‘Water,’ Rafa whispers and feels Boa Vista tremble as waters stir in pipes and pumps; a gurgle here, a trickle there; pouring from freshets and faucets; runnels merging into streams, channels filling, water chuckling around rocks, drawing eddies and foam and dead leaves; water gathering in the eyes and mouths of the orixas; a slow swell into great teardrops quivering with surface tension then burst into slow waterfalls; showers and trickles first, then bounding cascades. Until he silenced them, Rafa had never realised how the splash and trickle of moving waters filled Boa Vista.
‘Papai!’ Luna exclaims, dress hitched up and calf-deep in running water. ‘It’s cold!’
Boa Vista is Rafa’s now but still Lousika won’t share it with him.
‘Do you think you’ll move back?’ Rafa asks.
Lucas shakes his head.
‘Too close. I like my distance. And the acoustics are terrible.’ A touch on the sleeve of Rafa’s Brioni jacket. ‘A word.’
Rafa wondered why Lucas had sought him out at the far end of the garden, risking wet trouser cuffs and stained shoes among the stepping stones and pools.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Mamãe and I talked a lot in the last hours.’
Rafa’s throat and jaw tighten with resentment. He is eldest, hwaejang, golden. He should have had these last words.
‘She had a plan for the company,’ Lucas says. The play of falling water masks his words. ‘Her will. She’s created a new position: Choego. She wanted Ariel to fill it.’
‘Ariel.’
‘I’ve been through this but she was quite obdurate. Ariel will be Choego. Foremost. Head of Corta Hélio. Above me and you, irmão. Don’t argue, don’t make suggestions. I have this already planned. There’s nothing we can do about the will. That’s set, locked in.’
‘We could fight …’
‘I said don’t argue, don’t make suggestions. It would be a waste of our time and money fighting through the courts. Ariel knows the courts, she would tie us up forever. No, we do this constitutionally. Our sister was badly wounded in a knife attack. She is effectively paraplegic. Her recovery will be slow, and by no means certain. The constitution of Corta Hélio contains a medical competency clause. The clause allows for a board member to be retired from office in the case of sickness or injury that would prevent them from fully discharging their duties.’
‘You’re suggesting—’
‘Yes I am. For the company, Rafa. Ariel is a supremely competent lawyer, but she knows nothing about helium mining. It wouldn’t be a board-room coup. Just placing her powers and responsibilities in temporary abeyance.’
‘Temporary until what?’
‘Until such time as we can restructure the company more in line with what it needs, rather than our mother’s whims. She was a very sick woman, Rafa.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Lucas.’
Lucas steps back, hands help up in appeal.
‘Of course. I apologise. But I tell you this; our mother would never have survived her own medical competency clause.’
‘No, fuck off, Lucas.’
Lucas backs off another step.
‘All we need are two medical reports, and I have those. One from the João de Deus medical centre, the other from our very own Dr Macaraeg, who is very pleased to have been retained as our family physician. Two reports, and a majority.’ Lucas calls back through the spray. ‘Let me know!’
Luna goes splashing down the stream, kicking slow-settling sprays of silver water into the air. They catch the light of the sunline and diffract it: a child crowned with rainbows.
The door of the tram closes, the door opens. Ariel looks out.
‘Well, are you coming?’
There is no one other than Marina on the platform that Ariel could intend, but she still frowns, mouths, Me?
‘Yes you, who else?’
‘I’m technically out of contract …’
‘Yes yes, you didn’t work for me, you worked for my mother. Well, you work for me now.’
Hetty chimes: incoming mail. A contract.
‘Come on. Let’s get out of the fucking mausoleum. We’ve got a wedding to arrange.’
ELEVEN
Meridian loves a wedding and there is no wedding bigger than the marriage of Lucasinho Corta and Denny Mackenzie. The Eagle of the Moon has donated his private gardens for the ceremony: the trees have been dressed with bows and biolights and twinkling stars. The bergamots and kumquats and dwarf oranges have been sprayed silver. Paper lanterns are strung between the branches. The path will be strewn with rose petals. AKA has donated a hundred white doves for a spectacular, wing-clapping release. They’ve been engineered to die within twenty-four hours. The vermin laws are strict.
The contracts will be signed in the Orange Pavilion. Behind the happy boy and boy a squadron of aerialists will perform a winged ballet high in Antares Hub, weaving ideograms in the air with streamers attached to their ankles. The Eagle of the Moon has made small grants available for the residents of Antares Hub to decorate their neighbourhoods. Banners hang from balconies, streamers festoon the crosswalks and the bridges drip strings of Diwali biolights. Balloons in the shape of manhua bats and butterflies and ducks navigate the hub’s airspace. Space rental on those balconies with the best views has hit six hundred bitsies. The finest vantages on the bridges and catwalks were tagged and bagged long before. Exclusive image rights have been signed to Gupshup after a ferocious auction: the access agreement is stern: media drones must keep a respectful distance and no direct interviews with either oko will be entertained.
The four hundred guests will be waited upon by twenty catering staff and eighty servers. Cultural and religious diets will be accommodated, and all manner of dietary intolerances. There will be meat. A joke is running around that Lucasinho made the wedding cake, in his signature style. Not true: the Ker Wa bakery has the longest established tradition of oko cakes and moon cakes. Kent Narasimha from the Full Moon bar of the Meridian Holiday Inn has created a celebratory cocktaiclass="underline" the Blushing Boy. It involves a designer one-shot gin, foams, cubes of jelly that dissolve and send spirals of colour and flavour up through the gin and flakes of gold foil. Virgin cocktails and herbal waters for non-alcohol drinkers.
The security screening started a week ago. LDC, Corta and Mackenzie security have liaised on an unprecedented level. The gardens of Jonathon Kayode are being scanned down to the level of dust-motes and dead skin-flakes.
Three days to the wedding of the the year! What will the boys wear? Here are spreads of Lucasinho Corta’s latest looks. The preppy colloquium boy. His moon-run party tweed and tan pants. His two weeks as a fashion icon, when everyone pulled on suit-liners and drew on them with marker pens. His grandmother’s eightieth party; his grandmother’s memorial, so sad, so soon. His return to the fashion flashlight: who does his make-up? So very defining of this season. Heads up, boys! You’re all going to be wearing this look. Denny Mackenzie: oh who cares? When was a Mackenzie ever fashionable? But who will design the wedding suits. We simply can’t leave it to the familiars. Design AIs we’re loving include Loyale, San Damiano, Boy de la Boy, Bruce and Bragg, Cenerentola. Who will get the contract? And the cosmetics …
Two days to the wedding of the year! What makes the Dragons so much better than any of us: class. The Cortas have shown sheer class throughout the matrimonial process. It’s less than a month since the terrible attack on Ariel Corta, but not only is she as mobile as ever on her bot legs, she arranged the nikah from her hospital bed! And only two weeks ago, the whole moon was rocked and saddened by the news of the death of Adriana Corta. But what better way for the Cortas to show their courage than chin up, dress up, glam up: the wedding of the year! Class tells.