by John Meaney
“Shit.”
“But you don't just need technicians to do this. You need a mage to be present.”
“Cortindo.”
“Maybe.”
“An Illurian connection, and a dark mage inside the Energy Authority?” Donal thought they were finally discerning the shape of the opposition. “It's Malfax Cortindo, all right.”
So much secrecy cocooned the Energy Authority, perhaps born of ordinary people's natural unwillingness to think about their activities, to let them get on with whatever they had to do.
“Tell me about Bowman,” Donal continued. “What happened to him?”
Lexar's explanation lasted for the rest of the drive, until Viktor pulled up in front of Darksan Tower. He pointed.
“There's Harald.”
“Okay.” Donal checked his watch: plenty of charge remaining. “We could go to Mordanto, or up to my place. You say Alexa's not coming around anytime soon?”
“Unlikely, they said.”
“So, let's go up.”
As they got out of the car, Viktor gestured at it.
“What about this?”
“One of the doormen will park it for you.”
“Well, excuse me while I piss myself in excitement.”
“If you must.” Donal grinned. “I'll get the butler to bring you a change of clothes.”
“Butler. Tell me you're joking.”
Harald was standing at the main doors, waiting for them.
“Come on up,” Donal said to Viktor, “and find out.”
An hour later, they were spread out in Donal's lounge. Dossiers were stacked in several loose piles on a wide, low table made of gray stone flecked with black and silver. Several open boxes of Fat'n’Sugar doughnuts stood on other low tables, along with take-out cups of coffee. Harald had gone out to fetch them.
“Let's run through the categories, then.” Viktor pulled a dossier off the largest pile. “Cops we can trust. Most of 'em, we already know.”
Harald pointed at the dossier in Viktor's hands.
“Adam Obsidian. Young guy. I've seen him training, gun range and gym. Excellent.”
Viktor looked at Donal.
“I don't think I've ever heard Harald call someone excellent.”
“Hmm. So, Harald,” asked Donal, “just how would you rate us?”
Harald shook his head.
“Good answer,” growled Viktor. “All right, here we have politicians we can go to for help. Maybe. But none of us know these people at all. And those”—he pointed—“will help if we let them know that we know their secrets.”
“I've always wanted to be a blackmailer,” said Donal. He picked a dossier off another pile. “Jo Serranto, journalist. I've met her.”
“She has an incisive writing style.” Viktor picked up his coffee. “And a curvaceous ass.”
“What more could you want?” Donal remembered that the zombie Dr. Thalveen had called Serranto a zombiefucker—a term new to Donal, but not exactly hard to figure out.
Lexar was sitting in an armchair by himself, watching the three cops, frowning.
“You okay?” asked Donal.
“Sure. It's just… you take things so lightly. Or talk as if you do. I even understand why.”
“Can anybody spell coping mechanism?” said Viktor.
“We have our assets listed.” Harald gestured toward the files. “Next we identify primary and secondary targets, and remember ORDER.”
“Observe,” Donal said for Lexar's benefit, “Reduce, Decide, Exe cute, Reevaluate.”
Like every military acronym, it was short and simple. That was because the higher centers of the brain effectively shut down when bullets are taking off your comrades’ heads. The ability to process any kind of logic at all under stress is what Donal had always found amazing.
“Oh, but”—Donal looked around the polished walls, the small expensive sculptures—“we have another asset. I mean, a real asset.”
“You're rich,” said Lexar. “Even though you don't actually have a butler.”
“Exactly.”
“Although legislation could end that, in a matter of weeks. Take away your rights.”
“So, in the meantime, let's calculate how many bullets I can afford to buy.”
“Okay.” Harald stood by the low table that held the files. “We need plans of the Westside Complex, a timetable for contacting the cops we trust, and a briefing once our strategy is decided. Agreed?”
“Sure,” said Donal. “As for the briefing, I believe it's my birthday tomorrow.”
“Er …”
“Or something to celebrate, anyhow. So let's have a party.”
“A party?” said Lexar.
“Right here. Big one.”
“Ah.” Viktor smiled. “Bring your own gun? Ammo supplied?”
“Exactly.”
Lexar looked from face to face.
“You guys are nuts, you know that?”
“Of course.”
“Why we became cops.”
“Party, party.”
“I mean, really insane.”
Kyushen stood inside the doorway of Sister Felice's room. She beckoned, and he went in and closed the door.
“Sit over there, Kyushen.”
“Um, sure.”
He took the hard-backed chair by the desk. Sister Felice was sitting on the single bed, her legs crossed and her spine upright. It was not a posture of invitation.
“The security locks on Records,” she said. “They use encrypted hex codes, is that right?”
“Oh, no. Do you have any idea how many times people have a quiet word with me about this?”
“Why, Kyushen, I didn't know you were so popular.”
“And I've always refused to help.”
“That's because the other requests were for interview notes, personnel files on rivals, that kind of thing. I'm guessing here.”
Kyushen nodded, remembering that no Night Sister had ever asked him to do anything untoward. Not before tonight.
“This is related to the break-in, isn't it?”
