The Vanguard

by SJ Griffin

Chapter Fourteen

  It took us an age to get home. Minos took the quietest streets he could find all the way back to the hotel, and then doubled back a few times, anxious to avoid any trouble. We drove past the old Cathedral that had given the Cathedral Quarter its name. It had stood for hundreds of years, despite the areas around it being bombed and battered through various conflicts the smoke hadn’t even blackened the cathedral. But as we drove down the tiny alleyway behind the chapel our wheels bounced over the rubble and masonry that had fallen from the building. All that was left was the lower walls and the piles of debris. The dome lay upturned and cracked in the middle of it all like a headstone. If it had been in our sector it would have been recycled, turned into somewhere to live, somewhere to play but here the moneyed of the city walked by waiting for the paperwork that would authorise the site’s clearance. When we arrived the hotel looked deserted, even to our expert eyes. We walked up the short drive, worrying about Lola and Casino who should have been inside.

  ‘What?’ I said, as Casino glared through a crack in the front door. We had set all the alarms off. ‘You knew we were coming.’

  ‘I am finding it difficult to adjust to my constant proximity to sudden death,’ he said. ‘It’s unnerving.’

  ‘Where’s Lola?’

  ‘In the incident room annex, we’ve been waiting ages for you.’

  ‘Annex?’ Minos said.

  The incident room had grown again and the overspill was being housed in the cloakroom. We’d continued to put up everything we knew, almost knew, thought we almost knew and feared we knew. As a result miles and miles of string connected things that we couldn’t bear to disconnect in case they were connected after all. There were even blank spaces for things we thought we might need to know that we didn’t yet know, but we hoped to know in the future. It was like a migraine had been smeared on every inch of wall or ceiling. We assembled in the new extension sitting around on the benches beneath coat hooks swiping and tapping tablet screens. I whispered to Lola to see if there had been any word on Stark but there hadn’t.

  ‘We had the mother of all car chases,’ Casino said. ‘It was incredible. If they’d been more familiar with the city we’d be in trouble. But as it was, with her driving and my navigating we lost them in the Riverside and came straight back here.’

  ‘Eoin and Dave are refitting Vermina’s car, as we speak,’ Lola said. Two kids from down the road, big in vehicle crime and owing us several large favours. This refit wouldn’t even make a dent in their obligations.

  ‘Loki will know someone who’ll swap it for something we’ll find useful,’ I said.

  ‘Excellent,’ Minos said. ‘Now for the important stuff. Fill us in on what the Galearii said, translator man.’

  ‘OK, so we said they were old school,’ Roach said. ‘Well, they’ve set up headquarters in the old parliament building. That’s how old school they are.’

  ‘But it’s flooded,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but the Galearii are very fond of water, what with all the drowning and the island, maybe that’s how they like it,’ Roach said. ‘They are all there rehearsing for a ceremony.’

  ‘What’s this ceremony for?’ I said.

  ‘Not what, who,’ Roach said. ‘It’s for the Father.’ He got a lot of blank looks for his trouble. He shrugged. ‘I don’t know either.’

  ‘They like their rituals, don’t they?’ Minos said.

  ‘Whatever it is, this ceremony is the final piece of the puzzle. They’ve got all their troops here, all the politicians assembled. Once this ceremony is finished they are going to take over.’

  ‘Take over?’ Casino said.

  ‘The country, and then it will spread across the world,’ Roach said.

  ‘Mergers and takeovers,’ Lola said.

  ‘They call it something like the new way,’ Roach said. ‘Or the great cleansing. There’s isn’t really a translation, apart from into Latin but that’s not so useful.’

  ‘Vermina said they are going to rip everything up and start again,’ I said.

  ‘She did,’ Roach said.

  ‘She kind of agrees with them,’ I said.

  ‘I kind of agree with them,’ Lola said. ‘We need a new beginning. We’ve been staggering on, trying to hold on to the little we have and look at us. I can see why they want to start over. Wipe the slate clean.’

  ‘Except the slate isn’t going to be clean, is it?’ Casino said.

  ‘No,’ Roach said. ‘It’s going to be covered in blood. And it’s not going to be theirs.’

  ‘Where have they come from?’ Minos said. ‘That’s what I don’t understand.’

  ‘They’ve been waiting,’ Casino said. ‘That island didn’t build itself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a hand in the disasters themselves. The flood, the whole thing,’ I said. ‘Casino’s right. This all started a long time ago.’

  ‘When is this ceremony?’ Lola said.

  ‘Friday,’ Roach said.

  Four days.

  ‘What have you got to report?’ Lola said to me.

  ‘I left Rowling at the warehouse,’ I said. ‘And that’s about it.’

  ‘Where’s Vermina?’ Minos said.

  ‘She was at the warehouse when I left, I don’t know where she is now.’

