Free Empress of the Sun by Ian McDonald Page A

its attention back to Everett. It sang a trilling set of notes.
    ‘I am Everett Singh, from Earth 10,’ Everett said.
    The creature whistled a phrase that might have been Everett’s words played on a flute, gave a low burble and blinked its translucent eye-membranes again. The outer parts of the golden halo unravelled, flowed down the creature’s arm and formed a rotating ring around Everett’s face.
    ‘What the …?’ Sharkey shouted. The creature flicked one of its long, slender fingers at him. The hovering knife blade moved a fraction. Blood seeped from the tiny nick it made in Sharkey’s throat.
    ‘It’s okay,’ Everett called. ‘It’s … I think it’s … Oh wow!’
    ‘Are you okay, Everett?’
    He could hear voices in his head. Voices that were all one voice. His voice. Everett aged fourteen; Everett as a toddler forming his first word – Tottenham, his dad said, though his mum said it was really ‘Teddy’s eye socket’; Everett as an excited nine-year-old after a show at the London Planetarium; Everett the smart kid always giving the clever answer in Year Six; Everett speaking Palari; Everett’s few words of Punjabi. A thousand voices, all talking at once, all one voice. The creature lifted another finger and the golden halo lifted from Everett’s face, ran up the finger, up the long arm to rejoin the slowly spinning halo behind its head. Everett thought that it looked like a Ganesh, or a Shiva Nataraja, with haloes that burned with golden flames.
    The creature made a noise that sounded like a parrot saying
Everett Singh
. It made it again, clearer now. ‘Everett Singh. Earth 10.’
    Its voice was bird-like and more music than language, but Everett could understand every word.
    ‘Oh my God,’ Everett said.
    The creature cocked its head one way, then another.
    ‘Oh my God,’ it said. ‘You are Everett Singh from Earth 10.’ It looked at Sharkey, crooked a finger. The knife pulled away from his neck, flashed back to the halo and dissolved into glittering dust.
    ‘Did you just learn my entire language?’
    Again, the one-way-then-the-other look. Birds do that, Everett thought. Jackdaws and magpies. Clever birds.
    ‘Yes,’ the creature said. Its voice was becoming less bird-song and more Stoke Newington with every word. Its crest flicked up and turned deep electric blue. ‘I am Kakakakaxa.’
    ‘Sharkey,’ Everett said, ‘you believe in lizardmen now?’

9
    The thousand bells of Heiden rang out from the city’s steeples, peal calling to peal, bell answering bell, from spire to spire, carillon to carillon, further and further until last of all the chimes of the Zeeferrenkerk on the Island of Chains hung faintly on the yellow evening air. Soft wet snow had begun, staying for a moment of white on the cobbles of the courtyard beneath Charlotte Villiers’s window. Golden light shone from the leaded windows around the court.
    ‘How many are staunch?’ Charlotte Villiers asked.
    ‘In our section, Aziz, de Freitas, Tlalo. The Earth 10ers.’
    ‘Not enough, Charles. Not enough. But at least Ibrim Hoj Kerrim is secure.’
    ‘You asked him to join the Order?’
    ‘In as many words. He informed me he would not need the support of the Order. Unfortunate. But he understandshis position. The fact that he helped us in the past could be severely damaging to his chances of becoming Primarch of the Plenitude of Known Worlds.’
    Charles Villiers helped himself to a bonbon from a porcelain dish. ‘Have you ever thought that he might just decide not to run for the Primarchy?’
    ‘Ridiculous. Quite ridiculous.’
    ‘Not everyone is as ambitious as you, cora,’ Charles Villiers said, helping himself to another sweetmeat. ‘These really are very good. I still don’t get the twin thing, but they really know how to cook.’
    A knock at the door. Lewis, Charlotte Villiers’s Earth 3 valet, entered with coffee. He noticed the uncomfortable silence as he poured two cups.
    ‘Thank you, Lewis.’