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Chapter Text

In the county of Cornwall, when January Stirling was nine years, two weeks, six days, and three minutes old, a statistically random puffin was three years, five weeks, eight days, and forty-three minutes old, and not a minute older.

The puffin was statistically random because statistically, a certain number of puffins die every day, and that was the day that this puffin’s number was up.

This particular puffin happened to die right in front of January. It had spent the previous two minutes being chased through the sky by a great black-backed gull, who was hungry for dinner. This puffin had flapped and dodged with admirable urgency, but the gull was unfortunately faster.

The puffin, in one last-ditch attempt at survival, spotted a low stone wall on the ground below and attempted to dive towards it, intending to pull up at the last possible minute and fly over.

It did not.

Rather, January, who had been walking along the low-lying wall that surrounded his mum’s vineyard, muttering French words under his breath as he tried to visualize their accompanying poses, glanced up in time to see a puffin slam into the wall in front of him at an alarming velocity and come to a dead stop.

Both dead as in abrupt, and dead as in deceased.

The body fell limply to the ground at January’s feet. The shadow of a bird swooped angrily overhead.

“Croisé,” said January, which had been the term he’d had difficulty remembering, and also the positioning of the dead puffin’s legs.

The puffin was unquestionably dead. Beyond the fact that it wasn’t breathing, its neck had given an alarming crack reminiscent of a firecracker, and was laying at the precise angle to indicate that.

January, who liked puffins, knelt down to look at it. He thought perhaps he could get a shoebox and bury it – to leave it laying in the dirt seemed an inadequate fate for such a small creature. Its feathers looked very smooth.

January hesitantly reached out a finger to stroke it.

And at that moment, something wildly statistically improbable happened: The puffin gave a whole-body shiver and scrambled to its feet.

Shocked, January fell back onto his butt, and the puffin leaped into the air.

This was the moment that young January realized he wasn’t like the other children. He’d known that already – he was the only boy in his town in the top ballet class. But there were a few younger boys in the classes below him, and at the end of the week January was going to the Longborough Ballet School in Russia where there were going to be lots of boys just like him.

But this? This was like exactly no one else.

January could touch dead things and bring them back to life.

There was no instruction book or sign from the skies or internal reason that popped into his head. It just was. The terms of use were not immediately clear, and January didn’t spend too much time thinking about them.

Frankly, it kind of weirded him out. He’d confirm the ability with any dead bugs he could find along the rest of the walk to his house, and then he’d put it out of his mind, he decided. There were more important things to focus on. Like ballet boarding school.

As January continued on his way, he failed to notice the statistically relevant great black-backed gull drop out of the sky behind him, dead.

January successfully didn’t think about it again^[1] until he was eighteen years, four days, two hours, and ten minutes old. He’d come home for a brief visit before the start date of rehearsals for his first role with a ballet company.

He was sitting in the kitchen with his mother as she put the finishing touches on the lattice of a pie. His dad was on a ladder outside, fixing something with the roof.

His mother put the pie into the oven and set a timer on her phone – a Mori, a family heirloom – and at that moment a blood vessel in her brain burst, killing her instantly.

January didn’t know that at the time, of course. All he knew was that his mother had collapsed onto the floor and that she was very clearly dead.

January’s gift had scared him, and given him infrequent nightmares about zombies and Frankenstein – the monster and the scientist. It was at this moment that he understood Frankenstein – the scientist – a little better. To lose one’s mother was a terrible, terrible thing, and if he could warp the laws of life and death to bring her back – he would.

January squeezed her hand.

His mother blinked and sat up. “Goodness,” she said, “Did I fall? I was feeling a bit dizzy, but how’d I get down here?”

“You fainted,” said January. “Do you feel all right? Look, come sit down and I’ll take care of everything.” He took her by the arm, the soft linen of her sleeve bunching under his hands, and helped her to a chair in the kitchen. He got her a glass of water, and she talked with him and smiled and gradually January’s heart rate went down.

It was at that moment that his father fell off the ladder outside and landed on the ground, dead.

January and his mother rushed to the window, and then out the door. His mother called for help, and January had a realization.

His gift had a caveat. It gave, and it took. He could bring the dead back to life very briefly without consequences – perhaps a minute, as that’s what his mother’s phone screen had flashed when she dug it out to dial 999. But any longer, and someone else had to die.

January had traded his mother’s life for his father’s.

January looked at his father on the ground, and then his mother, crying, and he didn’t touch his father. He didn’t touch him when he helped his mother do CPR – his hands were pumping his father’s heart through his shirt – and he didn’t touch him when the paramedics came, and he didn’t touch him when they confirmed that he was dead.

Broken neck from the fall, they said.

But there was one more thing about touching the dead that January had to learn. And he learned it in the most unfortunate way.

“We’ll- we’ll be okay,” his mother said, watching them load January’s father into the ambulance. “We’ll just have to be strong, won’t we, January? You and me-” and she reached out to touch his face.

She touched him, and she collapsed.

That was the rule. First touch, life. Second touch, death. Permanently.

January learned that final and most critical caveat after he fell to his knees, frantically patting her hand and brushing the hair out of her face and shouting for the paramedics to help.

Nothing.

January’s life was a tragedy for the weekly paper. Orphaned in an afternoon – father to a ladder accident and mother to an aneurysm. He buried them, and then a neighborly lawyer helped him settle the family’s accounts and sell the vineyard and their house.

Two weeks later, January went to join the ballet company.

From that point on, January avoided social attachments. He didn’t like to think about what he’d do if he loved someone and he lost them, so he tried his best to fall for people who were safely unattainable, if he had to fall for anyone at all. He was friendly, of course, and a team player, and his internal detachment made him strangely likeable, as he was nearly impossible to offend.

January rose in the ranks, and thirteen years, two months, three weeks, and two hours later, he was the principal at the Royal Opera House.

It was raining.

Three hours later, it was still raining, and they were staying the night.

Six hours later, it was morning, and January was still the principal of the Royal Opera House, but it was rapidly becoming clear that there wasn’t going to be a Royal Opera House anymore, because London was most definitely descending into an Atlantean myth of its own, and also the ocean.

The facts were these: the first person who ever found out about January’s ability was the conductor at the Royal Opera House, and she handled it in a spectacularly decisive fashion.

After the Swan Lake rehearsal had turned into a Real Lake and the realization that the world was never going to be the same again, January and the conductor had gotten into a lost rowboat and went out to find some food. Or at least some information.

What they found first was a body.

January hadn’t known it was a body, or else he wouldn’t have touched it. They’d been to St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was projecting the news, and then they’d broken into a camping shop to appropriate supplies.

There had been a man sleeping at one of the camp tables with a blanket pulled over his legs and a ball cap pulled down over his eyes. He wore a nametag, and January and the conductor had assumed he was an unfortunate shop employee who’d been flooded in with no way to get home.

“Excuse me?” said January. Then, a little louder, “Hey, sir?” He took the man’s wrist and shook it, and the sleeve slipped enough that January’s thumb brushed skin. Cold skin. Dead skin.

The man gasped and looked up. “Wazzat?” he said, loud. “Who’re you?”

January realized what he’d done. The conductor didn’t. January grabbed for his mother’s phone and hit the stopwatch.

The conductor leaned around January and said, “Hello, sir. We’ve got twenty-five people, half of them teens, stranded at the Royal Opera House. Do you think you could let us take some stoves and torches?”

“Are you planning on paying for them?” said the man, grouchy as he pulled his blanket closer around himself. January’s gaze was darting rapidly between the man and the conductor. There was no one else around. Either January touched him again or the conductor was going to drop dead in thirty seconds. He’d experimented enough with bugs after his mother’s death to be certain it was a proximity thing. And the conductor was the only person in proximity.

Twenty-nine seconds. Twenty-eight. But how was he going to explain it to her?

His gaze caught on the man’s blanket. It was one of those heating ones, with a cord that stretched to a socket in the wall. There was a loose wire or two peeking out from the fabric of the blanket – it was old, probably something the man had brought himself to keep warm at work.

But there were exposed wires, and everything was wet now. At least it seemed to have shocked him in his sleep – he hadn’t woken up expecting to be dead.

“It’s an emergency,” the conductor was saying, “I mean, I can try to pay you back later, but I can’t promise-”

Twenty seconds.

“This isn’t a charity,” snapped the man. “It’s Mark’s Camping and Supply, Finest Products at High Quality, and you certainly only get what you can pay-”

January couldn’t think of any way to play this off. But there was no way around it. The man was dead, and the conductor wasn’t, and if the man went back to being dead, then at least January wasn’t interfering in something that had already happened. More people would die if he sacrificed the conductor for one recalcitrant shopkeeper.

He still hated it, though.

January reached forward and tapped the man on the forehead. He broke off and slumped over, limp, like his strings were cut.

“January!” said the conductor, mildly scandalized. Then, “Sir? Sir?” she reached forward and shook his shoulder. “Sir!” He was limp.

She pressed her fingers to his neck, and then she turned to January with horrified confusion on her face. “He’s dead,” she said. “He’s dead. What- How- Why’d you touch him like that? Why’d he just die? He was fine.”

“He wasn’t fine,” said January miserably. “He was dead before we even came in the window. Water got into the electrics on his blanket.”

“No,” said the conductor in the patient tones of someone dealing with the clinically insane. “He wasn’t dead before. He was talking. To us. Just now.”

“I know,” said January. “But he was dead. And then I brought him back to life, and now he’s dead again.”

The conductor stared at him.

January explained.

After twenty minutes, the conductor still didn’t really believe him, but the man was still dead and they were losing daylight, so they left it for later and started hauling camping gear to the rowboat. They went to the shopping centre for food next, and though the conductor was now watching him warily out of the corner of her eye, she didn’t mention it when they got back to the Royal Opera House, which was just about all January could ask for.

Then they settled in to wait.

On the fourteenth day, Terry died.

Terry was seventeen years, two days, and six hours old.

He’d cut his wrist on a stone when he’d tried to go home and found it flooded. They’d cleaned and bandaged it as best they could, but it still got infected. Badly infected. He was feverish and sweating for days, and they didn’t have the clean water to keep him hydrated.

They’d known it was coming for a few days, but it was still a shock when the director announced in a broken voice that he had stopped breathing. They couldn’t make him start again.

January tucked his hands into his sleeves and looked at nothing. He could feel the conductor’s eyes on him.

Neither of them said anything until the helicopters arrived the next morning. The kids had gone on the first one, then the director and most of the adults on the second. The crew of the second helicopter promised that a third would be coming back for those remaining, along with the other people on the street.

January nodded, and turned around to realize that the only people left were him and the conductor. She was looking at him with something weary and determined in her face, and January felt a chill that wasn’t from the wind being pushed around by the helicopter’s blades.

The second helicopter lifted off and flew away, and the conductor turned to face the sun and take a deep breath. Then she turned to January.

“We’re going to get Terry,” she said.

“They’re not doing body recovery until they get everyone living out first,” said January.

“I know,” she said. “You say you can wake the dead? Then wake the dead. Bring that kid back.”

“No.”

The conductor got in his face, all of a sudden. “Yes,” she hissed. “Yes. That boy is dead when it was the company’s job to look after him, and there are a scared set of parents out there who are dying to know what has happened to their little boy. You are going to bring him back.”

“I can’t,” January shook his head. “There’s a cost.”

“I know,” snarled the conductor. “And I am going to pay it. You said it’s random proximity, right? Well, look around, January, I’m the only one in proximity. And I say that the kid lives.”

January looked into her eyes and was afraid and inspired and maybe a little bit in love. He’d only ever seen her show this much life when she was playing violin for them, late at night.

“Okay,” he said at last. “Okay, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” she said.

They went downstairs. January woke Terry up and pulled on gloves. The conductor told Terry that he’d been very sick, but he seemed to have taken a turn for the better, and that a helicopter was coming back for him. Terry hugged her.

The conductor collapsed. Terry tried to revive her. January let him try until he heard helicopter blades in the distance, and then pulled Terry off and up the stairs to the roof. Terry cursed him and yelled, but eventually he stayed on the roof after January told him in harsh words that the conductor was dead and if he stayed he would only die with her.

When the helicopter landed, Terry sat as far from January as he could get.

When the translator asked if he’d like to seek refuge in Tharsis, January was sick to death of both water and death. Mars would at least get him away from one. He said yes.

1. Save for a few notable yet overall minor excitements that culminated in his decision to become vegetarian at the age of ten.
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Chapter Text

Six hundred days later, January walked into work at Tereshkova Wharf and saw an astounding number of people. It did ordinarily take quite a lot of people to run Tereshkova Wharf, but there were far more people than that at the moment, and all of the new people were Natural. Important-looking Natural, with fancy clothing and winking jewelry and camera drones and microphones bobbing about their heads. They made a riot of color - yellow and orange and black and purple - against the dusty red-tinged grey of the Earthstrongers' boilers suits and work-worn machinery.

“There’s a Senator coming to visit,” said Val, wheeling by and responding to January’s expression. “Best be on your best behavior.”

“Why?” January looked around at the rest of the Earthstrongers, none of whom, including him, looked like the kind of person Tharsese senators sought out to speak to. “Nobody here is important enough to talk to a Senator. No offense, Val.”

She laughed and flipped him off, but before she could respond, a Natural person with a lot of fancy braids and gold beads appeared suddenly – too close to January for comfort – and said, as if surprised, “Are you kidding? This is Tharsis. Whoever has the water has the power. That’s why the Senator is here: we want to make sure everything is flowing smoothly for our essential workers who maintain the flow.”

January stifled a laugh at the idle thought that no matter where he went, apparently water was inescapable. Water and death. Maybe the fates were fair, and the trade-off of always having to worry about water meant that he’d finally be able to stop worrying about death.

This was, of course, the very moment that the Natural person looked at him a bit closer and took him by the arm. January felt hot fear run up that very arm as a direct result of that very contact - he wasn’t wearing a cage. “Come with me,” they said, “You’re one of the lucky people who’s been chosen to have an interview with Senator Aubrey Gale.”

“Please let go,” January said, but the Natural person pulled, and he went, and then they were in a massive swirling crowd of people that orbited like miniature confetti-colored moons around the central black hole that was Aubrey Gale.

The Natural person released him, and January waited where he was put, as a microphone was placed on him and the Natural person came back with one of his coworkers, also for the interview. And then they were ushered into chairs, and Gale was coming over, and January realized it was too late to get out.

There were dozens of people around them – staff, the supervisor, January’s fellow worker – but January could only really focus on Gale.

“Lovely to meet you,” said Gale.

“It’s not, but nice of you to say anyway.” January wanted to kick himself. And then something flickered behind Gale’s eyes, and they looked at him searchingly. Almost like they recognized him.

No, January assured himself, not like they recognized him. Not even a coldhearted brilliant senator could remember one face from thousands.

But January had a creeping feeling that if any person could, it would be Aubrey Gale.

The facts were these: January was at the Gagarin Square Riot.

He hadn’t known it was going to be a riot. Most people hadn’t. It was supposed to be a protest. So he wore a red scarf and showed up.

For a while, there were signs, and chants, and plenty of press attention. They were getting the public to hear them, and hope was rising that they’d get the senators’ attention as well.

And then the senators came out the front door. People surged forward, January caught in the mix, and the water cannons went on.

January, caught in the tide of people crushing towards the door, was instantly soaked and freezing and shoved off-balance.

The man next to January took off his cage.

Fear colder than the water ran through January’s heart. As people around him were shouting and shoving, he could hear the faint metallic hiss of cages unclasping beneath the splash of the water cannons. He tried to go backwards, to go away, but the crowd was too strong and he went forward instead, stumbling up the steps.

Through a brief gap in the crowd, he saw someone shove a senator into a wall, and blood bloomed across the wall and their shoulders. People flashed by – Earthstrongers in and out of cages, police, a frightened senator’s face – until January tripped over something soft and fell onto a body.

January caught himself with one hand next to the body’s head and one hand on their shoulder. They were Natural, with bruises blooming across one eye and blood smeared on their face. They groaned beneath him.

They were going to get trampled, January realized, and grabbed them under the arms to haul them to their feet. He drew back, standing up and pulling them with, and they let out a shriek like a trapped animal.

January looked down. The person was missing most of one leg. There was a lot of blood. Too much blood.

January looked at the person’s shoulder. Their robe was ripped, enough to see skin through it. January’s hands were so numb with cold he couldn’t feel anything, but he knew he’d touched them.

His hands were clenched tight in the fabric bunching under their arms, but he started to work one hand free so he could touch their cheek and lower them back to the ground.

Suddenly, police appeared behind the Natural person, and yanked them away, and January reached out, too late, as the person disappeared behind a clear shield and a gun appeared in front of his eyes.

January dodged back and covered his face, and threw himself into the crowd.

Afterwards, when he’d somehow managed to get back to his apartment without getting arrested, he looked at himself in the mirror. He looked a mess. In a brief fit of vanity, he’d attempted to dye his hair back to its usual shade. His hair had gone white on the Crossing for reasons no one could explain to him beyond ‘stress’, and he hadn’t liked the way it looked. He’d dyed it just that morning, and evidently it hadn’t set yet, because there were streams of greyish-black water streaming down his forehead and ears.

He looked like he’d stuck his head in watery mud. He looked like he was trying to be someone he wasn’t anymore. He looked like a failure.

January stuck his head in the sink and scrubbed it all out, and didn’t try to dye it again.

When January watched the news later, the report was that two senators and ninety-eight other people had died. January got onto the memorial webpage and scrolled through images of faces, looking.

He didn’t find the Natural person.

And then the news showed a blurry image of a senator at the hospital who had survived despite grievous injuries. January blinked at the image, and went back to the memorial webpage, wondering how to tell which one of those people had died because he had saved Senator Aubrey Gale.

January was quietly thankful it wasn’t the custom to shake hands on Mars – especially between Earthstrongers and Natural people. He told himself to get through the interview with as little fuss as possible and get out of there before Gale could remember him.

On the plus side, Gale didn’t remember him.

On the minus side, January threatened to kill Gale on live television.^[1]

January spent exactly two weeks, three hours, and forty-seven minutes in medium security prison.

The only things of note that happened during this time were that January’s Mandarin improved and Consul Guang Song won a debate against Senator Aubrey Gale by using him as an example of how intolerant Gale was. It made him look a bit pathetic, but January felt a bit pathetic.

January’s roommate, a cheerful thief who liked to kidnap show dogs and take them on long walks so they could chase squirrels and taste freedom, tried to cheer him up by telling him stories about his most recent canine acquisition – the one that had finally caused him to get caught, because the irate owner had hired a private investigator in order to track down their missing pooch.

January listened and made polite interested noises at the tale of Bubblegum the Colladorussellapoo^[2], and tried not to feel jealous at the idea of someone caring so much about you that they broke you out of your everyday life to make sure you got the chance to go on walks and roll in the dirt and play jumping.

After prison, January waited in the office of the European Federation Embassy for one hour, two minutes, and forty-three seconds just for the woman to tell him that his options were to join a criminal gang that used a fast-food place as a front, go back to a warring Earth, or naturalise.

Everyone at the naturalisation center was very nice and very kind and January could tell that they would be very gentle with him while his soul died.

January went home to pack.

Ten seconds before January’s life permanently changed for the stranger, January was out of his cage, sitting at his table, watching the dust storm roll in, and decidedly not packing. His phone rang with another unknown number. He declined it.

At that point, three things happened in very quick succession: the lift’s bell rang, the Visitor sign lit up, and January opened the door to reveal Senator Aubrey Gale.

January, who had half been reaching for the mail, yanked his hand back and fell hard to a knee, twisting his hands nervously behind his back.

Gale was maybe a foot and a half in front of him. He wasn’t wearing his cage. And most importantly, he was wearing a sleep shirt and shorts because they were the least dusty items of clothing he currently owned. Thankfully Gale was wearing long black robes that covered them from head to toe, but January was terrifyingly aware that he wasn’t.

One elbow bump, one accidental brush of hands, and January would be sent to orbit Jupiter for life. A dead Senator in his apartment just days after he got out of jail for a death threat against them was an open-and-shut case.

“Hi. May I come in?”

January, wildly, wondered what would happen if he said no. He couldn’t bring himself to say it fast enough, though, and Gale stepped neatly in. January leaned back.

“Get up. Please,” said Gale.

January gave a sort of backwards lurch to his feet and moved as far away from Gale as he could get. They were eyeing him somewhat strangely, and he was sure his face looked a fright. He was frightened. He had no idea why Gale was here, and all he could think of was the ticking time bomb of accidentally touching Gale and high-security prison for life.

“Are you all right?” Gale asked, sounding as if they couldn’t believe the words coming out of their own mouth. “It’s just that you look-” They searched for a tactful word. “Ill,” they decided on.

“No, no, I’m fine,” said January. His mouth was dry. “Totally fine. It’s just- please don’t touch me. I don’t mean to be rude at all, I swear, but I would really, really prefer if you didn’t touch me.”

Gale’s face softened a bit. “I’m not here to get you in trouble again,” they said. “I think you should file for wrongful dismissal from the factory, anyway. It was very clearly sarcasm.”

“It wasn’t wrongful,” January managed, “Just- please don’t touch me.”

“All right,” they said, that strange expression still on their face. “I won’t. May I sit down?” They nodded at January’s table.

“Anywhere you like,” said January, and after they’d sat, he crept forward enough to pull a chair back and sit, distantly, opposite from them. He tucked his feet back under the chair and pushed his hands under his knees.

“So,” said Gale, looking him directly in the eyes. “I’d like to offer you a contract for a five-year job.”

“No,” said January immediately, “That’s fine, I’m-” he stopped and actually processed what they had said. “What?”

“Senatorial marriages in Tharsis are often arranged,” said Gale, which didn’t answer January’s question and instead spawned a whole host of new ones.

January blinked. He stared. “I don’t follow.”

“I need to appeal to a large amount of Consul Song’s working-class base if I’m to win the Consul seat in the upcoming election,” said Gale. “You’re a working-class immigrant who’s been unfairly slandered, imprisoned, and hung out to dry.”

“Thanks,” said January, dryly.

“Weddings are always popular,” said Gale. “Particularly fairy-tale weddings where it seems like the ordinary person has been rescued and lifted to the level of royalty.”

January tried to put this together. “You’re, what, rescuing me?”

“In a sense.”

“With a marriage?”

“Yes.”

“To you?”

“Yes,” said Gale. “Technically it’s a job, not an actual marriage. I mean, we would be married. But you’d have a salary and your own room and a fair contract in exchange for doing press engagements and public appearances and regular interviews.”

January laughed. He couldn’t help it. Judging by the look on Gale’s face, he sounded at least mildly hysteric. “Senator, of all the people you don’t want to be married to, you want to be married to me the absolute least.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want an Earthstronger in your house, for one.”

Gale looked away for a brief moment, then looked back. “I need you to win the election,” they said, “And I owe you for ruining your life. But you didn’t answer my question.”

“I did, though?”

“You said I should want to be married to you the least, but the reason you gave was that you’re Earthstronger. There’s hundreds of Earthstronger people out there – surely I should feel whatever you’re implying towards all of you equally?”

“I threatened you.”

“You sarcastically threatened me. I’ve been genuinely threatened plenty of times, by both Earthstrong and Natural people. You don’t really rank there, actually.”

 January was tired and miserable and scared. He could see all of the futures available to him and they were all bleak and here Gale was offering something that sounded nonsensically like a rescue and Gale wouldn’t let him turn it down in peace.

He lost his patience.

“Senator, you don’t want to be married to me because if you touch me, I’ll kill you.”

All the air went out of the room.

January heard the words hanging in the air like a horrifying omen of death. Because that, that was a threat. There was no sarcasm or laughter that could cover it up. Senator Gale was alone in his apartment and he had just threatened to kill them for the second time.

Gale was holding very, very still, and their face was frozen in something that used to be good-natured curiosity.

“It’s not a threat,” January tried weakly, “It’s just a- a fact, I guess. I don’t want to touch you. Or kill you.”

Gale didn’t move. It was concerning, actually, how still they were.

“Senator?”

Nothing.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m just going to- move back a bit, give you some space.”

He pushed his chair back as far as it could go with a horrible screech until it ran into his bed. He didn’t dare stand up and potentially loom over Gale.

“Senator,” he said, “I am so, so sorry. I know you don’t believe me, but that really did just come out wrong.” This far back, he could see the hem of Gale’s robes twitch. He thought maybe their leg was shaking. “You’re free to go,” he added quickly, “I’m not- trying to keep you here. You are absolutely free to leave, and – call the police, probably – and I’ll just stay right here.”

When Gale did speak, it was flat and nearly toneless. “Thank you, Mx. Stirling. I believe I am late for a previous appointment, so I will-” They hesitated just a fraction, eyes darting towards the elevator, “leave.”

“Yeah,” said January miserably, and to his shame he could feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “I figured." He curled his body down to rest his forehead on his knees because he didn’t want to move his arms and scare Gale, but he also didn’t want them to see him cry.

He fought tears for a long moment, pressing his face into his knees – knobbly with goosebumps from the cold – before he heard the slightest scrape of the chair and shush of fabric. He didn’t look up as Gale went to the elevator.

He knew what would happen. Gale would get on the elevator, call the police on their way down, and in under ten minutes the police would be on their way up. January’s life was really and truly over.

There was a ding as the elevator arrived.

The doors slid open.

“Mx. Stirling?”

“Yeah?”

“I noticed your suitcase was out. Are you planning on going somewhere?” Are you going to try to run before the police get here, they were asking, but at least they were tactful about it.

January didn’t have the energy left for tact. “No,” he said, “I was going to the naturalisation center. I’m not now, obviously.” Then seized with a hint of manic giddiness as he realized that nothing could really change the future now, he added, “Do you think there are going to be dead people in prison? Near me, I mean. I can’t be around dead people. Maybe you could put in a request for me. Just the living or no one near January, and to be safe no one should touch him, ever.”

The elevator dinged a bit, as irritated as a machine could get.

It made that noise when someone was holding the doors open.

January glanced up.

Gale was standing fully inside the elevator, their body halfway blocked by the door in a way that artfully appeared accidental but certainly wasn’t. But they were holding one hand against the door, and watching him with a frown.

“Do you have an aversion to touch, Mx. Stirling?”

“No,” said January. “That would make the whole situation easier to explain, wouldn’t it? But no. It’s just you I don’t want touching me. Well, you and Terry, I guess, but he’s on Earth. And a puffin.”

The elevator dinged again, louder. Gale frowned deeper.

“Mx. Stirling, clearly something is going on. You seem frightened and despairing in turns. I cannot make sure you get the help you need if you do not at least try to explain your situation.”

Well, that was nice, January thought. It kind of sounded like they were planning on sending him to a facility for the insane instead of prison.

“What, you want me to give you the elevator pitch?”

The elevator dinged irritably again.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” said January. “I was at the Gagarin Square Riot. You died. I brought you back. If you touch me again, you die permanently.”

Gale blinked. The elevator dinged. “Just to be clear, you don’t wish to touch me?”

“Not at all,” said January. “The very last thing I want is a dead senator in my apartment.”

Gale stepped out of the elevator and let it shut behind them. “You have my attention,” they said, “Explain what you mean? In detail.”

January wondered if ‘secret government lab experiment’ was better than ‘maximum-security prisoner,’ and then abruptly decided that he didn’t care. His life was ruined one way or the other, and it would be nice to finally tell someone before he disappeared behind one locked door or another.

So he told them. He told them about the puffin, and the experiments with bugs, and the one-minute rule and the longer-than-one minute cost. He told them about going to Gagarin Square to protest and getting caught in the crowd, he told them about tripping over them and touching them and realizing that they lived when they really shouldn’t. He told them about the two dead senators and the ninety-eight dead ordinary people and how he was responsible for one of them. And then he stopped.

Gale, who’d been standing next to the elevator the whole time, said, “You warned me not to touch you when I came in.”

“Yes.”

“And you truly believe this is an ability that you have and these are its limitations?”

“Yes.”

Gale hesitated. “Are you open to considering that you might be experiencing a break with reality?”

January couldn’t help but smile. “You think I’m crazy.”

Gale chose their words carefully. “I think it’s clear that there’s been a lot of stressors on you in the past few years, and that everyone handles that differently. Some people become debilitatingly superstitious-”

“And some people delude themselves that they have power over life and death,” finished January. “Yeah, I see it. I mean, I know I’m not crazy, but it would be easier if I was.”

Gale considered this. “Would you be willing to accept a psychiatric evaluation? And appropriate treatment, if a condition is discovered?”

“Willing to accept?” January asked. “Do I have a choice?”

“Yes,” said Gale. “Most of the marriage contract is open to negotiation. I’m afraid this isn’t, though.”

“Sorry, what? All of that, and you still want to get married? Are you insane?”

“I still need you for my campaign,” said Gale calmly. “And if you are delusional, you have shown nothing but concern for my person in your delusion, which is encouraging. And that can be identified and treated, and then with a bit of media training I’m sure you’ll dazzle the masses.”

“And if I’m not delusional,” said January slowly, “I’m a very useful asset to have in your belt.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Gale serenely.

January sat for a long moment and considered his options. There was really only one good one. It was still insanely risky and liable to end in flames, but at the very least he might get a couple of nights in a decent bed out of it. And it wouldn’t be naturalisation.

“I accept the evaluation and potential treatment,” said January, “On the condition that I get the chance to demonstrate my ability to you in private, and then you decide whether the evaluation is necessary. If you do, I’ll cooperate.”

Gale shifted their weight. “What kind of demonstration?”

“Plants work,” said January. “Bring me some dead ones. And possibly also a few living ones, if you want me to show you the beyond-one-minute rule.”

“Agreed. I’ll take you to breakfast tomorrow morning at the Tiangong to begin contract negotiations. I’ll have a room set aside with a selection of plants, and we’ll stop in after we’ve eaten.”

“Deal,” said January, and set his future on a different path.

Breakfast at the Tiangong café was alarmingly fancy, and yet the only one who seemed awkward was January. The security officers who had accompanied Gale had discreetly disappeared into various places around the café, except for the one taking minutes the next table over.

Gale told him about the House Gale reality show, handled starstruck teenagers with grace, and explained the basis of the Tharsis political system. They reviewed the wedding schedule and the romance timeline and somehow got January to agree to stay at the Tiangong for the month before the wedding.

“Excellent,” said Gale. “Would you like to see your room? I know you mentioned you were interested in plants, so I had a few brought.”

“That would be lovely,” said January, flexing his hands in the gloves he’d been wearing all morning. “Thank you.”

Gale walked him down to a meeting room and ushered him inside, then spoke quietly to a security officer before quickly following him in and locking the door behind them. January caught a glimpse of the meeting minutes-taker just outside, looking irritated at being excluded, but he was thankful that Gale apparently hadn’t told anyone about his ability. Or if they had, Gale’s staff was handling the fact that the Earthstronger fiancé was most likely insane with remarkable grace.

“This isn’t your room; your room is in the Rings. They’re meant to simulate Earth’s gravity for you, so you won’t have many visitors.”

“I see,” said January, who was looking at two neat rows of plants in pots. The ones in front were dead, the ones behind were not. “And officially, this is…?”

“Me showing you the plants so you can pick which ones you like for your room,” said Gale. “Unofficially, it’s your demonstration, as requested. If you still desire to do it.”

“I do,” said January, and he stepped up to the plants and tugged off one glove. He’d been careful to layer up – both for the cold and for any risk of touching Gale, and so besides his face, his hand was the only part of him that was exposed. “Which one would you like me touch? I’m sure we’d all be a lot more comfortable if I was faking this somehow, but I’m not, so I want you to pick what happens. Then you know I can’t have rigged anything.”

Gale nodded. “The second from the left, then,” and they stepped up next to January, still leaving a few feet of space, but close enough to clearly see.

January reached out and touched the dead leaves of something that had once been a fern. It instantly brightened up. It had three brown withered stems, in comparison to its living counterpart which was bursting with dozens, but all three of those stems straightened up and turned green once again.

That was the limit of January’s skill. It could bring the dead back to life, but it couldn’t heal beyond that, or regenerate what was lost. Gale’s leg was proof of that. Gale blinked rapidly, and their vision shifted to the middle distance as January watched them. Probably they were looking for some visual hack or trick in the filters.

January hit the stopwatch on his phone and waited.

At forty-five seconds, he said, “The minute’s almost up. Did you want me to touch it again, or let something else die? It’ll probably be one of these living plants, but I can’t guarantee that it will be. It’s pretty random.”

“You can touch it."

January touched it and the fern withered again in an instant.

Only because he was watching carefully, January saw a shiver go through Gale’s body, and they leaned away from him, just a fraction. It hurt more than he had been expecting.

After that, it was a rather drawn-out testing process. Gale had him demonstrate on all the other dead plants, testing the one-minute limit as well as the fact that if he touched a dead thing a third time, nothing happened. By the end of it, January had touched all of the dead plants, and he was fairly certain that Gale had been convinced.

Gale was quiet after they had finished. Eventually, January said, “So, you still think a psych eval is necessary?”

“Well,” Gale said quietly, “It seems highly unlikely that both of our delusions would overlap so perfectly.”

“What?”

“Gloves, I think,” said Gale abruptly, turning to face him. “Gloves for both of us, at the wedding and any other events where we have to appear near each other in public. We’ll say it’s in deference to how sharply Earthstrongers feel the cold, and I’ll attempt to set a new fashion trend to align myself with you. I suppose we should be glad that it is cold here, and our clothing tends toward the full coverage of the body. I can’t imagine how risky this would be in a warm climate.”

