Chapter Seventeen: Let Me Make My Heaven
They blamed us just for bein' what we are but they might as well go
Chasing after moonbeams or light a candle from a star.
- Arthur Colahan
That day, the Crown learned of successes and failures alike.
Mordred reclined in the throne that had been his father's, and looked away from Commander Lee for the first time since he had walked into the room, to look across the stony faces of the counsellors he had permitted to sit in on this meeting, fanned out in a crescent half-moon shape following the curve of the chamber's northern wall. The Queen Regent had elected, as she always did, to sit among them, shoulder-to-shoulder with Mordred's Minister for War and Minister for Intelligence, old men and women with salt and pepper at the temples dressed in neat suits of muted colours, and now she leaned forward in her seat as though it were possible to focus closer on what the military general had to say. He was just finishing his report, his hands clasped behind his back, his back as straight as an iron rod: "….and captured twelve men in all. We suffered six casualties and no fatalities."
"Captured?" Mordred nodded thoughtfully, his pale eyes distant, watching the mosaic on the far wall of the throne room rather than meeting his general's eye. "And what of the interrogation, Commander?"
"We have broken the scum, your Majesty."
Ysabel winced a little to hear such terms used. Mordred had to think of what he had said to his mother all those weeks ago, watching the false Demetri's Selection on the television. We've fought for peace,while they have fought for power. That was the only justification that they could cling to, these days. They fought for an end to the fighting. They killed for an end to the killing. They bled for an end to the bleeding.
Mordred's voice was slow-dripping venom. "And?"
Commander Lee looked to Set for permission to continue, but it was Mordred's uncle who stepped forward to answer the question. He had participated in the battle himself, though Ysabel had begged him for the past fifteen years to leave the front-line to those more disposable than he, to the soldiers who had signed up to offer their lives in the name of Illéa, to those without whom the strategies of the Crown would not be utterly crippled. Set had always said he could not leave his men to face a threat from which he would run, and the legacy of that integrity was apparent on his features – his face was deeply bruised; he had a swollen lip that threatened to burst and a set of delicately tiny stitches beside one eye, now thoroughy blackened in waning shades of ochre and purple. "Majesty. The information received is… privileged."
"Leave us," Mordred said coolly, and though his gaze had not moved from the far wall, his counsellors knew to whom he spoke and rose as one. They moved hastily from the throne room; the look in Mordred's eyes had brooked no argument. The Queen Regent joined them, clearly returning to the business of the Selection, the exhaustion of dealing with the start of such an enormous event etched deeply around her eyes and mouth in the shape of wavering crow's feet. When the enormous mahoghany door at the far end of the space had slammed shut once more, Mordred looked at his uncle to continue and, with a clearing of his throat that suggested some trepidation on the part of Set, he began.
"Mordred. The information we have received has led us to believe three things of importance to you. The first: our spy in the rebellion may be at some risk. We believe that they have been, if not identified, then they will be soon, and eliminated."
"Unfortunate," Commander Lee said. "But hardly crippling. We survived a long while without a mole. We'll survive a long while more."
Mordred inclined his head, narrowed his eyes. They would not have been able to co-ordinate their air strikes without the intelligence offered to them by their spy, but in the long weeks which had passed since, the information that their asset could offer had slowed to a trickle. The Kingdom in Exile was clearly taking steps to ensure that the girls could not be found, or at least, not together. The last few raids by the Crown had been fruitless. Truth be told, he suspected their spy had rather outlived its usefulness. "Is there any way to extract our asset?"
Set's mouth twisted. "It would be difficult. And there's no guarantee we could mobilise in time. They may be killed before that can happen."
"I want you to try. Anyone who risks their lives in the name of Illéa deserves to have that life valued."
Set nodded, and looked to Commander Lee to offer the next piece of information. Mordred could have guessed it before the older man had even shaped the first consonant: "there is, furthermore, reason to believe the rebellion have placed a spy within the palace. Deep within the court."
Mordred frowned. "We knew that already."
