by John Meaney
Down below on the street, the gates to the complex had swung open, and a glimmer of bright yellow indicated an unlikely sight, which Viktor would later think had distracted the sniper for those few extra milliseconds.
But Viktor's own momentum saved him the necessity of processing what he saw. He swung his leg forward powerfully and kicked the sniper in the ass: a move that might have looked comical but crushed the man's coccyx and caused him to arch back, voice frozen. In that moment Viktor descended.
He knee-dropped onto the sniper's spine, hammered the Grauser butt into the back of his neck, then slipped his left forearm under the sniper's chin. Viktor pressed down with his right elbow and applied a sleeper hold, hard.
The man was probably unconscious before the strangle went on, but this would make sure—though it added the risk that he might never wake up. After thirty seconds, Viktor released the hold. He stood up.
The sniper remained prone, unmoving.
As part of checking the environment, Viktor allowed himself to sink quickly, deeply, into a trance, checking for ensorcellment. If the various parts of his mind were no longer in synch with one another, then it might indicate that some form of hex was distorting the neural patterns in his brain, causing hallucination.
Nothing.
That meant several things: not just the lack of hidden, subtle booby traps in this place, but also that the vision Viktor had glimpsed earlier was real.
Just why the gates outside had swung open to let out two dwarves riding a canary-yellow tandem bicycle was unclear—but that was exactly what Viktor remembered seeing. Either that, or twin children wearing false beards.
The sniper began to groan and shake.
Good.
Meanwhile, Spike the alley kitten was already on his way, moving among shadows. He darted across a wall surmounted with fragments of broken bottles. They were fastened in place to discourage human intruders; Spike circumnavigated the sharp-edged shards with ease.
Then he was scrambling up a long-dead tree and slipping along one dry branch that led to a rooftop. High above, a noxeagle glided below moon-tinged clouds, but Spike was aware of the danger. In seconds he was hidden beneath a rusted water tank, waiting for the flying hunter to pass.
Yellowish eyes regarded him from across the roof. It was a parafox, not a deathwolf, but the look in its eyes was nothing like friendly. But even as Spike began to realize the danger he was in, two pairs of eyes suddenly glowed scarlet, followed by a third pair, and a fourth.
The parafox blinked at the appearance of more cats, these rangy and muscular. With one flash of his bushy tail, the parafox turned and slipped away. After a moment, one of the cats, old and gray and torn-eared, made his way across to the water tank where Spike crouched.
The other cats maintained their watch. They were far from familiar territory.
Ducking low, the tomcat peered in at Spike. Spike stared back, and the two cats—the old warrior male and the determined youngster—locked on to each other. Information passed along the entangled channel of feline communication that slips through the deepest geometry of space–time.
Spike began to purr.
Then the older tomcat turned and moved away, accelerating across the rooftop. It took a few seconds for the other cats to realize what had happened, then they, too, were on the move, into the night, heading for their rendezvous with Laura Steele.
There was a spare medical robe in her locker. Mina drew it out and pulled it on over her ordinary clothes. The robe was clean and smelled good. She ran her finger across her instrument case, then rejected it. The damned thing was too heavy to cart several stories down.
Mina had a smaller, zipped traveling case of instruments, which had been given to her by Aldinov, her boyfriend back in graduate school. Aldinov had lost interest in direct proportion to Mina's success and prospects outshining his. Aldinov had been rich—or rather his parents had been—and a useful-but-expensive present like the portable instruments had been a clever idea.
After their affair's bitter ending, Mina had almost thrown away the instruments rather than continue with a reminder of her stupidity. In the end, though, she kept the case and settled on using it only when carrying a full kit was impractical.
Mina slipped the small instrument case into the pocket of her robe. She stared at herself in the small mirror fixed inside her locker door, then swung the door shut. She exited and found herself in Autopsy Room 3, where concave steel benches with built-in drains and antiseptic nozzles were empty and shining.
