Osiris (31 page)

Adelaide turned to the Councillor of Netting on her other side. “When you said it is going to be a bad year for weqa, Councillor, did you mean, just the weqa? Or did you mean, the kelp harvest as a whole?”

Her voice, which carried clearly in the vault of the banquet room, was louder than she had intended. She saw Feodor glance in her direction. The Councillor of Netting looked uneasy, but rallied.

“There are always good years and not-so-good years, Miss Rechnov. That is a perfectly normal and healthy state of fluctuation. It may be one of our not-so-good years, but the next shall improve.”

“And with that and the new ban on certain fish stocks, do you anticipate food shortages this winter?”

“Not in my household,” murmured the Councillor of Estates.

“Supplies will be adequate,” said the Councillor of Netting firmly.

“Forgive me,” said Adelaide. “I’m something of an amateur in these matters, but wasn’t the last major crop shortage three years ago?”

“I believe it was, and, as you see Miss Rechnov, we survived to live another day.” He gave a little laugh.

“Yes,” she said. “It didn’t stop the riots, though.”

Now she saw the spots of colour in Feodor’s cheeks. The look he gave her this time was pure warning, but the Councillor of Netting had misunderstood her tone.

“I assure you, my dear, you have no need to fear for your safety. The Minister of Security has everything in hand, is that not the case, Ailia? Any hint of violence from the west shall be swiftly crushed.”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it? If the supplies were adequate, westerners wouldn’t feel the need to riot, would they?”

“I don’t think you quite understand, my dear,” said the Minister of Security kindly.

“I understand that three years ago, food supplies were stockpiled unnecessarily in the City and withheld from the west. Is that what’s going to happen this time?”

“You’ll have to forgive my daughter’s passion,” Feodor interrupted. “The west is her latest whimsy.”

“It’s not a joke—”

“Of course, of course, very admirable—and you have been championing that young man with the schemes, have you not? It’s an excellent cause.”

“He won’t fail.”

“Yes. Yes, well, we all hope for that.”

The words filled Adelaide with unexpected rage.
I was at that address too!
she wanted to shout.
You weren’t all so complacent then.

“Perhaps you should take the west more seriously,” she said.

“I doubt anyone takes the west more seriously than the people in this room,” said Feodor. “After all, we all witnessed the scenes at the execution.”

Viviana, perhaps anticipating a showdown between father and daughter, clinked a spoon vigorously against her crystal glass.

“Goodness, aren’t we all bored of talking shop? I thought you ladies and gentlemen had enough of this political claptrap in the Chambers!”

Laughter and a few claps echoed her regaling, and Feodor’s brow relaxed as the servers stepped forward to clear away. He needs her, Adelaide thought. He needs my mother back on form and she appears to have gained it. Viviana was talking now to the Minister for Finance—a big coup at a dinner party—motioning to a server to refill their glasses, nodding with intense interest whilst half an eye skimmed the rest of the table.

The mourning period is done, she thought. Was that what she had come to find out?

Feodor stood, raising a glass of rich, golden weqa.

“Ladies and gentlemen, before we enjoy our next course, a few words, if I may. Tonight is a special night for myself and Viviana. We are delighted to have our daughter Adelaide back with us.” Viviana inclined her head, the picture of modest support. Feodor’s eyes rested upon Adelaide. She could read the duality, even if the rest of them could not: tension in the jaw, tolerance masking reprimand. Now mention Axel, she pleaded silently. Say just one thing.

“I had long hoped to lure her into the mysteries of politics and cannot overstate my joy that someone else has achieved this seemingly impossible conversion. Of course—” Feodor’s gaze roamed the room, a wink of humour now present. “I had hoped we would have similar objectives. We teach our children the art of independent thought and what does it beget us?” Laughter from the guests. Adelaide’s hands clenched under the table. “What can I say. We must give them their heads. Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed colleagues—a toast. To those that follow, and the great City that we bequeath them. May they too guard Osiris with a watchful eye and a strong heart.”

“To those that follow,” the table echoed.

“And to those who cannot,” murmured a voice. It came from Hildur Pek, whose eyes, no doubt in memory of her own loss, were wet. Hildur’s words accomplished what Feodor’s had not. Adelaide’s vision was no longer clear. As the servers re-entered the banquet hall, she stood up, muttered an excuse to the Councillor of Estates, and left the room.

