Maximum Offence (40 page)

‘You know,’ she says, ‘I’m not sure what you heard when you were staying with us in Letogratz. But I think you might have misunderstood what was said.’

‘I might?’

Nodding, she touches my hand. ‘Diplomacy can be complicated,’ she says. ‘Particularly for . . .’

‘Savages?’

Her mouth sets in a tight line.

This isn’t the way our dinner is meant to go. We both know Paper has taken a suite at a hotel near the cathedral, while her embassy is redecorated. Imperia is less than a minute from the hotel. We have the whole night ahead of us and she’s wearing a dress cut so low I can see her nipples every time she leans forward.

So can the waiter who delivers our food.

Another three courses of fancy food and we can stumble our way to bed, via a fuck against an alley wall if that excites me. I’m ruining the atmosphere. But that is fine, because I’m going home when this is over. Although I’m not sure Paper realizes that yet.

‘Sven,’ she says. ‘Have I upset you?’

Behave
, General Jaxx told me. So I do. Sitting back, I say
Of course not
.

After all, it could be someone else at the dump. Another U/Free with Paper’s face watching while a squad from the Legion slaughter the Junkyard Rats, kill my sister and burn my village. And what’s a dead auxiliary between friends? Even if Franc was better with a knife than anyone I know, except me.

———

The sky’s dark and Zabo Square deserted as I cut around the cathedral, make my way under an arch and through a public garden where a Death’s Head major once tried to put a flechette through my head.

He’s dead and I’m alive, for now.

It is late and Farlight’s boulevards are quiet. A man smokes a cigar in the upstairs window of an ornate mansion. I can smell the richness of burning tobacco. Although maybe that’s just my imagination.

In a doorway a girl freezes, watching me over a boy’s shoulder as I pass.

A security guard moves forward to challenge me a few minutes later, sees my uniform and turns his challenge into a salute. The Death’s Head colours do that to people. If he wonders what a lieutenant is doing heading for a barrio on the upper edges of Calinda Gap, he has the sense to keep that question to himself.

‘Night, sir,’ he says.

‘Which regiment?’

He served with the XI Légion Etrangère. His name’s Paulo, he wants to know how I knew about the Legion. I tell him it leaves its mark on people.

Taking the coin I offer, he sees it’s gold.

‘Knew someone in the Legion,’ I tell him. ‘A good man.’

‘What happened, sir?’

‘He died.’

The security guard nods, as if that’s the obvious answer. And it is. We both know that.

Returning his salute, I head uphill until I reach a street I recognize. A cable car runs through here day and night. Aptitude told me about it. But I prefer walking anyway.

At a café below the landing fields, I stop for a coffee and a brandy. The café is small, used by people unloading cargo or working the repair yards. A man looks up briefly, looks up again and mutters something. A woman opposite slides me a glance, and then quickly looks away.

‘Brandy,’ I say.

So nervous is the young woman behind the counter that the entire room hears her rattle the bottle against my glass. She slops my coffee delivering it. And spends a full minute apologizing.

Time was, I’d ask her name. Ask what time she got off. Maybe ask if she has a sister who would like to join us for a meal. Either I’d get my face slapped or we would all end up in bed. The uniform works against this.

Finishing the brandy, I leave my coffee undrunk.

Golden Memories is in darkness as I work my way round the side of the landing field at Bosworth.
Must be late
, I think. Then check the sky and realize it is almost morning.

The front door is locked and bolted from the inside.

A metal grille closes off the rear entrance and all the windows are shut. Nothing for it: slamming my elbow through a pane of glass, I reach inside and have my wrist grabbed. Neen discovers you can’t nail a burglar to a wall with a knife if his hand is metal. ‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Boss?’

‘Yeah. Me.’

Opening the door, Neen waves me inside. ‘Thought you’d be—’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Well, I’m not.’

THE CATHEDRAL IN THE CENTRE OF FARLIGHT IS SO VIRUS-RIDDEN it has sunk into the caldera floor on which OctoV’s capital is built. It sits, faded and half melted facing Zabo Square. Cafés line the square around it, and a statue of a young woman sits under a colonnade a hundred paces away from where I am standing. She is made of bronze, and naked, obviously. Statues in Farlight always are.