  This news was met with some initial scepticism but there was no getting round the truth of the matter, I had no idea where she was or how she was. It was the very early morning by then, the power cut plunging nearby streets into moonlight, but Roach insisted that we got something substantial to eat before we went to bed. The kitchen was piled up with boxes of figurines and Casino had been sketching out t-shirt designs. The sight of them almost ruined my appetite but I managed some beans and went to bed. Minos set a wakeup call for everyone at eleven the next morning. I thought I would wake up long before then, if I slept at all, but the next thing I knew it was ringing for me to get up.

  Minos held onto the edge of the kitchen table, his elbows locked and his knuckles white. On front of him next to his plate of toast sat his wristset, buzzing away.

  ‘What does she want?’ he said, swinging on the back legs of his chair to get even further away.

  The unit’s display indicated that it was Clara Ten Below calling.

  ‘She’s probably just giving you a call after the party,’ Casino said.

  ‘What for?’ Minos looked alarmed.

  ‘Because you...you don’t remember, do you?’ Casino said.

  ‘Remember what?’

  I chuckled and poured some more milk on my cereal.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ he said. ‘And of course I remember.’

  ‘We’ll have to start calling her Clara Ten Above at this rate,’ I said.

  ‘Possibly higher,’ Casino said. ‘What do you think, Minos?’

  It was almost as though we’d forgotten what the week had in store as we mocked him without mercy. Minos convinced himself that Clara was calling with some test results and a demand for medical credit, that entertained Casino and I for a good half an hour until I got a call from Yum. My work placement records were back on line after Enforce suspended them, and my holiday was over.

  ‘Did you do that?’ I said to Minos. I had been enjoying my brief hiatus from the daily grind.

  ‘No, I thought you did it.’

  ‘Not me. Not when we don’t know who’s watching. Maybe it was the same people as before.’

  We wandered through the system. There was no trace of anything anywhere so we decided it was the same people as before and I went to work.

  By the time Yum had finished dragging me about all over the city it was dark again. I rode around to the back of the hotel and came in through the garden with my security code so as not to set off any alarms. I left my imposter bike in reception, I wasn’t ready to let it take the place of my other bike on the hooks over my bed. It just didn’t feel right. There was no one about, everyone was at work and Lola had gone to see Tex. T
ex, whose father worked at the Ministry for Securities. I pondered that. Lola had never in the time that I had known her played the class card. Minos wouldn’t be impressed but then Minos probably wouldn’t understand. If things broke he fixed them, if things lay around he stole them, his life wasn’t very complex. He was an honest, uncomplicated, straightforward man. I stretched out on the table in the incident room, my hands behind my head, looking up at the ceiling and the lengths of string as they wound round and round and out the door into the dark cloakroom. I had a strong feeling we needed to go to the ceremony but no feeling about how we would get in. I switched the news on, looking for a distraction. Marshall was on, holding forth on the ceremony. He told whoever was out there watching and listening that all manner of people would be invited. He ran through some names on the guest list that people might have heard of, or would be hearing more about in the future so they’d better get used to the sound of their names. Agent Tourniquet was on the list.

  The next day Greasy Clive’s was heaving, it was breakfast time for the great unwashed. I strode into his kitchen as he was plating up a number five and some hash browns that he’d got from Haggia. I knew he’d got them there because they were made from real potato. My interrogation didn’t go very well.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I know you know him so you might as well just tell me how I can get in touch with him.’

  ‘I don’t know how to contact him,’ he said. ‘And anyway even if I did know I’m quite sure that if I told you he’d make something horrible happen to me. He’s rich you know. He knows other rich people.’

  Short of holding his face against the hotplate I couldn’t figure out how to make him tell me, and the thought of doing that made me feel sick. I couldn’t ask Stark because he was unavailable and even if he wasn’t he’d just give me that look and then he’d tell Lola and she’d give me an even worse look.

  ‘And how about all the people I know, Clive,’ I said. ‘I know everyone.’

  Clive moved with a speed I found surprising, slipped behind me, picked up two plates and whisked them across the cafe. ‘True,’ he said when he came back armed with another order. ‘You know lots of people and lots of things. Useful things.’

  Now we were getting somewhere. I decided to wait for the rush to finish. All good things come to those who wait.

  ‘Right, sorry about that,’ Clive sat down opposite me. He’d furnished me with a fine lunch and coffee on tap. ‘The way I see it you want something from me and I want something from you.’

  ‘Happy days,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘What do you want first?’ he said.

  ‘You know what I want.’

  ‘You want Tourniquet.’

  ‘I don’t think we need to put it quite like that,’ I said. ‘I merely want to know where he is.’

  Clive risked a smirk and I pondered the hotplate approach.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said.

  ‘My five year licence is up today, my inspection is tomorrow and I found a cat in the fridge yesterday.’