“One patient is missing. Exactly one. Her name is Marnie Finross.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Anything we can dredge up on her, Lieutenant Riordan might be able to use.”
Kyushen formed a mental image of the security system, which he had in fact examined in the past, but never attempted to break. He visualized interlocking labyrinths, formed of yellow and blue light, that had to be rotated and translated in a sequence of transformations.
“It's not a five-minute job.”
“Wait here.” Sister Felice got up from the bed. “I'm going to make a phone call.”
“I don't know whether—”
“Stay. Please.”
Kyushen began to feel shaky.
“All right,” he said.
After Sister Felice had slipped out, Kyushen turned to the small bookshelf over the desk. Not every book was familiar. He pulled out a heavy volume called Sentenced to Sentience: An Evolutionary Fate, and opened it to a chapter entitled “Free Will Is Inevitable.”
He looked up when Sister Felice returned. How much time had elapsed since her leaving, he could not have said. But the book's argument was compelling.
“You can borrow that, if you like.”
“Yes. Please.”
“And tomorrow, you and I are going to a party.” Sister Felice drew back the drape that concealed a clothes rail, extruded one claw, and hooked a hanger off the rail. “Good enough, do you think?”
It was an elegant cream dress with a kind of bow beneath the bust.
“Er…”
“It's purely business. We're invited to Lieutenant Riordan's place.”
“His home?”
“Sure. You think police officers don't have homes?”
“I never thought about it. I'm not sure I'm comfortable going to—”
“It really is business, Kyushen.” She replaced the dress on the rail. “That's all.”
<
br /> “Police business.”
“Even so.”
Kyushen looked at the book he was holding.
“I can borrow this?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Um … can I ask one other thing?”
He was sweating heavily, very aware of his skin sticking to the fabric of his shirt.
“If you like, Kyushen.”
“It's about…” He blinked, swallowed, blinked several times more. “Sister Lynkse.”
“Lynnie? What about her?”
“Is she … ?” This was really difficult. “Is she … seeing someone?”
There. He had finally said it. Now he waited for Sister Felice to snigger.
“I don't believe she is.”
“Oh.”
“You know, day after tomorrow, the musical society is putting on a little show.”
“I… might have seen the notice. On the board.”
“Lynnie loves that sort of thing. She'll be there, on her own.”
“Ah.”
“I'll get you a ticket. And I'll make sure you sit together.”
Kyushen looked down at the book. He closed it carefully, and stood up.
“ I ”
“Good night, Kyushen.”
She was holding the door open for him.
“Yes. Um, good night.”
Then he was in the corridor, book in hand, and the door had closed behind him.
“I don't believe it,” he said.
A musical… thing. Show. A seat next to Sister Lynkse.
“Wow.”
He held up his borrowed Sentenced to Sentience, and realized he could not remember what page he was on. That was unprecedented.
“Oh, wow.”
Inside a large, near-ovoid chamber, a steel-enclosed bed stood, surrounded by floating, shifting runes that glowed brighter when someone's gaze was turned on them. Mage Kelvin watched them, then directed his attention to the patient lying on the bed.
“H-hell-o.” Alexa Ceerling's eyes fluttered, then partially opened. “Oh…”
“My name is Finbar Kelvin, and you're safe.”
“Thank—Oh. The … Motor. Cycle.”
“I like motorcycles. The Phantasm is healing.” Reflections from the runes played upon Kelvin's shaven scalp. “And so are you.”
“I didn't… The things I… did.”
“Under compulsion. You must know that.”
“No. Yes.”
“Your friends tracked you down. I rescued you, in my silver magemobile.”
“Oh.”
“I'm joking. The others did the hard work.”
“Mage? There's a … vault. In … HQ.”
“In Police HQ?”
“You need to … say: Per. Vera. Veritas.”
“A password?”
“Yes.”
“Tell…”
But her voice was drifting off.
“That's fine.” Kelvin modulated his tone skillfully. “And the images … in your mind now … of the things you were compelled to do … grow vague … and the color fades … as they grow … distant … and the feelings … fade.”
Giving Alexa Ceerling amnesia—a limited amnesia, circumscribing every act she had committed under dark compulsion—was within Kelvin's ability to grant, though his powers did not compare to those of Professor Steele and the other seniors of Mordanto. But ethical standards dictated that they act only to dilute the emotional impact of those memories. Among other considerations, she would still be able to testify in court about what she had done.
Testify as a victim, not the criminal that the police department currently thought she was.
Kelvin watched her a while longer, then crossed the chamber to a desk. On it was a notepad bearing a phone number that he'd written down in response to an earlier call from Viktor Harman. Now Kelvin picked up the desk phone—an ordinary black telephone—and spun the cogs to that number.
“Hello? Yes, Kelvin here. Alexa just woke up.”
He listened.
“Sure. She'll sleep now for a long time, fifteen hours or more. But she's turned a corner, and her mind is knitting back together. Yes.”
Then he listened again.
“I'm positive she will. But a party? Excuse me, but it doesn't sound like my kind of—”
He paused.
“Ah. I see. Right. Thank you.”
And he put the receiver down.
