Our Lady of the Ice (27 page)

It was done. All of it.

“Yes,” Eliana said. “We can’t be out too late.”

“Eliana—” Diego started, but Eliana had already taken Lady Luna’s arm and led her away. She had one hand inside her handbag, and she glanced over her shoulder, one last time, before disappearing into the crush of people.

The party clattered on around him. He sucked in breath, trying to calm himself. When he looked back, he caught sight of Eliana’s glacier-blue dress fluttering around the side of the closest exit.

Mr. Cabrera was glaring at him from across the room. He’d seen the whole thing. Of course he had.

Diego walked out of the party. The exit led into the hallway, opulent and underlit, the way expensive hallways always are. He wasn’t a part of himself anymore. He wasn’t Diego. He was just Mr. Cabrera’s man, the boy Mr. Cabrera had lifted out of the gutters and molded into exactly what Ignacio Cabrera wanted.

At the end of the hallway, the elevator dinged.

Diego broke into a run, racing down the length of the hallway.
Eliana and Lady Luna dove into the elevator, their dresses waving like flags. The doors closed before he got to them. But he stood where he was, watching the arrow go down in a slow steady arc, waiting to see where they got off. It didn’t stop till it reached the ground floor.

Diego slammed into the stairs. He took them two and three at a time, his breath coming hard and fast. More work, but quicker than waiting for the elevator to come back up. And the exercise numbed his brain for what he was about to do.

He slowed when he came to the first floor, took a deep breath, stepped out into the lobby. Lady Luna and Eliana weren’t anywhere to be seen. He hoped they hadn’t tried to double back with the elevator; if they’d used the stairs, he’d have known.

He walked up to the concierge, who looked at him with distaste.

“Excuse me,” Diego said. “I’m a valet for Lady Marianella Luna. She left her identification up at the party. Have you seen her?”

The concierge gave him a thin-lipped smile. “She just stepped outside, sir. You’ll have to hurry; we called a taxi for her.”

A taxi. Shit. Diego nodded and bounded out through the spinning door. He didn’t expect to see them. He hoped he wouldn’t see them.

He saw them.

They stood on the curb, clutching each other’s hands, staring down the dark street. Nobody out this late. It’d take a while for a taxi to arrive.

Eliana glanced nervously over her shoulder, then screeched and jumped back, fumbling in her purse. Lady Luna turned more slowly, her chest rising and falling.

“Look,” Diego said, “I think you might misunderstand—”

Eliana pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.

“Baby,” he said. “You don’t have to do this.”

She didn’t answer, only stared at him with wide, fearful eyes. The gun wobbled in her hand. Diego lifted his arms over his head. She wasn’t going to shoot him. She knew how to shoot at targets, but she didn’t know how to shoot at people.

“Mr. Cabrera just wants to talk,” he said.

“No, he doesn’t,” said Lady Luna, and then she leaned over and whispered something into Eliana’s ear. Eliana nodded, short and quick.

They both turned and ran, darting down the nearby alley.

Diego dropped his hands to his sides. An alley. They’d run into a
fucking alley
.

He refused to believe Eliana was this stupid. But maybe she was enough in love with him to think he wouldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t hurt her friend. Even if he had walked out on her. He’d seen how badly she’d shaken when she’d pulled her gun.

Maybe they were just scared, both of them. He figured cyborgs could get scared like anyone else. They weren’t robots, like Mr. Cabrera had said.

Anything that could die could get scared.

He eased his gun out of his pocket and let it hang inconspicuously at his side. He took slow, confident steps into the alley. The lights were burned out, the shadows long and thick. He didn’t see Eliana or Lady Luna.

Diego began to think this might not have been such a good idea.

Then he heard footsteps. He lifted his gun and pointed it into the darkness. Eliana emerged, holding up her own gun. Her face was streaked with dark rivers where tears had run through her makeup. The sight of her nearly broke Diego’s heart.

“Please,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m leaving. But you don’t have to do this.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you.” Diego moved forward. He kept his gaze on Eliana’s face. “I mean it, babe. He just wants Lady Luna. That’s all. He doesn’t even know who you are, thank Christ, and I’m not angry at you for getting out of the city.”

Eliana took a step back. The gun caught a bit of light from the street and flashed in his eyes.

“Please,” she said again, almost a whisper.

And then a great, sudden weight slammed into him from his right. Diego went barreling across the alley and plowed into the side of the building. Pain erupted, bright and sharp in the left side of his face. He tasted blood.

Footsteps echoed behind him.

Diego whirled around and caught sight of Eliana fleeing the alley.

