by K. Eason
“I sympathize, Lieutenant. But Jorvik insisted that he needs that much time to get your rig repaired, and it was the briefest span Sister Diran would agree to.” He rolled eyes at the curtain-walls, the monitors. Then his gaze snagged on the med-mecha. Any lingering humor seeped out of his features. Only memory left, hollow and brittle. “I’m sorry to leave you alone in here.”
Felt like another building had collapsed on her, not enough room for lungs and heart and breath. “It’s fine, sir.”
His eyes closed for a little bit too long for a blink. “In the meantime,” he said, and slid a hand behind his breastplate and produced a flat, slender volume, bound in leather. “I brought you something to help pass the time.”
There weren’t many places to stash-and-carry in non-combat armor. A part of her mind imagined the sharp-cornered discomfort of storing that book between poly-plate and uniform tunic. The rest of her mind recognized the pattern on the cover, without needing to see the title, or the author, or anything else.
“Meditations,” said Tobin, as if she might not recognize it. “I didn’t want to rummage your quarters to find yours, so . . .”
So he’d brought her his copy.
Iari took it with careful fingers. The book had seen rougher handling: had traveled with Tobin, she knew, since his own initiation, through each deployment. A memory surfaced of Saichi, rain rattling down on the tent before—before. Soft-lit interior, the lantern teslas throwing their blue-white glow into all the creases and corners. Bright enough a young captain could read, there on the periphery, while his even younger unit diced and bickered and tried to pretend the next day’s mission didn’t worry them. While Iari, who’d done time in the army already, who was no stranger to night-before jitters, sat on the tent’s other side, trying (and failing) to meditate and envying Tobin his calm.
And after, so much after: bringing that book to him here, his request, while the med-mecha prodded the ruin of his hip and leg. She had watched his hands smooth the cover, trace the title. Watched them shake.
Have you read this?
No sir.
And a breath. Ragged. Read it to me. Now. Please.
Iari rubbed the edge of the cover, smudged and discolored and ungentle Ptah, don’t think about why. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome.” Tobin stood up, equal parts stool-on-stone squeak and the rattle of armor. Under that, where bone and joint should have been: the whine of the mecha graft, faint as whispers.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Corso rearranged himself on a stool just a little too small and a little too short for comfort and sipped good, bitter tea out of a cup he could, well, cup in his palm. There were dimples in the side, meant for gripping by fingers both smaller than his and one fewer. Like, oh, that wichu over there. Moon-eyed little man, cup balanced in his fingers just so, the third and smallest held out straight like a perch for birds, sipping with his little narrow lips at the delicate little rim.
Corso considered for half a breath trying to imitate him—it was etiquette, obviously. But the only reason to try to match wichu custom would be to blend in, and that was slagging impossible. He couldn’t even hold the cup right. So he just held the whole cup in his palm instead, and poured hot liquid into his mouth that way. It was actually a little unpleasant; the tea was hot, and so was the ceramic. Reminded him of drinking tea in the field, out of metal cups. That had been an exercise in minimizing burns. And when they’d been deployed east of Windscar, on the northern line—then it’d been a wages-on competition to drink hot tea in that zone between scalding and tepid, while the metal cup gave up its heat to the crackling cold and the wind and the snow. Lot of coin changed hands back then, between him and Iari. Lot of bets won and lost.
Corso grinned at the memory. The wichu—you could never tell where they were looking, with those featureless eyes—flinched. Corso grinned a little wider and slammed the rest of the tea down his throat (hot, straight shot to gut, where it hit and spread out). Then he put the cup down with a little more force than necessary (made the other man flinch again, earned a glare from the barista) and got up to leave.
The veek had said, find Yinal’i’ljat. B-town was a big place, but sure as sunrise, you wanted to find a wichu, you went to Wichutown (except for that dead fucker Pinjat, but he was the exception that proved the rule). Wichutown had taken over about ten square blocks of B-town, carved out of what had probably been alwar neighborhood; the buildings had alwar dimensions, which already made them a little cramped and narrow for Corso’s comfort. Wichu had made renovations, and they’d been at the exteriors, painting and shaping, slapping wood and plaster onto honest bricks. Voidspit pink on that wall, yellow on that one, like a slagging field of wildflowers. Banners fluttered on storefronts, printed and painted in wichu script. More conventional signs, in conventional Comspek, stuck out like stones in a stream, flat and grey and useful. Like that one, over there: Lodging, it said, in simple block text, beside some elaborate foreign scribbling that probably said This Place Is Very Proud of Its Bedbugs.
