Rise Page 4

  “This says you ‘sought to expose an underbelly of murderous psychopathy in the National Guard’. And – your words again – ‘Awaken the Bleek nation to the exploitative and financially exhaustive housing of the Vary in labour camps while provoking fresh debate on the cleansing methods at interpersonal, municipal and state level. Also, to acknowledge a technological debt…’ The rest is redacted.” Joltu narrowed his eyes. “Quite the fan of words. Grand concepts too. What did Daddy think to your revolt?”

  Kali lifted her chin. “My father was disappointed in me. The same way he was disappointed when his wolf hound soiled the study rug with its dirty paws. In that case, my father led the dog outside and shot it between the eyes. Some would argue I got off lightly.”

  Joltu didn’t look like he believed her. Or did the idea of a father soliciting his own child’s public punishment sit uncomfortably with the Commandant Superintendent?

  “Well, Lieutenant Titian. Regardless of how you arrived here, my job is to treat you no differently to the rest. Except, you are different, aren’t you?” He brought his wine to his mouth, breath misting the glass. “I despise your presence in this camp. If I deal with you kindly, I’ll be accused of coddling a traitor. If I abuse you, what’s to say your father may not decide to come for his princess once he thinks the lesson has been learnt? What then, if you return a broken woman?”

  “Then my father will delight in the fact.”

  “And will he?” Joltu maintained eye contact. “Break you, I mean.”

  Kali didn’t answer, and the Commandant Superintendent gave a snort and shook his head. He tapped the gel frame and her case history vanished. “You have been assigned duties in the Construction and Bio-engineering department of the factory. We may as well make use of your brain while it is still lively. Your nights will be spent in the barracks with the Vary males. I suspect you may survive longer that way. A Bleek Lieutenant responsible for the forcible deportation of hundreds of Vary young may not fare well in the company of the womenfolk. The men may yet find a use for you.” His tone had an edge.

  “I’ll take whatever treatment is due to me,” Kali said, newly fearful of the words.

  “Will you?” Joltu searched her face. Apparently, he didn’t find what he was looking for. Getting to his feet and striding over to the doors, he threw them open and signalled a passing guard.

  Seven

  Kali knew death; she had grown up in the shadow of her mother’s. She also understood that, sometimes, death was essential for the greater good. The first time she’d tested the theory, she was seven years old. Her father had just returned to Geno from Nilreb, having been recently appointed to the role of advisor-in-chief in a cabinet reshuffle and this was one of his rare home visits. He was still capable of tugging off his own boots at that point. Still happy to bounce her on his knee.

  “So, your grandmother tells me old Jimney died.”

  “Granny loved that maw cat more than you love me. She fed it bits of razingstock jerky. Stroked its nasty fur where the scabs grew. Old Jimney bit me once.” Kali showed off the tiny worm of a scar on her left index finger.

  “The cat is dead now. Aren’t you sad?”

  Kali shook her head vigorously. “It was made fat by Granny feeding it all that jerky. Jerky is my favourite.” She sucked the tips of her fingers. “It smells like you.”

  “I smell like jerky?” Her father raised his eyebrows in mock alarm. But then a new thought must have struck him, and he lost his playful edge. “I am like this country, once handsome and well fed, now suckled dry.” He swaddled her tight in his arms, one ear pressed against the chest so that she could hear his muffled breathing.

  Her father released her and he looked so serious that Kali thought he must have hated old Jimney as much as she did. She decided to push her luck.

  “But you will tell Granny not to feed the jerky to her cats?”

  Her father gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I will insist Granny stops immediately or I will have her throat cut.” He did a good impression by sticking his tongue out a corner of his mouth and splaying the fingers of one hand near his neck to represent squirting blood. Kali enjoyed the joke and laughed a great deal.

  But she still hadn’t answered her father’s question. “The dead cat? Granny said it was her oldest, so you must have known the thing all your life. Granny even shed a tear, and who knew she had any liquid left to squeeze from her body. But you are unaffected?”

