II

ANNOD

The nights were stifling. Even breathing was an effort. Jonathon lay as still as possible on the bed, waiting for the late-evening sea breeze. He listened to the hum of the mosquitoes that swarmed through the open window and hovered above his bed. Like all the other men, Jonathon was coated in a repellent issued by the Vaik. It worked, but it smelt of swamp water and you had to cover every inch of yourself in it. The smallest patch of unprotected skin would send the mosquitoes dive-bombing from the ceiling to gorge on his blood. He kept a sheet over his body as protection from the little fiends, but even the touch of light cotton was too much in the heat.

He threw back the sheet and raked his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t seen his reflection since the tiles on the perimeter wall had scrambled his face on the day he’d entered The Fortress. He vaguely wondered what he looked like with his stubble and shaggy hair and skin chastened by sun, wind and salt gnats. He had lost his fat to the fields, so the masjythra clung to the bulge and indent of muscle and sinew. If he’d been with a poodle now, he wouldn’t have had to suck his stomach in. He dismissed the thought with a growl of disgust.

A squabble erupted beneath his window but was quickly resolved, the seabirds rendered docile by the heat. He dropped his head over the side of the bed to feel cool air from the vent over his body. At one point he considered walking to the bathhouse to immerse himself in a barrel of cool water but it seemed like too much effort. Eventually he drifted into sleep.

When the figure of a woman appeared, silvery in the doorway, he thought he was dreaming. She lingered there for a moment, then slipped across the floor to the window. She leant out and breathed deeply. “The sea breeze has finally come in. It’s late tonight. Tomorrow will be unbearable.”

Her profile was distinct in the moonlight. She had the long, sloping forehead and aquiline nose of the Vaik. Her hair was caught loosely in a clasp at the back of her head. It shimmered in the darkness against her straw and honey hair.

She perched on the edge of the bed and gently lifted his hand. “You’ve been using the mistaelnet ointment. Good.”

She slipped off the loose straps of her dress, letting it fall to her shoulders. When she placed Jonathon’s hand lightly against her breast, he knew he wasn’t dreaming. His dreams these past years were always different, but always the same. Dreams of stalking and pursuit. Of flimsy hiding places and footsteps drawing ever nearer.

The woman trailed her hand along his leg and thigh. “You are called Jonathon, yes?”

“Yes.”

She closed her hand around his cock. “Jonathon Bridge.”

“Yes.”

The blue-black water of sleep flowed away. He was awake.

Alert.

“The Vaik don’t trust bridges.” She cupped his balls and rolled them gently in her palm. “Things naturally separated should not be conjoined. Bridges make mischief.”

She stood up and wriggled out of her dress, catching it with her toes and flicking it into her outstretched hand. She folded the dress and dropped it onto the table. Her movements were loose and elastic and entirely unconcerned with whether Jonathon watched her or not. She was tall and rangy, with the spidery limbs of a long-distance runner. Only her stomach was soft and yielding, shot through with stretch marks that glimmered a little in the moonlight. Jonathon thought of Adalia. She was close to term now. The idea grieved him. He wanted to hold his wife and rest his hand on her belly. Bar their door against isvestyii. He wanted to lay his lips close to his unborn daughter and talk to her, tell her stories. What stories exactly, he didn’t know. If he’d been told stories as a child he didn’t remember them. He could tell her that the Vaik were suspicious of bridges.

“Get hard now,” the woman said. She said it casually, as if she’d asked him if he’d seen where she left her car keys.

I submit, he’d said. I submit. But how to make his body obey the words his mouth had spoken? It was easier for women, he thought.

The Vaik scraped some ointment from the jar and moulded it to her thumb. “Relax,” she said.

He held his hands towards her for the balm. Instead she reached under him and wriggled her thumb into his rectum. He cried out in pain and outrage. The cry echoed along the doorless corridor, but nobody came. The balm set his anus on fire, like a thousand salt gnats biting into the puckered skin.

“There,” she said, as his cock sprang up out of the darkness. She straddled him, took his cock in one hand, then lowered herself onto the length of him. He wanted to push her off. To strike her face with a closed fist. Instead he lay there, rigid, tears prickling the back of his eyes. He hadn’t known that he could feel this way.

She took his hand, wet his index finger in her mouth and placed it against her clitoris. “Like this,” she said. He concentrated on holding his finger the way she had shown him. She found her own rhythm, moving up and down, pausing now and again to sit still against him. She was taking herself to the brink, then pulling back. Her eyes were closed, her face intent on some goal he couldn’t share. He’d never seen such absorption before, so much concentration of self.

Self. Vest. Vest-ness.

He was the vessel of her self, the ship mainstay on which she was riding out to sea.

Adalia kept her eyes open during sex. I want to see you, she’d say, really see you. When she gave him a blow job she held his gaze. It sent him instantly to the edge. (And the poodles? Adalia asked in his head. Were their eyes open or closed?)

The woman shuddered and a wetness rushed over his crotch and thighs. She sat perfectly still, her chin tucked against her chest. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Jonathon. He let his hand drop to his side. She smiled.

“Jonathon Bridge,” she said softly. “Jonathon Bridge.”

She eased herself off him and sat on the edge of the bed again, her feet on the floor. She reached for his water jar and took a long drink. She offered him the jar. He shook his head. She moved again to the window and leant out. He heard in her slow intake of breath the intonation of satisfaction.

“The seabirds are so quiet tonight.” She ducked her head in, scooped her gown off the table and dropped it over her body. “Good night. Sleep well,” she said over her shoulder as she left.

The chime was sounding. He placed the pillow against his head to block out the sound. He needed to sleep. He’d lain awake long after the Vaik had left his quarters and had slept for perhaps three hours. But the chime went on. He threw back the pillow and that was when he saw it.

He was thick with blood. It was matted through his pubic hair and coated on his penis. It ran in sticky patches down his thighs and stained the mattress and the sheet. He cried out and sprang up, looking for the source of the wound. He pressed his hands against his stomach, checked his thighs.

Perhaps the woman had punctured the lining of his colon and he was bleeding from his small intestine. He had no mirror. Nothing with which to check that most private, hidden part of himself. He didn’t feel damaged. The sting of the balm had worn off. The chime clanged on. What would happen if he was late? How did he get someone’s attention? He heard the shuffling of the men below and was about to cry for help when he realised that the blood wasn’t his.

“Fucking bitch.”

He clamped his hand over his mouth as if to net the words from the air and stuff them back inside. He waited, for a strike of thunderbolt or for his room to sink into the earth. He had heard that those found guilty of Vaikray had been strapped to a post at low tide. Small incisions were made on their nipples with a delicate blade wrought by the Vaik especially for the purpose. The blood was left to trickle down the abdomen, along the legs and onto the feet. The creeping waves took the first, tantalising sniff of blood out to the deep water. The sharks would begin circling before the prisoner’s calves were wet. Drowning was considered a blessing.

A ferrous tang hung in the air and on his tongue. He smelt like prey. He looked down at himself, trying to figure out what to do. His masjythra wouldn’t stretch to cover all the blood. He didn’t stop to ask himself why he was afraid to pass another man on the way to the bathroom.

He poured some water from the jar onto his hands, then rubbed it onto his crotch. It seemed only to spread the blood further. Dampening a corner of his sheet he wiped at the blood, amazed that there was so much of it.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

He picked up the empty jar and hurled it against the wall. The jar dissolved when it hit the stone, sending a fine spray of glass through the air. Jonathon was in a fury. He followed the glass against the wall, smashing his knuckles into the stone. The shards embedded themselves in his bloody fingers. He wanted out. Wanted to return to his life as Jonathon Bridge: a man whose corner office looked down on the sprawl of the city. Whose clothes were expertly tailored. Whose CEO sought his counsel and clinked a whisky glass confidentially against his, late on a Friday night. A man desirable to young women, whatever Adalia said.

He didn’t hear Daidd enter his room. Daidd caught him in mid-flight, gripping both arms in his and holding them behind Jonathon’s back, forcing his head towards the ground.

“Stop,” Daidd commanded. “Enough.”

Jonathon tried to fight Daidd off but he was too strong. Jonathon’s back couldn’t break the deadlock. Tears and snot clogged his nose so that, held upside down, he felt as if he was drowning. He stopped struggling in order to gulp mouthfuls of air.

“Enough,” Daidd said again, then, “Aeraevest.”

Daidd slowly released him, then took a couple of wary steps backwards. He looked at the massacre spread across Jonathon’s crotch and thighs.

“What happened to you?”

“The woman who came here last night. She—she fucked me and left this behind.”

Daidd didn’t speak for a moment. “Menstrual blood,” he said flatly. “You’re having a meltdown over menstrual blood.”

“Look at this.” Jonathon spread his arms wide in front of him, stupefied that Daidd didn’t seem to understand.

“You’re a married man.” Daidd shook his head. “Anyone would think your wife had never had a period. Wait here.”

Daidd left the room, still shaking his head slightly. Jonathon looked down at his blood-spattered knuckles. When the scabs formed they’d tighten the flex in his hands, making it harder to pull the Goosen’s Trial from the soil.

Daidd returned with a bucket of water, a bandage and a sponge. “Here.” He handed the bucket and sponge to Jonathon. “Wash yourself. Then I’ll bind your hand.”

Daidd turned and walked to the door, keeping his back to Jonathon’s ministrations.

“We’re going to be late,” said Jonathon as he dipped the sponge into the bucket.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry about this.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t know why it freaked me out so much.”

“You know, on some level you ought to be flattered.”

“Why’s that?”

“A Vaik who comes to your bed when she’s menstruating is unlikely to conceive. She’s operating from desire alone. Of all the men here.” Daidd gestured towards the rest of the quarters.

Jonathon tried to find something in this that gratified his vanity, but he felt only . . . incidental.

“You done back there?” Daidd asked.

Jonathon peered into the pink-stained bucket. “Yeah, I’m done.” He took his silver masjythra from the peg on the wall and threw it over his head.

“Hold still,” said Daidd. He squeezed the shards of glass from Jonathon’s knuckles with his nails while Jonathon moved a pile of rocks a short distance in his head.

Jonathon’s assignment was broken up. Some men were issued new masjythra and assigned to masonry. They would spend the summer patching up buildings on the grounds. Others were dispatched to garden maintenance, keeping the vegetable beds moist in the summer heat. Others disappeared with the cattle in search of feed at the furthest recesses of The Fortress. To Jonathon’s relief, he was to remain in his silver masjythra with Daidd in the gardens.

“Not just any garden,” Daidd explained on their first day, “the shaenet. It literally means ‘body garden.’ It’s a place of tremendous significance. Most of the medicinal and recreational plants are grown there.”

“Where I come from, ‘recreational plants’ has a very specific meaning.”

“Here, too.”

Jonathon’s mouth fell open in surprise.

“You know, the Vaik aren’t saints, Jonathon. And they’re sure as hell not ascetics.”

“They just seem so clean-living and worthy. They’re like, I don’t know, good-looking churchgoers.”

Daidd paused, as if considering whether to speak what was on his mind. “The Vaik aren’t innocents. You’re like a piece on a chessboard to them, and they have a very specific idea of what the endgame looks like. Nothing here is spontaneous. Nothing.” Behind an iron gate, half-obscured by shambolic ivy, was the shaenet. Daidd forced the gate open and ushered Jonathon through. The smell was overpowering: sweet and deep and utterly intoxicating. Jonathon tried to isolate each scent. There was bergamot. Lime. Something like rose, but a rose stripped back to its essence and amplified. Fresh-cut grass and churned earth. Cinnamon and wood-smoke. Jonathon filled his lungs with it, exhaled, then breathed again.

The shaenet was ranged into plots, some square, some rectangular, that banked upwards against the high walls. Each plot was bounded by a low stone wall and accessed by a strip of mossy path. The plots, though small, were dense and fecund. Each was tended by two men in silver masjythra. They worked with trowels and stakes and skeins of twine, finer work than in the fields. Jonathon looked for the isvestyii and was relieved not to find him. Ancient trees bordered the garden on all sides, their massive canopy spreading across the sky. Jonathon looked up to see the ribbons of blue sky shimmering through the leaves.

“This is old,” he said.

“Yes. Hundreds of years old. Maybe older.”

“Excuse me.” A man nosed his wheelbarrow past Daidd and Jonathon. He was carting straw.

“This way,” said Daidd. Jonathon followed him along the path that led to the back of the shaenet, away from the gate. The ground was on a slight incline, and as they walked, dropping lower, Jonathon heard the distinct sound of running water in the distance. He gave Daidd a curious look.

“There’s a stream that runs from a source in The Dryans. It opens out into a small bay west of here. The Vaik use the water to irrigate this garden. I’ve heard, though I don’t know if it’s true, that in some myths the stream is said to have mystical properties. Or maybe that’s just some nonsense that the men made up to amuse themselves.”

“The things you do when you don’t have the internet.”

Daidd led Jonathon to the far end of the shaenet. The shade deepened the further they went on, deliciously cool, and the sound of rushing water grew louder. The garden hummed with bees and the close concentration of the men. They came to a halt in front of a large shed. Peering through the open door, Jonathon saw what looked like a greenhouse and several men ranged at high tables. They wore safety glasses and gloves and held fine blades; they appeared to be dissecting plants. Daidd gestured for Jonathon to take a seat at one of the large blocks of wood dotted around a long rustic table outside the shed.

Daidd picked a contraption up from the table and sat down next to Jonathon. “This might not be familiar to you.”

“It’s not.” It looked like a laboratory microscope, but it was larger and had a hefty lever attached.

“It’s a press. For mistaelnet.”

Jonathon took it from Daidd’s hand and looked it over. “Mistaelnet. Mandalay left some for me when I first came here, for the sores on my hands. It’s good stuff.”

“It’s an extraordinary plant. Extract the oil and you can turn it into that balm. You can also distil it into a tincture for indigestion and dyspepsia. But,” Daidd’s face broke into a wide grin, “you can also dry the seeds, crush them up and put them in water. This prompts an incredible reaction, as if the water becomes animate. It starts swirling like it’s going down a drain.”

