Page 124 of The Mars House

It was four or five floors deep. There were two above and two below at least, and right through it ran a waterfall. Enclosed in glass, tropical plants and trees winked jewel colours, twining out of moss and flowers, without the tiniest gap of bare earth. Vines tangled above a smooth wooden floor, real wood, and couches as jewel-coloured as the plants. But now, the waterfall was frozen. The thermostat must have been turned off altogether. Frost glittered over those beautiful couches and cushions, and hazed the glass that protected the plants. A strange mist hung just above the floor, glowing in the lantern light. None of the electrical lights were on. January stared around, perplexed, feeling like he did in dreams when the dream took you straight from inside a building to somewhere wild and you didn’t question it.

The Consul was sitting just inside; and so was Aubrey Gale, the original, in that same burnt-orange jumper as always. Only it wasn’t as always any more. Everyone could see them. The Consul certainly could: the two of them were playing Cat’s Cradle on a shoelace in the way of friends who had been waiting a long time and become distracted, as if, he thought furiously, they were normal people. River Gale could. They stopped walking, which made the praetorian with red hair jolt awkwardly.

All this time, they had been right here. If he had just said, that first day at the Tiangong, and who are you then, if he hadn’t been so keen to pretend nobody was in Gale’s room because he was scared of who they might be, this whole stupid thing could have been avoided. There would have been a confusing ten minutes where everyone thought he’d gone mad, but Gale would have believed him, because Gale wasn’t the sort of human who thought people spontaneously started seeing things, and . . .

It made him so angry that he wanted to smack himself in the face, just from complete, stupid, powerless frustration. All this was happening for no more involved reason than that he was a coward who hadn’t said, for months, Hi, I’m January. There had been endless moments where he could have but he just . . . hadn’t. It was beyond stupid. If someone had told him about it, he would have scoffed and said, That’s dumb, that would never happen, no one is that much of a moron. But here he bloody was.

Both of them stood up.

“Kali’s old room,” the Consul said cheerfully, to January. “Isn’t it obscene? God knew what it cost to heat.”

“A lot,” murmured Gale, January’s Gale. River. “Which is why I turned the power off.” Their eyes slipped across to Aubrey. “You’ve been . . . staying here?”

“I knew you’d never let anyone come in, so.”

Gale nodded once. January thought they were going to fight, or at least start buckling on armour, but when they spoke, it was quiet, and their voice had fissures in it. “But it’s so cold.”

“It’s not like I deserved to be comfortable.”

The two of them sounded incredibly similar, and they had the same straight bearing that said they wouldn’t duck even if fire rained from the sky. They looked alike too—not in the way of real twins, but it was obvious they had grown up together. They stood in the same way, they paid attention in the same way. But they seemed very different, side by side. River was stark in their dark clothes, like winter walking; Aubrey, much more colourful, was golden and summery. They would have suited this room beautifully when it was still alive and all the colours were still bright and hot. The two of them stood looking at each other. They both looked tired, and emptied out.

“Are you okay?” River asked at last.

“Mm. Are you?”

“Yeah. I—I had a good run, didn’t I.”

“You did.” Aubrey smiled a bit. “The thing with the mammoths and the windlasses was amazing.”

“It was pretty fun,” River agreed, and half-smiled too.

The Consul nodded to the praetorians, and they handcuffed River’s wrists behind their back. Then there was something else. It was a device like a bracelet. Through January’s glasses, they vanished. The praetorians looked like they were holding a patch of air. He tore the glasses off, fighting down the primal instinct that said Gale really was gone, lost into the winking motes of dust that still swam in the cold air. No. They were still there, eyes down, not meeting his.

He wanted to claw his own heart out. If they had been willing to let him die, then Gale would right now this second be the most powerful person in Tharsis. The election would be a dead certainty.

It was such a close thing he could taste that other version of now. Quietly and gently, Gale had left him behind to die in that tent, and taken the others and Yuan out to the train line. It would have been a slog, but without some idiot who’d got himself shot, they would have made it. They would have left Songshu to the Consul for now, because it didn’t matter. They would have set up a little command room at the naturalisation centre, safely away from the Consul and the praetorians. The launch would have happened just the same. Sasha would have insisted on bundling Gale into some kind of safe house for the next eight and half hours, somewhere top secret, in case the praetorians were out for them with sniper rifles.

And in three days, Gale would win the election, the Consul and Real Aubrey would be arrested, and they would have exactly zero lethal problems.

But no.

He had never been so miserable and so angry at the same time. He wanted to yell that he had never heard of anything so patently, ludicrously, boneheadedly moronic.

The Consul opened their hands.

“January. We should have a chat, I think,” they said in their friendly way. “You must be all at sea.”

There was frost forming in his hair; he could feel how stiff it was. Part of him, though, was still petty enough to think: Shut up, all at sea. There’s no sea on Mars. You said that because you think it’s culturally appropriate for me and it’ll make me feel more reassured. Patronising fuck.

The praetorians pushed Gale into a chair not far away and sat on either side of them. In the doorway, Kasha hurried through and stopped with her head cocked, clearly not sure about these new people. Yuan was with her. January clenched his hand, then held his arms out. Yuan looked relieved and ran across.

“Ah. Who’s this fine young person?” the Consul asked.

“I’m Yuan, I’m going to be a princess,” Yuan explained.

The Consul laughed. “Superb.”

January, who had been wearing them for weeks now as a kind of talisman to remind him that he was House Gale but that he shouldn’t get used it, unlooped the famous pearls and put them in Yuan’s hands. “You have a look at those. I’m just going to talk to the Consul, okay?”