps undone. She had a terrifying sense of things diminishing. A pan of events from before her time receding into the distance, like stills from an archive reel being blotted out: pixel by pixel, image by image. At the very end, last to disappear, was a tiny Siberian boat.

30 ¦ VIKRAM

Winter had Osiris under siege. Daylight was fleeting. The entire city glittered, like an ice ship dredged up from a century’s slumber in the deeps. At the shelter, people arrived with ice in their hair and beards. The doctors treated cases of frostbite. Sometimes they had to cut off fingers, toes, parts of limbs. The nights were loud and long with the sounds of hacking coughs. Vikram and Shadiyah did the bed rounds with extra blankets, tucking them tightly around the thin shivering bodies, feeding bowls of soup where hands were too shaky to hold a spoon. Not everyone who came in made it through to the morning.

Late one night he arrived at the Red Rooms. Adelaide opened the door and exclaimed.

“What happened to you?”

He looked down and saw that the blood had seeped through his jacket and there was dried blood all over his right hand.

“I’m okay. Marete patched me up.”

She took his bloodied hand and led him inside, easing the jacket carefully from his shoulders and placing it on the back of the futon. A month ago she wouldn’t have let it touch the floor. She lifted his bandaged arm.

“Do you remember the guy I told you about last week?” he said. “The one using the shelter, that we weren’t sure was genuine?”

“I remember. He did this?”

“He was an ex-Juraj gang member. Shadiyah caught him trying to recruit some kids. When we challenged him, he pulled a knife.”

“Stars, Vik. Does it hurt? Have they given you painkillers?”

“Marete gave me a local anaesthetic.”

He didn’t tell her of the terror that had blocked his throat when he saw the knife, not for himself but for the people he worked with, the people sleeping in their beds that he was meant to be protecting. It was terror that had delayed his responses for a full two seconds. That was the reason he had been injured; he’d been too slow.

“I don’t like to think of you in this kind of danger,” said Adelaide.

“Our security man caught him. The police have taken him away now.”

“You’re shivering.”

“I’m cold.”

But he could feel himself sweating; his head felt like it was on fire.

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

After she had washed the dried blood from his hands, she coaxed him into the bath and they sat opposite one another, her ankles resting on his thighs. Adelaide turned on the jacuzzi and foam billowed on the surface of the bubbling water. She was trying to help but he could not relax.

“Being here — all this luxury — it makes me feel so guilty,” he said.

“Hush. Think about what you do every day. You’ve earned it, far more than anyone else I know.”

“It’s difficult to think like that when you see people freezing to death.”

“Not the ones who come to your shelters.”

“Not all of them.”

Now that he was back in Adelaide’s world, Adelaide’s life, something was bothering him.

“You know that guy we were talking to at the party last week? The one that works for your father?”

Adelaide drew circles in the bubbles.

“You mean Tyr? What about him?”

Vikram tried to recall the scene, the smooth expression of the man’s face, the same man who had thrown him out of here all those weeks ago.

“This might sound weird but… I got the impression that he was spying on you. If he tries to get anything out of you about the aid schemes, you will tell me?”

“I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about, Vik.”

“He works for your father. Your father hates me.”

“Alright. I’ll keep an eye on Tyr.”

“Thank you.”

He sank lower amidst the bubbles. He wanted nothing more than to let his mind unravel, drift, forget.

“You still look worried,” said Adelaide.

“I am worried. I’m worried about the aid schemes. That they’re not doing enough.”

“Would more money help? We could canvas. Approach private funders. We could do other things.”

“I don’t think it would make a difference. I mean, yes, of course we can use more money, it’s just — I think the problem’s deeper than that.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know. This sounds crazy, but sometimes Adelaide, I honestly think people want me to fail.”

“Then you’ll prove them wrong.”

“I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I was insane to think I could make a difference.”

“Vik.” She leaned forward and ran her hands up his good arm. “I understand. You know, it’s like when Axel — when he vanished. I thought, Osiris is so huge. How on earth will I begin to look for him? But you have to start somewhere.”

She smiled at him, encouraging, and he nodded tiredly. She was right.

“I had a letter from my mother today,” she said. “Viviana is disowning me.”

“Will you be able to tell the difference?”

He wondered after he’d spoken if the question sounded callous, but Adelaide did not look offended.

“Not really. But it’s more of a statement, coming from her. She said she was disgusted with my behaviour at the dinner party.”

“I was proud of what you said.”

“It was unwise.” Her wet fingers trailed his chest as she leaned back, mirroring him. “But you know, Vik — more and more I can’t bring myself to care. About any of it. I missed Gudrun’s party last week. She’ll take it as a snub but I couldn’t bear to stand there, seeing the same faces, hearing the same conversations… Jan’s calling me every day about organising her twenty-second, I keep making promises and I haven’t done a thing.”

“Then don’t. Let them fend for themselves.”

She ran her toes down the inside of his thigh.

“That’s not very altruistic, is it?”

Vikram captured her nudging foot in his hands. There were calluses on the tendon where one of her absurd shoes had rubbed. Adelaide wriggled her toes, trying to free herself.

“That tickles!”

“Do you hate being tickled?” he asked.

“Ye— no. No, I don’t. Stop it!”

He moved his finger slowly along the inside of her foot. Adelaide solved her dilemma by sloshing water at him. He cupped a plume of foam and sent it back. Adelaide returned a larger plume. They sank back and she rested her ankles once again on his legs.

“Adelaide, there’s something I need to—”

“Vikram, have you ever heard—”

The sound of popping bubbles filled the room. Steam was beginning to varnish the tinted window-wall.

“What is it?” Vikram asked.

“You say first.”

“No, you go.”

Adelaide pushed a damp strand of hair behind her ear. She was wearing her serious face.

“Vik, you won’t fall in love with me, will you?”

He laughed. “No.” He thought about turning the question on her, teasingly, but she had a habit of only getting her own jokes.

“It would be a shame if you did,” she said. “Because I can’t care about anybody.”

“I can see how that would be inconvenient.” He flicked foam at her. “I’ll try and restrain my passion for you for as long as possible.”

“Don’t be a gull. I have a reason, you know.”

He sensed that she was, in her convoluted way, trying to tell him something. He remembered knocking on her door in the middle of the night, a stranger who might have been anyone, an amusement for an insomniac girl. Here he was in the austere beauty of her bathroom, their skin brushing, almost fused by the distortions of water. There must have been a transition, a moment of impasse. He searched his memory; he could not find it.

“Well, what’s the reason?”

“Osiris — Osiris demands some sacrifice on our part. It’s not a lovers’ city. That’s the price we pay for our hospitality here.”

“Is that your doctrine?”

“It has to be.”

“I can’t agree.” Osiris takes so much from us, he thought. Surely what Adelaide was talking about — intimacy, companionship in the night — was one of the few things they could hope for.

“What’s your doctrine?” she asked.

“I don’t see things as clear-cut as you do.”

“Things aren’t always complicated. Sometimes they just are.” Adelaide popped a bubble with one fingernail. “Anyway, I interrupted you, before. What were you going to say?”

Vikram thought of Axel’s letter. He should tell Adelaide. Stars, he should really tell her. Now was as good a time as ever.

She smiled at him, waiting. He tugged her leg, pulling her towards him. Her body slid underwater until he could see only her hair, spreading out in a three dimensional fan through the bubbles. She resurfaced in front of him, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. He kissed her back. “Nothing important,” he said.

“Tell me.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, what were you going to say before? You changed your question.”

“Oh. That. I was going to ask if you’d ever heard of something called white fly.”

“What’s white fly?”

“Just a phrase I heard and I didn’t know what it was. I wondered if it was a western thing?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Adelaide twisted in the water so that she could lie against his chest. He poured a globule of shampoo into his hand and began to lather her hair.

“That feels nice. You know Vik, what you’re doing — it’s really, really important. You mustn’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“I’m glad you think so. Without your blessing, I probably would have quit the entire programme.”

“Ha ha. No, I mean it.”

His hands, massaging her scalp, slowed. Despite his efforts to keep it dry, the bandage on his arm was soaked and had turned pale pink. He could see tiny strands of red diffusing through the water.

“Adelaide, what are you doing with me? Honestly?”

She had her eyes closed, so as not to get soap in them.

“You can’t ask me that.”

“I just did.”

“Well, I can’t answer. I told you I wouldn’t lie, didn’t I?”

Vikram rinsed the soap from her hair, watching the water turn opaque.

“What are you doing with me?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But you know what, Adie? You could do so many things, if you wanted to. Not what your family wants. Not like Linus, or Dmitri. But things that make a real difference. Think about that, will you?”

Hours later when it was still dark he woke and Adelaide was sitting upright, her body pale in the twisted sheets, her eyes wide and staring.

“Adie, what is it?”

“I had a nightmare.”

He put a hand gently on her shoulder. Her skin was covered with sweat.

“Tell me.”

“There was this giant thing — crawling, crawling everywhere, up the towers and over the bridges, and I knew wherever I ran, however fast, it would find me. It had these twitching — feelers, and its wings made a noise — an awful scraping noise. It plucked people out of the towers and grabbed them in its mouth and then it flew them out past the ring-net and into the sea and it — drowned them.”

He squeezed her shoulder.

“It’s just a dream. It’s over now.”

“A dream?” Her voice was uncertain, barely audible.

“Monsters in the night, Adie.”

He pulled her against him and they lay down, his body curled around hers. Her back was cool and damp. For minutes, hours, he held her like that while she trembled, unprotesting, and he wondered what it was that could make her so afraid when he’d never known her to be scared of anything.

31 ¦ ADELAIDE

As Lao sat down next to her on the bench, five or six butterflies rose in a small explosion of colour. Lao ignored them. He went through the usual routine of taking out his Surfboard. She knew that he was scanning the paths from behind his dark glasses, listening carefully for sounds of eavesdroppers.

“Lovely afternoon,” he said pleasantly.

“You said you had information. Did you check Radir’s client list?”

“I do, and I did. I managed to track down the woman who worked for your brother. Not either of the two that you employed, but another. I was right. She is an airlift.”

“She worked for him? Was she one of Radir’s patients?”

“She wasn’t on his list, unless she used a pseudonym. Lots of them do. However there is a connection. At one stage she worked as a cleaner for the reef farm, which is, as you know, adjacent to Radir’s offices. I would venture to hypothesise that this is how they met.”

Adelaide felt a spark of triumph.

“I want to meet her.”

“You can’t. She was very reluctant to talk, very scared. She spoke to me only on the condition that this was the last contact she had with any of the Rechnovs. I gave her my word.”

“You had no right to do that,” she said furiously.

Lao removed his glasses, polished them, put them back on.

“I have recovered all the relevant information, Miss Mystik. This woman ran errands for your brother, odd things which sound, to be frank, the product of insanity. There was one particular incident, however, that I believe is of import. Axel came across some documents. Paper documents, I should add. He had them with him when she arrived one day at the penthouse — this was some months ago. Usually, she said, Axel was exceptionally secretive, and would have hidden the documents from her sight. But he was excited. Elated, she said. He told her straight away that he had found something for the horses.”

A Red Pierrot landed on Adelaide’s hand. She stared at its spots.

“That could have been anything.”

“So one might think.” Lao cleared his throat; a small, anticipatory noise. “But the woman had a glimpse of the papers before he put them into an envelope. She said they looked official. There was an unusual motif in the top right corner — an insect — and each paper was stamped with the same legend: Operation Whitefly. Does that mean anything to you?”

In the warm, sticky heat, Adelaide felt suddenly clammy. She shook her head, intensely grateful for her own dark glasses. Not by a flicker in her face could she let Lao see her recognition.

“Axel told her he had been instructed to take the papers to the Silk Vault, for safekeeping.”

“He means that the horses told him.”

“Either way, we must assume that he took them there.”

Lao looked at her expectantly. She realized that an answer was necessary.

