Havoc (11 page)

I looked in on Sandor and Lanya. Sandor's face was tense even in sleep. Lanya was
curled up asleep on the couch nearby. Without her scarf, now lying bloodsoaked in
the bathroom basin, her braids fell over her cheek and she looked far too young to
be wielding knives and pointing guns at security agents. But here she was, and I
was glad and guilty in equal measure—which is to say, very glad and very guilty.

I turned back to the main room and went over to the windows. I looked across the
river to Southside. Rain still hammered the river and the city in great sweeping
torrents, and the clouds were low over Southside making it look gloomy and dangerous:
the shadow city—that's how we'd thought of it at school, and that's what it looked
like now. I thought, what if you were Breken, and Frieda offered you the chance to
get out of there—provided you agreed to work for her. Why would you choose that?
Why would my mother choose that? Maybe because it would be a better life for her
kid. But if she'd worked for Frieda she wouldn't have been with my father.

Why should I believe Dash anyway? We'd been good friends at Tornmoor, and for a time,
more than friends, really close. We knew each other well, but we were a long way
apart now, on different sides, and not just of the river.

I had no answers to any of this, and no time to find them. The clock was ticking
as Frieda laid her plans for Moldam, and I had to find my father.

Away west, the light of the setting sun slipped under the clouds and shone red down
the river. I listened to the house, silent above and below. No one home but us intruders.
Which, to be honest, is what I'd always been. Lou had tried to make it otherwise—like
I said, he was generous to a fault—but it wasn't his call. If he got caught breaking
curfew or skipping class he might lose a month's allowance. If I got caught I'd be
on the street with the clothes I stood up in and nothing else. That always made me
look two, three times at Lou's latest harebrained scheme before I jumped in; it made
me study everything for the catch that would send things spinning out of control.
Lou was the out-and-out loon; I was the one standing on the sidelines saying, ‘but
hold on a second'. On average then, I guess that made us a fairly sensible pair.
But now? Now being too cautious would lose us the game.

I peered into Sol's room—what used to be Sol's room. It was all packed up: bare walls,
stripped-down bed, toys crammed into boxes. Next door, Fyffe's room hadn't been packed
yet, but it was almost as sparse as if it had been. There was a bed with a white
coverlet, a white wooden desk and chair and a sky-blue rug on the floor, her single
concession to colour. It wasn't how I remembered it. The frills and clutter were
gone: no plumped up duvet and
cushions, no basket overflowing with the soft toys
she'd had when she was a kid, no dresser crowded with girl stuff. Fy had grown up
and grown serious in a hurry.

Lou's room was tidy and packed, which felt completely wrong. I'd never seen it tidy.
I wanted to go in there and toss clothes out of their carefully stacked boxes, mess
up the sheets folded on top of the bed and open every drawer and door.

Every door.

I had a thought, went in and heaved aside the desk. Behind it in the wall was a small
metal door. It looked like an ordinary cupboard door with a simple elock: type in
the code and you'd expect it to pop open. But it wasn't a simple elock. I knew, because
I made it.

Lou had wanted a place that, short of a stick of dynamite or a hacksaw, no one could
get into. ‘For what?' I asked. ‘Stuff,' he said. I'd made him an elock with a disguised
thumbprint scan that responded to his prints. He tried it out and gave a whoop when
he discovered how it worked. ‘You're a born spook,' he said. ‘I always said so.'

I made it to respond to my thumb as well, just to see if I could, but I'd never used
it. I used it now, and the little door sprang open. Lou's stuff fell out. Nothing
earth-shattering: a folded wad of cash, a spare phone, some pages of song lyrics
he was working on with lots of crossings out and doodles in the margins, his favourite
guitar pick, a photograph of him and Bella at a clandestine zombie
party. They stared
out at me, heads together, grinning like maniacs with stupid fake blood dripping
from their lips and eyes and pretend head wounds.

‘Hey you.' Lanya crouched at my elbow.

‘Hey.'

She touched my cheek. ‘You're crying.'

I wiped my face on my sleeve. ‘Thinking.'

