Page 133 of The Mars House

Aubrey looked out the window, at the city strobing by, and the beautiful purple aurora that was the solar circuitry on the road charging the car. “That’s okay,” they said.

But the Consul didn’t throw them out of the car. Instead, they watched Aubrey with an unbearable gentleness. It was how people—good people, kind people—looked at wounded animals.

Not how Aubrey did. Or River. Show either of them a wounded animal in the woods and they’d been trained to shoot it. Kindest thing, said Kali.

“I’m not going to do that,” the Consul said. “Because that would be dumb. I’m going to look after you, and get you better, and then we’re going to swap you back in. You’ll have your life back, and House Gale will be friendly with House Song again.”

Aubrey waited, because it seemed absurd that they would ever do that. They waited for the Consul to lunge past, open the door, and sling them out. Jokes! You’re a splat on the road. Because Aubrey had just confessed to murdering a member of House Song. The obligation to get some justice—if that had been House Gale, the honour of the House alone would have made Aubrey publicly flay whoever had done it.

There was no lunging.

And that’s because, said a little voice that sounded like River, the Consul is a statesman, whereas you are a narcissist. You wouldn’t seek justice because the person’s family needed it. You’d do it because you would have felt dishonoured.

“You haven’t spoken to anyone for months, have you?” the Consul said.

Aubrey shook their head.

“Come here.” They put one arm out and hugged them, and Aubrey juddered into tears they couldn’t stop, desperately relieved, and desperately scared, because they honestly couldn’t think of any reason why the Consul wouldn’t just shove them in front of the national press and use them as proof that River was committing identity fraud, and then it would be a prison hulk, and one day they would die in one of those airless steel cells. But they couldn’t think any more. They couldn’t get further than knowing something had to change, for worse or for something else. “It’s okay.”

And so Aubrey was a guest of the Consul’s at Jade Hill for the next two weeks. It was scary and balmy by turns. Words skittered away from them whenever anyone asked even a simple question like, Are you allergic to anything we should tell the cook about? If one of the praetorians opened a door for them, the fact of having been seen was paralysing, and it took every mote of courage just to walk through, even though, and this was maddening part, they couldn’t have said what dreadful thing their stupid brain thought might happen.

They hadn’t expected it at all—this was a business transaction, after all, and the Consul had no reason to care about Aubrey past their ability to take House Gale back from River—but the Consul came to visit every second day or so. When Aubrey had been there for a week, they appeared dressed up on the Friday night as a giant fluffy tiger with a bucket of sweets, and did a happy dance in the middle of the sitting room. Aubrey had no idea what was happening and said so.

The enormous fluffy tiger gave them a disapproving look. “It’s the final. It’s China versus India. Forget the election, this is the match of the century.”

“The . . . ?”

“Soccer! I have brought you the necessary,” the Consul said gravely, and handed Aubrey an Indian flag.38 They had a Chinese one. They started a little flag sword-fight.

Aubrey considered. “We’re going to destroy you.”

Just for a second, the Consul looked delighted that they’d managed to think of a normal reply, but then danced away to put the big screen on, and did a sports-commentator voice. “Yow, fighting words from the underdog there, but can India really pull it off in the face of the almighty—”

“As the direct descendant of Kali, Destroyer of Worlds, I say the Celestial Empire can get back into the trash fire from which it emerged.”

The Consul yelled the Chinese national anthem at them, and at the door, some praetorians had to try very hard not to look like they were laughing.

The Consul stayed in a good mood all week. River was being minced in the press over what had happened to January Stirling, and their polling looked awful now. Six months ago, Aubrey would have been hopeful that this was it, River had finally crashed, but they weren’t so sure now. Now they were pretty certain that River was like a boomerang. You hurled it as hard as you could, but a little while later, it looped back and smacked you in the face.

It wasn’t long after that that they both discovered River’s boomerang plan. The Consul came in one evening with an intelligence services briefing file, looking speculative.

“So River just went to the Earthstrong block in Americatown where January Stirling lives. He’s just out of prison.”

Aubrey frowned. To anyone who didn’t know River, it would be easy to assume they had just gone to apologise. But River never apologised for winning an argument. River believed in the survival of the cleverest. If you were a vole in the path of River’s combine harvester of a brain, well, you deserved to be goo. “Why?”

“Not sure. There were no press there, so not an apology photo op. I wanted to ask you. Genuine apology?”

“Hell would freeze over first,” said Aubrey, who was starting to suspect that something boomerang-shaped might be happening. They paused. “Let me go back to Songshu. I can find out.”

The Consul’s eyes ticked up and down Aubrey’s whole self. “Will you be okay?”

If it had been just for the sake of learning River’s ordinary day-to-day activities, Aubrey might have said no. But it wasn’t. There was an innocent dancer standing in the way of a combine harvester. Someone had to make sure nothing horrifying was about to happen to him. River had cheerfully destroyed their own twin. There was no telling what they’d do to a stranger.

“I’ll be fine.”

Marriage.

Boomerang.