  ‘How did it get in the fridge?’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Clive didn’t want to know who put the cat in his fridge. We knew that. It was Enforce. It wasn’t in their interests to have Clive run the cafe for another five years. He always paid all his fees on time and been no trouble at all, or no fun as they would put it. It would be easy to catch one of the hundreds of feral cats roaming around, sneak into Clive’s kitchen during the rush and put it in the fridge. Clive was not going to get his licence that was certain, as clear as if the cat had a sign hung round its neck saying so.

  ‘What time is the inspection?’ I said.

  ‘Three in the afternoon.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I stood up. ‘I have a strong suspicion that you’re going to be licensed for another ten years.’

  ‘Ten?’ Clive smiled.

  ‘Oh, yes. We know a good thing when we see it.’ I said. ‘And besides, Emirhan’s opening hours don’t suit our business requirements.’

  At three o’clock sharp the next day I was sitting in front of a screen trying to locate the plastic drone’s tablet in the system. Sure enough one blinked into life bearing the location tag for Clive’s place. It was a question of timing. I had banished everyone from the room and my headphones played some peaceful three step dub that Loop had compiled for me a couple of years ago. It was very relaxing. The inspection took forty five minutes, I watched the code alter according to the boxes the inspector checked on his or her tablet. I watched with total focus. It would not do to miss my opportunity, the authorisation process went through three different ministries but after this point it was a simple systemic programme without human intervention. And it was live. If I missed this window it would take days to filter through all the databases to produce the licence and that would be so tedious it didn’t bear thinking about. Bureaucracy was never, ever efficient. And in the meantime they’d shut Clive down, I’d never find Tourniquet and the ceremony would happen without us. The inspector got to the last option and chose not to approve Clive’s application. There was no reason to do that, given the responses they had already added to the system, but that wouldn’t matter. I counted to five and then changed the code as it fluttered up the screen. My palms were sweating despite that fact I’d done this kind of thing countless times before. I guessed that it hadn’t mattered so much then, it had been business whereas this was something more. I rendered Clive’s licence while Minos, who had be desperate to get in and see what I was doing, told me how Chunk had cut him in on a deal for some vodka. I could just picture the look on Marshall’s face.

  ‘Licence,’ I said to Clive as it appeared between my fingers.

  ‘How do you do that?’ he said.

  ‘Magic,’ I said. ‘Now where’s Tourniquet?’

  ‘Ah, about that,’ Clive looked ashamed. ‘I’m not sure I can tell you. Can’t you just give me your number and I’ll pass it on.’

  The hotplate wasn’t even warm. The dial went up to six and I couldn’t bear to put it higher than one and a little bit. It didn’t stop Clive screaming though.

  ‘Do you know what Minos will do to us if we give Tourniquet my number?’ I said. ‘Or what he’ll get Roach to do.’

  Clive was afraid of Roach. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you. I’m sorry, I didn’t think it through properly.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ I hauled him up and turned off the heat. ‘After I went to all that trouble for you too.’

  ‘He made me call him at a drinking establishment, near the Ministries I think it is. He’s there a lot. Like nearly every day,’ Clive’s cheek was a little red.

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Clive, you are hopeless. How do you know it’s a bar?’

  ‘Because I could hear drinking and what have you in the background, people ordering and whatnot.’

  ‘What’s the number?’

  After much searching he found it and gave it to me. ‘How are you going to find out where it is?’

  ‘I’m going to ring this number and ask them,’ I said.

  He looked at me in wonder. ‘You are clever.’

  It was a club for paper dolls. I put a pair of Minos’s socks, which I picked up with tongs and great courage from the pile of dirty clothes on his floor, in a padded envelope and wrote Tourniquet’s name on it.

  I strode into the club dressed in my finest courier chic. I smelt like the road, I was even wearing some of it. The doorman didn’t look impressed but I threw a few authorisation codes around and he let me pass.

  ‘I’m to wait for this person,’ I showed the package to a man dressed like an important penguin.

  He raised one eyebrow so I raised both mine back and took up position in a dim corner. The club was one of those mahogany walled, Turkish carpeted affairs. It was populated by ministry types so the air was full of whispers. I didn’t bother to listen, I knew it would be boring. It was
only then it occurred to me that I might be waiting for hours. I fiddled with my wristset to let Minos know that I was on a job with a wait and hoped that Casino wouldn’t be in an inquisitive mood and check who I was waiting for. Yum would have no idea. I contemplated setting Yum up to cover for me but before I could tie myself up in a knot of lies Agent Tourniquet sauntered through the door. I watched him install himself at a table near the fire blazing in the ornate fireplace and wave for a drink. He flicked through a book that was lying on the table and when he looked up I was sitting opposite him.

  ‘Hello,’ he smiled. ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in?’

  ‘If I were you I’d go for what do you want?’ I said. ‘You’ll like the answer to that one.’