“Well? What do we do now?”

“I cannot make enquiries about a vault in Axel Rechnov’s name — or under an alias, for that matter — without raising Hanif’s awareness. This line of investigation, should you choose to pursue it, will take time. We will have to bribe someone on the inside of the vault. I will have to identify a suitable candidate, which will involve background research — among other things.”

“And? If it does exist?”

“I will not be able to access it. I imagine, however, that you might.”

She looked at him quickly. “Because there’s always a secondary holder.”

Lao flicked a Monarch from his knee. “That is correct. Presumably it will be yourself. I suspect, Ms Mystik, that whatever lies within that vault may offer us valuable clues as to why Axel disappeared — or why, we have to consider, he was removed.”

“But the woman said he was acting for the horses. Axel probably had no idea what he had found. Anyway, ‘Operation Whitefly’—it could be anything — or nothing at all.”

“Precisely. Whether Axel realized or not, finding those documents could have placed him in danger.” For the first time, Lao looked at her straight on. “Do you want to proceed?”

Adelaide met the blank discs of Lao’s shades. She could not decide if there was a note of glee in his voice — the delight of discovery. Whitefly thudded in her head like a hammer.

Think, Adelaide.

If there was a vault, and if there was anything inside, Lao would expect to be party to it. And if what Axel had found had anything to do with what her grandfather had been talking about — she was potentially in a very dangerous position herself.

She could leave the vault be. That would be the safest option. She could pull Lao off the case altogether. But could she guarantee that his suspicions had not been raised? That he might not try to find the vault on his own?

“Find out if the vault exists. Do what you have to do. Let me know as soon as you have news.”

“It will cost, of course. My fee and the insider’s. You will trust me to negotiate the price?”

“Of course. Money is no object. I want you to do something else as well.”

“Which is?”

“I want you to search the prisons.”

“You think he may be underwater?”

“I don’t know what I think.” She struggled to keep her voice from rising. “Just search them. All of them.”

“Very well.” He tapped the Surfboard. “I’ll—”

“You’ll be in touch.”

Lao left first. He walked off in his usual easy, inconspicuous manner. After he’d gone she wandered through the garden, hoping to lose her thoughts in the succulent lure of the greenery. She ducked under a low hanging branch and into a canopied grove. The rustle of wings filled the air. The husks of cocoons hung from branches, split down the middle where the insects had crawled out.

She noticed a scattering of dead butterflies on the ground. Some were entire, perfect but motionless. Others had lost a wing. One was flapping. She crouched and scooped it up, careful not to handle its wings because the membrane was so thin, the scales would fall away at a touch. It lay in her palms, barely moving. It could not fly. She did not know what to do with it and after a moment she laid it back upon the ground.

There was a boat, Adie… an inconceivable feat of seafaring!

As she walked on, more dead ones littered the edges of the path. The thoughts that she had struggled to suppress ever since visiting the Domain rushed back to the front of her mind. Why had her grandfather told her about the Siberian boat? Did he want to be found out, or did he want the family to be found out — who else was in on this secret? Her father? Her mother? Linus? And if the family had authorised the massacre of an entire crew of Siberians, what else were they capable of?

She thought of the vault, of Axel holding documents that he did not understand, or only understood when he was lucid. She imagined him sitting on the balcony, smiling that half smile, when assassins broke in. Or perhaps he’d been afraid, perhaps he’d tried to hide — alone and muddled, unable to escape, running from room to room. Perhaps they’d dragged him away screaming, thrown him into an underwater cell where no one would ever hear him scream again.

Perhaps they’d killed him after all.

No. She remembered her grandfather’s words. No one would ever hurt your brother. She had to believe that.

Her twin was still alive; the connection was there, she felt it. Some part of him must have known the power of those documents. He’d left on purpose. He’d gone into hiding until she found him.

And then?

The answer was obvious. And then he planned to leave Osiris. With her. Because if there had been one boat, might not there have been others? Who else was out there, waiting to be found?

She kept walking. The path through the farm was circular; soon she was back to where she had started. Through the foliage she saw the external walls of the tower, their hexagonal pattern repeated over and over again. Endless repetition, the way a wheel turned, or a horse’s hooves beat.

She could not get away from one inescapable fact. If her grandfather was telling the truth, if there really had been a boat — then everything Adelaide had ever been told was a lie.

32 ¦ VIKRAM

A light mist trickled into the harbour as their speedboat approached. It blurred the hulls, red with rust, of gigantic ships whose load lines sat high above the water. It touched cool fingers to Vikram’s face. Only the cries of circling gulls broke the silence, and there was nobody present to hear them, except for Vikram and Adelaide, and Adelaide’s boatman.

The craft pulled up alongside a jetty which sloped down into the water. A maze of piers and walkways crisscrossed the harbour. Most were visible; some, more dangerously, were submerged. Vikram and Adelaide climbed out. They wore thermal wetsuits: Vikram’s red, Adelaide’s green. Adelaide’s hair swirled in the wind as she crouched to say something to the boatman. Vikram stood motionless, struck by the stillness, and the quiet.

“Let’s go!”

Adelaide started walking. Vikram gave chase and they ran, shrieking, to the jetty’s edge. The sea before them had a brownish hue; their forms were murky shadows.

“You know smugglers used to come here,” said Adelaide. “Before the border.”

“Maybe they still do.”

“No. It’s deserted now. Sometimes this place gives me — a queer feeling.”

They turned back and crossed a bridge into a floating cabin. Inside sat two identical waterbikes, sleek and silver. At the sight of those beautiful crafts, Vikram felt a surge in his head like the release of a pressure valve.

It had been building over the last few weeks. Subtly, so subtly that at first he barely recognized them, the responsibilities had been lining up: to the west and to the City. He needed this break.

Adelaide had mounted her bike. “What are you waiting for?”

He climbed onto the other bike and squeezed the handlebars, as she did. The motor hummed into life. They eased the bikes down a ramp and bobbed into the water, the aerodynamic bodies lying low. They emerged on the opposite side of the cabin, out into the mist.

Adelaide leaned over and grabbed Vikram’s handlebars. She had tucked her hair under a green hood.

“You ready?” she said.

Vikram pulled a pair of goggles over his eyes. “Absolutely.”

“Watch out for floating junk. This place is a scrap heap.”

She squeezed the handlebars, increasing the power. He did the same and felt the engine reverberating. Ripples of froth welled around both crafts. They leapt forward.

Out of the fog loomed the vast shapes of forsaken ships. Vikram glanced up as they skirted the length of a tanker. Its parts creaked like old bones. The hull was bleached with salt and green with algae. Despite their physical deterioration, the ships seemed to him to be sleeping, still semi-conscious.

The bike veered close to the hull on a wave. He edged left, maintaining a wider corridor. Ahead he watched the streamlined shape of Adelaide and her bike weaving under the shadows of the abandoned vessels. Several times he had to angle around debris or nudge the bike over a hidden walkway. The air on his face was freezing but it was good to be out here, with the elements, on his own terms. Winter and work had been choking him.

They passed between the last two ships, prows angled together to form a gateway. Before them lay the open sea. The mist was clearing. Some way ahead, Adelaide stopped and wheeled around.

“I’ll race you to the ring-net!”

She was already leaping forward in the water, streaking away so fast that the spray almost obscured her completely. He gave chase. The wind battled him, the waterbike bucked and rolled beneath him and at first he felt almost sick, but then he got used to it, and was aware only of speed.

Minutes passed but it felt like nothing. He was filled with exhilaration. He opened his mouth and had to shout, not words, just joyful noise.

Suddenly there it was, a vast dark wall rising twenty metres out of the water. It loomed closer and closer. The sea soaked him. Salt was bright in his mouth. Adelaide wasn’t far ahead now, swivelling left and right and left again, over the waves, down into the troughs. Glancing up he saw it for the first time in daylight, a series of interlocking chains: the ring-net. He was on Adelaide’s tail, in her slipstream, close enough to hear her laugh above the sea and the wind and the metallic music. Then she cut sharply to the right and he was under it. Horror clenched him. He was going to crash. He wrenched the handlebars with all his strength, panic sucking the oxygen from his lungs. The Dolphin careered right until he was practically lying along the waves, and the engine cut.

He wrested the bike upright, sucking in air, scared and exhilarated in equal measure. Five metres away, Adelaide’s waterbike was also at rest. She leaned over and touched the ring-net with one hand. He knew she was grinning.

“I won!” she shouted.

He looked up. The chains of the ring-net clinked and chimed, the whole construction rippling like a ponderous sheet of material. The metal was covered in algae. The net stretched from outpost to outpost in a giant fence, but wherever they were, the nearest one was too far away to see. So was the border, which ran up to the ring-net. He looked beyond Adelaide. The green lights he’d seen before illuminated the ring-net’s path. It curved away as far as he could see, cutting through the ocean until it was lost in the distance.

“Quite colossal, isn’t it?” Adelaide cried. “Keeps out the sharks.”

“Not always,” he yelled back. Adelaide nudged her Dolphin the short distance to him, and took hold of his handlebars once again. They rose and fell together on the waves.

“What?”

Beneath the goggles her face was pink and glowing.

“I said not always,” he repeated. “I saw sharks when I was underwater.”

Her mouth opened dramatically.

“Big ones?”

“Big enough.”

He felt a sense of menace, knowing what was on the other side of the net, and yet knowing nothing at the same time. The significance of the net overwhelmed him. Even here, in the middle of the ocean, with as much space around him as he could have desired, he was both locked in and locked out.

“If anything got through the net now we wouldn’t know anyway. Not since the alarm system broke.”

Vikram stared at the interlocking chains.

“It doesn’t work?”

“Hasn’t for years. My grandfather told me. Can’t even zap a shark.”

She pushed a button on his handlebars, then on hers. The Dolphins turned luminous. Against the brightness, the rest of the sea turned black. He realized it was already nearing dusk, and he was cold.

“You’ve not looked back,” Adelaide said. “Axel never looked back. Always out there, beyond the net.”

“You came out here together?”

“We did everything together.”

She was looking past him, back the other way. He spun the Dolphin around. With the onset of dusk it was difficult to distinguish the outlines of the towers; he saw only a geometric construction of light. Osiris a blazing star in the crepuscular ocean. If anyone had been left to find us, he thought, it wouldn’t have been hard.

“Have you ever gone past the ring-net?” he asked Adelaide. She did not respond, gazing at the City with an intensity that was uncanny. He repeated his question. He thought she hadn’t heard, but as she gunned her Dolphin into life she yelled, “There’s nothing out there.”

They sped back across no-man’s-land. He felt the gridlock of the City pulling him in. Adelaide poised rigidly on her bike, her head pushing forward. He saw huge waves breaking against her bike, and prepared himself for the same impact. It never came. It took him a few seconds to realize she must be deliberately colliding with the swells. At the same time he realized she had speeded up.

They were approaching the harbour. Vikram accelerated. His bike skimmed the sea like a petrel, almost flying now. Adelaide remained ahead. He could see the gateway from where they had ridden out before, the two ships pointed towards one another. The gap seemed narrower, and she was travelling far faster, hurtling at impossible speed, plunging her bike nose first, leaping up again, almost invisible behind a mask of spray.

“Adelaide!” he shouted.

She shot across the final stretch of water.

The bike and the hull smashed together. She was a bolt of green through the air — his own bike was charging forward, some part of his brain telling him to slow down and she was falling, almost gracefully. She was face down in the water. She didn’t move.

The waves raised her and lowered her, and her body bumped once against the ship’s side.

Vikram surged his bike forward. His heartbeat trebled in his chest. He leaned into the water and grabbed her arm, pulled her almost viciously towards him. Her body was cold and awkward. Not again, not Adelaide too. The suit, he told himself, it’s just the suit, she’s warm inside it. Please, not Adelaide too. The bike tipped as he hauled her up, both arms around her. Stars, if she was dead they would never believe he hadn’t killed her. He pressed his hands beneath her ribs and jerked, once, twice. They’d drown him the way they’d drowned Eirik. Please breathe. Her chest heaved and her mouth opened and water poured out. She gasped, choked, spat. Spasms racked her body.

