Glorious Angels

by Justina Robson

  She sealed the panel and went to her room. Best had appeared in the middle of the bed, sprawled like a starfish, mouth open, managing to occupy the entire thing. Dawn light was seeping through the curtains. She undressed and then looked around, found an old journal, rolled it up tightly and smacked Best firmly about the butt and shoulders until he grumbled and kicked around to make a cave for her under the covers. His eyes were still closed as he held up the quilt.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Out,’ she said. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Looking for you.’

  She felt a pang of guilt and wormed her way in next to him. He let his arm fall heavily over her with a sigh of resignation and muttered, ‘There you are. If I’d known, I would have stayed here.’ He sniffed, thought. ‘You smell of engine oil. What have you been doing?’

  ‘I flew out to look for you and Bo.’

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ he sounded accusing and hurt.

  ‘I fell asleep upstairs,’ she said. ‘Someone left the workshop door open. Were you in there?’

  ‘What would I go in there for?’ He grunted crossly and warmed her feet with his.

  ‘Must have been Minna,’ she said, nothing exactly untrue there. She sighed then, as if she wanted to unburden herself, and told him the night’s story.

  He thought it over. ‘You think I went into the workshop for the gun?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But whoever did that must have been disturbed when Minna went up. Clearly they didn’t know what they were doing. The pieces were all over the place. Any engineer would have known a power splinter from a focus core.’

  ‘Did you check the whole house?’

  ‘No I…’

  He groaned and got out of bed. ‘They could still be here. I’ll go. You just, stay out of trouble.’

  She was too tired to argue. She lay down in his warm patch and curled up in the quilts. The door closed after him. No, she didn’t think he was up to anything. But somebody had found that gun and tried to mess about with it. How? She fell asleep thinking about it.

  The morning brought uncomfortable answers. Since everyone had been up so late the night before there was a sluggish family convention for brunch at noon. Carlyn was first on the scene, having come with big news of her own, but had to wait as nobody was up. She busied herself making pancakes. By the time Minna’s web had started to crawl out of the solar in search of food she’d gone through pancakes shaped like clouds, like trees, like vegetables, and was leaning over the skillet dripping batter off a fork trying to make a springbuck with antlers that was robust enough to survive being tossed.

  A few minutes later Tralane found her holding the iron spatula and staring at the springbuck’s severed head hanging from the edge of it.

  Carlyn looked up, smiled, hesitated, peered at Tralane’s face and said, ‘Long night, darling?’

  Tralane took in the rest of the room, which was nearly emptied. At her glance the last of the web picked up their plates and slid obediently out of contact, snatching bottles of juice and packs of bread to take back to their lair. When they’d gone she collapsed into the worn armchair at the head of the table and put her head down on her arms.

  ‘There’s a man locked up in my guest room.’

  Carlyn switched off the burners under the skillet and sat down on the bench next to Tralane, pulling a plate of pancakes towards herself. ‘Was he trying to escape?’

  ‘Ha ha. Maybe. What’re you doing here so early anyway?’

  ‘I have to pack for an expedition. We leave in a week’s time. I need to talk to you about it but it can wait. What’re you doing up so late with male prisoners?’

  ‘Getting shot at,’ Tralane said, unable to resist before explaining the story.

  ‘You idiot,’ Carlyn said several times, and at the conclusion. She had finished her pancakes by then and was sitting with tea, blowing at the steam coming off it. ‘Are you going to leave him there for ever? I hope he had a toilet available or you’ll be scrubbing something shortly.’

  Tralane groaned and picked up her cup. ‘Fine, I guess it’s time to let him out anyway. He hasn’t actually done anything except trespass, really.’

  Carlyn stared at her. ‘Did you lose your marbles? He was obviously sent to check you out more thoroughly. I’m surprised no one’s come for him by now.’

