Nona the Ninth, page 42
Pyrrha said, “Don’t freak out, junior. Cool it,” but she didn’t feel cool at all, she felt horribly hot. Something itched wetly and warmly on the back of her neck, and she raised a trembling hand to touch the spot, but Pyrrha took her wrist and said, “Don’t smear it. It’s meant to keep … to keep you in the body as long as possible.”
The grip on Nona’s wrist was firm and gentle and totally normal—how many times had Pyrrha grasped her wrist, before crossing a road, or helping her stand, or twirling her around to songs on the radio? But from some hole in the back of Nona’s cupboard behind a fake plank of wood in Nona’s brain, her voice said roughly: “Don’t touch me.”
Pyrrha dropped her wrist, and Nona’s voice went on and on:
“Did you think this was fun, Pyrrha Dve? Did you think this was lovely? Family. Blood. Together. Kiss, kiss. A child’s game. You say nice words and everyone pretends they are the words you say. Here is a house. We live in it. Worms slithering over each other … Did you like playing pretend? Did you like being mother and father? You should have given into your desires and eaten us. Chew and swallow. More natural. Would have respected you for it…”
The voice died away and Nona, in agonies of hatred and repulsion and embarrassment, tried to curl up in on herself, only it didn’t work. She felt as though she had been interrupted in the bathroom. White-hot, fatal shame seemed to start in her middle and travel outward, and she got her own voice and she said—
“Don’t, don’t, don’t. Don’t do this to me, Pyrrha … Pyrrha, just let me die. It’s nicer. I can’t bear it.”
Nona cried for a little while. The tears oozed out of her eyes and landed in her lap. Her face felt hot, and the back of her neck was sore and itchy. After a while the tears subsided, and Pyrrha said— “Better?”
“Yeah,” said Nona, and felt her voice tremble, but said more steadily: “Yes. Can I have a tissue?”
“Wait till Cam and Sextus get here. You don’t want any tissue that’s been in my pockets.”
“Did they find the Sixth House?”
“Yes—thanks to you. And the megatrucks weren’t hard to stop either. The moment Ctesiphon grounded the first one, the others pretty well gave up. It’s … extenuating circumstances.”
This cheered Nona up a little. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
Pyrrha’s face did not look as though she thought it was altogether good.
“Nona,” she said carefully, “what if I told you I thought this was the end of the line, honey? I’m not sure any of us are getting out of this one.”
This cheered Nona up a lot, but she hesitated before saying so. It was an awful relief … that she and Pyrrha and Cam and Palamedes were all together, and nobody had to worry about the next day, or the day after that; that she could put everything else out of her mind—violently put everything else out of her mind—and she did not have to try anymore. But her relief was hard to articulate in a way that did not make her sound awful. So she simply said, “I’ll behave.”
“Let’s go see the others,” said Pyrrha. “You okay to be picked up again?”
Pyrrha’s boots crunched on the shiny black surface as she carried Nona. A megatruck loomed out of the darkness, blizzarded over with luminous strips, bigger than any truck Nona had ever seen. It was as tall as a house. If it had been driven up somehow next to the classroom building you could have stepped out of the window and stood on the top. It rose up out of sight, its top lost to the blackness, and was so wide that it took Pyrrha something like twenty seconds to walk around its bumper. A huge shutter had opened, and a ramp had been laid down, and there were people milling around next to a much smaller Blood of Eden truck with the soldiers laying people down on rollaway beds: checking them over, doing something medical, fluttering in the darkness like moths. Nona noticed many of the people being helped had wide, watery white eyes just like the makeup that Nona had gotten earlier: the sticky, filmy gazes that had so terrified Honesty’s crew.
Camilla was sitting in a chair. The chair had wheels. She had a clipboard in her hands, and the body of Ianthe Naberius was there behind the chair, as Palamedes in his shoulders and the line of his head as ever. Various people tottered down the ramps, assisted by Blood of Eden soldiers—Crown and, astonishingly, Pash, helping an extremely feeble and aged person, about Nona’s size. Palamedes looked very distracted as they approached. He was saying— “Cam, can we get any update on the tunnels?—For fuck’s sake, can someone please stop my mother from walking around talking to Blood of Eden? Someone’s going to put a bullet in her head. Go ask Kester Cinque to do it; he can actually talk to people, though I think right now he’s wishing he never left Koniortos. Where are your fathers? Why is this like herding chickens? Nona, how are you?”