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, almost before I’d finished my sentence.

  ‘I want you to take me out for a drink tomorrow night,’ I said.

  ‘Do you now?’

  ‘You suggested dinner, this is a compromise.’

  ‘You got my note then, I thought you were ignoring me.’

  ‘I was. The Noose and Trapdoor. Eight o’clock,’ I tossed the package on the table as I stood up. ‘This came for you.’

  I heard his horrified exclamation from the other end of the room. Minos had been known to wear a sock out before he washed it.

  I didn’t tell the others where I was going when I left the next evening. Casino noticed I didn’t look like I’d got dressed in the dark but he didn’t say anything. I considered taking the tracking pin out of my jacket but given our current situation I figured I’d rather have no privacy than no back up. I met Tourniquet in the tiny, traditional boozer out Albert way. It was in a quiet former residential area right on the edge of the river. We arrived at the same time, both a little early. Tourniquet had dressed down, but unlike many handsome men who looked good in a collared shirt he also managed to look great in scruffy t-shirt.

  ‘Rum, is it?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not going to ask how you know that,’ I said.

  ‘From my party,’ he said. ‘I saw you long before you saw me. Sorry. I’m not a stalker or anything.’

  ‘You’re not sorry at all,’ I said. ‘Rum will be fine. I’ll get a seat, shall I?’

  ‘Yes, you do that. Get a quiet one.’

  Much to my irritation Tourniquet was very good company. He was like Lola in that he had an enormous dislike for his social class but unlike her he was prepared to play along to get what he wanted. He struck me as the kind of man who would do a great deal to get what he wanted.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said when I asked him why he was an artist. ‘I’m not very good, am I?’

  I finished my third, or maybe it was my fourth, drink and didn’t supply an answer

  ‘You can tell me, I can take it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not to my taste, but its art, not everyone’s supposed to like it.’

  ‘It’s important that no one likes it, that way people don’t feel dirty about spending lots of money on it,’ he said. ‘Credit, whatever. Do you remember money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, you’re too young. I do, lovely stuff money.’

  He couldn’t remember money, he didn’t look old enough. Although, knowing him, he probably had the best surgeon in his pocket as well as everyone else.

  ‘I think I’m a bit drunk,’ Tourniquet said. ‘I think we should get something to eat.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Come on then,’ he stood up. ‘Inigo’s put something in the oven for us, we just need to heat it up. I hope you know how to do that, because I’ve got no idea at all.’

  ‘We’re going back to your place?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘On the first date?’

  ‘So it is a date?’ he sat down again. ‘I did wonder.’

  ‘You know what I mean, I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.’

  ‘Come on, Sorcha, don’t be boring,’ he stood up again. ‘Besides I imagine you have some sort of tracking device somewhere about your person so you’re quite safe.’

  ‘You know altogether too much about me,’ I said.

  ‘Yet you still maintain an air of mystery,’ he said. ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘I’m very devious.’

  Tourniquet lived in a huge flat at the top of an eight storey block that was otherwise empty. The south facing walls were made of glass and overlooked the Western Disaster Zone. He dimmed the lights so we could see the view better, at least that was his story and I didn’t bother to complain.

  ‘You know that old power station has always been like that,’ he said, pointing to four pale chimneys in the middle of the river. ‘Not flooded but abandoned and falling down. Never seems to completely crumble though.’

  ‘I heard people live there,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, they do. You can see the lights on their boats going back and forth sometimes.’

  ‘How can anyone live in the Disaster Zone?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tourniquet said. ‘I can’t imagine why you would want to.’

  When the river flooded it didn’t seep into the city in an organised fashion, rising like bath water. It surged down from the sea and in three or four places on the way inland it turned and on the outside edges of those curves huge waves destroyed everything. The Western Disaster Zone was the worst hit, everyone died, either crushed by the water or the building they were in. No one was saved. With no money for recovery the areas were sealed off and the bodies that didn’t wash up further downstream were forgotten.

  ‘I can’t imagine why you would want it as a view,’ I turned to him, away from the window.

  ‘It’s inspiring,’ he said. ‘In an odd way. And I like watching the weather experiments.

  I couldn’t see it in the dark, but the Western Disaster Zone was forever huddled beneath a very large cloud, part of an artificial weather system that some Academy scientists had created to try and develop a microclimate. They had all sorts of biblical weather out there. It snowed upwards one very cold day. The experiment was not going well but they couldn’t stop for fear that the whole thing would break free and drift across the city. They were trying to make it light and sunny, warm like Nexus. Just like Nexus. That was a worry. If they got power, I could see the plastic dolls going for all the things they could achieve in a big way. I’d read about a dictator who’d killed thousands and thousands of people but he’d got the trains to run on time so people didn’t mind so much. Along with the rest of the people in my sector I’d never been on a train so that wouldn’t have won us over. But no one was trying to win us over.