The rebel's General had been captured during a rendez-vous with the same – Adminster Nihata Guptacara, one of the legacies of his father's cabinet, who had begun his career as a military attaché under the General. The General had been killed live on television during an interrupted Report broadcast, but Nihata had been killed slowly in the dungeons under the palace. Broken, as Lee would have put it.
"No," Set said. "Another spy. One that escaped our investigation the first time around. It is doubtful that Nihata even knew of their existence."
Mordred set his jaw, and nodded. "Well. That's two. What's the third piece of news? Please, give me something good."
Lee and Set again exchanged looks in a silent battle to determine who should bear this responsibility.
"Today, gentlemen."
Set did away with any grand formalities. "It's Liara, Mordred. She's still alive. Still in the Selection, but… she's alive. Or she was, this time last week."
Mordred's expression did not change, but his uncle knew him well enough to see that there was something like grief or relief in his eyes at this news. "A lot happens in a week," he said softly, and nodded. It took him a moment to put the steel and ice back into his voice. "Very well. Thank you for your reports. I would be very grateful if you could close the doors behind you when you leave, and keep me apraised of any more intelligence you gather."
Set nodded at Commander Lee that this was their cue to make a tactful exit. They began to do so with some haste, Set hurrying back to the infirmary to check on the six men who had been injured in the attack, Lee moving with the purposefulness of a man who has yet more hostages to torture before the night is out. They were, however, stopped at the threshold of the throne room by a single word –
"Henry."
Liara's father turned, clearly surprised to hear his given name in the mouth of a royal, and spoken so insolently at that. Set couldn't quite resist the instinct to turn either. Mordred's voice was very cold indeed as he spoke.
"Whoever this spy is. When you find them, I want you to make an example of them."
Set's eyes were set very firmly on his nephew, but Mordred seemed utterly oblivious to his scrutiny as General Lee bowed from the waist and said, quite seriously, "historians shall write of the treatment we inflict on the traitor."
Mordred said, "sounds good to me," and the last thing Set saw before the throne room doors closed on him and his general was the young king, somewhat slouched in his throne, gazing at a letter in his hand with something like melancholy in his eyes.
To Eden's surprise, Demetri proved something of a capable conversationalist. He had suggested that they leave the yard and Pa's prying eyes behind, and slipped down towards the river that demarcated the far end of the Klahan's property, where tiny little minnows darted through the silvery shimmery surface of the water. The light was good here, Eden thought, all golden and maple, filtered through the amber foliage of the trees that lined the other bank. Dust and dandelion spores were rising, hazily, and spinning, gently, just above the points of the grass, and it seemed quite natural and quite comfortable to lower herself and sit beside Demetri, not quite close enough for their knees to touch, her camera resting on her lap.
He leaned back on his hands, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes, as though to enjoy the last rays of sun on his face. Eden had been saying something about Richard Avedon, and his work in portraitures, the way that he had used chiarascuro and shadows, and she was careful not to slow the flow of her words as she raised her camera, aimed it as naturally as speaking, and snapped a quick, almost casual, photograph of the king. She didn't have time to think about whether it was a good idea; the sound of the shutter made him open his eyes, and tilt his head towards her, and smile, and she snapped another, as instinctual as blinking her eyelids. He said, "always working, aren't you, Lady Eden?"
"I know a good tableau when I see one." She glanced down at the monitor, and was pleased to see that they had both turned out beautifully – the rays of light had made Demetri's dark green eyes seem almost otherworldly, emphasised the sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones, made his tousled hair look like so much liquid brass. She had heard so many people describe him as blonde, seen all the propaganda photos of him as a little boy with wheat-bleach locks, but it had always looked slightly dun in person until just this moment, when it seemed like someone had threaded little strands of gold amongst the rest. "I can stop if you want."
"It's flattering." Demetri managed to make it sound like he was reluctant to concede as much, almost as though they were already good friends embedded in a duel of teasing conversation in which neither wished to admit defeat. He had such a disarming way of speaking, low and rich, that made the simplest words sound intimate, like he was speaking for her ears only. Was this how he had won so much loyalty, she wondered, by convincing each individual person that they were the most important thing in his life for a few seconds at a time? A girl more gullible than Eden might have believed it. "But you're not on the clock, Lady Eden."
