The Fractal Prince

Emina takes a sobbing breath. ‘Of course it was. Silly girl. Go away now. Shoo.’ She wipes her eyes and waves towards the corridor.

‘Emina, please. I need Kafur’s help. I’m looking for the Axolotl. I have sobors, I can pay—’

Emina looks at her sideways. ‘So. The Axolotl. Finally. Tired of the limp-dicked mutalibun lords, eh?’ She crosses her arms. ‘Tell me, is it another game of pretend, or something more?’

Tears well up in Tawaddud’s eyes.

‘It is something more,’ she whispers. She wipes her eyes on her sleeve.

Emina looks at her for a moment. Then she gives her a hug.

‘There, there, Tawa, it’s all right. You look terrible. Don’t make it worse. Aunt Emina will sort it out. I will take you to Kafur, and if that silly man does not help you, he’ll answer to me.’

She pats Tawaddud’s back. ‘The Axolotl has been here, but not for a while. They say he has been running with the masrurs, attacking soul trains, fighting Sobornost.’ She gives Sumanguru a dark look. ‘You should be careful of the company you keep.’

‘Emina, I’m . . . I’m sorry about what happened. I did not want to cause trouble for anybody. This was a good place for me. Please tell Zuweyla and Marjana and Ghanim and everybody that—’

Emina’s eyes sparkle. ‘Don’t you worry about that. You just needed a spanking, that’s all. We all want the story of the jinn prince, and if you found yours, all the better. Now come on - let’s go find Kafur.’ She frowns. ‘He has changed a bit since you last saw him.’

Kafur receives them in a cavernous space, sitting cross-legged on the floor under a railway arch – they must be somewhere below the Station. Kafur wears a familiar long-sleeved, hooded robe, but is more crooked and twisted than Tawaddud remembers. His face is hidden behind a red mask. He is flanked by the two jinn thought- forms in forbidden female shapes, one with naked flesh of glittering, silvery snake scales, the other a slender sculpture of ice.

I have been away a long time, Tawaddud thinks.

‘Come closer,’ Kafur says. His voice has changed, too: it is higher, trilling, mixed with the sound of bells, not a human voice at all. ‘I never thought I would see you again. Such a beautiful self-loop. Come closer.’

There are pillows on the ground in a semicircle before Kafur. Tawaddud kneels on one of them.

‘Master, I come asking for a boon,’ she says.

‘A boon? Tawaddud, who now lives in the world of palaces and high muhtasib lords and the mighty Sobornost, comes back to the world of stories and secrets, and the first thing she asks Kafur is a boon? Do you not have a kiss for me, for old times’ sake?’

Kafur pulls back his hood and removes his mask. ‘Even if wildcode has not been kind to me. No one escapes the Destroyer of Delights.’

His face is a bloated, fungus-like mass, purple and blue, with yawning openings in his cheeks, running with pale fluids. Tiny things move and chitter in his empty eyesockets: chimera insects with iridescent shells that dart in and out of the crevices and creep across the ruin of Kafur’s visage. He touches the black wound where his lips used to be with an embroidered sleeve. Tawaddud’s stomach turns.

‘So, what do you say? You can close your eyes if you wish.’

Sumanguru gets up, raising a fist. ‘Maybe I’ll give you a kiss,’ he growls.

Tawaddud lays a hand on his arm.

‘The Palace is his,’ she says calmly. ‘I will pay his price.’

‘I cannot accept that.’

‘I would have thought you did not care much for what the flesh does with flesh.’

‘This is different,’ Sumanguru says, staring at Kafur.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Tawaddud says, and speaks the Secret Name of Al-Jabbar, the Irresistible.

It is possible to entwine forcibly, especially with a jinn. It is one of the forbidden things, but she is too angry to think about the consequences. She binds the serpent jinn woman’s self-loop into her own with the Name. Then she kisses Kafur as the jinn woman, tongue turning into foglets, fire and poison, sucking air out of his lungs until he is left sputtering and gasping.

When she pulls back and wipes her own lips with the back of her hand, the jinn thought-form lets out an angry scream and evaporates into thin air. The forced entwinement brings a blinding headache, but she grits her teeth.

‘You really need to work on your stamina, Kafur, if you want to trade in kisses instead of stories,’ she says.

Kafur stares at her for a moment and bursts out laughing, a shrill, crickety sound. ‘A kiss to die for, I agree!’ He replaces his mask. ‘Now, what is it that you want from old Kafur, dear Tawaddud?’

Tawaddud swallows. ‘You taught me that entwinement always leaves a trace. I want to contact a jinn, Zaybak, also known as the Axolotl, whose tomb you found me in. I want to find him in my mind. If I served you well, please help me do this thing.’

‘You did serve me well.’ Kafur’s hands move inside his long sleeves, sinuous and quick. ‘But you also brought Repentants to my house. What you ask is no small thing. You want to make what was torn asunder into one. You want me to cast a net into the athar to catch the father of body thieves and bring him to you, like a desert gogol in a jar. What will you give me in return?’

‘My father will—’

‘Ah. Your father. A wealthy man, a powerful man, with many gogols, many palaces, many friends. But here we care not for the common coin of Sirr-in-the-day. You know this: our trade is in Names and stories. Can you offer Kafur either, Tawaddud of House Gomelez, who learned all she knows from him? Can you tell me a Name I do not know? Or can you tell me a story I have not heard before, like the Aun always ask?’

She thinks about the Name the qarin told her, and it rises to her lips. But then, Sumanguru speaks.

‘How about a story from the stars?’ he says.

‘Interesting,’ Kafur says. ‘That would be a rare jewel indeed.’

Sumanguru removes his athar glasses.

‘This is a story I heard from a spaceship, but I swear it’s true,’ he says. ‘Once upon a time, there were two girls called Mieli and Sydan who went to a flying city on Venus so they could live for ever.’

20 THE STORY OF MIELI AND SYDAN

Mieli presses her face against the invisible skin of the flying city and watches her lover dance in the sky.

The Venusian godlings are naked, chalk-skinned shapes against the sulphur acid clouds, Sydan a tiny thing next to them on her borrowed wings. Mieli watches as they swoop and chase her, force her into a spiralling dive and knows that she is laughing, wildly and loudly, having the time of her life.

‘Mieli, girl! Come on!’ she shouts in Mieli’s ear. ‘I bet you can’t catch me!’

It would only take a moment to be there with her, to let the city give her a second skin and enough strength for her wings to survive the Venerian wind, but Mieli lets Sydan have this thing to herself. Besides, she still feels heavy, earthbound, in spite of Amtor City’s utility foglets supporting her frame like a gentle ghost hand. She does not want to fly just yet. Or so she tells herself.

She feels vertigo looking at the rough basalt landscape below, with its strange fractures, furrows and tick- shaped volcanoes, thinking about the three-hundred-mile winds that roar outside, the searing heat under the angry cloud cover that makes the whole planet something akin to a vast pressure cooker. Mieli is no stranger to deadly environments, having spent most of her life in vacuum skinsuits, but the Dark Man of space is not angry at you, just empty. For Venus, it’s personal, and Mieli is not ready to meet her, not yet.

Stop moping, says Perhonen in her mind. Go out. Fly. Play. We came all this way. Let’s enjoy it. There is impatience in the ship’s voice.

‘Quiet,’ says Mieli. ‘I want to watch the dawn.’