Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (31 page)

There was a slapping sound, and the gun discharged. Deño’s aim delivered the round into the floor with a resonant
thud
. Diana realised, a beat later: somebody had slapped
Deño’s arm down, just before he fired.

Then everything happened very quickly, a staccato succession of actions. First Deño’s head clicking back, his chin pointing at the ceiling, and a vivid splurt of red; then
Deño’s whole torso spinning on its right foot, rotating about and then backing towards Ms Joad. Ms Joad was expressionless; but she
was
reaching into her holster for her weapon.
Deño’s was glaring at the ceiling, red gushing down his front. His lurching body collided with Ms Joad. She staggered, went onto her back foot, and Iago was there – right in
front of her. Diana couldn’t see
how
he had got there. He seemed to appear from nowhere, standing upright. He punched forward, aiming his fist at Joad’s sternum. His fist went
in, and when it came back blood was gurgling from Ms Joad’s chest.

For the first time, Ms Joad’s expression betrayed something less than self-assurance. She looked incommoded and angry. Her eyes were on Diana’s. ‘I shall see you,’ she
said, ‘
again
.’ But on ‘again’ blood bubbled from her mouth, and the word was half drowned, and she fell to the left and hit the floor with a crash.

Diana breathed in, and then out.

Her heart was galloping.

She breathed in again. Out again.

She looked down at the floor. Three human beings, sprawled over the white stone. A patch of oily-looking red liquid was expanding across the flags. The borderline of this growing area came close
to her shoes, and she stepped backward to avoid getting them dirty.

Diana looked up. Iago was standing there. The lack of a right foot was a surreal sight: the leg ended in a flange just below the ankle. But there was no blood.

‘Iago, you do not have a gun,’ she said.

‘Indeed not, Miss Diana,’ he said, stepping over the legs of Deño’s supine form and taking her hand. His stride was rendered uneven by the lack of the foot, but he
seemed to be able to put his weight squarely on the bottom of the severed stump without discomfort.

‘The door would have registered it if you had had a weapon,’ Diana repeated, a little stupidly. Then she said: ‘you are lucky the bullet missed
all
the blood vessels in
your foot.’ But as she said it, she realised it was a foolish thing to say – she saw that it did not in the least explain the state of affairs.

‘We must leave at once,’ Iago said, his voice perfectly level.

A fuller understanding of what had happened was just dawning upon Diana. ‘What did you do?’ she cried out. ‘You killed Deño! My goddess, you actually
killed
him!’

‘Would you rather him shoot you in the leg?’

‘Leg,’ she said, staring again, with a new kindling sense of horror, at the absence at the end of Iago’s leg. ‘Leg! Leg!’

‘As you can see, my legs
are
artificial, Miss Diana,’ Iago said. ‘Both of them. Having a chunk knocked off the end of one is inconvenient, but the machinery still seems
to work.’ And Diana’s problem-solving mind went: so
that
was how he was able to stand around so insouciantly in this crushing gravity.

It hardly mattered now.

She gulped, gulped again. ‘Goddess. Oh, oh, Iago,’ said Diana, taking another deep breath, and looking at the bodies. ‘You struck them down. How did you strike them both
down?’

But she could see the answer to this question. In his spare hand he was holding a knife.

‘Why didn’t the door register that as a weapon?’ she said, pointing. ‘Surely it would register a metal knife as easily as a metal gun.’

‘A metal one, yes,’ said Iago. ‘But this knife is made from glass. Come along, Miss.’

12

Flight

They went back outside, into a fragrant Korkuran dusk. Sapho – the handservant – was still sitting in the chair. She looked up at them, startled, as they came
out.

‘Everything is different now,’ said Iago, fitting his knife back into its sheath. ‘This isn’t inter-Clan rivalry. The
Ulanovs themselves
are coming after you. We
need to get upland, and we can’t trust
any
of the Argent facilities. And we certainly can’t trust any of the other MOHclans; they’ll be rubbing their hands with glee at the
opportunities opening up for them. This is a very serious state of affairs, I’m afraid.’

‘Are my MOHmies alright? Is Eva alright?’

‘We must trust them to look after themselves. Right now we need to get away. We’ll go to Al Anfal; I have friends there. Once we’re there, we’ll figure out a way to get
back upstairs. Come along.’

