Chapter Text
People had been giving January weird looks all day.
Not for the first time, he checked his reflection in his phone camera to see if there was something on his face. There wasn’t; he looked ordinary, with the same prematurely white hair—better-looking now that it was professionally styled and never had machine oil or weird chemical grease in it—and glasses whose lenses flashed gold as the filaments of circuitry caught the white indoor light.
They weren’t January, there’s something on your face but I’m too polite to point it out looks, either. Nor were they oh shit, an Earthstronger, do I need to cross the street? looks, or even the more recent development, oh shit that’s Consul-Consort January Stirling, I need to be polite or the Consul will do the verbal equivalent of feeding me through a paper shredder.
It was the vague unease of seeing someone, recognizing by their clothes and haircut that they were important but not who they were, and not being one hundred percent certain that the wealthy influential visitor was someone else’s problem. Interns flinched visibly as he walked through the door. There were an awful lot of new interns, January observed.
It was starting to be seriously unsettling, the panicked lack of recognition when he walked into a room. January forgot people’s names too sometimes, but this was Songshu. It was home.
“Hello,” he tried, on finding an official he recognized.
They snapped immediately to attention. “Oh! Can I help you?”
“Have you seen the Consul?” January said, because he hadn’t seen River yet that day, and if something was going on, they would know about it.
“The Consul?” they said.
“Gale,” January said. “Where are they?”
“Which one?”
Yuan and River had been talking about giving Yuan the Gale surname, he supposed.
“Aubrey,” he said.
They looked faintly relieved to be talking about something they understood. “Out near the solar fields with Max.”
January’s entire world tilted sideways. “With who?” With whom, supplied the tiny River who lived in his head—not because they would have corrected him about it, but because it was how they would have said it, no matter how shocked they were.
“Max Liu, their spouse?” the official said. “I beg your pardon, but who exactly are—”
“What day is it?” January said. He was so shocked he had to scrabble for the Chinese, and it came out awkwardly stilted.
They named the day that Max had been murdered.
“What year ? ” January said, horrified.
“Are you feeling entirely—”
“What year?”
They told him.
“Excuse me,” January said faintly, and then broke into a dead run.
On waking up, he had thought, vaguely, that they were getting ready for some kind of event. Songshu was more opulent than it had been the night before. Whole wings had opened up, glittering with fountains and chandeliers; there were fewer screens, fewer cameras.
There were fewer people. The research wing was quieter. The interior had changed, favoring water-heavy interior gardens and intricate brocades. If he had thought someone ought to have been guillotined for Songshu’s interior decor before, it was now a thousand times more so. A fun-house mirror version of the House, because Aubrey was Senator, not River.
As he passed, people swore softly and reached for phones or went distant as they checked the internet. A grown adult running in a place like Songshu meant that something had just made international news, and probably not in a fun way.
“Sorry,” he said, shoving a security officer aside and throwing himself into a coat. It was massive on him: Aubrey’s or River’s, probably. “Where’s Aubrey?”
The security officer was too startled to do anything but point.
“Thanks,” January said, and kept sprinting.
In his cage, knowing it could have been a thousand times easier, it was like running ineffectively in a dream, uphill on endlessly shifting sand. Out of the cage, he would be faster, but it was bulky and hard to carry, and if he hit someone without it—what had happened to Aubrey, all over again. With every step, the knowledge that he was about to either save everyone or watch history repeat and get arrested into the bargain jolted up his spine.
River would have left the cage behind. River would have made the decision to discard the possibility of saving everyone in favor of definitely saving one person. But then again, River ate trolley problems for breakfast with the weird adzuki not-jam that they had on Tharsis instead of real jam, and January wasn’t them.
Light glinted off the solar mirrors, as bright as earthbound lightning. It was eerily quiet out here, the heat making swirling smoky ghosts in the air, silhouetted in copper by the dust. Over by the treeline, the pines whispered, still holding a bit of snow in their shadows.
Max was in among the mirrors, calling out. Somewhere close by, Aubrey was kneeling in the dust and taking aim. He could see them over the top of his glasses.
“Get down! ” he shouted, and tackled Max to the ground.
At the exact same millisecond, the shot cracked across the still air. January felt it catch the edge of his shoulder as if someone had punched him there. There was no pain yet, only pressure, and a dizzying spray of blood. The bullet passed through and hit one of the heliostats, shattering it and sending up a little burst of broken glass.
