Her father, Ari, looked sleek in his own uniform, that of a senior druidh, one of the Navy’s intellectual elite; he carried a neat leather satchel at his side. At least he had been expected. Mardina was more surprised to see that he was accompanied by Penny Kalinski, one of her mother’s old companions from the semi-mythical days of Before. Penny was bent and old – how old was she now? Eighty-eight, eighty-nine? And she leaned on the arm of Jiang Youwei. A comparatively youthful sixty, with a heavy-looking bag slung across his shoulder, Mardina had only rarely heard the taciturn Xin speak, but he was never far from Penny’s side.

With care, Penny sat down, a couple of rows back from Mardina and Beth. She said with a voice like rustling paper, ‘I’m afraid you must blame me for this. Well, indirectly.’

Beth glowered. ‘I know who to blame. You – Ari – you’d do anything to worm your way back into our lives, wouldn’t you? You knew we had to ask you to attend this procedure today. The rules demanded it. Just this one day, I have to stand your company.’

He grinned. ‘Yes, you do, don’t you?’

‘And you can’t resist manipulating the situation to your own ends.’

Ari, nearly fifty years old now, glanced around at the company, at Penny and Jiang, at Kerys – at the Deputy Prefect at his desk, who was rapidly becoming visibly irritated. ‘It’s not so much that I couldn’t resist it. I couldn’t waste the opportunity. We need to talk, Beth. And not about us – not even about Mardina.’

Mardina’s hopes of getting through this day successfully were receding. With rising panic she took her father’s arm. ‘Father, please – this is a big day for me. I’ve waited half a year already for this hearing. Can’t we wait until later?’

He patted her hand. ‘I’m afraid not, darling – but, oh! It’s good to see you again, and I’m so proud of you today, of what you’ve become.’

Beth growled, ‘Become? She wouldn’t even exist if you’d had your way.’

‘Mother, please—’

‘It’s all right, Mardina. But, look – no, I’m afraid we can’t wait. Because once this ceremony is done you’ll be gone, won’t you, Mardina? Lost in your career, lost in Ymir’s Skull. And the opportunity to talk will be lost. And we must talk, you know.’

‘About what, for Jupiter’s sake?’

‘About – what is the English word you use? Before, Beth.’

Beth shook her head. ‘That’s all gone. This is our life now – here in Brikanti, in this world of Romans and Xin. There’s been nothing new to say about all that old stuff for twenty years, not since we stepped off the Tatania.’

‘I’m afraid that’s no longer true, Beth,’ Penny said tiredly. ‘If it ever was. I don’t know what Ari has to tell you today. But part of it’s my fault. The Academy of Saint Jonbar. I always hoped it would bear fruit … Now it has.’

‘What kind of fruit? What are you talking about?’

‘And then there’s Earthshine,’ Penny said doggedly. ‘Earthshine. He’s been holed up on Mars for decades. Now – well, now he may be making his move.’ She glanced up at Kerys. ‘Ask the Navy types about Ceres. Höd, as they call it here.’

The Deputy Prefect had been listening with commendable calm to all this. But now he intervened, speaking directly to Kerys: ‘What’s going on, nauarchus?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ she said honestly, looking warily at Ari. ‘I feel as if the druidh here has handed me an unexploded bomb, and I don’t quite know what to do with it.’

Skafhog tapped a pen against his teeth. ‘One hour,’ he said briskly, standing up. ‘I’ll let you get all this family nonsense out of your systems in one hour – or not,’ he said severely to Mardina, ‘in which case all you’ll be seeing of the Navy, young woman, will be lights in the sky.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Kerys said with some relief. ‘You’re being very indulgent.’

‘I am, aren’t I? Get on with it.’ And he stalked out of the room, with his official scrambling behind.

When he’d gone, Ari smiled around at them. ‘Well. I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today.’

Beth punched him square in the face.

CHAPTER 23

‘Hold still,’ said Kerys. She was crouching before Ari, dabbing at the wreckage of his mouth. ‘I think the bleeding from your cheek has stopped.’

‘I should hope so. That spirit stung.’

‘You’re lucky we had the right stuff to hand. Then again the Navy is used to handling scuffles – even in its headquarters, even in the heart of Dumnona. Now I want to put some ointment on the swelling under your eye …’

‘Ow!’

‘If you wouldn’t keep yakking I could get it done. And you have a dislodged tooth. I’ll push it back in its socket for now—’

‘Yow!’

‘You need to see a dentist. Again you’re in the right place. The Navy has the best dentists in all Brikanti; we can’t afford to send out crews on years-long missions with rotting teeth … There. Hold this compress against your face until you get better attention.’

‘Thank you, Kerys,’ he said dully, and indistinctly, Mardina thought. K-chh-er-yssh. ‘How you enrich my life, Beth Eden Jones. In so many ways.’

‘Maybe you should have stayed away from me in the first place,’ Beth snapped back.

‘Perhaps … but I could not resist. Even from the beginning, when we found your ship, the Tatania. I thought you were so beautiful. And a woman born under the light of a different star, in a different history altogether! That was why I fell in love with you.’

‘You didn’t love me,’ Beth said, and she sounded desolate to Mardina. ‘You loved the idea of me.’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘It wasn’t like that. After all, we did manage to bridge the vast divergence in our cultures, did we not? For a time at least. We married – or would have, if we could have resolved the legalities. And we had a daughter! Here she is, standing before us. A child who is a product of two different histories.’

Mardina pouted. ‘You make me sound like some exotic cross-breed.’

Penny cackled. ‘True enough. You’re a mongrel, child. A mongrel in space and time.’

Kerys touched Mardina’s hand. ‘Ignore all this, cadet. Where you came from doesn’t determine who you are, and that’s true for any of us.’

Mardina forced a nod. ‘Thank you, nauarchus.’

Ari said now, ‘I have always remained fascinated by the question of your origin, what it means for all of us. And that question has become more urgent in recent years.’

‘Why? What’s changed?’

‘Earthshine,’ Penny said grimly. ‘That’s what.’

‘He is long established on Mars,’ Ari said. ‘He could not be dislodged, even if we tried, I believe. And for years he’s been moving Höd, a tremendous mass, around our planetary system. Of course he has a stated objective to bring Höd to Mars, to use its substance to enrich that planet. It was always going to take years, decades, to nudge such a huge body into the correct trajectory. But now he’s stopped filing reports to the Navy on the burns he directs the crews to make, the trajectory adjustments. The crew managing the kernel banks, driving the thing in its slow approach to Mars, are nominally Navy, but it’s become clear their loyalty has drifted to Earthshine. He seems to have promised them extraordinary wealth, power, on a transformed Mars of the future. As a result we can no longer predict the path of Höd, not in precise detail. This creature has accrued extraordinary power over us, in just a few decades. And you brought him here—’

‘You released him,’ Penny pointed out.

‘Some of us who remember the old faiths think he is Loki returned,’ Ari said with a smile distorted by his injuries. ‘Loki, on the loose among the planets, and planning a devastating trick.’

Beth shook her head at that. ‘I don’t think he would see it that way. I heard him talk about those old legends – as they existed in our timeline anyhow. He sees himself as opposing Loki.’