No stains marked the tiled floor, no scents hung in the air that could penetrate the eternal mist of disinfectant pervading this cold place. Perhaps a hint of steam marked the exhalation of Mina's breath.
Mina crossed the autopsy room and pushed her way through the triple sets of doors. She did not look back as the steel floor began its downward slope toward the Honeycomb, where Malfax Cortindo's corpse waited.
Something rumbled deep beneath her feet. Mina stopped.
“What the Thanatos—”
Mina held herself still, expecting something more. There was nothing. It had felt like a distant train, but no tunnels ran beneath this place. If it was a freak trick of geology and happenstance, then that was all right, but Mina decided she would report this.
All the more reason for doing what she had to do quickly, quietly, and privately.
Her pulse began to beat visibly beneath her thin skin. She took out the instrument case and unzipped it as she walked, drawing out a long, slender scalpel.
She neared the heptagonal cell containing Cortindo, then stopped to look up and down the steel corridor, sensing nothing save the clammy sweat coating her narrow body. Another tremor passed through the floor. This time she was certain.
Whatever was happening, there was danger, and she was its target.
“Fuck you.”
All the decades of medical training, of playing politics with the high and mighty—and immersing herself in the most painful Bone-Listener disciplines—fell away now, leaving only her native toughness.
“Just . . . fuck you.”
Mina hammered her fist into the crystalline ward set at the edge of the cell and watched as the hex shield flared, then began to fade. Inside that dying glare, the unmoving form resolved itself into a dead body, no different from any of the thousands that had passed through here before.
Except this time someone wanted the body back.
Someone who was capable of breaking into this place—but this was her place. Mina sliced savagely into the inanimate head of Malfax Cortindo, the scalpel coming away sticky with semiliquid blood.
There was no time to retrieve the other instruments, but that was all right, as Mina hooked her fingers into the flap of scalp and ripped back. She threw herself inside the cell as far as her shoulders, desperate as an explosion banged through the corridor outside. Metal ripped open amid showering dust and noise.
I hear you.
The corpse's exposed skull tasted raw and salty as Mina placed her tongue against it.
Cortindo, I hear you now.
Then Mina pulled her head back. Splaying her fingertips against the bone, she began her quest for one particular song amid the inchoate patterns laid down inside his—Hands clasped Mina's ankles.
“No!”
Strong hands, hauling her away from Cortindo.
“No—”
She shivered as the contact was broken. . . .
“Please, don't—”
. . . and they pulled her into the cold, dusty air. The two small figures who stared at her were ordinary thick-boned men, less than four feet tall but strong. Mina knew in the instant she saw their stone gazes that the rules she had broken, and the rules she had lived by, were of no consequence, not any longer. This was the day her own life ended.
One of the dwarves raised an ax that shimmered with coherent hex waves, its edge capable of slicing through the hardest stone or metal. Biological matter was no kind of challenge. The dwarf drew bac
k his lips; you couldn't call the expression a smile.
Concentrate. Replay.
Mina squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the disciplines.
Remembering the pain.
Concen—
The universe blacked out.
Was finished.
The Robbery-Haunting team was professional. By the time Donal and Alexa arrived, the R–H guys were well settled in place.
They had formed two concentric circles of observation posts around the Illurian embassy. Harald, his gentle eyes beginning to show his exhaustion, took Donal and Alexa on the tour, walking the quiet streets.
“And the limo,” Harald said, as they crossed one of the narrow avenues that led into the heptagon. “R-H impounded it from a counterfeit ring.”
Alexa grinned. Donal checked the vehicle from the edge of his vision, not turning his head, just in case their suspect or someone working with him was mounting a surveillance of his own.
In an area like this, where the grand old houses were owned by diplomats and embassies and occasionally a rich old Tristopolitan family, the normal kind of surveillance vehicle would have stood out: a baker's van, for instance. But the dark-windowed limousine was perfect.
“Who's inside?” Donal asked.