He pushed her goggles up. Her eyes wheeled crazily, then settled on his face. She tried to say something. It might have been “A.”

“Adelaide,” he said weakly.

“I’m okay,” she rasped. “I’m fine.” She glared up at him. “I’m fine!”

Relief gave way to anger in a blink.

“Your bike fucking isn’t, though, is it?”

The Dolphin floated listlessly on its side, handles twisted. Its light had gone out.

“What the fuck were you doing?” he shouted.

Adelaide’s head was shaking. He was clasping her so tightly she could barely move. Her body was shaking too and he felt each tremor hard against his ribs.

“Let me go.” Her teeth chattered.

“You’re going to have to ride back on my bike.”

“It’s not your bike,” she said. “It’s Axel’s.”

He wanted to hit her. He looked around him and saw the waves slapping against the ships. Seagulls rose from their perches to circle overhead. Adelaide gasped as the birds came into her line of sight.

“We have to get back,” he said. “Can you climb on behind me?”

She hauled herself up, wrapped her arms around his waist. One of the birds dove low and she screamed and lashed out at it.

“Leave it alone!”

“I hate them.”

“It’s not going to hurt you.”

He nudged the bike across to the other Dolphin and tried to start it but they both knew that it was futile.

“The speedboat can pick it up,” she said.

But a storm was coming in and they knew that as well. Vikram did not respond. If he opened his mouth he would say unforgivable things. He wove back through the harbour with grim determination. When they reached the pier the man in the speedboat gave a shout of mingled relief and alarm.

“What happened to the other bike?”

“It broke,” said Adelaide shortly. They climbed into the speedboat stern, shivering. The boat took off at once. Incoming hail chased them all the way back, sweeping across the ocean and the harbour before it slammed into the walls of the pyramids. The deluge caught them moments before they banged to a halt against the first decking they found. Adelaide leapt out and darted inside. Storm sirens began a wailing crescendo. The boatman cursed as he secured the craft with fingers already deadened by the cold, Vikram straining to hold the boat steady. Hailstones whipped against them. The decking was treacherous with ice, and they almost slipped running inside. Vikram heaved the doors shut.

The sirens ceased. The door sealed with a soft hiss. Vikram listened to the barrage, gasping for breath, praying that none of his friends were outside.

They were on an empty floor. Lifts and stairs ran up the back of the tower, a couple of flat trolleys were parked by the lift. Faint sounds of machinery, the lifts and other workings, filtered down the building.

“We’ll have to wait it out,” said the boatman. His voice echoed in the open space. “Unless you two want to hop on a shuttle line?”

Vikram glanced down at the puddle forming around his feet. A watery trail crossed the concrete floor to the other side of the tower, where Adelaide sat on the first steps of the stairwell, arms wrapped around her knees. Her eyes were cloudy.

“We’ll wait,” he said. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Probably some kind of storage place,” said the boatman.

Vikram slumped against the wall. It was warm compared to outside, but Adelaide should get dry or she’d catch hypothermia. She didn’t look like she wanted to move though, and he told himself it was her own stupid fault. Nils had been right about her.

He had seen his friend a couple of days ago. Vikram was holding a meeting of representatives from the west who would be heading up work parties in the spring. He’d asked Nils to come, but Nils was being oddly cagey, and had only shown up afterwards. He had brought fish from Market Circle. They drank coral tea and ate the fish with their fingers in Vikram’s office.

“What’s your new place like?” Nils asked.

“You know. Big. Clean. It’s nice.”

“I bet.”

“When are you going to come and see it?”

Nils wiped his fingers on the already greasy paper.

“Whenever you have the time.”

“I always have the time.”

“I thought you were all taken up with the crazy girl these days.”

“She can be demanding,” Vikram acknowledged. Nils laughed.

“Fucking Citizens, huh. So what’s she really like? You still think she’s a bitch?”

A bone was stuck in Vikram’s teeth. He worked his tongue, trying to free it. He wanted to explain that there was a connection between himself and Adelaide, but could not find the words to justify it.

“She has her moments.”

He hesitated. Nils, taking a large bite of white fish and batter, raised an eyebrow.

“I think she has a secret. Something she’s not telling.”

“Are you kidding me? She’s a Rechnov, they probably have more skeletons than they have closets, and that’s saying something. What, you think she’s going to bare her soul to you?”

“No, of course not. It’s just—” He stopped. It was no good, he did not even know what he meant himself. “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to tell you. I found something. A letter. It’s from Axel to Adelaide.”

Saying it aloud, he felt the heat of it, transferred from pocket to drawer to pocket and back, burning a hole in every garment it touched. Nils shrugged.

“So give it to Adelaide.”

“It’s a goodbye note. You know what that means.”

“Then you’d better burn it,” said Nils.

“I can’t burn it, it’s probably the last thing he ever wrote.”

“Exactly. You want to be caught with that on your hands?”

Vikram’s hand went to his jacket.

“Actually, I have it here—”

“Are you crazy?” Nils hissed. “You’re walking around with a dead guy’s — you know, I don’t even want to know what it says. Burn it. Here.” Nils delved into his jeans and produced a lighter. He flicked it on. “Get rid of it now.”

“I thought you could look after it. Until I decide what to do.”

Nils wiped up a few last crumbs of batter and scrunched up the paper. He tossed it into the bin.

“Think again. I’m not touching it. You give it to me, I’ll burn it for you. I want nothing to do with their pretentious society.”

“What I am going to do with it then? I can’t give it to Adelaide.”

“Why not? It’s her letter.”

“You don’t get it. If I give it to her, she’ll stop working with me. The only reason she’s helping me is because she needs to find out what happened to her brother.”

“And what if it’s a fake?” Nils demanded. “What if it’s a plant? Where did you even find the bloody thing?”

“This woman turned up at the door. Said if Axel went away, she’d been instructed to deliver this. Adelaide wasn’t there and I was.”

Nils shook his head. “Fucking hell. You’re meant to be the smart one.”

“I can’t tell Adelaide.”

“Why not? So she stops seeing you, so what? They’re not going to take away your flat.”

“I still need her. I can still use her.”

Nils gave him a shrewd look. “I think you’ve gone past that.”

“She’s not a bad person, Nils.”

“Fine, I believe you. Does that make her any less dangerous? You can’t trust these people, Vik. They’re eels, they’d turn on you in a second. Take you in, and spit you right back out. You should be trying to set yourself up, not holding out for some celebrity pin-up.”

Vikram was angry at that. After all, Nils had encouraged him to go to the Rose Night in the first place. He was the one who’d suggested meeting Adelaide.

“You’re determined not to give her a chance.”

“How can I when I’ve never even met her?” Nils protested.

“You don’t want to meet her.”

“Well, she don’t want to meet me. You see her coming down here? Dazzling us all with her presence? I don’t think so. This is a game for her. And you knew that, before.” Nils paused. The rest of the sentence, unsaid, hung in the air. “Look, Vik, I don’t mean any harm. Maybe you really like this woman for whatever reasons I don’t get. But if you’re asking me for advice — and it seems like you are — I say you’ve got two options. You give her the letter and take the consequences, or you destroy it right now and pretend you never saw it. Your call.”

Vikram fell silent. Nils didn’t understand that the choice was much more subtle, more complicated than that. Vikram couldn’t just destroy the final words of a dead man. It would be wrong. But neither could he show them to Adelaide. She was the only thing guiding him through this nest of eels. He couldn’t lose her. Not yet.

Nils clapped him on the arm.

“Look, I’ve got to go. Just—” He broke off. His voice when he spoke again was strained. “Just don’t forget what these people have done. Not just Eirik and Mikkeli. Osuwa, even the greenhouse, they’re not that long ago. For all we know, our families died in the reprisals. Maybe at the hands of people you’ve met,” he said pointedly.

Vikram winced. “Osuwa is complicated.”

“What happened afterwards isn’t. Giving Citizens guns? Murdering children? You know what they say. When the executions took place you could hear the shots right the way to the edge of the city, it was that quiet. Sound of a guilty conscience, I say.”

Nils gave him a hard, almost a challenging look. He was driving the conversation into territory Vikram wasn’t sure he wanted to cover. Not today.

He thought of what Shadiyah had said. They is an elusive term. But she had also told him something else: home was in the west.

“We could torture ourselves forever wondering about our families,” he said. “But what good will it do us? Or them. It doesn’t help them. They’re beyond our help.”

Nils shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Come over and see the new place,” said Vikram. “We can talk properly then.” He wrapped up the remains of his fish. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry.

“Sure.” Nils still sounded reluctant.

“You don’t want to?”

“No, it’s not that.” Nils screwed up his face in admission. “I’ve been sort of seeing that girl.”

“The one I met? Ilona?”

“Yeah. Her.”

It was Vikram’s turn to be worried. He had hoped that Ilona was a one-off occurrence.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Nils.

“Do you?”

“The answer’s yes. She works on the boats.”

Vikram remembered the dyed wing of hair. The averted gaze. “You mean she’s a prostitute.”

“She’s a nice girl.”

“It’s not that she isn’t nice and you know it. It’s that she could get in real trouble for seeing you. You know what the shanty town’s like, you’ve seen the corpses, what happens to those girls, we both have.”

Nils’s shoulders quivered. He squared them.

“I like her. I want to get her out.”

“Well, why didn’t you say before? I’ll help you, we’ll sort something out—”

Nils shook his head then bent double in a sudden convulsion of phlegmy coughs. Vikram stared at him.

“Are you alright? That doesn’t sound good.”

“I’m fine—” Nils cleared his throat. It was a loud, tearing sound.

“Are you sure?”

I’m fine. And I know you would help me. But I want to get her out. Myself.” He glanced at Vikram, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Anyway, I think you’ve got enough to deal with.”

They parted, each looking a little wearier than when they had met an hour before.

The squall passed over the northern quarter, leaving a clear icy night. The boatman dropped them at the waterbike centre, where Adelaide stalked into the changing rooms without saying a word. Vikram followed her. He wanted an explanation, any kind of response. She gave none. She went to her locker and began taking out her clothes. The ordinariness of the action was too much for Vikram.

“Well?” he exploded. “Are you going to tell me exactly what you thought you were doing out there? You could have been killed!”

Finally she spoke.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Vikram. You think I haven’t had accidents before? The sea’s unpredictable. I know what I’m doing.”

Vikram banged open his own locker and yanked out his jeans. He began to change as quickly as possible.

“If I hadn’t been there you would have drowned!”

“Don’t give yourself so much credit,” she snapped. “I wasn’t drowning. You didn’t give me a chance to drown before you yanked me out the water. I practically dislocated my shoulder.”

“So next time I should leave you there, should I?”

“Maybe you should,” she said. “Maybe you should just keep out of my affairs.”

“You’re the one that wanted to go out there.”

“And you wanted to come. So stop acting like you’ve done me some kind of favour.”

He shook his head. “You’re an ungrateful bitch.”

Adelaide shrugged. “Told you that when I met you.” She presented him with her back.

He wanted to take hold of her shoulders and rattle her until the truth came out with her teeth. She began to peel off her wetsuit, top to bottom, stripping as though he wasn’t there. She hung up the suit and walked naked into the showers. A moment later he heard the patter of water on her skin.

The first night he stayed in her bedroom, she’d passed out on him. He’d smelt the fumes of alcohol on her breath, seen almost invisible particles of green powder on her upper lip. She slept the deep, dead sleep of a body that rarely let go consciousness, and when it did, surrendered completely.

They had each set out to use the other, but the ties had become more complex than that. Now they were tangled in each other’s lives.

