Wrapt in Crystal

by Sharon Shinn

  * * *

  * * *

  What was left of the afternoon was a total loss, since Drake could not concentrate on any of his paperwork. He took a nap, hoping to make up for some of the lost sleep the night before, and woke up far past a normal dinnertime. He ate anyway, almost solitary in the hotel dining room, then stepped outside to breathe the cool air and spend a few moments admiring the vista of the stars.

  Nearly midnight. Time for damnfool stubborn ermana priestesses to go wandering through the unsafe streets of Madrid.

  He got in the car and cruised slowly toward the barrios, closely scrutinizing everyone he passed on the road. Ava surely guided him, for he turned down an alleyway he had not previously traveled, and there ahead of him, glowing in the starlight, he saw her walking. His heart speeded up against his will; for a moment his breath was tangled. Laura.

  He pulled up beside her and she glanced into the passenger window, not even surprised to see him. “Let me give you a ride,” he called. She nodded, and climbed in beside him.

  “Where to?” he asked, turning back into the street. “Farther down the street or back to the temple?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t going anywhere,” she said. “Just walking.”

  He glanced over at her. “Just walking,” he repeated.

  “The city is more beautiful at night,” she said. “Full of mystery and promise, with the ugly things covered and everything else left to imagination.”

  “The city is more dangerous at night,” he said.

  “I know.”

  But if she wanted to see the city, he would show her the city. She did not ask to be taken back to the temple and so he drove on, slowly as he dared, away from the barrios and along the elevated highways on the perimeter of the city. From here, the lights of Madrid looked magical, aloof and seductive. Overhead the stars designed their own display of dazzle and witchcraft.

  Drake pulled off the highway at the north edge of town where the stone viaduct arched into the city from underground waterways deep in the desert. Taking Laura’s hand, he led her up the hewn marble steps and along the narrow walkway that ran the length of the viaduct. The thin metal railing did not seem like much protection between them and the rocky gorge below, white and sharp as teeth in the milky moonlight. It was the highest point in all Madrid, and the city stretched before them like a black cat sprinkled with diamonds.

  He released her when they came to a halt, and she laced both her hands through the grillwork of the railing. “I used to come here,” she said, gazing down at the city with solemn fascination. “This used to be my favorite place in Madrid.”

  “When?”

  She shook her head. “Hundreds of years ago.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Why weren’t you at the session today?” Drake asked.

  “I didn’t learn about it till late. I had been out the night before, and I was sleeping.”

  It may have been the truth, but he knew she wouldn’t have come even if she had had plenty of notice. “And why aren’t you wearing your wrist alarm and your eye-crusher? Certainly someone explained their uses to you.”

  “I forgot.”

  “You forgot.”

  His voice was expressionless, but she knew him well enough to color its tones for herself. She faced him, and watched him with the same solemn expression she had turned on the sleeping city. “Cowen, I don’t want another lecture.”

  “What would you do if someone attacked you?” he said, and he could not filter all the intensity from his voice. “Would you scream? Would you fight? Or would you passively bow your head and go quietly to your doom?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Truly, I don’t.”

  He took a step closer. “Shall we find out? What would you do if I attacked you—here, now?”

  She gazed up at him. “Probably nothing.”

  He stared back. “I wish I could shake you up,” he said at last. “I would try to, if I thought there was any way to break through to you.”

  Now she seemed to feel a wash of anger herself, or perhaps it was only irritation. “What exactly is it that you want me to feel?” she asked sharply.

  “Fear, for one thing. A little sense of self-preservation.”

  “Well, I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You’re not afraid of anything.”

  “I never said I was brave.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not brave. You’re just tired. You don’t have the energy to feel terror—or hate—or love—or hope—or anything.”

  She laughed shortly and turned away from him again. He thought she would not reply, but that flare of temper was still with her and threaded through her voice as she spoke. “I have been swept clean,” she said, her words hard. “There are none of those things left in me. Why does that leave you so surprised and furious? You told me yourself that you know what it’s like to be destroyed by pain.”

  “You think that pain is a vacuum,” he said, taking her arm and making her face him again. “You think it sucks you dry and leaves you hollow and empty. You think it will take so much more time, so much more effort, to fill up that empty place again. You don’t think you can do it. But I tell you, pain is a vise. It clamps down on you. Everything you once were, everything you once had, is still inside you, small and squeezed and crushed flat. If you can break that vise, if you can move and stretch and open up again, all those things inside you will expand, will come back to life. You will feel everything again, once you give yourself room to feel.”

  “It is taking all my energy,” she said, “to move and dress and speak like a rational human being. I don’t have the energy to break chains and vises.”

  “Well, try to spare a little of that energy to protect yourself when you prowl the streets at night,” he said. He was surprised to realize how angry he was; it was an effort to keep the harshness from his voice. “How hard is it, physically, to strap on a noisemaker? I don’t expect you to carry one of the maces, oh no, that would require you to lift your arm and strike at someone, but I would think even you would be capable of pushing a button and setting off an alarm. Can you do that, do you think? Will you promise me?”

