Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  “It couldn’t just be a social call?” Farin unhooked a flask from his belt and poured clear liquor into a pair of cups he had found earlier. “Drink?” He shoved one of the cups across the makeshift counter of crates toward Willie. “It’s some of my boss’s finest.”

  Willie picked up the cup, inhaled the earthy scent, and drank it off smoothly. He smacked his lips and set the cup down. “Good stuff,” he announced. “But not enough to make me like boys.”

  “No.” Farin leaned his forearms against the counter and swirled the liquor around his cup a few times. “But you take an extraordinary interest in young girls, don’t you?”

  Willie put his back to Farin and turned up the lamp, throwing their shadows in stark relief on the dirt walls. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re lucky the cops didn’t see you pitch Chena Trust over the railing yesterday.” Farin unfolded himself. He had a good six inches of height and fifty pounds of muscle on Willie, and he wanted the other man to know it. “I did.”

  Willie held up his hands and waggled his fingers at Farin. “Ooo, what’d I do, touch your little kitty? How much she pay you to be her first?” He tried to sneer, but only managed to hiccup.

  Farin ignored his remark. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before. “She’s a friend of mine, Willie, and I want to know where she is.” He stepped closer, getting between Willie and the light.

  “So?” Willie backed up, and Farin saw his knees shake. “Doesn’t matter what you want. Who do you think you are? Your granny’s tougher than… tougher than you.” Willie’s hip bumped against the counter and he staggered.

  “Much tougher,” agreed Farin, gliding forward a few steps, forcing Willie to back up against his baskets. “Where’s Chena Trust, Willie?”

  Willie giggled, a high, ugly sound. “All wrapped up and ready to go. Keep giving us people, they do.”

  “Who do?” Farin forced himself to be patient. He’d dealt with plenty of drunks. If you kept them talking, you’d get what you wanted.

  “Hothousers. Keep this kid, give us that kid. Make up your damn minds, I say.” Willie sat down abruptly on the floor.

  Shouldn’t drink things you don’t recognize, Willie. Farin crouched down next to him. You should also remember what my grandmother does with her time. “Which kid are you keeping for the hothousers, Willie?”

  “Lopera’d kill me.”

  Farin leaned in closer until his lips almost touched the other man’s ear. “I won’t tell. It’s just you and me here. Lopera’s a damn fool anyway. She doesn’t appreciate you.”

  Willie looked up at him blearily. “ ’S right, she doesn’t. Errand runner. That’s all I am. Brought her all the Trusts, didn’t I?”

  Farin pulled back and clamped his jaw shut until he was sure he could speak calmly. “All the Trusts? Is that who you’re keeping?”

  “Nah, nah.” Willie waved the idea away. “That’s who we’re giving away. Had to let one go to the station. Got to give the other back to the hothouse. Won’t even let us siphon off the eggs from this one.”

  Farin shook his head. No point in trying to decipher all that. Just stick to the main point. “So, you gave Chena back to the hothouse?”

  “Not yet. Just boxed her up.” Willie burped. “Strong stuff.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Farin bared his teeth. “Takes a man to handle this stuff.”

  “ ’S right. So what’s she got this man doing?” He slapped his chest weakly. “Babysitting. Ain’t what I signed up for. I ain’t no dorm daddy.”

  “Who’re you babysitting, Willie?”

  “Ha. Want some of it?” He pumped his fist weakly in the air. “Thought you liked little girls, Far’n, not little boys.” He burped again and slumped farther down the wall.

  “You’re babysitting a boy?”

  “Boy. A cure. For the cris… div… Diversity Crisis. Built from scratch. Out of the Trusts. Stole him off and handed him to us so the others couldn’t have him.” His head flopped toward Farin. “These hothousers don’t make piss-all for sense, you know?”

  “No,” said Farin automatically. “They don’t.” His mind raced ahead. The cure for the Diversity Crisis is a boy? From the Trusts? He must be talking about Helice Trust.

  Farin leaned in close to Willie. “Where’s the boy, Willie? Where are you babysitting him? I’ll bring by one of the girls to take him off your hands, and you won’t have to bother anymore, okay?”