“What’s that used for?”

Daidd’s grin grew wider. “You drink it. The Vaik call it sterysh. It means ‘dragon sweat.’”

“So, what . . . it’s like an ale? Or a wine.”

“It’s like liquid weightlessness. Like anaesthetic, but you’re very much awake and alert.”

Jonathon laughed. “So it’s a party drug.” He turned the press over in his hands. “If this gets out there’ll be men lining up outside The Fortress to be supplicants.”

“Hardly. The Vaik like to get high and fuck as much as the next person, but they’re regulated about it. I’ve only been offered sterysh a couple of times. The penalties for drinking it without Vaik sanction are high.”

“They must trust me, then. To assign me here.”

“Perhaps. Or they’re testing you.” Daidd took the press from Jonathon and placed it on the table. “Or, more likely still, you can’t conceptualise what they have in mind. Let me show you our plot.” Jonathon bristled at the inference that he was witless compared to the Vaik. He’d been the head of Strategy at a top-tier company, after all.

Jonathon decided to let it go and turned his attention to the patch of earth that would occupy him for the next three months. It was the size of the desk in his office and about midway between the entrance to the shaenet and the shed. Guided by Daidd, Jonathon learnt the subtle, secret language of Vaik horticulture.

Mistaelnet was unprepossessing: stubby and coarse-leaved with no obvious smell. It was only when the tough, oval-shaped leaves were crushed that their pungent menthol aroma was released. It sent Jonathon’s nostrils a-tingling and made him feel that his windpipe had been wiped clean. It took skill and practice to recognise when the leaves were ripe: they became slightly rubbery and squeaked when folded between thumb and forefinger. He collected the plucked leaves in a large woven basket and took them to one of the rough-hewn pews and tables at the far end of the garden. He sliced the leaves with a fine scalpel that was given to him by Daidd each morning and pocketed by Daidd each evening. By slicing the leaf down the middle, Jonathon was able to extract the tiny black seed used to make sterysh. When cut, the leaves oozed a slimy gel that made the blade slippery. Jonathon’s fingers were crisscrossed with slices and nicks, quickly healed by the mistaelnet’s juices.

The seeds, once dug out, stuck to the pads of his fingers. He used tweezers to pull them off and scraped them into glass jars. The jars were collected by other silver masjythra who loaded them onto trolleys and took them for processing. This was closely overseen by the Vaik, who had an almost preternatural sense for how many seeds a plant should yield. Daidd had warned him that the penalty for sampling the seeds was severe, and Jonathon, though curious, was determined not to be tempted. In the months he worked in the shaenet, he saw only one man succumb, dumb with pleasure. His rictus grin never faded as he was hauled out of the garden by the Vaik. Jonathon did not see him again.

He ground the sliced leaves with a mortar and pestle, shaved wax into the mix, then added oil until the mixture had the consistency of a balm. Using a blunt knife, he packed the balm into small tins that made their way through The Fortress to tend cuts, bruises and weeping sores. Watching as the aromatic tins trundled off gave him a satisfaction that recalled the big contracts he’d secured at the firm. That this feeling could be the same when the tasks seemed so disproportionate struck him as odd, at first.

Besides mistaelnet, Jonathon cultivated other herbs and medicinals. Norsling was a shrub that dropped purple bulbs the size of golf balls. Daidd told him it was used to bring on contractions. Fascinated, Jonathon plucked one of the glossy baubles and took it back to his quarters; he kept it on the table next to his bed until it rotted and was removed by an unseen hand. The stalk from the vende plant yielded a smoky, peppery flavour commonly used in the stews that were served in the dining hall. It strengthened the immune system and promoted blood flow to the genitals. The knobbly, fast-growing grass that he had initially thought was a weed was an ingredient in a drink called verrglet. Snapped off and put on the tongue, it barely had any taste; but held over a flame, it became sweet and luscious.

Each man worried for his plot. It was cooler in the shaenet than in the rest of the grounds, but still the plants were thirsty. All irrigation was done by hand, and it was slow and backbreaking work. At the very edge of the shaenet, behind the shed, was a stone well fed directly from the stream. The men spent much of the day ferrying buckets between the well and their plots. Contingents of Vaik, in twos and threes, wandered the gardens several times a day, checking on the mistaelnet yield and testing the moisture in the earth.

Jonathon searched among the women for the one who had come to his bed and left her menstrual blood behind like a nick on his bedpost. He was never sure whether he’d seen her or not. It had been dark, and she shared the colouring of the vast majority of Vaik. And if he did see her, what then? He was here to submit. Had chosen submission. For Adalia, for himself. Still, he wanted a confrontation. Wanted to hold her to account, though for precisely what he couldn’t say.

Sometimes, Ulait would visit the shaenet and chat to Jonathon as he worked. She’d spread a little blanket on the ground and sit with her sketchpad and crayons. He enjoyed listening to her prattle about her lessons and her teachers. (But the boys, he wondered before he drifted into sleep at night, where are the boys?) Ulait would almost always bring a treat of some kind, biscuits or a slab of chocolate. He let the morsels dissolve on his tongue, excavating each ingredient then squashing it on his palate to savour the alchemy of the whole. Out in the world, he could buy whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He and Adalia had enjoyed all manner of food and drink, but not like this. He felt that his senses were opening up, deepening.

He could detect the lavender in Mandalay’s hair on the breeze before he saw her. The hairs on his arms lunged for contact with the flowing gowns of the Vaik as they came past, inspecting his plot. Infinite pink subtleties in the sky telegraphed tomorrow’s weather. The sound of Ulait’s springing step through the grass pinched the valves in his heart.

His cock, like the rest of him, was sensitive and alert. He woke up to cries of pleasure echoing through the residential quarters. For the first time, he unambiguously wanted the sexual attention of the Vaik. He had a raging hard-on several times a day, no longer bothering to stretch his masjythra over his groin. His breath shallowed in expectation when the women came to the shaenet, but though they coupled (and tripled) freely in the lush patches of grass, he was never chosen. Sometimes, when he woke at night, the mere touch of his bedding became unbearable. His skin was aflame. He craved relief, any relief, and thought about sliding his hand along his body to the dozen or so tugs that would bring it. The Vaik had never told him that self-pleasure was forbidden, but somehow it felt wrong. He kept his hands by his sides.

Jonathon woke to a certainty that launched him bolt upright from the bed: his child would be born today. It was a knowledge that seeped from his marrow, from whatever complex spiral of DNA made him irretrievably and ineluctably himself. He examined the conviction within him. He had never been mystical. Never read his stars or played with the tarot. He’d been derisive when Adalia had tried reiki, so this knowledge seated in his bones unnerved him. Yet he did not doubt it was the truth: his child would be born today.

He sprang from the bed and plunged his head into the dawn air outside his window. The air was soft and warm, the sky pink-streaked. The unseen sea moved lazily in and out of the bay like breath. Adalia would be setting their birthing plan in motion: phoning her sister who was to act as doula and driver, dashing off a note to him care of The Fortress, taking the prepacked bag from the hallway cupboard and breathing slowly, calming herself. The bag included a recording he had made for Adalia to play during the birth. It was a collection of classical music and all the Vaik songs about childbirth he’d been able to find in the city’s cultural archives. He’d also recorded a love letter he’d written to her.

The sack of Jonathon’s stomach twisted, released and twisted again. He looked down, disbelieving the sensation, yet he wouldn’t have been surprised to find he was standing in a gelatinous puddle, blood trickling down his thighs.

Daidd entered his quarters and seemed to immediately register the shock on his face.

“You seem unwell.”

Not knowing what to say, Jonathon shrugged. He braced himself in case the pain came again.

“I think . . . I think my wife has gone into labour.”

“How do you know?”

“This is going to sound very strange, but I think . . . I think I’m having labour pains.”

Daidd smiled, a broad smile that showed his white teeth and brought lustre even to his milky, dead eye. He extended his hand and shook Jonathon’s warmly. “Congratulations.”

Jonathon smiled quizzically. “This is freaking me out, but you don’t seem very surprised.”

“It’s not so strange when you think about it. That child is fifty percent you. She’s connected to you in a way that no one else ever will be.”

“Fucking hippie,” said Jonathon, but he was pleased with the thought. He felt overwhelmed and overfull. He wanted to run laps. Leap from the window then abseil back up the wall.

“Come on,” said Daidd. “I’ll shout you breakfast.”

“Ha.”

They joined the lines of men making their way to the dining hall and took their seats. For the first time in months, Jonathon’s body remembered coffee. His hands twitched as badly as they had during his first morning there. He spooned the food mechanically to his mouth, his mind elsewhere. He worried about the pain and the possibility that Adalia would resent him for not being there. The idea that she might call out for him made him desperately sad.

During their long nights talking, in the days before Jonathon was confined, they’d agreed on Adalia’s first words to their baby: Hello little one. I’m your mummy, and I love you very much. Your daddy isn’t with us in this room, but he’s with us. He loves you and will see you soon.

Jonathon tried to calculate the time it would reasonably take for a message to be couriered from the hospital to the perimeter wall, through The Veya Gate to his room. He looked around the dining hall and outside to the terrace where the women ate, but he couldn’t see Mandalay. She would be the one to receive the message. She would be the one to bring it to him.

After breakfast, Jonathon followed Daidd outside into the still air. Could Adalia see the same stretch of blue sky through her hospital window or had she tunnelled so far into herself that nothing seemed real but the pain? The masjythra relaxed to detach its tiny squares from one another, letting the breeze flow across his body.

“One day someone’s going to stick one of these things under a microscope and figure out what they’re made of,” he said to Daidd, gesturing to the fabric.

“Only the Vaik know, and I suspect only a few of them. There’s a legend that The Woman puts a few drops of her menstrual blood into the weave and that’s what makes it come alive.”

“Sounds like bullshit to me.”

Daidd shrugged. “It’s as good an explanation as any.”

They set off past the bathhouse and the cherry orchard then veered left towards the shaenet.

“There’s so much we don’t know about the Vaik,” said Jonathon. “How their society is governed. Where the boy children are. Whether The Woman is a real, actual person or a symbol. It must have taken you a long time to make peace with not having the answers.”

“I’ve wondered about all those things, and more. Ultimately, though, it works. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but it works. The rest is just detail.”

Jonathon chose his next words carefully, not wanting to rub Daidd’s nose in it. “Ye-es. But, and I hope you won’t mind my saying this, you have to put the best spin on it. I mean, it’s not like you can leave.”

Daidd bent to pull a weed from the stony path, shook the dirt from its roots and tossed it into the adjoining field. “I can leave any time I want. I could walk through The Veya Gate right now and no one would stop me. I’m freer than you.”

Jonathon paused mid-stride and reached his hand to Daidd’s scarred shoulder. “You’re free to leave.”

Daidd stopped too. He turned and looked Jonathon in the eyes, one eye brown and alert, the other opaque and elsewhere. “I’ve been free to go for three years.”

“And yet you stay.”

“I’ve chosen to become a permanent resident.” Daidd pursed his lips, thinking. Then he kicked a stone into the field. “Like I said, it works. More or less. I’m not sure the same can be said for out there. I’m useful here.”

They resumed their walk, Jonathon mulling over what Daidd had said. The idea of being able to find his way to The Veya Gate, walk out and fly, fly down the steep hill to the Women’s Hospital . . . it made him feel as if a giant was sitting on his chest, compressing his heart and lungs so he had to breathe shallowly. Carefully.

Jonathon was shaken out of his reverie by a burst of laughter up ahead. Walking at right angles to him and Daidd were half a dozen girl Vaik, Ulait among them. Each of them seemed to be talking at once. They turned their heads, bird-like, to dip in and out of the feed of chatter, so intent on their conversations that they didn’t notice Jonathon and Daidd.

Jonathon was seized by an impulse. He broke into a run and gambolled for the girls as fast as he could. He pumped his arms and legs, the effort a joy. He felt the grass spring back beneath his feet and the air eddy at his elbows, carrying him along. His child was being born. His child!

He threw his arms out and caught Ulait at the breastbone, intending to swing her off her feet and whirl her around. They would dervish in the soft summer air in celebration. Ulait dropped her head and bit Jonathon’s thumb. He cried out in pain and released his hold. There was a ferocious tug at his shoulder and he was cartwheeled through the air. He landed with a sick thud on the ground. Winded and unable to speak or move, he looked up into Ulait’s cold eyes. Soldier’s eyes, reflecting nothing.

The expression dissolved almost immediately and Ulait dropped to the ground beside him, her face a picture of concern. “Oh gosh, are you all right? Where does it hurt?”

Everywhere, he thought. I’ve become pain.

Daidd caught up and bent over Jonathon, feeling his ribs. “Nothing’s broken,” Daidd said. He bent his head to Jonathon’s ear and hissed, “What were you thinking?”

I wanted to dance. To sing. To celebrate.

But he couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes and focused on coaxing breath into his windpipe. One of the girls held a flask to his lips and dripped water into his mouth. Slowly, sensation returned and he was able to sit up. The girls sat by him on the browning summer grass, patient and concerned. Ulait held his hand, stroking it gently.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she said, “but sneaking up on somebody like that is not a good idea.”

“I wholly agree.” His voice came in a whisper. He imagined that underneath his masjythra he was one massive bruise. Tears leaked from his eyes.

“Oh, please don’t cry.” Ulait’s face crinkled with concern. “That’s just how we’re trained. It’s not personal. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Jonathon didn’t have a voice to explain that he was crying for fear that he would no longer feel the labour pains under his reddening chest.

The girls insisted on escorting Daidd and Jonathon part of the way to the shaenet. Their progress was slow, at first because Jonathon was still winded and then because he was reluctant to part from them. He enjoyed their stories about school and was fascinated by the snippets he gleaned about their lives. About how they would all do sentry duty in the Aeraevest for one year when they turned eighteen and how they were all trained in midwifery. About the combat training they did from when they were five, which accounted for how expertly Ulait had flattened him. Life outside The Fortress didn’t seem to exercise their imaginations at all. What, he wondered, were they told about “outside”?

