Read Online Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer - Free Book Online Page A

Mycroft. 」 Danaë’s smile washed over me like sunlight, and she even reached down with those pure alabaster fingers and stroked my hair, as one might stroke a faithful hound. 「 What did you do with the Canner Device? 」
    You, distant reader, and I now thinking back on this scene with the distance of weeks, we two can see Andō looming behind his wife, watching in calculated silence as this exquisite tool extracts what he desires. But the Mycroft who kneels before her, he sees nothing but those eyes, keen as blue diamond, which slice even as they sparkle. 「 I … I never had the Canner Device, Princesse. 」
    She cocked her head like a bird. 「 You never had it? 」
    ã€Œ No. I’ve never even seen it. I only ever had the packaging. I bought the empty box from some arms smugglers. I’d heard about the device from the news back when it was stolen from the lab, everyone did. I wanted the police to think I had the device so they’d think that was how I was sneaking around. It was just a trick to keep them from looking any deeper. 」 It all poured out of me, years of careful silence melted by that coaxing face. I had been close to breaking already, really, the truth brought to my tongue’s tip by the fear that being incriminated in this theft might cost me my parole, but if Andō’s intimidation was a cudgel, Danaë was that perfect scalpel touch against the artery that makes the blood flow free.
    She smiled—what sweet reward, that smile!—and chuckled like a teasing child. 「 Then why didn’t you just say so, you little silly? 」
    ã€Œ I … didn’t want anyone to think I still … I can … 」
    Her smile turned from teasing to forgiveness. 「 You can still do it, can’t you? You can still trick the tracker system, however you did before? 」
    ã€Œ Yes, Princesse. Please don’t tell anyone! They’ll lock me up again, I know they will. But if I’d told them they would’ve taken the means away, and I didn’t want to lose it, I need it in case … in case I need it someday to help … somebody … 」
    The mercy here was that she instantly assumed my ‘somebody’ meant her own bash’. 「 Of course. 」 She gave my hair a second stroke. 「 You did very well to protect that ability. I’m sure it is of great service. 」
    ã€Œ Thank you, Princesse. 」
    Danaë turned back to her husband now, freeing me to look down at the hat in my hands. The sight of it kicked off one of those chains of association which leads in an instant through five links to realization, or, in my case, horror. What had I done? How could I have betrayed so much, so fast? The threat of the device, of being implicated in this theft, it had seemed overwhelming, but I was innocent, and Martin would have believed me. I was not innocent of deceiving the tracker system whenever Bridger or other necessity required. Now, and forever after, Danaë could hold that over me. And so could Andō. I cursed myself inside, although, looking back, I forgive myself now. She was irresistible. Remember, reader, though I use archaic words, I am not from those barbaric centuries when men and women wore their gender like a cockerel’s plumes, advertising sex with every suit and skirt. Growing up, I saw gendered costume on the stage, in art, pornography, but to see it in real life is unbearably different: her shallow breaths within constricted ribs, her round French breasts threatening to overflow the low Japanese silks. Here, as Andō wraps his arm around her waist, the costume makes me see them in my mind: the husband wrenching the kimono back to bare the honey-wet vagina. You see now, reader, why, to tell this history, I must say ‘he’ and ‘she.’ Danaë is a thing long thought extinct, reviving out of time ancient venoms perfected by a hundred