by R A Fisher
Rina frowned, looking around. “It looks new.”
“Indeed, it does. No one understands it at all. No one understands how any of this is possible. With so many different variables—”
“You need a wide range of equipment.”
“You’ll sell to me, then?”
She smiled. “Curiosity dictates I do nothing less.”
10
Jabbing The Beehive
A lot was going on, and Syrina knew just enough to know she didn’t know anything. She wrote Ormo a note in tiny shorthand and attached it to Triglav’s leg before sending him out the window and closing it behind him. She stared at the rivulets of rain dribbling down the pane, wondering how she knew that he knew to fly all the way back to Eheene. She missed him already and wondered once more what Ormo had done to her. To them. On a whim, she opened the window again, even though it would be at least a month or two before he’d be back.
In the meantime, Syrina hung around Fom, watching the summer evolve into a wet autumn that was like summer, only a little cooler, and took in the sights while she waited for Triglav, though she avoided the public executions and the Pit. Famous as it was, she found the idea of betting on prisoners as they fought over scraps of food unappealing.
She did spend one wet, dim afternoon at an arena fight. One of the karakh ones, since they were the most popular and she’d never seen a karakh do more than walk around before. The ticket was outrageously expensive, but Rina had tin and loved to spend it.
The two karakh crept out of opposite gates, scuttling on their big clawed hands across the packed mud. They both stood well over thirty hands high at the shoulders, one a reddish brown, the other, slightly smaller, a mottled black and gray. The two creatures locked round, luminous yellow eyes and clicked and whistled at each other around tusks protruding from their elongated jaws. Their hands were pale and devoid of fur, with black four-hand-long claws at the ends of each of their twelve fingers. Their feet had three clawed toes, like birds, with one thick grasping talon jutting from the back.
Karakh were omnivores, scavengers in the wild, and almost comically unsubtle. The tusks were for digging up roots, rending carcasses, and fighting off rivals, not hunting. Even the deafest, lamest game could drag itself out of the creature’s path long before the karakh came into view.
The riders—shepherds, to use the ancient word they liked to call themselves—rested behind the animals’ heads, straddling their necks and holding onto heavy chains, which linked to brass rings pierced through the karakh’s cheeks.
What fascinated Syrina most about the karakh was the famous connection between mount and rider. She’d heard stories about the nomads in the Yellow Desert forming a special bond with their camels, but that was a casual acquaintance compared to the link between a karakh and its shepherd.
Karakh lived about as long as humans. When the elders chose a tribesman to form the bond, sometime in their first year of life, he and a karakh cub were put together, raised together, trained together, until they thought together. They even spoke the same whistling, clicking language. But as often as not, the creature seemed to respond to thoughts and feelings alone.
If the karakh died, the rider usually followed within the week, if not from suicide, then out of a loss of the will to live. If the shepherd died, the karakh remembered it had twelve claws and two ten-hand-long tusks, and mad with grief, used these assets on anyone and anything nearby until it was put down or crawled off somewhere to die of grief and exhaustion.
When Syrina had first learned about such a bond while a girl and still in training, the idea of caring about anything but her Ma’is so deeply seemed ridiculous, especially a mere animal. Now she’d developed a new interest in the subject, and she wanted to see it firsthand.
The Fom arenas weren’t to the death. Mounts and shepherds were too valuable for that, and whatever the details were within the treaty the Tribes, signed hundreds of years ago with the Church, it didn’t include a clause that said they had to kill each other for someone else’s entertainment. The karakh’s tusks were sheathed in thick leather. The contestants scuttled around the oval pit of the arena, lunging and swiping at each other until someone was dismounted.
The reddish one, named Pas on the playbill, was favored to win. Rina put a thousand Three-Sides down on the gray one.
