Palace (6 page)

‘None, Se. Just thought that fellow was bothering you.’

‘Not in the least. Hey, it’s festival, right? He’s too far gone to hurt anybody.’

Rico could just see the Protector smile under the smoked black vizor that covered half his face. ‘Well, true enough, Se, but you never know what trouble they’re going to get into, that kind.’ With a wave to his partner, he stepped round Hi.

Hi grabbed Rico’s shoulder and held onto him while the Protectors trotted off up the Boulain. Rico could only hope that Arno had enough of a head start to get away.

‘There’s nothing I can do for Arno,’ Hi whispered. ‘Nothing anyone can do.’

‘Maybe so, but I want to
try.’
Rico squirmed free, but Hi grabbed him again, harder this time.

‘Rico! I’m telling you to quit it! That’s an order!’

A direct order from his patron - Rico hesitated long enough for Hi to settle his grip two-handed, a painful clamp on his shoulders.

‘But why? How can you just-’

‘This is no place to talk about it. Now come on.’

Rico shook his head no and twisted in Hi’s grip to look in the direction that Arno had taken. All he could see now were crowds. Even the bright red helmets of the Protectors had vanished in the general sea of colour. Hi must have seen the same; with a sigh he let Rico go.

‘I could do something for him,’ Rico snapped. ‘Even if you can’t.’

‘For God’s sake! You are the most goddamn stubborn -’

‘He’s my friend. And your son.’

‘Yeah, I know that. I’m aware of it every day. This is no time to discuss it.’

‘But-’

Hi swung back-handed and cracked him across the face, then pulled him away. Hauled along like a saccule cart, Rico felt his eyes watering. No-one had ever hit him before, not that any one but his patron could have got away with such a thing. He made himself a promise that this would be the last time, too. Hi found a clear spot around a corner and stopped, letting Rico catch his breath and wipe his eyes off on his shirt-sleeve.

‘Sorry, Rico. I’m telling you that as your uncle, okay?’ Hi’s voice shook. ‘But never mention Arno again. And that I’m telling you as your guildmaster and your family’s patron both.’

Rico swallowed hard, swallowed a thousand insults, a thousand questions. Arno is your own son, how could you, just how could you? He could say none of it to his patron and guildmaster, not one word. All he could do was nod a yes he hated.

‘Good.’ Hi forced out a smile. ‘Now let’s go and have a good time and forget about this. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Rico paused just long enough. ‘Se.’ Hi winced, but he said nothing. Although Hi, wrapped in a black mood of his own, never noticed, Rico fumed as they hurried on, dodging the gridjockeys. The Cyberguild made rivals of its apprentices, not friends. Out of all the apprentices and younger journeymen around him, Rico had known only one person he could trust: Arno - brilliant, gifted Arno, the hope and pride of the entire guild, a product of centuries of informal gene-type breeding, really, since the guild’s masters, male and female both, tended to pick marriage partners with their own abilities. Everyone talked about Arno, everyone admired Arno, but Arno had sought Rico out and made him a friend - only to disappear, to drop out of the guild and out of sight just a few months past. Now Rico had found him only to lose him again.

‘I can’t,’ Rico said. ‘I can’t just not say anything.’

Hi groaned under his breath.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Rico went on. ‘I know you’re my master and my patron, but I don’t care if you kick me out of the goddamned guild. I don’t see how you -’

‘Then shut up and listen!’ Hi let out his breath in a sharp puff. ‘Do you think I like seeing Arno that way? It’s the drugs, Rico. Listen to me. Listen hard and think about what you’ve just seen. We can’t get full access without them, but some people fall in love with the damn cyberdrugs, and then their lives are over. They end up here, begging in the streets to buy more.’

Rico stopped walking and gaped. Drugs? Arno was a drug addict? He shook his head, an unconscious no.

‘Being a genius isn’t easy,’ Hi said. ‘He found something he needed in those drugs, Rico, something I couldn’t give him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rico whispered. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Do you think I wanted anyone at the prentice level to know? But hell, maybe I was wrong. I owe it to the rest of you, all you apprentices, I mean, to tell the truth about this. I don’t want this happening to anyone else, understand me? And especially not you.’

‘It won’t, I promise.’

But as they walked on, Rico could only wonder why he didn’t believe his uncle. No, not drugs, not Arno. He
knew
Arno, knew him better than Hi ever had. He was too smart, too strong, to fall like this. Something was going on, something had to be going on. Maybe Hi didn’t even know the truth of it; in fact, judging from what his uncle had just said, most likely he didn’t. Bet I can find out, Rico thought. Son of the morning, Child of the Gyre, and morning light - Rico repeated the metas until he could be sure he’d remember them. If he could get a chance to try them out without Hi or another guildmaster catching him, he was going to take it.

