Bone Song

by John Meaney

  To the levels where senior officers like Commissioner Vilnar had their offices and secret vaults.

  Far below, other ward fields, beginning at the minus-fiftieth floor, prevented wraiths (and sprites and ectomists) from reaching the dark secrets of the torture chambers. Not to mention the entombed bones of earlier commissioners.

  But Xalia was high up in the tower, higher than she had ever climbed. She floated with tortuous care between webs of high-tension hex, among intricate three-dimensional mazes of deadly energy. One lapse of concentration and she would be fried out of existence, in all universes.

  Vilnar had sent Donal to spy on Laura—and worse, to seduce her. Once Xalia had proof that she could show Laura, there was no doubt in Xalia's mind about what would happen next.

  Donal would suffer, perhaps die in some lonely alley, waiting for backup that would never arrive.

  * * *

  Xalia was slipping through the third layer of defenses when a fiery sentence sprang up in her awareness.

  +Who are you?+

  Xalia stopped her ascent. For a split second she began a sideways drift, but there were HT hex lines close by. She brought herself to a halt.

  *Who's asking?*

  The reply came cold and loud.

  +Have you ever considered the nature of eternity?+

  *What?*

  +The length of time that persists beyond your existence.+

  It took a moment for Xalia to decide that was a threat.

  *Fuck off.*

  And for a few more moments, silence filled the solid stone. Then a cold rippling passed through everything, including Xalia, and she began to understand the nature of the being that guarded the upper layers. It was a tesselan, an aggregation fashioned from families of wraiths that were torn apart, twisted into new forms, and reprogrammed with a single quasisoul by master practitioners from the darkest schools of mind-control mages.

  +I will eat you.+

  *I don't fuckin' think so.*

  +And tear you apart, and take you into myself.+

  Xalia was already moving.

  *You and what horde?*

  +I need no other—+

  But they were at the nova-bright webs deep inside the stone now, where lethal energies burned and a vast powerful form like the tesselan guardian dared not move. Sensing the huge capacity for resonance from the tesselan, the dumb, mindless energies of the fire webs were already closing in.

  Xalia elongated her form and slipped inside the fire webs.

  And now she was really in danger.

  *Ah, shit.*

  From behind, the guardian's words were bright.

  +That was fatally stupid, little one.+

  Xalia tried to move forward, but the ravening lines of energy beat her back, and a deep realization flooded through her: she was about to die.

  Donal stepped back into the interrogation room. The original frames and glowing patterns were now obscured by arrays of flowing light, webs in which glyphs and icons moved.

  Beyond the blaze, Kyushen was scarcely visible at his workbench. Equipment hummed and crackled. The dwarfish prisoner whose soul was being flayed was completely out of sight, hidden by the vast display of light and movement filling the stone-walled room.

  “Thanatos, what are you doing to him, Kyushen?”

  “This is the running soul.” Kyushen's voice was made indistinct by discordant clicks and moans from his instruments. “The actual thoughts generated by the schemata and images. See: there's a propensity being invoked in order to return the qualia associated with—”

  “You're insane.”

  “On the contrary. See.” Kyushen's sleeve was painted in kaleidoscopic hues as he pointed into the midst of the visual maelstrom.

  “There. That structure is completely inconsistent with rational thought, at least of the human variety.”

  “Are you saying the prisoner's not human?”

  “No, I'm telling you he's clinically insane. It would take some powerful mage therapists to work any kind of rechanneling to solve the guy's problems.”

  Donal stared at the shifting light for a few moments.

  “We're not here to solve his problems.”

  “No. We're not.”

  “But I can't let you—”

  “Hush. There. Bloody Death, I've got it.”

  “What have you found?”

  “Wait. This is the trace I've got to follow, just stepping through these invocations . . .”

  Donal started to ask a further question, then closed his mouth.

  “There's a phone number,” muttered Kyushen.

  “You're kidding.”

  “It's a resonance impression.” Kyushen looked up at Donal. “He didn't perceive it directly. I'm going to have to trace the impressions and build a shadow.”

