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  Kali stayed motionless and tried to disconnect from her own body. ‘My father will personally tear out your spine’, she might have said once. Except, her superior ranking would have made it unthinkable for a subordinate guard to even behave in such a way. Today, though, shoehorned into that stinking can of Vary livestock, the rules were very different.

  “560-59 secured!” hollered another guard from the far end of the gangway.

  The man left off groping and secured Kali’s nicks to the bolt bar at her back. Turning on his heel, he marched down the gangway between the shackled prisoners and joined his fellow guard at the airlock. Through the gloom, Kali saw him thumb a gel-patch on the wall. A synthesised voice listed off the cargo.

  “593 Vary, 1 Bleek. Engaging engines.”

  The guards shut themselves safely away behind the airlock.

  Back in the haulage wagon, the lights dimmed, and Kali tried to rest against a narrow perch. Her guard stared in as the porthole misted with slow gas escaping vents in the floor.

  Kali held out as long as she could. But at last she was forced to gulp for breath and the gas filled her airways like syrup. It was a nauseating sensation, designed to keep her precariously pitched between consciousness and blackout. All around her, prisoners dozed and ricocheted off each other’s shoulders as the wagon’s huge wheels set in motion. Kali’s view seesawed between the bolted roof and the marsh glow along the gangway. The wrist-nicks pulsed in time with her heartbeat.

  The Nedmac Delta covered an area 72,000 clicks north of the city of Geno. Rifts formed daily, the lava bubbling up in red rivulets that cooled to form unstable folds of basalt. The haulage wagons wove in and out the creases, dirtying the air with their blue-black smoke and gripe of sandy engines. Inside the livestock bay, the slow gas stabilised the temperatures of the occupants. Kali nodded in her cradle. Chained either side, Vary snored or murmured. Time stretched, the wheels long since retracted to allow the car smoother passage through the plateaux’s crosswinds. Every so often, the levy-ports buffeted on contact with an air pocket. Mostly though, the caravan might have sped over water.

  It was evening before the guards returned. Coming to as the slow gas feed cut off and the atmosphere clarified, Kali screwed up her eyes against the flood of artificial light. The closer she came to consciousness, the worse the nausea became. Everywhere she looked, Vary emptied the contents of their stomach onto the grid-floor.

  She was still drowsy when a blast of water struck her in the face, forcing her to gasp against the sting of it. The guards advanced down the gangway, hoses looped over their shoulders as they washed the vomit into gutters under the prisoners’ perches.

  “Ironic they have to throw up their last good meal!” she heard one remark. The kid looked like a recruit; Kali could smell the zeal.

  “Uh-huh.” Kali’s guard stopped in front of her. He grabbed hold of her chin, turning her face side-to-side. “You didn’t throw up, Lieutenant? Takes a strong stomach to rise above slow gas.”

  The other guard laughed. “What do you expect? Given her origins.”

  “I think my compatriot means that as a compliment, Lieutenant.” The officer grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled her head back. Kali blinked against a torch shone in her eyes.

  “I’m my own strength. My origins have nothing to do with it,” she said into the light.

  “Is that what you said in court too?” sneered the younger guard.

  Kali’s guard shifted the torch to the other man’s face. He nodded down the gangway. “Far end of the wagon. There’s a clutch of Vary suffering from lungrot. Oldest is a shitter. Get along there and help out.”

  Whether the new guard felt the snub or not, he didn’t react, just pulled out his beater and expanded its baton in one sharp swipe, then strode away.

  Kali’s guard chuckled under his breath as he scanned her data on his gel set and moved down the line.

  Left behind, Kali blinked rapidly in an effort to clear her eyes. Struggling to swallow, she licked her lips for any residual water from her hosing down. The taste was grit and sweat.

  A sudden tremendous grinding noise rolled towards her from the far end of the wagon. Kali braced herself. The huge chained wheels were descending in preparation for braking; she recognised the hiss of pneumatics and waves of vibrations from her time piloting personnel wagons. Next moment, the wheels touched down and locked, and the wagon filled with the colossal roar of braking and the back-burn of engines.

