I’m wondering how brief to make colonel Vijay’s moment, without wanting to push him into fury or despair. Since I never knew my parents, their death didn’t touch me. Can’t imagine what it would be like to have the general as a father. Suspect it’s one of those things you don’t want to think about.
While Colonel Vijay gets over his misery, I go check on Leona.
She’s missing.
That is, the fire escape is empty.
A sound of water splashing leads me to a door.
At first I think she’s taking a piss but it lasts too long. Twisting the handle, I find myself in another bathroom. The biggest I’ve seen. More a room with a shower for its ceiling.
Sergeant Leona stands in the middle, stark naked.
Hot rain falls from above onto the coloured pebbles at her feet. A cactus grows from the pebbles in one corner. Damn thing is soaking wet, but it has to be a cactus because it has spikes. A little bridge joins her part of the room to mine.
The stream separating us is fed by water that runs down a marble slab set into one wall and disappears into a floor-level slit in another. I have no idea how the fish living in the stream survive the hot water raining down on them or stop themselves being swept away.
Unless they’re an illusion.
As Leona tosses her hair, shampoo sprays upwards and she raises her face to the ceiling to rinse herself. She’s humming something loudly. Sounds classical. A march, or one of those strange pieces Debro likes.
The sergeant’s body is perfect.
I mean it. Firm buttocks, soft waist and wide hips. Legs that combine elegance with looking like they could squeeze the life out of you. Her breasts would fill, but not quite overflow my hand. A flash of nipple as she turns slightly takes my breath away.
And when she kneels to wash her feet, I’m speechless.
I’d know that arse anywhere.
There isn’t a man in Farlight who wouldn’t.
Only the arse I remember is bronze. And its owner kneels beside a different stream. She sits in a park in the oldest part of Farlight, near the cathedral. Serenity, says the plaque on her base.
No idea if that’s her name, or why she’s supposed to be peaceful. Sitting around naked by a stream with a body like that can only attract attention. As Leona stands she sees me watching.
‘Shit,’ she says.
Having clicked her fingers to stop the shower, she grabs a towel and wraps it tightly around her. She wears it like armour.
‘Sergeant . . .’
‘ Yes and no,’ she says.
Her feet seem small for the boots she’s been wearing. The tattoo on the inside of her wrist has a barcode and number I don’t begin to recognize, and the dog tags around her neck are not standard issue. Hanging beside the tags is a weird-looking key.
‘Oh well,’ she says, seeing me look. ‘You were going to work it out eventually.’ Her voice is sad as she adds, ‘I used to love this place.’
You used to . . .?
Sergeant Leona holds her ground as I stamp towards her, fists bunched. This is a militia NCO, I tell myself. An NCO who disobeyed an order.
A direct order. I could shoot her now; no court martial and no appeal, and still be within my rights. Only, she’s not really militia, is she? And that’s no way to treat soldiers, militia or not.
The thought stops me dead.
‘Nature,’ she says. ‘Nurture. They’re a bastard pair.’ Obviously enough, I have no idea what she’s talking about. ‘I need to get changed,’ she tells me.
Then waits for something.
‘You plan to watch?’ Leona asks after a while.
When I say nothing, she shrugs.
‘Guess so.’
Dropping her towel, she reaches for a sodden singlet and wrings it out, before dragging it over her head. Climbing into a thong, she yanks up her combats and slides herself into a shirt and then her flak jacket. Her light machine gun, boots and helmet stand in one corner, away from the water.
‘How’s Vijay?’ she asks.
‘You knew he was here?’
Leona shrugs. ‘It seemed likely. Although it was hard to be certain with the nodes down. There are only a few left. As I’m sure you realize.’
I’m sure I don’t.
She opens the door for me.
At a window, we stop so she can look at Farlight.
I’m not sure what she sees that I don’t, but when she turns away there are tears in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ she tells me fiercely. ‘Not now, not then, not even in the beginning.’
She’s talking to herself.
She has to be. Nothing she’s said so far makes sense. ‘You didn’t answer. How is Vijay taking the general’s death?’
‘Badly.’
‘Good. Better he gets over it now.’
Leona agrees that cutting Morgan’s throat probably helped. The U/Free was behind this. She nods when I say that. Not just him, she tells me. But he was part of what happened. And now the general is dead, killing Morgan, I tell Leona, will help Colonel Vijay negate some of his inevitable guilt.
Inevitable guilt?
Where does this stuff come from?
‘Your head,’ says Leona. ‘Intelligence is a construct. Well, mostly . . . You have yours locked down.’
‘Fuck,’ I say. ‘You’re-’
‘Run in survival mode long enough, you’ll believe that’s all there is.’
I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or about me. Maybe both. And I notice that, not only did she interrupt me, I allowed it to happen. That tells me we both know she’s not a militia sergeant.
‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I’m-’
‘One of OctoV’s handmaidens.’
Taken me long enough to work it out. They’re stuff of rumour and fantasy. Only the most intelligent, most talented, most beautiful and most deadly are ever chosen. The official version says all are virgins. Their relationship with OctoV is chaste and he’s interested only in their beauty and weapon skills. Obviously, that’s bollocks.
‘You don’t believe it, do you?’
Of course not.
You don’t put a fourteen-year-old in a harem and expect him to be interested in needlework, sword skills and musical talents. I imagine OctoV screws himself stupid most days. If he exists at all.
Leona looks at me. ‘Ah yes,’ she says. ‘I forget.’
She forgets I’ve talked to our glorious leader. And to his mother. At least that was how he introduced Hekati, the autonomous and self-aware habitat on the edge of Enlightened space. The ex-habitat.
Hekati no longer exists. I still hear her screams in my head.
‘Sven,’ Leona tells me, ‘there are no handmaidens. There haven’t been handmaidens for years . . . Centuries,’ she corrects herself. ‘Not for centuries.’
‘Then what are you?’ I demand.
‘Good question,’ she says. ‘A monster, I guess.’
She stares through the window at the burning city, and then looks at the black zep still hanging in the sky. ‘They lied,’ she tells me. ‘They said the furies would be programmed to kill only specific, pre-chosen targets.’
‘You don’t programme furies,’ I say. ‘You release them.’
‘These ones were supposed to be different. The U/Free promised.’ She shakes her head, runs one hand through her hair and flicks sweat from her fingers. Her mouth trembles and she looks close to tears again.
‘Leona. Who are you?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Believe me,’ I say. ‘It does.’
Don’t want to kill her. But if she’s a traitor, I will.