“Alright. Keep an eye out though.” Back in Nils’s partition, the cards were still on the floor in a neat brick. Through the wall they could hear Ari rearranging the room, dragging things into place.
“What do you want to play?” Nils asked eventually.
“Start you with a hand of piranha.”
Nils scooted over the pack. “Juraj and the rest are getting out of hand. Soon they’ll be trying to impose tariffs on every quarter in the west.”
“If he is alive. More likely than not it’s his underlings cashing in before the news is out.”
“Makes no difference if he’s dead or not. There’ll be someone else in his place within the week.”
“Won’t stop with the gangs though. We’ll all get caught up in it.” He paused. “What was her boyfriend running?”
“Soft stuff, soap and sugar, at least publicly. But judging by the argument before she kicked him out, that was a cover. Sounded like he was dealing in weapons.”
“Through the skadi?”
“How else? The bastards aren’t incorruptible.”
Vikram shuffled, distributed, reshuffled. As game followed game, the inanimate faces of the cards took on strange personalities. The Jack of Spades fell into Vikram’s hand three times until he began to see its presence as an omen. Signs and portents were everywhere in this city. Some people said the sea itself was a judgement. That the city was cursed for its sins, past and present. And it was easy, when the lower levels were flooded for the fourth time in a month and children drowned in their own beds-it was easy, he thought, to wring your hands and blame the heavens, because nobody else was there to listen to your woes.
“Your deal,” said Nils.
“Yeah. Sorry.” He shuffled with a snap and cut the deck.
Now there was shouting from upstairs. Human clamour sounded loud to Vikram now; it used to be nothing to his ears. Naala’s boat, where he’d grown up, was both a refuge and a morgue. The first winter he could remember, three kids had gone to sleep and in the night they’d died. The others had woken to find them, curled up like shells, a greyish tinge to their hardened skins. After that he was afraid to go to sleep.
He remembered the first night he had spent in a building, feeling sick with stagnancy and wide awake. Through the night he heard the breathing of the other three more distinctly than ever before. Nils’s smokers’ rasp. Mik’s gurgles. Drake’s long clear inhalations.
Mikkeli never said what stunt she had pulled to get the room, but Vikram suspected it had to do with the packages she sometimes delivered for a man named Maak. She collected the packages from the shanty towns. She took them to locations whose owners never had names, only yellowed eyes and mouths that liked to argue over previously negotiated bargains. Mikkeli didn’t like Vikram coming along. He understood why the first time he saw a man pull a knife on her.
He had a feeling, looking back now, that Mikkeli’s packages had probably contained weapons too.
It was shortly after that Vikram began his stints on the illegal fishing boats. Decisions and answers came easily then. He realized, as time went on, that things had degrees. Degrees of hurt and degrees of shame.
The Jack of Spades was in his hand. It was his turn. He had no idea how long he had been lost in contemplation, but Nils said nothing and Vikram suspected his friend was similarly absent tonight. You make your own luck, he thought. He played the Jack. It was a reckless move. He lost the game.
The bottle of raqua was almost dry, and they gathered up the cards for the night. Then, because it was late and he was a little drunk, Vikram asked, “You ever think about getting out of here, Nils?”
“Out of where? Six-fourteen? “Course I do.”
“I meant out of Osiris.”
It was a question each of them had posed to the other, a number of times, over the years. The sea got inside your head. Its currents pulled you, this way and that way. That was why you had to keep people around you, at least one-to act as ballast when the tide got too strong. Nils glanced at him. His forehead creased.
“Now that is crazy talk. You want to start fishing again? Not all those boats come back. Dangerous business, fishing.”
“Maybe they don’t go far enough.”
“They’re looking for fish, Vik. Anyone who went looking for land got eaten by sharks or drowned. Nothing out there to find.”
“They might’ve ended up on land, for all we know. What if it’s out there, what if it’s there to find… just waiting for us. Waiting for us to be brave enough.”
“And what if it is? What do you think you’d find? Rocks? Sand? You can’t eat sand. Can’t eat wind, either.”
“But you’d know. You’d know.”
He had a vision of wind blowing across an empty plateau. Not a creature in sight, just desiccated rock stretching on and on. Why was it so alluring?
“Wouldn’t you like to see the land your folks came from?” he asked.
“Vik. I know what it looks like. Everyone knows that whatever land is left, it’s toxic. Fire. Corpses. Plague and insects, man. Hell on Earth.”
Vikram nodded. He knew, but sometimes he couldn’t believe it.
Nils reached across and gave his arm a friendly shake.
“You’re drunk.”
Vikram couldn’t deny it. His limbs felt like cotton wool. Neither he nor Nils could afford to build up a tolerance to alcohol. Vikram reached into his pocket and pulled out the invitation.
“What’s that?” Nils asked. Vikram passed him the card. The Rose Night was two days away, he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer.
Nils looked at the card. He grinned.
“Where did you get this?”
“Linus Rechnov.”
“That guy you followed?”
“He’s Adelaide Mystik’s brother, isn’t he. Well, estranged brother. The other one’s most likely dead, if you believe what the krill say.”
“The twin was a nutter. Family probably did away with him. Why would Adelaide Mystik’s brother give you an invitation to some random party?”
“He said I needed a patron.”
Spoken out loud, it sounded even sillier than it had in Vikram’s head. Nils looked suitably dubious.
“It was you that followed him, right? So you caught him unawares. He probably thought you were out to assassinate him. He didn’t know what to do, so he’s palmed you off on his sister.”
Vikram shook his head. “No. It wasn’t like that. He’s-” He sought for a way to describe Linus Rechnov, but suitable words eluded him. “He’s too smart,” he concluded lamely.
“Smart? He’s a Citizen. Defective at birth.”
“Fine. So what if I go? And what if it’s a trick? Or a weird joke, I don’t know. At the time I thought he sounded genuine, but now…”
“No, you’re right. Citizens have reasons for everything. Still.” Nils turned the card over in his hands. He scratched the watermark with one nail. “It’s one hell of an opportunity.”
“To get myself chucked in jail?”
“More to spy,” said Nils. “Maybe this Linus guy, whether he realizes it or not, has a point. If we can’t beat them with guns and letters don’t get through, try something else. Try infiltration.”
“I’m not sure that’s what he meant either,” said Vikram.
“What does it matter? Go along, have a laugh. Eirik would love it.” Nils fell silent for a moment, but quickly recovered. “If you’re lucky, you’ll get to meet the mad bad Adelaide herself. Well worth a spell in jail.”
Vikram raised his eyebrows. Nils shrugged.
“Worth a day in jail?”
“Clearly you’ve never been underwater,” Vikram said dryly. Nils said nothing in response. He could not. The cell, with its green light and clogged porthole, was one memory they did not share. Time in a cell had made Vikram calm, dangerously calm. He had beaten down his anger so successfully that it had become an alien thing to him,
