Corvus

  *****

  Later that evening Max came into Laura's room while she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, Fabio's origami crow before her on the duvet. She'd succeeded in straightening it enough to roost without toppling, but it was lopsided and badly creased. She liked running a finger gently over the paper wings, and made it into a game: how much pressure could it withstand before falling on its side?

  Max thrust a packet of her favourite toffee at her—his favourite too, yet unopened.

  'Thanks,' she said, touched by this sign of affection. 'Want one?'

  'They're for you, otherwise Zach will bite my head off.'

  'What's Zach got to do with it?'

  'They're from him.'

  'You've seen him?'

  With a sheepish grin Max shook his head, then looked at his feet.

  'Max?'

  'You know.'

  She was silent for a moment, gnawing her underlip. It wasn't pretty, being jealous of your little brother.

  'He talks to you?' she asked.

  'I've taught him a few tricks.'

  'Tricks, you call them? I'd love to see the website you got them magic tricks from!'

  'Look, it's just a way to signal when he wants me to pay attention.' His cheeks pinked. 'I'm supposed to tell you he's thinking about you.'

  'What's he done? Forgotten to pay his phone bill?'

  'Mum.' Max rolled his eyes, that stupid mannerism he'd picked up from Owen's brother George. 'There've been a lot of calls. She's even taken your mobile so you won't be disturbed.'

  'Yeah, right. That's her story. And stop rolling your eyes, it makes you look like a Moss family clone.' Angrily Laura tore open the packet and shook out several toffees onto the duvet. 'Go on. He won't mind.'

  'You're sure?'

  'Just don't forget to brush your milk teeth.' It wasn't like him not to retort, he hated any suggestion of childishness. Something was bothering him. Ashamed of having flared up, Laura patted the bed and slid towards the wall so that he could sit down. He picked up the paper bird and prodded its crooked beak, his own tentative smile the response.

  'You ought to think of becoming a vet when you grow up,' she said.

  Max unwrapped one of the chocolate-covered sort and popped it into his mouth. Laura didn't need any special gift to know that it was his way of evading the topic; the future. She reached out and touched two fingers to his bony wrist, just over the vulnerable nexus of veins.

  He swallowed. 'Zach says he might be getting a bigger flat one day.'

  'I suppose.'

  Balancing the bird on the palm of his hand, Max kept his eyes on it as though it might spread its fragile wings and take flight. 'Do you think . . . maybe I could . . . I mean, I'd keep out of the way and everything.'

  'Max, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.'

  For a while he continued to stare at the bird. When he finally looked up, he still didn't quite meet her eye, and his cheeks were even rosier. 'Zach said that in a year or two, Dad might let me move in. In a lot of places the code's not strictly enforced, and anyway, sometimes there's special permission.'

  'Simus ought to stick together, eh?' Laura snatched the bird back from his hand, tossed it onto her bedside cabinet, and sprang to her feet. She strode across the room and yanked at the curtains, though in fact they were already drawn. 'Mum will fight like hell to keep you.' She took a deep breath, another, breathing in remembered warmth. 'Not that it'll do any good, but I'll take your side. Zach would look after you.' There's no finer man. Her back to Max, she continued to clutch the edges of the fabric while blinking hard. It would take someone like Zach to keep Max safe.

  'You mean you wouldn't mind?' She could hear the relief in his voice.

  'It's got nothing to do with me, does it?'

  'Zach said you'd have to agree.'

  Slowly she turned to face her brother, her heart beating too fast. It was obviously going to take some time before she was fit again. 'Whatever for?'

  'But—'

  'What?'

  'If you guys are going to share a flat . . .' His voice trailed off, something in her face puzzling, or unsettling. 'I thought you wanted to live with him. If you don't, you've got to tell him, Laura. It's not fair.'

  She came over and knelt at the side of the bed, a sensation like the fizz and tickle of a sparkling wine rizzling from her nostrils into her forehead into the very top of her head.

  'He said we're going to share a flat?'

  'Don't you want to? I thought—'

  She pinched him. Hard.

  'What was that for?' he whinged, rubbing his arm.

