by Mark Johnson
“You have an objection, Head?”
“No, sir,” she blurted, entirely too quickly.
“Two Missionaries will do as backup. Your deputy, Jools Teeber, and that dreamer with the blond hair.”
“Toornan Lyrean? He was promoted just before we left home.”
“Yes, yes,” he said with a dismissive flick of his hand.
This was a trick. Lijjen wouldn’t let up on hounding her so easily, surely? He wouldn’t just let her go like this. It was likely, somehow, things had just gotten worse.
“There are rumours of dark mechanisms in that direction,” Lijjen continued. “The Refugee Cenephans are up to their usual tricks. Shut them all down, Saarg. It’s past time.”
Mechanisms running on chaos energy? She doubted it. But it was enough to justify sending her.
“I take it you wish me to track the traders and their movements, sir?”
He gave another ambivalent hand-wave. No, he didn’t care about that. Was he going to get her, Jools and Toornan kidnapped and tortured? Or simply make them disappear?
“Just shut them down. You’ll have to be prepared, so you’ll be fitted for skinleaf plate armor to wear beneath civilian clothing, and we’ll give you tracers. The locals are hostile.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The lines around Lijjen’s eyes relaxed. A thought struck Terese, a hint of Lijjen’s purpose in sending her into Polis Sumad’s wilds. It had nothing to do with chasing chaos mechanisms.
“Dismissed.”
She clicked her heels loudly and turned to exit the windowless office.
“And Saarg?”
“Sir?”
“Rewrite your chaos flux reports, enlist for basic shockpole tutorials and extra patrols under another Head’s supervision. I wasn’t aware you’d been lax in those areas. Thank you for advising me of your inadequacies.”
He’d taken a fresh paper and was writing on it when she closed the door behind her.
4
“Now’s our best chance, Terese,” said Toornan, sliding off the rocky outcrop. “No one’s coming.” He raised an eyebrow. “If, that is, we’re actually going through with this.” He waited.
Terese took her time to respond, considering each word carefully and hoping what she said sounded unforced.
“We have a job to do, Missionaries,” she said. “Let’s get it done.”
“Really?” said Toornan, folding his arms. “What part of this has anything to do with hunting chaos energy or cadvers? There’s no chaos out here at all.”
She resisted the urge to scream. Toornan didn’t blame her, she knew. He’d been at the failed taking and gained bruises as souvenirs. But her demoralizing treatment had caused a few of her complement to ask questions they would not have, back home.
Terese turned from Toornan, rubbing her waist, where the note she’d hidden crinkled under her fingers.
“Pull your head in, Toornan. We have orders. Liking them isn’t part of it.”
Toornan snorted. “None of us can scent chaos energy here, so I can’t get in trouble for refusing an order. The bastards back at the chapterhouse won’t know.” He stamped a foot. “Dammit! All we’re doing is screwing with the refugees. They aren’t trading chaos mechanisms. They’re legitimate traders. And how does any of this help us find the renegades?”
Terese made certain her voice didn’t waver. “If you want to sit this one out, Toornan, and leave the work to Jools and me, you can. And I’ll commend your clear, moral nature to Keeper Lijjen when we return. I’m sure he’ll find you work better suited to your delicate temperament.”
She’d said it with her back turned, watching Jools for her reaction. Terese’s deputy avoided looking at either Terese or Toornan, preferring to fidget with her pack straps. There was a sigh. When she turned back, Toornan had hefted his pack to his shoulders.
“Will that be all for now, Missionary?”
He returned her stare without blinking. “Yes, Head.”
“Good,” she said.
They stepped out of the rock’s shadow and into sunlight. Their destination was a simple brick trading hut up ahead, nestled in a shallow basin.
Terese’s upper lip beaded with moisture. The impossibly blue sky had actual clouds in it today, though not many. Her old, reliable padded boots were a godsend, for even if the Sumadan afternoons boiled her feet, at least they were blister-free.