“Or in ballet costume,” January offered. “I brought back the Swan Prince at my company before I came here. It only worked because all of our careers were over and I wasn’t going to be lifting him three times a day.”

“You’ve done this to another person? And they’re still alive?”

“Yeah,” said January. “I guess if you notice anything weird, health-wise, you should reach out to him. Infection got him right before we were evacuated.”

Gale tilted their head. “Who died instead?”

“The conductor. She was the only other person I told. She saw me bump a dead shop clerk when we were looking for supplies, and then—er—put him back. It wasn’t my choice, really. She dragged me down to Terry right when we got rescued and told me that he was going back up.”

“She knew what she was doing?”

January nodded. “She was the only other living person for at least half a block.”

Gale considered this. “Is there a way to tell who took my place?”

January shook his head. “I tried. But anyone who mysteriously dropped dead near us in the crowd would have gotten injured in the crush, and that would be the assumed cause of death.”

“I see.” Gale looked pained. “I suppose I shall consider it a sacrifice that all of them made.”^[3] They hesitated, then said, “Perhaps this is impolitic, but I feel I must ask – for the sake of my security officers, if no one else – what’s to stop you from taking away your gift, if you become irritated with me?”

January flushed with shame, though he supposed he’d earned that. He certainly hadn’t been subtle about how angry he was about Gale’s policies in the interview. Luckily the answer was simple. “The same reason as before,” he said. “The judge told me that if I appear before the court again I’m going to the prison hulks.”

Gale winced. Evidently they knew how bad the prison hulks were.

“You have nothing to fear from me besides an accident,” said January. “Since accidents will end the same way for me, I’ll be very vigilant about preventing any. You’ve said yourself there’s lots of cameras at your house; rest assured that I’ll be very motivated to keep you safe.”

“I see. Is there anything else we should discuss, then, before the wedding? There aren’t likely to be many more camera-free moments for us.”

“One thing, I guess,” January shifted his weight, uneasy. “What happened to Max?” Max had been Gale’s previous spouse, as January had discovered in his frantic internet searches the night before. Max had disappeared under rather mysterious circumstances, but had apparently left a note, and nothing had come of an investigation without a body.

Gale’s face never changed. “They left. We didn’t get along. My – do you have a word in English, for the relation that shares your parents?”

“Brother?” January offered thoughtlessly, and then he wanted to kick himself. “I mean, sibling.”

“Thank you,” said Gale. “Max left with my sibling, River. It was all kept very quiet, you understand.”

“Ouch,” said January. “I see.” He hesitated. It was such a clean response. “You just- you're sure there’s no bodies in the basement?”

“Not now that I know you can talk to them,” said Gale blandly, and it was half a heartbeat’s worth of terror for January before he realized with a jolt that Gale was joking, and he surprised himself into a laugh.

Gale looked fractionally pleased. “Well, which of these plants do you like best?” they asked, looking at the small collection of green survivors of January's demonstration. “I’ll arrange to have a few sent to your room so that it appears we did something of mundane purpose in here.”

January spent the next one month, two days, and three hours in language lessons, history lessons, media lessons, scheduling discussions, tailoring appointments, and a rather unnerving impromptu visit to the Consul’s office which was half warning and half open invitation to betray Gale at any point in the future.

The Consul had shown him a video feed of a church on Earth where people were praying. Fire was consumed the trees behind the church, just yards away.

The Consul let him watch it for a moment before asking, “Do you know what colony collapse is?”

January shook his head, and then changed his mind. “That’s what happened to the other three Mars colonies, isn’t it? The storms were too strong, and they collapsed?”

“No,” the Consul said. “Well, yes, that’s true, but that’s not what I was talking about. I was talking about bees.”

Nothing the Consul had said up to that point had even hinted at bees being the topic of conversation. January wondered how he was supposed to have answered the Consul’s question correctly, and then wondered if that had been the point.

“Bees?”

“Bees,” said the Consul. “They live in their chosen beehive in what is called a colony. At least when they’re at home – when they’re out and about they’re called a swarm. But colony is a more apt word for the metaphor I’m trying to make, so let’s stick with colony. The colony lives in its beehive, and everything’s all right. But if something happens to the beehive to make it inhospitable – if, for instance, someone lights it on fire – then the bees leave. But they don’t make a new beehive. They simply fly away to die. It’s a natural phenomenon.”

The flames were starting to flicker up the back of the church. The people praying in front of it didn’t move.

The Consul turned and gave January a sort of nobly wry look. “And as we both know, Aubrey Gale loves to keep things Natural.”

January didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t, though,” said the Consul. “I believe in helping the bees find a new place to live, even if it goes against a natural phenomenon.” They pointed at the screen. “That colony is collapsing. I want to invite them into mine. Your fiancé doesn’t.”

“But what do you want me to do about it?”

“I want you to remember this,” said the Consul. “In two months, the election will be over, and I may not be Consul anymore. But I am Consul now, and I’m sending ships to get those people.” They nodded at the screen. “It’s a risk. We don’t know what it will be like in Tharsis when they arrive. They could be coming to their new home, or they could be coming here to die.”

They handed January a call card.

“So, if at any point you want to fight on the side of the bees, give me a call. You’re about to go straight into the heart of Team Colony-Collapse.”

The wedding was stunning.

January wore gloves – he’d told the fashion designer, Mx. Fenhua, that he had poor circulation, and Mx. Fenhua had risen to the challenge with delight. January now had pairs upon pairs of gloves, some that fit neatly over his cage in a way that emphasized the clean lines of it and made his hands look elegant rather than skeletally bulky, some that were thin and lay neatly beneath his cage without bunching or tearing, and some that were stretchy knit patterns that could be worn both over and under.

For the wedding, January’s gloves were red to match his red wedding clothes, but hand-painted with gold leaf at the joints to accentuate the gold-veneered cage he wore.

Gale, when they appeared, looked imposing and alien and beautiful, and he noticed, when they held out a hand to him, that they were wearing gloves as well, but thin ones dyed to match their skin tone exactly.^[4]

1. Again, but nobody but January knew that.

[↺ go back]

2. A Border Collie, Labrador Retriever, Jack Russell Terrier, and Poodle mix. Pronounced "Coll-a-dor-russell-a-poo". It took January nine days to work out how to say it.

[↺ go back]

3. Later, Gale arranged for flowers to be set annually on the gravemarkers of everyone who had died at Gagarin Square. When January read about this in a media briefing, he was struck with a sudden and piercing sense of grief for his parents, whose graves were probably underwater by now.

[↺ go back]

4. Later, when January saw the videos of their wedding replayed all over social media, their hands looked perfectly normal. Ungloved. Gale been wearing a filter to appear bare-handed. It was a nice way to make them seem closer than they actually were.

[↺ go back]

Chapter Text

Songshu was nestled in a massive forest of gargantuan, gravitationally-ambitious emerald pines. The scenery was wonderful and took January’s breath away, metaphorically. The altitude was awful and took January’s breath away, literally.

He managed to catch at least some of it by resting behind the main cluster of walkers and resting his hands on a nearby tree, which included a charming carving of a polar bear.

“Are you all right?”

January jumped, which made Gale start, and then they engaged in mutual sheepish shuffling after the rest of the group. “Just the altitude,” January said, “You can go on ahead without me, I’m sure there’s plenty of senator-y things that need doing.”

“It’s all right. The altitude was always rough for me when I came back from college.” Which was a fine and interesting piece of personal trivia that January was glad to know, as it made him feel less alone and related to, which was probably Gale’s goal. Then two nosy camera-drones drifted down to eye them, and Gale took January’s arm, which was a rational and logical action to indicate friendliness between newlyweds that filled January with horror, as he could feel Gale’s stiff fear through their loose grip on his arm.

“Don’t,” said January, pulling away. “Don’t do it if you’re scared. Look, I’m scared, but please don’t force yourself to touch me when you don’t want to. It makes my skin crawl like I’m some nightmare creature lurking under the bed. Which I am, to you, but I’d rather not feel that way if I can avoid it, and I’d rather not make you feel like you have to touch the nightmare creature and scare yourself.”

Gale stared at him. “But my feelings aren’t your problem.”

“They are when I’m involved. I don’t like feeling like your nightmare creature.”

“You’re not my nightmare creature,” said Gale with a weird level of confidence. “But I understand your concern. I’ll give you space unless it’s necessary.”

“Thank you,” said January. “And obvious ditto, here.”

After the tour of Songshu’s expensively elegant beauty and a dinner that January had nearly fallen asleep in, Gale took him to his room. That was as private a place as they were going to get for the other thing that January had to do that night, though of course he spotted cameras in the corners. Hopefully Gale would read the subtext of what he had to say.

“Before you go, Senator,” he said, going down on one knee and detaching his key from his cage, holding it out across both palms. “This is for you. To return only when you feel safe, and it disturbs no unquiet thoughts.” He flexed his fingers a bit, trying to draw attention to his gloves and say with his eyes that the oath for his cage held a secondary promise that he would wear gloves and sleeves and pants very carefully, to keep Gale safe.

From the laser intensity of their gaze, January was optimistic that Gale understood. Their gloved fingers took the key from his gloved palms without so much as brushing him, and they thanked him.

Six hundred and sixty-one days, fourteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes after January had last danced his way across the stage of the Royal Opera House in the company of a company accompanied by a conductor who gave life to their performance, January danced again.

It was different – he danced alone, and there was both a living and mechanical audience, but it was the same because it was dancing, and doing it made January feel like he could breathe with a secret pair of lungs that he only ever used when he was flying or helping someone else to fly.

Motion from the audience caught his eye, and when he saw Gale – sans senatorial finery, and looking shockingly soft and human in a green jumper – he went down on one knee to greet them.

“Don’t stop on my account,” said Gale. “It just seemed a shame to only watch on the feed when I could see you live.”

“Ah, thank you,” said January, flushed from exercise, “You’ve seen-”

Sirens howled from every wall, speaker, and drone, and January jolted.

Alert. Major storm. Close all windows and doors.

Gale went up the stairs to the nearest window at a run. Everyone else seemed shocked into stillness, so January, after giving Gale a head start, barreled after them.

Over the Plains, the sky roiled with cyclones and lightning. It wasn’t like the rolling implacable wall of the dust storm in the Valley. This was furious, and angry, and it frothed rather than merely blanketed.

Gale sent an announcement summoning all the senior staff to the meeting room, and nodded January ahead.

“Am I senior staff?” January asked, more surprised than he perhaps should have been.

“Yes. Or you should be listed as such, on the Schedule – I’ll have it fixed if it isn’t.” They hesitated for a moment, “I hope I can watch you dance later.”

January, flustered, merely said, “Ah, of course,” and led the way to the meeting room at the top of one of Songshu’s towers with a glass dome ceiling that showed the solar farms and pines for miles and miles.

Watching Gale work to create calm from thoroughly ruffled disorder and draw answers from the thoroughly ruffled Met Office AI filled January with a sense of wonder and chill. The wonder was because they were clearly in their element, and a master of it. The chill was because January was very aware that all that elemental power could be – and had been – directed at him, and there was no way he could ever win against it.

When Gale ordered the cameras off, a producer gently touched January’s arm and offered him a black and silver jacket. His, he realized, that he’d left in the dance studio.

“Thank you,” he said, taking it.

“Don’t thank me,” said the producer, and January noticed a camera drone overing over their shoulder, watching. “The Senator noticed you were cold.”

“Oh,” said January, and he smiled for the camera about how thoughtful Gale was, and reached into the pockets of the jacket to grab the gloves he’d left in there. He slipped them on under the table. Possibly it had simply been a thoughtful gesture. Perhaps it had been a pointed warning. Perhaps both. January tucked the sleeves of the skintight black dancing outfit he wore all the way down securely underneath the edges of the gloves.

He smiled until the camera drone floated off out the door with the others, and then let the smile fade.

He tuned back into the conversation to hear Gale calmly plan on spending an astronomical amount of money to build a solar array in the atmosphere, and then felt uneasy at the thought of all that money and looked out the window.

The storm raged around the tower, and January was abruptly reminded of flooded Earth, and the photos he would see on the news of forty-foot waves crashing up against skyscrapers like they were lighthouses perched on rocks. He’d always sort of wondered what it would be like to be in those skyscrapers, with water crashing into the glass around you. He felt like he knew the answer now.

There was an oddly pattered set of fireworks in the dust. January blinked and watched them grow closer with a frown, and then-

The window exploded and dust and glass howled into the room.

January reached for Gale, and then drew his hands back. A piece of glass sliced open their cheek, and the blast sent them sprawling to the floor.

January, helpless but wanting to help, grabbed the jacket from his lap and threw it over Gale’s head before following with his body.

Gale thrashed and made a muffled sound of fear, but January was stronger, and gripped Gale’s arms, trying to shield them as much as possible. He hissed, “Hold still, I’m trying not to touch you.” It was the closest they’d been since Gagarin Square, and Gale felt just as frail through the fabric as they had then.

Gale either heard or gave up – or was dead, but January fervently told himself he would have felt if there was any accidental skin-to-skin contact – and January waited out the crashing and the glass and the impacts of debris ricocheting off his cage and sand scraping every part of him raw until shadowy figures appeared out of the swirling sand.

The shadowy figures resolved themselves into House Gale security staff, and they shoved the table up to cover the hole in the glass and started helping people out. The head of security, Sasha Martinez, dashed over to shove January into the hands of a flanking security officer and hauled Gale up and out themselves.

The safe room was full of security personnel and a random scattering of chairs with staff members in varying degrees of injury and shock. Gale had been pressed into a chair in the center of the room, and after January had been judged to be not dying, he’d been promptly abandoned by his security officer who’d been called off to help someone having a panic attack.

January, after awkwardly hovering long enough to catch Gale’s eye, let out a sigh of relief when Gale nodded just slightly at him, and then grabbed a stray chair and dragged it over within Gale’s orbit.

Gale was in the middle of giving what looked like a speech to some cameras, and January jolted when he heard his name. “Mx. Stirling protected me from the broken glass,” they said with a nod, and the cameras all swiveled towards January. He blinked and pulled the shredded remains of his performer’s persona over his face enough to bow just slightly, which seemed to appease them.

After the cameras were corralled off, Gale was left alone long enough to breathe. January hated to intrude, but he had to know. He pulled his chair closer, wincing at the scraping noise, but it got Gale’s attention. Their eyes landed on him, and their face seemed a bit wan, but perhaps that was just the contrast from the stark white bandage on their cheek.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” he asked. “I should have been faster, but I-” January flexed his fingers, just slightly, and saw Gale’s eyes flick to them, “froze,” January finished, “before I could get to you. You didn’t land on glass or anything?”

“No,” said Gale. “I appreciate the care, but I am unharmed. Thank you for saving me.”

“Hah,” said January. “You know, that’s the first time it actually kind of feels like I have?”

“Make a habit of saving people, do you?” Mx. Ren had appeared from nowhere with pink and green fluffy blankets that they were distributing liberally.

“What? No,” said January. “Not at all. Just- Ballet dancer, me, so lots of playing the hero but not a lot of actual real heroics. This was my one and only foray into the heroics field. I’m retiring from the field.”

“Have a blanket,” said Mx. Ren. “I’m sure you’ll make more sense once you’ve calmed down. Then again, it’s not like you made much sense to start with.”

January rolled his eyes while Mx. Ren snickered to themselves and dumped a blanket on his head. They’d disappeared by the time he’d gotten his head uncovered and pulled it down around his shoulders, but Gale had risen and crouched in front of him.

January leaned back. “Hi. Er, you’re pretty close-”

“You’re hurt.” Gale reached out and gripped January’s wrist over the blanket, using it as a protective layer as they drew January’s arm forward and twisted it, revealing a long bloody gash down January’s forearm. January blinked. He hadn’t felt it at all, but now that he was looking suddenly his arm felt cold and wet, and he shivered a bit at the promised pain – it looked like it was going to hurt.

“Dr. Okonkwo!” Gale said sharply, and then they were hovering just above January as the doctor grumbled their way over muttering about testosterone under their breath. “Please treat January’s wound,” they said, and they said it strongly enough that Dr. Okonkwo shut up and cut off the rest of January's sleeve, rinsed out the sand, and wrapped the cut in bandage.

They’d just finished when January heard the echo of lots of voices in the hall.

“Ah,” said Gale, clearly seeing something on their haptics. “This will be unpleasant, January, but don’t do anything rash. I’ll come and get you. House Gale has very good lawyers.”

Sasha appeared and hauled January to his feet. He gripped his blanket-shawl tight with one hand, suddenly nervous. “Lawyers?”

“The police want to talk to you,” Sasha said briskly, “An Earthstronger did it.”

January was interrogated in jail for exactly twelve hours, twelve minutes, and forty-three seconds. His nerves had not acclimated any better to being in jail on his second go-round.

Gale, as promised, got him out. When January stepped into the waiting room to see Gale standing there like the King of Sparta ready to fight against all comers until they gained their goal, January felt a weird sort of twisting emotion in his gut that was a sludgy combination of relief and gratitude and fear.

“I didn’t mean to be so late,” said Gale.

“Annie was right,” said January.

“Who?”

“Annie,” said January, and then realized once again that nobody on Mars knew him or any of the people from his past life, and explained himself. “She played Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. And when Prince Désiré wakes her, she put a lot of fear into the expression. And she always told me it was because Aurora didn’t know yet that Carabosse was defeated, but I always thought it was silly. A prince had come for her, of course she was okay.”

Gale had tilted their head to look at January intently. “Am I the prince, in this scenario?”

“You’re the rescue,” said January, avoiding the question. He’d kissed Annie, in the scene when he’d woken her, and for some reason he didn’t want to think about that right now. “And I know I’m okay, but I’ve still got a lot of nerves in me. Like, leftover nerves. I couldn’t feel them all before so I’m making up for it now, just to make sure I’ve got enough.”

“You look like you need a hug.”

“You don’t like touching me.” January took a step back.

“I know,” said Gale. “You told me of your preferences before. I’m not offering. It just seems like you would benefit from one. Dr. Okonkwo tells me that regular human contact can have a variety of benefits for a person. I once asked if they meant the Heimlich maneuver, which has the clear benefit of clearing an obstructed airway.”

“What did they say?”

“They got into a blazing argument with Kali,” said Gale, somewhat fondly. “I was six at the time.” They blinked themself back into the present and focused on January. “I will ask Mx. Ren to hug you when we return,” they promised. “Mx. Ren is usually generous with physical affection, and I am sure they will not mind if I explain that you would benefit.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“It is,” said Gale. “After all, Prince Désiré could not succeed in rescuing Aurora without the aid of the Lilac Fairy. And the ballet cannot end until Aurora is both truly safe and feels so.”

It wasn’t until later, after the reporters at the door and the train ride back to Songshu, that January realized that Gale had more than a passing familiarity with the Sleeping Beauty ballet. He wondered when they’d had time to watch it. He wondered which recording they had watched.

The following day, the second attempt at an emergency senior staff meeting attending to the matter of the massive dust storm that boiled over them took place in a room with no windows and a rather high degree of latent unease.

The latent unease was not improved by Sasha, who was producing an alarming clicking noise with clockwork regularity as they glared into their lap. January, when he inched pass them to take his seat – Gale had caught his eye and indicated that the saved seat next to them was for him – peeked into Sasha’s lap to see them knitting with wooden needles and black and grey yarn.

January considered the fierce expression on Sasha’s face and decided to table any questions for later. Gale pulled out his chair for him, and January felt inordinately pleased at the gesture as he sat down and folded his gloved hands in his lap while Gale started the meeting.

After the meeting, Gale didn’t stand up as everyone else filed out, and January hesitated. He’d been waiting for everyone to go out first, as overnight a variety of bruises, aches, and pains had made themselves known with loud complaints to his nervous system. January, layered in pants and gloves and sleeves and long robes and a jacket over all of it, had thought he was hiding it well. But when Gale looked at him he felt abruptly caught out.

“I’m fine,” he said, halfheartedly.

“Your power leaves a lot to be desired,” said Gale, far too casually for January’s tastes. The room had emptied of cameras and people only seconds before.

“What?”

“My leg hurts.” Gale pressed a hand firmly to the join of their prosthetic and their leg. “You would think that reanimation would at least dull one’s sense of pain.”

“Oh, let’s not call it reanimation,” said January. “That makes me feel like Frankenstein. If we have to call it something, let’s call it alive-again. Because you are alive. Just. Again. But I’m sorry you’re hurting.”

“It’s your fault,” said Gale lightly, eyes glittering, and January’s heart sank before he recognized the faint signs that Gale was teasing. “It’s sympathy pain,” they explained. “It happens to a lot of people with missing limbs. I can see that your leg hurts, so mine does as well. It has to do with mirror neurons, I believe.”

January considered this, then reached down and dug his fingers into his sore leg – the same one as Gale’s. He massaged it, trying to work out the knots and the ache, and after a minute or so of focused attention – ballet dancers knew how to work out sore muscles – he did feel a bit better.

He felt himself relax, and next to him Gale let out a sigh of relief.

January had the passing thought that this was the closest he’d ever get to touching Gale – touching his own leg and having it affect theirs – and abruptly felt his face flush. He shot to his feet. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Senator?”

“I’d like you to do the interview circuit for the next few days to talk about your arrest and the Earth situation. The Consul should start attacking you more publicly, soon, and I’d like us to get out ahead of that.”

“I see. Of course.”

Gale frowned. “You do have a veto, you know, for things like this. You’re being paid for your time, but you don’t have to do every major publicity stunt I ask of you. Particularly not if it would be harmful to you.”

January considered a polite agreement, and then he considered that he’d held Gale’s life in his hands twice now, and they’d come for him anyway, so the least he could do was be honest.

“I appreciate that, Senator,” he said, “But you are paying me to do a job, and to be honest no one really knows what happened to the last person with this job. You talk a very good talk, but you’re also a politician, and speech and action are different. You’re like Schrodinger’s cat. You could be perfectly fine when I open the box, or you could be radioactive. The chance you’ve given me is far better than the alternative, but I’d still rather not open the box.”

“I see. That does seem rational.” If they said it rather stiffly, January decided that he didn’t notice. They were probably still sore from the explosion. After all, they had complained that his gift didn’t take away pain.

There were exactly two hundred and forty-four pristine salt marsh pearls in the hereditary Gale pearl string, and the hereditary Gale themself was expected to wear them to the benefit night at the Tiangong, which was a very fancy once-a-year event that newscasters had been speculating about for weeks.

January straightened his spine as Mx. Francis signaled from behind the cameras, and pretended to be utterly absorbed in the livestream that was on its second hour of jewelry speculation about the Great Houses. Currently on screen were images of sparkly shiny brooches with names like The Gladness Ruby and The Fearful Pearl.

At that moment, Gale sent him a text asking him to come to their room for a favor.

“Huh,” said January, angling his phone screen so that the camera drone could see. “I wonder what that’s about.” He got up and headed down the hall, trailed by a few camera drones and Mx. Francis, who was careful to keep out of the shot and was listening to the media team on their earpiece.

January froze for a moment at Gale’s open door. Someone was in there with Gale, but Mx. Francis had planned for Gale to be alone. The minutes-taker security officer was combing their hair.

January swallowed. The room was perfectly silent, but the air was charged with a strange energy, like he might get burned if he interrupted.

He could feel Mx. Francis’s gaze burning into the back of his neck. “Senator?” he asked, “Did you want to see me?”

The security officer instantly turned and settled themself into a nearby chair, and Gale sighed very quietly and turned on their own camera-ready charm, twisting a bit to see January. “I did,” they said, “Would you come here?” They were working the legendary pearls through their fingers, like a meditative practice or a fidget, but more gracefully than January had ever fidgeted in his life.

January eyed the security office as he moved closer, though he suddenly doubted they were security, after all. Security officers didn’t comb hair. But stylists didn’t crash choreographed video segments, either. This person had to be important, somehow.

Family, perhaps? Or, January thought with a sinking feeling in his gut, Gale’s real partner.

What an idiot he must be, to assume that someone as glamorous and important and clever as Gale wouldn’t already have a partner. Gale could have any romantic partner they wanted, and they’d said as much to January that their marriage was nothing more than a political hiring. The little part of January that had felt like Aurora seeing her Prince let out a tiny squeak before January mentally crushed it.

As much as he’d fallen in love with unobtainable people in the past, there was simply no world where letting a bit of awed admiration of Gale spiral into something more ended well.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asked, and he looked at Gale, and Gale looked at him, and neither of them looked at Gale’s real partner.

“Only if you wish to,” said Gale. “I’m sorry it’s so last minute, but would you like to go to a charity fundraiser with me? I was going to bear it alone, but they updated the itinerary and it’s going to last hours, and I simply dread going by myself for all of it. You’ll be paid in nice wine and pretty appetizers, though I am afraid that the only people there will be politicians and CEOs, which may be a tick in the negatives box.”

“And you want me to go to this fancy politician party with you?” January was supposed to be acting, he’d known this was coming, but hearing it all laid out in Gale’s elegant voice he was struck again by the absurdity of it. In what world would Prince Désiré ever pay attention to him? Because he wasn’t Aurora, not really. He wasn’t a princess or somebody important. If he was anything, he was Puss-in-Boots, an animal dressed up in human clothes to pretend at being Tharsese and dance around for the amusement of royalty.

“Yes,” said Gale. “It’d be nice to have some normal human company while I’m there,” they added, in a terrifying parallel to January’s own thoughts.

“You don’t have an obligation to take me to parties, you know,” January said hastily, glancing at the probable-romantic-partner. “I’m perfectly happy here, as well. And I don’t want to scare you.” Realizing that might be too blunt for the show, he softened it by adding, “After all, you don’t know what a terror I become after thirty minutes of company. I start making all sorts of awful puns until everyone’s ears bleed.”

Gale stood up then, and stepped closer, and January unthinkingly stepped back. It was the instinctive caution not to touch them, of course, but it was also the fact that Gale was seven feet tall and the closest thing Mars had to the King of Sparta, and January was just a dancer who had realized that all the dramatic rescues in the world would never change what he was.

“Mx. Stirling,” said Gale, “I am afraid you have got it into your head that everyone is just waiting for you to do something terrible. But that’s not who you are. You’re an artist who is thoughtful to the point of excess, and besides all that you have endured injury and indignity just to aid me in the recent attack. I think in a previous life you might have been a kitten who got lost in the rain.”

Puss-in-Boots wasn’t so bad, really. A ballet housecat was much less scary than an Earthstronger. And Gale, it seemed, liked cats.

“Okay, Senator,” he said, inordinately pleased. “You made your point. If my company is really what you want, then I wouldn’t be opposed to going.”

Gale tilted their head, just slightly. “How are your language lessons progressing?”

“Fine?” said January, and then, belatedly realizing that perhaps this sudden topic change wasn’t a topic change at all, “Oh no, have I just said something that translates poorly?”

They were speaking English, but the Gale show was dubbed and subbed into Mandarin and Russian, and January had already been warned by the production team against using a few colloquial British English word choices that would translate to something nonsensical or offensive.

“No,” said Gale. “Well, maybe. What do you know about double negatives?”

January thought for a moment. “They’re bad grammar?”

“I mean colloquially,” said Gale. “Are you trying to tell me that you don’t want to go? Because you don’t have to.”

Now January was confused. “I just said I would, though.”

“No. You said you wouldn’t be opposed. That’s a double negative, which can be taken a few different ways. In Slavic languages like Russian, double negatives stack and are still understood as a negative. Saying I don’t not want to go in Russian is saying you don’t want to go.”

“Oops,” said January. “I’ll watch out for that.”

Gale went on. “In languages like English and Chinese, double negatives usually resolve to a positive – they cancel each other out, though of course that’s not always true because different subgroups and dialects sometimes develop different rules. But usually, in Tharsese Mandarin and British English, they resolve positive. I mustn’t not want to go becomes I want to go.”

“Yes,” said January, “That’s what I meant.”

“Is it? Because there’s a particular kind of connotation that comes with choosing a double negative over a simple positive, at least in Mandarin, and I had assumed that it was the same for you and your very polite language from your very polite island.”

“What do you mean?”

“In Mandarin, I mustn’t not want to go, is how you say I want to go because I have to. You don’t really want to, but it’s necessary because of some external force. The weather. Social rules. Your boss asking you.”

“Oh.”

Gale didn’t say anything more, just looked at him with concern on their face.

Just to the side, January saw Gale's real partner roll their eyes. He tried not to mind.

“I don’t think it’s exactly the same in English,” said January. “I think it’s more like a way to say a little positive? As opposed to a big positive. Like, if you asked me if the jelly served with breakfast is good, and I said, I don’t not like it, that’s me saying it weirds me out and it’s not my favorite but I’ll still eat it and it’ll be okay.” Gale frowned, and January added, “But me saying I wouldn’t be opposed to going isn’t like that either, that’s more-” He stopped. He thought. “It’s a tone of voice thing, I think. I said it in the little positive way, but the way I said it meant I was happy about it.”

Which was true. January had been pleased to be convinced that Gale genuinely wanted him there, but saying, yes, please take me with you places because you’re a confident older person who is increasingly frequently kind to me and I’m very susceptible to that kind of thing had seemed like a bit much, so he’d hidden it in I wouldn’t be opposed to going.

And apparently walked face-first into a language cultural context gap.

Gale did not look particularly convinced. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said January. “I think we can blame this on the polite island thing, actually, where you say the little yes instead of the yes-yes so nobody thinks you’re too excited about something. Look, ask me again and I’ll give you as direct an answer as you like.”

“All right,” said Gale, and then they took a breath and said, mock-formal, “January, would you like to go to a charity fundraiser to eat ornate appetizers and engage in witty repartee alongside me? And if you could keep your answer to the declarative only, using affirmative or comparative modifiers, that would be greatly appreciated.”

January put on a mock-posh voice to answer. “Yes, I would be delighted to go with you.” He took a guess as to what a comparative modifier was, and added, “And I would like that much more than staying at Songshu and losing to Mx. Ren at mahjong.”

Gale finally looked satisfied and nodded once, and January couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

“This is kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?” he said. “We’ve practically got to consult a dictionary just to talk to each other.”

“That’s all right,” said Gale. “I have been reliably informed that I am the sort of person who reads the dictionary for fun, so we shall have one at the ready whenever we have need of it.”

It was a remarkably kind thing to say, rather than telling January that perhaps he ought to go reread a few chapters of his Mandarin textbook.

“Thank you,” he said, and he gave them the little quarter-bow that he was fairly certain meant respectful thank-you, because he was taking every opportunity to practice until it felt natural.

Gale inclined their head and smiled their public-ready smile, and January grinned back, and he didn’t look at Gale’s real partner out of the corner of his eye. He could be Puss-in-Boots, he thought. Puss-in-Boots could still make Gale happy, even just as a cat who danced to amuse them.

“I almost forgot,” said Gale, “Hold out your hand.” He did, and Gale held the string of pearls over his palm and let them slip through their fingers, spooling down in coils into January’s hand. “These are for you.”

The pearls were warm from being held in Gale’s hands, and all January could do was close his fingers around them and take what warmth he could get.

Gale had another gift, in the car to the party. They gave January a pair of glasses of his very own, and January couldn’t help but feel like he’d been given his own pair of boots.

When he put them on, in the corner was a little icon for a Mandarin-to-English dictionary.

The Tiangong ballroom’s ceiling was astronomically high, and lit with a combination of candles and haptic effects that made exactly two thousand little golden lights gleam across the far-off ceiling.

January put on his political pleasantry persona and privately vowed to eat as much fancy Tharsese cake as he could in Terry’s honor.

The Speaker of the House put a damper on January’s enjoyment of the event. He’d agreed to dance with them like he’d agreed to dance with half a dozen other people, but when they whirled out onto the semi-privacy of the dance floor, the Speaker stuck their face down close to his and said, “Did you know that Max is dead?”

January nearly stopped dancing, but muscle memory carried him through. “What?”

“Not just Max. River, too. The official story is that they eloped, but no one can vanish so perfectly unless they stop breathing.”

“Er,” said January, who had had this thought in passing once or twice. “But the police investigated, didn’t they?”

“They used a halo,” the Speaker spat. “Look at this.” They sent an image of a scan to January’s new glasses, and said, “This is the scan that cleared Aubrey of the crime.”

It looked like a mess of colors that meant nothing to January.

“It’s basically impossible to read,” said the Speaker. “This mind works in a way that is incomprehensible and unlike ninety-nine percent of the population. But one thing that is clear is that there’s no addiction. Addiction always shows up, in a little ripple in the corner, even if you’ve beaten it.”

“There’s no ripples anywhere on this,” said January, though he wasn’t quite sure what defined a ripple.

“Exactly,” said the Speaker. “Aubrey was in and out of drug rehab for years. So this isn’t Aubrey’s halo, and Aubrey hasn’t been cleared of Max’s murder.”

That was the fun sort of sentence that made January’s heart increase by about forty beats per minute. “But they never arrested the Senator. How?”

“The drug rehab was never public. Nobody knew but Max and River, and medical records are sealed.”

January tilted his chin up to meet the Speaker’s eyes. “So how do you know?”

“Max was my Apollo,” said the Speaker of the House, and now that January was looking there was a flash of pain in their eyes. “You’re a lot like them, you know.”

January had never been compared to the dead person whose job he had taken by said dead person’s sibling. He couldn’t say he enjoyed the feeling, as it was an uncomfortable mix of guilt and grief and regret.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything better to say.

