Nona the Ninth, page 15
Crown and Camilla exchanged a significant look. Camilla’s stilled fingers had returned to playing with the pen. Nona snuck a look at what she had been drawing; it looked like nothing more than three squiggles and a tiny heart.
“How long has the Second House installation been abandoned now? Station Red-as-Blood?” asked Cam.
We Suffer said, “Ah. I see where you are going with this, the line of questioning you are bringing. The answer is three months since the troops of the Empire abandoned it. I received word yesterday of an investigation last week. It was reported empty. You are wondering about point of origin?”
“Yes. That ship’s not big enough for a stele. Don’t know if it’s big enough for subluminary travel, even. How did it get here?”
Crown leant back in her chair, staring at the projector screen, head balanced in the crook of one golden arm. Nona noticed that her biceps showed even through her shirt, and that there were rubber bandages wrapped around one palm. She said, “Oh, that’s big enough for subluminary travel, Millie. See the double struts, and the massive exhaust? That’s a Ziz-class.”
It was hard for Camilla to hold anyone’s gaze behind the dark glasses, but she inclined her head a little way toward Pyrrha, who was staring at the picture. Pyrrha shrugged and said, “Crown’s the expert. This is all after my time.”
Crown continued, “The Ziz isn’t Cohort standard. And it’s not as big on the inside as you think. Look at the windows—see how there’re none on the back end? It’s mostly engine. Not plated either. It’ll get to sublume without many problems … but it definitely doesn’t have room for a stele. Camilla is right. It can’t travel by obelisk anchor.”
Camilla had started writing on her bit of paper before Crown finished talking, somehow managing to write and stare intently at the same time. The bodyguard did not even try to hide their interest in Cam’s paper, craning their head to stare in open suspicion, but did not seem to find anything to be hostile about.
We Suffer said, “Ah! Are you secretly an expert on the stellar craft of your people, Crown? That is a very useful piece to have in our box of tricks,” but Crown just laughed.
“Oh, only secondhand, Commander. I had a massive crush on a boy who was really into shuttles,” she said, and added wistfully, “He had a great body. A dancer. Loved shuttles … didn’t look at me twice, so I fell head over heels. Story of my life.”
The bodyguard said, “What happened? You eat him?”
Crown said, “A boy like that? Not all at once.”
“You’re foul,” said the bodyguard.
“Yes. Good. The intel, I mean, not anybody’s romantic history, which I abhor,” said We Suffer. “Let me change my numbers. Lower our estimate to seven to eight metres—yes?—of troop room. That is even better.”
But the bodyguard said urgently, (ZZT!) “Seven metres. Six metres. It doesn’t matter, Commander. It would take five trained zombies to blow a hole in us. The city’s only just starting to get over the fear of having their bones come out. If that confidence gets hit again, we’re pushed months back on the barracks, and they’ll regroup. Let me talk to the antinegotiation faction, you know I’ve got pull.”
“Have you forgotten Varun the Eater all of a sudden?” asked We Suffer mildly. “Have you forgotten hive exposure and blue madness, for the sake of your argument?”
“Who says they haven’t come up with a cure for that? Who says they haven’t figured out magic, or a pill or whatever, that stops them throwing up and screaming? Have you forgotten Assume the worst, ignore the best?”
For some reason, Pyrrha smiled a little, like she was thinking of something. The bodyguard’s head had inclined briefly to the portrait hanging behind We Suffer.
We Suffer said: “Have you forgotten: do not catastrophise? I heard that often from her own lips. I have no time for worst-case scenarios. We must play with the cards we have been dealt.”
Pyrrha said suddenly, “Crown. How’s the fuel consumption on a Ziz-class ship?”
“Thirsty,” said Crown, brightening up at being asked. “Its cell would be totally drained after a day in subluminary. It only takes the powerful stuff too—thalergy-enriched, not just hydrogen blend. Hydrogen blend stuffs up the engine.”
“Back to point of origin. Either this shuttle’s derelict, or—it dropped through the River,” said Camilla.
The bodyguard said, “What River?” but We Suffer interrupted: “That is above your security clearance. Ignore.”
