by Claire North
I stole the designs and sent them to Nadira, almost reckless now in my exploits, a dead man walking who may as well go out with a bang.
“She mobilised too late,” Georg mused, as Jia’s voice blazed out across the radio, mustering some of the old defiance with which she had held together disparate bickering Provinces down so many years. “She won’t fight in winter, but we can still keep manufacturing, growing. By spring, she’ll be too late.”
“She still has more troops,” I pointed out.
“People are not iron,” he replied, and that was the end of that.
In the evening, Georg says: “Drink with me,” and I do, and we play a few games, modern and ancient, on the low coffee table between his worn crimson couches, and after four rounds we are at a perfect draw, and neither of us suggests a decider. He is frustrated by this pattern in our game playing, infuriated by his failure to consistently win. That’s why he keeps coming back, and the joy of the thing is fading with every piece we move, and he will persist until victory.
For a while, we are silent.
We have been silent together for many nights, he working at his desk, I in a corner, without talk, music, the clatter of other people’s lives. As the streets grow quiet through the open window, we have shared the deeper calm of distant disturbances, little puffs of noise only emphasising how deep stillness goes. We are silent again now, until he finally blurts:
“Out with it. Come on! Out with it!”
It is strangely profane, this disruption to our easy peace. I sit back, feel the warm fabric where many people, more important than me, have recoiled a little from Georg’s stare.
“You look like a blob of mucus and have been moody for weeks. Spit it out.”
“I have been wondering what your final objective for this war is. Material victory is not a realistic end-goal. You’ve got a technological advantage – all that heretical history, cluster bombs and gas and nerve agents, and so on – but it’ll take you years to fully exploit it, and ultimately if the Council is too weak, if the Temple thinks the danger is too great, they’ll just unlock their archives and start doing the same.”
Georg is smiling now, arms folded, leaning back easy into his chair. “Do you think I can win?” he asks, eyes glistening, teeth white.
I think you have a spy in the very heart of the Council.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “I’d call it fifty-fifty.”
Either Pontus finds me, or I find them.
“Would you risk everything on those odds?”
“I think perhaps I already have. What are you really fighting for?”
“Perhaps I believe in everything I say. In humanism. In a better world.”
“Perhaps. Beliefs come and beliefs go. In the burning, the human mind was trained to value achievement, ambition and ownership above all else. It was the most abundant the world had ever been, and yet every child was taught that it lived in scarcity – that only by getting more would it ever be safe. Then the world burned and there was just war, famine and the kakuy. You killed, you died, while spirits of mountain and stone raged without the slightest interest in you and your fate. Then the fires ceased, and Temple emerged and taught us to be soothed by the river and the wind, to find joy in each other and what we had, and that… is also fine. I’m no priest, but I’ve spent enough time reading archives to know that a little boredom, a little sitting around drinking tea and not causing too much trouble for anyone – that’s also fine. But it is not a world for heroes. It is not a place where great men can shape the land to their will, for the simple reason that the land bends only to the kakuy. Only them. God lives; and God does not live for humans. We are tiny, once again. I think you are not interested in being tiny any more. Do you want to kill the kakuy?”
His eyes are bright as the moon; he is a brilliant man who has dedicated himself to working in the shadows, and yes, even Georg’s ego will puff like a strutting pigeon now and then.
“Do you think I can?”
“No. Kakuy die – I believe that. But the forest grows back, and while there is a forest, there will be a kakuy. Maybe you can drill a few holes in rock. Maybe you can poison the Ube itself. But you can’t kill the sky.”
“If you believe that, why are you still here?”
I shrug. “As soon as the going gets tough, I’m sure I’ll discover my cowardice again. Until then… I suppose you could say I’m curious. You want to kill kakuy. That’s the endgame – that’s all this war is about, yes?” He smiles, and that is answer enough. “Well,” I muse. “That’s some top-of-the-line ambition.”
“Is it not how humanity becomes truly free? By conquering the gods themselves?” he asks, mischief in the corner of his eye, a smile pulling the edges of his lips. “And when the kakuy are dead and the earth is ours, the temples will burn and there won’t be any need for a war. There won’t be any need, because we’ll be right. We’ll be our own gods. That’s how I’m going to win.”
