Queen of dust, p.6
Queen of Dust, page 6
She turned around to survey the room—the third she’d seen that afternoon. Private D’Aldiern had vetoed the first—he disapproved of the balcony, calling it “an obvious risk.” Mara had protested, liking the idea of standing out in the open, looking over her home, but on security matters she had no say. She, in turn, vetoed the next room just to watch his jaw set with annoyance.
“There’s no view,” she had sighed, waving a hand at the west-facing window. In truth, Mara felt a thrill looking down at the buildings. From this distance she couldn’t see the disrepair of the crumbling sand plaster, and the overgrown vertical gardens, spilling down the open back porches, looked lush instead of neglected. The continent was edged with cliffs, except for the western side of the city, where the ground sloped and curved around a cove. And there, jutting out into the water, were the docks. Jimma had told her about the fish, as large as a man, that they brought in some mornings. Light had danced on the waves and even though it appeared flat from her vantage point she imagined the feel of the current pulling her in and pushing her back.
“You’ve been staring at nothing but space for months, certainly this is good enough.”
“Private, you’ll find that I prefer better to good. And I think we can do better.”
“Of course, Ms. Leanor,” he had said, his voice carefully even, and went to find the concierge.
The suite she’d ended up in, from where she now regarded the bright crescent moons, faced south, offering a view of the Pearl on the hill and the grounds surrounding it. A view arguably better than the others. So she’d made a point to complain about the old-fashioned doorknobs for Calvy’s benefit.
“You’d prefer to be locked in? If the power surges or fails?”
“Ocean turbines make constant—”
“Ocean turbines require maintenance. They’ve shut down. The army has set up a fire plant to power the city.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“There’s plenty of oil.”
“It’s unnecessary.” The Dern, for all their professed interest in progress, in efficiency, were cheap. Careless.
“Ms. Leanor disapproves—would you like me to alert the authorities?”
She had shut her old-fashioned door in his face.
The room itself was spacious—in that it reminded her a little bit of space. The air conditioning was on full blast, and the building displayed typical Dern style—all glass and steel. It was sterile, the ceilings too high, making her feel small. She wished they could stay somewhere more authentic instead of the hotel, which was newly constructed to accommodate the influx of corporate interest in Balti, but Liam had made the arrangements.
And this wasn’t space. She wasn’t stuck in this room. She lifted the cloak she’d slung over the couch that faced the wide windows and made for the door. A hand caught her elbow as she stepped into the hall and she jumped.
“Where are you going?” Calvy D’Aldiern asked.
“Why are you standing outside my room?” She wrenched her elbow away from him but he had already let go. He had changed into a navy blouson jacket. The ribbed bottom fitted to his waist just above a pair of dark slacks, but it bulged on the right around his firearm. His hair was slicked back as usual, not a strand out of place. He still looked like a soldier, even out of uniform.
“You seemed like the type of charge who’d try to leave without telling anyone.”
“Did I misunderstand your purpose—are you a bodyguard or a prison guard?” Mara walked to the elevator, jabbing at the button long after it had lit.
“I’m here to keep you safe. Which is why you won’t be leaving the hotel without one of us.”
“Us?”
“Your security team—you must have noticed the people carrying all those bags from room to room this afternoon.”
“They don’t work for the hotel?” She feigned ignorance.
“They work for the Pent Corporation. But you knew that. Our room is down the hall. They’re getting settled. I took the first shift.”
He followed her onto the elevator and she narrowed her eyes.
“If you don’t want me, I could go get—”
“No,” she interrupted, nodding for him to press the button for street level, bypassing the lobby on the second floor. “Dannos has friends everywhere, I doubt he’s still in the hotel, and we should let Harper sleep. She’d never admit it, but she’s had terrible ship fatigue since before Satsume. She needs the rest.”
It was a hard choice, but as unpalatable as she found Calvy, he was preferable to Harper’s brand of rigorous scrutiny.
He looked like he was trying to figure her out. Her motives at least. “I saw. Real gravity, unprocessed air. Should help.”
“Well, at least she’ll have the gravity.”
The elevator doors opened and the sulfuric smell of metal production filled Mara’s nose. Jimma had described Balti as a natural place—fresh and green and bright, filled with life. Mara had returned to a hazy, smog-filled wasteland. What had become of this place?
She felt the same panic she’d had in the shuttle on the way to the surface, engulfed in the haze of cloud cover. Panic, that even though she’d made it back, there was nothing left of her here. Nothing left to find.
She thought she’d feel something as soon as they landed at the station—the one place she knew she’d been before. Where Rozz had found her, saved her. But it had felt like any other shuttle port on any other planet. From above, when they’d finally broken through the fog, she’d seen a canal cut across the continent, separating the station from the city. What else had been carved away?
The elevator doors started to close and Calvy stuck out his arm to hold them open.
Mara pulled up her hood against the cool night air and stepped onto the street. She looked right and left, her tongue moving against the roof of her mouth.
She could do this. She started south.
Calvy asked over her shoulder, “Where are we headed?”
“The Pearl. I want to see the Pearl.”
