Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  A Solaran thug meeting his woman. She could feel the secops sneer as they looked down, but that didn’t matter, so long as they were only seeing the show.

  “Hey, lover,” he murmured, and with his arm still wrapped tight around her waist they strolled up the street. They casually skirted the edge of the thickest crowds, where the shouting would cover conversation and the shifting sea of human beings would keep them from standing out.

  “Any news?” asked Siri quietly.

  A sly smile spread across Vijay’s face. “Oh, yeah. Your kidnapping seems to have had an unintended consequence.” She felt him slide the sliver drive into her side pocket.

  “What?” There were rules about the kind of information that could be passed in crowded places. She and Vijay long ago decided these should be considered as guidelines rather than absolutes.

  “Seems Kapa Lu was making fairly regular runs for a smuggling outfit. Out to Habitat 3,” he added quietly.

  “Really?” murmured Siri.

  “Really,” Vijay repeated. He nodded toward a door marked with a green spiral, the sign for a public restaurant. Siri shook her head. “And my would-be employer showed up today spitting mad and badly shorthanded. Wanted to know if I could work cargo and keep my mouth shut.”

  “Did you find out where the cargo was bound for?” Siri pointed toward a tiny cart where a woman swirled a wok made of hand-beaten metal over a small heating-coil stove. Vijay shrugged.

  “I’m a genius, I am. And he was really pissed. I bought him a few drinks and let him rant. Do you have any idea how god-awful the local moonshine is when you mix it with the local tea?” He grimaced.

  “Sounds like a very macho combination.” Siri broke off as she approached the woman with the wok. She was swirling peanuts in hot oil and chili powder. After a little dickering Siri exchanged a couple of battered sheets of scrip for two patchwork bags of very hot nuts.

  “And I am not man enough.” Vijay chuckled and bent down so Siri could pop a peanut into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully. “Hey, these are good.”

  “Found her yesterday when I was out and about,” Siri mumbled around her own spicy mouthful.

  They moved on so the woman could serve other customers, and Vijay reached across to fish another peanut out of the bag. “So, what’s the word on your end?”

  Siri bit her lip, considering. “There’s something you should know,” she said softly. “But it’s ‘out there.’”

  “Everything about this place is ‘out there.’” They moved into the shadow of a sagging building. “Today I broke up a fight between two guys over a string of dead rats. Seems the person who brought back the most was going to get the extermination contract.” He made a face and popped another peanut. “What have you got?”

  She turned to Vijay. She shivered. Shawn?

  “It’s up to you, but be careful.”

  Okay.

  Moving close, leaning on his shoulder, as if she were only a woman whispering suggestions into her lover’s ear, Siri told Vijay what she had learned from her encounter with Natio Bloom.

  To her utter shock, Vijay burst out laughing.

  “Okay, okay,” she murmured. “Enough for the witnesses.”

  “Buddha wept, Siri. You had me going for a minute.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  He looked at her, opened his mouth, and looked again. “Siri, what’s the punch line?”

  “You don’t believe me.” She backed up a step. Shawn, something’s wrong.

  “I can’t hear. They’re too loud. Siri, they’re too loud!”

  I don’t understand!

  “Talk to me,” whispered Vijay. “What’s going on?”

  She felt herself staring. She felt herself shaking. In the back of her head, Shawn struggled as if against chains. “Too loud, Siri. It’s the voices. They’re here. Here now!”

  Something was wrong. Something was wrong and it was coming from Vijay. And she’d just told him everything she knew.

  She forced a smile. “Some joke, isn’t it?” she says. “Bloom’s quite the character. Siphoned voices. I won’t need to go on the ghost tour now.”

  “I guess not.” Vijay pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head. “But no more of that, okay? I’m too wound up for that kind of joke.”

  “Okay,” she murmured to his chest and tried not to shudder as he stroked her back. “Okay.”

  After she left Vijay, there was only one place Siri could go, one place that remained safe. She made her way down the foundation streets to one particular subway entrance. She looked around carefully before she descended the skeleton of the spiral staircase. It creaked badly under her boots.