He grins and pours me a cup of wine and tips his glass towards me. “To victory,” he says.
“To victory,” I reply, and drain the liquid down.
Chapter 21
The days are ticking down, down, down, another year going, going, gone, where did it all go? Georg is in my head, Pontus is in my head, Lah is in my head. The only person who’s currently not home and making tea seems to be Ven Marzouki. What would he make of all this from his little home on the edge of the forest?
Meeting in the library, banners slung across the wall celebrating the de-classification of previously heretical texts on theories of racial evolution, eugenics and the carbon economy, Nadira says: “Ven. It’s time to go.”
“He thinks he can kill kakuy. He thinks Temple is hiding something, weapons, he thinks that when the kakuy are dead we will be free, free to tear the earth apart, free to be strong, free to make and build and kill each other again without worrying about the fallout, the way real men do. Real men, real war, real power – the world was so much easier when gods cared about humanity. I can find the spy, I can find Pontus, I’m so close…”
“Ven! Krima is looking, Temple is looking, I am doing everything I… Pontus will be found, it’s not you – this isn’t on you. What if they find you first?”
“Then that will tell us something too, won’t it?”
She leans back, recoiling as if punched, but though her voice says no, Ven, in the name of sun and moon, don’t be ridiculous, her eyes say why yes, yes indeed, you are not wrong. If we all die here, it will be very informative indeed.
I made it almost to winter festival before my world came crashing down. Low winter light in the morning, the touch of sun through the cold, we give thanks, we give thanks…
Then one unremarkable night as the snow fell in grubby sheets, Georg called me into his office, asked me if I’d finished writing up my notes – I had, and gave them to him – nodded once, looked at someone behind me, and whoever that was hit me in the back of my neck with a very large stick.
I think they were aiming for the back of my head, but missed. When this caused me a great deal of confusion and staggering, rather than just the desired immediate blackout, they hit me some more. I was not particularly surprised to see Klem leading the fray, and my old housemate Sohrab, though I was a little disappointed to notice that Rilka seemed to have forgotten our shared history and was busy getting in on the action too.
Here’s a cellar, a familiar place.
The summer flood had washed away the blood, leaving instead that fine coating of muddy stench that has settled in a fly-blasted miasma over the city since the Ube rose. None of us will ever be clean again.
Pitching a still-conscious body that doesn’t want to co-operate into a chair is hard work. Limbs go everywhere. Teeth, even if they don’t bite, remind us a little too much of a dog’s toxic mouth, or the venomous strike of the platypus, so if you’re not used to such things – and Sohrab and Klem clearly expected more docile prey – the result can be unnerving. In the end, Kl
em got bored and dumped me on the floor, belly up. Then he knelt on my left arm, pulled a knife from his jacket, uncoiled the fist of my hand and tried to cut my thumb off again. The absurdity of it made me laugh, somewhere through the pounding headache. This didn’t bother Klem. Laughter was a familiar fear response.
“Wait.”
Georg hadn’t said that last time, had he? It seemed only fitting to get the thumb business over and done with, just so everyone was on the same page. Klem paused but didn’t let go. Rilka stood by the door, hands squeezed together in front of her so tight I thought she might pop like a pimple. Sohrab lingered against the furthest wall, competent but lazy. Georg’s face hovered briefly over mine. I wheezed: “Torture makes people say what you want to hear.”
He nodded, once, then again, a backwards nod with his chin. Klem scowled, climbed off my arm, retreated to the edge of the room. Georg waited, just far enough out of reach that I couldn’t easily get blood on his clothes. I pulled myself up one arm at a time, clinging to the empty chair for support, managed to get my head up and let it loll back on the seat, untangling my legs on the floor in front of me.
“Can I have a drink?” I asked.
Klem found the idea contemptible. Georg found it almost funny. “Get him a drink,” he barked, and, relieved perhaps, Rilka scurried away to find one. I licked my lips, mopping up iron. Georg waited, then squatted down opposite me, a look that seemed close to concern in the corner of his eyes. I had never seen such a thing in him before; he almost never stooped to the level of other men. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a hankie, a finer, spider-silk version of the thing I’d given Rilka on the day the temples burned. He spat on the silk, then brushed a little of the blood from my face, examined the resulting smear, and pressed the hankie into my loose, sagging fist. I gripped it tight as a child might hold a sacred totem or a glimmer of metal with the ancient words Product of China. I wondered where Yue was. I hadn’t wondered that for a while. I hoped that if the inquisition found Pontus, they’d treat them better than the Brotherhood was going to treat me, and was surprised at the depth of my sentiment on the subject.