  “Things die. They’re old or sick or greedy.”

  “Greedy?”

  “Like old Jimney.”

  Her father held her gaze. “Kali, did you kill old Jimney? I know how much you enjoy shooting garden sparrows from your bedroom window.”

  Kali didn’t know how she felt about her father’s suspicions. Did he like the idea of her doing away with the ugly cat – in which case she should confess? Or was he disappointed in her savagery? She thought a moment, and in the end settled on a version of the truth.

  “I caught Jimney with his nose in that bag of bobbit poison in the gardener’s shed. Next day he was dead.”

  “Greedy,” her father affirmed. He stared past her to where the wall of smoked glass-sheet gave out over her grandmother’s glorious garden; taking stock of her reflection, Kali thought that she looked like another maw cat, curled up on his lap.

  Her father pressed his knuckles to his lips and sighed. “You are right, Kali. Greed is a form of death. It happened to this country before you were born. The greedy bankers promised to pay back debt that became almost insurmountable after the great Skyfall. The greedy politicians wanted to stay friends with the other countries draining us of geothermic energy and water from the hot springs until our land was dry and desolate. And then, of course, there were Vary. Incapable of any valid contribution, they swarmed our land, devouring everything in their path. They are the epitome of greed.”

  Kali wiggled on her father’s lap. “Granny says Vary keep pots full of grease which they use to cook their dumplings, and it is using this same oil which keeps up the stink.”

  “And your granny would know, having abided that foul boy next door all these years.” Her father made a hack sound in the back of his throat.

  “Boy?” Kali sat up in confusion. “The only person who lives next door is Mister Thatchett, and he’s old. Ugly too.”

  “And he’s Vary.”

  Kali clutched to her father. “How do you know? His teeth are all gone!”

  “The hands.” High Judge Titian flexed his fingers. “Next time you see Mister Thatchett, look at the hands. Look for the fingers being slightly longer than normal, and how the knuckles stick out. The nails too. They are slightly thicker and tend to flake.”

  This was new information for Kali. She went back to sucking her fingers, but her father slipped her off his knee. Even at that tender age, she understood his mind had turned elsewhere.

  “To bed now, Kali. I will see you again the next time I am in Geno.”

  Kali wanted to cling on to her father’s leg and beg him to stay. But she knew it would be pointless. There was a whole other city that her father called home, and so many demands on his time. As her grandmother would complain, “Your papa is masterminding Bleekland’s resurrection from the ashes. At least that is what he is always telling me.”

  She leaned forward and kissed his hand. “Goodnight, Papa.”

  Her father didn’t reply, just stayed staring out onto the garden, a deep groove running down the length of his forehead and between his eyes.

  Years later, Kali stood at the entrance to the male barracks, the familiar stench of death in her nostrils, and wondered what had happened to that man who bounced her on his knee and told her fairy stories.

  The Vary stayed in the shadows of two rows of crowded bunks with a narrow gangway between. As if realising there would be no attack on the Bleek bitch with them around to witness it, the blockers sloped off, kicking at the dusty ground and spitting aside wads of contraband tobacco.

&
nbsp; “They leave the door open at night?” Kali heard her voice catch. She had ordered armies, but the Vary on mass were unknown to her. What diseases did they carry? The stench of so many in close quarters was nauseating.

  She heard murmurs. One of the number said, “To aid air flow”, and another, “Where is a man to run to?”

  A man? Kali was confused for a moment. She did not think of Vary in terms of men and women, only males and females. But she understood the sentiment. What use was there in escaping through the door when blockers lay in wait and guards who could activate every wrist nick on the spot, not to mention a double fence of slice-wire and the black desert beyond?

  She cleared her throat. “I am to be housed here. My name is…”

  “Lieutenant Kali Titian. Yeah, we know.” A male strode towards her, long arms dangling as he walked. Kali had the measure of him in an instant; a bruiser – most likely an ex dust hauler. The job tended to attract physical types, being filthy, exhausting work that attempted to fight back Mother Nature on the streets of the cities but paid well.