“Guy I know vaguely,” said Harald, “called Ralfinko, and an older guy, a sergeant, who looks like he knows what's what.”
“All right.”
Alexa touched Harald on the arm. “You need to get some rest.”
“No.”
“Er . . . I know you and I have only just met,” said Donal, “but I think she's right, pal.”
“Balls.” Harald spoke softly as always. “All right. My old sergeant used to say, it's only your comrades who can tell you when you're screwing up.”
They were standing under a streetlamp. Harald dug inside his pocket and pulled out a small food box. He flipped back the lid and held out the open box. “Hungry?”
“Um. . . no thanks,” muttered Donal. Inside the box were layered flower petals, orange and darkest purple predominating. “I don't know how you eat that stuff.”
“It's all he ever eats,” said Alexa. “Mr. Gentle, we like to call him.”
“Right.” Donal looked at Harald, who nibbled at one of the petals. “Which sergeant was this that you mentioned?”
“Oh, Bastard Balrooney, we used to call him.”
“And this was in—”
Harald looked at Alexa, then at Donal, and smiled peacefully. “The Fighting Sevens.”
Donal had rarely come across the men of the 777th during his own military career, but those few had always lived up to the reputation of their brigade, known widely as the Cursed Commandos. He had once seen a one-eyed old sergeant of the 777th take down six military policemen, before walking back to barracks and handing himself in for punishment.
“Mr. Gentle,” Donal said.
Harald smiled again.
“So what do we do next?” asked Alexa.
“The usual.” Harald closed his food box and tucked it away. “We pick the most comfortable surveillance spot and wait.”
That was the way of things. Surveillance consisted mostly of watching and dying to take a pee. The biggest challenge was boredom and the tendency to doze off.
From somewhere behind them, an engine started up, then revved with power.
“Did you say we were going to wait?” muttered Donal.
“I am occasionally wrong,” said Harald.
A dark car turned into the avenue, its headlights a liquid malevolent green. Then the driver accelerated hard, and the car sped past them. Startled, a reptilian gekkobat launched itself from a stone tree and flapped away into the dark, featureless sky.
“Shit,” said Alexa.
The limousine parked at the curb started up, as the passenger window rolled down. “You guys want a ride?” The speaker was square-jawed and gray-haired: the sergeant that Harald had mentioned. “Better hurry.”
The driver had the limo pointing the wrong way, but he swung away from the curb in a tight U-turn and jerked to a stop next to Donal and Alexa. Donal pulled the door open and pushed Alexa inside, then followed.
“Go ahead,” said Harald. “I'll catch up.”
“Okay.”
Donal pulled his door shut, and acceleration slammed him back into the seat.
“Don't let him see you,” he muttered to the driver—what was his name again? “Uh, you're Ralfinko, right?”
“Yeah, and you gotta be kidding. The bastard's already out of sight.”
Tires screeched as Ralfinko hauled them through a left turn and piled on the acceleration.
At the corner of Silvan Avenue and 504th rose a blood-red craggy tower, famed locally for its twisted architecture, black oval windows that looked like rows of eyes, and the odd visitors who passed through its doors.
On a windowsill on the thirteenth floor, near the junction where a necrotonic cable disappeared into the wall, a gray cat hunched. Its crimson gaze followed the embassy car speeding past below, followed by a dark limousine, then a small car, and finally a bone-colored motorcycle, taking up the rear but accelerating hard.
The cat blinked.
After a moment, it leaped lightly onto the hanging cable and walked on toward the next roof, dismissing the chase it had seen developing below. Two other cats had relayed the message since the hard-bitten tomcat, Dilven, got it from the young Spike, but it was the goings-on at the docks that would concern Laura Steele.
The place where she awaited news, Darksan Tower, stood tall against the purple sky.
Viktor pressed down with his thumbs, and the sniper gave a strangled scream, all that his paralyzed vocal cords would allow. At this stage, the sniper didn't even know what information Viktor was after. This was only to establish that Viktor was willing to cause suffering.
