Carnival-SA (11 page)

A scientist—an anthropologist or biologist—might have cautioned him against jumping to conclusions. But to Michelangelo, it was breathtakingly obvious that the winged animals were the city builders, the native inhabitants. Even if several of them did not hold objects in their hands that he tentatively identified as a light-pen, a paintbrush, a chisel, the eyes would have given them away. They were all iris, shot through with threads of gold or green—but even in the thing the New Amazonians inadequately called a
frieze,
they were aware.

The Dragons towered three or four feet taller than he, even with their long necks ducked to fit into the frieze. They moved in the animation, the three humans the focus of their predatory attention. Michelangelo felt them watching, and it took the gallery railing across his lower back to make him realize that he had backed the entire width of the catwalk away.

6

AFTER THEY RETURNED TO THEIR ROOMS, MICHELANGELO took his time finishing his report to
Kaiwo Maru
and getting ready for bed. Vincent waited until he ordered the lights off and slid in beside him. He turned under the covers, cloth brushing his skin, and pressed himself against his partner’s back, draping an arm around Angelo’s waist. Michelangelo stiffened in the darkness.

“This is twice now,” Vincent said. “Are you going to tell me why you’re angry?” Again in their own private language, needlessly complicated, half implied and half tight-beamed, the parts of speech haphazardly switched and vocabulary and syntax swiped from every language either one of them had encountered.

For a moment, he thought Michelangelo wouldn’t answer. But his hand covered Vincent’s, and he said,

“Twice?”

“On
Kaiwo Maru
and at dinner. I can’t think what I said to anger you, but it must be something.” He kissed Angelo’s neck.

Michelangelo didn’t respond. Not even a shiver, and this time he let the silence drag. Vincent was just about to retreat to his own side of the bed when Michelangelo stretched, turning so their eyes could meet, the transmitted light of the nebula revealing his expression. Which, as usual, admitted nothing.

“If we’re going to work together—”
—you have to talk to me.
It was more than talking, though. He wanted what they had once had, the trust and the knowledge that Michelangelo would be where he was needed. And it was unfair to ask.

Vincent
was the one keeping secrets that could get them both killed. The betrayal had already happened, and Angelo inevitably was going to find out about it and have to live with the consequences.
How many
times are you going to make his choices for him?

Whatever lies Michelangelo was implying, they were for the job; he had made that plain on
Kaiwo
Maru.
The smallest dignity Vincent could do in return was not to lie to Michelangelo about Vincent’s honorable intentions.

So Vincent leaned forward, instead, and kissed his partner. There was a moment of resistance as their wardrobes analyzed the situation, but as he’d suspected after
Kaiwo Maru,
they were still keyed to each other. Vincent had never changed his program, and apparently Michelangelo hadn’t either. The resistance faded, and Angelo took Vincent into his arms.

Sounds drifted into the room from outside, attenuated by height. Music, laughter. A woman singing, the nauseating reek of scorched flesh from some restaurant, people getting the jump on Carnival. The colored sky shone through the false skylights, filling the room with a faint glow. Michelangelo’s mouth opened. He kissed hard, well, fluently, his hands soft and warm on Vincent’s back. And Vincent…wished he believed.

Lesa undressed herself and hung her clothes up to air without bothering House to raise the lights. The night was cloudless and there was enough illumination through the ceiling that she had no problem maneuvering in her own bedroom. But it was dark enough that she was surprised to find the bed already occupied when she tugged the covers back.

Surprised, but not terribly so. “Hello, Robert.”

He was awake. He propped himself on his elbows, the sheets gliding down his chest, revealing curly hair. Glossy scars contrasted with the oiled smoothness of his scalp. His teeth flashed in the darkness. “I thought you’d be longer.”

She shrugged, and slid into bed beside him, rolling onto her stomach, voice muffled in the pillow. “Let me guess. I forgot to tell Agnes that I wanted you tonight?”

“She said to check in with her in the morning, because she thought you’d be late, too, and didn’t feel like waiting up. Arms down by your sides, please?”

His hands were strong; he slicked them down with the oil from the bedstand while she shrugged her nightshirt off, and started work on her shoulders first. Maybe not safe to give him so much autonomy, so much freedom. Maybe not wise to be as permissive with him as she was. But this was Robert, after all, and he was as much hers as he could be without a transfer and a marriage, and she trusted him more than any woman she knew.