The statue bears a striking resemblance to the girl next to me. At least, the face does. I can’t swear to the rest of it.

‘My great-grandmother,’ says Aptitude.

I look at her.

‘She was sixteen.’

There are things about Farlight I don’t understand. How the rules work for the high clans is one of them. What kind of family puts statues of themselves naked in public for the entire world to see?

But knowing I don’t know is a start.

Ask me six months ago and I would have said the rich and powerful don’t work to any rules at all, because they don’t have to . . .

It’s not true. They have rules. Just weird ones.

Where I come from if someone injures you, then you kill them. Provided it’s serious enough. Round here, you invite them to a party and then patronize them to death. Aptitude has to tell me what
patronize
means.

I look at her to check if she’s joking; she’s not.

Aptitude is good with words. She’s good at cooking too. She has taken over the kitchens at Golden Memories; and now people actually come to eat, instead of regarding eating as an inconvenient fuel break between drinking and fucking.

Only we’re not in Golden Memories.

As I said, we’re standing outside a café on Zabo Square, in the shade of an umbrella, looking at a bronze girl with perfect breasts and a smile that is missing from the face of the young woman beside me. Aptitude is shaking. It’s not from the cold, because the sun is so hot that sweat drips down the inside of my jacket.

The last time either of us was here, she had just got married. And shooting her husband was my first job for the general. As far as we know Jaxx thinks she is dead. Her ex-husband certainly is. But in that case . . .

‘
I don’t know
,’ I tell Aptitude.

She looks at me, eyes made large by fear.

Neen is outside the cathedral waiting for me. He is in full uniform, as are the rest of my troopers, minus their rifles. It’s not just us; everyone invited to this afternoon’s service is minus their weapons.

Paper Osamu has been strict about this.

As U/Free ambassador to this section of the spiral she will not attend any function at which weapons are displayed. Although my gun is the exception. It has full citizen status under U/Free rules.

When it’s pointed out that Paper’s demand means no one can wear swords, she says the rule doesn’t apply to ceremonial weapons. Apparently, swords aren’t dangerous, they’re decoration. Shows what she knows.

Although who knows what Paper Osamu knows? Not me.

I don’t want to know, either. Sure, she is beautiful, intelligent and ambitious. She has the body of a teenage hooker, matched to the morals of an alley cat. This usually works for me. But she also has the mind of a snake.

And her grandfather is the new U/Free president.

It’s a titular role, obviously. That means he has no real power. But then nor do the U/Free if you listen to Paper Osamu. They’re just sweet lovely people who want to help the rest of the galaxy find peace and harmony, learn to love art and live for ever.

‘What are you thinking?’ asks Aptitude.

‘About Paper Osamu.’

‘You—’ She blushes. ‘Didn’t you?’

I nod.

‘Why?’ Aptitude has grown in the last few months. Either that, or she’s been storing up questions. She asks them with a new confidence. It comes, I guess, from having to cope on her own while I was away.

‘It was expected.’

She stares at me.

‘Also,’ I tell her, ‘I needed information.’

‘And
that’s
how you get information?’

‘One of the ways,’ I say. ‘You can learn a lot in bed. Who pays protection? Who demands it? Places not to go . . . Seems the rules that apply at my end of the scale apply at the other.’

Aptitude sighs when I say this.

‘Officer on deck,’ shouts Neen, as I approach.

As one, the Aux snap to attention.

A militia major glances across and begins to scowl. Then he sees my arm, which is piston-driven, but minus the spikes, and recognizes my face. He lets me go into the cathedral first.

The Aux have places at the back.

Aptitude has a seat. It might be behind a pillar and on the outer edge of a nave, but it is a seat . . . And that’s more than half the crowd have in this place. As for me, I stamp my way to the altar step and take up my position beside General Jaxx.

‘Sven,’ he says. ‘How good of you to join us.’

We’ve kept him waiting, I realize. We’ve kept them all waiting. From the look on the general’s face, he regards this as a huge joke. I’m glad; he could equally regard it as a shooting matter.

‘Your niece is here?’

I nod, my expression flat.

