First I’ve heard of it.
Walking over to my wardrobe, Paper finds my uniform. The jacket has been cleaned since she last saw it and the blood’s come out. My boots are also clean, which must be Angelique’s work, because I don’t remember scrubbing them.
There’s a waterfall of silver braid tucked inside one of the boots, a holster over the back of a chair and a dagger’s sheath on the mantel over the fireplace. The dagger itself keeps the sash window from sliding shut.
‘Antique,’ says Paper, looking at the blade. ‘You steal this?’
‘General Jaxx gave it to me.’
‘So,’ Paper says, ‘I guess that means he stole it.’
‘Paper . . .’
‘The blade’s old Earth,’ she tells me. ‘All old Earth artefacts are protected under United Free legislation. No trading, no selling, no transfer between systems without a licence.’
‘Could have been in his family for generations.’
‘We’ll make a diplomat of you yet.’
‘God forbid.’
‘I’m a diplomat,’ she points out.
‘So you’ve said.’
Arranging my uniform on the floor, Paper stands back and looks expectant. She’s medium height, athletic without being muscled, just enough hips to grip, a tight rear and high breasts, which are full without being large. She’s also black-haired, but that means nothing. Last time we met her hair was chestnut and her eyes were blue. Today they are green.
‘Sven,’ she says. ‘You need to dress.’
‘Then get out.’
‘I’ve seen naked men before.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m sure you have.’ Dropping the towel, I stamp over to the shower. It’s a real one, the kind that uses water. Unfortunately, its sides are made of clear glass. Paper walks round it slowly, taking a good look.
‘Impressive,’ she says. She’s not talking about the cubicle.
I keep my back to her as I pull my trousers over wet skin and buckle my belt.
‘May I?’ says Paper’s voice behind me.
So polite, the U/Free.
Reaching up, she wipes a drop of water from my shoulder where it vanishes under the edge of my prosthetic arm. ‘Exquisite workmanship.’ The stump has a tortoiseshell effect where badly healed flesh used to be. It gives a dull click as she taps it. Then she taps my arm itself, which rings slightly.
‘You lost this to a ferox?’
Nodding, I turn round.
She is standing so close that I can smell woman under whatever scent she’s wearing. And her pupils are wide, those little black dots no longer little but vast, reducing the green of her irises to a thin circle around the edges.
‘Really?’ she says, breathless. ‘A ferox?’
‘It was old,’ I say. ‘Almost dead.’
‘I heard you cut off its head.’
‘Needed proof.’
‘Of what?’
‘That this wound wasn’t self-inflicted.’
‘People do that?’ she asks. ‘In the desert . . . ?’
Smiling, I say, ‘In the desert, people do anything.’ Then, because she’s still close, I wrap one arm around her waist and pull her close, raising her chin with my other hand.
‘Sven . . .‘ She twists away before I can stop her.
‘Thought we were meant to be friends?’
Paper Osamu tuts. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s get you dressed.’
Helping me into my jacket, she adjusts my holster, buttons my braid into place, hangs my Obsidian Cross, second class, on its ribbon around my neck, and rips my blade from the sash window. Which, obviously enough, crashes shut.
The U/Free can be strange sometimes.
When we get downstairs the others are waiting. Telling Neen I’ll see him later, I ask Aptitude to help Lisa clean up and the rest to get on with whatever needs doing. Angelique scowls when I hold the door for Paper. Shil merely raises her eyebrows and makes sure that I’ve seen.
‘Who’s the eldest one?’ Paper demands, the moment we’re outside.
‘Shil . . . My sergeant’s sister.’
‘Had her too?’
‘Paper! ‘
‘Just asking,’ she says.
Paper mutters something about research, and I stop listening when she starts using words like polyandry. I’m pretty sure there’s a primitive peoples in there somewhere. But she catches herself, glances at me and decides I’m not paying attention anyway.
‘She likes you,’ Paper says, bringing it back to my level.
I could tell her that Shil hates my guts and has done ever since I made her brother my sergeant. But I don’t bother. ‘No, she doesn’t,’ I say instead.
‘Believe me,’ says Paper. ‘She does. I know these things.’
Paper probably means she once read something about the mating habits of those primitive peoples she was muttering about. As we walk, the city of Farlight wakes around us and she tells me my mission. The one I’m meant to keep quiet about.
We’re being borrowed by the U/Free. We being the Aux. Although that is a secret, obviously.
‘You understand?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I know what secret means.’
Paper sighs. She doesn’t, however, tell me why we’re being borrowed. That’s going to come later.
The houses become larger as we head downhill, and keep getting larger, grander and cleaner until we near Farlight’s centre where huge mansions hide behind heavy gates. The gardens are green and roses flourish. People down here have enough water to waste on plants. It’s an interesting idea for someone who grew up on a frontier fort in the desert.
Elegant hovers wait outside shops as we get closer still. Uniformed guards usher high clan families into retailers so exclusive I have no idea what they sell. And nothing outside gives a clue. Paper watches me watch them. There is something knowing in her gaze. As if this is what she expects me to do.
Cold air blasts from shop doors.
For a few seconds, as they leave, the families experience the heat with which the rest of this city lives daily. And then sides lift on sleek hovers, and chauffeurs and cold air welcome them inside. This was Aptitude’s life once. She’s never seemed to miss it.
‘What are you thinking?’ Paper asks.
‘Nice car,’ I say, as a smoked-glass monstrosity slides away. She glances at me strangely.
A virus attack hit this area before I was born. A few of the streets melted. Most just dripped a little and then solidified. Although few of them dripped as much as OctoV’s cathedral. This looks ready to collapse into a puddle the moment the sun rises high enough.
It’s looked like that for five hundred years.
That’s what Paper tells me as we skirt the square and duck under an arch in the shadow of the cathedral, that leads down an alley and into a smaller square beyond. Behind this is a long and narrow lake, looking like a river, that divides the north from the south of Farlight. The lake stinks in summer, and it stinks in winter. Only not quite as badly. Bodies have a habit of turning up in that lake. A number of them badly mutilated. I know where we’re going.
What interests me is that Paper also knows. I’ll give good money she hasn’t been before. The Death’s Head aren’t known for issuing open invitations to their regimental HQ.
The square is dusty, the grass even browner than the last time I was here. No one’s wasting any water round here. A fir tree droops behind rusting railings, stripped of its needles by the heat as surely as if someone had lit a bonfire underneath. The HQ itself is immaculate.
‘Don’t tell me,’ says Paper.
Glancing from the freshly painted door to the rusting railings, from the scrubbed steps to the parched earth showing between patches of dead grass, she says, ‘Subliminal reinforcement of already established hierarchical patterns . . .’
I ignore her.
Elbowing my way through a crowd around the door brings me to the steps at the same time as a major in the militia. His chest drips with braid and he’s wearing a row of ribbons probably awarded for dressing himself. A young woman hangs off his arm. She has as many jewels as he has medals. In addition, her breasts are doing their best to fight free from her blouse. It’s a heroic battle.