‘Indeed?’ Alameche allowed himself a smile. ‘Well, I am sure you will find some way to return the favour. Shall we walk?’
‘Of course.’ The man was trembling. Alameche wasn’t surprised.
Handlers had gathered round the pool to net the stricken eel, which was still writhing erratically. Alameche and Hodil threaded through the watching crowds and strolled along the terrace. Away from the fight pond it was quiet, and the evening air was warm and smoky. To Alameche’s relief there was a slight on-shore breeze; he took care to stay upwind of Hodil.
They walked in silence for a while. Then Hodil cleared his throat. ‘Ah, you mentioned returning the favour . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘May I ask, Lord . . . do you have anything in mind?’ Hodil looked down at his sweat-stained robes, and then back up at Alameche. He shrugged. ‘As you know I have little, and my position at Court is sadly reduced.’
‘I know.’ Alameche smiled at the man. Then he looked down. They were passing one of the ponds. He gestured at it. ‘The eels in there – will they fight today?’
Hodil followed his gaze. He shook his head. ‘No, Lord. Those are merely pets, not champions.’
Alameche watched them for a while. There were two circling the pond in opposite directions, staying close to the walls and passing each other only a few hand’s breadths apart. ‘They look nervous,’ he said, and nodded back towards the fight ponds. ‘Perhaps they know something’s going on.’
Hodil nodded. ‘Very likely. They are sensitive creatures. They have excellent hearing.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Alameche turned to face the other man. ‘Hodil,’ he said quietly, ‘I suspect that you also have good hearing. Is something going on?’
Hodil looked at him steadily. ‘You are not speaking of eels, Lord.’
‘No, I’m not.’ Alameche stared out to sea for a moment. It was dusk, and the few boats that were still away from their moorings were carrying coloured riding lamps that left dotted trails of light across the tops of the shallow waves. From time to time they blurred a little, as if some disturbance in the air had obscured them for a second.
He was tired, that was the problem. He shook his head and turned back to Hodil. ‘You were at the Games?’
‘Of course.’ The man seemed to swell, if that were possible. ‘A superb spectacle.’
‘Did anything strike you?’
‘About what, Lord?’ The face screamed innocent incomprehension, but the eyes were everywhere and the sweat smell, which was now strong enough to be offensive even with the wind against it, had the tinge of terror.
Alameche almost felt sorry for the man. Almost. He reached out and patted him on the shoulder, suppressing a wince at the clamminess of the material under his hand. ‘Come on, Hodil. Talk to me. Tell me what people are talking about. Tell me, even more, what you think they are not talking about.’ He patted the shoulder again, noting that it had become wetter even as he spoke. Then he added, as if he had just thought of it, ‘Or, if you’d rather keep your counsel we could walk along to the end of the ponds. You know? Where our host Garamende keeps his special . . . pets. Has he shown you?’
Hodil shuddered. ‘Yes, he has.’ His eyes flicked down for a moment. Then he sighed heavily. ‘Very well.’ He glanced at the eel pond, and added, ‘But please let us get away from these ghastly fucking fish.’
On the landward side of the terrace the ground stepped up yet further towards Garamende’s house. A spindly timber ramp wandered up the slope through stands of dense, rather spiky-looking dark green bushes. About halfway up, the ramp turned abruptly through a right angle and opened into a sort of landing half a dozen paces across. It stuck out over a steep part of the slope. Hodil lumbered on to it, panting, and leaned on the seaward rail. ‘This will do,’ he said, and blew out his cheeks. ‘I hope.’
Alameche looked around. ‘Do you fear being overheard?’
Hodil laughed. ‘Very much, but mainly by you.’ He laughed again, tailing off in a wheeze, and then fell silent.
Alameche waited.
Eventually Hodil pushed himself away from the rail and turned round. ‘As you have bought me, I had better deliver payment. The Games, then.’ He shook his head. ‘What possessed the Patriarch? The ambition he showed is beyond anything we could dream of. Even before the Games people were whispering that we are over-extended, that the taking of Silthx was a jump too far.’
‘Were they? What else?’