“Not tonight, Ms. Leanor—you have to arrange for a tour. Clearance comes from Dern.”
She stopped and faced him. “Does it?”
“Dern runs the planet, in the absence of native governance.”
“Because you killed our native governance.”
He didn’t respond. The last time they’d discussed this she’d told him to shut his mouth. He’d been gloating about his perfect place in the world when she was so unsure of hers and she had snapped. To someone else she might have considered offering amends, but she owed the Dern nothing.
Mara headed west instead, towards the water she’d seen that afternoon. She held it in her mind, the sparkling surface that almost blinded her.
The street began to slant down and she knew they were getting close. Yet she didn’t see it. The buildings faced out on the side of a hill, the levels stepped, connected by the sloped road that snaked back and forth towards the shore. Everything was dark. Too dark to see the colors of the houses. Too dark to even see the water. More black emptiness. Mara closed her eyes. The Black. It haunted her. But as she took a few deep breaths she focused on the sound of the waves, the brine of the air. This was not the Black. This was home.
She had time. Tomorrow, when the sun rose, she’d see it all then. She’d fill her eyes with it. Her mouth and her ears. She’d touch and taste and steep herself in everything Balti had to offer.
Calvy was waiting patiently behind her when she turned. He had a familiar look on his face, one she was getting used to seeing—he held the question between his brows, just for her: Are you okay?
She refused to think about the first time she’d seen that look on his face. The heat he’d lapped over her aching cunt—the climax he’d persuaded from her.
Now, again, she’d had a tense day. What she’d like, what she needed was a dose of something pure and rapturous. Her eyes followed the curve of his lips, another crescent moon the Balti in her was drawn to worship.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked when she didn’t move.
Six weeks. Liam would only be gone six weeks. All she had to do was remember what else that mouth was good at: insulting her.
“I’m hungry,” Mara said. Though it wasn’t exactly what she meant.
He nodded right and she set off, threading up a set of stairs between a quiet pub and a shop that had seen better days. Most of the storefronts had. There was no one left to run the businesses—no one left to patronize them. It was like seeing a sketch of the city, shallow and toneless.
They walked a few blocks in silence before coming to the main boulevard. There they took up the middle of the empty street because they could. Jimma insisted that Mara always walk with her head up, her chin high, but Mara couldn’t help looking down. The street was an intricate mosaic, bright orange lines separating eight lanes of mixed blues, wide enough for a person or—
“Hoverbikes,” Calvy said. “Balti transportation was singular.”
Singular, he said. But she knew what he meant: self-serving. The Dern hated the Balti autonomy. In all of its forms.
“Where are they now?”
“Military had them all locked up.”
On the next corner Mara stopped. The street was torn up, the displaced mosaic mixed with gravel in a pile next to a sleeping digger. Lying beside a raw hole in the ground was a Dern street sign, declaring the road High Street.
“It’s the Queen’s Road,” Mara said. It didn’t need a sign. None of the streets had needed them before—Balti had been insulated, everyone knew where to go. Everyone had had a place.
“There’ll be a lot of this. Dern changes to the infrastructure.”
“I saw the canal,” Mara replied.
“Standard procedure. Section off the assets, set a perimeter. That one will bite them though.”
“How’s that?” She hated how much more he knew about it than her, but not enough to quell her curiosity.
“In a storm surge. The continent is high, cliffs all around.”
“Not the cove on the west side.”
“No, but the buildings are made to withstand a storm. Set into the hill. Sloped roads. Stone breakers. The doors and windows seal—built-in bulkheads. They just have to wait for the water to recede. The canal gives the water a way into the middle of the continent. It’ll flood. If a storm is big enough.”
She didn’t know enough about it to argue more. Just that the storm season was months away.
So she did what she always did, and kept moving.
The boulevard curved in a circle around the city center, the Ring, they called it—and the Dern would have no luck changing that. And here: here were people. Excitement quickened Mara’s steps. She found an opening that led into the circular block between the buildings, following the smell of hot oil to a stand off the center of the Ring’s open square. Mara had been too nervous to eat lunch and it had been hours since the paste of ground meal the ship’s cook had served for breakfast. Her mouth watered as she drew closer.
“Fine evening,” Calvy said to the vendor, a man with white hair and a weathered face. He grunted a reply. He was probably used to these Dern invaders. Mara felt the sudden urge to distance herself from Calvy’s ignorance.
“The moons rise well,” she said, repeating the phrase Jimma had used, even on Støsh, where there were no moons. No natural tug outward, upward.
The vendor lifted his head and stared at her. His gaze caught like a hook in the tangle of her red-gold mane. He smiled at her and nodded. “Very well,” he agreed.
“This one.” She pointed to one of the rice cakes on the cart’s small counter. “Is it pinasche?”
The man nodded again. “My grandfather’s recipe.”
Mara held her finger up for one and the man slipped an uncooked cake into the oil, frying it fresh for her. Calvy opted for a sweet variety, covered in powdered sugar, which the man chose from the display pile while Mara’s cake sizzled, the rice taking on color.