‘Is that what you call it. All right. Thinking. Was this your friend's room?'

‘Lou. Yeah.'

‘What've you found?'

‘Just some of his stuff. And this.' I handed her a black leather cardholder.

She flicked it open and smiled slowly. ‘An ID? Your ID! I thought you lost it when
your school was bombed.'

‘I did. This one's fake.'

She peered at it. ‘Oh, yes. Look, you're twenty-one years old.' She sat back on her
heels and ran her thumb over the photo. ‘You and Lou and the nightlife?'

‘Me and Lou and, yeah, the nightlife, such as it was. His should be in here too.'
I fished about in the safe and found it.

‘Any chance Sandor looks like Lou?' she said, holding it up. ‘Nope. Wrong colour.'

‘How is he?'

‘Asleep. It's proper sleep too, not that creepy drifting in and out and eyes rolling
back in his head. I woke him
just now and he grouched and drank some water and dozed
off again.'

‘Good.' I looked at her face, quiet and grave in the fading light. ‘How are you?'

She smiled and frowned at the same time. ‘Hard to know. Here I am in the city at
last, and I nearly got shot today, and Sandor did get shot, and I knifed a security
agent, and I've broken into this—' she looked around, ‘—this palace on the riverfront
with someone who—'

She stopped and looked at me. ‘There's a you in this city that I haven't met before.
You're more at home here than you know.'

‘I am not.'

‘No?' Her eyebrows shot up and she smiled a ghost of a smile. ‘It's like someone
threw a switch. Over the river you fade into the background and try not to be noticed.
Here, you know where you're going, and you decide fast what to do and then you're
off in a hurry and doing it.' She looked down at my ID card then handed it to me.
‘It's not a bad thing, this other you. You saved our lives today.'

I pocketed the ID and the cash, and piled everything else back into the safe. Then
I closed the door on Lou's treasures and said a silent thank you. Lanya watched me
and said, ‘Tell me about him.'

By the time I'd finished that story, with Lou and Bella lying dead in the Breken
bombing of our school, it was dark and we were standing in front of the big windows
in
the games room. Lanya stirred.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

I nodded. ‘Me too.'

After a while she looked around. ‘What else is here?'

Glad to be on more solid ground, I said, ‘Above us, formal dining and entertaining
and guest suite; above that, the parents' suite and roof garden.'

‘Roof garden! Can I see?'

Outside the storm had cleared. The air was rain-washed clean and cool on our faces.
There was a half moon and a few stars, and we could see Sentinel Bridge, the black
path of the river, the classic old buildings gracing the riverbank, and the tall
blank faces of skyscrapers rising behind us. It all looked as mint and moneyed as
it ever had, but I wondered about that. What if those buildings were like the market,
full of people squabbling over the used-up, dried-out remains of nothing much?

The daisies and lilies in the roof garden had gone crazy in their big ceramic pots
and some climbing thing had taken over the walls and covered them in tiny star-like
flowers that glowed eerie white in the moonlight. Lanya wandered about, brushing
her palms over the rained-on greenery. The air was filled with the sharp smell of
herbs and the sweetness of lilies, but the lilies reminded me of funerals, so I leaned
on the railings and looked away, breathing the breeze off the river.

My father was out there somewhere, but doing what?
I decided I wasn't going to follow
my paranoia down the rabbit hole. If he was a spy, I figured that he'd have shown
up at the square, he'd have been a better actor, he'd have been more like a father
and less like a stranger. So, supposing he wasn't a spy—what was he doing? Planning
the next stage of the uprising? Congratulating himself on not getting suckered into
a trap today? I felt like I was hammering on the locked door of a fortress and somewhere
up on the battlements he and his One City pals were scanning the horizon, busy with
their battle plans and not even hearing the noise down below.

Lanya came back to me, eyes shining. ‘Wow. So beautiful.'

I took her hand and kissed her palm and we stood looking out at the shadows on Southside.

‘Why didn't he meet us?' asked Lanya.

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘He must have realised it was a trap.'