‘She comes with us,’ said Diana.

Iago looked at the handservant, seated, staring up at them. ‘No she doesn’t.’

‘Yes she does.’

‘She will slow us down. She is safer here.’

‘Clearly she’s not!’

‘Quite apart from anything else,’ said Iago, grouchily, ‘she
is
a murderer.’

‘Oh, Iago,’ she said. ‘We both know that’s not true.’

Iago was looking shrewdly at her. ‘Yes you’re good,’ he conceded. ‘Even though I’m guessing you don’t know the whole story.’

‘Indeed not,’ she admitted. ‘I couldn’t, for instance, have answered Ms Joad’s terrible question – back there. Could you?’

He shook his head.

‘She comes with us,’ Diana said again.

Iago gave up fighting it. ‘Alright. Come along we
three
.’ He helped the handservant out of her seat. The three of them made their way through the thickening darkness, halting
and slow. By the time they cleared the lawn dusk had thickened into actual night. The house was black behind them. Away across the bay, prickles of illumination adorned the town. But the shadows
swallowed everything up.

Stars were visible overhead.

They got in amongst the shadows of the olive grove, where they rested for a moment. But no sooner did they stop than, behind them, two cradles of light and noise were lowered through the evening
sky down onto the lawn in front of the house.

Hiding behind a tree, Diana saw the two craft settle into the turf. Their doors opened, and a half-dozen strong-limbed agents, or soldiers, or policepersons (or
whatever
they were) dashed
out and ran straight into the house.

‘Quietly,’ hissed Iago into her ear, putting a hand on her shoulder; ‘but
quickly
.’

They all three slipped through the olive forest, and came out the other side behind a low wall of uncemented plates of slate-stone. Getting beyond this obstacle was not easy, despite its modest
dimensions, but they managed it. Iago had to help Sapho up onto the top, and down on the far side. Puff, pant, puff. The black-purple sky. On the far side they crossed a road, the tarmac warm,
still hoarding the day’s heat. Dia’s crawlipers clacked softly. Iago limped rapidly on, his right arm helping Sapho stay upright. Then they were across, and making their way over a wide
downward-sloping field of lavender. The scent of the dark stalks was very strong, a clean, beautiful fragrance. Overhead the stars were distilling into full clarity. The spilled glitter of the
milky way. The million cursor-points of bright stars. Somewhere in all that profusion was the single Champagne Supernova upon which Eva had been working. And this thought sent a small pang through
Diana’s breast. Would her MOHsister ever finish that work?

Behind them, something whooshed up into the air – one of the two craft that had landed outside the main house. They all turned; the machine, pricking with illumination and humming as it
flew, was hovering above the house. A megaphone of light appeared at the underbelly, swivelling from left to right as the authorities swept the ground, looking for them. It rolled towards the
coast, away from them.

‘We need to get off this island,’ panted Diana.

‘Agreed,’ said Iago.

On the far side of the lavender field was another road, and Iago led them a hundred metres or so along it before turning off into a much larger area of forest. These trees were much taller than
olives; and the scent of pine, fierce in the nostrils though pleasant, was very strong. It was now so dark that they could see nothing, and moved with arms outstretched, passing themselves from
tree trunk to tree trunk. The ground beneath their feet was spongy with pineneedles. For what seemed to Diana a very long time they passed, painstakingly, through this blind environment.

Finally they came into a clearing; stars visible again above them. Iago pulled a fabric web off a small flycar, and keyed the door open.

‘I didn’t know you’d hidden a flitter here,’ said Diana.

They all clambered inside. The smell of plastic. Iago closed the door, and put the inside light on – eye-stinging yellow. It was a cupboard-sized space; there was barely room inside for
all three of them. ‘When we actually get going, I’ll have to drive without lights,’ Iago said; ‘and low. It may be a little hair-raising, I warn you.’

‘How far will this toy take us?’ Diana asked as she fastened her clenchbelt. In the pale lemon-coloured light of the flycar’s cabin, Sapho was sitting awkwardly, hugging
herself and looking wide-eyed. ‘You need to fix your belt – I’ll show you,’ said Diana.

‘Thank you, Miss,’ the handservant said, sitting passively as Dia fixed her clenchbelt for her. ‘What you said – back at the house, Miss?’

‘What did I say?’