Seven years of bad luck, January thought deliriously, but far worse not to do anything.
Underneath him, Max was breathing hard, their military topknot half-undone and falling down to their shoulders in thick black waves. January sat up and looked over his shoulder. Through his glasses, Aubrey flickered back into existence, clutching the shotgun to their chest.
The look on their face would haunt him. It was surprise, pure and childish. It ran deeper than just surprise that January was there. It was surprise at the blood, at the shattered mirror, at the gun in their own hands. Up until that instant, it had all been purely hypothetical, but an instant was all it took.
Somewhere in Songshu—right now it was gathering dust in an attic, but River would take it out after Aubrey’s death—there was a photograph of Aubrey winning an award for calligraphy, framed. There was a long stretch in their shared childhood when every single award for academics had gone to River. They had obviously not expected it at all; the camera had caught them before the delight or triumph or embarrassment hit, and their expression was pure open-mouthed shock, tinged with the slightest hint of calculation: how could this have happened? Right now, they were wearing the exact same expression.
Earlier in his marriage, January had thought the Great Houses were a machine for churning out people like River, who scythed through debate opponents with bloody-minded joy and a mind like folded steel. Now he thought they were probably just a machine for churning out smart idiots.
Max reached for the pistol at their belt, looking blank. January grabbed their wrist.
“Don’t,” he said, “please. This is enough of a diplomatic incident as it is.”
He hadn’t expected them to listen, but they did, enough to look faintly wry. Their hand relaxed.
Across the field, calculation flashed across Aubrey’s face again. They still hadn’t set down the gun.
“Call for help,” January said gently. “Aubrey. Please call for help.”
Their face was still mostly blank, frozen into that mask of surprise, but underneath it, desperation warred with nausea. It was the moment of truth; they could shoot Max and let January bleed to death, easily, and—January felt his own slow wave of nausea. And River would cover for them, because they covered for them with Max, and January himself was still a stranger. He would weigh less in their considerations than Max, who had been a friend. That future was so close he could taste it: the sour tang of metal in the back of his throat, the slow weakening of blood loss. Two bodies under the great pine instead of one, the hungry old ghost of a fear from early in his marriage.
Aubrey’s shocked expression broke. They lifted their hand from the trigger to their wrist and sent out an emergency distress signal.
The scales in January crashed from adrenaline to exhaustion. It hurt, suddenly and intensely, as if someone had shoved a hot poker all the way through his shoulder.
“Ow, fuck, Christ,” he said, slipping into English and briefly turning more than usually British.
“Are you alright?” Aubrey said, also in English. It was apparently reflexive.
January was tempted to say no, you fucking shot me, but that would have been unkind. “Yes,” he said instead, tightly. “Thanks.”
“Don’t move,” Max ordered. “Lie back and let me stop the bleeding.”
“Okay,” January said.
It was a relief to follow orders. Max, with an air of letting their training kick in and squeeze any thought or emotion out of their brain, applied pressure to the wound and shifted January gently into their lap. It would be nice to do that, to have training take over, one part of January thought. The thing that takes over for me in emergencies isn’t training, it’s impulse, which is probably not great. The entire rest of January thought, ow ow holy fucking Christ why does this keep happening.
“Stay with me,” Max said gruffly.
“Yup,” January said. He knew the drill.
He missed River. Normally, wherever there were Situations, there was also River, who made all Situations more tolerable. River was supposed to show up soon, weren’t they? They heard the shot when they were out with the mammoths, it was how everything started.
He had stolen River’s coat. They must have gone out without it, or they had multiple. There was something about it that was familiar, a smell or the precise shape of the shoulders. He had gotten blood on it; he’d have to apologize. His thoughts were spiraling wildly out from between his fingers. Of course, River didn’t know him anymore…
In the clear sky, humming, there were drones.
After a great hubbub, in which River was located (unharmed, but covered sort of endearingly in mammoth hair) and the crime scene (scene of the almost-crime?) was extensively photographed, January experienced the most awkward car ride of his life to date.
He and Max sat on one side of the car, side-by-side. Aubrey sat riding backwards, facing them. River rode shotgun next to a slightly younger Sasha Martinez, who was driving. No one said anything.
(Right after the shooting, before the cameras arrived, Aubrey had said, it was an accident. Max had said nothing, but given them a long slow look that said they knew exactly how much of an accident it had been.)