‘He'd still have come if he'd known you'd be there.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Maybe!' She gave me a sharp look. ‘Of course he would have.'

When I didn't say anything she pulled on my arm to turn me towards her. ‘You don't
think he would! You think he'd put his own safety ahead of you.'

‘I don't know, that's all. He's been in the Marsh once. Once is probably enough.'

She shook her head. ‘You're wrong. If he'd known, he'd have been there.'

‘Either way, it doesn't solve our immediate problem,' I said. ‘Let's give Sandor
a few hours, and then we'll have to move.'

We went downstairs and stood at the end of Sandor's bed like a couple of parents
fretting over their sick kid. He was breathing, and not bleeding.

‘Should we stay up and watch him?' said Lanya.

‘Bet we couldn't if we tried.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘I'm dropping just standing here. Where do you want to sleep?'

With you, I thought but didn't say. ‘Chair, couch, I don't mind. You take the couch,
I'll sit.'

‘All right. Thanks.' She wrapped herself in one of Fyffe's blankets, curled up on
the couch and slept.

After a while I did too.

CHAPTER 15

The bedroom light came on.

It took me a moment to realise why. Then my feet hit the floor and my heartbeat shot
to maximum. Voices were calling out downstairs and the front door slammed.

Sandor moaned. I put a hand over his mouth and tried to wipe sleep from my fogged-up
brain. Lanya was pulling on her boots, shooting me fierce glances and mouthing, ‘What
now?'

I put a finger to my lips and mouthed back, ‘Wait.'

We looked at each other. Waited. Heard the whine of the lift door opening, closing.
Heard the lift whirr, climbing slowly, so slowly, up to our floor, past our floor.
The voices re-emerged upstairs.

‘Can we get out?' whispered Lanya.

I shook my head. No chance, not with Sandor.

‘Who is it?' she asked. ‘Can you tell?'

I cracked open the bedroom door the tiniest sliver and peered through.

‘I will!' called a female voice. Then there were footsteps on the stairs coming
down to our level. Booted steps. A man, thirty-something, in understated battle gear
paused on the bottom stair and looked around the room the way bodyguards look, as
if there's a secret assassin lurking behind every door. He'd definitely shoot first
and ask questions later.

Then Fyffe came down the stairs and stood beside him.

Tears jumped into my eyes. I hadn't seen her for half a year and I stared at her
now, trying to work out how changed she was. You can't lose two brothers to a war
and not be changed. Outwardly she did look different: her hair was cut to a close
cap; she wore a long white shirt, narrow black jeans, no jewellery, no make-up. Spare,
like her room.

She tossed a pair of black boots beside a couch and said, ‘Please don't worry, Alan.
It'll be fine, really. You can go on down and settle in if you like.'

The guy looked unhappy, but he nodded, took a last glance around the room as he marched
across it, and disappeared down the stairs. Fyffe went to the sound system: acoustic
guitar chords and a woman's slow, low voice filled the room. Fyffe stood there lost
in the song. She always was a sucker for a sad song. And then, I don't
know, I guess
she felt it, the way you sometimes do, that she wasn't alone. She turned around and
looked towards the room we were in. She didn't run away. Didn't call out. She stood
and looked, daring whoever was in her space to front up and face her.

I opened the door.

She clapped a hand to her mouth and we stood staring at each other while whole seconds
ticked by. I should have been trying to read her—whether she was about to yell for
the guy downstairs, whether we were enemies now—but the sight of her standing there
put my thinking brain on hold and flooded it with the memory of her striding over
the bridge on that cold afternoon when we went after Sol's kidnappers. Call it heart
or courage or just plain stubbornness—whatever that quality of hers was, it was
still there now, as strong as ever.

I realised she was crying and I let out the breath I'd been holding. She opened her
arms, charged across the room and gave me a huge hug. Then she pulled back and put
a hand on my T-shirt.

‘That's blood!' she whispered.

‘Not mine,' I said.

She looked relieved, and darted a look over her shoulder. ‘You can't be here, It's
too dangerous.'