  When she reached the bottom, Siri stood still, facing the shaft of light that came from the hole above. Dust motes drifted like tiny stars. She set her back to the wall so nothing could sneak up behind her and slid down until she sat on the cracked concrete, her knees drawn up to her chest.

  He didn’t believe me. Siri gripped her hair with both hands. He laughed at me. Why would Vijay laugh at me?

  “Vijay wouldn’t,” Shawn answered softly.

  But he did.

  “That wasn’t Vijay.”

  Shawn?

  “We only saw him postsurgery the once before he went under, and it was dark…”

  Siri wrapped her arms tight around her legs. If…if they can siphon a person’s voice out and keep it in the network…could they put it into somebody different?

  “Hospital the size of a planet,” said Shawn bleakly. “They might be able to build the body just for the purpose. If they’ve collected all those voices, all those essences. If they could load them into constructed bodies, they’d make the perfect spies.”

  But we don’t know yet. We’ve got no proof! We don’t know anything!

  “I know, Siri, and you do, too.”

  Siri sat there, paralyzed. She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. It was too much. It was too terrible. But she couldn’t doubt Shawn. He was her Companion. She had to trust him, that was what he was there for, to be the one voice she could trust no matter what.

  Siri bowed her head. Vijay! She screamed his name in her thoughts, half-enraged, half-horrified. She had to press both hands to her mouth to keep from crying out loud. They got Vijay too. And I told him everything!

  “We need to tell Terese,” whispered Shawn.

  Siri shook her head violently. What if Terese doesn’t believe me? She didn’t believe me about the thing everybody thought was Bianca’s body. What if this time she thinks I’m crazy? She’ll ship me back home.

  She couldn’t breathe. She wondered if there were nanos in the dust. There could be. Nanos in the dust getting into her blood, isolating her essence, separating it out, getting it ready for siphoning.

  No, no, don’t think like that. Work the problem. She bit her lip, pulling herself back together.

  “What do we do, Siri?”

  If they’ve…if they’ve constructed a living body and stored his voice in it, it will have to be seated in the construct somewhere. If we dissect it, that will give us a clue as to how their network functions.

  She felt Shawn nodding. He understood without her saying it why they truly couldn’t tell Terese what was happening. This thing, this construct, that held Vijay’s voice might not properly be a live person, but she didn’t have time to waste convincing her commander of that. Terese would probably have to take it up the line, and by the time clearance came back down to take it apart, it would be too late.

  She’d have to bring Terese definite proof. When she opened up the construct and exposed its workings, Terese, and Misao and the whole chain of command, would see she was right. They’d be able to refocus the mission, and Vijay and Bianca would be freed.

  Siri straightened herself up and smoothed down her tunic. She’d have to play this very carefully. But she was trained and she was practiced. Nobody would see anything was wrong. Nobody.

  Siri climbed lightly up the
spiral stair and turned her face toward the base. She strode purposefully through the empty streets.

  She did not see Vijay emerge from the doorway and stare after her.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TERESE

  From a shadowed doorway, I watched the Clerk take his leave of Emiliya.

  Of course I followed her. That was why I found her and had that conversation. I already knew she wasn’t going to tell me anything voluntarily. When you’ve spent upward of sixteen hours in a confined space with a person, the fact that they want nothing to do with you becomes fairly obvious.

  But I needed to see what she’d do next. I needed to know if the conspiracy she was involved in was official or illicit.

  She’d left her mother’s home and gone straight to the Clerks.

  Official, then. She was a link in the chain that led to the war, no matter how far down she claimed to be.

  And the invisible Grand Sentinel Torian Erasmus was on the other end. I should have known, but he’d covered his tracks well. We’d gone over what data we had again and again. Looked at one way, he was an actual player. Looked at another, he was just another of the Bloods picking over the leavings of Jasper and Felice Erasmus’s system to see what he could get out of it.