He could smell the perfume of her shampoo rising with the hot water. She stepped out of the shower, towelling her hair. Everything about her actions said unconcern, but he didn’t believe it. He couldn’t.

“I thought by now you trusted me,” he said. Adelaide sighed, as though she was surprised to find him still there. She rooted through her bag for a hairbrush, and attacked her hair with fierce strokes.

“I don’t trust anyone.”

“It didn’t look like an accident.”

She whipped round to face him. He saw then what there was to see, the anger and the fear.

“You know nothing about biking, Vikram.”

“I know what I saw,” he shot back. “So were you showing off, is that it? Or have you got some kind of death wish?”

Adelaide’s hands clenched. “You insult me now? You’d accuse me of that, would you, accuse me of that — monstrosity? Go on, spit it out, say what you want to say!”

He looked at her.

“You fucking bastard.” She hurled the hairbrush at him. It slammed against the metal locker and clattered to the floor. He bent and picked it up. There were dozens of strands of her hair caught in its bristles. Her face challenged him to lob it back.

He took a step away from the locker. “Why don’t you answer the question.”

Adelaide turned away. When she spoke, her words ricocheted off the wall.

“I snagged on a current. The bike veered. That’s all there is to it. And don’t you ever suggest that again.”

She began to dress, twisting her arms behind her to hook up her bra and then her suspender belt. He had thought of the garments as camouflage, but the nights he’d spent holding that body naked had given him no further insights.

He tried one more time.

“Just tell me what happened. I want to understand — I have to understand. Or I’m out. Done.”

Adelaide slipped into her heels. From head to toe, she looked immaculate. When she spoke, her voice was as stripped as it had been when she had said goodbye to him that very first time.

“You must really hate my family, Vikram. I am aware of this. What I don’t get is, why don’t you hate me too? After all, we’ve done some pretty terrible things, haven’t we? Even I don’t know the half of it.”

“I’m not talking about your fucking family, Adelaide, I’m talking about you.”

Adelaide continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “So you probably do hate me too. You’ve probably hated me all along. This isn’t really anything to do with the biking, is it? This is about you and me. And the truth is, there is no you and me. Oh, you’ve been entertaining for a while, I’ll grant you that. But sooner or later, it had to end. It might as well be now.”

She paused only to draw breath. It was as though she had become a mouth; every other part of her diminished.

“You know what, Vikram? I’ve been so caught up in your miserable activities, I’ve almost forgotten about what’s important to me. Well, enough. I’ve got my own mission. I’m going to find my brother, and I’m not going to let anything distract me. Especially not some righteous westie trying to tell me how to run my life.”

She flung each word at him like a specially prepared, poison tipped dart. He ignored their impact. Like all wounds, the sting would come later. But he couldn’t suppress his rage. He almost blurted out about the letter, the truth about her brother, but some reserve of caution held him back. There was an alternative, and if Adelaide wanted to play dirty, he’d send it straight back at her.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said slowly. “Maybe we should be talking about how I hate your family. While we’re at it, maybe we should talk about how you’re exactly like them. You can give yourself a new name, but you can’t change yourself, can you Adelaide? However hard you try to get away from it, you’re just another Rechnov liar.”

He knew that would hit home. He saw her eyes narrow and he pushed his advantage.

“You told me once that lying was the one thing you couldn’t stand. But if we’re honest, it’s the thing you do best, isn’t it?”

Her mask remained intact, but he knew her better now. He could hear the tiniest crack in her voice when she spoke again.

“If we’re really being honest here, I have to say that you’re delusional. Do you imagine anyone takes you seriously? You think your schemes will make one jot of difference? The Council will never remove the border. You’re up against my lying bastard family, Vik, and they will never, never let you win.”

He felt that. He felt it now, and he would feel it more later.

He had to get out.

“I feel sorry for you, Adie.”

“Don’t you dare call me that!”

“I’m done. Goodbye.”

He hiked his bag onto his shoulder. Axel’s letter was crumpled in the inside pocket of his coat. As he walked out, his lungs burned as though he were breathing in acid. But he had made his decision, and Adelaide had clearly made up her own mind. If she wouldn’t give him his answers, he wouldn’t give her hers.

33 ¦ ADELAIDE

She switched on the changing room’s hose and ran the jet of water rhythmically over the red suit and the green, first up and down, then in horizontal passes. The drain guzzled gently. With their lolling hoods and missing hands and feet, the suits reminded her of gutted fish. She thought of the executed man. She turned them over to wash the other sides. When she reached up to put the red suit back on its hook, she found she could not take the step away. Her legs had become rubber too.

She squatted on the tiles and pressed her face against the suit. The hose still bubbled in her hand, drenching her clothes. Her shoes sat in the scummy water running towards the drain. Now the gargling was vociferous. No, it wasn’t the drain. The noise was in her own throat. She pressed her face close to the damp material, closer, until it hurt.

The tears streamed faster, but tears would not repair the damage she was doing, to Axel, to Vikram. Tears would not make the vault disappear, or spare the repercussions if Lao had, somehow, already found a way in. Tears were useless.

The noise subsided. With the silence that followed came a raw clarity. She lifted her head. For a long time she stared at the wall. She knew, as clearly as if she had been told, where she had to go. In the kelp forest, a sliver of mercury paused. The fish was waiting.

She hung the suits side by side to dry. In the changing room mirrors she caught a glimpse of her face. It was blotched with red, ugly. It didn’t matter. She knew where she was going now. There was only one place left.

34 ¦ VIKRAM

Linus’s secretary ushered Vikram into the office. Linus was at his Neptune, his eyes flicking back and forth as he scanned the body of text. Some report or other, Vikram supposed. As Vikram came in, Linus stroked the activation strip and the screen went black.

“Vikram, good to see you. Can I get you a drink?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

Linus dismissed the secretary with a nod of his head. He rolled over a chair.

“Please, have a seat. What can I do for you?”

There was a sense of the mechanical about Linus’s office. It contained mathematical lines, faintly humming machines. The walls held graphs and charts. The only other colour was a yellow rosette stuck to the window-wall. Vikram recognized it: one of Adelaide’s invitations.

“Are you going to that?”

Linus looked and laughed.

“Certainly not. Adelaide and I have a deal.”

Surprise must have shown in Vikram’s face, because Linus added, “She sends me invites and I ignore them. It’s a very simple arrangement. A little odd to outsiders, perhaps.” Linus clasped his hands. “But Adelaide is still a Rechnov, whether she wants to be or not. Oh, she can play at society. She may even have some social influence, through that set of hers, and I admit that she’s popular with the press. Eventually, though, she’ll come back to us. She won’t be able to help it.”

Vikram kept his face still. Linus’s words did not make him feel any better about what he was about to do; on the contrary, he was inclined to delay the decision. But it had to done. He could not allow Adelaide to jeopardise everything that he had worked for.

“So what is it you actually do here?” he asked. “Apart from attending Council meetings, that is.”

“You don’t think that’s enough?” Linus allowed himself an ironic smile. “I can see your point. Well, when I’m not haranguing old men who should have left the Chambers years ago, I liaise with the meteorological office.” He waved his arm in an encompassing gesture. “These charts are weather maps.”

“You’re mapping the weather?” Vikram stared curiously at the nearest chart. Linus watched him.

“It didn’t use to be a phenomenon.”

“Will it work?”

“One day. It would be easier, of course, if we had access outside. But for that to happen, we have to change mindsets, and Osirisers are stubborn. They believe they are living in the last city on earth — it has quite a ring to it, of course.” Linus looked thoughtfully at the Neptune. “Almost…glamorous. But not true.”

Vikram had a sudden sense of the scale of Linus’s ambition. He wondered what future role Linus had in mind for himself — revolutionary charter of weather? Discoverer of distant shores? At this moment, on the verge of giving away Axel’s secret, Vikram felt less certain of Linus than he was of Adelaide. But he was angry, and he needed someone on his side.

“Don’t you think we would have been found by now? If there were still people out there — people on land?”

Linus turned his head, focusing gradually upon Vikram. Vikram sensed him sifting possible responses. As always when talking to Linus, he had that sense of his own insignificance; that it did not matter what Linus said to him, because nobody would ever believe an airlift’s word over a Rechnov’s. Then Linus’s lips quirked in a thin smile.

“I suppose that depends upon whether we want to be found.” He paused. “There’s certainly a multitude of reasons why it’s desirable not to be. Anyway, I could talk to you about this all day, Vikram, but I sense that’s not entirely why you’re here.”

Vikram gave the yellow rosette a last glance. He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out the envelope. Wordlessly, he placed it on the desk. Linus glanced down.

“It’s from Axel,” said Vikram.

He heard the intake of breath, slight but sharp, that followed. Seconds passed whilst the two of them stared at the envelope.

“I take it you’re aware of the contents,” said Linus.

Vikram nodded. Linus picked up the envelope, took out the letter, and unfolded it. He read in silence. Vikram knew the letter by heart. He could only imagine what magic Axel’s phrases might be working on his brother.

When he had finished, Linus put the letter back in the envelope. Vikram noticed that the other man did not fold it in the right way; some of the creases were doubled back and the shape was all wrong. He pressed his hands together to stop himself reaching out to show Linus how it worked.

“Has Adelaide seen it?” Linus made as if to put the envelope down, then kept it in his hand.

“Not yet.” He saw Linus take note of the qualifier. Good.

“How did you get it?”

He listened to Vikram’s story without interrupting. His face was expressionless. Vikram felt his own unease growing as he continued, but it was too late to back out now. Linus’s face creased in much the same way that Adelaide’s did when she was tending to her balcony plants.

“Why did you bring it to me?”

Vikram strove for the same level of impassivity.

“Adelaide’s helping me because she wants to find out what happened to Axel. If she knows, she’ll stop. I can’t keep this letter but I can’t give it to her.” Vikram shrugged. “You’re the next logical option.”

“You want to watch out, Vikram, you’re getting quite Rechnovian.”

Vikram said nothing.

“I think your assessment of Adelaide is correct,” said Linus. “And I’m inclined to agree with your actions. My sister is doing something useful for the first time in her life — and you, Vikram, you’ve been instrumental in that. She doesn’t need any — distractions.”

“Not even if it means finding out the truth?”

Linus tapped the envelope.

“What does this tell us, really, Vikram? All this talk of missions. Horses. It’s not an answer.”

“But you believe the letter is genuine.”

“Yes.” Linus was decisive. “I do. And for that reason, I think it’s best that I keep it in the family. As they say. This investigation — it’s put us in a very difficult position, as I’m sure you can understand. Axel generated enough publicity in his lifetime. We don’t need any more. This way, the investigation can just… peter out.”

“She’s sure he’s alive,” said Vikram. “You do know that.”

Linus loosened his collar slightly, pulling its tight starch away from his neck.

“Adelaide is sure about a lot of things,” he said. “Besides, as we said — what does a letter prove?” He looked at Vikram directly. “Thank you for trusting me with this. I trust I can show my appreciation in some way — lean on the Council for those extensions to the aid schemes? Perhaps have a look at the flooded buildings?”

“You can do both of those. Will you show her the letter?”

“Of course. In time.” Linus glanced up at the clock. “Now don’t think I’m trying to get rid of you, but I have a meeting to get to.”

“It’s fine. I’ve got places to be myself.”

Linus shrugged on his jacket, tucking the envelope into his inside pocket. Vikram felt the weight of it then; his part in what must now be a conspiracy between himself and Linus. From this moment Vikram would carry that knowledge around with him like a microchip embedded in his brain. It would surface every time he saw an image of Adelaide’s face, or heard her voice on the o’dio. The thought that he would probably never see her in person again hit him with a terrible wave of loneliness.

A low burring noise jolted him out of his thoughts. Linus hooked in an earpiece and slid his Sobek scarab into one pocket.

“Hello?” He picked up a slim briefcase and mouthed to Vikram, “I’ll walk out with you.”

