The Fractal Prince (20 page)

Quietly, Tawaddud nods, gritting her teeth.

‘Listen. I have already been in touch with the hsien-kus, on Father’s behalf. Strangely, they don’t seem to be very concerned that their envoy was in danger. Like I told you, there is politics here that we simply do not know about. Or time: sometimes you find Sobornost communities entering Deep Time, leaping forward a generation in what is just days to us, and then they have forgotten what the previous negotiations were all about.’ She smiles a knowing smile. ‘Of course, sometimes it may suit their purposes to make such claims.’

She takes a small box from the folds of her robes and gives it to Tawaddud.

‘You should go and talk to Sumanguru, have a look at his wounds. When you treat him, insert this under his skin, somewhere not visible. Preferably close to the brain. Our studies of sobortech after the Cry of Wrath have not been entirely fruitless. Once that is done, you don’t need to worry about what comes next.’

Dunyazad opens the box. Inside is a tiny object, like a shard of glass, held delicately between metal pincers.

‘What does it do?’

‘Like I said, you do not need to worry about that.’

‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’

‘Because he trusts you. And you have proven yourself to be a capable doctor, if not a politician.’ Duny touches Tawaddud’s arm.

‘I know it is hard to believe, but you made progress with Father tonight. In time, he will come to see you as I do: a Gomelez. A member of our family.’

Tawaddud closes her eyes.

‘Will you do this one thing for me, please?’ Duny asks. ‘Or if not for me, for Mother?’

Quietly, Tawaddud nods. Duny kisses her forehead. ‘Thank you. After that, you should get some sleep.’

She lifts a jinn ring to her ear, frowning. ‘Or perhaps not. It seems that Abu Nuwas is here to see you.’

‘I came as soon as I heard,’ Abu says, when Tawaddud receives him in her assignation room. She applied some makeup hastily, but washed it away almost immediately: her tired face shone through the thin layer. Still, the calm of the room and a friendly face make her feel better.

They sit down on the pillows. Tawaddud lights two candles on the table. Abu’s brass eye glitters in their warm light.

‘How did you find out?’ she asks.

‘A high-speed chase over the Shade Quarter?’ Abu shakes his head. ‘Not exactly a secret. I’m glad you are all right.’

He reaches across the table and takes Tawaddud’s hand. ‘I had no idea it would be something so dangerous. I feel terrible for putting you in such a position. It is one thing to seek your father’s trust, but to throw your life away pursuing it—’

He shakes his head again. ‘Trust me, I know the price of dreams.’

‘Well, looks like my involvement in such dangerous matters is over,’ Tawaddud says and pulls her hand away. ‘My father does not even think I’m worth looking in the eye. And . . .’

She tries to keep the tears down, but they come anyway.

‘What is it?’ Abu says. ‘You can tell me. I know I’m a stranger, but if it helps, I’m here.’

He understands
. Tawaddud dries her tears on her sleeve.

‘It’s stupid. This whole thing. I found something, in Alile’s qarin. And I think I know who killed her. But I have no proof. I can’t tell Father, he will never believe me.’

Abu touches her shoulder.

‘If . . . if you want, you could tell me. I could go to your father, talk to him again. He will listen to me.’

His voice is gentle. She remembers the fire in the doctor’s tent, the all-consuming flame inside her. In the flickering light, a trace of it flashes in his human eye. A cold finger of fear travels down her spine. She shakes her head.
Stupid. I’m just tired
.

‘Thank you, but no,’ she says aloud. ‘You have done enough, and once my father has made his decision, the only one who could ever change his mind was my mother.’

Abu looks away.

‘As you wish.’ He pauses. ‘So. What about us?’

‘I don’t know, Abu. I’m tired.’

‘Of course. I should let you rest.’ He gets up. ‘I have a proposal: come have dinner with me tomorrow, at my palace.’ He raises a hand. ‘No obligations: you showed me your world, and I simply want to show you mine.’

Tawaddud nods. ‘I would like that.’

‘Good. You know, I did not quite finish my story the other night. Perhaps it will help you.’ He rubs his brass eye. ‘After the mutalibun got what they wanted, they left me alone in the desert to die, so that I could not lead anyone else to what they found. I was all alone in the wildcode desert, in the Fast Cities. There were houses whose windows were eyes, carbeasts, machines that looked human but were not, and . . . worse things.