The arena was a square mud-floored pit, eight hundred hands to a side and fifty hands from the ground to the first row of seats, which were reserved for Church officials and their guests. Rina sat in the row behind them. The walls of the pit were boarded with thick bands of hardwood, replaced every week but still scuffed and beaten half to splinters. Nine thick lodgepole posts, likewise scuffed, rose in a grid from the floor, a hundred hands apart from each other and almost as high as the rim of the pit. The whole arena was built to give the karakh something to jump around on while they dueled, vaguely simulating their natural environment on the Upper Peninsula.
The National Arena itself was an immense circular marble and granite structure built the better part of five hundred years ago for the karakh fights, which had been gaining in popularity for a hundred years before then. It held almost fifteen thousand people and was always sold out.
The karakh skittered, crab-like on their clawed hands through the mud, circling each other, leaping from ground to post, post to wall and back again, whistling and clicking while the shepherds eyed each other.
The gray karakh, billed as Nazuun, made the first move, jumping from one post to another, then shifting its momentum to lunge toward Pas. Nazuun tossed its rider just before the attack, protecting him from the impact of the landing and any retaliatory swipe. It caught the shepherd with one hand as it landed, and placed him back behind its head while swiping at Pas’s rider with the other in an open-handed slap. Pas was bigger, but it was faster, too. It tossed its own rider over the swipe of Nazuun, crouched down, and dropped back to avoid the blow, then snatched its shepherd out of the air and set him behind its head again. The maneuver caught Nazuun off balance, and it hadn’t recovered from its own attack before Pas swiped again. Its padded open palm smacked into Nazuun’s shepherd, who flew thirty hands into the mud, narrowly missing one lodgepole and rolling into another one. He was still for a moment, then stood. He looked muddy, bruised, and annoyed, but unharmed. Most of the crowd thundered with cheers, but there were a few boos, too, from the sore ones who’d lost money. Pas whistled in triumph and lopped toward the beaten gate opening on one side of the arena.
And just like that, Rina was out a thousand Three-Sides. Oh, well. She stood to leave with the crowd filing toward the exits, losers muttering about the shortness of the show, winners too pleased to care. It wasn’t her tin, anyway.
A month later, Rina got back to the Grace’s Hospice from a day of shopping to find Triglav waiting for her at his place on the top of the bedpost. He stared down at her, eyes curious and bored, but she still got the impression he was happy to see her.
It was an Eye Night. Unlike almost everywhere else in the world, it wasn’t a big deal in Fom, though many people still got the day off. It was always fairly dark under the permanent clouds belched out by the Tidal Works, and it seemed like half the city was intoxicated on something most of the time, no matter what day it was. She wouldn’t have been surprised if half of Fom didn’t even know there was an eclipse going on somewhere above the constant drizzle.
Syrina was elated to see Triglav and peeled off Rina so she could be herself around him. There was no logic in it. Just felt like the thing to do. He hopped down onto her shoulder, made a warbling sound, and leaned into her head. She scratched the back of his neck and untied the tiny piece of paper wrapped around his leg. The script was minute, small enough that it was hard for even her to read, and she imagined Ormo’s fat hand holding a tiny pen steady enough to write it. The image made her smile, but it was smart. Anyone coming across it would only see a small paper covered in uneven lines.
L motivations beyond profit. Ambitions of an
HM working outside Syndicate. Find proof. Disrupt. Remove both ends.
There it was. Both ends. One end was Lees because he’d overstepped his bounds and it was just a matter of time. The other was N’talisan, the guy who was getting all the benefits. Rubbing the archaeologist was the cleanest way to disrupt the operation, perhaps permanently. N’talisan was working indirectly, or maybe even directly, for a High Merchant who was going against the rest of the Syndicate. Or at least that’s what Ormo believed. Syrina wished she knew what else her Ma’is suspected that he wasn’t telling her, and she reminded herself for the hundredth time that it wasn’t her job to care.
