Chapter Text
As soon as January stepped off the ship from the Crossing, the Consul of all of Mars pulled him aside to propose marriage.
“So how about it?” Consul Song said roguishly, grinning widely. They were beautiful in a rugged leonine way. “You need a new job and a place to stay, I need someone to make me look more authentic to my voter base. I may not be the human equivalent of a haunted meat grinder that understands calculus, but my voters have been rightly pointing out that I make at least as much money as our friend the Senator. My campaign would benefit from someone like you in it.”
The haunted meat grinder, January understood, was their opponent, Senator Aubrey Gale. From what he knew of their politics, it was a fair assessment.
“It’s only five years if you don’t like it, and of course you’ll make loads of money. Jade Hill is an excellent place to live.”
They were flanked by a full honor guard of praetorians, wearing the beautiful uniforms that soldiers wore here in winter. When they shifted, he occasionally caught a shaken-foil glimpse of watered silk. The red-haired one shifted their grip on their gun, matte black and long-barrelled, casually enough that it might have been a coincidence.
“You’d have to be pretty stupid to say no,” Song said pleasantly.
January said yes.
600 days later.
Aside from the furniture being perpetually too large and everything being freezing all the time, the Consular estate in Jade Hill was indeed an excellent place to live, all dark wood and huge vaulted ceilings like the ribcages of whales. He’d had thorough language coaching—“But don’t lose the accent, it’s delightfully useful,” Guang Song said—and media coaching and politics coaching and debate coaching.
About once a week, January went on a talk program or gave a speech or cut the red ribbon when something opened. Nearly everything he said in public was scripted, which was fine, because he agreed with it. There was always a praetorian around. (“To keep you safe,” Guang said. “Gale is extremely fun once you get past the layers of pretentiousness. I wouldn’t put it past them to try their hand at assassination.”)
It was fine, he told himself. He got used to being a little bit too cold all the time. It was better than naturalisation, even if there never seemed to be any time to dance.
The first time he saw Senator Gale in person, it was completely unexpected.
Charity was a politician’s-fiancé activity the worlds over. January had chosen photo-op volunteering at a daycare center, teaching Mandarin and Russian to Earthstrong children. Some of them wore tiny cages, others looked twig-thin and unwell. It made his heart twist in his chest even as he smiled at them.
One morning, he got there a little before the camera, trailed as always by one of the praetorians—Eun, who had volunteered, and who always had to be stopped from offering to show flash bombs to toddlers.1
There was a familiar voice coming from the next classroom over. It was deeper in person, a gorgeous smoke and honey voice, shockingly gentle when it wasn’t raking Song over the coals.
“Why is it a square though? Mouths aren’t square,” said January’s friend Yuan (age 4). Gale had taken off their delicate senatorial coronet and set it in his puff of black hair.
“Well, all these characters were invented thousands of years ago,” Gale said practically, in perfect crystalline English he hadn’t known they spoke. They had a totally unexpected American accent. “Maybe everyone had square mouths back then.”
“That’s silly!”
“You’re right, it is,” Gale said. “Really it might be that people thought it looked better that way, or that straight lines are easier to carve.”
“Straight lines are easier to carve?”
“They are, sometimes. You can try it out.”
January ducked out of sight, and as soon as he saw someone he knew—Henrietta, another Earthstrong volunteer, with a red pin on her apron—he flagged her down.
“What is Senator Gale doing here?” he hissed quietly.
“It’s because of you,” Henrietta said.
“Oh God. What did I do?”
“No, it’s a good thing. Since you started coming here, a lot of bigshots remembered we exist. We’ve got a lot more funding now. House Gale wrote our entire language curriculum, so now the Senator comes to check in and give us extra materials for free.”
“Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, doing something to stop them indoctrinating children with their fascist ideology or something?” January said.
“If they were, I would be,” she said, “but mostly they just talk about words and fairy tales. It’s really…”
“Don’t say it.”