She didn’t doubt his temper, or his capacity for violence. They were marked on his body, and his status as males figured such things was significant. But he’d never directed either of those things at her, or any woman.

Not gentle, no. But
smart
.

“Thank you,” he said.

Her spine cracked under his weight. “Mmph.” It might have stood a better chance of being a word if she hadn’t had a mouthful of pillow. Robert pulled the cushion out of the way, straightening her neck, and ran his thumbs down her spine, triggering a dizzying release of endorphins. “You heard something? Or is this a social call?”

“Would that it were, my lady.”

She laughed at his pretend formality. “It can be a social call, too.”

“Business first.” But the kiss he planted between her shoulder blades promised pleasant business, at least. He stayed bent down, nuzzling through her hair to brush his lips across her ear. “Did you meet the Colonials?”

“Yes. And yes, it’s them. Well, I’m as sure as I can be.”

“And what do you think? Can we trust Katherinessen?”

His hands forestalled her shrug. Flinty, dangerous hands, the gnarled scar across the palm of the left one rough when it caught on her skin. “Do we have another choice? I can’t tell, Robert. I don’t know. Claude won’t risk it. There’s no guarantee about Katherinessen. Kusanagi-Jones is hard-line Old Earth, though I don’t understand it and it makes me sick to think about, and Claude’s bound to think placating the Coalition is safer than open opposition, especially if it means allying ourselves with Coalition worlds in open revolt.”

“Appeasement has such a glorious history.”

“This isn’t about glory. And it worked for Ur. Sort of.”

“Which is why they’re so eager to be rid of the Governors now?”

His tone was arch and dry. She matched it. “Keep it in your pants, Robert.”

“I’m not wearing any pants,” he said reasonably.

Somewhere, she found the energy to snort. “Anyway, if Mother finds out I’ve been letting you read history, she’ll—”

“Have your hide for a holster. I know.” His caresses became more personal and she rolled over, looking up through the dark. He touched the tip of her nose. “What are you going to do?”

She shrugged, and sighed. “I’ll know tomorrow. If we miss the meeting, it’s not like we’ll get another chance—”

“No.” He kissed her. “Not in time for Julian, anyway.”

Kusanagi-Jones was long past feeling guilt about
lying
. Conscience was one of the first things to go. If he’d ever had much of one to begin with, the job had burned it out. So it was with a certain amount of amusement that he identified the emotion he was feeling over telling the truth—as guilt. Well, a limited sort of truth, with the limitations carefully obscured, but still. Unmistakably the truth. The fact that he was doing it selfishly didn’t enter into it, he told himself. The fact that Vincent was right, and what he really wanted was to punish—

Of course, Vincent only knew that because Kusanagi-Jones wasn’t bothering to hide it. Pretoria had probably picked up on it, too, but with luck she’d think it was jealousy, male games. Oh, hell.

An omission was as good as a lie, and he had told Vincent he’d chosen the therapy. He was justifying. Justifying, because if Vincent didn’t think Kusanagi-Jones cared for him anymore, that was one less way Vincent could hurt him. Justifying, because if he
hadn’t
cared, if he was doing his job, then he was a much better actor than this. Justifying because he, Kusanagi-Jones, deserved Vincent’s loathing and anger for other reasons entirely—reasons Kusanagi-Jones was too good a Liar for Vincent to suspect, even years later.

Justifying, and it was the sort of thing, the sort of self-delusion, that got you killed. He knew it. And so did Vincent, apparently, because Vincent pushed against his hand and looked up, leaving an arc of moisture cooling on Kusanagi-Jones’s skin. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “Or else I’m more out of practice than I thought.”

The dry tone, brittle enough to break an edge and cut yourself on. It still worked, too; Kusanagi-Jones laughed, an honest laugh. Startled into it, though nothing Vincent said was surprising. It was just very
Vincent,
and Kusanagi-Jones had been so deep in his own bout of self-pity that he’d forgotten.

“Tired,” he said, not bothering to hide the fact that it was a lie.

Warm hands stroked his thighs. “Mmm. You were the one who said you didn’t need rest; you had chemistry.”