  “ ’Kay,” agreed Willie comfortably. “Got him in the caves. Cave number six.” He waved his hand vaguely westward. The effort seemed to exhaust him, because his head sagged and his eyes drooped shut.

  Not yet, damn you! Farin shook Willie’s shoulder. “With Chena?” Willie peeled his eyes open and giggled. “Heeeere, kitty, kitty, kitty.” He leered, and spittle dribbled out the corner of his mouth. “You got time. Lop’ra’s not letting her go until the hothousers pay up. Could take weeks the way she haggles. Heeeere, kitty.” He snorted with laughter, and his head fell forward against his chest.

  “Willie?”

  In answer, Willie snored.

  Farin got to his feet, running both hands through his hair. Willie snored again, and Nan Elle emerged from the darkness behind the pile of baskets. Leaning heavily against her cane, she shuffled past Farin without a word to bend over Willie and peel back one eye.

  “Hmph.” She pressed two fingers against Willie’s throat and held still for a moment. “Strong batch, but he’ll be all right,” she said, straightening up slowly.

  As soon as Farin saw Chena on the boardwalk the previous afternoon, he’d sent word to Nan via a rower they both knew. He’d expected a letter back, but instead she’d shown up at his door with a set to her jaw that he hadn’t seen since the last time someone in the village died from her attentions.

  “Did you understand all that?” he asked. A boyhood habit. He’d never quite shaken his belief that Nan knew everything.

  “Yes, I did.” Nan looked down at Willie, slumped and snoring. “It means we have a chance to save ourselves, as well as Chena.”

  “I’d be grateful if you’d tell me how,” he said blandly.

  “If we have the cure to the Diversity Crisis in our hands, we may just have a chip for which the hothouse must bargain.”

  Of course. Everyone knew that the only reason Pandora, a clean world in the middle of the Diversity Crisis, was being left alone was that the hothousers had promised the Authority that they would come up with a cure for the Diversity Crisis. If the Authority found out the hothousers did not have any such cure, Pandora’s isolation was over.

  Farin sucked thoughtfully on his cheek. “No matter what Willie says, we can’t have much time.”

  “No.” Nan paused, considering. “Stem’s librarian, I think, is a friend of yours?” Farin nodded. “Wake her. See if she’s got a map of the caves. You may have to risk going overland. Your kitchen’s good enough for me to boil up some of Chena’s concoction. If she made it all the way back to Stem, she must have gotten past the cameras.” Nan paused, and the smile on her face was proud. Farin knew what she was thinking. Only Chena Trust, her apprentice, had ever beaten the mote cameras. “I’ll need to wake up Ada for some more mint.”

  “I’ll walk you,” said Farin reflexively.

  “Didn’t I just tell you what you were to do?” snapped Nan, also reflexively, Farin knew. She was frightened, he could see it in her eyes, but she was determined to see this through.

  Farin straightened his shoulders. “Then I’d better get going.” If Willie was right, they probably had until morning to narrow down Chena’s possible locations.

  But if Willie wasn’t right? Farin’s jaw tightened and he glanced toward the shuttered window. There was no way out of the village tonight. Not for them anyway. They’d have to trust the unconscious man at his feet.

  Shivering at that unwelcome necessity, Farin slipped out the door.

  When the door shut behind her grandson, Elle turned back to the uncons
cious man. There was good reason to kill him where he lay. He abetted the tailors in kidnapping Chena. He could wake too soon and alert his masters about what had passed here. His account would be fuzzy, to be sure, but he would know he’d been questioned, and by whom.

  But she did not move her hands. She just stood there and watched him sleep. She wished she lay beside him. She felt old, as if every one of her sixty-eight years had settled on her back.

  How did the world turn over so fast? She shook her head. How can you stand here asking such questions when there’s work to do?

  Elle turned down the lamp until the light sputtered out. Then she eased the shutters open a trifle and peered outside.

  Clouds obscured the moon, but after a long moment she could distinguish the slopes of the dunes and the slightly paler boardwalk. Nothing stirred that she could see. Perhaps whatever watcher the constables had set had gone off after Farin.