She couldn’t stop herself from staring as Calvy bit through the crust, revealing a seedy fruit filling. But her own hot, golden cake was worth the wait. It was savory, tasting of green: the deep earthiness of pinasche and the brighter notes of herbs that teased her taste buds, tantalizingly familiar. Mara could feel recognition tickling the tip of her tongue and she closed her eyes to let it wash over her. But it stayed there, just out of reach. She exhaled the threat of frustration. It was only her first night. Something here would stir up her past, she was sure of it. She had tomorrows on Balti, as many as she needed.
“It’s good,” Calvy said. “Really good. What is it?”
Mara was pleased to know something he didn’t. Something from Jimma. “Fica pear. It’s a traditional dessert. I’m finding myself more and more doubtful of your assertion that you studied Balti culture.”
“I studied the planet.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“I know the weight of the moons. Mika, the smallest, is also the heaviest. I know the deepest point in the ocean, the length of the great cephalopod rumored to live down there. Over fifty meters, but that was on its last sighting. I’m sure it’s grown. I know the birds we saw today—they were blue ospreys. Out hunting. Probably jackfish, based on the direction, the time of year, the migration patterns. I know the planet. I didn’t read the menu.”
Mara chewed quietly and swallowed, refusing to be impressed that he’d memorized facts and ignored the customs of the people that made Balti what it was. “It’s pronounced My-ka.”
They stood in the square side by side, watching people pass. A group of men and women covered in factory soot left a busier pub across the square, keeping their heads down as they passed two Dern soldiers on patrol. Mara’s heart throbbed as she recognized them as members of the moonclan. She’d never felt this sort of immediate kinship before. Never seen this many people like her, people who shared her history, her culture, who looked—well, no. Nobody looked like her. They had similar features, but their skin was pale from generations of living under the rock, no atmosphere to protect them from harmful gamma rays. And none of them had her signature red-gold hair. Only honey-colored curls.
In her mind she’d imagined Balti as a paradise—where people like her, people who had gotten away, had returned to start over together. But how many people was that? Barely a fraction of the population had been off planet when the P bomb detonated. A remainder that bordered on negligible.
The pasty had been light and warm as she ate it, but now it grew heavy in her stomach.
Mara took a different route out of the square, Calvy jogging to keep up. She kept walking, narrowly missing a stray supply truck as she walked blindly across the curved street surrounding the Ring. Calvy swore behind her but she didn’t turn. The hotel was in this direction, wasn’t it? But the street she was on was different, littered with garbage and stinking of urine. She passed another pub, the entrance dark and seedy, and ignored the whistles from the men smoking on the stoop.
“Take a right,” Calvy said, when they reached the corner. He was closer now, not letting her have as much space. It helped orient her: they’d gone too far east.
She stepped over more trash. “Maybe the Dern should try keeping the soldiers to their barracks.”
“That wasn’t us. It’s the toughs who run Pent’s plant.”
“Of course, the Dern are governed by Virtue.”
He didn’t speak again until they were in the elevator, rising up like the smoke from the stacks of the factories she’d seen on the city’s rim.
“Is it not how you remember it?” he asked quietly. She didn’t have to look at his face to know the question stitched between his brows.
“I don’t remember it.”
“Nothing?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You were six.”
“Your point?”
“That seems old enough to—”
How dare he try to tell her about that. She replied defensively, her shoulders hitching up. “I hit my head. I fell. I was—I think I was rushing. Rozz says I had my shoes on the wrong feet. That they were too big. I must have tripped. My first memories are space.” Cold, empty, dark—months of feeling trapped, being trapped. On an unfamiliar ship. Missing something. Missing everything. It had to be the shock of what she’d found on Balti that had her explaining to him, “Everything I know about Balti I learned from Jimma. I have more of her memories than my own.”
“Jimma?”
They’d made it to her door. Mara answered as she pushed it inwards.
“My tutor. She was the real last Balti Temptress. Rozz found her. Or she found Rozz. I don’t know how. Jimma found me.” Sometimes Mara wondered if she’d been chosen as a Temptress, if she’d have made the cut if she weren’t the only little Balti girl left. “Jimma found me and she tried to keep me connected to this place. She wanted us to return together—to be here, for the—” Mara cut herself off. In Jimma’s last year she’d had trouble remembering that the story of Queen Balticourt’s return was a myth; she’d talked about it like it was real. Mara had almost said it like it was real too: the Resurrection.
Because here, seeing her home laid bare, overtaken, she knew—she felt—why that rumor mattered so much. How much better this place could be. If only the Dern were gone.
Mara turned to look at him, gripping the edge of the door as he brushed crumbs of sugar from his jacket. She had stood apart from him in the elevator and on the street and now their faces were close—closer than they had been since he’d pulled out of her on the observation deck, and she’d returned to Liam’s side, her inner thighs sticky with his come and her ears ringing with the harsh words they’d exchanged. She thought about running her finger down the length of his nose, hooking it behind his bottom teeth and pulling him into her room. She almost surged forward, ready to let him wash the day away.