‘The gentleman said I was a murderer, and you said, no.’ Sapho looked to Iago, who was booting up the interface from the driving seat. ‘He was right, Miss. I am a
murderer.’

‘It’s more complicated than that, Sapho,’ Diana said. At that moment, Iago extinguished the interior lights, and Dia felt the unpleasant stretching sensation in her gut as the
flycar rose into the night.

‘Where did you say we’re going, Iago?’ she asked, into the dark.

Iago rendered all the walls transparent, like a tourist bark, the better to be able to navigate by the faint starlight. Diana saw, indistinctly, his silhouette, blacker against this dark
ground.

‘We’re going,’ he replied, ‘to Al Anfal Li’llah. It’s beyond Turque.’

‘Will this car get us there?’

‘No, it’s too far. But it will get us off the island, which is the more pressing concern.’

They swished away through the air, flying so low that the tops of the pine trees spanked the bottom of the car with intermittent, shuddery, resonant slaps. Then they were clear of the forest,
and passed down a long sloping trajectory that missed the lip of the coastline by a metre or less. The transparency of the flycar walls was a disconcerting thing, adding to Diana’s sense of
exposure and vulnerability; but at least it gave them a superb view of this portion of the island. Many lights were on at the main house now, and one of the Ulanovs’ crafts still parked on
the lawn. The other was visible in the sky, away to the east, moving meticulously forward, sweeping its searchlight back and forth like a pendulum.

In the bay west of the island a large ship was anchored, balanced on the gleaming constellation of its own lit reflection. The ship had not been there before. ‘Is it Ulanov?’ Diana
said as they passed, low and quiet, half a thousand metres away from the ship.

‘I presume so,’ said Iago.

They left the ship behind them and Iago flew the car round the headland. Diana’s bId buzzed with a call waiting, and before she thought what she was doing she answered it.

There, shining right in the middle of the car, was Ms Joad. ‘My dear girl,’ she said. ‘What do you think you’re
doing
?’

‘Turn that off,’ Iago instructed her.

‘Don’t trust
him
!’ said Joad. ‘Don’t you know who he
is
?’

‘I know!’ retorted Diana.

‘Well how can you know
who he is
and then still trust him? How can you do anything apart from run in terror?’

‘I should trust you?’ returned Diana, a flush of anger overriding her common sense. ‘You were going to cripple me!’

‘Nonsense. You’re much too valuable intact –
that
was just playacting. And look at me now, poor lonely Ms Joad with one collapsed lung! But
you
, my dear, you are
currently fleeing into the night with the single most dangerous man in the entire solar
system
! Come back, and here’s the deal: Clan Argent to retain their position of eminence at the
Ulanovs’ right hand, yourself in the
as
-it-were throne, whatever your sister might expect – in return we take Mr Glass into custody. Simple as that.’

‘Diana,’ said Iago. ‘Please turn that off.’

‘You will regret—’ Ms Joad began to say, in her pleasantly modulated voice, as Diana severed the connection.

‘They’ll know our heading now,’ said Iago, as he rolled the car into a tight turn. Diana’s stomach heaved and yawed. ‘It makes getting away more of a
gamble.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Diana. ‘I shouldn’t have answered it.’

‘No,’ agreed Iago. ‘You shouldn’t.’

Diana felt the sting of this rebuke. ‘It was an automatic reaction.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to close down your bId,’ said Iago. ‘It is compromised. If you use it at all, for even the most trivial reason, the Ulanovs will locate you.
Can I ask you please to lock it down and erase access?’

Diana was going to object that this would leave her entirely and literally isolated – she hadn’t done without bId since she was a toddler. But there were no grounds to argue. Iago
was correct. So she closed it all down, and tickled the erase codes from their reluctant caches.

Being bIdless magnified her sense of vulnerability.

She asked Sapho if she were fitted with a bId, but of course she had nothing like that: she was only a servant, and a shanty bubble kid, after all.

They flew on, Iago keeping close to the coast and finally striking out towards open sea. After twenty minutes or so, Diana began to believe that they had indeed slipped away.

She slept fitfully, sitting up, her head at an awkward angle. When she woke her neck was sore, but the sky to the east was glorious with the colour of oranges. Sapho was
snoring, her body in harness but her head lolling forward. Iago was still at the controls. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked.