‘You could be surprised.’
‘Fine. Right after I get this thing open.’ I frown at the Box. The butterfly avatar settles on my nose, making me blink furiously until I have to brush it away.
‘It sounds to me like you are trying to distract yourself from something,’ it says. ‘Is there something you are not telling me?’
‘Not a thing. I’m an open book.’ I sigh. ‘Don’t you have better things to do? They created the first psychotherapist bots about four hundred years ago.’
‘What makes you think you are not talking to one?’ The avatar dissolves into a bubble of q-dots, leaving behind a faint ozone smell. ‘Get some sleep, Jean.’
I touch the Box, feel the solid shape of the warm wood, make it spin in the air again until its edges become a blur. The movement makes me drowsy. The ship is right. It is easier to think about it than about Mars and the castle and the goddess. And as soon as I close my eyes, they all come back.
The memory castle on Mars could have been mine: all its rooms with their wax and brass statues, the treasures and zoku jewels, stolen from diamond minds and gods. It’s all gone now, my whole life, eaten by an Archon who turned it into a prison. The only thing left is the Box, and the memories that came with it.
I could have reached out and taken it all back, but I didn’t. Why not?
I am not Jean le Flambeur.
I walk down the gold-and-marble corridor of the castle in my mind and look through the open doors, into the rooms of stolen memories.
There is the time I did not want to be Jean le Flambeur. I lived on Mars, in a place of forgetting, the Oubliette. I made a new face. I made a new life. I found a woman called Raymonde. I hid my secrets, even from myself.
There is the Spike, a Singularity both in technology and spacetime. A bright flash in the Martian night, a dying Jupiter raining quantum dreams down on the people of the Oubliette.
There is the Hallway of Birth and Death, the building I made to remind immortals of how things end.
There is the lover of an Oubliette artist whose memories I . . . sought inspiration from. He was touched by the Spike. In his mind, I saw the fire of the gods. And I had to have it.
There is the Martian zoku. They brought the Box with them, from the Protocol War. Inside, a captured Sobornost Founder gogol, one of the rulers of the Inner System. A trapped god.
There is the girl called Gilbertine – another thing I could not help but want, even when I shouldn’t – whose memories I hid the Box in. I wore a face filled with a cold purpose that feels alien now. Being Prometheus, that sort of thing, the old me told her. That’s what the goddess with the serpent smile who Mieli serves wants me to be.
There is the woman Xuexue from the robot garden who was an uploader on Earth. She turned children into deathless software slaves in the sky, in the time before the Collapse, before Sobornost. That is what pulls me to the home of humanity now, the knowledge that this memory has a purpose, that there is something in the world of ghosts that I need.
And then there is the closed door.
I open my eyes. The Box is still spinning. I have been distracting myself. Earth is where the answers lie – and inside the locked room in my head.
What would Jean le Flambeur do?
I take the Box and hum a few notes of Stan Getz. A circular opening appears in the curving surface of one of the walls. Much of the ship’s structure is made from Oortian smartcoral – or väki, as they call it – and it responds to music. I have had enough time to watch Mieli to figure that out. No doubt the ship knows what I’m doing, but I like the modicum of privacy that comes from having a hiding place.
I put the Box inside and make an inventory of the contents. A couple of zoku jewels – tiny dark amber ovals the size of quail eggs – stolen on Mars when the detective Isidore Beautrelet and I went to his girlfriend Pixil’s reincarnation party. There is also her Realmspace sword, which I brought with me from the battle with my other self, Jean le Roi.
It’s not much, but it’s a start.
I put a zoku jewel in my pocket for good luck, lock the rest of my paltry secrets away and go looking for Mieli.
Mieli prays to the Dark Man in the main cabin of the ship. The songs come to her haltingly at first but, after a while, the sculptures in the walls start moving to the sound of her voice, twisting into the dark countenance of the god of the void. It is a song Grandmother Brihane taught her, only to be sung in dark places, on dark journeys. But as she slips into meditation, the images become her reflections: many Mielis looking at her in the walls, their faces the colour of dirty comet ice.