  ‘Earth to Sorcha,’ Tourniquet said, very near my ear. ‘I’ve got no rum. Will champagne do?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I made a show of sighing.

  Inigo was a great cook, I hadn’t eaten so well in months, perhaps years. Tourniquet insisted on pronouncing the names of all the dishes in a ridiculous accent sending me into fits of giggles which proved infectious. If this had been a proper date I would have been delighted with how it was going.

  ‘I heard you’re going to that ceremony thing,’ I said, remembering why I was there.

  He groaned. ‘Don’t mention that, it’s going to be awful.’

  ‘It sounded very dull on the news.’

  ‘It’s very important apparently. The way they’re talking about it you’d think it was the most important thing that had ever happened.’

  ‘Who’s talking about it?’

  ‘Everyone. It’s so boring. I’ve got to wear robes,’ he said. ‘Me, in robes. Can you imagine it?’

  I smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to come?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got two tickets and no one to take.’

  ‘I find that very hard to believe,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s true. I’m very lonely.’

  I laughed.

  ‘It’s not funny. You’re not seeing anyone. Why don’t you come?’

&
nbsp; ‘You are a stalker.’

  He held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘Clive told me all about you. But in a nice way, he’s very fond of you lot. It sounds like he ought to be.’

  ‘I doubt you can prove anything.’

  ‘Why would I want to? And to whom?’ he said. ‘Honestly, you are so suspicious.’

  ‘You are a very strange man.’

  ‘Yes, but will you come?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I’d have to meet you somewhere though. You definitely can’t pick me up.’

  He grinned. ‘Am I a secret?’

  ‘Yes. From what Clive has told you about the rest can you imagine them approving?’

  ‘No, not Minos for sure. Maybe Lola though, I’m sure I know her uncle. Hercules, is it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s him.’

  ‘I keep my mouth shut about that though, right?’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, why don’t I give you the second invitation then you can meet me in there?’

  He went out to the hallway and came back with thick white card with embossed gold lettering. It was heavier that it ought to have been, suggesting it was packed with all kinds of digital delights.

  ‘Don’t lose it,’ he said. ‘It’s an arrestable offence. I can’t see why though.’

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ I said, thinking of another twelve things just off the top of my head. ‘I don’t have any robes.’

  ‘We can get them on the way in. You didn’t think I actually had robes, did you?’

  I lost count of the number of times I had to remind myself I was there on business and that I’d got what I wanted and should probably think about leaving. But it got later and later. I could hear a buzzing from my jacket pocket where I’d abandoned my wristset, I ignored it. I had a fleeting fear that at any moment the four of them would come crashing through the huge window on ropes but the champagne told me I was being silly.

  ‘Are you a big reader?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, how did you guess?’

  I pointed at the bookcase that filled one wall. ‘Actual books.’

  ‘That’s just the overspill,’ he took my hands and pulled me off the chair. ‘Come and see.’

  At first I thought it was a trick to get me into his bedroom, what with the enormous and obvious bed in the middle of the room, but he seemed so excited about his books it couldn’t have been. I’d gone way past the point where any tricks would be necessary anyway. It reminded me of Étienne’s study. The books were leather-bound with the occasional water damaged paperback nestled between them. There wasn’t an inch of wall space that wasn’t covered by a book, the shelves were built around the door and the window, its blind drawn.

  ‘I keep meaning to organise them properly,’ he said. ‘But I like that chaos, you know. It’s like fate choosing what I’m going to read.’

  ‘And what occupies the great reader at the moment?’ I picked up the book on his bedside table.

  ‘Research,’ he said as I leafed through it.

  ‘You’re into angels and that?’ I sat on the bed, it was heavy material to fall asleep to.

  ‘Mythology.’

  ‘Sorry, mythology. It sounds so much more reasonable when you say it like that,’ I tried to keep the suspicion out of my voice. ‘Did fate pick this for you?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was doing something on it at the Academy a few months ago and I’d completely forgotten I’d got all this stuff until I stepped into the game yesterday. And then I remembered that’s who they were, the Galearii.’

  ‘In the game? The Vanguard?’

  ‘Yeah, they just started to appear, maybe a couple of weeks ago. Current events appear in the game. It’s something to do with the neural patterning stuff. You’d know more about that though.’

  ‘Probably,’ I assumed Tourniquet had seen them in the Entertainment Centre, that he was just pretending to visit Massey’s House.

  ‘You should try it, it’s...’ he searched for the right word. ‘Immense.’

  He didn’t know the half of it. At least I hoped he didn’t. There was a chapter in the book on the painting that Stark had shown us and the rest of the work in the series. I didn’t know the half of it either.

  ‘You look very serious all of a sudden,’ he sat next to me.

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘I don’t do serious.’

  He took the book out of my hands and laid it on the bed between us. ‘The Galearii are not what people think they are.’