  'Listen, little brother, stay out of my head, you hear?'

  'I'm not like—' He hesitated, perturbed, then blurted out, 'There's something wrong, they're gone, and Dad won't answer my questions.'

  'Who's gone?'

  He chucked another toffee into his mouth.

  'Max!'

  Muffled, 'OK, OK.' He gulped the toffee. 'I'm not the only one, you know. There's a set of twins who are really good, much better than me.'

  Without warning the door opened, and their mum pitched herself into their midst. 'What's going on in here? Laura is supposed to be sleeping!' Her eyes fell on the open packet of sweets. 'And where did you get that junk?'

  Laura rose to her feet, then to her full height. She crossed her arms. 'From Zach.' Delicious to see vexation flare in her mother's eyes, as delicious as the toffees themselves. 'A goodbye present.' Smack me, Laura thought. Go on, smack me.

  Once her grades had begun to improve, Laura had raised her hand in a lesson and rattled off the causes of the Sino-American War. There had been no mistaking the triggerflash of anger that Mr Fuckwit Chester was quick to shutter. A moment of grim illumination: never before had she realised that, far from disliking stupid pupils, teachers relish them, relish and cultivate them. From then on she'd begun to study in earnest, setting herself a punishing schedule.

  Her mum took a deep breath. 'Just don't forget to brush your teeth,' she said, her mouth working as though a toffee were gummed to her own molars. 'Max, precisely, but I mean precisely, ten more minutes.'

  As soon as she'd gone, Max and Laura exchanged looks, then dissolved into laughter. Laura settled back onto the bed.

  'In the 9½ minutes remaining, you're going to tell me precisely how long you've known about the twins.' One last bubble of laughter from Max—'9¼'— while she sobered, trying to figure out how, or even whether, to tell him about the fire.

  'I've always known. Sometimes they forget to block. They're megastrong senders, and anyway they talk a lot to each other. OK, not talk—you know what I mean.'

  'Why haven't you told me?'

  He shrugged, then discovered a loose thread on the duvet to claim his attention. An uncomfortable suspicion crossed Laura's mind.

  'What about Zach?'

  Max looked away.

  'You've told Zach but not me!'

  'He made me promise to tell you. He said it was for me to do, not him.'

  'He got that right at least.'

  'Don't be racked at him. Please. He's so scared sometimes.'

  'Then he'd better stop with all that political stuff before someone—'

  'Don't say it!'

  In Max's eyes she saw a curtain part to reveal the dark mid-winter night of his own fear. Pinpricks of light like stars glittered there, where the darkest matter conversed with fearsome uncertainties, implicate order concealed even from a cognoscens. What must it be like to have a billion billion voices yowling to lynch your soul?

  'Is it ever quiet inside your head?' she asked softly.

  Max sat up straight, his brow furrowing like a much older lad's. 'Close your eyes.'

  'Why?'

  'Just do it.'

  She closed them, it was easier than arguing. She tried to blank off her mind, but he spoke straightaway.

  'Now think of Zach. Think of him walking along the canal. He's wearing a thick sheepskin coat, collar turned up against th
e wind, and a woollen cap jammed far down on his head. His hair's tucked up under the cap so no one can see it. He doesn't want to be recognised. Though he's got gloves on, his hands are deep inside his pockets. He's cold. He's walking slowly. His toes are numb, the soles of his feet. His eyes are watering from the cold, his nose running. He's tired but doesn't want to go back to an empty flat. Doesn't want to eat something, alone. Doesn't want to sit at his desk, alone. Doesn't want to sleep in the bed alone where you—'

  'Stop it!' She tore open her eyes. Viciously, 'At least you'll never be lonely when you've got all those companions in your head.'

  Max stared at her for a moment, blinking as though her words were specks of grit kicked up by a dust devil into his eyes, now reddening slightly. Wind-blown sand can strip paint, carve rock, and like words, flay your skin raw.

  'You know Aladdin's genie?' Max said. 'I'm just like him, except my oil lamp is made of bone. And there's no one to let me out.' He groped for the sweet packet but picked it up by the wrong end, so that the toffees tumbled out and scattered higgledy-piggledy like cobble across the floor.