It was also the place Yinal’i’ljat had listed as her place of residence on the official PK report, which Corso had gotten by means the Aedis wouldn’t approve. Chief Inspector Elin had taken her sweet slagging time giving him the address. Two days for a voidspit sliver of information that probably took five minutes to access from the PK turing net. It’s been busy, Elin had said, there’s shit going down, fucking Aedis has half of Lowtown behind barricades, templars crawling all over, asking for our fucking files.
And Corso had made sympathetic noises and didn’t ask details, same as his contact didn’t ask what he wanted with Yinal’i’ljat. But then Elin did say, Aedis wants everything we’ve got on who killed that other moon-eye. If you’re involved, you watch your back.
Which Corso had done. He was very good at back-watching. What he had not done, and what he did feel a little guilty about, was report to Gaer that he had an address; but then, the veek had said find Yinal’i’ljat, not just find where she’s living. So he was only half done with the work, technically, and besides: the fewer times he was logged comming the Aedis to report to the veek ambassador, the better. Shit like that got out, his reputation would suffer.
So, get the address, check; find the address, check; and now to put the R in P.R.I.S. Corso had been sitting in that tea shop for the better part of a day, waiting for Yinal’i’ljat to come out, or go in, or even confirm her existence. It was better, he thought, to approach a subject on the street, keep it public, since all he needed was to pass on a message. But he was sick of wichu tea, and he was sick of little wichu stools, and he had a headache throbbing behind his eyes because of all the bright wichu colors.
And really, he was starting to think she wasn’t there at all, in that hostel, and if she’d moved, he needed to figure out where she’d gone before the veek called him for a progress report. Or, void and dust, Iari did.
Gaer had said, last communication they’d had: “Because you asked me to call you: our mutual friend is alive and recovering, no permanent damage.”
Mutual friend. Mutual friend. Corso ground his teeth hard enough that they squeaked. He wasn’t sure what Iari and he were, anymore, but their relationship and whatever association she had with some slagging veek wouldn’t fit in the same word.
Gaer. Ambassador. Arithmancer. The reason Corso was down here right now, instead of—void and dust, what? Lurking outside the Aedis gates, gathering the guts up to go inside and see her? Or more likely, holing back up in his office with a bottle of whiskey and worrying there.
The veek had done him a favor. Given him something to do. Given him a target.
As for what the veek was doing, well. Corso looked in the Aedis’s direction (invisible, behind walls and architecture, but you could feel it up there). Hopefully finding the fucking arithmancer who’d tried to kill Iari, so someone could go kill him.
Corso gathere
d his braids out of his face and tucked them behind his shoulders, careful to avoid the hooks threaded through them. That’d taken practice, learning not to snag himself. Now it was easy as breathing. Easy as checking his weapons, too. He wasn’t wearing a laborer’s coveralls this time. Wore his usual canvas coat, oiled against autumn drizzle, meant to blur his outline and hide a very illegal whitefire sidearm tucked up under his shoulder and a monofil in the left sleeve. The coat made him look even broader, which he usually liked. Intimidation was useful in some investigations. In this one, less so; but damned if he’d leave his weapons home this time, even if wichu crossed the narrow lanes to avoid him if possible, and if not, drew back against the brightly colored walls and stared as if he were an iotun from pre-Landfall legend, come to crush them with stone fists and stone feet.
Corso felt a little bit like an iotun as he ducked into the hostel. The ceiling in here was a just a little too low. Beams crossing over his head with a handspan’s clearance. The desk in the foyer, in the middle of a little patch of colorful carpet, might come to the top of his hips. Maybe. If he crouched.
