Seven Surrenders--A Novel

by Ada Palmer

  “Merion Kraye?” Ganymede clutched the knife-straight hairpin tighter.

  “Calm, Your Grace, calm…” Madame warned.

  “Casimir Perry is Merion Kraye?”

  “Your Grace, I thank you to keep your temper in my house.” Madame did not raise her voice, but its firm timbre made the Duke—her ba’child as much as Heloïse—tremble.

  Of all present, Carlyle had the most right to shudder. “You’re my father? Casimir Perry?”

  I wonder if Perry, or rather Perry-Kraye, realized he was backing steadily toward the exit, or that I moved in to block him. I doubt it, for he stared at Madame like a lunatic at his hallucination. “You knew it was me this whole time? And you let me back in? Let me become Prime Minister? The last time you saw me I swore I’d never rest until I destroyed you and all that you’ve created. Why would—”

  “Because I asked her to, Merion.” The King of Spain stepped forward, gently, as if trying to keep a cornered animal from panicking.

  The Outsider paled. “Your Majesty? Why?”

  Spain smiled. “You were young and foolish and in love, and you were one of the most promising political minds of our generation. You did not deserve to lose it all over one sour love affair. Europe needed you. I needed you. Madame recognized you easily after you took on your new persona as Casimir Perry. Madame told me who you really were, but I asked her not to tell the others. They might not have tolerated giving you a second chance.”

  Perry-Kraye scrunched his cuffs with tense hands. “A second chance … And then I cheated you out of your office…” The new Prime Minister was too ashamed to meet the King’s eyes. “I rigged the election, I had Ziven Racer cheat so you’d have to drop out, all against my benefactor…”

  “I know.” Spain nodded, as a much-tried father nods. “And I forgive you. The important thing is that Europe be ruled well, not that I rule it. I trusted you to value your second chance, and not to squander it on some petty revenge. Was I wrong?”

  Kraye held his breath like a man about to dive, and I edged closer, ready to grapple if his dive turned violent. It was a strange way to meet him, really. I had not known this man, you must realize, not as Merion Kraye, nor really as Casimir Perry, the Prime Minister whom I had glimpsed here or there upon a balcony when I ran Jehovah’s errands at Parliament, no more. I had identified Carlyle’s mother by hacking the Gag-gene records, but had not known the deeper scandal.

  “I wish you were right, Your Majesty,” Perry-Kraye replied, slowly as if trying to prove he meant every syllable. “I wish I could say I had climbed the steps of power with the people’s welfare first in my heart, as you have. But at least you were half right. I haven’t squandered my second chance. My revenge is nothing petty, but a true apocalypse which will destroy, not only my destroyers, but the world that made them!”

  His eyes opened, sharp as stars, to lock upon Madame, but Caesar stepped in front of her, a wall of iron gray shielding the salmon petals of her gown. “Be careful whom you include, Kraye. A large part of the world is mine. And you, Madame, and Spain, you should not have hidden such a dangerous situation from the rest of us, not even,” he caught the King’s eyes coldly, “in the name of mercy.”

  Kraye laughed—I had not imagined any man could laugh in Caesar’s face. “Count yourself lucky, MASON, you’re hardly going to suffer, a little global turmoil, that’s all. You were party to it too; it’s less than you deserve.”

  Wise men do not intentionally make MASON frown. “I was not party,” Caesar answered, “I was witness. Your violence was intolerable.”

  “I was innocent.”

  “That you were not.”

  “I never raped her!” Kraye’s hand tightened around his sherry glass, as heavy as a sling stone, but Martin planted himself as a silent wall before his Emperor, as Dominic did before Jehovah. He was still with us, our disappointed God, silent in His Gravity, like a tombstone in the corner of a playing field. The rest ignored Him, or tried to. A glance at Him reminded us that we were fools to care about old scandal when we had just discovered humanity was beyond redemption. But He would not stop us. Rather, like a cliff in storm, He suffered silently as yet more proof of His conclusion played out before Him. This world is not good, reader, not as good as He deserves.

  “I know you didn’t rape her,” MASON answered flatly.