Willing, and able.
“A short woman.” Viktor's voice was low and throaty, designed to reinforce fear. “With green eyes. Have you seen her?”
“No. . .” The sniper could only croak a whisper. “Haven't—”
Viktor pressed again, hard, and the sniper's back arched off the floor, though his limbs remained helpless. Viktor had worked on the shoulders and hips first, and those joints must be burning in agony by now.
“Is there a prisoner? A woman?”
“I—Yes!” A finger twitched: all that the sniper could manage as a warding-off gesture. “There . . . Sal. Got some . . . one.”
Viktor glanced at the window. “In the compound? Sally the Claw's in there?”
The sniper nodded, eyes wide.
“With a prisoner?” Viktor's jaw muscles flexed. “Tell me.”
“Brought her . . . in. Tonight.”
“Her name. What's her—”
But the sniper was already shaking his head. If he knew the name, he'd say it: Viktor was sure of that.
“Which building?”
“Block . . . Three.”
Viktor didn't know which building that was, but he wasn't going to ask—to maintain dominance, he had to appear to already know almost everything.
“What else can you tell me?”
The sniper shook his head.
Viktor stared down at him. As the sniper regained consciousness, fear and bewilderment had cracked his conscious defenses, and direct questions had elicited answers. But now Viktor had run out of specifics to ask about.
“Next time,” said Viktor, “choose your employer more carefully.”
“No, you—”
Viktor's fist hammered down.
Afterward, just in case he had missed something on the first search, Viktor went through the beaten man's pockets with care, finally extracting a small brass ID strip. It was stamped with the dragon-wing logo of CalTransPort, the main holding company of Sally the Claw's near-legitimate import-export group.
There was no personal identification to go with it. For a moment Viktor considered stripping the sniper of his armored hexlar vest and impersonat
ing him, rifle in hand. But there was no way of knowing whether the guards down below knew the sniper by sight, or even by name.
Or perhaps Viktor was too attached to his own leather jacket to want to leave it in this infested joint.
Shaking his head, he picked up the unconscious sniper's rifle, checked the balance, and ejected the magazine. It held a clip of five long, slender bullets. If the sniper had a spare clip, he must have hidden it somewhere, and he was in no position to divulge that information now.
Viktor put the cartridge clip in his jacket pocket. Then, with a last inspection of the sniper—the man would live, provided someone found him within the next few hours—Viktor left the bare room. The landing and the rest of the dilapidated building looked clear. He stepped carefully over the trip wire, and went down the old treads quickly but almost silently.
At ground level, he stepped over broken shards on the floor, ducked under the stairs, and groped around until he found a suitable hiding place. He slid the rifle into the gap between a tread and a broken shelf—this had once been a cupboard, but the door had long since been ripped off, probably used for firewood.
There. Good. The rifle was too conspicuous to take inside the complex, but if Viktor had to retreat, this would be a good place to grab a long-range weapon. Five shots would drop one or two pursuers, maybe more.
Viktor hefted the brass ID strip in his left hand and walked out of the building, pulling the door shut behind him. If someone was expecting the door to be hexed but had no detector, then everything would look as before. If they did have a detector, they'd know the defenses had been breached. There was nothing Viktor could do to help that.
In the broken alleyway beside the building, Viktor paused, scanning the street, the blackened pits that were paneless windows in other buildings. Then he took a deep breath, held it, and let it out.
Viktor walked out into the open street and headed for the main gate, his walk loose-limbed and confident, projecting ease. Inside, his nerves crawled. Perspiration speckled his skin as the fine hairs rose across the back of his shoulders.
Someone behind the wire fence swung a flashlight beam in Viktor's direction.
They hurtled through the streets, not yet in open pursuit. If anything, the man they were tracking should be suspicious at the lack of cops. Twice he'd gone through stoplights at speed.
