Stormblood, стр. 21

I slip my shoes off in the genkan as is custom, then spread my bare toes on the warm, comforting timber. I’m hot inside my thermal suit, but I don’t unzip it. I won’t be staying long. The reception is minimalist and stripped of all but the essential life-support technology. Edo-style ukiyo-e prints sit on the wall. The first showcases the evolution of human space travel across the ages, ending at our establishment of the colony on this frontier planet. The second portrays the Russo-Japanese war back on Earth, hundreds of years ago. Artyom always thought it funny that so many of us are a mix of ethnicities that wanted to kill each other not so long ago. But my brother hasn’t laughed or smiled in a month now. I don’t think he even listens to music anymore.

A painted wooden door opens silently, and I go to see the Babushka.

She doesn’t look up from her papers as I seat myself on the hard, wooden chair opposite her. Smoky incense drifts past overflowing bookshelves and relics from Earth. The room is silent for what feels like an eternity before, with her head still bowed, she asks, ‘Do you understand what it means to come to me, Vakov Fukasawa?’

I nod slowly. She knows why I am here. She would not see me otherwise.

‘Good.’ She looks up for the first time. She’s still young for this position. Most are at least sixty when they are chosen by the previous Babushka on her deathbed. Her blonde hair is faded. Her skin is as pale as the papers she reads, her eyes grey like my mother’s, but there’s a tilt in the edge of her eye that hints at an Asian grandparent. She is the average, everyday face of New Vladi. But there’s solidity underneath those bones. Like hard, jagged stone underneath a thin layer of snow.

‘I heard what that Szymanski boy did to your sister,’ she says.

‘Kasia.’ My voice is raspy and hoarse. I clear my throat and try again. ‘Her name was Kasia.’

‘I know, child. I know.’

Joon Szymanski is infamous across New Vladi. The boy who, at age twelve, had cut open a pregnant cat’s belly and pulled out its unborn babies to see what they looked like. After he began chopping their heads off with a shovel, people stopped pretending it was a childish phase. But his rich, privileged family protected him then. And again when he threw acid in a girl’s face for mocking his height. She is scarred for life. The memory will haunt her every time she looks in the mirror. But at least she is still alive.

The Babushka creaks back in her chair. ‘Are you sure you do not wish to seek an agreement?’

‘I’m sure,’ I say, the words brittle. I will not settle. Not after he killed my sister.

‘Very well.’ The Babushka’s voice doesn’t change, doesn’t betray any emotion. ‘No direct action will be taken by my office, but you have permission seek justice as you see fit. The Five Courts of New Vladivostok will protect you. No punishment will befall you, so long as you do not harm any other party.’

My hands tighten on the arms of the chair. My sister had been nothing to that Szymanski boy. All her promises, her spirit, her laughter, dying out like lonely echoes in these cold mountains.

The Babushka places a number of objects on the table. A tube, connected to a series of wires. Hypodermics. A vacuum-sealed bag of liquid silver. An untraceable thin-gun.

‘Do what you need to do,’ she says. ‘And do it freely.’

Heart pounding in my chest, I collect each item. I don’t feel the cold as I carry them with me down the mountain. With every step my anger and resolve hardens. And by the time I reach the bottom, I know not just what I have to do, but how.