"I enjoy capturing beautiful things," she replied. That Demetri seemed to be putting on a performance made it easier for her as well – she was a girl accustomed to public speaking, for whom any true emotion made the words congeal in her throat, stopped her from truly ever saying smoothly anything that required more than her mother's voice in the back of her mind to conjure. Eden could do banter. She had perfected as much in all of her socialite escapades, all of her little dinner parties, all the plastic dates set up by Vivian where she just had to smile and make small talk and look pretty. And yet, this wasn't quite a plastic date, was it? She couldn't put her finger on it, but although they were both being cautious, dancing around anything real, she thought she was able to sense the roots snaking just beneath the surface, the potential for something deeper.
Demetri laughed. "Sounds like you're planning on locking someone up." He shook his head. "The General used to collect butterflies in jars," he added, looking pensive. Eden supposed it was only natural that being back here, in the space which he had originally shared his earliest days of captivity with his abductors, would draw his mind back to Klahan. Pa had spoken a little bit about the boy that he had been, but truth be told Eden couldn't quite imagine him as that little boy from all of the Report programmes, small and pale and aristocratically delicate, here in the quiet, restrained wilderness of Pa's broad back pasture. "Like little moving paintings." He smiled and oh, Demetri had a smile like no-one else. When Demetri smiled, it pulled a little higher on one side, made the expression look slightly crooked and unbalanced, a tiny imperfection that somehow made the rest of it look a little bit better for not being uncannily flawless. She had always thought Mordred a handsome enough fellow, but Mordred hardly ever smiled, and even frowning Demetri seemed to outshine him a few thousand times over. "He always said it was easy, if you knew how."
"Most things are," Eden replied lightly. "In my experience."
His only response was another smile. He ran his hands through the strands of grass nearest him, his fingers twining gently around the stem of the daisies and the honeysuckle which grew nearest him. They were sitting so quietly, Eden could see the little grey rabbits which were endemic in Pa's backyard creeping a little closer, a little braver now that Eden and Demetri had paused to listen to the breeze creep through the leaves and the river run gently across the rocks. "Some things are never easy," Demetri said finally. "Even with practise."
"Spoken like someone who hasn't had enough yet."
He just held his hand out for the camera, and, after a moment of hesitation, Eden handed it to him. He turned it carefully in his hand. It was not, of course, Eden's own – she had not been accorded the opportunity to be so careful in what she chose when the rebels arrived to draw her into the Selection, only grabbing those things precious to her that she had close at hand: her notebook, her lucky pen, a drawing that the young daughter of the family's driver had made of Eden and her as princesses, the sun wearing a smile and some sunglasses behind them. No, the camera had been borrowed from Enyakatho shortly after she had helped him to tighten a lacklustre script for a propaganda piece about a mining accident on the edge of Allens, and Eden had been using it to document as much of the ordinary rebel life here in the seceded territories as she could. On the rare occasion that she was allowed into the nearby town, she had talked a few old women into letting her create their portraits, or taken pictures of stray dogs in the street, or captured an argument between merchants, both bearing the sharp Ⴟ brand that marked them as thieves from the Russian Federation. Truth be told, Eden wasn't sure yet what use she would ever find for the photos, but she was sure they would be useful somewhere, sometime.
Demetri raised the borrowed camera. Eden tilted her head and smiled, in that practised way that had seen her grace a dozen magazine covers in Angeles before she was eighteen. She held the pose for a second, then, relaxed into a frown and said, "is it not working?"
"I can't seem to find the button," Demetri said, sounding puzzled, and Eden laughed, and that was when the shutter clicked and she had to laugh again at how transparently she had been tricked.
"Beautiful," Demetri said, and Eden knew he wasn't talking about just the photograph.
"Why am I not surprised you found your way down here?"
When Thiago came for Corvina Rouen, she wasn't sure whether he was about to rebuke her in the tunnels under the safehouse for the simple crime of discovering them, or if she was finally getting her wish, to speak Thiago on some sort of level playing field, to make her pitch for an alliance and equality. Pandora could help the rebellion, she knew, could smooth their path and allow the revolution to run over land already trampled down by the force of Corvina's trained criminals.