At the turn-off to the shaenet they parted ways. Ulait hugged him so close he felt enfolded in lavender. She gave him a wet kiss on the cheek. “I do apologise, Jonathon Bridge.”

“It’s nothing, Mistress.” He could breathe freely again and, other than a tenderness in his chest, seemed to be fine.

Ulait and her companions set off for school and their chirruping chorus began again. A couple of the girls bumped shoulders with Ulait, conspiratorially. Jonathon watched them until they disappeared from view on the other side of a hill and only their birdsong remained.

“You’re smiling,” said Daidd.

“Yes, because one day I’m going to have one of those.”

Mandalay was waiting for them at their plot. She was inspecting the mistaelnet leaves with her fine white fingers. “You’ve done well,” she said, not looking up from the plant. “These are thriving.” She brushed dirt from her fingers and stood. “Today, you’re coming with me.” She picked up a large canvas bag from beside her feet. It made a clinking sound as she shouldered it. “This way.” Jonathon followed Mandalay and Daidd to the end of the shaenet, near the well. They exited through a rickety wooden door fixed into the stone wall and were swallowed by wild, waist-high green. They tracked a slight path of tamped-down grass that released a minty smell under their feet. Jonathon wanted to look about him to savour these new sights and smells. He wanted to record everything about this auspicious day, but Daidd and Mandalay walked fast, sometimes disappearing behind trees as he struggled to keep up. Ahead, he heard a gurgling, rushing sound.

“Not long now,” Daidd called over his shoulder. He was strangely excitable. Usually contained in his movements, he was thrashing the long grass with his hands as he pressed on after Mandalay. Even the milky-wash of his almost-blind eye was astir. His jitteriness unnerved Jonathon. He wanted to call out to him to stop, to turn back. To return to the quarters with him and await the news that would be coming through The Veya Gate.

After fifteen minutes the grassland thinned out into a clearing. Nestled within it were a series of vertically connected pools, all fed by waterfall. The inner pools were frothy from the pounding of the water, the outer pools glassy and clear. The pools were bordered by boulders, all mossy and verdant. Off to one side of the clearing was a table and chairs piled with towels and clothes.

In the pools, four older women were chatting animatedly to one another in Vaik. One of them lifted her arm languidly from the water. Diamond-drops hung from her elbow and plopped to the surface. Her skin was threaded with red and blue veins and hung loose and bat-like from her bones. She brought her arm down hard against the water, making a tremendous splash. The other Vaik shrieked in protest.

“Mandalay,” the splashing Vaik called, her voice rich and almost manly, “what have you brought us?”

“Treats, my darling ones. Treats.”

One of the Vaik heaved herself from the water and stepped carefully towards the clothes. She tugged a robe over her head and gave Mandalay an affectionate kiss on the cheek. “Right my lovelies, I’m off for a rather less hetero afternoon. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” The Vaik in the pool laughed. “That is precisely what we’re going to do.”

Mandalay waved to the retreating Vaik and placed her bag on the table and drew out a small, sealed container, a bottle of water and several glasses. She kicked off her shoes and tripped nimbly over the boulders to the pool. She knelt on the spongy moss and dropped a kiss on the older lady’s forehead. The lady gave Mandalay a look of great affection then turned her gaze on Daidd and Jonathon. Her grey eyes were unflinching in the wrinkled pockets of her lids.

“Time to unwrap the presents.” She laughed wickedly. “Remove your masjythra, both of you. Let us see what you are made of.”

Jonathon pulled the garment over his head. A light breeze rippled across his sweat, his penis shrivelled into his body. He pressed experimental fingers to his chest, but the tenderness was almost gone. He had not bruised.

“Turn around.”

Jonathon and Daidd turned slowly before the Vaik in the pool. Jonathon had the feeling that he was goods being appraised at auction.

“Nice. Very nice. And have we drinks, my darling Mandalay? It’s not a party without a drink.”

Mandalay began to stand up, but the woman gestured for her to stay where she was. “No, no. I will do the honours. I’m pruning in here.” She clambered out of the pool and picked her way over the smooth rocks to the table. She reached up and coiled her thinning hair in her hand, streaming out the water, then draped an orange robe around her shoulders.

Jonathon had never seen old female bodies before. He had never even imagined them. Intellectually, of course, he knew that he and Adalia would age, but the physical reality of it—what those bodies would look like, smell like, feel like—he’d never considered. Those years between the half-century and death were not so much a mystery to him as they were an undiscovered planet. The body moving now to mix a drink from the things Mandalay had lain out on the table simply did not exist for him.

Yet here it was.

She was of middling height and slightly stooped at the shoulders. Long threads of iron-grey hair sprouted in patches from her scalp. Her face was deeply lined but her eyes were sparkling and mischievous. Her slack breasts pointed earthward. In fact, all her skin seemed to crave the earth. Even her knees had a hound-dog expression.

Her movements were sure. She poured water into the glasses, then spooned powder from the container into each one. The water swirled and turned the same verdant green as the moss on the boulders. She ferried glasses to each of the Vaik in the pool, then returned and offered a glass to Daidd, who accepted it eagerly.

The woman turned to Jonathon. “This is not a command,” she said, raising the glass to him, “this is an offer.”

He had a strong curiosity to try the sterysh. A drug cooked up by the Vaik would make coke seem like a downer.

He reached for the glass, but something stayed his hand. His arm fell back by his side.

“No thank you, Mistress.”

“As you wish. Now come, Treats, come to the pool.” Jonathon felt his way carefully over the slippery green rocks and lowered himself into the perfectly clear water. It was like stepping into a mirror. Pebbles, smooth as boiled lollies, twinkled in blue and duck-egg grey on the bottom. He gripped them beneath his toes, and that was when he felt the twist from some previously unknown sack in his stomach. He’d done his reading. He knew how slowly and painfully the womb released what it had nurtured.

Jonathon waited, wanting his body to bend in Adalia’s direction again. Opposite him, Daidd sat on a slab of submerged rock, the water line at his nipples. His penis, clearly visible in the crystalline water, was hard and at the ready. One of the Vaik—a woman who wore her hair in absurdly girlish plaits—straddled him, her back to Jonathon, and began kissing him. Jonathon was acutely aware of the suck and drip of tongues and mouths. He watched Daidd’s fingers stroke the curve of her back, the raisin-like moles and patches of dried, friable skin. Beside him, the Vaik opened their legs to the cool water and stroked themselves.

Jonathon was revolted.

He felt physically sick at the idea of parting the grey-pink lips of these crones and pressing his tongue to their withered centres. Smelling the decay rising from them.

The woman opposite him was moving up and down Daidd’s shaft now. His face emerged and disappeared as she rose and fell, rose and fell. He wore the same expression of concentration Jonathon had seen when he’d fucked the young Vaik in the field. How does he do it? Was the sterysh working its magic, transforming each woman into a nymph of the pool? Or had Daidd disappeared far inside himself, running complicated formulas in a panic room in his mind, abandoning his body to whatever was happening to it?

The woman moved faster now, sending ripples out to the rest of them as she rode towards her pleasure. She cried out and threw her head back. Her cry was mistaken by the birds for one of their own, and their answering call filled the clearing. Jonathon wanted to flee, but he didn’t.

He stayed, now on his knees in the grass, now prone on the stone shelf in the shallows as the Vaik directed. His cock was obediently rigid. It was partly fear, he knew, that kept him hard. These Vaik were high and they were old, but they were still Vaik—

The message came just before two in the morning. He was dozing, skating over a thin layer of sleep. His dick was chafed and raw, his chin scratchy and angry. One of the old Vaik’s nails had left half-moons in the underside of his wrist. A young man in a red masjythra, grizzled with fatigue, delivered the message: an A4 page folded in half. Jonathon struck a match so he could read in the darkness. And there it was, the ballpoint scrawl that confirmed what he already knew.

Beautiful baby girl born at 12.04, after eleven hours of labour, 3.25 kilos. Head of dark hair like her daddy. Fingers and toes in all the right places and doing all the right things. Mother and daughter both doing well and expect to leave hospital the day after tomorrow. Both send love to you.

Jonathon read the note through again, then blew out the match. He dove underneath the covers, drew the quilt over and around him, and wept.

It was the last day of work before the office closed for the Christmas holidays, and the final party preparations were in full swing. Jonathon sat at his desk, his tie on tight and cufflinks fixed despite the warm air purring from the vents in the parquetry floor. He sat upright in his square leather chair, his back to the sheet of glass that broadcast the dipping sun, and watched as two of the poodles moved from partition to partition.

Between them, Clara and Jureece had spent the best part of the week upturning boxes of tinsel, candy-canes, baubles and strings of gaudy beads. Jureece, a tall brunette who dressed like an escapee from a 1950s typing pool, was stringing pearlescent lights from one partition to another. Her pencil skirt and Mary Janes were paired with a tight red t-shirt that said “Santa, I can explain.” Her pink tongue protruded slightly as she festooned the partition

“Ready?” Clara asked from behind the partition.

“Ready.”

Jureece clapped her hands as the lights blinked on. Clara emerged from the partition, and the two of them stood back to admire their handiwork. Clara was the shorter and more studious of the two. Jonathon had noticed that she wore high collars and turtleneck sweaters to hide a purple birthmark that bloomed up her chest and onto her neck.

“I think it’s too low on that side.” Jureece pointed. “Let’s try lifting it up about an inch.”

Clara re-pinned the lights. “Better?”

“Perfect.”

Most of Jonathon’s colleagues had given up any pretence of doing work. They were gathered in clusters around the office, chatting. The bar didn’t officially open for another hour but bottles of champagne were already being passed between work stations. Every few minutes Jonathon heard the muffled pop of a cork and the slosh of liquid into a coffee cup. The god-awful muzak that was usually piped into the office had been replaced with god-awful carols. The head of HR, already a bottle of bubbles down, trumpeted a rolled-up wad of papers every time the saxophone blared between verses about chestnuts and sleighbells and snowball fights.

Jonathon swivelled away from his colleagues and rang Adalia’s number again. It was still engaged. He swore under his breath. He checked his emails, but there was nothing but the faux-personalised season’s greetings sent from office to office and firm to firm like some wispy smoke signal. He stood up and moved to the polished mahogany shelves that lined one wall of his office. His inbox was just as empty as when he’d last checked it forty-five minutes ago. He sighed and sat down again.

Clara and Jureece had reached his office. They knocked, al though the door was open. He gestured for them to come in. Clara placed a box on his table, careful not to scratch the timber that was so glossy it looked like glass. “Yours is the last office so we’re running a bit low on supplies.” She poked around in the box and came up with a bristling rope of gold tinsel. “Would you like this? Or how about this?” She pulled out a large green wreath: the holly was discoloured and the pine cones drooped from dusty clusters of berries. “It looks a bit sad but we can fix it up.”

Jureece shook her can of snow. “Or we could stencil some snowflakes on your window?”

“Not right now, ladies, I’ve still got work to do.”

Jureece pulled a face. “No you don’t. No one does. C’mon, it’s Christmas, where’s your festive spirit?”

“Okay then, the wreath,” said Jonathon, figuring it would be the least-fuss item. “You can put it up on my door.”

Jureece smiled. “See. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She tossed her hair triumphantly over one shoulder, revealing Christmas tree earrings that dangled from her lobes.

“Have you tried the punch?” Clara asked. “We put fresh pineapple in it and, like, a gallon of champagne. It’s delicious.”

“Not yet. A few more loose ends to tie up and then I’ll have some. I promise.”

“Okay.”

They secured the wreath to Jonathon’s office door, reattaching the loose cones with superglue and polishing the holly with a tissue. As they were on their way out, Thomas—head of Government and Media Relations—invited the girls into his office, which was next to Jonathon’s. Thomas’ office had been one of the first to be decorated, so it was already bursting with baubles; nonetheless, he insisted he wanted more. He’d have his hands in the boxes, Jonathon knew, as an excuse to press close to the young women.

Jonathon tried Adalia again.

This time she picked up. “Hello?”

“Babe, there you are. I’ve been trying to get through for an hour and a half. What’s going on? Are you on your way?” His words came in a rush, and were more accusatory than he’d intended.

“Just give me one second, honey.” She turned her head from the phone and addressed the chorus of voices behind her. “Not that one, the first photo. The aerial shot. Yes, yes. That one, good. Theresa, did that file come in from The Dryans yet? The one on the spate of Christmas-present robberies? Can you follow that up, please? Thanks. . . . Sorry, darling”—she was back, breathless—“it’s bedlam here. Why is it everything is guaranteed to go to shit the week before Christmas? It’s like some inviolable law of print media.”

“What time will you get here?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ve got maybe another hour to get this sorted, then I’ll freshen up and head over in a cab.”

“So two hours?” Jonathon sounded peevish, even to himself.

“Maybe two and a half.”

He was silent.

“You know, Jonathon, I’ve been pretty bloody patient with the demands of your work this year. It wouldn’t kill you to send some support back my way.”

This was too true for straight-out contradiction, but still it annoyed him. Adalia didn’t have to work. None of the other directors’ wives worked. What’s more, he was actually bucking the trend in wanting his wife at the Christmas party.

“Let me know when you’re on your way.”

“I will. I love you.”

He paused fractionally before answering. “I love you too.”

Adalia hung up first. He held the phone a foot above its cradle then dropped it. He enjoyed the crashing sound. He picked it up and dropped it again.

He searched his inbox hopefully for some urgent, overlooked task that would take his mind from the impending blankness of the Christmas break. There was nothing but the annual message from the chairman of the board to the CEO and his directors.

Gentlemen, let me take this opportunity to wish you and your families a safe, happy and restorative Christmas break. I think we can all agree it’s been a great year. Despite the contraction in the economy and a rise in the unemployment and interest rates, we’ve acquired more than four hundred million dollars in new accounts. Our organic growth has also continued strongly. Winning new business is one thing, but retaining our existing clients and encouraging them to take up additional service offerings in an increasingly competitive environment is another. I’ve always said our reputation is good, our delivery is better. And you continue to make that true.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the outstanding contribution of Jonathon Bridge and his team over the past six months. Jonathon has exemplified our core values of passion, dedication and commitment to excellence.