  Finally, the noise eased off. The guards let go of the handgrips in the roof space over the gangway and continued hosing down the prisoners.

  Geno. A sprawling citadel carved out of the basalt after the great Skyfall five hundred years earlier. In recent times, the inky sands of the Rudein Desert had been blasted into glass-sheet. Now, the ancient caves were lost behind the reflective manmade towers, pressing skyward like crystalline Bravais lattices.

  Kali knew she and the rest were not destined for the city. Emerging from the depths of the haulage wagon into the searing sunlight, she looked for the skyline of Geno but saw only miles of ash and sand. She had been raised by a grandmother behind Geno’s obsidian walls, her father forgoing his parental duties in favour of state politics at Capital Hall in Nilreb or diplomatic duties abroad. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six, she had fallen in line with her father’s expectations. Then she started thinking for herself.

  All the same, Kali wondered how her father would react if he could see her now, manacled and forced to stumble forward with the rest. Would he grieve for the child she once was? Or would he nod grimly and say, “Here you are, then. You got what you wanted.”

  “Want me to trample you underfoot?” The prisoner behind her laughed. “Then again, that’s more your style, Lieutenant.”

  She glanced back. It was the male who had travelled beside her. His fat teeth were uncomfortably near.

  “I said no talking, you Vary bastard!”

  Forced to go with the flow of the herd, Kali was propelled into the prisoners in front as the guard who had dealt with her forced his way through, beater readied. Whether it was the effect of the slow gas or being led as part of the chain gang, she flinched when the beater slammed into the Vary male.

  The prisoner clutched his side. The second blow produced a snap of bone and a strangled cry.

  ‘You are a fool!’ she wanted to shout. ‘Showing spirit will only make them beat you harder!’ Instead, she steeled herself as the beater plunged into the soft parts of the male – the belly, a cheek, the genitalia.

  “Do you want him dead?” she said instinctively. Her years as a Lieutenant did not wash away as cleanly as a floor full of vomit.

  The beater was under her chin in seconds, forcing her head back. Familiar now, the stench of schnapps on her guard’s breath. He flecked her face with spit. “Kill him, quarter him, roast him on a stick, it’s my choice! Perhaps you’d like to tell me otherwise, Lieutenant?” Her title – once a weapon – was now a slur. The guard laughed, showing the small neat teeth of the Bleek – a sharp contrast to the Vary’s molar-filled jaws.

  Despite the cold shine to the man’s eyes, Kali wasn’t afraid. “I have no opinion on the matter.”

  The beater strained at her throat. “Yet in spite of your circumstances, in spite of your time as a decorated member of the guard, in spite of your father, you speak.” The man leaned in. “You are as low as Vary, lower if there were such a thing. Your betrayal has cut your people to the bone.”

  Forced to her tiptoes, Kali focused on the boundless sky and tried to tune out the pain. If I were to die straight away, it would be a blessing. Anything to avoid the horrors of what is to come!

  The guard stepped back and she collapsed to her knees, dragging in aching lungful’s of air. Her world turned red as her focus oscillated between the bare ground and the punished male. His face was bloody and swollen.

  “Lieutenant Titian.” This voice was new. Quietly intense. Like a whisper from a lover.

  Sh
e scrabbled around on her knees to face a fresh batch of guards. Amongst them was Micha Joltu, formerly a high-ranking official at the Imperial Courts, now Camp Commandant Superintendent. Blinking away the dizziness, Kali recognised him from her father’s dinner parties. “You held my hand once. I was nine. You showed me a magic trick.” She pressed a hand to her throat, choking with the effort of speaking.

  Joltu nodded. “You were desperate to tell me about all the swallows you had shot earlier that day. Brimming over with pride to have slaughtered so many.” His eyes shifted to the guard intent on violence. “There is a mind we may yet use in the Speaker’s son. Don’t be so quick to break his body. That’s an order.” He stared down at the injured male before turning his back on the scene. “Get these prisoners processed.”