She had come back down to the tunnels, after Marjorie had gone to bed, and gone straight back towards the room they had seen, the one with the single screen, with the hidden person within. But the land below was a labyrinth, and it had taken Cor longer than she was willing to admit to retrace her steps and find the office in question, and when she did, Thiago Wesick was standing there with a flashlight and a gun in his belt. He did not seem inclined to draw the latter, at least initially.
"Curiosity killed the cat," Thiago added.
"Satisfaction brought it back." Cor's lip curled. "Got something to hide, Adminster?"
Was it her imagination, or did he smile, ever so slightly, at those words?
"This makes my job a little bit easier," he said, and gestured that she should follow him, and so she did. For a moment, there was no sound but their footsteps on the bare concrete, and then: "have you ever heard of a man called Artur Gildas?"
Of course she had. Gildas had been – well, not legend. But he had held quite a few underworld records in his day. Records that Corvina had since claimed for her own, of course.
Thiago did not bother waiting for an answer, for he continued. "Artur ran a racket. He moved cargo across province lines, dodged the Crown, made sure his products got to where they needed to be, and bribed or murdered anyone who got in his way." Thiago paused. "Man of few compunctions, our Artur. He dealt mainly in children."
Cor's eyes narrowed. She had dealt in many dirty businesses, but children – that was a monster's game.
"But the rebellion needed him. We needed him. How else could we smuggle our stolen king back into the Wasteland? We needed his supply channels. His contacts. But Artur made a fatal mistake. He let one child speak to another. He let our king see the suffering of those Artur called his little sparrows."
They came to a door, and entered. The room within had been stripped bare. A cell.
"And when Demetri grew up, and when Artur realised that our king was not the type of man to let these sins go unanswered, he fled north, he fled north where he thought that the hand of the Kingdom would not reach." Thiago paused. "Haven't you ever wondered why they call me the Butcher of St. George?"
Cor hadn't needed to wonder. She had seen it, in the images ferried back to her by the network of the Pandora gang. Massacre didn't half-describe it. "You took him out."
"I took his organisation out. Root and stem. Artur learned that the Kingdom in Exile does not countenance lawlessness." Thiago turned to Cor. "I think it is your turn to learn that lesson, Lady Corvina."
Lights up behind him. They were standing in front of a window – a sort of observational window, maybe a one-way mirror.
Cor felt her blood run cold that. That was her sister. Khione. She had been badly beaten – one brown eye swollen shut and red slowly trickling down her temple, her long, curly hair matted with blood and dirt, slumped against the ties that bound her to the chair in which she was shackled. She looked hungry, somehow gaunt, and paler than before, as though she had been languishing below the ground for days.
Weeks?
How long ago had the Selection started?
How many of the Selected had had their families abducted by the rebellion in this manner? Just Cor? Was she the only one dangerous enough for this to be deemed a necessity? Or were the others here as well – some of Lissa's homeless network, Saran's sister, Yue's family?
She ached for the familiar weight of a pistol at her hip. A knife in her hand. Anything with which she could try to strike out at Thiago. But his gun was there, and her hands were bare, and there was a sound behind her that announced the arrival of the king himself. She spun to face him, and saw that Demetri was carrying no weapons, but Thiago was like a spectre behind her, and she wasn't sure she trusted herself to be quick enough with what she had to do. Maybe she could talk her way out of this. She could talk her way out of this.
"The criminal gang you call Pandora cannot be permitted to continue operating unabated." Demetri's voice was almost bored. "I will not allow my citizens to live in fear of ruthless, lawless brigands. Dismantle it, Miss Rouen, or I shall be forced to send in my butcher."
Cor's eyes bored into his. "You think you'll be able?"
"I am confident." Demetri smiled. "Khione Rouen, Knox Harlen, Viridia Cox, Kanon Justus – all of your hitmen and thieves and brothel madams have had visits from Thiago."
Thiago's voice was silky soft. "I would commend you on their loyalty, but it was the worse for them in the end. Sometimes the cowards have an easier time of it."
