Beluga Fay (Dragon Bone Hill) (12 page)

There was, Titus was certain, a part of the woman that was utterly genuine, but there was at least one other part that was as bent as they came. How the two parts fit together was difficult to tell; she had to be, he was certain, experiencing the same with him. This was a dance that they continued to enjoy; one they were required to continue with; one they hadn’t quite figured out how to put aside. It was as well they only spent a couple of days a week at the apartment together. Also well, because though he had changed a lot since rowing ashore, he worried that Timog would figure out who he was—or hear the stories. Lots of reasons to be glad they’d not really moved in together, but Titus needed to put the constant bickering about trust behind them. How far behind the man managed to put these was an open question.

“Well, you will need to trust me a little now.” She lay beneath him, skin both cool and warm to the touch.

“Why is that?”

“The Wall wants another meeting.”

“They called you?”

“We still have phones in Makati—some still have them here too.”

“I know. What do they want?”

“Diamonds.”

“What for now?”

“The national government requires more bribes.”

“But we just gave them a pouch last week?”

“What happens when it’s learned that a large group of children of government members in the city have walked out of the gate? People are risking a lot to help us.”

“Or are appearing to risk a lot.”

“You do not believe them?”

“Glenna,” exasperation in the tone, “they’d turned you and your girlfriends into whores—of course I do not believe them.”

“You’ve stopped that.”

“For the moment, but all the Wall has to do is kill me and you and yours are back to where they were.” He didn’t beat the sentiment into the ground, but he wanted to be certain it was he, and he alone, which stood between herself and the guards.

“What happens if we do not feed the beast?” Glenna seemed to have taken the nature of the Wall to heart.

“That’s a good question. To be honest, and I hope we are both trying to be here, I’m not entirely sure.”

“I’d take a guess.”

“At first it would be difficult—blustering, some aggressive posturing, maybe minor acts of violence to help us see things their way. The last would be unpredictable.”

“Then we’d better have a meeting about this.”

“We can’t wait here forever.”

“Chrislann, he’s not taking a tram from a few blocks away. Getting here he’ll have to dodge a number of patrols then dodge the Cartel.” Chrislann Budiman had never accepted Titus, even though they’d never met. Glenna’s assessment of why had been accurate—Chrislann hated all men that came near his sister, and she’d known this a long time. She was never clear on why, but suspected. Though he had always been nothing but proper with his sister, there were glances that left her occasionally uneasy. These had been a part of his relationship with her since the elder had entered puberty. Only five years apart, there seemed more than that between them. On occasion, the woman wondered if there was a deeper gulf dividing them.

What caused her most distress was other women did not attract his attention in the same manner. If they had, she supposed, Chrislann’s abiding interest in her would have naturally shifted to others. Since he never focused on these others, she worried what he was thinking when he stared at her—but only when he did not believe she noticed. Her sense of his eyes on her never faded when they were together. Even when Chrislann was not looking at her, Glenna sensed he was thinking of her—aching for her. There was little reason to suppose the latter, but she could never escape the sense of his hunger.

“You’ve,” Chrislann again attempting to avoid looking at her and examining a dusty, single flower vase, “used that excuse for just about everyone that has been late to, or skipped, a meeting.” Glenna turned and walked into the kitchen to put some distance between herself and the man she no longer felt safe with. Sitting in the chair, Glenna looked up to see him in the doorway staring down at her. He was handsome: tall, lithe, athletic, with the same eyes as his sister, both of which came from their mother, short black hair, their father’s floppy lobes, and hands that were a bit knobbly at the joints. The last were said to come from their maternal grandmother, but she’d died years before either had been born.

Whether her death had come from suicide or murder was unclear. Their grandfather had been a passionate and domineering man—they saw a little of this in his last years—but he had also loved his wife. There had been abuse, but because of the family’s position in both government and industry, charges had never been brought. This also had occurred in a time when the laws were weighted against women. Glenna believed it was murder, but Chrislann asserted he was not certain. Secretly, Glenna believed he was just attempting to placate her. Either he believed it to be suicide or that their grandmother had been unfaithful—the rumor had been common enough in the circle of friends they still had. In many ways, Glenna was certain her brother was a throwback to another time. One more reason he hated Titus—and it
was
hate.

Though feigning distrust for racial and national reasons, the truth was that it was sexual jealousy and pride. Chrislann was to take care of her when their father was not around—but even when he was, the man was weak and sycophantic. Chrislann never tired of pointing this out to Glenna and their mother, when she was still alive. Much of the problem, Glenna again supposed, was just how close mother and son had been. She was not interested in supposing the closeness unnatural, but this never waned in later years when Chrislann should have been looking for a wife. Their mother always maintained that there was plenty of time for that and besides, she and Glenna needed him close so they would be safe.

