Resolution (13 page)

‘Ja, natürlich.’

When Kian sat down opposite Josette, he automatically switched mental gears.

‘
Tu
vas bien, Josette?’

‘What do you think, Dirk?’

‘I...’ Kian stopped. Exactly what had happened between her and Dirk?

‘Andre’s not too happy, either. You’d better stay away from him for a while,
hein?’

Kian thought that Josette’s elder brother was a clumsy fool, but that was irrelevant.

‘All right. Um, how did things go today?’

He knew Josette was trying out for the gym team. Like himself and Dirk, she came into the city three days a week for school; the rest of their studying was in Every Ware.

‘Vernadski hates me. I score 75 in biochem, or he drops me from the alpha group.’

Josette leaned back in her chair, took a tiny vial from her pocket, squirted a pleasant, understated fragrance beneath her ears.

Why does Dirk want to break it off?

It seemed a shame. Josette was very nice.

He‘d do the same for me.

‘What about gym?’ he asked.

Josette gave him a strange look.

Merde. Something you forgot to tell me, bro?

She opened her mouth as if to deliver a scathing reply, but just then Alberto came round from behind the bar, and deposited two tall glasses of warm dark
Glückwein.

‘To keep out the chill.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Merci.
’

Alberto nodded, and set about delivering similar free drinks to the other customers.

A touch on the back of his hand whipped Kian’s attention downwards. With a sultry smile - or as near as Josette could get to one - she wrapped her fingers in his.

‘You know it doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘about my knee. Getting injured. It was worth it, darling.’

‘I don’t—’

‘You can try again. You know what I’d like?’

Kian’s tongue was dry. He swallowed, tried not to flinch as Josette leaned across the small table and whispered in his ear.

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Huh?’

Kian could feel his face burning. ‘You’ve been doing what?’

Josette, suddenly pale, sat back in her chair with a thump.

‘Kian
... ?’ Then, raising her voice to stop all conversation in the café. ‘You’re not Dirk. You pervert!’

‘Oh,
merde.’
But Kian could not help smirking. ‘No wonder you strained your ligaments. Don’t you think that was a little, er, ambitious?’

Josette’s hand arced through the air. Kian shifted slightly, and her palm smacked into the wall.

‘Ow!
Now look what you
^’
ve done.’

‘Me? All I...’

But he let his voice trail off then as she placed her injured hand in her lap, covered her face with the other, and began to sob.

Accusing faces, all around, stared at Kian.

‘I’m sorry.’ It sounded inadequate. ‘Look, see ... Dirk couldn’t face having this conversation. You mean so much to him. It’s just not working—’

‘Bâtard!’
She hissed, an indrawn breath between her teeth, then:
‘Espèce de con! Je te déteste!’

‘I don’t—’

‘I hate your brother, and I hate you. Both of you!’

Kian pushed his chair back. It was time to leave. He signalled to Alberto: the universal handwriting-on-palm gesture which had survived into an age when no-one used pens.

There was a hiss. His left eye stung.

The fragrance bottle was in Josette’s hand and he knocked it aside. It arced through the air, bounced off a pillar onto the floor and lay there.

‘You bitch.’ Kian rubbed at his eye.

‘I didn’t—’

He used his thumbnail to lever off the contact lens, blinked rapidly. He ought to rinse—

But then he saw the expressions on the other diners’ faces, shock mingled with something else, and he slowly rose. There was a mirror on the far wall, inscribed with an advert for Toblerone chocolates. In the reflection, his exposed eye glittered darkly.

Obsidian. Jet. Shining black with no surrounding white.

A Pilot’s eye.

Something Dirk
didn’t
share with you?

Josette was frozen, the tears down her cheeks beginning to congeal. She
knew
that Dirk and Kian lived at the convent which doubled as the Pilots’ School. Had she never put the picture together?

‘Alberto?’ He fingered his infostrand-torc. ‘How much do I owe you?’

Ponderously, Alberto came around from behind the counter, scanned the patrons of his beloved café.

‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Nichts, nul. Rien.’

Kian took a breath, trying to ignore the pain in his eye.

‘But you’d prefer I didn’t come back, am I right?’

Alberto said nothing more, but his meaning was clear.

My kind is not welcome here.

Kian looked at Josette.

‘See you around.’

He left quickly, hiding the trembling in his shoulders, feeling sickened.

Outside, the night was icy black and unforgiving, but Kian kept his hood down as he walked, his eye burning, preferring December chill to the stony hardness of his supposed friends’ hearts.

<>

~ * ~

9

NULAPEIRON AD 3423

Sitting there, in the half-lit cargo hold of a speeding arachnargos, Tom wondered about the nature of obligation and duty. When Axolon was cut free and later restored, what then? Tom had the future to think of, yet no plans beyond attending a Convocation and trying out for any vacant positions. He did not even know when the next Convocation would be held.

None of this distracted Tom from his unease, from his fear of the Anomaly’s turning its attention towards Nulapeiron, and from the memory of Siganth. Eemur had said there was a link between him and the imprisoned Pilot; she implied that her ‘gift’ could have been a shared trip to almost anywhere, yet Tom had ended up in a hellworld.

The Pilot did look familiar. Now that Tom had spent time immersed in the old tale, he was struck by the man’s similarity to Ro and her sons. Though burn-scars distorted his face and his right hand was a claw, Tom decided he must be a descendant of the McNamaras.

I
wish I could help you, Pilot.

The arachnargos slewed to a halt. A voice sounded in the hold: ‘We’re stopping to take on board another passenger, my Lord, if that’s all right.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Tom. ‘You carry on.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The man who shortly climbed inside was a lean, taciturn courier called Markilon, who nodded towards Tom as he sat back against a bulkhead, placed an aerolute across his lap, closed his eyes and promptly fell asleep.

A quiet companion, anyhow.

Soon the arachnargos was under way again.

They stopped overnight in a raw cavern in interstitial territory, away from any civilized demesne. The two pilots, Feltima - a short woman with cropped hair and shoulders as broad and muscular as Elva’s - and the older, leaner Velsevius, joined Tom and Markilon in the hold.

‘We could sleep outside,’ said Velsevius, ‘but I always feel safer onboard.’

‘Suits me.’ Tom glanced at Markilon. ‘What do you think?’

In answer, the courier picked up his aerolute, strummed a chord, and began to softly sing:

‘A fighting Lord who lacked a limb

Asked suff’ring proles to follow him

And glad they were, against the Blight

To focus their enraged might

When hope of victory seemed dim
...’

Then he plucked a final chord, and allowed the harmony to die away.

‘You’re a man with hidden depths, Markilon,’ said Tom after a moment.

‘Many people are, my Lord.’

‘So
you’re
—’ began Feltima, staring at Tom, but a gesture from Velsevius cut her off.

‘We don’t enquire,’ Velsevius said, ‘about our passengers’ private lives.’