The email went on to mention the contributions of other team members before ending in the customary exhortation to rest up and return in the new year ready for even greater things. Jonathon knew that his colleagues were mentioned largely for form’s sake and as a salve to the CEO, who was beginning to feel the hot press of Jonathon’s breath on his neck. He—Jonathon—was the reason for the fat dividend cheques and the bonuses bouncing into their accounts. Electricity surged through him. He had done incredible things this year, pushed himself beyond what he’d thought was possible.

He permitted himself a smile. Everything was good. Everything would be fine.

But then, as it always did, the electricity spluttered and spent itself, and the hollows grew darker and deeper. The firm would not reopen for four weeks. Four weeks without the deadlines, targets and milestones that were the coathangers of his life. He had thought that marrying Adalia would magically change it all, but when he let his mind drift towards the next month and a half he felt an incipient panic. Like a man who collapses at the end of a marathon but can’t command his legs to stop moving; so he just lies there, upturned and pedalling, like a beetle on its back.

Unlike his brothers and his friends, as a kid Jonathon had always dreaded the death of one year and the slow crawl towards another. No school, no sport, no structure. He’d rattled around his parents’ house looking for something to do, warding off the feeling that he was slipping out of time. He would slap his hands, hard, against the walls just to feel the sting of it. To remind himself that he was matter; substantial. He apportioned time into tasks to ward off the catatonia: run from the tip of their long, sweeping driveway to the line of trees that marked the start of the state forest. Look up and memorise sixty new Vaik words every week. Read all the books on world history in the local library in Dewey decimal order. The tasks were, in themselves, unimportant, and he didn’t retain much of what he read. But they sustained him until the new year gathered momentum and the comforting routine returned. Stillness rankled him.

He looked at his watch. Ten minutes had passed. He checked his phone in case Adalia had texted. She hadn’t. Irritated, he reached up and loosened his tie. “Fuck this,” he muttered. “Where’s the punch?” He slipped his jacket from the back of his chair, put it on and strode out of his office, closing and locking the door.

Christmas had vomited all over the office. Baubles dangled from the ceiling, some so low that he had to sweep them aside with his hand as he made his way to the large meeting room. The smell of cinnamon-and-clove air freshener hung thickly in the air.

“Here he is,” said the head of HR, thumping him on the back with his papers/trumpet. “The man of the hour deigns to leave the office and join us.” There was a muffled snickering from everyone around him.

So they’ve read the email, Jonathon thought. Good.

“I am a man of the people after all, Arie old man.” More snickering. “So where’s this punch I’ve been hearing so much about?”

Jureece was at his elbow, holding a square glass with plum-coloured liquid in front of him. He noticed that her nails were the same colour as the punch. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Where’s Adalia?” asked Arie.

“On her way, apparently. There’s some crisis or other at the office. Always happens at this time of year. Or so I’m advised.”

“Then you’re at your leisure?” said Thomas, who appeared at his elbow. “The cat’s away and the dog will play. Come. Come along, children.”

Jonathon followed Thomas, Arie and Jureece out of the meeting room and through the maze of hallways to the teleconference room. It was dark. The star-shaped dialups were piled on the table like a UFO junkyard. The imposing glass windows showed a darkening sky. Beneath the first twinkle of the streetlights, shoppers paused at department-store windows and bit into candied nuts still warm from the street vendor’s grill.

Thomas sat down and took a small vial from his pocket. He carefully tapped the white substance onto the tabletop and chopped at it with his credit card—his corporate card, Jonathon noticed. He hummed “Jingle Bells” as he cut and recut, then apportioned the powder into straight white lines. “Give me some of that paper,” he said to Arie.

“You want my precious trumpet?”

“Just hand it over.”

Arie made a show of peeling one layer away from his “instrument” and handing it over to Thomas. “Merry Christmas.”

“Big spender, you.” Thomas carefully tore the paper in half then tore it again. He rolled it into a thin straw and held it in his fingers as if it was a precious relic. “For you, good sir: exemplifier of corporate values and the reason I was able to buy my kids ski trips for Christmas.”

“You’re going skiing for Christmas? Where?”

Thomas shook his head. “I said the kids. I have, ah, other plans.” He held the thin straw out to Jonathon, who hesitated. He hadn’t done much in the way of recreational drugs since he’d met Adalia, but it was Christmas. And a party. And she hadn’t even bothered to show up yet. He slipped the straw into his nostril, bent to the table and hoovered the fine white powder into his brain. He righted himself, ice crystals sprinkling across his peripheral vision. The crystals multiplied, leaping from neuron to synapse until his nerves and arteries were lit up like a Christmas tree.

Arie methodically arranged another line. “For you, good lady.” Jureece bent down to the table, and Jonathon noticed how firm and ripe her bottom was in her grey, woollen pencil skirt. She stood up, was still for a moment, anticipating. Then she giggled like a schoolgirl and tossed her hair over her shoulder, catching it in her Christmas tree earrings.

“You’re tangled,” Jonathon said. He reached for her hair and gently pulled the threads of glossy chestnut from the clasp.

“Thank you,” she said, so close he felt the warmth of her breath on his neck.

“Any time.”

The magic glittered through his body. He had done well. Exceptionally well. His bank account bulged. He had a beautiful apartment in the middle of the city that captured the skyline in three directions. He was a powerful man who would keep climbing. It was clear to him now as he stood in front of the window to the city that all would be well.

He felt Jureece sidle up to him, her shoulder next to his. “Look at this view,” she sighed. “I never tire of it. When I first started I’d come in here every day just to watch the city going about its busi ness. It always makes me feel that I’ve arrived somehow.”

He nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“I really feel that I have something to offer the company, into the future.”

“Have you applied to stay on?”

“Of course. But you know.”

He didn’t need her to finish the sentence. His firm kept on one, maybe two of the poodles each year. The rest were flung out after their internship to second-tier firms or further study or . . . Actually, Jonathon had no idea what else they did. He’d never troubled himself to inquire.

She inched nearer to him. “Do you think I have something to offer?”

He turned to look at her, the warmth of the drug coursing through his veins, fighting off stillness and death. Jureece bent her head slightly, so she looked up at him through her dark lashes. Her gaze was liquid and inviting.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and glanced at the screen. Adalia.

He answered it. “Hi, babe. You on your way?” There was a crackle of static.

“I can’t hear you, you’re dropping out. What did you say?”

“. . . going to take me a bit longer . . . late story . . . without me . . .”

“What? What did you say?”

But she was gone. Or the connection had been lost. He swore under his breath.

“Was that your girlfriend?”

“My wife.”

“Will she be here this evening?”

“Allegedly. At some point.”

“Well.” Jureece reached out and lightly grazed her claret fingernails along his lapel before straightening it. “I’ll just have to do my best to keep you entertained until then.”

He downed more coke, more punch, more flattery. The looming break swam away from him, ceased to exist, had never existed. The Christmas carols rang through the halls and the boardrooms. He tripped over people kissing beneath mistletoe tacked to doorframes and bent his head to tables of glossy jet where piles of fairy dust disappeared and reappeared and disappeared again. He looked at his phone from time to time to see where Adalia was and then, annoyed at himself, returned to his office and dropped his phone on his desk to keep himself from looking anymore.

Jureece and Clara swam at him down a long corridor. Jureece held a bottle of champagne in one hand and was struggling to support a very drunk Clara, who sagged beneath her.

“A little help?” Jureece said, laughing.

Jonathon took Clara’s weight on one side and together they made slow progress to The Quiet Room. They paused for Clara to be violently sick into a bucket they found in the cleaner’s cupboard. Then, unsure how to empty it, they just left it in there.

The Quiet Room had been a whim of the former head of personnel and resources who’d thought it would be helpful for the staff to have “a space where they can connect with their creativity.” The room had powder-blue walls and an enormous aquarium running the length of its back wall. The fish swished their tails inquisitively as Jonathon and Jureece lowered Clara onto the soft suede couch. She curled her knees up to her chest, sighed contentedly and promptly went to sleep. Jonathon draped his jacket over her to keep her warm. Above her, a poster was tacked to the wall that read, “Success comes to those who choose it.”

Jonathon fucked Jureece as Clara slept. She was pliable and theatrical, offering herself this way and that and always—he knew—with one eye on her future. He hadn’t been with a woman other than Adalia for a long time. Jureece’s body was womanly, with pendulous breasts that he fucked with relish, but she had left childhood behind so recently you could catch the scent of it on her. She was smooth and perfect in the way that youth is always smooth and perfect.

He had to encourage her with his hands to go down on him. She looked at the ground when she opened her mouth to take him in. Even when he wound his hand around her hair to pull and push her up and down his cock, she didn’t look up. Not like Adalia. This thought made him resentful. He couldn’t even fuck another woman—privately, furtively—without inviting his wife in to share the experience.

Frustrated, he tightened his grip on Jureece’s hair and pulled her away from him. He gestured for her to lie down, then kicked off his trousers and underwear. He left his socks on. He dropped to the floor, planted one hand to the side of her head and gripped himself with the other, probing for the entrance to Jureece.

Clara mumbled something in her sleep, and Jonathon and Jureece froze. She quieted and then began snoring.

“Tilt your hips up for me.”

“Like this?”

“Yeah, good.” He moved into her and let the rhythm of it take him over. It was so filthy and so wrong and so good. “Do you like fucking?” he whispered into her ear.

“Fucking you? Yes.”

“Who else have you fucked here?” It excited him, the idea that she was available to take the notes in their meetings and drop files of background research on their desks and open her legs to their hunger. He pictured her, naked except for her high heels, sitting on his desk with her legs spread, each foot resting on a different chair. Her long dark hair caught up in the French roll she often wore and her spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose. Her arms behind her, hands firmly planted on the desk so her back was arched. Her mouth closed with her lips open and wet, her eyes attentive, waiting to receive them as they needed.

“No one. Just you.”

He didn’t believe her, and would have thought less of her if he had. Far better insurance to have offered these luscious tits and warm, tight cunt to a couple of the other executives. It’s what Jonathon would have done. He came inside her then collapsed on top of her, breathing hard. “I hope that was okay.”

“It was wonderful,” she purred.

“No, I mean, that I came inside of you. I hope that was okay.”

“Oh. Oh, um, yeah. That should be fine.”

They dressed. Jonathon left his jacket behind to keep Clara warm, and rejoined the party. Adalia still hadn’t arrived. The outlines of the night blurred and bled. Later he remembered being in a small space at one point—it could have been the supply closet—with someone giving him a hand job. Remembered coming across the CIO and Arie getting it on in the stairwell, their pale, hairy bottoms looming at him. Yelps of disgust as the foul contents of the cleaner’s cupboard were discovered.

At some point deep into the night, Adalia finally arrived. He both hoped and feared she’d smell the other women on him. He pulled her to him, daring her to find traces of lipstick, perfume, the distinctive yeasty scent of female intimacy.

Could he push Adalia to perform some feat of magic that would fill him up?

Or would she just leave him?

The fear of it iced him. It froze the follicles at the base of his neck and chilled the very pads of his toes. Adalia loved him. Adalia, who was solid and real and effectual in a way that he was not, loved him. And that meant there had to be a self there to love.

There was some unpleasantness in the new year when they all returned to work. Clara had woken the next morning, sick and churning, to find she was naked from the waist down, her thighs sticky. She’d dressed herself, shakily, and called Jureece. Against Jureece’s advice Clara had gone to the hospital, and then the police. It had blown over by the time the working year was in full swing, and nothing came of it. But Jonathon felt uneasy. He wanted to call Jureece to ask after Clara—but, well, that would’ve been awkward.

His memories of what had ensued after he’d left The Quiet Room were shifting and changeable. Segments of the night rushed at him sometimes, then receded. Why, he thought, didn’t I stay with her? Why didn’t I at least move her into my office where I could have kept an eye on her? He repeated the questions to himself but the answers didn’t come.

Among his colleagues there was a palpable silence about it, and this silence unsettled him more. The men he worked with were generally boastful or cavalier about their sexual conquests, and sorties with the poodles were an open secret. Keeping mum about a blow job in the photocopy room or a tumble after client drinks would’ve been considered bad form. But the silence. The silence said that whoever had fucked Clara knew she wasn’t up for it.

Jonathon found himself looking sideways at his colleagues, trying to place when and where he’d seen them that night. He wanted to enlist Adalia’s help. She’d been by far the soberest person at the party and was more observant of little details than he was. But he couldn’t draw too near to his encounter in The Quiet Room with Jureece.

The question of what had happened to Clara attached itself to him like a remora. He sought out little details where he could, asking one of the more effectual HR people to let him know where Clara had ended up. When he found out she’d landed a pretty good job with a reputable firm he was pleased, though he couldn’t honestly say whether she’d been a wonderful or indifferent employee.

As summer peaked and began its slow roll towards autumn, Jonathon’s sleep became troubled. Gone was the mostly swift and blissful slide to oblivion of his first season at The Fortress. Night after night he woke in the dark, his heart thudding. Dreams fold

As the nightmare receded, Jonathon mourned the weight of the baby in his arms. He lay there, unmoving, imagining the impress of her fontanelle against his thumb, her chubby fist pressed to his neck. The surprisingly noisy snuffle and whinny of her breathing. He encouraged the lingering tightness in his arms, unconsciously bundling the bedclothes against his chest and cradling them.

Jonathon’s craving for his child was a sensation so new, so wholly without precedent, it shocked him. It was as if, at the age of forty-two, he had been shown a new colour or number. His desires and senses, which had seemed augmented and multiplying, now contracted to a single point. He just wanted to gaze down at the sleeping babe in his arms, to lift her gently to his face and nuzzle her warmth, drink in that heady smell.

Yet “want” wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t a desire or a whim or an inclination or an ambition or any of the other things that he had attached to the word “want” before. It was a cellular howling for his baby that shaded into violence. If Mandalay had appeared to him and offered him his child in exchange for strangling the man—nameless, unknown—who inhabited the room next door, he would have done it. Done it without pause. Done it impatiently.