The weight slammed into him again. This time, it knocked him to the ground. Diego hit the back of his head, and everything went black-and-white, like film burning. He didn’t have his gun anymore. When the world settled, Diego stared up at the strip of dark dome peeking between the two buildings. His mouth hurt; when he ran his tongue over his teeth, one of them moved.

“Stand up.”

It was Lady Luna’s voice. He recognized it from the advertisements, throaty and aristocratic. He rolled onto his hands and knees, feeling around for the gun.

“You won’t find it. Stand up.”

Diego lifted his head. Lady Luna towered over him, not a single fucking hair out of place. She had his gun. Not that she was pointing it at him. Not that she needed to use it.

Diego spit out his lost tooth.

“Why didn’t you do this before?” he asked. “When we came to your house?”

“I wasn’t so desperate then.”

She kicked him, although it happened so fast that he only realized after he was laid out on his back a few feet away, pain racing up and down his spine.

Lady Luna knelt beside him. Her expression was cold. Machinelike. She put a hand on his throat, and when he tried to sit up, he struggled against her grip, his windpipe squeezing shut.

“I can keep doing this until I kill you,” she said. “But I won’t.”

“Why?” Diego choked out.

“Because you aren’t the one who wants me dead.”

Diego hardly had time to register what she was saying, what the hell that even meant. He was aware of Lady Luna drawing back her fist, and then he was aware of nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

MARIANELLA

Marianella stepped out of the taxi. Her limbs felt strange—weak. She paid the driver in cash, careful to hand the money over with her left hand, the hand she had not used to beat Diego and leave him bleeding in an alley. If the driver noticed the blood splattered across the front of her dress, he didn’t say anything. She’d tried to hide it with her coat.

“You sure you want me to drop you off here?” he asked, leaning out his window. The gates to the amusement park rose up out of the cement. Eliana was sitting on the steps, her head bent down so that her face was covered by her hair.

“Yes,” Marianella said. “I’m meeting a friend.”

“Whatever.” The driver tucked the money into an envelope and sped off, leaving Marianella standing on the curb. Eliana lifted her head enough that Marianella saw the glint of her eyes. She almost didn’t want to walk across the street, almost didn’t want to face Eliana head-on.

It had to be done, though.

Marianella took a deep breath, lifted up the hem of her dress, and walked over to the park gate. Eliana watched her through the tangle of her hair. Her eyes were red from crying, and Marianella could make out an almost imperceptible vibration in her shoulders.

She stopped a few paces away from Eliana. Let the fabric slide out of her hands. They stared at each other in the shimmering, cold darkness.

“I’m sorry,” Marianella whispered.

“Is he dead?”

The question was hard, edged in ice. Marianella shook her head.

Eliana looked away, off in the direction of the smokestack district. “I couldn’t get in,” she said. “The gate was locked.”

“I know. I can open it.” Marianella wondered why Sofia hadn’t let Eliana in. Surely she’d seen her crying on the surveillance recorders. It was probably because Eliana was human. Sofia could be so cruel sometimes.

Marianella walked over to the gate and folded her hand around the lock. Energy bolted through her palm; for a moment she felt frazzled and lit up. Then the gate clicked open. She dropped her hand away and looked over at Eliana. She was crying again, silent tears running in rivers over her cheeks.

“Oh, sweetie,” Marianella murmured. She glided over to Eliana and knelt down beside her, not caring about the damp, oil-stained cement. For one shuddering second she was afraid that Eliana was going to pull away from her, but instead the opposite happened, and Eliana collapsed onto her shoulder, weeping loudly. Marianella held her close and stroked her hair and made calming noises as though Eliana were a frightened animal.

“He tried to
kill
you!” Eliana wailed.

I know,
Marianella thought, but instead she said, “It was Ignacio who wanted me dead. Not Diego. We need to get inside the park before—” Eliana wailed more loudly, and Marianella didn’t let herself finish.
Before Ignacio comes looking for us.

Gently, Marianella lifted Eliana to her feet. Eliana was as pliant as a doll, leaning up against Marianella for support, her steps trembling and weak. Together, they walked through the gate, leaving Hope City behind them.

Marianella guided Eliana over to a nearby bench and then went back to shut and lock the gate. She looked through the bars, out at the empty street. The streetlamps flickered, casting jittery shadows
on the outside. It made her think that someone was out there, lurking, watching, with a loaded gun pointed straight at her heart. She didn’t like being in view of the street.

She turned away and walked back over to Eliana.

“Let’s get you a place to wash up,” she said softly, pulling Eliana up to standing. She would take Eliana to the Ice Palace, at least for the night. Sofia would be there, and Marianella needed to speak to her.

