Osiris

by E. J. Swift

  “—done well this year, hasn’t she?”

  “Of course, she always does.”

  “Yes, but I mean, considering the circumstances.”

  “Bound to be difficult.”

  “The not knowing—”

  “Yes, my dear, but the suspicion is something else again. After all, people talk.” The woman speaking looked pointedly at each of her companions and gave a little laugh. The others joined in self-consciously but then the other woman, who was younger, said in a hushed voice,

  “Why, what have you heard?”

  “All sorts of things. Speculation, I dare say. But one can only imagine there is a reason dear Adelaide split from the Rechnovs…”

  The man unhunched his shoulders in a slight shrug. “Can’t be too big a rift if she’s living in a place like this.”

  “Yes, but can you imagine the scandal if they’d cut her off? It was already bad enough with… well, you know…”

  The younger woman looked at her in slight confusion, and the man mouthed something.

  “Did you know him?” she whispered back. He shook his head. The older woman checked over her shoulder, before saying, “I did.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Oh, he was a funny one. Bright, I suppose. Almost too bright—he’d walk off right in the middle of a conversation, terribly rude. The family said it was a health issue but I was never convinced; there was something odd about the whole affair.”

  “I’ve heard people say he might have—” The man made a circular motion with his hand, as if he did not want to be any more explicit. The older woman raised eyebrows elongated to the edges of her face. “You know,” he muttered. “Done it—himself.”

  The woman responded sharply. “That’s a filthy lie and you tell anyone that says so.”

  “Alright, alright…”

  “I heard they had fifty boats out looking for him,” the girl chirped. “Fifty! Viviana Rechnov must have pulled every string in the Reef. And that’s not all. They had entire squads of divers.”

  “That may be. But we shouldn’t really talk about him at all—she doesn’t like it.”

  They all shared a private smile. The young woman leaned forward to take a sip of something violet, and Vikram found himself in her line of sight. She stared at him curiously.

  “Hello?”

  The other two turned around.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m Vikram.”

  “Vikram…” The man ran the name over his tongue as though he was testing it for toxicants, then finding it clear, shook his head in bafflement.

  “Vikram who?” the older woman asked. Her eyes darted all over him.

  “Vikram Bai,” he said.

  “And you are here for…?”

  He was thrown by the question for a moment, and then wondered if she thought he was with Adelaide’s staff.

  “For the party,” he said, and waved his invite, the magic talisman.

  “Oh!” Her expression did not quite clear. “Adelaide’s taken you up, has she?”

  “Not exactly,” Vikram said, remembering he had promised not to mention Linus’s name, and now seeing that might be problematic. “I hope she will,” he said.

  “We all hope for that,” said the man fervently.

  “Don’t be silly, Kristin, you’ve been on Adelaide’s list for months. Oh Tyr! I didn’t see you arrive.” The woman’s greeting, directed over Vikram’s shoulder, was suddenly girlish.

  “I was here early, Gudrun.” The newcomer turned to Vikram, who saw the reason for Gudrun’s change in tone. The man was classically handsome and perfectly streamlined in features and physique. Unlike the other guests, the shirt beneath his jacket was red. He wore the clothes with easy, nonchalant grace. His eyes were a surprisingly deep shade of grey beneath hair the colour of dry sand. They travelled over Vikram, searching. Vikram knew with absolute surety that even if he had the same access to credit as one of Adelaide’s crowd, he could never look like that. The man was wet with money.

  “Hi,” the newcomer said finally. “My name’s Tyr. Don’t think I’ve seen you before?”

  “No. It’s Vikram.”

  “Would you mind coming with me? There’s someone who wants to meet you.” Tyr slung an arm around Vikram’s shoulders and was leading him away before he had a chance to say goodbye. The group looked momentarily surprised, and then reformed as though nothing had happened.

  Tyr steered Vikram expertly into the mirrored hallway. It was quiet compared to the fracas inside.

  “So, this is the first time you’ve been to one of Adelaide’s parties? What do you think?”

