The Great Grimsby [2/2]

Her visits grow more frequent—or, perhaps, you have only begun to notice them more. Most days, it is you who has the carnations ready for her. Some days, she stays to chat, and you learn so much more than Jess has about her. You know this, because Jess is surprised every time you comment offhandedly about her past. She used to live on Earth. Her uncle was an Intergalactic Diplomat who brought her up after her parents died—three-hundred years ago, she told you. 1895, to be precise. She’s been flitting through time ever since. 

‘Why settle down now?’ you ask her once.

‘Circumstance,’ she replies. ‘My uncle was killed a month ago,’ she elaborates, when you press her; she turns a single carnation around in her palm. ‘There was a bit of a scuffle over his estate, and this arse from the BMT—you’ve heard of the BMT, right?’

You have. BMT, or Black Market Traders, are one of the biggest legal gangs in the galaxy. Legal, because they’ve never been imprisoned for their crimes yet. ‘Yeah,’ you say. ‘They’ve got big names in the Intergalactic Court, right?’

‘Yeah.’ She tells you that BMT has taken her inheritance and, along with it, her safety. ‘I’m Diplomat now, o’course, and getting married is the best thing for me.’

‘Such a Victorian concept,’ you remark, and she smiles sadly.

‘I suppose so, yeah.’

This time, when she leaves, she tells you her name. ‘It’s Chrys.’

*


The New Year grows closer, and the Emporium is flooded with customers. Chrys appears every day, on schedule, at three o’clock. Life goes on. The jar of Tantelion stays in its place, on the front counter, but you look at it less often now.

When you tell Jess what Chrys’s story is, he mutters, ‘She shouldn’t go around giving information like that’, and then teases you about being her favourite. You don’t think you are, really, but it is one night in late December that you begin to think otherwise.

That night, it is cold—bitterly so. The clouds scurry over the sky like they have somewhere to be, and you sit, for a change, on the roof of the Emporium. Someone died on Jess’s side of the family, back in California—it was the plague again, he told you—and he’s down at the Inheritance Office right now, straightening things out. He’s using a fake ID, of course, because people cannot know he is directly related to someone white; they’ve been posing as very distant relatives for years. Everyone has roots down in Cali, Jess has said a million times. It’s only that they pretend that they don’t.

You lean against the low iron walls on the flat roof, breathing in deeply. The chilly air eddies through your lungs and you draw your jacket around yourself more tightly. The streetlights gleam brightly, the buildings send sloping shadows along the tarmac, and it is very quiet—the only sound that greets your ears is the slight buzzing of electricity, but that is a perpetual symphony. Day and night. Summer and winter. The buzzing never ceases.

Mechanically, just like all those other times you’ve been on the Emporium’s roof alone, your eyes are drawn to the ship. Chrys told you that she calls it Great Grimsby, after that one famous novel, but its actual name is Mehark. Its wings flicker in the darkness, like the hands of a clock that is unsure whether it ought to go clockwise—or anticlockwise—and so it ends up going nowhere at all.

‘Hi there.’ Chrys’ voice breaks through your thoughts and you smile lopsidedly at her as she comes to stand next to you.

‘Hi,’ you say. There is silence. Then she says:

‘The wedding’s tomorrow. In the ship. They’ll be showing it on a screen in the city hall.’ She glances askance at you, the silent question visible in her eyes. Be there?

‘I got a letter from Eileen’s lawyer today,’ you say instead. It’s not a reply, and she knows it, but this is the first piece of communication you’ve gotten from your wife in a solid two months, and it’s important.

Chrys places a hand on your shoulder. ‘What’d she say?’

The wind whips into your face, and for a moment you can’t breathe—it’s hard to say it, it’s so very, very hard. There’s a lump in your throat. You swallow. ‘Divorce,’ you say heavily. The tears slide down your face and you turn your head, ashamed. Ashamed that someone who hurt you so much should make you feel like this. Your heart is burning in your throat and your tears ravage your face. Chrys takes your gloved hand and grips it tightly between her ungloved ones. In the moonlight, it’s clear to see that the green she’s slathered across her face is paint. You wonder how she has the patience to do it every day.

‘Breathe,’ she says. ‘You knew it was coming, didn’t you?’ Her eyes look old, weatherworn as she looks at you; you feel like those eyes are peering into your soul and taking it apart at the hinges.

‘It’s the finality,’ you sputter, through your tears. ‘It’s hard to take in.’

She lets you cry, lets you use her as a pillar even as the stars blink out with the rising of the sun.

‘I’m going to kill him,’ she says, breaking the silence that hangs between the both of you.

‘The—who?’ you ask.

‘The King.’ Her face is grim, set in dark, grim lines. ‘I didn’t just come down to Stylwark for flowers,’ she admits. ‘I was looking for a weapon—a knife. Found one a week ago—staleblade, with augerine poison. It’s instant.’ She draws a breath in between her teeth, exhaling into your hair. ‘I’m going to—I’m going to kill him, and leave his body here. Come dawn the day after the wedding, I’ll be at Nebula, and then…’ the words topple out, and this time, it’s her tears that drip down on your face. ‘I’m getting my inheritance back. I need to—everything that my uncle left me.’

‘How will you—’ you begin to ask, but the answer hits you mid-question. ‘Devon has an army, doesn’t he?’

She is quiet; then, wiping her face with the back of a hand, she nods. ‘The head of the BMT is called Raun’Dun. He’s the bastard who’s going to die.’

‘You’ll be doing the galaxy a favour.’ You are slightly dazed. BMT has done its share of kidnapping and rape in the past hundred years. They are part of the reason the Intergalactic Council is so corrupt. ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’ you ask Chrys tentatively.

She laughs, and her laugh, this time, is not-so-musical.

‘You’ll see it in the papers. It’ll work out,’ she says, and she sounds so certain that you can’t help but smile.

Chrys leaves at five in the morning, after one last goodbye. She asks you to tell Jess she’ll miss him. You stay out on the roof as the sun climbs over the edge of the city; then, trudging downstairs, you close down shop, flipping the sign to ‘closed’ and writing ‘for personal reasons’ beneath it in red marker.

When you exit through the back, a single white carnation rests on the pavement.

It joins the sprig of Tantelion on the counter.

~*~

On the first day of the new year, King Devon’s body is found tucked in an alleyway behind the city hall, a thin knife between his ribs. The ship has disappeared. No one is able to find out who killed him, but the newspapers report that the young Queen is heartbroken. The murderer, whoever it was, was very careful. The knife was handled with a gloved hand. The only uncommon thing that the police find on the body is a striped carnation in the breast pocket.

They throw it away.