Mardina shook her head. ‘Oh, Mother, please don’t start on about Before. Not today.’ The English word was their private code for Beth’s strange other life before she had come to this place, this world, to Terra, to Brikanti. But Brikanti was all Mardina knew. She had come to loathe all that strangeness, as if it was a kind of flaw in her own nature.
If Kerys was aware of all this, and after all it was she who had retrieved Beth from the ship that had carried her here from Before, she didn’t show it, to Mardina’s relief.
They came to a small office maybe halfway along the length of the Hall, a nondescript little room that Mardina probably couldn’t have found again without memorising the number etched into the wooden door. The room was laid out like a classroom, maybe, or a court, with rows of benches and small desks facing a more substantial table at the front. Here two officers sat, looking over paperwork, murmuring to each other; one, a burly man, was evidently the senior, judging by the ornate flashes on the shoulder of his tunic, and the other a scribe or adviser. The room was otherwise empty.
But it was in this mundane room, Mardina realised, one of a warren of such rooms, that her future was to be decided, for good or ill, in the next few hours.
She tried to stay composed as she sat with her mother on the front row of benches, close to the wall. The older man barely looked up at Kerys as she approached the table and presented a packet of papers, and he did not bother to look over at Mardina at all.
Beth whispered, ‘So who’s the big cheese?’
‘Stick to Brikanti, Mother.’
‘Sorry.’
Kerys sat with them. ‘That is Deputy Prefect Skafhog. Very senior. Do you know how senior, cadet? You should …’
Mardina nodded. She’d soon become aware that the most important thing a would-be naval officer had to learn was the constellation of ranking officials above her. ‘A Deputy Prefect reports only to – well, the Prefect. The chief of the whole Navy, who reports in to the relevant minister in the Althing—’
‘There are only a dozen Deputy Prefects to administer the whole of the Navy, on Terra and in the Skull. So you see, cadet, we are taking you seriously.’
‘Then it’s a shame such a prominent officer, with respect, is going to have to wait for you,’ came a voice behind Mardina. ‘Or rather, for all of us. Because we have family business to discuss.’
Beth stood slowly, her tattooed face a mask of anger. ‘Ari Guthfrithson. So you deigned to turn up.’
Mardina gave a look of pleading to Kerys, who shrugged and whispered, ‘It’s your family.’ Mardina closed her eyes for one second, made a fervent prayer to Jesu the Boatman, and stood with her mother.
Her father, Ari, looked sleek in his own uniform, that of a senior druidh, one of the Navy’s intellectual elite; he carried a neat leather satchel at his side. At least he had been expected. Mardina was more surprised to see that he was accompanied by Penny Kalinski, one of her mother’s old companions from the semi-mythical days of Before. Penny was bent and old – how old was she now? Eighty-eight, eighty-nine? And she leaned on the arm of Jiang Youwei. A comparatively youthful sixty, with a heavy-looking bag slung across his shoulder, Mardina had only rarely heard the taciturn Xin speak, but he was never far from Penny’s side.
With care, Penny sat down, a couple of rows back from Mardina and Beth. She said with a voice like rustling paper, ‘I’m afraid you must blame me for this. Well, indirectly.’
Beth glowered. ‘I know who to blame. You – Ari – you’d do anything to worm your way back into our lives, wouldn’t you? You knew we had to ask you to attend this procedure today. The rules demanded it. Just this one day, I have to stand your company.’
He grinned. ‘Yes, you do, don’t you?’
‘And you can’t resist manipulating the situation to your own ends.’
Ari, nearly fifty years old now, glanced around at the company, at Penny and Jiang, at Kerys – at the Deputy Prefect at his desk, who was rapidly becoming visibly irritated. ‘It’s not so much that I couldn’t resist it. I couldn’t waste the opportunity. We need to talk, Beth. And not about us – not even about Mardina.’
Mardina’s hopes of getting through this day successfully were receding. With rising panic she took her father’s arm. ‘Father, please – this is a big day for me. I’ve waited half a year already for this hearing. Can’t we wait until later?’
He patted her hand. ‘I’m afraid not, darling – but, oh! It’s good to see you again, and I’m so proud of you today, of what you’ve become.’
Beth growled, ‘Become? She wouldn’t even exist if you’d had your way.’
‘Mother, please—’
‘It’s all right, Mardina. But, look – no, I’m afraid we can’t wait. Because once this ceremony is done you’ll be gone, won’t you, Mardina? Lost in your career, lost in Ymir’s Skull. And the opportunity to talk will be lost. And we must talk, you know.’
‘About what, for Jupiter’s sake?’
‘About – what is the English word you use? Before, Beth.’
Beth shook her head. ‘That’s all gone. This is our life now – here in Brikanti, in this world of Romans and Xin. There’s been nothing new to say about all that old stuff for twenty years, not since we stepped off the Tatania.’
‘I’m afraid that’s no longer true, Beth,’ Penny said tiredly. ‘If it ever was. I don’t know what Ari has to tell you today. But part of it’s my fault. The Academy of Saint Jonbar. I always hoped it would bear fruit … Now it has.’
‘What kind of fruit? What are you talking about?’
‘And then there’s Earthshine,’ Penny said doggedly. ‘Earthshine. He’s been holed up on Mars for decades. Now – well, now he may be making his move.’ She glanced up at Kerys. ‘Ask the Navy types about Ceres. Höd, as they call it here.’
The Deputy Prefect had been listening with commendable calm to all this. But now he intervened, speaking directly to Kerys: ‘What’s going on, nauarchus?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ she said honestly, looking warily at Ari. ‘I feel as if the druidh here has handed me an unexploded bomb, and I don’t quite know what to do with it.’
Skafhog tapped a pen against his teeth. ‘One hour,’ he said briskly, standing up. ‘I’ll let you get all this family nonsense out of your systems in one hour – or not,’ he said severely to Mardina, ‘in which case all you’ll be seeing of the Navy, young woman, will be lights in the sky.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Kerys said with some relief. ‘You’re being very indulgent.’
‘I am, aren’t I? Get on with it.’ And he stalked out of the room, with his official scrambling behind.
When he’d gone, Ari smiled around at them. ‘Well. I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today.’
Beth punched him square in the face.
CHAPTER 23
‘Hold still,’ said Kerys. She was crouching before Ari, dabbing at the wreckage of his mouth. ‘I think the bleeding from your cheek has stopped.’
‘I should hope so. That spirit stung.’
‘You’re lucky we had the right stuff to hand. Then again the Navy is used to handling scuffles – even in its headquarters, even in the heart of Dumnona. Now I want to put some ointment on the swelling under your eye …’
‘Ow!’
‘If you wouldn’t keep yakking I could get it done. And you have a dislodged tooth. I’ll push it back in its socket for now—’
‘Yow!’
‘You need to see a dentist. Again you’re in the right place. The Navy has the best dentists in all Brikanti; we can’t afford to send out crews on years-long missions with rotting teeth … There. Hold this compress against your face until you get better attention.’