‘That he is a liability. That he draws attention to us. That he endangers us. Perhaps even that he is in thrall to a foreign power. They talk of two options.’ Hodil stood up a little straighter. ‘One, that the Patriarch must go, however that can be attained, and replaced by you. Or, that you must both go.’
Alameche nodded. ‘Just those? Does no one expect His Excellency to stay?’
‘Everyone expects him to try. But nobody expects him to succeed.’ Hodil smiled a little. ‘The view seems to be that you can light his funeral pyre, Lord – or die on it.’
‘I see.’ Alameche found himself drumming his fingers. He stilled them. ‘I’ll need names, Hodil.’
‘I am sorry, Lord.’ The man drew himself up. ‘I won’t say them.’
‘Oh, you will.’ Alameche took a handful of Hodil’s robes, clenching them hard enough that he actually felt a trickle of perspiration squeeze out of them and run down his wrist. The sensation and the reek of the man almost made him retch, but he suppressed the urge and pulled Hodil close to him. ‘You can give them to me now,’ he said quietly, ‘or you can scream them in the ear of the Carnifex in a few hours, but either way I will have them.’
Hodil’s face had turned a sickly yellow, but he shook his head quickly. Alameche opened his hand, and Hodil tottered backwards until he bumped into the rail. Then he collapsed into an untidy sitting position. Without taking his eyes off the man, Alameche raised his voice. ‘Kestus!’
There was a pause, and then footsteps behind him, and then the security chief was at his elbow. ‘Yes, Lord?’
‘You heard that?’
Kestus nodded.
‘Good. Take this,’ and he kicked Hodil, ‘to the Chambers. And summon the Carnifex. Only him! Tell no one else.’ He kicked Hodil again, making him moan a little. ‘Names, Kestus. I want names.’
The losing eel was spitted, still alive, along its whole length on a straight limb of copperwood that had been soaked in spiced vinegar. It had taken seventeen men to hold the creature as the spit was pushed through, and even after the wood had broken out just short of the jewelled tail the spasms of the eel’s muscles still caused it to arch like a bow.
The crowd had applauded. The movements hadn’t stopped until the eel’s skin had begun to blister over the coals.
Alameche had to admit that the flavour was good. He turned to Garamende. ‘Do they always taste like this?’
‘I suppose.’ They were lying on couches at the most seaward end of the terrace. Garamende eased his bulk around until he was facing Alameche. ‘I always eat ’em fresh from the fight, mind. It’s supposed to improve the flavour. I’m not sure what they’d taste like from rest.’
‘But you only eat the losers?’
Garamende looked at him as if he was mad. ‘Well, obviously. Why would I eat a winner? That’s a damn expensive habit.’
‘I know.’ Alameche put down his plate. ‘I suppose the real skill lies in working out the exact moment at which a winner is about to become a loser.’ He looked up at Garamende. ‘That would be the right time to eat him. Don’t you think?’
They looked at each other for a long time. Eventually Garamende nodded slowly. ‘It would,’ he said. ‘But knowing the right moment – that would be a trick. Have you any idea how you would do it?’
Alameche frowned and shook his head slightly. ‘Of course not. You forget. I know nothing about eels.’
‘Yes. Eels. Of course.’ Garamende grinned. ‘Drink has clouded my head. But they are sweet clouds. Hey!’ He waved to a servant. ‘
Wine over here!’
They drank the wine while the cooking fires sank behind them and a cold salt air rose off the sea. Eventually Garamende shivered. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m tired of freezing my dick off out here. Indoors for me, and something to smoke. And, perhaps, something more entertaining to do with said dick, when it has thawed.’
Alameche grimaced. ‘Forgive me. I won’t be taking part.’
‘Of course not. You are made of stone, people say. Any news of Hodil?’
Alameche shook his head. ‘They won’t have arrived yet. Three hours, at least, before they make a start.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Garamende stood up and stretched. ‘An uncharacteristic outburst of bravery on his part.’
Alameche looked at him for a moment. The round face was unreadable. He shrugged. ‘It won’t last. It never does.’
