by R A Fisher
N,
Please do not misunderstand. The incident regarding L is troubling. Nevertheless, do not act in panic now, only to do something you will regret. You still have the support of all interested parties. As things stand now, your funding will continue unless you halt it. My clients and I realize how important your research is, and I am confident that with our continued resources, you will be able to proceed in your work uninterrupted.
All the documents have been recovered, and there is nothing in them that would cast a shade of suspicion in your direction in any case. While the loss of life is unfortunate, robbery seems to have been the sole motive. There is a high-level investigation underway, and you will be the first to be notified if evidence contrary to these assumptions are found.
In Solidarity,
K
Syrina frowned and looked out the window. Clouds had moved in while she’d talked with Ka’id. Buildings that had been dappled in sunlight were now dull gray and black in the dim light.
“K” was for Ka’id, of course, and obviously it pertained to Syrina’s show at Lees’s place—“L” for Lees. It could be a coincidence, but the timing was too good, and all the details fit. She didn’t know who the recipient might be. It was a formal letter, so “N” would be from the family name. Unfortunately, “N” was one of the most common initials in N’narad, where “N” was a particle, meaning dependent on context—the, a, that, from, of, or those—and was tacked on to nearly everything, including a thousand surnames. Syrina had always been lucky, but she wasn’t ready to assume it stood for the importer Stysha N’nareth before she found some real evidence. Still, it fit.
She didn’t like the sound of high-level investigation. Those words had connotations within the more influential circles in Skalkaad. It meant the corporate police force that handled things like breaking and entering had been called off, and one or more of the High Merchants had become engaged, which may or may not mean another Kalis snooping around. Syrina didn’t like the possibility that there were High Merchants besides Ormo involved, and that she could be working against them.
Everything was getting too gray for Syrina’s liking, and she still had no idea what was going on, other than it seemed to be going on in Fom.
6
Machinations
Syrina got to Ormo’s Hall just before sunrise the next morning. She was naked, nothing but a passing glimmer in the fading darkness. Triglav perched on her shoulder, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back again, talons clinging but not breaking the skin. Ormo was late, so she took the liberty of sitting in his Seat while she waited for him.
An hour later, her Ma’is emerged from the hidden door under his dais, and she wondered for the thousandth time what was under there. He looked surprised to find her sitting on his throne, as much as she could tell how he felt about anything as she peered under his hood at the black and white checkerboard of squares, circles, and triangles painted on his face. She saw his gaze wander to Triglav as he mounted the stairs, but it was probably because the owl was easier to see.
“Kalis Syrina!” he said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm as she relinquished the throne.
He seemed sincere, but then, he always seemed sincere.
“You have information, I guess, or you wouldn’t be here.” He looked at Triglav again.
“You already knew Lees was sending stuff to Fom for free, or at least making it look that way. You set me up to find the evidence.” Syrina shocked herself by saying it before she was aware of what was coming out of her mouth.
It shocked Ormo, too. His smile faded from his voice, and he narrowed his eyes.
“Of course I knew. It was necessary to have the appearance of searching for the cause of financial discrepancies so that my involvement in the matter won’t look unseemly if it were ever to come to light.”
She could see him growing tense, and she swallowed.
“That is, Kalis Syrina, if you have done your job?” He was still staring at Triglav.
Syrina’s remaining questions all drowned in a sudden swell of guilt. She couldn’t believe she’d called him out on her suspicion, or that she even cared. It was one thing to experience a personal moment of doubt. It was another to bring it up.
“No, Ma’is. There’s more. I’m sorry.”
The guilt subsided a little. She cursed herself for not coming up with an excuse, any excuse, but his tension slackened. He leveled his gaze at her eyes and waited for her to continue.
“So, um.” Syrina cleared her throat and did her best to pretend nothing had just happened. “Lees seems to be sending his stuff to Fom for free. Either that or it just looks that way because he’s hiding his profits with the help of the accountant Ehrina Ka’id. That, I guess you already knew. Embezzlement is the easiest explanation, but I think he’s sending stuff down there. There’s no telling where all the tin is coming from, but it seems like he’s involved with some sort of research.”
Ormo’s eyes widened, and she knew she’d told him something new.
“Really? What?”
“No specifics.” She told him about the letter.
“That seems to be another piece of the puzzle, even if the lack of names prevents it from helping us. Still, a lucky find. People like Ka’id are rarely so careless. It’s a shame you weren’t able to take it.”
“I’m sorry. I can still get it out of the post before—”
“No, no. You did the right thing. Its disappearance would cause suspicion, much more than Lees’s ledger, which you were wise enough to let them find again. If another High Merchant is involved, more evidence will be needed anyway. Go back to Ka’id. Tell her you’ve decided to accept her offer. I will provide you with counterfeit items that will support your story. But tell her it’s on the condition that you go to Fom yourself. She’ll want to know why, and I’m sure you’ll have a reason.”
“Of course, Ma’is.” She hesitated. “May I ask you something?”
He frowned under his paint, probably thinking that his Kalis had asked enough already. “You may.”