Behind the closed door the noise of the diners faded. She held her wrist against her eyes and blinked quickly, catching the moisture before it could smudge her make-up. Closing her eyes, she drew long breaths.

“Are you alright?”

It was Tyr. She averted her face. She could not look at him.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Feodor sent me.”

“That’s ironic.” Not quite as ironic as Feodor’s speech, embracing one delinquent child as he erased another. In sudden anger she said, “How can you stand it?”

He cupped her face, turned it gently towards him. “I have to work, Adie. I’m not like you. I don’t come from a great family.”

“You’re part of one now. One way or another. Aren’t you glad?”

“In some ways,” he said soberly.

She knew she should draw away but found herself pushing into his hand. When she spoke her lips moved against his palm.

“Cover for me? Ten minutes and I’ll be gone.”

“Is that wise? Your being here tonight is an olive branch to Feodor. It will be worse than reversed if you leave now.” His grey eyes were concerned.

“Tyr,” she pleaded.

“Alright,” he said softly.

She kissed his palm and felt him tense. They stood there in the empty lamplit hallway, equally aware of the currents conflicting one another. Their situation was what it was; she had never thought of it as unjust, because she could not imagine permanence with anyone, not even with Tyr. The heat of her own breath came back to her lips, trapped by his palm. Why was tonight different? She felt close to giving up. She was ready to ask.
Let me come over later, let me stay. I don’t care if they find out.

Tyr dropped his hand.

“Better go,” he said.

The words she might have said edged away. She took off her shoes and ran. She did not look back. Vikram had fastened the shoes earlier, when her hands were shaking. He had sat her on the bed and said
give
in a voice that brooked no argument. Watching his hands do up the buckles, one part of her mind had warned that this was not part of the bargain; it was not sex and it was not information. It was something else.

She ran to the end of the hallway. Heaved the doors open. The floor was slippery in her stockings. She passed the drapes, the alcoves, the Alaskan paintings. Old friends, old enemies. Here was a favourite hiding place, there a tunnel exit where the twins had been caught, Adelaide’s sandal sticking out under the curtain. Goran found them. He always did. He grabbed her foot and hauled her shrieking into the corridor whilst Axel hung onto her arms, Adelaide screaming, Axel yelling,
no, don’t, don’t hurt her!

Goran would be loitering nearby. She picked up speed down the galleries. She couldn’t let him catch her. An archway neared on her right. A silk curtain sighed in its frame. Flouting all reason, her feet slowed. Behind that curtain was a passage to the twins’ old bedrooms. The twins thought they had discovered all the secrets of the Domain, but what if they hadn’t? What if the family had Axel right here, under her nose? What if he was straitjacketed, sedated, unable to call out?

Close to the ground, the silk wavered. Adelaide’s heart beat faster. The swelling folds gave way to the triangular head of a large orange cat. Its nose wrinkled as it sniffed the air. She sighed.

“Oh, you.”

Out of habit, she scooped the animal up, hugging it awkwardly with one arm, her shoes gripped in the other hand. The cat was warm and heavy; it had grown fat. The feel of its soft fur alleviated her panic. Now she felt silly to have been running, silly for her ideas. What could the family do to her, anyway? She wasn’t mad.

They reached the second floor unscathed. There was a strip of light under the door of her grandfather’s study. Quietly, Adelaide turned the handle. Leonid was in his favourite armchair. He wore a tartan dressing gown over his flannel trousers and his bare feet were propped up on a stool. A book lay open on his lap. His spectacles had slipped down the bridge of his nose.

She lowered the cat to the floor and gave it an encouraging nudge. It stalked inside. She pulled the door gently back. Soon, someone would come to look for her. Goran was patrolling. She could not stay.

“Who is it?”

She paused, the door ajar. “Feodor said you weren’t well.”

Her grandfather’s eyelids lifted. “Adie?” A smile pulled his lips back from his teeth. “My back’s been playing up a little, that’s all. I have some injections for when it gets difficult.”

“You mean morphine,” she said accusingly. His face had lost weight; the papery skin stretched taut over the egg of his head. “It must be bad.”