Vikram opened the door and Linus stepped out with him, passing an electronic key over the lock.

“I’ll be there in ten. Yes… I’ve got the whitefly notes.” At the entrance to his offices, he pressed his wrist to Vikram’s. Then he walked away, confident in his pinstriped suit, a man at ease in every way that Vikram was not; with himself, with his place and with his times. Vikram felt his own wrongness like a physical ailment. To the west, he had treated with the enemy, even if it was for their own good. To the City, he would always be an impostor. Only Adelaide had accepted him for what he was, and Adelaide was a liar, and now he had betrayed her and her twin.

35 ¦ ADELAIDE

Boats with black hulls and crudely painted eyes slunk down the border, each vessel thick with Guards. Dark, bulky overcoats and furred hats hid their features, but the men bristled with guns.

Adelaide sat in the stern of the speedboat, hunched over, gloved hands at her chin. She stared determinedly westward through the checkpoint. She had been out here for thirty minutes, watching; she could no longer feel the exposed parts of her face or her feet. Gulls flapped overhead, pale and sharp beaked against the overcast sky. Their raucous calls pierced the cold air. Adelaide did not move.

The boatman gave her an exasperated look.

“Miss, haven’t you seen enough?”

“No.”

He folded his arms, sighing loud enough for her to hear.

Every waterbus that came out of the west was stopped. Each time, the officer in charge boarded the waterbus and forced its passengers to form a line. He walked the length of the line, pausing in front of some passengers, barely glancing at others. The officer carried a stick with which he rapped the decking in time to his footsteps, and she could tell by the dull contact sound that it was made of metal.

Beyond the checkpoint and the border net, western pyramids and scrapers rose grim and sallow. Faded graffiti covered the towers, layer upon layer, angry slogans and figures like manga cartoons, frozen in action — mid-leap, mid-punch. Their oversized eyes followed her across the border.

Further in, she could make out more boats, or things that had been coaxed to float, rafts and metal basins, clustered around the bases of the towers. There were shapes inside the boats and propped up on the deckings. Their movements were slow and laboured. At first she did not realize they were people. They moved like another race, one long lost and forgotten.

This was it. The last place.

For the first time since that day, she allowed the execution scene to crystallise in her memory, looking at it without flinching. Looking at it from Vikram’s side.

“We’re going across,” she told the boatman. He stared at her as if she was crazy. Perhaps I am, she thought. Crazy like Axel. He’d have to be crazy to come here, and she knew suddenly that her instinct was right.

“I’m afraid I can’t go any further, Miss.”

“I’m ordering you to take the boat across.”

“Miss, with all due respect, I’m not going to. Your father would have a fit.”

“My father can go hang himself.”

“Your father’s orders come above your own, Miss Rechnov. There’s no way in Osiris I’m taking you into the west. Do you want to be shot?”

She wanted to hit him for the way he was looking at her, defiantly, insolently, but more than that — as though she was something to be contained, even pitied. She clenched her teeth.

“I have to cross the border, Foma.”

How long they might have argued for in the bitter cold, she would not find out, because another dispute, louder than theirs, carried over the water. A waterbus had stopped at the checkpoint. The shouting was between the officer and one of the passengers. Adelaide could see those not involved fidgeting, the other passengers anxiously, the Guards with a twitching impatience.

Uneasily now, she watched as the officer hauled the passenger out of the line and off the boat, onto the jetty. He jerked him along the decking and thrust him onto his knees.

“Miss, miss, we should really go now.”

Foma shook her shoulder gently, but she felt it with the force applied to the passenger.

“Miss, you don’t want to see this.”

The officer lifted his stick, high above his head. It cracked through the air. A scream was quickly muffled. The officer leaned over to wipe the weapon against the man’s coat. He stepped away, twisting his wrist.

At a sign, four of the Guards gathered around the man. Systematically, they delivered a series of kicks and blows until he shrivelled against the decking. At first there were no sounds other than that of impact. Then he began to shriek.

It took barely a minute, and his face was no longer recognizable as a face.

One of the women on the boat turned away with a moan of horror. A Guard marched her to the rail and pinched her chin, forcing her to watch. Adelaide saw the woman’s body convulse as she retched.

“Miss, come on. Let’s go.”

The boatman reached for the ignition, but Adelaide put her hand over it.

“Wait.”

The officer in charge raised a hand. The beating stopped. The man’s howls grew shakier. The officer stepped forward, put the muzzle of his gun against the man’s head, and pulled the trigger. Two Guards took the wrists and ankles, and slung the body into the sea.

The dead man floated, his ruined face to the clouds.

“Miss, can we go now?” Foma’s voice had lost all its anger; now it was pleading. Adelaide nodded, numbly. She felt the boat gear into life, knew there must be something she should do, but was incapable of finding words or means. As the speedboat whirred away, three or four seagulls began spiralling downwards. Knowing their intent, she clamped her hands over her mouth, suppressing a noise of horror and disgust that one reborn soul could do that to another.

Adelaide opened the balcony door and shut it quickly behind her before the rush of cold could change her mind. Clouds hung low in the darkening sky, their bellies distended with unfallen snow. She sensed the City holding its breath, and held hers with it.

It was unusual for Tyr to want a meeting this early in the evening — Jannike’s birthday celebrations had barely begun — but she was glad of the opportunity. She had made a decision: she was going to tell Tyr everything. About Lao, about the airlift and the vault, about Operation Whitefly. It was a relief. She had to tell someone, and she had alienated Vikram. But she didn’t want to think about that.

Once she had told Tyr, they could work out what to do next.

The balcony door opened and shut again behind Tyr. He did not have a coat either.

“We’ll catch our death,” she said with a smile.

Tyr walked slowly across the balcony and stopped a metre away from her. They were both shivering. Adelaide took a step toward him.

“You’re sleeping with Vikram, aren’t you?”

The question caught her off-guard. She had assumed he knew; she had not thought he would ask.

“Yes.”

“How long have you been seeing him for?”

His grey eyes watched hers. She tried to mirror their blankness. He knew her face so well. They had learned one another like books by rote; a dip of the head, a blink, could act as code.

“Oh, I don’t know—”

“How long?”

“Couple of weeks.”

“You’re lying.”

She lowered her eyes strategically.

“It’s just a diversion. It’s over.”

“He stays here. You stay with him.”

She felt her way carefully around this iceberg.

“He’s a westerner. It annoys Feodor more.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think—”

“No. I get it.”

A tiny snowflake whirled out of the sky. Another chased it, then another, and another, and all at once they were surrounded by a maze of swirling shapes. They landed cold darts on Adelaide’s face. They blew onto Tyr’s scarf and the sleeves of his jacket.

“I can’t keep doing this, Adelaide.”

She saw his lips moving, but they did not seem to match the words that came out. It was not really Tyr talking. The person who replied was not really Adelaide.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you and me.” He sounded almost gentle now, and that made him more distant because the Tyr that she knew had no need for softness.

“We have to stop,” he said.

“But there’s no need,” she said. “Tyr, why—”

“Adelaide—” His voice broke her name. “The terms of our agreement — I can’t stand by them any longer.”

He looked away. Now the flakes were coming thick and fast, a sheet, then a quilt of snow, and there was nothing to see, only her and Tyr at the centre of a shaken paperweight. She reached out and touched his sleeve. It was thin and wet and reminded her of blood. She thought of the western man dumped off the jetty, felt herself caught in that same hopeless motion.

“Why not?”

He moved his arm away.

“Because — I love you, Adie.”

She tried to read his face, to unearth some aggression there, anger or blame, something strong that she could grasp with both hands and fight. She found only sadness.

“But you can’t,” she said. “I’m not that person.”

“Then I am. And I can stand the pretence, I can stand the lies — I’ve enjoyed that game, I don’t deny it. But seeing you let someone else into your life — I won’t do that.”

“What, you think he means something to me? He doesn’t. None of them do. Only maybe — he reminds me a little of Axel. That’s it. That’s all.”

You mean something to me. The thought, dormant at the back of her mind, suddenly clarified. But she could not say it.

Tyr sighed. “Let’s face it, Adie. We can’t be together. Even if you wanted it, we couldn’t.”

“Don’t say that. We can do what we like.”

He gave a helpless smile.

“I’d lose my position. Feodor would disinherit you. I’m his spy Adie — you know that. You’ve always known. Every month I write him a report. What you’re doing, who you’re seeing. Lies, years and years of lies. He finds that out and what then?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. Then nothing. You want to get a job, run away to the west? We’re creatures of habit, you and I. We like our lifestyles. We’re both too selfish to give them up, and anyway, what compensation would there be for you.”

There was an ache in her teeth and in her ribs where her lungs constricted. It was the cold. It was the cold.

“I can’t care about anyone,” she whispered.

“That’s right. You can’t care about anyone.”

He sounded infinitely weary. It made her see them both standing there, the snow settling on their hair and faces, resting on her eyelashes, in the corners of her eyes, where new snow was being made in hot, brittle flakes. He was going to walk away. He was going to abandon her.

“I need you,” she managed. “There are things I have to tell you.”

She felt flooded with the weight of it, almost frantic.

“Tyr, please — for stars’ sake—”

“You’ve had years to tell me anything you wanted, Adie. What could there possibly be left to say? Listen, I’m sorry it’s early. I knew I had to talk to you, I wanted to be lucid when I did.”

On his right temple was a tiny scar; she knew it was from a childhood accident but she did not know what the accident was. She knew everything and nothing about him. She had run out of time.

“And what now? We both go back and — pretend?”

“Like we always have. You’re a good enough actress, Adie.”

“But you can’t — you can’t just walk away.”

“I can,” he said. “And I will. One of us always has.”

He lifted her chin gently. For a long time he gazed at her face. Then he pressed his lips lightly to her forehead. She closed her eyes.

“Goodbye, Adelaide,” he whispered.

She didn’t hear him go inside. Her head was full of the sound of snow. The City had never seemed so cold and unyielding, and all at once she hated it.

“Adelaide! Where were you? We’re about to leave!”

“I’m ready, Jan.”

“Come on, everyone, we’re moving out! Got a shuttle to catch and a pool to find!”

“Everyone follow the crazy woman.”

“Out everyone, out, out, you too Adie, OUT!”

This wasn’t meant to happen.

They went to the Strobe. The first liquid cascaded into her mouth like oxygen as the music bombed her skull. She kept it on her tongue. She wanted to burn. Then she swallowed and swallowed until the glass was empty. She lifted her glass and the server leaned over to refill it. She repeated the ritual twice. When she swam away from the bar, the world was the way it usually was — bright and shifting. A boy dressed as a puff-fish snorkelled past. The sight of the ruptured scales made her feel nauseous. She found Jannike on a pink plastic float. Jannike slid off the float and they water-danced. Two reeds. Her limbs weird in the water. The music was phenomenal. Someone gave them fin-shaped pills which they put on each other’s wrists and licked off. Her vision fizzled. The music grew louder. Quieter when she slipped underwater.

“Fu-u-ck.” Jannike’s voice filtered down, strangely elongated. “Magda Linn’s here.”

Adelaide opened her eyes underwater. Her hair swirled around her head. A girl’s legs scissored slowly in the neon blitzed water. Red lights. Green lights. White flashing lights that were not part of the club’s rigging but somehow lost in it.

“How — she — get—?” Jannike burbled. Adelaide surfaced.

Where there had been people there was space. The large pool bare and strip-lit, littered with the debris of the night — plastic glasses, stolen bikinis, deflated floats. Overhead, the multicoloured spotlights had swivelled to a halt, but the tower still rotated and lights from outside swept in bars over the pool. Jannike’s elbow hooked into Adelaide’s. The tug of Jan’s arm. Bouncers herded out the stragglers. Voices echoed in the open space.

“Where to, Jan?”

“The late lounge, Adie.”

