Bile and Blood, page 20
Palia shot the surgeon a questioning glance, but sat down when the woman nodded to indicate she could tell him. It wasn’t like he was blind to the results, after all. The surgeon sealed the membrane behind her, blocking the space around Bek’s bed from the rest of the room.
‘Bek, I’m so sorry,’ Palia said.
He laughed, the sound hard-edged. ‘Why? You didn’t cut my arm off.’
Palia sucked her lips between her teeth, put a hand over her face, tried to work out the best way to say it.
‘You... did cut my arm off?’
‘Okay, okay.’ She held her hands up. Slow down. ‘I’ll start from the top and... get to that bit as soon as possible.’ She explained how the keepers had downed the mech, how they had found him trapped beneath the buckled hull, how the only way to save him had been for the arm to come off. After that, she sat staring at the floor, a thousand excuses and ways to carry on the conversation filling her mind, but none of them allowed to come to her lips.
Bek sighed. ‘Can’t say I’m happy about it, but sounds like you didn’t have a choice. Besides,’ he waved his other hand at her and winked, ‘this one’s my favourite.’
‘Wait, you’re not angry?’
He fixed her with a level stare. ‘Not about this. Maybe it’s just the drugs they’ve got me on, I don’t know. Think you’re a splitting idiot for pushing as far as you did, though. We found Progaeryon was dead, we should have headed back. Didn’t even complete the fake mission your Magister gave you.’
‘Not as such, but...’
‘What?’
Palia shifted in her seat, trying to escape the ergonomics it had shaped around her. ‘Lilesh ordered an orbital strike on it.’ Bek said nothing, just recoiled a fraction. ‘I told her not to, but it was too late. The fleet sent an empyrric lance through the surface. I think it was precise enough not to do too much collateral damage, but I can’t know for certain.’
‘You realise there’s a hab layer on top of the caves, right?’
‘What?’
‘Habitation. People live there.’
Palia slumped back into her chair, letting a huff of breath out through her nose. ‘Zash.’
‘But as you said, precise, so’ – he shrugged, then continued bitterly – ‘who knows? Besides, they’re just clones. Protectorate’ll pump out new ones.’
Confused, it took Palia a few seconds to realise Bek must have overheard Steel on the other side of the mesa. ‘Bek, she didn’t mean it like that. She doesn’t understand—’
‘None of your lot do. And you’re half right, anyway. They will just pump more of us out. Doesn’t put the same people back, though. They’re still dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Bek sucked in his cheeks, staring into a middle distance beyond the privacy membrane. That left it up to Palia to break the silence, to find something good to say and get them focused on the next goal. But the thought of whether Ferrash had been on Munab without her notice had been eating at her. It gnawed in the silence between moments, and the silence that now stretched between them.
‘Bek,’ she said, ‘ you’d tell me, right? If you saw Ash?’
His forehead furrowed over his brows. ‘Course I would.’
Palia breathed out a sigh of relief, conscious of Bek’s gaze on her.
‘What, you thought he could be standing right next to you and I wouldn’t say anything? Pal...’
‘Do you have a picture of him? Something to remind me what he looks like? In case you’re not there.’
‘Putting aside the fact that I will be there, no matter how many limbs I’ve left, sure. I’ve got his ID stored in my implants. Comes with an image. Here.’
The file came through to her implants and Palia hesitated over it before filing it away, unopened.
‘You looking at it now?’ Bek asked.
She shook her head. ‘With the gaps in my memory, the way it gets sometimes... I’m not sure how I’ll react. I’ll look when I’m in private.’
When Bek raised an eyebrow, she blushed and opened her mouth to deny any funny business, but he waved her off. In the same moment, he caught sight of his stump and his eyes danced away again. Maybe he blanched, but it was hard to tell – his skin couldn’t get much paler.
‘On Hesperex,’ she asked, ‘do they make prosthetics?’
