Nightwatch on the Hinterlands

by K. Eason

  Iari stared back, unblinking, impassive, and the vendor’s eyes skated sideways. They landed on Gaer and burned, having no easier target. “She’s got riev working for her. So yeah, she scares me. You cross her, you end up—” The tenju shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “Smeared all over a broken shopfront?” Gaer interjected.

  The tenju curled her lip. “Something like.”

  “You seen very many of those? People smeared on shopfronts?”

  “Couple. Davan’s bar, just down there. This one ganglord, his house, couple streets over. Maybe some others.”

  “When did this start? Tzcansi enforcing with riev.”

  “Maybe three weeks ago. A little less.”

  “And you never reported it?”

  The tenju twitched a shoulder. “Davan did, to the PKs, after Tzcansi smashed up the ganglord. You want to see how that turned out for him, go look at his pub. No one’s cleaned it up yet. Tzcansi said leave it. It’s a message.”

  Iari leaned forward. “I find her, that neefa-shit stops. Help me do that.”

  And there, that splinter of blue hope again, stabbing bright through the food-vendor’s aura. She made her hands busy on the cart, moving meat, rolling it. She laid a set of fresh raw strips on the rack. Leaned forward, and said through the burst of smoke and fresh sizzling: “I don’t know where Tzcansi is. Swear that, Lieutenant.”

  “Then tell me where Davan’s place was.”

  “You want to see it, just keep walking. It’s up the next street. You won’t miss it.”

  The vendor wadded a strip of meat and flatbread together, thrust it at Iari. “Take that. Take one for the vakar, too. Walk with the Elements.”

  She kicked the cart’s wheels, disengaging the brakes. Then she shoved it hard, so that Iari had to sidestep or be hit. The cart jolted over the cracked pavement.

  Iari watched her go. Then she sauntered over to Gaer and offered a meat-roll.

  “Got us lunch. Eat it. Be polite.”

  Gaer took the roll. Retracted his visor. Ate the roll in two unsavory bites and thanked his ancestors for an evolutionary legacy of eating things mostly whole. Iari was forced to chew.

  “PKs know about this Tzcansi person, and they don’t do anything,” she said, between mouthfuls. “Those neefa-shits.”

  Gaer nostril-hissed disapproval. “Maybe they’re taking bribes.”

  “No maybes.” Iari stuffed the rest of the roll into her mouth and frowned at the grease on her gauntleted fingers. Her gaze unfocused a little. Doing something with the rig, no doubt, through that unholy connection. “Huh. My long-range comms are down. Try yours.”

  Gaer did. Once, twice, setatir error message. No signal. No signal. He tried rig-to-rig. “You copy?”

  Her rig crackled obediently. Iari frowned at him. “Yes,” echoed in his helmet, match to the word coming out of her lips.

  “Right. Well. I’ve got no long-range, either.” It wasn’t unusual. He knew that, and still his gut coiled and dropped. “What about the riev? Can they—?”

  “Negative,” said Char, at the same time Iari said, “No.”

  They looked at each other, riev and templar. Then Iari said, slowly, “When the riev were decommed, their transmitters were removed.”

  Gaer noted that Iari hadn’t named a single agent in that sentence, which meant there was a someone, or someones, behind the decision to rip out riev-comms, and Iari’s opinion of those someone(s) wasn’t Aedian-protocol-polite. He wondered what she thought about Oversight’s removal. Probably didn’t approve of it, either.

  “What about all the warning lights on your HUD?”

  Iari pressed her lips in a line. “Still there.”

  “Are they, oh, worse?”

  “No.” Her aura sparkled chartreuse. Oh, that was a rarity. Iari, undecided.

  Or lying.

  She gazed narrow-eyed at the riev. Then: “Let’s keep going.”

  “Iari.” He thrust out his own arm, not quite a grab. “Look at these streets. This is the perfect place for an ambush.”

  “Yeah.”

  Look at her aura. All that brightness. “That’s what you’re hoping for. Void and dust.”

  She looked at him with a vintage blend of exasperation and pity. “Gaer, what did you think I was coming down here to do?”

