Does his gaze flick to me? A shiver runs down my spine. He comes toward me, the gun still in his hand, and I steel myself. He’s going to kill me. Shoot me in the head. Even if I wasn’t involved with this uprising, if he knew about that, he must know about me.
He looks down at me with something very like tenderness. “You didn’t stay.”
“I couldn’t.”
He stares at the man I captured. The man that’s now a corpse, though not by my hand. “Good job.”
“Thank you.”
For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to hold out his hand, and lead me back upstairs. The blood has washed the last vestiges of the drug from my system, and I’ve scanned the notebook. I have no desire to go back up there. Then Ensi turns, his head down.
“Malka,” he says.
She comes forward, to his side. I can’t tell if they’re romantically linked, but their bond, whatever it is, is deep. The King and the Queen walk away from the ballroom, side by side, leaving the carnage behind them.
TWENTY
TAEMA
I dream that I went with Ensi, and I awaken in a silken bed.
The sun streams through the window. Ensi lies next to me, fast asleep, his arm thrown over his eyes against the light. His face is clean of blood, like the events of the night before never happened. But they did. And this, right here, is the man who did them.
His other arm is around me and, trapped in his embrace, I can’t stop thinking about all the dead bodies. The fact that I had taken a gun and gone down there, something I never thought I’d do. I still feel like I’m changing and morphing. I’m becoming more like Tila, but I’m turning into someone else I don’t recognize, either, and perhaps someone I don’t like.
I turn and watch him, sleeping peacefully. I look at his torso, chiseled by modern medicine. What would he look like now if he couldn’t alter himself? Would that taut skin sag against a growing paunch? Would I recognize his face, with its lines that show the type of life he chose to live?
He opens his eyes, and his eyes are black pits. His mouth stretches wide, and deep within his throat is a glowing, pulsing light.
“Are you strong enough to kill me?” he asks, his voice crackling like a flame. “Do you really have what it takes?”
*
I jerk awake, for real this time.
I’m in the room in the safe house where I store my things, but where I hardly ever sleep. It’s my first brainload-free night in over a week.
I ease out of the bed, my sore muscles stretching. I have a bruise on my side, where a bullet grazed the Kalar suit. If I hadn’t been wearing it, the bullet would have killed me. I rub my sore muscles and stagger into the shower to wash off the sweat and the imaginary scent of blood that still clings to my nostrils.
After I’ve scalded myself, I go down to the kitchen, ordering strong, real coffee from the replicator despite its warning that caffeine is bad for me. I load it with cream and sugar, to boot.
Nazarin isn’t here. He’s gone to report in to the Ratel, receive his reward for helping with the fight. I want to ask him if that was his plan all along. I thought he wanted to foster unrest. So why, when unrest presented itself in a very real way, did he decide to help Ensi instead?
Using every security measure I can think of, I bring Ensi’s scanned notebook to my implants.
His handwriting is almost impossible to read, so tall and slanted. Each appointment is only a few letters and a time, perhaps a first name. Last night’s entry was only “XNDU,” presumably shorthand for Xanadu. There’s nothing over the next few days, but Wednesday has an entry: “D/O. MM.” I flip through the rest of the pages, wondering who the names are. On the last page of the book are various scribbled notes. Up in a corner, I spy “MM.” Next to it is a phone number, strange enough in itself, and it brings me up short.
I recognize it.
It’s the number for the emergency line at Mana’s Hearth.
I looked it up, after we left, after the surgery. When, despite everything, I was homesick. So many times over the years, I had turned on my implants, ready to input the number. I wanted to see if my parents were all right. If the Hearth was all right. I was too afraid, and I never pinged.
My throat tightens with unshed tears. It’s not totally unexpected, but it’s still a shock. We knew there might be a link between the Ratel and the Hearth when we discovered Vuk was Adam. We still don’t know what the connection is, exactly. Is Mana-ma sending people to the Ratel, and if so, why, and to what purpose? Is Mana-ma working with Ensi? That means interacting with someone Impure, and having a connection with the world she always taught us was evil.
I flip back to Wednesday’s entry. D/O. Drop off. Sure enough, Wednesday is the 15th—the date Tila and I used to look forward to. The date that the supply ship would come from the far-off shiny city of San Francisco. I guess, even ten years later, it hasn’t changed.
MM stands for Mana-ma.