Free The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi Page A

true?’
    Tawaddud sighs.
    ‘Yes, the stories are true. I ran away from my first husband to the City of the Dead. A jinn there took care of me. We became close.’
    ‘A jinn. The Axolotl?’
    ‘Some call him that. His name is Zaybak.’
    ‘He really exists?’
    That’s what Tawaddud first thought as well: a story come to life, the Father of Body Thieves, who came to Sirr a hundred years ago and became half the city.
    ‘Yes. But not everything they say about him is true. He did not mean to do what he did.’ She puts the remains of her food away. ‘But if you want a reason to give to my father, Axolotl’s whore is as good as any.’ Tawaddud closes her eyes and tugs at her hair, hard. ‘But thank you for a pleasant afternoon, and for showing me the city. The other city, I mean. That was nice.’
    Abu turns and looks away. With his brass eye hidden, he looks terribly young, all of a sudden: for all his wealth, he must be younger than she is.
    ‘Do not trouble yourself,’ Tawaddud says. ‘I’m used to it.’
    ‘It’s not that,’ Abu says. ‘There is a reason I don’t come here.’ He touches his brass eye. ‘You asked for my story. Do you still want to hear it?’ His voice is flat, and his human eye is closed.
    Tawaddud nods.
    ‘My parents died in the Cry of Wrath. I stayed with a Banu woman who let me sleep in her tent, for a while. When she found out I could hear the Aun, she sold me to an entwiner. I was six. It wasn’t like what the Council entwiners do. It was forced.
    ‘I was put in a tank, warm water, no sound, nothing else. Then there was another voice in my head, a thing that had once been a man, a jinn, screaming in pain. Its name was Pacheco. It swallowed me. Or I swallowed it. I don’t know how long it took, but when they let me – us – out, I was thin like a stick. I couldn’t stand. My eye ached. But I could see athar, touch athar. I couldn’t find my way around at first because I got lost in the ghost buildings in the Shadow.
    ‘And I could hear the desert, the jannahs and the heavens, old machines from the other side of the world, calling.
    ‘The entwiner was happy. He sold me to a mutalibun party. They took me to the desert to find gogols.’ Abu smiles. ‘Fortunately, I turned out to be rather good at it. Don’t get me wrong, it was not all bad. The mutalibuns’ rukh ship was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, white-hulled, curved like a chip of wood, and as light; the rukh birds carried it lightly and the hunter jinni rode with it like bright clouds. And the desert, I don’t know why they still call it the desert, there are roads and cities and wonders, herds of von Neumann machines, dark seas of the dead, sand that listens to you and makes your dreams come true—’
    Abu shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m babbling. None of it matters. I am an ill-made muhtasib, a thing, only half a man. So I cannot love as a man. I wanted to find someone who could understand both the jinn and the man. I thought—’ He squeezes his temples with his wrists.
    ‘It’s not about that, not just that, you understand. I . . . believe in what your father is trying to do. We can’t just keep pretending the Sobornost is going to go away, and the hsien-kus are much more sane than some of the other ones, so no matter what you feel or want, I’m going to help him.’
    Tawaddud swallows. This is not how it was supposed to go . Twin snakes of guilt and pity chase each other inside her chest.
    ‘Maybe I should go,’ Abu says.
    ‘Ssh,’ Tawaddud says and kisses him.
    His brass eye is cold and hard against her eyelid. His lips are dry, his tongue unpractised. She caresses his cheek, nuzzles his neck. He sits still like a statue. Then she pulls away, opens her bag, takes out the beemee net and carefully weaves it in her hair.
    ‘What are you doing?’ he whispers.
    ‘This is not how it usually goes,’ she says, laughing. ‘Kafur would kill me if he knew.’ She opens her bodystocking at