“No, I don’t,” Kella said. “She was terrified and disgusted. She came straight to the police as soon as she saw that room. I’m guessing she’ll probably tell her friends, or anyone who might be more supportive or sympathetic, and then go back to the police again, possibly with more evidence. She might even try to free the animals herself. She was very emotional.”
“Then we have a problem.”
“My lady, what is this doctor really doing?” Kella asked the question too quickly, before Sade had quite finished speaking. For a moment no one spoke, and the detective wondered if she would be chastised for speaking out of turn. She had heard rumors, only rumors but more than one, that Lady Sade frequently dispatched her private agents to punish those who were even slightly rude to her. Case files full of unsolved poisonings and stabbings washed through Kella’s mind.
But the lady only sipped her tea as before. “What did I tell you the doctor was doing?”
“Research, to help people.” Kella knew she was frowning, but she didn’t care anymore. “Is that what the doctor is really doing? Does she plan to help future patients by inserting these machines into their bodies? And by experimenting with explosive chemicals?”
“You seem upset, detective.” The governor tilted her head. “Why is that?”
Kella glanced down at her hands and forced them open to rest on the arms of the chair. “My lady, when you approached me about performing certain tasks for you, to help you with certain projects, I took that to mean I would be protecting the peace of this city and the security of the country. I was honored. And I understand that difficult times and circumstances require us to make certain sacrifices, to do what needs to be done, rather than what we would like to do.”
“But you no longer feel that way?”
The detective tried to put the words together in her mind as carefully as possible. “I am no longer certain that my actions are in the best interests of public security.”
“And if I explain to you exactly what the Espani doctor is doing, then that will set your mind at ease?” Lady Sade passed her empty cup to her silent companion to be refilled. “Do you want to know everything that I know? Do you feel you deserve to be privy to all of my private enterprises? Or is it that you wish to debate with me how I should conduct my affairs? Perhaps you have studied our national politics, the currents of our markets, the tides of public opinion and morale, and you have some suggestions as to how I might better serve my people?”
“No, my lady.” Kella glanced down, a quiet rage simmering in her chest.
“No?” Lady Sade shrugged her slender shoulders as she received her steaming cup. “As you wish. Then you will simply have to trust my judgment in the matter of the doctor.”
“Yes, my lady.” Kella studied the silent man, trying to place him. His face was familiar, probably from the rough portrait sketches in the newspapers that made everyone look vaguely alike. For a moment, the detective considered formally resigning her special appointment. But then what? A knife in a dark alley to silence me, and someone else takes my place as her errand girl? No, I’ve got to stay inside on this one until I know what’s going on. “I’m sorry I disturbed you and your guest, Lady Sade. It won’t happen again.”
Lady Sade nodded curtly and slid back in her seat, just a bit, and turned her body to face her companion, and Kella sensed that she had been dismissed. She stood, smoothed her jacket, and left.
Detective Massi took the long way home, which was one of several long ways she had deliberately mapped out in her mind for various reasons. This particular long way required her to cross several wide open parks and squares that offered no convenient places to loiter in hiding, and carried her past many long shiny store windows that cast enormous reflections of the streets around anyone who happened to walk by. This was a popular neighborhood, one filled with cafés and teahouses and shops peddling both traditional and novelty items from clothing to mechanical toys. During the day, these parks and squares became stages for singers, storytellers, acrobats, and preachers, and in the evenings they plied their trade all the more fervently, but now, in the dark of night, these places stood empty, swept clean by street workers and guarded only by the silent gas lamps sputtering atop their posts.
It took more than a half hour of meandering through open spaces and past reflective surfaces for Kella to spot the dark figure following her. He walked with a male stride, his posture too correct for the business of lurking and sneaking. He moved from shadow to doorway to corner, silently and swiftly. He clearly thought he knew his business. He didn’t.
