From her hiding place up on the mezzanine, Adelaide surveyed her party critically. The room was full. Hired barmen moved subtly through the red-dressed guests, replenishing cocktail bowls where the tidemarks fell low. Beside her, the DJ was brewing a potent cloud of sound to fuel the dancers. But Adelaide was distracted. There was a man present at her party who was not meant to be here. She knew he was not meant to be here because he was talking to Gudrun, a veteran member of the Haze, and Gudrun looked bemused. Gudrun was never bemused.
Loathe to create an unnecessary scene, she found Tyr chatting to Freya Kess, a tiny girl with a pixie face and hair that descended in corkscrew curls. Adelaide surveyed them dispassionately before interrupting.
“Do you have a minute, Tyr?”
“Nice to see you, as always, Adelaide.” His tone, as usual for their public meetings, was just short of sarcastic.
“Now?” she said imperiously.
“Excuse me.” Tyr turned to Freya, rolling his eyes. He followed Adelaide into the crowd. “What is it?” he said in an undertone.
“We have a gatecrasher.”
“Where?”
“Behind me, by the interior wall, two o’clock.”
His eyes flicked over her shoulder. “Black shirt, terrible hair? Talking to Kristin and Gudrun?”
“That’s the one,” she said. “Do you recognize him?”
“No. You?”
“Not a clue. Do you think he’s dangerous?” With her back to the gatecrasher, Adelaide felt her sense of intrigue rising. The breach in security took her aback though. Her invitations were watermarked like pre-Neon banknotes. They weren’t just quaint; they should be impossible to forge.
“No idea. Looks oddly familiar though. Stay here, I’ll deal with it.”
“Thank you.”
The second that Tyr moved away her attention was claimed by Lilja. Adelaide gave the acrobat a full half of her attention. The other half shadowed Tyr as he approached the stranger and escorted him through the archway. Adelaide excused herself and moved to where she could listen without being seen.
“I’m not here for any media. I’m here to see Adelaide.”
The gatecrasher sounded strange. It was a gruff voice, but hoarse too, she thought. It wasn’t an accent as such-what was an accent nowadays anyway? Everyone spoke Boreal English. Even her grandfather had forsaken his childhood Siberian; she had only ever heard him speak it on those occasions when Axel had asked. She edged closer.
“That’s funny,” Tyr was saying. “Because you’re not on her guest list.”
“I know that.” There was a pause. A new track started and Adelaide strained to hear over the music. Why did this man want to see her? She knew most of the krill by voice if not by sight. She was forever changing her scarab code to evade them.
“Look,” the gatecrasher said. “I’m from a political reform group. Horizon. I spoke at the Council recently. I just wanted to see Adelaide. To ask if she could help us.”
This was unexpected, and disappointing. Of course, it was possible the man was lying, but she sensed not. That was what was bothering her about the voice. It held the unusual ring of truth.
“I don’t know who you are, or who you’re working for, but you’re leaving right now.” Tyr evidently had no such concerns.
Adelaide judged it time to put an end to the intrusion. She stepped out.
“It’s alright, Tyr. He’ll go quietly.”
The opposing walls of mirrors multiplied the two men’s reflections, producing the illusion of spectators on either side. Tyr, calm in his red shirt-only Adelaide would know that his body was tensed in apprehension. And the stranger-up close she was surprised by his appearance. He was younger than the sandpaper voice suggested, perhaps not much older than herself. His eyes were the colour of cocoa, almond shaped, striking, but the whites were bloodshot. His hair was dark and shaggy. She ignored the clothes, her gaze stripping away the cheap layers of clothing to the sinewy physique beneath. Tall, and thin like wire. No, she thought idly. Not unattractive.
But still. Too still, as if he had practised. Even his blinking was slow, each sweep of the eyelashes seeming to reinforce some careful screen. It was a little unnerving.
“Adelaide,” he said.
I must put a stop to this, she thought.
“I need to talk to-”
“Yes. Thank you for coming. Goodbye.”
An odd expression crossed the man’s face. There was anger there, clearly, but it was more than that. It was accusatory. Almost a look of hatred. For a moment she thought he was going to do something wild, and wondered if her assessment was way off track and he was dangerous after all. She let her smile drop into that tension, leisurely, the way he had looked at her, before she turned her back.