‘But I walked home. I survived. There were a hundred times I thought I was going to die, but I kept going. I had a destination and it kept me alive, no matter how bad things got.

‘So do not give up on your father. Maybe you can still show him who you are. I will help you, if you will let me. You don’t have to walk through the desert alone.’

Tawaddud feels warm.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

She kisses him at the door. His lips are cold, but he embraces Tawaddud hard.

He smiles when she finally pulls away. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘What was it?’ Tawaddud asks.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What was it that kept you going?’

Abu smiles.

‘Revenge,’ he says. ‘What else? Good night, Tawaddud.’

When Abu is gone, Tawaddud picks up Dunyazad’s box.

Revenge
.

The Cry of Wrath. She was eight years old. There were mountains in the sky. Crystal clouds, diamond pyramids, blocking out every bit of blue. Distant thunder. Shouting, fearful cries, carried up to the Shard. White beams coming down from the heavens. She laughed with delight when she saw it.

‘Mother,’ she shouted. ‘Look, it is raining light!’

Her mother looked at the Sobornost sky in terror. She had not been the same since the star of madness, prone to silences and nightmares. Tawaddud thought the wonder in the sky would make her laugh again.

Instead, her mother ran to the balcony and leaped.

The candles flutter in the wind from outside. She closes her window, takes her doctor’s bag and goes to see Sumanguru.

The guest quarters are in the Tower of Saffron, the tallest of the five horizontal towers in the Gomelez palace, in the tip with a magnificent view of Sirr. Tawaddud chooses a long, winding staircase from her own rooms that takes her around the main living areas of the palace, climbing along the curving shell of the Shard. The night air and the exercise clear her head. Sirr is a sea of golden light far below, reminding her of the other Sirr Abu showed her in the athar. She finds herself missing him.
At least there is one good thing that came out of this
.

Sumanguru opens the door. He is wearing white trousers and a plain shirt from the guest wardrobe, stark against his dark skin: they make him look like a wirer, except for the scars. He looks at Tawaddud curiously.

‘I did not expect to see you so soon,’ he says. ‘Do you have something to tell me?’

Tawaddud looks down. ‘Lord Sumanguru, I wanted to make sure there were no aftereffects from the barakah gun or the exposure of your Seals, not to mention your injuries. My father is concerned about the welfare of his guest.’

‘I am not overly concerned about this body, but I can hardly turn down a gesture of hospitality. Please come in.’

At Tawaddud’s request, Sumanguru sits down and removes his shirt. His body is hairless and smooth, every muscle impossibly perfect. His chest is covered in innumerable tiny wounds, but most of them appear to be healing already, faster than any baseline human. In athar, his Seals are still intact. Looking closer, she can see a network of nodes under his skin, complex machinery that athar does not know how to represent.

‘I did not know you were a doctor,’ Sumanguru says.

‘I am many things.’ She touches his thick neck: there is a deep cut on the left side of his back that should do. ‘There is a needle fragment here I should remove, to avoid wildcode infection. This may sting a little.’

‘Pain is irrelevant. Go ahead.’

She picks up a scalpel from her doctor’s bag.
A killer of Dragons. Is that who you really are, Sumanguru of the Turquoise Branch?
She presses down on his firm flesh, ready to make the cut. He tenses at her touch.

Why were you afraid of flying
?

She puts the scalpel down. No, Duny. I’m not going to play your game. Not like this.

‘If you are going to do it, do it,’ Sumanguru says. ‘If I have to die, I might as well be killed by a pretty girl.’

Tawaddud takes a step back. ‘Lord Sumanguru, I—’

Sumanguru turns around. He is holding up the little box Duny gave her, open. The tiny jewel glitters inside.

‘Nice,’ he says. ‘Zoku technology. Where did you get it?’ He turns it around, a curious look in his eyes.

Zokus are something Tawaddud only has the faintest idea about, a distant civilisation with ancient customs that once upon a time fought some sort of war with Sobornost. What could Duny possibly have to do with them?

She takes a step back, lifts the scalpel slowly, heart racing.
Why can’t I do anything right
?

Sumanguru gets up.

‘Calm down,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I only tried to frighten you earlier. I get scared, too. I know you know who killed Alile.’

