She didn’t like hearing that Mr. Veppers was coming back because he was the man who owned her. She didn’t see him very often when he was in the big estate house — their paths seldom crossed, as her mother put it — but just knowing he was in the place made her feel funny. It was like being breathless, like when you fell on your back and hurt yourself, but worse than the getting hurt was the not being able to draw a breath. It was a bit like that, except all the time when Mr. Veppers was at home.
Lededje hadn’t run away for a while, though she still thought about it sometimes. She was thinking about running away the next day, the day Mr. Veppers came back, but for now she wasn’t thinking about it at all and was just having fun in the last insect-buzzy heat of the day under a sky that was all red and yellow.
She paddled along, lying on her front on her old ship, the trusty battleship made from the length of foametal that had been an off-cut from one of the dock pontoons. She’d shaped it a bit over the years to make it more aerodynamic in the water; it had a point at the front and it bent over at the back where you could brace your foot. Actually hers wasn’t a battleship at all because battleships were big and heavy and slow and when she was on her ship she wasn’t any of those things; she was light and quick and so she’d decided she was a light cruiser.
They were playing group-tag. She hid in the rushes close by one of the wading points between islands as the others slid quietly or splashed noisily past. Most of them were calling out her name and Hino’s; Hino was the second youngest and small like her and he was very good at tag and hide-and-seek, also like her. That meant that probably they were the last two to be found and tagged. She liked that; she liked to be the last to be caught, or not to get caught at all; sometimes they heard the adults calling them, or one of the older kids got a comms call they couldn’t ignore, and so they had to give up on the game and that meant whoever still hadn’t been caught by then had won. Once, she had fallen asleep on her light cruiser board in the sunlight and discovered that all the others had got bored and hungry and just gone off, leaving her there alone. She’d decided that counted as winning too.
Stuck into the mud near where she was hiding was a metal and plastic shell. You rarely saw these because they had locator things in them like the kid-phones did that meant they could be tidied up after each battle, but here was this one lying with a badly dented nose that must have doinked off the armour of one of the ships. She picked it up carefully, just to look at it, holding it in two fingers like it might explode at any moment. It looked very old and dirty. There was writing on it she couldn’t make out. She thought about putting it back where she’d found it, or throwing it onto the nearest island to see if it would explode, or dropping it in one of the deeper bits of the lakes — she even thought about leaving it where it would be found really easily by one of the maintenance people — but in the end she kept it, making a little mud nest for it right at the front — the bow — of her foametal light cruiser.
Leaning over to scoop up the mud to do this must have caused ripples, because next thing she knew there was a loud shout from alarmingly nearby and Purdil — one of the bigger, older boys — was almost on top of her, powering his plastic warship towards her along the channel using both hands, raising a breaking bow wave that shone in the red rays of the setting sun as he turned to head straight for her though the reeds. She struck out as hard as she could, angling out and away through a gap in the swaying stalks, but she knew she would never make it; Purdil was going too fast and she could never outpace him anyway.
Purdil was a bully who sometimes threw stones instead of mud when they had proper battles and was one of those who most liked to tease her about her tattoo and her being owned by Mr. Veppers, so the best she could do would be to get out into the channel and hope at least she’d get caught by somebody else.
She flattened herself on the board and started paddling desperately, both hands digging deep into the warm water, raising clouds of mud towards the surface. Something flew over her head and splashed just ahead of her. Purdil was shouting and laughing close behind her. She could hear the dry, rattling sound of the reed stems being pushed aside and under by the curved prow of his plastic ship.
She got into the channel and almost collided with Hino, who was being pursued by two of the others. They both manoeuvred to avoid hitting each other. He sat up when he saw it was her and was struck in the face by a clod of earth with some broken reed stems still attached. Hino nearly fell off his board, which curved back round, blocking Lededje’s course. She’d never get past him now. She started to pull up, using both hands to slow herself as the front of her craft slid in towards Hino.
Oh, she thought. She hoped the shell she’d found didn’t blow up when her ship hit Hino’s. It didn’t. Phew, she thought.
Hino wiped the mud off his face and glared past her at Purdil. Led felt Purdil’s craft smack into the back of her own just as Hino reached out to the little lumpen nest of mud she’d put the shell in, at the bows of her ship. She saw him pick up the muddy shell and throw it in one quick movement.
Lededje had time to draw breath.
The shell tore past her, half a metre away.
The explosion seemed to slap her once, right across the back. It made her head ring. Sound seemed to go away. She was still looking forward at Hino and raising her hand to try to say, No!
She felt the ringing noise everywhere in her body. She saw Hino’s face go pale as fast as clicking your fingers. The two other kids behind him wore the same expression. It was those expressions she would never forget; they were worse than what she saw when she looked round. Their faces; the three of them, staring, open-mouthed, eyes wider than she thought eyes could go, all blood draining from the faces.
She pushed herself up and turned to look behind her. It seemed to take a long time to do this. She looked away from Hino and the other two children, away from the channel behind and the setting sun and the reed beds stretching alongside. As she turned she saw the low hill of the miniature island forming one bank of the channel; above was the arch and spire of a sky canal and a tower above that.
She glimpsed something red. What was left of Purdil was still just about sitting on his plastic board. Most of his head had gone, though she only had a little while to see this as he fell forward and crashed down, part onto his board and part into the water.
It was only then that they all started screaming.
“No backing up, then?”
“Of course not. We don’t do that; we can’t do that. We’re not you.”
Lededje frowned at Demeisen. The second or third most traumatic thing in her life and the ship’s avatar seemed almost unconcerned.
“So,” Demeisen said, “properly dead.”
“Yes. Properly dead.”
“What happened to Hino?”
“We never saw him again. He was taken to the city for the police investigation and then had intensive post-traumatic counselling. His—”
“Why? What did the police do to him?”
“What? Nothing! There had to be a formal investigation, that’s all. Of course they didn’t do anything to him! What do you think we are?” Lededje shook her head. “The post-traumatic counselling was because he’d thrown what he thought was a rock and blown a kid’s head off.”
“Ah, right. I see.”
“Hino’s father was a consulting landscaper who was only due to be on the estate until the end of that year anyway, so by the time he was fit to be seen in polite company again Hino was on the other side of the world while his dad sorted out some other rich man’s problematic mansion sight-lines.”