Kella felt through the pocket of her gray jacket to the only weapon issued to members of Security Section Five: the police club, a slender little bit of wood with a small iron ring screwed into the business end to lend it some extra weight. The detective wondered how threatening a professional killer would find such a weapon. Her hand slipped around to the small of her back and she pulled out a folded knife and she thrust it into her front pocket. At the next corner she paused, kicked her shoes loudly against the stoop as though to clean them, and then sauntered into an alleyway where she promptly flattened herself against the wall and waited.
A moment later the dark figure flowed past the mouth of the alley, so quickly and quietly that Kella almost missed him, but she stepped out into the street and just managed to tap him on the shoulder.
The man in the black cloak whirled about, and though his face remained shadowed by his hood, the gun in his hand gleamed brightly. Kella grabbed the long barrel of the revolver in her left hand and then dealt the man a vicious punch to the throat with her fist wrapped around her folded knife. The man gasped and stumbled, but did not release the gun, and Kella felt the cylinder begin to turn beneath her fingers. She snapped the gun up and toward him, wrenching it free of his grip and then stepped back, brandishing both her unfolded knife and the gun. “Don’t move.”
The man fell still except for the one hand still massaging his throat. Then he broke into a run and vanished down the next alley. Kella sprinted after him, darting down the alley around discarded bits of broken furniture and piles of rags and wide dark puddles. Ahead, she saw the stranger reach the end of the alley and dash to the left down the street. Kella passed the corner a moment later, ducking as the man in black lunged at her, swinging his fist level with where the detective’s head should have been. Instead, his arm whirled through empty space and his wrist connected with the brick corner of the building, and he cried out. Kella snapped up from her crouch and threw two punches to the man’s stomach, and then kicked his legs out from beneath him.
The man fell to the ground on his rear, not so much moaning as growling through clenched teeth as he squeezed his injured wrist with his other hand. Kella knelt down beside him, leaning her knee against the man’s leg, pinning him in place. She shoved the gun in his face as she unfolded her knife blade. “I said don’t move.”
“I can see why she picked you. Even if you are old.” The man’s voice was strained as he tried not to make any more pained noises. “You’re pretty tough.”
“That makes one of us.” Kella pushed back the man’s hood with the tip of the open knife. An unremarkable male face stared up at her in the lamplight. An adult, but of any age. Neither handsome nor ugly. Nothing memorable about him at all. The perfect agent. “Do you have a name?”
“Not when I’m working.”
“Well, you’re not working anymore. Possession of a firearm and assaulting a police officer. You’re under arrest now, and probably will be for some time.” Kella poked inside the man’s coat with the barrel of the gun, but found no other weapons. “You were going to shoot me? In the street? Seems like a good way to attract a lot of attention. Not very assassin-like. You’d wake people up, they’d coming running to see what the fuss was about. You’d only have a few moments to get away or hide.”
“My orders were very specific.”
“Orders? From Lady Sade?” Kella frowned and nodded to herself. “So were you just l
urking around the house waiting for someone to kill, or did she have to send out for you?”
The man merely winced as he continued rubbing his wrist.
“No, I didn’t think you’d want to talk about her.” Kella straightened up and glanced around the empty street. “Not to worry. That’s what cells are for.”
The man managed a wheezy laugh. “I won’t talk in a cell, either.”
“Then you can just rot in one. Either way works for me. Come on, up on your feet.” The detective pulled the man up, wrapped her fingers around the sturdy fabric of his collar, and shoved the muzzle of the gun into the small of his back. “All right, let’s take a walk.”
They set out down the street in single file. The man in black tilted his head back with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in making some sort of deal?”
“Only if you and all of your little friends feel like testifying against Sade before a high court.”
The man snorted. “I was thinking of a different sort of deal. As in, you let me go and I tell you where another of my little friends is right now.”
Kella jerked her prisoner to a halt under a streetlamp. “Where?”
“Let me go first.”
Kella slammed the man into the lamppost. “Where?”