Safe from what was never made clear, but Glenna supposed it was the woman’s way of taking a dig at her husband. Henry, it was true, was a weak man—but he was also a womanizer, a poor father, and a non-existent role model. The consequence was that their mother, unable or unwilling to find a proper replacement, took her son for the role and never knew what she was doing to him or his sister. When she did die, her brother’s attention shifted dramatically from the absent mother to the surrogate sister. That both of them were busily working their way through a tedious cliché was not lost on her, but it did not make living with the man any easier—hence the number of lovers she’d gone through. There were even a couple of pregnancies Chrislann had had terminated, though these remained illegal even when other countries had been aggressively liberalizing their legal systems.

Their father, through the heavy influence of Chrislann and his industrial lobbyists, had voted to keep the laws in place. Half the time Glenna was certain he was doing this simply to control her. When this failed, Chrislann always had a few good doctors and nurses on call to deal with the issue. It did not matter that the men had offered to marry Glenna—she was, after all, beautiful, educated, wealthy, and cultured. Chrislann had refused them, and through his rejection, their father was required, if he wished to keep his position with the government, to follow along with his son’s wishes.

One of the woman’s goals on getting out of the city was to get as far from the men in her family as she could. The terrible thing for Glenna was she loved both of these desperately, but she needed free of them. How, on the other side of the gate, this was to happen, she did not know—especially since Chrislann wanted out too. Why this was, was both clear and frightening, and it had nothing to do with wanting to live, Of that much she was, once again, certain.

The woman stared balefully at the floor—not wishing, or daring, to look at her brother. Chrislann had a way of seeing into her. This gift was never consistent nor was it complete, but he could see into her, and now she needed to keep her brother ignorant of her thoughts. She wasn’t, in truth, clear as to what these were and definitely uncertain as to what they were relative to Pym. The man was the most frustrating lover she’d ever taken. All her lovers had been devoted to her and unquestioning in this devotion. The woman simply took this as a given—but here not only was the man not devoted to her but assumed, she was certain of this, she was not only lying to him but simply using him to protect herself from the guards and get her and her friends out of the city.

This wasn’t, really, a fair assessment of what she was doing with him. Of course, Titus offered her a level of protection no other man had ever offered—even where these men could call on the services of police, private security, and, later, the militia. There was a draw to such a man she’d not known before, and it was intoxicating. Yet, he was right in that she was using him to get out of the city. What was to happen then Glenna remained unclear about. On the other side of the Wall, since she was abandoning the ruling class, there would be no protection she could draw on and no members of the national government she would be able to appeal to. All that would remain was what wealth she could take with her in the form of uncut diamonds, other precious and semi-precious stones, and her own wits.

These seemed inadequate to the challenge the woman would meet there. Her brother and her friends would not have much more to offer than what she already had. Outside the Wall, in a country that seemed to be collapsing, she would have no protection from Chrislann’s appetites. Perhaps this is why he favored the plan—freed of law and social convention, what was to stop him from taking what he wanted or coercing this out of his sister? It wasn’t that she was appalled by the prospect—disgusted, of course, but not appalled. Still, he was her brother, and there was nowhere good for such a relationship to go—socially or personally. There’s no telling where they’d be swept off to if they stepped across that line.

 She needed someone on the other side of the Wall that would stay with her and protect her from what was out there and what would follow her from the city. This was not an easy decision to make, nor one Chrislann would allow her to make if he had anything to say about it, and Glenna was certain he’d have a lot to say.

Taking courage, the woman raised her face to Chrislann and there was the sound of a car turning onto the street. Before their eyes could meet, he turned back to the living room and the front door. “It’s the others.” Chrislann called from the front of the house. At least they’d not be alone. Even as she rose, there was another call from the living room. “Another car—looks like your new boyfriend.” There was a casual, twisted loathing thrown down on the word. He’d have denied it and others would not have heard it, but for Glenna the sickness in her brother was getting difficult to deny and harder to abide.

Running to the front window, she craned over his shoulder to see if it was Titus. She didn’t recognize the car, but this didn’t mean anything—he tended to show up in a different car each time they met. When Chrislann pushed her back with an elbow, the woman snaked round the other side of him and under his arm. Then Glenna was running across the graveled driveway; turning she blew her brother a kiss. This was, she knew, a dangerous thing to do, but he’d pushed her too far, or she’d been brooding too keenly on what they were to each other and the power her older brother had over her life and biology. She didn’t even know if it was Titus, but as she ran toward the car, the woman experienced a lightness of being and a swelling in her heart she’d not known before. A part of her thought this love—the darker part wasn’t certain what name to put to it.

Climbing from the car, the first thing Pym saw was not the dark woman with the wild hair flying behind her in the white cocktail dress but the man in the apartment window. The expression was passive but forced. This would have to be the brother, no missing the resemblance between the two. One look at the brother and Pym saw the next obstacle in his path to getting out of the city—as if there weren’t enough already. Even as he took her in his arms, Titus was calculating how he was going to remove this latest obstacle while not alienating Glenna. From all she had said of him, he knew there was a tension and hostility between the pair, but they were family and killing Chrislann would estrange his sister.