Slowly his heart returned to its familiar, silent work. He plumped his pillow and felt something stiff in the down. He wriggled his fingers into the sleeve and brushed against a piece of paper. It was A4 and folded as many times as it could be folded. Jonathon smoothed it out with the heel of his hand. It was thick and creamy, like the sketchpad used by Ulait. He scratched a match against the wall and surveyed the crudely executed lead-pencil drawing. A man was being hurled through the air by a stick figure with a ponytail and breasts. Underneath, in capitals: “WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?”

Jonathon felt nauseated. The drawing was clumsy. The only embellishments were a bow in Ulait’s hair, breasts with the nipples coloured so darkly the paper had been indented, and a massive, erect penis on the Jonathon figure.

The long match sizzled out in his fingers. How long had the picture been there? The incident had occurred weeks ago. Only Daidd, Jonathon, Ulait and about six of her friends had been there. He tried to convince himself that it was the work of one of the girls, the product of an overheated adolescent mind. But sex was such a part of the Vaik way of life that it probably wouldn’t occur to them to draw smutty pictures. They had no need of it. And Daidd, why would he leave this obscene scrawl for Jonathon to find?

The answer was that he hadn’t. Jonathon realised that he knew who was responsible. He’d encountered only one man at The Fortress sick enough to do such a thing.

Still, how had he known? What did he want?

Jonathon was bent low over a norsling. Overnight, the beds had been infested by aphids. These insects were chameleons, transforming from their natural sickly pale green to blend with the plant: now purple along the bulb, now green along the stem. They tunnelled and gorged until the norsling collapsed on itself. The Vaik refused to use any form of pesticide, so the pests had to be plucked with tweezers, placed in a jar and drowned. Jonathon and Daidd had been kneeling in the beds since sun-up, their faces pressed close to the plants and their eyes blurry from concentration.

Daidd’s gaze kept wandering from the plants to Jonathon and back again. A couple of times he cleared his throat as if to speak. “I’m going to the shed,” he said eventually.

“Okay.”

Daidd returned with two steaming mugs of tea. He handed one to Jonathon and sat beside him. Daidd rubbed his eyes, then cleared his throat again. “You don’t look well.”

“I’m fine.”

Daidd sipped his tea. “You’re not sleeping.”

Jonathon didn’t reply.

“Talk to Mandalay. She can give you a tonic.”

“I’m fine.”

There was the slight wavering movement he’d been waiting for. He plunged for the aphid with his tweezers and plied its sticky feet from the plant. Trapped, the creature reverted to its sickly green and wheeled its many legs and feelers in the air. Its helplessness provoked Jonathon. He held it under the water in the jar, watching as it cycled its limbs ever faster in its panic, then slowed to a twitch and finally stopped. He loosened the tweezers and the body floated up to join the other dead aphids. They released a frothy white scum. He sealed the lid and shook up the jar, dissolving the scum. The aphids appeared to be cartwheeling in space.

Jonathon had developed the habit, before he fell asleep, of rereading the note from Adalia announcing the birth of their daughter. Then he would hold the ultrasound photo against his chest, as if to cradle the baby. Finally, he’d wriggle his fingers into the sleeve of his pillow, feel the crisp outline of the drawing and withdraw them. Then he’d read the note again, and try to sleep.

But three nights ago he had inched his fingers into the pillow and felt nothing. He peeled the pillowcase back. Still nothing. He pulled the pillow from the sleeve and turned the sleeve inside out. The drawing—the disgusting, sickening drawing—was gone. He checked the gap between the bed and the wall. He riffled through the blankets. Squeezed himself under the bed and examined the floorboards. The drawing was gone.

Someone had taken it.

The idea that the isvestyii had been in his room, between his sheets, revolted him. That he had seen, touched (please god let him not have touched) the ultrasound of Jonathon’s child that he kept on the rickety bedside table was intolerable.

A wave of nausea rolled over him. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly in and out.

“I’m taking you to the sick bay,” said Daidd.

Jonathon shook his head, his eyes still closed. He was counting slowly backwards from thirty, resisting the sweaty heat at his temples and across his shoulders that told him he was going to throw up. His nose twitched at the faint scent of lavender on the breeze. He opened his eyes, but Mandalay wasn’t there. Only Daidd hovered above him, looking uncertain as to whether he should say what was on his mind.

Jonathon woke in a cold sweat. Night after night he was being wasted by these dreams in which he was compelled to carry his baby through ruined landscapes, running from some nameless fear. Unable to take rest. His heart thudded and his palms were clammy. A memory burst in on him, sudden and unwelcome, of ridiculing a colleague who had filed a stress claim years ago. She’d said she was suffering from panic attacks. The claim was rejected, and the woman eventually resigned. Jonathon had thought she was a crank, trying to pull a swift one on the firm. What, after all, was a panic attack but the disordered rambling of an insufficiently regulated body? He had no patience for the undisciplined, yet here he was. His nerves were plugged into the grid, frying him from the inside. His glands were fulfilling orders for adrenaline around the clock.

He swung his feet out from the bed, steadied himself and stood up. He leant his elbows on the windowsill and looked out on the moonless night. Below him two Vaik were dimly visible, kissing in the shadows. The rush and whisper of the waves calmed him a little. He pictured Adalia asleep on their massive bed, their baby next to her. He was nearing the halfway mark of his tenure at The Fortress. He could do this.

Calmer now, he returned to bed. He shook his sheet out and plumped up his pillow.

No. It couldn’t be.

Something was in the pillowcase. He reached into the sleeve and drew out a folded piece of paper. He dropped the drawing as if it was hot and stared at it. It had landed perfectly square on a floorboard, as if it had been placed there precisely. He stepped over it and left his quarters. He leapt as quickly as the gradient allowed down the zigzag ramp to the door of the residential quarters. It was unlocked, so he stepped onto the verandah and took the path towards the bathhouse.

He began running. He ran blindly, not caring where he was going. He needed to feel the illusion of freedom, of motion. That he could leave if he wished to. His elbows pumped at his sides and sweat ran into his eyes. Low stone walls flashed in the dark beside him and the owls hooted. A bird, disturbed, swooped low and flew with him for a while. His feet, tough and callused, didn’t feel the stones and branches. After a few miles he came to a wide field. He stopped, lifted his head to the vast canopy of stars above and screamed himself hoarse.

He slept out in the open that night, knowing he would not be able to find his way back in the dark. He curled up on the grass, his masjythra stretching itself around him, his head on his arm. He was drenched in sweat, but the summer night was mild. He closed his eyes and listened to the scuffling and settling of birds in the undergrowth. He was not afraid.

The sun woke him. He sat up and watched the gentle illumination of the earth. He was in a little copse of springy grass. Beside him was a broad, cultivated field. Beans, he guessed. That was a good sign. An assignment would no doubt be here at some point today to water the field. He could wait for them and be guided back to his quarters. He stood up and brushed grass and dirt from his legs and arms. He thought back to summer camp, all those survivalist skills he had supposedly acquired as a boy. How to start a fire; how to use shadows and the angle of the sun as a compass. He was terribly, terribly thirsty and his throat was sore. He traced the low stone wall bounding the field until he found the canvas water bags. He drained one and used a sprinkling from another to wash his face.

He sat with his back against the wall, his legs straight out in front of him, watching the last of the darkness dissolve as the sun arced behind him and over the field. He was right: the stalks were fat with bean pods that drooped like chandeliers. This field would be harvested very soon. The grass and stones underneath him were slightly wet with dew. The morning was warm, but the season had palpably shifted.

He felt calm and curiously well rested, as if the night out in the open had cleansed him. The drawing now seemed puerile and not worth his notice. He imagined telling Adalia about how the longing for their child had supercharged his emotions, rendering even silly things portentous. He enjoyed rehearsing these conversations with Adalia, bringing her close. He saw the two of them, naked under their silky sheets, the baby monitor crooning beside them. It was late, the city no more than a slight hum beneath them. They were propped up on pillows, awake but with sleep close and easy, whispering to each other. He told her about the drawing and she laughed that laugh of hers, and he thrilled to the sound. He swept his fingers gently along the side of her face and through her hair. She smiled and closed her eyes.

Jonathon heard the trudge of feet moving along the path behind him and smiled at his prescience. He didn’t move until the assignment was close enough for him to hear their talk, then he stood and watched their approach. They were silver masjythra, like him. The pure morning light gave them the look of a school of fish moving as one in a clear pool. There were twelve men, most of them bunched together, a straggler at the back. They carried a couple of canvas sacks between them: one for gardening tools, one for food.

Jonathon raised his hand in greeting as the group approached.

The man at the front was vaguely familiar from the dining room.

“Bridge,” he said.

Jonathon nodded.

“Have you any injuries?”

“None.”

“Good. The assignments have all been instructed to be on the alert for you. You’re to work with us today and return at close. We have food.” He gestured to the man holding one of the sacks.

He unzipped it, pulled out a loaf of bread and handed it to Jonathon.

“Thank you.”

Jonathon waited for the man to indicate whether he—Jonathon—was in any sort of trouble for running off. But he knew enough of Vaik ways to understand that if they wanted him confined to quarters all night, they would bar the front doors. He tore into the chewy, dense bread.

“Oorsel beans.” The man nodded towards the field. “We’re to cut them and pile them up. A cart is being sent for them this afternoon. You done oorsel beans before?”

Jonathon swallowed his mouthful. “No. Goosen’s Trial, mallow and herbs, mainly.”

“Goosen’s? Fuck that. Oorsels this ripe are easy. Don’t even need secateurs, they just pop right off.”

Jonathon dusted the breadcrumbs from his hands as the assignment entered the field from the gate. The men acknowledged him with slight nods. A couple of them asked, “All right?” It amused him to think how different this mode of communication was from the one he was used to: the handshakes, the exchange of business cards, the subtle but laden language of which credit card would prevail at the close of lunch. The man who’d greeted him handed out large cotton sacks and assigned each worker a row.

Jonathon opened his sack and dropped it at his feet. The oorsel pod came loose with barely a twist. He sliced it open with his thumbnail and pulled a green, kidney-shaped bean from the sleeve. He popped it into his mouth; it tasted grassy and slightly sour. How he’d hated oorsels as a boy. They’d been a staple at summer camp at Lake Wykaita, always over-boiled and mushy. He’d been surprised years later when, on a date with Adalia, he’d stabbed one with his knife off her plate and enjoyed it.

The assignment worked fast. When the sacks were full they emptied them into a pile just outside the field near the path. By midmorning a small hill of glossy bean pods had formed.

Jonathon found the work dull after the shaenet. He missed Daidd and the important plants for which he felt personally responsible. He filled another sack and tramped down the row to empty it. Another man followed him, so close he could hear his breathing. The hairs at the base of Jonathon’s neck lifted and he sped up. He went out the gate and upturned his oorsels onto the pile.

“Suit,” said the man behind him.

He turned. The isvestyii was standing right behind him. Jonathon was close enough to see how his lower eyelashes were stuck to his cheek with sweat. The isvestyii poked his pink, wet tongue through the gaps in his teeth. The bulging pink flesh glistened.

A wave of revulsion swamped Jonathon. “Fuck off, paedo.” The isvestyii laughed. Some of his spittle landed on Jonathon’s cheek.

Jonathon’s hands flexed and opened involuntarily. He told himself to turn, walk away and return to his row. With some difficulty he did so. He steadied himself in front of the next plant and began plucking, with rather more ferocity than before. He looked around but there was only one other man in his row.

Not knowing where the isvestyii was made it worse. The beans were at head height, so when the men were at full stretch you could just see the tops of their heads shuffling along the row. Jonathon couldn’t see him. He took deep breaths and returned to his task. After a while he became aware of a childish, singsong chant coming from the row behind him.

Suit boy, Suit boy

Don’t need rope, when you got some coke

Suit boy, Suit boy

He whirled around and crashed through the row, but the isvestyii had disappeared.

“Cunt,” said Jonathon under his breath.

Adrenaline whipped through his body, accompanied by the percussion of his pulse. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, then relaxed them. In his head he imagined standing before a pile of smooth white rocks, taking one in his hands and moving it a short distance. He took a second rock and moved it. Three rocks. Seven rocks. Twelve rocks. Aeraevest.

Suit boy, Suit boy

Gave a job to his secretary

She eighteen so it ain’t statutory

It was the sort of song you’d hear in a playground as children jumped rope. It was everywhere at once. The oorsels were singing it, their leaves shaking. It rained from the skies and shimmied in the dirt. Jonathon ran to the end of the row, bowling over a man on his haunches. “Hey!” he shouted to Jonathon’s back.

Jonathon stopped at the close of the row and glanced up and down. The men were gathering beside the pile of oorsels for lunch. He clambered over the wall, a couple of smooth white stones crashing after him.

The man in charge of the assignment came towards him. “Bridge. What’s wrong?”

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“The isvestyii. The paedo.”

“Looking for me, Suit boy?”

He was behind him again. Him and that mocking voice and shit-eating grin. Jonathon took a swing but he was off balance and the isvestyii easily ducked it. Furious with himself, Jonathon centred his weight in his heels, one foot forward, one behind, and drew his fists in front of his face. The isvestyii laughed and made as if to walk off, but the other men wordlessly corralled him. The isvestyii seemed unsure what to do. He laughed again, uncertainly, and took a few steps forward. The assignment huddled closer, linking arms. The isvestyii was trapped between the stone wall on one side and the arc of the men. His only way out was past Jonathon.

Even through the red mist over his eyes, Jonathon was aware that the men were breathing as one, chests rising and falling. He danced lightly, never taking his eyes off the isvestyii. He’d boxed at summer camp and later at university. He had sharp reflexes but had always been let down by a lack of stamina. Not a problem now. His palms itched pleasurably.