“Then I should have that bloody security cl—”
Pyrrha said, “Then who exactly is the negotiator?”
“That is what we would all dearly love to know,” said We Suffer. “This has delighted many factions, Unjust Hope’s included … they are saying, ah, we have the power, John Gaius is taking us and the matter very seriously.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” said Camilla. “You’re selling him back the Sixth House.”
There was a buzzing intake of breath as though Two-Thigh-Machetes was going to say something, but Pyrrha cut in swiftly: “John Gaius has always taken you seriously. Commander, what does this mean about the due date?”
We Suffer said, “The Hopers are asking for a progress report.”
Her goggles, buried so deeply beneath her hood, were angled toward Nona. Everyone in the room suddenly remembered Nona existed, and looked at her too; she felt exposed, and regretted everything until Camilla gave her that tiny expression—that smile so minute it could slip underneath a doorway—and she felt better.
Crown said, “But we’ve got months and months. She’s come along wonderfully … Point out we’ve got other ways and means.”
“I point out things to the others continually,” said We Suffer. “Unfortunately, everyone agrees that we have exhausted the ways and are very, very low on the means. I agree on her magnificent progress. But she is not yet what we hoped for, and I include myself here.”
Camilla said, “Tell them collaring Lyctors hasn’t gone so well for you.”
We Suffer pressed her gloved fingertips together. “Well, no, that is not so true,” she said meditatively. “Ctesiphon’s interactions with Source Joyeuse and Source Piotra got us many things. Accurate fleet schematics for the first time in a hundred years. Goodness, that was a day. I was only a young soldier then, but that was exciting. And the location of the Mithraeum … very useful. Not to mention a genuine attempt on the life of John Gaius. I know it did not take, but that in itself was important information. We would know nothing about Resurrection Beasts without Commander Wake”—here she and the bodyguard saluted the portrait on the wall, and Pyrrha’s mouth did something strange)—“and her Source Aegis … leading to contact with a House, twenty years ago. A terrible mission failure, we thought. Until the posthumous contact a year ago. No, interacting with Lyctors has not been so bad. Of course, our greatest ally was Source Chrysaor, who taught us all about the obelisks and steles, and who defeated ten high-ranking House personnel and one necromantic monster.”
“Cytherea took out a handful of adults, a handful of kids, and an old science project,” said Pyrrha impatiently. “And she let two new Lyctors through the net. It wasn’t her best effort. Whatever she was doing at Canaan House, it wasn’t helping you out. Come on, Commander. When you say they want progress, do you mean they want to weaponise her? Or is she merely another part of their negotiation bundle?”
Camilla said, “Anyone who would describe two fourteen-year-olds as high-ranking House personnel isn’t interested in Nona as a person.”
We Suffer held up a hand. “Camilla Hect,” she said, “I am not trying to be cruel. You must see it from our point of view. When you stand in our shoes, Chrysaor—Cytherea the First—came to us, and identified the crisis of many new Lyctors about to rise, and removed it. There were eight powerful necromancers at Canaan House … to us, the seeds of eight more enemies we could never hope to defeat. Lyctors take out the very flooring from beneath our feet. We cannot see them coming. We can never stop them. When they arrive the clock starts, and another home is taken away from us … our children stateless, our grandchildren perpetual nomads. How many lives, balanced against those ten dead people and that one old—thing?”
“Cytherea didn’t kill ten people,” Cam said. The pen was held very tightly between thumb and forefinger now, and it didn’t move. “She only killed six. The cavalier primary of the Second House killed your monster, and died at its hands. The Eighth was killed by something even we don’t understand. And the Sixth House went out on its own terms.”
There was an unpleasant silence.
“What happened at Canaan House wasn’t your victory, Commander,” said Camilla. “It was Cytherea’s. She was the only person in that whole building who got what they wanted … you just got lucky off the scraps she dropped. And you still think Lyctors are a gun you can wield? What happens if we give you the one you want, right here, right now? In these barracks, at full power, and mad with hive exposure? Assume the worst, ignore the best. And the worst here is pretty bad.”