Behind her, quick footsteps marked the stranger’s eviction. Nobody had noticed anything. She waited, aware that Tyr was at her shoulder.
“We’ll have to find out who he is,” she said.
“I know who he is. The westerner who went to Chambers-I saw his photograph on the newsreel. Stars knows how he got in.”
“Stars indeed.” She frowned, but put the gatecrasher aside. “Balcony?”
“Five minutes.”
She moved away and was instantly claimed by a newly blonde Minota. It was a lucky collision. Minota was diverting but so caught up in her own cleverness that she paid little attention to anyone else. Over Minota’s shoulder Adelaide saw Tyr disappear into the next room. Minota was relating a story. She gave it little glosses, doll-like hands gesticulating. There was a pet goose in the story, and the conclusion was something to do with the goose attacking one of Minota’s lovers in her bed. Adelaide laughed and calculated the mental time for Tyr to make his way through the study, the kitchen and the dining room, and from there into her bedroom. Minota looked pleased with herself.
“Really, though, you should have been there. It was too brilliant.”
“I can only imagine.”
Minota caught her arm, eyelids stretching. “Oh honey, I hate to ask, but do you have anything? I’m so dry, I can barely afford a line.”
“There’s a brass pot in the drinks cabinet.” Adelaide gave Minota’s hand a conspiratorial squeeze. “Why don’t you help yourself?”
Minota giggled. “You’re so generous, Adelaide.”
Minota’s discovery was met with shrieks of delight and delving into handbags for suitable paper. Masked by the commotion, Adelaide slipped back into the hallway. She checked over her shoulder, then arranged her fingertips in a pattern against the glass. There was a little click, and a panel of the mirror slid across. Adelaide eased through the gap. The panel slid back behind her. She was in her private bathroom.
It was abruptly quiet. Adelaide smiled to herself. Her grandfather had incorporated some useful innovations into the Rechnov properties.
She opened the door into her bedroom, knowing Tyr would already have entered from the other side. She took a slip of milaine from the dragon pot and a thick, heavy coat from the wardrobe. Heat rose to her face with the additional layer, evaporating the moment she opened the balcony door.
She shut the door behind her, and stopped, mesmerized by the cold. The emptiness. There was nothing out here but the occasional light from a passing patrol boat, and beacons shining seven miles away at the ring-net. Just the dark, endless ocean. Another world.
Tonight especially she felt that dislocation. The night was acute with absence. Absence of wind, rain, absence of everything except the hiss of her lungs, the thud of her heart, and Tyr, breathing, a few metres away.
“You escaped,” he said.
“I told Minota where to find the milaine.”
“Good diversion.”
They moved at the same time. At once he was kissing her, her back pressed against the glass wall, their lips the only warmth in a frozen world. She was stunned, as always, how much she wanted him. In five years of illicit sex they had never spent a night together. She knew disparate parts of him, could bind them together to make the man he might show to other lovers. But it was an imaginary picture; a concept of boundaries that she would never know. And so it was new every time, dazzlingly, incredibly new. She felt these moments in the marrow of her bones.
“Wait,” he said.
“Wait?” She put a bite of anger into her voice. He responded at once, swinging her around and pushing her against the balcony. She grabbed the railings. Vertigo collided with adrenalin. She was dizzy with altitude. The hundred floor drop and the crashing waves. Tyr against her, inside her, only Tyr’s hands to save her if she slipped. This was world’s end, a sight to drive you mad. That madness was vented in their need for each other, in its heady savage haste. When he pulled away she felt almost sick with it.
“You could stay,” she said.
He shook his head. “Too risky.”
One of them always held back. She shook a fat line of milaine onto the rail and they raced to snort it before some disturbance in the air dissipated the fine green particles. Their heads collided in the centre; she met his eyes and giggled. He grinned back, sniffed.
“Hang on…”
She brushed a trace of powder from the stubble of his upper lip.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Yes. You go back first.”
“Don’t fall off.”
“I won’t.”
She watched him go with a kind of wrench, as though he was already back in her father’s office. He had never admitted it, but she knew Feodor had sent him to the Haze to spy on her. Tyr bridged two worlds.
For a few moments she let herself surrender to the strangeness of the night. Scorpio and Lupus glimmered brightly. She imagined the scientists upstairs training their telescopes. The dryness in her throat, heightened by outdoor air and milaine, reminded her that she must return to her guests. She was no longer worried about getting caught; quite the contrary, she knew that she and Tyr were too clever for that.
