Soldier's Duty

by Patty Jansen

  And no, she hadn't imagined it, the air surrounding him did feel cold. It brought a shiver to her bare arms.

  There were hundreds of things she wanted to ask him. About her uncle, but he was obviously not in Barresh. About how Daya had stopped his slide into madness, but that seemed rude to ask. About his relationship with Hedron, or with his father, or why she was employed here, but all of that seemed exceedingly dangerous questions and this was a dangerous man.

  What had he done with that explosion of light? How could he stand in the hot air vent when it blew and still survive?

  "The Aghyrian compound is a school and institute of research," he said, his voice flat and icy. Those eyes gave her the chills. "I'm not sure why you are interested in it, but I am well aware of what you and your peers think of what I am. You can spy on me whatever you like, but whatever you find you are welcome to share with your employers at the guards. We are not mad. We are not outcasts. Just remember who is paying you."

  Chapter 17

  Well, phew! Izramith wasn't sure how she got out of that room alive.

  During her walk back to the guesthouse, she grew both disturbed and angry with herself for being disturbed. Since when did a man, and especially a thin and bookish one like Daya, frighten her?

  But the fact was: he did.

  Every time she met those fathomless eyes a chill went over her. She had seen the zhadya-born men with that expression at Hedron. Wielding a knife, blood on their hands, or peeling off blistered skin from the victims they had burned.

  He looked calm and in control, but every time he spoke, people froze and listened. People in this town worshiped him, and didn't know of the dangers. Most zhadya-born betrayed their families. What if he was going to betray an entire city?

  Braedon's words that the zhadya-born were a people in their own right only justified the town's behaviour towards him. He was an outcast, they saw themselves as outcasts, and considered him a soul mate. They adored him because of his money, but no doubt he was using the money to earn himself more money, no longer shackled by the communal shareholder regulations at Hedron.

  He was a zhadya-born who had learned to control his madness and used his intellect to play games on the big stage. Owning half the Hedron Mines, he was a huge economic player. Now he was trying to resurrect his people?

  But why this town? Because it was the only one that would have him?

  When she arrived in her room she sat down with her reader on the oval bed and checked her mail. She had messages Commander Blue and one from Mother. Her courage sank at the third message, which was from Indor.

  She opened the one from Mother first, but it was only a question about some invitation that had come to the apartment. Do you want me to accept it?

  Seriously, Mother, did it hurt so much to ask How are you?

  Commander Blue sent her official release notice, just a simple document with no personal note or inquiry about how she was getting on.

  Indor on the other hand, wanted to know when was a right time to visit Barresh so we can get acquainted with each other before the start of our contract. Good grief. The only way he could be more blunt was to say hey, babe, I want to get laid, how about it?"

  Izramith closed all those messages without replying to them. She wanted the rest of her life to go away. Hedron was an empty shell where no one cared for her.

  What reason was there for her to go back home after this contract finished? Mother didn't want her, Thimayu didn't care for her, and there was no way that she could see Indor again. By now, he probably would have heard about Shada, and would be waiting at her door as soon as she set foot in the settlement to sever his contract with her.

  And her life would be wasted, her wishes unfulfilled, her home empty of children's laughter

  The Respite Illness Centre would never release her nephew to her, and she didn't know how. to stop him sliding into madness anyway. And the only person who knew frightened the life out of her.

  She never did used to be frightened. She would enjoy frightening hapless merchants who didn't have their permits in order, and watch how they weaselled and cringed their way through the interviews.

  And then she went to war and everything changed.

  She lay staring at the ceiling deep into the night.

  * * *

  By the time Dashu came into the room, daylight was bright.

  Izramith had been fast asleep on her stomach. She pushed herself off the mattress, sweaty and feeling disoriented. Nauseous again. Seriously, how long was this adaptation crap going to last?

  "I've brought some new shirts," Dashu said, and proceeded to lay them out on the chair. Because, you know, one couldn't possibly wear old Mirani army shirts around town. The two shirts were plain, khaki-coloured and quite wide. "These are men's. I'm sorry about that, but the women's don't come in sizes that fit big shoulders." Dashu's pronouns were all professional today.

  "Thank you." Izramith pushed herself from the bed. Her stomach was still gurgling like mad. She grabbed the shirts and stumbled to the bathroom.

  Oh, this was not going well.

  Not well indeed—

  And another puking session.

  Oh, for fuck's sake.

  What did these people say about adaptation when visiting Asto? Ten fucking days?

  She washed her face and quickly dipped in the bath. The khaki tunic fitted much better than anything else Dashu had brought so far. Izramith could even strap her gun underneath so that no one could see it.

  Back in the main room, Dashu sat on the couch. She gave Izramith a rather sharp look when she came in. Izramith tied her hair in front of the mirror. To her surprise, the skin on her arms had darkened where it had protruded from the shirt she had worn yesterday.

  In silence, they went to the courtyard where breakfast was being served.

  Izramith drank some tea, but didn't feel hungry. She took a few nibbles of the bread with the dark swirls inside, but had trouble swallowing them.