  “Good party.” Vikram stayed neutral.

  Tyr laughed. “They always are. Now do tell me, Vikram. Which of the krill are you working for? Because you sure as hell don’t belong in here.”

  Vikram glanced back through the archway. Two girls had climbed onto the piano and were swaying from side to side as they sung, the weight of their headpieces threatening to unbalance them completely. No-one was paying any attention to him and Tyr.

  “I’m not here for any newsreel,” he said. “I’m here to see Adelaide.”

  “That’s funny,” said Tyr. “Because you’re not on her guest list.”

  “I know that,” Vikram said, wary now. He didn’t know Tyr’s background, but nor did he doubt a stranger’s capacity to throw a punch. He felt his own body tensing in anticipation. There was a growing part of him that would love to get in a fight. “Look,” he said. “I’m from a political reform group. Horizon. I spoke at the Council recently. I just wanted to see Adelaide. To ask if she could help us.”

  Tyr stared at him as though he was crazy. “I don’t know who you are, or who you’re working for, but you’re leaving right now.”

  “It’s alright, Tyr. He’ll go quietly.”

  The voice was at once layered and laden, cold and charged, honey and steel. Composed as it was of so many disparate keys, it had no right to be any one thing. Vikram looked to its source and caught his first glimpse of Adelaide Mystik. She was wearing a dress the colour of clotting blood. It rippled around her body as though she was a strand of seaweed caught by the waves. In her hair were black roses and black lines ringed her green eyes, brilliant in a pale, pointed face.

  “Adelaide,” he said. The words clustered on his tongue. He was ready, at that moment, to tell her everything. About Mikkeli, about Stefan, about the other people who were going to die this winter, about the fishing boats and the unremembered quarters, the coldest he’d ever been, and the way the sea sounded at night with the window open in the summer months, fierce but strangely comforting, even about the underwater cell. He was ready to tell her all of this, and despised himself for the impulse, but he could not stop. “I need to talk to you—”

  “Yes,” she said, and now her voice was sanitized: stripped of all pretence at kindness. “Thank you for coming. Goodbye.”

  The door opened. The doorman beckoned. Adelaide turned away. Vikram glared at the velveted figure, furious with himself, furious with Linus and Linus’s bitch of a sister. Tyr stood with a smile which Vikram could only construe as amusement. With every second that passed he felt his options dwindling. He could fight. He could rage and swear at them. He could get arrested, and spend another few months in jail underwater. He could walk away. Once again, he could walk away.

  They were encouraging him towards the latter. It had been so neatly done. Extracting him from the guests, Adelaide bidding a cordial farewell. He wanted to rob them of that victory, to make a mess and a scandal, bring blood to these exquisitely papered rooms. He was longing to break Tyr’s jaw. He saw the other man’s face as a mangled pulp, and was almost shocked by the intensity of his desire to make it happen. Even that would only give them more meat to feed off. He had lost all around.

  Outside, he read the gold plated sign on the closed door: Adelaide Mystik, The Red Rooms. He vented a fraction of his frustration on the wall, denting the panelled corridor. The doorman
took a step away from his post.

  “Don’t,” said Vikram. Something in the expression on his face halted the man, and Vikram walked away.

  11 ¦ ADELAIDE

  From her hiding place up on the mezzanine, Adelaide surveyed her party critically. The room was full. Hired barmen moved subtly through the red-dressed guests, replenishing cocktail bowls where the tidemarks fell low. Beside her, the DJ was brewing a potent cloud of sound to fuel the dancers. But Adelaide was distracted. There was a man present at her party who was not meant to be here. She knew he was not meant to be here because he was talking to Gudrun, a veteran member of the Haze, and Gudrun looked bemused. Gudrun was never bemused.

  Loathe to create an unnecessary scene, she found Tyr chatting to Freya Kess, a tiny girl with a pixie face and hair that descended in corkscrew curls. Adelaide surveyed them dispassionately before interrupting.

  “Do you have a minute, Tyr?”

  “Nice to see you, as always, Adelaide.” His tone, as usual for their public meetings, was just short of sarcastic.