He grunted. “I don’t think you have time to play guessing games. We already wasted a lot of time meandering through this neighborhood. My little friend has quite a head start on you, and she’s very motivated to make a good showing tonight. So let me go and I’ll tell you who the target is.”
Kella shoved the man away, turning him so they stood face to face, and then she shoved the gun into his cheek. “Who is it?”
“Look, I know you’re an honest officer. Make the right call. Let me go. After all, I haven’t hurt anyone, and I’m unarmed. You saw to that.”
“Who is the target?”
The man squinted and pursed his lips. “Third district. Some sort of medical machine shop. One of the employees. A girl called Amadi.”
I never mentioned her name. Sade must have a list of the doctor’s employees. Kella tightened her grip on him. “It’s the middle of the night. She won’t be at the shop.”
“No.” The man smiled and took a small step back from the gun. “So my friend is no doubt running around town at this moment, trying to find where she lives. I got the easy job, killing you. I hate research. Questions. Talking. Boring.”
Kella grabbed the man’s shirt and yanked him forward, and brought the butt of the gun down on the top of his head. The assassin slumped against her, unconscious. She pulled out her manacles and hastily shackled the limp body to the lamppost, and dashed away into the city. All the way back to the third district! Kella glared at the road flying by underfoot. At least she knew the target’s name, the whole name. Jedira Amadi. But she didn’t have an address. Yet.
She pounded up block after block through the fifth district, darting around corners, narrowly avoiding two collisions with young couples walking arm in arm in the dark. As she crossed the avenue that marked the edge of the third district, Kella bent her course east, angling not toward the prosthetics shop but toward the police station. She burst through the heavy doors, drawing stares from the handful of officers still leaning over the papers on their desks, and ran to the records room. The narrow room was little more than a long path for walking between two rows of massive filing cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling. The detective scanned the drawer labels, then yanked open the city directory. Amadi, Amadi… Jedira Amadi. The address. Five blocks away.
Kella strode back into the main room and pointed at the officers at their desks. “You over there, get down to High Street in the fifth district. You’ll find a man shackled to a lamppost near Carter’s Square. Bring him in. Attempted murder with a firearm. The rest of you need to sweep the streets right now for a lone killer, female, possibly armed with a revolver. Stop and search anyone you find out there. Usem, you’re with me.”
The room leapt to life as officers grabbed their jackets and clubs and lanterns and rushed out into the street. The one officer loped away to the right and Kella led the others to the left into the third district. They jogged through the darkness and puddles of light around the lampposts, crossing streets and squares and alleys. In ones and twos, the officers dashed away in every direction until only Usem was still with her. Finally, Kella pointed out the small door next to a bakery bearing Amadi’s address. The door was locked.
“Jedira Amadi!” Kella pounded on the door. “This is Detective Massi, from earlier. Jedira! Miss Amadi! Open up! Hello? Hello!”
The detective paused as a distant strain of music caught her ear. Someone was whistling a single clear melody echoing faintly down the street. She turned and saw a figure in a white coat in the middle of the road sauntering toward them. A woman, she guessed by the way she walked, and as the seconds passed she saw that the woman was staring at them. The tune warbling out of her pursed lips was a nursery rhyme, a lullaby that had the oddly disturbing sort of lyrics typical of all lullabies, softly bribing the child to be quiet and go to sleep, or else a monster might appear. Kella hated lullabies. She knocked on the door again, but kept her eyes on the woman in white.
The stranger angled toward them. Her whistling grew louder, rising and falling in time with her footsteps, and her hands remained in her pockets.
Kella beat on the door again. “Miss Amadi?”
The whistling broke off, and the detective saw that the woman was smiling, her gait suddenly breaking into a swinging sort of swagger, a lazy swaying accompanied by a cruel grin. “Thank you, for that. The name. It’s always good to confirm the target’s identity through a third party.”