Nona felt very lost and astonished and weary. “Are all these your family?” she asked.
“Metaphorically yes, literally it’s complicated,” he said. There was a great calm relief in his body, which Nona did not expect. Cam was slumped in her chair and she was about six degrees paler than she had ever been. “My mother wanted to meet you—too bad for her, I assume she’s off asking one of the junior officers about the philosophy of violence and how these trucks work and what everyone does for a living.”
Most of the people being helped could not stand, and they all looked thin and crumpled and haggard, though quite cheerful in many cases, Nona thought. Pyrrha looked around and said, “Sextus, any Heralds get down here, I’m not sure these people will survive.”
Camilla said, “They wouldn’t.”
Her voice was thin, barely a whisper. Palamedes supplied, “They’re in pretty poor shape, yes … but there’s also everyone in the city to think about. I’ve tried to explain to them what’s happening, and they’ve got the gist, but before you ask about necromancy, that’s right out. The Master Archivist says any display of aptitude on their part crocks them for days—blinding themselves nearly killed them, and that was when they were much stronger. There’s no hope of us taking anyone back to the barracks to work on something as fine-grained as those wards Ianthe left.”
Nona felt herself being shunted around in Pyrrha’s arms, her weight shifted from side to side. Pyrrha said, “And Ianthe…”
“Kicking,” said Palamedes. He smiled again. “She’s getting lively now. And quite shockingly angry.”
“Sextus,” said Pyrrha, “I’m not used to saying this, but I’m fresh out of plans, and either you’re so completely high on lovey-dovey cavalier shit that you’ve taken leave of your senses—and, you know, fair do’s, I’ve been there—or you know something I don’t.”
“It’s not that I know anything, Pyrrha,” said Palamedes. “It’s that I’m feeling ready to gamble. In a couple of minutes—once the commander gets back to me with the manual—I’m loading everyone here back into the truck. They’re going over it now, in case Merv Wing left anything untoward inside.”
Nona peered around into the truck, into the big well of dim light, and tried to be positive but cautious.
“Palamedes, you know I get motion sick.”
“I know. I’m sorry. You’ll only have to put up with it for a bit, Nona, I promise.”
Pyrrha said, “Look, I know this thing has the tonnage you usually find in spacecraft, but if your plan is to hoon around the city squashing Heralds as you go I have to tell you: that’s not going to work.”
“Didn’t think of that,” said Camilla.
Palamedes said, “No. Don’t worry, Dve, my ambitions don’t extend to the city surface. Hang on—here comes the committee.”
The commander and someone that Nona had never met walked into the big yellow square of light in front of the ramp. The commander looked normal, except Nona was struck afresh by the enormous contrast between her and Palamedes: We Suffer looked a lot more like Pyrrha, in that she was stressed and wild-eyed and had a fatal, brisk focus that was completely at odds with Palamedes’s cheerful anticipation. Palamedes was acting as though he were a tiny at show-and-tell who had brought in his favourite toy with the expectation that he was about to get two minutes all to himself to tell the whole room about it, even the big kids. The crumpled, blind-eyed woman next to We Suffer, who walked with one hand on her gracefully extended arm, stopped in the light. She had quick features and a very long braid of dark, silvering hair, so long that it made Nona wish to have her own braids back. She looked quite old—maybe older even than We Suffer, marks of deep care delineated on her face—and wasn’t glamorous, and wouldn’t have been even had she been in fresh clothes.
“Here’s the numbers, Master Warden,” she said, and leant out with a sheaf of paper. “I haven’t been able to double-check them—I did an initial calculation, but of course, the basic mathematics can’t be relied upon. I will say that my computation has come along wonderfully in the past couple of months. We were having quite a fun time in my corner doing quadratics out loud until the Chair threatened to toss us out of the truck. How are they?”