Tentatively, Bek drew his gaze back to the stump of his arm and examined it with pursed lips. ‘No. Most vatters just get retired when they’re broken. But if you’re a Keeper, or you’ve power in the committees, or you can prove you’ll be more useful to them with a fix than dead, you can get them regrown. Ash probably knows a dozen people can do it in the lower levels, provided the purge didn’t catch ‘em.’
Palia tried not to think too deeply on what ‘retired’ meant in the context of the Protectorate. ‘Do you think you could get one?’
Bek inclined his head to the membrane, the stale white room beyond. ‘Your friends here won’t do it?’
‘No, though I could probably pay for treatment on your behalf, if you wanted it done here. But I was thinking we should go to Hesperex next,’ she said. ‘If Ash isn’t on Munab, he might be there.’
‘Or he might be with the Laresics, or on Rythe, or in the Outer Reach.’
‘But he might be on Hesperex. We have to start somewhere.’
Bek sighed. ‘No, I agree, it’s just...’ He chewed his lips, as if wrestling with some unwarranted sense of guilt. ‘I’ve been going through Ash’s files. He was thorough, deleted most of them, but... there’s a pattern to his actions over the last few years. He has contacts everywhere. I can’t salvage enough of the data to see where, but there are a lot, and they all report back to him. I knew he had some, but I never knew the scale of it. I thought half of it was just him listening in to stuff he shouldn’t.
‘After the purge, I started to suspect. When he went missing...’ Bek ran a hand along his scalp, letting his fingers tangle with his untied hair. ‘I think he’s up to something. Something he’s been planning for a long time and doesn’t want me involved with.’
Palia could see the hurt in his features even without the Empyrean to peer beneath. It frustrated her, to see evidence that Bek and Ferrash must have been close but have no memory of how close, of how deep that bond went, of whether either of them kept anything from the other, of how much it might hurt to have that flipped on its head.
‘If he is planning something,’ Bek said, ‘it’s more than likely going to be on Hesperex. That means we’ll be wading straight into whatever mess he’s about to cook up. Could ruin it.’
Palia glanced at the membrane, wishing it was one-way visible so she had something else to look at. ‘What do you think it might be? At a guess? What would he choose to do with all that?’
Pity twisted as a bright coil in Bek’s gut, the emotion reflected only a fraction on his face. ‘Ash is an idealist, for all he doesn’t always seem it. He’ll be doing something good. Maybe not kind, maybe not safe, maybe not all too clever even if he tries to be, but it’ll be good.’
The ship’s guns boomed, far enough away that it could have been joggers running down an adjacent corridor. Palia wondered what they had fired at – the Protectorate fleet or the surface of Munab. What if Ferrash was trying to stop all that? What if he had some master plan to end the war and somehow bring peace to the Protectorate? She doubted it, but she hated herself for doubting it at the same time.
She scrunched up her face as she thought. ‘If he’s doing something good, and us getting in the way could ruin it... maybe we should just give up. Leave him alone.’
‘Say we find him on Hesperex. If we ruin his plans, then… well, that’s his fault for not telling us. If we don’t, maybe we could help him.’
She could pose so many more possibilities. What if he didn’t want help? What if they got there and found out he was up to no good? But she looked into Bek’s eyes and saw the earnestness there, the desire to find what once was and hold it close, and never let it slip its rein again. She could appreciate that. So she nodded, and she promised that travelling to Hesperex would be the next step in their mission, as long as she could get permission for it.
As she got up, Bek reached out to grab her sleeve. He grunted when he realised he’d reached with the wrong arm. ‘You haven’t mentioned the others. Are they okay?’
Palia couldn’t imagine he cared for the archivist’s welfare, so she said, ‘Tessa’s fine. She was worried about you. She tried to break down the door but it was stuck on her side.’
Rather than making him blush, the words cast a shadow on Bek’s face.
‘What’s wrong?’ Palia asked.
‘I’d hoped she didn’t think too much of me.’
