“Why did you go to his talk? Why did you care?”
“I like networks. The subdermal patterns the Gatoi have remind me of networks. Do you think there’s something to the idea they’re being controlled by the Phene? I was just playing for time when I said all that at the banquet.”
Sun lowered the pistol. “All right, Persephone. Get us out of Argos. Then we’ll talk.”
Persephone had a decisive manner that Perseus had lacked. “Once they’ve searched the cargo trains and tunnel they’ll guess we escaped on the boats. So here’s the plan.”
Sun raised a hand. “Stop. First, I must address the cee-cees.”
Persephone’s brow wrinkled. “We don’t have time.”
“It’s necessary.” Sun turned to the others. “According to your contracts you have the right to refuse service that precipitates an imminent threat to your life. This turn of events falls beyond what any of you can have expected when you signed up as employees. Go if you wish, with no shame attached. Furthermore I don’t want anyone to stay who would rather leave. Tiana?”
The cee-cee had just pulled a handheld dryer from her duffle. “I’m staying. I need my paycheck.”
She threw in a reassuring nod to Persephone, and the Lee girl let out a breath in relief and nodded back as the cee-cee began pulling moisture from dripping clothes.
“What about you, Isis?”
James’s cee-cee was from a minor branch of Samtarras House, one downward step from losing House status and becoming citizens. She’d been with him since he was made a Companion. James didn’t even look her way; he was watching the boats reach the open water.
“I stay,” Isis said.
“Candace?”
Alika went through cee-cees about as fast as he broke strings. That Candace had been with him almost a year was testament to the fact she hadn’t had to survive an Idol Faire season with him yet, but she fit in well, and her military background was impeccable. Yet Sun was jolted when Candace pulled off her cee-cee’s ring.
“I’m out, Your Highness. Apologies. This isn’t what I signed up for.”
“No harm, no foul.” Taking the ring, Sun squashed an urge to call her a coward. “Candace Jiāng Alyǎnshī, we are quit of obligation.”
Alika had taken his ukulele out of its case and was examining it minutely for any sign of damage. He looked up now with a surprised flare of the eyes. “Are you leaving, Candace?”
“I am. That late bloomer … I didn’t sign up to get shot at with outlawed dark tech.”
The look she gave Sun betrayed a bloom of fear, an emotion Sun had never before seen in her face. The pistol shot. Navah’s startled expression as blood soaked her shirt. The splash she’d made when she hit the water. Her flailing arms as the sea swallowed her, bait for the scyllas. Sun could practically hear Candace’s thoughts: What if she decides she doesn’t trust me?
The cee-cee tried to arrange her expression into something steady, but the words came out shakily. “Honored Alika, we are quit of obligation.”
“Right. Well. Toss me that pack of strings I gave you to carry, will you?”
Candace winced at his toneless reply but fished into a pocket and threw a green packet, which Alika caught.
“We are quit of obligation. Your contract also binds you to silence about all our activities. You can get a train at the station. Go!” Sun liked Candace, but done was done. She saw no need for inconsequential farewells.
Wiping tears from her cheeks, Candace hurried away.
No one called goodbye because Persephone was already talking.
“There are three train stations within walking distance. I’m hoping that will confuse search parties. Point Panic Sports Garden is closest to us. I need two volunteers to take a short-haul van from Panic Harbor Station out toward the Heffalump Trunk Escarpment. There’s a rental service at every end-of-the-line station. I’ve got a route plotted through the warehouse and manufacturing district that should allow you to avoid notice. You’ll take the logging road toward Auspicious Forests Province, but you’ll double back at Sublime Point lookout and make your way through the Autumn Peace residential zone to Orange Line Station at Autumn West.”
Sun considered the possible ramifications of this elaborate movement. “Why don’t we all just take the van?”
“The van is a decoy.”
“Very well. Who’ll take it?”
Gaze flashing to Candace’s receding figure and then back to Sun, James spoke in his usual drawl. “Isis and I will do the aunt-and-nephew ploy. That always works. We’ll rent two vans to confuse matters and drop one at random along the way. Do we all meet up at Autumn West Station, then?”
