Even I was bewildered.
Food arrived and I ate, even though I wasn't hungry, because it was so expensive. Casta was somewhat subdued for a while, but she picked up again soon. It was clear that she still disapproved of Ledo's plan for her sister. Liss, true to form, was either oblivious or pretending to be.
Those two. They existed entirely in their own little world, like most of the Plutarchs and their families. Why was it that the people with power were the only ones licensed to act like children?
Sometimes the aristocracy scared me. I often wondered if we shouldn't be more afraid of our rulers than our enemies.
34
Heat, shadows, hard breath. He pushed against me amid a shifting landscape of bedclothes. The little whimpers I made had long ceased to be fake. I'd given him one climax already but I was building unstoppably toward another, and this one would be the real thing. This bastard knew what he was doing. I hated him for that. I hated him for making me enjoy it.
We came to a gasping, shuddering halt together, and I held him close so I wouldn't have to look at him. He stroked my hair as I shivered in his arms. Afterward, there would be the ugly wash of guilt, the poisonous self-hatred. But for now, just for this moment, there was only exquisite post-orgasmic sensitivity and the feel of his thin, muscled body against mine.
Thankfully, he wasn't one of those that liked to hold their women as they slept. Alcohol and sex combined to put him out only minutes after we finished. I lay next to him for an hour until I was sure he was deep under, then I slipped gradually out from beneath the covers.
The chill air of the city settled against my skin, raising goose-pimples. Slats of light, thrown from the nearby shinehouse, stretched across small piles of discarded clothes. It was near the end of the third seg, and the streets were quiet beyond the shuttered windows.
Naked, I padded across the room and out into the corridor beyond. The apartment was silent and still. Expensive sculptures stared blindly into the gloom. I found the door to his study, opened it and went inside.
He had carelessly left the files I needed in an unlocked cabinet. Perhaps he thought the guard on the apartment door was security enough for him. Perhaps years of being the accountant to a crimelord had made him think of himself as untouchable. Well, whichever: it saved me looking for the key, or going back for the lockpicks hidden in the heels of my designer shoes.
One thing I liked about accountants: they were meticulous. They kept records. They liked to know where every last scrap of money went. Take a safehouse, for instance. The kind of place where a crimelord might hide somebody. Safehouses cost money. It didn't take me long to find three addresses in the city. My target was staying in one of them.
I headed to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and then returned to bed. I'd rather have left then, but I didn't want to do anything that would make him in the least suspicious of me. I was just a woman he picked up in a bar. He'd probably want to fuck again when he woke – he seemed like the type – and I'd act the obliging slut once more. Then I'd be gone, leaving promises to call on him, and I'd never see him again unless it was to cut his throat. I'd dearly have loved to do that. Not for making me cheat on my husband. But for making me like it. It was always cold in Mal Eista. The city had a bite in the air. The light possessed a sharper edge than in Veya, chill and bright. Steam rose from vents and lakes and lungs.
I sat in a cafe, sipping at a mug of hot, syrupy sweetroot, eyes unfocused as I swam in thought. I was wrapped up in a fur-lined coat and hat, warmed by a nearby wrought-metal brazier. Beyond the forecourt, the alley was crowded with shoppers. Restaurant windows glowed with firelight; inside, men and women talked animatedly over their meals. Lichen-trees stood stiff and skeletal in rows. White bats darted across the rooftops of stern, imposing apartment blocks.
I'd spent too long here, tracking this man. It was beginning to feel more like home than Veya did. The brief time I'd spent with my family in the subsurface caverns seemed a lifetime ago, but the resentment at my situation had not faded one bit. Unworthy as it made me feel, I was bitter at being sent here. I knew it was my duty to obey the Clan in all things, but I didn't have to be glad about it. I wanted to be with Rynn and Jai.
The annoying thing was, I didn't even know who to be angry at. My orders were generally delivered on behalf of the Clan, not from any specific person. It made evading the blame easier if I should screw up. But I had a pretty good idea.
