Abena whispers a prayer to Jesus.
‘The Asamoahs keep everyone’s secrets. But look out for Lucasinho, Abena. The Mackenzies won’t daren’t touch us, but they hold long grudges and long knives.’
Zabbaleen carefully pick up and take away the dead doves that litter the gardens of Jonathon Kayode. The release had been timed; the cages sprang open, the birds beat upwards in an applause of wings and whisked out over the heads of the departing guests. Ariel picks her careful, purring path through the rotting rose petals. She doesn’t trust her bot legs on the slippery slime. She shares her mother’s distaste for living matter. Organic turns so nasty so fast.
Jonathon Kayode receives her in his apartment, overlooking the garden. Ribbons and silvered fruit still adorn the citrus trees, food scraps litter the lawns. The bots are diligent but four hundred guests shed a load of party.
‘Well, this is a mess,’ Jonathon Kayode says, greeting Ariel.
‘We hire people to clear up our messes,’ Ariel says.
‘I didn’t get the opportunity to mention it at the “event”, but it’s wonderful to see you so mobile. That lower hemline suits you. I’ve been around a few places. The wedding of the year flops but the groom’s aunt sets a fashion trend. How is the boy?’
‘The Asamoahs have given him sanctuary.’
‘You always were close, Cortas and Asamoahs.’
‘I want you to stop this Jonathon.’
Jonathon Kayode shakes his head, touches a finger to his forehead.
‘Ariel, you know as well as I …’
‘If the LDC wants a thing to happen or not happen, the LDC finds a way.’
They sit on either side of a low table. A bot brings two Blushing Boys.
‘You know, I really got a taste for these,’ the Eagle says. Ariel does not have the taste this afternoon. The Eagle takes a sip. He is a noisy drinker.
‘It’s two years since the Court of Clavius settled by combat,’ Ariel says.
‘Not quite.’ Jonathon Kayode sets his glass down. ‘Alayoum versus Filmus.’
‘It would never have gone to blades. I knew that. Malandragem. It’s how I win. And the two cases are different. That was a divorce case. This is an old-fashioned calling-out, a trial of honour.’
‘Bryce Mackenzie did rather get the drop on your brother.’
‘You can call it off Jonathon,’ Ariel says.
‘Are you sure you don’t want anything to drink?’ The Eagle of the Moon says, lifting his glass. Over its rim his eyes catch Ariel’s. His glance darts to the rear of the apartment; once, twice, three times. Ariel’s eyes widen.
‘It’s still a little too early for me, Jonathon.’ It had been a standard joke among the court and legal circles that Adrian MacKenzie had the Eagle of the Moon trussed up like a piece of exhibition shibari. No joke.
They want blood, he mouths. ‘Who’s representing Lucas?’
‘Carlinhos.’
Jonathon Kayode’s mouth opens in shock. Your oko didn’t tell you that the blood they want is the heart blood.
‘They nominated Hadley Mackenzie as zashitnik. We had to match status.’
She won’t let the Eagle of the Moon look away. You can stop all this, save two young men.
‘Jonathon?’
‘I can’t help you, Ariel. I am not the law.’
‘I seem to be making a habit of this, but fuck you.’ Ariel wills her legs to stand her upright. She lifts her clutch bag. She raises her courtroom voice to hit the back wall of the drawing room. ‘And fuck you too, Adrian. I hope my brother cuts yours to pieces.’
He’s gone back to Boa Vista for the fight. I couldn’t do that, Ariel thinks. Even in the deep dark, when she felt opened and reached into and violated, when she feared her fine legs would never carry her again, when she saw the knife every time she closed her eyes, she refused to let her mother carry her back to Boa Vista. You see the knife too, Carlinhos. Every time. It’s behind me, it’s ahead of you. I would be paralysed with fear.
He lies on his belly on a table in the Nossa Senhora da Rocha Pavilion. Spray from the Oxum waterfall gathers and drips from the lip of the dome. A masseur works his body, fingers deep in the muscle fibres. Carlinhos moans, little cries that sound like sex. It repulses Arieclass="underline" another touching your body so intimately. Another has touched her body, more intimately than massage, or sex.
Carlinhos turns his head to one side, grins at his sister.
‘Ola.’
‘My silver tongue let me down this time, Carlo.’
Carlinhos’s face twitches sad. He grimaces to another deep working by the masseur. You are magnificent, Ariel thinks, and I think of knives slicing that perfect skin and I am filled with cold horror.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ Carlinhos says.
‘I can try … No I can’t do anything. I’ve reached the end of words. They will have their duel.’
‘I know.’
Ariel kisses the back of her brother’s neck.
‘Kill him, Carlo. Kill him slowly and painfully. Kill him in front of their eyes so they can see every last thing they hoped to do to our family bleed out in front of them. Kill him for me.’
‘Can I come? Can I?’
‘No!’ Rafa thunders. Robson trots at his father’s heel.
‘I want to support Carlinhos.’
‘No,’ Rafa says again.
‘Why not? You’re going. Everyone is going.’
Rafa turns to Robson.
‘It’s not handball. It’s not a game. It’s not a thing you support. We’re going because Carlinhos does not fight alone. I don’t want to go. I don’t want him to go. But I will go. And you will not.’
Robson shuffles, frowns.
‘Then I want to see him now.’
Rafa sighs in exasperation.
‘Okay.’
The gym is the least used of Boa Vista’s chambers. Bots have cleared years of dust, slowly warmed it from the chill of the eternal deep rock. Carlinhos has hung ceramic bells on ribbons from the ceiling. Seven bells. In a pair of fighting trunks he feints and dodges, cuts and pivots across the floor.
‘Irmão.’
Carlinhos comes panting to the rail. He sets the knife on the ledge, rests his chin on his folded arms.
‘Hey, Robson.’
‘Tio.’
‘Did you ring any?’ Rafa nods at the hanging bells.
‘I never ring any bells,’ Carlinhos says. A movement, so fast and unexpected Carlinhos has no answer to it. Robson presses the tip of the knife to the soft skin under Carlinhos’s right ear.
‘Robson …’
‘Hadley Mackenzie taught me, if you take a man’s knife, you must use it against him. Never let go of the knife.’
Carlinhos is liquid action; he ducks away from the knife point and in the same flow of movement twists Robson’s wrist firmly enough to teach pain. Carlinhos scoops up the dropped knife.
‘Thank you, Robson. I’ll watch for that.’
All the bells chime, a gentle tintinnabulation. Another small quake.
Carlinhos comes out of the bathroom, eyes wide.
‘There’s a whirlpool in there. I didn’t even have a whirlpool in Boa Vista.’
‘It’s the least I can do, Carlo.’
Lucas’s preparation of Camp Carlinhos has been unusually difficult. The wedding fiasco still taints the social atmosphere. Should news of a duel between enemy Dragons leak, even the threat of litigation from Cortas and Mackenzies would not stay the gossip networks. Handsome boys fighting in not many clothes. Even better than handsome boys marrying. The exclusive apartment on Orion hub was hired through shell companies; the printer designs commissioned through another and the masseurs, physiotherapists, psychologists, cooks, dietitians, knife-smiths, discreet security hired anonymously through agency AIs. A training room has been built and Mariano Gabriel Demaria brought secretly from Queen of the South and set up in the adjoining apartment. Last of all, Carlinhos’s fighting knives, of lunar steel, have been carried from João de Deus and installed in the dojo.