For what it was worth, Terese agreed with Toornan.
Perhaps because the silence unnerved her, Jools began speaking. “There’s such variety in Polis Sumad,” she said. “Way more than back home. I mean, the Polis gets dustier the closer it gets to the RimWall. Back home it’s grass and hills everywhere outside the Center, but here there’re deserts at the Rim and rivers near the Center. There’s these drought-resistant crops out this way, but actual willow trees a few hours further in.”
Terese’s hands turned to fists.
Had they been ‘further in’, Terese silently lamented, they could have used the Polis’s tram system, and their mission would have taken three days at the most. Instead, they’d been allotted two weeks.
Jools let a pensive hum escape her lips. “And the Walls the Cenephan refugees live in, out this way. They’ve got so much variety in their cluster patterns. You can actually tell which clusters were raised first, as experiments, with help from Sumadan builders, and which were made by the Cenephans by themselves. The oldest-looking buildings always have those entryway arches with points at their apexes. Can you believe the Cenephans even put chimneys in some of those oldest Walls? There isn’t enough tinder out here to burn every night! These Walls do well enough though. They’d keep out the most determined cadvers pretty easy.”
Terese stifled a groan. Jools’s meandering trains of thought were the worst part of their mission. Why couldn’t the infernal woman have just become an architect or city planner instead of a Seeker?
But Terese wouldn’t snap at her subordinates. She had to act exhausted and beaten, just as she had at Sumad Reach Chapterhouse. It was all an act.
Just nine months of pretending. Then home to Pella.
Their boots scuffed the dry clay. They closed in on the shack.
“There’s only five in there,” said Toornan. “Four big men, and an old man who looks like the bookkeeper.”
“Jools,” said Terese, “did the dossier say how much traffic this trading post gets?”
“If it’s the place in the mission brief, it doesn’t have a name,” said Jools. “The post has erratic business, like the rest of Chastity Territory’s trading stations. Some days there’s no trading at all, others it’s bustling. I suppose that’s normal for places with no established roads, that keep—”
“All right,” Terese said, squinting against the sunrise. “When we get there, you two guard the door, I’ll speak to them.”
She was certain her two Missionaries turned their heads to one another behind her back.
“Is that safe?” Jools said.
Terese patted the shockpole at her waist and forced a smile. “I’ve faced worse, Jools. I’ll call if I need help.”
A burly man with a nail bat leaned against the door-less, rough-arched entry; locked doors in the Wastes gave the mistaken impression there were things of worth inside. Cenephan traders working outside a Wall took their goods home each day. An old hand-pulled cart was parked off to the side. The man straightened.
“Right, you three.” He clapped one hand with the bat. “I don’t know you, and any fool can carry a shockpole. Show me—”
Terese ducked close, hefting her shockpole and sticking him in the belly. The blow wasn’t heavy, but the shockpole’s vibration charge staggered him.
The man wheezed and collapsed, his eyes open but his body immobilized.
One down, four standing. “Watch him, Jools.”
Light entered the single-storey clay house through a barred hole in the ceiling. A sharp-jawed man waited, arms folded, inside the larger room. She guessed he
was the boss. Flanking him was an old man, likely the trading gang’s bookkeeper, next to a blanket with technical wares. There were no women; trading outside a Wall was a hazardous activity in the Refugee Territories.
The last two men had their club and machete ready as she entered. They came at her. She emptied her mind, her instincts taking over. The men were troublesome, but blades weren’t as dangerous as the grasping, sharp claws of screaming cadvers.
She stepped close instead of countering. Made it look like she’d rely on her shockpole, then used her knees. Spun, instead of following through on a strike. In only heartbeats, the two men lay prone and paralyzed on the shack’s clay floor.
Terese thumbed off her shockpole and hung it at her waist, then turned away from the boss and the old man, lifting the back of her shirt and exposing the lower half of her Seeker tattoo. The colorful, almost lifelike insignia of a flame in a cage, so detailed and vivid that counterfeit versions of the tattoo were either impossible or too costly. And certainly too dangerous to keep.