The isvestyii was swaying slightly, not like Jonathon, but as if falling under the spell of the tightening cluster of men. Their breathing was ratcheting up. Preverbal, almost a groan. They were enmeshed in a cloud of sweat and adrenaline. Jonathon darted forward, jabbing at the isvestyii’s face, not to hit him but to startle him out of his trance. The isvestyii flinched and shuddered a little.

“Come on, put ’em up, you bastard,” said one of the men. A chorus of grunts swelled around him.

Jonathon jabbed again, closer this time. The isvestyii put his hands up to protect his face, and the men cheered louder.

“Come on, bash the bitch.”

The call was taken up by the assignment in low voices. “Bash the bitch. Bash the bitch. Bash the bitch.”

Jonathon rolled his shoulders. A right jab to the nose would do it. He imagined the pop , satisfying as a plump zit released, and then the burst of blood. He dropped his shoulder and was raising his arm when he was encased from behind. Strong arms immobilised him. He thrashed but knew it was pointless. The assignment saw whoever stood behind Jonathon, dropped arms and stepped back nonchalantly, as if their arrangement were an accident.

“Stop. Enough.” It was Daidd.

Jonathon ceased resisting and Daidd let him go. The isvestyii released something like a sob and pushed his way through the widening circle.

“You fucking idiot,” Daidd whispered to Jonathon.

“You.” Mandalay’s voice, clear and cold behind him. “We go. Now.”

Mandalay marched them over the rise and towards the main buildings. Jonathon, Daidd and the isvestyii walked in single file behind her, silently. Jonathon felt sick from the unspent adrenaline in his body and his growing fear about what Mandalay was planning to do with him. He hadn’t broken his vow, he told himself.

You would have, though, Adalia’s voice echoed through his head. You would have if Daidd hadn’t stopped you.

He did stop me.

Remember your vow, Jonathon: “I will not raise my hand in anger against anyone at The Fortress.” Or are all your vows negotiable?

This isn’t about us, Adalia.

Everything’s about us. You’re here because of us. For us.

He deserved it. I’m protecting Ulait, alone in that Story-Keeping House. Think of the backpack he took with him to the school. The vaseline. The rope. He deserved it. Mandalay will see that. If she doesn’t, I’ll demand to see The Woman.

You’ll demand, will you? At The Fortress? Adalia’s laugh ricocheted off his skull.

As they came in sight of the long verandah at the close of the cherry orchard, Jonathon noticed that the nights were drawing in. He felt less salt-rinded than usual. For the first time he turned his mind towards what winter would be like. Would they be given a warmer uniform or transferred to labour indoors? All your physical needs will be met by us, Mandalay had said. Anyway, he had more pressing things to worry about.

Three red masjythra waited at the foot of the steps that led to the verandah and up towards the sleeping quarters and dining hall. Behind them were half a dozen grim-faced Vaik. Jonathon’s group marched to the stairs where Mandalay gave a signal. One of the red masjythra took him by the arm and directed him to the left of the building, in the opposite direction to the bathhouse. Two Vaik followed; Daidd and the isvestyii did not.

“What are you doing?” Jonathon asked. “Where are you taking me?”

But no one answered.

The man holding Jonathon’s arm was shorter than him, but stockier. Jonathon made a swift and brutal calculation. He could knock the man down if he needed to. He didn’t doubt that the Vaik could do him some damage if they had a mind to, but he was pretty sure he could outrun them. But run where? The wall was impossible to scale. Even if he could find his way to the sea he was no Eshtakai; the waves or a shark would claim him before he made dry land or hailed a passing boat. He would need help.

He glanced sideways at the man escorting him. He was perhaps in his mid-twenties, with no visible scars on his face or arms. Jonathon pretended to stumble to his knees so he could scan the man’s upper thigh.

“Sorry,” he said, as the man hauled him upright. The man wasn’t branded as an isvestyii. A supplicant, perhaps? Or a national serviceman? Jonathon was good at alliances. Somewhere in his network of influence, of favours owed and gifts conferred, there was something this man wanted or required. All Jonathon needed was an opportunity.

They walked for some time, long enough for the night to close in. His masjythra shifted around him, lengthening and tightening to his body. Whether from fear or cold, his arms thickened with gooseflesh. Strange bird calls passed from tree to tree, the branches casting ghostly shadows along the path.

They arrived at a large stone building with a steeple. “Stop.” The shorter of the Vaik stepped to the wooden door and sounded the brass knocker three times, paused, then sounded it twice more. By the light of two burning torches staked to the entranceway, Jonathon made out a tumble of gargoyles carved into the threshold. Peering closer, he saw that they were leashed by an imposing woman who held a sceptre in her other hand. The Woman?

The door was opened. Even in the welter of his predicament, Jonathon felt the warm, liquid punch of desire land in his stomach. She held the heavy door with one hand, her arm a thick rope of muscle in the firelight. She stood as tall as Jonathon and nearly as broad. Her white gown was cinched at the waist by a leather pouch from which poked the handle of a small dagger. A Vaikray blade. It glinted in the torchlight. Her blonde hair fell, iron-straight, to her shoulders. Something about her was familiar, eerily so, but Jonathon could not say what.

She exchanged a few Vaik words with one of the women. Her mouth was round and full, her eyes calculating. “Eminently fuckable” was how Jonathon and his colleagues had described the choicest of the poodles. This woman was more statuesque than any of them had been, and it was impossible to imagine her fetching and carrying coffee and doughnuts, but still she brought the phrase to Jonathon’s mind. She turned her gaze on him and seemed to distil everything she needed to know about him in a second or two. Adalia, thought Jonathon, it must be Adalia she reminds me of, the same penetration. The same shrewdness.

The woman issued a command in Vaik and turned back into the building. The red masjythra guided Jonathon up the stairs and into the darkened hallway. He escorted Jonathon to a room on the second floor, opened the door and stepped aside to let Jonathon pass through.

“Thank you,” Jonathon said, as he entered. “Don’t close the door yet.”

The man hesitated.

Jonathon looked calmly around him, the way he might have inspected a hotel room before tipping the bellboy. “They’re fascinating, these old Vaik buildings. You must have seen a few on your travels through the grounds.”

“A few, yep.” The man’s eyes strayed back along the corridor.

“One of the advantages of being a red, I suppose. You get to see all different types of buildings. I’ve mainly seen fields, being a silver. I won’t be here much longer. Just a few months to go.” He waited, hoping the other man would volunteer how long he had left at The Fortress.

“I’m starting to think about what I’ll do when I leave,” Jonathon spoke wistfully, as if thinking out loud. “I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have to worry about money. It would be hard if you’d been here for a while and you had no nest-egg. Skills lose their currency after a while. Be tough to retrain, find a foot-hold again.”

Jonathon watched the man from the corner of his eye. Watched him bite his lip. “I think I’ll do something creative. I’ve got this rural property . . . actually, it’s really more of a shack, if I’m honest. I’ve never had the time to renovate before. But soon I’ll be a free man. A free man with means and in need of a project.”

The man scuffed his feet on the stone floor, as though it were burning his soles.

Jonathon made a show of examining the wall nearest to him, taking angles with his thumb and index finger. “Trouble is, of course, the Vaik don’t keep architectural plans in the local library.”

“S’pose not.”

“If I were to remodel the property along Vaik lines I’d need expert help. A consultant. Someone who’s had an opportunity to study these structures up close. Who’s seen a variety of Vaik buildings. Like this one, for instance.”

The man was clearly turning all of this over in his mind.

“That will be all.” A female voice spoke from behind Jonathon. The red masjythra blushed, nodded and closed the door. Frustrated, Jonathon turned in the voice’s direction. He’d been close to forming an alliance. One he might need.

The room was a long rectangle lit only by two candles burning on what looked like an altar, though he knew that couldn’t be right. The Vaik had no church, no god. The earthen floor gave off a low orange glow as if it were slowly releasing stored sunlight. A wooden bench ran along the perimeter of the room.

“Tell me,” she said archly, “when did you develop such a passion for Vaik architecture?”

Jonathon stared into the darkness, his heart clawing its way out of his chest. Could this be The Woman speaking to him from the gloom?

“Would you like tea?” Mandalay materialised from the shadows with a steaming goblet in each hand. She misread the anxiety on his face. “Don’t worry. It’s not a sleeping tea.”

He took a goblet from her and she gestured for him to sit down. He didn’t want to sit. He wanted to pace. Fight. Negotiate his way out of this charade of submission. He shook his head. “I’ll stand. If it’s all the same to you.”

“As you wish.”

Mandalay seated herself on the bench and sipped her tea, staring at the far wall where the candle-shadow played charades: now a bunny rabbit, now a tree grown gnarled and monstrous.

“You have ill will towards the isvestyii,” she said.

Jonathon snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

“Very well. You hate the isvestyii. He sends filthy, flesh-eating bugs crawling over your skin. He arouses all of your fears about your child. You worry for the girl Vaik. For Ulait.” Jonathon started at Ulait’s name but Mandalay remained transfixed by the candles. “When he tore the Goosen’s Trial from the ground you saw rope. When you think of the girls, what he did to them, you push it away, but it comes back. You think he deserves death.”

“He does. And the Vaik think so too, or you wouldn’t have declared him isvestyii.”

“You presume to know what we think?”

“It’s not a presumption, it’s a statement of fact. The isvestyii can’t be redeemed. He’ll dissolve to nothing at the end. Leave nothing. His family will wipe his name from the official documents. The Vaik will kill him and not one single fuck will be given by anyone.”

Mandalay was silent, drinking her tea. When she spoke her voice was low and contemplative. “They’re all dead now, you know. Those girls. Essa died of her injuries. Internal injuries. The surgeons tried to save her, but . . .” Mandalay trailed off. “One of the girls, Sarai, was a promising athlete. A champion runner and high jumper. She refused to train, after the rape. Do you know what I think?”

She stared straight ahead at the altar now, tears streaming down her face and onto her gown. “I think Sarai stopped believing in her body. She’d thought she was fast. Powerful. But when it mattered her body failed her. She was no match for a man three times her size. She wasn’t powerful. She wasn’t strong or fast or any of the things she had believed. She was just a girl. And she was nothing.” Mandalay dashed the tears from her face with her hand. “I think that’s why—afterward—she punished her body. First she stopped eating. Then, after a few years, she shot herself full of pills and gear. We wanted her to come here. We offer sanctuary to all those wronged by isvestyii, as you know, but her parents refused to let Sarai come. Not that you can blame them. We keep isvestyii well away from their victims, but her parents, they worried about that. She made it to seventeen. Seventeen years, three months and four days. Which I think is remarkable.”

Jonathon didn’t want to hear any more. He wished Mandalay had given him the aniseed tea and he was now sitting, head propped against the wall, her words rolling off his warm narcotic bubble. Instead, they lanced him. They wriggled into the empty spaces inside him, growing louder and sharper.

“After they cut Sarai down from the tree where she hanged herself, they did an autopsy. They found that every inch of her skin she could cover up was lacerated. Cigarette burns on her thighs. Razor scars on her wrists and feet. Puncture wounds she made with a compass on her stomach. Track marks. Bruises. Chemical burns. Her whole body was a map of pain and loathing. And that whole time, the isvestyii you fought today was here. Fed. Clothed. Protected by the Vaik from men who think he deserves a different sort of treatment.”

“He does,” muttered Jonathon.

Mandalay drained the rest of her tea. She tapped her nails on the brass. Shadows flickered on her pale, tear-stained face. “The third girl we know very little about. Her parents moved away after the rape. We followed her progress for a while but there’s not much you can do when people don’t want to be found. She lasted the longest. She was twenty-three when she was killed by an oncoming car. Seven people and three cars were involved in that accident. Everyone else walked away with superficial cuts and bruises.

“The isvestyii was here the whole time.”

“Yes. For thirteen years by the time Julia was killed in the accident. Four women—Essa, Sarai, Julia and their teacher—all dead. Yet he lives. And he lives here, among us.”

On impulse, not even fully aware that he was doing it, Jonathon pushed away from the wall and knelt at Mandalay’s feet. Only when he was reaching for her did he check the sympathetic impulse to touch, to commiserate. He froze, his hand midway between them.

“Sorry,” he said, bringing it slowly back to his side.

Mandalay gave a slight smile, and relief flooded his stomach. “It’s all right.” She leant towards him and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she pressed harder and opened her mouth. He answered, his tongue finding hers. She tasted of salt and lemon and rage.

He pulled away and lightly kissed her forehead, her cheeks. The tip of her nose. “Mandalay,” he said softly. “Mandalay.”

“I hate this,” she sobbed, “this . . . this fury you can’t do anything with.”

“You can do something, though,” he said fiercely. “Tie the bastard to a stake on the beach and stick a knife in his gullet.”

Mandalay blinked, and a fat tear ran down her face. “That won’t bring those girls back. Won’t mend them. Won’t bind their parents’ hearts.” She sighed. “That’s my fury. The isvestyii, I almost don’t see him. He’s a matter of near total indifference to me. He can’t hurt women anymore, and he’s isolated. An object of scorn. We drip-feed him the threat of violence, and that threat, the anticipation of it, is worse than the actuality. But those girls. Those girls.”

Jonathon did not want to think about the girls. Hesitatingly, he reached for Mandalay’s hair and ran his fingers gently though it. His arm was tense, ready to retract if she hardened. Slowly he bent towards the soft red hair in his hands and breathed in the lavender and earth smell. Anything so that he did not have to think.

“Tomorrow we take the isvestyii to The Great Hall,” said Mandalay.

“The Great Hall,” Jonathon murmured, continuing to fixate on her hair.

“It’s the place where all Vaik decrees are made. It’s where isvestyii are declared. Where we decide if an electii can enter The Fortress as a woman. It’s also where we decide if men like you, Jonathon Bridge, can come to us as supplicants.”

He ran his fingertips along her bare arm, her skin as reflective as the perimeter wall, his touch butterfly-light.

“You will be there,” she said.

“What?” he said, forgetting himself in his confusion.

“As you are so certain in this matter, you will judge.”

He shook his head. “What? Me? This is crazy.”

“The Woman has decreed it. We will come for you an hour after sun-up. Sleep well tonight. Rest.” She gently removed his hand from her arm, then took him by the shoulders and drew him upright. “I must go.”

