Pyrrha was sitting in the special chair they always got out for Pyrrha. It was a hard chair made of bent metal tubing and scratchy matte plastic pads, and they always strapped a thing to her neck that made soft klik … klik sounds whenever she moved her head back and forth. This was because if Pyrrha made too many sudden movements it would blow out her spinal column automatically. It made a soft klik as Pyrrha turned back her head to look at them: she had been staring at the portrait of the lady who looked as though she were about to hit the photographer.
There was another klik, more of a click, as the door locked behind them. This startled Nona; she hadn’t seen anyone walking with them and Crown down the corridor. Crown didn’t seem to care, but Camilla tensed up.
There were people already in the room when they got there, dressed the way Blood of Eden always dressed. Nona was forever amazed by their get-up. Everyone she ever met at the meetings covered their heads like they were in a dust storm, and wore masks that varied wildly—gas masks and surgery masks and festival masks with teeth drawn on, and welder’s goggles that covered the eyes, and dark glasses that let you see in the nighttime—everyone had visored eyes and swathed themselves in layers of fabric so that it was hard to tell what lay beneath. When they talked, their voices sounded flat and muffled, or breathy and tinny if they were wearing gas apparatuses. Some people with bigger masks had voices that did not sound like any voice that had ever come out of anyone. Palamedes had said they were using tech to hide what they sounded like.
Usually there were a dozen people like this at the meetings; today there were only two.
It was easy to tell which person was the more important. They were sat right in front of the portrait, haloed by that thicket of plastic flowers. A kind of bodyguard stood a little to their left, a long gun slung over their back and a big machete strapped to each thigh. Nona used to think that was cool, but Camilla said it was completely stupid and not cool at all. Palamedes then said Cam was a big hypocrite. The two-thigh-machetes person had their face obscured with an air cleanser toggle mask and welder’s goggles, which made them look quite frightening to Nona, like a monster picture. Two-Thigh-Machetes was hooded and wore a long jacket and gloves, so not one bit of their true self was visible.
The sitting person was less frightening in a white mask, the kind they had a box of at home, and quite ordinary black goggles and a deep black hood. You couldn’t see any forehead or ears, or any skin at all. This was the commander. In heavily accented House she said, “Please sit.”
The soft panel lights at the sides of the room had been dimmed, which made the overdressed visages sitting with them at the table all the more indistinct and weird. It also made Crown’s beautiful face more beautiful, lending her eyes a softness and her laughing mouth a tenderness that bright light sometimes took away. Camilla and Nona sat down at the very end of the table and Crown sat on Nona’s left. Camilla took one of the click pens from the table in front of her and rolled it between her fingers very slowly, making it flip from knuckle to knuckle, her hips angled forward on the chair.
Crown pressed one hand to her chest in a formal salute and said, “Crown Him with Many Crowns Thy Full Gallant Legions He Found It in Him to Forgive, representing Ctesiphon-3, acknowledges We Suffer and We Suffer of Ctesiphon-1. Troia cell reporting in, Cell Commander.”
“Let’s not be so formal. I have had three emergency meetings today and I am pretending this is, how you say, a coffee break,” said We Suffer and We Suffer. “This is … a personal discussion. So please consider all information here limited to Troia cell, not to be mentioned in outside chitchat.”
“Have you checked the room for bugs?” asked Pyrrha pleasantly.
“Please try to do a little less of the telling me my own business, Ms. Dve,” said We Suffer.
“Just wanted to make sure,” said Pyrrha. “Because this is off the log, isn’t it? We’re in one of the old buildings on the southeast, in a district Blood of Eden doesn’t hold. You’re outside your zone.”
Two-Thigh-Machetes drew the big gun from their back and it made the ready noise. They said— “The Lyctor knows too much.”
Only their air-toggle mask had some kind of vocaliser on it, so they sounded like a pissed-off robot suffering an occasional blast of static, sort of THE LYCTOR ZZT KNOWS TOO MUCH.
“At ease,” said We Suffer, not even looking at Two-Thigh-Machetes. Two-Thigh-Machetes did not move to being at ease. We Suffer kept her eyes on Pyrrha. She asked, “Did the drivers take the southern motorway, with the bumps?”