She turned around.
“Nice shockpole,” the boss said, his voice nasal. His face and tone were politely casual.
“Your men will be fine,” Terese said. “You can believe my tattoo is real or not. You’re still going to answer my questions.” She checked behind her. Neither Jools nor Toornan were visible. It was time.
She retrieved the paper from her belt, pushing it at the old man. He took it and fingered his unkempt white beard. She almost let out a sigh of relief when he squinted at its first line.
He can read! Thank you, Gods!
Terese gave him a graphite stylus when he looked up in surprise after reading the first few lines.
She held a finger to her lips. The old man nodded eagerly, understanding the circumstances she’d explained in the note, and set to writing.
“I’ll have answers from you,” she said to the boss, tapping her shockpole. “I’m tracking chaos.”
The boss examined the old man frantically writing, then Terese, his eyes narrowing. “All who live in Polis’s light aid the Seekers without hesitation, Miss Seeker,” he said. No mention so far of her foreign accent.
She made her voice deliberately haughty for the listeners. “There are chaos mechanisms moving through trading stations out this way. The Royal holograms sent to the chapterhouses have reported chaos energy surges,” she said slowly, buying the old man more time to write.
“Never mess with chaos,” the boss said. “There’s stories about the borderlands, and further east of here. We’ve enough problems with cadvers. We don’t want chaos about. It’ll bring more of ‘em.”
The old man put the stylus and paper down hurriedly, fetching an electric fan from the blanket with the wares and putting it before Terese. The boss looked at the fan, bafflement plain on his face.
“No, no, don’t deny it. You’re not masterminding a smuggling operation, that’s obvious. But you’re a cog in a grander set of gears. You still have information. You know something I don’t.” She slowed her voice and kept it calm. “Tell me where the rest of the rogue trading stations are.”
The old man gestured desperately at the boss, communicating some familiar idea with wide sweeps of his arms. Terese hoped the boss understood her intentions.
The boss regarded her for a long moment. “I assure you, Seeker, I don’t trade with the Darkness. I can’t scan for chaos, not like you can, and I can’t vouch for all my patrons, but I don’t touch nothing if I reckon it’s got chaos. Bad for business.”
Terese pointed at the blanket loaded with mechanisms in the corner. “That one there. It’s a currency counter. You do know the law about trading with currency?”
The boss never blinked. “Cenephan refugees are not permitted to receive currency energy.”
“And so, you will be relieved to part with useless stock.” She clicked her fingers at the old man, who fetched the currency counter for her, leaving it beside the electric fan.
Terese bent to inspect the counter. The mechanism was a thick, upright metallic rod just over a foot high, bending horizontally as long as it was tall. She turned some knobs as she spoke.
“Yes, this is definitely a currency counter.” She produced a metallic card, holding it in her palm beneath the mechanism’s arm. The mechanism made a satisfied beep.
A red dial on the mechanism jumped higher than it probably had in months.
“What?” said the boss, confused at her generosity. She’d just paid him almost a week’s worth of her own wages.
The old man made a shushing gesture.
“Gentlemen, I’m simply following orders,” she said, pulling out her shockpole. “Nothing personal.” She thumbed the vibration voltage to its highest setting, the soothing vibrations raising the hairs on her arms. Despite the damage vibration energy could do, it was also calming. She brought the shockpole down on the fan with all the force she could muster, shrill clangs and screeches filling the confined space. She grunted loudly with each blow.
The traders watched her destroy the innocent fan, shattering it into chunks, and then those chunks into pieces. The boss stood with his mouth agape. The old man continued to make placating gestures as he scribbled.
“I hope you’re ’appy, Seeker,” said the boss as Terese panted, bent over the fan’s remains. His slight smile hinted that he’d caught on. “That currency counter was keeping our operation afloat. I searched for it for four years.”