They walked along. The only sounds were their footsteps and Eliana’s crying. Marianella wondered if Eliana was in shock. Already it felt as though Eliana were walking through some other plane of existence, like she wasn’t aware of Marianella’s presence at all.

Finally, the Ice Palace appeared in the distance, the spotlights turned on as if to act as a beacon. Sofia and her generators. Marianella guided Eliana along. A maintenance drone slid across the pathway, chirping once to acknowledge Marianella before it disappeared into the shrubbery, on its way to whatever it’d been programmed to do. Marianella wondered if it was one of the newly sentient ones, if it had tripped the wires that had caught fire and exploded in that power plant.

A figure moved up ahead on the path. Marianella’s machine eyes kicked in, and through the darkness she saw that the figure was Sofia. Eliana stirred against Marianella. The muscles in her shoulders tightened.

“No,” Eliana said, and her voice pitched more loudly into a shriek. “No, no! She’s going to hurt me.”

“It’s just Sofia,” Marianella said. Sofia stopped and gave Eliana a cold look.

“What’s going on here?” Sofia said. She looked at Marianella’s dress. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s not my blood,” Marianella said automatically. Eliana gave a sob, and Marianella immediately regretted saying it.

“What happened?” Sofia’s eyes swung back and forth between Marianella and Eliana. “Was it Cabrera? Did he hurt you?”

“He tried, yes.” Marianella squeezed Eliana tighter. “Please, Sofia. She’s very upset. Let me put her up in one of the palace rooms.”

Sofia’s eyes narrowed. She studied Eliana, who was shaking more violently now, her head buried in Marianella’s shoulder.

“Please,” Marianella said.

“You’d do it even if I said no,” Sofia said. “Get her out of here.”

Marianella sighed with relief. “Come along,” she whispered to Eliana, and together they shuffled up the path.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Eliana said when they were finally inside the palace. “I don’t—just let me go home.” She struggled against Marianella, but Marianella held her tight.

“It’s not safe,” she said. “You’ll need to stay here, at least until we know what to do about Ignacio.”

“Diego will keep me safe!” Her shout bounced off the walls. Then she covered her face with her hands and crumpled down onto the floor. Marianella stood there, awkward, watching Eliana’s shoulders shake. Marianella doubted that Diego had ever been able to keep Eliana safe, but she didn’t dare say that out loud.

*  *  *  *

Marianella didn’t bother to sleep that night. She took a long, scalding shower, rubbing hard at the places on her skin stained by Diego’s blood. Afterward, she sat in the place beside her window where she liked to pray. She said the rosary three times, once for Diego and once for Eliana and once for herself, for forgiveness. When she finished, she dropped the rosary into a shining pile of beads on the sill and stared out at the gloomy park.

The dome lights came on, that slow mechanical sunrise.

A maintenance drone buzzed into the room. Marianella jumped at the sound of it, her nerves raw after last night. It was a park drone, still running on steam. A bell chimed deep inside its shell. It had a message for her.

“What is it?” Marianella said, anxiety turning her clammy. She stood up and walked over to the drone and knelt down at its side. It chimed again.

“I know, I know,” she muttered, even as her thoughts trembled. Why was a drone coming to her room? Sofia wouldn’t have sent
it; she always visited herself. It certainly wasn’t bringing word of a culling. Ignacio?

Marianella removed the paneling on the shell and hooked herself into the drone’s system. Immediately she was flooded with a message in the jittery ones and zeros of the drone’s language: she had a visitor at the gate. Alejo Ortiz.

Marianella withdrew her hand and let out a long sigh of relief. In the aftermath of the attack, she hadn’t once thought of him. He wasn’t going to be happy with her, running out of the Midwinter Ball like that. At least not until she explained.

“Thank you,” Marianella said to the drone, replacing its panel. She changed out of her dressing gown and into a pair of slim trousers and an old sweater, the two items of clothing that were closest at hand. The dress from last night was puddled on the floor, the fabric arranged so she couldn’t see the blood.

Marianella went out into the park and made her way toward the front gates. Out in the freezing air, she felt a flicker of fear that this might be a trap—that it hadn’t been a park drone who’d come for her, but one of Cabrera’s drones, programmed to lie. But then, there was no way Sofia would let that happen. She might be radical and antihuman, but she wouldn’t let any harm come to Marianella. Of that much, Marianella was certain.

Still, Marianella slowed her pace as she neared the gates, and took a meandering path through one of the overgrown gardens so she could see the person waiting at the gate before he could see her. She moved as lightly as she could, weaving through the vines and tangled branches like a dancer. Soon, the gate materialized into view, all those wrought-iron fairies guarding the entrance. Marianella felt a pang of regret, seeing them and remembering how she had walked through them last night with Eliana weeping at her side.

