“We don’t tell her about anything,” said Nico. “It’s a secret.”
“That’s right,” Lady Katchatka said. “It’s a secret.”
Antonio and Petro nodded.
After the two eldest boys returned to their cards Nico stood up and swished his katana through the air, listening to its note; then he wiped its blade one final time and sat himself at a window seat, staring out over the wastes of Katchatka Segment below. A moment later, his mother joined him. Unfortunately, they were too far away for Lady Neku to hear what was said.
When their conversation was done, Lady Katchatka bent forward and kissed Nico carefully on the forehead. She left without bothering to say goodbye to the others.
Lady Neku half expected Nico to follow, but all he did was stroll over to where Antonio and Petro knelt and squat beside them. At the end of that round, Antonio dealt the cards into fresh piles and all three brothers began to play.
“I don’t get it,” said Luc, when Lady Neku eventually found him sulking in the Stroll Garden. “Why do you dress like that?”
Protocol said he lived with her family for the time it took to complete the celebrations that ensured she would remain for the rest of her life within his. Luc made little pretence about hating every minute of his enforced stay.
“Why do I…” One of the things Lady Neku found most odd about Luc was the innocence with which he asked questions. Surely he’d been told that every question revealed more about the person asking than could be offset by knowing the answer?
Yet Luc simply asked. Odd was one word for it. Stupid was another. Because the other thing Lady Neku found strange about Luc was that he appeared to believe everything she told him. There was a third strangeness. Which was that Neku had begun to find herself giving truthful answers to the questions Luc asked, because tricking him and lying were just too easy. If nothing else, she found a novelty value in being honest.
“Dress like what?” Neku demanded.
“You know.” Luc flapped a hand. “All this black. And that shirt.”
“What about it?”
“It’s…” He shrugged, then flapped his hand again. Lady Neku guessed he meant to indicate the rips. Luc went red every time he got embarrassed. I mean, she thought, how stupid a modification was that?
Lady Neku wore a skirt of crumpled silk ripped to show the layers beneath. The skirt was old and had been spun by tiny worms fed on starlight, or so her mother said. It fluoresced in the daylight, but wear it at night and it became darker than the deepest shadow, a mere absence of light wrapped around the person inside.
It had been Lady Neku’s favourite, until she mentioned this to her mother and Lady Katchatka had replied, dismissively, that she’d also loved it at her daughter’s age. Now Lady Neku hated it, but continued to wear the garment to stop her mother from knowing the effect of those words.
Anyway, it was not the skirt that bothered Luc, nor the niello bangles and memory beads around Lady Neku’s wrists, it was her top. “It’s okay,” said Lady Neku. “You can stare. Everybody else does.”
“Everybody?”
“Nico, Antonio, and Petro.”
When Luc bit his bottom lip it made Lady Neku wonder what she’d said. And that was enough to push her into considering his question carefully. It was only after she’d dragged Luc to a tiny waterfall and sat him beside her on the grass that Lady Neku wondered if his unworldly innocence were some weird double bluff, designed to manipulate her into telling him the truth. If so, then she was impressed, because it was working.
“What?” Luc said.
“Nothing,” said Lady Neku. “I’m just not used to talking to people. So you’ll have to listen carefully.”
“To what?”
“My reasons. Why I wear black.”
“I understand it’s the Katchatka colour,” said Luc. “It’s the way you all dress. You know, it’s just the…” A shake of his head, then one hand went up to rub his eyes.
If he’d only get his mouth fixed, thought Lady Neku, he’d be almost good looking. Pulling up her knees, she twisted her skirt decorously around her ankles and rested her chin on her hands.
Lady Neku was thinking.
“Okay,” she said. “It goes like this…My mother likes torn clothes because they look good on her and my brothers dress the same because they follow my mother’s example. I wear this shirt because it renders me invisible to them…”
Lady Neku held up a hand, stilling Luc’s question. “Let me finish,” she said. “The rips are house style. If I dressed as neatly as you I’d be making an exhibition of myself. Does that make sense?”
Sitting back, Lady Neku lowered her knees and unfolded her arms. “What do you see when you look at me?” she demanded.
His blush was her answer.
“Exactly,” said Lady Neku.
“That’s how you make yourself invisible?” Luc said softly. He nodded, then nodded again, considering her words. “But I still don’t understand. Who are you hiding from?”
It took Lady Neku ninety minutes to explain to Luc the background, history, and internal politics of her family. And at the end, all he said was, “You’re hiding from the lot of them?”
And when she scowled, he nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I can see how that might work.”
Sweeping hair from his eyes, Nico slashed through the air and a dozen invisible enemies died beneath his flurry of blows, then a dozen more as he dropped, swept low with a particularly lethal cut, and danced away across the duelling room. When he finally came to a standstill in front of Lady Neku, his brothers, and Luc, he’d barely broken sweat.
“Sweet,” he said. Nico was talking about the blade.
“Let me try,” said Petro.
Nico shook his head.
“Come on,” Petro said. “It’s not even yours.”
“It is now,” said Nico. “I found it. Go find your own.”
But Petro wouldn’t, because that meant going to the surface, tracking down an object of value, and then wresting it from the original owner. And Petro grew sick simply thinking about surface dwellers and the plagues they carried. Not something that worried Nico, who time and again had returned with blood splattering his arms. “Here…” Nico tossed the katana to Luc, all three brothers grinning as Luc fumbled his catch. “You can borrow it,” said Nico. “I’m sure Petro would be delighted to fight you.”
Petro scowled, mainly because Luc got to try the blade and not him. Which, obviously enough, was why Nico gave Luc the katana in the first place. Lady Neku’s family could be very predictable.
“I’m not that good,” said Luc, as he tried the katana for balance. He was rewarded with a laugh from Nico.
“Have a go, anyway.”
“Okay,” he said. Turning in a circle, with the katana held far too tightly to give him the fluidity he’d require, Luc practised a dozen of the simplest blocks and finished up facing Petro.
“What are the rules?” Luc asked.
Petro grinned. “This is Katchatka,” he said. “There are no rules. At least, not about things like this. You should know that if you’re going to marry my sister.”
“So how do you score?”
Petro glanced at his brothers, who rolled their eyes rather more obviously than was necessary. “Two people fight,” Petro said. “One wins. How hard can that be to mark?”
It was time for Lady Neku to get involved. The question was how? Since coming up with a complex and emotionally satisfying answer would take longer than she had, Lady Neku chose the simplest option. Pushing herself away from the wall, she marched across to Luc and held out her hand.