banknotes. They weren’t just quaint; they should be impossible to forge.
“No idea. Looks oddly familiar though. Stay here, I’ll deal with it.”
“Thank you.”
The second that Tyr moved away her attention was claimed by Lilja. Adelaide gave the acrobat a full half of her attention. The other half shadowed Tyr as he approached the stranger and escorted him through the archway. Adelaide excused herself and moved to where she could listen without being seen.
“I’m not here for any media. I’m here to see Adelaide.”
The gatecrasher sounded strange. It was a gruff voice, but hoarse too, she thought. It wasn’t an accent as such-what was an accent nowadays anyway? Everyone spoke Boreal English. Even her grandfather had forsaken his childhood Siberian; she had only ever heard him speak it on those occasions when Axel had asked. She edged closer.
“That’s funny,” Tyr was saying. “Because you’re not on her guest list.”
“I know that.” There was a pause. A new track started and Adelaide strained to hear over the music. Why did this man want to see her? She knew most of the krill by voice if not by sight. She was forever changing her scarab code to evade them.
“Look,” the gatecrasher said. “I’m from a political reform group. Horizon. I spoke at the Council recently. I just wanted to see Adelaide. To ask if she could help us.”
This was unexpected, and disappointing. Of course, it was possible the man was lying, but she sensed not. That was what was bothering her about the voice. It held the unusual ring of truth.
“I don’t know who you are, or who you’re working for, but you’re leaving right now.” Tyr evidently had no such concerns.
Adelaide judged it time to put an end to the intrusion. She stepped out.
“It’s alright, Tyr. He’ll go quietly.”
The opposing walls of mirrors multiplied the two men’s reflections, producing the illusion of spectators on either side. Tyr, calm in his red shirt-only Adelaide would know that his body was tensed in apprehension. And the stranger-up close she was surprised by his appearance. He was younger than the sandpaper voice suggested, perhaps not much older than herself. His eyes were the colour of cocoa, almond shaped, striking, but the whites were bloodshot. His hair was dark and shaggy. She ignored the clothes, her gaze stripping away the cheap layers of clothing to the sinewy physique beneath. Tall, and thin like wire. No, she thought idly. Not unattractive.
But still. Too still, as if he had practised. Even his blinking was slow, each sweep of the eyelashes seeming to reinforce some careful screen. It was a little unnerving.
“Adelaide,” he said.
I must put a stop to this, she thought.
“I need to talk to-”
“Yes. Thank you for coming. Goodbye.”
An odd expression crossed the man’s face. There was anger there, clearly, but it was more than that. It was accusatory. Almost a look of hatred. For a moment she thought he was going to do something wild, and wondered if her assessment was way off track and he was dangerous after all. She let her smile drop into that tension, leisurely, the way he had looked at her, before she turned her back.
Behind her, quick footsteps marked the stranger’s eviction. Nobody had noticed anything. She waited, aware that Tyr was at her shoulder.
“We’ll have to find out who he is,” she said.
“I know who he is. The westerner who went to Chambers-I saw his photograph on the newsreel. Stars knows how he got in.”
“Stars indeed.” She frowned, but put the gatecrasher aside. “Balcony?”
“Five minutes.”
She moved away and was instantly claimed by a newly blonde Minota. It was a lucky collision. Minota was diverting but so caught up in her own cleverness that she paid little attention to anyone else. Over Minota’s shoulder Adelaide saw Tyr disappear into the next room. Minota was relating a story. She gave it little glosses, doll-like hands gesticulating. There was a pet goose in the story, and the conclusion was something to do with the goose attacking one of Minota’s lovers in her bed. Adelaide laughed and calculated the mental time for Tyr to make his way through the study, the kitchen and the dining room, and from there into her bedroom. Minota looked pleased with herself.
“Really, though, you should have been there. It was too brilliant.”
“I can only imagine.”
Minota caught her arm, eyelids stretching. “Oh honey, I hate to ask, but do you have anything? I’m so dry, I can barely afford a line.”
“There’s a brass pot in the drinks cabinet.” Adelaide gave Minota’s hand a conspiratorial squeeze. “Why don’t you help yourself?”
Minota giggled. “You’re so generous, Adelaide.”
Minota’s discovery was met with shrieks of delight and delving into handbags for suitable paper. Masked by the commotion, Adelaide slipped back into the hallway. She checked over her shoulder, then arranged her fingertips in a pattern against the glass. There was a little click, and a panel of the mirror slid across. Adelaide eased through the gap. The panel slid back behind her. She was in her private bathroom.
It was abruptly quiet. Adelaide smiled to herself. Her grandfather had incorporated some useful innovations into the Rechnov properties.
She opened the door into her bedroom, knowing Tyr would already have entered from the other side. She took a slip of milaine from the dragon pot and a thick, heavy coat from the wardrobe. Heat rose to her face with the additional layer, evaporating the moment she opened the balcony door.
She shut the door behind her, and stopped, mesmerized by the cold. The emptiness. There was nothing out here but the occasional light from a passing patrol boat, and beacons shining seven miles away at the ring-net. Just the dark, endless ocean. Another world.
Tonight especially she felt that dislocation. The night was acute with absence. Absence of wind, rain, absence of everything except the hiss of her lungs, the thud of her heart, and Tyr, breathing, a few metres away.
“You escaped,” he said.
“I told Minota where to find the milaine.”
“Good diversion.”
They moved at the same time. At once he was kissing her, her back pressed against the glass wall, their lips the only warmth in a frozen world. She was stunned, as always, how much she wanted him. In five years of illicit sex they had never spent a night together. She knew disparate parts of him, could bind them together to make the man he might show to other lovers. But it was an imaginary picture; a concept of boundaries that she would never know. And so it was new every time, dazzlingly, incredibly new. She felt these moments in the marrow of her bones.
“Wait,” he said.
“Wait?” She put a bite of anger into her voice. He responded at once, swinging her around and pushing her against the balcony. She grabbed the railings. Vertigo collided with adrenalin. She was dizzy with altitude. The hundred floor drop and the crashing waves. Tyr against her, inside her, only Tyr’s hands to save her if she slipped. This was world’s end, a sight to drive you mad. That madness was vented in their need for each other, in its heady savage haste. When he pulled away she felt almost sick with it.
“You could stay,” she said.
He shook his head. “Too risky.”
One of them always held back. She shook a fat line of milaine onto the rail and they raced to snort it before some disturbance in the air dissipated the fine green particles. Their heads collided in the centre; she met his eyes and giggled. He grinned back, sniffed.
“Hang on…”
She brushed a trace of powder from the stubble of his upper lip.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