An ankle twisted. Not sure if it was hers or Jan’s but they almost fell. She felt the pain for both of them. Flashing lights, right in their faces. Look this way, girls! Lovely!

The waterbeds engulfed them like a dream. A woman brought two pipes. The smoke made haloes of their heads. Jannike’s lips struggled through the crusts of their lipstick.

“What’s the matter, Adie? I know something’s the matter.”

Adelaide knew Jannike would forget this night. She would forget it too. Part of her already had.

“My family are murderers,” she said. “A boat came and they killed everyone on it.”

“Yeah?”

“And I biked into a ship. I don’t know what I was doing — I had this idea that Axel might be hiding there, and if he saw — he’d have to come find me — but he didn’t so he couldn’t be there, he’s got to be in the west, it’s the only place left—”

“I’m old, Adie. I’m twenty-two. I’m ancient.”

“That’s half a life, in the west.”

“Stars, Adie.” Jannike drew deeply on the pipe and halfway through exhaling, yawned deeply. “I tell you I’m old, ancient old, and you come out with… you know what’s weird, I can’t work out… how Magda Linn managed to get in…”

Her eyes turned upwards in her head. Adelaide did not understand at first that her friend was unconscious. Then Jannike’s pipe clattered to the floor and she knew she should pick it up, but she could only stare at it, the pipe lying useless on the crisscross matting, until the proprietress came to retrieve it and gave Jannike a glance, and then lay the pipe, extinguished, on a round wooden dish beside her. Adelaide inhaled and somewhere in that one breath time unfolded and dissolved.

Hours later she walked home. She climbed over the barrier and walked along the double snail trails of the Pharaoh shuttle line, from the south quarter to the east quarter, where she walked twenty flights upstairs to jump the barrier to the Sphinx line. Her sandals made blisters on her feet. She took the shoes off and walked barefoot. The silver tracks were cool. Her fingers stretched out to touch the convex, translucent wall.

Once a night shuttle streaked past, blind and pilotless, and she pressed her spine to the bufferglass and cringed her stomach inward in the slipstream blast.

She passed a siding where a group of shuttle pods were lodged. Lights were on in the repair stations behind and she heard the sounds of machinery. A man in overalls carrying a tool kit came around a shuttle. He stared at her. Grease darkened patches of his face. She gazed back at him, clutching her shoes tightly. Neither of them spoke. He passed an arm over his face and then he got to the ground and slid under the shuttle and his hand shot out and grabbed a tool and disappeared again.

Dawn began to crack the night’s rigid cocoon. The city was rousing. Maintenance men and cleaners collected behind the barriers of the stations, smoking a last cigarette before the day’s work began.

“Hey! Hey, miss! What you doing down there?”

She looked around, then up. A man stood on a platform. She squinted.

“You’re on the shuttle line,” he said.

Adelaide did not reply. He reached out a hand. She let him help her up onto the platform where he peered closer at her face but she turned her head away.

“What scraper is this?”

“S-one-nineteen,” came the reply, and Adelaide knew she was close, now, to her destination.

She padded out of the platform to where a vendor was setting up his stand, laying out energy bars and fruit. The newsreel ran across a screen attached to the stand. His eyes followed her as she climbed the stairs to the footpath that ran over the line. Stumbling now, her feet guided her along the last few stops.

The key was the wrong shape for the lock and it took her several tries to force it in. A shadow passed as the lift went up, past her floor to the meteorological facility. The door gave way at last. She fell forward into the hall of mirrors. Home.

Dream fragments chased one another through her head; Jannike, aged thirteen, arguing with Feodor. Lightning struck both of them and burned their faces but neither died, they kept arguing, and she realized it wasn’t Feodor but the man from the border with no face, the water parting to receive his body, and white horses were running on the sea, leaping one over the back of the other. Their hooves made a horrendous noise, drumming the ocean with a tattoo that called the world to arms.

Adelaide woke suddenly. She was in bed, face down. She had forgotten to darken the window-wall and the room was full of lancing sunbeams. She screwed up her eyes. The noise of galloping hooves resolved into a persistent banging. There was someone at the door. Someone insistent.

Turning her head, she saw how the night had ended. The decanter, empty, an arm’s length away. The glass knocked onto its side. A bottle of pills she hoped she hadn’t taken and the grey dune of the ashtray. The smell of stale ash was a physical assault.

Adelaide groaned. She sat up just before she thought of Tyr and then she reeled forward, head to knees, and thought she might be sick there and then. Her mouth tasted of sour milk. She caught a glance of herself in the mirror; make-up blackening her eyes, her hair latticed. She pulled on her kimono, scrubbed her teeth and splashed water into her face before going to the door. Every bang drove another nail into her skull.

Tyr? Vikram? Her heart squeezed.

She slid the bolt across and opened the door a crack. Disappointment barbed her.

“Linus?”

He barged through the gap. In one white knuckled hand he clutched his briefcase.

“Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.”

“I’ve been sleeping.” She followed him back into the apartment, massaging her temples.

“Your beeper’s off—”

“I never use that thing.”

“I’ve been calling since eight o’clock, you don’t answer, I only just managed to get out of the office. Father’s been fielding questions all afternoon. Even Mother came up here and knocked, nobody could get hold of you—”

His voice was bringing on her headache in full force, and with it, everything that sleep had let her forget. She tried to concentrate. She had to get rid of him.

“I was out, Linus. Then I was sleeping. My scarab’s probably run dry. What’s going on?”

Linus glared at her. A wisp of morning shadow on his upper lip and jaw. Linus was always clean shaven.

He propped his briefcase on the table and yanked it open. The contents spilled onto the floor. Linus grabbed a Surfboard and dangled it in front of her.

“You haven’t seen this, I take it?”

Adelaide peered at the screen. Her own face greeted her, eyes unfocused, mouth slurred. She looked a mess. Last night’s events reassembled themselves slowly. She remembered the pool. The pills.

“What have I done now?” she asked wearily.

Linus shoved the Surfboard towards her as if he was too disgusted to speak. She bent to pick it up. The words seemed jumbled; they did not make sense. They could not, because how could anyone possibly know? Shakily, letter by letter, her finger followed the newreel headline.

Adelaide Rechnov breaks investigation decree.

“Oh shit,” she whispered.

Below the initial hideous picture was a grainy but unmistakable image: herself and Vikram entering the penthouse.

“I think you’ll find that’s one of the better headlines,” said Linus. His face was steady now, nastily so, a gull about to skewer a fish.

Her legs stopped working. She had to sit down. She knelt where she was. Her kimono divided over her knees; mindlessly she smoothed out the silk. She flicked from one newsfeed to another. Adelaide and western lover Vikram flout committee… Adelaide uses criminal friend for break-in… Adelaide finds new vocation… Adelaide’s new love-shack?

It didn’t end there. Selecting the Daily Flotsam feed, she found full-colour evidence of last night. There were photos of her and Jan, naked on a pink float, entwined with two girls that Adelaide did not remember. She had a dim memory of Jannike shouting that she had seen Magda Linn, although her friend had not known then that Adelaide had betrayed her.

“How…” Her voice faltered. Linus’s shoes shifted angrily.

“You idiot, you bribed someone to cut the camera, didn’t you? Apparently Hanif had a feeling you’d try it on. He promised to match any bribe you might offer. The camera was recording the whole time.”

Words and pictures advanced and receded in front of her.

“But why now? It doesn’t make sense… If they had this — why wait until now, why would Hanif…?”

“Hanif’s in the middle of a Council-authorised investigation, it doesn’t help him to throw this information to the press. But you can guarantee that some lowlife scum in his team has just made a fat payload leaking this. And believe me, we will find out who it is.”

She went hot and cold. So Sanjay Hanif had been hoarding this information all along, waiting for the optimum moment to pounce. Only his thunder had been stolen before he had the chance. Sweat trickled between her breasts.

“Where’s Vikram?” He must have seen it already. She swallowed. “He’d better come over.”

“He’s not coming.”

“I have to speak to him.” The sunlight, skittering off polished surfaces, was blinding. She imagined reporters in the adjacent towers, their cameras trained on her windows whilst they scanned the feeds, rereading, joking amongst themselves, relishing her humiliation.

“Vikram will be safest here,” she said. She spotted her scarab in the bowl on the table. “Then we can work out what to do.”

“Has it not occurred to you that this fiasco ran first thing this morning? It’s fifteen o’clock. Vikram’s on his way to jail, if he isn’t there already. Father’s pulling strings like a marionette to keep the police away from you. Congratulations, Adelaide! Not content with wrecking your own life, you have to drag everyone else down with you.”

Linus touched a finger to his earpiece. His expression changed: settled and ironed out, before he spoke again. “Father, hello.”

“Jail,” she repeated. She remembered Vikram locking up the penthouse door. We’re in it together. Vikram had not said that, but it was true now. They would take him back underwater, to the green cell and the eye of the porthole, unless she stopped them. The kimono stuck to her clammy skin. Her muscles felt weak, useless. Ignore it.

She needed a plan. She needed Linus gone so she could clear her head. Think, Adelaide, think.

Linus took a few steps towards the window. He was nodding to himself. “Right, yes. Did you get onto the Flotsam? Yes, I understand. Ten minutes? No problem, I’ll hang on.” The conversation ended abruptly.

“How’s Daddy?” she asked.

Linus folded his arms. “This isn’t the time for flippancy. Father’s not happy. He’s putting you under house arrest.”

“How old does he think I am, six?”

“Judging by your actions, yes. He’s sending Goran.”

Her mouth dropped in horror.

“Goran? He can’t send Goran here…” She thought of the eye tattoo on the back of the bodyguard’s neck. His real eyes, dual toned, searching. Every nerve in her body twanged. “Linus, you cannot be serious!”

“Apparently Father is. You’ve overstepped the line, Adelaide. He’s fed up with it. We all are. The more licence we give you the more you throw it back in our faces.”

She lurched to her feet. Red and green dots speckled her vision.

“Licence for what?” she shouted. “Not to be like you? Well, sorry if I’m not interested in your political machinations. I have my own life. We both do. Me and Axel. We’re nothing like you.” She jabbed a finger an inch from his chest. Linus surveyed her, unconcernedly. When he spoke, every word was crisp with contempt.

“Spending our money getting high every night and flaunting yourself for the Daily Flotsam’s pornographic photographers? Fucking our father’s employees? Frankly, Adelaide, it’s boring. Father has tried just about everything with you. He’s asked you to tone down the parties and cut back on the milaine. He’s appealed to you as a Rechnov, but you have no sense of familial duty. I’ve even tried giving you an outlet to do something useful with the aid schemes. Nothing seems to make a difference. Nothing makes you see. There’s a whole line-up of people out there who would love to see our family eating surf, Adelaide. You’ve jeopardized our position one too many times. Now you’ve forced Father to take drastic measures. Goran’s coming to housesit.”

“Like fuck he is! I won’t let him over the threshold.”

“You’ll do what we decide is best for you. You’re so selfish you can only think about yourself right now. But if you looked beyond this narcissistic paradise, you might realize that this—” the Surfboard in Linus’s hand shook. His voice was rising opposite hers. “This has greater ramifications than you being grounded. This article questions the whole family’s integrity. You had a chance to prove yourself. You’ve thrown that away. You’ve pissed, Adelaide, on my fucking career.”

Adelaide was trembling with shock and fury.

“Selfish, Linus? Listen to yourself! You haven’t even asked what I was doing in the penthouse. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what happened to your brother?”

Linus hurled the Surfboard at a plant. It hit the pot and landed beside it. The screen went blank.

“I don’t give a shit what you were doing there,” he spat. “This is a containment issue. Bribing a member of a Council investigation—how the hell does that make Father look?”

Adelaide could not remember ever seeing Linus lose control. It was like a rock cracking and gushing forth water.

“Our father cares more about his reputation than he does about his own son.” She was shaking.

“Don’t bring Axel into it!”

