Principles of Angels (27 page)

Authors: Jaine Fenn

BOOK: Principles of Angels

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The boy’s blurry glance swept round the room. She knew he would never have been in a homespace like this. The only gap was the trapdoor of toughened glass, and the grey walls were covered in a bright collage of hangings and posters. Candles - not those foul lamps filled with human fat - burned on every flat surface. The room was furnished with topside furniture: a table, chairs, and the bed he was lying in. Then his gaze settled on her and his good eye widened. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was an incoherent croak.

Nual picked up the water bottle from the table, leaned over and raised his head with one hand. His hair was matted with dried blood, the skin beneath it hot. She squeezed a few drops of water into his mouth. He licked his lips and swallowed, his eyes fixed on her face. His emotions still battered her:
fear, confusion, shame. Love.
She didn’t return his gaze.

Don’t adore me, you stupid boy. Don’t you know I will destroy you?

She looked away and said brusquely, ‘You’re in my homespace. Do you know how you got here?’

He let his head fall back onto the pillow. ‘No, lady,’ he croaked.

‘Solo came here late last night. A remembrancer friend of yours came to the Exquisite Corpse, asking for me. When I went to the Corpse this remembrancer told me that you had managed to get yourself to his homespace, half-dead. He said you were ranting about having been too weak to resist, that you had betrayed me. So he came to find me. I think he expected me to pass judgment on you.’ She smiled to show that this was not her intention. ‘I flew him back to his homespace. There you were, damaged, unconscious. I brought you here, though you have your friend Fenya to thank for tending to your injuries.’

The boy regarded her like a frightened animal.

For a moment she reconsidered her decision, and almost dived into his mind to find the nature and extent of his betrayal—But no, she was tired of not trusting.

She spoke more quietly. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Taro, but you must tell me what happened.’

He looked away, staring up at the ceiling, to where Nual had disguised the grey underside of the City in draperies. ‘Aye lady,’ he murmured, his voice hoarse. ‘Then you must decide whether or not to let me live.’

He had been a mess when they first met, confused and under the influence of some drug. His life had obviously not improved since. ‘What did you do after I left you at the end of Chance Street?’ she asked.

‘When?’ Taro asked, blinking. ‘Oh. Was it yesterday? Aye, only yesterday. I talked to the Minister. He wasn’t happy. And he—’ Taro closed his eyes. ‘I’ve done a terrible thing, lady.’

‘Tell me, what is this terrible thing you have done?’ Only the slightest effort and she could read it, this betrayal that was tearing him apart - but he was willing to tell her freely, and she would grant him that kindness.

He turned his head away. ‘He gave me orders fer a removal. To give to you.’

‘Oh.’ He was wearing only tattered, ripped breeches, and they didn’t look like they had any pockets. ‘Where are those orders now, Taro?’

He put his hands over his face and rolled onto his side, away from her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped, trying to stop the tears leaking from his eyes. ‘I tried . . . I really tried. But I weren’t strong enough. He—He knows ’ow to hurt me, and not just me body. He took them.’

‘Who, Taro?’ she asked gently, ‘who took the orders?’

‘Scarrion,’ he said, shaking with fear. ‘The Screamer, he found them when ’e—Lady, I swear I tried to keep it from him, only tell ’im what I had to to make the pain stop, but . . . But it was no good.
I
was no good. He should’ve killed me.’ Taro pulled his knees to his chest and curled up against the wall.

Nual watched his quivering back and thought through what he had said. It would be just like the Minister to use the ultimate sanction of orders for a removal to get her attention. But who could the orders be for? The rules of the Concord wouldn’t allow another hit on Vidoran without further voting - assuming the Minister had really wanted Vidoran dead in the first place - and rumours from the Exquisite Corpse didn’t suggest any other hot-list contenders coming up for removal yet. But the Minister didn’t always play by his own rules, not with her, anyway.

And now Vidoran’s Screamer had the orders, and that was not good at all.

Almost absently, reacting to his need for comfort, she reached out to stroke Taro’s hair. His despair washed over her, momentarily eclipsing her own concerns. She leaned over and wrapped her arms round him, letting him cry, absorbing the horror and self-loathing, draining the poison. It felt good to touch someone, even someone this damaged.

He cried for a while, then uncurled slightly and muttered something she didn’t catch.

‘Taro?’

He sniffed. ‘There’s a copy,’ he whispered. ‘I’d almost forgot . . . Limnel, the boss, ’e took a copy of the ’spike. Before Scarrion came. Lady, we could get it.’

‘Where would he keep it, do you know?’

‘There’s a lock-up store, near the room where ’e took me. I’ll bet it’s in there. I can show you.’ He rolled over and tried to sit up, then groaned and fell back.

‘You aren’t going anywhere,’ she said, sternly.

‘
No!
I mean—Sorry, lady, but . . . I have to. Must undo what I’ve done.’

His despair had turned to hope, almost equally pitiable. She could still take the simpler option and read his mind for the location of the copy, or she could dominate him, make him her willing slave - but she rather thought she needed a friend as much as he did.

‘Taro, you’re in no state to go anywhere at the moment, and I’m afraid we do not have the time to wait for you to heal.’

‘Please! I can’t jus’ do nothin’ - it’s all my fault!’

‘From the look of you, you did everything you could to resist the Screamer. You cannot be blamed for his actions, Taro. Stay here, rest. You’ll be safe. No one will find you here. I will go for the orders.’

