The Power(75)

Roxy smiles and gives a little laugh. That’s a good memory. Simpler, happier times. ‘That’s teamwork,’ she says.

‘I think we could do it again,’ says Mother Eve, ‘on a larger scale.’

‘How d’ you mean?’

‘My … influence. Your undeniable strength. I’ve always felt that there were great things ahead of you, Roxanne.’

‘Am I really pissed,’ says Roxy, ‘or are you making even less sense than usual?’

‘We can’t talk here.’ Mother Eve lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘But I think that Tatiana Moskalev will soon have outlived her usefulness. To the Holy Mother.’

Ohhhhhhhh. Oh.

‘You kidding?’

Mother Eve shakes her head minutely. ‘She’s unstable. I think in a few months’ time the country will be ready for a new leadership. And the people here trust me. If I were to say that you are the right woman for the job …’

Roxy almost hoots with laughter at that. ‘Me? You’ve met me, haven’t you, Evie?’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ says Mother Eve. ‘You’re already a leader of a great multitude. Come and see me tomorrow. We’ll talk it through.’

‘It’s your funeral,’ says Roxy.

She doesn’t stay long after that, just long enough to be seen to be having a good time and press the flesh of a couple of Tatiana’s other disreputable cronies. She’s taken with what Mother Eve’s said. It’s a nice thought. A very nice thought. She does like this country.

She stays out of the way of the reporters circling the room; you can always tell a fucking reporter from the hungry look on their faces. Even though there’s one she’s seen on the internet who she fancies like she could lick his flesh straight off his bones, there’s always more blokes where he came from; they’re ten a penny. Especially if she were President. She mutters it under her breath. ‘President Monke.’ And then laughs at herself for it. Still. Could work.

In any case, she can’t think about it too hard tonight. She’s got business to do this evening; non-party, non-diplomatic, non-pressing-the-flesh business. One of them UN soldiers or special representatives or whatever wants to meet up with her somewhere quiet, so they can work out how to circumvent the blockade in the North and keep product moving. Darrell’s set it up; he’s been doing operations here for months, keeping his head down like a good boy, making contacts, keeping the factory running smoothly even during the war. Sometimes a bloke is better at that than a woman – less threatening; they’re better at diplomacy. Still, to finish the deal it has to be Roxy herself.

The roads are winding and dark. The headlights are the only pools of light in the black world; no streetlights here, not even a little village with lit windows. Bloody hell, it’s only just gone eleven; you’d think it was four o’clock in the morning. It’s more than ninety minutes out of the city, but Darrell’s sent her good instructions. She finds the turn-off easily enough, drives down an unlit track, parks the car in front of another one of these spiky castles. All the windows are dark. No sign of life.

She looks at the message Darrell sent her. Green-painted door will be open. She makes a spark from her own palm to light her way, and there’s the green door, paint flaking off, at the side of the stable block.

She can smell formaldehyde. And antiseptic. Another corridor, and there’s a metal door with a round handle. Light is seeping in around the frame. Right. This is it. She’ll bloody tell them next time not to have a fucking meeting somewhere unlit in the middle of nowhere; she could have tripped over and broken her neck. She turns the handle. And there’s something weird, just enough to put a frown between her eyes. She can taste blood in the air. Blood and chemicals and there’s a feeling like … she tries to pin it down. It’s a feeling like there’s been a fight. Like there’s always just been a fight.

She opens the door. There’s a room lined with plastic, and there are tables and medical equipment, and she’s thinking that someone didn’t tell Darrell the whole story, and she has just enough time to be afraid when someone grabs her arms and someone else pulls a sack over her head.

She gets off a huge blast – she knows she’s hurt someone badly, could feel them crumble and she hears the scream – and she’s ready for another go, she’s wheeling round and trying to get the bag off her head, and she’s spinning and letting off jolts wildly into the air. She shouts out, ‘Don’t you fucking touch me!’ and pulls at the thing on her head. And blood and iron bloom at the back of her skull because someone’s hit her as hard as she’s ever been hit and her last thought is ‘A leopard, as a pet’ as she goes down into night.

She knows, even in her half-sleep, that they’re cutting her. She’s strong, she’s always been strong, she’s always been a fighter and she’s wrestling with the sleep like a heavy, sodden blanket. She keeps dreaming that her fists are clenched and that she’s trying to open them, and she knows that if she could only make her hands move in the real world she would wake up and then she would bring down such blood upon them, she would make the pain fall from the sky, she would open up a hole in the heavens and tumble the fires on to the earth. Something bad is happening to her. Something worse than she can imagine. Wake up, you fucker. Wake the fuck up. Now.