“Why not? He’s what’s important!”

“He’s dead. Wake up, Adelaide! Stars above, it’s hard enough trying to mourn him without you raking these insane theories over our heads day in, day out—”

“How do you know unless Feodor had him murdered? Did Goran do it? Did he? And now he’s coming to sort me out?”

“Don’t be fucking stupid.”

“Then tell me the truth!”

Linus’s hands went to his head, kneading and clenching. An animal noise came out of his throat. “You just — don’t — get it.”

“I never did,” she said.

On the table, her scarab was flashing. An inbound call. Lao, she thought numbly. I know that’s Lao. Her fingers itched.

There was a knock at the door. Neither of them moved. A second knock. Finally Linus went. Goran strolled into the room, a holdall and a brown paper bag in one hand, a mango in the other. He wore the usual dark blue suit, specially tailored to fit his heavy, muscular frame. His head had been recently shaved. It was pale and shiny.

“Hi AD,” he said. “Long time no see.”

His neat white teeth bit into the mango, skin and all.

“Don’t you dare call me that,” she hissed. “Get him out of here, Linus, I’m not even dressed.”

“It never seems to bother you anywhere else.” Linus extended his hand. Goran juggled mango and bags until he could press his wrist to Linus’s.

Adelaide yanked the cord of her kimono taut. She could not miss anything they might say.

“Never was too polite, was she?” commented Goran. He did not seem to care whether he received an answer. He ambled around the room, sucking gently on the flesh of the mango, touching things with his tattooed fingers. Perspiration collected on Adelaide’s scalp. Her own sweat felt unclean.

“Don’t touch that,” she said, as his fingers hovered over a photograph of the twins. Goran paused, as if he might obey, then picked it up.

“Interesting place.” He pulled back the red and orange curtain that hung from the mezzanine and peered into the space beneath. “Nice den. Guess I’ll be sleeping here.” He nudged the sofa with his leg. Adelaide froze.

Goran let the curtain drop and wandered towards the kitchen.

“Linus—” she said.

Her brother closed his briefcase and patted the left breast of his jacket. “What, Adelaide?”

“You can’t do this. That man — cannot stay in my apartment.” Linus shrugged and made for the hallway. She ran in front of the door. “You can’t leave him here! This is my home!”

“It’s Rechnov property, Adelaide.” Linus smiled. “And as you keep reminding us, you’ve got a different name now. Mystik, isn’t it?”

“You bastard.” Her voice shook. From the kitchen she heard the sounds of breaking glass and running water. “What the hell’s he doing?”

“Getting rid of your alcohol, I think. Move away from the door. Or shall I get Goran to remove you?”

Keep calm, Adelaide. She put her hands up. “Okay, okay. Joke’s over. Now let’s sit down and talk about this rationally.”

“Adelaide,” Linus hissed. “I have to things to do. Our father and I are attempting to clear up the enormous pile of shit you have landed us in. Now get out of my way.” He shouldered past her and wrenched open the door. She wrapped her fingers around the frame, only just removing them before he slammed it. A key turned in the lock. Her eyes darted to the bowl on the table. He had taken her scarab as well. The bowl was empty.

“Linus!” she screamed.

There was no answer. She pressed her ear to the door. Nothing.

“Linus!”

There was another smash. Her stomach lurched. For a second she thought she heard pots and pans clanging; it was not Goran in the kitchen, it was Axel.

It was Goran. He was emptying a crystal decanter of raqua down the sink. The warm amber fluid winked in the afternoon sunlight. Adelaide grabbed his arm. The smell of a dozen mingled alcohol fumes rose from the sink. Orange and blue liquids made rainbows with broken glass. Goran stopped pouring. With Adelaide clinging to his arm, he smashed the decanter quite deliberately against the sink. Crystal flew. The jagged edge glinted in his hand. She saw specks of his blood. Goran smiled at her.

“Don’t be naughty, now, AD. You know I can break you and it would be a real pleasure.”

He flung out his arm. She spun backwards and slammed against the wall. Her eyes watered with the impact.

“Did you kill my brother?”

“He didn’t need me for that, AD.”

“You’re evil.”

She staggered out of the kitchen. This was not happening, not to her. Her family were despots, but they were rational people.

Goran worked systematically through the apartment. He ripped the sheets off her bed and lifted the mattress. He rifled through her clothes, pulling dresses off hangers and trampling over them. He wrenched open the balcony door and chucked out the dragon teapot, a gift from Tyr. He emptied her sleeping pills down the sink.

Within half an hour, the apartment was strewn with her possessions. Satisfied, Goran reclined on the futon and put his feet up. He produced a bunch of grapes from the brown paper bag. One by one, the green ovals disappeared into the dark cavity of his mouth.

“Just you and me, AD,” he said conversationally. “Anything good on the o’vis?”

The shakes began in the centre of her head and they rippled to her muscles. Her legs, her arms, even her eyes twitched uncontrollably. She could not stop it, she could not think of anything but it. She became a living pulse.

The ceiling had grown a strange shape. It had wings and a segmented body. It was an insect, a fly, the colour of falling snow. It crawled inside the vault. It crawled on the collar of the man in the lift. Operation Whitefly lived upstairs; all along, it had lived in the facility upstairs.

They were not measuring the weather up there. They were watching for boats. Like the Siberian boat which had found the City, whose crew they had murdered, whose bones now rested on the ocean bed. And if a boat came, they would destroy it. This was her grandfather’s dark secret.

But it was too late for realizations. The gulls were descending. Their wings rustled sheerly. Her body and mind were riddled and the birds found hooks for their beaks, delved hard and deep. Their button eyes bore no pity. They were pulling her apart. She knew, when they had dismantled her completely, they would bear each piece of her in their mouths to some far flung corner of the ocean. The birds would feed her to their fledglings.

36 ¦ VIKRAM

He opened the door. They grabbed him roughly and threw him face-first against the wall. He heard the contact crack and thought for a moment they had broken his nose but the blood did not come, just quick splitting pain. Someone locked a pair of handcuffs on him. He heard the word arrest. He didn’t listen to the rest because he already knew why they were there. There could only be one reason. They had found out about the break-in.

“Get me a lawyer,” he said through gritted teeth pushed into the plaster, and a voice warmly close to his ear replied.

“Airlifts don’t warrant lawyers, Mr Bai.”

He kicked back at that, catching someone because there was a yelp of pain. They retaliated, knocking his legs out from underneath him. With his hands behind his back and nothing to stop his fall he smashed against the floor. This time his nose did break. The blood gushed from his nostrils and he floundered in it. A boot pushed into the small of his back.

“Especially those who resist arrest,” he heard. Laughter followed. He could not see a single face but he knew it was the skadi, not the civilian police force. He knew it by their taunts and their glee. Every gut instinct ached to respond. These were the bastards who had killed Mikkeli. Who had killed Eirik. The boot had him pinioned. All he could do was twitch and splutter. He heard the spark of a lighter and smelt cigarette smoke through his blood. Hot ash stung the back of his neck. Half his instinct said gurgle, start to drown, then they’ll have to take you to hospital. But it was only too easy to record an accidental death. Especially an airlift death.

The skadi were in no hurry. They joked over his head. After a minute the door opened and footsteps rapped the floorboards. A woman crouched at Vikram’s head. Vikram could not see her face, only her shiny black boots, heels just lifted from the floor, beneath a black and white photograph on a Surfboard. The image was grainy but what it contained was unmistakable.

The woman tapped the Surfboard.

“This is a still from a section of footage taken from a security camera outside a private residence. Date, April twenty-four, hour, three-oh-five. The residence was and remains under Council jurisdiction. The couple in question use a stolen high-security swipe card to disable the police barrier, then pick the penthouse locks with crude metal before entering and leaving approximately fifty minutes later. This evidence serves as a warrant for arrest and detention. Is this you, Mr Bai?”

“No,” he lied.

“I should also add that the evidence in question is sufficient to ensure jail without trial, should it be proven that you have a prior offence.” Her hand came towards his head with a test tube. She held it under his nose. He tried to turn his head away but the blood dripped in. She passed the test tube up to someone standing. “Your DNA will ascertain whether you have a record. Do you have any prior convictions, Mr Bai?”

“No.” He spat out blood. Not under that name. They would find it anyway. His skin began to crawl with fear. “Listen,” he croaked. “I need to speak to a lawyer. Call Linus Rechnov. He’ll vouch for me. I’m running the New Horizon Movement. I need to speak to people. I need a scarab, I need a lawyer—”

The officer stood up. “You can take him away.”

“Listen to me!”

Two of them hauled him to his feet, nose still streaming. His face throbbed. He could feel where the bone had split.

The skadi shunted him to the lift, wrestling and kicking. Black space rushed to fill his vision. He was aware of shouting, a terrible screaming, did not realize at first that it was his own voice making that sound. His heels dug trenches in the floor. Pairs of eyes peered curiously from behind their doors as the lift began to bear him inexorably down.

He saw the porthole looming, the cold unearthly cell. He realized that his noise was words.

“Not underwater,” he was screaming. The same words, over and over again. “Not underwater, not underwater, not underwater.”

The fist came towards his temple. There was a pin burst of pain and then nothing.

The teeth chattered in his head. He heard their clicking, one against the other, as if from miles away. His mouth was sore. He could not feel the rest of his face and he could not see. He panicked that he was blind and crawled his hands bit by bit up to his face, expecting to feel the open sightless orbs but it was the skin of his eyelids, clogged and somehow immovable. He thought he heard a voice, then there was an eruption of pain, something cold and wet in the centre of his face. The voice faded. He was deaf as well as blind.

His eyelids peeled open, pulling away from their crusts. He blinked, breathed in cold air, blinked again. He was lying on a bunk in a cell. The light was glaucous. It smelled of salt and damp and slow corrosion.

The space seemed no larger, no smaller than the last time. The walls were concrete. It was empty except for a bucket and the bunk he was lying on. Thin mattress. No pillow. They had patched up his nose, but he could still taste old blood. He touched it with fingertips that withdrew quickly when he felt the tender flesh. Whatever they had done, it was not set properly. His fingers explored upward, over the bump on his right temple. At least they had missed his eye.

He sensed, somehow, that he was further underwater than before. The porthole was obscured by algae. Fish swimming by were no more than shadows in a murky well.

His mind jumped between terror and rationale. He lay very still and ordered himself not to scream.

“Adelaide Rechnov to see you.” The guard’s voice through the shutter was flat.

“I don’t want to see her.”

The guard opened the door. Adelaide came in. She was wearing a black trouser suit and tinted glasses and her hair was tied back in a tail. It gave her an androgynous look. Under the light of the cell, the pale peaks of her cheeks and the pointed chin took on a green tinge, watery and opaque. She reminded him of a mythical creature risen from the depths. A siren. An undine. He could smell scent on her, the sharp citrus one she wore sometimes. He had watched her apply that scent to hidden parts of her body.

“Thank you,” said Adelaide to the guard, a gesture that was also a dismissal. The guard glanced from Vikram to Adelaide and then left. The door clanged shut.

“Hello, Vikram,” she said.

He stayed as he was on the bunk, half sitting half crouched, arms balanced on knees and fingers interlocked. Adelaide’s eyes flitted about. They did not pause for long; there wasn’t much to see. The walls, the damp, the bunk. He saw her note the porthole and cursed himself for ever having mentioned it to her. With that weakness he had given her access to something deeply personal. He was a fool.

“Lovely place you’ve got here,” she said. The joke was absorbed into the stifling air. Adelaide’s handbag dangled at her side. The bag was awkward, out of place. She seemed to realize this, because her fingers clenched and unclenched on its strap. He let her squirm. Her eyes settled on his face and he saw them widen.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

He did not reply. A broken nose was obvious to anyone, and as they hadn’t fixed it properly it would always be crooked now. Adelaide ploughed on.

“I’m so sorry about this, Vikram. I’m doing everything I can to get you out.”