Demetri said, "Artur learned that the hard way."
Cor swung on him, but Thiago had his hand on his gun. Cor wasn't sure she trusted Kanon's self-defence training to be faster than this man's draw. "We are nothing like Artur Gildas. Trafficking in people is something I would never -"
"But you deal in drugs, you deal in flesh, you deal in guns. Make no mistake, Lady Corvina, children have died because of your desire for power, for wealth. You have stolen hope from poor men and women. You have profited from the poverty and death of others. You are exactly like Artur Gildas."
"We have a code."
"So did Artur." Demetri's voice was cold. "Everyone always does. Everyone has the line they won't cross."
Thiago shook his head. "Everyone says they do."
Demetri inclined his head. "Yes." He sounded sad. "Everyone has a code. Doesn't mean they're not still liars and killers, in the service of liars and killers." He stepped forward, and Thiago moved around him to join him by the door, so that both were silhouetted against the frame, narrow spectres of savagery.
"You're locking me up down here." Cor's voice was almost bewildered.
"I was hoping your family could be persuaded." Demetri shrugged. "I kill you, Pandora does their best to take revenge. Probably not fatal to our rebellion… but an inconvenience. I continue to let you run rampant, and my people suffer. I keep you here, promise not to hurt you as long as they hibernate for a little while..."
Thiago said, "your people are loyal, aren't they, Corvina?"
"To the death."
Demetri said, over Cor's head, like she wasn't even there, "they'll try to save her."
"They'll try."
"Thiago will be your warden, my dear." She could see that Demetri was already gone, at least mentally, his mind already slipping, moving onto the next problem, Corvina forgotten. He considered her dealt with. "Try not to get on his bad side."
Something had happened. She could see the vein jumping in his jaw. Something had happened. Something bad. The rebellion was closing ranks, nerves spasming in its death throes. What had happened? "I can help," she said, and her voice did not sound like her own when she did, sounded oddly smooth and calm, more persuasive than even she usually tended to be. "What you're doing here, trying to cut off my operation, trying to fight a war on two fronts – we can be allies. I can help."
There was something oddly cold in Demetri's eyes. "I don't accept help from people like you."
And yet he stood beside Thiago, and led a rebellion, cut a swathe through this nation to take a crown and a title, to assert a blood-right no more tenable than moonlight twisting in your grasp.
One last chance. "You'd put your image above the lives of your men? You're no better than Ysabel."
She had struck a nerve. She could see it in the way that the vein jumped in his jaw. "Indeed," Demetri agreed. "It's starting to look that way."
The Inner Circle had always joked that Täj was the friend you called when you had a body to bury, but it had been a very long time since his services had been called on in that manner. There was no need for furtiveness. The Kingdom in Exile killed in public now, and called it righteousness. Täj was no longer a murderer, but the executioner of the rightful king of Illéa.
It had been a very long time indeed.
He couldn't say that he had missed it very much.
"Jesus Christ, Tayna. What did you do?"
She had blood on her face. He asked what she did, but he did not ask on whose orders. He knew better than that.
He circled the corpse. One of the Selected. He hadn't got to know this one very well, but she was still a girl, a young girl, only a little older than Vardi Tayna. A few years ago he might have felt bad about this, how she lay there like a mannequin with its strings cut. But it had been a long time since Täj had permitted sentiment to intrude on these sorts of matters.
It had been a very long time indeed.
He couldn't say that he had missed it very much.
Vardi Tayna did not pace, as another might, but stood just to the side, still holding her knife. Blood on her face. She was feral. How could he have allowed himself to forget that? Still the wild girl from the wastes. Still more storm than subject. Still feral.
"I did what needed to be done."
She always did. She always had. He looked at her and abruptly the last fifteen years had melted away and they were mere children once more, stranded in the hinterlands among wolves with only one another to rely on. They had been here before. The Inner Circle had always joked that Täj was the friend you called when you had a body to bury, but it had always been the two of them, no matter which names they used, committing their sins to the soil and their sins to the silence of the other. They always did what needed to be done.
It had been a very long time indeed.
He couldn't say that he hadn't missed this.