Palamedes squatted down to check the papers with Camilla. Cam said, “If we could get inside the dome, this wouldn’t matter.”
“I can’t navigate like that, Cam. I’m not sure anyone can. I never knew where I was, spatially, and exiting and entering must be hell—we’re going to have to do this on the fly. Gideon’s ponied up some of the inside layout. Our best bet sounds like their landing platform—if we get anywhere even slightly near it…”
Pyrrha cleared her throat. “Commander, casualties?”
We Suffer sighed. “Out of the frying pan,” she said, “into another frying pan—falling out of that frying pan—into the underworld, where there is a huge frying pan where the devils dance, and say, ‘Fuck to you.’”
“You always had a way with words,” said Pyrrha. “Are they everywhere, or localised?”
“Ctesiphon is at the mouth of the tunnel and further inside. I cannot get good reports. We are doing fine—but we will run out of bullets in a few hours. They are having a veritable orgy out there, and we cannot use explosives unless we want to collapse the tunnel. And I do not want to collapse the tunnel, because there is no getting out.”
“Roger that,” said Pyrrha.
The archivist said, “That’s a new voice,” and Palamedes said cheerfully, “Archivist, this is Pyrrha Dve, whom Cam and I credit with keeping us alive … please be very nice to her. The Sixth House owes Pyrrha Dve everything barring tenure. All right,” he said, and tapped a knuckle on the sheaf of papers. “That’s all we’re going to get. Commander, I’m about to ask that we put the Sixth House back on this truck—we don’t need to be too worried about living space, this is temporary. If you want to pack anything on here yourself, tell me now.”
The commander stepped forward into the light. The archivist, plait twitching, stepped with her.
“Palamedes Sextus,” she said, “how do you hope to get out of here?”
“We’re heading through the River,” said Palamedes. “I plan on getting everyone to the Nine Houses, and—once we complete the mission—heading back to the Sixth House. Which, so you know, is parked on an exoplanet just outside the star system.”
Pyrrha demanded—
“Are you a fantasist, boy, or only out of your mind? Your cav’s the one with no blood left, so there’s no excuse for you.”
“I believe it will work,” said Palamedes.
“I know it won’t. You can’t travel the River. You’ve never been trained, for one thing.”
“That is the tricky part,” admitted Palamedes. “But Pyrrha, I’ve spent time in the River … I’ve studied it, albeit in a strange and partial way. I think I can accurately navigate.”
“I don’t care how much you learnt in that bubble. You’re not a Lyctor,” said Pyrrha. “You can’t keep the ghosts off. They’ll strip you to the bone.”
“Not this time,” said Palamedes—very lightly.
Nona felt Pyrrha’s arms suddenly lose their normal untrembling strength and let her slip down a couple of centimetres until she said urgently, “Pyrrha, you’re dropping me,” and Pyrrha gathered her back up.
We Suffer said, “I need you to tell me you can do this with a certainty.”
“I can give you ninety percent,” said Palamedes.
“Prove it.”
Palamedes passed the sheaf of papers back to We Suffer. He said, “Mum, can you get Kiana? She should be here … and Cam’s dads—”
“No. Just Kiki,” said Camilla. “Just my sister. They won’t … They might not understand, Warden.”
The archivist was saying, in quite a jaunty and familiar way, “Ah, family matters—would you give me your arm, Commander?—Are you a family woman yourself?—Oh, and when was the divorce…”
Palamedes wheeled Camilla into the dark, back toward the truck that Nona had woken up inside. Pyrrha looked after them, her face and eyes wild; she followed without being asked to, and Nona clasped her arms around Pyrrha’s shoulders. She did not understand.
The corpse prince was sitting on the back step of the truck when they got there. Palamedes had hit the brakes on the wheeled chair and Camilla was slumped back in it. Even in the darkness of the tunnel Nona could tell that she was in a terrible way. She was very calm but very feeble; her mouth had gone dark.
“No. No more medication,” Nona heard her say clearly. “Need my head … want it clear.”