  It would not be good to count on that.

  Willie stirred in his sleep. Elle decided to let him live. He might alert the tailors, but that would take time, even if he woke before morning. She and Farin would already have their head start, and a death at this stage might make the constables sharper than necessary.

  Elle opened the door and set the lock’s latch so that it would fall back into place when she closed it. It was that pathetic lock that had allowed she and Farin easy access to the shop. She supposed Willie used it to convince anyone keeping an eye on him that he had nothing worth protecting here.

  She closed the door and heard the lock snap into place. Resting her stick on her shoulder, she hobbled down the boardwalk. She’d already made enough noise tonight. She did not need the tapping of her cane to alert anyone to her passage.

  The constant wind carried no one else’s sounds to her. The only smells it held were damp and a bare whiff of smoke from some late fire. A shout lifted up from somewhere, freezing Elle in her tracks, but no other noise followed and she hurried on again.

  As she rounded a curve of the boardwalk, both the clouds and the dunes separated to show the expanse of the moon-silvered lake. Stars and moon hung low and fat over the rippling black water. Despite all, Elle—whose life consisted of branches, trunks, and shadows—found a moment to stare.

  Then the moon moved closer.

  Elle’s hand slammed against her mouth. In the next moment, a low buzzing reached her, and the “moon” turned, changing shape from spherical to oval. It was a dirigible.

  Old Fool. Elle let out a long, shaky breath. Closer to the nervous edge than you have any need to be. She made herself walk forward again.

  Never in a thousand years would she have admitted to Farin how badly news of Chena’s disappearance had shaken her. He guessed too much already, observant boy that he was. It had bitten hard when he had no patience for the work of a Pharmakeus, but she had learned to live with that disappointment. He was brave and he was loyal, to her and the people they protected. Those were the important things.

  The market at night was an unsettling place. The sides of the tents flapped in the wind, sending shifting shadows across the boardwalk. Then there was the dirigible, sinking ever closer. Part of Elle’s mind imagined it as a great white eye swooping in for a better look at her.

  Ridiculous, she sniffed at herself, but as the dirigible settled down on the black water, she did duck behind the nearest tent. The crew would be coming up the docks soon, and she could not risk being seen.

  Exactly, she said to herself as she brought her stick down so she could lean against it. It has nothing at all to do with fear.

  Crouched behind her flimsy shelter, Elle watched two of the dirigible crew disembark to take the mooring cables and clamp them into place. As soon as the dirigible stabilized, two more figures emerged from the gondola. They ignored the crew, as far as Elle could tell, and started straight up the boardwalk, one shuffling its feet, and the other striding ahead, then stopping impatiently to wait.

  Elle frowned. She couldn’t tell from here whether either of the two wore the hothousers’ black and white. There was no immigrant shipment due. Her sources would have told her days ago, but the figures wouldn’t have ignored the crew if they were pilots or handlers. That left hothousers.

  She watched the one figure shuffle, and the other try to slow itself down to match the shuffler’s pace.

  They had to be hothousers, but they didn’t act like it.

  What is going on? Elle held herself still and low. The breeze dropped, giving her a solid wall of shadow for cover. The two came closer, their footsteps padding softly against the boardwalk. The impatient strider was a woman, tall, hunched, and relatively slender; the shuffler was a man, also hunched over. Elle peered hard, trying to see through the darkness. The tall woman looked familiar somehow. The man shuffled, swayed, took a few decisive steps closer, and straightened his shoulders, and Elle recognized him.

  Tam Bhavasar.

  She wanted to step straight into his path and demand to know what had happened to him and what he knew about Chena, but she held herself still. The woman with him could still be anyone at all.

  Tam and his companion passed her without even looking around themselves. Careless, she thought. Then they paused at the juncture of two walkways, full in the moonlight. The woman wore the ubiquitous Pandoran tunic and trousers. She straightened up, looked left and right down the available paths, murmured something, and Elle knew. The woman looked like poor lost Helice Trust.

  One of her daughters, at least, had come home.

