A WEEK AND A HALF after my first encounter with the rabbit, Kobachi finishes his custom work four days behind schedule, and three before the main event. Pisses me off because he’s slagged with my timetable. Would not be nearly as troublesome if it weren’t for the sudden increase in security in Hyperion. Something has happened, something they don’t want the general public to know. There’s no news on the HCs. Nothing but the political war between the Sovereign’s Optimates and the Vox Populi as they masticate each other in the press on the merits of the Peace. Half the fleet from Mercury is coming home, so the talking heads say, because the Senate is terrified the Reaper will rally the whole Armada and return to dissolve their power. Meanwhile we’re on overdrive adjusting our plan to ensure the increase in security doesn’t slag all our hard work.
Kobachi is making some last-minute adjustments, bent like a nearsighted hierophant over his workbench. I ease my nerves by smoking half a pack of burners in a crusty formFab chair. I go through correspondences from contractors on my ghost datapad, my tenth in the last month. Even using Syndicate freelancers, everything has to be done piecemeal so no contractor can point a finger my direction if this blows up in our faces. Which, despite the thoroughness of my plan, seems to be the outcome we’re racing toward. I feel like I’m the only one who knows it. Cyra and Dano are both infected with the excitement of all the new gear, while Volga sulks around like someone stole her favorite toy. Whenever I ask about her mood, she puts on a brave smile and says it’s nothing. Knowing her, she’s having second thoughts about the job. But doubts have never stopped her from following me before.
I smile when I see a message from the Obsidian beast himself: Gorgo has the gravWell. I’ll be damned. I feel like a kid who wished for a lizard and woke up to a dragon sitting on the lawn.
I look at my watch. I’m to meet the rabbit at Aristotle Park at two in the afternoon, and it’s already pushing one. Cyra and Dano wanted me to make the plant on the girl the first day out. They worried I wouldn’t be charming enough to ensure I’d see her again. Too many variables, they said. Cyra knows computers, and Dano knows angles, but leave the human condition to me.
We kept correspondence since I last saw her. It started facile. Sharing little jokes, musings on the superciliousness of Luna’s jewel-bedecked denizens. It was a bore at first. She was just a child realizing she could mock the world. I expected the vitriol to continue to pour out. But the more comfortable she grew, the kinder she became and the heavier the black, gnarled weight in my stomach grows. In some ways she reminds me of Trigg. Small-town, good heart waltzes into the big, rotten city; and here I am, the welcoming party. Some people just have shit luck.
I look at my watch again, annoyed.
“Kobachi. Almost done?” He doesn’t answer. “Hey, gecko, I’m talking to you.”
Kobachi starts and peers up at me, his eyes magnified by the lenses. “Quite. Quite. Come have a gander.” He shuffles to the side to make way for me. I pick up the small metal drone from the table, turn it over in my hands and match it with the Bacchus pendant already around my neck. Perfect replica, but a bit heavier. “The face is just as you requested. Sweet and gentle, lively and compassionate, but the devil’s behind the eyes, eh?”
“Will it work?”
“I bet my reputation on it.”
“Not just your reputation, Kobachi.” I pat him on the cheek and slip the pendant around my neck, shoving the other into my pocket. I head to the door. “The Syndicate will cover the expenses.”
I change into Philippe’s clothes in Kobachi’s lavatory and fix his beard to my face. I apply the makeup for my fake scars and insert the blackmarket retinal forges, which turn my eyes a gray so pale it could almost be white. I twirl an extendable cane out before me in front of the mirror and work my face through the gamut of emotions to check for creases in the makeup and resFlesh scars. “A pedestrian’s penchant for circumambulatory locomotion is the pedantic paroxysm of a pleonasm of peremptory drivers and sometimes leads to imperfectly preventable parricide.” I repeat the phrase four times till I have Philippe’s pretentious multisyllabic-adoring accent down pat. Satisfied, I check the Bacchus pendant one last time and tuck it away. The cool metal slips under my shirt and waits against my skin. It’s uncommonly heavy. Will she notice? I stare at myself in the mirror. My pupils huge in the low light. I sink into the darkness in them, remembering how the Gold spit Trigg with her razor. Holiday’s words slither back.
What would he think of me now?
I reach for the zoladone dispenser and activate the blighter on my collar.
After catching a taxi to Aristotle Park, I find the rabbit waiting for me underneath an old sycamore that’s seen at least five Sovereigns. She’s watching squirrels chase each other along the boughs. “Finally!” she says, bursting to her feet and looking up at me with those big rusty eyes. Her hair is more fashionable now. Straightened and hanging to just below her ears. I liked it better the other way. In the reptilian chill of the zoladone, I vivisect her. The city is already changing the girl. The hair, the silver nail polish, the faux-leather black jacket she wears with purple lights on the sleeve—eroding the romantic rustic mystique I built around her. The city never infected Trigg, except for those coral earrings and that sad jacket. Least she still talks like she’s from a mine, for now. “ ’Lo, geezer, I was startin’ ta think you’d been hit by a bloodydamn train. I’m almost an old maid here.”