She stops, staring at them. The spherical candles floating in the air, their tiny heart-flames emanating light and a soft cinnamon smell, the song – none of that matters. The hollow feeling inside her is back.
There are things she should be doing. Preparing cover identities for the approach to Earth. Reviewing Sobornost databases about the home of mankind – and the place that her people, the Oortians, fled, centuries ago. Instead, she sighs, pulls herself to the comfortably ordered axis of zero-g furniture and spherical bonsai trees in the centre of the cabin, and fabs herself a bulb of liquorice tea.
She cradles the rough warm coral of the bulb in her hands. The song to make it comes to her, suddenly: a few simple notes a child could learn. She hums it as she takes a sip. A dark taste, liquorice and bitterness. She has forgotten how foul the stuff could be. But a memory comes with the mouthful, a morning in the koto when the blinds were opened and the Little Sun shone in, turning the thousand scars and cracks of the ice sky into bright winks, the Grandmother pressing the bulb into her hands and giving her a kiss with her withered lips, her dry, sweet smell mingling with the tea, the pumptrees opening, the little anansi catching the morning thermals in their diamond web gliders—
Even that memory is not hers anymore. It belongs to her mistress, the pellegrini.
It should not feel any different from everything else she has already given. Her flesh, shaped into a container for fusion and death. Her mind, augmented with a metacortex that kills fear, figures out what her enemies are going to do before they know, turns the world into vectors and forces and probabilities. All that for Sydän. So why does the last thing she gave up – uniqueness, the right for the goddess to copy her, to create gogols that think they are Mieli, daughter of Karhu – feel so precious?
Perhaps because it was not for Sydän, but for the thief.
She brushes aside the old, habitual anger at the thought of his face, features that have become familiar over the last few months: bright eyes beneath heavy eyelids, an easy smile, high eyebrows as if sketched with a sharp pen. For a moment, she almost misses the biot link that her mistress used to bind them together, feeling what he feels. It made him easier to understand.
He made her sing, on Mars. Like everything he does, it was a trick, meant to cover up something he was doing behind her back. But through the biot link, she could feel his joy at her song. She had forgotten what it was like.
And there was honour. She could not abandon him to die in another prison, discarded by the pellegrini like a broken tool. How could she have done anything else? She touches the jewelled chain around her leg. Precious gems in a chain, one after another, irrevocable choices.
She lets go and continues to pray, slowly. The candlelight dances on the faces of the statues, and they start to become Sydän’s face, the wide mouth and high cheekbones, the arrogant pixie smile.
‘Why is it that you never pray to me, I wonder?’ the pellegrini says. ‘Gods are so old-fashioned. Memetic noise inside monkey heads. You should pray to me.’
The goddess stands in front of Mieli, a shadow framed by the zero-g candles, arms folded. As always, it is as if she is standing in normal gravity: her auburn hair is open and falls across shoulders left bare by a white summer dress.
‘I serve and obey,’ Mieli says. ‘But my prayers are my own.’
‘Whatever. I am generous. Prayers are overrated anywa
y.’ She waves a red-nailed hand. ‘You can keep them. I have your body, your loyalty and your mind. Remember what you promised me.’
Mieli bows her head. ‘I have not forgotten. What you ask is yours.’
‘Who is to say I haven’t already taken it?’
Mieli’s mouth goes dry, and there is a cold fist in her stomach. But the pellegrini laughs, a sound like tinkling of glass.
‘Not yet. Not yet.’ She sighs. ‘You are so amusing, my dear. But unfortunately, there is little time for amusement. I do, in fact, need your body, if not your soul. My Jean and I need to have a conversation. Circumstances have forced my other selves to set certain things in motion. Something is coming for you. You need to be ready.’
The pellegrini steps into Mieli’s body. It feels like plunging into freezing cold water. And then the cabin and the candlelight and the goddess are gone and Mieli is in the spimescape, a ghost among the tangled threads of the Highway.
2
TAWADDUD AND DUNYAZAD
Before Tawaddud makes love to Mr Sen the jinn, she feeds him grapes.
