by Patty Jansen
He said there would be no charge, as long as I could guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again. I had to make an effort not to roll my eyes. I’d guaranteed this twice before. Why did they even believe me?
Oh, I understood it well enough, though. As my employee, Reida fell under gamra law. He’d been arrested in Barresh proper in an area that fell under their law. Barresh couldn’t lock gamra people up for slight transgressions, because if it went to court, gamra’s pockets were much deeper than the council’s. As to why they didn’t simply extradite people to the gamra system, no one knew, but we suspected there was someone’s loss of face involved. Probably some of the influential council families, those same ones who complained the loudest about “all kinds of criminals” being allowed to enter the city through the provision for gamra workers.
These guards were caught in the middle of that dispute, and I tried very hard to feel sympathy for them, but this particular man wasn’t helping.
As to where Reida had been arrested doing what, the guards had been vague the previous two occasions he had been arrested, and this time was no different. The guard said he’d been caught climbing a first floor balcony of one of the commercial buildings. Apparently, one didn’t climb balconies in Barresh. I didn’t have the energy to argue about it. The best thing for me was just to answer his questions and ask the young man later. Last time it had been trying to climb into a councillor’s daughter’s bedroom window. Climbing things was obviously the young man’s forte. Whatever happened to doors?
Evi and Sheydu had remained outside the office. Occasionally one of them would walk past the window. Deyu was standing in front of the tiny window—with metal bars—looking into the street.
By the time the guard was finally done, the light that fell through the tiny window had started to turn golden. He turned away from his screen and took his keys. I knew about the next bit, too. I gestured Deyu to come over.
The guard called a colleague to come to the other side of the metal grated door in the back of the room. The door opened with the aid of a really old-fashioned key and an even more old-fashioned creak, and the front office guard passed us onto the prison guard, who looked at me with a not again expression.
The door slammed shut behind me.
Let’s just get this over and done with, right?
Deyu clamped her arms around herself. Unpleasant memories?
The old Barresh jail was located beneath the guard station, one of those secret corners of Barresh that a hundred years of rebuilding and reform had passed by.
For the sake of prison security and inmate discomfort, it was the only place in town that had been built entirely underground, and the humidity and mugginess closed in on us as soon as we were through that metal door.
Deyu and I followed the second guard down a set of dark and slippery stairs, our footsteps muffled in the constricted space. I could see little more than the back of the warden’s uniform, broad and thick in the waist. He carried a light, which cast long shadows on the slime-covered walls.
At the bottom, we entered a second corridor with cells on both sides that disappeared into the darkness. The prison’s stone walls were meant to keep out the rising water from outside, because we were well below the water table, but judging by the puddles on the floor, those old limestone blocks and the cement between them were no longer up to the task. The surface of the water reflected the sparse light with oily stains.
“Don’t step in,” the guard said in heavily accented Coldi.
Probably because of the risk of infection.
Deyu gave a tiny gasp.
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t like it here.” Her voice sounded small. Yes, I decided, definitely the result of some traumatic experience, maybe in the underground zeyshi warrens?
Something scuttled away in the dark space of one of the cells. Probably a ringgit or something similar. Those huge insectlike crabs lived in the reeds that surrounded the island. They had a habit of creeping into houses that were close to the water and building huge communal nests in the darkness under floorboards. They were fairly harmless, if messy and in possession of the loudest mating call I’d ever heard.
The warden stopped at a cell on the right hand side to open the door with a clanking of keys and creaking of metal on metal. Yup. Just like in a medieval movie set.
In the corner, on a bare wooden bed with a hard-looking mattress, sat the young man we had come to see: Reida.
As soon as the cell door was open, Deyu slipped past me and threw herself into his arms. He held her, softly speaking to her. At least this part of the association worked as it should. Their personalities might differ as night and day, but I had no doubt that they were true zhaymas.
A night in the cell had not been kind to Reida.
His face was pale, his cheeks smudged and his hair hung limp on both sides of his head. Loose. Very un-Coldilike. His upper arm bore a nasty bruise under his encircling black tattoo of thorns and leaves.
He did his best to maintain an angry glare, but I didn’t miss the flicker of relief that washed over his young face as his eyes met mine. In the few months I’d known him, I’d learned that he was very bad at hiding his emotions.
“Get up,” the warden said in keihu.
Deyu helped him up, but the warden shooed her out of the cell, and she retreated to the door. Reida stood forlorn in the middle of the cell. His traditional shayka was dirty and ripped at his left knee. He was wearing the cream yellow one—I liked that particular one. He wore metal braces around his ankles. Good grief. He was Coldi and stronger than most locals, but was that necessary?
The warden knelt, searching in his bundle of keys to undo the lock in the ankle braces.
“You’re treating him like he’s a dangerous criminal,” I said, in keihu.
“All criminals are dangerous, Delegate.”
“Your colleague said that he was climbing over a balcony. I guess he wasn’t meant to be where he was arrested, but what else did he do that justifies this treatment?”
