Chapter Seventeen
Van pulled the covers up higher, trying to create a warm coccoon, but the problem was there was very little warmth under the blankets in the first place. He had gone to bed early at Meruru's insistence but there was no way sleep was going to come. It was too cold, even beside how rumpled up his mind felt. Meruru was curled on the bunk above him, supposed to be sleeping too, but he kept hearing her turning over and sighing uncomfortably.
'Meruru,' he said after a while, 'I can hear your teeth chattering.'
'They're not chattering,' she said.
'But you're freezing too, aren't you?'
'Yes.'
'Can I crawl in with you? We could double the blankets and maybe not freeze as much.' He waited for an answer. 'Just like when we were little. I don't want to make you uncomfortable but I'm really uncomfortable being this cold.'
He heard her give a gusty sigh. 'Little Meruru should just give up trying to be grown-up, shouldn't she? Her life isn't going to let her.'
Van's heart lifted. 'You said you were happier being little'
'I'm coming down,' she said. 'Stay there.' She clambered down in a bundle of blankets, quickly unrolled the blankets from herself and threw them onto the lower bunk, before leaping in before she could get too chilled. She squeezed up close to Van and gave him a soft little headbutt under the chin, the way she used to do. He put one arm round her and relaxed.
'That's better already,' Van said. 'It's just nicer like this, isn't it?'
'Of course it is,' she said firmly. 'I'm sorry I ever said that about the kiss. It was just just dumb and yucky. I'm sorry.'
'You don't need to keep saying that,' he said. 'I shouldn't have done it.'
So you really didn't want to?
So you really didn't want me to?
They didn't talk any more about it. It was just too difficult to touch. After a while it got warmer under the blankets and they were able to fall asleep.
'Van! Wake up! We've got a problem!'
Van tried to sit up, got tangled up with Meruru, who was half on top of him, tried again and cracked his head on the underside of the upper bunk.
'Ow!'
'What's happening?' Meruru moaned sleepily, trying to pull the covers over her head. Van blinked to clear his eyes, rubbing his head. Serena was in the room, with a lamp in her hand, looking ruffled and anxious as though she'd jumped out of bed and pulled her clothes on any old how.
'Just get dressed and get down to the front entrance hall as fast as you can,' she said shortly, and ran out, taking the light with her.
'What's happening?' Meruru wailed again. Listening now, they could hear shouts outside.
'I don't know, but it sounds urgent,' Van said. He scrambled over her to get out of bed, found his trousers on the floor by the simple method of stepping on them and hopped sideways trying to get them on fast. 'Get me a shirt, get me a shirt,' he said. Meruru hung over the side of the bunk and rummaged in the duffel on the floor.
'Put on a sweater as well,' she said, throwing him one bundled up with a shirt. 'It's too cold out there. And here's your woolly socks.'
'I can't find my boots,' he muttered, pulling the sweater over his head. 'Where are my boots? Where does everything go in the dark?'
'Here,' she said, shoving them at him. 'Cat eyes work!' While he pulled on the boots she got his sword from the wall bracket and put it in his hand just as he straightened up. 'Okay, go. Be careful.'
'You're great, Meruru,' he said, and gave her a peck on the cheek before running out the door. He was in the corridor before he thought Why the hell did I do that? We just got back to normal. What's she going to think I meant? It was too late to fix it. It made him angry that he even needed to fix things like that; there was a time when it would have been as simple as a kiss to a sister. He just had to keep going.
Meruru sat back on the lower bunk, her hand pressed to her cheek in the dark. 'Van-sama'
It took too damn long to get anywhere in the Capitol. The elevator was faster than the stairs would have been, probably, but it still seemed to take forever, and it was made worse by the fact that although you knew the room you were standing in was moving, you had to just stand there, jittering around, feeling as though you were getting nowhere. Besides, the elevators still made Van nervous. Unwisely, he had asked Serena how they worked, and now he couldn't stop thinking that the cables might break. Eventually it reached the ground floor and the doors sighed open, letting him out and letting a hubbub of noises in.