“You don’t have any reason to believe me,” said the Speaker, “but I just wanted to warn you, for Max’s sake. Because Max was a soldier. They wouldn’t have run away from anything. And River was the dullest second heir it is possible to have. They were not a romantic, and certainly nobody was ever going to elope with them. So they’re both dead.”

“You’re sure? People change.”

“Not that much,” said the Speaker. “People can pretend to change, but you can never really hide who you are forever. Aubrey killed Max and River. That’s a fact. That’s who they are. They might seem normal now, January, but people’s nature is like a flood. You can only keep it dammed up for so long.”

“I’m so sorry,” said January again, uselessly. “I wish I could have known Max.”

The Speaker nodded, just once, and then there was a hubbub at the door as the Consul entered.

Gale appeared, gracefully nodding at the Speaker and saying, “You don’t mind if I borrow my spouse for a moment, do you?”

“Of course not,” said the Speaker, acid-friendly. They shot a half-second of a sympathetic look at January. “He might mind, though. Not everyone can stand spending every minute of the day with a zombie.”

January’s heart briefly stopped. “Zombie?” His voice was almost but not quite normal. “That’s- the Senator isn’t a zombie.”

“Yes they are,” said the Speaker, leaning in like they were whispering a secret but pitching their voice so Gale could still hear. “Haven’t you noticed? All Senator Gale cares about is moaning about other people’s brains and eating ordinary humans alive. Textbook zombie.”

Gale frowned slightly at January, and then said to the Speaker, briskly, “I believe what my spouse is too polite to say is that ‘zombie’ isn’t an apt metaphor, because they desire brains indiscriminately. I am far more selective. Your brain, for example, doesn’t interest me at all. But then again perhaps that’s because you don’t have one.”

The Speaker smiled, vicious. “It’s true that you’re far too articulate and sharp-tonged to be a zombie. Perhaps a cobra would be a more appropriate analogy. The kind that eats its siblings in the nest.”

“I will let you think on it,” said Gale, “but since that might take you a while, my spouse and I will take our leave, as we are due to exchange pleasantries with the Consul, who will hopefully be more pleasant than you.”

They bowed politely to the Speaker, who bowed back as January copied them, and then swept away toward the Consul. January followed them, pulled into Gale’s orbit as inexorably as a tugboat into a roaring flood.

“Not a fan of zombie metaphors?” said Gale, quietly.

“Not really,” said January. “It just seems rude to you. Also, unsettlingly close.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. That’s been a running joke for long before – well. Before we ever met.”

And then they were nearing the Consul, and there were too many people nearby for January to be comfortable talking about zombies anymore. Which was just as well, because the Consul saw them and came over to boisterously greet them.

The opening shots between Gale and the Consul were sharp and witty, and then they dragged January into it, which was still sharp and witty but with the added layer of deeply unnerving, seeing as the Consul’s method of dragging January into it was openly speculating over all the ways Gale might have him killed.

“We have a sweepstake going at Jade Hill,” said the Consul, beaming. “I have six to one that he is pushed off the Valley cliff by a trufflehunting pig after his pockets have been conveniently filled with truffles.”

“That’s unusually specific,” said Gale.

“Seven to one is that he falls on a sharpened hairbrush after drinking poisoned coffee. There’s also one about him getting crushed by a falling chandelier in a staged home invasion.”

None of these options sounded very fun to January.

“Who has the odds that I won’t murder him?” Gale said, as lightly as if it were all a joke. Or as lightly as if their true nature was being the kind of person who murdered their last spouse, and joking about murdering their current spouse was just a way for them to loosen the pressure on the dam.

“The intern,” said the Consul. “Wilfred Woodruff. They got the last option to choose.”

“Mx. Woodruff is going to win a lot of money,” said Gale mildly. “Don’t you have some sort of saving-face speech to be giving about this artificial storm?”

“Right as always, Gale,” said the Consul. “Farewell, January, I’ll leave no stone unturned in the investigation after you disappear. But if you could at all indicate how you were killed before you die, I’ll make the sweepstake winner import some Earth flowers for your grave marker. Or perhaps I’ll have them make some plastic ones – real flowers won’t last long since we don't have bees yet.”

“I’ll try,” managed January in a throat that was rather dry.

The Consul processed away toward the podium, and Gale turned the full force of their attention onto January.

This person is the most likely suspect to have killed their spouse and their sibling, January told himself, and tried to smile.

“The intern is going to win,” Gale said firmly.

January nodded, but evidently it didn’t look too convincing.

“Schrodinger’s cat,” muttered Gale, and they looked so upset that January was struck nonsensically with the urge to make them feel better.

“I like cats,” he said, “Puss-in-Boots is one of my favorite characters in Sleeping Beauty. My friend Eugene danced him beautifully.”

Gale gave him a fraction of a smile, and January smiled back. He could be Puss-in-Boots. Murderers had pet cats too, didn’t they? And surely the cats liked the murderers, because the murderers fed them and otherwise acted like normal people when they weren’t out killing innocents and drinking the blood of babies.

January was pathetic, he knew that, but he also knew that if Gale fed him on kindness and company his foolish heart was going to wander its way into their hands, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The facts were these: the Consul’s announcement that Earth was sending aid ships of uranium to Tharsis was nothing short of a disaster. The instant they said it, January could see the train crash spiraling out in front of him in a three-step explosion of doom with no way to stop it.

Step one: Gale tapped January’s elbow, a barely-there touch through the fabric. “I’d like to go speak to the journalists outside.”

Step two: January asked, “What will you tell them?”

Step three: “We can’t let them land,” said Gale. “It’s just a ploy to get thousands of immigrants-”

Disaster.

January interrupted. He hadn’t known this was his limit until he’d found it. He’d been okay just moments before, following his probable-future-murderer-and-current-employer around at a fancy party full of people much more important than him, but now it wasn’t just his life on the line. January had reached his limit.

“Refugees,” he said.

“What?”

January stepped around behind a golden pillar, away from the crowd and hopefully any cameras. Gale followed. “Refugees don’t have anywhere else to go,” he said.

“But they can’t come here,” said Gale softly, and then, firmer. “You can’t really believe that there won’t be a dramatic increase in Natural homicides if we flood the city with Earthstrongers?”

“No,” said January, “No, there aren’t any perfect choices, but you can’t just let those people die.”

“There is no choice. If we let them land, we’ll have to make them naturalise. We can’t just let people be killed because the people who landed don’t want to adapt to the planet they’re on.”

“No!” January snapped, and suddenly he was furious. “Everything we do is a choice. Tharsis or Russia, listen to Max’s family or listen to you, let thousands of people die or let them be dangerous. We make choices, and we live with the consequences. That is all life is, so don’t you dare say there is no choice because there is always a choice and ignoring that doesn’t negate the fact that you’re making it!”

“You?” said Gale. “We are House Gale. If you’re so certain there are choices, then start showing me more options than this.”

January felt the rage of helplessness and clenched his hands into fists. “I can’t do that! I don’t know- physics, or science, or even a quarter of the knowledge that you’ve got to come up with things.”

“So you don’t even try?” Gale leaned in so that each word, sharp and precise, landed with needle-sharp pinpricks in January’s ears. “You just criticize me? What, you’re afraid people will laugh at you?”

“I’m afraid they’ll deport me,” January said, “Or send me to jail.”

“I see,” said Gale, cold. “I’m afraid someone will kill me.”

It was at this point that January realized that he and Gale had gotten very close to one another in their whispered argument. Their chests were nearly touching, and January had craned his face up to glare at Gale, who was sending their level politician’s look straight back. There were mere inches between their faces.

It would be the work of a moment for January to reach up and touch Gale.

They both stepped back in perfect unison. January forced his hands out of fists, tucking them behind his back.

“It’s immaterial,” said Gale at last. “We only have a month for a solution, anyway. If you’d rather not be here, you can go back to Songshu.”

January felt tired. Gale had probably murdered River and Max. Max was the last person who’d had his job. And if January had proven to himself that he had any sort of actual magical power, it was apparently saying exactly the wrong thing to Aubery Gale. He’d kicked Schrodinger’s cat. To go back to Songshu now would be to declare himself both an obstacle and unwilling to do his job.

“No,” he said, quiet. “I disagree with you, but that won’t stop me from doing my job.”

January did his job.

The hasty midnight meeting in the Songshu dining room featured every available staff member in various stages of consciousness, though they all got alert very quickly when Gale told everyone that if the Earth fleet landed in two months, Tharsis was a colony again and all of Songshu would likely be arrested for promoting nationalism. January felt unsettled. He hadn’t realized those were the stakes for all of House Gale.

Gale said that the solution was the solar array, as fast as they could make it. And just like that, the room spun into action again, as the various workings of House Gale set each of their individual powers into motion to accomplish a great big impossible thing.

People drifted away. Gale turned to January, who’d been sitting silently next to them, wrapped in a fuzzy red sweater that clashed horribly with his green and lilac party clothes and the Gale pearls. January didn't say anything - he wanted to go to his room and be alone, but he didn't think he could leave until Gale dismissed him like they'd dismissed everyone else.

They considered him for a moment, then set their phone on the table and tapped it, and an extremely popular Nigerian boy band ballad that was copyrighted within an inch of its life blasted from the speakers. The nearby camera drones gave a few irritated wiggles and flew off.

“You didn’t tank me in front of the press,” Gale said quietly. “Why?”

January had thought it was fairly obvious. “I’m scared of you,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to Max. I already yelled at you earlier tonight, I didn’t particularly want to keep pushing my luck with Schrodinger’s cat.”

Gale looked like the surface of Mars had shifted irrevocably beneath their feet. “January. You’re safe. Nothing is going to happen to you.”

“Your drug addiction didn’t show up on the halo that cleared you of Max’s murder,” January said, and he wanted to laugh for a moment, because they were having this whole conversation very quietly beneath the sound of teenage heartthrobs belting out their love in five-harmony Hausa. “So I know someone else took it for you. I’ll do what you ask, I’m not going to go to the press, I’m not going to make trouble. I just want to get out of this alive.”

January gave a seated bow that was probably too low, and stood to make his escape.

He froze when he felt long fingers wrap around his elbow, pressing tight over the fabric and the cage joint, keeping him in place. “You’re supposed to fight me,” said Gale. “That’s why I need you. Ideally with less yelling, but I promise you’re safe. I didn’t kill anyone, and I’m never going to hurt you.”

“And I’m not going to hurt you,” said January tightly, “but that doesn’t stop you legislating as if I will. And you know I can see, right, how often you check to make sure I’m wearing gloves? No, please don’t say anything, I know you’ve got a dozen clever arguments ready to tear me to pieces-”

“January, an argument is different than physical violence-”

“I know, but it’s still a fight that you will always win! We’re all very aware of the fights I would win, but you can’t seem to see that you’re the champion of your own category.”

“Because it’s not-”

“Good night!” January yanked his arm free and spoke too loudly as he stepped back. People glanced over. “Good night,” he said, a fractional degree more calmly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He fled to the elevators as fast as he could without technically running.

Behind him he could hear Gale’s phone crooning, “…ina son ku har abada…”^[1]

1. I’ll love you forever.

[↺ go back]

Chapter Text

January had scrubbed himself within an inch of his life around the cage and finally wrestled, dragged, and bullied himself into fitful sleep when he heard a woodenly echoing bang.

He jolted awake and stared at the ceiling, trying to decide if it had been an actual noise or one of those on-the-cusp-of-sleep illusions that made you think you were falling for some technical reason to do with brain signals getting mixed up.

A secondary bang followed, and January got up.^[1] He did not particularly enjoy banging sounds outside of his door at midnight, and spared a moment to wonder if this had happened to Max before he braced himself and opened the door.

Gale was sprawled on the floor at his feet. They were in green and gold pajamas, with the sleeves crumpled up their arms, and January lunged backwards with such violence that he fell down himself.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Gale, but it was in Mandarin, so January knew they were rattled. They’d only ever spoken in perfect English to him – part kindness and part demonstration of linguistic prowess, January was fairly sure – and to hear them in Mandarin now meant that they were shaken.

Gale had shifted themselves enough to sit upright on the floor, their uninjured leg tucked in as if to sit cross-legged, their prosthetic stretching out in front. They looked tired as they rubbed their arm, and any trace of the glamourous camera-ready senator was gone.

January crossed his own legs and studied them. “Did you sleepwalk here?”

“It seems that way,” said Gale, which was irritatingly cagey of them, but January decided to forgive it. “I’ll go in a moment, I just need to catch my breath.”

Their breathing was rough and shaky.

January got up slowly, like Gale was an animal he was trying not to frighten, then went and got a plum-colored sweater from his closet and pulled it over his head. He was certain that his hair looked frightful, but he didn’t particularly care as he came back in time to see Gale wince as they attempted to push themself to their feet. One of their arms was shaking and didn’t seem to be willing to bear Gale’s weight long enough for them to get their feet under them.

January dug the gloves from the pockets – he kept gloves in all of his sweater pockets, now – and slid them on. “Will you let me help you up?” he asked, and he held out both hands, palm-up, as he stood over Gale.

Gale’s gaze skipped over the gloves and January’s cage like a stone before landing on his face. “You don’t have to,” they said. “I’ll be fine.”

“I would like to help. It feels wrong to just let you wander back alone in the middle of the night without company.”

“But if you walk me back, you’ll be wandering without company,” Gale pointed out. “The staff does say that Songshu is haunted.”

“Yes, well, I’m a big scary Earthstronger. And I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Gale raised a single incredulous eyebrow.

“What?” said January, playing up the mock-defensiveness. “I don’t believe in any kind of supernatural nonsense. I thought you Tharsese people were all about rationality – nothing exists unless it’s scientifically proven.”

“Magic,” said Gale loftily, “is just a name for science we don’t understand yet. Likewise the supernatural. I had thought you would be more – open – to the possibility of magic.”

Never in his life had January gotten the opportunity to joke with someone about his power, and the knowledge that he could, now, made him embrace the moment wholeheartedly. Besides, having Gale tease him made them seem more like themself again, rather than a frightened person in their pajamas on the floor.

“If I were – hypothetically – to witness something magic and impossible,” said January, “that doesn’t mean that all the rest of our stories about magic impossibility are true. That just means that there’s one particularly unusual event or person. Now will you let me walk you back?”

Gale reached forward, and then hovered one of their hands over January’s. “It feels bad to make you help me. I’m a foot taller than you, and you’re in a cage. I’m going to squash you.”

January laughed. “You couldn’t,” he assured them. “I used to lift Terry three times a day, one arm, and he’s twice as dense as you. His mum brought sweets by all the time, and he was absolutely shameless about wandering off with cake right before lift practice.”

“Did you even like Terry?” Gale said abruptly. “Sasha’s background check on you suggested that he very much didn’t like you.”

January gave a wry smile. “I imagine he didn’t. Our last conversation wasn’t- pleasant. We didn’t like each other before that, though. Just difference of opinion. But we didn’t let that stop us. Terry was a professional, and so am I. We had a job to do together, and we did it.”

“I see,” said Gale, and they placed their bare hand into January’s glove.

January hauled Gale upright enough that he could duck forward and get his shoulder under theirs, and then they were pressed together, side-to-side, as January held them around the waist with one arm.

“Steady?” January asked, and after a moment Gale leaned more of their weight onto him.

“Yes.” Together the two of them headed toward the elevator, Gale limping rather badly. “I’m sorry,” Gale said once they’d got into the elevator. “You are a professional, you know. It makes it easier to forget that you really do think I’m Schrodinger’s cat; you’re just adept at hiding it under all the jokes and performance.”

“You hide it well, too,” said January, abruptly glad that they were facing the same direction and Gale couldn’t see his face. “I didn’t know your options were prison or Consul. And it’s easy to forget that you’re scared of getting killed, too.”

“You’d think I’d be less scared, now,” said Gale drily. “I’ve already done it once.”

January, against his better judgement, laughed.

Three minutes and twenty-three seconds later, January returned Gale to their rooms. The probable-romantic-partner was waiting for them, watching January warily from an armchair, and January’s heart hurt more than it should when he let go of Gale, who’d steadied enough to walk on their own.

The door shut behind his probable-murderer-employer and their probable-romantic-partner, and January walked back to his room alone.

Halfway through breakfast the next morning, a new meeting popped up on the Schedule. January looked at it. “Consultation: A. Gale and J. Stirling. Location: Songshu Crane Room.”

It started in ten minutes, and there were no other attendees listed on the meeting. Gale hadn’t mentioned anything when he’d seen them last night. January sipped at his tea and tried not to worry about it. He didn’t succeed.

Gale was already inside when he arrived at the Crane Room. It was a little meeting room, meant for groups of four or five, with a little circular table and a scattering of chairs. The wallpaper was full of stylized skyscrapers under construction, red and black and orange buildings rising against a Martian sky with the help of long mechanical arms and pulleys.

A drone looped lazily in the corner.

“Good morning, Senator,” he said, sitting across from them when they nodded for him to sit.

“Good morning, January,” said Gale, even and implacable. There was no trace of last night’s unease on them. It was as if it had never happened. “There’s been an accident.” They paused, deliberately long, and added, “We think.”

January waited.

“An Earthstronger was found dead in the transfer yard next to the steel trains this morning.”

A hair-trigger panic instinct started to scream in the back of January’s head. He forced it down and didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry to hear that."

“There is, of course, an investigation into the cause,” said Gale. “It’s made difficult by the fact that none of the Earthstrongers on the steel crew have haptic implants that could have recorded their final moments for medical and legal review.”

They had put the slightest stress on the words final moments. January heard it. Of course he had; he’d been listening for it. He pretended he didn’t.

There’d been a nightmare he’d had when he was young, about people finding out what he could do.

It started off with cake and balloons and people telling him how lovely and wonderful and helpful he was, and it ended in a small white room with pieces being cut out of him.

As he’d gotten older, certain elements of the dream had changed: a friend asking for a favor instead of cake, a paycheck instead of balloons. But certain elements had not.

It always ended a small white room and despair.

The nightmare had been creeping around the back of his mind ever since he’d made the decision to tell Gale the truth. Fiercely analytical, practical Gale, who would run you over with a bus if it was most efficient for everybody else. January could feel the nightmare in the room with them now.

He wondered how much of an illusion of choice Gale was going to give him.

“I’m sorry, Senator,” he said again. Polite, apologetic. “But I’m sure the police have other ways of finding out what happened.”

“They might,” said Gale. “But I’m not sure that one Earthstrong death is going to be their top priority. It is, however, one of mine, if people are dying in the service of House Gale. It would be a great help if you might be willing to inspect the body.”

January decided he was going to make them push. He was not going to walk down the road to that small white room willingly. “I don’t see how that would help,” he said. “My experience is with nuclear fusion machinery. There wasn’t much steelwork or welding at Tereshkova Wharf.”

Gale’s expression never changed. “I know. But you have much more familiarity with cage mechanisms than anyone else on Senior Staff at Songshu. And I’m sure you would like to know as soon as possible about any potential cage malfunction, seeing as that pertains to your own safety. Not that I think it is, but I would like to eliminate all potential possibilities before jumping to something as dramatic as sabotage or murder.”

That was either the world’s most elegant threat, or merely a threatening delivery of a perfectly reasonable cover story for why January would need to look at a dead body. Perhaps it was both.

No one could really argue with it – Mx. Martinez might not like letting January near a body, but it was reasonable to have someone familiar with living in a cage to inspect one. The police and security teams sometimes wore resistance cages for strength training, but that was a different design. This would make an excellent cover story for what Gale was really asking.

January thought about the words pertains to your own safety and decided that was enough of a push for now. He gave them a seated half-bow that he was sure didn’t look as elegant as he wanted it to, and said, “Of course I will help if it’s a safety concern.” He kept his voice flat and dull.

“Thank you,” said Gale, looking uncertain. “Will you come now?”

“Yes,” he said, and stood when they did to follow them out.

The body was being kept in a shed next to the steel trains. It was so cold on Mars that keeping the body in an uninsulated shed actually helped preserve it enough until the authorities could come and collect it.

Gale hadn’t said much on the walk over, just asked January if the heat suit was comfortable and then pointed out the dandelions that were blooming.^[2] January hadn’t said much either, feeling cold despite the suit and trying to focus on the fact that he was outside and nothing bad had happened yet.

He could see caution markers all over one corner of the steel trainyard in the virtual layer. The shed, likewise, was marked with a very large KEEP OUT: OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY. The drone that had been following them hit the caution markers in the virtual layer like a physical wall, and then peeled off to wander further away and get a better angle to record them when they came out.

Gale pushed the door open and went through first, and January followed. The inside was dusty, with crates stacked in the corners, though of course the most eye-catching thing was the body laying on the table in the center.

The man had been shorter than January, though not by much, and his eyes were closed. He had painted a small green band on the collar of his cage rather than use a pin, and his work jacket had orange patches on the elbows and shoulders where the cage wore through faster.

He also had a three-foot piece of rebar sticking out through his stomach. The cage’s bottommost rib spar was bent up and out around it like a vine. The end of the rebar was a jagged sharp edge – they must have had to cut it to get his body into the shed.

“Cage malfunction?” January said, dry. “Call it a hunch, but I suspect the metal pole killed him, not his cage.”

“Yes. He’d fallen onto it from a survey tower. But he shouldn’t have fallen – there’s safety railings – and his supervisor tells me that they heard squeaking the last time he’d climbed up. The supervisor had clocked out of their shift before they saw him climb down.”

“Cages don’t squeak,” said January. “They’re specifically built not to, or else it would drive everyone crazy. Could you imagine the fire hazards if we’ve all got to be oiling our joints?”

Gale considered this and inclined their head at him

January pulled out his phone and set a timer for one minute. “Do you know what you want to ask him?” he asked, “What’s his name?” He took off a glove. He pretended not to notice when Gale took half a step away from him.

“Tam Phong,” said Gale. “I have his paperwork as an employee of House Gale, but it doesn’t say much. He doesn’t have any preexisting medical conditions.”

“That he was willing to tell you about,” said January, lightly, and then, equally lightly, tapped Tam Phong on the back of his hand.

Tam’s eyes flew open, and he lurched to sit up, sending the long piece of rebar down like a drawbridge. If a drawbridge were a piece of metal roughly two inches in diameter and moving very swiftly. So not like a drawbridge at all, aside from the fact that both moved from a vertical orientation down to a horizontal one like a hinge.

“Watch out!” said January, dodging out of the way while Gale ducked.

Tam stopped, and after a moment he lay back down again, propping himself on his elbows but keeping the rebar mostly-vertical. He looked at the metal through his stomach. He wiggled his toes. He looked confused. “Am I dead then, or not?”

January looked sidelong at Gale. Gale’s eyes were very wide and fixed on Tam. January supposed it was probably one thing to see a plant come back to life and another to see a person with a fatal injury sit up and chat. So he took the lead.

“You’re dead,” he said, “Think of this as a sort of nondenominational rest stop on your personal death journey. Mr. Phong, are you able to tell us what killed you?”

“Why do you want to know? Shouldn’t you know that already, being a waystation attendant at this nondenominational death rest stop?”

“Er,” said January. “We’re more on the living side of things. Safety officers, you know, to make sure what happened to you doesn’t happen again.”

“You have to promise not to hurt them,” said Tam.

January looked at his phone. Forty-two seconds left.

“Well-” said Gale.

“Yes,” January said, over them.

Tam nodded. “It was the bats,” he said. “They were startled, that’s all.”

January looked at Gale. Gale looked at January.

“Sorry, the bats?” January wondered if there was another meaning for the word ‘bats’ that he was unfamiliar with.

“Yes,” said Tam. “I’m a chiropterologist, you see, and I’m working for a researcher down in Tharsis who’s attempting to genetically modify animals to build out the Martian ecosystem. Bats are key pollinators in deserts. I’ve been looking after our test colony that roosts up at the top of the survey tower.”

“Why wasn’t House Gale notified?” asked Gale.

Tam rolled his eyes. “The self-centered idiot in charge thought it was a waste of time.”

Gale did not visibly react to being called a self-centered idiot. They only said, mildly, “So you’ve been conducting unsanctioned animal research in the House Gale steel yard?”

“Yes,” said Tam, and he twisted his hands in front of himself, a bit nervous. “Is this going to affect my final nondenominational death destination? Because in that case I think I’d like to sign up for one of the reincarnation ones.”

“Hard to say,” said January. “This is less of a sanctioned rest stop and more of a brief death hijacking. Is there a chance the bats are going to kill someone again? Do we need to have them moved?”

“I mean, an actual bat box would be better. It would have to be somewhere in the steel yard because they’ve accepted this as their roost site. But they shouldn’t hurt anyone else as long as you fix the trespassing thing.”

January looked at his phone. Ten seconds. “Trespassing thing?”

“Yeah,” said Tam. “Somebody comes into the trainyard at night and turns on the lights every few days. Security cameras haven’t been able to catch them.” He shook his head. “They came earlier than they usually did – the bats hadn’t left to hunt yet, so when the lights came on they startled and knocked me down.”

“Thank you,” said January, very quickly, and he tapped Tam’s hand. Tam went limp, and January turned to Gale, who was still looking, rather solemnly, at Tam.

“It’s very quick, isn’t it?” They reached out their hand, very lightly, and touched Tam’s. “One minute.”

“Yes,” January said, short.

“And still,” said Gale, “It was long enough to solve a mystery that would have puzzled the police for ages. He did well.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have to move the bats, of course,” said Gale. “It’s a hazard otherwise. But I’ll see if we can find his researcher to put them in charge of it.”

January’s heart was in his throat. They were being so matter-of-fact about it, so deliberately kind, like they were screaming at him with every motion, you’re so helpful for using your gift, January, look what good things happen when you let Gale use you.

“I want a new contract,” said January. His blood was like ice.

Gale frowned. “What contract?”

“Actually, a separate contract,” said January, realizing their marriage contract was probably on public file somewhere and accessible by lots of ordinary people and lawyers. “Between you and me, and- and we decide on the terms together, and if you don’t follow it, I’ll-” January didn’t know what he’d do. He couldn’t say he’d touch them, he’d already come too close to that that they wouldn’t have any patience left for it, but what else did he have that they’d want? “I’ll jump off a bridge,” he said, “Or – you don’t have bridges here. Something tall. I’ll figure it out.”

Gale did a marvelous impression of a horrified person. “Please don’t jump off anything,” they said. “What’s wrong? I don’t understand.”

“This,” said January, jabbing a finger at Tam, “wasn’t in the marriage contract. Nowhere in there did it say that I’d bring people back for you. I know, I checked. So if you want to use it, there have to be rules about it, and you have to follow them, and there have to be consequences if you don’t.”

January didn’t want to use his gift for them at all, but they’d already figured out that he’d fall in line if he thought they were going to hurt him – pertains to your own safety was echoing in his head – so the best thing he could do was to try to at least get some control over how it was used.

“January,” said Gale, “I’m not planning on using it. I just thought it might come in handy, in this one particular unusual instance. I’m not going to loan you out to the police, or whatever you’re thinking.”

January hadn’t been thinking about that at all.

He was dreading something else.

“Do you know the kidnapping rate for doctors in America?”

Gale shook their head.

“It’s high. If you’ve won any sort of medical distinction award, they tell you not to travel to America, because your odds of being kidnapped are about three times the odds of getting food poisoning.”

“Why?”

“Because the hospitals there are overfull and understaffed,” said January. “They’ve got lots of people getting hurt with the fires and the floods and famine and there’s really not enough doctors to keep the places running. Critical surgeries are booked years out. So the very few rich people in America, the ones who could afford to leave and don’t want to because they live like kings there, they make sure to have the people they need to keep them healthy so they can enjoy all their wealth.” January shook his head. “Whether or not they want to be there.”

“You’re not a doctor.”

“No. But I’m an excellent backup plan. I know your security team had a fit when they found out my company traveled to Texas. They shouldn’t have. I never left my hotel room unless I had to be on stage. I was deathly afraid of getting found out and locked in a room somewhere by someone rich until they needed me when their lungs gave out from all the smoke.”

“That’s not why I married you.” Gale was watching him, eyes piercing.

“I know,” said January. “I’m a political asset, that’s fine. But in five years I won’t be, and there are plenty of rich people on Mars who haven’t died yet and don’t want to. So one of my rules is that you can’t tell anyone. You can’t. Because that person will tell somebody else, because someone who can bring people back from the dead is an objectively insane thing and they’ll have to talk about it. It’ll spread.” He shook his head. “Rule two is that I won’t kill anyone. You get a minute for free, but not any longer. I don’t – enough people have already paid that price on accident, I won’t do it on purpose.”

“You’re shaking.”

“It’s fine,” snapped January. “Well? That’s it, it’s two rules. You can add your own, but those have to stay. Do you agree?”

He wanted, very badly for them to say yes. The longer they stared at him, the more he was afraid that they were going to realize that they didn’t have to agree to either of his rules if they didn’t want to. He’d already told them what he feared.

All they really had to do was threaten to call Mx. Francis and their twelve social medias and January would do whatever they wanted. He would wake anyone up, and put anyone back, and smile and give a good interview, because being exposed scared him worse than anything. It wouldn’t be that hard to stop him from jumping off a building, either. Gale could give him a security detail and call it care for their spouse.

January forced himself to breathe and willed them to say yes.

“You’re scared.” They sounded surprised, like they had only just realized he was.

“So what?” said January, and he put as much bite in it as he could, because it was that or cry. “Do you agree or not?”

“Not,” said Gale, as lightly as a feather.

January sat down where he was and pressed his face into his knees because his bones had turned to water and he wasn’t sure he could stay standing.

“No,” said Gale, sounding frustrated, and then, from closer, “I meant we don’t need a contract at all. You have my most solemn promise that I will never ask you to use your ability again. And I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”

January looked up. They were standing near him, leaning over with their hands braced on their knees, watching him with something like anxiety on their face.

“I’m sorry. I think we had a misunderstanding. I didn’t mean to frighten you, and I didn’t mean to imply that I was planning on using you for your gift. I would never have asked you to help with Mr. Phong if I’d known it would be distressing. You remember that you have a veto, right? You’re allowed to say no to things if you don’t want to do them. Particularly unusual things.”

“You said a potential cage malfunction pertains to my own safety.”

Gale sucked in a breath. “I didn’t mean it like that,” they said. “I was giving a reason for why you in particular might want to see the body, for the drone.”

January tilted his head. “Really?”

“Really,” said Gale. “I won’t ask anything of you relating to your gift. It is absolutely your choice whether you would like to do anything with it, save that I’d put in a request you don’t touch me.” They tugged off their glove and held a hand out to January. “But you can touch me right now if you don’t believe me.”

January was filled with an abrupt flood of relief – even though it was obviously just a dramatic gesture, as touching them would end up with January in jail around Jupiter and he obviously wasn’t going to do it, it was still an unnecessary risk for them to take.

It was a stupid risk to take if you didn’t mean it. January decided that he was going to believe them.

Life would be awful, if he was forever looking for a little white room around the corner. And if he couldn’t trust them, then there wasn’t much he could do about it, and he could at least live normally until he figured it out.

“I believe you.” He stood up and they put their glove back on. For a moment they just stared at each other. January tried to joke. “It can’t really count as properly bringing someone back from the dead unless someone has some light hysteria about it, can it?”

Gale didn’t laugh. “I’m sorry I scared you,” they said. Then, “This is something you’ve been afraid of for a long time, isn’t it? How long?”

January shrugged. “When I was twelve, my ballet class read the story of King Midas. Guy who could turn everything he touched into gold.”

“I’m familiar,” said Gale. “There’s a Tharsese children’s book based off that called The Water Touch.”

“Some of my friends got to talking,” said January. “They all agreed it would really suck to be Midas, but it sure would be nice to be friends with him. He’d have all this gold to give away, and you would be rich. He could make all your racecars gold, and leaves, and homework. And nobody stopped and thought about the fact that if Midas had kept his golden touch, he’d starve to death and his daughter would be dead.”

“You were twelve?”

January shrugged. “I’d been considering telling one of my friends, just that week. I’d hoped he would think it was cool.” He shook his head. “People don’t care about you if you’ve got something they want bad enough. What do people want more than their lives?”

Gale looked pained. “Yes,” they said softly. They took a step back and bowed to him, deep and formal. “I swear,” they said, “I will not betray your trust about your gift.”

“Thank you,” January said, though it sounded inadequate.

Two days later, January got a meeting ping with a Schedule update for later that day: “External Meeting, Tharsis: A. Gale and J. Stirling. Location: Hoffer Residence.”

Moments later, a message came through from Gale. You don’t have to come, was the first thing it said. I just thought you might like to have the option, was the second. Lev Hoffer was Tam Phong’s research partner – I plan on offering them control of the bat transfer project.

January considered this. His first instinct when thinking about Gale and Tam was to panic, but that was just instinct. It might be nice, actually, to do something good for someone dead. To help Tam in a way that didn’t include killing someone else.

I’d like to come, he messaged back.

At three o’clock, a black unmarked car deposited January and Gale in front of a very nice Tharsese townhouse with white pillars tinted ever-so-slightly orange from the dust storms.

Sasha, wearing a black knitted scarf that perfectly matched their security uniform, followed them up the steps and stepped around January to go inside. January and Gale waited outside, because appearances were everything and seeing the Senator and their Consort engage in the polite fiction that they were ordinary people who had to wait for the owner of the house to come open the door lent itself well to political and televisional ratings.

After two minutes and twelve seconds, the door opened again and Lev Hoffer gestured them inside. “Good afternoon,” they said.

