The arch led into a brightly lit enclosure cool with perfumed air, the ceiling strung with lanterns and banners and slowly spinning circulators. The corridor followed a gentle curve to the right, crossing ornamental pools via stone bridges. For the second time since arriving in the city I saw koi gaping up at me.
‘What’s the big deal with the fish?’ I asked.
‘You shouldn’t talk about them like that. They mean a lot to us.’
‘But they’re just koi.’
‘Yes, and it was just koi that gave us immortality. Or the first steps towards it, anyway. They live a long time, koi. Even in the wild, they don’t really die of old age. They just get larger and larger until their hearts can’t cope. But it’s not the same as dying of old age.’
I heard Chanterelle murmur something which might have been ‘koi be blessed’ as she crossed the bridge, and allowed my own lips to echo the sentiment. I didn’t want to be seen or doing anything unusual.
The walls were crystalline, an endlessly repeating motif of bustling octagons, but at intermittent distances they had been hollowed out to admit little boutiques and parlours, offering services in florid scrawls of neon or pulsing holographic light. Canopy people were shopping or strolling, most of them couples who at least looked young, although there were very few children present, and those I saw might well have been neotenous adults in their latest body image, or even androform pets programmed with a few childlike phrases.
Chanterelle led me into a much larger chamber, a huge vaulted hall of crystalline magnificence, into which several malls and plazas converged on multiple levels. Chandeliers the size of re-entry capsules hung from the ceiling. The paths tangled around each other, meandering past koi ponds and ornamental waterfalls, encircling pagodas and teahouses. The centre of the atrium was given over to a huge glass tank, encased in smoked filigreed metal. There was something in the tank, but there were too many people packed around the perimeter, jostling parasols and fans and leashed pets, for me to see what it was.
‘I’m going to sit down at that table,’ I said, waiting until Chanterelle acknowledged me. ‘You’re going to walk over to that teahouse and order a cup of tea for me and something for yourself. Then you’re going to walk back to the table and you’re going to look like you’re enjoying it.’
‘You’re going to keep that gun on me the whole time?’
‘Look on it as a compliment. I just can’t keep my eyes off you.’
‘You’re hilarious, Tanner.’
I smiled and eased myself into the chair, suddenly conscious of the Mulch filth in which I was caked, and the fact that, surrounded by the gaudily dressed canopy strollers, I looked like an undertaker at a carnival.
I half expected Chanterelle not to return with the tea. Did she really think I would shoot her here, in the back? Did she also imagine I had the skill to be able to aim the gun from my pocket, and not run the risk of hitting someone else? She should have just strolled away from me, and that would have been the end of our acquaintance. And — like her friends — she would have a very good story to tell, even if the night’s hunting had not gone quite as planned. I would not have blamed her. I tried to summon up some dislike for her, but nothing much welled up. I could see things from Zebra’s side clearly enough, but what Chanterelle had said also made sense to me. She believed the people they hunted were bad people who ought to die for what they had done. Chanterelle was wrong about the victims, but how was she to know? From her point of view — denied the exquisite viewpoint which I had experienced thanks to Waverly — Chanterelle’s actions were almost laudable. Wasn’t she doing the Mulch a favour by culling its sickest?
It was enough that I allowed this notion into my head, even if I stopped short of preparing a bed for it.
Sky Haussmann would have been very proud of me.
‘Don’t look so grateful, Tanner.’
Chanterelle had returned with the tea.
‘Why did you come back?’
She placed the two cups on the ironwork top of the table, then lowered herself into the seat opposite me, as sinuously as any cat. I wondered if Chanterelle’s nervous system had been adjusted to give her that edge of felinity, or whether it just came from a lot of practice. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t quite bored with you yet. Quite the opposite, perhaps. Intrigued. And now that we’re somewhere public, I don’t find you half as threatening.’
I sipped the tea. It was almost tasteless, the oral equivalent of an exquisitely pale watercolour.
‘There must be more to it than that.’
‘You kept your word about my friends. And you could have killed them, I think. But instead you did them a favour. You showed them what pain is really like — real pain; not the soft-edged approximation you get from experientials — and, like you said, you gave them something to brag about afterwards. I’m right, aren’t I? You could have killed them just as easily, and it would not have made any difference to your plans.’
‘What makes you think I have plans?’
‘The way you ask questions. I also think that, whatever it is you need to do, you don’t have long to do it.’
‘Can I ask another question?’
Chanterelle nodded, and used the moment to remove the cat’s-eye mask from her face. Her eyes were leonine, inset with a vertical pupil, but other than that her face was rather human, broad and open, with high cheekbones, framed by a halo of auburn curls which tumbled to her neckline.
‘What is it, Tanner?’
‘Just before I shot your friends, one of them said something. It might have been you, but I don’t remember so well.’
‘Go on. What was it?’
‘That there was something wrong with my eyes.’
‘That was me,’ Chanterelle said, uneasily.
So I had not been imagining it. ‘What did you say? What was it you saw?’
Her voice lowered now, as if she was conscious of how strange the whole conversation had become.
‘It was like they were glowing, like there were two glowing dots in your face.’ She spoke quickly, nervously. ‘I assumed you must have been wearing some kind of mask, and that you discarded it before you emerged again. But you weren’t, were you?’
‘No. No, I wasn’t. But I wish I was.’
She looked into my eyes, the vertical slits of her own eyes narrowing as she focused intently. ‘Whatever it was, it isn’t there now. Are you telling me you don’t know why that happened?’
‘I guess,’ I said, finishing the watery tea with no great enthusiasm, ‘it will have to remain one of life’s little mysteries.’
‘What kind of an answer is that?’
‘The best I’m capable of giving at this moment in time. And if that sounds like the kind of thing someone who was a little scared of what the truth might hold might say, maybe you’re not entirely wrong.’ I reached under the coat and scratched my chest, my skin itching beneath the sweat-sodden Mendicant clothes. ‘I’d rather drop the subject for now.’
‘Sorry I raised it,’ Chanterelle said, heavy with irony. ‘Well, what happens now, Tanner? You’ve already told me you were surprised that I came back. That suggests to me that my presence isn’t vital to you, or you’d have done something about it. Does it mean we go our separate ways now?’
‘You almost sound disappointed.’ I wondered if Chanterelle was aware that my hand had not been on the hilt of the gun for several minutes now, and that the weapon had barely entered my thoughts during that time. ‘Am I that fascinating to you, or are you just more bored than I imagined?’