imprisonment. He would not have put it past them… and at least it was exercise.
But as soon as he had absorbed the room’s contents fully, he knew it was not his own. Pascale was sitting on her bed — and when she glanced up, he could tell she was just as astonished as Sylveste.
‘You’ve got an hour,’ the moustachioed guard said, patting his partner on the back.
And then he closed the door, Sylveste having already entered the room without their bidding.
The last time he had seen her, she had been wearing the wedding dress; her hair sculpted in brilliant purple waves, entoptics adorning her like an army of attendant fairies. He might as well have dreamt that. Now she wore overalls, as drab and shapeless as those Sylveste himself was dressed in. Her hair was a lank black bowl, eyes rouged by sleeplessness or bruising, possibly both. She looked thinner and smaller than he remembered — probably because she was hunched over, bare feet hooked under her calves, and the room’s whiteness seemed so large.
He was unable to remember a time when she had looked more fragile or beautiful; when it had been harder to believe that she was his wife. He thought back to the night of the coup, when she had waited in the dig with her patient, probing questions; questions which would later open a wound into the very core of who he was; what he had done and was capable of doing. It seemed very strange indeed that a confluence of events had brought them together, in this loneliest of rooms.
‘They kept telling me you were alive,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think I ever really believed them.’
‘They told me you’d been hurt,’ Pascale said, her voice quiet, as if she dared not shatter a dream by speaking aloud. ‘They wouldn’t say what — and I didn’t want to ask too much — in case they told me the truth.’
‘They blinded me,’ Sylveste said, touching the hard surface of his eyes; the first time he had done so since the surgery. Instead of the little nova of pain to which he had become accustomed there was only a vague fog of discomfort which faded as soon as he removed his fingers.
‘But you can see now?’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact you’re the first thing it’s been worth having sight for.’
And then she rose from the bed, slipping into his arms, hooking a leg round his own. He felt her lightness and delicacy; was almost afraid to return her embrace in case he crushed her. Yet he drew her nearer, and she reciprocated, seemingly just as nervous of damaging him, as if the two of them were spectres uncertain of each other’s reality. They held each other for what seemed like many more hours than the one they had been allocated; not because time dragged, but because for now time was unimportant; it was in abeyance, and it seemed as if it could be held that way by the act of will alone. Sylveste drank in the vision of her face; her eyes found something human even in the blankness of his own. There had been a time when Pascale had lacked the courage to look at him face-on, let alone stare into his eyes — but that time had long passed. And for Sylveste, gazing into Pascale’s eyes had never been difficult, since she need never be aware of his scrutiny. Now, though, he wished she could tell when he was staring; wished her the vicarious pleasure of knowing that he found her intoxicating.
Soon they were kissing, and then they slumped awkwardly to the bed. In a moment they were free of their Mantell clothes, shucking them in drab heaps beside the bed. Sylveste wondered if they were being observed. It seemed possible — likely even. It also seemed possible not to care. For now — for as long as this hour lasted — he and Pascale were absolutely alone; the room’s walls really infinite; the room the only open enclosure in the whole universe. It was not the first time they had made love, though the previous occasions had been rare indeed; in those few instances when the opportunity for privacy had arisen. Now — the thought almost made Sylveste laugh — they were married, and there was even less need for any subterfuge. And yet here they were again, once more snatching what intimacy they could. He felt an edge of guilt, and for a long time he wondered where it came from. Eventually, as they lay together, his head buried softly in her chest, he realised why he felt that way. Because there was so much to speak about, and instead they had squandered their time in the fevered archaeology of their bodies. But it had to be that way, Sylveste knew.
‘I wish there was longer,’ he said, when his sense of time had returned to something like normality, and he began to wonder how much of the hour remained.
‘The last time we spoke,’ Pascale said, ‘you told me something.’
‘About Carine Lefevre, yes. It was something I had to tell you, do you understand? It sounds ridiculous, but I thought I was going to die. I had to tell you; tell anyone. It was something I’d kept inside me for years.’
Pascale’s thigh was a cool pressure against his own. She drew her hand across his chest, mapping it. ‘Whatever happened out there, there’s no way I or anyone else can begin to judge you.’
‘It was cowardice.’
‘No, it wasn’t. Just instinct. You were in the most terrifying place in the universe, Dan, don’t forget that. Philip Lascaille went there without a Juggler transform — look what happened to him. That you stayed sane at all was a kind of bravery. Insanity would have been a lot easier on you.’
‘She could have lived. Hell, even leaving her to die the way I did — even that would have been acceptable if I’d had the courage to tell the truth about it afterwards. That would have been some atonement; God knows she deserved better than to be lied about, even after I’d killed her.’
‘You didn’t kill her; the Shroud did.’
‘I don’t even know that.’
‘What?’
He leant on his side, momentarily pausing to study Pascale. Before, his eyes could have frozen her image for posterity. But that feature no longer functioned.
‘What I mean is,’ Sylveste said, ‘I don’t even know she died out there — I mean, not at first. I survived, after all — and I was the one who lost the Juggler transform. Her chances would have been better, though not by much. But what if she came through it, the way I did? What if she found a way to stay alive, but just couldn’t communicate her presence to me? She might have drifted halfway to the edge of the Shroud before I came round. After I’d repaired the lighthugger, I never thought to look for her. It never crossed my mind she might still be alive.’
‘For a very good reason,’ Pascale said. ‘She wasn’t. You can question what you did now, but back then intuition told you she was dead. And if she didn’t die — she’d have found a way to get in touch with you.’
‘I don’t know that. I never can.’
‘Then stop dwelling on it. Or else you’ll never escape the past.’
‘Listen,’ he said, thinking of something else Falkender had said. ‘Do you ever speak to anyone apart from the guards? Like Sluka, or anyone like that?’
‘Sluka?’
‘The woman who’s holding us here.’ Sylveste realised with a yawning sensation that they had told her next to nothing. ‘There isn’t time for me to explain in anything but the simplest terms. The people who killed your father were True Path Inundationists, as near as I can tell, or at least one offshoot of the movement. We’re in Mantell.’
‘I knew it had to be somewhere outside Cuvier.’
‘Yes, and from what they told me Cuvier has been attacked.’ He held back from telling her the rest, which was that the city had most probably been rendered uninhabitable above ground. She did not have to know that — not just yet, when it was the only place she had ever known properly. ‘I’m not really sure who’s running it now — whether people loyal to your father, or a rival group of True Pathers. The way Sluka tells it, your father didn’t exactly welcome her with open arms once he’d gained control of Cuvier. Seems there was enough enmity there for her to arrange his assassination. ’
‘That’s a long time to hold a grudge.’
‘Which is why Sluka is possibly not the most stable person on this planet. Actually, I don’t think capturing us figured in her plans — but now she’s got us, she isn’t quite sure what to do. Clearly we’re too potentially valuable to discard… but in the meantime—’ Sylveste paused. ‘Anyway, something may be about to change. The man who fixed my eyes told me there was a rumour about visitors.’
‘Who?’
‘My question as well. But that’s as much as he said.’
‘It’s tempting to speculate, isn’t it?’
‘If anything was likely to change things on Resurgam, it would be the arrival of Ultras.’
‘It’s a bit soon for Remilliod to return.’
Sylveste nodded. ‘If there really is a ship coming in, you can bet it isn’t Remilliod. But who else would want to trade with us?’
