by Andy Graham
Ray scrubbed his knuckles through his unruly hair. “You may be my mother but that doesn’t spare you from hearing certain things. When were you going to tell me who I really am? Did you not think I should know I had a brother I never knew about? Do you not think this is important to me?”
“If you hadn’t found out, it wouldn’t have been.”
“You’re telling me dishonesty is the best policy? You hate President Laudanum and her ilk so much you’re trying to claim their own weapons and tactics as your own?”
Rose winced. “I was trying to protect you, to give you a chance of a normal life, free of my past.” She reached out. Tentative. Hopeful. “I made mistakes. I see that now. I—”
“Shut up!” Ray yelled. “For once just shut up and listen.”
“How dare you speak to me like that.” She slammed her outstretched palm down on the box and leapt to her feet. “Whatever happened, I am still your mother.”
“Whatever happened? The little matter of near thirty years of lies?”
“You’re not interested in what I have to say? You just going to shout me down?”
“‘Use whatever you have to get whatever you need’, didn’t you say something like that to me once? It ranks up there with your favourite saying: ‘trust half of what you hear from someone in uniform, and nothing of what you hear from anyone in a suit.’” He waved his hand at her drab, loose-fitting clothing, at the baggy jumper that was older than he was. “Well, as far as I can see you’re still wearing the stuff you always wore, so I guess that makes that jumper your uniform.”
Stella’s eyes shifted from one Franklin to the other.
“You gave up one child to a government research institution,” Ray said, a rising edge in his voice he couldn’t control. “You let the other one drown.”
“You think I’d let my son drown? Grow up, Ray. Stop behaving like a child.”
“What would you know about how children behave?”
Rose went scarlet. Ray advanced on her. “You had the live child switched out of that camp to replace the dead one you had at home. Then you ignored the boy for most of his life. You ignored me. You lied to me. You’re still lying to me. Now you expect me to treat you with the respect you never gave me?”
“Ray, please, don’t,” Stella said, taking his arm.
He shook her free. “I’ll give you the whole secret government research thing, Rose, that you had no choice in the matter. As resourceful as you are, though, I’m sure you could have got around the tacit ban on twins. I didn’t think twins were even biologically possible until I discovered I was one. I can forgive the enforced abandonment; the rational part of me knows that was not your doing. But everything since then is.”
“Ray,” Stella said. “Stop this, your mother is right. You’re behaving like a spoilt brat.”
Ray rounded on her, straining to keep his voice civil. “Back off, Dr Swann. Let me get this out in the open where it belongs rather than festering inside. Isn’t that the healthy thing to do? Isn’t this what you doctors recommend?”
“This isn’t coming from a doctor, it’s coming from a mother. There’s no manual to bringing up children. There’s no right way of doing it, no matter what all the self-appointed, usually childless, experts tell us. Never mind all this over-aspirational crap that we have to listen to from people with an army of nannies and cleaners. Bringing up children is the hardest thing you can ever do. You owe her a chance, at least.”
“She’s right,” the voice in his head said.
He grit his teeth, biting back the words he wanted to spray across the room.
“Parents are constantly being judged and dictated to,” Stella said, holding Emily tight. “We only get one chance to get it right with each child. There is no control group to experiment on in a humane society.”
Ray laughed bitterly. He spread his hands in front of him like talons. “That’s where you’re wrong. I was part of a control group in an experiment on children: one twin inside the camp, one twin outside the camp. Professor Lind and the VP had made bets on the outcome. And if they had made a bet, who else was in on the game?”
The tower groaned in a sudden gust of wind. A broken window pane chattered nervously in the draught. Rose linked her fingers behind her back. Tears were gleaming in the corners of her eyes.