“Quite sweet.”
“It’s Gale though,” January said. “They’re pure evil.”
“That’s kou,” Gale was saying, helping Yuan scratch things into the table with a paint knife. “Yi, er, san… very good, excellent job.”2
“Oh my God, what happened to that table?” another volunteer said.
“Experiential learning,” Gale said guiltily, tucking the paint knife into their sleeve and out of sight.
“Just don’t let it happen again.”
“About time I left anyway,” Gale said, aiming their glossiest magazine smile at them. The volunteer flushed bright red. January hoped they stepped on a Lego.
“Can I put your crown back on?” Yuan said.
Gale hesitated, and then bowed their head so that he could slot the sigil back into their half-topknot. Yuan still had to stand on his tiptoes to do it.
“Thank you,” they said, as gravely as if they had been speaking to an adult. The sigil was extremely crooked.
They swept away without noticing January, leaving him with a strange, unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach. Guang had told him what had happened to Max and River. You could be gentle and patient and good with kids and still be a murderer. You could.
“It’s a publicity thing, obviously,” Guang said, when he told them about it.
There hadn’t been any cameras. He didn’t say that, though. Disagreeing with them had consequences. He hadn’t seen the consequences yet—they were playing an I know you know game that would have been fun if it had been for lower stakes—but he could see there would be consequences, because of the way the praetorians looked at him. The water was deep. There were things shifting in it.
The next time he saw Gale, it was at his own wedding reception. He barely remembered the ceremony, just the drums and the roar of the crowd, so loud he could feel it in his ribcage, less like something that could have come from human throats and more like a waterfall or a supernova. Then they were back at Jade Hill, in one of the strange beautiful halls with its curved ribs and gigantic round windows-turned-skylights.
Gale drifted over to speak to them with a joy-in-war spark. They were resplendent in blue and silver against a backdrop of wedding red, like an unexpected breath of cool air.
“Aubrey!” Guang said, with apparently genuine happiness. “And here I half-expected you to show up in red.”
“If you need someone to play the jilted ex-lover, you’ll have to find someone who likes you,” Gale said. Guang clutched their chest, laughing. “Did you sleep well, Mx Stirling? I wouldn’t blame you for finding it difficult, as I assume Guang here keeps you handcuffed to the radiator.”
“It’s a bedpost actually,” January said cheerfully. “Jade Hill has a central heating system. Not that you would know.”
They inclined their head, looking for all the world as if they had enjoyed that. They had a smaller smile than usual—not the magazine one, but something slower and more cautious—which made him suspect that they meant it. Something warm and unfamiliar bloomed in his chest.
“Alright, careful,” Guang said. “I understand the urge to score points off the fact that Senator Gale’s never been Consul, I understand it deeply, but please be more cautious about implying I’ve kidnapped you at public events.”
January had a sharp pang of real fear. Gale tilted their head to one side, considering.
“Surely if you don’t really keep him locked in the basement, you have nothing to fear?” they said. “Mx Stirling, blink twice if you need us to steal you instead.”
January almost said, why, can you offer me a better basement? He could see Gale’s tiny real smile deepen in anticipation of the next volley, and he wished he could say it, in order to see what they would say next. It was like a dance. But Guang Song was there, and so were the praetorians.
“I don’t need to be rescued, I chose to be here. I love Guang,” he said instead.
Gale’s tiny smile vanished: a small, acute loss. “Do you,” they said.
“That’s more than enough trying to steal my spouse,” Guang said. “Go back to trying to steal my seat in the government, will you? It’s more sporting.”
“With pleasure,” Gale said, but the joy had gone out of it for them, somehow.
Their eyes lingered on January and his gold-brushed cage. They bowed, deeply. January bowed back. They blinked, although he hadn’t done anything loud or sudden. Then they glided away.
“You don’t feel as though I keep you locked in a basement, do you?” Guang said in an undertone.
