Page 40 of The Mars House

“Actually—Senator. There is something.” It wasn’t in the script for today, and no one had reminded him that he needed to do it, but he didn’t think that that was because everyone was feeling tolerant. They’d either forgotten, or else they didn’t know about it at all. “This is going to look silly but it’s important.”

“What is?”

January went down on one knee and held out the key to his cage in both hands. The oath was formal, legally binding, and therefore Mandarin. He had had to repeat it again and again on the voyage here; that, at least, they made certain you knew by rote. “This is for you. To return only when you feel safe, and . . .” He had to pause, because the irony of what he was about to say had clanged into him. This close, and from the ground, he could see that Gale still tended to keep all their weight off the prosthetic. “And it disturbs no unquiet thoughts.”

Gale took the key without touching him, just lifting it from his palm. “Thank you,” they said, very quiet, perhaps irony-deafened too.

January sat back on his heels.

“I didn’t know that was real,” Gale said.

January smiled, a bit thinly, drowning in the awkwardness of it. A small but important part of him had wanted Gale to realize that this meant he wasn’t dangerous, he would never hurt them, or anyone, and everything was all right now; even though he knew that was idiotic, because of course you couldn’t have a limb torn off by an Earthstronger and then come around to a new Earthstronger immediately just because he was polite. “It was the first sentence of Mandarin I learned.”

“The first,” Gale echoed, as if that had touched them unexpectedly. “How does it work, though? You can’t sleep in a cage.”

“You can. Some people do it all the time.” January held his arm up to show how flat the ligaments lay to his skin. He had changed out of the incredible ceremony things just before the dinner, into a fractionally more practical set of clothes that let him wear his normal cage underneath, cut out in places to show that he was. He understood the question suddenly. “You—do not have to give me that key every night and have a person who may or may not sleep-strangle bystanders prowling about the house. This is your house and you give me that key when you are comfortable to and not before.”

Gale inclined their head slowly. Their hair was bound back partly with red cord and gold, but still loose enough to fall heavy over their shoulder, down to the red wedding sash. “May or may not?” they said, with a spark. “Do you not know?”

“Afraid not,” said January, and realized he had just confessed that he had never lived with anyone before.

To Gale, and to half the country who’d definitely be watching this later.

“Thank you,” Gale said again. It sounded different this time. Less sceptical.

He shook his head, not liking the idea that Gale was thanking him for performing a very basic courtesy as if he were doing something wonderful.

There was a long pause, and then Gale held both hands out to him. January stared at them for a second, because it was excruciatingly clear that Gale would have preferred to be chased by wolves than touch him, but he couldn’t say no. It would have been patronising to say no, it would have looked like he thought Gale wasn’t strong enough. Very, very lightly, he hovered his own hands above theirs and did his best to make it look like Gale had pulled him upright. The moment he was, Gale clasped both hands behind their back. Anyone with a less iron command over themselves would have crossed their arms and stepped right away.

“Well. I’ll see you in the meeting tomorrow,” Gale said and, with an exactly correct bow, moved away. His lungs filled with a tight anxiety that somehow he’d made everything worse. He wished he could ask why, but the cameras were still swimming all around them both.

In January’s earpiece, the strained voice of Gale’s press secretary said, “Mx Stirling, can you come to the production room please?”

He wondered if he should just go and drown himself now to save them the trouble.

The production room was a long gallery on the floor above. It had a window that looked down onto the great atrium, and on the opposite wall, screens and screens as clear as mirrors, showing all the camera feeds from around the house. Dread crushed his ribcage inward. He was going to get a yellow card warning about not going off script again, and then they were going to mention politely but forcefully that this could always be a story about a marriage going horribly wrong if he was going to be difficult.

Mx Francis, the press secretary, was the one who had made January talk to Gale at the factory. They were one of those people who seemed very nice and reassuring, but who January knew—from long experience with armies of identical copies of them in London—were actually cut-throat first-class bastards who would do almost anything to make sure you did what the boss wanted you to. They were always exactly the same type of person, whatever country you happened to be in. They were always young, pretty, charming, they always had upsettingly expensive shoes, and with no sarcasm at all, said things like hurrah.

“I’m sorry,” he said, instead of hello, “but I had to do it. It’s the Senator’s house and—”

“That was superb!” Mx Francis shouted over him, beaming. “January! That was so much better than anything I could have come up with! Is that oath a real thing? I had no idea!”

“It’s real,” January said, shocked.

No wonder Gale had been quiet. If they hadn’t known what it was, they must have been wondering all the while if January was making some passive-aggressive joke. A tidal bore of hopelessness rolled right through him. No matter what they said to each other, and no matter how good January’s Mandarin became or Gale’s English was, they were never going to understand each other. There was too much between them. They’d got the tin cans and the string, but that, realistically, was the best they were going to manage.

He would have given an awful lot to do just a little bit better than the tin cans.

Mx Francis didn’t notice. “Hurrah! Sit down, we’re having some wine, you tiny genius.”

16

Sasha Martinez, who was Gale’s head of security, took the night shift. Heads of security didn’t need to do that, but Sasha had a bone-deep dislike of asking the younger officers to do it as if it were meaningless grunt work. If you looked at the history of break-ins, thefts, and even murders inside any one of the Great Houses, they almost always happened after ten at night. Sasha didn’t think the dark had anything to do with it. Anywhere with money was lit up like a carousel at night. What it was, was that it was very hard to stay awake at night, and very quiet, and very boring, and on some nights in winter when you didn’t want to leave the security office and its glorious heater, you could probably miss a whole mammoth herd letting itself in quietly and sneaking into the kitchen.

It was fine having an Earthstronger in the house.

It was.