The wichu behind that desk—palely round-eyed like all his species, wispy hair gathered up in a knot—glanced up from his turing. Frowned. Raised a finger in universal just one moment gesture.
Corso hunched a little bit deeper into his coat and tried to take up less space. Maybe this was how Char had felt, squeezing into his office behind Iari and Gaer.
The clerk, having finished whatever neefa-shit he was doing on the screen, looked dubiously up at Corso. “May I help you?”
Thus invited, Corso approached the desk and loomed over it (like an iotun). “I’m here to deliver a message to Yinal’i’ljat. Is she in?”
The clerk blinked. “I can take that message for you, sir.”
Confirmed she was on the register, anyway. Clerk hadn’t asked, who’s that. Corso grinned and leaned forward a little. “Yeah. Sure you can. But I need to deliver it to her personally. So, she in?”
The clerk’s head cranked back on his skinny little neck. Fucking creepy eyes. You couldn’t see a reflection in them. “I’m afraid not.”
“You know when she’ll be back?”
“No, sir, I’m sorry.”
Now, that slagging veek arithmancer with his fancy optic, he’d’ve been able to read the clerk’s aura and tell truth from lies by the colors he saw. Corso didn’t pretend to understand what the fuck that really meant, or how it worked, but he knew it was real enough. Seemed like a slagging waste of arithmancy, looking at people’s colors, though, when it was easy enough to tell liar from honest from the outside.
“Listen.” Corso spread his hands on the desk. “I got orders it’s got to go straight to Yinal’i’ljat. My boss says. So, I can wait for her here”—he gestured at the lobby, and the clerk’s eyes widened and rounded, taking his mouth along for the ride—“or you can let me go up there and leave it for her. I can shove it under the door.”
“That’s not our policy.” The clerk’s voice was thin as steam coming off a teacup in a Windscar spring morning. “Only guests go upstairs.”
“Then I guess I’ll wait.” Corso made a show of looking around the little lobby, which was not equipped for waiting by someone Corso’s size (two little chairs, that was all). “Maybe outside,” he said. “Right by the door. That way she’ll see me right away. That okay?”
The clerk blinked rapidly. You could see the calculations march across his face. Tenju standing outside, scaring everyone. Gossip piling up like shit behind a neefa.
“I. Um. Perhaps I can make an exception in policy, sir, just this once, and allow you to go up.”
Corso grinned in the clerk’s face. “That’d be great. Thanks.”
The clerk sighed. Tapped something into his turing with the force that said logging off, and then came around the desk. “Follow me, sir.”
He abandoned Corso at the top of the stairs. “That way,” he said, and pointed. “Room Seven.”
Which begged asking why number to seven when Corso counted only four doors, but hey, they were wichu. Probably some numerological voidspit involved. Wichu were almost as bad as vakari for seeing the world in numbers and equations.
And color. Void and dust, magenta walls shading to violet at the floorboards, doors in eye-bleeding yellow and orange, and yeah, that was number seven, in terrible teal. Corso grunted at the clerk—thanks, fuck off, however you wanted to interpret it—and started down the hallway. Thick carpet underfoot, masking bootsteps and creaking floorboards. Almost as quiet as stone. That was fucking weird, after the rattle-trap Vulgar Vakar.
And it wasn’t just the floor. Corso slowed as he passed Room Three (yellow door, plasma-blue trim). There was no sound coming out of any of the doors. No voices, no rustling around. No sound anywhere up here. Corso turned slowly, tilting his head at each door in turn. This was exactly like Tzcansi’s sister’s house had been, when it’d been so quiet he was sure Tzcansi was waiting upstairs for him with a whitefire longcaster, laying ambush.
Instead she’d been Brood-gutted and dead.
Corso’s heart ricocheted off his ribs and got stuck in his throat. P.R.I.S. wasn’t safe work, especially not the districts he worked; but it wasn’t, until very fucking recently, going to put him in the way of Brood, either. He should turn around, get the fuck out of here—why had he taken the veek’s job, anyway, after what he’d seen in that house, Tzcansi split open and guts everywhere and—
—and Iari’s face, when she’d walked in and seen what’d happened. She might’ve been cast from the same alloy as her battle-rig. He remembered her face before the scar and cap on her tusk, remembered the day she’d got both (lot of blood, shattered visor, serious swearing). The Iari he remembered had always been cool, but she’d never been fucking ice. Templar Iari was a whole slagging glacier.