* * *

By the time Vida got home, coloured light flooded The Close. From some blocks away she could see its spires, glowing against the foggy twilight with a hundred strip lights of pink, crimson, and indigo. Behind its synthistone wall, it rose three storeys high, the best, the most expensive brothel in all of Pleasure Sect. She lingered a moment, watching the lights change in a ripple pattern. She could take at least a little pride in her life knowing that she’d be working The Close, not some mouldy cheap whorehouse down by the river. A clock floated past - sixteen of the seventeens - she was late, over an hour late for dinner. Aleen would be furious. Vida ran down the alley to the gated back door of The Close. At the speaker unit she gave her name.

‘Voice confirmed,’ it whined. ‘Print?’

She laid her thumb on the ID plate.

‘Confirmed.’

The gate snapped open, and she trotted into the service tunnel. Behind her, the gate slammed shut. Vida was planning on sneaking through the pantry and up to her room the back way, but when she opened the back door, she found Tia, waiting for her. Aleen’s second-in-command looked as fierce as a Garang whose blood oath has been denied. She stood in front of Vida with her arms crossed, like one of the fortified Colossi whose pulse waves guarded the main gate out of Pleasure Sect. Vida had about as good a chance of getting by her.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Tia’s usually pleasant voice was flat.

‘Seeing the festival.’

‘Oh?’ Tia’s expression became even grimmer. ‘I told you to stay home, didn’t I?’

‘You said to wait for you. You didn’t say I had to wait in The Close.’

‘You stupid little cull! Of all the times to disobey, this is the worst. Half of the damned Peronida Fleet is on shore leave, drinking and roaming around the Sect during festival. You might have been killed, or worse, out there.’

Vida dodged back, but Tia snatched her arm with a strong hand and looked her up and down.

‘You’ve got grass stains on your leggings, you smell of insecticide and daalenerry flowers, and your hands are full of scrapes. Where have you been?’

‘I got chased into a roof park by a Lep disguised as a Lifegiver.’

‘Don’t lie to me!’

‘I’m not. It’s true. I swear ... by the Eye of God.’

Tia’s eyes widened, but before she could speak, another Marked girl trotted up to them in a clatter of high-heeled gold sandals -Lera, wearing a purple, nearly transparent smartgown programmed to cling. She was in her thirties, still a Not-child, and likely to remain one forever, too, since she never let ambition overrule her laziness.

‘Tia, Aleen’s not back yet, and we’ve got clients waiting. What’ll we do?’

Vida felt a flare of hope. Maybe she’d escape Aleen’s punishment after all.

‘Send some of the girls to the receiving area to entertain them,’ Tia said. ‘If Aleen isn’t back by the end of seventeens, I’ll help them choose, I guess. How many are waiting?’

‘A dozen. One of them’s that Cyberguild master you told us to look out for. I put him in the special room, like you said we should. He’s bringing his nephew for his first time. The boy’s kinda cute.’ Lera giggled and winked.

‘Fine,’ Tia said. ‘I’ll attend to Se Hivel myself. Wait for me inside, Lera.’

Lera clattered off. Tia gave Vida’s arm such a hard shake she whimpered.

‘I don’t have time for this right now, but you’ve got to tell Aleen everything when she gets back. Now, go clean up and change, then come back down here and help in the kitchen. You are
not
to leave the kitchen for the rest of the night. You got that?’

‘Yes, Tia.’

‘You didn’t tell the Protectors about this, did you?’

‘No, course not!’

‘Good. Smart girl. Now, go!’

* * *

Rico and Hi had arrived at The Close just before sixteens, just as the sun was setting in earnest, turning the swirling fog red and bronze. In the brassy light the brothel’s plastocrete spires looked like engraved and burnished metal. As they headed toward the front gate in the synthistone wall, Rico noticed what seemed to be writing, big ugly letters scrawled in black, up high on the wall. He paused, then pointed them out to Hi.

‘Lep loving bitch,’ they spelled out. ‘Lep filth must die.’

Hi swore under his breath with a growl of pure venom.

‘This kind of thing has got to be stopped,’ Hi snapped. ‘Well, I suppose you can understand why this racist crap would spread to Pleasure. Some of the people here really need someone else to look down on. That’s who joins political groups like UJU.’

