And then came the morning of strange quiet, the day the riots began. The day that everything fell apart and the skadi came for Eirik. The City published findings that they said proved Eirik was NWO. He’d gone from group to group, they said, winning trust, gaining followers. Recruiting. They gave him a number.
For Eirik, after three years in a seabed cell, death might be a relief. He wondered if Mikkeli’s ghost had lingered with the other man whilst he was underwater, the way she had with Vikram, presenting him with her lifeless body over and over again, the tattered yellow hood that fell back from her face drenched to ochre. Did Eirik even know she was dead?
The second hand edged past eleven o’clock. Something was happening. Birds, alert to the change in mood, began to swirl overhead. A curious gull dove low over the boats. Of course the birds would come today.
The hatch on the execution boat had opened. A skadi officer emerged. He came to stand at the rail, hands clasped behind him. Wide sunglasses wrapped around his head caught the sun as he turned this way and that.
The officer barked an order. Eirik was led out from below deck. He must have been kept there all along, in darkness. Vikram strained his eyes, desperate for a glimpse of Eirik’s face, but it was concealed behind a dark hood, part of a prisoner’s suit.
A frisson went through the crowd.
“That’s him… that’s Eirik 9968…”
Eirik seemed to move as one in a dream. His hands were manacled in front of him. The man leading him gave tiny jerks upon the chains, and Vikram could hear their clank beneath the ever present rush of the ocean and the whispers of the audience.
The executioner checked the tank. He rapped the glass on each side and on the roof. Two skadi on either side of Eirik held his arms. They turned him towards the western crowd, but his head flopped on his chest, and his face remained in shadow.
He’s drugged, Vikram realized. He felt anger stirring at their cowardice, mixed with a horrible relief that Eirik would barely be conscious.
The air keened as a dozen loudspeakers were switched on. The wheezing woman next to Vikram covered her ears. The man to his right squeezed his boy’s shoulders. Vikram wanted to wrench the kid away and cover up his eyes. In the next breath he thought no, he should see this. He should know what the Citizens do to us.
A voice began to speak. The tone was clipped and robotic.
“The man known as Eirik 9968 has been sentenced for his actions against the city state of Osiris. He is found guilty of the following crimes: denouncing the Osiris Council, organising collective violence against the City, inciting aggressive action in westerners, acts of personal terrorism, assault and mass murder. In particular he is convicted for his role in reviving the illegal New Western Osiris Front, the organisation responsible for the atrocities committed at Oswua University in the year twenty-three eighty-eight, and for leading and instigating the July riots three years ago. He is judged responsible for both the deaths of Citizens and the necessary reprisals against the west.”
Eirik made no reaction to this speech. His posture was bowed and defeated. It was doubtful whether he had even heard the accusations. Confronted with that small, lone figure between two cities, all Vikram could think of was Eirik sat cross-legged in Nils’s room, leaning forward, gesticulating as he spoke, his face intense and serious, half illuminated by the flickering light. Look, it’s not enough to know the history-we’ve got to know how these people think. Why won’t they take us seriously-why won’t they answer Vik’s letters? Because we don’t use their language and we don’t understand their systems. We don’t know who they really are.
The memory was so strong it made him giddy. Vikram could hear Eirik’s voice perfectly; he could see that room, smell the empty wrappers of squid and kelp. His head swam.
Instinct told him the truth. In that moment he knew, with absolute and shocking conviction, that everything that had been said about Eirik was a lie. Because Eirik, who did know the language, had been a threat. He might actually have made people listen. And the City couldn’t let anything threaten the divide, so the City were going to remove him.
Maybe Eirik had helped to feed the riots. Did it matter? It was not a terrorist who had thrown the first fire torch. It was an ordinary westerner like Vikram, who had been up against the border and everything it represented too many times, and in a single moment of frustration had cracked. Anyone could have started the riots.
The officer on the boat drew himself up, concluding his speech.
“For this long and atrocious history of criminal activity, the Osiris Council has condemned Eirik 9968 to death by drowning.”
The kid leaned forward over the boat rail, eyes wide and eager.
Vikram felt a rising panic. It couldn’t happen. Eirik was innocent. Vikram knew he was innocent. Where were Nils and Drake? If he could find them-he had to explain. It was as though he had emerged from hibernation. How could he ever have imagined that Eirik could be involved with the NWO? The idea was insane. What had he been thinking?
There was still time for a miracle. The speaker would reverse his statement. He would declare that the execution had been a warning to the west, and Eirik would be freed. They couldn’t-they couldn’t kill him.
He willed Eirik to look his way. A moment of contact-he needed Eirik to know he was here “Pardon.”
The call came from the other side of the crowd. Quiet at first. Then another voice joined in.
“Pardon.”
The call rose, each voice creating a new bubble of sound. Vikram added his own plea, but his throat was tight and his voice hoarse and barely audible.
“Pardon. Pardon.”
The executioner stepped forward and zipped up the hooded suit, concealing Eirik’s face completely.
No One of the guards opened a door in the tank. They pushed Eirik inside. He fell against the side of the tank and slumped to the floor. The skad banged the door shut. Vikram felt the reverberations shudder all the way down his spine. You didn’t believe him, they said. You didn’t believe him, believe him, believe him…
Wild ideas raced through his head. If he could get to the tank underwater-hold his breath long enough to swim Chatter skittered through the crowd, small sounds of distress, quickly choked, others muttering in anticipation. The people around him were faceless and alien. The man on his right had lifted the kid to sit on his shoulders and someone behind was complaining that their view was blocked. Vikram could not see Nils or Drake anywhere. He was on his own.
Two skadi went to their stations at the pumps. The executioner checked his watch, gave a curt nod. A stifling quiet fell over the crowd.
It was so still that Vikram could hear water guzzling through the bilges. The first load splashed into the tank.
He heard disjointed words behind him.
“I can’t watch-”
“Don’t look. Come here, just don’t look-”
“Dad, the water’s going in-I can see it-”
Behind the glass the water trickled, greenish in colour. It foamed and swirled with the pressure. Strands of floating kelp were sucked inside. A small fish was flung out of the pipe. Eirik lay prone against the tank wall, his hands still manacled.
Stars Help him!
The water gathered around Eirik’s legs. At last he seemed to stir. The shock of the icy water must have jerked him from his state of comatose. He moved his head. He drew his knees to his chest. Every movement he made was infinitely slow.
“It’s going to take ten minutes,” said someone on the next boat.
“Ten? Fifteen at least.”
“No, not fifteen. Not as long as that.”
“I’ll bet you on it.”
A girl began to scream, a long and eerie sound, rising and falling. A skad lifted his rifle and fired a warning shot into the air. The scream stopped abruptly. The crowd rippled with alarm. He saw several people duck, some hunching protectively over their neighbours, but no one shouted; no one dared to protest. It would have to be Vikram. If he spoke up, he could incite the crowd-they must be angry enough to act-surely they must want to stop this-surely they didn’t believe, as Vikram had His body had turned to lead. Some part of his mind knew that this was
