She’d hoped to find the restaurants – well, not open for business, but perhaps one or two of the dozen with doors ajar. But a line of shutters and solid glass doors greeted her, and she’d collected too many cuts in awkward places making her way out of the wrecked bathroom to be eager about breaking in. There was, however, something unexpected where the wharf widened and curved around to its second mooring. A café table set with a brilliant white tablecloth. Seated very upright beside it was a girl, pouring herself a cup of tea.
And eating scones. Scones with jam and cream.
The girl looked around as Madeleine approached, providing a glimpse of starry blue streaks marking her throat. She was short, curvy, her eyes and light brown skin suggesting Asian heritage, though her hair was a wild mass of spiral curls, held back from her face by a red tartan bandanna. Her eyes were swollen, but she managed a crooked sort of smile.
"Table for one?"
Madeleine laughed, and then stopped because her laughter worked as well as the girl’s smile. "I’m having to hold myself back from mugging you for your little pot of jam."
"Ha." This time the smile worked, warm with wry edges. "I could tip you into the bay before you got so much as a spoonful. Sit down, I’ll bring some more out."
Hunger overrode any pretence of restraint, and Madeleine swallowed the remaining half-scone before the girl had taken two steps, then quickly emptied what was left of the little serving pot of jam and cream, running her finger around the interior to catch the last traces. The tea was sugarless, but Madeleine drank it anyway, and finished off the milk. Then she pulled off her backpack and sat down, embarrassed, staring at her sandals poking from beneath the hem of the green maxi-dress she’d liberated from Tyler’s closet. Her toes glimmered back at her.
"One Devonshire tea, special Blue serving," the girl said, putting down a tray holding a half-dozen scones, whipped cream, and a jar of plum jam. She picked up the teapot and left again, and by the time she was back, lugging a chair while balancing a tray, Madeleine had inhaled four still-warm scones and was spreading jam on the fifth.
"Sorry." Madeleine had recovered enough to put down the jam and make room for a larger teapot and accompanying cups and milk. "Thanks."
"No problem – it keeps hitting me like that. You’ve got to stay ahead of it." She surveyed Madeleine frankly, gaze lingering on her face and hands, and Madeleine, uncomfortable with the extent of her blueness, was glad she’d worn a long-sleeved shirt knotted over the dress. "I’m Noi."
"Madeleine."
They drank tea in silence. Madeleine, who constantly received report cards declaring "does not work well with others" and "does not participate in group activities", searched for the right thing to say. With a glance toward the restaurant, Nikosia, she tried: "Did you stay in there the entire time?"
"No." Noi’s voice dropped. "Once the stain started showing, everybody went home. I…there’s no-one at my home now, so I came back to check on Niko."
Madeleine awkwardly took another bite of scone, giving the girl time to take a few deep breaths. "Niko?"
"My boss. I knew he lived alone, that no-one would be around to check on him." Her voice wavered again, then firmed, and a ghost of a smile emerged. "I’ve only been here a few months – first year of my apprenticeship – and he was a little tin-pot dictator who had me on prep and cleaning for forever. But he took me on, so I owed him for that, and, well. He was in his apartment."
Madeleine didn’t need to ask for details: television had fed her more than enough statistics. In the areas of heaviest dust exposure the first deaths had been recorded within twenty-four hours of the darkening of wrists, though for most the crisis point was after the two to three day point. Green stains were slower to regain strength, but so far had a much higher survival rate. Even among Greens it still took the very young, the sick and weak, the elderly – and a great many others who were none of these. Surviving Blues were rare. Noi had stayed at her home till everyone there died, and then returned to find this Niko dead as well. Making scones and drinking tea in the sun was a better response than Madeleine would likely have managed.
"My parents haven’t shown any signs yet," she said, glad and guilty to be able to say that. "They live at Leumeah, and had a little time to prepare."
"That’s southwest, right? Are you going to head out there?"
"And risk letting in the dust – or infecting them if this is infectious?" Madeleine shook her head. "I’m borrowing my cousin’s apartment. I’ll stick there until–" She stopped, unsure what limit there was to until. Tyler had sent her a text two days ago, letting her know he was still at Sydney Airport, no longer on the plane. Then, nothing.
"Want to go look at it?"
Noi was gazing up at the Spire, and Madeleine suddenly regretted not bringing her sketchpad, and then was overwhelmingly glad for that reaction. Since she’d woken she’d spent hours staring at Tyler’s portrait, but had inexplicably lacked any urge to complete it. She’d thought she’d lost something, but with Noi her usual drive to capture people around her had revived.
But Madeleine also wanted to see the Spire again up close, to compare skin to stone, so she finished off the last of the scones, and helped Noi put her table away and lock up. Noi had obviously been tidying earlier – Nikosia was the only restaurant where the outside tables had been cleared of dusted food. Then they started up the curving multi-flight stair to The Domain.
Noi stopped abruptly, and Madeleine barely avoided running into her. Then she saw the reason: an ungainly tumble of school uniform and blue-patched limbs sprawled at the foot of the next flight of stairs. The second body Madeleine had seen in person.
"He has stars," Noi said, fingers digging into Madeleine’s arm.
After a beat, Madeleine understood Noi’s reaction. The stars developed after the cramps, at what the TV was calling the survival point for Blues.
"Maybe there’s a stage we haven’t hit yet," she said, approaching the body reluctantly.
He’d been around her own age, and what she thought of as half-made: someone who’d shot up in height recently, and was all bony wrists and coat-hanger shoulders, not yet fully filled out. Wide mouth, strong nose, and very straight, dark brows below a mop of black hair which didn’t quite curl. Madeleine immediately wanted to draw him as well, which felt a wildly inappropriate thing to do with the body of some poor random boy who had died of being Blue.
"I think he’s breathing," Noi said.
"Could he have fainted from hunger?" Madeleine reached down to press fingers to the boy’s throat, and easily found a pulse.
Noi joined the examination. "There’s an enormous lump on the side of his head," she said, and showed Madeleine red-streaked fingers. "I guess we better take him back to the restaurant. This should be interesting."
Madeleine rescued a pair of rimless glasses about to slide out the boy’s pocket, then she and Noi carefully straightened him and tried to work out how to get someone taller than either of them down several unforgiving flights of stairs.
"If I go first, with his knees hooked over my shoulders, and you lift him under the armpits?" Noi suggested.
They experimented with this, and eventually managed to get enough of the boy off the ground to move down. The steep, lowest flight was hardest, both of them struggling, but not daring to stop. It wasn’t that he was impossibly heavy, but they needed to keep pace with each other or be pulled off balance. The last few steps were particularly wobbly.