“If it had only been my brother who died as a result of this mess, this would still need to have been said, but it isn’t,” said Ray. “How many people have been affected because of what you did and didn’t do, Rose?” He stuttered to a halt as the throbbing in his ankle swelled. “I dreamed about you telling me the truth to my face: you have a brother. You were singing it to me. Except you had Lind’s voice. He said something similar to me just before Lenka died. In the dream, I watched you lay my twin brother in the river in Tear. You stood there as the water washed over him, as it closed his eyes, and swirled down into his mouth. You were still singing those words: you have a brother, you have a brother.”
You have a brother. A brother. A brother.
“Ray, please.” Tears were streaking down Rose’s face. “Don’t do this. Let me explain.”
“Too late. No more chances.”
He slammed the door behind him as he left. He got three limping steps down the corridor, and over two decades of frustration and hurt burst to the surface in an agonised howl. It raked white-hot thorns through the questions and recriminations that had stayed silent for so long. As quickly as it had arrived, the cry fled, leaving an ashen taste in his mouth.
17
Jann Rainehoff
The porcelain mug shattered. Thick shards skittered across the wooden floor. Lius leapt up onto the lintel, fur bushed out.
“The bastard! How dare he?” Chester yelled.
Lius growled his agreement and snaked his way past the ornaments to the gladii propped up at one end.
“They’re my troops! My legionnaires. I created that legion. The 13th are mine and he takes them from me? Running the police force into the ground until the only option was privatisation or anarchy was one thing, but—”
“The private money backtrails to him,” Jann cut in.
“Of course it does. He’s wanted his own militia for an age. But this? This! I will not allow this, cannot allow it.”
Jann shrank back from the sudden outburst. “I came as soon as I heard the VP had taken control of the Unsung, Field-Marshal.”
Chester raised a finger.
“Willa,” Jann added quickly. “Not Field-Marshal. Willa. It’s hard for me to get used to saying that.”
“I knew he wanted more autonomous control over the legion. I had to agree to that. I didn’t know he had taken complete control of the 13th.”
“He used the VIPER laws: Violent Incident Protocol—”
“Emergency Rules,” Chester finished, waving her hand to silence her PA. “Yes, I know them. They haven’t been used since the Silk Revolution. What violent incident has triggered this?”
“Not what has, what will: the inevitable war with Mennai.”
Chester’s face soured. “I wondered whether his semi-suicidal drive to wipe out the Mennai had an ulterior motive. He’s using it to gain total control over the army.”
“His lawyers found a loophole that can apply VIPER pre-emptively, bypassing the president.”
“There will be no war. There can’t be.”
“With all due respect, you don’t get to make that choice.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean his plans of a genetic dirty bomb. This has gone from the drool-laced ravings of a lunatic to a calculated play by a madman. Most people in Ailan have ancestors from that country. He has a genetic lineage back to the country. Doesn’t he realise what he’s doing?”
There was a rap on the door and Jann snapped her mouth shut. A military engineer stood in the corridor, a chipped blue gas canister at his feet.
“Your gas, ma’am.” His face seemed too young to own the thin gleam of grey hair across his scalp.
Lius hissed at the man as he passed Chester. “Have we met?” she asked.
The man shook his head and dumped his tools on the floor with a clang.
“What are you going to do with Stann Taille?” Jann asked.
Chester wrenched her eyes off the engineer. “What?”
“Stann Taille, Ray Franklin’s grandfather.” Jann picked up Stann’s old medal from the table in front of the battered sofa. “This guy, remember?”
Chester laughed. Amused and excited by her PA’s growing confidence. “Stick him in his new office and give him a pen to push around.”
“I thought you needed him?”
“We’ll give him a shine and polish and wheel him out on special occasions but that’s it.” As she reached out to clasp Jann’s hand, a spanner dropped in the kitchen. Lius’s tail knocked over one of Chester’s gladii. Jann started and took a step backwards.
