Standing in the corridor threshold was Field Commander Terese Drajeske. Emiliya stared for a moment.
“Field Commander.”
“Dr. Varus. May I come in?” Terese Drajeske stepped in without waiting for an answer.
“How did you find…this place?”
Terese smiled, abashed. “Orry Batumbe said he knew several Varuses in the city. I’ve been going door to door.”
“Oh.” Emiliya gestured a little helplessly at the front room. “Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you.” The Field Commander settled gingerly onto one of the chairs made of disassembled crates. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I’m fine, thank you.” Emiliya couldn’t tell whether the Field Commander recognized the lie for what it was. Most saints wore their emotions out in the open, but this one was different.
“I’m glad,” Drajeske said seriously. “Because you saved my life, and my second’s life. I’d hate to find out you got pinged for it.”
“No, I’m fine.” What is this woman really doing here? Does she know what I did to her second? No, the saints don’t think like that. They’ve never had to. She trusts Amerand and Amerand trusts me.
“That’s good.” The Field Commander nodded.
Emiliya folded her hands. Maybe she’d be lucky. Maybe the woman would leave, and she could start working out what she was going to do next.
But the Field Commander didn’t budge. “May I ask you something?”
“Certainly,” Emiliya answered reflexively. She’d learned long ago never to appear to be reluctant to answer a question. It made people suspicious.
“If I wanted to get to Hospital, how would I go about it?”
Emiliya’s throat tightened and she regretted her agreement, but it was too late to withdraw. It was all right. She knew how to work an interrogation. Say as little as possible. Stick to the truth, but leave out the meaning.
She faced the Field Commander as if she were a casual stranger. Emiliya was used to people vanishing suddenly from her life. Her lover had vanished into the Security, then into the shadows. She set it aside. Her mother, her whole family, was gone in an eyeblink. She had already begun to set them aside. If she could do that, she could surely set aside a few hours spent with a woman pretending to fight for her life.
Or was I really fighting for my life? I wonder if I won or lost?
I’m drifting. Not good. The Field Commander was looking at her with a sympathy that veiled a great deal. What did she want to know? Oh, yeah. She wants to go to Hospital.
“I’m afraid I’m too far down the chain to help you with that, Field Commander. You need to ask Commander Barclay or the Grand Sentinel. They’re the ones who can arrange the permissions.”
Saints are truthful. Saints are open. No saint can find out anything one of us wants to keep hidden.
Terese Drajeske sighed. “I thought so. But I thought I’d ask, because there doesn’t seem to be any regular traffic between here and there.”
“No,” replied Emiliya politely. “Not really.”
“Which is odd, because there’s also not a lot of traffic out-system from Hospital; but according to all our records, it’s Hospital that’s helping finance the system.”
Emiliya tried to look abashed, but it was hard. “Sorry,” she said. “I really wouldn’t know.”
The Field Commander nodded as if she understood. Anger surged through Emiliya. How dare this person, this saint, this alien creature, even pretend to be able to understand what was happening here?
If she’s such a naive fool she can’t even take care of her own people, maybe they deserve whatever they get.
“So,” the Field Commander went on pleasantly, “how is it that you and Amerand and Kapa all know each other?”
The change of subject caught Emiliya off guard. How did she know…never mind, never mind. Just answer the question. “We were…we were neighbors on Oblivion and shared a ship during the Breakout.”
“Was it your idea to put Amerand on our watch?”
It was too much. Emiliya burst out laughing. The Field Commander pulled back, looking mildly offended. “I’m sorry,” gasped Emiliya, “but you really have no idea how far down the chain I am, do you?”
Go away. Why won’t she go away? What’s she after? She can’t know. She can’t have found out. There is no way the Grand Sentinel would give me a dose the saints could trace. Unless he wanted them to catch me instead of him…
Stop it. She’s a saint. She’s after what she says she is.
“The chain of command is proving extremely difficult to track here,” Terese Drajeske replied. “The Grand Sentinel, for instance. I’m having a very hard time arranging to talk with him.” She cocked her head. “But you knew he would help you.”
Which did not sit well with her previous claim of being far down the chain. Mistake. “He vetted me for the biosecurity team,” she said, and hoped it would be enough.
“And he told you what you’d be doing?”
Emiliya looked quickly away and ran her tongue across her bottom teeth. “We all of us just follow orders,” she said. “I was ordered to do your scans. Amerand was ordered to take your watch.”
“And Kapa?” asked the Field Commander.
Kapa. Skinny little boy who ran the tracks between the dead trains with the rats and the gangs on his heels. Kapa, who could jump farther and fly higher than any of them. Kapa’s skin and hands against hers. Kapa pushing her up against the wall, and her arms and her legs wrapping around him…all so very long ago. She’d followed him and fallen for him for the same reasons Amerand had—because they were afraid and he wasn’t, and they’d hoped that somehow he would take them with him when he finally flew away.
Kapa, who’d sworn he’d come back for her when he went into the academy, but then melted into the shadows and left her behind as easily as he had left Amerand.
Kapa.