She takes one from the bowl in her lap, peels it carefully and holds it between her lips, kissing the sweet moist flesh. When she bites, there is a faint, metallic sigh from the jinn jar that is attached to the fine sensor net of the beemee in her hair by a thin white cable.
Tawaddud smiles and slowly eats another grape. She lets other sensations mingle with the taste this time. The feel of the silk of her robe on her skin. The luxurious weight of the mascara in her eyelashes. The jasmine scent of her perfume. Her former master Kafur taught her that embodiment is a fragile thing, made from the whispers and silences of the flesh.
She gets up, walks to the keyhole-shaped window with slow, careful steps. The delicate dance of the embodiment slave: moving so that the jinn bottle always stays out of sight. It took two hours to place the embroidered pillows and mirrors and low tables in the narrow room just right.
She allows the sun to warm her face for a moment and draws the soft curtains, and the light in the room takes on the hue of dark honey. Then she returns to her pillow seat at the round, low table in the centre of the room and opens the small jewelled casket that sits on top of it.
Inside, there is a book, hand-bound in cloth and leather. She takes it out slowly, to let Mr Sen enjoy the forbidden thrill that comes with it. The story within is a true story, of course, the only kind you are allowed to tell in Sirr. She knows it by heart but looks at the words anyway as she reads aloud, running her fingers along the rough texture of the paper before turning a page.
‘There was a young woman in Sirr,’ she begins, ‘not long after the coming of Sobornost and the Cry of Wrath, who was married to a treasure-hunter.’
The Story of the Mutalibun’s Wife
Her father married her off when she was still very young. Her husband the mutalibun was old beyond his years. His first wife was possessed and went to the City of the Dead to live as a ghul. After that, he went on long journeys to dig up old heavens in the desert, to mine gogols for the Sobornost.
He bore the scars of his work: troubled wildcode dreams and sapphire growths that felt rough and sharp against her skin when they lay together. That was seldom: as mutalibun do, he had long since given up desire to survive in the desert, and touched her only because it was his duty as a husband. And so her days were lonely, in their fine house up on the Uzeda Shard.
One day, she decided to build a garden on the roof of their house. She hired Fast Ones to fly up loam from the greenhouses by the sea, planted seeds, told green jinni to make her seeds for flowers of all colours, and trees to provide shade. She worked hard for days and weeks, and asked her sister the muhtasib to protect the garden from wildcode with Seals. At night, she whispered to her garden, to make it grow: she had studied athar magic with jinn tutors in her father’s house, and knew many Secret Names.
The jinn-made seeds grew quickly, and when the little garden was in full bloom, she spent long evenings sitting there, enjoying the smell of the earth and the fragrance of the flowers and the sun on her skin.
One evening, a strong wind came from the desert. It blew over the Shard and through the garden. It brought a cloud of old nanites with it that settled in the garden like thick, heavy fog. The little machines condensed into glittering droplets on the leaves and petals of her flowers. They were as fresh and pure as some of the ancient utility foglets from the Sirr-in-the-Sky that her father kept in a bottle in his study.
The mutalibun’s wife started whispering and thinking at the fog, like she had been taught. She lay down on the soft grass and asked the fog to make the hands and lips of a lover.
The fog obeyed. It swirled around her and ran soft, cool fingers down her spine. It tickled her neck and collarbone with a tongue of mist.
Tawaddud pauses, slowly removes her robe and whispers to activate the mirrors she has carefully set around the room. Mr Sen used to be a man, and men need to see. In that way, her once-female clients are easier – but far more demanding in other ways, of course.
So she lies down on the pillows, looks at herself in the mirror, rolls her head so that her thick dark curls hide the beemee cable, and smiles. The amber light brings out her cheekbones and hides the fact that – so unlike Dunyazad’s – her mouth is slightly too large and her body not as slender as her sister’s. But her skin is as dark and smooth, and her muscles firm from the long climbs on the Shards.
Remembering the fog, running her fingertips across her breasts and down her belly, she continues.