“That depends on what happens next,” said Persephone. “We’ll have to let you know later. Princess Sun, you do have a secure channel to your Companions, right?”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that stupid question. By the way, I’d suggest you pull a bag over your head. I’m releasing the banner soldier.”
The Lee girl went from cool and composed to jumping backward like a frightened squib. “What? What?”
Alika forgot himself enough to smirk, entertained at this display of ignorance about banner protocol.
The Lee girl dug frantically into her duffel and yanked out a scarf printed with the CeDCA logo. As she wrapped it hastily around her head, leaving only a slit for her eyes, James laughed. Hetty looked away, frowning. Tiana stepped nobly up beside her employer, still clutching the sandal as if it could possibly be an effective weapon. Although given everything Sun had seen of the cee-cee so far, she had to wonder if it could.
Sun triggered the cutoff on the wires that, wrapped around the Gatoi prisoner’s legs, had been pumping a steady dose of percussion echo into his neuro-enhancers. Released from its dampening effect the prisoner reared up like a cobra sensing a threat, then leaped to a crouch, ready to spring. Persephone pressed a hand over the scarf to hold it in place as its coils loosened and started to sag, exposing bits of skin.
“That’s right, if he doesn’t see your face he won’t attack you,” Sun added as the damped-down anger tightened in her chest.
The banner soldier’s gleaming amber gaze fixed on Sun because she was speaking. She could almost see the grid of his thoughts as his homing system analyzed her presence for threat. In an instant more he would attack.
She extended her right hand, palm up. Being the daughter of a Royal caused her no end of trouble and suspicion in the Republic of Chaonia, but her father had made sure she understood her obligations within the banners as well. She knew the ritual words.
“Where the heavens above did not exist, and the earth beneath had not come into being, there dwelled the cosmic waters, which are the substance of all. Out of this ocean rose Lady Chaos, who gave birth to the eleven exiles.”
His chin came up like he’d been slapped, all the surprise he allowed himself before he tipped forward onto his knees and rested his hands, palms down, on hers.
His voice was low, scarcely more than a whisper, with a smoky timbre. “Thus Lady Chaos said to her twelfth child, the last born, the Royal: protect my offspring, and in exchange they will serve you when you call.”
“I call you now, according to the ancient covenant,” said Sun. “I am born beneath the banner of Royal, child of João, child of Nanshe, child of Ashur to the tenth generation. By the binding of the crown of light I assert my right to demand your service until I release you.”
He touched his forehead to her hands. “I am born beneath the banner of Wrathful Snakes. I am bound by the ancient covenant and by the crown of light.”
She placed her left hand atop his buzzed-short hair, thus cupping his head and therefore his loyalty between her hands. “You know my name. What do I call you?”
“My battle name is Zizou.”
“It is an honorable name among the people. Elegance with precision. You will act as my bodyguard. My safety and security, and that of my companions, is yours to defend to the death.”
“So will it be.”
She released him, knelt beside Octavian’s body, and touched her ring to the ring the dead man wore. The rings had a kind of microscopic burr to them, sealing to the skin of the one who wore them; only the touch of another ring could unseal the connection unless the person wearing the ring took it off themselves.
At her touch Octavian’s ring loosened. She pulled it off his lifeless hand. Zizou put it on, eyes flaring as he felt the bite of the burrs.
“He might want to cover his torso.” Tiana pulled a baggy hooded sweatshirt from her duffel. She tossed it to the Gatoi, then shook out a square of folded fabric to reveal a striped surfboard bag. “The body will fit in here. It’s a hover-bag and can lift up to 120 kilos.”
There was a pause as everyone stared at her.
She shrugged. “I just thought a corpse would draw notice.”
“I’ll do it,” said Sun. This wasn’t the time to ask if Vogue Academy had a class in “hiding the evidence.”