  The guards encouraged the crowd to move on. Kali stole a glance at the male who had been beaten. Blood, blacker than her own, stained the dusty ground.

  “Goodbye,” she said. Because no one else would.

  Four

  The city was filmy with heat. Grizmare Titian did not want to be taking high tea up on the roof garden of the Red Orchid hotel. She wanted to be seated behind smoked glass-sheet, at home preferably, a generous glass of sour gin in one hand, the other smoothing the luxuriant fur of Josphire, her favourite maw cat. Instead, here she was, pushing puffs of flower grass around a plate and drinking something sparkling and minty. A few feet away, the roof garden’s famous fountain kept up its infuriating racket, the candy-green water cascading over the featureless black figures like the flow of nations it was designed to represent. That the fountain was still intact was ludicrous! How long had it been since relations between Bleekland and its neighbours soured? Ten, eleven years? Grizmare scowled at the fountain and willed it silent. At the very least, she would leave a message for her son and have the thing dismantled before her next visit!

  “I have got around to reading High Judge Titian’s novel, Our Holy Nation.” Mrs Harriot Zoorbiah nodded in self-approval. Her hair was a mass of tight white curls and pale-yellow ribbons; a ridiculous choice for a widow of almost ninety, thought Grizmare. “It is quite a remarkable tract,” Harriot went on. “A bible for our times.”

  That was the final straw! “Do stop your gibbering, Harriot! If the Sisters of Gothendore hear you talking like that, they’ll have you crucified before you can even think to call on that daughter of yours playing politics at Capital Hall!”

  “I am merely suggesting there is a spiritual quality to the book. I am enthralled by the principles which underpin it. The strengthening of our national ideology, the Clean Breed plan…”

  Grizmare maintained her hard stare and Harriot gave up her defence. She waved a lace fan in front of her pink face, trying to waft away attention.

  “Clearly my son inspires. Just look at all this!” Grizmare threw out an arm to suggest not just the elite roof terrace, but the soaring black towers of Geno. “He works tirelessly to resurrect this great nation from the dust, to free us from the yolk of national debt. But even my son cannot control the ground beneath our feet! There is something futile about his efforts. As if our downfall is preordained.”

  “And you advise Harriot to watch her mouth...?” Morantha, Countessa De’Shone of Varbardige, leaned in, the beading of her exquisite shawl twinkling in the sunlight. “If a father can sanction his daughter being condemned to life – and, yes, inevitably, death – in one of those hideous Vary camps, then how will he chastise his own mother if she speaks out of turn? I know you don’t like the idea of your son as a living god, but, face up to it, Grizmare, he’s the equivalent.”

  Morantha had a way of cutting to the heart of a situation, Grizmare gave the woman that much! All this hero-worshipping was precisely why she tended to hide her feelings about her son. She had given him life, raised him in an orthodox neighbourhood, sold her ancestral linens to fund his studies at the Nilreb Conservatoire for Modern Architecture, and watched him build an empire from a steel will and glass-sheet. But the instant he threw it all away for politics and warmongering, she knew that he was lost to her.

  “I don’t know why you insist on dining in this insufferable heat, Morantha!” Tugging at her stiff collar, Grizmare wondered why she had settled on such an uncomfortable outfit. Even now, seated here with Harriot and the countessa – both women of social standing and matriarchs of their own political dynasties – she still felt like that young mother, piecing together conservatoire fees from the scraps of her past.

  Morantha sat up stiffly. Hers were still the purest, crystal-green eyes Grizmare had ever seen, even if the jet-black hair was dyed now and the skin papery. “The Red Orchid remains the best restaurant in Geno. Do you read the datastacks? It is very hard to get hold of desert otter meat now. I dine here because the quality of the food is outstanding.”

