‘This is a good one,’ said Vivyen, and she told them all the tale of a foolish emperor, who was convinced by two swindlers that they had fashioned a magical garment, one that only those of keen intellect could see. The hopelessly stupid and unimaginative would be unable to appreciate its – and by association the emperor’s – majesty. Of course all the emperor’s courtiers, not wishing to be thought stupid, claimed their master’s new clothes were magnificent beyond imagining.
And so the emperor paraded before his subjects to show off his new clothes. The people, who by now had heard the swindlers’ claims, also cheered the naked emperor and told him how grand he looked.
All was well until one little boy, courageous enough to speak out, cried that the emperor wasn’t wearing anything at all. And the spell, for such it was, was broken and the crowds howled with laughter as the emperor fled to his castle, red-faced in shame.
Vivyen finished the story, her eyes refocusing as she lifted them from the page. It felt like the words were rearranging themselves on the page. Sometimes they did that.
The faces around her were smiling, stronger now, and Vivyen smiled back at them, pleased she’d given them hope and fresh courage. Even Uriah looked less angry, more defiant.
‘Another!’ said Vesper, clapping her hands.
‘Yes, read one more,’ added Challis.
‘Okay,’ said Vivyen.
‘What’s “okay”?’ asked Lalique.
‘It’s an old word Alivia used to say to me,’ said Vivyen. ‘It sort of means yes, but sometimes it can mean that things aren’t bad either or that they’ll get better.’
Oskar rose to his feet as the door opened, fists gathered at his side. Vivyen’s heart leapt, imagining that Alivia would be standing there with her silver gun with the white snake etched into the metal. Smoke would be curling from it and she’d cock a hip and say something that would tell Vivyen that, yes, things were going to be okay.
But it wasn’t Alivia, it was a man in a long white tunic. Like the women before him, he had been mutilated. His skin was scarred, one eye burned out, and his lips were an unhealthy purple. He carried a dirty knife that dripped with something yellowish.
The children screamed and scrambled into the corner of the room. They whimpered and cried as the man swept his one good eye over them, like a buyer at a meat market. Even Uriah’s anger vanished in the face of naked terror.
‘You,’ he said, pointing at Vivyen. ‘Come now.’
Vivyen shook her head, too frightened to answer.
‘Now.’
‘No,’ said Vivyen, remembering the courage of the little boy in the story she’d just read.
‘I will hurt you,’ he promised, lifting the knife.
‘I’ll hurt you back,’ said Vivyen. ‘You’ll cut me with that knife, I know that, but not before my nails scratch out that last eye of yours.’
The man considered her words, then grinned.
‘I expect you would,’ he said.
Vivyen wanted to let all the air in her lungs out in one explosive breath. Relief turned to horror when she saw the man wasn’t admitting defeat, he was just going to take someone else. He took three powerful strides and grabbed Challis’s scrawny arm, wrenching her from the huddled group of children.
‘No!’ screamed Uriah. ‘Don’t!’
The boy threw himself at the man. Uriah was big for his age, but was still just a child against a full-grown man. The knife bit flesh and Uriah fell with a howl of pain.
Blood squirted from his shoulder and the children screamed at the sight.
‘You don’t want to go? Fine, I’ll take this one instead,’ said the man.
He dragged Challis from the room and slammed the door behind him, leaving the six remaining children to their misery. Vesper fell to the floor, weeping and shrieking at the loss of her twin. Oskar and Lalique knelt with Uriah, their faces wet with tears. Ivalee stood silent and uncomprehending.
Vivyen felt as though the man’s knife had stabbed her in the gut. She looked at Vesper’s curled, sobbing form and guilt settled upon her like a lead weight.
She looked down the book, but the words were meaningless.
They had no comfort to offer her, not now.
‘Please, Alivia,’ sobbed Vivyen. ‘Please help us.’
Alivia’s feet dangled a metre off the deck. The Space Marine gripped her neck in one fist, the wrist of her gun hand in the other. He could break both in an instant.
‘That hurt,’ he said, bleeding from the side of his skull where her bullet had creased him.
‘It was meant to kill you,’ gasped Alivia.
‘You’re fast, I’ll grant you that, but Yasu’s the only mortal I’d credit with a chance of seeing my blood. Even Loken didn’t get a shot.’
‘Who?’
‘Another son of Cthonia.’
‘Another traitor.’
Severian sighed as though disappointed.
‘In another life, I’d already have killed you and been half a kilometre away,’ he said. ‘But I fight on the side of the angels now, and behaviour that was as natural to me as breathing is… frowned upon.’
Severian fractionally tightened his grip. ‘So tell me, who are you? Who are you really?’
Alivia’s eyes bulged at the pressure.
‘Alivia,’ she said between snatched gasps. ‘Alivia Sureka, I’m looking for my daughter.’
She felt his disbelief, as palpable as cold or pain. Just as she felt truth and fresh purpose in his bones, their fit still new and chafing against old instincts.
Severian leaned in, his bearded, tattooed face millimetres from hers, and sniffed her like an animal. He shook his head and his cold eyes flicked down to her flat belly.
‘You’re no mother,’ he said. ‘That womb is as barren as Cthonia’s surface.’
Alivia blinked in surprise, now seeing what lay beyond the savagery his murder-gang tattoos suggested: an agile mind, predator’s patience and a hardwired hunter’s instinct. Alloyed to a psychic presence entirely unlike the blunt, sledgehammer minds possessed by some among the Legions.
‘My adopted daughter,’ she said, resisting the urge to give her words a psychic push. The inside of Severian’s mind was a steel trap of jagged edges, just waiting to snap shut.
‘That’s better,’ said Severian.
She eased the serpenta’s hammer down and relaxed her grip, letting the gun hang by the trigger guard from her forefinger.
‘Good girl,’ said Severian, lowering her to the deck and plucking the weapon from her hand.
‘I want that back,’ said Alivia, massaging her bruised neck.
‘So you can shoot me again?’
‘I’m not going to shoot you, Severian,’ she said.
‘You’re damn right you’re not.’
‘I won’t shoot you because you’re going to help me.’
Severian laughed.
‘Something tells me you’re not the kind of person who normally needs help.’
‘True, but I want you to help me now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we both answer to the same master.’
Severian’s eyes narrowed and she sensed his frank reappraisal. His instincts were telling him there was more to her than met the eye. That she was dangerous. He’d thought she was simply fast, but now he knew better. He didn’t know what she was – how could he? – but he was curious.
And for someone like Severian, that was enough.
‘So we’re going to find your daughter?’ he said.
Alivia nodded.
‘How do you know she isn’t just lost?’
‘Because he told me,’ said Alivia. ‘He took her last night and I don’t think she was his first. And unless I find where these monsters are hiding, more children will be taken.’