“A party.” He gestured, a flamboyant movement, and a brass knuckleduster lay in his palm. “Some kind of party, with violent toys.”
He twisted his hand, and the weapon was gone.
“But if Mage Cortindo's involved, I'll need something more subtle than that.”
From the bed, Alexa Ceerling groaned, and the runes shifted, flickering. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, but then she quieted. The runes settled, glowing steadily once more.
The next night, at twenty-one o'clock, Sister Felice and Kyushen were in the back of a taxi, looking out through hissing quicksilver rain, toward the entrance to Darksan Tower. Several hard-faced men and women were approaching the place from opposite directions, carrying boxes tied with ribbon. One guy with a scar running from crown to chin was holding a long bunch of black flowers.
“Okay, Kyushen. Let's go.”
“Yes. I think we're not the first.”
“Are we fashionably not quite on time?”
Kyushen shrugged as he climbed out of the taxi. Sister Felice was wearing the cream-colored dress she'd shown him, and it looked far more elegant now than draped from a hanger. If he'd known how to word an appropriate compliment, he'd have done so.
“I'm Kurt.” A uniformed doorman was smiling at them. “You're expected. Floor Two Twenty-seven.”
“Um, thanks.”
“You're very welcome.”
They entered the foyer, were joined by some of the other men and women, and they all got on the same golden-walled elevator. A curved grid of tiny studs appeared on the concave surface of the elevator's interior. A defensive system, designed to skewer intruders. The mute wraith within the elevator must have been briefed in advance by Donal, or it would not have held back.
A wide-shouldered man bumped into Kyushen as the elevator halted. A long box wrapped in red ribbon was in his arms. It bore a tag that read: Congratulations.
“Sorry.”
“That's, er …” Kyushen noted that the box was heavy and crumpled, containing something narrow. A tube appeared to be bursting through one corner. “… all right.”
Not so much a tube as the business end of a rifle barrel.
“I guess we're all in a party mood,” said Sister Felice.
A short woman with black hair and calloused knuckles gave a soft laugh. “My idea of fun.”
They stepped out into a twenty-foot-high chamber. Black steel double doors stood open at the far end, revealing a wider room, furnished in steel and black, with blue flames dancing on cups supported by helical stands. The apartment proper began with the room beyond that, through a doorway like a huge open mouth.
“Riordan lives here?” asked the man with the scarred face.
“It was Laura Steele's,” said the black-haired woman.
“Guess she didn't need the money, or she'd have rented it out to the Boreville Terrors.”
“Them, and all two of their supporters. Or has one of them died by now?”
“If you're talking about relegation to the Tertiary League, we was robbed in the—”
“Yeah, yeah.”
When they filed into the big lounge, everyone paused at the sight of twelve pale-faced zombies, all dressed in white, listening to Donal Riordan.
“—buses I've arranged,” he was saying. “Be there at nine. Two bags per family, all pets in cages or on a leash.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“And you've got the locations memorized?”
“Yes.”
“Then good luck to you all.”
The zombies headed for the elevator then. Kyush
en noticed that Bertelloni's Bakery was embroidered on the chest of each zombie's tunic. And it looked as if they had delivered a feast.
“Hey, Lieutenant.” The scarred man was unwrapping his heavy sniper rifle. “It really is a party, then.”
“Yeah. You ready to do your party piece?”
“Tell me where and tell me when.”
“Typical man,” said the black-haired woman. “Just point and aim.”
“At least I hit what I'm aiming at.”
There were couches and comfortable chairs ranged around the large room. A long table bore savories and sweet cakes, sparkling water and indigoberry juice and five jugs of coffee.
“No booze?”
“That's the other party.”
“Other party?”
“The celebration afterward.”
“Ah. Got it.”
Kyushen saw a pale man watching him and Sister Felice. Pale skin, but not a zombie, and protuberant dark eyes: he looked like a Bone Listener.
“Hi.” The Bone Listener walked over to them. “I'm Lexar Pinderwin.”
“Kyushen Jyu, and this is Sister Felice.”
They shook hands all round. Kyushen watched Sister Felice being careful to keep her claws retracted.
“Let's grab some plates, fill them up,” she said, “and find a quiet corner. So we can watch these people in action.”
“Good idea,” said Lexar.
Kyushen thought that, in this company, he would rather stay silent unless someone asked him a direct technical question.
“Here's a technical question for you.” Sister Felice pointed at the buffet table.
“Uh.” Kyushen blinked several times, feeling off balance. “How did you—? What?”
“Is that indigoberry jam or purple caviar inside that pastry thing?”
“Um…”
After a while, the food was finished. Some cops simply pushed their plates aside or put them on the floor, and forgot about them. Donal (who had drunk half a glass of water, and appeared satisfied) and Viktor brought out several easels. On the first, Donal propped a large scale map of Archon Borough, including the Arachnia Twistabout and color-coded roads. Viktor put up a plan view of the Westside Complex. On the remaining easels, he placed blueboards—they looked new—then he opened three boxes of yellow chalk.
At some point, Kyushen realized that a shaven-headed man was standing near his chair, although he had not seen the man enter. This wasn't a cop.