  Donal shook his head.

  “You mean it's guesswork, not memory.”

  “If we get a complete image, it will be accurate.”

  Donal wanted to ask how Kyushen knew that but decided not to. Kyushen's fingers flicked across switches and toggles.

  “I'm getting it . . .”

  Fingers moving faster across the console.

  “No. Damn . . .”

  There was nothing Donal could say or do to help.

  “Ah. . . Hades.”

  “You've lost it,” said Donal.

  “Oh, no.” Kyushen looked up. “I can tell you exactly where the call came from: seven-seven-seven, two-nine, three-five-one, seven-two-zero.”

  Donal stared at him, then nodded.

  “Keep a log,” he said. “Of everything you find.”

  “Of course.” Kyushen shook his head. “What did you expect me to do?”

  Donal said nothing, but his mind was whirling. This was the second piece of evidence.

  I expect you would bury it, if you knew you'd just fingered Vilnar.

  Because if there was a more dangerous enemy than a police commissioner, Donal could not imagine it.

  Xalia tried, but the pseudofire that could destroy her wraith form, inflicting pain that would last a subjective century, beat her back. The fire web was squeezing and burning her out of existence: a time-dilating immolation.

  *Fucking bastard place.*

  Then a cool wave passed through the web, clearing a passage.

  *Who—*

  *They call me Gertie.*

  Xalia recognized the wraith now. When Laura rode the elevator tubes upward—elevators that were irrelevant to Xalia—Xalia sometimes flew up alongside, so she'd gotten to know some of the captive wraiths.

  *Gertie? Aren't you trapped in elevator seven? Bound to it?*

  *Well, there are binds and binds, aren't there?*

  Uncertain what to make of that, Xalia matched her own vector's rotational frequency with Gertie's: it was like two corporeal humans holding hands. Together, they slipped through solid matter, heading up toward the place that might unveil the truth.

  Commissioner Vilnar's office.

  Harald brought his bone-shielded motorcycle to an idling halt. The Phantasm extruded two curved stands, steadying itself as Harald swung his leg over and dismounted.

  “Stay ready,” he murmured. “And keep watch.”

  A sense of alertness seemed to radiate from the Phantasm as Harald left it behind him. He strode quickly down an alleyway, across which a row of low spiked posts was set: there to discourage bikes and cars from joyriding between the graffiti-decorated walls.

  Tonight was too cold for the neighborhood youths to be out in force. Even so, a sudden burst of red-and-gold light washed across closed windows, and a series of loud cracks split the air: firecrackers and gunpowder candles thrown by young idiots who ought to know better.

  As a rookie cop, Harald had nearly shot a fourteen-year-old boy for throwing a firecracker, when his galvanized nerves had reacted as if to gunfire. Now he knew the difference automatically—not just from his years on the street, but from the intervening years as a marine before returning to life as a co
p.

  And as a sergeant in the Fighting Sevens, he had once led his troop into a safe haven in the Kongal Rock Forest, in the disputed Fuerile Valley beyond the Zurinese border. Harald had used a native guide, one who'd lived in the military base with them and even cooked their food. The guide's name was Gam Sintil, or at least that's what they knew him as.

  Fucking bastard snitches and traitors.

  But no one realized that Gam Sintil's true sympathies lay with the separatists—until a crescendo of hexlar-piercing rounds crashed from among the fractal forest pillars, and half of Harald's troop were dead before they even recognized the ambush.

  Kill the fuckers.

  Harald had fought his way out with three wounded comrades. His only satisfaction had been when Billy—aka Corporal Bilken Flewelor—placed a round in Gam Sintil's spine. The bastard had been running and nearly got clear.

  Billy's skull had exploded into scarlet mist a second later, from a sniper that Harald never saw. Harald just managed to get away.

  Kill them all.

  Just as Harald would do to Donal Riordan if it turned out the bastard was responsible for what happened to Sushana.

