Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  He reached up to the proscenium and touched a switch.

  The houselights came up and much of the room vanished: the balconies and frescoes, the velvet curtains, the scarlet-and-gilt paint. What remained was a scuffed white cavern with rows of incongruous red-velvet seats, all facing a featureless white stage.

  “And there you have it,” said Bloom to whoever might be listening. “Very simple really. Take someone away from the familiar, put them in a situation already resonant with emotional meaning, and tell them your tale. A very ordinary illusion, really.” He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice, but did not entirely succeed. “Now she has a shape for her delusions, and she’ll fall as quickly as you could wish.”

  He walked to center stage, spread his hands, and Natio Bloom bowed deeply to his empty space.

  TWENTY-TWO

  KAPA

  Kapa Lu sat in a comfortable private cabin aboard the saints’ sprawling city ship. The rescue shuttle took two jumps to get them there, and he had no idea where that was, except that it couldn’t be the actual Solar System, because that would have taken four jumps from where they had been.

  The illumination for the room was the best simulated daylight he’d ever seen. There was also a long, narrow strip of window that showed the black sky and a single yellow star shining in the far distance. The carpet was soft and whole and clean. So were the blue shirt and black trousers he’d been given to wear. The bed had swaddled him comfortably for the ten hours he slept. The chairs adjusted to fit his contours. He had been extremely well fed, and for the first time in more years than he could remember, he was not thirsty. Their gravity was too heavy for him and he ached from it, but he was adjusting.

  Emiliya, you should have come with me. You’d love this place. He tried to ignore the way his good fist tightened at the thought. He’d figured her for smarter than that. He’d loved her. She’d loved him—he knew it. How could she not see that the shadows were the only place for someone who wasn’t in the Blood Family? He wasn’t free, but at least he had a shot. He would have gotten her the same shot if she’d just remembered how good they used to be…

  If he ever saw Amerand again, he was going to stomp him into the deck for stealing all Emiliya’s nerve. But Jireu always had been a fuckless coward, even back in the tunnels, always hiding from every fight. Always trying to play it safe. How the hell could an OB believe anything was safe?

  Kapa’s wrist itched under its beige stabilizing cast. The saints’ doctors told him that was a side effect of speed-healing the bone. The gook they spread on his chest and stomach had already taken away the pain there, and the bruises. His nose also itched under the form they secured over it, which was somehow more annoying. He’d been told the itch would fade in six more hours and that he should touch the red circle shining on the top of the broad desk if it didn’t. That would open an active pane directly to his doctor in the ship’s clinic.

  They also told him the green and blue lights would open panes so he could talk with his crew. He hadn’t touched those.

  He had been further informed that the door would be unlocked as soon as his debriefing was completed, then he could have the run of the ship, anywhere that was not crew-only access.

  Kapa found himself utterly and truly stunned at these calm declarations.

  Do you even realize I tried to kidnap, then kill, two of your own? he thought as his guard asked if he had any questions. Don’t you care?

  The arched doorway lit up green, the signal that someone was about to enter. Kapa turned away from the window. His good hand flexed automatically, but he had nothing to grab hold of. The portal swung open a split second later and a single man entered. He was about Kapa’s height with black hair and startling, pale green eyes. His uniform was very like the ones the saints had worn.

  “Seño Kapa Lu?” the man inquired. “I am Marshal-Steward Misao Smith.” He bowed slightly. “I’m here to ask you a few questions.”

  Kapa shrugged.

  “Shall we sit down?”

  Kapa shrugged again, and sat in one of the chairs beside the active desk. The saint, Marshal-Steward Misao Smith, sat across from him. The desktop lit up at the touch of Smith’s gloved fingertips. Several panes opened immediately. As Smith shuffled them, Kapa’s gaze flickered from the man to his work, trying to find a hint as to what was coming. But Misao Smith’s face gave nothing away, and the displays he sorted might have been written in hieroglyphs for all Kapa could read them.