“You don’t know anything about the worst,” said the bodyguard. “You want to know what the real worst-case plan is? I helped craft it. We go over the cowards’ heads, we don’t wait for negotiations. We evacuate who we can, we liquidate that barracks, we carpet-bomb the whole place. We make sure that every zombie on the planet is dead. I think that big blue son of a bitch is here looking for zombies. No more zombies? No more sphere. Isn’t it crazy how you always argue for a plan in which the zombies get to live?”
Crown slapped the table so sharply that everyone jumped, except Pyrrha.
“Oh, shut up! Just shut up … I’m sick of your fake bravado and bloodlust. Leave my wing alone. I can’t stand listening to you rark.”
The room fell silent, the bodyguard too. Crown and the guard stared at each other through a layer of air-toggle mask and welding goggles with a hate that was genuine.
“You’re only boobs, hair, and talk, Crown,” said the guard.
“No,” said Crown. “I’m boobs and hair and talk and a hell of a sword hand.”
“Did you think that sounded cool?” said the guard.
“You ignored my warning. Both of you are on bullet duty in your frees today,” said We Suffer. “This is for saying boobs, and for being boobs yourselves. Repeat it again and it is two days, as promised.”
The bodyguard stood so tall and so hard that they trembled, vibrating slightly. Crown fell back in her chair, arms crossed. We Suffer sat back too. The hood fell a little away from her face, and the black lenses covering her eyes now gleamed beneath the dimmed lamps, reflecting all of them in the glass.
“Troia cell,” she said, “this is an old conversation. It is one we have had over and over again. You know the ways in which I am sympathetic and in which I am not. It is not simply a matter of the sixteen. If I say, ‘The Lyctor experiment is going well in that the Lyctor now talks in full sentences but shows no signs of power,’ then the others will definitely say, ‘Useless. Offer her up with the others.’ If I lie and say, ‘We will soon have a Lyctor on hand,’ the Hopers will want me to prove it. And the Hopers are the ones who are in charge of your people’s incarceration, and I cannot fob them off. Everyone wants to know what we have on the table before the negotiators arrive, and I am expected to say our part later today. Exactly what I say … exactly how I say it … should matter very much to you right now.”
Camilla said, “Thanks for reminding me. I want Sixth House proof of life.”
Crown said, “You know there’s no question of harming them, especially at the moment.”
“Proof of life. Now,” said Camilla steadily. “I want to make sure there’s still sixteen. Maybe the reason they want Nona is to patch up numbers, and hide how many of them have died under torture.”
We Suffer said stiffly, “I was the one who promised them clemency, Hect. There is a no-torture clause. Merv Wing know that.”
“Yeah, well,” said Pyrrha, “you aren’t exactly showing a united front.”
“Unjust Hope is a very crap human being,” said We Suffer, “but my word is still not nothing in Blood of Eden.”
Pyrrha said, “How certain are you of that?”
There was a long silence. We Suffer wheezed through the mask, and then said abruptly, “I had intended to give you this anyway … Here.”
She opened up a brown-paper folder, and took from it a little piece of electronics, a fingernail-shaped thing with prongs. She tapped on a space in the cracked wooden veneer on the table, and nothing happened, so she tapped again more violently and it reluctantly opened—a panel in the wood, revealing hard white plastic sockets and buttons. Camilla was still again, chin in one hand and pen in the other, more like a picture of Camilla than Camilla herself. There was a sudden noisy crackle from the speakers in the walls, and then a disembodied voice— “Master Archivist Juno Zeta reporting, remaining as representative of the Oversight Body in lieu of the Master Warden. I count six days, seven hours, and forty-six minutes since the last recording. In answer to the previous question, the article title is Heteroscedasticity in Viscus Models for Long-Term Data. Head count standard. All well within the house formerly identified as Sixth. Awaiting further instructions.”
The pen had scratched a tiny mark into the paper Camilla had been doodling on. Her shoulders suddenly relaxed, and she clicked the pen, and her face minutely bent toward the mark.
“Do you accept this as proof of life?” said We Suffer.
“Yes,” she said. “This is the next proof-of-life question: How many pages in my Scholar’s thesis?”
We Suffer wrote that down. “All right. I cannot guarantee the next drop coming soon under these circumstances, but I will try to make it timely. Please, Camilla Hect, give me something.”