“Stann Taille was a great soldier,” said Chester, momentarily annoyed at being denied the chance of contact. “He deserves a decent pension and home. But an ex-sniper and boxing champion with one-and-a-half hands, no knowledge of cyber-warfare or admin is useless to us. War is about winning, it’s not a charity. Stann Taille’s reinstatement will give him a comfortable retirement. It’ll be good publicity. It may even help us recruit Ray Franklin, if we can ever flush him out. But most importantly” — she grinned maliciously — “it will irritate the heavens out of the VP. Can you imagine how annoyed he would be if both Taille and Franklin worked for me?”
Jann stared down at Stann’s medal. A thin streak of purple paint had rubbed off onto her thumb. She laid the medal back on the table, reverently.
“I thought—”
“Finished, ma’am,” the engineer said. “I’ll let myself out.”
As the door closed behind him, Chester saw a solitary bead of sweat trail down the deep vertical furrow in his forehead. Who was he? She met so many people in her job, keeping track of faces was becoming a problem.
“Guess I should clean this up.” Jann pointed to the cup Chester had shattered not five minutes ago. “Then I’ll make you a drink and you can teach me about Alcazar.”
“Alcazar?”
“The board game. You promised to teach me?”
Chester stared at Jann as her memories caught up with her thoughts.
“This morning, on the way to Tear.”
“That I did,” Chester said with a smile.
Jann squatted down with a dustpan and brush she’d brought from the kitchen. As she set about cleaning up the porcelain shards, Chester realised three things. One: the engineer hadn’t bothered to clean up the mess he had made. Two: Lius was behaving erratically, or at least more erratically than a cat usually does (she considered them the one species on the planet more irrational than humans). Three: Jann’s off-duty attire, as distracting as it was, suited her. The indignation she had been warring with over the VP’s treatment of her disappeared. She had long ago realised that one of the advantages of age was the knowledge that today’s problem was often tomorrow’s solution. The Unsung could wait till sunrise.
Chester’s shoulders relaxed. The regular swishing noise of Jann’s brush was soothing. The figure of the woman wielding that brush, however, was not quite so soporific.
As with many who had spent most of their life in the military, Jann didn’t have much of a wardrobe outside what the legions provided. There was no real need, especially not for a loner like Jann, who had lost most of her family in the Second Great Trade Conflict. The looser cut of the off-duty shirt and trousers showed a different side to Chester’s PA. They moulded to Jann’s form, which was lithe and trim even though she was in her late forties. As she swept up the porcelain shards, Chester saw flashes of the younger woman’s chest. She caught the scent of skin laced with fresh sweat.
Jann emptied the broken mug into the bin. Her shirt clung to her back as she leant forwards, the trousers exposing the hint of pale flesh not usually seen. The shirt spilled open at the front, and in the polished steel of the oven, Chester saw just enough to give the hornet’s nest of her imagination a shove.
Jann stood, pressing her hand to her temple. “If you don’t mind, Willa. I’m going to go. I’m feeling light-headed all of a sudden. I want to be home before dark. I want to beat my PB for the timed run and log drill tomorrow a.m. You could come, too, put in a surprise appearance for the troops. You’re still fitter than most people half your age and your limp doesn’t slow you down. It’d be good for morale. What do you think?”
You could stay, Chester could hear herself saying. On the sofa. Or in my bed if you want something more comfortable. I’ll sleep down here. I don’t mind the discomfort. It’s good for me, keeps me young, stops me from going soft. I have no heating in this flat. I don’t believe in it. Fire may cleanse, but cold hardens. Society is getting soft and weak. I could get you a second blanket if you got too cold, or we could . . .
“Are you OK, Willa?” Jann asked, reaching out to hold her superior’s hand. “It’s the VP, isn’t it?”
Chester’s posture caved, every one of her seventy years weighing heavily on her spine. All the things she had wanted to say fled her mind. The hungry buzz of the hornets was embarrassed.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re right. It’s the VP.” She pulled over some kindling and squatted to prepare the fire. Anything to keep her hands busy.
Jann shrugged her coat on, her shirt pulling tight across her chest. “I have to go. Thank you for the drink and the chat. I hope we can do it again sometime, Willa. Oh, I forgot. Your drink. Pass me the matches please.”