  “If Ava wills that I remember next time,” she said, responding in the way she knew would annoy him the most, “I will do that.”

  “At the moment,” he ground out, “I am doing far more toward keeping you alive than Ava is.”

  “No doubt she appreciates your help,” Laura retorted.

  There was another moment’s silence between them, this one highly charged, almost unbearable. He felt his hand tightening on her arm and could not relax his grip. He did not know if he wanted to strike her or kiss her, and he was afraid to do either. She stared up at him, almost daring him to cross some unforgivable boundary, to prove to him conclusively that nothing could reach her, not violence, not love. Her green eyes were unfathomable in the mystic light. He dropped her arm.

  “It’s late,” he said. “I should be taking you back.”

  “Yes, you should,” she said.

  But instead she turned away from him, crossed her arms on the flimsy railing and looked down once again at the spangled city. Drake stood beside her, close enough to touch but not touching, and watched the unvarying view as well. Neither of them spoke and neither of them moved for a long time.

  * * *

  * * *

  Although he knew it would be an abortive attempt, Drake spent the next day on a house-to-house canvass of the residences closest to the postal center where Diadeloro had rented a mail drop box. He was met, at every door, by suspicion and hostility, and only a dozen times during the day came across landlords or tenants who had lived for five years in the same house. He had no photograph, two names—neither of which was likely to have been used—and no way of describing his quarry. Those he questioned kept no records and never asked their boarders too many searching questions. He had no success whatsoev
er.

  He was in a bitter mood when he returned to his hotel, and his temper was not improved much when Leo was the first person he saw.

  “Yo,” said the younger Moonchild. “You’ve been gone a lot lately.”

  “Trying to get some work done,” Drake muttered, heading up toward his room. Leo followed amiably. He had worked alongside Raeburn long enough not to be discouraged by someone in an uncertain humor.

  “Well, fine, if you want to work. Just thought you might be interested in dinner down at Papa Guaca’s. I don’t like to eat alone.”

  Drake unlocked his door and let Leo precede him. Once he had taken another shower, he might feel cooler and less irritable. “What’s Raeburn doing? What’s Lise doing, when it comes to that?”

  “One of those high-level government meetings for Raeburn,” Leo said, waving a languid hand. “Sort of thing he thinks I don’t have enough class to attend.”

  Drake grinned briefly, stripping off his shirt. “And Lise?”

  “Said she had a date.”

  Drake grunted. “She works fast.”

  “You know anything about this?”

  “Just guessing. Name Benito sound familiar to you? El capitan?”

  “No, should it?”

  “She spend the day with you or at the temples?”

  “Didn’t spend it with me.”

  “She’s out with Benito, then. Huh. Who’d have thought—” He shook his head and stepped into the shower.

  The water refreshed him, and Leo’s inoffensive chatter relaxed him a little over the meal. They did not linger over their food. Drake was putting in too many late nights, and they were taking an inevitable toll. He wanted to return early tonight and sleep well for a change. He dropped Leo off in front of the hotel, parked, and strolled slowly through the wide, airy lobby toward the stairway.

  “Oh, Lieutenant Drake?” He was hailed by a pretty young girl wearing the livery of the hotel staff.

  “Yes?”

  “A message arrived for you by courier this afternoon.”

  She handed it to him, and he recognized the official seal of the Madrid county courthouse. The packet seemed slim, eight or ten papers at most. “Thanks,” he said.

  Up in his room, he seated himself at his desk and opened the package. It was the abbreviated list he had requested, detailing how many criminals had been convicted “by the will of the goddess” the year that Diadeloro disappeared, and the status of each. There was a separate piece of paper for each of the eight felons. Drake quickly skimmed the summaries of the crimes and the trials, going straight for the information that interested him: disposition of the criminal and current status.

  Miguel Hobarta. Multiple assaults, rape. Life imprisonment on Fortunata.

  Guillermo Saberduce. Drug-running, illegal trading, murder. Executed two years ago.

  Pablo Partisi. Rape and murder. Executed two years ago.

  Randolfo Cortez. Multiple assaults. Fifteen-year sentence on Fortunata (“still there,” a clerk had written in by hand).

  Jorge Condozi. Drug-running, illegal trading, murder. Executed two years ago.

  Georges de Ville. Espionage. Ten-year sentence on the prison planet of Menarchy (“still there”).

  Josefina de Ville. Espionage. Ten-year sentence on Menarchy (“still there”).

  Candido Barcelona. Rape and multiple assaults. Lifetime sentence on Fortunata (“but died in prison of a fever”).

  Drake turned over the last page and stared at the desk below it. Surely that was an error. Surely there was at least one more conviction, one more criminal who had won his freedom just a few months ago and was now angrily prowling the streets of Madrid, looking for vengeance. He turned back to the first page and read each entry more intently, looking for clues—the names of the religious witnesses, the names of the victims, something that would sound familiar and decisive. But there was nothing. If Diadeloro had testified against any of these men (and woman), she had done so anonymously. And unless the records were wrong—unless someone had escaped from Fortunata or bribed a prisoner to be executed in his place—not one of these criminals had been alive and free during the time the murders had been committed.