They walked up towards the house. As they passed the fire pits Garamende turned and flicked the dregs of his wine on to the coals. They sputtered and flared for a moment, and a puff of steamy smoke gathered above the spit. Alameche glanced at it, and then looked again. Definitely tired. He shook his head and followed Garamende towards the lights of the house.
It had probably been the breeze, but just for a moment he thought the smoke had parted as if it had risen around some invisible object.
Alameche blinked, and sat up. The room was light, but not with sunlight, and someone had said his name. He looked round, and felt his head spin. Not asleep long enough to have metabolized everything, then.
‘Alameche! Please!’
He shut his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them in time to see Garamende reaching for his shoulder. He stretched out an arm and deflected the hand. ‘What is it?’
‘You need to come. Sorry.’ Garamende ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s Hodil.’
Alameche felt sleep leave him in a stampede. He sat bolt upright. ‘Has he talked?’
Garamende shrugged. ‘That’s the problem. Look, come on, will you?’ He pointed towards the door. ‘I’ve got transport waiting.’
‘What?’
Transport turned out to be a four-seat gyro. It was incredibly noisy; the wide flat rotors hammered at the air like some sort of power tool. Alameche had leaned forward as far as he dared. Garamende, in the front pair of seats next to the pilot, leaned back and shouted. ‘I said, that’s where they found the wreck. At the base of those cliffs, see?’
Alameche craned his neck. If he stared hard he could see, just about. Waves sucked and boiled at a clump of fallen rocks and at the bones of something that might have been a gyro like the one he was in, before whatever had happened had happened.
He turned to Garamende and shouted, ‘Accident?’
Garamende shook his head. ‘Don’t think so.’ He slapped the pilot on the shoulder and, when the man turned to him, shouted something which looked like an order. The pilot nodded and the gyro heeled off on to a new course and tilted forwards under power.
Alameche sat back and waited. With any luck his head would have sorted itself out by the time they got there. Wherever ‘there’ was.
In fact it was a nondescript building at the far outskirts of Garamende’s estate. Within the building was a plain, windowless room with nothing written on the door, and within the room was a stretcher, and on the stretcher was a corpulent body draped in the shredded, blood-soaked remains of white robes.
They stood, looking at it. For a while no one spoke. Then Alameche said: ‘He was questioned.’
Garamende nodded. ‘No doubt of that. Look at the state of him. A Carnifex has been busy, right enough.’
‘But not by us?’
‘No. They never got anywhere near the Citadel. They couldn’t have done. There wasn’t time.’
‘Hm. So where did they go?’ Alameche prodded the body. The robe shifted, revealing a series of elaborate surface wounds. He studied them. ‘Did he die under torture?’
Garamende shook his head. ‘My surgeon says not. He, ah, has some expertise. He thinks he was alive when the Carnifex had done with him.’
‘So he may have talked.’
‘Almost certainly. His new-found bravery didn’t last long enough to be fatal.’
‘Yes. But it wasn’t us he talked to.’ Alameche compressed his lips. ‘How is Kestus?’
‘In a coma. Head trauma, from the crash.’ Garamende sighed. ‘He’s a long way from telling us what happened. If he ever can.’
‘Yes. The crash.’ Alameche gave the body another prod. ‘Definitely not an accident, then?’
Garamende snorted. ‘I doubt it very much.’
‘So do I.’ Alameche’s prodding had disarranged the remains of Hodil’s robes. He straightened them, and then turned to Garamende. ‘So if it wasn’t an accident, it was on purpose. Which means that it had a purpose.’ He paused. ‘Which means that your estate is under quarantine.’
‘What?’ Garamende raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought we trusted each other.’
Alameche smiled. ‘I’m sure you did. But I’m as bad at trusting people as I am at taking advice.’ He shrugged. ‘Did you really think those rumours were new to me? The state is practically made of rumours. I’m more worried when they go quiet. But this? This is new. Someone has gone to war with me.’
‘So what? You’re used to war. Fuck it, man, you exist to go to war!’
‘Maybe.’ Alameche stared at Garamende, who met his stare without flinching. ‘But this one started on your land. You can tell everyone from me that if I’m to go to war, whatever the cause – I’ll choose the time and place.’ He reached out, patted Garamende on the shoulder. ‘Old friend.’