Most of the ceiling lights had been scavenged in here, but some were working, and it was enough to make out some rather impressive interior architecture, in gloomy relief amid the shadows. Of course, this would be a room the public would sometimes see; it needed to be imposing. The great stained-glass sliding doors that led out onto the steps and square were brightened in patches; someone had lights out there too. The atrium was full of monks and soldiers, looking as though they expected something to happen but were not sure what. Near the doors he could see Ailo, Serena and Gadeth in a sort of organisational huddle. He made his way to them with some difficulty, pushing past men who mainly seemed to want to stand and stare at the lights beyond the stained glass in case they did anything.
'The messenger said they don't want trouble, but with that many men I'm sure they're prepared for it,' Gadeth was saying as Van reached them. 'Van - we've just had a message from this Artho Mariel character. He wants to meet and discuss terms.'
'Terms of what?'
'He just said terms. I think he's trying to demoralise us by catching us at night,' Serena said irritably. She had straightened herself up a little more but her hair was still holding the shape of her pillow, as though it didn't believe it was going to have to stay up and was keeping itself in readiness for repose.
'Of course, I was up,' Ailo said. 'I spoke to the messenger. I didn't like the look of him at all; a thickset young lout, the sort who won't look you in the eye and talks into his chest. Which was decorated with a large silver star painted over the front of his shirt.'
'Well, we've got representatives of all the Allies here - I guess you top brass had better go out and say hello,' Gadeth suggested.
The doors were slid open, their ponderous movement assisted by Asturian guards, and Serena, Van and Ailo peered out into the night. A considerable crowd had assembled in the plaza, far more than the handout detail had seen at any one time during the day. Some carried lanterns on long poles, swinging over the heads of the masses. They were mostly men of various ages, but there were some teenaged girls and young women too. They had the air of people who make a lifestyle of not showing weakness, of presenting an impassive, implicitly powerful front to the world. Most were dressed in dark colours. No-one looked too shabby. At their head, halfway up the steps, stood a broad-built man in late middle age, thoughtfully sucking on a pipe.
If the crowd were decently well turned-out, he was positively resplendent, in a long sweeping overcoat with a fur collar and bands of silver braid around the cuffs. A wine-red scarf was crossed over his neck, its ends tucked behind his lapels, and a large silver star stick-pin gleamed there. It was a customised badge of the Zaibach Police. His pepper-and-salt hair was cut short and bristling, and he had a beard that trimmed the square lines of his jaw, but no moustache to conceal the equally square lines of his mouth. It was a no-nonsense letterbox sort of mouth, made to snap shut. As the three representatives stepped forward, he appeared occupied with something going wrong in the bowl of his pipe, and only looked up to acknowledge them when they had already been standing at the head of the stairs for a few moments. Very clear eyes of a peculiar light amber, the colour of beer, regarded them with something approaching amusement.
'Good evening,' he said genially.
'Good morning,' said Serena pointedly, but gave him a gracious smile. Van decided he was not about to let her run this meeting. It was about time he showed his authority, and reminded her that, other circumstances apart, he outranked her considerably.
'You have the attention of Fanelia,' he said to the amber-eyed man. 'What do you wish to say?'
'Only, Mister Fanelia, that we don't wish for any unpleasantness,' the man replied. 'We should introduce ourselves. My name is Artho Mariel and I lead the Silver Star syndicate in this city. The protection of the people is and always has been my business. I have a duty to investigate any possibly disruptive or harmful elements. You're a caretaker of your people. I'm sure you understand that. Things can get out of hand so quickly if you don't see them coming.'
He favoured them all with a brief, avuncular smile before continuing.
'You see before you an assembly of the solid citizens of Zaibach. We don't particularly like outside interference. We've taken care of ourselves for a long time, because we had to. None of you were interested in helping us, say, two hundred years ago. You, and Daedalus, and Basram and the rest of those bastards, had your own axes to grind back then. And after the recent unpleasantness, if you suddenly come over all philanthropic, we're bound to ask ourselves why. The last time someone came to help us well, it didn't exactly work out as we might have hoped, did it? So we've gone back to taking care of ourselves. Taking care of our own. We haven't asked you for anything.'
'That's not quite true,' Van said. 'I'm informed that many citizens have been very interested in what we have to offer.' He folded his arms over his chest. It was good to be a few steps higher up than Mr Mariel. It would be better still to be a little taller.
'Many citizens,' Mr Mariel said, with a sort of distasteful deliberation, 'don't understand about taking care of each other. They don't understand about mutual solidarity, say, and loyalty. Very selfish people, impractical people who won't adapt to circumstances.'