“Rub it in.” It could only be fraught if he let it. He was a professional. And
Earth
needed what they had come for. The Coalition needed it; the Governors were ruthless in balancing population and consumption against their programmed limits. Even wind farms and geothermal caused impact. Action, reaction, as incontrovertible as thermodynamics. And—seemingly abrogating those laws—clean, limitless New Amazonian energy could change the fate of two dozen worlds.

And Kusanagi-Jones needed their mission to fail. Or more precisely,
he
needed a win—because he
wasn’t
Vincent Katherinessen, and he wasn’t getting any younger, and accepting therapy had kept him his job, but it hadn’t done enough to lift the cloud after their last awful failure, the mess on New Earth. Kusanagi-Jones needed a win.

And meanwhile, ethics and—sod it,
humanity
—demanded he take a fall. Just like New Earth. But a win here was the only way he could count on staying alive. The only way he might be allowed to stay with Vincent. It left him cold from throat to groin to think of losing that again. Vincent had always been worth paying attention to in bed. And Vincent had noticed that he still wasn’t doing so. “Angelo,” he complained, “you’re
thinking
.”

“And that’s supposed to be your job?” Not quite Vincent’s dry snap, but enough. “Really want to know?”

Vincent nodded, his depilated cheek smooth on Kusanagi-Jones’s skin. “I’ve no right to ask.”

Somehow, in their own private language, it was possible to talk. “You never came,” Kusanagi-Jones said, as if his betrayal hadn’t happened. And as far as Vincent knew, it hadn’t. “I know. Unrealistic expectations. You couldn’t have come. Couldn’t have found me, and there was nowhere to run. Doesn’t help.”

Kusanagi-Jones felt Vincent flinch. “I failed you.”

“Didn’t—”

“I did,” he said, as if he needed to. “But you took the therapy.”

“I did,” he said. Six months of biochemical and psychological treatments. Kusanagi-Jones wouldn’t call it torture; they’d both experienced torture. Profoundly unpleasant. That was all. And he wouldn’t let his hands shake talking about it now. “They said I was a model patient. Very willing.”

Vincent tensed, shoulder against his thigh, the long muscles of his body tightening. “If this is—”

“Vincent,” he said, “I don’t want to lie to you.”

That shudder might have been relief, or pain. Or the flinch of a guilty conscience. But Vincent nodded and shifted his weight, moving back, pulling his warmth away. Kusanagi-Jones stopped him, tightening his fingers on Vincent’s head.

“I can counterfeit anything,” he said, and waited for the realization to settle in. He knew it would, although it took longer than he expected. But he felt it take hold, felt Vincent understand what he meant, felt his grief turn to disbelief.

“You’re amazing,” Vincent said, quiet voice vibrating with excitement, suppressed laughter, his breath both warming and cooling Michelangelo’s skin. “A therapy team. A cursed therapy team. You beat
reeducation
. You son of a bitch.”

“S’what I do. Not just you who’s good at his job.”

Vincent shook his head. “I see why you would be mad at me.”

“It’s done.” And it was. Gone and past mending, but maybe leaving room. If Michelangelo decided Vincent was worth more than his ethics.

Michelangelo drew one knee up and pressed his palm into the coarse, rich nap of Vincent’s braids, urging silently. And Vincent, after a thoughtful pause, acquiesced.

Later, he slid over Michelangelo, lithe body warm as he straddled his hips, fumbling their bodies into connection before pinning Michelangelo’s hands to the bed. Fingers flexed through fingers and the sheets bunched in strangely
material
ways as Vincent exerted the strength that had always excited them both, and Michelangelo pushed back, spreading his arms to draw Vincent’s mouth down on his own. Vincent groaned, breath rasping, and Michelangelo slurped sweat off his neck—quickly, before his wardrobe could wick it away—and left banners of suck-marks purpling on Vincent’s golden-brown chest. The Gorgon’s radiance, bright as moonlight, cast diffuse shadows rather than razored ones, colors layered on Vincent’s skin like a Secunda sunset, and Vincent’s meticulous nails gouged crescents on the backs of Michelangelo’s hands.

It was good.

But it wasn’t what it had been. It couldn’t be; there was too much moving under the surface now, and Kusanagi-Jones couldn’t set it aside. Vincent was a professional, but he wasn’t a Liar, and he was keeping back something. Once, Kusanagi-Jones wouldn’t have minded. Once he would have known it was orders, and Vincent would tell him when he should.