January followed Gale inside a rather opulent foyer that looked like a slightly gaudy attempt at recreating the ambiance of the Tiangong ballroom on half the budget. Sasha was standing across the room by the stairs, face impassive and professional. Mx. Hoffer shut the door behind them.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said Gale, bowing politely. “I’m Aubrey Gale, and this is my spouse, January Stirling.” January tore his attention away from the lopsided chandelier and bowed as well.

“I know,” said Mx. Hoffer, “I mean, not you, child, you’re a complete stranger, but I know who you are, Senator. Didn’t River ever mention me?”

January’s head shot up and then he tried to not look as if he was too interested. Gale’s eyebrow twitched up a fraction of a degree. “I don’t believe they did,” they said, “At least, not to me.”

“That’s a shame,” said Mx. Hoffer. “We always had such lovely chats.”

Gale made a noise of polite agreement. “I’ve brought along Mx. Phong’s data logs,” they said, “He didn’t have any next of kin listed under his House Gale employment contract, so they revert back to House Gale, but I thought you might have a better idea of what to do with them than me.”

Mx. Hoffer deflated a little. “Thank you,” they said, “He was a good colleague.” They shook their head a bit, then said, “Hosting! I’m hosting, of course, how forgetful. Can I take your coats?” They had a gold-covered coatrack by the door, and Gale handed over theirs.

January smiled and said, “No thank you, Mx. Hoffer. I run pretty cold.”

“I know,” said Mx. Hoffer, “I read about your circulation condition in the papers. I turned the heat up an hour ago especially for you – can’t you feel it?”

January blinked, and realized, suddenly, that his face was warm. It hadn’t been warm for literal weeks, not even in Songshu, which was comfortable but optimized for people with genetic modifications to tolerate Mars cold better. “Yes,” he said, surprised.

Mx. Hoffer looked proud. “You poor thing, always forced to bundle up wherever you go. It’s the height of rudeness, I say. I think what makes a good host is ensuring that everyone is comfortable. So can I take your coat?”

January hesitated. He had, in retrospect foolishly, assumed that Mx. Hoffer’s house would be like every other mostly-Natural interview room and conference room and ballroom he’d been in, and had planned to wear his coat the whole time. It wasn’t bulky and was a sleek sort of light silver with pink accents that made him look less like a gangster and more like a plucky young thing who’d just arrived in the big city hoping to get their big break into show business. It was perfectly fashionable to wear to events, and he had three more just like it in various shades of white and red.

It was perfectly fashionable. The tank top he had under it was not.

More importantly, the tank top he had under it was not the careful sort of outfit choice he’d subtextually promised Gale that he’d always make. It was just that he had assumed he wouldn’t take the coat off, and wearing long sleeves plus the coat in the car with Gale when they thoughtfully cranked the heat for him made him sweaty, so he’d figured out that tank top plus coat was a convenient combo for car trips and short events with Gale.

“Thank you,” said January, “It’s silly of me, but I had assumed I would wear my coat the whole time. I haven’t got a very fancy shirt on for House Gale business.” January tried to communicate his state of tank-top-ness to Gale with his eyes. If he’d known Morse code, he would have been blinking in it.

“Oh, there’s no need to stand on formality,” said Mx. Hoffer, “I won’t mind at all.”

January suspected his eye-telegram had failed when Gale inclined their head at him like they were agreeing with Mx. Hoffer about unnecessariness of formal fashion. What was worse, Mx. Hoffer had seen it, and so January couldn’t claim that it wouldn’t be appropriate now that the head of House Gale had given him permission.

January took off his coat. Mx. Hoffer took it and bustled over to the coat rack, and January looked down at himself to see densely muscled arms that looked stubby and crass and naked compared to Gale’s luxuriant amber sleeves that were elegantly draped over their arms. He’d had to take off the gloves, because to wear gloves and no coat was odd enough Mx. Hoffer would ask questions.

The cage gleamed silver down his arms but didn’t take away from the fact that from his shoulders to his fingertips, January had bare skin. He forced himself to look at Gale. They were looking at his shoulders, but met his gaze with a fraction of a shrug that January chose to read as a well, what can you do? kind of shrug rather than a I am going to lock you in your room for the next two weeks kind of shrug.

Mx. Hoffer came back and shot a tentative smile at January. “Would you like to see Mx. Phong’s favorite room in the house? I think you’ll like it. All the Earthstrongers who’ve been here say it’s like a taste of home.”

“Of course,” said January, bracing himself to compliment another painting of Beijing or Mount Tai.

Mx. Hoffer led them up a set of stairs to a richly carpeted hallway, and then said, “Oh! Tea! I’ll go down and grab it, you two go ahead. First door on the left.” They turned and went down the stairs swiftly, while Gale let out a very tiny sigh, and January went ahead to investigate what sort of appreciative noises he ought to make when Mx. Hoffer came back.

January took one look into the room and turned around so sharply he nearly walked into Gale, who stumbled back in a way that looked almost purposeful. They tucked their hands into their sleeves and frowned, just slightly, at him.

“Senator,” January whispered, heart racing, “I can’t go in there.”

He stepped to the side to let them move past him. Gale stepped forward and stood in the doorway, and said, quietly, “Ah.”

Rather than a painting of the Neva or the Yangtze, the room was completely filled with animals from Earth. A snarling tiger, a swinging monkey, a stately moose. Snake and badger and aardvark.

And every single one of them was dead.

The centerpiece of the whole room was the massive polar bear standing on its back legs. January was fairly certain that was a Martian polar bear, as he didn’t think Earth polar bears could get to be twenty feet tall, standing up.

“Impressive, isn’t she?” Mx. Hoffer had appeared again with a tea tray, and both January and Gale jumped. “Come in, come in, she won’t bite!”

January very carefully did not meet Gale’s eyes to keep himself from breaking into hysterical laughter.

Gale cleared their throat and took a step into the room, heartlessly abandoning January. “I take it you are a fan of taxidermy?”

“What gave it away?” said Mx. Hoffer. “I was absolutely obsessed with Earth as a child, so I try to bring as much of it here as I can. What do you think, January?”

January, who had once seen a creature as exotic as an alpaca in the remains of the extremely downsized London Zoo, was eyeing the rattlesnake coiled on the coffee table and trying to remember whether they were venomous. “It’s very impressive,” he said. “I lived in cities most of my life, so this is actually – wilder, than I’m used to.”

Mx. Hoffer appeared delighted by this, and said, “Well, hopefully with our progress in biological biome development, Mars will soon be this wild everywhere. Of course, when I say soon I really mean within the next hundred years, so not your or my lifetime, unfortunately, but humanity as a whole.”

“Brilliant,” said January, weakly.

Gale sat down on a wide couch and Mx. Hoffer sat across from them, leaving the space next to Gale open. January did two seconds of very rapid arithmetic to calculate the exact maximum distance he could sit from Gale while simultaneously not looking like he was avoiding being near them^[3], and sat down fourteen inches from them.

January leaned forward and snatched up a cup of tea to have a reason to keep both of his hands to himself in the center of his lap and nowhere near his spouse. He nearly spilled the tea, but thankfully recovered in time to save the fluffy white rug underfoot.

“So,” said Gale, picking up a teacup with a bit more decorum. “Unsanctioned bat experiments.”

Mx. Hoffer laughed. “That’s one way of putting it,” they said, “I prefer bold methodology in the pursuit of scientific discovery, myself.”

“And that pursuit took you into House Gale steel yards without permission, where a person died because of this bold methodology?”

Mx. Hoffer stopped laughing. “That was a tragedy. It shouldn’t have happened. Mx. Phong was taking every precaution.”

“And yet it did,” said Gale. “My legal team is advising me to sue you.”

Mx. Hoffer lost approximately forty percent of puffy cheer, and January reflected that when one wasn’t on the receiving end of Senator Gale, King of Sparta, it was kind of fun to watch.

Mx. Hoffer didn’t find anything to say before Gale spoke again.

“However,” they said, “I would rather not. I would rather honor Mx. Phong’s memory by moving the bats to a safe location that remains within their roosting territory and House Gale land, where they can be properly studied and cared for. Seeing as you were Mx. Phong’s research partner, I would like to put you in charge of this effort so I can be sure that the experiment continues as it was intended.”

“Thank you,” said Mx. Hoffer, reinflating, “That’s very generous, and I completely agree, Senator-”

“I also think it might be an honor to Mx. Phong’s memory,” Gale said, over them, “if his name came first in whatever research papers you publish about these bats.”

January was put in mind of one of those old fashioned bellows, that swelled and deflated every second when you pumped the handles.

“Well,” said Mx. Hoffer, “He was really only taking measurements-”

“I believe he had a degree in Mammalian Evolution and Engineering from Moscow State Technical University,” said Gale mildly. “In my perusal of his notes, he seems to be contributing greatly to both the theoretical structure and analysis of your findings.”

Mx. Hoffer looked valiantly for an out for several seconds. Gale, graciously, let them.

“Of course you’re right,” said Mx. Hoffer at last, “He was instrumental to the work, and that would be suitable for his memory.”

Gale inclined their head. “You may come up with any equipment and team you find necessary to move the bats – I’ve closed the tower where they currently are to avoid any more accidents. Will sometime within the next week suffice?”

“Yes, that should work,” said Mx. Hoffer. “I’ll collect some grad students and come up in, say, two days?”

“Yes,” said Gale. “And in the future, I suggest you keep your bold methodologies within the bounds of the law. Tenure committees tend to frown on academic mavericks.”

Mx. Hoffer frowned slightly at that, but shook it off enough to say, “Sound advice, Senator. I can appreciate that.”

Gale inclined their head at Mx. Hoffer, and there was a helpful little notification in the corner of January’s glasses that said A. Gale has copied you on data file package “Tam Phong Gale Data” sent to J. Hoffer. Would you like to view it?

January dismissed the pop-up just as Mx. Hoffer said, “Received, thank you.”

“Very well,” said Gale, “If there’s no other business to discuss, then we would hate to keep you, Mx. Hoffer. I’m sure you’re very busy with your research.”

“Indeed,” said Mx. Hoffer, bowing slightly at them. “Won’t you let me walk you out?”

“Of course,” said Gale, and stood before January did. January hastily swallowed down the rest of his tea as Gale moved in front of him, to have an excuse to not touch his partner or for Gale to offer him a hand up.

Mx. Hoffer led Gale to the door, and January got up, ready to leave.

So ready, in fact, that he neglected to notice the old-fashioned style of the low tea table in front of him. Old-fashioned and lovely, but with a design that meant the legs stuck out farther than the surface of the table. The legs were also partially disguised by the fluffy white fur of the massive throw rug.

January tripped.

January, mindful of the snake on the table and the badger just in front of him, did not throw his arms out wildly to catch himself. Rather, he tucked his hands in and caught himself on his palms, fingers gripping into the fluffy white rug.

Which was how January learned that there wasn’t just one polar bear in the room.

There were two.

There was the standing bear behind him, and there was the polar bearskin rug beneath him.

Horrifyingly, January felt the ripple of movement beneath him as the bearskin rug flexed whatever remained of its muscles, and a low moan started to creep from what appeared to be the head, discreetly placed in the corner and still attached to the rug.

He lifted both hands and slapped them down hard again, digging his fingers through the fur to reach skin. The rug stilled and the moan cut off, and January looked up to see both Gale and Mx. Hoffer turning back to look at him, faintly concerned.

“Sorry,” he said, picking himself up very, very carefully. “I tripped.”

“Are you all right?” Mx. Hoffer instantly came back to take his arm and help him up, nearly tripping themselves on a fold in the rug that had recently been perfectly flat. “Did you make that sound?”

“Oh, yes,” said January. “That’s my I’m-terribly-embarrassed sound.” Mx. Hoffer raised an eyebrow at him, and, seeing no other option but to double down and commit, January made a sort of growling moaning noise in his throat. “Ragh. Like that. I used to be a ballet dancer, you know, so losing my balance is sort of a professional embarrassment.”

Mx. Hoffer looked at Gale.

“Yes,” they said, as if this was all perfectly normal. “I’ve told you before, January, you’re only human. It’s perfectly natural to stumble on occasion.”

“Or, rather,” said Mx. Hoffer, a smile playing on their face like they thought themselves very clever. “It’s perfectly Earthstrong. At least for now.”

Mx. Hoffer guided January to the door, apparently blissfully unaware of the way the air between Gale and January had turned to suffocating sludge.

Or perhaps not, since they were halfway down the stairs and walking in complete and utter silence – January couldn’t think of anything to say – when Mx. Hoffer said, worriedly, “Oh no, I wasn’t rude just now, was I? You’d just said you’d hated falling over and here I went and made a joke about it. My deepest apologies, January, really.”

“It’s fine,” said January, wrenching himself away from the visions of crutches and Consular election parties and muscle spasms and powerful spouses who passed laws you couldn’t say no to. “Jokes are good. A politician’s spouse can’t very well have thin skin, can they?”

Mx. Hoffer still looked anxious, and January patted their arm. “You’re all right,” he said. “Really.”

Gale appeared in front of them like a miracle, holding out January’s coat. He took it and stepped away from both of them to briskly yank it on.

“Two days?” Gale said, crisp and perhaps a little colder than they’d previously spoken.

“Yes,” said Mx. Hoffer, bowing good-bye. “I’ll be there.”

Gale let January come stand by their elbow, safely ensconced once more in his coat and gloves, and they bowed together to Mx. Hoffer for their farewell. January, out of the corner of his eye, noticed that Gale had not gone quite as low as he’d thought they would, but figured it was just a trick of the angle.

Mx. Hoffer’s face still looked a little uncertain in January’s last glance back as he followed Gale out the door, Sasha appearing from thin air to bring up the rear.

The three of them walked down the steps in silence. Sasha got in the front passenger side and rolled up the privacy screen to quietly talk to the driver.

Gale and January got in the back, and January banished himself to the furthest possible corner from Gale. The car started moving. Gale reached over and cranked up the heat for January like they always did, and the kindness of it was so deliberate it hurt.

“Sorry,” January said, “I’ll dress more appropriately next time. That was – entirely my fault.”

Gale looked at him. “It was a reasonable mistake,” they said, “Most places are too cold for you. I’ve been meaning to ask Mx. Fenhua to come back for another fitting for a warmer wardrobe.”

 January almost said, Oh, there’s no need, but Gale raised a single eyebrow at him and January managed to swallow it and said instead, “Thank you. You are a conscientious leader of House Gale and myself and the union appreciate it.”

Gale graced him with a very small smile, and January dared to think that he hadn’t entirely ruined every shred of goodwill between the two of them. He gave them a sheepish smile back.

“I think,” said Gale, idly, “that five years will get very tiresome if we’re harsh with each other about little mistakes. That seems like a lot of needless effort and ill will for very little purpose. How would you feel about taking all mistakes and apologies as honest ones, and leaving them at that?”

January, who had been fully prepared to worry over this for the next twenty-four hours, thought that sounded like something of a relief. “I’d like that,” he said, and dared to shift into a seat that brought him a few inches closer to Gale.

The silence that fell afterward was far more comfortable, and January deleted a few emails from his glasses before Gale spoke again.

“You know,” they said, “River hated Mx. Hoffer.”

January shut down every single one of his glasses’ interfaces and looked at Gale. “I thought you said River hadn’t talked about Mx. Hoffer?”

It was Gale’s turn to look a bit sheepish. “Well,” they said, “I thought that was more politic than saying, ‘Oh yes, my sibling thinks you’re an elitist attention-hog who does shoddy writing and takes advantage of graduate students to do your research for you.’ ”

January laughed. He hadn’t expected to, since in the past Gale had mostly gotten sad and thoughtful at even a hint of a mention of River, but the scathing precision with which Gale delivered their defamation of Mx. Hoffer’s character showed that it was a rant they’d heard many times before.

“Probably a safer bet,” he agreed.

“Would it be too much,” Gale wondered, “to frame the title page of their journal article when it comes out? Their name has never come second on a research paper before – to my knowledge.”

January laughed again, a little more confused this time. It seemed like rather a lot of vindictiveness for a person Gale had only met that day, but then again, this was apparently their sibling’s cause. Maybe this was something Gale was doing for their absent sibling. It was strange, yes, but grief could look very different on different people. Gloating in an academic smackdown wasn’t the worst reaction, by far.

“Maybe don’t put it where anyone can see,” said January, “But otherwise? Go for it. Personally, I think I will take my revenge by not reading it. Science stuff is complicated, and I’d rather spend my time doing other things. The best revenge is living well, and all that.”

Gale seemed pleased that January had joined in the Mx. Hoffer bashing, and gave him a smile of their own. They didn’t say anything more, though, and the silence turned thoughtful, but it was still comfortable.

When they neared the edge of the Valley and the train station, Gale said, as if it has only just occurred to them, “Was it real then? Mx. Hoffer’s rug?”

January remembered the feeling of flexing skin beneath his fingers and made a face. “Yup,” he said. “Real polar bear skin.”

“Ah.” Gale wrinkled their nose in a very tiny display of disgust, and January couldn’t help but give a nervous laugh.

To his surprise, Gale laughed too, and then the two of them were very quietly giggling, filled with the fizzy sort of relief that comes from having gotten away with something risky with no apparent consequences.

They spent the rest of the train ride back to Songshu in pleasant silence.

They did not talk about naturalization. Or tripping.

Which was fine. It was all going to be fine.

1. This took a while, as January’s room had – like all of the rooms in Songshu – been originally designed for a Natural person, and thus the bed was approximately eight feet long and wide enough for him to lay in the middle like a starfish and not get anywhere close to touching the sides. Waking up each morning was an adventure as he discovered what new corner he’d ended up in and decided on the best course of action to get out.

[↺ go back]

2. Dandelions were everywhere on Mars - and massive, due to the lower gravity - and one enterprising businessperson a few generations ago had attempted to take advantage of the abundance of hardy plant and designed a Martian car that ran on dandelion fuel. Unfortunately, the design was faulty and the cars had a tendency to explode when they were driven with the headlights on and the seat warmers set to low. Which was why all Martian cars now ran on electricity and relied on the electrical grid, and was one of the contributing factors as to how House Gale had become so enormously wealthy.

[↺ go back]

3. Relative height difference times distance between knee and thigh divided by couch cushion width scaled to relative squishiness of couch added to one sixth of the overall couch length.

[↺ go back]

Chapter Text

Over the next two weeks, six days, sixteen hours, and fifty-two minutes, House Gale did politics like their lives and the lives of every single Tharsese citizen and Earthstronger resident depended on it.

January, to his surprise, found himself not only useful, but an actual weapon that House Gale had in its toolbox, to open the naturalization centers and help explain the energy rationing as Tharsese power generation crept closer and closer to null while the storm raged.

In the midst of it all, Gale listened to him, and January felt a sort of swooping, almost flying feeling in his stomach when Gale acted upon what he had said. It felt like breathing extra deep, like being heard was giving him enough life that he could put his hands on Gale’s waist and lift them up and spin so that they were flying, and he was flying with them.

He didn’t, of course, because he and Gale avoided touching each other whenever possible and he wasn’t quite sure yet that Gale trusted him to not drop them, so he packed those feelings away into his lungs to wait for some hopeful future day when maybe they did trust him like that.

Even if they didn’t trust him as far as touching, Gale proved to be an otherwise brilliant performance partner. Each day, House Gale broadcast a twenty-minute cultural exchange segment with Gale and January to keep people’s spirits up. Gale wore the face of a glamorously charming politician like a second skin, and January made himself into a combination witty Puss-in-Boots and stalwart Swan King like being a mixed metaphor was his day job.

If January was completely honest with himself, he liked Gale. They were quick and clever and unexpectedly kind, and it was nice to be less alone with his secret.

After one culture segment about common Earth dishes, when Mx. Francis was checking the playback on the cameras while Gale neatly stacked plates to return to the kitchens and January snuck Kasha leftovers under the table, Mx. Francis said, idly, “Sorry again that we couldn’t get actual meat, January. It’s just not a critical import so it’s hard to get a hold of.”

“You poor little Earthstronger carnivore,” said Mx. Ren, appearing, as they often did, out of thin air when they sensed an opening to tease. “I’m sure you’re positively withering away without your primitive dead-animal diet to sustain you.”

“Actually,” said January sunnily, “I was vegetarian before I came to Tharsis. So that part of the transition was quite easy for me.”

“Huh." Mx. Ren's eyebrows raised, incredulous. “Good for you. Now we just need to wean you off chocolate, and you’ll have a properly healthy Tharsese diet.”

“Never,” January promised, and Mx. Ren wandered off again with a laugh, badgering Mx. Francis about production timelines.

Gale, once they were mostly alone, turned toward January with a horrified look on their face that told January that they’d worked out the reason behind why January was vegetarian.

“Christmas turkey when I was ten,” he said. “I was in charge of stuffing it.”

Gale got paler.

“Nightmares for years,” January said cheerfully. “That’s been one of my favorite parts about Mars, actually, is that no one accidentally serves you meat.”

“I suppose that is a benefit,” said Gale, pulling themselves together. “I believe there was talk from Mx. Francis’ team about doing something special for our one-year anniversary^[1]. I shall make sure that meat-based Earth delicacies are removed from the list.”

And things might have continued on in that trend of a shaky but steadily growing equilibrium as the solar panel tower went up and the train moved to and fro each day, carrying exactly one thousand Earthstrong workers and approximately thousands of yards of steel and the unquantifiable hope of energy for Tharsis that didn’t come with strings to Earth attached.

But life on Mars is very cold and there is very little water, and all it takes is one moment for everything to go wrong. After all, there had once been four colonies on Mars.

For House Gale, that one moment where everything went wrong was when the startled mammoths tore up the train track – the single, solitary train track that carried workers and steel and hope up and down the Valley every day.

The facts that Gale presented at the emergency senior staff meeting on Christmas Eve were very short and very scary, and there were only two of them.

Fact One: They had a thousand Earthstrongers stranded at the top of the Valley with no way to get them back down – and no way to get them back up again in the morning to continue working on the solar rig.

Fact Two: The mammoths had jostled the salt towers of Fields Eight and Nine in their panicked exit, and that energy loss meant that House Gale could either cut the internet in the next six hours, or allow Tereshkova Wharf to lose power and subsequently explode after ten minutes.

The solutions proposed were ineffective or impossible. January saw one solution for one problem, but he knew nobody would like it.

“We could bring them to Songshu,” January said, and the room stared in varying levels of horror and concern. Mx. Martinez looked mutinous.

Mx. Francis evidently decided that it would be better to beat Mx. Martinez to the punch, and phrased their objection more diplomatically than Mx. Martinez’s face currently was. “It’s too dangerous,” they said. “If even a tenth of them take off their cages, Songshu falls. And they’re Earthstrongers, so most of them hate you, Senator. No offense, January.”

January, who had been in the hating-Aubrey-Gale camp and was currently in a rather murky no-man’s-land between that camp and inadvisable romantic imaginings, elected to ignore that part. “The House Gale show already has cameras everywhere,” he said softly. “Nobody could do anything without being seen and shot.”

“We said that about Gagarin Square.”

Gale and January flinched in unison. January tucked his hands underneath his knees. Gale looked like they were considering the merits of being sick.

But when Gale opened their mouth, all that came out were words that started quiet and got steadily louder, driving the room into silence. “The problem is not ‘are you feeling uneasy about letting Earthstrongers into Songshu?’. The problem is that there are a thousand people we are employing who are going to freeze to death, tonight, if we do not help them. I do not care about feelings or misgivings, I care about solving the problem based on the facts in front of us. If you do not have a statement of purely objective observable truth, I do not wish to hear it. Now, are there any objections?”

There were not.

“Dr. Molotov, get in contact with the internet servers to let them know we’ll be cutting power at night from this day on. I’ll put together an announcement to the public about it. Everyone else, make the tower floors as ready for our guests as you can manage, and Mx. Ren, send somebody up to the building site to let them know the plan. Go.”

The room dispersed in a silent scatter remarkably quickly. Gale remained pale and still. A camera that had locked onto Gale’s speech with all the attention of a bloodhound wobbled closer. January thought that the speech would play very nicely on the House Gale show to reinforce their reputation as a capable leader. He did not think that the aftermath of Gale’s decision would do the same.

So January coughed a bit and leaned closer to Gale and said, “Senator, I think my altitude sickness is coming back. Could you walk me to Dr. Okonkwo’s office?”

Gale blinked blankly at him for a moment, then nodded. They stood together, and then Gale, arm faintly trembling, offered their elbow to January. The last thing January wanted in the world was to take it, but the camera was still watching, and they had to present a united front for any of this to work. So he took their arm, very carefully, and they walked together down to the elevator.

They were in it for mere seconds before Gale hit the emergency stop and then completely stopped themself, as if the button had been for Gale and not the elevator. They just held perfectly still in the near-dark of the emergency generator’s red-tinted lighting, and it took nearly a minute for January’s eyes to adjust long enough to realize that Gale was silently crying.

Crying standing up was strange, January thought. The only reason he’d ever cried standing up was because he was walking to get somewhere to cry properly – sitting curled up, or sprawled out on a bed. But of course Gale would cry standing up, January realized, because they were tired – everyone was – and their leg hurt more when they were tired, and if Gale sat down in the elevator then January was the only person to help them back up again, and he was pretty sure that he was the last person in the world Gale wanted near them.

“I’m sorry,” said Gale at last, wiping their eyes. “This is probably quite irritating for you, watching me lose my composure about Earthstrongers in Songshu when there’s no reasonable cause.”

“No,” said January, “It’s actually a great relief to see that you can fall down into the irrational feelings with the rest of us. I’ve been going round terrified I’m married to the King of Sparta. And I’m not even a king – I’m a ballet housecat who trips around the stage wearing boots.”

Gale looked at him with an unreadable expression, and then they pulled their labgrown polar bear shawl^[2] off their shoulders and wrapped it around January, who let it happen, confused.

After a moment, there were twin lines of pressure around January’s shoulders, and the soft fur was pressing into his face, and January realized that he was being hugged. He felt suddenly small in a nice way – rather than the constant looming, which he had gotten used to over the past weeks, this felt like safety, and he memorized the feeling of it as best he could.

“Thank you,” Gale said, when they stepped back and delicately rewrapped themselves in their fur.

“If you want,” said January, as Gale hit the button to make the elevator start again, “you could hide out in my room for a bit. I have lots of stories about dancing, if you don’t mind ignoring all your important work to listen to me ramble on about rolled ankle drama.”

“I would like that,” said Gale. “Even a cat may look at a king, January, and I like the way you see the world.”

At seven forty-five pm on Christmas Eve, Dr. Molotov stood up in front of the senior staff and presented the following facts.

Fact One: There was enough steel currently on the worksite to finish the solar panel tower, which was good.

Fact Two: Cutting down the pines around Songshu would provide enough heat for the next two weeks to keep Tharsis from freezing to death when the heating power was cut to conserve energy for Tereshkova Wharf.

Fact Three: Even with these measures, Tereshkova Wharf would run out of power in exactly three days, four hours, and thirty-two minutes. The fleet carrying uranium and potentially the makings of an Earth takeover would arrive in one week, six days, fourteen hours, and seventeen minutes. By the time the fleet arrived, Tereshkova Wharf, all of Americatown, the old nuclear reactor building, and a significant part of Benin Gate and Dengta would be leveled, and the uranium would do nobody any good without a nuclear reactor building to put it in. Thousands of people would die because Mars was very cold and very dry and even building a solar array would not be enough to save House Gale from prison.

The mood in the meeting was grim.

“January?” said Mx. Francis. “Do you think Earthstrongers could lift the gravity trains? It should only take three hundred or so, and we’ve got a thousand up here. If there’s no energy to build the array anyway, we could put them to pulling the trains.”

Dr. Molotov shook their head. “The only cables we have are the train cables, and each link is the size of a person. The problem isn’t that we don’t have the physical power, the problem is that we don’t have any way to direct it onto the train. I don’t know if we even have enough ropes to tie to the cables, let alone if that rope is rated for that much cold and tension.”

Everyone looked at Gale, but Gale was somewhere else in their own head, and not in a place to answer questions.

“Okay,” said January, “Well, we have three days to come up with more ideas. Cold’s supposed to be good for your brain, isn’t it? We’ll check in again later.” January caught sight of the time in the corner of his glasses. “We’re about to lose the internet,” he added, “so get ready for that, I suppose?”

“Stay seated,” said Dr. Okonkwo firmly. “It’s going to feel like you’ve lost part of your brain. Which is fairly accurate. Who here doesn’t have lenses and haptics?”

Once again, as in so many things, January was the odd man out.

“Do you have any first aid training?” Dr. Okonkwo asked, dubiously.

“I was CPR certified five years ago,” January offered, and Dr. Okonkwo managed to pull off a facial expression that somehow communicated both their disappointment and the fact that they hadn’t expected anything better.

And then Dr. Okonkwo’s face changed to look like they’d just missed a step on the stair, and everyone collapsed.

January swallowed hard. He was abruptly reminded of a nightmare that he hadn’t had in years, but it sprung back to life vividly now.

In the dream, he was in a morgue, and everyone he loved was lying on tables around him, dead. And he could touch them to bring them back, he knew, but he also knew – in the way dreams sometimes gave you dream-knowledge that you never questioned – that there was nobody else alive in the world around them.

There wasn’t even a world. It was just January, and the morgue, and dead people.

He’d always spent the dream standing stock-still in the middle of the room, paralyzed with fear and indecision – did he bring people back for a minute to say goodbye? Did he try to bring someone back permanently? Would the gift rebound on him, then, since he was the only other living thing, and would he be dooming someone he loved to waiting out their days in this room of dead people? January had never come up with an answer, and never moved until he woke up, and he’d eventually stopped having the dream six years or so after his parents had died.

This time, though, January forced himself to move, and when he knelt down to shake Mx. Francis’ gold-sequined shoulder he was overwhelmingly relieved to find that they were breathing. They blinked at him as he helped them to sit up, and then he went to steady Mx. Ren, who looked rather pale but managed to snark at him anyway.

Gale had sat up on their own by that point, looking tired and irritated more than anything. By the time January had done a full circuit around the room, people were in various stages of shock and horror at what January could only assume felt like half the world dropping out from under you, but otherwise all right.

The language barrier now that personal autotranslators were down was formidable, and January found himself dredging through his brain for pieces of Russian that had gone unused since boarding school. Gale, when he returned to them, spoke in English, which was a surprising relief that evidently showed on January's face.

“I’m not quite where I want to be with English,” Gale admitted, “Apparently my instinct is to go for a dictionary far more often than I should.”

“Shut up,” said January. “You have a beautiful accent and I can understand you perfectly. And I bet your vocabulary is better than mine even without a dictionary.” Gale twitched part of a confused smile at him, and January didn’t like the part that was confused, so he barreled on with the compliment. “Obviously you’re a natural with languages. I bet you don’t even need a dictionary for Mammoth.”

Something sparked behind Gale’s eyes. “Mammoth dictionary,” they breathed, and then, “River was doing research with mammoths and their language. The gear is still stored in their old room.”

January caught their intent and held it. “Do you think the mammoths could lift the gravity trains? The cables are too big for a person, but maybe not for a mammoth?”

“Absolutely not for a mammoth,” said Gale. “I’ve met them, they’re enormous. And at this point all we can do is ask.”

Things were taller on Mars on account of the gravity being so low. January knew this. He lived with the proof of this each day, surrounded by seven-foot senators and staff members who had singularly destroyed his back-of-the-mind expectation that he was usually one of the tallest people in any given room.

But there was actually quite a lot of difference between a seven-foot senator and an eighty-foot mammoth. Particularly when the eighty-foot mammoth gave a bit of a jolt when she saw Gale calmly crossing the clearing toward her, and January lost ten years off his life and actively felt his hair trying to go whiter than it was.

But then the mammoth – and January was pretty sure, at this point, that she had to be the leader of the herd, because all the other mammoths were watching attentively – dropped to her knees and made a massively reverberating rumbling noise that January felt in his knees and let Gale attach the sensors of a modified halo.

Sasha, who had been unsuccessfully hiding amusement at January’s worry while standing next to him at the edge of the mammoth’s chosen clearing, said quietly, “They speak two ways at once, high and low. That’s why we need the sensors – it’s different but you get the hang of it after a bit.”

When the mammoth rumbled again, the translation showed up on January’s glasses, and he saw what Sasha meant.

bad * lovely

weather * see you again

While Gale and the mammoth exchanged pleasantries – which was an insane sentence that made January wonder whether or not he’d actually lost his mind – he got a better handle on the language. The upper line seemed to be more for tone indicators or details, while the most critical information came in the lower line.

And then, in the most amazing feat of translation January had ever had the pleasure of witnessing, Gale asked the mammoths to help them by lifting the gravity trains. They explained it in terms the mammoths could understand – that by pulling metal vines, the mammoths could create the lightning that humans needed to eat.

The mammoth, after some consideration, agreed. And then she looked past Gale at January, and though she was a completely different species with a completely different sort of intelligence and way of looking at the world, January recognized the exact look of a grandmother sizing up the paramour her child has decided to bring to family Christmas.

Then she turned back to Gale.

difficult * always

being grandmother * eyes watching

She flicked a glance at January.

chafing * must

bulls * manage.

When Gale agreed, she added,

your * your

bull * metal vines

January had never been a subject of mammoth conversation before. He decided that he felt a little bit embarrassed, just because it was about his cage and he didn’t particularly like being reminded that everyone saw him as a polar bear lumbering around a low-gravity china shop.