Tail End Port, Catastrophe
FLEARE LAY BACK in the steaming mud. She was too buoyant to stay immersed without help. Every few minutes, her slow upward float brought too much of her body out into the open, and she had to reach out to the twisted cables that ran between the lines of heavy mud buoys and shove herself under again.
The Great Mud Plain was the other end of the phenomenon that was Fusion Field. The point where the glacially slow lava field hit the bottom of its own cliff marked the boundary of the jurisdiction of Tail End Port. Just inside it, a wide crescent-shaped sweep of ancient river deposits had been heated and moistened by magmatic waters until they had become a chain of mud holes, separated by sinuous mineral-rich walls and punctuated by geysers. Those closest to the cliff were hot enough to parboil human flesh in seconds, but things got cooler further away. By the time the mud lapped against the margins of the Port City itself it was no hotter than a steam bath, albeit one too thick to swim in and too soggy to walk on. The hot, wet air rising from the slithering mud gave the edge of the city a tropical microclimate complete with some exotic plant and animal life, including the biggest dragonflies Fleare had ever seen. They were everywhere, hovering a hand’s breadth above the mud in hissing shining flocks, and no two seemed to be the same colour.
Her recollections of the time since they had been arrested were episodic. She had woken, briefly, on a Port Authority transport; then in an all-night courtroom; and then in a prison cell. Each time she had been aware of Jez somewhere in the background. Mostly she had been shouting.
No one seemed to know what had happened to Muz.
Her most recent waking had begun three hours ago in the bright white room in the Medical Centre. She was pain-free, but the Port’s duty medic hadn’t been able to guarantee how long that would last.
‘Something is causing the adapted elements of your system to denature.’ The medic studied a row of sample vials. ‘You’ve got four different broad categories of non-original fibre. They’re all going, at different rates. Have you been exposed to anything recently? It would probably have taken a skin puncture.’
Fleare stared at her for a moment, and then nodded slowly. ‘Can you stop it?’
The medic pursed her lips. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t have the key.’ Fleare’s incomprehension must have shown; the woman went on: ‘Yo
ur modifications have a viral root. It’s keyed to your genome, so it will only grow in your cells. It’s a fail-safe, to stop the modifications becoming epidemic.’ She smiled apologetically, deepening the wrinkles around her mouth so that Fleare wondered how old she was. ‘I used to work on this stuff.’
Fleare smiled back. ‘So, you’re an expert. What do we do?’
The smile faded, leaving the woman looking even older. ‘Take it easy. Pain relief.’ She spread her arms. ‘That’s it.’
Fleare was lying on a couch. She raised herself on her elbows. ‘Just take it easy? Is that all? For how long?’
The medic stood up, and walked over to the couch. ‘Maybe they didn’t explain when you got modified,’ she said. ‘They should have done. That new material in you? Muscle fibres, some arterial wall, nerves, parts of your bone cells? They aren’t additions. They’re replacements.’ She looked straight at Fleare. ‘You don’t have the originals any more.’
Fleare felt as if she was falling. She lowered herself back on to the couch. ‘So when they go,’ she said, and then stopped, trying to remember anything at all about what she had been told. She couldn’t. I dumped Muz, she thought. Then I signed up. Listening wasn’t involved.
After a while she shook her head. ‘Okay, I get it,’ she said quietly. She swung herself off the couch, daring her body to hurt. It didn’t. She reached out a hand; the medic shook it. Fleare began to turn away. Then she thought of something. ‘You need some sort of key to stop this,’ she said. ‘Does that mean it needed the same key to start it?’
The medic nodded. ‘Someone knows you too well,’ she said. Then she turned away. It felt like being switched off.
Jez was waiting outside the med suite. She jumped up as Fleare came out. ‘Well?’
Fleare shook her head. ‘She says to rest.’ Which was true, she thought. She didn’t feel ready to confront the other part, not yet. ‘Did Kelk get finished with the court?’
Jez grinned. ‘Yeah. They set bail at a hundred mil. Kelk paid up on the spot. You should have seen their faces.’
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