  “Hello, Teal,” said Elle, emerging from the shadows. “Hello, Tam.” Teal jumped and turned, grabbing Tam’s arm as she did, ready to run and drag him along with her.

  “God’s own,” she gasped as her eyes focused on Elle. “Nan Elle.” She laughed once without real humor. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Elle agreed, leaning toward Tam. “Thank you for bringing back my granddaughter, Tam.”

  Tam cringed and shrank away, and Elle pulled back. Even allowing for the moonlight, Tam looked pale. She had seen him in darkness many times, and the planes of his face were too sharp, his eyes too dark.

  “Elle,” he croaked. “Elle. Good. You can help.” He reached for her, but his hand fell away before he actually touched her. “I should turn to my family. I know that. I know. But Elle, you can help.”

  Elle felt the blood drain from her face. “God’s garden. They finally caught him, didn’t they?”

  Teal, aged to the point where she had become her mother’s twin, nodded. “And whatever they did… it was better for a minute there, but he went to sleep, and now… I don’t know, maybe that gave everything a chance to integrate better, ’cause I think it’s getting worse.”

  Elle hobbled forward and laid her hand on Tam’s cheek. It was cold, but slick with sweat. His eyes widened until she could see the whites flash in the moonlight, but he submitted to her touch.

  “Oh, Tam,” she breathed. “I am sorry.”

  She lowered her hand to her stick. That would have to be enough for now. If Teal was right—and the girl had never been a fool—they had a limited time left for Tam to be of any use whatsoever.

  “Bring him, Teal, and tell me what’s happened.”

  “Thank you for attending us, Dionte,” said Father Mihran from the far end of the conference table. His was a familiar face—solid, lean, and well lined from years of serious thought. Dionte had seen him at least in passing every day of her life. He knew her. He knew her work. Despite that, he looked at her like a stranger today.

  “What can I do for you, Father, my Aunts and Uncles?” She bowed to Father Mihran and the committee arrayed down the sides of the low table.

  “I am sorry to have to say such a thing, especially under such conditions.” Father Mihran nodded to the committee. Strangers, all of them, with blank eyes. She looked at their faces and felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  “What is it, Father?” Dionte folded her hands in front of her, not lettin
g her fingertips touch. She had to concentrate on the room in front of her right now, but she felt as if she had been placed behind a thick glass wall and every impression from them came to her muted and distorted.

  “Your birth brother, Tam, is missing.”

  “What?” Dionte clamped her hands together. No, no. Aleph would have told her. Aleph stood with her. She and Hagin had almost eliminated the unexpected distractions the most recent events had caused. She and Aleph were bound together, and Aleph would not leave her ignorant. She had just checked on Tam yesterday. His expanded filaments were almost complete. Another night’s sleep to integrate the final adjustments, and…

  But the reports had all frozen with yesterday’s time signature, and no new data poured into her.

  “How…” The world spun around her, and she had to sit down hard on the stool behind her.

  “That is the question,” said Father Mihran, and the words sounded too harsh. “It comes in conjunction with accusations that Aleph has made.”

  Aleph… Tam gone, no report of him, no action, no meeting, no sighting. Where was Tam? Where had he gone without her? They were bound together now. They must see the same future, but where was he?

  Dionte forced her hands apart. The committee watched her. She had to answer them. “Aleph is…” She stopped herself. She was not supposed to know too much about that. She was a Guardian, not a tender. They could not know of her connection with Hagin, not yet. “Aleph has said something about me?”

  “Father Mihran, Seniors all, Dionte.” Aleph’s quiet voice cut through the assembly, and Dionte’s heart thudded in her chest. What had she missed? What would Aleph say? “I am sorry to intrude, but we are in receipt of a transmission from Director Shontio of Athena.”

  Dionte’s spine stiffened instantly. From Athena? What was happening now?

  Father Mihran frowned. “Tell him we are in a meeting. I will speak to him as soon as we are finished.”

  “He says it is an emergency, Father,” said Aleph.

  Senior Jahn stirred uneasily. “The situation there has not been stable.”