None of the lesser Clan members had the authority to command me. The twins wouldn't have paid for me to go on vacation only to send me off on a mission the very same turn. At least, I didn't think so. That would be odd, even by their standards. So it could only have been Ledo.
But I couldn't resent my master. A Bondswoman didn't do that kind of thing.
My instructions concerning my target were very clear. Kill him in his sleep if possible. If not, do it from a distance. Make it quick and definite. Don't mess around. I didn't usually get orders that specific. Often they left it to my discretion as to the best way to get the desired result. I wondered what he had done to Clan to incur their wrath, and why they were being so careful about specifying a quick and quiet kill. But in the end, it wasn't my place to ask.
He was a small-scale merchant named Gorak Jespyn. A man who'd made some wise investments and wiped them out with some unwise ones. I wondered if he owed the Clan money, but I'd found no indication of that; and besides, killing someone wasn't the best way to get them to pay you back. Even if he'd fallen on hard times, experience had taught me that people possess an amazing resourcefulness when faced with sharp objects and the threat of losing certain valuable extremities.
No, it was something else they wanted him for, but I had no idea what.
The other mystery was Jespyn's connection with Sladek Dev. Jespyn was staying at the pleasure of Mal Eista's premier crimelord in return for I-know-not-what kind of favours. For someone so insignificant, he had a lot of powerful people interested in him. I'd been after him all over the city, trading favours, leaning on people for information, digging and digging. He'd cost me a lot of time. I wanted to take it out of his hide. But that was idle fantasy. I'd play the good girl and just kill him straight.
I replayed the events of the previous turn in my mind. The casual meeting, the seduction, the sex. I wished I could tell my husband that the easiest way to get inside someone's place is to be invited. That a man's guard is at his lowest when he's in bed with you. That what I did was necessary, unavoidable even. To get the information I needed, without alerting anyone, I had to let him fuck me.
But you didn't have to like it, I heard him reply, and I had no answer to that. I didn't want to. I just couldn't help it.
He didn't deserve someone like me. Someone so honest shouldn't have to suffer a wife whose world is wrapped in lies. And though my heart had always been his and his alone, my body had often been given to others. If he knew half of what I got up to in the name of our Clan, well… I didn't know if he could still love me then. I believed he knew that too. That was why he never asked.
Times like this, I made myself sick.
The accountant wasn't a person to me. He was just a fade, like many fades before him. Ghosts. Immaterial, insubstantial, unimportant, nameless. A fade was someone you went through to get to someone else. A slang term in the trade. Sometimes you had to do them favours, sometimes blackmail them, kill them, pleasure them; but in the end, they were only a stage on your journey to get something else done, a puppet to be used and then discarded.
Some fades, like the accountant, it was necessary to forget. Because when this was done, I was going back to my husband, and I would make love to him in our bed. By the time that happened, there wouldn't be a trace of the accountant left in my mind.
Just a fade. Like all the others. Money always made my job easier. A man with nothing could disappear without a trace, but the richer my enemy, the harder he had to work to conceal himself, the more fronts he had to defend. Money left a trail.
>
It was kind of like the place where Gorak Jespyn was hiding. Rich people bought big houses. Big houses had a lot of potential entrances, and a lot of places to hide. You could fill them with guards, but you'd never cover everything.
Sladek Dev was rich. Even his safehouses were mansions. Good news for me.
The information I got from his accountant was solid. Less than three turns after I kissed him goodbye, I found the man I'd been tracking. The heating pipes clanked and creaked in the high-ceilinged corridors of the mansion's upper floor, fending off the chill of the city. Shinestones cast a flat light across a floor of black stone sparkling with bright mineral veins. Huge rootwood beams spanned the corridors overhead, holding up smaller support beams that fanned out towards the peaked roof. That was where I hid, crouching in the shadow, listening to the footsteps of the approaching guard.