  Tralane shrugged. ‘Well they haven’t.’ She hadn’t mentioned the part about the gun, why it was on the bench. She wanted to, but she kept it to herself. It felt like the information was loaded, exactly like another sort of weapon. She drank coffee, ate pancake coated in butter and sugar, waited for energy to come back to her and listened to Carlyn talk now about her expedition, a hasty summons from the Empress, an urgent mission. It was only when Carlyn nervously let slip that she was headed to the front that Tralane started out of her half trance and the prospect of having to meet Zharazin Mazhd evaporated for a minute.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be going too,’ Carlyn said. ‘I don’t know why you haven’t been called already. You’re the best engineer in the city.’

  ‘It’s a dig, what do they need me for? Civil workers do the heavy stuff. You futz about with brushes. How hard is that?’

  ‘Lane, what’s got into you?’

  Someone was messing with my gun. And only you knew where it was. ‘Just a hangover and a foul temper. Nothing new. Let’s go see what the infomancers have to say.’ She rolled a pancake up, stuffed it in her mouth, picked up coffee and started to move but found her way blocked by a yawning Isabeau in the doorway. ‘Gracing us with your presence?’ She tried to say this but it was muffled by pancake and came out as a hummed line of sarcasm which Isabeau rolled her eyes at. She passed Tralane and sat at the table, studied the pancakes, and took the nearest after a moment.

  For a while Tralane couldn’t understand what was new, then realised it had been a year since she saw Isabeau up in the morning in her pyjamas and not in the grey scholar gown. She swallowed pancake and took the rest out of her mouth. ‘What happened?’

  Isabeau shrugged and got up to look for cutlery and to find a drink.

  ‘I was out looking for you.’ This emerged a lot more shrewishly than Tralane had intended and she had to stop herself. An eternity of disappointed mothers in the Huntingore line bore down through her and made her sound like a vengeful harpy.

  Isabeau poured a calculated amount of coffee into a mug and measured out sugar, one grain at a time, almost.

  Tralane felt herself growing old, grey and irritated.

  Isabeau stirred methodically, tapped her spoon and picked up her mug. She looked up over the rim. ‘Hello Carly, Mom. Sorry I was late.’

  Tralane reached for the patience of the gods and didn’t find it. Instead a thought occurred to her. ‘Did you leave your web?’

  ‘Yep.’ Isabeau picked up her pancake and turned it around, frowning. ‘Is this meant to look like a horse?’

  ‘It’s a camel,’ Carlyn said.

  ‘Ohh… Oh yeah.’

  ‘So,’ Tralane said, attempting measured and calm. ‘Two years of study and apprenticeship after six months of begging and pleading to be admitted, plus a thousand dinari on special tuition and you’ve just walked out on the most advanced and prolific and respected scholars in the Empire because…?’ She ended on a rising note, waiting, wondering when she’d learned to get so pompous and feeling it nearly physically hurt.

  ‘They’re wrong,’ Isabeau said. Her voice was cool and flat, as if the subject was boring and the question uninteresting. She sliced off the camel’s head and then segmented its body into neat pieces, more or less as if following the chart of butchering cuts on display in the meat shops.

  ‘Wrong,’ Tralane said, wishing so very hard she could step out of this awkward thing she was becoming and into something more useful, or at least warm and caring. But those parts of her hadn’t woken up yet.

  Isabeau looked at her as if she were hopelessly slow. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Wrong.’ />
  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’

  Tralane felt a flash in her head, both pain and light. She felt Carlyn touch her arm and looked at her. Carlyn’s blue eyes and golden curly hair. Carlyn’s knowing look of sympathy.

  ‘Bigger fish first,’ Carlyn said. ‘Let’s get one thing done at a time. She’s not going anywhere for now.’ She took Tralane by her sleeve and pulled her.

  Tralane followed, feeling distinctly that she was about to overload and blow some kind of permanent fuse in her head. Following Carlyn seemed all she was good for. She toyed with the idea of going for the gun but that wouldn’t do much good. She wasn’t going to shoot Mazhd. She wasn’t sure she could speak in the same room with him, so pulling a weapon and killing him was beyond the wildest realms of possibility. Why did it have to be him? Wasn’t there some other gossip-sucking, sneaking, untrustworthy sonofabitch they could have found to do the job?

