He turned back, before he slowly closed the door, and looked at the bloody mess on the curved carved surface of the headboard. He smiled his thin smile, a little uncertainly.
Then he slipped away into the stone-black depths of the palace, like a piece of the night.
Two
The dam lay wedged between the tree-studded hills like a fragment from some enormous shattered cup. The morning sunshine shone up the valley, hit the concave grey face of the dam, and produced a white reflecting flood of light. Behind the dam, the long diminished lake was dark and cold. The water came less than halfway up the massive concrete bulwark, and the forests beyond had long since reclaimed over half the slopes the dam's rising water had once drowned. Sail-boats lay tethered to jetties strung along one side of the lake, the chopping waters slapping at their glistening hulls.
High overhead, birds carved the air, circling in the warmth of the sunlight above the shadow of the dam. One of the birds dipped and swooped, gliding down towards the lip of the dam and the deserted roadway which ran along its curved summit. The bird pulled its wings in just as it seemed it was about to collide with the white railings which ran on either side of the road; it flashed between the dew-sparkled stanchions, executed a half roll, partially opened its wings again, and plummeted towards the obsolete power station that had become the grandly eccentric — not to mention pointedly symbolic — home of the woman called Diziet Sma.
The bird settled belly-down to the swoop, and, level with the roof garden, flung out its wings, grasping at the air and fluttering to a precipitous halt, talons tacketing down on a window ledge set in the highest storey of the old admin block apartments.
Wings folded, soot-dark head to one side, one beady eye reflecting the concrete light, the bird hopped forward to a slid-open window, where soft red curtains rippled out into the breeze. It stuck its head under the fluttering hem of the material and peered into the darkened room beyond.
"You missed it." Sma said with quiet scorn, happening to pad past the window just at that moment. She sipped from a glass of water she held. Droplets from her shower beaded her tawny body.
The bird's head swivelled, following her as she crossed to the closet and commenced to dress. Swivelling back, the bird's gaze shifted to the male body lying in the air a little less than a metre above the floor-mounted bed-base. Inside the dim haze of the bed's AG field, the pale figure of Relstoch Sussepin stirred, and rolled over in mid-air. His arms floated out to either side, until the weak centering field on his side of the bed brought them slowly back in towards his body again. In the dressing room, Sma gargled with some water, then swallowed it.
Fifty metres east, Skaffen-Amtiskaw floated high in the air above the floor of the turbine hall, surveying the wreckage of the party. The section of the drone's mind that was controlling the guard-drone disguised as a bird took a last look at the filigree of scratches on Sussepin's buttocks, and the already fading bite-marks on Sma's shoulders (as she covered them with a gauzy shirt), and then released the guard-drone from its control.
The bird squawked, jumped back from the curtain, and fell fluttering and frenzied off the ledge, before opening its wings and beating back up past the gleaming face of the dam, its shrill alarm-cries echoing back from the concrete slopes and disturbing it further. Sma heard the distant feedback of commotion as she buttoned her waistcoat, and smiled.
"Good night's sleep?" Skaffen-Amtiskaw inquired as it met her at the portico of the old admin block.
"Good night, no sleep," Sma yawned, shooing the whining hralzs back into the building's marble hall, where Maikril the major-domo stood unhappily with a bunch of leads. She stepped out into the sunlight, pulling on gloves. The drone held the car door open for her. She filled her lungs with the fresh morning air and ran down the steps, boot heels clattering. She jumped into the car, winced a little as she settled in the driver's seat, then flicked a switch that started the roof folding back, while the drone loaded her luggage into the trunk. She tapped the battery gauges on the vehicle's dash and blipped the accelerator, just to feel the wheel motors strain against the brakes. The drone secured the trunk and floated into the rear seats. She waved to Maikril, who was chasing one of the hralzs along the steps outside the turbine hall, and didn't notice. Sma laughed, stood on the throttle and slipped the brakes.
The car leapt off in a spray of gravel, took the right-hander beneath the trees with centimetres to spare, shot out through the station's granite gates with a farewell shimmy of its rear end, and accelerated hard down Riverside Drive.
"We could have flown," the drone pointed out, over the rush of air.
But it suspected Sma wasn't listening.
The semantics of fortification were pan-cultural, she thought, as she descended the stone steps from the curtain wall of the castle, gazing up at the drum-shaped keep, hazy in the distance on its hill behind several more layers of walls. She walked across the grass, Skaffen-Amtiskaw at her shoulder, and exited the fort through a postern.
The view led down to the new port and the straits, where seaships passed smoothly in the late morning sunlight, heading for ocean or inland sea, according to their lanes. From the other side of the castle complex, the city revealed its presence with a distant rumble and — because the light wind came from that direction — the smell of… well, she just thought of it as City, after three years here. She supposed all cities smelled different, though.
Diziet Sma sat on the grass with her legs drawn up to her chin, and looked out across the straits and their arching suspension bridges to the sub-continent on the far shore.
"Anything else?" the drone asked.
"Yeah; take my name off the judging panel for the Academy show… and send a stalling letter to that Petrain guy." She frowned in the sunlight, shading her eyes. "Can't think of anything else."
The drone moved in front of her, teasing a small flower from the grass in front of her and playing with it. " Xenophobe's just entered the system," it told her.
"Well happy day," Sma said sourly. She wetted one finger and rubbed a little speck of dirt from the toe of one boot.
"And that young man in your bed just surfaced; asking Maikril where you've got to."
Sma said nothing, though her shoulders shook once and she smiled. She lay back on the grass, one arm behind her.
The sky was aquamarine, stroked with clouds. She could smell the grass, and taste the scent of small, crushed flowers. She looked back up over her forehead at the grey-black wall towering behind her, and wondered if the castle had ever been attacked on days like this. Did the sky seem so limitless, the waters of the straits so fresh and clean, the flowers so bright and fragrant, when men fought and screamed, hacked and staggered and fell and watched their blood mat the grass?
Mists and dusk, rain and lowering cloud seemed the better background; clothes to cover the shame of battle.
She stretched, suddenly tired, and shivered with a little flashback of the night's exertions. And, like somebody holding something precious, and it slipping from their fingers, but them having the speed and the skill to catch it again before it hit the floor, she was able — somewhere inside herself — to dip down and retrieve the vanishing memory as it slipped back into the clutter and noise of her mind, and glanding recall she held it, savoured it, re-experienced it, until she felt herself shiver again in the sunlight, and came close to making a little moaning noise.