‘Bek, you had sex. Even if her feelings go no further than that part of the relationship’ – and when he flinched at the word, she imagined them going no further was exactly what he wanted – ‘she’s not going to be happy about you dying. Her being upset about that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants... exclusivity, if that’s what you’re scared of. Exclusive isn’t really the done thing around here, anyway.’ Palia didn’t know how true that held for the arsaeria, but the rumours inclined her to assume the same.
‘Good. Good. Thank you.’ Bek sighed and leaned back into the pillow that propped him up, letting the light from an overhead panel wash over his face. Then, with a wistful air and not a hint of humour in his voice, he said. ‘I wonder how the weather is on Hesperex.’
Palia left him to enjoy his painkillers.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fabien wallowed somewhere just below consciousness, pinned down by a fug of sleep, vaguely aware of the pillow he had his face shoved into. A knocking came at his door. The sound sat in his brain for several seconds before it registered, then came again.
Groaning, he rolled out of bed, pulling upright at the last second so he didn’t just flop straight onto the floor.
What time was it? These forty-eight-hour days were wreaking havoc on him. His brain felt like a pool of lead trying to run out of his eyeballs.
The knocking came again, measured and polite.
‘Come in,’ he said, voice thick with sleep.
The door opened and Lady Charante stepped in. Her eyebrows shot up when she caught sight of him, and Fabien rubbed a palm across his eyes to try forcing them to focus. He realised he was only wearing the thin trousers he had gone to sleep in and was both glad and a little embarrassed that it was Lady Charante who had opened the door and not one of the steward’s staff.
‘Stars, you look like vriar sick,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’ Fabien cleared his throat so his next words wouldn’t be as much of a garbled mess. ‘Sorry, I’m having a little trouble getting used to the time difference.’
Lady Charante laughed and gave him a once-over. ‘I can see that.’
Self-conscious at the attention, Fabien dragged himself to the wardrobe and pulled a plain tunic over his head. ‘Is something wrong? I don’t think I’ve got anything on my schedule for now.’
‘Yes, sorry. I should have realised you’d be catching up on some shuteye.’ She folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the doorframe, tilting her head back to regard him. ‘I just figured you’ve been running about so much these last few days, you need a decent break.’
Fabien mirrored her stance, leaning against a windowsill and raising an eyebrow. ‘I thought that’s what I was doing by sleeping.’
‘Yes, well.’ She stared at him. ‘Come on, you can’t tell me you’re not in the slightest bit interested by what I’ve planned?’
‘What have you planned?’
She waved a hand. ‘Ah, telling you would spoil it.’ Then she slapped her thigh like she was beckoning a pet over and jerked her chin towards the corridor. ‘Come on!’
Fabien followed, not quite certain how much of his obedience was due to his lack of sleep. As she led him along the corridor, he asked, ‘This isn’t just a very thinly veiled attempt to kidnap me, is it?’
Lady Charante just laughed.
As soon as they left the walls of the palace behind, Fabien began to wake up. The sky was grey and overcast, so he couldn’t tell what time of day it was meant to be, but the chill air shocked his face. He wished he had put a jacket or some robes on. If night-time approached, it would only get colder.
Soon enough, he realised that they were heading for the vriarbeast tower. He stared up at it, its tip shrouded in mizzle, until they passed under the entrance. With the damp air pressing in, the deep, earthy, sharp-tinged scent of vriarbeasts was far more noticeable.
Lady Charante glanced back at him over her shoulder – the first time she had done so since leaving his room – and gave him another appraising look. At the bottom of the staircase, she held out a hand for him to wait and darted into a side room. She came out a moment later with a bundle of brown fabric in her arms. This she thrust at him, and Fabien turned it around a few times before realising it was a long, thick coat.
‘Don’t want you freezing up there,’ she said.
He shrugged into it, grateful for the extra warmth, and refrained from asking where she was planning to take him. Maybe by ‘up’, she just meant the top of the tower, and he was in for a hands-on introduction to her world of vriarbeasts. Whatever she meant, she clearly meant it as a surprise. He would let her have that.
