tear.
Feodor cleared his throat. He thanked them all for being there, a sentiment clearly directed at Adelaide as the estranged member of the family. Then her mother stood up. She had the blanched face of someone who had not slept in days. Adelaide hardened herself against sympathy.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Viviana. She stopped, and for a moment it was not clear whether she would continue. Then she seemed to gather her strength. “I’ve been thinking about what we should do,” she said. “And I think-we must have a-a service. Some sort of gathering, so that people can pay their respects. To commemorate Axel.”
It was the wrong choice of word. Adelaide knocked back her chair as she stood, words feverish on her lips.
“How can you even think about saying that? We don’t know Axel’s dead. We have no idea where he is. You just want him gone so you don’t have to worry about him showing you all up any more.”
“Unjust, Adelaide,” said Linus mildly.
“Is it? I don’t think so. Feodor paid for just about every shrink in the city but he wouldn’t set foot in Axel’s home. None of you would. Deny it if you can.”
After that there were tears, and shouting. Only when her accusations ran dry did Adelaide look at her grandfather, his shoulders stooped, weariness articulated by every line in his face. He was still, except for his hands, one resting on top of the other, shivering every now and then like two dry leaves stirred by a breeze. He was old, the Architect, over ninety years old.
Something about her grandfather’s silence induced Adelaide’s own. She returned to her seat, and folded herself inward.
The rest of the family accepted her retirement as a compromise and for an hour they tried to discuss objectively what form of service might be held. Her brothers decided that Feodor must say something. If the entire script could be reported in full, it eliminated the necessity of delivering a press statement. Adelaide listened and said little more. She felt numb. She wished she could expand that emptiness until it filled the cavern in her chest.
Viviana talked about the candles she wanted with a specificity verging on the deranged.
“We’ll have a large red one directly beneath Axel’s photograph, and smaller orange ones surrounding it. I’ll arrange them in a half moon shape, very simple… And then the layout repeated on each table, I suppose it will have to be the same colours, orange and red, or red and orange, we must put the order in with Nina’s…”
“You know, I’m not sure about having the photograph,” said Linus. “It might give the impression Axel’s dead.”
“But how can anyone think about Axel if there’s no reminder of what he looks like?” Viviana’s eyes glistened. “We haven’t seen him… in so long.”
“That is a consideration,” Feodor said. “When was the last time anyone had contact with Axel? A year ago? More?”
He did not say, apart from Adelaide, which would have been a concession. Viviana was incapable of replying. She buried her head in her arms, strangling her sounds of distress. Streaks of grey meandered through the deep red of her hair, almost conquering it at the roots. Adelaide wondered how much of that was a recent development. Her mother was a strong woman; Adelaide could not remember ever seeing her cry.
“I saw Axel eight months ago,” said her grandfather. “After Dr Radir’s last report.”
“Did you? How was-” Feodor stopped himself. “Oh, there’s no point.”
“He was the same,” her grandfather replied.
The last remnants of pink and red light infused the room, rendering its occupants unnaturally soft. The room hushed under this elemental spell, and the heavier mantle that fell with it, of guilt.
“What will you say it is?” Adelaide’s voice startled her, reinserting itself into the discussion almost without her consent. The others looked at her with equal surprise.
“What?”
“What will you call it? I mean-the gathering, or however you’re going to describe it.”
That was when Feodor came up with the phrase service of hope. He said this was the reason they were holding it, so they might as well make their intentions clear. There was no verbal dissent. Viviana got up and went to stand by the window-wall, staring vacantly out as though the regimented rows of skyscrapers would yield the whereabouts of her son. She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, her arms cradled. The familiarity of the pose unnerved Adelaide. For the first time that day, she wanted to reach out and pull her mother back.
They progressed inevitably to the content of Feodor’s speech. No-one could work out how to talk about Axel’s life without implying that it was over, which as Feodor pointed out, would be a strategic blunder. At the same time, Viviana was adamant that her son’s achievements should be mentioned. In the end they agreed that Feodor should compose the speech and send it to the others for approval.
Discussion returned to the mundane. Dates and times. Who should be invited. Where it should be held. They hammered through decisions with a rigidity of conduct, faces disciplined tight. Only at the end did anyone raise the question of the Council investigation, and then it was in passing-Dmitri mentioned to Feodor that they had been asked for access to Axel’s bank records. Feodor frowned and said he supposed they couldn’t refuse.
Such easy capitulation infuriated Adelaide, but she saw no profit in expressing it. The choice had been made a long time ago. She no longer warranted a say in Rechnov affairs.
Two weeks later and here she was. From the alcove, she watched the guests circulate, half eavesdropping on their conversations. The whispers made her angry. Axel had been whispered about for too long.
Adelaide’s mother had chosen her candles and arranged them in small clusters on every table. Even grouped together like that, the flames they emitted seemed frail. Viviana sat at the head of one table as if she were holding court, but the glass at her elbow was untouched and she displayed no interest in conversation. A pocket-sized version of the photograph eventually designated inappropriate lay on the table in front of her. From the briefest of glimpses, Adelaide knew that this had been taken some years back. The directness of Axel’s gaze was a shocking memory.
A curious mix of people had come. There were a few wild cards-she noticed Zadiyyah Sobek, head of the electronics corporation, chatting to one of the family Tellers-but most were her father’s crowd, either politicians or other venerated family members. They had split into cliques. The Dumays, of Veerdeland extract, occupied one corner. The Ngozis, descendants of the Pan-Afrikan Solar Corporation, whispered in another. Adelaide’s father and brothers worked the rooms, careful to acknowledge every guest.
The Rechnovs traced their own roots to the Sino-Siberian Federation. At its conception, the City of Osiris had attracted the world’s most brilliant minds, rich and poor, from the northern hemisphere to the south. Looking at the assembled congregation, Adelaide felt that there was little evidence of that intellect visible today, and particularly amongst the Councillors.
With their upright carriage and pinched expressions, they were easy to spot. Some of them wore the formal session surcoat over their suits, the sweeping garments giving them the appearance of doleful bats doused in cherry juice. Linus and Dmitri had already established themselves within the illustrious hallmark of the Council Chambers. Linus’s personal mission was to convert his sister. He liked to dangle words like future and ramifications under Adelaide’s nose, fish on a hook she never bit. As a Rechnov, even a renounced fourth gen one, Adelaide retained the respect, prominence, and wealth afforded all of Osiris’s founders: this was her inheritance.
But she had her own name now. Adelaide Mystik. She had her own set, too. They were known as the Haze. A few of them were here, distinguishable by their roving butterfly wariness and adherence to fashion. Beneath cloche hats, the girls’ lips were matte in red or mulberry. Their diamond-patterned legs shifted as they tested standing in one spot, then another. The boys, usually so at ease, loitered self-consciously amongst the Council members and founding families.
Adelaide saw Jannike, one of her oldest friends, bend over to say something to her mother. Viviana did not glance up.
A smattering of reporters completed the parade. Some of the krill journalists had attempted to glam up their shabby hemlines with a belted coat or a hat, but nothing could disguise their insidious manner. Perhaps it was the proximity of these conflicting factions as much as the event itself that produced such an air of uncertainty. A Councillor bumped into a socialite and both parties blushed and fell silent, alarmed by the prospect of conversation. Under other circumstances, Adelaide might have found the interaction comical.
