‘Shil? ‘
Has to be the first understandable word I’ve said. Franc’s expression is so dark it makes me think perhaps I was meant to ask something else first. And maybe I was. But then I wouldn’t be me. Shil is Aux, that’s reason enough to ask. ‘Well?’
‘Sergeant Neen went looking.’
Since when did Franc stick Sergeant in front of Neen’s name? Since his sister went missing, I guess. ‘He went alone?’
‘No, sir. The colonel went with him.’
Oh fuck . . .
‘When?’
‘Over a week ago.’
‘And the others,’ I say. ‘What about the others?’
‘Rachel’s downstairs,’ says Franc. ‘As for Haze, he spends his life field-stripping that gun of yours. When he’s not sitting over his bloody pad gibbering to himself.’
‘Franc . . .’
‘Fucking don’t, sir . . .‘
Maybe being thanked isn’t what she expects. Throws me too. But I died and so did she, back during that idiot test at the beginning of this mission. It gives us something else in common.
All the same, my voice is harder when I say, ‘Cut the ropes . . .’
She shakes her head. She’s about to explain why when steps on the stairs make her move away from my bed. I expect the local caudillo. Some broad-shouldered thug wrapped in a foul-smelling coat and carrying a rifle, probably with a dagger thrust through his belt. Probably my dagger.
Come to that, probably my belt as well.
What I get is an old woman. Grey hair waterfalls from a high forehead. She’s dressed in a shift that is white and almost clean. A string of pearls hangs round her neck, and a silver brooch fastens a cloak at her shoulders. I’m not sure how she can stand the smoke and heat in here, but she barely seems to notice them.
‘Ahh,’ she says. ‘My voices were right.’ Dark eyes examine my face, and she scowls when she sees the wires to my jaw have gone.
‘You died,’ she tells me.
‘I know.’
She looks at me closely. ‘How do you know?’
‘My own voices told me.’
Gripping my head, she turns it towards her lamp and stares into my eyes. Her gaze is unforgiving, and unexpected from an old woman in a rotting city on the edge of a stinking sea in a habitat that’s taking longer than it should to die.
‘He tells the truth,’ she says.
Franc nods. ‘He always does,’ she replies. ‘Not an endearing quality.’ She has to be quoting Haze or Vijay, no way would she come up with a comment like that on her own.
The old woman smiles. Her name is Kyble. Or maybe that’s her title. Pulling a wineskin from her belt, she yanks off the stopper and holds the skin to my mouth. ‘Drink,’ she says.
‘Not if it’s going to send me back to sleep.’
She shrugs. ‘Die then.’ Putting the stopper back in her flask, she turns to leave the room.
‘Kyble,’ Franc says.
The woman looks back.
‘Please?’
With a sigh, Kyble gives Franc the flask.
The next three days pass in a haze of smoke, bitter wine and memories of Franc raking embers, rebuilding endless fires and stacking herbs onto burning coals until the smoke gets thicker and my memories uncertain. One morning Rachel appears carrying a tray of food for Franc.
Looking round, Rachel screws up her face.
And then, wandering over, she peers deep into my face. Maybe she thinks I’m unconscious. ‘How can you stand it?’ she asks Franc. She’s talking about the heat, unless it’s the smoke. Alternatively, it could just be the smell.
‘You get used to it.’
Rachel snorts.
‘Remember Ilseville?’ Franc’s voice is flat. When Rachel doesn’t answer, Franc says, ‘I do. He kept you alive. He kept me alive. Haze would be dead if it wasn’t for him.’
‘That’s why you’re doing this?’
‘One reason.’
‘What’s the other?’
‘None of your fucking business.’ Stripping dried berries from a branch, Franc busies herself arranging the berries into small heaps. After a few seconds, Rachel leaves. Next morning Kyble cuts the ropes tying my legs. ‘Move your toes,’ she orders. So I do. ‘Now try your whole feet.’
I can move those too.
We work our way up my body. My ankles will twist and my knees will bend, but lifting either leg is near impossible. My fingers work, my wrists turn.
‘Who made this?’ Kyble asks, tapping my prosthetic arm.
‘A woman.’
‘Someone like her?’ asks Kyble, nodding at Franc.
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Someone like you.’
It’s the right answer. Although it invites more questions. These need answers before she will leave me alone. I am tempted to tell Kyble to shut up, fuck off and take her curiosity elsewhere. But in answering questions I pay a debt. And Kyble is not my enemy, or I would be dead and the rest of the Aux too. I have a good idea, though, whose enemy she is.
‘Caudillo Pavel,’ I say.
She spits from instinct. ‘The only person who calls Pavel caudillo,’ Kyble says, ‘is Pavel himself.’
She sees me smile sourly.
‘So,’ I say. ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend?’
‘In your ejercito also?’
‘Also in my ejercito.’
Shaking hands involves gripping wrists while folding back one finger. Kyble doesn’t mind that I fumble the greeting. ‘Clean him, feed him and bed him,’ she tells Franc. ‘Any order you like. Although cleaning him first might be best.’
To me she says, ‘They’ll be back today. Your caudillo, and your angry little servant.’
When Kyble lets herself out, she’s chuckling.
‘Who is she?’
‘Someone who hid you,’ says Franc. ‘When the Silver Fist swept through this city and everyone else wanted to give you up.’
Chapter 27
Walking over to the window, I find myself facing rotting canvas. So I rip it down and toss it on the fire, which doesn’t improve the smell. But that doesn’t matter, because opening the shutters lets in the afternoon wind.
Two young women glance up from the square and look away, probably because I am naked. About the only thing you can say for Enyo Square is that it isn’t full of goats. There are no trees, no flowerbeds, no statues . . . None of the things I’ve come to expect from a square.
And I am looking down onto the sloping roofs of the other houses. They’re made from crumbling red tiles patched with sheet metal. An upper window in a building opposite lets into a bedroom where a woman is breast-feeding a baby. She must be precog, because she turns to meet my gaze.
A second later her shutter shuts.
‘Sir . . .’ Franc leads me away from the window. A second after that, she pulls what is left of the canvas from the fire and stamps it out with her bare feet. ‘Poppy,’ she tells me. ‘You’re feeling the effects of poppy.’
She’s wrong. I’m not feeling anything at all.
Certainly not as much as I expect to feel, given the raw skin covering my lower gut, which is puckered at the edge and sunburn pink. ‘Franc,’ I say. ‘About Colonel Vijay. You know he’s . . .’
‘We know who he is, sir.’
‘I’m sure you do. You’d have to be dumb not to. What I want to know is how he ended up joining Neen’s hunt for Shil.’
‘Originally, sir, the colonel intended going on his own.’
I make her repeat that.
‘Neen insisted on going,’ she says, knowing how absurd that sounds. Neen is a sergeant. Colonel Vijay outranks us all.
‘He told Neen to stay and then changed his mind?’
‘Yes, sir. That’s exactly what happened.’
Never issue an order you know will be broken. Never threaten punishment you don’t inflict. Never make promises you can’t keep. Sounds to me like Colonel Vijay is learning.
I wash myself, because I can’t see why Franc should. And I’m rinsing off the soap when Haze wanders into the attic, carrying my pistol. Without looking at me, he puts the SIG carefully on a table. After a second, I realize it’s because I’m naked. He is a strange boy, and I mean more than the braids twisting from his head.