  She ground her teeth when she saw Minnabar coming towards them as they walked to the room. Minna ran forward to hug Carlyn hello and then trailed them.

  ‘Go back now,’ Tralane said to her. She didn’t think they were really in danger but she badly wanted not to be witnessed in front of this man. It wasn’t as if she had anything to hide about him – he had never been her lover. They’d met once, at a large social event, some Academy prizegiving, and she’d asked for an introduction because she was drunk and feeling frivolous and full of herself. He was notorious; illustrious because of being the incomparably mysterious Night’s student, and just then remarkable for their separation. The rumours had run riot from esoteric to erotic and usually a confabulation of both. Tralane despised the situation intellectually as fatuous but she’d seen him across the room – why was it the distant glance, unobserved, that mattered so much? Anyway, she had been unable to prevent herself fantasising about him. Later that had made her ashamed, to be so like everyone else. Then it had been exciting. Carlyn had made the arrangements. He had been polite and attentive, she remembered, or thought she did. They’d talked of everything but what she wanted to know. He’d been alone but she doubted there was a bed in Glimshard he couldn’t have been in that night. It was the night she’d been called home suddenly in panic, to find Minnabar with a virus, vomiting on everything in sight, including her one evening gown when she had gone to commiserate and offer weak tea and dry biscuits. For all these reasons now she felt justified in sending Minna away.

  She was ignored, naturally, and as she reached the door she realised the truth of her shame. In front of Mazhd she had no power. She’d given it all to him when they met, even before his lips had touched her flux-burned knuckles and before his fingers had gripped hers and hidden the black grease lines that would never never wash out beneath her nails. This made her girlish and foolish and beneath respect. It was an idiotic thing to have done and even now the perverse joy she felt about it was breathtakingly stupid. She inhaled and attempted to suck the gift of it back again with the air, but a sullen weight in her chest said the magic had not worked. Her palm on the wood undid the locks. It was resignation, not authority, that let her open the door and step into the room with the calm, steady stride, and resignation that prevented her from acting with surprise when she found him lying atop the neatly made coverlet, reading a book.

  My, she thought, this room is damp and needs airing out. She saw his boots lined up neatly at the bed’s foot, tucked under it as if they belonged. He got up in a fluid, single movement, book cast behind him, and made a half bow which looked apologetic.

  ‘I’m glad to see you looking so well,’ he said. His expression was sincere.

  Tralane blinked speechlessly for a moment, then laughed. He laughed too, but kindly, with her. ‘I suppose Shrazade sent you to find out why I crossed your border.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But given the weather we are prepared to assume a mistake.’

  ‘How generous,’ she said, disliking the sensation of being on the hook in her own domain. ‘You assume correctly however. I lost too much height and it was cross you or crash.’

  His smile stayed in his eyes, a sparkle that would not diminish even when the rest of his face became more serious now that they had dismissed the first bit of business. The second, the matter of her disposal of the spying spell, was much more significant and she didn’t want him to seize the initiative, nor speak of it before the others. ‘I suppose I should thank you, but I’m not going to. I want you out of my house and I never asked you into it.’

  His glance, a half bow of recognition accompanied by the merest lowering of his chin displayed his understanding of her although he looked hurt. ‘Of course, I will be going immediately now that you have kindly let me out.’ He turned, put on his coat and collected his book and then paused in the act of slipping it into the coat pocket. ‘I understand congratulations are in order.’

  Tralane searched her mind frenetically – congratulations?

  He segued effortlessly in to save her. ‘On your daughter Isabeau’s acceptance as the student of Parlumi Night.’

  She searched his face avidly but there was no sign of mockery or anything besides genuine approval and a search for her own reaction.

  ‘Oh that,’ she said, as if it was old news, mentally preparing to stake Isabeau out to dry. ‘Yes, we were all so surprised.’

  Behind her she heard Carlyn clearing her throat with a magnificent cough. Minnabar’s voice rose over it in an indignant, ‘Wha-at?!’