'We offer a change in circumstances,' Ailo said, 'which could be beneficial to everyone.'
'You offer an alliance, I'm sure,' Mr Mariel replied. 'A very big-hearted forgiving alliance, a brave new world order where we all benefit from one another's strengths, and, in short, Zaibach becomes your factory state, your servant state, and you give us order and your idea of good governance while we give you the fruits of our centuries of discipline and hard work and it stops Basram breathing down your neck just a little bit.' He spoke coolly but there was a spark in his eyes.
'It needn't be like that,' Serena said, stepping forward, stepping down and meeting the older man's eyes. 'Zaibach and Asturia have been allies before. We've shared a great deal before! For - for reasons of my own, I have a very strong interest in making sure things really do work out favourably for both sides. You can trust Asturia, Mr Mariel. And you can trust our allies too.'
Both sides? Van thought. Since when is this just about Asturia and Zaibach? And since when does she do the talking? He stepped forward himself. Unfortunately, standing on the same step as Serena drew attention to the fact that he was shorter than her. 'This is an equal alliance we're proposing,' he said pointedly. 'The fact that Fanelia is willing to treat with you on such terms should tell you something.'
'It tells me,' Mr Mariel said, 'that it smells fishy when someone asks me to trust them, and I know they have no reason to trust me.' He looked blandly at Van. Things can get out of hand if you don't see them coming. No, I have no reason to trust people like you at all.
'The King doesn't wish to rake up the past,' Serena said, brightly, trying to be conciliatory.
'The King can tell people what he wishes for himself,' Van snapped back, before he could think about it. 'The King, perhaps, is in a better position to negotiate about things like this than someone whose real interests are anyone's guess!'
'You'll ruin it,' she hissed at him under her breath.
'You have ruined it,' he growled back. 'You let Fanelia and Freid down. You just have to arrogate it all to yourself, don't you?'
Mr Mariel was looking from one to the other with some fascination.
'I'm fed up with you turning your personal dislike of me into an excuse to find fault with the way I do things!' Serena snapped. 'And I don't care if everyone hears me say so!'
'The only reason you're here is because your brother bought you that uniform,' Van said. 'Do you want everyone to hear that? I don't know what he thinks he's doing, giving you an assignment like this to play with, but you have no place in this business.'
'That's not fair!'
'What's not fair is you getting things handed to you on a plate and thinking you've got a right to put yourself forward!'
'I - I - oh, shut up.'
'Good one!'
She glared at him for a second before resuming her smile for Mr Mariel's benefit. 'I'm so sorry - our young friend was called from his bed and I think he's a little tired.'
'I'm not your friend and I'm the same age as you!' It sounded childish as soon as he'd said it, almost as bad as whining 'I'm not tired!'
'Welcome to my level,' she said sweetly.
'You are really pathetic,' he told her.
'I'm pathetic! I wish Hitomi could hear you!'
'You don't even know her!' He was infuriated beyond measure now, and when she turned away from him with a little flick of her head that made it even worse. His hand shot out, caught her collar and yanked her back round.
'Get off!' The pale-rose lawn cravat wasn't tied properly, and as it came undone her necklace swung round and draped its chain over his hand.
'And this! You, of all people, should not have this!' He wrenched at the chain, but it was quite strong and he only succeeded in pulling her head down.
'Take your hands off her!' Gadeth bellowed from somewhere behind; laughter was breaking out among the people in the crowd, but it was hard to focus on anything but the stone dangling from his hand. It was so bright; every glint struck tears in his eyes.
Hitomi
The brightness grew; Serena was grabbing at his hand, prising at his fingers, but his grip did not relax; she was shouting something but there was a strange rushing in his ears no a familiar rushing
As the people above and below the stone steps watched in amazement, a colossal beam of bright, white light formed around the two struggling figures, rocketing up to the sky. They were lifting they were rising they were gone.
Gadeth had begun to run towards them, almost in time, stumbling to a halt, gazing up foolishly at the point where they had disappeared. There was a general shocked hush.
'What, please, was that?' Mr Mariel asked mildly. Gadeth blinked at him, at the assembled citizens, at the cold winter stars.
'They'll - they'll be right back,' he said.