Page 98 of The Mars House

Kasha nosed at his knees; she knew something was wrong. He stroked her ears, around the paper party hat she was wearing. Someone, with very great care, had stapled a ribbon to it and tied it under her chin.

It felt like a thousand years since the carols, but the last of the Christmas party was still smouldering, the smell of mulled wine rich in the air, and people’s voices and laughter muted in the comfy way that happened late at night by firelight. Although most Natural people he’d met on Mars had no idea what Christmas was,33 lots of Songshu staff had stayed up too. People were making friends.

Even though he was waiting for it, it was a shock when he heard the thunder of the helicopters.

The Consul brought at least thirty praetorians, who swept into the room in military formation, guns out and visors down. They surged past January. Gale started to stand up, clearly about to ask what they thought they were doing. January wanted to look away and couldn’t. The praetorians slammed Gale flat on the floor and wrenched their wrists backwards into cuffs, scattering the wooden marble run, and marbles. Yuan stared, silent and frozen. So did everyone else.

It didn’t look like an arrest. It looked like a black ops kidnapping. January heard himself yell at them to stop, but Gale didn’t try to fight—they couldn’t, not against three armed ex-marines—and then they were all gone, into the back rooms as if they knew exactly where to go. Yuan still hadn’t made a sound, but he was crying and crying. Whoever had been looking after him before wasn’t there now, so January scooped him up, while around him, alarmed people jolted onto their feet, slow from the wine and the warmth of the fires.

“Apologies for the intrusion,” the Consul said to the room at large. They had come in after the praetorians, slow and steady, more like a general than a politician. Which they had been, of course. More than ever now they were in a room full of Earthstrongers, they looked heroic and magnificent, firelight turning the consular coronet a brilliant gold in their grey dreadlocks. “We had an anonymous tip that a body was found in the grounds, and that’s just been confirmed. A pathologist is examining it now, but it’s a suspected homicide. Please do relax, nobody here is in trouble except Senator Gale.”

With Yuan gripping his shirt, pressed against his shoulder, January looked back and realized people were turning towards him, as if it was up to him what to do. It broke over him only very slowly that they were right. The fires danced shadows over a lot of anxious faces. Nobody wanted to be Earthstrong and in a room with consular praetorians at the same time. He thought of all those cases where Earthstrongers had been shot just for sneezing at the wrong second.

“Okay, let’s get everyone upstairs to bed and out of the Consul’s way,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level, and trying hard to copy Gale’s way of talking in a crisis. “I’m sure it is safe but let’s not tempt fate. Or the praetorians. I’ll be up soon, I’ll try and find out what’s going on.”

You know what’s going on though, because you did this.

When he blinked, he saw the praetorians snatching Gale again, so rough it made him start to shake with something awful between rage and shame. What had he thought would happen? That they’d sneak in and ask for a quiet word?

“Why did you do that?” he said, turning back to the Consul, one hand over the back of Yuan’s head and feeling very glad there was something between them, even if it was just a tiny boy. His voice came out strange and quiet. “We don’t even know if it is Max yet.”

The Consul tipped their head ruefully. “I did this so that we have lots of footage of a spectacular arrest in which my very dangerous opposition looks like the criminal they definitely are,” they said, with an honesty that almost shocked his voice out of him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset the little one. What’s your name, tiny person?”

Yuan hid against January’s shoulder. He was still crying, in the terrible, silent way children cried when they didn’t think anyone would care.

“Jesus, leave him alone, you’re scaring him!” January snapped. “A bunch of giants just dragged away someone who was being kind to him, have some common pissing sense!”

The Consul blinked like a cat had just hissed at them for no reason, and dismayed, he realized that it had never occurred to them that anyone Natural might seem frightening.

“And now you’re going to broadcast that I was the anonymous tip,” January said, not quite able to believe he hadn’t seen it coming. “Even better scandal. Aubrey Gale given up to the police by new consort. Right?”

“No, I’m not, because remember the garbage truck we talked about before?” the Consul said, quite gently. They glanced to the side as if they were hoping somebody would help them with him, but everyone Earthstrong had gone upstairs now, fast, and the only people left were a few praetorians stationed at the doors, staring straight ahead. “January . . . you were right to get help. If Aubrey is guilty—I don’t think anything good would have happened to you if you’d confronted them alone.”

“And if they’re not?” he asked, his voice going high. “You just had them dragged off like they were waving a gun around—”

“I can see you don’t want to hear this, but I am really quite confident that they are guilty.” The Consul stepped up close to him and set both hands heavy on his shoulders. It made him flinch. They were huge, up close, and he had a nasty sense that they wanted him to feel it, rather than just notice it. He was about level with their breastbone. “I’m detaining the staff as well, as a precaution. You’re the only person here who had nothing to do with Max, so—you’re it, Jan. You’re House Gale for now.”

“Please stop touching me,” he ground out. “I’m holding a toddler, for Christ’s sake.”

They looked genuinely taken aback, and took a little step away. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying—”

“Do I have a choice about what I do with House Gale now, or will you shoot me if I choose wrong?” he interrupted tightly. In his arms, Yuan was reassuringly heavier than he looked.

The Consul looked like they were in pain. “We don’t do things that way here. You know we don’t.” They sighed. “Look, if you don’t want Aubrey to realize you’re the one who called it in—I suggest you keep going with the tower, and make a good show of being furious with me. If they’re innocent, great. If they’re not; congratulations. House Gale is yours. The first Earthstrong senator, ever.” They smiled, and he thought it seemed like a real smile. “Either way . . . I’ll be delighted.”

January stood still, fighting down the need to say, Get out of my house. He didn’t know why he wanted to say that. It wasn’t the Consul who had maybe murdered someone and fully endorsed locking up Earthstrongers. The Consul was annoying and theatrical and overbearing, but they were here because he had asked them, and in the end, it was the Consul who wanted to help people instead of locking them up.

He couldn’t stop seeing Gale hit the floor.

There was a word for that, when an idea made a kind of cross shape. When, for example, you had one person who was wrong but who was also endlessly kind, and another person who was right but also somehow terrible. Gale would have known.

He was saved from having to say anything, because a praetorian ghosted up to the Consul and murmured something.

“It is Max,” the Consul told him. “They’ve just confirmed it. And cause of death is a gunshot wound to the head.”

He had to shut his eyes for second. “Is there any way to prove who did it? A halo won’t work on Senator Gale.”

“We can try again.” The Consul paused. “I was wondering if you’d ask the questions, actually.”