  Kraye staggered. “Wha—what?”

  “You didn’t rape her. You beat her violently, and slandered her.”

  “She slandered me! She accused—”

  “She never said you raped her!” My heart skipped hearing Caesar raise his voice. “You assumed she would. You were so obsessed with expecting that accusation that you never heard the words any of us actually said to you. We said you assaulted her, and you did, with your fists. You fractured her cheekbone, gave her a severe concussion, and could have done much worse, and when we dragged you off of her by force, you said the worst things of her that can be said of a lady in this house. Blacklaws may do what they like here, but as a European you were bound by law, as well as decency, and you went far beyond the bounds of both. Your expulsion was just and reasonable, as prosecution would have been too, under the laws of your own Hive!”

  Is that a flinch, Kraye? Is that seething brain of yours revisiting old memories, and finding certain keywords lacking?

  “She did accuse me! She faked the test!” Kraye shrieked. “She told you all the child was mine. I never touched that whore, not once! It was Ganymede! Ganymede arranged everything to conceal the produce of their incest, and I fell into the trap!”

  “Filth!” the Duke cried. “Villain!”

  Andō’s grip on writhing Ganymede began to loosen, the Director running short, not of strength, but of reasons to keep the Duke’s weapon from tasting Kraye’s throat.

  Kraye’s eyes hopped from Chair to King to Emperor. “How can you not see it? I was framed! Ganymede got Danaë pregnant and lured me in to take the blame!”

  “Then my real father is Ganymede?” Stunned Carlyle barely had the strength to voice the words.

  “Yes!” Kraye snapped. “Yes, you’re the poison that started all this.”

  “No, Merion. This is our son.” Danaë stirred from her swoon at last, tresses spilling down about her shoulders, exquisite as when Helios pours gold across dawn waves from harbor to horizon.

  Kraye’s eyes glowed with that maniacal, inhuman light which made past generations believe in possessing demons. “The queen of whores joins us at last.”

  “Danaë…” Ganymede wrapped himself around his sister. “You don’t have to—”

  She shook her head, blue diamond eyes almost black as she peered out through the jungle of gold let loose without her hairpin. “That is you, isn’t it, Merion? I should have known you at once, that gait, those hands. Monster.”

  “Monster? Me? You’re the one who betrayed an innocent man.”

  “Innocent?” Tears came to her, bright as dew. “Day after day you swore you would love only me forever, but the instant you thought another man had touched me, you tried to kill me! How is that innocent?”

  “I did love you. You’re the one who cheated.”

  “No!” Danaë wrapped her rose-gold sleeves about herself. “You never loved me. A feeling which dies that easily isn’t love, Merion, it’s lust. You wanted my body. If we had been united, how long would it have taken you to pass me over for something younger? Fresher? To tire of me as my good husband never has? You never loved me or you never would have stopped!”

  He laughed. “And you think Andō loves you for real? You’re just a tool to them.”

  “No, I am not.” She held her head high. “After the scandal I thought I was ruined, never to wed. Hotaka came to me. He said he did not care whether I was a virgin on our wedding night. He did not want a bride, he wanted a wife. My company, my counsel, my trust, my powers to draw in friends and lay waste to his enemies, that was what he wanted, a partner for his long journey to break the Chinese hold on the Chief Di
rector’s seat and rule the Mitsubishi as they should be ruled. Madame and her tutors gave me this power over people, but Andō taught me to realize that I had it, and to use it, and trusts me to choose my own tools, and my own victims.”

  Dark Kosala dug angry fingers deep into her skirts. “You mean me, don’t you? My CFB?”

  Danaë smiled softly. “Later, dear Bryar, you, and the Count, and I can retire to settle that issue ourselves, but kindly grant me some moments more to deal with my betrayer.”

  “Betrayer?” Kraye mocked.

  The Princesse faced him boldly. “Lifelong trust, that is what a husband and wife give one another, Merion, not the heat of passion.”

  “You expected me to trust you when you were suddenly pregnant with someone else’s child?”

  “That shouldn’t have mattered if you truly loved me. You failed the test.”