That’s not what she was thinking. She was thinking I’d ditched her. That’s what you always think when you’re alone. That you’ll always be alone, and any present company is an aberration.
Cold inside, I feign a smile and touch my leg. “A thousand apologies, love. No, a million! My leg, the old limb, has been the black death of me today.”
She pales and looks at my cane. “Oh Jove, I’m sorry…was only a jest.”
“You couldn’t know.”
“You should have messaged me. I could have met you….”
“An old tinman’s rust should never jeopardize a lady’s enjoyment of an afternoon as splendid as this.”
“You should have told me,” she says crossly. “We don’t have to walk the park….” We’d planned to stroll the park and take a taxi to the wharf to see the water of the Sea of Serenity—an idea I couldn’t get her to drop. But to go to the water, we’d have to cross through a security checkpoint, and checkpoints have advanced sensors and my Philippe credentials are hardly unimpeachable. Say what you want about the Republic, whoever created their ID system was a razor-smart bastard.
“We could find a café if that would be easier for you,” she says. “Or maybe go to the stalls and get a picnic on the grass?”
“No, the wharf would be lovely!”
“Philippe…” She crosses her arms. Subborn little rabbit.
“Well…only if you insist.” I emphasize a sigh of relief. “I believe you’ve saved my life this time. The water makes my leg ache so. Are you sure you don’t want to walk? I could grin and—”
“We’re having a picnic,” she concludes. “And that’s the end of it.”
“Then I insist on shopping with you, paying for everything, and escorting you properly as I do it. Young Lyria…” I proffer my arm. She smiles, delighted by the courtly manners and how dashing she must look in her new black jacket; she slips her arm in mine. We cross the park, where lowColor children fly their kites through the twilight sky—slate blue stained with fingers of whorehouse pink—and my sight lingers on indiscreet lovers who lie in the deep shade. The rabbit’s eyes seek out families playing and lounging along the edge of a pond.
In the market, we amble through stalls of foods from four planets and ten continents. Fatty strips of beef bubble over charcoal grills. Seafood simmers in oil. Squid steams in marrow vapor. Vegetables, flash-frozen and shipped from Earth, like all the rest of it, glimmer wetly in clear plastic. The air is soupy with the scent of cloves and Martian cumin and curry, making my mouth water. We choose two foils of Pacific sweet fried cod, a plastic bowl with olives swimming in oil, European Gruyère cheese wrapped in South American prosciutto and baked in a flaky pastry, and for dessert a pint of jasmine ice cream and custard-stuffed dates. We lay the spread on the grass and eat while watching the children’s kites bank in the sky.
“I like watching them,” Lyria says about the children.
I mutter something neutral.
“All they know is that their parents love them and they like kites. Do you like kites?”
“Who doesn’t like kites?”
“I don’t imagine the Sovereign likes kites.”
“No?”
“No.” She takes on a pompous, hilarious Martian Aureate accent: “What are these bits of paper, floating in yonder air? For what efficacious purpose do they exist? The betterment of man? I think not. Put the paper toward the troops! The string to the nurses! The children to the munitions plants!”
I smile, but with a half dozen milligrams of zoladone in the veins, I can’t find it in me to laugh. “Children fly them on Mercury, you know. From the parapets and rooftops. Thousands of kites in midsummer.”
“Have you seen it yourself?” she asks.
“Just once. On a work trip for a former employer.”
“That must have been beautiful,” she says dreamily.
I feel the sudden need to quash her enthusiasm. “But they use glass string and angle them to cut each other’s kites out of the sky till there’s only one left.”
“Why?”
“What’s more human than competition?”
“Thousands of losers and one winner? That’s so sad.”
I snort. “Sounds like something Volga would say.”
“Volga?”
I realize my mistake. “A friend of mine,” I say instinctively.
She snorts. “You have friends besides me? The nerve.” She smiles. “Really, I’d love to meet her. Volga. That’s an Obsidian name, isn’t it?” She looks apprehensive at the idea.
“Lamentably, she is no longer with the living,” I say, and as I say it, I feel like I’m not with the living. Not tethered to any of the people around me. All these lies to this girl, and for what? Money? My life? I settle back against a tree to close my eyes, hoping Lyria forgets the name and lets the subject die.
“How’s the Telemanus family coping with the peace talks?” I say to distract her. She’s caught off guard. I’ve never asked about them before.