‘Who are you?’ Tawaddud hisses.

Sumanguru smiles. ‘The better question is who
you
really are, Tawaddud Gomelez. And I think you are not someone who would hurt a guest in your father’s house. Did he send you?’

‘No.’ Tawaddud’s face feels numb. She licks her lips but can’t feel them. The thoughts come at her fast like chimera serpents in the desert, striking.
Dunyazad. Rumzan would have reported to her that we found the qarin. She would have known where to get a barakah gun
.

The scalpel clatters to the floor. Sumanguru lets out a slow breath. ‘That’s more like it,’ he says.

They look at each other quietly for a while. Sumanguru sits down, leaning his elbows on his knees.

‘It was your sister, wasn’t it?’ he says slowly.

A sick feeling grows in Tawaddud’s stomach.

‘I wasn’t supposed to be your guide, she was. That’s why the Fast Ones did not touch me.’

‘Do you think your father knows?’

Tawaddud shakes her head. ‘He is Cassar Gomelez. After my mother died, all he has cared about is Sirr. He has been working on the Accords for half his life. And he would have never hurt Lady Alile.’

‘It does make sense,’ Sumanguru says. ‘Earth has been . . . a bone of contention between us and the zokus for some time. We pushed them back in the Protocol War and came here. It would definitely be in their interest to restrict our access to the gogols here as much as possible. So they may have used your sister to get rid of Alile.’

‘What about the attack in the aviary?’

‘My guess would be that she was worried about a Sobornost investigator getting too close to her. That’s also why she wanted you to put an insurance policy in place.’

He tosses the box back to Tawaddud. ‘No doubt it will have self-destructed already. Too bad: I could have tried to figure out which zoku it came from.’

Tawaddud squeezes her eyes shut. ‘I can’t go to Father without proof.’

‘Is there anyone else in the Council you trust?’

Abu. But it was Duny who wanted me to meet him. That is the last thing she will ever take away from me
.

She shakes her head.

Sumanguru smiles. ‘Well, I suppose that leaves yours truly.’

‘With all due respect, I don’t trust you, Lord Sumanguru.’

‘And you shouldn’t. But that does not mean we can’t help each other. If we find the jinn who killed Alile, maybe we can link the murder to your sister.’

Zaybak tried to warn me. He would understand. Or at least the Zaybak who was Tawaddud would
.

A cold certainty grips Tawaddud. She remembers old stories, about deals with devils, about dark figures who offered the innocent whatever they wanted, in exchange for their soul. She always thought they were just clever ways for body thieves to put their victims at ease.

But there are other stories too, ones where the sister no one likes saves the day in the end.

‘He is called the Axolotl,’ she says.

‘The one from the children’s story. I see. So, how do we catch him? I have something that will hold him, I think, but we need to find him first.’ He holds up a small device that looks like a bullet.

Tawaddud touches her temples. Entwinement always leaves a trace.

‘We already have,’ she says. ‘A part of him is in me. We just have to find a way to speak to it. There is a place called the Palace of Stories. Someone there will help us. But we have to go tonight.’

‘How do you plan to sneak away from this place?’

Tawaddud smiles a bitter smile.

‘That is the easy part, Lord Sumanguru. I am
very
good at running away from my father. But you may not like it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I understand that you are not too fond of heights.’

17

MIELI AND EARTH

Sydän wanted to go to Earth. At the time, Mieli could not understand why.

They had just met, while building a Great Work. Among the people of Hiljainen Koto, it was a coming-of-age thing to do, go out into the black and shape ice with väki, make new habitats or just Great Works for their own sake, just to show that there was something valuable to be made from the crude stuff that the diamond minds no longer cared about, big icy middle fingers held up to the prissy gods of the Inner System.

It was the Grandmother who sent Sydän to work with her, bright-eyed Sydän from the Kirkkaat Kutojat koto. Extreme programming, she said, ancient tradition (which meant that dirtpeople used to do it): two minds working as one, the other shaping, the other watching, monitoring, correcting. At first, Mieli saw it as an insult. But she discovered that the other girl was much better than her at chasing down errant ancestors that escaped down the icy pathways as phonons or configurations of ghostly electricity that messed up the growth patterns, leaving behind icicles shaped like fertility idols.