When he had the coat buttoned up, Lady Charante nodded, satisfied. Then she started up the stairs two at a time. Fabien’s time-lagged body protested at the sight. He tried to keep up with her for the first few steps before resorting to a more normal pace. He was fairly certain he caught her chuckling at him the next time she happened to look back. In any case, he was gasping for breath by the time he reached the top.
Lady Charante clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on, you’ll have time to rest in a minute.’
Wheezing, Fabien staggered after her.
The stable she brought him to wasn’t as large as the one he had landed in upon his arrival, and nor was the vriarbeast it contained. This one was about half the size, for a start. He could tell that even though it was curled up asleep. The feathers that rustled as its breath hissed over them were black, not green, with fine lines of yellow feathers patterning its back and face.
‘Up, lazybones!’ Lady Charante called to it, patting it on the rump. ‘You were awake when I left you. You can’t have gone back to sleep already.’
The creature snorted. Its eyelids slid open to reveal bright yellow eyes. It shook its long neck before giving Lady Charante a grudging look that might have been very similar to the one Fabien had given her earlier. He wasn’t the only one whose sleep she had disturbed, clearly.
In no time at all, Lady Charante coaxed the vriarbeast to its feet and jumped onto the saddle it already wore, then hauled Fabien up behind her. The saddle had room for four passengers, with harnesses to keep them in. Fabien sat in the spot behind Lady Charante with his hands tight on the handhold that separated them.
They leapt from the side of the tower, the wind whipping Lady Charante’s ponytail into his face so hard it stung. He spluttered, woken up a fraction more. The vriarbeast spread its wings – far wider than those of the larger beast – and soared.
They flew for perhaps thirty minutes, passing above the clouds and skimming over the shrouded landscape below far faster than Fabien would have thought possible. Eventually, the clouds beneath them cleared and they dipped back down again, plunging towards an oval lake that sparkled in the bowl of a forested mountain valley.
They landed on the slopes where trees gave way to rugged grass, the vriarbeast’s wings snapping closed the moment it touched down.
Lady Charante hopped off, took a deep breath and said, ‘Here we are.’ Then she turned to help Fabien with his harness straps, freeing one leg with practiced motions before leaning across his lap to undo the other. When she was done, she took hold of his hand and helped him down to the grass. Fabien had met diplomatic aides who were less helpful.
‘You know,’ Fabien said, looking around, ‘I do have a security attaché back at the palace. He’s probably running around screaming at people and wondering where I am.’
‘Oh, I ran it past him.’ She waved the thought away, then started rummaging in the vriarbeast’s saddlebags.
Fabien stared out across the lake. On the far horizon, the edge of the ice caps shimmered so bright he had to squint. The grass around them bustled with birds and butterflies and nodding red flowers. It looked like the sort of remote wilderness he could imagine Lady Charante enjoying, but he wondered how much a hand she had had in organising this. He found he didn’t entirely care.
When he turned back, she had spread a cream blanket over the grass in front of a flat rock and placed an insulated box on it. She caught his eye and held a bottle in the air, waving two glasses at him with her other hand. ‘A little something to cheer you up.’
With a smile, he went to join her on the rock. They sat beside each other, knees touching from time to time as they helped themselves to the food she had brought with her, the vriarbeast shuffling its snout through the grass beside them as it tried to catch butterflies.
After a while, Lady Charante said, ‘So, what is it in the Hegemony that makes everyone want to have their tits out?’
Fabien snorted, spraying out the mouthful of wine he’d been savouring. ‘I’ve been wondering when you were going to ask that question,’ he said, although he hadn’t imagined she would put it quite that colourfully. From her reaction to Consul Esselia showing up naked on their call earlier, he’d thought she would ask about it sooner.
‘I’m a curious soul. Can’t help myself.’
He shrugged. ‘Not everyone does it. It’s most popular amongst voidfarers and the arsaeria. They don’t really see the need for clothes, and I guess some people see it as freeing. A few of them talk about showing the truest version of themselves.’
