Vikram’s breath fluttered on the back of her neck. She shifted, hoping the movement might dislodge him. He only paused between inhaling and exhaling, and his grip tightened as his breath trickled out. Adelaide thought back to yesterday. She remembered the victory afterparty, the Haze running rampage over the Red Rooms, the dancing and the octopya. She remembered kissing him at her bedroom door. She remembered locking the door. After that, memory failed her.
She twisted her head to look at Vikram. His head, pressed against the top of her spine, fell into the alcove just below the pillow. She prised his arms away and turned to study him properly. Dim light and sleep had softened him. Tiny veins tracked the half moons of his eyelids. His lashes shivered, betraying his subconscious, active in dreams. She traced a finger down the length of his back. His mouth twitched. She wondered what he was dreaming.
Fuck. They must have had sex.
She sat up and pulled the sheets around her shoulders, exposing more of his naked body. He was so thin. There was nothing beneath his skin but lean muscle and bones. She examined every blemish, every flaw, as though she could read last night’s actions in the history of his skin. There was a nick above his right eye. A long scar bisected his side. The white streak ran beneath the ribcage and into the shadow where his stomach met the sheets. She could not help imagining the quick silver slice of the knife and her eyes widened with the shock of the idea. She reached out to touch, but withdrew. She’d probably done that already.
Her head heaved with recollection. Stars only knew how many people remained in her apartment. She cast aside the sheets and got up to find out. At the door, she stopped. She did not want to know. She stood there, fingers on the handle, her next move perilously unclear, when the man on the bed moved. He yawned, stretched, and rolled onto his back.
“What time is it?”
The question threw her completely.
“It’s-before dawn.”
“Come back to bed then. Nobody else will be awake.”
Adelaide complied, to the point of coming to sit on the end of the bed. Vikram scratched at the stubble just beginning to darken his jaw. His eyes were bleary.
“You’re not meant to be in here,” she said.
“You didn’t leave me much choice.”
She glowered at him. He met her scowl with a smile. She opened her mouth to tell him not to, but he pre- empted her.
“You fell asleep on me.” Now he sounded smug.
“What?”
“You fell asleep,” Vikram repeated. “You were very tired. And exceptionally drunk.” And when her lips parted again he added, “I’ve got no reason to lie.”
“I never sleep,” she said.
“Alright. You passed out. Drunk, a dead weight, soon as we lay down and your head hit the pillow.”
It was possible. It explained, at least, the lack of memory. Adelaide felt the cold sting of humiliation.
Vikram yawned again, and flopped back onto the pillows. His face was unlike any man she had ever known. There were lines in that face that would never be erased, lines made by the early tiredness of poverty. But they had faded beneath the light of a new expression.
“You look happy,” she said accusingly.
“I am happy. We won.”
She had almost forgotten the events that had lead up to last night’s fiasco. They came back in a flood of sound and image. She saw Vikram standing in the Chambers, his face arrested, his voice pooling into the basin of their scepticism. Suddenly she smiled.
“Alright.”
He reached out a hand, and when she took it, he pulled her back against him, hugging her. They lay in silence. The windows were tinted with violet, the world outside a shadowy place, as though without the distinction of time it must remain embryonic. She thought of another face and another man. Possibilities gathered on the edge of her brain, things that could or might or should have been. She thrust them away from her.
“How did you get that scar?”
“Which one?”
Adelaide turned over, resting her arms and her chin on his chest. She traced a tentative finger along the disfigurement. It felt like embossed lettering. “This one.”
“My friend-Mikkeli-she used to take these deliveries to people.” His voice was low and reminded her of summer rain. “She worked for a dealer called Maak. It was dangerous work. The sort of thing where your luck only holds out for so long. One of the jobs went wrong. The buyers came after Keli at home. There were four of us living there. Only two of them but six people with knives in a small room… it was messy.”
It was the most information about himself he had ever volunteered. She kept her eyes on the scar, away from his face, not wanting to discourage him.
“Why did only two of them come?”
“They didn’t think we’d protect her. Loyalty in the west is-pretty easily compromised.”
“And you didn’t compromise.”
“No.”
“So what happened?”
“We killed them. Then we left the tower and we never went back.” He gave her a twisted smile. “This is my souvenir from that night.”
Once more she heard the whisper of knives in the dark. She bent her head and gently kissed the scar. She left her face buried. How much time passed whilst she stayed there, she could not tell. Vikram’s lips brushed her shoulder. She met his mouth in sudden haste, overcome by pity, and her need to block out that other face.
28 VIKRAM
The waterways were quiet. It was an achingly cold but clear night, and Vikram could hear the motor hum as his boat cut through the waves, uninhibited by other traffic. He ran a hand over its sides. He’d had the boat for six weeks and he still felt a frisson of ownership with the touch.
As he steered through the western quarter, graffiti-covered slopes loomed and receded, the vivid images bluish in the moonlight. From the far side of the city a cheer went up, followed by the crackle of fireworks. Vikram looked up, trying to find the umbrellas of light amidst the sky’s star-studded pane, but he saw only a fading glimmer over to the east. The race must have begun.
He fumbled in a pocket for his Sobek scarab. It was slippery in his glove as he switched it on and spoke Adelaide’s name for the second time that evening.
“Hey, it’s me. Look, sorry I can’t make it-but enjoy the show.”
These small appeasements had become regular. They were for him, not her, although she did not know that. Axel’s letter haunted him. Right now, it was concealed beneath the lining of a locked drawer, and Adelaide, unaware of its contents, unaware even of its existence, was urging on her favourite glider with no notion that her brother waited for the white horse to speak.
He would tell her. When it was right.
The quiet struck him again. A lone gleam of light in the distance became a single tower, lanterns glowing at the window-walls. Vikram peered ahead through the shadowy maze of scrapers, and found what always followed such a display: fire on the water surface. They were committing the tower’s dead to the deep.
He switched the motor off and let his boat drift. He could see the bodies piled upon rafts, some already ablaze, others drenched in oil, their foreheads banded with salt so that the ghosts would recognize them as Osiris’s people. There must have been a power-cut, or a flash epidemic.
The mourners threw torches onto the pyres. Flames leapt high. When they were all alight, boats would tow the pyres to the ring-net and cast their cargo out to burn. Vikram had always thought that would be the most