Camilla sat ramrod-straight, very still, in a pose of pure thought.
“Tell them they’ll have a Lyctor, or equivalent, if they wait,” she said.
“Now there’s a grim fucking thought,” said Two-Thigh-Machetes.
We Suffer said levelly, “Then we go with promises? Fine. Is there anything else?”
“Well, I need the bathroom,” said Nona.
“Ah, in the end, all of us are people … who need the bathroom,” said We Suffer, and leant back in her chair.
“You think I am trying to shore up my own failing power base,” We Suffer said finally. She had pressed her hands together so that it looked as though she were praying. “You think I am either cruel and traitorous—that I had thought this was the outcome of the great coming-together that we hoped for—or stupid, that I was naive. I am not naive … I had just never thought we would be given such a terrible scare, or such a terrible chance. I wish for Blood of Eden to fight, and fight beautifully; to win with whatever aid or succour your Houses may bestow. I do not want to run anymore. Now the negotiator comes. What will John Gaius ask for, and what will John Gaius want? And will we give it to him? All I can tell you is I am prepared to give my answer … and I feel that Blood of Eden would stand with me if they only knew how, if they were given good reasons. Please help me give them those reasons. We are done here. Let us all go to the bathroom. Dismissed, Ctesiphon-3, Troia cell.”
13
CROWN STOOD, AND BOWED, and tapped her chest three times with an open palm, which was the Blood of Eden way; then she began untaping Pyrrha from her seat, unmercifully, with Pyrrha barely wincing. We Suffer kept her seat as they filed out, Camilla in front, Pyrrha after, and Crown bringing up the rear, and before the door was closed Nona heard the bodyguard say: “Can I bloody well leave now? The package is late for work.” (“PACKAGE ZZZT IS LATE FOR WORK.”)
Crown’s jaw was gritted fast. She automatically started shepherding Nona toward the bathroom down the corridor, but Nona said—“Why does Pash hate us so much?”
Crown was so startled that her jaw relaxed.
“How could you have known that was Our Lady of the Passion?”
“It’s … it’s bones,” said Nona, struggling to articulate. “Beneath her clothes. The way she moves her bones,” and Camilla looked at her for the longest time.
“Pash,” said Crown darkly, “is what happens when nepotism and bullshit collide. Boobs and hair…?! My hair is naturally big and manageable, dickhead! I haven’t been able to condition properly for a year!”
There were two guards waiting outside. They led Pyrrha away to get her collar taken off. Pyrrha went with them much more meekly than Nona expected, and just turned her head to say to Nona: “Remember to stuff,” before the guards shuffled her onward with the butts of their rifles.
As though she wouldn’t. When Nona was locked away in the bathroom stall stealing toilet paper, judiciously stuffing it down her shirt as Pyrrha had taught her—Pyrrha had a very Blood of Eden mindset, if you thought about it—she heard Camilla outside by the sinks, saying quietly: “Let me see her.”
Crown said, as though casually surprised, “Do you really want to? It’s not a good day. She’s in and out … Moving her has been a royal bitch. We’ve had to keep shifting her between beds ever since we got her here.”
“Okay. Let me see her.”
“If you agitate—”
Camilla said, “You know I can help her, Third. You know I want to.”
It seemed like Crown was going to say a joke or something dismissive again, but then she said, “So long as Dve doesn’t tag along. Your call.”
When Nona rustled her way out of the stall, Camilla looked at her chest, and her mouth quirked in something that might have been the tiniest and most beautiful smile yet. But Crown didn’t notice. Her lovely head was bowed and her sooty eyelashes lowered. Nona said, “Are we going right away? I’m going to be so late for school,” but Camilla said, “I want to make a quick visit first. Do you want to come with, or do you want to stay in the waiting room and wait for Pyrrha?”
The waiting room was not an option; Nona would be stuck with some Edenite bodyguard who wouldn’t even talk to her, and no magazines, and nothing to look at. But Camilla loved to give people choices. Nona hated how she fell for that every time: whenever Camilla said something like, “Cereal, or eggs?” Nona would be tricked into saying Cereal even though she had wanted to choose Nothing!! But this choice was easy; she liked visits.
