He’d been regretting Flynne missing the miniatures, though he himself preferred steam to sail, and the drama of long-range guns to these sparkings of tiny cannon. But the water in the region of the battle had scaled waves, and miniature cloud, and something about that always delighted him. The peripheral, seated on the bench beside him, seemed to be following it as well, though he knew attention to moving objects was just a way of emulating sentience.
“Lowbeer wants you back at Lev’s,” said Ash, coming to a halt in front of their bench. Her skirts and narrow jacket were a baroquely complicated patchwork of raw-edged fragments, some of which, though no doubt flexible, resembled darkened tin. She wore a more ornate reticule than usual, covered in mourning beads and hung with a sterling affair he knew to be a chatelaine, the organizer for a set of Victorian ladies’ household accessories. Or not so Victorian, he saw, as a sterling spider with a faceted jet abdomen, on one of the chatelaine’s fine chain retainers, picked its agile way up from the jacket’s waist, its multiple eyes tiny rhinestones.
“Flynne seemed worried, to be called back,” he said, looking up at her. “The timing was unfortunate. I was about to explain the framing narrative for Annie.”
“I’ve explained to her that you’re a publicist,” she said. “She seemed to understand it in terms of some already very degraded paradigm of celebrity, so it was relatively easy.”
“Public relations isn’t one of your areas of expertise,” he said. “I hope you haven’t left her with misconceptions.”
Ash reached out, brushed the peripheral’s bangs aside. It looked up at her, eyes calm and bright. “She does bring something to it, doesn’t she?” she said to him. “I’ve seen you noticing.”
“Is she in more danger now, there?”
“I suppose so, though it’s difficult to quantify. Some apparently powerful entity, based here, wants her dead, there, and brings increasingly massive resources to the task, there. We’re there to counter that, but in our competition with them, we’ve stressed her world’s economy. That stress is problematic, as it can and probably soon will produce more chaotic change.”
A sudden sharp crack from the battle in the Serpentine. Children cheered, nearby. He saw that one of the ships had lost its central mast to a cannonball, as had happened long ago, he’d no idea where, according to whatever account was being reenacted. He stood, extended his hand to the peripheral, which took it. He helped it to rise, which it did gracefully.
“I don’t like it, that she’s sending you to Daedra’s,” said Ash, fixing him with her vertically bifurcated gaze. It occurred to him that he’d now been around her so much that he scarcely noticed her eyes. “It’s almost certain that Daedra, or one of her associates, is our competitor in the stub. They may be unable to do more to Flynne, here, than destroy her peripheral, in which case she finds herself back in the stub, however painful the experience may have been. The same for Conner, in brother Anton’s dancing master. But you’ll attend in person. Physically present, entirely vulnerable.”
“Tactically,” he said, “I don’t see what other choice she has.” He looked at her, struck with the idea that she might be genuinely concerned for him.
“You haven’t considered the danger you’ll be placing yourself in?”
“I suppose I’ve tried not to consider it too closely. But then what would happen to Flynne, if I were to refuse? To her brother, mother? Her whole world?”
Her four pupils bored into his, her white face perfectly immobile. “Altruism? What’s happening to you?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
87
Clovis Raeburn had beautiful skin. When Flynne opened her eyes, Clovis was right there, up close, like she was looking at Flynne’s autonomic cutout, or its cable. Easiest transition yet, from sitting on a bench beside a path in that Hyde Park to propped on pillows in a brand-new hospital bed. Like somersaulting backward, but not in a bad way. “Hey,” Clovis said, straightening up as she saw Flynne’s eyes were open.
“What’s going on?”
Clovis was pulling the two halves of something apart, packaging of some kind. “Griff says the competition’s hired Luke to make us look bad. I say anybody they protest just looks better.”
“Macon said Burton’s on his way back from Pickett’s.”
“In a deputized car,” said Clovis. “Been an orgy of car deputizing, over there. Pickett’s employees, the ones still being shoveled out of the pile, had their cars on the lot there.” She extracted something small from the packaging: circular, flat, bright pink. She peeled its backing off, reached under the hem of Flynne’s t-shirt, and pressed the adhesive down, just left of Flynne’s navel.
“What’s that?” Flynne asked, raising her head off the pillow, against the weight of the crown, trying to see it. Clovis hiked up the bottom of her own combat shirt. On abs you could do laundry on, the pink dot, with two sharp red lines crossing in the center.
“The antidote for party time,” Clovis said, “but I’ll let Griff explain that. Just you keep yours on.” She lifted the crown from Flynne’s head and put it carefully down on what looked like an open disposable diaper, on the table to the left of the bed.
Flynne looked from the crown to Conner, in the next bed, under his own crown.
“Better he’s still up there,” said Clovis, “considering the situation. He does have a proven potential to make things crazier.”
Flynne sat up. A hospital bed made you feel like you needed someone’s permission to do that. Then Hong walked into her line of sight, a plastic sack of takeout dangling from either hand. He wore a Viz and a dark green t-shirt with COLDIRON USA on it in white, the logo she’d seen on the envelope in Burton’s trailer, that first night. She realized he’d come in through a narrow vertical gap, in the wall of shingles, to the left of her bed. “Hey,” he said.
“There’s a secret passage from Sushi Barn, now?” she asked.
“Part of the deal for the antennas. Weren’t those e-mails from you?”
“Guess I’ve got secretaries and shit.”
“Have to be able to get food over here,” Clovis said. “Always have a few of Burton’s boys sitting in there, watching out.”
“Getting fat,” said Hong, grinning, and went out, past a blue tarp.
“Food’s for Burton and whoever,” Clovis said. “You hungry?”
“Might be,” Flynne said, picking up her Wheelie Boy from the chair where she’d left it.
“I’m here with sleeping beauty, you need me,” Clovis said. “True that you’ve got your own whole other body, up there?”
“More or less. Somebody built it, but you couldn’t tell.”
“Look like you?”
“No,” Flynne said, “prettier and tittier.”
“Go on,” Clovis said, “pull the other one.”
Flynne followed the smell of Sushi Barn. The bags were on the card table, the one she’d signed the contracts on, which was now back behind the blue tarp of what Macon had said was their legal department, but Hong wasn’t there.
“You’re Flynne,” the man said. Brown hair, gray eyes, pale, cheeks pink. Another Englishman, by his accent, but here in what she was starting to try not to think of as the past. “I’m Griff,” putting out his hand over the foam containers and three bottles of Hefty water, “Holdsworth.” She shook it. Broad shouldered but light framed, maybe not quite as old as she was, he had on a beat-up, waxy-looking jacket, the color of fresh horse poop.
“Sounds American,” she said, but really it sounded more like a character in a kids’ anime.
“It’s Gryffyd, actually,” he said, then spelled it for her, watching like he wanted to see exactly when she’d laugh.
“You Homes, Griff?”
“Not even slightly.”
“Madison thought you came in a Homes copter, that first time.”
“I did. I’d access to one.”