January had crossed worlds. He was strong. He dredged up a smile from somewhere, and looking in the dark mirror of the nearest round window, it even looked genuine.
“Course not,” he said.
The next time he saw Senator Gale, they were backstage just before the first big election debate. January loved being backstage anywhere—the feeling of exclusivity, being just out of view on the underside of the glittering surface of a performance, as if he and everyone else there were conspiring together. It was odd to feel that way about Gale, but they made eye contact across a sea of drone controllers and camera techs, and suddenly it did feel that way. In all the ways that mattered, they were on opposite sides, but in one sense, the audience was one side, and he and Gale and Guang were another.
He wasn’t supposed to appear onstage for this one, so he was wearing a simple button-down shirt and jeans. Gale was regal in velvet. They were talking to their terrifying press secretary.
“It was a real language,” they were saying, with the air of a joking argument that they were repeating mostly to calm each other down, “for the last time.”
“Spoken in the rolling hills of Narnia,” the press secretary was saying.
“The Minoan civilization, in Crete,” Gale said.
“That’s what I said.”
“Mx Stirling, you’re from Earth,” Gale said. “Confirm for us that Linear A was a real writing system.”
“Don’t rope innocent victims into this,” said the press secretary.
“The Senator would know better than I would,” January said. “What’s Linear A?”
Gale looked wrong-footed somehow, although he didn’t think he’d said anything surprising.
“Don’t encourage them,” the press secretary said, joking.
“Why not?” January said, not joking at all.
A gong rang, signaling three minutes before the start of the debate. Outside, January could hear the rise and fall of what the moderator was saying, but not the words.
“Sorry. Looks like you’re on,” January said, bowing in the way people did here and gesturing towards the door. “Good luck.”
They raised an eyebrow at him. “You’d prefer it if I crashed and burned.”
“Well, yes, obviously, but I can’t tell you that. Seems unsportsmanlike. Plus I’d lose my moral high ground,” January said.
“We can’t have that,” they said seriously.
“Exactly,” January said, equally seriously.
Gale smiled.
Then it was time, and the debate was starting, and there was a roar outside from the crowd and a whistle-pop-boom of fireworks that January felt deep in his chest. He retreated deeper into the back of the stage, where the rest of the crew was watching on a tiny screen. He could hear Guang and Gale’s voices easily, magnified by speakers the size of a person, as loud as the fireworks.
“Gale’s crushing it,” one of the techs whispered smugly, only a few minutes in.
They were right, unfortunately. January felt cold in a way that wasn’t just the temperature.
“There are other solutions,” Guang was saying. “We can have a society where everyone functions together, Earthstrong and naturalised. Integration, proper cultural understanding, will reduce accidental homicides without hurting anyone. You don’t have any numbers that say that can’t happen.”
“I have, actually,” Gale said.
January's entire body tensed.
“There is another situation—very well established and well documented—in which one set of adults mixes with another set who are generally far stronger. It’s on Earth. It’s men and women.”
January felt himself stand up. Gale was looking directly at the camera. It felt like they were looking directly at him.
“Despite the very best efforts of all humanity, no one, until us, has ever stopped it entirely,” Gale said, in their beautiful rich voice. “So this will always happen, in any population with a huge imbalance of strength between two groups. It is why we stopped that imbalance here, it is why the first colonists deleted extreme gender traits in the DNA of their children, the same way they deleted cancers.”
January could see an alternate present so clearly he could almost remember it. If he had come to Tharsis in the normal way, gotten a minimum wage job in a factory or in an Americatown wet market, this would have been crushing. Gale would have been unbeatable; debating them would have felt like being an ant under a magnifying glass, trying to fight the sun.
But he had spent the past two years dancing around the Consul, learning to do exactly this. Two years watching Guang, and seeing how they did it, and wondering how they could do it better, because he needed Gale to lose.
Guang slumped a little against the podium. January could tell they had nothing to say.
But he did.