‘Lemme come with you. I have to.’ He needed to redeem himself. And he did not want to be parted from her. Despite her attempts to keep her distance, the link between them was already growing.

There was one way that he could go with her, though it would mean breaking the promise she had made not to use her powers. So be it: she had pretended to be human for too long, and she had spent so long hiding that she had forgotten what it was like to get close to someone. Because of that reticence, she lacked experience using her powers in this way: she could not be sure what effect such a drastic intervention might have on him, or on her. But it was what he needed, and what she wanted. The time was right.

She asked softly, ‘Do you trust me, Taro?’

‘I trust you.’

Of course he did. ‘There is a way you can come with me, but first I have to explain something, and it’s going to be hard to understand. It’s something very few people know.’

He stared up at her, eagerly, adoringly, waiting on her words.
Damn him
.

‘Not all aliens have wings, Taro,’ she started. ‘I am not human.’

‘Not human? But you’re—’

She tried not to pick up the end of the sentence he was too embarrassed to speak—

You’re so beautiful.

‘There are old, nasty secrets being exposed to the light here, Taro,’ she went on. ‘Do you know who the Sidhe were?’

‘I’ve ’eard topsiders mention them. Din’t they run things a long time ago?’

‘The time of the Sidhe Protectorate was a long period of stability - or, as some prefer to call it, repression - when the Sidhe ruled humanity. The Sidhe looked human, but where humans are limited to five senses, the Sidhe operated in a wider spectrum. Trying to explain what that means would be like trying to explain colour to a person who had been born blind. And while humans influence the world around them purely by their actions, the Sidhe had the power to influence reality, or rather, how sentient beings perceive reality, by thought. Legend has it their glance could bare your soul, or stop your breath, or induce total obedience. Most of them, the powerful ones, the ones anyone saw, were women. Humans used to say that to love a Sidhe woman was to doom yourself to the death of ecstasy. The men . . . well, that’s a story for another time.’ She sighed. ‘Fear of the Sidhe was one of the few things that has ever united humanity. But, like you said, all that was long ago. They’re gone now, dead these last thousand years, all that power reduced to nothing more than fairy-tales to scare children. Everyone knows that.’

‘Except they ain’t,’ said Taro carefully.

This boy was not the idiot he liked others to think he was.

She nodded slowly. ‘The Sidhe always were a minority. They ruled partly by controlling humanity’s access to technology and partly by using awe, adoration and illusion, making themselves into goddesses who were willingly worshipped. When they were - apparently - destroyed, the survivors went into hiding. They encouraged the belief that they had been defeated utterly and were gone forever, which wasn’t so hard to do, given how humans always like to believe tales of their own superiority. The only way such a small group could exert any control is by remaining hidden, and by making the possibility that they might still exist ridiculous. And by being united. Just one renegade, one rogue with Sidhe powers and no loyalty to the Sidhe agenda, could threaten their secret hold on humanity.’

‘Oh,’ whispered Taro. ‘And that’d be you, then?’

Nual smiled at his expression. He looked understandably shocked, but not afraid.
Not appalled.
There was none of the hatred she picked up from other humans at the mere mention of the Sidhe. Then again, most humans didn’t spend their lives struggling to survive in squalid surroundings beneath a floating city.

‘I am telling you this because there is a way you could come with me to get the chip back. I could help you. But it would mean using my—my talents on you. I want you to understand what that means. For the past seven years I have been in hiding, making myself blind, not using my abilities, all so I could survive amongst humans, so I could fit in. But I am still Sidhe. If I try to heal you I will be invading your mind, reaching into you. It may change you. It will certainly change . . . us.’

‘It’s all right. I ain’t frightened,’ he said, straightening his narrow shoulders with a grimace of pain.

No
, thought Nual,
you aren’t. Brave, foolish boy.
‘All right. Try to relax. I’ll do everything else.’

Taro obeyed. Nual knelt beside him and placed her hand on his forehead.

She went in slowly, letting the images and sensations uppermost in his mind wash over her on the way through his consciousness: the blond man smiles as he draws the knife - the boy with the crooked nose and the sharp suit holds out a spoon of golden powder - the Minister hands over the dataspike, his face grave - herself, sitting across the table in the Exquisite Corpse - in a dark room smelling of sex, the battered, naked girl lies curled up on a filthy mattress - the Angel, dark-haired and wide-eyed, jerks backwards as the bolt blows half her head away—

Names and associations adhered to the images. Nual absorbed Taro’s recent experiences, allowing them to seep into her memory. She braced herself to accept all the emotions that accompanied them: fear; shame; terror; confusion. Powerlessness. Hopelessness. She felt a growing admiration for the boy’s determination to survive, and to do what he felt was right. She would do what she could to help him.

She had no direct control over the physical, but fortunately, the addiction was mostly psychological and she could excise the need, the insistent demand for more. The physical symptoms of withdrawal she could only reduce, not remove, but she could and did encourage his body’s natural healing processes, and she infused him with energy drawn from the lives that - now her shields were down - she could feel seething all around her. And she dulled the physical pain, just enough to let him function. She could have easily dulled his mental anguish too - he might take it as a mercy, to lose the memories that haunted him—

No!
His mind must remain his own.

But she let her consciousness drift like a ghost through the core of his being for a little longer, taking the time to enjoy being in another’s mind.

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