Octavian was a deadweight as she and Tiana rolled him into the hover-bag. She paused before she sealed it closed, wondering if this was the last time she would ever see his face, and then she was furious that the ashen cast of skin and the blank stare of his once-keen brown eyes was the last glimpse of him she would take with her.
“James and Isis can take the hover-bag,” said Persephone. She was kneeling, back to the rest, as she dug through her own duffel.
Hearing her voice, Zizou began to turn to see who was there, and Sun snapped, “Eyes forward, Recruit. Don’t ever look toward that voice, on my order.”
James extended a hand. “Here’s Navah’s ring. I slipped it off before she went into the water.”
He spoke in an unexpectedly harsh voice, with a glance at Hetty’s grim expression. Hetty had not spoken since Navah’s death, and Hetty not speaking was like the sun not shining.
But Sun had done what was necessary, so she sealed the fabric over Octavian’s head and took the ring without comment. James and Isis hurried away with the hover-bag in tow.
Sun pulled two rings off her hand and held them out. “These are the rings Perseus and Duke wore, so I give them to you, Persephone and Tiana. They’ll feed you into my secure network. Persephone, you’ll go separately with Hetty. The other three will come with me.”
Hetty gave Sun a nod, but it was stiff and disapproving. Sun could not shake a sick feeling rising in her gut at Hetty’s continued silence. Yet there was nothing to be done. They had to go.
“Which station?” she asked the Lee girl.
“Sports Garden. A royal wedding means a republic-wide holiday, so there will be a lot of people out and about. And our fancy clothes won’t look out of place.”
Sun slipped Navah’s and Candace’s rings onto her fingers as she started walking. The sting of their connection reminded her of the consequences of disloyalty.
Zizou strode a few steps ahead like he were expecting to absorb a spray of shrapnel on her behalf. With the hood pulled up he was eminently ignorable except for the crisp power of his stride. Tiana walked alongside with her duffel slung over a shoulder. Alika cradled his ukulele case protectively against his chest.
Persephone had pulled on a black peacoat to hide her mourning clothes. She twisted her brother’s ring onto her middle finger. As she and Hetty hurried away down a different path she rewrapped the scarf in a more practical fashion.
Sun’s network blinked as a appeared with a message:
OUCH. WHAT WAS THAT?
CONNECTION, Sun replied.
FUNNY HAHA. MAKE SURE ALL PERSONAL LOCATION TRACKERS ARE OFF. TAKE THE RED LINE TO THE WHEELHOUSE. MEET ON THE 1435 GREEN LINE FOR DRUM TOWER. SECOND TO LAST CARRIAGE, SIT IN THE DOWNSTREAM END SEATS.
A code pinged in. Sun forwarded it to James, almost lost to view as he and Isis shepherded the hover-bag toward the Point Panic industrial harbor. She telescoped her vision in on his receding figure. After a moment he raised a hand with two fingers up to show that the code looked legit to him. She forwarded it to the rest of the party.
Hetty was almost out of sight beyond rocks and towering shore bushes and hadn’t glanced back once. Had killing Navah been a mistake? No. Absolutely not. They had proof Navah was a spy, so they’d have had to jettison her anyway. Octavian was dead because Navah had drawn attention to their boat with her flashing bracelets.
Octavian. Percy. Duke. Their deaths would not go unanswered. She swore it.
They reached a windbreak of cypress trees. Beyond lay an expansive public park with playing fields and picnic facilities. Alika had been here before—it had been a competition stop on Idol Faire—so she let him guide them through the garden with its changing rooms for swimmers and surfers, the badminton, volleyball, and basketball courts, and a profusion of table tennis pavilions and handball cubes.
The sports garden was crowded today. No one celebrated alone in Chaonia, and every citizen was required to celebrate on royal occasions. Local citizens were out in their best clothes, playing chess or mah-jongg or Go, singing along to Channel Idol’s streaming karaoke, or crowding up to one of the food carts where free food and drink, nothing too expensive, were being disbursed courtesy of the Ministry of Rites and Culture. Wide banners draped every available surface, big messages painted by the local schoolchildren: “Let happiness bloom” and “At last the skies above are blue.”