  I waited.

  ‘Do you know how many people in the NW sector they killed during the disturbances?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘None.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘Not a single one. Which is odd given that the affluent sections of society are in raptures about the extreme and deadly violence they witnessed on the news. They saw it with their own eyes and yet are quite content to believe the official figures of zero casualties.’ He stood up, raised the blind and looked out of the window, hands folded in the small of his back one, inside the other. ‘It’s the same old problem.’

  It was a very old problem and I knew it well. ‘Nobody cares.’

  He turned to me. ‘That’s right. Nobody cares. But you do. Inside. You care.’

  ‘I don’t think you know me well enough to know if I care or not.’

  ‘The government, the paper dolls, they don’t care about you lot because they can’t do anything with you, they can’t use you, they can’t bargain with you, they can’t understand you. But worst of all, they can’t stop being afraid of you.’

  ‘So what are they going to do about it?’ I tried a smile.

  ‘What are they going to do? They’ve all ready started. They’re turning you into a number. And that number is zero.’

  I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out.

  ‘Come on, let’s change the subject. This is depressing, and I’m just showing off and being dramatic. I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he held out his hand. ‘I know what you need.’

  I gave him the Capuzzo eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  He looked innocent, faux-innocent. ‘Dessert.’

  There was, of course, more champagne to wash down Inigo’s dessert. Tourniquet regaled me with funny stories about the Academy and Stark, who he seemed to be very fond of despite knowing that Stark despised him. He knew that I knew Stark but he didn’t let on and neither did I. He didn’t mention Stark’s current incarceration either. After a while I managed to lose our previous conversation somewhere in the back of my head.

  ‘Who’s Inigo?’ I said.

  ‘He’s my, I can’t think of the word,’ Tourniquet rubbed the end of his nose with his palm, I was learning that this was something he did when he was embarrassed.

  I laughed. ‘Is it servant?’

  ‘No, no it isn’t.’

  ‘It is, he’s your servant.’

  ‘It’s not that funny,’ but he was laughing too. ‘He’s my assistant. Yes, you carry on laughing. You poor little make your own dinner type person.’

  I laughed so much I started the room spinning.

  ‘Hey, did you use that cheat code?’ Tourniquet said as he came back from the kitchen with another bottle of champagne.

  I nearly said that I had but saved myself just in time. ‘I told you, I don’t play the games.’

  ‘That’s right, you’re a privacy nut,’ he sat on the sofa next to me, very close, and put the bottle on the table. ‘Do you know what I think?’

  ‘Give me a clue.’

  ‘You’re right, in a way. It’s a question of simple economics. I think that this space here,’ he leant closer still and put one finger on my left temple and one on my right. ‘This space inside your head is the most valuable real estate there is and they really do want to get in it.’

  ‘Really? It’s that valuable?’

  ‘Well, maybe not as valuable a space as this here, but still pretty...’ his lips touched mine.

  I listened to h
im breathing while he slept and I flicked though his bedtime reading. I wasn’t really concentrating on the book, I was thinking how my new, unexpected life was not conducive to romance. And there was, as usual, the Vermina factor to be considered. It was difficult to work out what Tourniquet wanted, but I knew that in the end it wouldn’t make any difference. I put the book down and closed my eyes.

  I woke as the sun was coming up, slipped out from under Tourniquet’s arm and left. I’d slept badly. I kept dreaming about the people at the black market with the smart bomb and how the Galearii would give them an excuse to set it off. I could see straight through Minos as the blast hit him, his skeleton lit up in bright, bright green. As I crossed the road, the heavy fog of a hangover beginning to descend, a grey van almost ran me over. The side door opened and three angry faces glared out at me.

  ‘Get in,’ Minos said from the driver’s seat, making it four angry faces. ‘Get in this van right now.’

  It was worse than I feared. No one would talk to me in the van on the way home despite my best attempts at polite conversation. They left it until I thought maybe I’d gotten away with it and then they rounded on me in the kitchen.

  ‘So, what do you have to say for yourself?’ Minos said, his hair smouldering. He was angry.

  ‘I was finding out about the ceremony,’ I said.

  ‘You were not,’ Casino said. ‘I know what you were doing and it wasn’t that kind of investigation.’

  A silence descended on the table.

  ‘What?’ I said after a long pause during which Casino looked more and more nervous.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault,’ Lola said.

  Every cupboard evacuated its contents onto the floor.

  ‘We were worried,’ Roach said.

  ‘I didn’t stay,’ Casino said. ‘I came in, had a moment of horrible, horrible realisation and then went out again.’

  All the taps came on full blast and the shutters over the windows danced up and down. I tried to get a grip on myself.

  ‘He should lock his front door,’ Casino said.