  Now that they were starting to speak up, the Vary crawled down from their bunks and stood in huddles, easing the kinks from their necks. In close quarters, Kali saw how inexorably thin they were. Skin clung to their bones like wet silk. Would they have the strength to kill her? If they rushed her as one, she would not be able to fight them off.

  It appeared that her death sentence was to be carried out by one individual. The bruiser grew up out of himself and spread his arms. “What do you make of your new home, Lieutenant? Not quite what a State Daughter is used to.”

  “It is not. Labour camps were originally intended to house criminals. Their recent use is not something I sanction.”

  “Spoke out about it too from what we hear.” The bruiser jerked his head towards the others.

  “I did.”

  “And now are brought here, same as the rest of us. Only –” His eyes narrowed. There was a nasty twist to his mouth. “You aren’t the same, are you, Lieutenant? Headed up a guard battalion since you were old enough to piss in a pot, I shouldn’t wonder.” A finger elongated and pressed into Kali’s shoulder. “We pricked your conscience at last, did we, Lieutenant? Question is, how many Vary did you round up or execute in the years before?”

  “Five-hundred and ninety-two.” Kali didn’t blink.

  A gasp rolled back through the barracks.

  “Five-hundred and ninety-two arrested?” The bruiser’s hand dropped to his side. Even he balked at the idea of touching her.

  “Five-hundred and ninety-two executed. Not by my hand. It is a task for lower ranking officers. But authorised by me during official raids.”

  The bruiser’s eyes became glassy. It was a strange display of hurt or hatred, or both, thought Kali. As if the male was overriding his stunted capacity for emotion.

  “You don’t get to rewrite history just because you say a few pretty words about Vary and upset your daddy…”

  “That’s exactly what she gets to do.” The voice was weak but had a force to it that reminded Kali of her father’s. Whoever it was that spoke had a settling effect on the Vary. They crept back into their niches.

  Narrowing her eyes, Kali peered into the darkness and made out a solitary low cot tucked under a razingstock manger. A trembling hand signalled her over.

  “You’ll go see the Speaker if you want to survive the night.” The bruiser stepped between her and the exit, a pointless move but Kali understood power play, even in their pathetic circumstances.

  She approached the elderly male on the cot. His hair was very fine and his fat teeth were all missing, like her grandmother’s neighbour, Mister Thatchett, all that time ago.

  “I didn’t think a father could treat a daughter so,” said the man in a coarse whisper. “The message you distributed across the datastacks was hardly treacherous to the Bleek; it simply advocated gentler means of our removal. I do not understand the severity of your crime. And now you are put among us as punishment, the people you have spent so long trying to destroy.”

  “I was raised to follow orders. It takes time to grow an opinion.” Kali felt awkward standing over the male. Warily, she crouched down so that they were on the same level.

  The male held up a finger and choked into a rag. He patted his chest. “Did he say goodbye?”

  “Are you still referring to my father?” Despite the chill from the open door, Kali felt her cheeks grow hot. “He is the most excellent of men, a strategist and a patriot. I never expected him to support me through the trial.”

  “And yet you published your affidavit anyway.”

  “He has his politics and I have mine.”

  “So you admit it was a political act?”

  “Of course it was political! What kind of question is that?”

  “You do not need to rile so easily, Lieutenant.” The male gave a weak chuckle. “We still aggravate you. And by we –” He pointed towards the bunks. “I mean, Vary. You have no love for us. We are other to you. But there is something in your conscience which says we are alike enough in our use of speech and coherent thought to deserve better treatment.”

  Kali rubbed the heel of a hand against her forehead. She didn’t find it easy speaking to this male. He looked like the beast he was. The words he used, though, they were elegant and organised. It was unsettling. He was exactly the kind of individual the authorities sought to weed out. That she had sought to weed out.

  “You are the Speaker,” she said in dawning recognition. “I’ve read your tracts.”