  “Investigate. Gather evidence. That’s what Tobin thinks you’re doing.”

  Half a smile. “No, he doesn’t. He sent me down here to use my discretion.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Yeah, the vendor hadn’t been wrong. The ruined tavern was obvious: a rotting tooth in a jagged smile of weatherworn wooden storefronts. The cracked sign that dangled from two of its four bolts spelled out Davan’s Brew and Chew in Comspek and Dwerig and broken teslas. The door itself was missing in action. Iari put a tentative hand on the doorframe. The top layer of wood smeared away onto her gauntlet. The wood itself seemed pretty solid, though. The fire must not have burned too long, or too hot.

  “That’s a terrible name.” Gaer was hanging back by the riev, like he’d decided they weren’t as dangerous as whatever might be inside. Well. He might not be wrong.

  “Yeah,” she said, because Gaer expected some kind of response. Probably needed it. “You see anything?”

  “Damage. No hexes.”

  “Right. Stay behind me.”

  Iari poked her head inside. The helmet sensed the change in the ambient light and turned on the headlamp. It was a narrow space, close-ceilinged. It had been cramped, once, crowded with tables and chairs. Now it was scattered shards of wood and slivers of polymer. The bar took up most of the width of the place. There were swing-doors behind it, leading into what must be a storeroom. Those doors sagged on their hinges, mostly intact. There might be stairs back there, too, to the level below. Sixty years ago, there’d been a massive flood in B-town when the Weep fissure had opened. The Rust had jumped its banks, torn its bed loose and brought it along, filling the streets of Lowtown with three meters of mud. The priests of Chaama had offered to help clean it up, but moving that much earth took time, and most of surviving Lowtown had decided to build new doors on the second level.

  Iari slid a foot inside, tested the floor. Real wood plank, probably old. Maybe pre-flood. It seemed stable enough, but—

  She stuck her head back outside. “Char. Brisk Array. You stay out here. Floor’s rotting.”

  Brisk Array’s eyestalks rippled. “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  Char, however, took a half step toward Iari (and startled Gaer, who flinched aside and out of their way).

  “Lieutenant.” Char sounded . . . terse. “It is unsafe.”

  “The floor, yeah. I’m not sure it’ll take your weight.”

  “Char does not mean the floor.” Riev didn’t—weren’t supposed to—argue. Truth, Iari’s personal experience of riev was limited to her two years of army service, and even then, it’d been only circumstantial. The Aedis didn’t use riev, and she’d never had cause to hire one, and none of that mattered, because Char (big, massive Char) was clearly unhappy.

  So, “Why? You sensing something?”

  Char hesitated. “There is something wrong in that place, but there is no data to support that assumption.”

  “Oh, void and dust.” Gaer stared at Char. “A hunch. The riev is having a hunch.”

  Iari ignored him. “What kind of something? Can you be more specific?”

  Char shifted their attention past Iari, like they could see in the dark. Probably could, for that matter, the whole spectrum, with those artificed eyes. “No, Lieutenant.”

  “All right,” Gaer said. “Now can we leave? The setatir riev is spooked.”

  “Spooked.” Char tried out the word. “That word is adequate to describe this discomfort.”

  “Understood.” Iari’s scalp prickled. Well, now she
was spooked, too. She resealed her faceplate. The hex-warnings blinked on her HUD’s perimeter: unspecified, still, but persistent. Sometimes that happened in proximity to a Weep fissure, when the Weep bled contaminants into the aether. Sometimes it happened near Brood, for the same reason. And sometimes it meant hostile arithmancy at work.

  The nearest fissure was well out of range. No Brood.

  But Char was spooked. Iari unclipped her axe-shaft and balanced it in her palm. The rig’s arms-turing came online, sent a little jolt through the needle-socket at the base of her neck. The syn was ready. A single instant’s intent, a jump from nanomecha to rig, and the axeblade would deploy.

  “Gaer? I could use you. Take a look.”

  Vakari rig headlamps were bluer than their Aedian counterparts. Where Iari’s light brushed over things, Gaer’s stabbed, blasting details into sharp relief, making darker shadows.