  ‘I’m too angry to talk to you right now, but you might be interested in this,’ I said, slamming the invitation to the ceremony down on the table. I stalked off leaving them to clear up the mess I had made.

  It was a whole three hours before I had calmed down. That is to say an hour until objects stopped flying around, another hour until I had reassured myself that Casino hadn’t seen anything that I would have been that ashamed of, not in the dark anyway, and a third hour for me to work out how to walk downstairs and speak to them while retaining the moral high ground. Not that I had the moral high ground but having it and acting like you have it are not the same thing at all. If you can act like you have it, you don’t need it.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘What’s the invitation all about then?’

  They were still in the kitchen huddled around the dismantled invitation like surgeons around a critical patient. They had cleaned up.

  ‘It’s very interesting,’ Minos said.

  ‘You were right,’ Casino said. That was about as close to an apology as I was going to get. It was also about as close as I deserved.

  ‘This tells us everything we need to know about the security, guest list, timings and access,’ Minos said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I had a hunch,’ I said.

  ‘We’re going, aren’t we?’ Lola said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We need to disrupt that ceremony and buy some time. We need to do something, anything, otherwise I have a horrible feeling it’s going to be too late.’

  ‘Me too,’ Minos said.

  ‘And me,’ Lola sighed.

  ‘Right,’ Roach said. ‘We’ve got two days to work out how we get into the old parliament building.’

  ‘Can any of us breathe underwater?’ Casino said.

  ‘Before we do that,’ Minos said. ‘We need to know what you’re doing.’

  I looked around the table to see who he was talking to only to find that it was me.

  ‘It was only the day before yesterday that you were all moon-eyed about Vermina,’ Minos said.

  ‘Moon-eyed?’ I said. ‘I don’t even know what that means.’

  ‘Listen, we’re not having an intervention here,’ Roach said. ‘It’s just that the other night we nearly got into serious trouble with the Galearii because you wanted to talk to Vermina.’

  ‘And that’s perfectly fine,’ Lola said before I could interrupt. ‘But we need to know. You said you weren’t going to find her. If you hadn’t been tracked we wouldn’t have known where you were, would we?’

  Silence.

  ‘Would we?’ Casino said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘And then last night, the same,’ Minos said throwing his hands up in a gesture of despair. ‘Honestly, Sorcha, engage brain please. Engage brain.’

  The blinds closed themselves, fluttering like furious birds in the windows. Minos emitted a crackling sound.

  ‘There’s no need for anyone to get angry,’ Roach said. ‘I think we all need to make a deal that we won’t, any of us, wander off without telling someone where we’re going.’

  ‘And no falling in love,’ Minos said. ‘Even if it is for just five minutes.’

  Lola sighed. ‘Minos, that is completely out of order and you know it.’

  I skipped the rest of the argument and went and found something else to do. I checked my messages in the DarkNet and found an order from a friend of Loop’s who wanted a hack for his welfare record. He had a serious disease but silly credit. I liked Loop so it felt like a good use of my time.

  ‘Do you have a minute?’ Lola said later as I was sending a message back to the guy to say it was all done and that I hoped he’d get well soon.

  ‘Sure. Thank you for sticking up for me.’

  ‘That’s all right. Minos was out of order. I know he was just worried about you but still, there is no need to be like that about it,’ she said. ‘I wanted to say thank you to you, actually.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Because even though you pretend you don’t, you do understand about Stark and I appreciate that. I really do. Both the understanding and the pretending. So, thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said.

  ‘And I’m sorry about earlier.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gone off and...’ I couldn’t think of what I shouldn’t have done, because if I had the chance to do it over I’d do it all the same.

  ‘And gotten all involved with the gorgeous man Stark told you to stay away from?’

  ‘I’m not involved. It was casual.’

  ‘You don’t do casual,’ Lola said. ‘Your casual is someone else’s grand passion, just a lot faster.’

  ‘I’m not going to see him again,’ I said. ‘So it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You said that about Vermina, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s different. Besides there’s nothing going on.’

  ‘Listen, you think with this, right?’ She put her hand over my heart. ‘But you need to start thinking with this or someone will get killed.’

  ‘Who?’ I said with Lola’s left hand on my heart and her other on top of my head. I meant who else but couldn’t say it.

  ‘You,’ she said.

  ‘What did Tex say?’ I shook off her hands with more irritation that I felt. Massey had said something similar, and Stark. What was it with these people?

  ‘Tex?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said in such as way as to indicate that I would find her lying or prevaricating tedious.

  ‘He said that his father was, unfortunately, unable to get Stark out,’ she shrugged like it was nothing, but I knew what it would have cost her to ask him and how terrible the answer was. ‘He was genuinely helpful about it. I think under all that he’s probably a nice guy. Just very young.’

  ‘I thought he said his old man was Director of Liaison, surely a quiet word would have done it?’ I said.