  “Now.” Misao folded his hands. “The first thing you need to know is that you have currently broken no laws within the boundaries of the Pax Solaris. Therefore, if you now wish to request asylum, it will be granted to you.”

  Kapa crossed his arms over his chest, a little awkwardly because of the cast. “So what if I did?”

  “You will be given the status of legal refugee. You will be assigned a living space, a stipend, and enculturation assistance. You will also become subject to the laws and regulations of the Pax Solaris.”

  “Uh-huh.” His nose itched like hell. Kapa tucked his good hand under his armpit to keep from rubbing the healing frame. That just seemed to make it worse. “And if I don’t ask for asylum?”

  Now it was Smith’s turn to shrug. “It is your decision. If you do not wish to receive refugee status, we will provide you with transportation to the destination of your choosing, outside the Pax Solaris, as soon as it can be arranged.”

  Kapa narrowed his eyes. What’re you hiding under those words? “I’d have to think about it.”

  “Of course,” agreed Misao Smith easily. “Now, we are first of all interested in why you led a kidnapping attempt on Field Commander Terese Drajeske and her escort.”

  Kapa settled back, resting his cast on his thigh. “Suppose I don’t feel like telling you?”

  Smith didn’t even blink. “That also is your decision.” He moved a couple of the panes around on the desk and studied the new one that came up. He said nothing. He did not look up. He sat there, apparently engrossed in his work, and the silence stretched out.

  Kapa’s heel started to tap.

  “Is that it?” he asked.

  Smith looked up. “I’m sorry?”

  “I said is that it? Is that all?”

  “What else would there be?”

  “I don’t know.” Kapa could not keep the irritation out of his voice. “You guys are in charge here.”

  “Yes. But if you decline to answer my first question, I cannot continue.”

  “And you’re just going to sit there?”

  “I am not going to just sit. As you see, I have a great deal of work to do.” Smith gestured at the desktop. “Field Commander Drajeske and Field Coordinator Baijahn are my direct subordinates. I have a particular interest in this mission, and there is a lot of follow-up to do. I do not normally come out into the field anymore, which has put me behind on a number of fronts.” He pulled a stylus out of the holder at the desk’s edge and began making notes on one of the panes, tapping keys with his free hand.

  Kapa stared.

  Okay. Whatever. The saint wants to sit there and push his buttons, who cares? Kapa got up from his chair and wandered over to the window. He watched the single star for a while. He turned back. The saint did not shift position at all. Kapa paced to the end of the cabin and back again. Smith did not look up.

  Well, if you’re going to be that stupid…

  The carpet was soft, and his movements soundless. He slipped up behind Smith, angling his approach so his shadow did not give him away. He raised his good arm to bring it down around the saint’s neck.

  The room spun and pain shot from his wrist to his shoulder. When he could see straight again, Kapa was on his knees, and Misao Smith had locked his arm behind his back.

  “You really are a very slow learner, Seño Lu,” Smith remarked as calmly as if he were still sitting at his desk.

  “All right, all right!” shouted Kapa. “It was worth a try. Lemme go.”

  Somew
hat to his surprise, the saint did let go and stood back. Kapa rubbed his sore wrist. He glowered at Smith, who sat back down behind the desk.

  “Why did you attempt to kidnap Terese Drajeske and her escort?”

  Kapa got to his feet awkwardly, not wanting to use either of his hands. His healing fingers didn’t have a lot of strength and his formerly good hand was now a mass of pins and needles. He dropped into the chair. “I was offered an internal drive ship if I could bring your people in alive.”

  “Who made the offer?”

  Kapa considered for a moment. Either you mean it about the legals and I’m free now, or you’re a fuckless liar and I’m screwed.

  But the worst way you can screw me is to send me back, and I bet you know that.

  “An old guy named Nikko Donnelly,” said Kapa. “He’s in charge of Habitat 3.”

  “And how did Seño Donnelly have an internal drive ship to give you?”