  Drake leaned his head on his hands and closed his eyes. So his theory had been wrong, and Diadeloro’s disappearance had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with despair. No one had tried to kill her; no one was trying to kill her now; and the temple murders were not in any way connected with her. The time he had wasted trying to track her down had been just that—a waste—and now he had to start all over again from the beginning.

  Nearly three weeks on Semay, and the little he had learned had proved to be wrong.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next two days Drake spent doing basic police work. Going back to his map of the city, he studied again the pattern made by the murder sites, the ragged circle around the worst section of the barrios. Assuming the killer was based in the barrio as well, he would have little access to cars or public transportation—no way to make a quick retreat from the murder site and get far away. Therefore, he probably had a lair nearby.

  Drake connected the six sites with straight lines and drew a circle around the point where they intersected. Most likely, the murderer’s home base was here somewhere; it was, at least, the likeliest place to start.

  Armed with his Moonchild insignia and an official hombueno letter of entry, he began another house-to-house search, this time deep in the barrios. He had expected these landlords to be as unhelpful as the ones near the postal drop, but he was surprised: They were equally hostile, but they had more information, and they didn’t mind sharing it with him. It was the world they hated, he decided—the world, the government, their wives or husbands, their kids, their tenants—and they didn’t mind telling anyone who asked.

  Of course, he also had more specific and recent questions to ask on this search. Drake didn’t believe that the murderer had lived quietly in the slums his whole life until one day deciding to do away with priestesses. He thought the murderer could not be a typical Semayan but someone who had gotten his head turned; someone who had been off-world. Someone who had only recently come home.

  Therefore, this was his primary line of questioning: Who has moved into one of your buildings in the past six months? Someone who’s probably very quiet, keeps to himself, but gives himself airs because he’s been around more than you have. Someone who keeps strange hours. Someone you don’t quite trust.

  It turned out that about ninety percent of the landlords’ lodgers fell into this category, judging by their quick and bitter complaints, but Drake had expected slumlords to hold low opinions of their tenants. The big qualifiers were the length of time the property had been rented and whether or not the tenant had mentioned any extraterrestrial experiences. Drake collected the names and addresses of some twenty prospects before the first day was over. He could not decide if he should be encouraged or discouraged by the number of leads he had to track down. He had gone from precision drill to scattershot, and his results could very well be the same.

  Walking back to his car on that first evening, he passed two dilapidated, abandoned buildings, and it occurred to him that his quarry might not even be a renter. Well, think about it a minute. Say he was born on Semay, moved away, acquired radical views about religion on some other world, and then returned. Had to have some money to travel, right? So he can afford to buy or rent in one of the nicer sections of town. But he still needs some kind of base here in the barrios, a place to run in case the hombuenos appear on the crime scene a little too quickly. What could be better than one of these abandoned old buildings? No pesky landlord to see him come and go, no rent to pay, no upstairs neighbors to complain about the noise. It was worth an investigation. Benito’s men could sift through the leads he had gathered today.

  Accordingly, Drake returned the next day with some high-powered flashlights and a few tools
for breaking and entering, and began a methodical search of the tumbledown buildings in his targeted section of town. A few of them were so old and decrepit that he couldn’t imagine anyone sheltering in them, even for a night, even in direst extremity; but one or two looked like real prospects.

  One building, a single-story former family dwelling, had definitely been in use, and recently. Drake found the remains of a fire in a makeshift grate and a pile of rags in a corner. He spread the discarded clothes in the middle of the floor. They looked like they had once been a woman’s skirt and blouse, although they were ripped almost beyond recognition, and they were smeared and spattered with what was probably blood.

  Blood. So perhaps someone had crawled here wounded after a brawl in the streets. Had the woman been the one hurt, or had she tended a bleeding lover? Or had the quarry he sought been practicing on women other than priestesses when he had a little free time?

  Drake prowled through the rest of the house but he found nothing else of interest, nothing left behind to indicate that someone would return for it. It didn’t feel like the killer’s house, somehow; but on Semay, Drake was beginning to doubt his own instincts. He circled the house on his map, and went on to the next building, and the next.

  Late in the afternoon, he was intrigued by a two-story house a mile or so outside the strict perimeter of his search area. On the outside wholly disreputable, inside it was in reasonably decent shape, aside from cosmetic damage to the walls. But all the doors closed properly, the stairway was sound, and the ceiling was in no immediate danger of collapsing. Not a bad place to run to.

  And although its boarded-up windows proclaimed it abandoned, someone had used it relatively recently: In the dirt that filled the bottom story were footprints partially filled in with a new layer of dust. The visitor hadn’t spent much time on the bottom floor, judging by the tracks; upstairs, a moldy carpet made it harder to tell where the boarder had walked or lain. There were no scraps of clothing, no pots and pans, no traces of past meals, but someone had been here, if only briefly enough to look the place over. Drake put a star by the building on his much-marked map.