Blackfish City(89)

“We should have taken him prisoner,” Soq said.

“We got what we needed from him,” Ora said.

“Leaving him alive is a big risk.”

“I know. But he needs to know what it’s like to live with something like that.”

Podlove had screamed and begged when Ora took off his left hand. Promised her mountains of money. Shown staggering repentance. She’d taken her time removing the right one, sawing slowly while Soq held him down. Then they took his tongue. Then they powdered him with clotting agents, bandaged him up, and got off him. Walked away. Carried Kaev to the boat where Ankit waited.

“Where are we going?” she’d asked then, but no one had spoken.

She asked it again now.

“Go’s ship,” Soq said.

“Ballsy move,” Ankit said. “After you just shot her in the head in the middle of the grid. You don’t think her army might have something to say about it?”

“I’m her kid,” Soq said. “Everybody knows it. The next three hours will be crucial. The software war is winding down, but it’ll take that long for the city’s infrastructure to reassert itself. Drones, cams, witness reports—I don’t think what I did will reach the ship for a little bit. I think I’ll be able to muster enough important players into my corner by then. I have the advantage—no one else knows the time is right for a power play—and with Dao dead there’s no one with a more legitimate claim to the throne.”

“Or maybe none of those things will happen.”

“Right. And I’ll get killed.” Soq shrugged. “Let’s see what we can do about making that not happen.”

Ankit recognized it, this look on Soq’s face. This fearlessness that probably wasn’t really fearlessness. More like—the excitement outweighed the fear, the potential positive outcomes overshadowed the potential negative ones. She didn’t share it, but she’d seen it before. On her scaler friends, the ones who came from even less than she did, the orphans who hadn’t lucked into a family or had ended up in an awful one. The ones who climbed the buildings beside her and stood there looking out at Qaanaaq without the sick feeling in the pit of their stomachs, the fear of falling, the fear of imprisonment, who had nothing but the open-armed embrace of the night to come, with whatever good or awful things waited for them inside it.

Soq squatted down beside Kaev. He looked at Soq, looked through them. “Shhhh,” Soq said, and put their hands on their father’s shoulders. So much muscle in there, so much strength. Yet here he was, helpless. Whispering a word that sounded like God? Chim climbed down from Ankit’s shoulder to huddle up against Kaev, poking him tenderly from time to time, warming herself with his body heat.

Green flares spouted intermittently at the end of an Arm, unscheduled methane ventilations, less spectacular by daylight. Snow fell faster now.

“She wouldn’t have hesitated to kill us all,” Soq said, and Ankit saw tears streaming down their face. “Or most of us. I’m a maybe, Go might have thought she could scare me into silence, but you two . . .” Soq pointed to Ora and Masaaraq, grief wracking every word. “She’d have done her damnedest to put the blame somewhere else, and that would have been a lot easier if the Killer Whale Woman and her Cabinet-escapee lover were corpses who couldn’t tell a different story.”

“He won’t care,” Ora said, touching Kaev’s sweaty forehead. “All he knows is, he loved her.”

Soq nodded. Their face was a blotchy knot of guilt, sadness, rage. “Is there . . . can we . . . do . . . anything?”

“He’ll be in a lot of pain for a very long while. When I was in the Cabinet, and my eagle was sick, I was lucky enough to know it was happening. To have some time, to help ease the transition. By bonding people, I built up the kind of bonds that soothed the trauma, but it happened slowly. Having been through what he’s just been through, Kaev might not be able to last that long.”

“. . . Last?”

“He might choose . . . not to stick around,” she said sadly. “Not to be. I almost did, ten times or more.”

“But people need him,” Ankit said. “There’s a lot of people with the breaks, suffering really badly. He can help them, and they’ll help him.”

“We’ll get to work,” Soq said, pressing a cool hand to their father’s hot forehead. “As soon as we get back. I know some of Go’s soldiers must have the breaks. And then we’ll head to Arm Eight, where lots of people have it.” Soq stood, and Ankit’s heart caught in her throat, to see the power that Soq radiated. Power, and something else. Lots of people had power. Fyodorovna had power; Go did. What Soq had was different. Power, and something more—the strength to do the right thing, the hard thing, the wisdom to know what that was. “We’re going to fix him.”

Ankit looked up from her screen and said to Soq, “They’re finished. Your friend Jeong finished processing all the escapees. He’s taking advantage of the chaos, got half of Go’s soldiers ferrying them to their new homes. Word is, he can get pretty bossy.”

“He can,” Soq said. “And it’s good to hear that they’re already obeying him.”

“The two of you might have a shot.”

“We can’t stay here,” Masaaraq said, the first words she’d uttered since regaining consciousness.