When she got back to the party Minota was in the middle of recounting the same anecdote about the goose and the lover to a giddied circle. A mirror was on the table. Tyr lounged on the other side, his long legs stretched out, laughing. There were new arrivals. The apartment was heaving, most people now standing, many dancing.
“There you are, Adelaide!”
It was Jannike, with two glasses of pink punch. Jan’s hair supported a spectacular headpiece that curled over her forehead in a furry cerise tail. Adelaide had a flashback of Axel two years ago, solemnly fixing a dried seahorse to Jan’s head and assuring her it was the latest trick.
“Darling, the most incredible party!” said Jan. “You really have surpassed yourself this time, absolutely everybody’s here. I met this rather handsome but most peculiar boy outside your bedroom. Said he was a biker, but Udur doesn’t know him. And Linus! What a surprise!”
The mention of her brother distracted Adelaide from Jannike’s previous comment.
“Linus? He’s not here?”
“Yes, over there. How on earth did you lure him out?”
“He never said he was coming.” Adelaide scanned the room until she found her brother. He had clearly come straight from work, dressed in a formal suit with no flair to it at all. People moving in his direction swerved away when they clocked who it was. Adelaide was not surprised. Linus was hardly stimulating conversation and besides, everyone knew the siblings shunned one another. “What does he think he’s doing here, Jan?”
“Well, darling, he was chatting away-maybe not chatting exactly, but when I asked him something he responded with words. Maybe there’s hope for him yet, what do you think?” Jannike pursed her lips, assessing the situation.
“I suppose I ought to talk to him.” Adelaide stared at her older brother with equal fascination. Yes, she had sent him an invitation, but that was a long running, only half funny joke between them. She could not work out whether to be angry or amused.
“Give him a line,” Jannike suggested. “Say, he doesn’t even have a drink. I’ll get him one, what does he take?”
“Get him a Rose Infusion. He needs sweetening up.”
“Never fear, angel. Janko will come and save you in a minute.”
Skirting the window-wall, Adelaide managed to cross the room unmolested. Linus caught her eye as she reached the halfway point. His eyes creased with amusement. She reminded herself that the Rechnovs were game players; his presence must be approached as a challenge.
“Evening, Adelaide. Made it through the hyenas?”
“I’d prefer jaguars, if Osiris had any,” she said. Reaching up to his collar, she undid the necktie, pulled it off, and tossed it onto a nearby plant. “Better. Don’t you know it’s cabaret night?”
“I thought it was rose night.”
“Rose night, cabaret theme. Anyway, this is a rare sighting. What brings you to this end of town?”
Linus looked bemused, perhaps by the disappearance of his necktie. “You sent me an invitation, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but you chuck my cards in the recycler.”
“Not always. Sometimes I find a more appropriate use for them.”
Adelaide gave him a suspicious look.
“Tell me,” said Linus. “How much does it cost you to host these things? Or should I say, how much does it cost us?”
“Why, does the bottomless pit of family bank have a previously undiscovered floor?”
“Not as far as I know. Dmitri guards the accounts. If he gets in touch, you’ll know bankruptcy is imminent.”
“I’ve not seen Dmitri for months.”
“Then I dare say you have a few more parties’ worth.” Linus retrieved his necktie from the plant. He rolled it into a neat snail shell and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Adelaide frowned.
“I hope you aren’t going to be admonishing tonight. I’d have to effect your removal.”
“I promise to behave,” he said. “If only because I’m too scared of your security detail.”
“I thought I sensed a latent air of terror about you.”
“I like the decor, by the way. Very dramatic. Although I can’t help feeling a little sorry for all the women getting second-rate flowers, now that you’ve used up a month’s worth of rose stock.”
Adelaide scoffed. “Old World values.”
“So why did you choose roses for tonight?”
She looked at him. Was he serious? “Aesthetics.”
“Your Rose Infusion, sir.”
Jannike stood before them, grinning. She held aloft a selection of cocktails balanced enticingly on a tray. The tray was angled, with the pink concoction sloping towards the rim of its glass and Linus.
“Oh-thank you, Jannike.”
“You’re welcome.” Jannike performed a curtsy. The tray skidded away, skimming over the tops of heads like an adolescent flying saucer. Adelaide and Linus watched.
