“There’s milk,” I said as I came out of the bathroom.
“Where?” they asked.
I stubbed my toe, distracted by a breaking report of street violence in Melbourne. “Mini-fridge, under the Mycroft desk, the big green box all those tubes are leaning against.”
The Cousin fetched it. “There’re no forks, but I found a spoon and chopsticks.”
“I have a fork,” I said.
I saw ‘why’ on the Cousin’s lips, but it faded as they realized why any Servicer would travel well-prepared to eat whatever chance or lazy patrons offered. “Do you want the dense fudgy cake, the tall fluffy cake, or this one with sort of red jam stuff between the layers?” they asked.
I hesitated, distracted as I fished the fork from my thigh pocket, and felt the grit of sea salt on the time-dried cloth. Sea water, bodies on stretchers, tsunami, Mycroft, gone. I pretended my sob was a hiccup. “Some of each?”
Foster-Kraye spoon-hacked hunks off the first two cakes, but paused before the third—their tracker, like mine, must have flashed the report that the city government of Odessa had given an order to round up Mitsubishi from their homes, and possibly also Humanists; sources were vague.
“Was it this bad before?” I asked. “Before when I was . . . not calm . . . was bad news coming in this fast?”
Before the Cousin could frame an answer, we heard of what was being called an ‘organized militia’ approaching several bash’houses in Limpopo. “It’s been like this since the cars went down,” they answered. “I guess now people know no one’s coming to stop them, no polylaws, no Alliance aid, no Romanova. Everyone who’s had a plan is putting it in action.”
“So many plans,” I said, as much to my cake as to my companion. Casimir Perry-Kraye had had this in their plan, Perry-Kraye who had destroyed the transit computer backup station, just to make all this more painful for the world. Were there backup backups, I wondered? Had they destroyed those too?
“Every city its own law.” Foster-Kraye stretched back, peering at me. We are in a city. They didn’t need to say it, it was in their face, the thought, the fear. I felt trapped in their gaze, that piercing, hypersaturated royal blue which Danaë and President Ganymede taught me to fear. My mind turned to the palace at La Trimouille, and gilded bed frames, and Perry-Kraye laughing in the flames at Brussels.
“We’re not incapable of doing real good,” they said suddenly.
I stared. “What?”
Carlyle Foster-Kraye leaned toward me. “Just because some of what led Earth to this crisis is our fault, yours, mine, doesn’t mean we can’t still do real good. We’re still here. Alive. We have the ability to act, and choose, and achieve. That’s real. Even if it seems dwarfed by past mistakes, those mistakes aren’t a negative number, they don’t cancel out the good things we do now, don’t make an insurmountable pit we have to climb back out of to start at zero. We can do good, and our pasts don’t take that possibility away, not while we still live and breathe. And try.”
I stared, my fork slack in my mouth. It was mental whiplash, the surreal eye-of-the-storm crisis hush suddenly swapped for a sensayer session. Ex-sensayer? I couldn’t remember whether Foster-Kraye was still a sensayer or not, and searched for their sensayer scarf, which they did have, the black-and-white cloth knotted around their waist to keep their wrap half-up around their hips. I knew this kind of whiplash, being blindsided by metaphysics in the midst of normalcy. The phrase ‘You’ve spent too long around Prince Mason’ toddled through my mind. And then I realized Foster-Kraye and I were here alone, and both insiders, and there was no reason to be circumspect. “Do you worship the Prince now?” I asked.
A smile beamed from the Cousin’s face like sun. “I’m giving my Maker a second chance. It’s only fair: They’ve given me the same.”
I felt my brow tense. Foster-Kraye’s tone was sweet, sincere, like springtime, but made something boil in me, noxious and familiar, like the burn of stomach acid on an already-burned throat. And when They give Mycroft a second chance, I’ll smile like that too. I don’t know how long the hate-burn held me, but we were still staring at each other when a rush of cops charged in so violently that I leapt up, grabbed a heavy pipe from under Papa’s desk, and took a defensive stance before I even realized I was moving. “. . . somewhere in Papa’s desk . . .” one of them was saying as they entered, but they stopped short in front of us, four of them, eyes glittering with lens-traffic, their gray Romanovan uniforms rumpled from the all-nighter.
“Why are you here? This is a secure area!” one shouted. I recognized this one—tall, classically beautiful, South-Asian-looking with a Whitelaw Hiveless sash about their hips—but their name escaped me.
Foster-Kraye rose and kept their hands prudently visible. “I’m Special Informant Carlyle Foster, I’m—”
“I know what you are.” Rolled eyes condemned, either the liberties Papa took with their informants, or this Cousin specifically. “Do you have orders to be here?”
Foster-Kraye smiled. “My last orders from Papa were ‘Stay down and don’t get lynched,’ but I don’t have that in writing. Papa left me here to look after [Anonymous].”
Suspicious eyes grew more suspicious as they turned on me. “AWOL from your dorm? And in a state of emergency, no less.”
“Not AWOL,” I answered. “Papa let me stay.”
The officer shoved past Foster-Kraye, toward me. “I suppose you don’t have that in writing either?” I recognized their uniform at least, gray with gold piping and that sparkling, holographic blue trim that home printers can’t replicate, just like Papa’s except lacking the cross-swirl. Deputy Commissioner General, then. The title summoned the name: Bo Chowdhury.
I held my ground. “I’m working.”
“In a top security office? Doing what?”
The truth was off-limits, but in my mind I said it: I’m the damned Anonymous!
Chowdhury pounced on my hesitation. “Drop the weapon, Servicer. You don’t want armed resistance on your record.”
I froze. I felt like I was a spectator, watching myself in horror, cursing at my body: Drop the pipe, you idiot! Threatening the Deputy Commissioner General? What are you thinking! Yet my body would not move.
Chowdhury nodded for the others to advance on me. “Take the Servicer to the cells.”
Foster-Kraye stepped in. “No need for that.” I couldn’t tell whether the sweetness in their tone was fake or just irrepressible. “I’ll escort [Anonymous] to the nearest dorm.”
Chowdhury’s eyes were stone. “Cells. Now. And you’ll be sharing a cell with them if you interfere again, Cousin.”
“Blacklaw,” Foster-Kraye corrected, rising so the black sash about their waist lolled down from amid the wrap’s folds, like the dangling legs of a sleeping cat. Their posture felt different suddenly, striking, with an intentionality I could not quite call menace. I’d forgotten Foster-Kraye had followed Dominic so far. “Call Papa,” Foster-Kraye challenged, calmly. “They’ll settle this misunderstanding.”
The cops in the back exchanged unhappy glances.