  “Test?” His words grew chill. “You had your brother impregnate you to test my sincerity?”

  She squeezed her brother’s hand. “If you had loved me, you would have stayed by me, embraced any child of my flesh, whatever its sire. And then I would have loved you forever, just as you had promised me. What joy we would have shared! Instead you…” Her fingers strayed to her cheek, drawn by the tactile memory of old blows. “You never loved me. I should have realized it sooner. Ganymede warned me. Every day you smuggled in letters swearing to love only me forever, while every night you vented your impatient lust on my twin! You didn’t want me for myself, you just wanted my body, and you didn’t care what mind and personality were inside, mine or Ganymede’s!”

  The Prime Minister seethed, hands twitching with the urge to seize and tear. “You’re angry because I slept with your brother? Your husband sleeps with your brother. Everyone sleeps with your brother. That’s what your brother’s for!”

  Ganymede ran out of syllables, but, sparkling like sun gold on angry water, writhed and screamed.

  “I should have listened to my brother,” Danaë continued, strong. “But I wanted to think better of you, Merion, to think that you only turned to Ganymede in desperation in your wait for me. But I had to be sure. The pregnancy was my test, to make you think that I had been with another man, to see how you’d react. And it was my escape too, so we could be together. I knew you could never pay Madame as much for my hand as other suitors could, but if I was spoiled, scandalously with child, then petty lovers would turn away, and only you, my true, true love, would stay. It was the only way that we could have each other. It was my brother who brought me your seed.”

  “My … seed?”

  Her blink glittered with tears. “I said he was our son.”

  “It’s the truth, Merion,” Headmaster Faust interrupted, signaling me to refill his sherry. “I ran the DNA myself, twice. Has it not occurred to you that, thanks to modern science, there are ways a sperm and egg can meet other than the customary dick up vagina?”

  Kraye froze a moment. “No. No, it was Ganymede, their incest…”

  Faust rolled his eyes. “Look at the child, you idiot. The twins are genetic duplicates. Except for one Y-chromosome swapped in, Danaë and Ganymede are the same lifeform. Their child would be practically a clone of Ganymede. Does Carlyle Foster look like a clone of Ganymede to you?”

  Kraye’s flinch was painful to see, doubt flaring torture-sharp where doubt had seemed impossible. I knew that feeling. “Artificial insemination?”

  “True love would have stayed true, Merion.” Danaë held his eyes with hers, as deep and deadly as the sea. “I said I was with child, and a true love would have sworn to keep on loving me regardless, to the world’s end. Then I would have revealed that the child was yours after all, and we would have had our happily forever. That’s what I’d planned. But I mistook the false lover,” she practically spat the words in Kraye’s face, “for the true,” a warm squeeze of her steady husband’s hand. “I never claimed you tried to force yourself upon me, Merion. I said you tried to kill me, which you did. And our child. And when they stopped you, you went mad with rage, and swore to burn the whole world down.” Danaë rose to her feet, and faced her former lover with so calm and strong and fixed a gaze that all within the circle held our breaths. “You stole the Seven-Ten list, didn’t you? You climbed the ranks enough to learn about O.S., and now you’ve exposed it because you want to see my husband and my brother burn, and you don’t care if you burn with them.”

  Threat to her own woke Chair Kosala from her shocked silence. “Is this true?”

  The Prime Minister slouched within his stiff suit, like a man relieved of an old weight. “The Japanese Mitsubishi made the Canner Device, by the way. It’s not just a stealth device, it’s designed to remote access the Tracker System’s main computers.”

  “You did it?” Kosala stepped forward. “You stole the Seven-Ten list? You admit it?”

  Perry-Kraye laughed as he relaxed at last. “Why shouldn’t I admit it? I’ve done the world a favor! While you hypocrites are here debating how best to cover this up for the public good, I’ve scattered enough proof that the lot of you together can’t even slow it down. The world will know. The Humanists are guilty, the Mitsubishi, the rotten heart of Europe, guilty! The four of us, Andō, the twins, and I, and all our filthy allies, we’ll all go down together as we deserve, the rest of you will suffer through the aftermath, and no one can stop it, no one!” He raised his eyes to MASON, past MASON to the subtle, silent matriarch hiding behind her fan. “Not even you, Madame.”