All the simmering betrayal had drained out of them. Now they just looked disappointed and weary, as if they weren’t even surprised enough to be angry.
“Sorry about your coat,” January said to River.
They turned around, failing to completely hide their surprise. It was infinitesimal, like all their real expressions, but obvious if you were looking.
“It’s alright,” they said, after a long pause.
The rest of the ride passed in dead silence. January had never been happier to pass out.
When he woke up again, he was in a Songshu doctor’s office, handcuffed to the bed. Doctor Okonkwo was in the process of swapping one bag of fluid out for another one. Instinctively, January made a face at them.
“Oh good,” Sasha said. “You’re alive.”
“Seems like it,” January agreed.
“We don’t think you’re here to assassinate anyone, since you saved Max Liu’s life. But still, no one has any idea who you are or how you got in, so you’re going to have to answer a few questions.”
“You’ll have answers if I can talk to River Gale,” January said. “I’ll answer anything they ask.”
“I am not letting you talk to anyone under my protection until we confirm your identity.”
“That might be harder than you think,” January said. The other January was on Earth just then, performing in Moscow. He had done the math on the car ride.
“What does that mean? ” Sasha said.
“Dr River Gale-Zhou, please. Aubrey too. Then I’ll tell you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Are they listening?” January spoke slightly louder. “I’m not here to hurt you, not that I could. I’m in a cage and handcuffed to the bed. Unless you’re scared?”
“That’s not going to work.”
The door slid open. River padded in wearing their house shoes, trailing Aubrey, who was making expressive faces of various shades of long-suffering exasperation.
“Why does that work on you, I hate you,” Aubrey said. “Why does it work on you when they say it and not me, you don’t even know them, ugh.”
River settled into the chair by the side of January’s bed, clutching a tablet. There were still a few strands of long rusty mammoth hair clinging to the malachite green of their sweater. They caught the light like copper, glimmering.
“Hi,” January said.
“Hello,” River said politely. January had forgotten how American their English accent had been in the beginning. It showed in the vowels.
Aubrey threw up their hands. “What is going on?”
January took a deep breath. “Aubrey, you have to abdicate your position at House Gale in favor of River.”
“What?” Aubrey and River said at once.
“The video House Song is using to blackmail you? You need to be the one to leak it. It should be as soon as possible and as part of an official apology. They can’t blackmail you with something you admit to doing. Then you should give up control of House Gale to River, because everyone will be calling for your resignation, but if Max gets it then there will be no House Gale, because the entire Tharsese power industry will go to House Song. It won’t even be their fault, it’s just that they’ll be away when they get deployed—do you understand?”
Aubrey’s expression was slowly turning ugly.
“You need help,” January said gently. “Not the psychiatric kind, it’s just—you need to not have to do this anymore. I know you’ve been trying, but it’s not good for you. The pressure is twisting you out of shape.”
“I don’t need help,” Aubrey snarled.
“You just tried to shoot your spouse,” January said, “for literally no reason.”
Aubrey stood with their hands curled into fists. Belatedly, their eyes glistened slightly, although their posture didn’t unbend.
“It doesn’t make you a failure as a person, that you can’t run Songshu,” January said. “But there is a future, a very near miss, in which I wasn’t here and you killed Max out there in the sun fields, and it would have eventually gotten you killed, too. Weren’t things easier when you were a child, before you knew what everyone expected from you? Let go. River misses you.”
“Okay, but—maybe you’re right about me, but you think River can do better? That River? River who can barely go thirty minutes without talking about consonant mutations? River who never leaves their fucking office? River who can’t have a normal conversation without boring someone to tears? The Senate will eat them alive.”
“Other way round, really,” January said. “There’s only one way to see.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Aubrey said.
They took a little half-step forward, as if working up the courage to do it, and then they stormed properly out. Doors didn’t slam well in Songshu, because they were all automatic, but they whipped around the corner and it hissed softly shut behind them.
“Follow them,” Sasha said into their earpiece.
“Are you going to go after them?” January asked River.
They shook their head. “I don’t know what else to say.”
There was a little bubble of quiet. Medical machinery whirred. The pain in January’s shoulder had softened to a distant whine, like a high note off a violin.
“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what’s a consonant mutation?” Dr Okonkwo said.