“Kapa was in the shadows,” she said. “If he was following orders…I wouldn’t know about that.” She shifted quickly, aware she had made another mistake. Not that it mattered. This woman didn’t matter. What’s she going to do, report me to the Clerks?
The Field Commander stood and bowed formally. She recognizes a stonewall at least, thought Emiliya with a kind of desperate gratitude.
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Varus. I won’t take up any more of it. I don’t want to get either of us in trouble.” Drajeske smiled with a casual mischief that made Emiliya’s blood burn. “I seem to be wandering about without my keeper. I’m sure they’ll catch up with me for that sooner or later.”
“Field Commander?”
“Terese,” the Field Commander reminded her. They had gone onto a first-name basis when Terese had helped glue her to the ceiling. Glued me to the ceiling! Kapa would have laughed so hard.
“Did,” Emiliya licked her lips and tried to change her mind, but she had started the question and couldn’t think fast enough to come up with a plausible replacement. “Did Amerand send you?”
“No. I haven’t seen him since we got back.” The commander’s gaze was too sharp, too obvious. She believed she was about to hear something meaningful.
“Neither have I.”
The Field Commander blew out a sigh that ruffled the curls falling across her forehead. “Interesting. Well.” She paused once more. “You know where our base is, I think?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Amerand is likely to have to take up his station with us again right away, especially since I’ve been on the loose, so if you want to see him before you head back to Hospital, or if you want to leave a message for him…”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Good-bye, Dr. Varus.” Terese bowed again. This time there was a hint of acknowledgment in the gesture and the look. She knew she’d been beaten, that she would come away with nothing.
“Good-bye,” said Emiliya.
The Field Commander turned and left without looking back.
It was almost too much to stand. Almost, but not quite. Emiliya was a child of Oblivion. She would keep going. She felt her mother’s rough hand over her heart. This is still beating, Mother said, after one of the riots, the first time a friend didn’t come back. As long as this is still beating, you can keep on going.
Thinking on her mother’s words, it occurred to Emiliya, oddly and belatedly, that she was free. Her family had been her hostages. They were gone now, probably beyond the reach of the Security and the Clerks. There were those who said the black sky wasn’t that big, but Emiliya didn’t believe that. Her mother would not have started a run she couldn’t finish. She was very thorough like that. So, they were gone, and if she did wrong, if she made a mistake, there would be no one else to suffer. No one to arrest or imprison. No one to execute for the crime of having a rebellious relative.
It touched Emiliya like a faint reflected light. That was what her mother had been thinking. That was why she’d run so fast. Her mother had made sure Emiliya would have the one set of skills that was known to have use and worth beyond Erasmus, and set her free.
THANK YOU
Free, Emiliya Varus walked down the stairs and into the street. Free, she didn’t know what to do or where to go.
She had no money. She had nothing with her but her medical whites and her depleted doctor’s kit. And freedom. It wasn’t much, but she’d worked with less.
Emiliya Varus turned her footsteps toward the port yard.
It wasn’t really a bad walk. It was a long way up, but Emiliya walked farther almost every day in the Hospital complex. Some of the bridges were in bad shape, but she knew how to judge her risks.
The area around the port yard was in fairly good shape. Trade from those shipping, warehousing, and related enterprises brought in the money and paid for repair. No one bothered her as she walked down the well-ventilated corridors, although some looked on her medical whites with envy. It had been a long time, but Emiliya still recognized the order of doorways, the graffiti and other signs, some of them subtle, some not subtle at all.
She knocked on the sixth door from the south stair. An old woman opened the door. She had bones like a starved bird and a dowager’s hump that lifted her shoulders permanently around her ears. She and Emiliya stared at each other for a long time. Emiliya managed a watery smile, and the old woman’s sparse eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“You’re Andera’s girl, yes?”
Emiliya nodded.
“Andera’s and…that man, what was his name?”
Emiliya didn’t think for a moment the old woman had really forgotten. “Nikko Donnelly.”
“Nikko, Nikko Donnelly, that was it. Long time ago.” The old woman shook her head.
“Got a chair for a sister OB?”
The old woman pursed her sunken mouth. “I think that’s going to depend on what he has to say.” She nodded, and Emiliya turned.
Behind her stood a Clerk, tall and composed in his plain black coat. Cold fear shot through Emiliya and she froze before she remembered she was now on the side of—in the pay of—Fortress itself.
I have already been cleared.
The old woman slipped backward and bolted the door so softly Emiliya barely heard her. She just felt the breeze. Somewhere, Emiliya heard the parakeets chattering, but other than that, the corridor was silent. All human sounds had died away.
Emiliya straightened herself. “Is there something I can do for you, Seño?”
The Clerk stepped right up to her, standing less than six inches away. His breath was warm and smelled of nothing at all. “I have you identified as Emiliya Varus,” he said.
“Yes, Seño?” She resisted the urge to step back. Have they got you people on drugs now? It was possible. His pupils didn’t look right even though his eyes sparkled with awareness.
He nodded once. His expression was intense, involved, with her but not with her. “You will return to Hospital and resume your duties.”
Emiliya’s heart stopped, but she managed to work a note of mild surprise into her voice. “Of course.”
