“I want you to search the prisons.”
“You think he may be underwater?”
“I don’t know what I think.” She struggled to keep her voice from rising. “Just search them. All of them.”
“Very well.” He tapped the Surfboard. “I’ll-”
“You’ll be in touch.”
Lao left first. He walked off in his usual easy, inconspicuous manner. After he’d gone she wandered through the garden, hoping to lose her thoughts in the succulent lure of the greenery. She ducked under a low hanging branch and into a canopied grove. The rustle of wings filled the air. The husks of cocoons hung from branches, split down the middle where the insects had crawled out.
She noticed a scattering of dead butterflies on the ground. Some were entire, perfect but motionless. Others had lost a wing. One was flapping. She crouched and scooped it up, careful not to handle its wings because the membrane was so thin, the scales would fall away at a touch. It lay in her palms, barely moving. It could not fly. She did not know what to do with it and after a moment she laid it back upon the ground.
There was a boat, Adie… an inconceivable feat of seafaring!
As she walked on, more dead ones littered the edges of the path. The thoughts that she had struggled to suppress ever since visiting the Domain rushed back to the front of her mind. Why had her grandfather told her about the Siberian boat? Did he want to be found out, or did he want the family to be found out-who else was in on this secret? Her father? Her mother? Linus? And if the family had authorised the massacre of an entire crew of Siberians, what else were they capable of?
She thought of the vault, of Axel holding documents that he did not understand, or only understood when he was lucid. She imagined him sitting on the balcony, smiling that half smile, when assassins broke in. Or perhaps he’d been afraid, perhaps he’d tried to hide-alone and muddled, unable to escape, running from room to room. Perhaps they’d dragged him away screaming, thrown him into an underwater cell where no one would ever hear him scream again.
Perhaps they’d killed him after all.
No. She remembered her grandfather’s words. No one would ever hurt your brother. She had to believe that.
Her twin was still alive; the connection was there, she felt it. Some part of him must have known the power of those documents. He’d left on purpose. He’d gone into hiding until she found him.
And then?
The answer was obvious. And then he planned to leave Osiris. With her. Because if there had been one boat, might not there have been others? Who else was out there, waiting to be found?
She kept walking. The path through the farm was circular; soon she was back to where she had started. Through the foliage she saw the external walls of the tower, their hexagonal pattern repeated over and over again. Endless repetition, the way a wheel turned, or a horse’s hooves beat.
She could not get away from one inescapable fact. If her grandfather was telling the truth, if there really had been a boat-then everything Adelaide had ever been told was a lie.
32 VIKRAM
A light mist trickled into the harbour as their speedboat approached. It blurred the hulls, red with rust, of gigantic ships whose load lines sat high above the water. It touched cool fingers to Vikram’s face. Only the cries of circling gulls broke the silence, and there was nobody present to hear them, except for Vikram and Adelaide, and Adelaide’s boatman.
The craft pulled up alongside a jetty which sloped down into the water. A maze of piers and walkways crisscrossed the harbour. Most were visible; some, more dangerously, were submerged. Vikram and Adelaide climbed out. They wore thermal wetsuits: Vikram’s red, Adelaide’s green. Adelaide’s hair swirled in the wind as she crouched to say something to the boatman. Vikram stood motionless, struck by the stillness, and the quiet.
“Let’s go!”
Adelaide started walking. Vikram gave chase and they ran, shrieking, to the jetty’s edge. The sea before them had a brownish hue; their forms were murky shadows.
“You know smugglers used to come here,” said Adelaide. “Before the border.”
“Maybe they still do.”
“No. It’s deserted now. Sometimes this place gives me-a queer feeling.”
They turned back and crossed a bridge into a floating cabin. Inside sat two identical waterbikes, sleek and silver. At the sight of those beautiful crafts, Vikram felt a surge in his head like the release of a pressure valve.
It had been building over the last few weeks. Subtly, so subtly that at first he barely recognized them, the responsibilities had been lining up: to the west and to the City. He needed this break.
Adelaide had mounted her bike. “What are you waiting for?”
He climbed onto the other bike and squeezed the handlebars, as she did. The motor hummed into life. They eased the bikes down a ramp and bobbed into the water, the aerodynamic bodies lying low. They emerged on the opposite side of the cabin, out into the mist.
Adelaide leaned over and grabbed Vikram’s handlebars. She had tucked her hair under a green hood.
“You ready?” she said.
Vikram pulled a pair of goggles over his eyes. “Absolutely.”
“Watch out for floating junk. This place is a scrap heap.”
She squeezed the handlebars, increasing the power. He did the same and felt the engine reverberating. Ripples of froth welled around both crafts. They leapt forward.
Out of the fog loomed the vast shapes of forsaken ships. Vikram glanced up as they skirted the length of a tanker. Its parts creaked like old bones. The hull was bleached with salt and green with algae. Despite their physical deterioration, the ships seemed to him to be sleeping, still semi-conscious.
The bike veered close to the hull on a wave. He edged left, maintaining a wider corridor. Ahead he watched the streamlined shape of Adelaide and her bike weaving under the shadows of the abandoned vessels. Several times he had to angle around debris or nudge the bike over a hidden walkway. The air on his face was freezing but it was good to be out here, with the elements, on his own terms. Winter and work had been choking him.
They passed between the last two ships, prows angled together to form a gateway. Before them lay the open sea. The mist was clearing. Some way ahead, Adelaide stopped and wheeled around.
“I’ll race you to the ring-net!”
She was already leaping forward in the water, streaking away so fast that the spray almost obscured her completely. He gave chase. The wind battled him, the waterbike bucked and rolled beneath him and at first he felt almost sick, but then he got used to it, and was aware only of speed.
Minutes passed but it felt like nothing. He was filled with exhilaration. He opened his mouth and had to shout, not words, just joyful noise.
Suddenly there it was, a vast dark wall rising twenty metres out of the water. It loomed closer and closer. The sea soaked him. Salt was bright in his mouth. Adelaide wasn’t far ahead now, swivelling left and right and left again, over the waves, down into the troughs. Glancing up he saw it for the first time in daylight, a series of interlocking chains: the ring-net. He was on Adelaide’s tail, in her slipstream, close enough to hear her laugh above the sea and the wind and the metallic music. Then she cut sharply to the right and he was under it. Horror clenched him. He was going to crash. He wrenched the handlebars with all his strength, panic sucking the oxygen from his lungs. The Dolphin careered right until he was practically lying along the waves, and the engine cut.
He wrested the bike upright, sucking in air, scared and exhilarated in equal measure. Five metres away, Adelaide’s waterbike was also at rest. She leaned over and touched the ring-net with one hand. He knew she was grinning.
“I won!” she shouted.
He looked up. The chains of the ring-net clinked and chimed, the whole construction rippling like a ponderous sheet of material. The metal was covered in algae. The net stretched from outpost to outpost in a giant fence, but wherever they were, the nearest one was too far away to see. So was the border, which ran up to the ring-net. He