Several projections showed a band and dancers in full performance, ostensibly from the hall where the wedding feast was taking place, although Sun had her doubts since she’d seen no stage in the hall. Their party clothes did indeed make it easy to slide through the crowd. Every public festival was an opportunity to dress up. They passed masked monkey kings and mermaid warriors in towering crowns, silver-gowned elves and Asgardians encased in augmented-reality armor, children wearing myco-facture mecha suits and elders in kaiju headdresses pretending to steal their candy with mock roars.
Poor Zizou gave a classic double take when a group of people painted with Gatoi-style tattoos shimmied through the crowd. Their pretended dance moves broke the spell. No banners ever danced in that jerky “savage” style.
He glanced back at her, and for the first time she saw a glimpse of personality behind the obedient banner soldier—his brow wrinkled in puzzlement.
“What was that, Royal?” he asked in a low voice. “Those are not our cousins. They are just painted to look like them.”
“Ignore it for now. I’ll explain later.”
He plunged on, scanning the crowd for whatever a recruit raised within the banners would consider a threat.
Everyone in the crowd was wearing at the very least a ribbon or headband or sash of red in honor of the wedding. Sun grabbed a bunch of ribbons from a pillar festooned with the red and gold of the military, thinking of Octavian. She could barely recall life without him nearby. It was unfathomable that he was dead even though that had been his job: to save her life, even at the cost of his own.
Those responsible would pay for this. They would pay dearly, and they would pay over and over and over again. Every time a glimpse of the feasting hall flashed into view on a pillar or screen her fury flared anew, blue-fire hot.
Tiana was opening a path by letting her duffel “accidentally” bump into people hard enough that they stepped aside. Alika kept his head down, using the case to conceal his face. At last they reached the pillars and rainbow awnings that marked the transit forecourt. All trains and trams in the Republic of Chaonia were free as part of the war effort, so no fee barriers blocked their way. The Red Line platform was glowing with a fading pink; a train had just left.
Down at the far end of the platform Candace was stalking the edge like she meant to jump onto the rails. Sun prided herself on her ability to suss out people’s weak spots, but she was forced to admit she hadn’t seen this coming. Raised on shipboard and later on orbital stations by a string of relatives in the shadow of the dead parents who had given their lives fighting for the republic, Candace feared abandonment. Su
n had thought that would make her loyal through the thick and thin of dealing with the Honorable Alika.
“Tiana, how long have you worked for the Honorable Persephone?” Sun asked.
“I just met her today.” Tiana was also looking toward Candace as she turned the ring that had belonged to Duke around and around on her left forefinger. She had amazing control over her expression. Her face revealed nothing but a pleasant mask.
“Then why are you sticking with us, under these circumstances?”
“You have no idea what it means to be poor, do you, Your Munificent Highness?” Her smile was a scorpion: perfectly designed and with a sting at the end. “Begging your pardon, but people do all kinds of dangerous work because they have no choice.”
“You could have taken less-fraught cee-cee work.”
“Not anything as well paid. If I’m injured or killed in the line of duty my family gets a big payout in compensation.” She gestured back toward the park they’d left behind. “Do you think everyone celebrating cares about the royal wedding? Some have come so their children can have sweets and festival foods they can’t otherwise afford.”
“A fair perspective.” Sun looked back toward Candace.
It really chewed at her to be proven wrong. Which strand of Candace had she misread? How had she miscalculated? She watched the young woman pause at the platform’s far railing and scan the view beyond the station’s awning, which looked toward the central city. From where she stood Sun could not see whatever Candace saw, a sight that made the young woman stiffen, take a step back, then whirl and with an expression of grim determination stride back down the platform toward Sun and her group. She unclipped her fans from her belt but didn’t open them.
Sun waited for Candace’s icon to ping into view, but of course it didn’t. The ring was also a sophisticated scrambler that kept Sun’s personal communications network private.
Unconquerable Sun Page 18