“Mandalay, wait! This makes no sense. I don’t understand.”

She gave him a sad, rueful smile. “You will,” she said. Then she turned and left the room.

* * *

The Woman has decreed it.

Jonathon was fourteen years old when The Woman first stamped herself on his consciousness. He was at the Lake Wykaita summer camp, the same one he’d attended since he was eight, his cohort growing taller and deeper-voiced with each passing year.

His parents told him how much he enjoyed the camp and how much he always looked forward to it, which confused him, because that wasn’t how he remembered it. “We practically had to drag you out of there last year, you were having such a good time,” his mother said as she manoeuvred his suitcase from the back of his wardrobe. Preparing for camp was one of the few domestic chores she took upon herself. The rest was left to the help.

Jonathon cast his mind back to the preceding year. What he remembered were slow days and bad food. Tepid showers. And an incipient feeling of threat. There was an undertow of menace in every exchange. A sense that at any moment a look or word or gesture might tip a ball game or canoe ride over into fists and elbows and knees. Although Jonathon didn’t mind the physical fights so much: they were tangible, knowable, in a way that other things weren’t. Like why they had to get their dicks out and jerk off on the same rock. And why the boy who came last or not at all was therefore a fag. Or what another boy—who’d been, to Jonathon’s eyes, unremarkable—had done to deserve having his backpack smeared in human shit.

“I don’t like it there, Mum.”

“Of course you do,” she said brightly. She hummed a little as she packed his case.

He went.

His chest was permanently tight that summer, as if he was forever holding his breath. Lights out meant ghost stories and the recounting of rapes, murders and dismemberments that had happened near the campsite. He hated these tales, but they compelled him, too. He’d lie awake afterwards, willing the dawn on, determined that the next phone call would be the one where he made his parents understand—finally—that he DID NOT like summer camp.

The story about The Woman was told by Zeb, one of the few boys that Jonathon liked. In the twelve months since Jonathon had last seen Zeb, his adult shape had muscled its way out from puppy fat and brought a new, deep voice with it. Zeb was a gregarious, sporty boy with the general magnanimity of the super-rich and the moderately bright. Most of the boys told their stories with the torch under their chin, funnelling its light over their faces. But Zeb placed it at his crossed knees so the light faced outwards, forcing you to look away at the shadows on the wall, or your own hands in the darkness.

“The Woman lives in the highest turret in the tallest tower at The Fortress,” Zeb began. “The tower is always shrouded in mist, even in the hottest days of summer. Olöcks roost in the hills near the tower. Some say they serve The Woman, acting as her eyes and warning her of any approach. The Woman is a thousand years old. Maybe even two thousand. But you wouldn’t know it if you ever saw her. She has hair the colour of summer straw and clear brown skin. The men who’ve seen her and lived say she has one blue eye and one brown eye, and that when she looks at you she sees into your very soul. She can tell your past, your future and the whole truth about you. She has luscious tits and an arse so pert you could serve drinks on it.”

“Tell us more about her tits, Zeb,” said another boy.

“They’re round and coffee-coloured with enormous pink nipples. They’re so big and firm that if you tit-fucked her your entire cock would disappear into her cleavage. She’s got long, perfect legs, and sitting right between them is a shaved pussy.”

Jonathon was aware of the quickening breath around him, the concentration of lust and shame in the air.

“The Woman’s turret is on the perimeter wall so she can see everything for miles around. One night, a fisherman got lost off The Dryans coast. There was a lot of cloud cover so he couldn’t navigate by the stars. He saw the candles burning high in The Woman’s turret and set his course by that. He brought his boat safely into the little cove by her tower and scrambled up the beach. The olöcks called to The Woman, telling her about the intruder. She set out from the tower, wrapped up in a golden shawl. She found the man shivering and cold and offered to take him to safety. She brought him to the tower where she ordered the male prisoners to prepare a warm bath for him. She washed him herself, lathering him with the sandalwood soap they make at The Fortress. She fed him bread and cheese and gave him wine. Then she took off her dress and gave him a head job—they teach the women at The Fortress how to give blow jobs that’ll blow a man’s mind. Then The Woman climbed on top of the man and fucked him, her cries so loud they were heard all across The Fortress. It went on for hours and hours.

“They found the man a few days later. He washed up in his fishing boat near an effluent overflow in The Dryans. They couldn’t figure out the cause of death. His body was completely unmarked. In the end the authorities issued a statement saying that he’d died of natural causes. But that was just because they didn’t want anybody to know the real truth.”

Zeb paused. In the darkness the only sound was the held breath of thirty boys. Finally, one of them exhaled. “What was the real truth, Zeb?”

“The real truth . . . Are you sure you want to know?” A row of shadows nodded against the wall.

“The real truth,” Zeb’s voice fell to a whisper, “is that The Woman has no ordinary cunt. Deep in her pussy is a long, white fang. A sharp needle that finds its way into the head of your dick and sucks you dry. Drains the life force right out of you. That’s how she stays young. She’ll fuck you to death. Literally.”

The story stayed with Jonathon. He was sure it stayed with all the boys, but for different reasons. When Jonathon thought of The Woman, it wasn’t because of her tits or her blow jobs or the razor-sharp tooth in her pussy, although he’d be lying if he said he didn’t think about those things. It was something else Zeb had said. That when The Woman looked at you, she saw into your very soul. Jonathon both craved and feared it: the idea of The Woman looking into him and delivering, whole and inarguable, the essence of who he was.

Jonathon woke with the dawn in the garret where they’d kept him overnight. He hoped the familiar red masjythra would bring him his breakfast of sticky porridge and tea, but it was a different man. Jonathon ate while perched on the windowsill. He watched the sun appear over the horizon, lightening the ocean and the sentry posts on the thick slab of limestone the Vaik had built into the sea. He thought of Eshtakai slipping into the water to unpick allegiances on the warships and douse their volley of fire.

The seasons were in flux. The light was different: weaker and more diffuse than it had been even four days before. He looked down at his hands. His nails were split, some to the quick. Despite the coarse brushes at the bathhouse there was a half-moon of dirt under each nail. His blisters had burst and reformed so many times that his hands were patched with hard rounds of blunted nerve endings. He remembered how badly his hands had shaken those first few days. How conscious he’d been of his freefalling groin, always resisting the urge to cup himself as he walked; trying to keep his balls and cock from nosing out from under his masjythra. The season had changed, and he with it.

His mind felt clear and certain, as it had the day before when he’d woken out in the open. Essa, Julia, Sarai. His child. That was where his allegiance lay. Eshtakai herself could not change that. Still, he felt light-headed at the prospect of seeing The Woman. Why had she chosen him for judgement in this matter? He surrendered to a profound feeling of gratification. The Woman had singled him out. Recognised his specialness.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

Mandalay opened it and entered the room.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

“I did. Surprisingly.”

“Good. The Great Hall isn’t far, but it’s a steep climb. You’ll need these.” She handed him a pair of shoes.

He looked them over with bemusement: ankle boots made of a suede-like material with crude wooden heels and string laces. “These must be what all the elves are wearing this season.”

Mandalay dipped her head to one side, quizzical. “Elves?”

“Yes. You know, little guys with pointy hats and booties that make toys and chocolates.” Jonathon pulled the boots on. “When you hand me fairy wings, Mandalay, that’s where I draw the line.”

She bent, grabbed his wrist and wrenched him to a standing position. She was a tall woman, almost at eye level with him. She held him so close that he noticed her eyes weren’t dark green any more than the exterior of The Fortress was white: they were a complex honeycomb of amber, brown and grass-green.

“This is not a joke, Jonathon.”

“I know.”

“Your moral certainty won’t serve you here. Once we’re in The Great Hall, you’ll be beyond the reach of my protection. Keep your wits about you. Assuming you have any.”

He thought furiously to ask what he needed protection from, but he couldn’t shoehorn his questions into statements before two red masjythra walked into the chamber. Mandalay dropped his wrist, leaving an angry clench-mark. With her back to the waiting masjythra, she mouthed, “Be careful,” then she turned and addressed the men. “We leave now.” Jonathon followed them down the stairs and out the heavy wooden door.

They proceeded south, Mandalay leading the way, trailed by a masjythra in front of Jonathon and one behind him. If Mandalay was following a path, Jonathon couldn’t see it. Even though it was summer, the grass was thick and waist-high at some points. It hid sudden drops and swells in the earth, making him stumble. Sometimes the grass gave way to patches of gravel. The tiny stones were smooth and slippery; even with the boots he struggled to keep his footing. Mandalay threaded through the grasses and through boulder outcrops, leading them steadily to the peak of a hill. It was wild country, too rocky and steep for cultivation. The rise above them was not far, but tough-going as Mandalay had warned.

They came to a circle of tall, egg-shaped boulders. Mandalay turned and addressed the men. “We’ll catch our breath here.”

Jonathon leant against one of the smooth purple rocks and closed his eyes. The grass licked at his bare legs. Now that he was stationary, the slight wind on his sweat made him shiver.

“Mistress. Look.”

Jonathon opened his eyes and followed where one of the red masjythra was pointing. Just to the left of the outcrop two improbable black birds were fossicking in the undergrowth. They had swan-like necks and bulbous bodies supported by skinny orange legs. Jonathon moved to get a closer look.

“Stay where you are,” Mandalay whispered. “You’ll scare them away.”

He froze. The birds unfurled, elongating their necks and bristling their feathers at the interlopers. He was fascinated. He’d only ever seen olöcks in the zoo as a young boy. When the pair had died, one of old age and the other of loneliness shortly thereafter, the Vaik had refused the zoo’s request for more. No one—except perhaps the Vaik—knew quite how many were left in the wild. Their heads had the prehistoric twitch of lizards, and in stature they were closer to lions than birds. Jonathon breathed in and out as slowly as he could, committing the scene to memory. He would tell his daughter about this.

“We need to keep moving,” said Mandalay.

The party pushed on, the ground rising sharply underneath them. The olöcks fled, their legs flashing orange in the grass as they ran.

“I had no idea they were so fast!” Jonathon said.

“They’re remarkable birds. And contrary to popular belief, they can fly. But only when there’s a storm coming. We think they do it to gauge the air pressure. Come on,” Mandalay commanded.

The last part of the climb was fiercely steep. Jonathon’s breath came ragged and the augers were winching into his muscles again. He noticed small mounds of freshly turned earth dotted about the hill. Curious, he kicked at one as he passed. Something white and hard poked out. He bent lower and brushed the dirt away, then snatched his hand from it in horror.

It was a bone. A tiny, fragile bone.

Jonathon looked up, but no one seemed to have noticed what he’d done. Quickly, he kicked the topsoil over the fragment and tamped it down with his boot. Another bone poked out. A graveyard, he thought wildly, I’m stepping through a graveyard. He commanded himself to keep moving, to avoid drawing attention to himself, but he seemed to be paralysed.

“Jonathon,” Mandalay called to him, “why have you stopped?” Stricken, he looked up. He watched her gaze slide from him to the protruding fragment. She moved quickly from her vantage point, her eyes never wavering from the spot. She bent and upturned soil onto the bone, tamping it down with more force than Jonathon had used.

“Another odd thing about the olöcks,” she said, not looking at him. “They bury their dead.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said mechanically.

“Come, we need to hurry.” She strode away from him, quickly reaching the top of the rise where the reds waited for them. Her hair flew behind her like a flag.

He scrambled to the lip to be level with her, then gazed on the scene below.

“Fuck me,” he said under his breath. His disquiet about the bone flew from his mind.

Mandalay smiled. “I remember the first time I saw The Great Hall. I’d been at The Fortress for nearly four years when I was summoned here to take my final vows. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t find my voice for a minute or two.”

It wasn’t difficult to believe. Jonathon had been expecting a municipal building, something like the town hall or government house in his city. Statues and crests, the emblems of statehood. But this wasn’t even a building: it was an almost perfect circle formed by the natural rise of the hills. The circle was divided into quadrants by a stream so narrow that you could step cleanly between the banks on either side. The stream also flowed around the circle’s perimeter. In each quadrant an amphitheatre of limestone seats faced towards a wedge of stone slabs. Massive glass circular sectors were erected in each quadrant; they caught and transformed the sunlight so the quadrants were awash in ceaselessly dissolving colour. Now amber, now green, depending on the angle. When the sun disappeared behind a cloud it was as though the air was wiped clean, the clarity almost painful to the eye. The cloud passed, and the kaleidoscope twisted again.

“One quadrant for each of the necessities of Vaik life,” Mandalay explained. “Work. History. Sex. Justice. We’re expected at the justice quadrant. Let’s go.”

Jonathon followed her down the winding stone stairs cut into the hillside. People were massing in each quadrant, having approached the circle from different points. Mandalay stepped nimbly over the stream and onto the soft springy turf of the justice quadrant. The clear blue water was surprisingly deep and fast flowing. Jonathon had an urge to throw a coin over his shoulder and make a wish.

“Come,” said Mandalay, “give me your hand.” He reached across for her white hand and she led him into the quadrant.

A prism of light entombed her in bronze as if she were a statue.

The light shifted and she was sentient again.

“Sit here.” She gestured to one of the stone slabs and he lowered himself to it. “Remove your shoes.” He tugged off the boots. “Now remove your masjythra.” He hesitated, then drew the garment over his head and handed it to her. His body was sharp-cut: a working, functioning machine. He heaved himself backwards onto the rock, feeling the stored warmth of it against his buttocks and legs.

Daidd, the isvestyii, two red masjythra and four Vaik entered the quadrant, taking seats in the amphitheatre.

The woman he had seen yesterday strode into the quadrant. Again he felt a sense of déjà vu. He had seen her before, he was sure of it. A word on the tip of his tongue just wouldn’t become sound. The best thing to do is not to think about it, Adalia suggested. It will come when you’re not expecting it. The woman stood before Mandalay, who was now seated in the amphitheatre, and exchanged a few words. Mandalay was tall, but this woman was a giantess. Her dagger was still cinched at her waist.