  She had also spent a great deal of her time in the National Guard rooting out members of the Resistance, those Vary and Bleek men and women who risked their lives distributing pamphlets the Speaker had put his name to. The transcripts had attempted to bridge the cultural divide, detailing the Vary’s financial input to the Bleekland economy, the contribution of Vary aesthetes to the country’s arts programmes – the likes of Eustang Holt, famed for his neuro linguistic philosophies, and the soprano, Octavia Drethoan, who sang at High Judge Titian’s inauguration before her imprisonment – as well as Vary specialisms in seismic mining, micro surgery, bookkeeping... None of it had any effect. How could it? The Bleek could not afford to be swayed by sentiment. They had invested too much in High Judge Titian’s ideal; to believe otherwise would be to admit their actions towards the Vary were motivated by something darker than patriotism. Instead, those who distributed these words of rebellion were rounded up and executed or sent to labour camps like Abbandon to pay for their crimes. In time, the Speaker himself had been arrested too.

  The man struggled to clear his throat. “Their treatment of us is barbaric,” he hissed. “Your treatment of us was barbaric.”

  “It was.” Kali recalled the scores who had died on her order. She tried to feel more, but the deaths were metadata. Meanwhile, the male’s rheumy eyes questioned in a way that made her naked. What did he see? An ally? A monster?

  “Find her bunk space, men, and leave her be. She will suffer more at the hands of her own than ours. In that small way, we will have victory.” He chuckled hoarsely and waved her away as the laughter turned to choking.

  Kali heard each squeeze towards death from the Speaker’s lungs. She walked between the rows of males to the far end of the hut where she found space had been made for her on one of the squalid bunks.

  Eight

  Mohab dreamt of beasts rising from the fire pits in the north, their golden wings coruscating under sunlight. The beasts unleashed a torrent of sound – high pitched cries and yelps, low mews which hurt the soul, and, now and then, the snap of an order to “Be quiet!” Rising through the sludge, he tried to claw his way back below consciousness but couldn’t keep a grip. His eyes flickered open.

  “Thank fuck you’re alive!” A figure leaned over him, backlit by a guttering fire lamp.

  Mohab blinked. His throat was red raw. He tried to swallow and broke into a coughing fit.

  “Steady now. I set your ribs
with green paste, injected it myself and while I’m a trained nurse… Well, it’s not an exact science.” The man showed a gappy smile.

  “Not sure you should have bothered.” Batting the man’s hands aside, Mohab struggled to sit up. He found himself in a room lined with narrow beds, most of which were occupied. A number of ghostly figures drifted around the ward; Mohab recognised the black habit of the Gothendore Sisterhood. As a student, he had taken a summer job as a gardener at The Holy Alliance of St Marie in west Nilreb and seen for himself how the sect tended to attract those with a violent predisposition. In place of prayers, he had witnessed a barrage of spite against the poor. In place of caring, he had witnessed cruelty towards the old and the ailing. He was grateful his unconscious body had been in the hands of this strange man with the gap-toothed smile.

  “Not like I had a choice,” his personal nurse was muttering. “If I could have steered you towards a happy grave, I would have. But the Commandant General himself demanded that I keep you alive. So here you are with the rest of us miserable souls. Welcome to Abbandon!”

  Mohab looked down at his coarse pyjamas uniform. Blood had seeped through the knee of one trouser leg. His left eye felt swollen. A molar was missing; he prodded the gap with his tongue. It was hard to find a part of him that didn’t hurt.

  The nurse kept jabbering. “My name is Groff, and what can I tell you, Speaker’s son? They made a mess of your face. Far as I can tell, the one who went for you had no intention of stopping. It was the Commandant Superintendent who intervened. I’m sorry, but it would appear you are meant to suffer more at the guards’ hands before Mama Sunstar delivers you.”

  “I put no trust in the old mother.” Mohab touched the criss-crosses of thread running the length of one cheek, surprised and afraid of the damage.

  Groff nodded sagely. “Pain will dent a man’s faith.”