  Carlyle’s breath sped to the edge of panting. “That’s your revenge? You’re trying to expose the truth about the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’?”

  “And the Canner Device. Don’t imagine for a moment that Andō isn’t the worst of all! The three-way assassination alliance wasn’t enough for Japan, they had to develop something they could use against their allies too. That’s what the device really is! Using the tracker system like the transit system. I had the device for years and I could barely tap its simplest functions. You can’t blame it on your predecessors, Andō, not when the set-sets trained to use the device all call you father!”

  Wrath-blush rose in Andō’s cheeks as he felt the others’ stares.

  “The tracker system…” Carlyle broke the hush. “They were tapping it, today, the Mitsubishi kids, I saw them! They were tracking me through it. And they were asking about the Canner Device too. Julia said they had a name for themselves … Oniwaban set-sets?”

  Shock held them all, but I saw a different kind of shock and hurt on golden Ganymede. “O.S.…”

  “My children are not set-sets.” Andō was too dignified to bellow, but his words had the same shock-force. “They were deprived of that, ripped out of training by rabid Cousins, Lorelei Cook and their Nurturist zealots. The children were torn from their computers, their senses half remapped, scattered to the corners of the Earth.” He had a black look for Kosala. “A child has a right to grow up with its ba’sibs. I gave them that, gathered them back together when I learned how my predecessor, who ordered their training, had abandoned them to the false mercy of your Cousins. As strat-leader, I owed those children nothing less than the home you stripped them from.”

  Carlyle was breathing even faster now. “They asked Julia to help them find the Canner Device. No, Canner’s prototype, that’s what they called it, like there was another. You’ve been using your own Canner Device!”

  “No one can use the Canner Device!” Andō shot back. “No one ever has, and no one ever will, the training process was lost when Lorelei Cook’s Nurturists destroyed the training bash’. Kraye is just trying to spit every kind of poison they can here, lie or truth. They’re trying to splinter us. They know we can still turn the tide back if we work together.” Andō faced Perry-Kraye head on, his gaze as black as ash. “Trying to tear down three Hives because you were too cowardly to face an honorable duel.”

  “Not three Hives! The world!” the Outsider shrieked back. “This whole world is rotten to its heart! Look at yourselves! Madame h
as sucked us all into playing these idiotic roles humanity should have outgrown centuries ago!” Kraye was in his element now, strutting like an actor who had rehearsed his lines too long. “I haven’t been plotting revenge for twenty-eight years for nothing. The first five years I was in a blind rage, working my way back from nothing, through crime, through politics, all so I could earn entrance back here, kill Andō and Ganymede in front of Danaë, then hack out the bitch’s heart. But then I realized they aren’t the cause. It was Madame who made us into this. Look at you, prancing around in skirts and holding the door for ladies! Even you!” He faced Carlyle at last. “The most powerful administrations in the world did everything in their power to keep you out of all this, yet here you are in a monk’s robe running errands in a salon. You were born here and you should have died here, and that’s not the worst! The worst is us.” He waved to Andō and seething Ganymede. “The leaders of three of the seven Hives caught up in a stupid love revenge cycle. It’s absurd! Madame’s turned me into the fucking Count of Monte Cristo, and there’s nothing I can do about it except to make sure my revenge doesn’t just destroy my betrayers, but also the system that did this to the world!”

  “Leaving what behind?” Carlyle stepped forward, bold, though not without glancing to silent Dominic—for what, reassurance? “What’s supposed to happen to the world after you destroy it? You haven’t thought about that, have you, Father?”

  “Don’t call me that!” Kraye snapped. “I have no interest in talking to the poison that started all this.” He knocked Carlyle aside. “This is about us, Andō. Me, and you, and your mad, psychotic whore, and their whore brother!”

  “Kraye!” The Duke broke free of Andō’s grip at last. He seized the Prime Minister by his embroidered lapels, and pressed the hairpin’s point against his throat. “You can’t have thought this would end any other way.”