“If another High Merchant is involved, shouldn’t we let it be? Couldn’t my involvement be construed as treasonous?”
She exhaled a mental sigh of relief when Ormo didn’t snap at her. Instead, he nodded, making the silk of his hood whisper.
“If this other High Merchant is involved with the Church, then it might be they who are treasonous. Until we know more, we must go on that assumption. Act with caution. More caution than you displayed at Xereks Lees’s warehouse.” He let that hang in front of her for a second. “Remember when I gave you Triglav, Kalis Syrina?”
“Yes.”
It dawned on her before he finished saying it. She couldn’t help wondering what else she didn’t know and how much he’d known all along.
“I asked you if you would return my gift with your loyalty. Do I still have it?”
“Now and always, Ma’is.”
“Good. I’ll have the materials for you tomorrow. As usual, I entrust the details to you.”
Syrina went back to the Mercantile Oasis and lay down for a while before another appearance at Ka’id’s office. She was beginning to see a few of the benefits her relationship with Triglav provided Ormo. The Kalis that had existed before the owl would’ve had serious reservations about acting against another High Merchant. It was ingrained since birth—loyalty to the Syndicate first, her own Ma’is second. Whatever the job, a Kalis never worked against the greater good of Skalkaad. The members of the Syndicate might compete for power, but the key to Skalkaad’s vast influence and thousands of years of stability wasn’t just the Kalis. It was the unspoken rule that the Fifteen left each other alone.
Ormo must’ve known that the connection he’d created between the bird and her would lead to more independent thought. In fact, it was beginning to look like he’d been counting on it. Which meant he’d had something planned even back then.
The idea fed into the suspicion she was trying to ig
nore. Still, the crushing guilt she’d first felt when she’d questioned Ormo lifted a little. He wouldn’t have tolerated her insubordination unless he thought he could get something in return.
Rina insisted on going to Fom to meet the importer in person, and Ka’id had agreed to arrange transportation. Rina’s reputation for doing business face to face was well-known, after all.
A week later, she was on a cargo ship. The wind moaned from the north, warmer than it had been but still carrying the distant smell of the taiga. The Hound’s Cry was a huge three-stack naphtha turbine ship with a hold filled with parts and gizmos salvaged from the Corsair wreck.
They pushed south in the general direction of Fom for the first few weeks, before the ragged green slash of the Upper Peninsula appeared on the southern horizon and the ship was forced to swing due west. Syrina had never had much of a problem with seasickness, but she had the impression that Triglav wasn’t feeling good and it was making her queasy, too. The owl spent most of the time perched on the rail, head tucked beneath his wing, or flying parallel to the ship, skirting a dozen hands above the rolling waves. At least there seemed to be no shortage of rats for him to eat.
She knew it was a gamble to bring him. If Triglav ended up helping her the way he had at the warehouse, it would be the type of thing that people would remember. But as long as no one saw him doing anything untoward, she could explain his presence. Rina was an eccentric woman known for her exotic tastes. A pet owl wasn’t too far-fetched. She’d just need to be careful.
Ka’id refused to let her people deal with Maresg. The accountant was back in Eheene, but it was still her ship, so the captain avoided the canal through the mangroves and took the Hound’s Cry the long way around. It was another ten days skirting the forested hills of the Upper Peninsula before they swung south again, and then after another day around the cape, back again to do it the other way.
A day after they passed the south side of Maresg, they turned south again, parallel to the mainland’s coast. The mountains along the eastern horizon diminished to grassy hills, and a few days later she could glimpse the suburbs of Fom along the tops of high limestone cliffs. Wooden peaked roofs and a few stone spires poked out of the perpetual mist that rested on the city, the tailings of the Tidal Works that made Fom one of the great miracles of Eris.
Thirty minutes later, they began to round the northern spike of the crescent-shaped double peninsulas that formed the bay, and Syrina could make out the latticework of wooden platforms, shanties, and piers that could only be the Lip. In front of them was the famous sea wall which, unlike the mud-flats that comprised Eheene’s harbor at low tide, helped keep the Bowl of Fom flooded. Along the tops of the inner curve of limestone cliffs forming the harbor rose thirteen brass-domed towers, numbered in thick black N’naradin script, robbed of any other detail by the fog.
Even with the high breakwater of the seawall protecting the Bowl from the rage of the sea, entry into the port of Fom was no easy feat, as the rusting hulks that had failed to dock attested. They surged and groaned against the tide where they wedged against the cracks between the water-smoothed rocks, never completely washing away before a new one took their place.
Syrina watched the waves roll up and crash against the walls and ruins of the steamships, a display both lazy and violent. She inhaled the scent of the ocean off the spume of the fifty-hand-high breakers as they pummeled the massive stones and twisted remnants of the dead ships, all of it green with algae. The surf pushed the Hound’s Cry through the gap in the wall in slow, steady surges.
Timing had been good. At low tide, their way would’ve been blocked by the low center of the dam, and they’d need to join the queue that always formed outside. The tide was almost at its peak as they passed between the two spires that marked the entrance to the bay, both high enough that the yellow-tinted glow lights at their apexes were hidden as the Hound’s Cry passed beneath.
