“I won’t,” Kit promised. It was the last thing he said to her.
CHAPTER 58 — Nawa-no-ukiyo
She had betrayed herself, her family, and Luc d’Alambert, every one of these by accident. So much for Lady Neku to remember, so much to forget…
“How does that work?” Luc had asked, finding himself standing in High Strange, beside a recently regrown pod. He meant the fact that he was standing there at all.
“Who knows?” said Lady Neku.
One second they were in Schloss Omga, the next Luc was asking his question and Lady Neku was doing her best not to look smug. “I mean,” she said, “how does High Strange stay up and what makes sky sails change colour if the sun flares?”
“They’re made that way,” said Luc. “And we’re high enough above the ground to stay here.”
“No we’re not,” she said. “I’ve checked. We’d need to be at least three times this height to stay in orbit, and then we’d have to circle the planet.”
Luc smiled. “You really are strange,” he said.
Lady Neku sighed.
“I should go,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Lady Neku. “You should.” She watched him limp away, his yellow cloak tangling with his heels as he walked. His foot, his lopsided smile, that tic in his right eye—small problems. Lady Neku was pretty sure he’d have them fixed if she suggested it.
“It’s time you dressed,” said a voice in Lady Neku’s head.
“What’s the point?” she said. “I’m only going to take it all off again. I could always…”
“No,” said the voice. “You couldn’t.”
The cloak was black, the dress was black, as was her belt and the shoes decorated with tiny beads. A black-bladed dagger hid inside a black velvet scabbard, the leather of its retaining thongs being the obvious colour.
“And the others?” Lady Neku asked.
“Already dressed,” said the kami. “Going over the final arrangements. Do you want to see?”
Her brothers were in her mother’s study, at the southern tip of the spire. Amber walls like frozen honey, a steel throne and a trio of wooden stools set neatly around it. Lady Katchatka wore a dress cut from spiders’ silk, the light-swallowing kind she professed to despise.
The boys wore doublets and cloaks sewn with black pearls. Petro was alive, looking pale and unsteady on his seat, Nico and Antonio supporting him at each elbow, neither prepared to meet their mother’s eyes.
“You know what to do?” asked Lady Katchatka.
All three boys nodded.
“Nico moves first,” said Lady Katchatka. “Until then, everyone behaves.”
Petro got ready to protest.
“Nico does it,” she told him. “You’re weak as a baby and Antonio is too slow. We strike fast, and hard. With d’Alambert dead the cripple will be useless. Antonio can have him. After that, kill anyone you want.”
“And the ships?”
“Old men and children,” said Lady Katchatka. “We deny them air and food unless they surrender…” She smiled at Nico’s raised eyebrows. “All right,” she said. “We’ll deny it anyway.”
“What about Neku?” asked Petro, from a throat wet and barely formed.
“She’ll get over it,” Lady Katchatka said.
The marriage ceremony was simple, the bedding embarrassingly crude. Mostly in the thinness of the mattress, the hardness of the actual bed, and the wide-eyed enthusiasm of d’Alambert’s retainers. As a sop to Lady Neku’s modesty, Lord d’Alambert had allowed her a sheet. It came, almost inevitably, in a vile shade of yellow.
“We must talk,” said Lady Neku, as Luc slipped a robe from his shoulders and climbed self-consciously into bed beside her.
“Later,” he said. The boy was shaking, body taut as a karman wire.
“Now,” said Lady Neku, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck and drag him close enough to bury her face in his hair. One of the retainers started clapping, and Lady Neku heard Nico groan.
“It’s a trap,” she whispered.
Luc pulled back. “What is?”
Grabbing his hair, Lady Neku yanked him down again, to general laughter from her brothers and a sigh from Luc’s father. Only family were allowed close, retainers being kept at a decent distance by silken ropes.
“All of this,” whispered Lady Neku. “Stay next to me at the banquet, I’ll protect you.”
Startled eyes stared down at her. Luc wanted to demand answers, he wanted to scramble away. It was all Lady Neku could do to hold the boy in place.
“Whisper,” she said.
Luc leaned close and someone started clapping again. “What’s a trap?” he asked, turning his head as Lady Neku’s hands twisted into his hair and dragged his ear to her mouth.
“Everything,” she said. “All of it.”
“Why?”
Lady Neku met his eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve only just found out. But you’re in danger.”
“My father…”
Shaking her head, Lady Neku felt her face against his. “Too late,” she said. “It’ll be all I can do to save you.” A half dozen members of each family stood watching, a hundred servitors waited behind a silken rope. The boy clung to her, his body protected only by the sheet. Anyone could have killed him with a single thrust; she should be grateful her brothers had spared her that.
“We have to go through with this,” said Lady Neku.
Luc’s eyes widened. “I can’t.”
“Everyone’s watching,” she said. “You must.” If you don’t, thought Lady Neku, then Nico at least will know something is wrong and it will be much harder for me to protect you.
His lovemaking was angry and brutal, as if it was her fault everything had already begun to go wrong. This was High Strange, once called Katchatka Segment. What did he expect?
Lady Neku whimpered and sighed, closed her eyes, and clung to her new husband, burying her head in his hair. It was a command performance. So unexpected that she impressed even herself. When it was over, the face she presented to her family was streaked with tears. And the tears, at least, were real.
You did this, she told them, inside herself. You took away my friendship with Luc. You made him hate me.
Tradition allowed her to miss the banquet. In fact, tradition allowed her to hide her face from public sight for three days. Time for a new bride to live down the trauma of her public bedding. It was a d’Alambert family tradition. Lady Neku wasn’t remotely impressed by what it said about them.
“You’re sure you want to attend?” Lord d’Alambert stood with a cloak, ready to hide Lady Neku’s nakedness. A moon-faced servitor, moist-eyed in sympathy for the tears drying on her new mistress’s face, stood ready to escort Lady Neku to a waiting ship. “It would give you time to…”
Lady Neku smiled her sweetest smile. “I want to be with Luc,” she said, and all of the old man’s resistance crumbled.
The cloak he offered her was a faded shade of red, with slivers of amber sewn in patterns around the hem. It was lined with yellow silk and weighed so heavily that Lady Neku’s knees buckled as Lord d’Alambert draped it around her bare shoulders.
Having shown her mistress how to fasten the collar, the moon-faced servitor led Lady Neku to an alcove, so she could dress properly and compose herself. Of course I’m shaking, Lady Neku wanted to snarl. You’d shake if you knew what was about to happen.
“Leave me,” she demanded.
The servitor looked doubtful, which was interesting. Had the woman been from High Strange she’d barely have dared lift her eyes from the floor.