Gale laughed and responded,

not * him * his  

me * him * choice

The grandmother mammoth stared at January for a bit longer, and January stood up straight and tried desperately not to feel like he was failing the meet-the-in-laws test.

his

choice

Repeated the grandmother dubiously, and January was shocked at the amount of skepticism in it. But then she went on to apologize for her bull who had ripped up the train tracks in the first place, because he’d been startled.

The fear was not his fault, she emphasized, with another look at January.

But in the end, the grandmother agreed to help. And while Dr. Molotov was building mammoth-safe harnesses as fast as they possibly could, January was drafted to explain the whole humans-eating-lighting thing again, because mammoths were of the opinion that individual humans were helpless and they could only take care of themselves if they were in a big group of humans that had reached consensus.

Which, January thought, considering government, they weren’t exactly wrong. So he did his best to explain that humans could eat lighting and not hurt themselves, and when he could tell it wasn’t quite working, he borrowed a silk jacket off of Gale^[3] and asked one of the young bulls if he could show them little-lightning.

When the young bull said yes, January rubbed the silk on his trunk to make his fur stand straight up with static. His trunk looked like a fluffy red-brown scarf, which made everyone laugh. The bull, happy, tossed his trunk around a bit, showing off his static.

little * not

lighting * hurt

January said with the halo-translator,

big * safe

trains * lightning

This, at last, seemed to get through to the mammoths, and for a moment January thought that the conversation was over and everything was going to be all right.

Then the young bull snatched up the silk jacket and rubbed it on his head and ears to make that fur stick up, and when everyone laughed at him, he wiggled with delight and descended upon January’s head with the silk.

January tried unsuccessfully to dodge away as his head was vigorously rubbed, and when it was pulled away he was grinning good-naturedly. It was the first friendly touch he’d gotten in years where the person touching him wasn’t afraid of being a little rough or jostling him and having him jostle back.

But then the young bull took a step back, and said, in carrying tones,

odd * grandmother * danger

smell * grandmother * smell?

“What?” said January, hoping his glasses were mistranslating. But when he turned to Gale, Gale looked just as confused as he did, and concerned.

The grandmother, who had been speaking with the mammoths who were going to pull the trains at the other end of the clearing, turned and came over to the young bull immediately.

The young bull waved his trunk at January, and January tried to look as inoffensive as possible. The grandmother reached out her trunk and placed it on January’s head and then sucked in a breath, hard. It tugged on January’s hair and overall felt exactly like getting aggressively sniffed, but he held still.

After a long, long silence, she said,

old * odd * from

smell * smell * story

Gale perked up, noticeably. “They haven’t told me any story about odd smells.”

eight * human

generations * grandmother

“Eight generations ago – that’s the start of mammoths on Mars, when they were first brought back out of the test tubes – there was a human grandmother,” said Gale, quickly, and January was thankful for the rapid translation, as he was suddenly a bit nervous to piece together all the details of Mammoth on the fly.

good * human * big

good * grandmother * rule

“The grandmother was good,” said Gale, “the mammoths liked them, but there was an important rule.”

no * touch * human

no * touch * grandmother

January felt abruptly unsteady. “They weren’t supposed to touch the human grandmother?”

“Yes,” said Gale, clearly suspecting the same thing January was.

human * odd * like

grandmother * smell * bull

And just in case there was any doubt as to who the grandmother meant by bull, she tapped January lightly on the chest.

new * second * okay

rule * generation * touch

“The rule got changed,” Gale said. “In the second generation, they could touch the human grandmother.”

“Oh." January didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t know where to start. The fact that apparently, the first generation of mammoths on Mars had been less a feat of brilliant genetic engineering and a bit more alive-agained. The fact that apparently being alive-again wasn’t a hereditary status, and that if Terry ever had kids who came to Mars, January could tousle their hair without fear.

Or the fact – and this was the big one that January was finding hard to face head-on – that there had been another person like him in the universe.

“What’s this have to do with January?” Sasha asked, and both January and Gale jumped. They were standing a bit back, eyeing the grandmother. “It seems like a pretty important rule to them.”

“Um,” said January, who was blanking big-time. Of all the ways he’d planned to explain away any accidental reveals of his ability – freak accident, nerves twitching after death, plain old gaslighting – he’d not accounted for a mammoth to just announce that there had been a moratorium on touching people who smelled like January. It seemed like it would be hard to convince the mammoths otherwise. After all, he couldn’t smell anything different.

Thankfully, Gale came to the rescue.

“The early scientists – that’s who I suspect their human grandmother is – had to be very careful not to reintroduce disease,” said Gale with such calm certainty that January would have never known they were lying. “I suspect that one of the scientists was sick, or perhaps a carrier for something, and that the mammoths’ incredible sense of smell could sense that. Perhaps by the second generation the scientist got better, or they were more confident about the immunity boosters they were giving the mammoths.”

Sasha eyed January. “Have you been sick?”

“A bit,” said January, and he wasn’t even lying, which was good, because he was bad at lying. “I’ve been fighting a cough from the dry cold for a while. And I got chicken pox when I was a kid – one of the last people to get it, actually, before they eradicated it completely. Rotten luck.”

“See?” said Gale, with just a hint of triumphant satisfaction. “I would assume that nobody on Mars has ever had chicken pox. But perhaps one of the scientists also had gotten it as a child on Earth and was carrying the virus with them – it has the potential to be activated later in life to manifest as shingles.”

“That sounds serious,” said Sasha, who was once again eyeing January with a sort of practiced distrust.

“I’ve been vaccinated for shingles,” January assured them. “Thoroughly. You really think Dr. Okonkwo would have let me up here if all my shots weren’t up to date?”

“No,” admitted Sasha. “You’re sure that’s it?”

“I plan to research the matter thoroughly,” Gale assured Sasha. “After all, this is a legend they’ve been holding out on me, and I am curious for further details on how they understand the nature of their origins. Because the mythology influences the language, you see, and perhaps how they think-”

Sasha gave a good-natured groan. “I’m sorry I asked. Do all the research you want, just don’t expect me to know about it.”

“Of course,” said Gale serenely. “Anyway, I believe it’s time to get started – Mx. Molotov has messaged me that the harnesses are ready.”

As Gale swept past January towards the place where the mammoths would turn the windlasses, January shot them a grateful look and was overwhelmingly relieved when Gale winked. They were in this together, January thought.

Gale was protecting his secret. It felt nice.

Watching the mammoths turn the windlasses by yellow lamplight and silver moonlight felt like something out of an impossible story. There was a sort of grace to it, a dance, of human and mammoth and strength moving in rhythm to create potential energy. And with it, potential. And also energy.

January was not a choreographer, though he’d taken the mandatory choreography classes at the Longborough Ballet School. But an old part of him itched to see if he could make something that told the story of mammoth and human and energy. Hope building past midnight.

A larger part of him, however, was cold.

The cold sank into his bones as he hurried back to Songshu for the restroom, and it sank in even deeper when he left Songshu again to walk back. This was a one-in-a-lifetime thing to witness, and he didn’t want to miss more than a moment if he had to.

But the day had been long, and the day had been stressful, and the day had been cold. January had been wearing his cage nonstop for two months, six days, and seven hours. When he took showers he could see faint lines on his arms under the cage when he pulled on the skin to clean it – the precursors to pressure bruises from too much prolonged wear. But he hadn’t been about to ask Gale to lend him the key back, and so there was nothing to be done about it.

January was kind of regretting that now. The long trek back to where the mammoths turned the windlasses was cold and windy, and it seemed to bite especially hard on all the places the cage pressed against his body. He found himself walking slower and slower, almost without realizing it.

Food would help, he told himself. Perhaps somebody watching the mammoths had brought a snack they would be willing to share.

And then there was a light tap on his shoulder, and January nearly jumped out of his skin. He whirled around, and then he craned his neck up to look at the mammoth who had snuck up behind him.

After a bit of squinting in the dark, January was fairly certain it was the grandmother. Certainly she gave the no-nonsense huff of an exasperated grandmother, right before she wrapped her trunk around him and lifted him thirty feet off the ground with no apparent effort.

January made a rather embarrassing noise and then relaxed when it was apparent that she wasn’t going to drop him. Instead, she started lumbering in the direction he’d been going, toward the windlasses, and January appreciated the merits of mammoth fur and its heat-conservation qualities.

Suddenly January’s stomach gave a swoop, and he found himself deposited on the ground a yard from Gale’s feet. January, cold again, forced himself up while Gale found a halo for the grandmother, who was waiting above them like she had something to say.

yours

yours

Gale shot January a bit of a smile, and then the smile disappeared when she went on.

metal * on * cause * must

vines * bull * hurt * remove

January stopped looking at Gale, not sure whether it would be worse to have just him be embarrassed or both of them. It would be awful to try and explain the situation to a mammoth, and he didn’t particularly want to try.

He was afraid Gale would. Gale did.

necessary

no

said Gale back,

metal * for * weak

vines * purpose * bull

January hated this.

no * strong * three * hurts * others

vines * bull * strong * hurts * others

January wanted to go back to Songshu, but he wasn’t sure he could do the walk on his own. So he’d have to wait to walk back with someone, most likely Gale, who had explained to the mammoths that January was as strong as three people without the cage, and would hurt others if he took it off.

The silence stretched so long that January glanced up at the grandmother to find her staring down Gale, who was starting to look a bit concerned, which was a major expression change for them. Usually they never strayed beyond calm or serenely happy or contemplative.

many * are * strong

bulls * are * strong

She said,

good * finds * for

grandmothering * allows * strength

She stretched her trunk forward and bumped the gleam of the cage on January’s neck – the only part of it that could be seen under the third coat January had acquired.

this * not * good

vine * not * grandmothering

And of course, January thought, I’m married to the one person on Mars who’s willing to argue with a mammoth.

Gale said,

respectful * don’t * strong * accidentally-

you * understand * bull * hurts-

The mammoth interrupted them, loudly, with a rumble that January felt even in his fingers and toes, which had gone numb.

you * are * grandmother

you * are * grandmother

Gale blinked under the force of it, and didn’t do more than agree before the grandmother added,

small * for * great * for

strength * bulls * strength * grandmothers

January half-laughed under his breath. “Different kinds of strength means you win different kinds of fights.” It was a pleasant surprise to find that a mammoth saw the world in a similar way that he did.

no * can * great * true

bulls * achieve * strength * true

She leaned closer to Gale.

good * never * small

grandmothers * diminish * strength

Gale looked both surprised and as if they were doing rapid figuring in their head, but they said, simply,

i

understand

The grandmother, apparently have imparted all the wisdom that she wished to, ruffled January’s hair and lumbered off to speak to the mammoths at the windlasses.

January and Gale stood in suffocating silence for three minutes and twenty-two seconds.

“Did you also see a mammoth providing me instruction on good government?” Gale said at last.

“That does seem to be what happened, yes,” said January, attempting to set his tonal inflection in such a way to seem as if he had no personal opinion on the subject. Evidently he was not successful, because Gale frowned when they looked at his face, clearly reading something on it – January was not sure whether it was hope or despair, as he was feeling both of those feelings in about equal measure, along with cold-induced apathetic numbness.

“You have been in a cage for a while,” Gale said, still looking like they were working out complex maths in their head. “And we’re outside with lots of space. Anyone who is still afraid is in possession of a personal issue that should not affect you, as your personal status should not affect them.” January blinked. “And also,” said Gale, “I think if she comes back and you’re still in a cage, she’ll take you away and have you adopted by some better humans.”

January looked at his Prince Désiré and said, “I like my current humans,” and Gale looked a bit like they’d been punched, or like a cat had sat up and asked for his boots, please.

But Gale didn’t say anything more about humans or adopting them, but rather stepped up to January, briskly unzipped his three layers of coats, and unlocked his cage. January hadn’t realized that they’d have the key on them^[4], but it had been discreetly hooked on the chatelaine^[5] that Gale wore, often with the dangling objects tucked into a pocket so they wouldn’t catch on anything.

“The tea-and-coffee tent has a heater,” Gale said quietly. “You can change there.”

January, rather than say ‘thank you' because it seemed awkward and inadequate, said, “I’ll come find you when we go back inside.”

“Right,” said Gale, but their expression was unreadable when January finally met their gaze, and he couldn’t tell if they were in that group of people who were in possession of the personal issue of being afraid of January.

Stripping out of three coats and a heat suit in a little tent that was mostly just supposed to keep the beverages warm was a very cold endeavor. January had spent forty-six seconds standing in place, stamping his feet and rubbing his arms, before rapidly stripping, hoping to build up some sort of heat reserve that would make it all a bit easier.

He wasn’t very successful, and by the time he was down to his bottom layer and could step out of the cage, his teeth were only barely not chattering.

January pressed the release, and for a dizzying moment he thought that he was floating.

He was shockingly light, and he was abruptly grateful for the cold metal of the cage at his back, because it grounded him enough to reorient to the fact that he was still standing on the ground.

January eyed the heat suit folded on the floor and took a step forward. Or rather, he tried to. But two months, six days, and seven hours of resistance had taken their toll on how he expected the world to be, and instead he launched himself forward with such energy that he instantly tripped over the heat suit and hit the Mars dirt.

“Ow,” said January.

“Are you all right?” said Gale’s voice through the tent fabric.

January, who was practically naked by Tharsese standards – his arms and his collarbones were showing – hoped desperately that Gale was not going to come in. “Yes,” he said clearly, “It’s only just that I’m recalibrating, and that might take a bit. Please don’t wait for me.”

Very, very slowly, January got his arms under him and attempted a push-up with the same amount of force he’d use to pluck a flower. He jolted up a bit fast, but otherwise in control, and feeling like he was in an absurd slow-motion sequence, he went about getting his knees under him and then his feet, and then dressing, all so slowly and carefully like the world was made of glass and might shatter if he sneezed on it.

He found a basket of fruit under the table with the tea, and picked up an orange, hoping to eat it once he’d tossed it around enough to feel settled with the gravity.

And then January went to find the intern in charge of the tea-and-coffee tent, hands tucked behind his back with one hand loosely gripping the other wrist, which was dripping with orange juice, and embarrassedly told them that there was exploded orange goop all over the other oranges and apples.

Once that job was done – January had not offered to clean up the mess himself, and the intern, after one good look at him, had not asked – he crept away from the tent towards a nice open patch of grass with nobody in it and walked in circles until he felt like he could control whether or not he tripped even if he wasn’t paying attention.

But he was paying attention, very carefully, and so he quickly noticed that Sasha had positioned themselves at the edge of his little open space, paying just as careful and just as close attention to him as he was.

Still, when January had judged himself acceptable enough for Natural proximity and crept towards the nearest fire, Sasha hadn’t said anything. Mx. Ren had just given him a no-nonsense nod and asked if he was the reason their apple tasted like oranges. January had said yes, that he did it just to irritate Mx. Ren, and Mx. Ren had told him to expect his revenge at a suitable time in the future when he least expected it.

And when Gale appeared with a mug of coffee to offer January, Sasha still didn’t say anything, though January was fairly sure that both he and Gale were vividly aware of their stare across the campfire.

“Yes, please,” said January, holding his gloved palms out flat. He was wondering whether it was best to hold the hot cup for a moment to warm his hands, or to drink it as fast as possible to get the heat into his core.

Gale carefully balanced the orange coffee cup on one of January’s palms, and then their long fingers – gloved themselves in a light green knitted set that January hadn’t seen them bring outside – wrapped around January’s free hand and guided his fingers up to grasp the cup.

January, floored, let it happen. The gentle press of their fingers felt shockingly tender with just fabric between them and not the hard lines of the gauntlets. It made January feel warm even without the coffee.

He was the first Earthstronger at Songshu, and though everyone was varying degrees of genuinely friendly and polite, people rarely touched him. Likewise, he rarely touched other people, not wanting to alarm anyone. It was also best not to set a precedent of touching everyone except Gale, so he’d resigned himself to hardly touching anyone for next five years.

A steel-metal screech sounded out through the night, jolting both Gale and January in opposite directions, and January scattered half of his coffee out onto his gloved hand, which instantly soaked up all the boiled liquid and scalded him. He looked up as he hissed in pain to see the gravity trains thudding into their locks, and the mammoths gave their own rumbling cheer as they got disconnected from the windlasses.

The mammoths didn’t stay long after it was done, but the grandmother turned to look searchingly at Gale and January before she vanished after her herd into the dark.

“Can we go inside now?” January asked, more plaintively than he’d intended, when Gale turned to look at him. “It’s very late and very cold and now my hand is wet and cold.”

“Yes,” said Gale, a shade of amusement in their tone. “I imagine it’s rather uncomfortable for you by now.”

“I’m very fragile,” said January, and was gratified when several people within earshot snorted, and Mx. Ren outright laughed.

1. January was consistently amazed at the level of preparedness and advanced tactical planning that came into running the life of a very important political figure. He was still getting used to the fact that he was technically married, and hadn’t even properly arrived at the thought that meant he was the sort of person to have an anniversary (Before this, the furthest relationship milestone January had previously reached was four weeks, three days, and seven hours). Once Mx. Francis had made it clear that they were already planning the one-year anniversary party, January had decided to look forward to it. Not for its own sake – the Romance Timeline was due to be in full swing by then, and it would involve a lot of rather public romantic-ness, all without touching each other, which he was fairly sure that he and Gale dreaded figuring out the logistics of in equal measure – but because if they really had a one-year anniversary party, it would mean that January was still alive to attend, and that was the sort of thing he looked forward to, these days.

[↺ go back]

2. January had been pleased to discover that labgrown clothing derived from animal DNA did not, thankfully, seem to pass enough of a bar to be alive-agained.

[↺ go back]

3. They had another, less decorative and more insulated layer, underneath. January wasn't sure if they'd been double-layering before the disastrous visit with Mx. Hoffer or if they'd only started after, and didn't ask.

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4. This was the product of a lack of thinking on January’s part. Offering Gale his key was the most heartwrenchingly noble thing that had ever happened on the House Gale reality show, and Mx. Francis was a pragmatist. Carrying a lover’s token was a very nice way to nurture a slow-building romance, and on the first day of their marriage Mx. Francis had politely sent Gale a message saying that if they wished for Mx. Francis to keep their job, Gale would keep the key on them at all times, and ideally visibly for at least half the day.

[↺ go back]

5. A sort of belt hook with several chains attached to hold useful everyday items, popular in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Fashion, as in everything, is circular, and they’d come back in vogue around the time that spaceship technology became sophisticated enough that just about any common problem on a spaceship could be solved with the same six tools. And of course the chain attaching the object to your belt was very useful in situations of zero gravity. The astronaut-chatelaine had undergone several permutations over the years until it arrived in its current form as a fashionable accessory for Senators to carry their symbolic tools of office – the pen of law and the mirror of reflection – as well as anything else of great importance. Besides January’s key, Gale carried a piece of pine to represent Songshu and a shard of solar panel to represent House Gale.

[↺ go back]

Chapter Text

The walk back to Songshu was still long and cold, but it was better in company. Not that people could talk much, because the work site where the grounds maintenance people were cutting down trees for firewood to heat Tharsis was sending up great clouds of sawdust into the air, and anyone who spoke was drastically increasing their chances at a coughing fit.

January, a little pointedly, coughed where Sasha could see him and was glad when they rolled their eyes.

When they arrived at Songshu, it was like a completely different place. January was reminded of the day when the company at the Royal Opera House shifted their rehearsals from airless practice rooms with mirrors and barres to the open echoing space of the stage. The energy of the company changed entirely, and so did Songshu when they finally escaped inside from the cold.

Though the company’s energy had changed from grimly studious to joyfully determined, while the Songshu energy had changed from gleefully euphoric to rather more uneasy.

There was about three feet of clear space after they entered the foyer, and then a wall of bulletproof glass with two doors – one EARTHSTRONG and one NATURAL.

January realized, belatedly and guiltily, that he’d left his cage in the coffee-and-tea tent, and hoped some poor staff member had thought to haul it back with the tent supplies. Embarrassed, he went to the Earthstrong door, and once he got in he saw that there was glass on this side too, splitting the hallway into two separate halves.

The space stretched out before him, leading deeper into Songshu, and parallel with the Natural tunnel. The only difference between the two was that January's tunnel had a layer of fine red dust packed into footprints over the green and brown carpet, and the Natural tunnel didn't.

The air smelled like sweat and sawdust, and January realized abruptly that just ahead, somewhere in the house, were one thousand Earthstrongers just like him. They’d probably be willing to shake his hand if he was polite about it.

January looked over to the Natural tunnel to see all the rest of the staff and the interns and the producers and the techs who’d been monitoring the train jostling past each other to get deeper into the house and muttering about how nobody had updated the house haptic maps yet.

Gale stood unruffled by the current, next to the tunnel wall – also bulletproof glass, January could tell – and looking distant in the manner that meant they were checking something or reading a message with their haptics.

January stepped closer and knocked on his side of the glass with a finger, which made Sasha glare and Gale blink slowly.

“Hey,” said January, “I hope somebody grabbed my cage – I wasn’t thinking when we left. Can you ask if somebody’s got it and if they can leave it-” January hesitated. He wasn’t sure how far the tunnel situation went through the rest of the house. “Mx. Martinez,” he said, turning towards them. “Where would be a good place for me to collect my cage?”

“One of my people got it,” said Sasha, their tension easing a bit now that January had asked for their opinion. “I’ll have them leave it in your room. Third floor is Earthstronger only, so you can wait there. The dining room is cages and Natural, and the rest of the house is only accessible with credentials. The elevator’s locked to only let you out on your floor for now, so just be careful between the elevator and your room – though that wing should mostly be empty.”

“Thank you,” said January, and gave them the little half-bow he was still certain looked mostly awkward. Sasha looked fractionally pleased, and pushed the knitting needles that were sticking out of a specially designed pocket of their sweater back in a little farther.^[1]

Gale abruptly yanked off one of their gloves and pressed their hand to the glass. January blinked at it for a moment, never having had Gale’s bare palm so close to his face, then slowly peeled off his wet glove and pressed his hand to the glass as well.

Half an inch between them, and perfectly clear glass.

From January’s view, it almost looked like they were touching.

Gale smiled at him, soft and fleeting. January, feeling excited and nervous for no apparent reason, smiled back.

With a clunk-chunk, the lights in Songshu abruptly went off emergency power to full brightness, the heating gave a waking-up sigh, and Mx. Francis loudly said, “Oh, thank goodness.”

“Power’s back,” said Gale, “Thanks to the gravity trains and the mammoths.”

“Thanks to you,” said January, and he could have stood there, smiling stupidly at Gale for who-knows how long before a production drone dipped low over Gale’s shoulder to get a better angle on their hands.

The moment abruptly soured in January’s throat. He’d taken it all as real – the care, the joking, the almost-touch – but that was foolish. Gale was a professional. Gale expected him to be a professional. Everything they did had a purpose, and the purpose was to play a burgeoning romance for the show, but no further than that.

This was just using the emotional high of success to justify the growth of other emotions. A tried-and-true narrative it would be stupid to waste.

January cleared his throat and dropped his hand. He’d left a faint coffee-toned stain on the glass wall in the shape of a smear. “I’ll wander through and check on everyone on this end, and then come find you in the dining room after? Maybe twenty minutes?”

“Excellent,” said Gale. “I recommend a change of clothes as well. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got sawdust in absolutely horrific places.”

January smiled, but he couldn’t muster a laugh.

“I’ll bring champagne, as well,” Gale added. “If there is a more appropriate occasion, I can’t think of one.”

“That sounds excellent,” said January. “I’ll be ready in fifteen then, just for that.”

Still, he wandered through the third floor with a sense of fizzing joy. Here were plenty of people he matched with, whom he could bump shoulders with and cheerfully apologize to and think nothing more of it. The chatter of children who’d been too young to leave alone at home gave the whole night the aura of an extended and chaotic family gathering, and January, who had never had enough family to have that kind of gathering, but had always thought that it seemed kind of nice, was pleased to find out that it was nice.

It was also fun, January thought, to be tall again. Back among Earthstrongers, being six foot two meant that he was back to being one of the biggest people in the room. Being around Natural people could make him feel like a squat little troll, but being around the Earthstrongers reminded him of the very best parts of ballet, when he could feel strong and powerful and help push the story along by supporting his partner and doing it all elegantly.

After a full pass through the floor and a bit of shaking grateful hands and dodging out of the way of running children, January felt the chill and grime still hanging over him like a gruesome shroud, and elected for a hot shower.

He waited patiently for the elevator to scan and approve him, and then once it opened to an empty chamber it took him straight to his floor. He was halfway to his room when a junior staff member in an orange pantsuit stepped out of a door, humming and clearly distracted by something on their haptics.

They were surprisingly short for a Natural person, and blonde, but they were still definitely Natural, and distracted, and January wasn’t wearing a cage.

January stopped as soon as he saw them, still a safe distance away, and called, “Excuse me, I don’t want to alarm you, but I think this floor’s supposed to be closed for a bit?”

The staff member blinked their eyes back to focus on him, and then gave an abrupt squeak and turned red. “Mx. Stirling!” they said, giving a hasty bow in tandem with a step back. “I apologize, I didn’t realize you were- I’m so sorry for intruding.”

“Oh, no,” said January, who was a little thrown at the fact that the staff member seemed more mortified than afraid. “You’re all right, I just- I’m going past you, and I didn’t want to startle you. Hallway should be back to normal traffic once I’ve got to my room, though. I don’t plan on leaving until I’ve boiled myself in the shower and got all the sawdust off my cage.”

The staff member gave a little laugh with enough of a surprised snort in it that January knew it was genuine. “Good luck,” they said, warmly. “I’ve still got sawdust in my socks, and I didn’t even go outside.” They gestured for January to continue his walk, but didn’t otherwise move away or retreat back to the door they’d come out of.

January took it as the gesture of trust it was, and calmly walked past them, far more nervously than he let on. He paused with his hand on his door. “What’s your name?”

“Oh! I’m Olive, Mx. Stirling.”

“Thank you, Olive,” said January. “I hope you have a good night.”

January, in a brief fit of brilliance, realized that it would make more sense to get the sawdust off of the cage before attempting to wash himself. He accomplished this by dragging the cage to the shower and sticking it in while the water warmed up. The cages were designed to be waterproof and fast-drying, and he’d showered enough with it over the last two months to have proved both claims a dozen times over.

After he hauled it out and left it to drip on the bathroom carpet, January got in the shower and sighed in superheated bliss. He scrubbed the cold and the coffee and the sticky orange residue and the sawdust and the mammoth fur off of his body until there was nothing left but January, safe and warm.

After he got out and dried off, he stood for a moment, eyeing the faint lines of bruising hinting along the cage lines on his body, and facing down the opened cage.

After eighty-four seconds of indulging himself, January turned around and stepped backward into the cage. It closed around him like a second skin, and January’s skin ached as pressure returned to places that had been flirting with the idea of beginning the healing process after the pressure had originally vanished. But a few deep breaths and it mostly passed, enough for him to get back to performance-and-politics-worthy capability, and January got dressed.

In the dining room, people were quiet but the energy in the room wasn’t unpleasant. Natural people and Earthstrongers in cages were scattered around in little clumps, and January made a beeline for the hot chocolate.

After emerging from chocolate-centered tunnel vision, he looked around for Gale, but they weren’t anywhere to be seen, and so instead he wandered over to the piano and put his classical music education to good use by playing Christmas music. It was, after all, Christmas Day.

After a few rounds, an Earthstronger improbably produced a violin, and joined in on “I Saw Three Ships,” and then there was a minor horde of children wiggling in various dance-adjacent movements or standing-stock still in awe watching the strings and wood produce music.

January spotted Gale across the room, heading towards him, in the middle of a verse, and caught the violinist’s eye and gave the little head jerk of musicians to indicate that he was going out on the next round. The violinist nodded back, and then spun dramatically a few steps away as they crescendoed into the chorus while January faded out on the keys. The children moved after the violinist, attempting the words, and Gale came and sat next to January.

“Hey." January twisted to face them a bit better. “I believe I was promised champagne?”

“On its way,” said Gale, nodding at a bottle that was making its way around the room.

January, not sure how to say anything that wouldn’t sound awkward, just pulled open his house coat – even with all the extra people in Songshu, he was still feeling chilly – so that the chest piece and the lock was uncovered.

Thankfully, Gale picked up on the cue – or had been trying to figure out a tactful way to bring it up themselves – and said, “Ah. Thank you.”

They pulled out January’s key and quickly locked it, and then tucked it away. January made sure to keep the tiny feeling of disappointment off his face, and privately hoped that now that he’d proven himself trustworthy, Gale might feel comfortable letting him out more than once every two months.

“Are you a princess?” An awestruck little voice piped up from behind January, and he twisted around to see a small Earthstrong child, perhaps three. He was looking at Gale like his eyes couldn’t get any bigger, and January realized that the Senatorial silver did look a bit like a crown or a diadem to someone unfamiliar with Tharsese politics.

Gale visibly debated explaining Tharsese politics, but January bit back a smile when they obviously decided it was more trouble than it was worth – it was nice to have proof that even Gale got tired.

“Yes,” they said.

“Is it a crown?”

The Senatorial silver was more of a comb that was placed into a braid or twisted hairstyle, and after a moment, Gale reached up and pulled it out. “See?” they said, a bit stiffly, like they were unfamiliar with children. “It’s not quite a crown. This is called a sigil.”

“Sigil,” breathed the child. “Whoa.” He reached out a hand to touch it, and January lightly caught his wrist.

“Ask first, little bear,” he said gently. “It’s polite.”

“Can I touch?”

Gale, to January’s surprise, said, “Yes.” And to the little boy’s credit, he stroked the silver lines very carefully with a single finger. “Here,” Gale said after a moment. “Hold still.”

The boy did, and Gale set the sigil in their lap before reaching forward to gather up the boy’s hair – grown unevenly to his shoulders, though January couldn’t tell if it was an attempt at Tharsese fashion or if his parents simply hadn’t had the energy to cut it – in a loose twist on top of his head, and then pinned it in place with the sigil.

January pulled down the piano key cover, which was polished to a mirror sheen, and said to the boy, “Look.”

The boy looked at himself in the reflection and his eyes went even wider. “Whoa,” he said again. “I’m pretty.”

“Yes,” agreed Gale. “What’s your name?”

“Yuan.” He held his arms up in the universal pick-me-up request of children. Gale hesitated, then leaned forward and gathered him up, placing him gently on their lap.

“I’m January,” said January, smiling at him. “And this is Aubrey.”

Gale gave a sad little smile, and then the champagne came by and their face smoothed back to pleasant cheer as they said, “Your champagne, as promised.”

January accepted the bottle and the cups and poured two, one for himself and one for Gale, before leaning over to pass it to the next pocket of people.

“What’s that?” said Yuan.

“It’s an adult drink,” said January. “We drink it when there’s something happy.”

“Like staying in a pretty house?”

Gale looked a bit like they’d been shot in the heart.

“Yeah,” January said, remembering the difference between his freezing little nuclear flat and his luxurious life at Songshu. It was easy to get used to the change, but January knew that he would be a worse person if he did. He had to remember that for all that Gale had saved him, thousands more were still where he had been. “Like staying in a pretty house.”

An hour later, Yuan had run off to an older woman in the corner, and the violinist had proved that their knowledge of Christmas music vastly exceeded January’s. He’d retired from the piano after asking an aide to make sure someone saved a bit of champagne for the violinist, and wandered around, until across the room he saw Gale yawn and was struck with the thought that only Gale could make a yawn graceful, and his heart gave a stupid little leap and January thought that he really was in trouble, if he was finding even Gale’s yawn charming.

So January decided to get some air. His credentials worked, thankfully, to let him out of the dining room, and he wandered back down the main staircase of Songshu.

Halfway there, he heard someone singing. "Hopelessly devoted to you..."

It sounded faintly familiar, and when January turned a corner he saw Olive again, rather dramatically singing into a broom handle.

"Oh! Mx. Stirling!"

"Hi, Olive," said January, and then he looked at the broom and the truly massive amount of red dust permeating the staircase. "Are you sweeping?" He was fairly certain that there were robots somewhere in charge of keeping dust out of Songshu, though with all the Earthstrongers and mammoth-spectating traipsing about, there was quite a lot more dust than normal.

"Yeah," said Olive, smiling. "The dustbots are powered down to save energy, and since the internet's also down, Mx. Ren said they'd give a bonus to any of the staff members who took a shift sweeping." Conspiratorially, Olive leaned in. "Honestly, I think it was more of an excuse to keep the junior staffers busy because some of them were freaking out about all the houseguests, but I'm saving up for my second wedding, so I will gladly take Mx. Ren's money."

"Second wedding?"

Olive gave a dreamy sigh and leaned on their broom. "I proposed this time. Fredo said we didn't need a big event, but they're such a romantic, so they deserve real flowers and a full honeymoon and everything."

January felt abruptly jealous, and then ashamed at himself for it. "You must love them very much."

"I do," said Olive. "I'm grateful every day they love me back."

And January, before he could stop himself, asked, "How do you know?" Instantly he felt himself flush and bit his lip, wondering if he could take back the question. But Olive was already answering.

"I didn't know, at first," said Olive. "Sometimes it takes a while to realize. But eventually you wake up one day and you feel it. And not just a little bit. As a good friend once told me, when you find someone who loves you, you'll feel it with every inch of the fifty-nine you've got. Or," they eyed January for a moment, "In your case, seventy-four."

January wondered what it would be like to feel like every inch of him was loved. He wondered if it felt similar to watching Gale press their hand to his through the glass and believing it was real.