Chester threw Jann the matches and gazed at a vertical smudge of ash on a log in the fireplace. A vertical black streak like the crease in the engineer’s forehead. A mark she had seen before on an Unsung legionnaire. A man she had met. A man who had been subjected to unspeakable atrocities as a child. A man now working for the VP: James Brennan. The pieces slotted into place like the click of a gun being cocked. Her mouth went dry. “No. No. He wouldn’t.”
She heard a loud hiss from her cooker as Jann turned the gas hob on. Chester spun. A scream formed on her lips. “No!”
Jann struck a match and the world went white.
18
Maudlin. Definitely Maudlin
The water shimmered on the horizon as the sun started its slow slide beneath the waves. Ray shook the steel parapet that ran round the roof of the tower to check it would hold. He leant into it, taking the weight off his ankle. He was so hungry he was starting to feel sick, so tired he was seeing double. But laid over those sensations was Rose’s last look.
Had he seen anyone else sobbing like that, he would have gone to them. He should have said something, gone to her. He couldn’t. He’d made the choice to stop running after Captain Aalok had died in Substation Two. But there were things he still hadn’t dealt with. Weeks alone in the Weeping Woods with only old myths and memories for company hadn’t helped.
Stella had strapped his ankle for him and dosed him up with something that ‘would help with the pain’. Knowing her, it was probably a placebo. He wouldn’t put it past Stella to tell him it was a placebo just to see his response. He’d asked her if she thought he was being unfair on Rose.
“If you have to ask me that,” she’d answered, “you know the answer.”
Stella had gone to bathe Emily and put her to bed. Martinez, Kayle, the kid who’d cracked the lewd joke, and the Mennai (who he’d learnt were twins, one man, one woman; “and no we’re not identical,” the woman had said with the lazy ease of a well-worn joke) were planning their next move. More specifically, how to get Stella’s son back. Ray had told them what he knew and then excused himself. He’d found his way up here, where the choppy water below, stained red by the sunset, matched his mood.
“Maudlin,” he murmured. “That’s what Brooke called this behaviour.”
He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, blinking back the tiredness. The crimson light spilling across the wave
s was the same colour as the mines under the Donian Mountains. The tunnels and caves seemed to be fed by the arteries of that strange red rock, gwenium. The rock had given off a pulsing light that had washed over Brooke’s broken body.
“Brooke.” His stomach clenched. “What happened to you?”
There was a click of the roof hatch opening behind him. Light spilled out from the square hole. It slid off the fresh grease smothering the rooftop crane in off-green and rotting-yellows. Rose lowered the hatch, muffling the brightness.
He’d known this visit was coming after his outburst below. It had to happen, but he wasn’t sure he was ready for it. He fixed his gaze on the closest double-storied tower. It, like its six companions, was perched on a quartet of thick cylindrical stilts. The stilts poked out of the waves, narrowing down as they reached the lower level. Dirty red streaks leaked from the sightless windows of that level and the one above. A balcony jutted out at one end, the railings warped or missing. In another world these towers could have been mechanical giants that had walked out into the sea and rusted to a standstill. The incessant beating of the sea air had finally got to them; giants worn down by little things: air, salt and water. Question was, were these giants running to or from something? He squeezed the handrail. “Maudlin. Definitely maudlin.”
The footsteps stopped just behind him. He felt the warm presence of another body. They stood in silence, watching the waves chopping at each other, listening to the sounds of the sea and the birds.
“We tried to salvage the machine guns.” Rose pointed at the stubby lines poking out of the tower. “Most were beyond repair. The tower we’re standing in had a couple that were OK. It also had glass in most of the windows. Maybe its location in the heart of the towers gave it some protection. Maybe there’s a lesson in there.”
“How long have you been here?”
The wind picked up, rattling through a missing plate in the parapet.
“Just over a year. We’ll have to move on soon. It’s starting to feel like home.”