  "You do know what associations are for, don't you?" Dashu spoke in all-accusatory pronouns.

  "We help each other," Dashu continued when Izramith didn't say anything. "We are always there for each other, to make a stronger team. That's what Daya wanted when he put us together. Because that is what Coldi people do."

  Izramith sipped her tea.

  "So, if you're sick, we're here to help you."

  "I'm fine now."

  Dashu rolled her eyes.

  Izramith said, "I'd prefer to keep this professional. That's why I'm here: to work. As long as my personal situation doesn't affect my work, there is no need to discuss it." It was private. Next thing, she'd want to know about her family and about what she'd done at Indrahui. No way. Just, no way.

  "Suit yourself."

  Another uneasy silence.

  Then Dashu spread her hands. "How can you work like that? I mean, you have the sheya instinct, otherwise you'd never have fought Loxa, or you would have called the guards. You clearly won. Now he's all confused about what his relationship with you is. Why do this to him? Why do this to yourself? Sheya is not something that you can turn off. It comes from inside. You can't stop it. When someone looks you in the eye, you have to react to it. You have to know who is superior. When it's settled, you're both fine. Sheya is not a subject of shame. It's why we have such a strong society. It's why we don't get involved in wars—"

  "Shut the fuck up." Now she was probing about Indrahui. Hedron was not involved in the Indrahui war. It simply hired out specialists.

  And she was not going to discuss that with someone whose agenda was to show how right she was and how wrong Hedron was.

  Just. Not.

  * * *

  Most of that day was spent securing the parts of the route considered "safe" to honour Daya's promise to the council.

  Izramith took a team of Eris' council workers and ordered them to cut bushes, move bins and restore lids to drains so that no one could hide in those places. A couple of the team spoke t
o the owners of the houses. Children came out to watch what was going on, bothering the workers.

  One of the council workers explained in rudimentary Coldi that it was annoying that the children had nothing better to do. Izramith asked, to fish for information, if the building in Sunrise Street was a school, why didn't they go to it? But his command of Coldi was not good enough to understand.

  They spent all day checking gardens, balconies, windows and roofs of houses. The work was routine and hot. Izramith worked through the fog of heat haze.

  As per Daya's directions, they could not visit the guesthouse in the time they worked for the council, so they planned the trip for that evening.

  The cover was to visit Wairin, who had gone to the markets and bought food. Being a local from a moderately well-off family, Eris didn't fit in their plan, and he stayed back to monitor any transmissions picked up by the bugs he'd set at the Andrahar hub.

  It was only a short walk from the council to the guesthouse, but the streets were busy. A couple of musicians had set up just outside the guesthouse entrance and a crowd had gathered to watch.

  Young people were going up and down the stairs, greeting each other. Izramith, Dashu and Loxa followed them into the arched entryway. Unlike the guesthouse where Izramith was staying, there was no reception desk and there didn't seem to be anyone controlling access to the building.

  The courtyard was full of people and more music. The air was heavy with the smell of cheap food and sweat from many different people. A couple of Pengali women hung around under the overhang of the upstairs gallery, as if waiting for something.

  Dashu led the group in single file through the crowd and up the stairs to the first floor balcony. More Pengali girls stood here, leaning against the wall and measuring up everyone who came up the stairs. Their huge brown eyes reflected the light. Not all of them had tails, but those that did waved gently at knee height.

  Wairin sat on the upstairs balcony, where there were a couple of tables and mis-matched chairs. The parcels of food lay on the table.

  They all sat down. From Izramith's position, she could see into a dorm room off the balcony, where at least twenty beds stood in rows. Bags lay on the floor in the aisles with clothes and other items spilling out.

  Wairin unwrapped the parcels, which released a strong waft of fried food. By the look of things, he had bought some of the dishes from that Coldi woman at the markets.

  "Ooh, you bought leishya." Loxa dug into one of the parcels and extracted a handful of fried curls.

  "You told me," Wairin said. "I know I can't eat."

  "That means there is more for us."

  They spent some time eating. Izramith was still not very hungry, and the curls looked greasy. It was, according to Loxa, real Asto food, and he said it as if he challenged her to eat it. She did—and the curls burned on her tongue.

  She managed to swallow saliva that flooded into her mouth.

  Damn it.

  Meanwhile, the courtyard on the ground floor was filling up with people. Most of them were a lot younger than in the guesthouse where she was staying, many of them were Mirani, but there were also Kedrasi and Indrahui and the occasional Coldi, all of them from Asto.

  In the gathering darkness, the crowd blended into an indeterminable mass of bodies. Light pearls under the overhang of the balcony did little to illuminate the scene. Tables were moved aside when the musicians from the street outside joined the party.

  Pengali girls danced with Mirani men. A stream of couples went up and down the stairs on the other side of the courtyard. Mostly Pengali girls and Mirani men. They'd go up arm-in-arm, and come down separately, the men always first.

  Oh, she saw. At Hedron, some of the establishments like the Traveller's Bar had companion girls. A lot of those were classy, intelligent, slender Damarcians because the patrons of the Travellers Bar were mostly upmarket merchants and other professionals. Rumours went around about how much they got paid to just share dinners with customers, let alone spend any time with them in private.