“Kadri,” Georg sighed. “How did we end up here?”
“Terrible choices,” I chuckled, and humour hurt, so I decided not to do that again.
He smiled, squeezed my shoulder, harder this time – hard enough for pain – released, waited. The door opened. Rilka entered, carrying a crystal glass of the good stuff. She did not understand the finer nuances of interrogation, perhaps, but Georg let it slide. She held it with two fingers under the base, like a sacrificial offering of water at the temple.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from her shaking hands. I thought I’d down it in one, get a little courage, but the heat of it on my bleeding gums was surprisingly pleasant, so I took my time.
“Kadri,” Georg said quietly, a little firmer now, a man with places to go, people to see. There’s an unmarked grave already dug somewhere on the edge of the city; it needs to be filled by morning, you know how it is. I clung tighter to the glass.
“The thing is,” I grunted, “I’ve got to wait a few hours before I start spilling my guts. To give other agents a chance to escape. Professionalism. Three should be enough. You can beat me senseless in the meantime if you want, but it’ll probably be easier for everyone if we take that for granted.”
“Unfortunately,” Georg sighed, “you don’t speak for everyone, do you?”
I shuddered, despite myself, tried to blink some of the spinning from my eyes.
Then Georg said: “I believe you call him Pontus.” Glass is but sand, sand is of the desert, I am the desert, I am sinking from the heat of the sun to that cold, soft place where light may never find me. Georg nodded at nothing much, mused: “Krima’s investigation was a little too loud. She turned over a few too many rocks, got sloppy. That’s the problem with using a spy to catch a spy – every step closer, you become easier to see. When did Temple recruit you?”
“When? Oh. You think I was bought or… you said something rude to me that made me turn? Earth and sky, no.” I tipped the glass to him in salute, bloody teeth and throbbing head. “I’m an inquisitor. The whole… selling information, expulsion business – that was just cover. Bait. You were always my target. You swam onto my hook like the little greedy fishy that you are.”
He looked away, tiny white teeth in a puckered mouth. Georg had never looked away before. He turned again to face me almost instantly, as if the moment had never happened. “How much did you give them?”
“Everything. Military, political – everything. The training camps in the mountains? The airbase hidden in the north? Your brilliant strategic plans – the new fleet; the new artillery? Everything. Temple knows about Antti’s embezzling, your secret friends in Magyarzag, what soap you use to wash your nethers.” For a moment, he looked sick, and I felt a swell of strange, giddy defiance unlike anything I had experienced since the forest burned. I wished I had more alcohol to salute him with, a toast to his ignorance, a glass tilted towards his frown. Then Georg looked away one last time, smiled at the floor, was still smiling when he looked back up. He patted me on the shoulder, gentler this time, a father comforting a disappointing errant son. “Well,” he sighed. “You were always good at your job.”
He began to stand. Back, haunches, an unfolding upwards. Klem detached himself from his corner, ready to do that thing he did. I caught Georg’s hand as it drifted away, gripped it tight. A flicker of surprise ran over his face, matched only by the pure bewilderment as I swung the crystal glass as hard as I could into the side of his head. It shattered against skull and palm, shards digging like the burrowing wasp into my flesh, spilling in bloody stripes down his cheek. The blood started flowing instantly, thick and dark, dripping onto his spotless shirt. The impact rocked him against the chair and I thought I heard Rilka stifle a scream, Klem growl like the hungry wolf, but I was already reaching for Georg’s trouser belt. I had searched his jackets before, examined every part of his wardrobe, and now there was only one place left for his damn knife to be: tucked into a sheath on the back of his belt, a little hidden scabbard that made would-be murderers feel smug and bold, but which any professional thug knew was too easily hijacked. My hand closed round a wooden handle; I dragged the blade free as Klem lunged towards me, and as Georg swayed back, pushing himself away from the chair, I caught his hand again and stuck the knife into his left armpit. He gasped, bit back on the pain, twisted as I dug a little deeper, pulling him towards me until finally his throat was within my reach and I slid the knife up into the ridge between neck and jaw and snarled: “Get back!”