He smiles. ‘You,’ he says. ‘A family man. I can’t tell you how surprised I was. And to fly her halfway across the spiral like that . . . Our glorious leader told me,’ he adds, seeing my surprise.

‘OctoV?’

‘We are but falling sparrows in his eyes,’ says the general.

I’m still trying to work out what the fuck that means, when a wind blows through the cathedral and the lights flicker. In my throat, the kyp goes berserk, as the air begins to taste of electricity.

OctoV could enter quietly if he wanted to. But why would he bother? When he can appear in the centre of a storm, and have even the U/Free blinking and wondering what the little psychopath is up to this time?

Sven
, says a voice in my head.

I snap to attention.

That isn’t kind. After I lied about Aptitude for you
.

Everyone looks at me. Well, the general, the archbishop and all those choirboys who have been shooting glances at the bishop up to this point. There are days when I want to burn this bloody city down.

Believe me
, says the voice in my head.
There are days I want to burn it down too. But it’s the only one I have
. This isn’t true. OctoV rules ten thousand systems. He has more cities than I’ve had whores.

Maybe
, the voice says petulantly.
But this is the only one I like
.

I wait for the punchline and inside my head OctoV laughs.

It’s a terrifying feeling.

You’re right
, he says.
I don’t even like this one that much
.

I want to wipe sweat from my skull, but I’m damned if I’ll give OctoV the pleasure. This time when he laughs everyone hears it. He looks about twelve and sounds younger. From what Colonel Vijay says, this is his first public appearance in more than a hundred years. ‘Well,’ says OctoV. ‘I suppose we’d better get on.’

Stepping up to General Jaxx, our glorious leader extends his hand and waits for the general to sink to his knees. I sink to my knees behind him. Although I’m not important enough to kiss the emperor’s hand.

At OctoV’s suggestion, I’m replacing the general’s ADC for the day. Reward for my part in overthrowing an evil Uplift plot. My rank of lieutenant is confirmed and the Aux now have official status. We’re going to be paid. Although I’ll believe that when it happens. I’m also officially part of the general’s staff, which allows me a second twist of silver braid.

The general’s rewards are more impressive.

General Jaxx is now Duke of Farlight. As of last night, fifteen families have gone into exile at this sign of imperial favour. His political enemies are crawling over one another in their desperation to become his friends.

If I were OctoV, I’d be afraid of putting this much power in the hands of one man. Particularly a man like General Jaxx.

But I’m not OctoV.

The choir does what choirs do, loudly and endlessly. Although I can see from the faces of those around me that they find it delightful. OctoV makes a speech in which he thanks Paper Osamu for her understanding.

He means for overlooking the fact an Octovian mother ship suddenly uncloaked in Uplift space. And then he does something strange. Our glorious leader stares out over a congregation made up of empire ministers, courtiers, generals and heads of the trading families, and calls my intelligence officer to the front.

Being Haze, he trips on the steps to the altar rail.

OctoV smiles indulgently.

‘Fuck,’ says my gun. ‘Now what?’

Everyone around us is far too polite to notice.

At a sign from the emperor, Haze removes his helmet and shakes free two braids, which drop around his shoulders. This part of OctoV’s speech is short, to the point and brilliant. The Enlightened might discriminate against Octovians, but Octovians do not discriminate against the Enlightened. Haze-ben-Col chose to serve OctoV in an elite sub-group of the Death’s Head.

That’s one way of putting it. And the general, at least, isn’t happy with that description. Although he swallows his expression quickly enough.

But OctoV has a new job for Haze. He’s to be our ambassador to the U/Free. When OctoV says this, Paper Osamu blinks. And then she smiles, twisting her lips into something close to amusement and nods approvingly. She’s impressed, and the whole galaxy can see she is impressed because we are all on lenz.

Kneeling, Haze takes a letter of introduction.

As he stands again, he catches my eye and for a moment looks apologetic. But I know how these things go. So I step back, to give myself space, and come to attention, saluting smartly.

It’s worth it for the appalled expression on his face.

‘Swings and roundabouts,’ says OctoV. ‘Swings and roundabouts.’

A wind is rising around him. The lights in the cathedral have gone back to flickering. We know our beloved leader is about to disappear before our eyes. Well, I do, and the others do if they have any sense.