  �
��Apparently not, he’s outranked by the Imagination Industries liaison people and they’re sending them to some court in New Europa to try them for some kind of espionage.’

  Things were gathering pace. ‘New Europa? They can’t do that.’

  They could have done it before the flood and the crash and all the other things that befell humanity, but since then there were no international treaties, no bargains to be made over borders.

  ‘They can,’ Lola said. ‘It seems that since Enforce are a private company some legal expert, a specialist supplied by Imagination Industries no less, has worked out that detainees can be defined as products and therefore transported and traded as such.’

  ‘So what court are they going to?’

  ‘Some kind of industrial one.’

  Vermina was right. That’s how they were going to do it. They were going to take everything they had set up for commercial gain and apply it for political reward. There used to be a popular saying just after the flood, as corpses from other places started washing up dead on the beaches, something about disasters not respecting borders.

  ‘They’re a disaster,’ I said, and for a moment Lola looked puzzled because she was thinking about Stark.

  We let logistics take our minds off things. The security for the ceremony was massive, Enforce were bringing in all the licensed private security they could buy. Roach was worried he would be on the list but his citizen clearance wasn’t high enough. They weren’t taking any chances. Work and Labour people were volunteering to help out, desperate to play a part and they were being given time off work to do so. We thought for a moment that it might be better to forget about our plan and raid some places in the city because everything was going to be abandoned. But I guess our consciences got the better of us because we mapped out a route and a strategy that would take us up into the parliament building from under the city.

  The first part of the journey would be easy, it was the usual sneaky route into the city when security was tight, but there was a hitch in the middle. We would have to go through Mole Town. Mole Town was a bit like the underground community on the brown line except where they’d suffered a psychosis from never moving above ground for three generations, Mole Town was suffering from a psychosis brought about by everyone down there being a psychopath. Most of them were military. After the Seven Invasions necessitated the redrawing of the world atlas most countries couldn’t afford armies, or air forces or whatever else and they were disbanded. Demobbed soldiers roamed around fighting with themselves out of habit. No one wanted them. Some countries blamed them for the millions of lives that had been lost and carried out a kind of professional genocide against anyone who had served. Our soldiers fared a little better but still found themselves unloved and unemployed, even Enforce wouldn’t touch some of them. They were a public relations nightmare. So, they moved underground and colonised one of the biggest stations and a mile along three of the lines that intersected it. They had planned to hold the system to ransom but it fell into disrepair so fast that the only thing their demands for a ransom raised was a smile. Mole Town was like a warzone because that’s how they liked it. It wasn’t how we liked it, but it was the only way we were going to get into the passages under the old parliament building.

  Once we’d come to terms with our proposed jaunt through Mole Town we decided to travel light with only what we needed to get in to the building and then disrupt the ceremony. We were going to stop them from finishing the ritual and then take it from there. That would throw a spanner in the works and that was the best we could hope for. We’d got all the schematics and schedules we needed from the data packed into the invitation. It seemed that they’d given everyone complete access, we guessed because they didn’t have time to segment everything. Or maybe it was just their usual arrogant and lackadaisical attitude towards security, either way once we’d got into the building we were all right. Even the robes would provide a handy disguise. I worried that it was all too easy but stopped that before I tempted fate.

  ‘We’ve still got Vermina’s gun, I suppose,’ Minos said. We were sitting in the lounge room, the others taking care of errands or out working, everyone tracked and in touch.

  ‘And telekinesis and pyromancy,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he grinned.

  ‘It’s good not to get complacent.’

  ‘You never know,’ he lit a flame on his fingertip and blew it out. ‘It might even be fun.’

  He didn’t say that in a way that suggested he thought it would be. I felt a little more relaxed. Vermina had said it had been going on for years. That meant they were playing the long con. And that was fine by me, I loved the long con. From the way his left leg was jiggling up and down I could tell that Minos wanted to talk so I just hung around waiting for him to start.

  ‘You know Clara,’ he said, after a lot of waiting.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I did something, we did something.’

  ‘It’s OK, I know what it’s called,’ I said. He seemed more upset than usual. He always was very uncomfortable with the whole thing, fearing he was the great pregnamancer instead of the pyromancer, but it wasn’t like him to dwell on it.

  ‘Well, I don’t like to, you know, because it’s more trouble than it’s worth, really, don’t you think?’ he looked at me. ‘No, I know you don’t.’

  ‘It’s fine, Minos, isn’t it? Does she want to move in or something?’

  ‘No, no, she’s all right. She’s cool about it.’

  ‘Yes, she struck me as a woman who would be,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just that...’

  There was some more waiting. I thought about getting a snack.

  ‘It’s just that I only did it because I thought, well you know,’ he said.

  ‘You’re going to have to help me out.’

  ‘I thought, well I’m probably going to be dead in a few days what with all this that’s going on, so why not?’

  No wonder he was so upset about it.