Klem and Sohrab froze, Rilka sobbed. I had never seen anyone sob like that before, an awkward, uncertain thing as if she felt it was her womanly duty to have a reaction, which her bright, adrenaline-popping eyes weren’t really feeling.
On the floor, Georg and I were a tangled, contorted mess, blood mixing in grubby smears across skin and stone. Trying to slit his throat at this angle would be a right stinker, fleshy but unlikely fatal; but I didn’t trust my grip to change to something more practical, so hoped no one else would notice or care.
“Drop your knife,” I hissed at Klem. He looked to Georg, who seemed as if he would nod, then thought better of the motion.
“Do it,” he said.
Klem dropped his knife, toed it away; Sohrab was unarmed.
“Stand by the wall,” I snapped. “Facing it.”
Slowly, Klem and Sohrab walked to the wall, turned their eyes to the grey stone. I nodded at Rilka, who didn’t need any further encouragement to do the same. I slung my right arm across Georg’s chest, adjusted my left so my elbow hooked around his shoulder, giving me a little more balance and control. “Up.”
He climbed up slowly, reluctant to shift his weight against the blade, feet scrambling against my thigh as he tried to find purchase. I followed, letting his strength half-pull me upright, until we stood, a swaying, bleeding mess pressed so tightly toge
ther we could have been born sharing the same liver. “Out.”
He straightened all the way, an uncomfortable height that forced me to peer past him as if I were a puppy hiding behind a tree. His first step was a sway and he almost fell, nearly losing his own windpipe as I struggled to stay with him. Then he caught himself, straightened again, adjusted the cuffs on the end of his sleeves and, with as much dignity as an admiral boarding his flagship, began to shuffle towards the door. I followed, glued flesh to his flesh, blood to his still-flowing blood, through the cellar door.
“Lock it. Throw away the key.”
He locked it, tried the handle to show it was done, threw away the key.
“Kadri – Ven – do you have a plan?” His voice had the soft concern of an employer inquiring into his underling’s personal development.
“Car.”
A little nod, which became smaller as he remembered the knife at his throat. “Of course. Worth a try.”
Climbing the stairs together was such a messy, undignified shuffle that at one point Georg spluttered: “Wouldn’t it be easier to stab me in the kidneys?”
I didn’t answer, pulled my arm a little tighter across his chest. When we rounded the corner into the corridor, I thought he might try to buckle, felt a tensing of muscles against me, tensed back. He reconsidered, shuffled to the front door, opened it, looked out into the street, turning his head this way and that as if waiting for a rickshaw. “Well?” I peeked past him, and he took that opportunity to turn, grabbing my head in both his hands and slamming me against the wall. I felt my blade cut something, nick flesh, felt blood hot on my fingers, but it didn’t slow him down. He drove a knee into my chest and fumbled with his thumbs for my eyes, burrowing from ear to temple to eyebrow, skimming the top of the socket. I ducked under his grip before he could dig, drove skull-first into his belly, trying to push him back from the wall. He staggered a few paces, then adjusted to bear-hug me around the torso with one arm, slowing me to a grind of feet pushing against feet. He caught my knife hand as I swung it up towards his stomach, and though he twisted my wrist he didn’t quite have enough strength to force me to open my fingers. Instead he turned, turned and turned, driving forward now as I slid back again, pushing the blade with his whole body towards my chest. I kicked and struggled and grunted and tried to head-butt his sternum into some sort of submission, felt blood in my ears and heard him gasp and wheeze like a poisoned lion. The tip of the blade slithered towards my chest, pricked skin, drew blood. His grip on my wrist was numbing, cutting off blood as he drove the knife on. I dropped to the floor, let the weight of his body on mine send me tumbling. The knife turned as I fell, my arm finally breaking from his with the unexpected force of gravity, his grip around my middle pulling him with me. I didn’t feel the tip of the blade glide over my ribs, didn’t feel it glance across my body – that sensation would come later. But I felt it slip across his flesh as I scrambled for purchase on the floor. Saw his thigh in my line of sight, felt myself tumble from his grasp; drove the knife all the way in.