No one was particularly paying any attention to him. As the Consul’s spouse, he was mostly here to appear briefly at the end and be ornamental. Because of this, no one noticed when he edged toward the door, and no one stopped him in time when he walked onstage.
Chin up. Shoulders back. Turn towards the audience. He stopped, equidistant from the two podiums, suddenly in the glare of every single spotlight.
“Hi. You’re wrong,” he said to Gale. “Sorry. But you are.”
“January,” Guang said, amused—for now—pushing their microphone away so that the audience couldn’t hear it. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
January stared out into the audience. The lights were so bright that he couldn’t see anyone at all, only a blank space with orbiting stars. It was so quiet he could hear himself breathe. Between the two podiums, he was tiny. The stage was built for much taller people. He had about thirty seconds, he thought, before someone dragged him away.
“This is highly irregular,” the moderator said. “Pardon the interruption, we’ll—oh.”
There was a faint clicking sound. January looked over. As he watched, Gale detached their microphone from their podium and held it out, offering it to him.
He took it. Their fingers brushed his. When they let go, Gale tucked their hands away.
“Thank you, Senator,” he said, bowing. After a moment, they bowed back. “Anyway—you’re wrong. Do you ever think much about marriage?”
He held the microphone out so that they could respond. They leaned in and said, “I can’t say that I have.”
“I have, lately, for obvious reasons,” he said. “Oh, in case you didn’t recognize me—I’m January, I’m married to the Consul. I know I’m not supposed to interrupt, but if you could just bear with me for a second. Thanks. Uh, I can see that our fact-checkers have put some statistics about gendered violence on Earth up on the screen, that’s excellent—can we have that graph of reported instances of sexual assault on Tharsis versus conviction rates, the one with legal changes labeled? I think it’s from the Tharsis University Law Review.”
The screen flickered and changed colors, backlighting everyone in pale green-blue. Gale straightened in place, eyes shining.
“This is Senator Gale’s favorite graph,” January said. “My spouse leaves the television on in the living room all the time, tuned in to Senate coverage, and I can never figure out where they’ve put the remote.” There was a general disbelieving chuckle. “Yeah, you all think you’ve got it bad when your loved ones force you to watch sports. Anyway, I’ve seen a lot of what Senator Gale says on the Senate floor, and I pay attention, because being who I am, they’re sort of my personal archnemesis. But they talk about this graph a lot. I think they’re right to—it’s incredible. It’s the story of how Tharsis reduced the threat of sexual assault to practically nothing, told in numbers. They’re right—no other country has managed to do this, it’s very impressive. You should be proud.”
Gale tore their eyes away from the graph and stared at him as if they’d never seen anything quite like him before.
“Senator,” January said, heart in his throat, “can you tell me what year gender was abolished on Tharsis?”
He tipped the microphone back towards them. They said, “2143 CE.”
“Right, even I know that by heart,” he said, with a smile at the audience. “They teach us on the Crossing. But if you look at 2143 CE, cases don’t really start to drop off until about sixty years later. Can you tell me what happened in 2203?”
“The term of a marriage was set to five years,” Gale said.
“Right. And I’ve been thinking about that, because I’ve just gotten married, and it’s so different to how we do things on Earth. And if you look, cases drop by a lot after the marriage law. If Senator Gale was right, and this particular type of violence was really due to differences in strength, it would have dropped dramatically as the first generation born without gender traits reached adulthood, right? But that’s not what happened,” January said. “It dropped off much later, after a variety of different laws regulating marriage, anti-retaliation, ease of reporting, and even fair housing and social security. Look, you can see how many there are.
“I think this is because the Senator is wrong, because it was never about differences in strength. It was about differences in power,” January said, echoing slightly in the still arena. “Now that marriages only last five years, the power one adult can have over another is limited. It’s still there—the Consul has a lot of say over what I do and say and where I go—”
The Consul presently looked like they wished they had a bit more control over what January said and did. Gale’s eyes flicked over to them, briefly, and then back to January.
