The Fractal Prince

‘I am not overly concerned about this body, but I can hardly turn down a gesture of hospitality. Please come in.’

At Tawaddud’s request, Sumanguru sits down and removes his shirt. His body is hairless and smooth, every muscle impossibly perfect. His chest is covered in innumerable tiny wounds, but most of them appear to be healing already, faster than any baseline human. In athar, his Seals are still intact. Looking closer, she can see a network of nodes under his skin, complex machinery that athar does not know how to represent.

‘I did not know you were a doctor,’ Sumanguru says.

‘I am many things.’ She touches his thick neck: there is a deep cut on the left side of his back that should do. ‘There is a needle fragment here I should remove, to avoid wildcode infection. This may sting a little.’

‘Pain is irrelevant. Go ahead.’

She picks up a scalpel from her doctor’s bag. A killer of Dragons. Is that who you really are, Sumanguru of the Turquoise Branch? She presses down on his firm flesh, ready to make the cut. He tenses at her touch.

Why were you afraid of flying?

She puts the scalpel down. No, Duny. I’m not going to play your game. Not like this.

‘If you are going to do it, do it,’ Sumanguru says. ‘If I have to die, I might as well be killed by a pretty girl.’

Tawaddud takes a step back. ‘Lord Sumanguru, I—’

Sumanguru turns around. He is holding up the little box Duny gave her, open. The tiny jewel glitters inside.

‘Nice,’ he says. ‘Zoku technology. Where did you get it?’ He turns it around, a curious look in his eyes.

Zokus are something Tawaddud only has the faintest idea about, a distant civilisation with ancient customs that once upon a time fought some sort of war with Sobornost. What could Duny possibly have to do with them?

She takes a step back, lifts the scalpel slowly, heart racing. Why can’t I do anything right?

Sumanguru gets up.

‘Calm down,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I only tried to frighten you earlier. I get scared, too. I know you know who killed Alile.’

‘Who are you?’ Tawaddud hisses.

Sumanguru smiles. ‘The better question is who you really are, Tawaddud Gomelez. And I think you are not someone who would hurt a guest in your father’s house. Did he send you?’

‘No.’ Tawaddud’s face feels numb. She licks her lips but can’t feel them. The thoughts come at her fast like chimera serpents in the desert, striking. Dunyazad. Rumzan would have reported to her that we found the qarin. She would have known where to get a barakah gun.

The scalpel clatters to the floor. Sumanguru lets out a slow breath. ‘That’s more like it,’ he says.

They look at each other quietly for a while. Sumanguru sits down, leaning his elbows on his knees.

‘It was your sister, wasn’t it?’ he says slowly.

A sick feeling grows in Tawaddud’s stomach.

‘I wasn’t supposed to be your guide, she was. That’s why the Fast Ones did not touch me.’

‘Do you think your father knows?’

Tawaddud shakes her head. ‘He is Cassar Gomelez. After my mother died, all he has cared about is Sirr. He has been working on the Accords for half his life. And he would have never hurt Lady Alile.’

‘It does make sense,’ Sumanguru says. ‘Earth has been . . . a bone of contention between us and the zokus for some time. We pushed them back in the Protocol War and came here. It would definitely be in their interest to restrict our access to the gogols here as much as possible. So they may have used your sister to get rid of Alile.’

‘What about the attack in the aviary?’

‘My guess would be that she was worried about a Sobornost investigator getting too close to her. That’s also why she wanted you to put an insurance policy in place.’

He tosses the box back to Tawaddud. ‘No doubt it will have self-destructed already. Too bad: I could have tried to figure out which zoku it came from.’

Tawaddud squeezes her eyes shut. ‘I can’t go to Father without proof.’

‘Is there anyone else in the Council you trust?’

Abu. But it was Duny who wanted me to meet him. That is the last thing she will ever take away from me.

She shakes her head.

Sumanguru smiles. ‘Well, I suppose that leaves yours truly.’

‘With all due respect, I don’t trust you, Lord Sumanguru.’

‘And you shouldn’t. But that does not mean we can’t help each other. If we find the jinn who killed Alile, maybe we can link the murder to your sister.’

Zaybak tried to warn me. He would understand. Or at least the Zaybak who was Tawaddud would.

A cold certainty grips Tawaddud. She remembers old stories, about deals with devils, about dark figures who offered the innocent whatever they wanted, in exchange for their soul. She always thought they were just clever ways for body thieves to put their victims at ease.

But there are other stories too, ones where the sister no one likes saves the day in the end.

‘He is called the Axolotl,’ she says.

‘The one from the children’s story. I see. So, how do we catch him? I have something that will hold him, I think, but we need to find him first.’ He holds up a small device that looks like a bullet.

Tawaddud touches her temples. Entwinement always leaves a trace.

‘We already have,’ she says. ‘A part of him is in me. We just have to find a way to speak to it. There is a place called the Palace of Stories. Someone there will help us. But we have to go tonight.’

‘How do you plan to sneak away from this place?’

Tawaddud smiles a bitter smile.

‘That is the easy part, Lord Sumanguru. I am very good at running away from my father. But you may not like it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I understand that you are not too fond of heights.’

17 MIELI AND EARTH

Sydan wanted to go to Earth. At the time, Mieli could not understand why.

They had just met, while building a Great Work. Among the people of Hiljainen Koto, it was a coming-of-age thing to do, go out into the black and shape ice with vaki, make new habitats or just Great Works for their own sake, just to show that there was something valuable to be made from the crude stuff that the diamond minds no longer cared about, big icy middle fingers held up to the prissy gods of the Inner System.

It was the Grandmother who sent Sydan to work with her, bright-eyed Sydan from the Kirkkaat Kutojat koto. Extreme programming, she said, ancient tradition (which meant that dirtpeople used to do it): two minds working as one, the other shaping, the other watching, monitoring, correcting. At first, Mieli saw it as an insult. But she discovered that the other girl was much better than her at chasing down errant ancestors that escaped down the icy pathways as phonons or configurations of ghostly electricity that messed up the growth patterns, leaving behind icicles shaped like fertility idols.

At first they shaped ice just to get a feel for it, wove some of the smaller ice clumps into toy castles and monstrous shapes. They even let the ancestors animate one of them, called it a minotaur and when little Varpu