“I don’t need them often.” He patted the arm of the chair. “Why don’t you come and sit a minute.”

She curled her fingers around the door frame, reluctant to enter when she had been about to make her escape. Then she came in, shutting the door behind her. The room had not altered. It still smelt of tobacco and pine cones; it was still crowded with blueprints and piano scores.

Adelaide glanced to the piano in the corner, which her grandfather had played often when she was a child and less often as she grew older and his hands grew arthritic. The cat had slumped upon the stool. Its stomach began to rise and fall in contented waves of purrs.

“I’m amazed he’s still alive,” she said.

“I think he will outlive me,” her grandfather replied.

She went to sit at the foot of the armchair.

“You should renounce the rest of the family, Grandfather.” She tilted her head back, smiling. “Hiding out here, complaining of back pain… I think you’re trying to escape.”

He chuckled.

“It is the duty of the young to rebel. I am too old for all that, Adie. I need my pipe, and a good bottle of octopya.” He gestured to the table. “Perhaps you will do the honours.”

She prepared two measures of liqueur. Her grandfather inhaled deeply before taking a sip. Adelaide nestled her glass between her knees. She had always loved this room. It felt both old and ageless. A thing treated with attentive care. A thing from a time before Osiris. Now the room seemed smaller too, or herself too large for it.

“This house is my bequest to you all,” said her grandfather softly. “But you, Adie. I know what the Domain means to you. You feel as though you have surrendered your agency. You prefer to live in a cage of your own making rather than one designed by somebody else. Tell me, what brings you here tonight?”

The heater was warm on her face and neck. “I don’t know, Grandfather. It’s a peace gesture, isn’t it. And partly for information—Vikram thought it would be useful. And… Axel. I suppose I thought it might help, to come back.”

“Did you?”

She fell silent.

“You don’t believe Axel is dead,” he said.

Careful, she thought. She realized then how far she had come. This was her grandfather who she loved and trusted.

“I don’t feel that he is,” she said. “In my heart.”

“Sanjay Hanif will find out. He is a good man.”

“So everyone says.”

The marmalade cat woke, arched its back so that all of the hairs separated along its spine, and hopped off the stool. It regarded Adelaide with blank eyes. She stroked its head automatically.

“I find it hard to believe that the boy would go away without any communication to you, Adie. Even through his delirium, he was aware that there was someone he should remember.”

“You saw him after Radir’s last session, didn’t you?”

“Yes. That was the last visit I made and he was very secretive. There was one room in the apartment which was locked. Axel did not respond when I asked him what was inside. Now, I think perhaps he was planning something.”

Oh, he was. He was.

“I should have gone,” she said. “I just—I couldn’t.”

“You took care of him in other ways.” He paused. “The bond between you twins was so strong, a break was bound to be dramatic. If he had regained his mind, I suspect the reunification would have been as abrupt.”

She imagined the scene: Axel’s return, healthy, jubilant. But almost at once another image replaced it: Axel in a balloon, at the heart of a storm, flung this way and that. Her grandfather packed another layer of tobacco into his pipe and lit it.

“Bring me the photograph, Adelaide.”

She knew at once which photograph he meant and went to get it from a drawer in the cabinet. The image was faded with age but the construct was still clear: a man, a woman and a small child standing in front of a huge stone building. The building was hewn out of a mountain, and the mountain rose upward in striates of grey and green.

Leonid held the photograph in both hands.

“Do you know where this was taken?”

“Yes, grandfather. That’s the Osiris Facility, in Patagonia.”

“I was born in that town. For a few years, the whole of our family lived there whilst the City was under construction. Imagine it Adie, to see the pyramids rising from the sea for the first time—what a sight that must have been!”

Adelaide leaned on the arm of Leonid’s chair, resting her chin upon her hands.

“I wish I could have seen it.”

“As do I. As do I… but much of the footage was lost. A great tragedy. I often wonder how they first found the site, those entrepreneurs of the Board. There were old sea maps, of course, but even then, navigation was almost impossible. The sea was ravenous. The winds were wild. Instruments ran haywire, driven mad by all the broken currents in the atmosphere—oh, it must have been an adventure, Adie. But they found it—the fabled Atum Shelf.”