Pyrrha sat Nona on the truck step, blindly, despite Nona’s warning squawk; Nona very much did not want to be sat next to the shimmering white figure of the dead Kiriona Gaia, who was watching the proceedings with the lively interest of a spectator at a ballgame. Pyrrha practically stumbled away—she dropped to her knees before the chair and Palamedes—she reached out and took Palamedes’s hand, and then Camilla’s. Her face and hands showed only dumb despair.
“I’ve loved you two,” she said. “Not well. Not even wholesomely. I don’t have it in me. But I’ve loved you—in a better world I’d be able to say, ‘Like you were my own,’ but I don’t know what that would even mean anymore. You’ve been my agents … you’ve been stand-ins for something I haven’t had for longer than either of you can understand. Which is why I’m saying—don’t do this. Please, don’t do this.”
Neither of them answered.
Pyrrha continued urgently: “Understand that once you do this, you can’t take it back. It’s better to die. There’s a power to dying clean … dying free. It’s not love, what you’re about to do. It’s not beautiful and it’s not powerful. It’s a mistake. We didn’t even do it right … we were children—playing with the reflections of stars in a pool of water … thinking it was space.”
Palamedes stood, and Pyrrha stood with him. He reached out and grasped her wrist strongly. “Whatever you think we’re doing, we’re not,” he said.
“Whatever you think you’re doing,” said Pyrrha, “you shouldn’t.”
Camilla said, “Just watch us.”
Pyrrha tugged her wrist free of Palamedes’s hand. She reached down, and tilted Camilla’s chin up, and looked at her for the longest time. Then she leant down—she kissed her brusquely and briefly on the forehead—and, startlingly and even more briefly, on the mouth. Nona, who even then could never ditch the lessons of the hand and the mouth, watched that kiss and felt very sad. It was like watching Pyrrha stealing something she didn’t want to take—reaching out for the juicy, cherry-red part of the oven, even when she knew that all it could give her was a burn. And Nona saw Camilla, with her cold, navy blue mouth, and could tell that Camilla understood.
Camilla said, “Could you try not to be such a chicken hawk, Pyrrha?”
Pyrrha reached out, ruffled the perfect hair of the body of Ianthe Naberius, and leant in to briefly kiss Palamedes too—Palamedes said, tolerant and amused, “You are an appalling old roué, Dve,”—and Pyrrha said, “Call me if you need me. Otherwise, see you around.”
Pyrrha crossed over to the truck, to Nona, and leant heavily into the interior; Nona could see that she was sweating, in exactly the same way she had sweated after the bottle of bleach. She mumbled, “You knew this was happening. You knew this was happening months ago,” and when Nona put her hand on Pyrrha’s, it was like Pyrrha hadn’t even noticed her.
By now, other people had filtered through to stand in a ragged semicircle around the wheelchair. There was the birdlike lady with the braid, We Suffer, a tall, lanky, creased young woman in grey whose face looked so startlingly like Cam’s that Nona wondered at it; her hair was nearly all shaved off on both sides, and unlike the others her eyes weren’t milky-white at all, they were set deep and dark in a face like a hawk’s. Crown joined them too, golden, shining Crown, another ragged lamp in the darkness. She was tying her fingers in knots, then untying them, over and over.
Nobody said a thing. Camilla’s head was lolled back against the chair, but she abruptly stood—stood on her own power, rolling her shoulders, cracking her neck. Palamedes drew her to sit down on the cold road, and they sat facing each other, cross-legged. It took Camilla a long time to fold her legs, and when she did, she made a kind of deep oof noise that told Nona it had cost her. She drew one of her knives from its holder, and laid it down between them on the concrete.
All at once, the ragged watchers closed in—just a few steps—so that they formed a ring: not tight enough to smother, but like they were trying to shut out the rest of that vast, empty tunnel, the far-off echoes of bullets. Nona instinctively moved forward, and nearly fell out of the truck; Pyrrha caught her up and they sank to the ground together. Kiriona Gaia was staring politely at the side of the truck, as though there were something really interesting on the paintwork.
“Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we?” Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe. “We had something very nearly perfect … the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.”