  Harald used snitches. He was gentle and friendly with them, when appropriate. But he distrusted and hated them all.

  This was an immigrant area, where refugees from Illurium made their homes. Harald already knew where to check first: a café called Stelto's, where Birtril Kondalis hung out eight evenings a week (with Hachiday reserved for worship at the Temple of Xithros).

  The usual haunting music drifted out of Stelto's, and Harald pushed aside the metal-beaded curtains and slid open the heavy rune-carved wooden door. Its runners were well-greased, so the door action was smooth and soundless. Harald stepped into the opium-scented atmosphere.

  Three long-faced men were sucking from helical pipes in the far corner. When they turned their eyes toward Harald, the irises were fully contracted, their pinprick gazes focused on a dream world that had little to do with Harald himself: it was just a reaction to movement.

  On the right-hand side, where a family was gathered to eat, a round-faced man with coffee-colored skin—that was Birtril—closed his eyes and swallowed. Then he opened his eyes and forced a smile.

  “Hello, Sergeant,” he said.

  “Birtril. What have you got for me?”

  “Huh?”

  “Information. You know that's what I like.” Harald dragged a spare chair across the cheap linoleum floor and sat down at Birtril's table. He nodded to the thin woman and two young boys who were sitting with Birtril.

  “Mrs. Kondalis,” Harald added. “Nice to see you. And the sons.”

  Birtril's wife, Laxara, nodded, but warily. She and Birtril were all too aware of the true legal status of their marriage. Birtril's first—and by law, only—wife remained in Silvex City, back in Illurium.

  The money that Birtril sent her every week was the only thing that prevented her from raising the matter officially. If Birtril's bosses at the embassy heard about it, his career in catering for diplomats would be ruined for good. And no one would get any money.

  “There's, er, nothing going on. . . .” Birtril looked up as the café's owner, Zegrol (the original owner, Stelto, had passed away during a dispute in a nearby nightclub whose bouncers bore scimitars that they knew how to use) poked his head through the curtains at the rear.

  Zegrol spotted Harald, observed his mood, and withdrew immediately. The curtains swung gently after he disappeared. Birtril gave a long liquid blink of unsurprised disappointment. “Honestly, Sergeant. No one in the embassy's up to anything.”

  “Not even the driver of XSA899-omega-beth-del?”

  “Huh?”

  “Limo driver. Lean, pale skinned, black hair. Get a grip, Birtril.” Harald leaned toward him. “And concentrate, will you?”

  “Um. . . Sure, Sergeant.”

  Harald checked the two sons for signs of anger, but they were not yet old enough to appreciate the bind that Harald held them in and to realize just how much their parents must resent him. Laxara's feelings remained deeply hidden.

  “So what's his name? The driver?”

  Birtril's gaze shifted to his left. “Ixil Deltrassol. He's an ex-army driver. Keeps to himself.”

  “And?”

  Birtril glanced at Laxara.

  “Um, can we take a walk, Sergeant?”

  “Well.” Harald smiled. “Of course. Let's get going.”

  He stood quickly and helped Birtril get up, as though he needed assistance. It was a matter of maintaining dominance. Harald ignored the opium smokers and Birtril's family—his second family—as he left with Birtril beside him. But he kept watch in his peripheral vision.

  Nothing happened as they passed through the hangings and out onto the cold street. Two youths on the corner, one carrying an unlit gunpowder candle, caught sight of Harald and faded into Raxman Alley. Harald was known here.

  That was the way he liked it.

  “Talk to me, Birtril.”

  “I have no idea what he's done,” Birtril said quickly. “Deltrassol doesn't make friends. Not enemies but not friends either, you know what I mean?”

  “Only if you use simple words.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. What are you hiding?”

  “I'm not—Shit.” Birtril stopped by one of the metal posts. “I don't know about any crime he might have committed, okay?”

  “Right, and who are his acquaintances, if he doesn't have friends?”

  “I don't know. He spends time in Sir Alvan's offices, but then, he works for the man. That's all.”

  “And?”