‘But with the second kiss, and the third, she found that the fog was not just responding to her thoughts, was not just an extension of her own hands and lips, but a living thing from the desert, just as alone and hungry as she was. Fog-tendrils wove themselves into her hair playfully. As she reached for the fog, it made smooth, warm curves and planes for her to touch. Gently, it pushed her down to the grass—’
Her heartbeat quickens. This is how Mr Sen likes to finish. She touches herself harder, lets the book fall shut. As always, as the heat under her fingers builds up and her hips buck against her hand, shuddering with hot and cold earthquakes, she finds herself thinking of the Axolotl—
But before she can cross the edge and take Mr Sen with her, the visitor chime rings, the brass sound sharp and sudden.
‘Good morning, dear Tawaddud!’ says a voice. ‘Do you have a moment for your sister?’
Dunyazad’s sense of timing is impeccable, as always.
Tawaddud leaps up, face burning with arousal and embarrassment. She pulls her robe around her and disconnects the beemee cable from the jinn jar.
There are muffled footsteps outside. The assignation room is next to her study, down the corridor from the entrance hall.
‘Tawaddud!’ says her sister’s clear voice again. ‘Are you still asleep?’
‘That . . . was exquisite, as always, my dear. Although, towards the end, you seemed . . . distracted.’ Mr Sen says in his dry, tinny voice.
‘A thousand apologies,’ Tawaddud says, digging for the jinn bottle from under the pillows. ‘No compensation will be required.’ Tawaddud swears under her breath. The ancient jinn purchased her services with a new Secret Name that she had been searching for a long time.
‘I promise I will arrange a new assignation at your earliest convenience. A simple family matter has come up that I have to deal with.’ She lifts the heavy bottle. A precious pre-Collapse bioprocessor within allows the jinn to maintain a temporary localised presence in her quarters. The outer shell is the work of Sirr craftsmen, simple ceramics and circuitry, decorated with blue glass.
‘In my experience,’ the jinn says, ‘family matters are never simple.’
‘Tawaddud! What are you doing?’
‘I’m afraid that I really have to ask you to leave,’ says Tawaddud.
‘Of course, if you will just lend me a hand. Until next time.’
Tawaddud takes the bottle to the windowsill. There is a rush of heat that mak
es the curtains flap, a barely visible shimmering in the air, and then the jinn is gone. She hides the jar behind the pillows, covers the mirrors again and takes a moment to arrange her hair.
There is a knock on the door. Just as Tawaddud is about to touch the unlocking symbol, her heart misses a beat: her book is still lying on the floor. Hastily, she replaces it in the casket and slams the lid shut.
The door opens. Dunyazad looks at her with a mischievous smile on her lips, one hand resting delicately on the qarin bottle around her neck. The Secret Names written on her fingernails are bright against her dark skin. Tawaddud’s sister is dressed for a walk in the town: blue robes, slippers and a jewelled cap covering her braided, beaded hair. As usual, she looks perfect.
‘Am I disturbing you, dear sister?’
‘As a matter of fact, you are.’
Dunyazad sits down on one of the pillows. ‘What a lovely room. Smells wonderful. Have you been . . . entertaining?’
I know what you are doing, her smile says. And that’s why you are going to do whatever I ask you to.
‘No,’ Tawaddud says.
‘Excellent. That is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Duny lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘There is a young man I want you to meet. He is wealthy, handsome and a wit to boot – and free this afternoon. What do you say?’
‘I’m perfectly capable of arranging my own social schedule, sister,’ Tawaddud says. She walks to the window and closes the curtains with a jerk.
‘Oh, I’m well aware of that. That is why you associate with street entertainers and riff-raff.’
‘I have work to do this afternoon. Charity work, healing work. The Banu Sasan – entertainers and riff-raff- need doctors.’
‘I’m sure the young gentleman would be curious to see what it is that you do, down there.’
‘Yes, I imagine it’s difficult to see how the Banu Sasan live, up from a muhtasib tower.’
There is a dangerous glint in Dunyazad’s eyes. ‘Oh, I assure you that we see everything.’
‘My work is more important than a date with some perfumed boy you met at a Council party. I appreciate the effort, Duny, but you really don’t have to keep trying.’ She walks towards the door to her study, with steps that she hopes are determined.