As he passed beneath me, I threw a looped length of chain down over his head, pulled it tight and then slid off the other side of the beam. The chain was still wrapped around my hands, turning the beam into a gallows. I dangled suspended in mid-air, my body providing enough weight to lift him two spans off the floor. He clawed at his throat, gasping, eyes bulging. He saw me hanging next to him, scrabbled at me weakly. I pushed him away with my feet. The gaze that met mine was pleading, panicked, helpless.
It wasn't a nice way to go.
His fight for life didn't last long. His muscles went slack, and pungent urine trickled from his trouser leg. I let go of the chain and dropped to the floor, and he fell in a heap.
I didn't like the necessity of killing the guards. It felt messy. I'd rather have tried to get to Jespyn without alerting anyone. But I considered it prudent to take out the three men who patrolled the upper floor, at least. Just in case Jespyn turned out to be tricky and managed to get off a cry for help. I didn't like the idea of three armed guards finding me standing over a dead body.
Besides, it didn't hurt to send a little message to Sladek Dev. A playful nip at his flank to remind him that it might not be wise to shelter a fugitive from Clan Caracassa, whatever the incentives. Because next time we might do something a little more drastic, and a little closer to home.
I stashed the body quickly and retrieved my bow and quiver from where I'd left them, hidden in the beams. The other two men would be at the door to Jespyn's chambers. I'd watched this place for half a turn before I made my move, and they always kept two on the door while a third one patrolled. It was a similar tendency towards regular patterns that made it so easy to cross the courtyard and scale the mansion wall unseen.
I peered around the corner of the corridor. Sure enough, there they were. Two dark-haired men with swarthy features, muttering to each other and laughing with the casual ease of long-time friends. The nearest one drew out a pair of cigarillos and gave one to his companion. I nocked an arrow as he brought out matches.
They both leaned in together to light their smokes from the same flame. I stepped out, aimed, and shot the nearest one through the back of the head. The force of the arrow threw him forward so that he butted his companion in the nose. It was almost hard enough to knock him out, but not quite. He recoiled, his face bloody and slack with shock. I shot him through the chest before he had the chance to recover.
I stepped over the bodies and listened at the door, wondering if Jespyn might have heard the noise of falling bodies. Probably not. By my reckoning, he was asleep, and had been for several hours.
For wrecking my vacation. For taking me away from my family. For making me betray my husband.
I opened the door quietly. If Jespyn was still asleep, he wasn't waking up again.
35
The lift from Veya to the surface wasn't built for comfort. It was a tall circular chamber of grimy black metal, with three levels stacked one on top of the other, connected by stairs. Each level was filled with seats in concentric circles, facing a central column which housed the enormous screw that the lift travelled up and down. By controlling geothermal pressure in the shaft, the chamber could be made to ascend or descend, slowly turning as it did.
I sat and listened to the screech and groan of metal on metal. The lights, resting in coiled iron sconces, dimmed and brightened fitfully without ever dispelling the gloom. They were a relatively new invention, powered by the motion of the lift itself. I didn't trust them. They seemed permanently on the edge of failing.
We rode the upper deck, of course. Though it was still too loud for easy conversation up here, it was the best available. The lowest level was a nightmarish swelter, where the heat from the shaft pulsed through the floor of the chamber. Our short vacation was Liss and Casta's treat, a moment of suspicious generosity on their parts, and they never did things by half measures.
'You must go! We insist! Spend some time with your family!'
'Our brother works you too hard. You and Rynn both. Between one thing and another you're hardly ever together.'
'We know how it hurts you.' This was Liss, fawningly sympathetic.
'We'll pay for everything.'
'Oh! Won't it be fun?'
'It's the least we can do for one so close to our hearts.'
I accepted, naturally. Turning them down would have led to consequences I didn't want to deal with. They got Rynn pulled from his escort duty – guarding a powerful friend of Caracassa, more for show than anything else – and persuaded Jai's tutors to give him a few turns' leave from military school. Then Jai asked if he could bring Reitha, and we said of course, and the twins said of course. So we were four.