  Harald stared hard, maintaining psychological pressure.

  “There were rumors, and . . . I've seen Deltrassol's car parked where they said it would be.”

  “Uh-huh. Continue, Birtril. All the way to the end.”

  “The See-Through Look 'n' Feel,” said Birtril. “I happened to see him coming out of there.”

  “You're sure?”

  “Yeah, and the doorman said good night to him by name, like he was a regular or something, y'know?”

  “Good.”

  Birtril let out a sigh of relief.

  “That's it, boss. Sergeant. That's everything I know about him.”

  “I believe you.” Harald pulled out his wallet and slipped out three thirteen-florin notes. “Here, buy Laxara a new coat.”

  Birtril slipped the money quickly into his pocket.

  “Much appreciated, Sergeant.”

  He waited, as if for permission to rejoin his family.

  “Go on.” Harald nodded back toward Stelto's. “Laxara's waiting for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Harald waited until Birtril was almost at the café door before calling out, “And I won't mention anything to Laxara.”

  Birtril stopped, stiffening.

  “About you being in Quarter Moon Alley,” added Harald. “I wouldn't want to speculate on what you were doing there. Know what I mean?”

  Birtril's head hung forward, and he stood there in front of the door to Stelto's. His face was in shadow against the light, and perhaps he was crying: it was impossible to tell. Then he straightened by a small amount, pushed open the door, and went inside.

  It banged shut behind him.

  Harald stood looking at the closed door for a while. Then he remembered Sushana's battered face, and his own expression turned to stone.

  A rocket burst high overhead, throwing out silver and black stars, emitting a screeching howl.

  Reaching his motorcycle, Harald swung his leg over the saddle and settled into position.

  “If this Deltrassol's a principal,” he told the Phantasm, “I'm going to rip his nuts off. But if he's just a stooge . . .”

  The Phantasm rumbled and growled, engine revving as Harald took hold of the handlebars. It rolled forward, pulling its twin stands back inside itself.

  “. . . then I'm going to make sure it's Donal bloody Riordan who
loses his testicles, and more. For Laura's sake as well as Sushana's.”

  The Phantasm accelerated into the street.

  Xalia fought her way through further barriers that Gertie found easy to slip past. For over a hundred twenty years, Gertie had glided along elevator shafts and the lesser-known aspects of police HQ architecture. She knew where solid stone offered clear passage and where security concerns had resulted in devious defenses.

  Now Gertie hung back before the final labyrinth, directing Xalia.

  *That way. See?*

  *Yes. Thanks.*

  There were risks in helping a fellow wraith, but Gertie had a perverse streak, and in any case she had been bored for days. And Xalia worked with Donal, was part of his new team, and Gertie's fondness for Donal had been growing with the years.

  Xalia, meanwhile, slipped and squirmed and attenuated her form to a dangerous extent, fighting to breach the barriers. She wanted proof of Donal's complicity to take to Laura. But this fire labyrinth was of expert design.

  *How are you doing, Xalia?*

  Gertie's message came through blazing curtains of hot hex like a distant echo. Xalia directed a narrow beam of communication back through the labyrinth, more to see if she could than because she wanted to answer. She needed to concentrate.

  *Fine. What did you think?*

  Whether it was the tiny distraction of making that reply, Xalia could not tell—but in the next few moments, the bars of hex floating among the thinner shields grew fatter and hotter, strengthening their manifestation. Xalia pulled herself inward and held still, floating in place.

  Then the bars brightened and began extruding crescent-shaped horns of crackling energy, and Xalia knew she was done for.

  Going farther into the labyrinth was out of the question. Secondary and tertiary labyrinths began to swing and rotate through from the orthogonal pocket universes in which they were stored. They inserted themselves into the mortal continuum, filling the labyrinth's gaps.

  *Vilnar, you mother—*

  Xalia's curse was cut off as the first two horns of energy pierced her half-ethereal form, and pain flared along the length of her paranerves: a twisting agony such as normal human beings could never experience.