  Now that the Clerk was gone, Emiliya Varus, who had heard Amerand promise to help us, was dissolving into hysterical laughter. I made myself stand and watch, although my feelings bled for her. Whatever she had done, it was not going well, or easily.

  Did you murder Amerand’s Clerk? Was it possible the Clerk had come to tell her they would not let her get away with it, no matter what the orders?

  Which led to the question: If she’d killed the Clerk, and Torian was pulling her strings, why did Torian want Amerand’s Clerk dead?

  Eventually, Dr. Varus straightened herself and walked rapidly down the corridor, finally banging through the door at the end that led, I knew, to the crumbling, much-mended staircase.

  I was worried. No, that’s not right. I had been worried before—now I was frightened. For myself, for her, and most of all for Amerand Jireu.

  The problem was, there was next to nothing I could do. Amerand, already under suspicion for murder, would probably have treason added to the charges. If I barged in demanding his release—assuming I could even find him—I’d only confirm that he was working with us.

  The lights dimmed for me. I felt stone under my hands. I tasted old blood in my mouth.

  Nothing was going the way it was supposed to. I had next to no time before I had to head back to Fortress into whatever cage they had waiting for me there, and I hadn’t even scraped the surface of what was happening on Dazzle. Siri had come back from her meeting with Natio Bloom subdued and said she’d have to verify the info he’d given her before she knew what kind of source he’d turn out to be. I was supposed to put on a public face and make nice with the citizens council, who’d sent their invitation via Bloom. I was supposed to help Siri sort through our fragmented and barely coherent data about the real power structures of the Erasmus System. I was supposed to find out who’d killed Bianca and how these people were going to make war against us.

  But I couldn’t leave Amerand without at least trying. If for no other reason than that he was my only connection to Emiliya Varus, and she was my only connection to the Grand Sentinel. It was a slender thread, but a whole lot was hanging on it.

  Around me, doors began to open. People emerged cautiously, as if in response to an all-clear signal I couldn’t plug into. I didn’t wait any longer. I headed for the stairs to make my way back to the Common Cause house.

  Liang didn’t like me or the Guardians. That was all right. But he did like Amerand. He wouldn’t leave him to the Clerks’ tender mercies.

  I threaded my way through the people queuing at the single tap in the base courtyard. I opened the door for the lobby and saw Liang standing at the base of the curving stair, one still figure in the midst of noise and bustle.

  Waiting for me.

  “My office,” he snapped. He marched away before I could say anything, and the force of his anger almost lifted him off the ground with each step.

  I didn’t try to talk. I just followed him down a flight of stairs, then through a whole series of aesthetically curved, time-stained hallways, and into a room about the size of a storage closet. He had to jiggle the door to get it to shut all the way. When it was shut, Liang snicked the latch closed. The light panel in the ceiling buzzed erratically as it worked its way up to full brightness.

  Liang faced me.

  “What have you been saying to Amerand Jireu?” he demanded. “What did you promise him?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. “He offered to help us. I hadn’t had time to make any kind of response.”

  “It doesn’t look that way.” Liang folded his arms. “Captain Amerand Jireu gets back from being kidnapped by smugglers and spending sixteen hours cooped up with you, and his Clerk either falls or is pushed to his death from the rooftops.” He paused, and added, “It takes a hell of a long fall to kill someone in this gravity.”

  “You do not believe Amerand Jireu killed his Clerk,” I replied evenly.

  “I don’t know.” Liang’s admission was both brutal and bitter. “The Clerk is dead. No one wants to talk about it, but the word is out there. I’m asking again: What did you say to Jireu?”

  “As if I’d tell you that I urged him to commit murder in direct contravention of my service oath.”

  Liang didn’t even blink. His steady gaze was just one goad too many. I moved forward, right into his space. “I don’t know what Bianca Fayette did that’s got you so mad at the Guardians,” I said evenly, “and I don’t know what kind of frame the Security is trying to build around Amerand Jireu, but neither I nor mine did this thing.” I drew myself up to my full height. “You either tell me what this is really about, or you get the hell out of my way, Seño Chen.”