“But that lasts five years max, then it’s over. They don’t own me,” he said. “That changed things. So if, like you’re saying, Earthstrongers and Natural people are like men and women on Earth—the actual data doesn’t show that there’s only one solution and no laws will help. It shows the opposite, actually.”
Gale leaned forward in place a little. January held the microphone out for them.
“You say there is a legislative solution that doesn't include mandatory naturalisation,” they said. “What is it, then? What would that look like?”
“I don’t know,” January said. “I don’t think it’s just one thing. I was sort of hoping you and Consul Song might work that one out together.”
They frowned a little, too faintly to be picked up by the cameras. This close, January could see the shadows change by millimeters on their face.
“But what I do know is that forced naturalisation is not the only way to solve this problem. History rhymes, yes, but that is not what history is saying. Pretending otherwise is not only wrong, but dangerous, because it can kill or cripple thousands of people. People you personally have a great deal of power over. That’s all. Thank you.”
There was a ringing silence, and then a roar of shouts and applause. Not all of it was approving. Some of it was.
“Senator Gale, would you like to respond to this... unorthodox interruption?” the moderator said.
January gave them their microphone back and melted into the shadows by the side of the stage. Gale held the microphone and said nothing, looking up at the graph.
“Senator Gale?” the moderator said.
“I acknowledge that there might be another solution,” Gale said slowly. They were nearly drowned out by a roar like the world collapsing. “I don’t know what that that might be. I would suggest that Consul Song start thinking about it. I am open to suggestions from them and from my colleagues in the Senate.”
The roar only intensified, because that sounded a lot like January Stirling is right.
January slipped backstage and collapsed into a folding chair. One of the lighting techs handed him a bottle of water. He took it gratefully, shaking with adrenaline and fatigue. He had been onstage for all of two minutes, but it felt like he’d been dancing for hours. Outside, the conversation moved on to something about nationalising various economically important industries.
By the time the debate was over, most of the shaking had gone away. He was tired to the bone, but he straightened up and bowed as Song clattered backstage.
“Well, what’s the damage?” they said, aiming it at an aide.
“From the conservative news outlets, we’re getting pretty much exactly what you’d expect,” the aide said, scrolling. “January Stirling is a total wild card, the Consul can’t control him, he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t respect the rules of civilized debate, he put Senator Gale in danger…”
“I would never have hurt them,” January said, shocked. “They could see I was in my cage.”
“But from everyone else,” they said slowly, “that went over rather well. The moderator was right, that’s going to be the critical issue in this election, and I think we—won?”
“You were lucky,” Guang said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Next time, run that by someone first, yeah?”
“Sure,” January said, and didn’t say that no one would have let him onstage, or that if he’d said nothing, they would have lost.
“Let’s go,” Guang said, steering January towards the door.
“Mx Stirling!”
They both turned. Gale had just outrun their aides, trailing behind them like a comet’s tail. They were still a little breathless, their coat unbuttoned. They looked starry and bright-eyed, a little flushed, the way a very small January had been after seeing ballet for the first time.
“Sorry about earlier. I really didn’t mean to threaten you,” he said, miserably.
“What? Sorry?” They shook their head. “I came to congratulate you.”
“But you lost,” January said, before his brain could catch up.
“Yes? That’s why I’m congratulating you.”
“Oh,” January said.
“That was magnificent. Excellently done,” they said.
“If you’re quite done creeping on my spouse,” Guang said acidically.
January immediately started looking forward to whatever sharp-edged retort Gale would fire back. They didn’t have one, though; they physically took a step back, like a cat that had been tapped on the nose.
Come on, you can do better than that, he thought at them. But they weren’t looking at him anymore.
“Good night, Consul, Mx Stirling,” they said.
“Good night. Come on, January.”
One night, much later, January couldn’t sleep. The wind was rising again, a subtle hissing noise like static, chasing ripples of dust across the empty courtyards. There were voices coming from downstairs.