  As Laura bent down to help Max collect the toffees, they cracked heads. 'Oof,' she said, rubbing the sore spot, then as he followed suit, began to laugh. 'Maybe you can release the genie that way.'

  Relieved to see him smile, albeit tremulously, she knelt to collect the last toffees. Go home, Zach, she whispered to herself. Please. The wind slicked its wintry tongue along the canal's bare skin, raising gooseflesh. A torn plastic bag, a sudden slither of ratblack, a patch of ice. In the distance the lonely chatter of an engine. Tomorrow Zach will have to face the prep team for a briefing; a new run is being planned. Tomorrow Zach will be warned by Slade that even an MVP cannot continue to flout the miscegenation code without ministerial dispensation; not that Slade minds personally, of course not, but despite its influence Fulgur can only do so much, and Mr Randall himself has given the magistrate a guarantee after the last little incident. Tomorrow they will hang a plastic bag filled with human shit from the handlebars of Zach's motorbike.

  Chilled, Laura slid her hands inside the sleeves of Zach's jumper to his elbows, the fine hairs thrumming under the friction of her palms. His skin had a timbre all its own, a timbre which neither cold nor distance could deaden.

  'We've all got our voices, Max.'

  With a guilty look Max spit out the ribbing of his crewneck.

  'You aren't even listening to me,' Laura said. Then it struck her what Max had been humming under his breath. 'He's played that to you?' It's ours, it's private, how dare he.

  'Zach thinks a lot in music. Sometimes I can't help overhearing.'

  She studied him for a moment. 'Now?' she asked softly.

  At first it seemed he wouldn't answer. Laura waited, her skin tingling as though warming from a near frozen state. Waited, because silence spoke in her loudest voice.

  'Remember that silly rhyme I used to chant when I was little?' Max said at last. 'You know, before going to sleep?'

  'How could I forget? Bad man, don't talk. Bad man, don't stalk. Got my hawk. Got my hawk. You didn't even know what it meant.'

  'I never told you what it meant.'

  She eyed him but a quick glance at her clock warned her that their mum was likely to appear at any moment. 'So?'

  'So that's what Zach does. Plays the clarinet in his head.'

  Sarcastically, 'To keep away the bad man?'

  'Even smart people can be superstitious.' Max reached for his neckline again, then thought better of it. 'Laura, you don't understand how terrified he is that he's going to lose you.'

  This time it was their dad at the door. A feeble grin to accompany a feeble joke. 'OK you two, bedtime. Doctor's orders.' He waved a hand at the toffee packet. 'And don't forget to brush your teeth.'

  Her dad would have to do the telling.

  *****

  At first Laura's mum remained solicitous, almost affectionate. There were special dishes, and special privileges—a TV brought into the bedroom, household chores suspended temporarily—and not a single overt reproach about Zach, though after a few days had passed, she began to wonder, with quite a girlish laugh, whether Owen was afraid of catching something.

  'They've got enough kids as it is,' Laura snapped. 'Why don't you ask if you can adopt him?'

  Her mum's brow knit and her lips stitched in a way that meant duck, but then she gathered her unravelling temper together—Laura could see the muscles under her mum's skin stretching into a forbearing smile, as though a Fulgur evaluation team had just come into the room.

  In the weeks that followed, winter became oppressive, a race you knew was forfeit the instant you hit the water, a race that by everyone's reckoning, yours included, you ought to win. There's no explaining it. You're fit again. You're back in school. You're seeing Zach but still you swim through February as though the pool contained slushy, greying, slightly grainy snow, not water.

  It happens to everyone, Janey claims. The better part of a race is in the mind.

  Zach remained in his flat where Laura stayed the night at least once, sometimes twice a week. Her mum accepted this arrangement with distaste but no real opposition, evidently fearful of what Laura might do if permission were refused. As usual, her dad said little, but Laura noticed a certain gleam in his eyes when her mum asked about Laura's plans for the evening, a gleam which he hid by clearing the plates or examining the new Mancala board he'd bought; he had a large vintage collection, corresponded with aficionados worldwide, and had even written a book about regional varieties of the game, whose mathematical complexities he claimed rivalled any of the more popular mindsports.