It wasn’t the ice that stuck with him. It was the look she gave him after, when the riev had shouted up about finding Tri and her kids dead downstairs. A flash of anger—that Iari he recognized—and then a dawning disappointment. Like she’d expected better of him.
Fuck if she’d look at him that way twice. Ever again. No matter how slagging quiet this hallway was, how wrong it felt, like the very silence was pushing him back, plucking at coat-tails, urging him go back. He’d said he’d do a job. And he would. Right now.
Corso adjusted his sweat-slick grip on the sidearm. The charge-light was green, ready to fire. He crept up on door seven, listened (to nothing). He knocked, lightly, with the back of his left hand (right hand and jacta still ready).
More nothing. More aggressive silence. More get the fuck out of here wrongness.
Explain to Iari why he’d walked away now. Explain to that bone-faced veek. Or put a hand on the panel and expect (explosion, fire) an earth-shattering beep of locked, no entry. At least there’d be a noise.
The panel chimed—polite, demure—and turned green. And before Corso could entirely summon his wits and conceal the jacta, the door slid aside.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he started. But there wasn’t anyone on the other side of the door. Not a maid, or a maid-mecha, and certainly not Yinal’i’ljat. An empty patch of floorboard carved out in a square of bright from the corridor teslas. The room itself was all dimness and gloom. Corso ducked his head a little and peered in. Curtains drawn tight, with only a little leak of light from the gap in between.
He stepped over the threshold. His shadow blotted out the light from the corridor and merged with the room’s shadow. The air felt markedly cooler inside. There were reasons it might: this was the northeast side of the building, it was autumn, and raining, and late afternoon. But it was stale, too, and close, like the ventilation was off. And the room’s teslas, which should’ve lit up when the door opened, stayed dim. The remaining light-bleed from the hallway teslas showed him a cramped little entry corridor, a shut door to his immediate right. T
hat’d be the WC. In the dim beyond that, he mapped out the rest of the room: the smudged line of light around the window. A hard-cornered shape, tall and flat to the wall, that must be a wardrobe. A partition wall jutted into the room, squeezing off any view of what else the room held. He guessed, from prior experience in places like this: a bed, a desk, or a table on the other side of that partition.
Corso’s scalp prickled tight. He raised the jacta, one-handed, and slapped for the tesla panel on the wall. He found the switch. The teslas flared bright as the sun for a second. Then came a pop and a smoky smell and the dark slammed back down like a fist.
Corso brought his left hand up, stabilized his grip on the jacta. Sense said come in quiet, walk soft. But he’d already tried the slagging lights. Anyone inside would know he was there. Best give them a chance to:
“Come out.”
The room snapped up his syllables. Corso strained against the pressing silence to hear breath, or any whisper of friction: fabric or flesh on the floorboards, on the bed. Maybe the whine of a jacta, whitefire, or old-style bolt-thrower. He held his breath. Waited. Listened.
“Yinal’i’ljat? My name’s Corso. P.R.I.S. Not PK. Hear me? Just want to talk.”
And still—nothing, except his own heartbeat thumping in his ears. He slid a foot forward. Felt the sole of his boot glide over the polished floor, felt it catch on the edge of a rug.
And heard . . . nothing. Not even a whisper.
That wasn’t right. And when something wasn’t right like that, it meant arithmancy. A silencing hex, the kind you got for abattoirs or machine-shops or brothels, so that the neighbors didn’t hear. The Vulgar Vakar had, like, a dozen of those for the needle-rooms. None this good, though; Corso could still hear things through his flat’s floor. These hexes were excellent, and that meant expensive.
There weren’t many in his clientele whose targets could afford hexwork, but there were a few. Ganglords, mostly, people with money. Tzcansi had been one of them. A wichu—what had the veek said she was? Oh, right—linguist, something fancy, might have that kind of capital. Clearly she did.