‘UJU? I didn’t think anyone really believed in them. It doesn’t make any sense, hating Leps.’

‘Yeah, I agree, but I’m afraid a lot of people don’t. Look at that big rally they’re advertising.’

‘No-one’s going to really go to that, are they?’

‘I bet they get a decent crowd. Someone’s got to write those lousy pamphlets, don’t they?

And someone’s got to download them. Well, come on. I’ll mention this to Aleen’s staff, and they can come out and clean it off before she has to see it.’

Behind the lacy metal gates stood a pair of burly human men, wearing pale blue trousers and shirts cut like a military uniform. Rico felt profoundly squeamish when he realized that they recognized his uncle for a long-time regular customer.

‘Come in, Se,’ one said, bowing. ‘Good to see you. Madam’s holding a little party out back in the gardens.’ He glanced Rico’s way. ‘Good evening to you, Se.’

Rico mumbled good evening with a dry mouth.

Across a narrow, gravelled courtyard rose the facade of the brothel, covered with small windows like the front of a hotel. The front door of polished wood slid back at their approach. Inside stood a pretty young blonde wearing a purple smartgown, close enough to transparent for Rico to make out the shape of her breasts and thighs, and a shadow that had to be pubic hair. Seeing a woman’s body in holos, as of course he had, turned out to be different than the real thing. He looked away fast, afraid of staring, but she was looking only at Hi.

‘I’m Hivel Jons,’ he was saying. ‘Where’s Aleen?’

‘Se, Madam sends her regrets and asked if you’d wait for her. She had to leave on an urgent errand.’

‘Errand? What the hell - Well, I’ll bet Aleen didn’t tell you where she was going.’

‘No, Se. Won’t you come in?’

She settled them in a little room of plush furniture and lush plants, heavy with scentless flowers. When Rico touched a petal, his finger went right through it. The flowers were all holos. On one wall hung a big vidscreen, windowed into four panels, each showing newsfeed from the festival outside. The blonde trotted away, only to return with a short woman dressed in what Rico thought of as real clothes; he couldn’t see through her black and beaded dress, anyway. She had eyes the colour of a sunset.

‘Se Jons,’ she said, smiling, holding out a hand. ‘And this is?’

‘My nephew, Rico.’ Hi paused to catch her hand and kiss it. ‘Good to see you, Tia. Where’s Aleen?’

‘I don’t know. No, honestly, I don’t. She got a message over a closed comm about twenty minutes ago and rushed off with a couple of bodyguards.’

Hi’s lips tightened, then smoothed, and he forced a smile.

‘Well, she’ll get back when she does, huh? No matter. Now. We’re here to celebrate my nephew’s coming of age. He was certified Not-child yesterday. Any ideas?’

‘Aleen left instructions.’ Tia winked, then turned to Rico. ‘Would you like to see some holos of our girls, young Se? Or would you prefer to be surprised?’

Rico’s heart was racing, and he clasped his trembling hands behind his back. Suddenly he remembered the girl he’d seen on the Boulain.

‘Um. Well. Do you have any, uh, red-haired girls?’

‘Not right now,’ Tia said. ‘Only a young ward who isn’t Marked yet. What about a blonde?

Or wait a minute. Darla has brown hair, but it’s got a reddish tone in it.’

Hi laughed and clapped a hand on Rico’s shoulder.

‘I’ve seen Darla,’ Hi said. ‘You’ll like her.’ He glanced at Tia. ‘I’ll wait for Aleen. The doorman said something about a party out in the Pause?’

‘Yes, Se. Lera, take the guildmaster outside, will you?’

‘Fine,’ Hi said. ‘Oh, and Tia, someone’s written on the front wall with a pressure can, it looks like. More racist junk.’

Tia sighed with a shake of her head.

‘I’ll get a servant out there. Se Rico, if you’ll come with me?’

Rico followed Tia down a long hall. He could hear music dimly, coming from a long way away, and every now and again distant laughter. About halfway down Tia ushered him into a lift booth that levitated them to the third floor in a whoosh of compressed air. In this new hallway, the light gleamed dim and mysterious, shimmering on the carpets of handwoven mats that seemed to suck up all sounds. He smelled perfume, spicy but muted. All along the pale pink walls hung two-dee art work. With a shock, Rico recognized Bassi Ev’s famous
Night of
the Following Day.
He paused, studying it, seeing brush strokes and whorls of actual paint. This had to be the original, worth more than he was likely to make in a lifetime. His mother would love to see this. At the thought of Barra, Rico felt his cheeks flush.