“Then I recommend you invest in another industry, something other than trading chaos mechanisms.” She put her shockpole back at her waist and turned back to the old man. “Now. The other trading stations. Where are they? Be warned, if you direct us to cadver territory or send us on a wild coyote hunt, I’ll find you and break your arms and every mechanism you own.”
The boss stepped forward, palms rising. “We never—”
The old man held a quieting hand to the boss. “Seeker, if you please.” His reedy voice paused when he checked back to Terese’s note. “We’ve always wanted to know as little as possible. Better for business, you understand. All we know is… what you’re looking for? Well, we’ve heard stories from out east, past FanderWall cluster and further into Chastity. There are slums out there that never really got named, or the names change too often to bother learning. We’re sure you’ll find what you want out there.”
The old man handed back her paper, with his scribbled notes.
“Your co-operation has been invaluable, citizen,” she said. “The Seekers thank you for your contribution to Polis’s wellbeing.”
“The pleasure was ours, I assure you,” said the old man.
She shrugged apologetically at the boss, who acknowledged her with a nod. On one hand, she’d walked in, paralyzed his employees and broken one of his trading goods. On the other hand, she’d spent far too much of her own currency and hopefully passed on a warning.
Terese walked out to rejoin Jools and Toornan. Toornan glared at her as if willing her to drop her eyes first. The guard she’d incapacitated was sitting up and rubbing his head.
“Leave him,” she said. “We’re heading deeper into Chastity Territory.”
5
“There’s not much out past FanderWall,” Jools said, folding away her map. “The food-growth hexagons are sparse out there and the water pipes barely flow. I can’t tell much about the slums, except hardly anyone visits them. It’s a waste of time going out there. The powerheads are better left to fight among themselves.”
Terese wiped her brow. “It’s where we were pointed, Jools. We’ll keep our water bags full and camp out. No fires tonight.”
“Why are we even doing this?” said Toornan. From all his lip biting, she guessed he’d been holding the question in. “Why not the Sumadan Seekers?”
“Our infected went to ground, Toornan. We’ll find them, but until we get some useful reports we’re just as much a part of Sumad Reach Chapterhouse as we are of Armer Stone. Keeper Lijjen said the powerheads crossed the line when t
hey started trafficking chaos to pay for their addictions.”
So much nonsense she was forced to speak aloud. Whatever was happening out this way, powerheads weren’t the problem.
“But why’s he letting us out in the first place? Lijjen’s fixed control of the complement tighter than a finger-trap. Gods! He’s locked you up in the chapterhouse. Jools and I have more freedom.” He gestured around them. “And then, within a day, we’re given a mission, fitted for skinleaf plate and pushed out into the Wastes.”
If she didn’t say something awful about Lijjen, Toornan and Jools would figure something was wrong. “Lijjen is an ass. He thinks I messed the taking deliberately, and that I’m lying about my meeting with the infected who kidnapped me. He can’t accuse me of that: not openly, because I’ll walk us all out the door and go home, citing prejudice. He’s convinced himself I’m hiding something about the infected. He wants me broken for doing my job, so I’ve been given basic training and filing work to grind me down. I have to put up with this nonsense for another nine months and after that we’ll go home. I smile, nod, and agree I’m a complete idiot who should never have been made a Head.”
She hadn’t answered Toornan’s question. It wasn’t safe to answer it yet.
“And if we do this job well enough,” Jools mused, “perhaps we can get a little credit, see a little more action?”
“We’re just the foreigners scattered into the Territories, Jools.” That much may have also been truth. “Perhaps the refugees know something about the chaos trading industry out here. And foreign accents and faces might shake new information loose more easily than Sumadan ones.”
Toornan muttered something to himself, casting his boyish looks into a sullen sulk.
The sun rose, peaked, and declined as they moved further south-east into Chastity Territory’s depths. Clay ridges turned to small hills, a series of successive clay-and-dirt waves threatening to break upon the stick-shelters hiding in their shade.
