The Fractal Prince (3 page)

She lets go and continues to pray, slowly. The candlelight dances on the faces of the statues, and they start to become Sydän’s face, the wide mouth and high cheekbones, the arrogant pixie smile.

‘Why is it that you never pray to me, I wonder?’ the pellegrini says. ‘Gods are so old-fashioned. Memetic noise inside monkey heads. You should pray to me.’

The goddess stands in front of Mieli, a shadow framed by the zero-g candles, arms folded. As always, it is as if she is standing in normal gravity: her auburn hair is open and falls across shoulders left bare by a white summer dress.

‘I serve and obey,’ Mieli says. ‘But my prayers are my own.’

‘Whatever. I am generous. Prayers are overrated anyway.’ She waves a red-nailed hand. ‘You can keep them. I have your body, your loyalty and your mind. Remember what you promised me.’

Mieli bows her head. ‘I have not forgotten. What you ask is yours.’

‘Who is to say I haven’t already taken it?’

Mieli’s mouth goes dry, and there is a cold fist in her stomach. But the pellegrini laughs, a sound like tinkling of glass.

‘Not yet. Not yet.’ She sighs. ‘You are so amusing, my dear. But unfortunately, there is little time for amusement. I do, in fact, need your body, if not your soul. My Jean and I need to have a conversation. Circumstances have forced my other selves to set certain things in motion. Something is coming for you. You need to be ready.’

The pellegrini steps into Mieli’s body. It feels like plunging into freezing cold water. And then the cabin and the candlelight and the goddess are gone and Mieli is in the spimescape, a ghost among the tangled threads of the Highway.

2

TAWADDUD AND DUNYAZAD

Before Tawaddud makes love to Mr Sen the jinn, she feeds him grapes.

She takes one from the bowl in her lap, peels it carefully and holds it between her lips, kissing the sweet moist flesh. When she bites, there is a faint, metallic sigh from the jinn jar that is attached to the fine sensor net of the beemee in her hair by a thin white cable.

Tawaddud smiles and slowly eats another grape. She lets other sensations mingle with the taste this time. The feel of the silk of her robe on her skin. The luxurious weight of the mascara in her eyelashes. The jasmine scent of her perfume. Her former master Kafur taught her that embodiment is a fragile thing, made from the whispers and silences of the flesh.

She gets up, walks to the keyhole-shaped window with slow, careful steps. The delicate dance of the embodiment slave: moving so that the jinn bottle always stays out of sight. It took two hours to place the embroidered pillows and mirrors and low tables in the narrow room just right.

She allows the sun to warm her face for a moment and draws the soft curtains, and the light in the room takes on the hue of dark honey. Then she returns to her pillow seat at the round, low table in the centre of the room and opens the small jewelled casket that sits on top of it.

Inside, there is a book, hand-bound in cloth and leather. She takes it out slowly, to let Mr Sen enjoy the forbidden thrill that comes with it. The story within is a true story, of course, the only kind you are allowed to tell in Sirr. She knows it by heart but looks at the words anyway as she reads aloud, running her fingers along the rough texture of the paper before turning a page.

‘There was a young woman in Sirr,’ she begins, ‘not long after the coming of Sobornost and the Cry of Wrath, who was married to a treasure-hunter.’

The Story of the Mutalibun’s Wife

Her father married her off when she was still very young. Her husband the mutalibun was old beyond his years. His first wife was possessed and went to the City of the Dead to live as a ghul. After that, he went on long journeys to dig up old heavens in the desert, to mine gogols for the Sobornost.

He bore the scars of his work: troubled wildcode dreams and sapphire growths that felt rough and sharp against her skin when they lay together. That was seldom: as mutalibun do, he had long since given up desire to survive in the desert, and touched her only because it was his duty as a husband. And so her days were lonely, in their fine house up on the Uzeda Shard.

One day, she decided to build a garden on the roof of their house. She hired Fast Ones to fly up loam from the greenhouses by the sea, planted seeds, told green jinni to make her seeds for flowers of all colours, and trees to provide shade. She worked hard for days and weeks, and asked her sister the muhtasib to protect the garden from wildcode with Seals. At night, she whispered to her garden, to make it grow: she had studied athar magic with jinn tutors in her father’s house, and knew many Secret Names.

