‘There is a honeytrap in every con,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry it had to be you.’
‘You are not sorry,’ the ship says. ‘You are Jean le Flambeur. Why would you be sorry?’ The butterfly settles on the edge of my glass. Its white reflection is distorted by the thin pseudomatter and the golden liquid at the bottom.
‘I thought you could help Mieli, on Mars, I really did. That you could show her that she did not have to obey the pellegrini. I thought you saw there was a different side to her. You even made her sing. But in the end, you are just like her. You will become anything to get what you think you want.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ I say. ‘You are just a . . .’ I hesitate. Servant? Slave? Lover? What is the ship to Mieli, really? In the end, I have no idea. ‘Sorry,’ I mutter.
‘You seem to be fond of that word today.’
‘I’m fond of my skin,’ I say. ‘I don’t deny that. And I’m not going back to the Prison, or whatever hell the cop thing had in store for me. At least I’ve dealt with the pellegrini before. Her I can handle.’ I hold my tongue. The goddess is always listening, no doubt. But the ship does not seem to be worried about that.
‘Oh yes?’ the butterfly says. ‘Is that why you are letting her manipulate you into trying the impossible?’
‘You don’t understand the stakes here, ship. If the chen has a Spike artefact that can do what I think it can—’
‘I understand the stakes that matter to me,’ Perhonen says. ‘Do you?’
It is surprisingly difficult to win a staring contest with a butterfly, even when you are wearing the face of the greatest warlord in the Solar System. So in the end, I look away.
‘I need to be free,’ I say. ‘So I can try again. I had something on Mars, and I threw it away. I almost think I got caught on purpose, can you believe that? The pellegrini showed me what I did, last time. A lot of things came back with it, about her, about Earth, about what she is after.’ I rub the bridge of my nose. The scar tissue is rough and alien.
‘You see, I had a plan, a perfect plan – but I did not use it. Instead, I went right up against the chen. To see if I could take him.’ I shake the glass and the butterfly alights. I pour myself more whiskey. ‘So it’s not about Jean le Flambeur. It’s about getting rid of him.’
‘This plan of yours,’ the ship says, slowly. ‘Will it work?’
‘It will. Except that after what happened, I’m not sure Mieli will ever go along with it.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
So I tell her the story of the warmind and the Kaminari jewel. I tell her about the insurance heavens and the city of Sirr and the Aun and the body thieves. Not everything, of course, but enough to convince her that it will work. And that it will be me doing the heavy lifting, this time. The butterfly listens. I wonder if somewhere inside my head or far away, the pellegrini is laughing.
‘You are right,’ Perhonen says, finally. ‘Mieli will never do it. She’ll die first.’
With a force of will, I turn my face back into my own. ‘So, what are we going to do?’ I place the glass carefully in the air, like a chess piece. It’s your move.
‘What you do best,’ the ship says. ‘We are going to lie to her.’
12
TAWADDUD AND THE QARIN
The girl who loved only monsters walked alone through the narrow streets of the City of the Dead.
The ghuls looked at her with empty eyes, huddled around the warmth of the server tombs.
It was instinct that had led her to this place, more than anything: looking for a place where the Repentants or Veyraz would not find her. She could pretend to be a ghul, if anyone came. She would be safe here, amongst the dead.
A ghul started following her. She kept walking.
Duny had come back from the entwiner a different person, a jinn jar around her neck, two beings in one. The girl could not go to her. She did not know her anymore.
And Father—
The ghul grabbed her arm. He was tall, shrivelled, with a filthy matted beard, but his grip was strong.
‘I SHOT THE OUTLAW ANGEL IN THE DAWN,’ he screamed. ‘CURSE YOU, MARION, IT SAID, BURNING—’ He shouted directly at her face, voice monotonous, the story coming out with the terrible smell of rotting teeth. She wrenched away from his grip and ran.
She did not get far. More ghuls came out from the tombs, blinking against the daylight, whispering their own stories, a hollow chorus. Before she could flee, they were all around her, touching, pressing against her, a muttering mass of filthy humanity. She covered her ears against the stories but they tore her hands away—
A cold wind came, tearing at her hair and face, something sharp in it, like sand. It had a voice.
‘This . . . one . . . is . . . mine,’ it said.
The ghul crowd moved as one, carrying her with it. They pressed her against one of the tombs. Her head banged against the hot wall. A darkness came, but before it took her, she was lifted into the air by hands made of sand.
‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ asked a voice when she awoke. There was only darkness apart from a jinn thought-form, a face made from tiny, pale flames.
What could she say? That she grew up on the Gomelez Shard, in her father’s palace. That soon after she was eight, the Cry of Wrath came and took away her mother.
That she liked to escape her jinn tutors: she had a liking for the ancient tongues and learned many secret words with which to confuse them.
That after her sister went to the entwiner to be a muhtasib, she was lonely. She craved to hear forbidden stories, wanted to see treasure hunters return from the desert: wanted to speak to the ghuls and the old jinni in the City of the Dead. That, instead, her father gave her to Veyraz.
‘I am Tawaddudd,’ she said. ‘Thank you for saving me.’
The tomb was not large, barely more than an access space between the humming machines that housed the jinn’s mind in the rough concrete building made with ghul labour. There was sand on the floor. The only light was the jinn’s face.
‘So, you are the girl the Repentants are looking for?’ the jinn said. His voice was soft, a little shy, but human. ‘You should leave.’
‘I will,’ she said, massaging her head. ‘I only need to rest. I will leave in the morning, I promise.’
‘You do not understand,’ the jinn said. ‘I am not a thing you want to spend your nights with. This is not a place for your kind.’
‘I am not afraid,’ she said. ‘You can’t be worse than the Repentants. Or my husband.’
The jinn laughed. It was a sound like a flame laughing, a staccato hiss and crackle. ‘Oh, dear child, you have no idea.’
‘Do you have a name?’ Tawaddud asked.
The face of flame fluttered.
‘Once, I was called Zaybak,’ it said. ‘You made me laugh. For that, you may rest here, and not be afraid.’
That is how the girl who loved monsters came to live in the tomb of Zaybak the jinn, in the City of the Dead. The food was meagre, and the days long, repairing tombs with ghuls and other servants of the jinni. She made Zaybak’s tomb a little more comfortable, with rugs and pillows and candles and clay pots for water.
When she asked the other jinni about Zaybak, they would only whisper.
‘He wants to die,’ said one ghul. ‘He is tired. But there is no death in the City of the Dead.’
But when they were together, Zaybak did not talk about death. Instead, he answered all the questions she had, even those her jinn tutors had never spoken about.