  At the end of the month Laura worked up her courage to attend one of Zach's meetings on her own, which was held after hours in a public library. The small room was crowded, mostly with couples who could afford babysitters for the evening and a meal afterwards in a restaurant with starched white tablecloths, serried ranks of cutlery, and a sommelier. Zach was far too coolheaded, too circumspect, to glare at her but it took every bit of her self-control not to get up and leave.

  'Not tonight,' he said when she caught up with him by the water cooler. Slowly he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand while he glanced at his companions, one the medical student who had been at the first meeting she'd attended, the other the sort of twenty-something professional woman who made Laura feel scruffy and tongue-tied. Though discreet about their relationship, Zach had become more willing to hazard, occasionally, going out together in public—a visit to an art exhibit he was keen to show her, an hour at a café. 'Notoriety has its perks,' he'd said wryly. All the more shocking, then, when the woman gave him a foxy smile and dragged the student out of earshot.

  'There's some stuff I need to discuss with them,' Zach said.

  'With them? Or with her?'

  'I don't want you coming to these meetings.'

  Two spots of colour flamed in Laura's cheeks. 'It's you who doesn't want to sleep with me, not the other way round.'

  'I'll ring you tomorrow.'

  And Laura was left staring after them in a rage. Did he think that she wanted to go to art galleries when all her mates were at concerts and clubs or just watching TV with a couple of packets of crisps, some beer, and a good long uncomplicated snog?

  'Think I don't know you're scared?' she hissed. 'Bloody terrified that it won't be fairytale perfect?'

  She whipped out her mobile and rang Owen.

  Chapter 38

  'What does your name mean?' Pani asks.

  'What a little pest you are!' Zach says, caught off guard.

  'Names are important,' Pani insists, unabashed. 'They're part of your soul.'

  'What makes you so sure I've got one?'

  'If you've left it somewhere, I'll lend you a piece of mine.'

  'Not the tailpiece, I hope.'

  Pani ducks his head, but not before Zach catches sight of the merriment in the boy's eyes. Under other circumstances he'd have been the school daredevil
, this lovely child. Zach leans forward and pantomimes a stitching movement in front of Pani's lips. 'I thought you didn't want anyone to hear us.'

  At Pani's instigation the two of them have slipped away before the rest of the camp is fully awake, though they've been careful to avoid the communal room where, in a sleepy bustle, the aunties are beginning to prepare the morning meal. Weeks ago Pani and a few of the other lads excavated their own access route in a small storage annexe, the sort of enterprise that Zach remembers from his Foundation days. A narrow squeeze, this tunnel, and he refrains from suggesting that Uakuak is far too canny not to be aware of it. There's probably a great deal the old hunter doesn't reveal, particularly to his son.

  Without a torch it's slow going, even though Pani swears to know every centimetre of the terrain. They struggle against a brisk headwind, which is the very reason for harpoon practice before the hunt. 'My father took his first seal when he was two years younger than me.' By the time they cross an unforgiving stretch of icy washboard sastrugi to reach the edge of a polynya, Zach promises himself ten minutes alone with Angu.

  Pani delicately probes the matte surface of the water with his harpoon tip, then kneels in scrutiny. 'Ugurugizak—greasy ice.' He clears a patch not much larger than a breathing hole, lowers a weighted sealskin bladder, and passes the line to Zach. Rising and stepping back several metres, Pani readies his harpoon. As instructed, Zach waits for a self-determined interval before hauling up the target with a sharp jerk. The boy misses. They repeat the exercise. Again Pani misses, though not by much. Further attempts merely worsen Pani's aim, and he's unable to disguise his mounting frustration. After a while Zach calls a halt to walk about, clapping his hands together and stamping his feet. Despite caribou skin mitts and fur-lined parka—Uakuak insisted on outfitting Zach with as much 'proper' clothing as would fit—the cold is quick to penetrate his defences. Pani eyes him with a worried expression, the kind a much older lad might use towards a small brother with fever, a beloved dog who's just been injured.