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TWENTY-SEVEN

I TELL MYSELF I HAVE QUESTIONS ONLY she can answer, but in truth, I visit her to stem the waves of guilt that roll through me without warning, brought on by the most innocuous things. The scent of roses drifting through the garden, the sting of hot bathwater, a bite of dry pot roast—they bring her back to me. I don’t want to attach the prisoner locked securely in the bowels of the estate with my mother. But no matter how well I understand the situation, my brain is no match for my heart.

My mother’s curled up in a ball in the corner of her cell. She doesn’t move when I enter. For a moment, I think the worst: that she’s dead. And confused feelings swirl up inside me. Anger. Bitterness. Sadness. Relief. I wish I could lean forward and reach out to her. With her eyes closed, she looks peaceful. She’s not wearing cosmetics and her hair is clumped around her head, but it’s still her. She lifts her head, and the shift reveals a large purple scar running up her neck.

What did the Guild do to her? Can I undo it?

She stares at me without speaking and I see the wheels turning in her head. She’s going to play with me, but I won’t let her.

“Meria,” I say. I can’t bring myself to call her Mom after our last meeting.

“Adelice,” she murmurs. “Come to check in on your prisoner?”

“You aren’t my prisoner,” I remind her.

“Sure, your whining didn’t land me in here.” She sits up. She’s thinner than the last time I saw her. Under her threadbare shirt I can see the jut of bones, and how her clothes hang on her. She’s all points and angles.

“Are they feeding you?” I ask.

Her lips squash a smirk. “Yes, scraps.”

Scraps like she is an animal. No wonder she’s so thin.

“I’ll make sure you get real meals,” I promise her.

“That’s so sweet of you.” Her voice is flat, as colorless as the walls around us.

“I have some questions for you.”

“And I have all the time in the world to answer them.” She blinks slowly.

“Can you swim?” It seems silly and frivolous to ask a starving woman this.

“Are you planning to drown me?”

I plant my hands on my hips and stare down at her. “Do you see any water in here?”

“No, I can’t.” She speaks each word with halting, dramatic emphasis.

“Never mind,” I say. “This was a stupid idea.”

“Your question was stupid.”

“Fine.” My fists ball up as they did when I was a sullen child. If she wants a real question, I have those, too. “How did you get to Earth?”

“Planning to return home?”

“Do you remember?” I ask, bypassing her question.

“Of course I do,” she says. “We took a loophole.”

“Were you running to a loophole on the night I was retrieved?” I ask, abandoning any hope of a casual conversation.

“Your parents really failed you that night,” she says, not answering my question.

“Do you remember?” I ask, unsure I want the answer.

“I know what happened,” she snaps. “The retrieval squad came and you were too stupid to warn your parents. They tried to run. There was a slub in Romen. You would have been safe there, but you didn’t warn them, so they couldn’t escape. You killed your parents.”

Her words sting.

“My parents aren’t dead,” I say. “Benn is. But you’re alive, and so is my biological father.”

“So Dante told you?” she asks. “I wondered if he would. I didn’t think he had the courage.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I tell you?”

It’s frustrating to sit here and talk with a woman who shares my history and holds the secrets to the past I can’t remember, but who doesn’t see herself as part of it. She looks at her memories from the outside.

“I don’t suppose I’ll be calling him Daddy anytime soon,” I say.

“That child couldn’t be a father,” she says. “He can’t see past himself. He didn’t even realize she was pregnant.”

“You were pregnant?” I prompt.

“Meria was pregnant.” The words are oozed venom on her tongue.

“You are Meria.”

“I am no one,” she says.

And I see the truth of it in the flat deadness of her eyes. I hear the resignation seeping through her voice. I feel it as the words hang between us. It’s true because she believes it.

“Where can I find a loophole?” I can’t keep talking circles around this subject. I can’t listen to my mother denounce me, my family, herself.

“Around,” she says with a shrug.

“That’s so helpful.”

“Don’t you think someone as powerful as your host would know the answer to that question?”

“My host is gone at the moment,” I say. Then it occurs to me that I might be giving her too much information in telling her that Kincaid is away. Maybe it’s a good thing she’s so securely kept.

“And he left you behind?” The question digs at me.

“I’m tired of your games,” I tell her. “I just … just wanted to see you.”

“In the future,” she begins, and my breath hitches, caught on the unexpected hope rising in my chest, “don’t bother.”

It stings, even though I know this is a game. I turn without a goodbye and leave her there. On my way out, I decide:

I’m never going back to her.