And then he saw Olive visibly remember that he was Senator-Consort Stirling, and he was asking them about love advice, and their face fell into something like understanding pity. "Mx. Stirling," they said, "I'm sure Senator Gale-"

"Of course," said January quickly. "Senator Gale is lovely. I was just curious about your experience, that's all." Before Olive could say anything else, January gave a quick bow and said, "I won't keep you any longer. Have a good evening, Olive."

He made his escape down to the Songshu exit and hoped Olive wouldn't mention anything to anyone. Especially Gale. He shoved down anxious thoughts about the Songshu rumor mill as he shoved his feet into the boots of a heatsuit, and went straight outside before he finished zipping the heatsuit, hoping the snap of cold would help him get his head on straight.

All of it was stupid, he reasoned. He’d never actually been in a relationship, just pined after unattainable people, because he was afraid of what he’d do if he ever cared too much about someone and he couldn’t let them go. But now he was married to someone who was older and smarter and much more important and who’d already died – which was, like, the exact definition of unattainable – and he couldn’t stop wondering if there was something he could do to make it real.

Which was foolish and stupid and he needed to stop. Because Gale was probably a murderer, and definitely scared of him, and definitely didn’t like him like that.

And even if they did they could never even touch.

He blinked, hard, and pretended it was just sawdust from the tree-cutting that had gotten beneath the heat-suit’s visor that was making his eyes watery.

And then, exactly four hours and forty-four minutes after midnight, January had an experience that made him reevaluate his stance on ghosts.

Something shoved him backwards into a tree and held him there.

Or rather, someone, because January could feel fingers digging into his shoulders, and there wasn’t anyone in front of him.

“What?” January croaked in a hoarse whisper, then, louder, “Let go!”

He wasn’t let go, and for a moment he just stood there, and then the weight pressed against him shifted to what felt like an arm across his throat, and, horror of horrors, the someone started to write in the dust on his visor.

S…K….A….M

“Skam?” January whispered, confused and horrified.

There was a long pause, and then something smacked the side of his head. That felt like a ‘no’.

“Um, I’m sorry,” whispered January. “I don’t- know that word.”

A dot appeared beneath the M, like someone had pointedly poked it.

“M?” January said.

A dot beneath the A.

“A?”

A dot beneath the K.

“K?”

A dot beneath the S.

“S,” January said, then his brain clicked into gear. “Maks. Max.”

His visor was wiped clean by an invisible hand.

Oh no, January thought. If this was stage two of his power, activated by stress or mammoths or ill-advised love or living past one’s thirty-fourth Christmas Eve, then it majorly sucked. Reanimating dead things was fairly easy to avoid if he paid close attention.

But if ghosts could just find him and grab him, then there would be no avoiding it. Also, people were definitely going to think he was crazy. But maybe Gale would believe him.

“Max?” January said, “If you’re talking, I can’t hear you. But if there’s- something you want, maybe you could write it down, too? Or, er, I don’t know how this works exactly, but if you know where your body is-”

And then the pressure disappeared, and a hand firmly grasped his wrist, and January was being pulled at a run through the sawdust-swirling forest.

January ran until the hand let go, right before he fell down in front of a massive crater where a felled tree had torn up the earth with its roots. There was a dark hollow in the web of roots and dirt, and January couldn’t see anything.

“Hello?” January said. “Max?” But nothing more happened, and nothing touched him. January looked at the tree roots again, and then got out the emergency matches from the heat suit and lit one.

January was looking at a body.

A dead body.

It looked remarkably well preserved, as if it might only be sleeping, but that had to be an effect of the cold, because there was a red stain blooming around a black hole directly over the heart.

January swallowed hard. He didn’t recognize their face, but he didn’t have to. There was a Tharsis Marines tattoo on their forearm.

He was struck with the absurd urge to laugh. Gale had agreed that there wouldn’t be any bodies in the basement.

“Hi, Max,” January said softly, crouching down to slide into the hollow with them. “I guess it’s time for us to talk.”

They were lying in an undignified sprawl, and January reached forward, trying to push their legs into a bit more of a straightforward resting position, but the cold had made them stiff, and he couldn’t move them.

Besides, January admitted, he was just stalling.

So January tugged off a glove, pulled out his phone, and took a deep breath. Then he tapped the timer and Max’s wrist, in quick succession.

Max gasped and sat up, swinging an arm out that January just barely dodged by scrambling backward.

“Aubrey!” they shouted.

“No, no, not Aubrey,” January said quickly, “Just me, January, remember?”

“Remember? What?” Max lurched to their feet, and whipped their head around. “Where am I?” They turned their gaze back down to January. “Who are you?”

Evidently alive-agained people didn’t retain whatever knowledge they got as ghosts.

Or there had been a different ghost, but January hated that theory, so he went with option one.

“I’m January,” he said, rising slowly with his palms open to show he wasn’t holding a weapon. “I’m Aubrey Gale’s consort. Because I’m so sorry to tell you this, Colonel Liu, but you’re dead.” He pointed.

Max looked down and saw the bullet hole in their heart. “Oh,” they said. “I’d hoped- well. I see.” They paused. “Where am I now?”

“Still at Songshu,” said January. “I’ve, er, brought you back. Temporarily. I have to send you back in forty-five seconds, but I was hoping you could tell me who killed you. You know, for justice.”

“Oh,” said Max. “I thought it would be obvious. Aubrey Gale.”

January’s heart sunk into his shoes. “You’re absolutely sure? There’s- there’s no doubt, or anything?”

“I’m certain,” said Max. “My spouse killed me. I knew they were unhappy with our marriage, but I never thought they actually would.”

January wanted to be sick. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Gale was a murderer. Five seconds ticked by in silence.

Max cleared their throat. “Is River all right?”

January blinked. “Nobody knows,” he said, failing miserably at keeping the misery out of his voice. “They disappeared at the same time you did. Gale has been telling people you two eloped.”

Max appeared to be riding the fine line between furious and mortified. “If they’ve killed River,” they said in a fury, and then stopped, realizing there was nothing they could do.

“I’ll have people look,” January promised. “We’ll dig up all the trees if we have to.” He looked at his phone. “Fifteen more seconds,” he said, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Max looked at him. “You said you’re Aubrey’s consort now?”

January nodded.

“I’m sorry,” they said. “This can’t be an easy thing to learn.”

“It’s not your fault,” said January, fighting back tears at the first sign of sympathy. “I suspected. I just hadn’t wanted it to be true. And anyway, I’m more sorry for you. I’ll make sure your body gets back to your family.”

The time was nearly up. January held out his bare hand.

Max looked at him with piercing eyes that seemed to see right through him. “Thank you,” they said finally, in a way that seemed like they were thanking him for far more than just the sympathy.

They shook his hand and collapsed, dead again.

January climbed up out of the hollow with numb fingers, and dug out Consul Song’s card with numb fingers, and held it in front of his face with numb fingers, so his glasses would see it and dial the number.

A groggy voice answered. “January? Are you all right?”

“No,” said January, forcing his voice into evenness with every last shred of self control. “Gale killed Max. I’ve just found the body.”

When January got back Yuan had found Gale again, still wearing their sigil, and was chattering happily under Gale’s laser-focused attention that they gave to everything they did. January’s heart ached.

He knew it was possible for people to be a horrible murderer and still be nice to children and still be polite, but he hated that it was. People should behave like they really were inside, he thought. A lot fewer hearts would get broken that way.

Twenty minutes after January had made the call, helicopters were hovering over Songshu.

Twenty-three minutes and forty-seven seconds after January made the call, Gale was slammed facedown on the ground and handcuffed.

Twenty-four minutes and eight seconds after January made the call, the thirty praetorians and Gale had disappeared into the back rooms and Yuan was crying.

“Apologies,” said the Consul to the shocked and frozen room. “We just had an anonymous tip about Senator Gale’s role in Colonel Liu’s disappearance. A forensic pathologist is examining the body now, but there’s no need for anyone to panic. Senator Gale is the only one currently under investigation.”

January leaned down and scooped Yuan up, and Yuan pressed his face into January’s collar with quiet hitching sobs. People were turning to look at him.

“Okay,” said January, gathering his thoughts as he spoke. “Let’s have everyone go up to bed and let the Consul and their team work. I’ll let you know what’s going on when I find out more.”

As people filed away, January turned to the Consul. “That was…violent,” he said at last. “Did you have to be so rough? Gale’s not a physical threat.”

“Politics,” said the Consul. “Now I have footage in which it looks like they are, which is good for my re-election campaign.” They gave a self-deprecating grin into response to January’s look of disgust. “I know,” they said. “It makes me sound monstrous, but politics is one of those games you can never quit playing, not even in moments of emotional turmoil. I imagine you feel quite a bit like this young person, only you’re keeping it all inside.” They nodded at Yuan. “It’s perfectly natural to feel that way. I’m sure this is a shock.”

January felt disgusted. With himself, with the Consul. Gale was a murderer, yes, but the Consul’s heroic rescue wasn’t feeling very heroic.

“But congratulations is also in order,” said the Consul. “You’re House Gale now. It will be good for Tharsis to have an Earthstronger senator. Bring a new voice to the conversation. I’m sure you’ll have lots of interesting proposals about how to handle our ongoing immigration goals.” They smiled at him and added, “Buzz buzz.”

“I…can’t think about that right now.”

“Of course,” said the Consul, too gracious. “Besides, it might be best to wait until you’ve got your support back. I’m detaining the staff for questioning, just in case, though I’ll get them back to you as soon as possible, and you can use them to start hashing out whatever changes you wish to make.”

January blinked. What changes? Then a praetorian snuck up to the Consul and whispered something to them, and the Consul said to January, “Would you like to question them? Dear old Aubrey remains incomprehensible to halos, but you’re the one who’s most certain that they killed Max. And I think they actually like you. They might be more willing to explain themselves to you.”

January hated the feeling like he was dancing to the Consul’s tune, but he did actually want an explanation out of Gale. “Okay,” he said. He looked around. Everyone else had cleared out, but he didn’t want to bring Yuan along to a murder interrogation. “I need someone to watch Yuan.”

“I can,” offered a redheaded praetorian. “I’m sorry that we scared you, little person.”

Yuan looked at January, then at the praetorian. “Do you know where the hot chocolate is?” he asked.

The praetorian eyed January, who nodded at the corner where the drinks had been abandoned.

“I think so,” said the praetorian, glancing over. “Would you like to find some hot chocolate together?”

“Okay,” said Yuan, and he wriggled out of January’s hands and went over to the praetorian without a backwards glance. January wondered who his parents were, to have a kid who went from adult to adult with apparent ease.

“Okay,” said January, looking at the Consul. “Let’s go.”

Gale was locked in their own room, and there were two praetorians on guard outside, one eyeing a halo display.

The one not watching the display opened the door for January, and he went through. He’d never been in their room for long before – only as long as it took to film something for the show, or to say goodnight after walking them back after a dinner – but it was messier than it usually was. Drawers were hanging open, clothes spilled on the floor, tablet styluses scattered around the desk.

Evidently Gale’s room had been searched before they locked them away in it. Gale themself was sitting at the desk, ignoring the mess as they wrote on a tablet. They wore halo equipment on their head, a bit different from the slim scientific models they’d used with the mammoths.

This one looked like it would be harder to smash.

Gale’s eyes flicked up to meet his when January entered. And January realized that Gale was afraid.

Part of him still didn’t believe it. Gale was rumpled, hair knotted back with a white band, lacking the Senatorial silver still nestled in Yuan’s hair. They were not wearing gloves, or shoes, and by Tharsese standards they were horribly underdressed. They were wearing their holey old green jumper, and they looked like a lost academic more than a murderer.

But the part of January that was looking at the facts knew better.

“You killed Max Liu.” He dragged a chair out to sit across from them and crossed his arms.

“I didn’t,” Gale whispered.

“Don’t lie to me!” January snapped. “You’ve been- you’ve been lying to me, and been kind and inaccessible and avoidant and charming and everything under the sun and I’ve gone along with it, so for once do you think you could just tell me the truth?”

“I am telling the truth. I didn’t kill Max Liu. January, I promise you, I wouldn’t-”

“I found the body,” said January flatly.

Gale flinched. “Where?”

“Not in the basement.” January was viciously happy when Gale flinched again. “You kept your word on that, at least.”

“January,” said Gale. “I was joking. I didn’t kill-”

January yanked his glove off and slammed his bare hand down the table. Gale jolted back, drawing their own bare hands to their chest.

Now they looked afraid of him.

January felt sick and guilty and a little bit glad. He’d been in love and afraid and uncertain for months, and now they got to understand at least part of that. Puss-in-Boots had teeth. Puss-in-Boots could be Schrodinger’s cat.

“I found the body,” he repeated, looking at his bare hand. “I know you killed Max Liu.”

Gale’s eyes, locked on his hand as well, skipped up to meet Janaury’s. “You-” they started, and then cut themself off with a glance at the door where the praetorians were undoubtedly listening in. This was, after all, an interrogation. “You found the body,” they repeated, heavy with meaning, and January nodded.

A small part of him was grateful that they hadn’t tried to deflect attention onto January by telling the praetorians that he could bring back the dead, but then again, who would believe them? Still, it was better to not even put the possibility in people’s heads.

“And you – think – I killed Max,” Gale said, looking sick. “Me. Aubrey Gale.”

“I’m quite certain.” January took his hand back and replaced his glove. He’d made his point.

“Um,” said Gale, and for the first time January had known them, they were at a complete loss for words. They glanced at the door again, and then at January, and then the door, and abruptly they dropped their face into their hands and sunk down in their chair and said, miserably, “Oh, this is such a mess.”

January let them sit in silence and then said, “Why did you kill them, Senator?”

Behind their hands, Gale shook their head. “I honestly can’t tell you, January. Because I don’t know.”

“You don’t know why you killed someone?” said January, incredulous. “That’s horrifying. You see how that’s horrifying, right?”

“I didn’t-” Gale started, but evidently realized there was no point in arguing – it was hard to argue with the trump card of ‘the murder victim told me you did it’ – and said instead, “I see why you’re scared, January, but I promise you were never in any danger from me.”

“Yeah,” January said, long and sarcastic. “Anyway, where’s River?”

Gale’s face lifted to meet his gaze again. “What?”

“Max and River disappeared at the same time,” January said. “You killed Max, I’m assuming you know what happened to River, since you’re the one who’s been telling everyone they eloped together. Tell me that, at least, Senator. I promised-” January cut himself off with a glance at the door. “I didn’t find River’s body where I found Max’s,” he said instead. “But Max strikes me as an honorable sort of person, and I think they would want River to have justice as well.”

“Max asked about-”

“No,” January said sharply. “Max didn’t ask anything. Max is dead. I’ve just been reading up on them, and from what I know about them, I think they would want justice for every person you’ve had disappear, not just them.”

“That’s-” Gale was blinking rapidly. “That’s probably a good assessment of their character. Max was kind.”

“Don’t tell me what to think about Max. Obviously I can’t trust anything you say on the subject.”

“Okay,” said Gale, and it was the easiest capitulation he’d ever gotten from them. “January, I need your opinion on something.”

“What?”

“I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in my life,” said Gale. “But is luck finite? It was lucky,” and they stared hard into his eyes on the emphasis, “That I survived Gagarin Square. I’m- concerned, now, that if there’s a riot here, and I’m attacked-”

Can I be killed again, is what they were asking. January knew the answer from dozens of squished bugs when he was young.

“I think your luck is just like anyone else’s,” January said evenly. “Nobody’s immortal.”

“Ah,” said Gale. “I believe my luck runs out very soon, then.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean,” said Gale, “That despite your conviction, the Consul has no actual proof that I killed Max. Just that somebody did. And I know you don’t believe me, but I didn’t kill Max. So this might drag out into a big long mess, but the Consul can’t actually remove me as an opponent yet. And what they want, more than anything, is for the Earth ships to arrive and provide us with power. So they can’t have the sun fields completed. You’re in charge of House Gale now – are you going to cease the solar panel construction?”

January blinked. “Of course not. We need energy as soon as possible, and the solar fields are a good long term investment against future sandstorms.”

Gale inclined their head in agreement. “So you’re an obstacle to the Consul’s goals as well. You need to leave Songshu. Tonight.”

January huffed out an incredulous laugh. “The Consul’s not going to hurt me.”

“And you know them well enough to be certain of that? How often have you been going behind my back to confer with them?”

“Don’t turn this around on me. You cannot make me feel guilty for having a backup plan in case you were a murderer when you actually are a murderer!”

Gale took a deep breath. “I apologize. Your trepidation was understandable. But January, now’s the best chance for the Consul to remove me as an opponent for good. And quite possibly you.”

“Senator,” said January. “You’re not going to die in the Consul’s custody.”

“It would look very suspicious, wouldn’t it? Which is why I suspect there’s going to be a very big distraction. Most likely a riot – we have a thousand Earthstrongers in the house of a Senator with pro-naturalisation and anti-immigration policies. Mx. Martinez and Mx. Francis have valid concerns about how much of a powder keg it is. And a riot would make it very easy for the drones to look away and the praetorians to lose track of me, and then five minutes later they find my body fallen down the stairs.”

January stared.

“But it’s very hard to control a riot,” said Gale softly. “And I want you to be safe. So please.” They reached down to their pocket and then reached their other hand forward, bare hand grabbing January’s over his glove and drawing his palm flat. January, shocked to be touched after all of this, let it happen. The hand that had went to their pocket pressed something into his palm in a gesture that looked like supplication. “Go.”

January pulled his hand away and glanced into it. It was the key to his cage.

Without saying anything more, January stood up and left.

1.  January had eventually worked up the nerve to ask an intern what was up with Sasha and the yarn, and the intern had looked nervous and then sworn January to secrecy. After a solemn promise of silence that included writing the intern a glowing reference if Sasha were ever to find out that the intern had told January, the intern told him that Sasha was famous among the security officers for knitting in times of stress.

Previously the worst knitting incident had been Gagarin Square, and during the Senator's hospital stay Sasha had completed eight partnerless socks, two beanies, and a cardigan. January's presence was a new source of stress for Sasha, as in the week since he'd gotten married to Gale, Sasha had completed a sweater vest and a knitted rifle sling. The knitting had only gotten worse after the bomb. The intern had sheepishly run their hands along the orange scarf they were wearing when they said that.

January was just glad Sasha had an outlet for the anxiety he was causing them, and wondered if he ought to buy them more yarn as a combination apology/peace offering.

[↺ go back]

Chapter Text

The facts were these: January felt an uncomfortable kind of obligation to find Gale’s probable-romantic-partner and tell them that Gale wasn’t who they thought they were. To address this, he asked to visit the production room so as to find the partner on the video feed and find out what their name was and where they were.

Two minutes and three seconds after January entered the production room with the Consul, the people in the production room were feeling very uncomfortable, as people often did when they were accused of editing video they were honor- and legally-bound not to edit.

Ten seconds later, the praetorians were on edge, as praetorians often were when someone was raising their voice and having an apparent altitude hallucination next to the Consul.

Two seconds later, January had pulled off his glasses in a fit of frustration, and the probable-romantic-partner was standing right in front of him, playing with Kasha.

Four seconds later, January had put his glasses back on and realized that the person was invisible due to some kind of filter, and then the person shoved him into the Consul, and chaos followed from there. It was the sort of incomprehensible chaos that comes when quite a few different people are worried about quite a few different things, and as such are unable to facilitate communication and understanding.

Six seconds later, the probable-romantic-partner had kicked January in the stomach and made him double up. To the praetorians, who couldn’t see the probable-romantic-partner, it looked strange and lurching and odd.

And, as is usual in scenarios with uncomfortable strangeness, a person with a gun decided to put an end to the thing they did not understand.

January was shot.

Earthstronger teenagers expressed their disapproval by throwing a shoe.

Praetorians expressed their disapproval by shooting at teenagers through a glass ceiling.

A grand total of two minutes and forty-four seconds after January entered the production room, a riot broke out.

Songshu was in chaos.

January, feeling a floaty sort of distance from his body that probably wasn’t a good sign – gunshot wounds should probably hurt more – managed to scramble out of his cage and then out of the production room.

His hands were cold and bare. The praetorians must have pulled the gloves off when they’d tackled him the first time – checking to see if his gauntlets were on, most likely.

He went to Gale’s room before he could talk himself out of it.

They’d killed Max-

They’d been right about the riot-

They’d opened Songshu-

The Consul’s praetorians were killing Earthstrongers-

There was an invisible person-

Gale had taken his key-

Gale had returned his key-

But they’d killed Max-

And then January was outside of Gale's room, and a single praetorian was looking through Gale’s door, and he didn’t know what he was going to do.

The praetorian saw January: Earthstronger, uncaged, covered in blood.

January saw the praetorian: Natural, wearing body armor, with a gun.

The praetorian’s gun went up.

January was fresh out of his cage and still unadjusted to the gravity. He hit them, open-handed, across the shoulder.

The praetorian went into the wall with an ugly crunch. January, unthinking, reached out to stop them from sliding to the floor.

Fingers on skin. The ruined face, blood and angles and missing teeth, swung to face him.

“Help!” The voice was choked and wet and faint. January would hear it in his nightmares. “There’s an uncaged-”

January gave a thin animal wail of horror – he hadn’t known he could make a sound like that – and lunged forward, patting the horribly warm and wet face over and over and over again until he was absolutely sure that the praetorian was dead, again and forever, and would never be back in the crumpled and broken form before him.

January pulled his bloody hands away and tucked himself into a ball on the floor, closing his eyes and trying very hard to wish it all away.

An indeterminate amount of time later, January opened his eyes.

There was a very long pair of legs standing in front of him. He blinked at them a moment, then followed them up to find that they belonged to Gale, who was standing in front of him, still in their green jumper and leaning down to look at him.

“January?” they said, in an anxious tone of voice that suggested they’d said it several times before.

“I killed my dad,” said January, “and the conductor in my company, and someone in Gagarin Square, and some small animal about the size of a puffin. But this wasn’t like that. This was- this was like all those bugs that I crushed when I was trying to figure out the rules. It was scientific. It had a purpose. But I killed and unkilled and rekilled those bugs and it was cruel and I shouldn’t have and this was just like that only it was a person but it was just like crushing-”

“January,” Gale broke in, painfully gentle. “Cover your ears.”

January did. He kept his eyes on Gale and off the ground, watching only their face as they stooped to collect something, and then held an arm out toward the body that was formerly a praetorian and several gunshots blasted through his ears.

Gale touched the gun around the barrel, then set it down and looked at January. He took his hands off his ears. There was blood on them now, he was sure. There was blood all over him.

“Are you hurt?”

January stared.

“January,” said Gale, “Answer me. Are you hurt?”

January nodded fractionally. “I got shot. It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.”

“That’s shock,” said Gale. “We need to get you to safety. They made an announcement trying to gather people on the third floor. We need to get everyone out another way. Can you survive a fall at forty miles per hour?”

That was a simple question. January knew this one. “Yes.”

“The tower’s only five hundred feet,” said Gale. “Make an announcement – people will listen to you. Meet me at the big warehouse with the heavy-weather gear.” They reached down and grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. January bit back a scream as his gunshot wound sort of oozed under the additional pressure.

“It’s cold outside,” said January, who was already cold. “People can only be outside for ten minutes without layers.”

“I’ll leave the door open,” Gale promised. “I have to go out another way, but I’ll be there. Tell people on the intercom.” And then they drew back and were gone.

January pressed a bloodied finger to the intercom button on the wall.

Time seemed to pass in skips and jumps. January made the announcement. He ran up the stairs with a whole crowd of Earthstrongers as the praetorians shot after them ineffectively. He smeared blood on a few of the littlest kids that he helped carry, but he told himself they wouldn’t know it wasn’t his.

Gale sent him a message to livestream from his glasses so that people could see what was happening. January did, and gave some sort of brisk-sounding instruction like Val would have done, and people started jumping.

Yuan tugged his sleeve.

January grabbed him and jumped.

The fall was long.

January rolled, belatedly, after he’d landed, but he didn’t think he’d twisted an ankle. It was already so cold. He told Yuan to head for the lights of the warehouse. He told the video that there were more kids than Yuan, and that he’d been shot.

It was very cold. Yuan hadn’t run ahead.

January was on his knees. Yuan was patting him.

January was on the ground. Lights were swirling fuzzily around him. He blinked.

There was an oxygen mask on his face, and a blanket wrapped around him. The lights cleared a bit. “Gale?”

“You’re okay,” said Gale, hauling him to his feet, firm grips on his arms through the blanket. It was brown and scratchy. Yuan was perched on Gale's back, hands carefully clasped around their shoulders rather than their neck. “Just a little further.”

Gale was like warmth and safety and brilliance all at once.

And they’d killed somebody.

So had he.

“Max didn’t think you’d do it,” January said, because it seemed important somehow, to say this now. “I don’t, either. Which I guess makes me an idiot. But your idiot. And I want you to be my human.”

He was choosing them, he realized. He’d met Max, he knew the truth, but he was picking Gale over Max, Gale over wherever River was, and he hoped they might someday give him a reason so he could feel less guilty about it, but he was choosing them. Sorry, Max, he thought, and he wondered if they would be angry, wherever they were now.

“Shush,” said Gale. “That’s the blood loss talking. Just move your feet.”

The warehouse was warm and full of people, which was nice. The warehouse also had Dr. Okonkwo, which was less nice. But Dr. Okonkwo got the bullet out and packed January’s wound, which was unpleasant yet necessary.

The plan was for everyone to slip into the forest with camping gear to eventually rejoin the railway and get back down into the safety of Tharsis.

January thought it was a nice plan. He also thought that he was unlikely to complete it. Dr. Okonkwo didn’t have to say anything, but January knew they shared his opinion.

The senior staff mostly hiked together, at least until everyone collapsed.

Gale had been walking next to January, carrying Yuan, and January saw them waver before they went down.

For a split second, January thought about reaching out. But he wasn’t wearing gloves, and his fingers were numb, and to even take the chance of ending it all horrified him.

So instead he lurched away from Gale and jerked his hands behind his back, and Yuan squeaked when he slid down to the ground as Gale fainted, surprisingly gracefully, onto their face.

January leaned down and patted Yuan’s head. “Are you all right, little bear?”

He wriggled out from beneath a fold of Gale’s coat and looked up, wide-eyed and afraid. “What’s happening?”

January was afraid, too. He tried not to show it to Yuan. “I think the internet’s out. Can you be brave and go wake Dr. Molotov up? Tell them it was the internet if they’re confused.”

“Okay,” said Yuan, and went.

January didn’t dare touch Gale. He had no cage and was unsteady from blood loss and had done none of his readjustment exercises and he wasn’t wearing gloves under the heat suit, and his fingers were still numb enough he wouldn’t know if there was a hole.

“Gale,” he said, leaning down close to them. “Aubrey. Wake up.”

Gale shot up and nearly whacked January’s nose. Various noises of complaint started to sound from the other senior staff. “The Consul’s cut the internet,” they said grimly. “Broadcasting must have been effective, if they don’t want us doing any more of it.”

After Gale had produced a tent like a magic trick and Yuan had discovered the existence of heat silk and gave a commendable effort at melting into the ground, January and the varyingly-stunned senior staff waited in the tent while Gale looked for anyone else passed out in the forest.

“This is crazy,” Dr. Molotov said at last. “Who would have thought the Consul would actually try to assassinate the Senator?”

“They were going to win the election,” said Dr. Okonkwo. “The solar panels were on target. Still were, after the mammoths helped. I think finding Max is just about the only thing that could have given the Consul an advantage.”

Sasha glared at January. “Anyone would think the timing is a little too convenient.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Martinez,” snapped January, wondering how guilty he looked. “I would rather not have found the dead body of the person who had my job before me, either. I would much rather have gone on believing the blissful little lies Gale tells me, but that wasn’t on the cards. What do you want me to tell you, that the ghost of Max desired justice at this time and no other?”

Sasha leaned into January’s space, furious. “You’ve got some nerve, bringing-”

“That’s enough.” Gale pushed through the tent flap and gave one of their room-commanding glares that got everyone to fall in line. “Sasha, he’s got plenty of reason to be suspicious of me. But January, I can explain everything. I didn’t kill Max.”

“Stop saying that,” said January, plaintive and pathetic. “I know you did, and I don’t even care anymore because I’m here, I’m with you, but I just wish you would stop lying to me.”

Gale looked at January, unreadable.

“Senator.” Sasha’s voice was quieter than January had ever heard before. “Don’t.”

“January,” said Gale. “I won’t lie to you. I didn’t kill Max.”

January wanted to cry.

“You are correct that Aubrey Gale killed Max,” they added. “But I’m not Aubrey Gale. I’m River.”

The facts were these:

In the forest outside of Songshu, when River Gale was forty-four years, eight months, three weeks, and two hours old, Colonel Max Liu was forty-one years, two months, one week, four hours, and sixteen minutes old, and not a minute older.

Max was located exactly forty yards, two feet, and three inches away from where River was negotiating the return of their halo from a mammoth calf.

Notably, Max was not alone. Aubrey Gale was also present.

That was the day Aubrey Gale shot Max Liu.

River heard a gunshot. River went to investigate.

Aubrey said Max was missing. Aubrey said there was blood.

River called Sasha.

There was a lot of blood on Aubrey.

There was no body.

River offered to put a halo on Aubrey, to see if they’d seen anything useful despite the fact that they were frightened.

Aubrey said no.

River insisted.

Aubrey said no.

In short order, River accepted that: There was no bear. There was no intruder. And lifting a dead body would get quite a lot of blood on a person.

Over the course of this acceptance, Aubrey slammed the end of their rifle into River’s chest and sent them sprawling.

This was the first time in their life River had been hit.

It was the first time in their life River had been hit so hard they fell down.

And every future time – in a riot, in a sandstorm, in a nightmare – that River fell again, for a brief sparking moment they would remember this moment:

Aubrey, and fear, and the falling that comes when a sibling you trusted to have your back would never have your back again.

River saw the future written on Aubrey’s face. They wore the kind of fear that mammoths called vixen-and-the-bear, the kind of senseless wild fighting of frightened animals. They would hand over the Gale sun fields to Consul Song if it got them out of jail.

And Consul Song didn’t want Tharsis to make its own power. Consul Song wanted Earth to send power and people, more and more of them each day.

River thought about Earthstrongers, and about what getting knocked down had felt like.

“Halos don’t work on me,” River said.

They agreed to have River take Aubrey’s place for a month. Filters, accounts, life, and everything. Aubrey promised to go to a rehab center and didn’t.

River came to the startling realization that the ruthless thing they’d been stifling under their skin all this time made them either an overly invested academic or a political terror. It was all a matter of setting. Aubrey had never understood their approach to emotions, had labeled River an automaton or a stone throughout their lives, and while River still didn’t understand exactly what it was that made them different, they knew how to calculate and they knew how to be immovable.

They could calculate people and stand immovable on laws and they could make neat, clean, precision-sharp plans that cut anyone who tried to change them. They were a very good senator. No; they were a ruthless senator. Which was a word that had never been applied to River before, but they gave it to themself and they thought it suited them.

Yes, thought River, this is ruthlessness. Right before they went on camera and turned off their filters to show the world the real face of Aubrey Gale.

Afterwards, Aubrey burst into Songshu in a fury. Sasha – loyal, clever, hardworking Sasha – realized what happened. River saw it on their face.

And then Sasha – loyal, clever, hardworking Sasha – tucked the realization far away from ever gaining words, and threw the crazy person who was ranting about destroying Senator Gale out.

After Gale finished their explanation, you could hear a pin drop.^[1]

Everyone was staring anxiously at January. January was staring at the hand that had shaken Max’s.

“You’re River Gale,” he said.

“Yes,” said River Gale.

“And Aubrey Gale killed Max.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said, “You were right. This is a mess.” And then he laughed.

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m relieved, more than anything,” said January. “Though I can’t help but feel we could have avoided all this if you had mentioned this at literally any point before the last twelve hours.”

Gale winced. “I’m aware. And I’m sorry. I just wasn’t sure if I could trust you at first, and then I didn’t want to burden you with the secret.”

January stared, incredulous. “Didn’t you keep Aubrey quiet because if they went to the journalists, you would testify that they killed Max? You didn’t have to trust me at all, Gale – you’ve got something just as good on me to keep me quiet.”

Perhaps that really was the blood loss talking, because January definitely should not have said that in front of the incredulously hungry ears of Sasha, Mx. Francis, Dr. Molotov, Dr. Okonkwo, and Mx. Ren. Yuan, thankfully, had been asleep since before Gale had mentioned murder.

“What does the Senator have on you?” Sasha asked, instantly suspicious.

“None of your business, Martinez,” said January, but he was too tired to snap it.

“It’s private,” said Gale in the sort of firm pronouncement they had that made people decide their energy was better spent not arguing. “But January, I would never use that against you. And I didn’t- what I did – what I am doing to Aubrey is cruel. I didn’t want to do it a second time.”

“I see,” said January, who did. “Speaking of Aubrey, I don’t believe in ghosts. Again.”

“Again?”

“I briefly believed in them, earlier tonight, when an invisible hand wrote the word MAKS on my visor and then dragged me through the forest to where their body was exposed under an uprooted tree.”

“What?” whispered Mx. Francis, passionately.

“How long have you been awake?” asked Dr. Okonkwo, skeptically.

“Anyway,” continued January, doggedly, “I had sort of thought it was Max’s ghost. Seeking justice.”

“I can see why you would think that.” Gale’s face was perfectly even except for the faint twinkle in their eye that said that they too were enjoying the conversation underneath the conversation they were having.