  “He’s Blood. Diluted, but in there, and he’s connected into the shipyard.”

  Smith made a note. “He was able to purchase this ship?”

  Kapa snorted. “Not likely. He’s on probation with them. Did something naughty-naughty back in the day. Never heard what, but it got his allowance cut off.”

  Smith made another note. “Why did he give you an ID ship before you had completed your task? You might have simply stolen it.”

  “He’d junked the codes. Scrambled them. The ship could only jump between Erasmus and the spot you found us. He was going to hand over the good codes when we handed over your saints.”

  “So Donnelly had access to not one ID ship, but two. One for you to use in the kidnapping and one to go out to meet you.”

  “I guess.”

  Smith read over his notes. “Given the level of security surrounding internal drives in the Erasmus System, that seems most extraordinary.” He frowned. “Was Nikko Donnelly acting as an official representative of the Blood Family when he contacted you?”

  “How the hell would I know?” sneered Kapa. “If I had to guess, I’d bet somebody closer to the best Blood gave it to him and told him what to do with it. Probably told him he’d get back in the good books if he did.”

  “But you didn’t ask?”

  “He had a job and a price beyond anything I’d dreamed of. That was the beginning and the end of what I wanted to know about him.”

  “I see.” Smith made yet another note, selected another pane, and dragged it in front of him. “Very well. Thank you, Seño Lu, for your cooperation. Now, I am going to ask you again, do you wish to accept asylum in the Pax Solaris?”

  Kapa’s jaw worked itself back and forth. What if he did? What if he made this little fuckless saint let him go inside the precious Pax, made Smith have to deliver him safe into one of their tidy little worlds, pay him a salary for fuck’s sake, and do everything but wipe his poor little refugee ass?

  Serve the smug little bastard right.

  “Okay. Yes. I accept asylum in the Pax Solaris.”

  “Very well.” Misao made yet another note. “Your official acceptance of refugee status is hereby recorded and sealed.” He stood up. “As is my filing of an official complaint of attempted assault on a serving officer of the Solaris Guardians. An appointed legal representative will visit you as soon as you are transferred to port to explain your options and obligations.”

  Kapa’s jaw dropped. Smith walked out of the room and let the door close behind him.

  TWENTY-THREE

  EMILIYA

  Emiliya Varus’s interrogation by the Clerks lasted approximately seven hours. She must have done fairly well, because at the end of it they allowed her to sleep on a cot in the interrogation room. There was even a toilet she could use, and a meal of ham, fresh bread, and black tea before they let her walk out into the streets.

  There were clearly advantages to being in the pay of the Grand Sentinel. She’d never been fed by the Clerks before.

  The Grand Sentinel. Emiliya blinked in the flickering light. What was he doing while she was being questioned by the hard-eyed Clerk in that windowless room? What had he been doing to her mother?

  I did everything he asked. I told the absolute truth, about everything that matters to them. All right, she’d left out a couple of things about Amerand…But if they’d caught that, they’d have said so while she was still in the room. They’d never have let her go.

  Emiliya swung around the curve of a copper-sided dome and took off across the rooftops at a run.

  Home. She had to get home. She had to tell her mother what she’d done. She had to see her siblings. She had to make sure they were all right, and that the Grand Sentinel wasn’t lying.

  She had to be sure they were really free.

  Her breath came short and painful. She stumbled and staggered, but she didn’t stop.

  In the section of Dazzle where her family lived, how much room you got was largely a function of how much room you could hold on to. Andera Varus and her oldest son Parisch made a formidable combination. They took and they held an entire suite, midlevel, outer east wall, in the Erasmus Tables building.

  Emiliya made it to the Tables’ roof and threaded her way across, avoiding the ducts that were nests for snakes. The access door was long gone and she charged down the stairs, swinging herself over the rail, dropping down a full floor at a time, landing sure and steady on both feet.

  When she emerged into the gloomy, dusty hall, it was empty. She remembered vaguely that it was water-market day. No one would have any time to be hanging around in here.

