“You’re not going to let that bitch get the better of you, are you?” she said. Foam dribbled from her lips. Her voice was as dead and as empty as surf.
You know it’s what they all want. And it’s so easy.
He sat up and walked silently through the study into the kitchen, closing each door behind him to block off her escape route. Moonlight fell across the white tablecloth and crystal glasses in the dining room. The outline of the next door was a grey line around its pale panels.
He stood looking at it. The only sounds he could identify were the thud of his heart and the drumming of his pulse in his ears. If he went through that door, he would be taking a step that could not be reversed.
The door opened. Adelaide came out, one hand rubbing her eyelids. When she saw him she stopped.
Their eyes met for a long time.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
“I need some water.”
He saw Eirik, in the tank, his mouth open. Perhaps she did too.
She said, “Do you want a glass?”
“Yes, please.”
She walked around the table. She passed within a few inches of him. He recognized the effort it must have cost her, because she had seen his face. He turned and followed her into the kitchen, watched her bare legs crossing the tiles. She opened the fridge door. The light flooded her slender body, crouching naked beneath the slip of lilac. She took out a jug and poured two glasses of chilled water. Face averted, she placed one on the sideboard for Vikram.
“Sleep well,” she said. She took her own glass of water and went back through the empty dining room and shut the door.
21 ¦ ADELAIDE
She slumped against the bedroom door. Her legs shook. Five minutes passed before she could stand, walk to the bedside cabinet, take out the gun, and go back to sit by the door.
He was going to kill me.
She kept the thought there, wrapped with her the way her fingers wrapped around the grip of the gun.
He was actually going to kill me.
And he’s still here, in my apartment, right now.
22 ¦ VIKRAM
Silently he opened the door that Adelaide had just shut. He knew that she would not hear him. He stood barefoot outside her bedroom. It was so quiet that on the other side he could hear her breathing, long and shaky.
Minutes passed. He stood there, motionless. He took out the knife. He turned it over, noticing the network of scars on his hands and forearms, old and recent, in places overlapping.
Adelaide, and people like her, had given him those scars. Whether she knew it or not, she was guilty.
He sensed the west behind him, urging him to revenge. It was a simple emotion. He could not deny that he wanted it. Gently, he closed his fingers around the door handle.
There was a tiny tremor in the metal, as though, sitting against the door, she was shivering.
He hesitated. It was the briefest flicker of concentration, but within that second he felt his resolution slip away.
Putting the knife back, he padded back through the apartment to the futon. He lay down and pulled the rug up to his neck. The soft fleece gathered at his throat like a noose.
He let out a long, muted sigh. His heart was beating wildly. He was covered in sweat. The relief that flooded his body only mirrored the horror at what he had almost done. The footsteps made to Adelaide’s door and back felt like those of a stranger.
“It was me who found you in the unremembered quarters, Vik. Nils dared you, remember? It was a stupid dare.”
Mikkeli was waiting for him, hunched over, her feet skimming the piano keys.
I’m sorry, he thought. I forgot.
It was true; Mikkeli had found him. She’d shone a torch on his face. Or maybe that was a different occasion. There were so many other times, anyway; lying on the edge of starvation, his body sabotaged by hypothermia. Time losing all logic whilst he waited for warmth.
Mikkeli climbed off the piano and stalked out of the window-wall, back to wherever she had come from. He remembered hugging her to him, trying to press some warmth to that lifeless body, but he’d had none to give, or she had taken it already.
Lying on Adelaide Mystik’s futon, staring at her ceiling mural, Vikram promised himself he was never going to be that cold again.
23 ¦ ADELAIDE
“So the first thing you have to understand is how the Council works.”
It was late morning. They sat on opposite sides of the table, the polished lake of wood between them. At one end, a pot of coral tea on a ceramic base steamed gently. Outside, heavy fog obscured the city entirely. The apartment felt like an oasis.
Adelaide’s eyes were sore with tiredness, but the day’s agenda was full. She had people to see. She tied back her hair as though she was preparing for hands-on work. The action focused her mind. If she was going to help Vikram, and for today at least, that illusion must be maintained, then she had to dive deep into the recesses of memory. She must recover incidental conversations between her parents, old lectures from Linus. She must listen once more to her grandfather’s calm unhurried voice.
When the dawn came she had dozed for an hour or so, the gun still resting in her hand. She thought about barricading herself in until Vikram went away. But it was light. He had let her live. She put back the gun. This morning Vikram was uncommunicative; both the strange intimacy of last night and the nightmarish tension in the kitchen had all but vanished.
Adelaide reached behind her neck and unclasped a string of onyx beads. She arranged the necklace in a half circle. Then she took a ring off her middle finger and placed it under the arch.
“Here we have the Council, and here—” She touched the ring. “Is the Speaker. You probably stood on the podium just in front of him, right?”
Vikram nodded.
“The Council is like any other group. It has factions.” She unhooked an earring and put it at the left end of the beads. “Here sits my illustrious father Feodor, and his cronies.”
“Yes, I remember your father. I think he might remember me too.”
Abruptly Adelaide recalled the day she had gone to see Feodor. Hadn’t he said something about a westerner? The idea gave her a turn, almost as if they had met before, unwittingly. She tapped the earring with her forefinger.
“Feodor doesn’t like anything to disturb the perfect order of his world. And he has to think about saving face. When the Council first established the border, Feodor was one of the Councillors who spoke out strongly for it. Any step towards unification, however small, will be an admission that they, and he, made a mistake.”
Vikram’s eyes were watchful. She knew that he wouldn’t miss anything.
“Why did they do it?”
“What, divide the city?”
“Yes.”
Adelaide kept her tone brisk. “You know why, Vikram. The west got too violent. After what happened at the Greenhouse, the City didn’t have a choice. Harvests decimated, working citizens stabbed — I mean, there were children in there for stars’ sakes. Only three of them came out intact.”
Vikram scowled. “Conveniently.”
“What do you mean, conveniently?”
“I mean it’s convenient that when the ’seventy-seven riots started, the Council decided it was a great idea to let school parties wander round public buildings. Don’t you think?”
She stared at him. “You can’t accuse—”
“I’m not accusing.”