The Peripheral

119

Netherton moved his wrists slightly in the metal cuffs, having decided that looking at the Michikoids wasn’t a good idea. The restraints appeared to have been embedded in the chair’s granite arm for several centuries, but he assumed that assemblers had made them, and that his wrists were in them now because assemblers had made them temporarily flexible, and had briefly animated them. But they were, at the moment, solid.

The bearded man had just promised to have him repeatedly beaten almost to death by Michikoids, he noted, and he was thinking about assemblers, about faux antiques. Perhaps he was finding his own dissociative state. Or perhaps he was about to start screaming. He looked at Daedra. She looked back, without seeming to see him, then up, apparently at the glass roof, four floors above. And yawned. He didn’t think the yawn was for his benefit. He looked up at the roof himself. It reminded him of a dress Ash had worn, it seemed years ago. Ash seemed so utterly normal, from this vantage, this moment. The girl next door.

“I do hope you have this quite entirely sorted out, Hamed,” said a mellow but rather tired voice.

Netherton, lowering his gaze, saw a tall, very sturdy-looking older man, in perfect Cheapside cosplay, his coat long and caped, a top hat in his hands.

“New Zealand looked slightly pushy, I thought,” the bearded man said, as the other crossed from the top of the stairway.

“Good evening, Daedra,” the stranger said. “You gave a most moving testimony to your late sister’s many sterling qualities, I thought.”

“Thank you, Sir Henry,” Daedra said.

“Sir Henry Fishbourne,” Netherton said, remembering the City Remembrancer’s name, and immediately regretted having said it.

The Remembrancer peered at him.

“I won’t introduce you,” said the bearded man.

“Quite,” said the Remembrancer, and turned to look at Flynne. “And this is the young lady in question, albeit virtually physical?”

“It is,” said the man.

“She looks rather the worse for wear, Hamed,” said the Remembrancer. “It’s been a long day for us all. I should be getting along. I need to be able to confirm the successful result to our investors.”

“You’re al-Habib,” Netherton said to the bearded man, not quite believing it. “You’re the boss patcher.”

The Remembrancer looked at him. “I don’t like this one at all. Can’t say you seem very organized tonight, Hamed.”

“I’m killing him as well.”

The Remembrancer sighed. “Forgive my impatience. I’m quite tired.” He turned to Daedra. “A very nice chat with your father, earlier. Always a pleasure.”

“If you can look like the boss patcher, and then look like that,” said Netherton, to the bearded man, “why didn’t you simply change your appearance again, after you realized that you’d been seen?”

“Branding,” said the bearded man. “Investment in persona. I represent the product. I’m known to the investors.” He smiled.

“What product?”

“The monetization, variously, of the island I created.”

“Doesn’t it belong to the patchers as well?”

“They have endemic health issues,” said Hamed al-Habib, bright-eyed, smiling, “of which they aren’t yet aware.”