  Which meant there was no one to greet her. It also meant there was no one to block her view of the open door.

  It’s not ours, she told herself as she walked down the corridor toward it. Her shoes had soft soles and made no sound on the bare floor. It’s not ours.

  She repeated that mantra until she was standing in the doorway and staring into the suite of rooms that was her mother’s home.

  No one was there. Emiliya tried to tell herself that her family had just gone to the water market. She stumbled from room to room. The last room, in the far back of the suite, was her mother’s. Her entrance disturbed a snake on a window ledge and it slithered under the bed. The rustling patchwork blankets were still on the bed, but the clock was gone from the shelf. So was the only-semilegal active screen that Parisch had stitched together and kept working by sheer force of will.

  Maybe it’s temporary, she thought desperately. Hers wouldn’t be the first OB family to clear out on short notice to hide from the Security or one of the gangs. Parisch thought he was a tough. He could easily have offended some patri.

  Emiliya scanned the rusted shelves, looking for some hint as to where they had gone. But there was nothing.

  “They wouldn’t leave without telling me,” she murmured. “Their account can’t have been cleared that fast. They wouldn’t go without me.”

  But she’d been out in the black sky for at least a day, and then there was her interrogation, then she slept. She ate. All that time, with no one knowing where she was or if she would ever come back. Two days can be a very long time to wait when you’re trying to keep ahead of the Blood Family.

  They must have left recently, because otherwise the place would have been stripped down to the stone by the neighbors. They hadn’t been taken by the Clerks. There would have been a secops on station here to greet her and tell her that her family was in custody.

  Biting her lip, Emiliya lifted the lid of the clothes chest at the foot of the bed. Empty. She held the lid with one hand and with the other she picked at the corner of the bottom with two fingers. It was a hard scrabble, but she got it, and the chest’s seamless liner peeled back and lifted up. That was where the family kept its precious store of scrip and promissory cards. Little bits of positive balance hoarded like water ice.

  Her arm trembled and she had to blink several times because her vision was beginning to fail her.

  The space was empty, and Emiliya was forced to believe. />
  Then she noticed the wadded-up bit of writing sheet jammed in the back corner. Emiliya retrieved it and let the false bottom settle back in place. She lowered the lid and sat on the chest. Carefully, because the thing had been used so many times it had grown fragile, she smoothed out the sheet. There, scraped out in her mother’s sprawling, unpracticed writing, were two words.

  THANK YOU

  Emiliya stared. She blinked. She read the words again.

  THANK YOU

  There was a strange noise coming from somewhere, and she realized it was her, choking on her own breath. She pressed her hand against her mouth, then against her eyes.

  They’d left her. Her family, with her mother no doubt in the lead, had left her. This was no spur-of-the-moment thing, either. It was too clean, too accomplished. Her mother had planned it. The second their accounts were clear. The second they had a positive balance. She might even have kept the bags packed from the moment Emiliya had gotten into the medical academy.

  How could she do this to me? After I fought and I starved myself trying to get a positive balance for her. After what I did…after everything I did…

  THANK YOU

  Inside, Emiliya raged and screamed. It wasn’t reasonable. After all, her debts weren’t cleared. She couldn’t have gone with them in any case, but they hadn’t known that. Her mother hadn’t known that. She hadn’t waited for Emiliya, the one who freed her, to make it home. She’d just taken what she had and left, leaving Emiliya to fend for herself.

  In her mind, Emiliya ran through the suite, smashing and tearing anything that would give beneath the force of her hands. She wept and howled and banged her fists bloody against stone and metal.

  But if anyone had been there, they would have only seen her wipe her eyes and carefully fold up the ragged, wrinkled note to tuck away in the pocket of her medical whites.

  A knock sounded, someone’s knuckles on the threshold. Emiliya jumped. Did I leave the door open? She couldn’t remember. She rounded the corner slowly, afraid to see who or what had come to her empty home.