Resolution (24 page)

At one point a neophyte skater - not Anna - slipped, tangled another person’s feet, and in seconds there was a pile of a dozen or more fallen people. Dirk’s blade caught in a gouge in the ice and he rolled -
look out!
- and whipped his arm up in a forearm block, stopped hurtling steel by reflex, and a skater fell over him.

‘Shit.’ Dirk disentangled himself, pushed over to Hilde. ‘You all right?’

‘I am. How’s your arm?’

‘Just the muscle. It’ll be bruised.’ Dirk rubbed it with his other hand. ‘Better that, than stopping a skate-blade with my skull.’

‘Right. Amateurs.’ Hilde looked at the fallen people getting to their knees and brushing off snow and ice-dust, laughing. Then she stared up into the bright-lit café. ‘Neither of them’s noticed.’

‘Your mothers?’

‘Right. Hey!’ Hilde whistled to Kian and Anna, who were slowly making their way across the ice, avoiding the skaters who had tripped. ‘You guys want to go for a walk?’

‘Where?’ Kian drew close, keeping hold of Anna.

‘I know a scary graveyard we can visit.’

‘Merde.’

‘What, you scared or something?’

‘Only of what your mother will do if she finds out.’

‘Yeah? Then we’ll make sure she doesn’t, right?’

‘I...’ Kian looked at Dirk. ‘All right.’

They grinned in unison.

Shadowed wings spread against black sky: the tomb’s statue might have been devil or angel; in the night, it was impossible to tell. From further inside the graveyard, Hilde’s clear laugh came echoing back. All Anna could do was shiver.

‘It
is
creepy here,’ said Kian.

‘I know.’ Anna placed her palm against his chest. ‘But I’m glad—’

Then they heard Hilde again, but this time she was screaming.

Dirk
—

Golden
sparks glimmered in Kian’s eyes as he ran at unnatural speed through the darkness, avoiding obstacles, Anna forgotten as he raced to find his brother. He vaulted a headstone, skidded on a path, showering gravel...

Blue, it shone: a tracery in the air touched here and there with blazing scarlet.

What the hell is it?

‘Kian.’

‘You’re all right?’

‘Yeah.’

The brothers watched as the twisted maze of light hung roiling in the night air. They moved with unspoken consent to their right, and something in the apparition’s shape altered to match.

Watching us.

Then a circle of white light slid across a mausoleum, and the low drone of a police aircar sounded overhead. The glowing apparition winked out of existence as though it had never been.

‘Merde alors.
’

‘Got that right, bro.’

Above them, the police aircar moved on.

They helped up Hilde from where she had fallen, and led her back to the cemetery’s boundary where Anna still waited, too petrified to flee.

‘Scarier than we thought,’ said Kian.

‘Some moron with a holo projector,’ said Dirk.

‘Yeah. Probably thought—’

‘—that was funny, right.’

They headed back in silence to the fair.

Frau Volk and Frau Schönherr had abandoned their demitasses of espresso and were scanning the crowd of skaters, their faces pinched in cold disapproval.

‘Sorry.’ Hilde came up behind her mother and squeezed her arm. ‘There was an accident, a pile-up on the rink, so we got off.’

‘I couldn’t see you.’

‘I’m sorry, Mother.’ There was enough genuine feeling in that to surprise Frau Volk, jolting her out of interrogation mode. ‘I really am.’

She would not look at Dirk.

Anna, with an abandoned-puppy look in her brown eyes, moved to her own mother’s side, away from Kian.

I did run off pretty fast. Damn it.

‘Can we go home now, Mutti?’ Anna asked her mother.

They walked in a loose group back to the aircar, not in silence but making awkward Smalltalk which bounced with odd intonations and pauses; and it was obvious by the time they climbed inside the cold vehicle, breath steaming, that this was the last outing they would make together.

From the forecourt, Kian and Dirk watched the aircar whisk straight up, hang over the convent, turn towards Zurich, and begin its acceleration. The twins stared up at the stars a moment longer, then headed for the entrance.

‘No-one’s seen a Zajinet since they—’

‘—kidnapped Mother and took her—’

‘—to Beta Draconis III. Right.’

They sensed the scanfields probing them before the doors clicked open. Perhaps they would be safe inside.

‘But they can teleport.’

‘Or something like it.’

‘Scheiss.’

‘And
merde.’

They climbed the granite steps and headed for their room.

Aliens who can teleport?
The stories had never seemed real.

Tonight, neither of them expected to sleep.

<>

~ * ~

17

NULAPEIRON AD 3423

Gleaming black morphglass dragons towed the floating coffin. Chains formed of blinding white diamond emerged from the dragons’ shoulder blades and led back to the golden bier, draped with the dark-blue d’Ovraison livery. Behind, legions of the Seventh Army in full dress uniform, polished graser rifles held high, marched to the funeral cadence beaten out by military drums.

For two hours the procession moved along the Via Imperata, while the silent populace watched from ground level and nobles in their floating platforms bowed their heads. As the obsidian dragons drew close to the great bronze doors of the Aedes Sanctuaria, a two-hundred-strong choir of priestesses sang the plaintive lament of
Requiem to A Hero,
and in the crowd below Tom’s platform a woman broke down and sobbed.

Glassbirds swooped through the air, making no sound.

Elva stood beside Tom, and her presence was immensely comforting, though they exchanged no words and did not even touch hands. This was a formal occasion, and they would honour Corduven’s memory by obeying the protocols of his class.

For you, my friend.

Tom shivered as the coffin slid past their position. The sharp scent of incense drifted into his nostrils, but it could not mask the acidic stench as the tall bronze doors swung open at the broadway’s terminus, revealing the swirling green luminescence of the Altissimus Vortex Mortis which would consign Corduven, coffin and all, into chemical oblivion.

For the rest of the ceremony Tom could only watch numbly, scarcely hearing the eulogies as the coffin unhooked itself from the black dragons and floated above the Vortex, awaiting the temple’s command.