“I don’t,” said Sasha. “I thought we specifically checked that January was at least smart enough to differentiate between an altitude hallucination and empirical reality. On top of the events of tonight, Senator, he’s a liability.”

January spoke over them. “But now I know it’s not Max’s ghost. For one thing, Max’s ghost would never be so rude. So I don’t believe in ghosts again, because I was wearing my glasses under the visor.”

“And what,” said Sasha savagely, “does that have to do with the price of yarn in Dengta?”

“Because the riot started when an invisible person shoved me into the Consul.”

“Let me guess,” said Sasha, “An invisible person only you can see.”

“Precisely. And while your first instinct may be to assume that this is just another side effect of my status as the universe’s specialest little guy, your first instinct would be incorrect. Because for a while I had been seeing this invisible person all the time, and I had assumed that they were, at various points, a secretary, a bodyguard, and the Senator’s real partner, and that of course you all could also see them but were merely letting them get on with their work.”

“Wait,” said Gale, “You assumed I had a romantic partner and didn’t tell you?”

“It’s none of my business,” said January, trying to make himself sound much more stoic and uncaring about it than he actually did. “Anyway, after the charity fundraiser at the Tiangong, I saw this person much less frequently. Almost as if they’d become invisible.”

Mx. Ren snorted, and then hastily forced themself to hold a straight face under Sasha’s stern glare.

 “I gave you your glasses just before the fundraiser,” said Gale suddenly, the force of their full-focused mind clicking through the story faster than January could tell it. “And you said you were wearing your glasses under your heat suit. And everyone here’s got implanted haptics except you.”

“Exactly,” said January, completing the pas-de-deux. “It’s an invisibility filter.”

“Dr. Okonkwo,” said Gale, turning to them abruptly. “You’ve been saying my sleep disorder is unusual because I don’t have any of the biological symptoms. What I have is bruises and a feeling like someone is grabbing me. And-” They hesitated. “I’ve been feeling it other times, too, as if someone is touching me when I’m wide awake and in the middle of a meeting.”

Dr. Okonkwo sputtered. “You never-”

“I thought it was delusion, but I didn’t have time for figuring it out, so I was managing it.”

“The TV show,” said January. “That could show you what was real.”

“And people would see if I actually did start to lose it,” said Gale.

“But video drones are connected to the internet and filters just like implanted haptics are,” said Mx. Francis. “That’s why you can see all the virtual layer stuff like floating jellyfish in recorded fashion shows.”

“So if there is a person,” said Sasha. “With some sort of visual filter that manages to somehow completely erase them rather than merely modify their appearance, the only way you’d be able to see them is if-”

“You didn’t have a tech connection in your brain,” said January. “If, for instance, you were perhaps not born here and lacked access to universal basic income. They’ve probably been in Songshu since whenever Gale started feeling things.”

“Months,” Gale murmured, “since after Gagarin Square. Aubrey-” and it was the first time they’d said their name since January had started talking about invisible people, making it all much more real, “they’ve been haunting Songshu for months.”

“But not haunting,” said January. “Because they’re not a ghost. However well they impersonated Max’s nonexistent ghost-” January was struck by a sudden thought. “Er,” he said, “how likely is it that Aubrey is working with anyone else to ruin your life?”

“Likely,” said Sasha. “You said they shoved you to start the riot, right? That benefits the Consul, not House Gale. If they’re not working with the Consul, they’re at least helping them.”

“Ah,” said January.

“What’s bothering you now, January?” Sasha was done with absolutely everything.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said January, giving Gale a pointed look. “It’s only- Aubrey did take me to Max’s body. And I was wearing my glasses, so I couldn’t see them at all. I don’t know if they stuck around.”

Sasha sighed. “So?”

“They might have seen me discover the body,” January stressed. “And have a bit of an emotional reaction toward the person named Aubrey Gale. It could be very bad press if they happened to see all of it. Or record it.”

Gale tilted their head in minute acknowledgement. “There’s nothing to be done about it right now,” they said. “The internet’s down for everyone, so we can’t broadcast, but neither can Aubrey or the Consul.”

That was true, but it didn’t particularly make January feel better.

“And they can’t track us,” said Gale, “so if we’ve concluded the last of the shocking personal revelations and mysteries, I suggest we all get some sleep.”

The little tent had gotten so warm that Gale, after a sort of contemplative look at January – he’d taken off the heat suit so Dr. Okonkwo could check the bandage, but was still buried in a thick ochre jacket from the warehouse gear, as well as Dr. Okonkwo’s – removed their own layers down to the shirtsleeves.

It was the first time January had seen Gale’s arms. They had very nice arms, January thought distantly. Graceful. And then he squashed that thought with extreme prejudice and told himself that was the blood loss talking.

The rest of senior staff had scattered to other tents – Sasha only left after a quiet and furiously whispered conversation with Gale that January pretended not to hear – and so Gale and January and Yuan were alone, Yuan sleeping against January’s knee.

Gale was opening up the rations they’d grabbed from the warehouse gear, and January blinked himself away from a distant stare into space when Gale frowned and said, “Well, that’s unfortunate.”

There was vegetables and broth and egg, all individually packaged for combination in a little cook-stove, but the vegetables packet – the largest of the three – had evidently torn some time ago, and all the carefully preserved vegetables had grown into fuzzy mushy mold with the exposure to air and damp.

January laughed faintly, and then winced when he could feel it in his bullet wound, which was feeling unpleasantly like it was still bleeding through Dr. Okonkwo’s second bandage.

“Give them here,” he said, holding out a hand. “My party trick will actually be helpful for once.”

Gale scooped up the packet and then dropped it carefully into January’s hand. Both of them had bare palms, but any extra fear had oozed out of January with the blood, and being anxious seemed like too much effort. Gale was graceful and careful, and January was paying attention, and there really wasn’t much danger here even if neither of them were wearing gloves.

January leaned a little closer to the cooking pot and finished tearing the vegetable packet open. Then he reached in and, one by one, picked out each piece of vegetable with a careful two-finger grip and dropped it into the pot. As he touched each one, the vegetables grew in color and freshness, losing the mold and the wobbly lines of mush.

“That’s very useful,” said Gale, watching with a sort of intense wonder. “And they’re safe to eat?”

“As safe as they were when they were fresh,” said January. “Because that’s all they are. Alive-again, fresh-again, returned to what they were before they died.”

“Huh,” said Gale, adding the broth and the eggs into the pot and staring contemplatively into it. “It feels faintly cannibalistic, to eat something else that shares my status.”

“Please don’t identify with the carrots,” January said earnestly. “We’ve got enough problems without you going on a hunger strike.” Gale laughed. “Besides, you have to eat them, because I’m planning on looking very pathetic with my seeping bullet wound and asking if I can have some of your share of egg.”

“You don’t have to look pathetic to get what you want, January,” said Gale, frowning. “You just have to ask. Of course you can have my share of egg.”

“I don’t need all of it,” said January. “Just- more calories helps with the whole keeping-warm thing when we have to walk again. And you and Yuan are splitting the vegetables.”

“Oh,” said Gale. “Eating them would…?”

“It would count as a second touch, yes,” said January. “Very King Midas of me, I know. I can return fruits and vegetables to shining freshness, but I can’t eat any of them. If the ballet school thing didn’t work out, my backup plan was to make a killing at farmer’s markets by just buying up all the rotten discounted fruits and vegetables and selling them at full price the next day.”

Gale stirred the broth. “And you won’t have any touch-related troubles with the egg?”

“No,” said January. “The eggs that we eat aren’t fertilized, so they’re more like a vegetable than a Christmas turkey, in terms of potential trouble.”

“I see,” said Gale, and then they brought out tiny collapsible cups from somewhere, and a pair of chopsticks, and bent their head over the pot to start picking pieces of egg and vegetable out with singular focus.

It was oddly touching to watch. Gale could very easily have just poured the broth into three cups and picked the vegetables out of January’s, but they obviously didn’t want to leave anything to chance, and so they very, very carefully made one cup of vegetables, one cup of egg bits, and one cup of egg and vegetables. Finally, when there were three soggy cups of soup ingredients and one clear boiling pot of broth, Gale split the broth between all three cups and January nudged Yuan awake to eat.

Yuan attacked his food with single-minded focus, and January, eying the small gap of space in the corner of the tent, said, “There’s enough room for everyone in the other tents, right? If we need to squish we could probably fit another person in here to sleep.”

Gale shook their head. “There’s plenty of space in the others. These tents are rated for four people, but I thought you might like less of an audience for a little while.”

“I appreciate it.” January smiled, a little ruefully. “I might not make very good company, though – I’m probably going to just rest until we have to move again.”

“That’s all right,” said Gale. “Though it might be best for you to stay awake while you rest, just for my peace of mind.”

January was pretty sure the only injured people you were supposed to tell to not fall asleep were people with hypothermia or people who you were otherwise worried about quietly slipping away from life.

“No promises,” he said, trying to smile. “I can fall asleep anywhere.”

“I’ll set Sasha on you,” said Gale, forcing a smile back. “One of the ways I got them to leave us alone and go to another tent was promising them you wouldn’t, because they seem to think you’ll roll over in your sleep and kick me.”

“Unlikely,” said January. “This lovely bullet wound is on the side I usually sleep on. I’m sleeping flat on my back for the foreseeable future.”

“How’s it doing?”

“It’s okay,” said January, “Just feels a little wet.”

Yuan, apparently listening, glanced up at January’s shoulder, and then back down again. January craned his neck to peer down. Good. The blood that he could feel oozing around the bandage hadn’t soaked through his jumper yet, so Yuan couldn’t see any sign that January wasn’t actually okay.

That thought sent another chill through January, despite the warmth of the tent, and he was starting to get the feeling that at a certain point, blood-loss cold was going to beat any number of jackets he could drape on himself.

January realized, abruptly, that he’d lost a bit of time in hazy thought, and that Gale was now crouched right in front of him, Yuan hovering nearby.

“Lie down, January,” said Gale. “Just rest.” They placed their hand over January’s good shoulder and helped him lie back, and then they drew a lab-grown grey sealskin blanket over his legs. “Yuan,” Gale said, “Can you help me?”

Yuan, wide-eyed and tired, came up close to peer at January’s face before solemnly nodding to Gale.

“Put your hand on his forehead,” said Gale, sitting themselves cross-legged next to January, “and put one hand on my forehead, and tell me which of us is hotter.”

“What’s that do?” Yuan asked, looking between them as Gale tucked a few loose strands of their hair behind their ears. January was abruptly aware of his hair, which he was certain was a sweaty and static mess, and had an inconvenient yearning for a comb.

“It’s a way to tell if he’s sick without a thermometer – something to take his temperature,” said Gale. “Sick people have a fever, which makes them hotter. Since I’m not sick, I’m about the correct temperature for a healthy person, so I want you to compare how we each feel and see if January is similar or hotter.”

“Okay,” said Yuan. He knelt by January’s head and placed his hand on January’s forehead. It felt cool to January, which was probably a bad sign. Yuan turned toward Gale with his other hand, and said, “Can you lean down more?”

River Gale, the Artemis twin and ruling Senator of House Gale by virtue of their own planning, hunched their shoulders awkwardly and ducked down so that a three-year-old Earthstrong child could place a sticky hand on their forehead.

Yuan closed his eyes in thought for a moment, and then he announced, “January’s hotter.”

“Can you describe it?” Gale didn’t sound worried at all, but their eyes had flicked instantly to January’s.

“It’s like the floor,” Yuan said, referring to the heated silk panels of the tent fabric. “But maybe less hot than that?”

“Okay. But still hotter than me?”

“Way hotter." Yuan frowned and drew his hands in to his chest. “Does that mean he’s sick?”

“Just a little sick,” January croaked, and then he regretted it, because he sounded awful. “Gale’s right – I’ll feel better when I rest.”

January rested.

January? January? “January?”

“Mmblegh,” said January, which he felt was a fairly articulate statement for someone waking up with a bullet wound after the painkillers had worn off. Still, despite the pain, he felt both cold and as if he could fall right back to sleep, which didn’t strike him as the greatest possible combination of sensations, but he was too tired to worry about it at the moment.

Besides, Gale was there, and Gale was smart. Gale would worry about it for him and come up with a solution.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” said January, proud of himself for articulating. It was hard to open his eyes. “Worrying.”

“A little,” said Gale’s voice, which was attached to their face, which was hovering anxiously over January’s. “Can you watch Yuan for a minute?”

January turned his head enough to see that Yuan was fast asleep curled up against his side. Which was good, because January wasn’t confident in his watching-over ability for any more strenuous level of activity.

“Yeah,” he said, and almost before he’d finished saying it Gale was gone. Apparently it had been urgent.

One minute passed.

Then another.

Then another.

January started to get a weird feeling.

Actually, it was a weird bad feeling.

January’s brain was slow and scattered and probably running on far fewer calories and blood circulation than it should be, but he was eventually able to figure out the cause of the weird bad feeling.

Exactly thirty-four minutes and twelve seconds after Gale had left, January shouted at the top of his lungs, “Sasha!”

Yuan startled awake and looked wildly around, and then looked at January and his eyes got very wide.

“Sorry,” January said, but couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Six seconds later, Sasha burst into the tent, one hand on their holster and the other one shaking loose a pink snarl of yarn that might have been the beginnings of a hat. “Where’s the Senator?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask,” said January, gripping onto the fear that was starting to rush through him to keep himself awake. “They’ve been gone for…” He hadn’t been keeping track of time. Just ‘too long’.

Sasha was staring at him funny. “That’s a lot of blood,” they said, almost cautiously.

January looked down. “Oh.” The seeping he’d thought was still beneath the layers of bandage and jumper and jacket had evidently conquered all three as he’d slept. There was a near-black liquid pool in a sort of wobbly oval on the topmost jacket of his pile.

That seemed like something Gale was going to worry about.

Forty-six seconds later, Gale’s voice echoed through the trees on the speakers used for the mammoth sirens. “Everyone in the woods, it’s safe. You can come back inside.”

“January,” said Sasha calmly. “If we get back to the house, and you’re not dead, but the Senator is dead, you’re dead.”

Despite the fact that both Sasha and January shared a not-insignificant amount of skepticism regarding January’s ability to make it back to the house, Dr. Okonkwo managed to get January up and walking with a rather alarming set of needle injections.

Yuan had held January’s hand for moral support – which January privately admitted to himself was rather helpful – and then January carried Yuan back tucked under his good shoulder, because Yuan was unwilling to lose sight of the other half of the adults he liked.

When asked what his parent’s name was so that January could return him to them, Yuan just shook his head and informed January that his mother had died, and though some people had been pitching in to look after him, none of them loved him.

January didn’t have anything to say to that.

1. Well, not actually a pin, because the tent’s bottom was a sort of thick plastic fabric with a soft covering, and a pin would drop soundlessly into fluff.

After Gale finished their explanation, you could hear something breakable with a net weight of five pounds and a velocity of a fall from about six feet drop.

[↺ go back]

Chapter Text

When they arrived at Songshu, January, to his eternal disappointment, didn’t pass out. If there ever was a time to do it, it was after dramatically walking out of the woods with a life-threatening gunshot wound towards his spouse who was waiting with an assortment of doctors. But January’s body did not apparently share his sensibilities for drama, so he merely endured the rush into the house and the incomprehensible chatter of people and doctors and the dizzying light-headedness until the blood transfusions and the sutures started to do their jobs.

What followed over the next two hours was what is known as ‘presenting a united front’. Senator Gale and Consul Song appeared before both the virtually and physically present public, and acted very strongly like everything was going to be okay.

And, as often happens, the scared and hurt people listened to the calm people rationally explaining what had happened as a tragedy and an accident and how there were lots of reasonable plans on what to do next and move on from here. Dr. Okonkwo had produced January’s glasses from somewhere, and he could see that the same story was echoing across all of the social media pages: everything was fine, and would be fine, and would continue to be fine.

It all seemed, to January, too good to be true.

But the internet and drones were firmly back and keeping an eye on everything, so January was unable to say what he really wanted to say, which was, “What’s going on, River?”

Instead, he sat with Gale and consoled Earthstrongers and lent out his phone to people who needed to call a religious officiant about their dead. Nobody – Earthstronger or Natural – made any sort of comment about religion or lack thereof, which was a relief, because January was fairly certain no one could handle a God and gender conversation with any level of grace at that moment.

After a lull in people who wanted to talk to either Gale or January or January’s phone, Gale squeezed January’s arm through the unbloodied mango-colored jacket he’d found, and said, “Come upstairs with me? I need to find somewhere a little more quiet.”

“Yeah,” said January. “Me too.”

They left Yuan with Mx. Francis, and then January followed Gale up to their room, quietly amazed at how, despite everything, they still moved as regal and stately as a steamship, whereas January felt more like a little tugboat caught in their wake.

It was a lot of effort to put one foot in front of the other. Someone had found his cage and brought it to him, but they hadn’t found the key. When January had quietly mentioned this to Gale, Gale just gave him a long, level look and said, “Good.”

Because all of his concentration had been dedicated to walking in a straight line, it wasn’t until Gale closed the door and sighed that January realized that he’d followed Gale into their room, and that he didn’t know what to do next.

Gale did. “Go wash,” they said, nodding towards an open doorway. “I’ll get you new clothes.”

January blinked. “But the internet’s back,” he said, thinking of Aubrey. “You shouldn’t-”

Gale opened a drawer and drew out a stack of light blue cloth. “This should be your size,” they said. “Go on.”

January didn’t have the energy to try and figure out why Gale had spare clothing in his size – a foot shorter than anyone else at Songshu – in their room. He went.

Gale’s bathroom, astonishingly, featured a bath that was more like a little inground pool. He stared, and then got rid of all his clothes as fast as he could without aggravating his shoulder and got in.

The water was warm, and blissful, and suddenly January was certain that he’d never been warm in his life, but he might be able to get there now, surrounded by water on all sides that felt like it was reaching into his frozen core to thaw him.

January laughed to himself. Didn’t he leave Earth in the first place to get away from water? And here he was, relieved beyond measure to be drenched again. Somewhere in the middle of the thought, the laughter turned to tears, and he buried his face in his hands.

A repeating footstep echoed on the tile behind him. Gale walked lightly, but their prosthetic clicked anyway. Probably they’d been able to walk as silent as a cat before they’d lost the leg.

They walked around to the side and lowered themself to sit at the edge of the pool, across from January. They pulled their robe up to the knees and swung their legs in, and January pushed himself back. “Don’t-”

“I’m not getting in,” they said, holding up an oak hairbrush that he hadn’t noticed. “I’m just sitting with you.” Their eyes tracked quickly over him for a moment, and they added, “If you’re comfortable.”

January had given up on ever being considered pleasant-looking by Tharsis standards on his second week of living on Mars. He had no self-consciousness left. And though the fact that he was naked, and that Gale’s remaining leg was completely exposed, made him anxious, he was at the other end of their little pool. Even if he tripped, he shouldn’t be able to flail and touch them.

“I’m comfortable,” he said, and when Gale tossed him a cloth and soap from a shelf next to them, he caught them and went about getting off the blood and the dust and the sweat.

“That looks inconvenient,” Gale observed, after January spent sixty-four seconds trying to jam the cloth between his arm and the main bicep support of his cage. “Why don’t you just take it off?”

“Wasn’t one of the rules that everyone had to keep cages on so the praetorians would put the guns away?”

Gale shrugged. “You’re bathing. It’s not like you’re going to go run the halls naked. And there aren’t any cameras in here.”

“Oh,” said January, “Good,” because he had been wondering about that. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Gale, though the instant January tapped the release and stepped out, nudging his cage out of the way to soak, their face darkened and he wondered if their answer had changed.

Before he could ask, Gale said, “You’ve got bruises.”

January looked down at himself. There had been a sort of darkened purple knot all around the bullet wound, but that was mostly sealed away under the watertight bandage Dr. Okonkwo had produced to protect his new stitches. There was some bruising on his forearm, where he’d caught himself jumping from the tower, but the bruises that Gale was referring to were the ones from the cage.

Faint purple lines tracked all over his chest and limbs in a tender tracery of all the major muscle groups that needed to be pushed back against in order to make January safe to be around.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re supposed to take it off a few hours a day to prevent this kind of thing, but it’s not a requirement.”

Gale slowly resumed brushing their hair, still staring at him. “It’s a requirement now,” they informed him. “After this mess is over, anyway. You make sure to put time in the Schedule for you to take care of yourself. Get Mx. Ren to help you bully Solly if you have to.”

“Okay, Senator,” said January with a teasing little quarter-bow, and ignored the part of him that was pointing out that Gale didn’t sound like they were offering to bully Solly for him.

After January got out and wrapped himself in a towel, he hauled the cage out and started drying it off as well. He’d only barely started when there was a relaxed sigh, and he looked over to see that Gale had gotten into the pool and was sitting on the bench with their eyes closed, looking like they wanted to go right to sleep.

The water came up to their shoulders when they sat on the bench – January had stood, as he’d been unable to sit on the bench without drowning himself – and he couldn’t help but stare at the marks on Gale’s body in turn.

There were scars like claws on their shoulders. Like a big cat had tackled them. Or human hands had grabbed.

January closed his eyes and tried to remember, flexing the hand that had landed on Gale’s shoulder in Gagarin Square. He hadn’t clawed them, had he? Just fell on them. Which was pressure, bruising, if anything, not- not that. Right?

“Was that the hand?”

January opened his eyes to find that Gale had moved closer, resting their arms on the edge of the pool closest to where he crouched over his cage, like they were some curious sea spirit observing a person on shore.

“What?”

“Was that the hand that touched me? My memories of that day aren’t very clear.”

“Er,” said January. “I think so. It all happened very fast. But you were already on the ground when I fell on you.” He held up his left hand. “I touched your shoulder, but everything was already numb from the water.”

“You’d think I’d remember that more clearly,” said Gale. “Dying and returning alive again.”

“Well,” said January. “As I’ve just re-proven, blood loss makes you very confused. And likely to pass out.”

“That’s true.”

“I tried to pick you up,” offered January. “I hadn’t seen your leg yet, so I thought you’d just fallen. I wanted to put you on your feet.”

Gale’s gaze was distant in memory. “I remember being lifted. It hurt.”

“Yeah,” said January, grimly guilty. “That was me.”

“Thank you.”

January was hearing things. “What?”

“Thank you,” Gale repeated. “I don’t think I’ve said it yet. Thank you for bringing me back.”

“I mean,” said January. “It was an accident.”

“I know. But you could have taken it back at any time – yes, I know there would have been consequences, but you could have – and I am grateful. I imagine you don’t hear that a lot.”

January thought of Terry and the conductor. “Yeah,” he said. “For what it’s worth, you’re welcome. And- I’m glad I did. Even accidentally.”

Gale smiled, something small and tentative, and January gave a tentative smile back.

Once Gale had gotten out and both they and January had dressed again in matching sets of pale blue pajamas^[1], Gale had gone to a drawer and removed what appeared to be a roll of plastic wrap.

“What’s that for?” January asked, watching as they tore a large piece.

“Before my leg had healed enough,” said Gale, “I’d have to bathe without getting any of the bandages wet. I’d wrap it in this.”

“It looks like the plastic wrap you’d use for baking."

Gale smiled. “It’s very similar. Just a bit less likely to tear if it catches on a buttonhook.”

They carefully laid the sheet across both their palms, and then walked over to January, holding it out like they were offering it to him. Their hands were delicate and steady beneath the thin layer of see-through plastic. “Show me what you’ve got,” they said.

January knew the tests for friends and coworkers across Earthstronger-Natural divides. He even knew the test that was recommended for those living together, though he had been certain he’d never need it.

He opened his mouth to ask if Gale was sure, and the intent look they gave him was answer enough.

January pressed his hands down on theirs. The plastic was thin enough that he could feel the faint warmth of Gale’s hands through it, though he was sure his hands felt far warmer.

“Harder,” said Gale. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

So January pressed harder, and then harder still, more than he thought he should, until Gale’s hands inched down a bit, and he stopped.

“See?” said Gale, almost to themself. “We’re okay.”

And then, quicker than January could follow, they moved their hands to press over and around January’s, wrapping his hands in the plastic wrap, before tugging his hands up to press a kiss to each of his knuckles.

They were warm, and gentle, and January felt abruptly treasured and wildly confused. If he could have, he probably would have done something foolish, like kiss them.

“Stay here for the night?” Gale asked. “There’s a trundle bed in here from when my sibling and I used to have sleepovers.”

“Yes,” said January, which was an accomplishment because he really wanted to say, ‘I love you,’ which was an inappropriate response to one’s arranged spouse starting to solve the problem of how to run a Romance Timeline when the partners couldn’t touch.

Gale trusted him, and he trusted Gale, and they’d keep each other’s secrets and look after each other, and that was enough. January didn’t need to be getting his feelings all over them, and since there was absolutely no chance he could do anything risky like kiss them on a spur-of-the-moment impulse, all he had to do was watch his words and Gale would never have to know.

January slept on the trundle bed next to Gale, and when he woke, he found that he’d balled himself up like a hedgehog under all the blankets and that Gale was speaking quietly with someone at the door.

“January,” said Gale, turning back to him, and January blinked to see Mx. Ren, looking abruptly delighted to see him – by virtue of his location more than his presence, he suspected – waiting by the door. “Would you like to come watch the solar array launch? The tower is above the dust storm.”

January, Gale – and the media drone that had followed the two of them pointedly from Gale’s rooms – made it to the largest meeting room in Songshu in record time. Several engineers and a surprisingly limited number of PR team members^[2] were watching a variety of screens, but the largest projection on the wall was a live feed of the ship carrying the panels. It was waiting on the red square of the launch dock and January had never seen anything so beautiful.

An engineer nodded at another, and then the engines fired, and the whole room was dead silent as they watched the ship slowly drift up and out of the launch pad area. It moved faster once it cleared the observation building, and the whole room sparked into relieved chatter when one of the engineers announced: “Course is set and steady. It should be at the top in two hours, and the array should be completely installed and operational in eight and a half. We’ll keep you posted.”

There was a bit of an awkward silence, as everyone quietly realized that a launch was not quite the near-end to all the tension as they’d expected, but then Mx. Ren said, a touch loudly, “Well, we’re almost there, then! I, for one, am looking forward to a nap once we’ve shown this Mars dust who’s in charge of our electricity.”

The silence burst as people laughed, and some began to chatter again, which was good, because Gale took the opportunity to fold gracefully to their knees, so gracefully it almost looked like they had done it on purpose.

January hastily knelt beside them. “Senator?”

Their face was relieved and worried and a whole host of other unreadable things.

“January,” Gale said, focusing on him. “You know how every sudden wonderful thing in the worlds comes with a cost?”

“Yes,” said January, who did.

“The united front with the Consul, launching the solar array unimpeded, getting everyone back to Songshu…” Gale trailed off.

“What was the cost?”

“Me,” said Gale. “I’ll end my campaign for Consul and go to prison.”

“What?” said January. “No. No one will stand for that. Look at-” He waved a hand demonstratively at where the PR team was huddled in a euphoric clump flicking through various glamor shots of the solar array. “-all that. You’ve saved Tharsis, you can’t go to prison.”

“Aubrey Gale saved Tharsis,” said Gale quietly. “And anything is easier to do a second time.”

Oh.

They were going to give Aubrey their life back.

Aubrey Gale – who’d been missing or invisible or doing who-knows-what for the past few years – would be alive-agained as easily as if January had touched them. But the cost was that River Gale’s life as they knew it was over.

“So Aubrey is working for the Consul?”

“Yes,” said Gale. “And I suspect they’ll be in Song's pocket in exchange for covering up Max.”

Someone cleared their throat, and they both jumped. “Senator,” said the praetorian who’d appeared behind them. “It’s time for your meeting with Consul Song.”

“Of course,” said Gale, easy and unbreakable as water. “January, could you-?”

“Of course,” January parroted, unable to think, as he stood and then reached down to grasp Gale’s forearm and help them to their feet. Gale rested a hand on his shoulder, and he could only tell they were nervous because they were attempting to dig their fingers between the metal of the cage and his shirt, as if they could hold onto him better by burrowing in.

January wished they could, and walked with them after the praetorian – who was quickly joined by three others – down to a lavishly decorated series of rooms that he’d never even known existed.

Inside was a frozen waterfall, Consul Guang Song, and the person January now knew to be the real Aubrey Gale.

Gale – River Gale – said, “You’ve been staying in Kali’s rooms?”

“You didn’t let anyone in here.” Hearing them speak for the first time, January could hear River in it – the shared education and upbringing evident – but their voice had a slight rasp to it, as if they’d spent too much time whispering.

They stared at each other and January was sure that volumes of words passed that only the two of them knew, but all River said out loud was: “Are you okay?” and all Aubrey said was, “Yes. Are you?”

River agreed, and then the Consul nodded at the praetorians, and the nearest one gently placed a hand on River’s wrist and pulled it off January’s shoulder to be handcuffed behind their back.

January felt as frozen as the waterfall. He just watched. And then one of the praetorians hooked a metal bracelet around River’s wrist, and they disappeared.

January yanked off his glasses so hard he nearly poked himself in the eye, and to his unending relief, River was still there. They were quiet now, not meeting his eyes or anyone’s, and looking more like a lost and downtrodden academic than he’d ever seen.

The Consul smiled expansively. “Poor little bee,” they said, “You must be terribly confused.”

“Who are you?” January asked, ignoring the Consul entirely and staring down Aubrey Gale. Some creeping animal in the back of his mind told him to play dumb, to play the housecat that had no idea of the machinations of the humans around it, and since River was not otherwise signaling him with a brilliant plan, January followed his instincts.

“This is Aubrey Gale,” said the Consul, grinning. Aubrey gave a polite nod without breaking eye contact with January. “Your spouse. They plan on stepping down from the consular election after the events of yesterday in order to set their House affairs in better order. After all, records show that Sasha Martinez fired the first shot.”

That filled January with a surprising amount of fury. For all that Sasha had side-eyed and grumbled about him, they’d never actually drawn their gun in his direction. He knew they took their job and the weapon they carried very seriously, and to imply that they’d fire at scared Earthstronger teens, or whatever the Consul had the video doctored to show, would destroy their reputation and their pride.

“Martinez wasn’t even there,” January said.

The Consul shrugged. “To the victor, the spoils, and to the winner, the facts.”

“You can’t change the fact of a whole person,” said January. He glared at Aubrey. “That person is not my spouse.”

River’s head glanced up out of the corner of his eye, but just as quickly down again.

“You can change the facts when the facts you learned are incorrect,” said Aubrey, “You’ve been lied to. I am Aubrey Gale. The person you’ve been living with is my Artemis, River. Let me explain.”

The facts, as Aubery Gale knew them, were these:

Kali Gale had taken as their passion two things in life – an exorbitant self-interest and a determination to believe that the vagaries of life in the world ended when they did.

So when Kali died, Aubrey was horrified but not entirely surprised to discover the following things.

• Kali had enjoyed spending money – their room had had an in-ground waterfall on a planet where water came at a premium.
• Kali had accepted quite a lot of money from House Song.
• In exchange for this money, Kali was to drive the solar array system into overpriced inefficiency so that the Consul could set up privatized energy from Bejing and tie them inextricably closer to Earth.
• To seal the deal, Aubrey would marry Max, and Houses Song and Gale would present a united front into the future.

Aubrey, as a person raised by Kali Gale, did not like being told what to do. Neither did River, but they dealt with it by disappearing themselves into language books and mammoth societies. Aubrey had turned to more exciting activities that got them cited for inappropriate behavior for a House Gale Apollo.

Lt. Col. Max Liu was the very opposite of exciting and House-heir-inappropriate activities. Aubrey didn’t want them. And to make it worse, Max didn’t even want Aubrey.

Max, like River, seemed to have a steel plate where feelings ought to be. Max, like River, was very comfortable speaking hypothetically about their death as a part of a brainstorming solution to address Aubrey’s problems.

Aubrey was sick to death of stone-faced people who calmly looked at the idea of their own death like they were an unimportant worker drone in the service of some all-important entity called a House.

Aubrey hadn’t actually meant to do it. They had just wanted to scare Max. Just wanted to see them have an emotion for once in the time they’d known each other.

Aubrey was still able to draw an emotion out of River, but it was harder these days, and took much more needling until they would cry. But at least they still would, and Aubrey would have proof that they weren’t the only person in the world who felt things.

The Hades filter – the fancy invisibility bracelet tied to everyone with haptics or internet – proved to be a useful tool for scaring Max. At least, Aubrey thought it should. Even a soldier should be unnerved at having an invisible person with a gun gallivanting about. And if they were unnerved, they would show it, and then Aubrey would have proof that they weren’t the only messy-feelings person in this marriage.

Aubrey just wanted to feel less alone. But Max just kept calling their name at a slightly louder decibel, and if a slight increase in tonal volume was all that Aubrey could look forward to for the next five years of marriage, they weren’t going to tolerate it.

Well.

It was just supposed to be a thought.

They were going to tolerate it. They had been right about to calm down and accept it.

It’s just that their finger moved first.

“Sorry,” said January. “You accidentally shot Max?”

“It’s a tragic accident,” said the Consul, consolingly. “But it does happen. I’m sure River could tell you the exact number of firearm mishandling manslaughters per year. They did, after all, memorize those statistics for Earthstronger manslaughter.”

January flinched. River didn’t, because they had poise and self control.