“They think Caraval is playing both sides. And that Dancer can’t control the Vox like he thinks he can.”
“Interesting.”
“Something’s happened.” She squints. “Something bad. I’m not sure what, but it was on Earth. They’ve been sealed up in the Sovereign’s wing for days.”
“Hm.” I let the subject die, lest she become suspicious.
Despite everything, it feels good to lie down and ease the ache between my shoulder blades. I’ve not been sleeping well in my apartment. I never do when it’s a bright month. Up all bright night pacing back and forth in front of the smoke glass, racing through burners and watching that Gold bitch kill Trigg again and again on my holocube. The two of them are doing their little dance across my gray matter, and the Reaper watches, huddling with Holiday as Trigg dies and dies and dies, for him. For their messiah.
What would Trigg think of how this has all turned out?
Seven years ago, Luna was a war zone choking on dust and debris, her sky groaning with bombers. But today there are children laughing, children born who’ve never seen those bombers or the mechanized legions that once prowled the cityscape. The sky is warm and friendly. The air cool. The girl beside me breathing shallowly. And I feel, despite myself, at ease enough to drift to sleep.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” the girl says suddenly. I look over at her from under my shades. She’s on her back, her eyes closed, shirtsleeves rolled up so the autumn sunlight can warm her dark forearms.
“Oh dear. Whatever did I prattle on about now?” I ask.
“About seeing myself before others see me.”
“Oh, that. Forgive the proselytization, I was quite well sorted.”
“You weren’t that drunk,” she says. Her eyes are open now and watching the kites. “I’ve never really been alone before. I mean, I have my nephew, Liam, here. But he’s so done up in the Citadel school that I hardly see him. And when I do, it hurts both of us. Reminds us of who isn’t here.” I turn on my back and look over at her, propping myself up with an elbow. “So when you said I have to see myself before anyone else does, I look and I…well, I look and I don’t see anything.” This is hard for her, but she steels herself and goes forward. I find myself admiring the resoluteness in her face. The zoladone must be fading on account of the food in my gut. “In Lagalos, I was always minding my family. Watching my little brothers so Mum could sleep. Stitching my big brothers’ clothes together with my sister. Patching boots. Then they sent me to school to learn how to work a silkery. Didn’t much change after the Rising. Kept on minding my job, my family. And when we got out to the camps, it was the same. Only my brothers left and soon I was minding my father and my jobs and my sister’s little ones.”
I wish she would stop telling me her story. I can tell she’s kept this pain locked in a dark little chest inside her, just like I did. But I’m not the good person she is. I want her to be a little nasty creature. Want to see the ugliness I know everyone’s got inside them seething out of her eyes, spewing out of her mouth. But all that comes are little tears.
We’re not alike.
I hoard my pain, because no one will understand it. She’s just been looking for someone she can trust. Someone to share it with. Not me, stupid girl. I don’t deserve it. But she keeps going, and I feel heavier and blacker on the grass, wishing I took more zoladone.
“When the Red Hand came, I thought I’d be braver. You know, get a gun like they do in the flicks. But everything felt so fast. And I felt so small. All I wanted to do was sink in the mud.” She wipes her eyes and returns her arms to guard her chest.
“And you feel guilty for being here, when they’re not,” I ask quietly.
“Yeah.”
I hesitate. “Don’t you think they’re waiting for you in the Vale?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“And if they were watching you, would they be proud?”
She considers, looking up at me with glassy eyes. “I hope so.”
We linger in the park till our ice cream has melted. I walk with her back to the tram depot so she can return to the Citadel. We hug farewell, and as I planned, I take off my necklace and fix my face with compassion, but the words don’t come as smoothly as intended. They stick in my throat.
“Philippe?”
“I want you to have this.” I push the locket into her hands. “To wear it. It’s always brought me strength.”
“I can’t take that….Your fiancé…”
“Gave it to me so I’d remember wherever I went I had him with me. But I don’t need a pendant for that. But you should be reminded that wherever you go, you’re not alone. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“I think you’re my only friend.”
“And what do friends do? Friends help each other. You carry my shadows. I carry yours for a spell.” I take an imaginary necklace from her neck and put it on myself and buckle my knees like it’s a great weight. She laughs. “Maybe then we’ll both be a bit lighter when next we meet.”
“Do you think he’s watching you? Your fi—your husband. Not from the Vale, course. I know you lot don’t believe. But from somewhere?” She stares up at me from under her mop of red hair.
“No, I don’t.”
“I think you’re wrong. I think he’s watching you. And I think he’s smiling and got a twinkle in his eye.” She bundles her coat and heads to the depot, but turns around and runs back to me to give me a small kiss on the cheek. “You’re not alone either, Philippe.”
Sweet little rabbit, if only that were true.