The jinn-made seeds grew quickly, and when the little garden was in full bloom, she spent long evenings sitting there, enjoying the smell of the earth and the fragrance of the flowers and the sun on her skin.

One evening, a strong wind came from the desert. It blew over the Shard and through the garden. It brought a cloud of old nanites with it that settled in the garden like thick, heavy fog. The little machines condensed into glittering droplets on the leaves and petals of her flowers. They were as fresh and pure as some of the ancient utility foglets from the Sirr-in-the-Sky that her father kept in a bottle in his study.

The mutalibun’s wife started whispering and thinking at the fog, like she had been taught. She lay down on the soft grass and asked the fog to make the hands and lips of a lover.

The fog obeyed. It swirled around her and ran soft, cool fingers down her spine. It tickled her neck and collarbone with a tongue of mist.

Tawaddud pauses, slowly removes her robe and whispers to activate the mirrors she has carefully set around the room. Mr Sen used to be a man, and men need to see. In that way, her once-female clients are easier – but far more demanding in other ways, of course.

So she lies down on the pillows, looks at herself in the mirror, rolls her head so that her thick dark curls hide the beemee cable, and smiles. The amber light brings out her cheekbones and hides the fact that – so unlike Dunyazad’s – her mouth is slightly too large and her body not as slender as her sister’s. But her skin is as dark and smooth, and her muscles firm from the long climbs on the Shards.

Remembering the fog, running her fingertips across her breasts and down her belly, she continues.

‘But with the second kiss, and the third, she found that the fog was not just responding to her thoughts, was not just an extension of her own hands and lips, but a living thing from the desert, just as alone and hungry as she was. Fog-tendrils wove themselves into her hair playfully. As she reached for the fog, it made smooth, warm curves and planes for her to touch. Gently, it pushed her down to the grass—’

Her heartbeat quickens. This is how Mr Sen likes to finish. She touches herself harder, lets the book fall shut. As always, as the heat under her fingers builds up and her hips buck against her hand, shuddering with hot and cold earthquakes, she finds herself thinking of the Axolotl—

But before she can cross the edge and take Mr Sen with her, the visitor chime rings, the brass sound sharp and sudden.

‘Good morning, dear Tawaddud!’ says a voice. ‘Do you have a moment for your sister?’

Dunyazad’s sense of timing is impeccable, as always.

Tawaddud leaps up, face burning with arousal and embarrassment. She pulls her robe around her and disconnects the beemee cable from the jinn jar.

There are muffled footsteps outside. The assignation room is next to her study, down the corridor from the entrance hall.

‘Tawaddud!’ says her sister’s clear voice again. ‘Are you still asleep?’

‘That . . . was exquisite, as always, my dear. Although, towards the end, you seemed . . . distracted.’ Mr Sen says in his dry, tinny voice.

‘A thousand apologies,’ Tawaddud says, digging for the jinn bottle from under the pillows. ‘No compensation will be required.’ Tawaddud swears under her breath. The ancient jinn purchased her services with a new Secret Name that she had been searching for a long time.

‘I promise I will arrange a new assignation at your earliest convenience. A simple family matter has come up that I have to deal with.’ She lifts the heavy bottle. A precious pre-Collapse bioprocessor within allows the jinn to maintain a temporary localised presence in her quarters. The outer shell is the work of Sirr craftsmen, simple ceramics and circuitry, decorated with blue glass.

‘In my experience,’ the jinn says, ‘family matters are never simple.’

‘Tawaddud! What are you doing?’

‘I’m afraid that I really have to ask you to leave,’ says Tawaddud.

‘Of course, if you will just lend me a hand. Until next time.’

Tawaddud takes the bottle to the windowsill. There is a rush of heat that makes the curtains flap, a barely visible shimmering in the air, and then the jinn is gone. She hides the jar behind the pillows, covers the mirrors again and takes a moment to arrange her hair.

There is a knock on the door. Just as Tawaddud is about to touch the unlocking symbol, her heart misses a beat: her book is still lying on the floor. Hastily, she replaces it in the casket and slams the lid shut.

The door opens. Dunyazad looks at her with a mischievous smile on her lips, one hand resting delicately on the qarin bottle around her neck. The Secret Names written on her fingernails are bright against her dark skin. Tawaddud’s sister is dressed for a walk in the town: blue robes, slippers and a jewelled cap covering her braided, beaded hair. As usual, she looks perfect.

