‘Perhonen did tell me your story, you know. No offence, but to me, there was always something strange about the way Sydän led you to Venus, and how you found the pellegrini. As if it was meant to happen.
‘You see, Joséphine doesn’t just find people, she makes them. She did that to me, when I was young. She needed an agent she could trust, so she got me out of Santé Prison and moulded me into one.’ He looks at the sky and smiles at a distant memory. ‘Of course, it did not exactly work out like that, but that’s how it started, between us.
‘I recently … learned a little about the Kaminari jewel. To get it to accept you, you need to wish for something altruistic and something that is constant across your possible future selves. A singular drive, perhaps. Something all-consuming. Like saving someone from a black hole’s event horizon.’ The thief looks at Mieli. His eyes are bright.
‘I think Joséphine needed me to steal the jewel. But she needed you to use it. She needed someone who wanted, wanted in a way that the Kaminari jewel would accept. And she did not want her instrument to fall into All-D’s hands.’
Mieli stares at the thief.
‘That’s insane!’
‘Is it? But it does lead to conclusions that you might not like. Can I see that chain you wear, the one that your friend Sydän gave you?’ He smiles sheepishly. ‘I promise not to steal it, this time.’
Frowning, Mieli whispers to her ankle chain, opens it and hands it to the thief. It spirals into the air from his hand and rotates, like the DNA of some strange crystal animal.
‘Now, the nice thing about Realms is that they try to preserve the quantum information contained in anything that’s brought in here. It’s a good way to study things. I should have had a closer look at this before, but you always made it clear it would not be good for my health.’
A spime opens around the chain, a digital shadow flickering with annotations. The stones in it are simple Oortian smartcoral, made with whispers to resemble the Great Work Mieli and Sydän built, a long time ago. The thief frowns and zooms in. The jewels become first a crystal mountain range, then a grid of interlocking molecules. It looks familiar, and it takes a moment for Mieli to realise why. Prometheus. It’s like the surface of Prometheus. Too regular.
‘Hidden picotech,’ the thief says. ‘Probably something Joséphine stole from the zoku: she was never too concerned with remaining ideologically pure. Now, you would have to ask your zoku friends what this thing does, but my guess would be that it is some sort of volition analysis engine, like the zoku jewels. What makes Mieli, daughter of Karhu tick? What does she want?’ The thief sighs. ‘Mieli, I hate to say it, but I think your Sydän was working for Joséphine from the day you met her.’
Mieli stands up and grabs the chain. She stares down at the thief, who leans back in his chair, a sad smile on his face. A part of her wants to strike him again, but she has no rage, no strength left.
‘You are lying,’ she whispers. ‘This is a trick. You are trying to—’
‘Mieli,’ the thief says softly, ‘what do you think I am trying to do, exactly? I have nothing to gain from this.’ He pauses. ‘I’m trying to keep a promise. I’m trying to tell you things you need to hear.’
He looks at his empty glass and gets up. ‘Not exactly my strong suit, I know. I’ll leave you alone for a while. Come find me in the pilot’s cabin when you are done. I’m going to check on how things are going in Supra City.’
Mieli watches him walk away and disappear in a swirl of silver dust. She wraps her toga tighter around her and walks to the railing. The wind has picked up, and jagged glassy waves crash against the ship’s sides. She holds the jewelled chain in her hand. It can’t be true. But a part of her knows it is, a pattern that is as inevitable as the next note in a song. She tries to think of Sydän, but can’t hold on to her face. Mieli’s thoughts of her dissolve like Sydän’s face, erased by the data wind from the singularity on Venus.
Made for a purpose, Zinda said. She thinks of the glowing jewels the zoku girl laid down onto the grass, for Mieli, pieces of herself, one by one. What a fool I have been. A sudden longing blooms in her chest. And fear, a memory of the horror on Hektor, the non-face. She imagines it swallowing Saturn.
She squeezes Sydän’s chain in her hand so hard the edges of the stones dig into her flesh.
‘Kuutar and Ilmatar, not this one,’ she whispers, looking at the yellow moon. ‘Give me the strength to save her.’
Mieli replaces the chain around her ankle. It is cold from the sea air. It is good to keep reminders of your mistakes.
She stands in the bow of the ship for a moment, looking at the horizon. White waves rise and fall against the hull, like beating wings.
It is also good to finally know where she is going.
She whispers one last prayer to the moon and goes to find the thief.
I recognise a certain look on Mieli’s face when she returns. The last time I saw it was on Earth, when she fought a mercenary army and the wildcode desert by herself.
She says nothing, simply stands next to me and studies the spimescape, the hopeless tangle trying to represent millions of raions and zoku ships around Saturn. At least the guberniyas are obvious: all seven of them, positioned in Lagrange points, armed and dangerous, as only planet-sized zeusbrains can be.
‘It is difficult to tell what is going on. The particle storm is too dense, and I can’t access the Great Game intelligence network. But there is a lot of structural damage to Supra City.’ I swallow, thinking of Sirr on Irem. ‘A lot of strangelet events, a couple of Hawking blasts, nothing bigger than that yet. But it’s only a matter of time.’
Mieli narrows her eyes.
‘Here is what we are going to do,’ she says. ‘We are going to get to the Kaminari jewel before the All-Defector does. We are going to steal it from the Great Game Zoku. And then we are going to put things right.’
I smile. ‘Well, that’s a thought.’ Stealing the fire of the gods, that sort of thing. ‘Are you sure the Great Game won’t use it?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Do you know where it is?’
Mieli frowns. ‘I … heard something in the Great Game’s Realm. They talked about a Planck brane.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Oh my. They’ve hidden it in a parallel universe.’
I should have let my other self tell me his plan. Mental note: never interrupt a villain who is monologuing.
I grit my teeth. If he could come up with it, so can I. I massage my temples.
The Planck brane. Of course. The ekpyrotic cannon. The idea leads to others, like dominoes falling.
I turn to Mieli. ‘All right, I have a plan. Step one is to persuade the Father of Dragons to stop sulking.’
Mieli raises her eyebrows. ‘And step two?’
‘You’ll see. We may have to destroy Saturn in order to save it.’ I get up. ‘Come on. I’m going to introduce you to Matjek Chen. You’ve already met, of course, but he has grown up quite a bit since then.’
I take a deep breath in the main corridor. I have been putting of talking to Matjek for a while, but the time has come. And finally, I actually know what to say to him. This time, the bookshop vir opens easily as Mieli and I walk through the gate.
The boy is not sitting in his usual spot. The vir is silent, except for the quiet whisperings of the stories of Sirr.