And when the lights in the dining room had begun to show halos, that’s where Iolanthe had gone.
From outside she could hear the sounds of celebration, the cheerful talk and laughter from the women her mother had invited to rejoice with the Pelagia women this fine afternoon. The sounds were outside her universe, however. They emanated from the gray space beyond the pain, and as such, they were irrelevant to her life.
Io changed position on her bed, moving carefully to avoid any increase in the size of the monster that fed on her head. A crack of light appeared in the doorway to her room. She blinked at the silhouetted shape there: her Aunt Bella.
“Iolanthy, darling,” said her aunt, her stocky shape peering in uncertainly. “My, it’s dark in here.” She opened the door wider and stepped inside. “No wonder you’ve got a headache, lying in the dark when everybody else is having a good time. You should go out and join the party.”
Io was in too much agony to answer, but if she’d possessed a gun and the strength to raise it, Aunt Bella would have died then and there. Unaware of the effect she was having on the victim of her charitable advice, Aunt Bella waited a moment for a reply, then sighed. “Some people are too stubborn for their own good,” she intoned, and shut the door.
It had been a bad week for Io, and she would have cherished her anger at this sanctimonious advice if she’d had the capacity for actual thought or feeling, but already Aunt Bella’s image was receding into the gray space. Iolanthe could only file her remarks away for later resentment. Filed away with her mother, who didn’t care whom her daughter married, and her father, who she always thought would have cared, and the unknown Protector of the City of Diamond, whoever was holding that post this year. Her future husband. Whatever his cursed name might be.
But that was for later. When it was over and she was reborn into real life. For now, it was all gray space. And pain.
“Who the hell is Iolanthe Pelagia?” William Stockton inquired. He pushed his dark hair off his forehead and adjusted his uniform jacket, trying to look as dignified as possible, which was difficult under the circumstances.
The duty sergeant gave him a look of bored patience. “Do I know? Do I care? Some aristo brat, by the name. Needs her hand held till they palm her off on some sucker of her own class. Congratulations.” He spat, clearly not for the first time, into a small transparent cup on his desk.
Will averted his eyes from the cup and looked down at the official duty sheet. “You will report to Residence A79 at 12:00, and present yourself as chief bodyguard to the Lady Iolanthe Pelagia. Further orders will be given to you there.” Nothing like being terse. You’d think after four years in the City Guard with a record nobody his age could match—nobody from Sangaree Section, anyway— they’d give him something with a little responsibility, a little status. You’d think they’d throw him a fucking crumb—
He turned over the sheet and froze. He looked up at the duty sergeant. “It’s got the Ecclesiastical Council imprimatur on it.”
“So?”
“I’m not in the EPs. I’m just a City Guard.” He swallowed. Responsibility and status were overrated. “Why would they send me on a council assignment?”
“I told you everything I heard, sweetheart. It’s got your name on it, right? Somebody asked for you.”
Will’s dark eyes were wary. “Who would ask for me?”
“The Lord Cardinal asked for you, asshole. It came to him in a vision while he was taking a dump. I keep telling you, I don’t know. Are we speaking the same language?”
Will refolded the page and slipped it into his outer jacket pocket. His fingers felt cold. He turned and stepped down from the platform beside the duty sergeant’s desk.
“Congrats,” said the sergeant.
“Yeah, thanks a whole lot.”
“Not for this,” said the sergeant. “Turn around.”
Will turned.
“For this,”the sergeant said, and he tossed something flat and shiny through the air. Will raised a hand and caught it.
It was a gold First Sergeant’s bar. He blinked down at it, not understanding. Nobody from Sangaree was ever promoted past Third, and not many got that far. He met the duty sergeant’s eyes.
The man grinned. “You impressed hell out of somebody, sweetie.”
Will stood there a minute. His thoughts seemed to be extraordinarily slow. “It’s a mistake,” he said finally. “They’ll straighten it out in time.”
“Right,” the duty sergeant agreed. “Better haul, Stockton. You have to be on A deck by twelve hundred.” Will’s hand went involuntarily to his jacket pocket and he heard the faint crackle of paper. He turned and left.
Instead of taking the train straight to A level, he boarded one at Seacum Street Station going in the opposite direction. Street after street, level upon level flashed by; he sat with his long legs stretched out in the aisle, watching. Outside the windows, the clean lines of middle-class shops began to look less well-maintained. Women appeared, walking freely, working in dirty shop windows beside the men, and the closed chairs of the upper decks vanished. At Tanamonde Street he stepped out, checking the time as he did.
Here the buying and selling spilled over into the streets and walkways, where bins of used clothing and wrapped leaves of home-cured smokeless blocked the way for pedestrians. Will stripped off his red uniform jacket and rolled it under one arm. At the foot of the third Tanamonde walkway he turned into an entrance beside a shop-window so unaccustomed to cleaning it was impossible to see inside. A tattered