Reida said in Coldi, “It’s because I’m Coldi and he hates Coldi.” Oh no, I wasn’t fooled. In the short time he’d been here, he’d picked up keihu and understood most conversations.
I frowned at Reida over the man’s back in a look that hopefully said Shut up while you’re ahead.
Reida averted his eyes. No, he wasn’t stupid, if rash and entitled.
The ankle braces clinked on the floor. The warden stepped back. “Hands up and out.”
Reida spread his hands wide. He walked stiffly to the door, where Deyu waited for him. She took his hand, and he stroked her cheek.
The guard said, “You’re free to go, providing you behave yourself. The Delegate has been so kind to put up a bond but I’m sure he has a thing or two to say to you. So I don’t want to see you back here again, right?”
Reida said nothing, his lips pressed together. I found out on a previous occasion that he had not a skerrick of shame in him. Because getting him out of jail was my task, right? Because I was the head of the association.
The warden sighed. He looked at me. “I can’t keep reprimanding him, Delegate.”
“I understand.” He’d said that last time, too. Sooner or later, this young man was going to create a diplomatic incident. And yes, it would be my fault, and no, I had no idea why this young man kept doing this and why Nicha didn’t seem to have any control over him.
In silence, we climbed the stairs, past the other guard into the little ground floor office, and then into the street, where Sheydu and Evi joined us, both with solemn nods. They knew the drill. They could probably tell from my expression that I wasn’t happy.
Not fucking happy indeed.
We started walking. Evi went first, looking impressive in his black gear.
I walked behind him with Deyu and Reida, and Sheydu behind us.
I waited until we were well away from the guard station before I spoke. “What was it this time? The guard said they arres
ted you trying to climb on the balcony of the commercial building.”
Reida looked down and mumbled something incoherent about helping a friend.
“What sort of friend and what did he want? Couldn’t this friend climb the balcony for himself? What?”
He sniffed. “Nothing.” He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Reida, answer me.”
He didn’t look at me. “I thought the guard would have told you?”
“He did, but I want to hear it from you, because there were some large gaps in his story where I assume you can be more illuminating to me.” I wasn’t sure if he was just playing dumb or genuinely didn’t know how little information those guards were willing to share, especially on matters of decency of female members of councillors’ families. “Why were you trying to climb into that building?”
Another cringe. Then he looked at me, his expression defiant. “I was doing work for Nicha.”
“Nicha would never send you on jobs that would involve your getting arrested. Don’t try to jump around and don’t try to blame this on anyone else, least of all my second.” It still hurt me to say that, but I had come to accept that the current status of our relationship meant that Nicha was my second.
“All right then! I heard Thayu and Veyada say that they needed to get bugs into the merchanting office so I thought I’d do it for them, especially since I accidentally fried the previous ones.”
Yes, that was another of the mishaps that plagued this young man. He’d accidentally routed a huge burst of data through those mostly dormant devices that were part of the security network that my staff tapped into, and taken all of them out. And he was right: he did always want to help, even if his help often made things worse.
I sighed. “Look, I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: in case we need someone to go into buildings illegally, that is Sheydu and Veyada’s task. Because they have the skill to get out of buildings again without being arrested.”
Did I imagine things or did Sheydu wear a gloating grin on her face?
He shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
“Reida, look at me.”
We stopped in the street. While people walked past us on both sides, I faced him.
Recently, a storm had taken out a good number of the giant ancient trees in the old city, allowing the low sunlight to penetrate to street level.
Even with the sun in his eyes, his irises were eerie black, lacking the golden flecks that so many Coldi had. He displayed a kaleidoscope of emotion. Angry and sullen. Bored. Disappointed. Impatient.
“You cannot be sorry and expect it to be forgotten and forgiven, because that is not good enough. If it happened only once, all right, but I don’t understand why you keep doing this. Why are you not listening to Nicha? Why did you—”
“I said I agreed that was stupid of me.”
“Don’t interrupt me.”
He cringed again and a strange feeling struck me. He acted like a belligerent teenager. An Earth human teenager.
I had the right to hit him for his transgression, according to Coldi custom. But I couldn’t do that, because hitting people for disobedience was not my thing and, besides, he was much stronger than I was; but it was clearly what he expected. My heart hammered against my ribs. Belting him here on the street would make me look bad. Letting his transgression slip would make me look weak in his eyes.
This young man was on the bottom tier of my association and was meant to obey me unconditionally. He was meant to perform a subservient greeting when I faced him. I’d told everyone in my house that I didn’t care much for this custom and I really didn’t, but everyone in my house had trouble weaning themselves off the habit. Except this young man. He did not act subservient and come to think of it, he had never acted subservient to me and, much as I hated it, he should have.
“Look, let’s go home and deal with it there.” Using that expression dealing with that held so much threat in Coldi. Dealing with often meant guns, violence. Death even.
Did I imagine it or did he cringe?