Erik is at dinner, alone. I’m not hungry, but I knew he would be in the dining room. When Kincaid left to find the Whorl, I expected meals to become less formal. But even though Valery doesn’t join us and Dante rarely does, the kitchen still serves a full five-course meal.

“Do you know anything about loopholes?” I ask Erik, sipping the last of the coffee that was brought with the dessert tray.

“Like bunny ears for tying your shoes?” he asks.

“Yes, of course that’s what I mean,” I say in a flat tone.

“I guess I don’t know then,” Erik says. He hasn’t touched his coffee, so I steal it.

“I can’t believe you drink that stuff,” he says.

“I can’t believe you don’t.” I slurp a long draft of it for emphasis.

“Why?” he asks.

“It hits me right here,” I say, poking my forehead. “Like tiny explosions.”

“Right,” he says as he fiddles with my old digifile, barely interested.

“Why didn’t you pawn that?” I ask.

“It’s useless down here,” Erik says, but he doesn’t stop playing with it. “Why did you ask about loopholes?”

“Something my mom said.”

That gets his attention.

“At the risk of sounding like my brother, you know it’s a bad idea to visit her, right?” Erik asks. He abandons the digifile and looks at me.

“I know,” I admit. “But it feels like she’s the only connection I have left.”

“You have me,” Erik says.

“Not what I meant. My last connection to a time when life wasn’t confusing.” My words are all wrong, betraying me. I can’t explain it to him. I barely understand it myself.

“And she told you about loops?” Erik guesses.

I nod, trying to sort my thoughts into coherent strings of words. “Dante called them loopholes. There must be one in the Icebox with that many refugees winding up there. Someone in the grey market must know.”

“Do you even know what a loophole is?”

“No,” I say. “But I have an idea.”

“Well, that’s something,” Erik says.

It’s more than I usually have. “But what now?”

“That’s the easy part. We go to the Icebox.”

Most of the house has retired for the evening. There’s no way to procure a security detail to leave the premises at this hour and Kincaid has left strict instructions that I can’t leave anyway. But thirty minutes later we’re sitting in a crawler. I’ve traded my skirt and blouse for one of the few practical outfits Kincaid has supplied me with: a mink coat layered over a flowing silk tunic and close-fitting black trousers with supple black leather boots that reach my knees. There are a few credits crammed in my pocket—the leftovers from the items we pawned upon our arrival here. The Icebox is down through the mountains, and it sprawls around the estate like a metro built on a tributary.

“So you stole a crawler?” I ask.

“I borrowed it,” Erik says.

“Without permission,” I add.

“Flexible morals,” we both say at the same time.

“Jinx,” Erik says.

“Uh-oh, bad luck for me,” I say.

“Nah,” he says. “In Saxun, it means you owe me something.”

“That sounds like trouble,” I say, unsure I want to be further in Erik’s debt. “What do I owe you?”

Erik shoots me a wink from the driver’s seat. “I’ll think of something. So what now?”

“We figure out…” I pause. I have no idea what we need to figure out next.

“Good plan,” he says.

“I’m known for my high-quality planning skills.”

The grey market is as delightful as I remember. But Erik says nothing when I toss a few credits to a refugee begging on the sidewalk.

“I don’t care how he uses it,” I say, suddenly self-conscious of my move. “He needs it more than I do.”

“I’m not judging you,” he says. “He probably does need it more than you do.”

He smiles so genuinely then that my insecurity melts, replaced by something much warmer that tugs at me.

Something that forces me to turn away.

“Wait,” I say, twisting back toward the opposite direction, returning to the refugee.

“Ma’am.” The refugee tips an imaginary hat at me.

“You’re a refugee.” I point to the scrawl of information on his makeshift sign. “How did you get here from Arras?”

The beggar’s eyes dart from me to Erik and back again. “Don’t remember.”

“I promise,” I start, squatting down to him, “we’re only looking for one to use ourselves. We need to go back.”

His eyebrows tilt in surprise and he mumbles a few unintelligible words that sound like oaths.

“Please,” I press, reaching out to touch his hand.

“There’s a depot in the grey market. Find the speakeasy on First,” he says, but he grabs my hand with sudden passion. “You can’t go back. It’s suicide.”

I pull my hand away, managing a smile.

“Come on,” Erik says, offering me his hand. I accept it, thanking the refugee for his information. The man’s face stays gray in the halogen of the fading lighting system. We have enough time to find the bar he’s talking about, on First Avenue, before the streets go dark at curfew.

“Want to grab a drink?” Erik asks, threading my arm around his.

“Erik, you read my mind.”