  For a long moment, we stood like that, both of us stretched to our breaking points. I watched a vein in Liang’s temple throb unsteadily as he tried to find words strong enough for the emotions dammed up inside him.

  “You’ve seen what we’re up against here.” He swept his hands out. “Field Coordinator Fayette comes on the Tour. She’s supposed to conduct a full evaluation, start getting us resource coordination, help us work out what’s really going on so we can make substantive change. What does she do? She sends her entire crew off and stays behind partying with the ambassador and the smugglers.”

  He leaned forward so I could not mistake what he said. I had brought myself into his space, and now he would not let me go. “Now you turn up, and you are taken off by those smugglers, and one of the few genuinely good people I’ve met in this system goes over the edge.” Rage shook his frame.

  I made myself focus on the important words. “Bianca Fayette had contacts with the water smugglers?”

  “You better believe she did. Here, and on Fortress. She probably could have given a full list to the Blood Family if she’d felt like it. I take it this is something else your superiors didn’t know about.”

  I had no answer for that. Instead I asked, “Do you know how much time she spent with Torian Erasmus?”

  “She practically had a standing engagement whenever he was over here.” Liang cocked his head. “What I’m really trying to figure out is whether you’re here to cover up what Fayette was doing or keep on with it.”

  For a moment I couldn’t even breathe. When I was finally able to make myself speak, I said, “I am leaving this room now. I am going to continue my operation and I will expect your cooperation. I will be making a full report of this conversation to the Marshal-Steward. If I have even the first inkling that you are undermining me, I will have you removed.”

  “You do that,” he said. “You do all of that. If you’re so starry-clean, you go ahead.”

  “I’ve heard you,” I said, and walked to the door. I opened the lock and left him there.

  I walked across the lobby w
ith no real destination in my head. I couldn’t even see straight. Eventually, I found myself in the dining hall. This time it was almost half-full, mostly with Erasmans, sitting on the long benches, drinking from bowls, tearing apart loaves of bread and sharing them out with their families.

  I sat down on an empty bench.

  What am I going to do? I stared at the ceiling. I should not have come back into the Guardians. I should not have even tried. This whole situation had gone completely pear-shaped, and I had no idea how to straighten it out. And for the cherry on top, I might become responsible for the death of Amerand Jireu.

  I should have known better than to listen to him. I should have cut him off before he’d spoken a word.

  My head started to ache. I folded my arms on the table and rested my forehead on them.

  I thought I was used to the blows from Bianca’s secrets, but this one had caught me off guard. We’d combed through all Bianca’s reports and Jerimiah’s fragmented memories. There was next to nothing about the Grand Sentinel. That was one of the reasons we hadn’t been sure if he worked any real power. If he had, Bianca would have known. Bianca always knew where the real power was. It was what made her so good.

  I thought about Jerimiah and his fragmented memories. I thought about Liang’s telling me Bianca partied with the smugglers and spent time with Torian Erasmus that she didn’t report. I thought about Siri, sitting in my room at the Palmer House and telling me Bianca was still alive.

  I thought about how there were very few ways a person alone could work a genuine takedown. I thought of all the ways you could betray an oath, about human greed and weakness, and how those who lived too long served too many masters.

  I thought about what it would take to cut out your own Companion so it could never betray you. So the Guardians would truly believe you were dead and never seriously come looking for you. Bianca was one of the few Guardians who knew the loss was survivable because she knew me.

  I missed Dylan. I missed David. I hated being alone. I hated myself for being fool enough to walk into this morass. I wanted to go home. Now. Even if David had left me for good. Even then, it couldn’t be worse than this. I squeezed my eyes shut. No. That idea was just making this mess worse because that was the pain that wouldn’t leave. “I see our chief has had his little chat with you.” I lifted my head. Orry was standing there holding a bowl and a cup of something that steamed. “Here, eat this.” He set them down in front of me. “I can’t…”