“So why are you?”
“I don’t know.” She took a sip of tea, and set the cup back without a clink. “What about your girl? Mikkeli, wasn’t it? What was she like?”
He felt indebted to answer. “She wasn’t my girl,” he said. “Not like that. We grew up together. She looked out for me. She was smart, too.” He smiled wryly. “Not like your brother. She was a thief.”
Adelaide smiled back. “I like that.”
“Anyway, she died.” Vikram almost said too, but caught himself in time. He stretched out his legs under the low table and realized that both of them still had the plastic sheaths on their feet. He removed his and discreetly stuffed them into his boots.
The girl with the origami was taking her booty from table to table, depositing a napkin bird on each polished surface. When she reached them, Adelaide spoke sharply.
“We don’t want that.”
The girl ignored her and placed a bird on a saucer. She moved dreamily onto the next table. Vikram picked up the offering. Its folds were clean and crisp. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t like birds.”
“You don’t like—” He glanced at her and grinned with the realization. “Oh. You’re scared of them.”
Adelaide scowled blackly.
“It’s alright, you’re not the only one I’ve met with a phobia.” He tucked the origami into his pocket. “I won’t tell.”
The girl, having finished her rounds, paid for her tea and left.
“Where do you think Axel is?” Vikram asked bluntly.
“He may have gone somewhere. Somewhere he feels safe, until I can find him. That could be anywhere, with Axel.” Adelaide hesitated. She checked around them and lowered her voice. “But I have to consider the possibility that he’s been taken somewhere. By someone who wants him out the way.”
Stars, he thought, the girl’s deluded.
“Then I hope it’s the first option,” he said.
Vikram’s certainty was equally strong. The way he saw it, Axel’s death could have been accidental or deliberate. If it was deliberate, presumably the Rechnovs had decided the boy was too much of an embarrassment, and had him removed. They were an important family with a big reputation at stake. Vikram had no doubt that they were capable of it. Or, Axel had chosen to die, in which case it was better for all the Rechnovs if his body was never found.
Osiris was not a kind city, but to choose to opt out was the strictest of taboos. In the severest cold spells, Vikram had spent the nights with friends, talking through the long dark hours, pinching one another at the first sign of drowsiness, because if sleep came there was no guarantee of ever waking up again. Every sunrise was a miracle. On days like those, you didn’t think about why, or what for. You just clung.
Perhaps that was why Adelaide was so adamant that her brother was alive. To avoid the shame if he had taken his own life.
“You saw something in the penthouse.” Adelaide changed the subject. “Not about Axel. It was the balloon room. When you saw that, you thought of something.”
He was surprised that she had noticed.
“It’s not important,” he said. “You’d think it was silly.”
Denial was a sure way to catch Adelaide’s interest. She poured herself another glass of tea and then topped up his, absently or on purpose, he wasn’t sure which.
“Tell me,” she said.
“There’s a story about a balloon flight.” Vikram shrugged, trying to impress upon her its insignificance, although the tale resonated with him. “When I saw that room, I was reminded of the story. That’s all.”
“Go on.”
She wasn’t looking at him but he sensed the beam of her attention, bouncing off the windows and lancing him in the chest, where another voice was stirring. He felt Mikkeli sit up, shake her spiky mess of hair out of its hood.
“There’s a legend,” he said. “When the rain began in the year of the Great Storms, a balloon set out on a journey to Osiris. There were two passengers. One of them was a girl — an important girl. Some people say she was a ruler or a princess. Others say she was some kind of star.”
A smile flitted over Adelaide’s face.
“Like me.” She raised her coral tea to her lips and sipped without looking at the glass. He had earned her concentration.
“Well,” he said. “More like me, actually. They’d be refugees, wouldn’t they? Anyway, she has different names. She’s also blind. The other passenger is a man. Her guide.”
He heard Mikkeli’s voice in the quiet parlour. Come on, Vikram, you can do better than this! Where’s the drama? He couldn’t do her exuberant speech, her exaggerations, but they were both speaking as he continued, because Keli had loved this story and narrated it many times, whispering to Vikram from the bunk above his on nights when the orphanage boat rocked on frightening waves, and Naala’s off-key, drunken singing was drowned by the wind.
“The girl relies totally on the guide. He flies the balloon. He has promised to take her to a safe place — to Osiris, he says.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Nobody knows. Some say south where the ice is, others say deep in the deserts, far up north. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, the man isn’t who he says he is. He’s an assassin.”
Adelaide made an ooh shape with her mouth. Vikram paused, making a show of sprinkling a finger-and-thumb full of ginger into his tea. The tiny grains floated for a second, then sank.
“Well? Does he kill her?” Adelaide demanded.
“He poisons her. And then he discovers that she isn’t who she says she is either. She’s a double. An illusion of the real target.”
“So who wins?”
“Nobody wins. He poisons himself in remorse. The legend says there is a cure in Osiris, but they haven’t got here yet. The balloon is still flying. That’s why it’s called the last balloon flight.”
Adelaide licked her index finger and dipped it into the ginger. She sucked thoughtfully.
“They’d be dead,” she said. “Or old. Ancient, by now.” She fell quiet.
“It’s a story, Adelaide.”
“I know,” she said quickly.
“People talk about it mostly when they’re thinking about getting out. You could say it’s like an alarm bell.”
“Maybe Axel heard it.”
“I don’t know. It’s a western thing.”
“He might have thought he could take that flight.”
He did not reply to that because her words rang uncannily close to Mikkeli’s. His best friend, leaning forward over the oars of a rowboat as they scuttled from tower to tower, lit only by the moon. Just imagine, Vikram, that it was true. Would you take that flight? Keli would have. She’d have jumped on board without a glance back, just to get that close to the clouds. And then they’d hop out the boat and bust a lock.
“I said your tea’s gone cold,” said Adelaide.
She was staring at him. He wasn’t sure why he had told her the story. It felt like a betrayal. As if he had given away a piece of the west, its fragile, ethereal psyche. He wanted to take the story back, to tell Adelaide that she wasn’t worthy of their superstitions. Her side of the city had safety; they did not need hope.
Vikram looked at the windows. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “The rain’s stopped anyway.”