She crooked a finger at one of the masjythra. He manoeuvred the isvestyii to the apex of the quadrant, tugged off his gown and shoved him against one of the granite slabs. The isvestyii hugged his arms to his chest.

Jonathon felt no pity for him.

The rock beneath Jonathon was smooth and warm. He flipped onto his stomach and lay like a starfish, embracing the heat. The granite felt molten and inviting, as if it might slip over him and cradle him to sleep. But it annoyed him to feel the isvestyii staring at him. He slowly raised his head. The isvestyii rocked back and forth on the rock, his eyes wide and manic. Jonathon met his eyes with a steady, unreflective gaze.

The dagger-carrying Vaik perched on the edge of Jonathon’s rock. She held a goblet of tea in her large brown hands. Remembering Mandalay’s caution, he resisted the urge to make a crack about the Vaik penchant for tea.

“For you.” She held the goblet out to him.

He rolled onto his side and took it. “Thank you.”

“My name is Laliya. I give you leave to name me.”

“I’m honoured, Laliya. I am Jonathon. Jonathon Bridge.”

She tilted her head to one side, as if bemused that he would think it possible she didn’t know his name. Didn’t know his entire history and have a strong presentiment about his future besides.

“How do you like our Great Hall, Jonathon Bridge?”

“It’s magnificent. But then everything about the Vaik is magnificent.”

Laliya sipped her tea. “You are a fan of our society?”

“Very much so.”

“You don’t find it at all strange that The Woman would decree that you judge this matter?”

“Yes. That I do find strange.”

“Why do you think she would do that?”

“I was hoping you might tell me.”

“Hmm.” Laliya looked thoughtful. She turned the goblet to the left and to the right, as if she might divine something from the tea leaves. “Let’s start by being clear on why we are all here.” She looked up and addressed herself to the assembly, her voice resonant and powerful. “On his entrance to The Fortress, Jonathon Bridge took the traditional oath. Both in writing and in speaking, he affirmed that he would not raise a hand in anger towards anyone at The Fortress. Mandalay, you were a witness to this?”

“I was.” Mandalay’s voice was unwavering, but she was even paler than usual, her jaw set.

“Despite this vow, Jonathon Bridge was observed to move towards the isvestyii in his assignment with intent to strike. Were it not for the intervention of Daidd, it seems certain that Jonathon Bridge would have struck the isvestyii. Daidd, does this conform to your understanding of the events?”

Daidd hesitated. “It’s hard to say with certainty.”

Laliya smiled, as if she were humouring a child. “Of course. We are talking here, after all, about something that did not happen. An absence. But on the balance of probability, do you think that if you had not restrained Jonathon Bridge, he would have punched the isvestyii and thereby violated his vow?”

Daidd swallowed. “On balance, I think so. Yes.”

“Mandalay. You observed these events, though you were out of earshot. What is your view?”

“On the balance of probability, I think it likely that Jonathon would have struck the isvestyii. With what force and how many times I cannot say.”

“The effect of the impact is not in question. The question is one of intent. Would you describe Jonathon Bridge as angry when you approached the assignment?”

Jonathon felt an incipient prickle of panic crawl along his spine. He rose to a sitting position and crossed his legs, the goblet of tea in front of his genitals.

“I could not hear the conversation until I was within two or three metres of the assignment,” Mandalay said.

“How was the assignment arranged?”

“Arranged?”

“Were they picking oorsels, eating lunch, taking water?”

“They were . . . They were arranged in a semicircle around Jonathon Bridge and the isvestyii. A tight circle. Jonathon Bridge was in a boxing stance.”

“The mood of the assignment—how would you describe it when you approached?”

“Tense. Hostile.”

Laliya turned from the assembly towards Jonathon. A ray of sunlight struck one of the circular sectors, turning the air around Jonathon the colour of claret.

“Were you angry, Jonathon Bridge?”

“Wait a minute. I’m the one on trial here?”

“Did anyone tell you different?”

“I was told I was to judge. That The Woman had decreed I would judge this matter.”

“And so you shall. How do you judge yourself, Jonathon Bridge?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Were you angry with the isvestyii?”

“Yes. I was angry.”

“What was the cause of this anger?”

“The cause?” Jonathon nearly laughed out loud. “He’s the lowest form of life.”

“If Daidd hadn’t stopped you, would you have struck the isvestyii?”

Jonathon sucked in his breath, then slowly exhaled. He consid ered lying. He was an expert liar, so expert that his fabrica tions came to seem real even to himself. “Yes,” he said eventually.

“In violation of your vow, you would have committed physical violence against a resident of The Fortress?”

“I broke no vow. He’s not a resident. He’s an inmate. He’s locked up here for raping and killing little girls.”

“I didn’t kill any little girls,” the isvestyii muttered. Jonathon had almost forgotten he was there. He looked shrunken and pathetic, his knees tucked under his chin, his hands locked around his shins.

“What did you say?” Laliya asked him. “Speak up.”

“I said I didn’t kill any little girls.” He spoke to the ground rather than to Laliya.

Jonathon was swamped with disgust. Look at him, he thought.

What a cringing and pathetic creature.

“What do you say to that?” Laliya directed her question towards Jonathon.

“To his contention that he didn’t kill any little girls? I treat it with the contempt it—and he—deserve. He raped a child who died from her internal injuries. He left another so damaged she killed herself after years of self-abuse. And the third one had so little will to live she died in an accident that everyone else walked away from.”

“How is it that you know all this, Jonathon Bridge?”

“I read a bit about the case. Before.”

“You couldn’t know all that from reportage. That information is not public.”

Jonathon hesitated. “Mandalay told me.”

“And what makes you certain that Mandalay told you the truth?”

“What?”

“You forget yourself, issuing a question.”

Jonathon remembered something that Daidd had told him. That he was like a piece on a chessboard to the Vaik, every move planned out. Was it possible that Mandalay had lied to him? That this whole thing was an elaborate set-up? The clouds shifted overhead. Tuning forks of light turned the quadrant sea-blue. Jonathon had a momentary sense of panic, as if he were underwater. He sucked the air into his lungs so fast his head swam.

“I’m sorry. I’m dizzy. A moment.”

Mandalay, Daidd, Laliya. They were all submerged in the ocean. He thought of Eshtakai swimming among them, a blade between her teeth.

He was a good judge of character, he reminded himself. “I do not believe Mandalay was lying to me. She had no cause to, and she was in some distress about the details. Obviously. She seemed . . . sincere.”

Laliya shrugged. “Perhaps you are not as astute a judge of character as you like to think. Perhaps Mandalay likes to make mischief. Perhaps she gets off on having a starring role in dramas of her own making. Perhaps she’s a sadist who wanted to see me do this.”

In one fluid motion Laliya launched herself from the rock, lifted her goblet over her head and swung it in a wide arc into the isvestyii’s face. Jonathon heard the crunch of brass on bone. The second of contact reverberated around the echo chamber of the circle cut into the surrounding hills. The isvestyii cried out and rolled into a ball like an isopod, his hands covering his face.

“Sit up,” Laliya demanded. “Sit up now.”

Trembling, he pushed himself to a sitting position. He held his hands above his head as protection against further blows. Blood gushed from his temple and coursed down his face and onto his chest.

Laliya calmly bent to retrieve the goblet that she’d dropped after smashing it into the isvestyii’s face. She cleaned the rim of blood with the hem of her gown, rusting the white fabric.

Jonathon was shocked. It had been so fast, so brutal and so . . . “unprovoked” was the word that sprang to mind. But that wasn’t right, he corrected himself. It was entirely provoked. Entirely justified.

The isvestyii whimpered and cowered as Laliya handled the goblet. She casually seated herself on the granite next to Jonathon. “Do you think me just?” she asked.

“I, I don’t know.”

“Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

“I said I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Yesterday you were prepared to attack this man, in violation of your undertaking to the Vaik. Now, you don’t know?”

“I was unarmed,” Jonathon stammered.

“I see. So it’s the goblet you object to?” She held it out to Jonathon, who mechanically took it.

Laliya stood up and positioned herself in front of the isvestyii. He made inarticulate, pleading noises. Blood had pooled on the rock and was now dripping over its lip onto the grass, staining it purple. The isvestyii still held his shaking hands in front of his face, peeking up through his fingers to the woman towering above him. Laliya scratched the tip of her nose, then cracked her knuckles. She looked indifferent, even bored, as she lifted her arm and brought her balled fist down through the sea-blue air to the isvestyii’s jaw. Her arm was a knot of rope, her fist a boulder. Jonathon closed his eyes so he didn’t see the contact.

But he heard it.

The crunch of bone on bone, then something wet, like a full nappy being dropped to the ground. The man began to cry in earnest: great, slavering sobs. Jonathon folded himself into a ball and placed his forehead on his knees, but he couldn’t cocoon himself against the sound of the crying man. The sound of shame, pain and fear was all around him, trapped in the bowl of the valley.

“You seem distressed, Jonathon Bridge, yet I was unarmed.” Jonathon didn’t look up. As a boy, he’d repeatedly dreamt of a winding hallway along which he was compelled to open doors.

When awake, he could never remember what was behind them.

But it was something that left him winded and small. The doors were open now. All of them.

He wanted Adalia. Wanted her like oxygen. He ached with homesickness, and only Adalia could be home. With his head cradled in the darkness of his arms and knees, he pictured his wife in the colourful kaftans she’d chosen for when she grew big with the baby. He tried to drown out the man’s sobbing with his wife’s magical laugh. But thinking of her only made the homesickness more acute. Tears welled up in his eyes.

“Do you still think us fair and just, Jonathon Bridge?” Laliya’s voice wended its way through the chinks between his limbs.

“Go away,” he said.

She was silent for a moment. When she did speak, she sounded regretful, even kind. “I cannot. This is my place. My land. My history. Where would you have me go?”

“I don’t know. Just away.”

“You sound like a child.”

“I feel like a child.” He raised his head a little so his eyes were visible above his forearms. He knew he probably looked weary and hunted. “I’ve the rights of a child here. You have the arbitrary power of a parent. You can do what you want. Say what you want. Make up the rules as you go. I’m trapped here. For six months more I’m trapped here. Yes, I’m a child.”

“You chose to come here. You’re here of your own volition. All the rules and obligations of our society were made known to you. Your consent was informed.”

“I didn’t know there’d be this—” He waved his hand in a gesture that took in the isvestyii, the goblet, Laliya and her fist. “No one told me about this.”

“This,” Laliya retraced Jonathon’s gesture, “was only necessary because you broke your vow. Had you kept your oath, the existence of The Great Hall would never have been known to you.” Her tone was reasonable, lawyerly.

Jonathon raised his eyes to where Mandalay sat, intent on the scene unfolding below her. She held herself rigid, the ropey muscles in her neck taut. The sun shifted, drawing a tide of malachite through the valley. Six months, Jonathon thought, six more months. How am I to survive it? What kind of shape will I be in when I leave?

“For the record,” Laliya stood up, “Mandalay told you the truth. The isvestyii killed the teacher with a gun at point-blank range. She stood in front of the children, sheltering them with her body. He nudged the gun into her ribcage and shot her through the spleen. Then he raped three of the girls at the school. Perhaps the same school your own child will attend. The police literally peeled him off one of the girls. Essa. Julia. Sarai. So. What do you think he deserves?”

Jonathon stared at the isvestyii. The blood was drying in crusts along his jaw and temple. It was hard to believe that someone who looked so pitiful, so broken, could have done such a thing. Jonathon shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“You seemed certain yesterday.”

“Yesterday was . . .” It was different. Why exactly was hard to explain. Suddenly, a word that Adalia was fond of using came to him. “Was organic. What happened yesterday was organic.”

Laliya ran her hand over her chin, as if checking for shaving stubble. “Organic?”

“He,” Jonathon jerked his head in the isvestyii’s direction, “tried to mess with my head. Singing stupid songs about how we’re the same. We’re not the same. What he did, I can’t comprehend it. Not in a million years would I do what he did. I was angry. He was angry. You should have left us to it.”

“I didn’t sing no songs,” the isvestyii blubbered.

Laliya ignored him. “You think justice is best served in anger? In hand-to-hand combat?”

Jonathon shrugged. “At least it’s honest.”

“This isn’t honest?”

Jonathon laughed a hard, sardonic laugh. The rock was beginning to lose the heat it had stored from the intermittent flashes of sunshine. Goosebumps were puckering his arms. “This is a mind-fuck. There’s nothing honest about it.”

“And you value honesty do you, Jonathon Bridge?”

He sighed, rubbing his arms against the looming cold. “Truth. I value truth. Truth runs deeper than honesty.”

Laliya smiled. “That sounds like something a cheating husband would say. I was never unfaithful in my heart.”

Jonathon flushed red. He felt the heat beaming from his face. It coursed down his bare chest and barrelled through his forearms, flattening the goosebumps. His ballsacks blared heat into the air. Laliya kept her gaze on him, her knowing smile hard as a car grille, showing fine-pointed teeth. A sudden wind pressed her gown against the outlines of her body, the skirt whipped behind her like a tail. Jonathon’s eye was drawn to the bulge in her underpants. Electii. Is that why she seemed familiar?

“I’m not saying anything more,” he said, half-expecting the words to bubble out of him and float to the surface through the blue-green sea. He curled himself up as tight as he could and hid his blushing head in his arms again. I am the rock, he thought. Earthed.

When they addressed him, and shook him, and Laliya slapped him—open-palmed—and shouted “Pay attention!” into his ear, he plunged his hands into the centre of the rock. He dipped into geological time, imagining himself moltening and dissolving into the world’s core. Then hardening there, far beneath the crust, untouchable and unreachable.

Eventually, Daidd, Mandalay and Laliya half-carried, half-dragged him out of The Great Hall and down the hill, back to the building where he’d spent the previous night. They sent for a stretcher, and some of the men from his assignment carried him to his quarters, tipping him from the stretcher into his bed. He turned to face the wall. Mandalay ran her hand softly down the side of his face. “Sleep,” she whispered, but he was stone, and could not hear her.