  “The rest of these parasites have a different motivation.” Grizmare arched her pencilled brows as she took in their fellow diners – high ranking National Guard, a good many fellow octogenarians draped in finery and self-importance, and a handful of brats with trust funds and palaces. “Everyone likes to boast how easy it was to get a table. Mostly, they want to rub shoulders with me on the off-chance the man himself might put in an appearance.”

  “You are terribly sure of your own importance today, Grizmare.” Harriot was apparently still sore after being chastised for her patriotism. She pushed her plate away and patted her curls. “High Judge Titian has washed his hands of Kali. Morantha and I thought it would do you good to show your face at the old haunts. Remind folk exactly who you are.”

  “And who am I, Harriot?”

  “The mother of High Judge Titian, of course.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “What more is there?”

  Grizmare drained her glass and grimaced. “If I have so much power, how come I’m being forced to drink this… piss?” She caught her companions’ mock shock and revelled in it. “I rather like to think I was someone long before I squeezed the High Judge from between my thighs.” She unhooked her cane from the back of her chair and, leaning heavily on the handle, got to her feet. “I cannot abide this wretched heat any longer. I have shown my face and now I am ready to return to my empty nest, having been abandoned for the crime of being irrelevant to that self-same son this nation is so intent on worshipping! It is how I like it. I do not need this grotesque display of worth, or these turgid flaps of desert vole or rat or whatever it is they’re serving.” She jabbed her cane towards the fountain. “I certainly don’t need that infernal din.”

  “Stay, Grizmare.” Harriot’s plea was half-hearted.

  Morantha gave a limp wave. “Go then. You are in danger of putting out the sun with your ill mood. I will call on you in a day or so, when you are not being subjected to daylight and hopefully better company.” A smile formed on the countessa’s cosmetically fattened lips.

  Grizmare gave a curt nod. Turning her back on the two women, she set off for the elevator to street level and her waiting driver, the taps of her cane counting out the steps.

  Five

  Abbandon. Home of the wretched.

  Kali knew the statistics. Five thousand Vary tucked away from the rest of Bleekland, protecting the country from their inherent leeching. Walking through the gate, her throat bruised from the pressure of the beater, she felt awash with the fear of the Vary. Mothers clutched children to them, repulsive with their long arms and blockish teeth. The males trudged alongside, as if it took every trace of self-preservation to persuade their feet to carry them. Guards pulled on smoke sticks, relayed news from the outside, and made liberal use of their beaters.

  As if watching a government data reel, Kali took in that the camp was enclosed by two high fences of slice-wire; if the wrist nicks failed for any reason, there was the backup of the patrols between the fences and guards’ towers either side of the gate. More than enough manpower to contain the Vary! Even now, shuffling forward with the rest, she couldn’t help but feel an instinctual, perverse
burst of pride.

  They passed a giant sink hole where the sounds of sledgehammers reverberated through the air. The camp had a basalt quarry which supplied the stone-wool production at an onsite factory; given her past connections, Kali had been privy to the camp’s schematics when it was designed. She understood the value of stone-wool as thermal insulation for tyre components, construction materials, and the mesospheric craft her father was relying on to help him win the war. The ground might be splintering beneath their feet, but in the skies it was a level battleground.

  Further along stood a large stable block, smelling of gorse grass and sweetly vegetative manure. Kali heard the hoo-hoo of razingstock and the clap-clop of the spread hooves that helped them navigate sand and dusty ground. The complex ropes of the animals’ bridles and other tack hung off nails on the outside of the stable wall. A row of sand-sledges suggested the razingstock worked the quarry.

  The sight reminded Kali of her childhood home in Geno – a grand glasshouse with a desert garden which had taken so much watering. At the far end, her grandmother’s zoo housed a miniature oryx, a family of desert otters, pock pigs, tiger dogs, several rare species of maw cat and a large aviary filled with cactus wrens, megapodes and parakeets. As a girl, Kali had suspected the creatures tended to die, cooped up in the heat as they were. Or perhaps she had just underestimated their brief lifespans.