  “Now?” she said imperiously.

  “Excuse me.” Tyr turned to Freya, rolling his eyes. He followed Adelaide into the crowd. “What is it?” he said in an undertone.

  “We have a gatecrasher.”

  “Where?”

  “Behind me, by the interior wall, two o’clock.”

  His eyes flicked over her shoulder. “Black shirt, terrible hair? Talking to Kristin and Gudrun?”

  “That’s the one,” she said. “Do you recognize him?”

  “No. You?”

  “Not a clue. Do you think he’s dangerous?” With her back to the gatecrasher, Adelaide felt her sense of intrigue rising. The breach in security took her aback though. Her invitations were watermarked like pre-Neon banknotes. They weren’t just quaint; they should be impossible to forge.

  “No idea. Looks oddly familiar though. Stay here, I’ll deal with it.”

  “Thank you.”

  The second that Tyr moved away her attention was claimed by Lilja. Adelaide gave the acrobat a full half of her attention. The other half shadowed Tyr as he approached the stranger and escorted him through the archway. Adelaide excused herself and moved to where she could listen without being seen.

  “I’m not here for any media. I’m here to see Adelaide.”

  The gatecrasher sounded strange. It was a gruff voice, but hoarse too, she thought. It wasn’t an accent as such—what was an accent nowadays anyway? Everyone spoke Boreal English. Even her grandfather had forsaken his childhood Siberian; she had only ever heard him speak it on those occasions when Axel had asked. She edged closer.

  “That’s funny,” Tyr was saying. “Because you’re not on her guest list.”

  “I know that.” There was a pause. A new track started and Adelaide strained to hear over the music. Why did this man want to see her? She knew most of the krill by voice if not by sight. She was forever changing her scarab code to evade them.

  “Look,” the gatecrasher said. “I’m from a political reform group. Horizon. I spoke at the Council recently. I just wanted to see Adelaide. To ask if she could help us.”

  This was unexpected, and disappointing. Of course, it was possible the man was lying, but she sensed not. That was what was bothering her about the voice. It held the unusual ring of truth.

  “I don’t know who you are, or who you’re working for, but you’re leaving right now.” Tyr evidently had no such concerns.

  Adelaide judged it time to put an end to the intrusion. She stepped out.

  “It’s alright, Tyr. He’ll go quietly.”

  The opposing walls of mirrors multiplied the two men’s reflections, producing the illusion of spectators on either side. Tyr, calm in his red shirt—only Adelaide would know that his body was tensed in apprehension. And the stranger—up close she was surprised by his appearance. He was younger than the sandpaper voice suggested, perhaps not much older than herself. His eyes were the colour of cocoa, almond shaped, striking, but the whites were bloodshot. His hair was dark and shaggy. She ignored the clothes, her gaze stripping away the cheap layers of clothing to the sinewy physique beneath. Tall, and thin like wire. No, she thought idly. Not unattractive.

  But still. Too still, as if he had practised. Even his blinking was slow, each sweep of the eyelashes seeming to reinforce some careful screen. It was a little unnerving.

  “Adelaide,” he said.

  I must put a stop to this, she thought.

  “I need to talk to—”

  “Yes. Thank you for coming. Goodbye.”

  An odd expression crossed the man’s face. There was anger there, clearly, but it was more than that. It was accusatory. Almost a look of hatred. For a moment she thought he was going to do something wild, and wondered if her assessment was way off track and he was dangerous after all. She let her smile drop into that tension, leisurely, the way he had looked at her, before she turned her back.

  Behind her, quick footsteps marked the stranger’s eviction. Nobody had noticed anything. She waited, aware that Tyr was at her shoulder.

  “We’ll have to find out who he is,” she said.

  “I know who he is. The westerner who went to Chambers—I saw his photograph on the newsreel. Stars knows how he got in.”

  “Stars indeed.” She frowned, but put the gatecrasher aside. “Balcony?”

  “Five minutes.”