  Tralane levelled her gaze at Mazhd. ‘I’d be most grateful for any advice you might have on that score. Isabeau is much younger than you were when you held the same post and her background is far different.’

  Mazhd’s hand, elegant, poised, lingered and touched the book in his pocket. His dark eyes filled with soft invitations. ‘I’m afraid I would have to know you personally much better than I do before I would be comfortable revealing information about my relationship to Night.’

  Tralane studied him. It wasn’t him – he was delightful – it was what he represented that made her hesitate and her head spin. She told herself that at least. Yes. It was not easy to deal with the massive disruption such a person could make to her life. But it seemed that there were more reasons to agree and move on than say no and refuse. If only he would put into words all the things he seemed so eager to say with his expressive body. She was flattered and she didn’t trust that. But she saw too that Mazhd could be a barrier against Alide, a conduit into circuits of power that until lately had held no interest but which now felt like they strangled her all the time.

  ‘You can come over for ikasen then,’ she said. ‘Be here by eight.’

  ‘Thank you, I will.’ A subtle glow of deep satisfaction rippled over him and she wondered again what she was walking into.

  A surprised silence behind her met her statement and she took the moment – rare and precious – to step back and gesture for him to precede her out of the room. She saw Carlyn mouthing ‘What?’ to her as he passed by. Ikasen was dinner for two, an invitation offered when one wished to explore the possibility of a relationship of note with another. Everyone else was automatically excluded. Minna’s eyes were also wide.

  Tralane returned a glance of ‘so what?’ to her daughter and winked at Carlyn with a confidence she didn’t feel. She followed Mazhd to the outer door – noting he never took a wrong turn – and showed him out. Once he’d gone she closed the door and leaned against it looking back to the kitchen turn where the others stood watching her.

  ‘What have I got myself into now?’ she asked them, only partly rhetorically. She groaned and hit her head against the solid wood gently.

  Carlyn was smiling at her. ‘I wish you could see your face.’

  Tralane thought about the gun, the crystals. ‘Keep that image because there’s more to come.’ She pushed off the door and strode back to the kitchen, turning with purpose and authority – but Isabeau was already gone. ‘Dammit!’

  ‘I can find her
for you,’ Minna offered, a promise of cold blood in her voice that Tralane took to mean she hadn’t been in on Isabeau’s doings either.

  ‘No, let her go, I can deal with her later,’ Tralane said, exasperated beyond measure. ‘Right now I have to… clear up here and…’

  ‘You should get some sleep before your big night,’ Carlyn said, beginning to collect up the dishes.

  ‘Oh it’s not a big night, I just said that so we’ll have time to talk.’ Tralane was taken aback by her own glibness.

  ‘Right.’ Carlyn ran water and soap into the sink. ‘Well, I have to go finish packing for my expedition shortly so right now your priority is handing me dishes and talking to me.’

  ‘I can’t believe you asked him for ikasen,’ Minnabar said, although she was attempting to slide out the door before some domestic duty was pushed her way at the same time so Tralane merely awarded her a suitably haughty withering glance of dismissal of the opinion of someone young and ignorant in the face of a better. It kind of hurt the cheeks and she was glad when Minna twisted out of sight and padded off towards her room.

  ‘He is NOT the daddy type!’ Minna shouted with warning tones from the hall.

  Tralane ferried the ex-pancake plates to the sink and watched Carlyn scrub them with unbridled enthusiasm. She put her hand on her friend’s shoulder and rubbed it. ‘Duck and Diver are going with you?’ She used the pet names for Carlyn’s colleague-lovers to try and inject a bit of comfort into the conversation. She didn’t feel there was all that much comfort to grab on to realistically. Carlyn’s emergency dispatch was so unusual that it set all kinds of alarm bells ringing in her head, connected up inevitably to the war and the quiet daily statistics of those lost in the south. Selfishly she longed for the dull days when there was nothing to do but climb the stairs to the lab. But she massaged Carlyn’s shoulder and watched the dishes emerge, steaming, on to the drainer.