Jade Hill was old, as old as the colony itself. January, used to older buildings still, hadn’t expected it to be creaking and drafty—huge parts of it were built for the vacuum of space—but it was, especially in a storm. Metal groaned and settled like a person turning over in their sleep. Somewhere, a praetorian shifted at their post, and the floor sighed.
“It’s done,” someone said, and January jolted, because it sounded like Gale. They had the same rich burning-sugar voice.
He crept down the stairs, needing to know what was going on.
“Well done, well done. Drink?” Guang said brightly.
“Please. That was a long and horrible walk.”
“You said you liked hiking, though,” Guang said.
“Hiking. I said I liked hiking, not rappelling invisibly up the side of Mount fucking Penglai.”
“You didn’t walk all the way back, did you?”
“I took the late train. Nearly missed it, too.”
“Thank you, Aubrey. I’ll always remember the part you played in this,” Guang said.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t pretend it’s a good thing. People will die when the power goes out.”
“Pangs of conscience?” Guang said sympathetically, as if they had just admitted to an embarrassing toenail infection.
“No, it’s just—hard to believe it’s really over. There’s no way River’s getting out of this one.” There was a sound of ice against glass, as if Aubrey (Aubrey?) had toasted them. “The election is yours.”
“Thank you very much,” Guang said, radiating smugness.
January leaned forward and caught a glimpse of the person Guang was talking to. It wasn’t Gale. It was someone else, someone he’d never seen before, curled up in a leather armchair. They had a streak of gray in their hair.
The stairs creaked.
“What’s that?” Aubrey said.
“Probably the wind,” Guang said, but they leaned forward in a way that suggested that they were gesturing for a praetorian to go check it out. “This place is a mess. We should renovate.”
Aubrey mumbled something, but January was already creeping softly back up the stairs, not wanting to push his luck. He couldn’t go back to sleep. He stared at the canopy of his bed until the sky lightened, less than it should have. He didn’t understand any of it.
Then the Met Office announced the biggest dust storm Mars had ever seen, and he did understand.
They were going ahead with the charity fundraiser at the Tiangong, because of course they were. We are Mars, January thought wryly, as one of Guang’s stylists arranged his hair. They had him in white and pale gold like it was already election night, a characteristic piece of cockiness on Guang’s part.
“Do try to talk to Gale,” Guang said.
“Sorry? I thought that was exactly what you didn’t want,” January said.
“If you can put up with them bullying you for a bit, hopefully someone will get a photograph of it.”
He understood, suddenly. The most famous photograph of the first election debate wasn’t Gale and Guang, it was January and Gale—him in his ordinary clothes, Gale in their finery, leaning in so that they could speak into the microphone. Nearly equally famous: Gale holding out the microphone, offering it to him. Gale reaching down from their podium, January reaching up. It was lit like an oil painting.
“See if you can get one that looks a little less cooperative.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good man,” Guang said, even though that was vulgar here.
Then they had arrived. January stepped into a maelstrom of silver and amber camera flashes. Gale spotted them at once.
“Aubrey!” Guang said, looking genuinely pleased to see them. “I’m shocked you could make it. We hoped you’d be crushed under the weight of your own failures by now.”
“Terribly sorry to disappoint,” Gale said, looking—as usual—brighter, as if they’d been looking forward to the fight.
“Not at all, we’re delighted to have you. Isn’t that right, January?”
“Always,” January said, bowing.
It was harder to enjoy Guang’s banter when part of his brain was still trying to calculate how many people would die after the power went out but before the uranium came, all to make it look like Gale had failed.
“Well, I ought to circulate. January, don’t hesitate to scream for help if they try to do something horrifying.”
They patted him and left. Gale looked faintly worried, as if they were concerned he thought they would really do something horrifying.
The orchestra had finished setting up.
“Senator,” January said, “I’m really sorry if this isn’t how you ask here, so feel free to throw a drink at me and run away, but may I have this dance?”