  She moved away and was instantly claimed by a newly blonde Minota. It was a lucky collision. Minota was diverting but so caught up in her own cleverness that she paid little attention to anyone else. Over Minota’s shoulder Adelaide saw Tyr disappear into the next room. Minota was relating a story. She gave it little glosses, doll-like hands gesticulating. There was a pet goose in the story, and the conclusion was something to do with the goose attacking one of Minota’s lovers in her bed. Adelaide laughed and calculated the mental time for Tyr to make his way through the study, the kitchen and the dining room, and from there into her bedroom. Minota looked pleased with herself.

  “Really, though, you should have been there. It was too brilliant.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  Minota caught her arm, eyelids stretching. “Oh honey, I hate to ask, but do you have anything? I’m so dry, I can barely afford a line.”

  “There’s a brass pot in the drinks cabinet.” Adelaide gave Minota’s hand a conspiratorial squeeze. “Why don’t you help yourself?”

  Minota giggled. “You’re so generous, Adelaide.”

  Minota’s discovery was met with shrieks of delight and delving into handbags for suitable paper. Masked by the commotion, Adelaide slipped back into the hallway. She checked over her shoulder, then arranged her fingertips in a pattern against the glass. There was a little click, and a panel of the mirror slid across. Adelaide eased through the gap. The panel slid back behind her. She was in her private bathroom.

  It was abruptly quiet. Adelaide smiled to herself. Her grandfather had incorporated some useful innovations into the Rechnov properties.

  She opened the door into her bedroom, knowing Tyr would already have entered from the other side. She took a slip of milaine from the dragon pot and a thick, heavy coat from the wardrobe. Heat rose to her face with the additional layer, evaporating the moment she opened the balcony door.

  She shut the door behind her, and stopped, mesmerized by the cold. The emptiness. There was nothing out here but the occasional light from a passing patrol boat, and beacons shining seven miles away at the ring-net. Just the dark, endless ocean. Another world.

  Tonight especially she felt that dislocation. The night was acute with absence. Absence of wind, rain, absence of everything except the hiss of her lungs, the thud of her heart, and Tyr, breathing, a few metres away.

  “You escaped,” he said.

  “I told Minota where to find the milaine.”

  “Good diversion.”

  They moved at the same time. At once he was kissing her, her back pressed against the glass w
all, their lips the only warmth in a frozen world. She was stunned, as always, how much she wanted him. In five years of illicit sex they had never spent a night together. She knew disparate parts of him, could bind them together to make the man he might show to other lovers. But it was an imaginary picture; a concept of boundaries that she would never know. And so it was new every time, dazzlingly, incredibly new. She felt these moments in the marrow of her bones.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Wait?” She put a bite of anger into her voice. He responded at once, swinging her around and pushing her against the balcony. She grabbed the railings. Vertigo collided with adrenalin. She was dizzy with altitude. The hundred floor drop and the crashing waves. Tyr against her, inside her, only Tyr’s hands to save her if she slipped. This was world’s end, a sight to drive you mad. That madness was vented in their need for each other, in its heady savage haste. When he pulled away she felt almost sick with it.

  “You could stay,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Too risky.”

  One of them always held back. She shook a fat line of milaine onto the rail and they raced to snort it before some disturbance in the air dissipated the fine green particles. Their heads collided in the centre; she met his eyes and giggled. He grinned back, sniffed.

  “Hang on…”

  She brushed a trace of powder from the stubble of his upper lip.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes. You go back first.”

  “Don’t fall off.”

  “I won’t.”

  She watched him go with a kind of wrench, as though he was already back in her father’s office. He had never admitted it, but she knew Feodor had sent him to the Haze to spy on her. Tyr bridged two worlds.

  For a few moments she let herself surrender to the strangeness of the night. Scorpio and Lupus glimmered brightly. She imagined the scientists upstairs training their telescopes. The dryness in her throat, heightened by outdoor air and milaine, reminded her that she must return to her guests. She was no longer worried about getting caught; quite the contrary, she knew that she and Tyr were too clever for that.