It was sunset by the time Tower Ten flashed them the signal to dock far out near the end of the long pier beneath it. They were on the outskirts of the forest of masts and smokestacks, close to the southernmost arm of Fom. The sun was setting between the white and gold spikes of the harbor towers, making the perpetual mist over the city glow silver. The tide had gone out enough again that the sea dam was poking above the waves, slimy and barnacle-covered. The air was rich with the smells of fish and salt, steam and smoke.
Syrina had barely stepped on the pier, when Triglav, with obvious relief, soared up and away toward the city. She stopped herself from calling him back to her, telling herself he would find her again, just like he always did.
Most of the time between docking and entering into Fom-proper was spent filling out forms and standing in the lines that switched back and forth through the low-ceilinged, damp stone hallways of the underground Customs House sprawling behind the cliffs of the harbor. The arduous process was done in silence, punctuated only by the questions of the border agents and the answers of the travelers echoing from the distant guard kiosks. At times, the lines of exhausted travelers were so quiet that the gurgling of the tidewater could be heard as it flowed between the sea and the Tidal Works through wide bronze pipes running under the floor.
It wasn’t until late the next morning that they were allowed out of customs, into the city. Rina Saalesh went to the nearest worthy inn. It was one of the multitudes crowded near the harbor, this one called The Grace’s Hospice. The moment she checked in, she disappeared into her room and didn’t emerge again for several days.
Syrina woke up on the floor next to the bed, almost twenty-four hours after she fell asleep, Triglav was outside on the windowsill, gazing in at her with curious sleepy eyes.
She felt more rested than she had in a long while, despite her lack of need for much sleep. She’d found it hard to relax at sea and allowing herself an extended rest fit with Rina’s image if anyone was watching. She let Triglav in through the window and dressed not as Rina, but as a peasant boy in the rough clothes of a temple messenger. She wanted to breathe in some of the sights of Fom before she got to work. But first, she filled the round limestone basin with hot water and took a bath.
It was drizzling, but it was summer this far south, and it wasn’t cold. She didn’t mind the rain—good thing since it was almost always raining in Fom—and she jogged along, taking in the sights and smells and sounds of the Crescent City while looking like she knew where she was going. Sure enough, no one messed with a temple boy while he was working.
As Syrina’s first time in Fom, the thing that struck her most was the absurd amount of people everywhere, and that was coming from Eheene, which wasn’t a small city by anyone’s standards.
They crowded onto the wooden sidewalks and spilled into streets paved with mud or stone. They huddled in alleys and sat along the curbs and bunched in clusters between covered holes along the lanes which vomited coils of greasy gray steam. In Eheene, no one was poor. If you were poor or got poor, you lost your citizenship, and it was away to the District with you or one of the coastal peasant towns where you could eke out an existence fishing or farming until you got rich enough to move back to the city.
Here, everyone seemed poor. Everyone but the handful of wealthy merchants and Church officials who hurried by, sequestered in carriages pulled by disgruntled camels which grunted and spit at anyone in their way, or in rickshaws pulled by disgruntled men who swore at the crowds under their breath. Everything, everyone was saturated in the combined stench of brine and mud and mildew, and over all of it was the stink of humanity.
Most of the buildings in the section of Fom behind the harbor were packed together, two or three stories high, and made of wood painted with faded shades of red and white. Syrina recalled the maps she’d mulled over on the voyage and made her way into the heart of the city, where the exporter Stysha N’nareth kept her residence and her office.
She trotted for a little more than an hour until she reached the Grace’s Parish. Homes here were palatial, built from
the same grayish-green limestone as the cliffs the city was built on. The docks were all muddy streets and wooden houses, but parks scattered further inland, filled with trees and wide-leafed ferns. Streets in the Grace’s Parish were paved with reddish flagstones, and the stout, flimsy houses near the harbor turned into gated estates that slouched behind high sandstone walls. The vents to the Tidal Works, shoddy manholes and moldy clay pipes manholes around the harbor, were sculpted here into fish or dragons, and the steam came in puffs from their noses or mouths.
N’nareth lived and worked out of one such estate. It loomed out of the rain behind a high hedge and a thick bulwark of pocked, greenish stone. Syrina ran past it as if the temple boy was heading to the Parish’s Cathedral another three long blocks further on.
Then she doubled back, looked around to make sure no one was paying attention, and dropped behind a billowing fern where she could get a clear view of the gate. She’d thought about coming here naked to check things out, but she wanted to look like something other than a Kalis if she decided to talk to someone. There were two entrances. One was a small unmarked bronze gate in the stone wall surrounding the three terraces of the house. Syrina figured that one must lead to the N’nareth residence. The other one was made of heavy wood. It stood open to the wide stone path that led to the front door, marked by a sign written in elegant N’naradin—Stysha N’nareth, Importer. Syrina hunkered down on her heels as comfortably as someone squatting in a fern was able to, and spent the rest of the day watching the comers and goers.