They blinked. “Of course.”
The music began. It was a waltz. He settled one hand on Gale’s shoulder and the other in their hand, nervously, because he couldn’t tell if they were really fine with being this close to him or just pretending very well. They didn’t flinch. It brought them close enough to whisper, which was the entire point. He hadn’t asked only because he wanted to dance, or because he wanted to dance with them, but now that it was happening, he did. He was vibrating with excitement.
“Do you dance?” they asked belatedly.
He laughed. “I was the principal of the Royal Ballet.”
“Were you really?” they said.
“It’s why Guang wanted me. I’m occasionally photogenic and used to being onstage.”
“You’re a lot more than that,” they said softly.
They were a good dancer. Without talking about it, he had let them lead, and they were good at that, too—guiding without being domineering, perfectly in time with the music. They favored one side just a little because of the prosthetic. He shifted slightly to accommodate them. They blinked like he had done something dramatic and startling.
“Shouldn’t you know this already, doesn’t House Gale have a creepy dossier on me? I’m hurt.”
“We do, I’ve just been respecting your privacy.”
“That’s a shame,” he said, and then, “Look, Senator, I have to tell you. The dust storm is artificial. I don’t know how the Consul caused it, but—”
“Silver iodide.”
“Sorry?”
“It was silver iodide, it was an early method of cloud generation but there’s not enough water here for it to work properly,” Gale said. “It creates giant dust storms instead.”
“You knew? Never mind, there’s more,” he said. Their hand tightened in his. “The death toll is going to be much higher than most people think. Earthstrongers get paid in electricity.”
“Wait, in—”
“No one has bank accounts, because it makes them easier to track, so employers pay them using their charge cards for the subway.”
“How do you know this?” they said, sharp.
“Because that would have been me, if not for the Consul. They tell everyone on the Crossing. And I talk to people,” he said, as they lead him through a particularly elegant turn.
They had a few follow up questions about how it worked, wiring diagrams, apartment layouts, few of which he could answer.
“What you’re saying,” they said at last, low and frustrated, “is that there are thousands of people who are about to freeze to death, and it is personally my fault.”
“Yes,” January said. No sense sugarcoating it for them. “But I’m not trying to gloat. I’m here because you’re the only person who can do something about it. Guang needs this to happen because they need you to lose the election.”
“You also need me to lose the election,” Gale pointed out.
“Not like this,” January said.
The song ended. Rather than step away, they stayed there, holding his hand. They and January were exactly where they had started, having made a perfect circuit around the room. He couldn’t read their expression.
“Next one?” they said.
“Yes please.”
The musicians changed songs—slower, more romantic. In spite of everything, he was having fun.
Gale had noticed. “May I spin you?”
“Sure,” he said, pleased.
They did. January spun and let his silk clothes flare around him, basking in the feeling of not having to worry about whether he was about to hit something or frighten someone, because Gale was thinking about it for him. It was hard to feel through the gauntlets, but they weren’t wearing gloves, and they were very warm.
When they came back together, Gale said, “If you were Consul instead of Song, with all the money and power in the worlds, what would you do?”
“Open the naturalisation centers,” he said, a bit bitterly, because obviously Gale would never do it. “Free food and housing for the entire blackout, no obligation to naturalise. They’re already equipped for it, they have the funding.”
“Alright, we’ll do that,” they said.
“What? Shut up.”
“I’m worried that no one will believe it coming from me.”
“I’ll take care of that,” January said, floating on air. He would, somehow. “You’ll have to tell me when you’re making the announcement.”
“Immediately after Song stops talking. I’ll be asked for my opinion.”
“Right. Okay. I’ll see what I can do.” He swallowed. “Thank you.”
They squeezed his hand gently, making the gauntlet creak. “Be careful.”
“Worry about yourself,” he said.
They smiled unexpectedly, slow, not like their television smile. It lit them up like sunshine on snow.