‘Am I disturbing you, dear sister?’

‘As a matter of fact, you are.’

Dunyazad sits down on one of the pillows. ‘What a
lovely
room. Smells wonderful. Have you been . . . entertaining?’

I know what you are doing, her smile says. And that’s why you are going to do whatever I ask you to.

‘No,’ Tawaddud says.

‘Excellent. That is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Duny lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘There is a young man I want you to meet. He is wealthy, handsome and a wit to boot – and free this afternoon. What do you say?’

‘I’m perfectly capable of arranging my own social schedule, sister,’ Tawaddud says. She walks to the window and closes the curtains with a jerk.

‘Oh, I’m well aware of that. That is why you associate with street entertainers and riff-raff.’

‘I have work to do this afternoon. Charity work, healing work. The Banu Sasan –
entertainers and riff-raff-
need doctors.’

‘I’m sure the young gentleman would be curious to see what it is that you do, down there.’

‘Yes, I imagine it’s difficult to see how the Banu Sasan live, up from a muhtasib tower.’

There is a dangerous glint in Dunyazad’s eyes. ‘Oh, I assure you that we see
everything
.’

‘My work is more important than a date with some perfumed boy you met at a Council party. I appreciate the effort, Duny, but you really don’t have to keep trying.’ She walks towards the door to her study, with steps that she hopes are determined.

‘Oh, I agree entirely. It is like washing wildcode off a mutalibun’s cock, and about as rewarding. Father feels differently, however.’

Tawaddud stops, a chill in her belly.

‘I spoke to him this morning. I told him that you had repented your actions, that you wanted nothing but to restore the good name of our family, to become an honourable woman again.’

Tawaddud turns around. Duny looks straight at her, with blue and earnest eyes.

‘Do you want to turn me into a liar, dear sister? Into a teller of tales, like you?’

Tawaddud pulls her robe tighter around her and grits her teeth.
A teller of tales. A lover of monsters. Not my daughter anymore
. That’s what her father said on the day the Repentants found her and brought her back from the Palace of Stories, three years ago.

‘Who is it, then?’

‘Abu Nuwas,’ Dunyazad says. ‘I think Father would be very pleased if you two became . . . friends.’

‘Duny, if you want to punish me, there are easier ways to it. What does Father want from him?’

Duny sighs. ‘What could he possibly want from the richest gogol merchant in the city?’

‘I am not stupid, sister.’
And Repentant jinni like Mr Sen like to tell me things, afterwards
. ‘Father has all the support in the Council he needs: he does not have to buy it. Why him and why now?’

Dunyazad narrows her eyes and runs one of her rings along her lips, back and forth. ‘I suppose I should be glad that you follow at least the rudiments of city politics,’ she says slowly. ‘There have been recent developments that have made our position . . . unstable. A Council member died this morning, very suddenly. Councilwoman Alile, of House Soarez: I think you remember her.’

Alile: a dour-faced woman at her father’s table, with a wildcode-eaten bald patch in her dark hair, a brass hawk on her shoulder.
You should rather shovel shit for a living than become a mutalibun, little girl
. I guess this is why, Tawaddud thinks, brushing away the memory. Her chest feels hollow, but she keeps her face blank.

‘Let me guess,’ she says. ‘She was the biggest supporter of Father’s proposal to modify the Cry of Wrath Accords. How did she die?’

‘A far too convenient suicide. The Repentants think it was a possession. It could be the masrurs, but so far they haven’t claimed responsibility. We are looking into it. Father even contacted the Sobornost: the hsien-kus are sending somebody to investigate. The vote on the Accords is in three days. If we want to win it, we need to buy it. Abu Nuwas knows that, and that’s why you, dear sister, are going to try your best to make him very happy.’

‘I am surprised that Father would entrust such an important task to me.’
To a lover of monsters
.

‘Lord Nuwas specifically requested Father’s permission to court you. Then again, rumour has it that his tastes are . . . unusual. In any case, I am going to be busy looking after the Sobornost envoy – a dull babysitting job, but somebody has to do it – so it is up to you, I’m afraid.’

‘How convenient.’ You are the one he trusts, and I am the one he sells to the merchant like a gogol from the desert.