  “Door was bashed in. Scorch patterns on the floor make it look like the fire started in the middle of the floor. Are you asking me if I see any organic remains? Because I don’t. Only traces.”

  “Anything left after the fire would’ve gone to rats by now.”

  “Sss. Thank you for that image. Then why am I in here?”

  Iari prodded a broken chair with the axe shaft. “I want to know how this fire started. There should’ve been protective hexes.”

  “So let us assume there were not, or someone got through them.” Gaer folded his legs into a crouch and nudged the rubble aside with the muzzle of his jacta. “I don’t see any lingering hexwork. However, I do see traces of phlogiston, so I’m guessing conventional explosives. A small bomb could produce this kind of damage. Or a group of large, angry tenju with rags stuffed into bottles of flammable liquid. Or a riev, armed with the same. Although that seems like overkill.”

  “Setat.” Iari tried out the vakari expletive. Satisfying collection of sibilants. Easy to see why Gaer overused it.

  “Your accent’s improving. Yes. Setat. Though I’m not sure why angry tenju are more distressing to you than rampaging riev.”

  “First, because Yinal’i’ljat didn’t mention anything hitting Pinjat’s place except a single riev, and that looked . . . well. Like a riev tore the place up. This looks more, what, conventional? More like a gang war than an assassination.” Iari moved another few steps into the pub. “If Tzcansi’s responsible for Pinjat and this place, why not just burn them both with the same materials? Or have the riev trash them both the same way?”

  “Assuming our single eyewitness wasn’t lying—”

  “Why would she?”

  “Because she’s wichu.” Gaer’s voice shifted into that breathiness that meant both jaw-plates flared, teeth bared. No love between wichu and vakari; that grudge was older than the Accords, the Schism, the Expansion that’d started it all. “But assume that she’s telling the truth. Pinjat was an artificer, and that means he would’ve had protective hexes over every centimeter to protect against Elemental damage. Presumably he’d’ve gotten those hexes from you. Or not you personally, but—” Gaer waved a hand, three fingers, one thumb, too many joints. “Your Aedian priests, since they are the Elemental experts. So he’d’ve had the very best. Some little burning rag in a bottle wouldn’t destroy his shop. Whitefire’s about the only thing that would.”

  Void and dust, his prejudices. “Not every wichu works for the Aedis.”

  “No. But all artificers are wichu, which means they’ve all worked for the Confederation during the war, which includes doing work for the Aedis, and I am reasonably certain that association entitles those artificers to a level of benefits most people won’t get. Think a more inclusively plural you.” Gaer drifted back toward the front door. “This place didn’t need whitefire to burn. Pinjat’s workshop did. Where’s it say a ganglord has to use the same method twice?”

  “Nowhere. But people have habits. Seems to me Tzcansi’s are changing. She’s getting more serious, if she’s going from phlogiston to whitefire.”

  “Yes. Now she’s arming her murderous riev with better weapons and sending them into the nicer parts of town. She might go for the Aedis next.”

  Ungentle Ptah. There was a thought.

  “Let her try.” Iari leaned around the bar. Broken glass sparkled like frost under her lamp. Every bottle on the shelves had come down, along with most of the shelves. Wood. Glass. Polymer. A jacta, short-barreled and five kinds of illegal, its muzzle bent like a big hand had grabbed and squeezed, lay on the top of the pile. Davan had fought back, then. Hadn’t done him much good.

  Iari passed her headlamp over the walls. A cheap knock-off print of Gock’s “Nightflower” hung askew, the frame cracked, but no sign of burning. The fire was remarkably well-behaved, to confine itself to the room’s center. Iari was turning away when she noticed a hole in the wall beside the painting. A particular discoloration around the edges. Looked very much like someone’s head had gone through the plaster there. The reddish-dark stains on the paint seemed to support that assumption.

  A templar’s rig was designed for basic scan-and-identify. Hazmat, mostly: excess phlogiston, radiation leaks, toxic alchemical compounds. You didn’t want to put a foot into a puddle of corrosives or walk into a fire too hot for the rig’s shielding. The panoply of warning lights on the HUD had been all for conventional alerts. But as Iari got close to the wall, the whole HUD red-shifted, so that it felt like looking through blood.