The Clerk’s eyes snapped into focus so quickly, she could practically hear the click. “No, I think you do not understand me. You will do this because otherwise we will find it necessary to refine the questioning of Amerand Jireu.”
The last of the blood drained from Emiliya’s face and her ability to dissemble went with it. “What?”
The Clerk’s focus faded, and snapped back again. “Captain Jireu is needed for other duties, but the law and public vigilance cannot be overlooked, no matter how inconvenient. If he is involved in a conspiracy against orderly trade and the public peace, it will be discovered.”
Amerand? They are holding something on Amerand? Why would they tell me?
Because they knew she was his friend. Because they knew that she had tried to love him even if Amerand didn’t know it.
She was wrong when she’d thought they had no hostages anymore.
The Clerk watched her with his alert, intense, unfocused eyes. “You are authorized to return on the Argos, leaving from Bay 12 in four hours. Your access numbers have already been verified. You will need only your personal identification and Hospital residency codes.”
“Thank you, Seño.” Emiliya bowed, because there was nothing else she could do.
The Clerk turned on his heel and strode away before she straightened up.
Two hours. I was free for about two hours. A little less. One hour and fifty-two minutes. One hour and fifty-three minutes, maybe.
Does Amerand know this is happening? She could never tell what he knew. He only used his Security connections when there was no other way. It was as if he didn’t use his power, he didn’t have to admit having it. He didn’t have to really be in the Security, not all the way.
Amerand never truly committed himself to anything—not to jump from one ledge to the next, not to the Security, not to her, not anything. Not like Kapa, who never did it any other way. That, more than Kapa’s shadow, was why they had never come together. Amerand probably thought he was sparing her, but he was sparing himself and pretending to leave them both free.
But even as she thought this she remembered how Amerand looked at the Field Commander, the new notes in his voice as he promised her help. There was something in that moment so far beyond the shabby loyalties she had known that she didn’t even have a name for it.
Does the Field Commander know the Clerks have special plans for Amerand? Why didn’t she say anything? Emiliya covered her mouth. Because she wanted to find out if I knew. She wanted to try to see if I had anything to do with this.
I’ve been played by a saint!
Alone in the corridor, Emiliya Varus began to laugh. She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks and she couldn’t tell whether she was still laughing or weeping. In the end, she straightened up, smoothed down her jacket, and began the walk to the port yard.
TWENTY-FOUR
SIRI
Siri stood at the base of a rickety ladder that had been bolted up the side of a building as an afterthought. Around her, the people of Dazzle formed a churning, boiling mass. There was no restriction by class here. The rich in their gleaming finery, the poor in their rust and rags, surged up and down the streets. Carts pulled by hand or creaking along with sputtering electric motors eased their way through the foot traffic. It was the only place Siri had seen in the broken-down city that was genuinely crowded, and everyone carried containers: jugs, crocks, skins, canteens. In the light gravity the pyramids and bundles could be of eye-popping size. Everyone was shouting. It was like a hundred auctions all happening at once. “Water I got!” “Start it at ten! You got ten? No?” “You! You! What’ll you say?”
“Water I got!”
Crowds formed shifting walls around the water sellers. The Security, dressed in full-body armor, stood on platforms and balconies with their guns cradled in their arms. Some of them looked hard at Siri, but not for long. She’d left her uniform back at base
and was dressed in plain work clothes. To them, she appeared to be just another of the garden-variety saints you saw down in the base streets. Probably they thought she was out on some pointless charitable errand. Nothing for them to be concerned about.
Another time she might have enjoyed being here. Unlike the rest of Dazzle, this place had life. It was still part of the same messed-up system, but it was brimming with people doing their level best to carve out lives for themselves and there was an energy, a vitality, in that.
But she kept feeling distracted. The whispering wouldn’t leave her alone. It was as if, now that Bloom had made her aware of its presence, she couldn’t shut it off. She wanted to be back at base working her listening station, searching for the hidden frequency. It had seemed so implausible when Bloom had told her about it, and yet…Shawn was so certain. She couldn’t ignore it. She had to prove it one way or another.
And if it was real, he was right—they had to find it, had to open it up. Even if it was just some kind of electronic ghost of Bianca in there, they couldn’t leave her. Even Terese would see that. But Terese would have to be shown, especially after Siri had tried to convince her Bianca might still be alive.
“She might still be,” murmured Shawn. “We don’t know. We won’t know until we find the network.”
I know. I know. But we can’t miss the meet with Vijay. Guilt surged through her. She wanted to see him. She needed to know he was still okay.
Maybe she could find a way to tell Vijay about the network. Vijay would believe her even if Terese wouldn’t. Vijay had always trusted her.
Where is he? She shifted the jug a little and pushed herself up on her tiptoes, craning her neck above the crowd.
“There.”
As soon as Shawn said it, Siri spotted him. She hated what they’d done to him, even though it made for an excellent disguise. Vijay shouldn’t have looked like he couldn’t stand his own life. It was the opposite of everything he was.
Vijay waded through the crowd, making good use of his height to pick out a path. Siri waved her free hand and he elbowed his way across to her, earning more than a few curses as he did. He swept her in close with one arm and gave her a long, open kiss.
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