I should ask Nicha about this, because he had picked the pair of them out. Both of them were supposed to have the association instinct, but I wasn’t sure about it anymore. Yet I couldn’t imagine that Nicha would have made such a blatant mistake. I couldn’t imagine why Nicha would have chosen someone whose only contribution to my household had been to create trouble from the very moment he walked in the door.
Chapter 3
* * *
WE WALKED THROUGH the main street, full of people having finished work at this time of the day, shopping at the little food stalls that spread a wonderful smell through the streets.
Groups of people streamed out of the airport building, talking and carrying bags. An army of young men with carts waited at the entrance, a highly organised fleet of motorised rickshaws that would take visitors with a lot of luggage to the guesthouses, their private accommodation or either of the two nearby railway stations that were not attached to the main building.
We walked along the fence to one of those stations, situated at the end of the jetty below the airport. It was hot here, and air shimmered above the paving.
The tarmac on the other side of the fence was a hive of activity. Gamra traffic had their own section at the very back, where arriving delegates could get straight to the station. Barresh was the first gamra seat where this infrastructure had been purpose-built, and it worked so well that it had been decided that when inevitably Chief Delegate Akhtari retired, the gamra seat would not move to another entity.
Since the assembly would be sitting in two days’ time—and damn it, was that all we had to prepare?—there was a lot of activity at that end of the building. Many delegates travelled on shuttles, but some of the more important ones had their own transport. I glanced at all the craft parked there, half expecting Ezhya Palayi’s craft to be there. A few days ago, it had come in unexpectedly to drop Raanu at our house. I had agreed to host her but would personally have picked a better time. Ezhya rarely divulged his reasons and since he barely acknowledged her as his daughter in public, I had accepted her visit. Raanu was cheeky, but smart; and I liked her. She behaved when she needed to, and she got on well with Thayu and the staff.
As of now, Ezhya’s craft had not arrived, but the Damarcians were here, and so was the delegation from Hedron.
At the very back of the gamra allocated parking space stood a number of unmarked shuttles. They looked like commercial freight vessels, but they lacked the insignia of the Pilot’s Guild or the Couriers’ Guild. Otherwise, they were very plain and very non-descript, and some supplies of very ordinary goods stood on pallets waiting to be loaded. A couple of people stood talking next to one of those pallets. They wore plain, dark colours, which were clearly not uniforms.
My heart jumped.
There was only one organisation I knew that made a point of using unmarked transport and non-uniform dress in public: the Asto armed forces. It also made sense that they would be here. They would hang around in orbit, keeping an eye on the zeyshi group and the negotiations that concerned their world. But by the look of all the supplies being loaded, there was a large ship in orbit. A very large ship. Even the ship I’d travelled in to Asto had only one surface transport shuttle which was used sparsely. Most of the crew lived aboard and grew their own food. If they ever left the ship, it was to go into one of the orbiting stations. I didn’t know where they got their supplies. They either grew their own or were supplied by even more secret military ships.
All of that raised the question: Why were they so blatant about their presence by coming down here for supplies?
The Coldi military only came out of the shadows for two reasons: bluff and armed action. I suspected they even preferred the latter from a position of cover.
Thayu might know what they were doing here, but then again, she might not. It often surprised me how little she knew of her father’s activities.
We left the airport behind and walked down the h
illside in full blast of the hot western sunlight. Those clouds we’d seen earlier had indeed collapsed, leaving a virtually clear sky.
Phew, it was hot. The sweat ran down my back under my shirt. That was one of the disadvantages of the cobalt blue: every little wet spot showed up on it.
I was alone in my suffering, because no one else cared. The others were all Coldi and the heat didn’t bother them.
We entered the station just as a train arrived at the platform.
The carriage was about half full of people going back with shopping, gamra domestic staff with their purchases from the markets.
We sat in the aisle seats, near a group of children. There were six of them, of primary school age and dressed in prim dark blue uniforms, accompanied by one older girl. She told her companions, in Aghyrian and in a slightly too-loud voice, “That man is an official delegate for gamra. You have to greet them politely any time you see anyone wearing that colour blue in the street.” She probably didn’t realise that I understood her. Aghyrian shared some very basic grammatical structures with Coldi. The pronoun situation was a lot simpler, but oh the noun declensions!
The little ones turned around to gawk at me. Three were dark-haired and dark-eyed, one boy had auburn hair with hazel eyes and a distinctive olive complexion. A girl had hair as white as was common for upper class Mirani people, but her eyes were sand-coloured and the last one, a boy, almost radiated orange light for the colour of his hair. His eyes were intense green.
The children all gave me polite nods. Delegate. Then they returned their attention to the girl, who was now explaining about the history of the islands in the haughty way I’d come to associate with Aghyrians. For all I knew, she could be Marin Federza’s daughter.
The train set off, gliding over the rails that connected the islands at high speed and with very little sound.
Occasionally, one of the children would frown at Reida who sat opposite me, doing his best, but failing, to cover the rip and muddy patches in his shayka.