  There were two reasons a HUD would do that. A suit-breach in void, which this wasn’t, or:

  “Gaer. I’m picking up Brood emissions.”

  Gaer sputtered shards of High Sisstish in which setat figured heavily. But he didn’t challenge her. He’d argue the color of the sky, or the wetness of water, but not whether an Aedian templar knew when to call Brood.

  “Stay back,” Iari said, and deployed the shield in her left gauntlet. It would turn solid projectiles, whitefire, battle-hexes, some of the lesser Brood. Which, please Ptah, there weren’t any of in here. In this pub. In B-town at all.

  Except the HUD said Brood, and so there were. Take that with the same faith as Ptah’s very existence.

  Iari moved forward. Brood didn’t like daylight. They were probably hiding in the storeroom behind those saggy swing doors. Her arms-turing tried and failed to get a lock on the Brood. That didn’t worry her. It’d happened before, Hrok’s breath, it happened most of the time when you found Brood. You told recruits that, they never believed you. You survived your first few encounters, you stopped worrying about it.

  She deployed her axe in a shimmer of whitefire. It was hexed especially for Brood, who could warp honest physics out of true and send a jacta bolt skewing into an ally, or make it explode inside the weapon. The axe relied on muscle and aim. And proximity.

  She stayed close to the wall to minimize herself as a target and poked the right-side door open with the tip of one boot. The back room was an extension of the front: maybe three meters long, made narrower by stacks of boxes propped on each other and all available walls. Some of those boxes had come down, shattered, spread their broken, seeping guts across the floor. The door to the back alley was still closed, intact and poorly sealed. A thin strip of light leaked along the seams.

  The arms-turing began finding targets, marking them on the HUD. Small shapes. Brood swarm.

  Oh, ungentle Ptah.

  Her syn responded to the surge in her heart rate. Tingling like electricity in her spine, down her limbs. All those little nanomecha, coming online and waiting for her trigger.

  “Counting ten or so swarm inside,” she told Gaer. “I’m going in.”

  “Copy.” All business now, Gaer. “On your six.”

  A pause, a breath. Then she eased over the threshold.

  The first Brood peeled itself off the ceiling. It dangled, three sides loose: a boneless, vaguely trapezoidal mass of what looked like gelatin. It had legs, about
a thousand of them, very small, very hooked. Very sharp. A priest she’d known once, half-alw named Mikanasan, told her that the shape of those legs was more reminiscent of teeth than locomotive limbs, designed to sweep food into the orifice on the belly. More like cilia, Mikanasan had said. Like, like teeth-legs.

  Iari aimed for the center of those teeth-legs and struck.

  The edge of the axe blade threw purplish sparks when it touched Brood-skin. Iari knew from unvisored experience that there was smoke curling up from the contact point. This particular sort of Brood was flammable.

  And there, yes: three-point-five seconds of contact. The swarm burst into flame—

  Thank you, Ptah.

  —and fell the rest of the way to the floor in a flickering bundle of don’t-ask-what.

  The ceiling rippled. The sides of the shelves. Moving, all moving.

  She had time to trigger the syn—the searing rush of nanomecha along the length of her spine, through her muscles, into what felt like every cell, and then back through the needle and into the rig, a faster-than-thought link between armor and body—before the swarm swooped at her.

  She flung the shield up, slinging swarm aside, keeping them off. They clung to the shield, all those teeth-legs trying for purchase on battle-hexed whitefire and sparking, burning, smoking. Too many to hold, too many to cut, but—

  The crate nearest to her had a shipping label which featured a logo for a local distillery. Please, Hrok, Lord of Aether, let that not be an empty crate.

  Iari planted a foot and swung the axe low. Whitefire could make a surgical cut, smooth, easy, slice the crate in half and leave it standing. She wanted a little better than that. Put force behind the swing, dragging the blade through the crate’s polymer, through its contents, a list of which marched up one side of her HUD, tiny letters greyed to be more easily ignored unless the blade touched something reactive.

  Like, oh, alwar whiskey.

  The crate crumpled. Smoke curled behind the blade, then the first licking of fire.