‘Hey. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?’
‘We still needed a high roll.’
There are other firmament flashes along the beach. More Jean le Flambeurs are arriving. Their faces are all mine, but different, a gallery of past lives and moments. I smile. It is good to see them, for one last time.
I turn to Joséphine and Matjek. ‘Go,’ I tell her. ‘That trick will only work once.’
The other Jeans are doing something to the vir, creating encrypted firmament layers to keep the vir under our control. It’s not going to help us for long: All-D has the entire guberniya under its control.
Time is running out.
‘Jean, you don’t have to—’ Joséphine begins. I cut her off.
‘Yes, I do.’
I kneel and hug Matjek, hard. His hair smells of the sea.
‘Be good, okay? Tell Mieli I said goodbye.’ I squeeze his shoulders, and run out of words again.
I turn to Joséphine. ‘And you. You stay away from Mieli. Leave her alone? Do you understand?’
She nods. I kiss her. Her lips are papery and dry, but there are other kisses beneath them, serpent lips of a goddess that taste of roses and open doors and beginnings. It is hard to let go.
‘He’s coming,’ one Jean says. ‘He is in us,’ the other whispers.
‘Now,’ I tell Joséphine. She and Matjek raise their hands in a silent goodbye, and then they are gone, in a firmament blink.
I turn to the assembled ranks of Jean le Flambeur.
‘How much time do we have?’
The dark-haired young Jean looks at his pocket watch. ‘Twenty seconds,’ he says.
I nod. I don’t have to say anything to them. They already know.
I walk down to the waterline and dig my toes in the warm sand. I cradle the dragon jewel in my hands. I never realised how beautiful it is, shaped like a butterfly, made of liquid light.
The sea sighs and the water pulls back, leaving behind a dark grin of wet sand.
I close my eyes.
When the wave reaches my feet, I will open the jewel.
20
MIELI AND THE KAMINARI JEWEL
In the Invisible Realm, Mieli and Zinda watch the chen guberniya die.
It begins with a sudden confusion among the raion clouds around the Sobornost diamond world, like a shift in weather. Sobornost ship formations near the guberniya lose cohesion and break before smaller zoku forces. A ripple goes through its surface. At first, Mieli thinks it is an optical illusion, but a touch of the spime shows them the proud statues and thoughtwisp fountains and antimatter furnaces of the diamond sphere’s surface.
A wave is travelling across the adamantine vastness. Where it passes, only a smooth, featureless surface remains, an endless, shining plain, a nothingness. The constant neutrino roar of the guberniya is silent, suddenly.
The dragon jewel, Mieli thinks. Did the boy Matjek open it? Did the thief fail?
Kuutar and Ilmatar. Killing one guberniya won’t be enough. We need the Kaminari jewel.
The ragged remnants of the zoku fleet gain a brief respite as the Sobornost forces deal with the guberniya’s death. But it does not take long for the other Founders to regroup, and soon, whatever power struggle the chens’ sudden departure caused is over.
And the sunbeam mirrors are still moving.
Mieli looks at the spime and thinks of giving in to the battle call of the Great Game jewel. The dull eye of the brane tanglematter sphere stares at her, mockingly. She takes Zinda’s hand. The zoku girl squeezes her fingers.
An alarm rings in her mind. There is a thoughtwisp in the approach vector the thief gave her, with the signature of a qupt data package. It is escorted by three pellegrini oblasts, three killer whales guarding a fleck of plankton. They are transmitting declarations of neutrality, announcing that the pellegrini guberniya will withdraw from battle, on the condition that the contents of the thoughtwisp are routed to—
A Realmgate opens, and a boy of twelve steps out. He has just a hint of grey in his hair. He has grown since the last time Mieli saw him, on a beach, in the Lost Jannah of the Cannon, on Earth.
A tall woman with auburn hair follows him.
‘Hello, Mieli,’ the pellegrini says.
Mieli ignores her. She looks at the boy. ‘Matjek,’ she says. ‘Do you remember me? We met on a beach, once.’
Matjek nods. ‘I remember you.’ His mouth is a straight, serious line. ‘Jean says goodbye.’ His voice breaks, but he presses a fist against his mouth, refusing to cry.
Mieli offers him her hand, thinking of little Varpu, her koto sister. ‘Ssh,’ she says. ‘It will be all right.’
Then she turns to the pellegrini. The scar on her cheek burns.
‘I suppose you are here to tell me that Sydän still wants me back, and that you will give her to me in exchange for the Kaminari jewel,’ Mieli says.
A faint smile flickers across the pellegrini’s rouge lips. ‘No, Mieli,’ she says. ‘I am here to say goodbye, and to thank you for your service. I made a promise to Jean to leave you alone, and I plan to keep it.’ She sighs. ‘A pity. You were just beginning to show potential.
‘Now, I suppose I will have to watch as my brothers and sisters destroy you. Jean hurt the All-Defector, but it is still in many gogols across Sobornost, not as high-ranking as Matjek-Prime was, but it hasn’t given up. But by all means, give a quick truedeath to as many of them as you can. It will make things easier for me, afterwards.’
‘Perhaps I will surprise you,’ Mieli says.
‘Nothing would please me more, Mieli, daughter of Karhu. Good luck, and goodbye. I release you from your oath to me. Go free.’ She turns and takes a step towards the Realmgate.
‘Wait,’ Mieli says. The pellegrini looks at her over her shoulder.
‘Did you ever love him, truly?’ Mieli asks. ‘The thief. Or was he just a tool?’
The pellegrini closes her eyes. A veil of sadness passes across her face.
‘Of course I loved him, Mieli. There is no greater love than a maker’s for the things she makes. Especially when they grow to be something she never imagined.’
She blows Mieli a kiss and walks through the silver gate. Mieli feels something on her face, a touch of lips. She touches her cheek. It tingles under her fingers.
‘Mieli?’ Zinda says.
‘What is it?’
‘Your scar is gone.’
The Zweihänder takes the Liquorice-zoku and Matjek to the yin-yang moon of Iapetus, taking advantage of the disorder caused by the withdrawal of the pellegrini fleet. On the way, Mieli has to convince Sir Mik that engaging the four oblasts that are exchanging fire with Gun Club holeships is not a good idea.
‘ButMyladyMieli!’ the diminutive warrior protests. ‘NoGreaterHonourForKnightThanFightingGiants!’
Mieli sighs. What would the thief tell him?
‘Except a sacred quest,’ Matjek says. ‘We seek the Holy Grail!’ Zinda has taken the boy under her wing, and one of the first things she did was to make the young chen a member of the Liquorice-zoku.
‘WhyDidn’tYouSayFirst?’
Wearing a heavy metacloak, the ship takes them down near the equatorial ridge. Mieli wears the body and the weaponry she created for her mission to Prometheus. In spite of her claims of having a combat alter, Zinda is unarmed, in a simple q-suit. Anti-de-Sitter-times-a-Sphere wears her incomprehensible four-dimensional form. Sir Mik, of course, is armed to the teeth. Matjek carries the tanglematter sphere, guarded by heavy botlets under Mieli’s control.