‘How long would my Seals last in there?’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Tell me,’ Sumanguru says.
‘I don’t know. Two to three minutes? They tell me sobortech is more vulnerable to wildcode than we are, so perhaps less. But you should wait for the muhtasib, they can—’
Before she can finish, Sumanguru steps through the Seal wall.
A faint aura shimmers around him in the athar. He walks past the remains of Alile, head turning, looking everywhere. Tawaddud wonders what kind of range of senses he has beyond human. He touches things, the empty jars on the high tables, traces the arabesque patterns on the walls. His movements seem different, not so much a clumsy, unstoppable machine but a cat, looking for something.
Then he stops in front of a wall with an ornate pattern of graphical representations of Secret Names, geometrical shapes on a four-by-four grid, made from multicoloured ceramic tiles the size of a palm, inlaid with gold.
In the athar, Tawaddud sees a black stain marring his Seals, spreading. Wildcode.
‘His Seals won’t hold!’ Tawaddud shouts. ‘Lord Sumanguru, get out! Rumzan, get help!’
The Sobornost gogol starts pressing the tiles. They move under his fingers. The Alile thing’s sapphire tendrils coil around his limbs but he is immersed in his work. There is a click, and a part of the wall slides aside, revealing a dark space. Sumanguru reaches within, brushing aside a sapphire tendril with his other hand. Then he is back through the Seal wall, clutching something in his arms: a metallic bird.
It looks smaller than Tawaddud remembers, but still large for a bird, the length of her forearm, a hawklike, graceful thing with a forked tail. Its eyes are closed, covered by tiny golden lids.
‘Arcelia?’
Tawaddud holds the bird in her arms. She expected it to feel cold and metallic, but the feathers of its back are almost alive, sharp but warm, and the flywheel in its chest hums steadily, like a rapidly beating heart. She strokes it to soothe it, but with no effect. Whatever happened to her, she had time to hide it. The sensible part of her.
‘Explain a qarin to me,’ Sumanguru says, pointing at the creature. ‘In simple words.’
‘A qarin is . . . a jinn companion, entwined with a muhtasib,’ Tawaddud says, voice shaking slightly. ‘A qarin and a muhtasib are one being, brought together as a child by an entwiner.’
‘What you describe is a forbidden act to us, only for the Primes,’ the Sobornost gogol says. ‘Perhaps there are even more reasons to cleanse your city than I thought. Why is this thing done?’
‘It is a custom,’ Tawaddud says. ‘A symbol of the alliance between our two peoples. But it also allows the muhtasib to regulate the economy of the city. To see athar like the jinni do, to watch the flow of information, the shadows of everything in the athar, money, products, labour, people.’ She looks at Rumzan. ‘Directly, not through a primitive instrument like athar glasses.’
Sumanguru laughs, a resonant, barking sound. ‘Matter and mind. Dualism. Primitive distinctions. All is information. Are you saying that this creature, this qarin, contains remnants of the Councilwoman’s mind?’
‘No,’ Tawaddud says. ‘I’m saying that the qarin is a part of the Councilwoman’s mind.’ There is something wrong here. Why does he not know all this?
‘Perfect,’ Sumanguru says. ‘Repentant Rumzan, is there a quiet space in this palace? Somewhere where we would not be disturbed?’
‘Lord Sumanguru, if you don’t mind,’ Rumzan says, ‘in the capacity of the official investigator here, I am compelled to ask what it is that you are intending to do? I cannot let you—’
Sumanguru draws himself to his full height. ‘Perhaps your Council has not explained the situation to you,’ he says with a rumbling voice. ‘We are not all like my sisters the hsien-kus: not all gentle. There are those who say that the Great Common Task demands a cleansing here. If I can’t find the enemies of the Task, those voices may be heard. Do I make myself clear?’
Ripples run through Rumzan’s thought-form. ‘Lady Tawaddud—’
Suddenly, she remembers how she met the jinn. He had started to identify with his thought-form, and so she wore a mask and body paint that duplicated his tilings, to match his self-image. She took him out to her balcony. He liked the feel of sunlight on his skin.
‘If there is a problem,’ she says slowly, ‘you also have a problem with me and my father. I may not have an official position in the Council, but I assure you I have my father’s trust,’ she holds up the jinn ring, ‘as well as that of the Council. Not to mention the fact that Mr Sen is a close personal friend.’ She gives the jinn the sugary sweet smile Duny always uses when making threats. ‘Do I make myself clear?’
Rumzan makes a little croaking sound. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘My apologies. I just had not been briefed properly, that’s all.’
‘Lord Sumanguru,’ Tawaddud whispers, ‘it would be useful if you were to share what it is that you intend to do.’
‘Just the obvious,’ Sumanguru says. ‘Interrogate the witness.’
Alile’s palace is even larger than Tawaddud’s father’s residence – a maze of transparent cylinders, bubbles and projecting pyramids.
As the Repentant takes them through a large, sunlit gallery of sculptures, another thought-formed jinn appears, a cloud of purple and white flowers. Rumzan’s form becomes fluid, mixing with the newcomer’s. When he coalesces back to his mosaic self, his movements are quick and agitated.
‘The Council is requesting progress reports,’ he says. ‘I must leave you for a moment. In fact, perhaps it is better that I do so, if Lord Sumanguru intends to do something . . . unorthodox. That way, I will have no knowledge of such matters if questions are asked. I will ensure that my Repentants give you privacy. You will find an aviary through the doors at the end of the gallery and down the stairs.’
‘Thank you, Rumzan,’ Tawaddud says. ‘Your loyalty to the cause of Sirr will not be forgotten.’
‘I am at your service,’ the jinn says. ‘And for myself, I have not forgotten a certain pleasant afternoon and the new perspectives of the world you showed me.’
‘It will continue to remain our secret,’ Tawaddud says, forcing herself to smile.
At first, the noise in the aviary is deafening, a cacophony of high-pitched screams and the flapping of wings. It is a high dome of glass nearly a hundred metres in diameter. Most of the bottom half is taken up by chimera plants from the wildcode desert, thick purple tangled networks of tubes that expand and contract, geoengineering synthbio of old Earth gone wild in the absence of its masters. A few windmill trees rotate slowly, spiky turbine foliage catching the light in hues of amber and angry dark red.
When Tawaddud and Sumanguru enter, the rukh swarm notices them. They are everywhere: flying things of different sizes, from tiny sapphire insects to two or three manta-ray like gliders who circle near the ceiling. Tawaddud shields her eyes against the storm of wings. Then she barks a Secret Name at them and the swarm disperses and quiets down, becomes a coiling cloud amongst the vegetation.
Down in the centre of the aviary is a clear space, with a delicately wrought white table, a few chairs and a perch. Tawaddud sets Arcelia on it. The bird does not open its eyes but clings to it, flapping its wings briefly for balance.
Sumanguru studies the bird closely, leaning forward, hands clasped behind his back. Then he reaches out, fingers spread like a magician’s, surprisingly graceful for a man of his size. Five crackling lines of light appear between his fingertips and the bird. Arcelia lets out a shrill, mechanical scream and starts flapping its wings furiously. A bubble shimmers into being around it, holding it in place, and the sound is gone, leaving the bird scratching and pecking at its invisible prison in silence.