“Are you?”

“You can speak. For a minute there I thought they’d cut out your tongue.”

“Not yet,” he said.

There was a silence. Adelaide looked as though she might lean against the wall, but thought better of it. He did not suggest she could sit down.

“So,” she said. “I’ve managed to get you a lawyer, a really good one. She’s going to stop by this afternoon, go through all the technicalities with you, but I’d say you should only be in here a couple more days.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“What?”

Behind the glasses, confusion rippled across her face, before she regained possession.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” she said. A flash of the real Adelaide at last. The smell of citrus was overwhelming; making him think of lemons and limes, the tang, the jolt of biting into a lemon slice after voqua. He had to think of her and what she had done.

He leaned forward.

“I. Don’t. Want. Your. Help.”

Adelaide folded her arms across her chest. Even her lips were pale green.

“Noble as that sentiment may be, Vikram, it’s hardly in your interests, is it? Without me you’re stuck down here for all foreseeable eternity.” Her face softened. “Look. It’s not like you’re going to owe me anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. Think of it as me settling a debt.”

Her arrogance really was astounding, Vikram told himself. His fingers untangled and locked again. He struggled not to clench them. She had taken enough of him already, he was not going to show her anything.

“I don’t think you quite understand,” he said. “You’ve got me in enough shit. I don’t want you meddling in my affairs any more.”

“You were happy enough for me to meddle up until now,” she snapped. “What in hell’s tide’s got into you? I helped you get your schemes through, didn’t I? I put your name on the map.”

“And then you sent me right back where I belong, didn’t you?”

He was standing, moving towards her. He slammed his palm against the wall inches from her head. She flinched. His hand stayed there, trapping her. With his other hand he ripped the glasses from her face. They clattered on the floor behind him. Pinned, Adelaide looked him right in the eye. There was redness, swelling, and for a moment he thought she had been crying, but that was impossible. Adelaide never cried.

“I didn’t put you here, Vikram.”

They were head to head now, close enough to see the tiniest contractions of the irises. Close enough to kiss. He looked at her mouth. Her lips were suffering from a lack of care, colourless and chapped. Still he remembered their feel and wanted to kick the wall and her too.

“How do I know you didn’t set me up?”

She shook her head. She looked bewildered. He reminded himself that she had spent most of her life acting.

“Why would I set you up? I’d only be screwing myself as well.”

“As opposed to screwing me?”

“Grow up.”

He knew he deserved that, but he could not shake the belief that she had screwed him over, one way or another. Someone was to blame and it had better be her. His other hand flashed to her throat. He could see the vein pulsing there. Adelaide Mystik had given him nothing and taken what he had.

“Listen to me,” she said, her voice restricted. “I know what I told you when we made that deal. I warned you. I told you not to trust me.”

“And you were right,” he snarled.

“I’m telling you the opposite now.”

He placed his hand under her jaw and lifted it, appraising her in a cold, deliberate manner. There were dark shadows under her eyes; nightmares or nights without sleep. He imagined her tossing and turning in the empty width of that bed. The lilac silk sheets wrapping around her limbs. Her body sticky with sweat in the tropical heating.

“Not looking so hot, Adelaide,” he said softly.

He felt the tension in her jaw, sensed she was gathering her resources for a crushing rejoinder. Her shoulders lifted a little.

“Well,” she said. “It’s fucking freezing in here.”

He almost laughed. He had to hold his face under tight rein. He knew he had been successful because disappointment flickered in her eyes and they dropped. He had never known Adelaide to drop her eyes.

“I don’t have much time,” she said. She slumped against the wall.

“Got somewhere better to be? Don’t let me keep you.”

“You don’t understand,” she said.

The plea made him incandescent. He had to move away before he hit her.

“Oh, I understand you perfectly! You think I have a rat’s ass chance of getting out of here in the next twelve months? You’re fucking crazy. You asked me once what it’s like down here. Well, look at it! Take a fucking good look, Adelaide! Getting claustrophobic yet?” He gave the metal bunk a vicious kick. Adelaide was frozen against the wall. He stepped towards her. “Not yet, perhaps. It takes all of a good hour to sink in. But after that, you’ll stop feeling normal. That porthole drives you mad. You start thinking of ways you could get out, except there aren’t any. Thinking you could somehow swim out, except you’d drown. And then you start to think you are drowning. You’ve played at that, haven’t you Adelaide? You’ve played at drowning. Did you think it was fun? Think it was a game?”

The door opened. Out of defiance, Vikram did not move, waiting for them to order him away from her, wanting until the last second that pale face at the mercy of his accusing stare. But it wasn’t who he thought. The big, muscular man in the doorway was not a guard; he wore a dark blue suit and his head was shaved to nothing. Vikram had never seen him before.

“I told you I didn’t have much time.” Adelaide turned to the newcomer, her face beseeching. “Just give me five more minutes—”

For answer the man took a rough hold of her wrist and yanked her towards him. She stumbled.

“Your brother said time’s up, Miss Rechnov.”

“It’s Mystik.”

“Rechnov since I’ve known you. She’s under house arrest,” he said casually to Vikram. “Daddy’s orders, isn’t it AD?”

Vikram stared at the man. Adelaide’s elbow hit hard and fast. Her antagonist doubled over. Then he straightened, cleared his face of all expression, and hauled Adelaide out of the cell. The door slammed before Vikram could anticipate it. He heard a crack like someone being hit. If it was her she did not cry out.

Good girl, he thought automatically. The noise reverberated in his ears. Was it just prison playing tricks? He wanted to pull her back, examine her face anew for signs of proof. Don’t you understand, he wanted to say. Don’t you understand, I have my pride too. But she was gone. He felt stunned, incapable of rational thought. His anger was wasted. He had been waiting for her to show up, he realized, so he could say everything he wanted to say, but he had expected to get answers. Someone — he did not know who — had denied him that.

Adelaide was gone. She was really gone. The eerie light settled upon him like a shawl and in his solitary green cell he shivered.

He watched the drop of water forming on the ceiling. Steadily, it grew. It bulged from the damp concrete, swelling, tugging at its life cord until finally it parted and fell—plink—into the puddle in the corner of the cell.

The puddle, when he arrived, had measured about four centimetres across. Over the last — how many? — days, it had stretched to seven. The puddle terrified him. From its meagre beginnings he saw the ocean grow and grow and surge through the porthole to flood the cell. He saw himself drown. He saw the water rising and himself swimming up with it as he cried out for help but none came. He swam from one side of the cell to another, pushing against the walls. Inch by inch his airspace receded. His mouth pressed against the ceiling which had turned to glass, he sucked in his last gasp of oxygen and then he was in a tank full of ocean and there was no more breathing.

It happened when he had been staring at the porthole. The glass broke and the water rushed in. The visions were short and abrupt. The longer versions waited until he slept. When the cell was full of water, his lungs burning and his consciousness prepared to switch off, he woke, hyperventilating. He lived his dying again and again.

Sometimes, when the water crashed in, he saw Adelaide’s body inside it, turning over and over like a fish.

Time fluxed. The outside world, with its catalogues of sunrise, sunset, hail and snow, was estranged from him. The lighting was the same dim green twenty-four hours a day. When he was let out to eat the light in the hallway flickered, but in his cell it never changed.

He knew, from his last stint underwater, that his skin was draining of colour and his arteries were growing sluggish. He did sets of exercises twice a day, with the damp floor against his palms and his back. He ran on the spot but the buildup of trapped momentum made him want to slam himself against the wall. Sometimes he did so, screaming with the impact. His shoulders and hips swelled in purple bruises. From the condensation and the cold he developed a shiver and a hacking cough. He watched carefully for specks of blood: the first signs of tuberculosis.

Every twelve hours he scratched half a cross into the wall. He hung his watch on the stub of a nail. If they were worried about suicide they would have filed the nail down; it was, he speculated, just substantial enough to kill yourself. He pondered how it might be done, the best angle, the most likely site. The base of the skull, probably. They had left it for the same reason the cell was concrete and he had been allowed to keep his watch, which he could choke on. A person who committed suicide was not worth preserving until the end of their prison sentence.

A man five cells around from Vikram managed to hang himself. When he heard the news Vikram tried to imagine how the man might have done it. What had he hung from? What had he used? A shoelace? A belt? He took off his own belt and examined it, felt the metal studs and the taut length of it.

As he lay in the green, faces edged into his mind, old friends, members of Horizon, Nils, Shadiyah, Jannike, Linus, the brother and sister in the shelter, Hella. He had lost not one but two lives. Bad enough to be an airlift, but what happened when you had to cross back? He saw himself leaving prison, staggering into daylight like a manta addict. He could not go to any of those people. He would be as rootless as he had been in the orphanage before Mikkeli found him, a buoy cut loose from its moorings and cast out on the open sea.

It’s not a lovers’ city, said Adelaide, and she was right, in the end. Osiris mocked such fragility. I don’t love Adelaide, he wanted to say. Don’t punish me for what I have not done. He heard repeated the cell door shut and the crack that followed it and imagined the action that must have made it. Her theories of Axel’s murder took up residence in the cell with him. He spoke to Rechnov murderers. Asked them how they had done it. He whispered lines of the letter to himself. The white horse will talk first.

He started from fits of dozing to find himself battering the concrete with his fists. The cell was growing smaller. This has happened before, you know how prison messes with your head. But this time it was happening faster. As the cell grew closer and the puddle grew larger, he recognized the seeds: fear that he would never get out, and worse, fear that he would not want to. He knew how it ended. Osiris became too terrible to envisage. The city’s hand clenched cold around your heart and you preferred to stay submerged, away from sunlight and eyes that might stare.

Finally, like the man five cells around, you no longer cared for your own convictions and you found a way to hang yourself.

Her undine spirit haunted him. He replayed her, opening the door in black lace, telling tales of the rainbow-fish with her viridescent eyes wide, the slope of her back rising and falling, slumped in sleep against the lilac sheets. He watched the waterbike leap over the waves and her hair stream in a banner behind her. He felt the warm unconscious weight of her pushing on his chest. The smell of lemons and limes permeated the cell, for a day or so. Then he had to hunt for it on the air. Then it was just an idea.

Sometimes he heard his breathing and thought that it was hers. He saw her floating, face down in the water and she was both herself and Mikkeli, water and ice, the two fused in some halfway state between liquid and frozen. A bird rested on each of their backs. Its beak plunged. Their lungs had forgotten how to breathe.

The puddle grew. He had heard you could drown in an inch of water.

The woman in the cell next door wailed. At least, he thought it was her, but it might be Mikkeli howling with a chorus of ghosts out by the ring-net, or it could be Adelaide. If Adelaide existed.

Perhaps he had never left jail. He had been here all the time; everything had been a protracted dream, the produce of his brain, a diversion, a defence mechanism. He marvelled at the power of his own invention. He had conjured Adelaide out of adverts and headlines from years before the riots. Here she was walking along a red carpet. Clear voqua poured onto a mountain of ice which imprisoned her in a great column and melted from the inside out. He watched her drown. She turned blue.

His lungs were thick; he lay on the bed, too weak to move. Black lace curled around the door frame and produced twine that grew into her mouth and pierced the back of her head. Her hair writhed and bound her to the waterbike. She was pulled beneath the surface with it. On the seabed he watched fish turn her to mud. She stretched out a dissolving finger and he knew that when she touched him he would turn to mud too.

Her touch was liquid. The mud took his hands first, and last his eyes.

His ground-dreams wrapped around his nightmares. He began to think of land. A boat would come, a lost boat, a found boat. It would take him away from Osiris. Away from staring eyes. Better to die on the open ocean, with clean air on his skin and the sun on his face.

Adelaide whispered to him.

And when I come back we can find the sand. You’ll like that.

I will, he said. I will.

No more mazes, no more clouds.

Another drip landed in the puddle. Everything returned to the sea.