“It’s a grammatical feature of some languages where consonants change into other consonants according to certain rules,” January and River said at once.
“Languages in the Celtic family like Irish and Welsh are particularly known for it,” January added, “but you also see it in Japanese, in the middle of compound words. Right?”
The last part was addressed to River, who looked like they had missed a step on the stairs.
“Yes,” they said. “Are you… interested in linguistics?”
“My spouse is,” January said. “Everything I know about this stuff, I learned from them.”
The microexpression that flickered across their face was hard to catch. “I see.”
“Ask them who they are,” Sasha said.
River moved their fingers a few millimeters in acknowledgement. “Who are you?”
“I’ll tell you, but only you.”
“I am not leaving you alone with them until we know exactly who you are,” Sasha said.
January looked at Dr Okonkwo.
“Oh, fine,” they said, and started packing up their things. “No strenuous exercise for at least a week, whoever you are. Don’t lift any heavy objects.”
He waited until the door hissed shut behind them.
“My name is January Stirling. I’m a ballet dancer and a politician’s consort.”
“Which politician?” River said.
“You’re not going to like it,” January said.
“Tell me.”
January met their gaze and held it. “You,” he said. “I’m from about ten years in the future, a future where we’re married and Aubrey shot and killed Max in the sun fields.”
River was too well-controlled to react. “Time travel,” they said thoughtfully.
“Time travel,” January agreed.
“Assuming for the moment that you’re telling the truth, how does the time travel part work?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” January said.
Sasha said, “Dr Gale, they’re obviously lying.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t make sense,” River said, standing up. “Assuming that this is a hoax, a considerable amount of effort went into it. These clothes are custom-tailored House Gale formals.”
“I thought they were just blue and expensive?” Sasha said.
River shook their head, leaned in, and pulled January’s lapel aside. There was a House Gale insignia embroidered on the silk lining, pale gold against pale blue.
“Faking this would be both difficult and expensive,” River said. “So you’d think whoever’s helping them would also coach them on more plausible lies. If anyone here is likely to have a glamorous ballet dancer spouse, it’s not me, it’s Aubrey. It’s a lie that both loses credibility and is unlikely to endear them to me at all, although the consonant mutation thing was a very clever touch. Why tell it? Why choose me for this?”
“Because they’ve clearly lost their mind?”
“Or because it’s the truth,” January said.
“Tell me this, then. What was the reason behind our marriage?”
If January said love, he knew with stone-cold certainty that this River would never believe it. He wasn’t sure if it was a Great Houses thing, that no one of their class would expect to marry for love, or a River thing. Either way, in spite of everything that had happened afterwards, they were right.
He took a deep breath and told them everything that had happened from Max’s death on. No feelings, because River wouldn’t believe them, but the facts, all the way up to River’s second term as Consul.
By the time he finished, Sasha was looking at him with naked horror, as if they thought he had gone completely insane.
“Well, now we know they’re deranged,” they said. “Dr Gale, we can charge them with trespassing as soon as we know how they got in and why no one stopped them.”
Underneath the affectless mask, River was looking at him with a different kind of horror, one that ran deeper. January recognized the expression. The machine that ran their thoughts was ticking along, arranging events and motivations one after another and giving them a good hard shake to see if they held together. They were aligning January’s testimony with what they thought they would have done, and it fit.
“You see it, right?” January said.
“I see it,” River said quietly.
“Dr Gale,” Sasha said, sounding faintly aggrieved.
River removed their attention from January. It was like stepping outside in the dead of winter, an abrupt chill. He tried not to feel bereft.
“If you’re wondering why no one stopped Mx Stirling earlier, it’s because they were well-dressed and they acted like they knew what they were doing,” River said. “If you’re wondering whether or not they’re lying, there’s an easy way to tell.”
“There is?” January said.
“Yes. Will you accept a halo?”
“Oh right. Yes, of course.”
“Aren’t those the things people use to talk to animals? Can they really be used as lie detectors?”
“No, they can’t detect lies, but people’s brains react quite differently to information that they’re seeing for the first time,” River said. “If Mx Stirling is telling the truth, they should be very familiar with Songshu: its layout, its rules, its scenery, some of its retainers.” They hesitated, only briefly, and January recognized that they were at least a little bit afraid. They were holding the next idea out at arm’s length, with tongs, like a radioactive specimen. “And with me.”