Someone has wired my jaw shut and I’m getting water through a tube. The sheet swaddling my legs is tied in place with a rope. I can see the rope if I squint hard enough. Although looking gives me a headache.
Haze is right. Being back hurts. It hurts like fuck, and then it hurts a bit more. I would go back to where I was, if I hadn’t just boasted I was ready to return.
‘Franc.’
She seems to be ignoring me.
Tapping the side of the bed might attract her attention, but my hands are tied and my strength is gone. I can barely turn my head, never mind break knots. It seems best to worry about that later because Franc is turning towards me. She approaches with all the patience of a wildcat pacing its cage.
Walks straight past. Then turns and walks back. I only realize this when she stands over me.
Her lips are cracked and her eyes ringed with dark circles. A bruise on one leg matches another above her hip. Looks like tiredness has her walking into things. Scabs crust the cuts across her gut, which is hollow.
I know why my jaw is wired when pain explodes across my face. Pavel obviously kicked me in the head as a parting gift. And Franc’s slap is hard enough to make the room blur.
Shooting offence, I think. Before wondering, what was that for?
‘Pleasant dreams?’ she asks.
When my eyes refocus, Franc is on the other side of the room, forcing her elbows through the sweat-rotten straps of the singlet she wears under her combat jacket. And then, back still turned to me, she climbs into her trousers and buckles on her boots. She’s made her point.
There are four wires in all holding my jaw shut, and she snaps each, leaving me with a mouthful of blood and lengths of metal sticking from my teeth. Turning my head, as much as the pain will allow, I ask:
‘Shil? ‘
Has to be the first understandable word I’ve said. Franc’s expression is so dark it makes me think perhaps I was meant to ask something else first. And maybe I was. But then I wouldn’t be me. Shil is Aux, that’s reason enough to ask. ‘Well?’
‘Sergeant Neen went looking.’
Since when did Franc stick Sergeant in front of Neen’s name? Since his sister went missing, I guess. ‘He went alone?’
‘No, sir. The colonel went with him.’
Oh fuck . . .
‘When?’
‘Over a week ago.’
‘And the others,’ I say. ‘What about the others?’
‘Rachel’s downstairs,’ says Franc. ‘As for Haze, he spends his life field-stripping that gun of yours. When he’s not sitting over his bloody pad gibbering to himself.’
‘Franc . . .’
‘Fucking don’t, sir . . .‘
Maybe being thanked isn’t what she expects. Throws me too. But I died and so did she, back during that idiot test at the beginning of this mission. It gives us something else in common.
All the same, my voice is harder when I say, ‘Cut the ropes . . .’
She shakes her head. She’s about to explain why when steps on the stairs make her move away from my bed. I expect the local caudillo. Some broad-shouldered thug wrapped in a foul-smelling coat and carrying a rifle, probably with a dagger thrust through his belt. Probably my dagger.
Come to that, probably my belt as well.
What I get is an old woman. Grey hair waterfalls from a high forehead. She’s dressed in a shift that is white and almost clean. A string of pearls hangs round her neck, and a silver brooch fastens a cloak at her shoulders. I’m not sure how she can stand the smoke and heat in here, but she barely seems to notice them.
‘Ahh,’ she says. ‘My voices were right.’ Dark eyes examine my face, and she scowls when she sees the wires to my jaw have gone.
‘You died,’ she tells me.
‘I know.’
She looks at me closely. ‘How do you know?’
‘My own voices told me.’
Gripping my head, she turns it towards her lamp and stares into my eyes. Her gaze is unforgiving, and unexpected from an old woman in a rotting city on the edge of a stinking sea in a habitat that’s taking longer than it should to die.
‘He tells the truth,’ she says.
Franc nods. ‘He always does,’ she replies. ‘Not an endearing quality.’ She has to be quoting Haze or Vijay, no way would she come up with a comment like that on her own.
The old woman smiles. Her name is Kyble. Or maybe that’s her title. Pulling a wineskin from her belt, she yanks off the stopper and holds the skin to my mouth. ‘Drink,’ she says.
‘Not if it’s going to send me back to sleep.’
She shrugs. ‘Die then.’ Putting the stopper back in her flask, she turns to leave the room.
‘Kyble,’ Franc says.
The woman looks back.
‘Please?’
With a sigh, Kyble gives Franc the flask.
The next three days pass in a haze of smoke, bitter wine and memories of Franc raking embers, rebuilding endless fires and stacking herbs onto burning coals until the smoke gets thicker and my memories uncertain. One morning Rachel appears carrying a tray of food for Franc.
Looking round, Rachel screws up her face.
And then, wandering over, she peers deep into my face. Maybe she thinks I’m unconscious. ‘How can you stand it?’ she asks Franc. She’s talking about the heat, unless it’s the smoke. Alternatively, it could just be the smell.
‘You get used to it.’
Rachel snorts.
‘Remember Ilseville?’ Franc’s voice is flat. When Rachel doesn’t answer, Franc says, ‘I do. He kept you alive. He kept me alive. Haze would be dead if it wasn’t for him.’
‘That’s why you’re doing this?’
‘One reason.’
‘What’s the other?’
‘None of your fucking business.’ Stripping dried berries from a branch, Franc busies herself arranging the berries into small heaps. After a few seconds, Rachel leaves. Next morning Kyble cuts the ropes tying my legs. ‘Move your toes,’ she orders. So I do. ‘Now try your whole feet.’
I can move those too.
We work our way up my body. My ankles will twist and my knees will bend, but lifting either leg is near impossible. My fingers work, my wrists turn.
‘Who made this?’ Kyble asks, tapping my prosthetic arm.
‘A woman.’
‘Someone like her?’ asks Kyble, nodding at Franc.
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Someone like you.’
It’s the right answer. Although it invites more questions. These need answers before she will leave me alone. I am tempted to tell Kyble to shut up, fuck off and take her curiosity elsewhere. But in answering questions I pay a debt. And Kyble is not my enemy, or I would be dead and the rest of the Aux too. I have a good idea, though, whose enemy she is.
‘Caudillo Pavel,’ I say.
She spits from instinct. ‘The only person who calls Pavel caudillo,’ Kyble says, ‘is Pavel himself.’
She sees me smile sourly.
‘So,’ I say. ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend?’
‘In your ejercito also?’
‘Also in my ejercito.’
Shaking hands involves gripping wrists while folding back one finger. Kyble doesn’t mind that I fumble the greeting. ‘Clean him, feed him and bed him,’ she tells Franc. ‘Any order you like. Although cleaning him first might be best.’
To me she says, ‘They’ll be back today. Your caudillo, and your angry little servant.’
When Kyble lets herself out, she’s chuckling.
‘Who is she?’
‘Someone who hid you,’ says Franc. ‘When the Silver Fist swept through this city and everyone else wanted to give you up.’