Kella pulled the gun from her pocket and pointed it at the stranger. “Stop right there. Hands where I can see them. Right now, hands up.” Usem pulled out his club.
The woman, still grinning, slowly raised her empty hands. “Hm. The gray coat says police, but the gun says not-police. So one of them must not be yours, and I’m betting it’s the gun. Where’d you get it? Hm? It doesn’t look like standard army-issue. Did you swipe it from a crime scene?”
“Something like that.”
The woman laughed a husky, condescending laugh. She had an enormous hawk-beak nose set between eyes and lips that seemed sculpted to convey only cruel amusement. A thick mass of limp black hair disappeared beneath the collar of her white coat. “That’s Merin’s revolver, isn’t it? The idiot. Using a gun. I told him not to be taken in by all the flashy toys you people have, to stick to the old ways, but no, he had to go and steal a gun. Stupid, even for a Persian. I always knew he’d die young.”
“He’s not dead.”
“Then you’re as stupid as he is.” The woman’s hands drooped below shoulder level. “Very important, very powerful, people have hired me. These people like things done and done properly. On time, as instructed. Merin understands that, so as long as he’s alive, he’s a danger to you.”
Kella heard soft, uneven footsteps behind the apartment door. “And I suppose as long you’re alive, you’re also a danger to me?”
The woman’s hands fell a bit farther and she resumed walking forward. “Very much so, but only for the next few moments.”
“I said don’t move.” Kella strode away from the door into the street. “No one listens to me, no one ever listens to me.” She pointed the gun at the woman’s feet and pulled the trigger.
The cylinder rotated slightly, then clicked back again.
The stranger smiled. “I told Merin not to carry a gun. I also broke the stupid thing when he wasn’t looking to teach him a little lesson. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to actually be here when it failed. You’re not Merin, but you’ll do. The look on your face is precious.” She dashed forward across the small space between them and collided with the detective with two fists and one steel-toed boot all at once.
Kella staggered back and fell to one knee, stunned and gasping, unable t
o focus on the pains in her chest, stomach, and leg. The woman moved in a swirl of white cloth and blurry limbs, all flying and snapping into position as though God had decreed that her fists and feet belonged in the detective’s flesh and bones at that precise instant, and nothing in creation could prevent them from striking. Amid the flurry, Kella glimpsed a bloody bandage around the woman’s hand.
Usem brought his club down on the woman from behind, but she leapt back against him, inside the sweep of his arm. The detective gasped and dropped his club, and when the woman stepped away Kella saw the knife buried in Usem’s chest.
Kella heard a woman cry out and looked over in time to see the bakery door open for a brief instant to reveal Jedira’s terrified stare, and then the door slammed shut again. The detective refocused on the woman in white and staggered upright just as Usem collapsed to the street, still gasping, one hand gripping the handle of the knife.
Damn it. I can’t help Usem and protect the house at the same time. As she stared down at him, she saw the detective’s hand fall from the knife and he slumped back to the ground. Damn it, Usem. I’m sorry.
She cleared her throat and tried to focus on the woman in white, only barely able to ignore the fresh bruises all over her chest and arms. “You have a strange accent. I would have said eastern, but you don’t seem to like Persians.” Kella shifted, placing herself between the woman and the door.
“Most Samaritans don’t.” The woman surged forward again, fists flying in tightly controlled jabs too fast to count.
Kella took a dozen blows to the head and stomach before she could even raise her arms to shield herself. She barely heard the faint sigh of a blade slipping free of its sheath, and the detective hurled her body to the ground and rolled away.
“Oh no,” the woman said calmly. She held up a long thin knife. “Look. I just chipped the tip against the wall here. I’ve had this knife a very long time. I liked this knife. And I’m running out of knives as it is.”
Kella stood up, this time with her own fat knife unfolded in her hand, its wide blade bright and shiny in the gas-lit haze of the street. “You talk a lot for a killer.”
Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy) Page 21
