The Demon and the City by Liz Williams Read Free Book Online

last settled into the figure of a shark-monkey, flat face astounded, thin little hands waving and the long tail beating and twisting against the surface of the plinth. Nanotech art, anything you wanted, moment by moment. The monkey melted down into a nebulous mass, and out of the writhing substance Robin's own suspicious face emerged. Robin watched in fascinated revulsion.
    "It's a mischievous toy," Sardai said, stepping into the atrium. He was very much like his daughter: the same harsh, aquiline face, but with an ascetic cast which Deveth, the puritanical hedonist, had never possessed. He was dressed in a white Mao jacket and loose dhoti, and leaned on a cane. "Come forward."
    Obediently, Robin walked through into the main lounge. Far away on the horizon, the gibbous moon was visible, floating about the hazy curve of the world. The tower blocks of Tevereya rose up to the left, the buildings glinting in the sunlight. Beneath the moon, a smudge of peaked land arose, tiny in the expanse of sunlit water: Lantern Island. Such were the lives of the wealthy, Robin thought again: silent and high.
    "This is my wife, Malian." Sardai made punctilious introductions. Deveth's mother was a big woman, but her face was sunken and hollow-cheeked. She did not look well. Neither of them did, come to that. Without really thinking about it, Robin had assumed that when you were that rich you could afford all the health that money could buy, but evidently this was not so.
    "Come and sit by me," Deveth's mother suggested. She patted the cushioned chair by the side of the couch. Robin sank into it and thought she might never rise again. Giris Sardai unobtrusively disappeared. Malian dabbed her broad face with a handkerchief. Robin wanted to say: I'm so sorry. I don't know where Deveth is . She was still convinced that, somewhere down the line, they would have her arrested, or thrown out. Something bad, anyway. She did not belong here.
    "Tell me about my daughter," Malian said. "You probably know her better than I do." She gave Robin a mock humorous look to take the bitterness out of her words.
    "I've been wondering whether I know her at all." Robin said. With a vague sense of dismay, she found herself telling Malian Sardai everything: about the embarrassing parties, the way Deveth always promised to phone and never did, how they used to go round the market together. She felt her nose start to itch and tingle with imminent tears, and thought furiously, I'm not, I'm not going to cry. She was saved by the arrival of a quiet drone, a slender young man dressed in a green dhoti, with perfect Dravidian features except for his lack of a mouth. Robin tried not to stare. He put a tray down before her: tea and fruit, cut into elegantly carved pieces.
    "Thank you," Robin said. Her nose was about to run. "May I visit your bathroom?" She followed the drone down a twisting corridor. Movement, almost imperceptible, kept catching the corner of her eye. The bathroom, containing a mercifully copious amount of tissues, was larger than her flat. If Deveth had given up all this to go and live in artistic squalor on Mherei Street, she was a fool, Robin thought, impatient with the indulgences of the rich. The poor couldn't afford to experience ennui. Deveth had talked a lot about how important it was to follow your creative instincts, whatever the cost, and Robin had sat silently among her lover's admiring friends and thought what it must be like to have such a choice. And she was one of the lucky ones: with her own place, no need to live with her four brothers and two sisters, and her good job at Paugeng.
    Robin wiped her eyes and nose in front of the wall-sized mirror and repaired what remained of her minimal make-up. Her eyes looked frightened and vast in the small paleness of her face. She wanted to hide in the luxurious bathroom in this enclosed silent place and never go back to her cramped flat or that good job which involved feeding a supernatural captive