A man waited on the city side of the gate. Tall, television-star handsome. Alejo.

Marianella let out a deep breath of relief and pushed out of the garden, onto the path. Alejo looked up at her in surprise. She reached up to smooth her hair away and found a dead leaf crackling beside her temple.

“Good God, Marianella,” Alejo said. He wrapped his fingers around the bars and pressed up against the gate. “Did you sleep out here?”

“No, of course not.” Marianella arrived at the gate, where she undid the lock. The gate popped open. Alejo gave a gasp of surprise and lifted his hands away.

“That’s quite a trick,” he said, grinning. But then this grin vanished, and he peered at her closely, as if she were a book he needed to study. Marianella looked away.

“What happened to you last night?” he said softly. “You just ran off.”

“I had to,” Marianella said. “You ought to come inside, by the way. It’s not safe on the boundaries.”

“What? Why not?” Alejo squeezed through the open gate, and Marianella pushed it shut, relishing the comfort of that metallic twang as the latch sank into place.

“Ignacio,” Marianella said. “Cabrera. We can talk in the garden.”

She began walking toward the interior of the park, but Alejo hung back, marveling up at the bursts of colored blossoms decorating the trees.

“This place,” he said, shaking his head.

She waited for him, let him relish whatever childhood memories he had of the park. His nostalgia didn’t last long. He dropped his gaze back down to her and said, “Now, what’s this about Ignacio Cabrera?”

“He was at the ball last night.”

Alejo’s expression didn’t change. Always the consummate politician. “That’s not possible. He certainly didn’t receive an invitation.”

“He must have come uninvited.” Marianella walked toward the garden again, and this time Alejo jogged to catch up with her. The overgrown trees arced, unmoving, overhead—filtering dapples of green and white across the path. “At any rate, he saw me.” She told Alejo the rest of the story as they walked. Her voice sounded like it came from outside her head, like it was humming with a peculiar feedback. She told Alejo everything, even about how she had beat Diego in the alley, because he was the closest she had to a confessor in this moment.

She finished just as they arrived at the entrance to the garden. One of the metal gates hung sideways, broken in its frame.

“That’s terrible,” Alejo said in a low voice. “Absolutely terrible. You should have come to me. My associates were there. You didn’t have to put yourself at risk like that.”

Marianella slipped into the garden. She’d rather harbor this heavy guilt than know she had invited the aid of a terrorist.

“It was easier that way,” she finally said, and settled into a place on the cleanest bench. “To just run. I’m sorry, I am, but—”

“You don’t need to apologize, for God’s sake.” Alejo sank down beside her. “I’m just glad you’re not hurt.” He paused, tilted his head, looked up at the trees. “This is a problem.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Marianella glared at him. “I don’t think he’ll even
let
me pay him off at this point, do you? If he wants me dead so badly?”

Alejo rubbed his hands over his forehead. “The man’s primary focus is money,” he said. “It always has been. I take it you didn’t try to negotiate with him last night?”

“Negotiate!” Marianella cried. “I didn’t even see him! Negotiation was the farthest thing from my mind. I was just trying to get Eliana and myself out of there alive.” Her voice hitched. She remembered the sting in her knuckles as she slammed her fist into Diego’s forehead, knocking him unconscious. It had been necessary, a necessary evil, the only way to escape—at least, that’s what she had thought last night. In the sallow light of morning, Alejo’s suggestion of a negotiation seemed almost reasonable.

“I did what I thought I had to do,” she whispered. It was more to herself, but Alejo drew his arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick, brotherly squeeze.

“You were scared,” he said. “We can figure some other way out of this.”

“There is no other way.” Marianella stared straight ahead. “He won’t take my money.”

Alejo was silent for a moment. In the distance Marianella heard the clicking whir of one of the performance robots, sneaking its way through the park’s path, avoiding her and Alejo.

“My associates,” Alejo said slowly. “You know they’d be willing to—take care of him for you.”

Marianella’s breath lodged in her throat. She felt dizzy. “Kill him, you mean. Just say it.”

“Fine, yes, kill him. He certainly wouldn’t be the worst person they’ve targeted.”

“Wouldn’t it go against the cause?” Marianella’s question was more mocking than she’d intended, and she squeezed the bridge of her nose. “You’re the one always saying that they aren’t mercenaries for hire.”

“I say that, but they really kind of are.”

She could feel Alejo staring at her. Waiting for an answer. She didn’t tell him that Sofia had offered the same thing, that it had given her a sick feeling in her stomach like the world was falling apart.