“So. Did you like your gatecrasher?”
“You heard about him? Did you, by any chance, send him?”
Linus smiled. “Now why would you think that?”
“Nobody else would give away an invitation.”
“Well, I might have.”
“Rude of you, dear brother. But he was evicted quickly.”
“Did you listen to anything he said?”
The sudden switch in conversational direction annoyed Adelaide. She had been rather enjoying their backhanded banter. Now she had a strong urge to put Linus in his place.
“Why would I want to listen to one of your spies?”
Linus extracted a rose petal from his cocktail and looked for somewhere to put it. Crossly, Adelaide held out her own glass. He dropped it in. “Don’t be absurd. Vikram is trying to encourage the Council to put through a few reforms for the west. You have influence, I thought you might help him.”
Adelaide’s laugh rang out. Several people glanced over as if they might approach, then seeing Linus, retracted the impulse. His presence was beginning to dampen her party. She needed him gone. “Linus, you have a very odd idea about my priorities.”
“You wouldn’t like to annoy the Council?”
“Even if I did, I have other things to think about right now.” They were talking without looking at one another, but his next words changed that.
“Like getting into Axel’s apartment?”
Her eyes narrowed. “So now we get to it.”
“Get to what?”
“Why you’re here. Did Feodor send you?”
“Nobody sent me, Adelaide.” Linus dropped his voice. “I decided to come and talk to you. This investigation is a delicate thing. People are making accusations. The Daily Flotsam has even suggested we’ve done away with Axel ourselves because he was an embarrassment.”
“For all I know you might have done,” she said distantly.
Linus’s eyebrows drew together. “It would be a mistake to think I don’t care, Adelaide. He was my brother too.”
“He was nobody’s brother by the end of it.”
“In any case you can’t go around establishing your own private battleground. You’ve got to let it go. We all have.”
She bestowed an insincere smile upon him. “Anything you say, Linus.”
“You’re impossible.” He kept his voice low but it was strained with anger.
“It’s been said before.”
“And you should stop screwing around with Tyr as well.”
She saw the regret flash over her brother’s face a second after he had spoken, but it was too late. Her eyes flicked involuntarily across the room. They were playing poker at the table now. Tyr had a stack of chips in front of him. He was toying with them, letting the disks slip through his fingers in a series of clinks. It was chance, perhaps, that made him catch her eye at that moment. But it might have been something more elusive and unqualified. Understanding sprang between them. Tyr looked away.
Linus lit two cigarettes and passed her one without speaking. The first inhalation grated on her throat. He smoked something different to her. It tasted grey. She drew twice, deeply, before allowing herself to speak.
“How long have you known?”
“I’ve suspected for a while. Tonight confirmed it.”
A cloud of laughter floated up from the poker table. Jannike had appropriated one of the barmen’s jackets. She bent over in mock imitation of a waiter, cocking her head so that the crimson tail dangled over her ear. “Raise you five hundred,” said Kristin. Minota stripped off her bracelet and threw it down. In the corner, one of Adelaide’s musician friends had opened the piano and was playing pre-Neon baroque, oblivious to the DJ or anyone else in the room. Olga was lounging across the top, blowing smoke rings.
There was something awful, she thought, about the idea of prolonged wondering, of surveillance. She would almost rather have been caught in the act.
“You know if our father finds out he’ll be fired,” said Linus.
“I know.”
“You’re selfish.”
“I always have been.”
“There’s too much on the line.”
“For me, too.” She hardly knew what they were saying.
“For everyone. This is an unstable time politically.” Linus lowered his voice. “Adelaide, you must know that the City is on the verge of a resource crisis. Bufferglass and solar skin reserves are all but gone, now we’re having problems at the mining station. This is not a time when the family needs distractions. Now please-if you aren’t prepared to reconsider, let’s just go back to how things were. We’ll stick to our business and you stick to yours.”
Not trusting herself to speak, she stared directly ahead. Linus sighed.
“I have to go. I’ve got a meeting at nine o’clock in the morning and I need to be awake for it.”
“Of course. Thank you for coming.”
Many hours later, when the party was over and she was sitting alone in its debris, Adelaide would have to admire the finesse of Linus’s attack. He might have played his trump card too early. He had played it well nonetheless. But watching him leave, all she felt was sick, as if every last gasp of oxygen had been squeezed from her body.