Jon Grimwood - redRobe

Kate looked up from stuffing twigs into a small fire. And as Axl watched her watching him, he tried not to think of all the others watching them. For someone meant to keep to the shadows he’d been doing a spectacularly bad job. She weighed up his words as she looked for the catch.

‘Mai?’ She asked at last.

‘Yeah, that. . . And something else,’ Axl gestured at the fire. He wasn’t quite asking Kate’s permission to sit but he wasn’t far off. As close as he was likely to get to an apology anyway. And when Kate had finished looking surprised, she nodded.

Inside Axl’s head, the soundtrack added strings which died abruptly as his adrenaline levels soared. He got steady drum and bass on their way down.

Part of him wanted to tell Kate that PaxForce were waiting in the woods. Somehow he never quite got round to it.

‘Kate.’ The single word was too hard, too abrupt.

She did that look, the half frightened/half aggressive one he was beginning to recognise.

‘There was a mosquito,’ said Axl, then stopped. Lost for his next line. Same as it ever was. There was enough room in the silence that followed for either of them to stand up and walk away. Neither one did.

Her frown was puzzled, her eyes watchful. Without knowing, she twisted her mouth and bit at the inside of her bottom lip. That was another tic of hers Axl recognised, the one that said, Okay. I’m concentrating…

‘Look,’ Axl said into the silence. ‘You remember after… ?’

‘After what?’ Kate was about to say and then realised what Axl was talking about. She froze. ‘Remember?’ She couldn’t forget and not from lack of trying. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, ‘I made a mistake. What about it?’

‘The mosquito.’ Reaching with clumsy fingers into the side pocket of his coat, Axl extracted a tiny tangled mess of chitin and gossamer-fine optic fibre. Even in the fading light and covered with grit its solar-powered wings were flecked with iridescence.

‘PaxForce-issue,’ Axl said. He held it out to her but Kate wouldn’t take it.

‘How do I know it isn’t yours?’

‘You don’t.’

Very slowly Kate reached out for the bug, her shaking fingers closing around the tangled remains. They both knew she was trying to take the bug without touching his proffered hand.

Kate took the dead insect and squinted at it. Made by machines or once actually alive, she had no idea how to tell. Not her area of expertise. She used to have people to do that stuff for her. What the fuck do I actually know? Kate thought crossly, turning the tiny bug over in her hand.

She was meant to be considering what she’d revealed to him back then, doing grown-up things like working out the possible political impact of her indiscretions, Kate knew that: but what was really looping through her brain was the memory of Axl naked above her. That and the absolute certainty she’d been screaming by the end.

Well, if not actually screaming, then certainly not silent. And all the time…

‘You told me about Mai, remember.’ If Axl noticed Kate had gone red he didn’t say anything, just waited.

‘And Joan,’ Kate said.

Axl nodded. ‘Joan, the dreams, those memory beads.’ He stopped, hesitated and told the truth anyway. ‘I came here to get you. But after you told me about Mai, I knew she was key. The only question was, who’d get there first…’

‘ Why did it have to be you?' There was such upset in Kate’s question that Axl winced, an actual physical flinch. And then he told her…

An hour was what it took, an hour Axl didn’t have, while the others fidgeted and Mai hummed under her oak tree and PaxForce troops crouched in the woods below certain in their knowledge that there was only one trail down to the valley floor.

‘That’s the truth?’

‘Yes.’ Axl nodded. It wasn’t, of course, not the whole of it. That would involve telling Kate facts he wasn’t prepared to let go. Strange as it seemed, he trusted the woman and, now his decision was made, he had no intention of being responsible for her doing something stupidly noble… Like refusing to go home to Cocheforet.

Kate didn’t need to know about the timecode, the soundtrack, the whole of Rinpoche’s tatty little bag of tricks that locked him into the countdown for the Nuncio’s cruiser. Any more than knowing about the Colonel’s troops dug into the edge of the woods would be useful ... In fact, Axl told Kate nothing that might complicate what he was about to do.

‘I’m letting Mai go,’ Axl said.

He expected shock, a flare of hope, outright suspicion… What he got was a slow nod of the head. It seemed Kate was ahead of him even in this.

‘The Cardinal will kill you.’ They both understood she meant it literally.

Axl shrugged. No would be a lie and Yes didn’t bear thinking about. About the best he could hope for was maybe.

‘You think you put her over the edge,’ Kate said. ‘But it was Father Sylvester who led her there. No,’ Kate shook her head, ‘he dragged her there, bound and with her lips sewn together—and I gave the order…’

Guilt, it was a wonderful thing.

‘I’m going to tell Mai.’ Axl pushed himself up off the ground. Both knees were locked from squatting by the fire and pins and needles threaded through both ankles but Axl felt none of it. In fact, he was working very hard at feeling nothing at all.

Kate didn’t move. ‘You coming?’ Axl asked over his shoulder, and he walked off without looking back.

They heard the girl puking before they reached her.

‘I’m scared she’s dying.’ Kate’s voice was raw, as if she was the one who’d been vomiting over the tree roots.

‘No,’ Axl said firmly. ‘Rinpoche wouldn’t allow it.’ Both Kate and he knelt in front of the girl and waited for her huge pupils to focus.

‘13.38.34…’ She told Axl. Mai even did the dots between numbers.

He nodded. ‘I’m looking for Rinpoche,’ said Axl.

‘Beloved?’ She stared up at him, dark eyes as empty as the Big Black.

‘The silver monkey ... I need to talk to him. You know where he is?’

‘Up.’ The Japanese girl pointed directly into the night, sky.

Yeah, thought Axl, surprise me…

‘How do you know?’ Kate demanded, voice uncertain.

‘We’re watching. You’re small and suddenly whoosh…’ Mai smacked her hand into the dirt, ‘you’re big.’

Radical focus shift, most vidSats came with it built-in except for the really cheap Italian ones. Watching not listening or he’d have been down already. Besides, Mai probably wasn’t looking at them, not really, she’d spliced into some feed. Actually… Axl ran through what he knew about human optics and decided it amounted to the same.

‘Tell Rinpoche I want to do a deal with Tsongkhapa.’

‘You want what . . . ?’

‘Tsongkhapa,’ Axl stressed, ignoring Kate for a second, ‘you got that?’

Mai had and within seconds so had Rinpoche… The silver monkey didn’t so much drop as plummet. Not quite as fast as Mai’s hand had hit the dirt but still swift.

Big beats crashed in Axl’s head. One second there was blackness, then the silver monkey was landing, wings thrown wide and grown vast, its very own instant parachute.

Axl grinned and Rinpoche grinned back, wings already shrinking.

‘So,’ it said, folding the now small wings neatly across its back, ‘you looking for extra muscle?’

‘No, I’m changing the deal.’

‘There is no deal,’ said Rinpoche.

‘As of now there is,’ said Axl. ‘Or there will be. And it’s got to hold for Tsongkhapa too. Not just you.’