I watched my son and his lover as we sat in the lift, surrounded by the din. Jai was fascinated by the lights. He hung on every sound, trying to understand the lift's mechanisms. He had such a wonderful mind, mystifyingly ordered and logical, endlessly interested in the way things worked and how to make them better. It was a compulsion; he couldn't stop himself tinkering with any device he laid his hands on. Our home in the Caracassa mansion had been full of disassembled lamps and clocks and spring-loaded toys until he went away. Without them, the place felt bare.
And yet, when Reitha touched his arm and leaned in to talk to him, I saw the other side to my son. The way he softened, the look in his eyes when he laughed. He worshipped and adored her. Beneath that rigid structure of thought there was an ocean of feeling. He was a sensitive child, prone to crying when young. Never really the physical sort. He learned to fake it around his father but nobody was fooled. Jai was always my child rather than Rynn's. The lift stopped several times on its journey to disgorge passengers and to take on new ones. It took hours to get to our stop, near the top of the shaft. Most of the passengers emptied out here. It was a small cavern, a junction from which a half-dozen tunnels led, and we walked into the middle of a bazaar. There were a multitude of hawkers, who had set up stalls beneath the glow-lamps in anticipation of the crowd. They sold the eggs of rare animals or offered cakes and drinks; they provided transport or sought to recruit labour; they displayed precious minerals from the surface. Some sold paintings of the night sky: depictions of the aurora, or of the mother-planet Beyl looming over the horizon, all purple and black streaks. Little groups of people waited to welcome associates or family. Militia crayl-riders patrolled the stalls, holding obsidian-bladed pikes. The air was stuffily warm and dry; the cavern echoed with voices.
Reitha fairly dragged Jai to the pens, where crayl were being sold for domestic use. I liked crayl. They were wonderful beasts of burden and tireless mounts, and if trained well they were also vicious and formidable fighters. Native to the surface, they were nevertheless well adapted to life underground. They spent Red Tide Season sheltering from the endless day in the subsurface cave networks that riddled Callespa, only emerging onto the surface when the nights began in Ebb Season.
Reitha was an animal-lover; it went with her job. She petted the crayl in the pens, and they turned their muzzles to nose her hand. I stood by her and joined in. She offered me a smile. I knew she valued these moments when she felt we made a conn
ection, however small. Like Jai, she was sensitive, and she could see how I felt about my only son being taken by another woman, no matter how well I tried to hide it. She wanted me to like her, and I did like her, but nothing was going to erase that faint primal jealousy.
I wasn't an animal person by nature, but it gave me a faint thrill to touch them. They were several times my weight and easily capable of ripping me apart. Shaggy four-legged beasts, high as my shoulder but able to rear up to twice that height. Retractable claws like knives. Broad, flat muzzles with wide nostrils, and small eyes buried under fringes of thick fur. The merchant nearby watched us closely, while pretending not to. He had already decided we weren't going to buy, so now we were just a nuisance.
'She appreciates them, I can tell,' Jai said to Reitha. 'She has an attraction to anything hairy and brutish.'
Reitha gasped, appalled at his cheek. She brought out a wicked streak in him which I was rather fond of. I aimed to clip him but he dodged away, laughing. 'And slow, too! What's the Cadre coming to?'
'You're very cocky for someone who can still be beaten up by his mother,' Reitha said, swatting his arm.
'She'd never hit me. I'm Ledo's property. It's more than she's worth to damage this chassis.'
I wasn't rising to it any more; I was too preoccupied with the animals. Jai gave up teasing, content with a victory.
'What do you like about them?' Reitha asked me, genuine interest in her tone.
I looked over at her. Small, even features, brown hair, dusky skin unlined by age or care. Intelligence in her eyes. I always admired her daring, her determination to work on the surface no matter what the risks. It had warmed me to her immediately.
'I like that they're survivors,' I replied, after a moment's thought. 'Not too many animals made it through when the tribes went underground. But these held on. They're tough. Adaptable.' I thumbed at the ceiling of the cavern, indicating what was beyond. 'I like that they can live up there.'
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