“You live in a place surrounded by open land and forest and polar bears,” he said. “I know you’ve had rifle safety training. I’ve had it, even though my marriage contract has a whole section about how they’ll never provide me with one. What accident could you possibly have had?”

Aubrey took three steps closer to January, who stood his ground, but he had to tilt his head back to look at them properly. This close – he’d refused to put his glasses back on in order to keep sight of River – they started to blur, and he could almost think they were River. Until they spoke, and where River was all steady glacier danger, Aubrey was a crackling fire just waiting for you to be stupid enough to pour on gas.

“Whatever Max told you,” Aubrey said, low and deliberate, “They weren’t me, and I am the one who knows what happened. It was an accident.”

January’s heart was somewhere in his shoes, and his throat felt too narrow for air.

“Max – ” He had to stop and take another breath. When River threatened him, it was with precise calmness – I’m afraid your psych evaluation is a nonnegotiable condition. This threat, one sneeze away from completely destroying plausible deniability in front of the Consul and four praetorians and who knew how many hidden cameras or how many people Aubrey had already told – January couldn’t think about that. “Max is dead,” he said, weakly. “They didn’t tell me anything. It was just – the body looked like-”

“And you’re a licensed medical examiner, are you?” said Aubrey, raspy and dangerously sweet. “You can read an entire situation from however many months ago by looking at a bullet wound in a body?”

They were starting to smile now, like they’d won. They had. Now Aubrey knew what he could do, and they knew he wanted it to stay a secret. January would do a lot of things to keep it that way.

January swallowed hard. “No.”

“No,” repeated Aubrey. “But I was there, so I’m telling you, it was an accident.”

“Okay,” said January.

“Do you want to hear the rest of my story?”

“Yeah,” said January, because the Consul was eyeing him with slight confusion, and January knew he’d lost.

The rest of the facts according to Aubrey had a rather difficult time entering January’s skull to any degree of comprehension, as approximately eighty percent of his brainpower was devoted to panicking and fourteen percent was devoted to making it look like he wasn’t. The remaining six percent of his brain understood the following:

River-as-Aubrey had shrugged off Aubrey’s blackmail and the slow destruction of the solar arrays with a halo test and a public release of finance data and financial overhaul. They dropped the price of energy and raised the House Gale profits, and decided to top it all off by running for Consul.

Aubrey couldn’t take their life back during a Consular run – people running for Consul had no life, famously. So Aubrey gave their sibling an untreatable sleep paralysis and hallucination condition, and River retaliated by starting a reality show.

But Aubrey handled it. They were handling it. Right up until they went down to Tharsis to practice being a not-invisible-person and realized that they couldn’t handle being spoken to anymore. That was a skill, apparently, and one that you could lose. Aubrey had known muscles could atrophy, but not people-skills.

Aubrey needed help, and the Consul had just won a debate against River with facts. Aubrey hadn’t known that was possible. The only way they’d ever won debates with River was by shouting them down or making them cry.

So Aubrey had gone to the Consul for help, and the Consul had said they would help in exchange for House Gale and House Song being a united front again. That sounded nice to Aubrey – they were sick to death of being alone and invisible.

When Aubrey was done, everyone was staring at January. Aubrey, the Consul, River, the impassive praetorians.

“So now what?” he asked. “United front, the two of you?”

“Yes,” said the Consul. “Just as we’re supposed to be. And you, of course, will be with us. It is Aubrey Gale you’re married to, you know. The paperwork is very official, no matter who was standing in their shoes.”

January looked at River, who was looking at their shoes.

“River will have to be in prison,” said the Consul, sympathetic in a way that made January’s skin crawl. “But not orbiting Jupiter. Aubrey didn’t think you’d like that, and besides, putting them in the same facility you were in seems fitting, doesn’t it?”

"That way you can visit them," said Aubrey, acid fire in their eyes. "I know they might seem like an unfeeling zombie who just wants to eat brains, but they really do quite like you. Well. You’d know better than me. About the zombie thing, anyway."

Out of the corner of his eye, January saw River flinch.

January wanted to scream. Aubrey hadn’t told the Consul yet, that was clear, but if they kept dangling these obvious comments, someone was going to figure it out.

January wouldn’t make it five years with Aubrey juggling his secret with all the delicacy of a dancing rhino.

This was only going to end in laboratory tests and small white rooms. January could see it like a ghost in front of him – life in a locked room where the only parts of him that left were the parts cut off with a scalpel, or life in a basement where his only visitors were living people snatched off the street and dead people rich enough to pay to come back, or life in a government closet where he touched dead Natural people while the Earthstrongers who’d jostled them died in their place.

And then January looked at River, whose eyes were lifted to meet his with matching horror, and he didn’t care anymore. Because this whole time River had been quietly accepting checkmate, but it was January’s fate five moves ahead that made them protest. They cared for him, and it hurt.

How stupid, thought January. He loved them, and he couldn’t even touch their cheek to say goodbye.

“Okay,” said January. “So what does the Schedule say now?”

“Now we do a press conference,” said the Consul.

“United front,” said Aubrey, and they looked almost gentle as they said it, like they’d gotten the thing they wanted.

“United front,” said January, and tried not to look like he was screaming on the inside.

The lectern was set up for a livestream press conference. January was bracketed close between Aubrey and a praetorian who was keeping a discreet hand on River’s elbow in a way that might have just been them stretching their hand on empty air.

“Just read the autocue,” said Aubrey, quietly. “It’s all there, you don’t have to improvise.”

“Good,” whispered January back. “I’m terrible at improvisation.”

“Me too,” said Aubrey, and smiled, a bit, and in that moment January hated that he could see why plenty of people liked them. They weren't a mustache-twirling villain - they were reckless and out of their depth but they were a person. They were the person who was going to destroy River and January and House Gale, but they were funny and wry and bad at improvisation.

The thing was, River was excellent at improvisation. But River couldn’t do much of anything right now, beyond perhaps convince a few people that Songshu was haunted before they got themselves killed.

So January took a deep breath and looked at the stage around him. I’m Senator Gale, he thought. My Senator Gale. And it’s time to perform. What can I do?

He took another deep breath, and it was like the air went into the secret pair of dancing lungs he only ever used when he was creating the miracle of flight. His stomach was turning with nausea and his shoulder hurt, but he could think past all that, he could leap into the air if he had to.

The best performances were always based in truth. He had an idea and he took it.

“I’m going to be sick,” he whispered, which was halfway true. Aubrey turned to him, alarmed. “Just- just- I’ll be back.”

He sprinted for the bathrooms, and maybe in that moment he really was River Gale, because things clicked into place for him just like they did for River, and Dr. Molotov was walking just in front of the bathrooms.

January grabbed them by the elbow and shoved them in as gently as possible.

Dr. Molotov, looking vaguely concerned, opened their mouth, but January beat them to it.

“The Consul’s switched Aubrey and River back,” he said. “River’s wearing the invisibility filter now. Can you-” January struggled to think of something that Dr. Molotov could actually do. “Could you turn off the internet?” he asked. “So that people can see?”

“With no warning?” Dr. Molotov was usually quiet, but they were intense now, blinking rapidly at them with a growing frown. “It’s dangerous, people will collapse wherever they are.”

“A few seconds, then,” said January. “Just enough to put doubt in their minds. We need to do something now, or our Gale disappears for good, and House Gale is just a nice coat that House Song puts on in the morning.”

“Okay,” said Dr. Molotov. “I serve at the pleasure of the House of Gale.”

They opened the door and hurried off, and January splashed water in his face and tried to look as if his word vomit had been actual vomit and that he was now emptier and ready to present a united front and in all ways be extraordinarily un-plotting.

River leaned over to look at him when he walked back. January didn’t meet their eyes because he didn’t trust himself not to give it away, not when the Consul and Aubrey were also looking.

“All right?” said the Consul, in an affected attempt at January’s accent.

“Yes,” said January flatly. “Or better. Lots of life-changing information is still not great on a bullet wound and two meals in two days. But I can make it through this.”

“We’ll have dinner after,” Aubrey promised. “I’ve been looking forward to that part. The Consul’s chef is nice, but Songshu tastes like home. I've missed it for a while, because nobody’s leaving any leftovers for the ghost.” They leaned into January’s ear with a conspiratorial whisper. “Maybe we can swap ghost stories later. I'm very curious to hear yours."

January swallowed and tried not to actually be sick.

And then the Consul stepped up to the podium and the lights snapped on and the drones all focused, and January got ready to do something hopefully brave, and hopefully helpful, and hopefully good for the House of Gale.

Around him, the Consul and then Aubrey were speaking, saying things like cooperation and investigation and how Aubrey Gale was stepping down from the election in order to give full cooperation to the investigation.

Aubrey elbowed him lightly – familiarly, as if they knew each other, and for all the cameras knew, they did – and January shoved his glasses back on and read the autocue. He performed. He assured people that House Gale was cooperating fully with the investigation, and that in the unlikely event Senator Gale was temporarily unable to run the House due to the investigation, the capable House staff would keep everything running smoothly. He smiled picture-perfect-plastic and mentally promised to bake Dr. Molotov a dozen pies if they would just hurry up.

The autocue vanished.

January blinked, and people around him staggered or fell. One of those people was the praetorian guarding River. Improvise, January thought, there’s an opportunity. He stepped off the podium and straight into them, snatching their gun and flinging it away before knocking them to the floor – carefully, he was careful – but he pinned them and searched their pockets for the key to River’s handcuffs.

He could feel River standing somewhere over his shoulder, watching the room. “Internet’s up again,” they said quietly just before January’s fingers found the key fob and he clicked it. “Follow me.”

January spun around to see River appear out of thin air as they slung the invisibility filter bracelet to the ground and stepped back up on the podium, facing the silver glitter of the cameras. January left the praetorian and followed them, eyeing anyone else who looked like they were trying to get close.

“That is not Aubrey Gale,” said River, straight to the cameras in hard and carrying tones. They didn’t look at Aubrey even as they pointed at them. “I will remain in the election, and I will be going to court with House Song for kidnap. If anything happens to me today, it will most certainly be murder.”

“It’s true,” said January, wishing he had a script for this to sound as coldly fierce as River did. “This is Senator Gale. That person’s wearing filters, but they’re not my spouse!”

Aubrey – who was indeed wearing filters to mimic River’s face – wore a horrific expression. Praetorians were shouting and people were moving closer and if anyone else touched River January was going to scream. He hit the release on his cage instead and stepped out in front of them. He felt like a bodyguard and was grimly satisfied with it.

Then the light pressure of River’s fingertips moved him aside as they stared down the Consul under the gaze of dozens of cameras. January stepped aside as River guided him, as easy as thought. He trusted them.

That was the final straw. January saw the defeat pass over Consul Song’s face as they realized that there really was nothing more they could do. Not with this room full of people, not with these faces, not with these cameras.

The Consul jerked their head in a signal towards the head praetorian. River’s head turned to track their response.

January’s eyes skipped past the praetorian and found Aubrey. Aubrey, who had seen the Consul’s defeat as clearly as River had. Aubrey, who was holding a gun.

January had been out of his cage for thirty seconds. His sense of force and scale was completely unmoderated. He was Puss-in-Boots, to move in the service of Prince Désiré. But all anyone else would see would be Schrodinger’s Cat leaping out of its box.

He could be nuclear. He could be harmless. But Aubrey was right there, and the odds favored destruction. Destruction of Aubrey, destruction of the rest of January’s life.

There was no self-defense option for the nuclear cat.

But losing River would be unthinkable. He’d already lost them once, before he’d even really known what he’d lost, and there was only ever one chance January had to bring them back. It was one chance more than anybody else got, and January was going to protect it.

January lunged. The cat jumped out of the box.

1. Gale, in a rare show of embarrassment, had ducked their head and muttered something about Mx. Francis conspiring with Mx. Fenhua for “all possible outcomes”.

[↺ go back]

2. All grinning fiercely, like perhaps they’d knocked someone’s teeth out or won an insanely unlikely sweepstakes to earn the right to be in this room.

[↺ go back]

Chapter Text

One week, four days, seven hours, and seventeen minutes later, January was laying on his back on the top bunk of the bed in his prison cell, glaring at the Mandarin character displayed on the screen he’d propped on his knees.

Every twenty-four minutes for the past three hours, the warden had stuck their head in to ask if January had changed his mind about coming down to the canteen to watch the election results roll in.

Every twenty-four minutes for the past three hours, January had declined. It was irritating, and distracting, and he was going to have to redo all these drills tomorrow and be behind on his language proficiency testing timeline, which he’d mapped out down to the month for each of the next twenty-five years of his sentence.

He had Mandarin and Russian improvement planned, of course, but in later years he was going to learn Hausa and Hindi, and for Gale’s sixtieth birthday he was going to try to write a poem in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European.

He was keeping busy. He had goals. It was important to have a plan if you were looking down the barrel of twenty-five years in a box.

It was nineteen minutes after the last time the warden had stopped. There was a knock on the open doorframe.

“You’re early,” said January without looking up. “I still don’t need to know who wins. I need to know what this character means.” He angled the screen over his shoulder towards the door.

“Swan,” said Gale from just next to his head. “Or, more literally, sky-goose. I don’t know if you’ve learned the character for ‘goose’ yet, but that first character is ‘sky’, remember?”

January sat up so quickly that he hit his head on the ceiling. Gale was standing next to his bed, and after he’d twisted around to sit facing them with his bare hands tucked under his thighs, they rested their forearms on his mattress and leaned close to look up at him.

“Just because I’m skipping the election results to study Mandarin does not mean that you can,” said January, his brain still processing the surprise of Gale’s appearance. His voice was louder than he’d meant it to be. “I mean, hi.”

After the mandatory minimum sentence of twenty-five years for uncaged manslaughter, before he’d been issued a basic study device with no outside internet access, a guard had brought a stack of papers to his cell approximately one foot high.

It had been a printout of the Schedule for the next twenty-five years. The items within the next four years were mostly minimized down to thin lines too small to read, or occasionally redacted or marked with question marks as placeholders, but there was a one-hour chunk of time marked out every Saturday morning that had been highlighted and placed in a large font so that January could see it. “Private meeting: A. Gale and J. Stirling. Location: Dengta Prison Visitors Room.”

January had cried and spent three hours carefully lifting up every single page to see that same meeting repeated each week. Even fifteen years out, where the Schedule was completely empty save for things like birthdays and ten-year-reviews, there was an hour blocked out every week for January.

It was a promise that they wouldn’t forget him, and January had loved them even more for it.

He’d vowed that he wouldn’t be embarrassing or needy or emotional when he saw them. Gale had done as much as they could for him. The least he could do was convince them he was content.

So for each of the two visits they’d had so far, January had carefully spent the preceding half hour assembling a mask of calm adjustment and clear progress on the road to acceptance and had been able to speak to Gale normally.

It was the sort of practiced performance you did for someone you loved, and January, unexpectedly faced with Gale now, was reminded that he was both terrible at and hated improvising.

“Hello,” Gale said, searching in his face for something. “Are you all right? I didn’t think you’d mind, but I can leave if you’d rather.”

“No,” said January, “I’m fine. I’m happy to see you. How are you doing?” He blinked very hard and told himself not to cry in front of Gale. Just because seeing them twice in one week now felt like birthday and Christmas and rescue from the long dark road of repetitive days that stretched out in front of him didn’t mean he had to cry about it.

“Nervous,” said Gale. “Will you come watch with me? I’d like you to be there when we know – one way or the other.”

“Yes,” said January. “I’ll come.”

The prison canteen was loud and full of people and flashes and drones. A massive screen was pulled down over one whole wall, and there was a moment of vertigo deja-vu as the newscaster on the screen displayed a live video of the inside of the prison canteen, creating a sort of canteen-into-canteen-into-canteen effect before it cut to something else.

January looked across the tables and saw Gale’s entire staff spread out among the prisoners. The publicity team was handling drones and typing press releases under Mx. Francis’ watchful eye, but other members of the senior staff appeared to be having friendly conversations with the Earthstrong prisoners – all sharing January’s sentence – and January was delighted to see that Sasha appeared to be amiably chatting with an Earthstronger who’d been a soldier and was wearing the sort of expression that expressed shock at themself for having a pleasant time.

“People!” hollered Mx. Ren over the din. “They’re going to call New Kowloon!”

The current poll results flashed up on screen. Nearly neck and neck, with Gale a shade in the lead. New Kowloon was notable for being the biggest constituency in Tharsis. If someone was going to be Consul, they had to get it, and it would be the deciding factor with the results as they currently stood.

It was also Consul Song’s home constituency.

The canteen was perfectly silent save for the sounds of one hundred and fifty people breathing.

“You know,” said January quietly, because he talked when he was nervous and seeing Gale unexpectedly had reminded him of all the thoughts he had every day that he wanted to tell Gale and had to save up and winnow down to a one-hour time slot every week. “I didn’t do it because I expected you to do anything about it. I don’t expect you to do anything about it. The law is the law, and you shouldn’t feel guilty for leaving me here. I mean, you can feel a little guilty if you must, and carry my cage key around forever as a token of your undying devotion, but don’t feel guilty enough to keep you from being happy and taking care of what happens next.”

“Please stop being nobly self-sacrificing,” said Gale. “It sounds like you plan to disappear in here, and you should know that if you disappear I’ll have to come find you. I don’t need to carry a token of my undying devotion because I don’t plan on needing the reminder.”

January couldn’t look at them head-on. He put his shoulders toward the poll results and laced his fingers together behind his back, pretending it was Gale’s hand he was holding.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gale’s shoulders flex, almost like they were doing the same thing.

A voting registry steward raised their hand on the big screen. “New Kowloon calls for Senator Gale.”

The world erupted into noise.

Mx. Ren was producing an improbable amount of white and gold glitter from various pockets. Earthstrongers were excitedly thumping each other on the back with varying sounds of cloth and metal. Sasha and Mx. Francis appeared on either side of Gale to grasp their arms and help them up onto a table where everyone could see and the drones could get the best shot.

Gale appeared on the big screen, glittered and grinning and larger than life, but January just looked at the real one in front of him and breathed.

“Good evening,” Gale said, and their voice carried. “First things first. January Stirling, by Consular Pardon, you are absolved of all charges against you. You’re free.”

Roars and shimmering erupted all around them, and January smiled helplessly as an entire pocketful of silver confetti was dumped on his head.

The room was more splendid than the stage at the Royal Ballet had been for the final act of Sleeping Beauty. In the final act, when January had played Prince Désiré, he and Annie had danced one final grand pas-de-duex before the whole ensemble joined in and confetti fell from the rafters. Then the show had been over, and January and Annie and Eugene and the rest of his friends in the company had hugged each other for a good show and gone to their respective homes. 

This certainly felt like the grand finale. The big curtain-close moment of success and celebration. January smiled for the cameras and for Gale, and tried his hardest not to think about the fact that he desperately didn’t know what came next.

January woke up with the certainty that he was dreadfully late for something. He was in a massive bed with red and white sheets, and Gale was sitting at the end of it, a book propped on the blanket over January’s legs.

January blinked at them. “Your book’s on my shin.”

Gale closed the book and looked at him. “As a general rule,” they said, “Tea is not a meal, and the human body cannot survive on it for more than three days.”

They put their hand on the blankets and rubbed January’s shin where the book had been. It was very gentle.

“I know,” said January. “I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“Please do. I don’t like not being able to catch you when you fall.”

January hadn’t expected them to try. Faintly, he had a memory of walking into Jade Hill and the lights going fuzzy, and Gale saying, sharply, January, sit down- and reaching for a chair. He felt absurdly touched.

“I don’t like not being able to catch you, either,” he said, and it felt like a confession. He looked around to confirm that they were still in Jade Hill – probably, since he didn’t recognize anything. The room was lovely, with big glass windows that looked out over Tharsis. Buildings rose in steel and ivory streaks against the sky.

“This is it,” said January. “Isn’t it? When do I have to go?”

“Go where?”

“The naturalisation center,” January said, trying to keep his voice level.

Of course he’d known it was coming. He’d just not been thinking about it.

At first, it had been a choice between naturalisation right away, or marrying Gale and hoping they lost the election so that he could have five years of someplace to live and save money to avoid naturalising as long as he could.

But that had changed, with the Consul and the sun fields and everything. It had become a choice between Gale losing – and Gale ending up dead or in jail - or Gale winning – and January naturalising. Losing Gale had become so unacceptable to him that he hadn’t let himself think about the cost. But he’d made his choice, and it had happened, and here were the consequences.

“No,” said Gale.

“No?”

“No. We’re not doing that. And when I say we, I mean you and me but also the entire Tharsese government. I can’t make you do that, and if I can’t make you, then I can’t make anyone.”

January stared at them. Nothing felt real. They were still touching his leg through the blanket.

“I won’t kiss you,” he said. Gale’s eyebrows shot up. January shook his head. “No. Wait. That came out wrong. What I meant was, I really want to kiss you. Right now. And in general. But I didn’t want you to think I would because I can’t, and I know I can’t so I won’t. Even if I want to. And it’s not even anything you have to think about, if you don’t want to, because – you know. I can’t. So I won’t. But in case you wanted to think about it, in case I am not entirely misreading the fact that your hand is still on my shin, I thought I’d say. In case it would make you happy to know; I’d like to kiss you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” said Gale, face unreadable. “I’m not making you naturalise even if you don’t say things like that.”

“I know,” he said. “The kissing is unrelated to your politics. It’s just- this makes it harder to resist.”

Gale searched his face for a moment, and then liked what they saw enough to smile. “I’d kiss you,” they said. “If it wouldn’t kill me.”

“Oh. Really?”

That seemed unlikely. Gale was Prince Désiré and January was just January. Puss-in-Boots, not Princess Aurora.

Gale squeezed his ankle. “Do you know what phantom limb is?”

January shook his head.

“It’s when you feel it, even after it’s gone. Phantom pain, phantom sensation. I’ve had it before, occasionally. But the worst I ever had it was when you were in jail. I kept tripping on missing you.”

“I’m here now,” said January, feeling suddenly, abundantly happy. “You came and got me.”

“I did.” They glanced at the window, and then back at him. There was a faint shushing noise, like an old fan in the background. “I have something to tell you,” they said. “I wanted to tell you in private first, before I gave my speech.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve been saving lives. People who would have otherwise died have not died, because of you.”

January frowned and twitched his hands – bare still, he’d changed into the clothes Mx. Ren had brought before leaving the prison, but they hadn’t thought to bring gloves for formal election wear – back further away from Gale. “What? I haven’t-”

“You haven’t touched anyone,” said Gale. “Not physically, anyway. The video of you swearing the oath and giving me your key has been viewed millions of times. There’s a hashtag - #EarthstrongHonour – and millions more posts. Cage-related accidents have been on a downward trend for the last month. People are giving their keys to their partners, their neighbors, their friends. Several of the Earth embassies have opened secure key storage boxes.” Gale hesitated, watching him. “I had some of the interns comb through the hashtag,” they added, a little more slowly. “They found every single post where someone shared a moment that would have been an accident – if they hadn’t given their key to someone else. I thought you might like to read them. To know the effect you’ve had.”

January’s throat was too full to speak.

“There’s forty-five so far.”

January gave up the fight and wept.

Gale made a wordless tender sound, and when the bed shifted and a blanket was draped over his head like he was a child playing hide-and-seek, January leaned into the wool warmth of it and the subtle strength of the arms on the other side. His face was pressed into red fabric and there was the edge of a jaw resting on his head, tucking him into Gale’s arms where it was safe and dark and warm.

They held him until he was done crying, and when January had recovered enough of his dignity to attempt to emerge, Gale pulled the blanket with them when they went back down to sit at the end of the bed.

“Thank you,” he said, voice still hoarse. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” said Gale, deadly serious. “That was all you, January. There’s more than one way to give someone a second chance. Promise you’ll never stop showing me that.”

“Yes, Consul.” Flashes of light reflecting off the skyscrapers caught his eye, and he looked at the window again. The shushing fan-noise was getting louder. More of a dull far-off roar than a rattling fan belt. “I don’t suppose there’s something official you ought to be doing right now, is there? Did you say something about a speech?”

Gale lifted one shoulder in half a shrug, which was how January knew they were rattled because they were normally a fastidiously even person. “I can’t do it if you’re not there.”

“I’m here now,” January said again.

Afterwards, when the speeches and the grand dinner^[1] and the first of many parties were over, Gale brought January back to the Jade Hill bedroom he’d woken up in. They’d said goodnight to Yuan hours ago, in a spare ten minutes between the dinner and the drive to the Tiangong ballroom for the party.

January looked around the bedroom. Red silk curtains, massive windows, end tables and a vanity in rich oak filigreed with gold. It seemed alarmingly fancy, even for a Consul’s spouse. And then Gale went to the closet and opened it to reveal hangers and hangers of their formal clothes, and January realized that it was actually Gale’s bedroom.

They’d brought him here, instead of a separate room. That probably meant something.

No, January told himself, looking at the bed where they’d waited for him to wake up. It did mean something. He trusted them, and they’d told each other they valued each other. If words were all they were ever going to have between them, then he’d have to take them at their word and trust that they would take him at his.

Gale pulled off their topmost robe of translucent gold and arranged it neatly on a hangar. January looked at them and ached.

“Is this going to be enough?” he asked. “You and me, but never touching?”

Gale looked at him over their shoulder, eyes dark. “It is for me,” they said. “If never touching you is the only way I can have you, then that’s what I’ll do. I love you. I’ll love you in any way I can. We can’t touch, so I’ll love you in other ways. I’ll tell you when I speak to you, and when I look at you, and when I listen to you. I will fill my soul with the sound of your voice and the contents of your thoughts.”

January’s heart was in his throat.

“Is that going to be enough for you?”

“Yes,” January said, and he meant it.

Gale looked at the bed. “We probably shouldn’t…” They trailed off.

“Probably not,” January agreed. “I’m a pretty active sleeper.”

“Stay for a bit anyway?” said Gale. “Your room is just through there,” they nodded at a discreet door near the closet, “but I don’t want you to go yet.”

“I don’t either,” said January. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep, how’s that sound?”

Gale’s face was soft and happy. “All right. If you want to change, I think the spare pajama set is in that drawer.” They turned back to slip their next layer – opaque cream and white – into the closet next to its partners, and January turned to the nearby dresser.

The topmost drawer contained two sets of soft blue pajamas – the same that had been in Gale’s room in Songshu. January got out the bigger pair and left it on top of the dresser for Gale, and then took the smaller for himself.

He paused. Something else was in the drawer. A long tube of what looked to be plastic wrap. After a moment, he took that out too. It had been strong, he remembered. It was designed to be a perfect barrier, to keep Gale’s leg from getting wet. It was strong, and thin enough to still feel the texture of Gale’s hands against his.

He watched it, thinking, as he changed into the soft pajamas and put his election-day-consort clothes on an end table. Then, instead of second-guessing himself, he took the plastic wrap and tore off a sizeable piece.

Gale was down to their last layer – a simple off-white tunic and pants that were mostly meant to trap heat – and was reaching for the last hanger. January came to stand next to them, realized they were still seven feet tall, said, “Hold on a moment,” and went to go fetch one of the little end tables.

When he came back with it, Gale was watching him, bemused, and continued to watch him as he set the table down right next to them, and then clambered up onto it to sit on his knees.

Conveniently, this brought his face just about level with Gale’s. January took the piece of plastic wrap, which he’d been careful to keep uncrinkled, and held it up between their faces.

Gale sucked in a breath, surprised –

And January leaned forward and kissed them.

Their lips were soft, and their mouth was warm against his. Their noses bumped, and he could hear them sigh, very softly. It was a little different from the kissing January had done before, but it was tender and warm and Gale, and January thought that he could kiss only like this for the rest of his life and die happy.

“I love you.” His breath fogged between them.

“You are-” Gale kissed him, “going to-” they kissed him again, “make it-” again, “very difficult-” once more, “to fall asleep.”

They settled themselves into Gale’s bed, Gale tucked beneath the covers and January above the covers but having claimed their green sweater to keep himself warm. They were both fizzy with happiness and bleary-eyed with weariness, and January couldn’t keep himself from smiling every time he looked at them.

I love you was beating in his heart like a melody. I love you, I love you, I love you.

“Do you think we’ll say it too much?” he asked.

Gale blinked at him, slow. “What?”

“I love you,” said January, and Gale smiled like they couldn’t help themselves. “If words are the only way we’re going to say it, surely we’re going to say it more often? I mean, I can’t say ‘I love you,’ by squeezing your hand or kissing you. Not without a bit of preparation. So every time I want you to know it has to be words.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“Maybe I want you to know a lot,” said January, feeling his face warm. “Maybe I want to tell you all the time. But – do you think that we'll overuse it? What if the words get stale, or lose their meaning?”

Gale tilted their head and considered this. “Hmm,” they said, “I see your point. Semantic satiation^[2] is a concern.”

“Exactly.”

“Then, I suppose we’ll have to say wo ai ni^[3]. Or ya tebya lyublyu^[4]. And if those lose their meaning, then we’ll have to learn new ways to say it. I’ll learn some, you’ll learn some. We’ll teach each other.”

January swallowed. “There’s a lot of languages out there.”

“Yes,” said Gale. “It might take a very long time to get through all of them.”

Time. January liked the sound of that. “All right. For as long as there are words for love, I’ll love you.”

Gale’s hand reached out beneath the blanket, lifting up just enough to press their knuckles to his knee. “That’s a dangerous thing to say to a linguist,” they said softly. “We know how words are made. I could keep making up new words and keep you forever.”

January put his hand on top of theirs, gentle enough that they could pull away if they wanted to. They didn’t. “Well then. I’ll have to keep you forever, too.”

In the end, Gale did fall asleep, head sinking loosely into the pillow with every breath. They’d turned the lights down low, but January could see well enough to make out the strands of hair escaping from their braid and wisping around their head.

January had propped his chin in his hand and laid next to them while he softly talked about the lanterns and dancing from the evening. He had a hand laid on their chest, over the blanket, and he could feel it as their breath shifted from relaxed and slow to the slower, deeper, breath of sleep.

“Gale?” he whispered quietly, to check. When there was silence, he slowly lifted his hand until there was just a single finger resting on their chest, and traced a heart over theirs.

Then, still trying not to wake them, he rolled off the far side of the bed as best he could with minimal jostling. He went to the discreet door for Consorts and put a hand on the knob before turning to look back at Gale.

They were stretched out and still under the blankets, but when January held his breath he could hear the soft sound of their breathing, and he could see the faintest motion of their chest. Only then did he turn out the lights.

January went to his own room, smiling to himself, and was pleased to find that the temperature was set warm enough to be comfortable for him. He collapsed down onto the bed and fell asleep until morning.

When he woke, January took a proper look at his room. Where Gale’s room had been all reds and golds, his was blues and silvers. Red for Mars. Blue for House Gale. Gale was Consul, now, but they were still House Gale beneath it, and January would help remind them of that.

January eyed his closet and experienced a vivid premonition of several sessions with Mx. Fenhua. Between power outages and jail, he hadn’t seen them in months. He was looking forward to it. Mx. Fenhua had been brilliant in setting a style for an Earthstronger Great House consort; he was eager to see what they’d do for a Consular one. Perhaps he could convince them to do something with mammoths, for Gale. And for him.

January took a fluffy blanket from the bed as protection against the cold morning and explored. The closet had all of his clothing from Songshu, and the bathroom was tiled with ceramics in geometric patterns. He managed to wash Mx. Ren’s celebratory glitter off of most of his face before giving it up as a lost cause and dressing in formal layers that were the same shade of watery blue as the stream that had run alongside his mother’s vineyard.

He had to go around a wall into a little half-hallway to find the actual door to the room – though it would be funny to just enter and exit from the little passageway that led to Gale’s, he thought he should at least know where his own door was – and stopped when he saw the table. It was just in front of the door, a decorative little piece of furniture to fill up the space and to set things when one came home with hands full after a long day.

On the table there was a small blue vase holding two chunky white flowers. His glasses helpfully labeled them as saguaro flowers, but what drew January’s attention more was that one of them was withered. One alive, one dead.

January smiled. They were both beautiful. Perhaps tomorrow he’d swap them.

There was a little card on top of a book next to the flowers. The card was pale cream with decorative edges, and it said, Ljubljú-tja. January picked up the card and looked at the book beneath: A Beginner’s Guide to Old Church Slavonic.

He put the card into the inner pocket that folded against his heart, and tucked the book under one arm before he stepped out into the hallway. At the very end, someone with long dark hair and formals the color of the ocean was waiting for the elevator.

January took one step toward them and stopped to look out the window. A haze of clouds had descended amongst the skyscrapers, and thunder rolled with a low far-off grumble like mammoths calling.

Droplets flecked the glass and ran down in streaks.

It was raining.

There was water falling from the sky beyond the walls, and a second chance at January’s fingers.

At that moment, in the city of Tharsis, events occurred that are not, were not, and should never be considered an ending. Nothing ever truly ends; it only changes, or starts a second chance, or comes alive again.

Endings are where we begin.

1. January’s stomach had been dubious about the prospect of massive amounts of the finest culinary craftsmanship Tharsis had to offer, but then Gale had given his plate a wistful look and January thought about I don’t like not being able to catch you and grimly went after some little dumplings that were made from different batches of dough dyed red and gold for luck. Gale smiled at him when they were gone, and somehow despite all the many extravagantly spiced and sauced courses that followed, there was always a little basket of the good-luck buns on the table somewhere within January’s reach.

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2. A psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener. Planet planet planet. Planet planet planet. Planet planet planet.

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3. I love you.

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4. I love you.

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