The song ended. It was time for them to return to their ordinary places—Gale in the audience, January at Guang’s side. They both took a step back and bowed. Gale’s attention was turning elsewhere, but the smile didn’t altogether vanish. It shimmered under the surface of their expression. January couldn’t shake the feeling that it was his, somehow: for him, because of him… but you couldn’t think that way. It could have meant anything. Probably it was only their usual joy in the fight.
He filmed his endorsement of Gale’s plan—his plan, really—in one of the Tiangong’s bathrooms. It was fancy enough to not really look like a bathroom, enough to have its own little lobby with a pair of leather armchairs and a wall of black-and-white herringbone tiles. He scheduled it to post fifteen minutes after Guang finished their speech.
It was the next step in the incredibly delicate dance he and Gale were doing. He was trusting them to follow through, half because it was the right thing to do, half because it would be good for their campaign in the long run. He was letting them take the credit, half as a reward for doing the right thing and half because he was a little worried Guang would throw him out a window if they realized it was his idea. January wondered how much of that Gale had seen when he spoke to them. All of it, probably.
To his surprise, he was enjoying it.
He washed his hands and rejoined the praetorian standing outside the bathroom. It was Eun.
“Did you take any of the tiny cakes?”
“What?” they said, because strictly speaking he wasn’t supposed to make casual conversation with them. They were faceless to anyone who had filters. Every praetorian was still getting used to the fact that January could effortlessly tell them apart.
“For your kids,” January said.
“I don’t think that’s allowed,” Eun said wistfully.
“Steal them and wrap them in a napkin, then. Here.”
It was time. Guang walked up to the podium to a storm of applause.
Towards the end of their speech, Gale slipped calmly towards the door. January had been watching for it. When Gale paused at the door and looked back, their eyes met. They straightened a little and then bowed, very deeply, because no one was looking at them. January inclined his head a little in response.
Fifteen minutes later, it was clear that they had done exactly what they’d said. January had expected to feel surprised. He didn’t, though, only a rising champagne bubble of joy.
Guang watched the interview footage and January’s post in the car on the way back to Jade Hill, silently. Eun and the red-haired praetorian Alexei exchanged glances.
“That was too far, my dear,” Guang said to January—cheerfully, but with steel behind it. “Give me your phone.”
“What?”
Guang held out their hand, flat and expectant. Fear ran cold fingers up his spine. He’d known they would be angry, but this wasn’t anger. They hadn’t even lost their usual friendliness.
January hesitated. His phone was the only thing he had that had belonged to his mother, the only thing of his left that she had also touched. It was where all his photographs of her were—all his photographs of his old friends, old colleagues. Earth, which he would never see again.
Guang gestured with their other hand. Not looking much like they wanted to, Alexei lifted their rifle to his chest and flicked the safety off.
He reached into his pocket and slowly placed his phone in their palm. They held the power button down to turn it all the way off, screen blank. January’s fingertips were numb. Without it, he felt untethered and twice as alone. Stupid, because there was no one he could have called for help in the first place. But still.
“You’ll have it back when you convince me you won’t pull a stunt like this again,” Guang said. “In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to do this. As it is, we can’t afford to lose.”
“Yes, Consul,” January whispered, pulling his sleeves over his hands.
“Cheer up,” Guang said. “You must have known this was coming. There’ll be cameras outside Jade Hill.”
He drew his shoulders back and took a deep breath. The usual stage smile wouldn’t come. He closed his eyes and tried to think of the calmest person he knew: Gale, their hand in his, unsurprised because they had already known about the storm; Gale dressed in a hospital gown during an interview after Gagarin Square; Gale, onstage, reaching down to hand him their microphone.
When the door of the car opened, he smiled into the camera flashes and held the Consul’s hand.
1. Sometimes people called them En, the Chinese reading of the Korean Hanja character that was their name, in the same way that people called January Yiyue. It meant kindness, mercy, charity. return to text
2. 口, 一, 二, 三. return to text