  There was also a bar where the male waiters were all tall and muscular and mostly Indrahui. No one at the guards spoke about it—to be found with a man was cause for a strong warning—but many of the women went there after coming off duty. If you asked the muscled barman, you would find that most of the men were for hire, and if you asked the bar's owner nicely, she would let you into the back section of the establishment and the less said about what went on there, the better.

  They talked about small, insignificant things, pretending, but probably failing, to be a group of friends, while observing the goings-on in the courtyard downstairs.

  Izramith had insisted on making a task sheet, and in the morning Loxa had outlined the three-pass plan he and Eris had drawn up to audit the guesthouse's population. It was all pretty much standard security operations, like checking communication, putting bugs at the entrance and hauling the results through face recognition and cross-referencing the results with existing databases, most of which left Izramith wondering why these things had never been done before. If the lady Mikandra's father had hired thugs or snipers to disrupt the wedding parade, this method would catch them. However, looking into the courtyard, she worried at the stream of people coming into the entrance. Why couldn't they simply lock this place down for a few days?

  When the pile of food parcels on the table had been reduced to a collection of empty wrappers, Wairin took the group for a tour to check for points to put up bugs. Through an arched passage, they entered another courtyard where there was a pool amongst trees with spreading branches. They walked casually around the gallery, lit by intermittent pearls in holders. The floor was uneven and their footsteps sounded loud.

  A couple of young men sat in the pool on the ground floor. Their voices and laughter echoed in the enclosed space.

  A group of five Mirani men came the other way. They were all short and curly-haired Nikala, talking and laughing. A strong smell of liquor lingered in their wake.

  At the far end of the courtyard, a passage led to another gallery at the back of the building, looking out over a yard with bins, clothes lines, tables and benches. A wall indicated the perimeter of the yard, and beyond that were surrounding houses, most of them two-storey mansions. The group spread out, pretending to be guests relaxing in the warm evening.

  While Loxa and Wairin leaned with their backs against the balcony railing, Izramith stared over the yard with the lines of washing. Sheets rippled in the breeze. A few petals rained from a flowering tree in a pot in the middle of the yard.

  From this position, and across the courtyard, there was a passage to the alley behind the walled yard, closed off with a large fence: a metalwork structure set into the wall. The bars were ornate, curved like flowers.

  On the other side of the fence was an alley and across that a wall surrounding a typical council family's residence. Was this the back of one of the houses on Fountain Street? She'd have to study the map to be certain. She pulled out her comm and scanned the yard. The screen caught the low sunlight that just peeped over the roof of the house to the right. It made a brilliant reflected spot into the shadowed yard, but the image came out all black and useless. She had to scan a few times. The screen kept flashing and reflecting, and in the end, it would only work when the last of both suns had dipped under the line of the roof.

  Sunlight, she concluded, was very annoying.

  The comm took a while to compare the scan with the map. Izramith waited.

  Wairin and Loxa were chatting to each other a bit further down. Their voices carried in the courtyard. Dashu had disappeared.

  From the balcony she could see between two mansions on the left, across a couple of yards to the blocky shape of the commercial building and the top floor balcony where she had stood on her first night in Barresh.

  A light flashed briefly on that balcony, a series of short bursts. The balcony was still in sunlight, and Izramith thought it was a reflection, but then another flash replied fr
om the roof of a house ahead.

  She signalled to the others and they came over. "There's people signalling to each other with lights. One up there on the top floor, one of a roof somewhere over there."

  Just then, the light on the top floor of the commercial building flashed again.

  "Damn, you're right."

  "Hey, guys, have you seen—" Dashu came onto the balcony.

  "Shh. We got a few people giving light signals," Loxa said.

  Now the light on the roof flashed again.

  "Crap," Dashu whispered.

  "Do you know whose house that is?" Izramith asked.

  "The Emiru house's observatory? Loxa? Do you know—"

  —there was a click in the yard below.

  Izramith didn't think, she pushed Loxa and Dashu away from the railing, and dropped flat on the boards.

  A crackling beam hissed overhead and hit the wall where Loxa had been a few moments earlier. Someone yelled downstairs and this was followed by the sound of running footsteps and rustling.

  Izramith swung herself over the balcony railing and let herself drop to the ground floor. Oof. Damn gravity. She unclipped her gun and crouched, all muscles tensed.

  "Come out if you don't want to be shot."

  There was a wild rustling of bushes and cracking of branches. A small human figure detached itself from the bushes and bolted across the yard to the metal gate that led to the street and climbed up on the bars. Izramith sprinted across, but tripped and went down on her knees.

  The man swung himself over the top of the gate, jumped down on the other side and ran into the alley. Izramith went up to the gate, hauled herself up. Into the alley. It was narrow and flanked on both sides by tall walls. There was no one in sight.

  She ran down, but found no gates or any sign of where the fugitive could have gone.

  Damn it, she should have worn her infrared gear so that she could see in the dark. She wouldn't have tripped and could have caught him.