She could probably justify getting rid of N’nareth as well, and for that matter, Ehrina Ka’id if Ormo asked her to. On the other hand, she’d be surprised if N’nareth knew very many details. It would be too dangerous for her and Lees, and details wouldn’t help the importer anyway unless she was in the blackmail business, and Syrina didn’t think she was. Ka’id would know more, but the accountant was far too influential to act against without solid proof or direct orders, and Syrina had neither. Ormo might want to make their lives miserable in other ways, but they were just money movers doing what they were paid to do, and he wouldn’t have anything against that.
Something still didn’t sit right, though. She told herself once more that she shouldn’t second-guess her Ma’is, but something was off, and she couldn’t put her finger on it.
But Ormo was her Ma’is, and she was his Kalis, and he gave her a job, and she did it. That meant dealing with N’talisan now and Lees when she got back to Eheene. With N’talisan gone, whatever plot was being cooked up by the rogue High Merchant would crumble. With Lees gone, everyone would be too scared to start it up again, at least for a while.
Before she made everyone suspicious by killing people off, though, she needed more indisputable evidence against Lees, and she might be able to get to the bottom of the mystery around the Tidal Works while she was at it. She didn’t cherish the thought of looking through piles of records of tariffs paid, merchandise shipped, fees collected, and the rest, but with a little less work she thought she could get someone to do it for her.
The idea of rubbing Gaston made her sad. She suspected that whatever he’d discovered within the Tidal Works was bigger than the Church or the Syndicate, but it wasn’t her job to like what Ormo told her to do. Well, it was, but just because she stopped liking it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do it. The thought of Ormo’s disappointment was still more painful than any regret she might have over killing a N’naradin archaeologist.
She tried to shake the black feeling from the back of her mind again. I’ve needed to kill better people than N’talisan. Why should it bother me now?
The auditor’s robe was the easiest part since they took them off every night before they went home and left them in the coatroom of the Customs House. A little research told her that each House maintained its own supply, so there were always extras in different sizes. They were bulky, heavy affairs made of red and black silk. They bore complicated folds along the shoulders, and the Sun-and-Crescent of N’narad etched in gold thread down the front and back. She was short enough that they were all too big, but she grabbed the smallest one she could find, stashed it on the roof under an overhang to keep off most of the rain, and went back in naked to pick the lock on the Trade Commissioner’s office.
She rifled through old letters and files until she found one that still had most of the broken wax seal on it and another one she wouldn’t need to doctor too much to make it say what she needed it to. Then she whisked everything back to Rina’s hotel room.
The streets were still busy that close to the docks, and anyone looking up saw the robes as a shapeless ghost in the fog, flapping from rooftop to rooftop, and maybe something else they couldn’t get their head around before it was out of sight again.
She took her time making up the face, and even more fixing the seal and altering the letter. She was thankful she could come to Fom with Rina’s absurd stack of luggage. Everything she needed was in it, including more than a hundred wigs, and this time she’d need to do more than fool a few frightened peasants on the Lip.
A stern, diminutive man, pallid and nervous, with a sharp nose and a jaw that protruded in an under-bite a karakh would be proud of emerged from The Grace’s Hospice an hour after dawn. His hair was thinning into a widow’s peak as sharp as his nose. It receded almost to his crown and was uncompromisingly black. He clutched a letter sealed with black wax to his chest with both hands, and his eyes were a serious, intelligent green. He was tiny compared to the throng of people around him, but he had no trouble weaving through the streets unhindered.
People began to flood out of the Customs House as the tide reached its peak. He merged with them for a half-span and checked into a hotel with the lofty name of Summer’s Prayer. He ignored the tinkling marble fountain under the dome of the lobby and the children’s choir humming on a balcony to his left. There were a few minutes of confusion at the desk. The man’s reservation had been lost, and they scrambled to find him another room, but they did so with prolific apologies.
Then he slipped back out into the river of people.
No one in the Customs House was happy to see an auditor from the Spire. Fom fancied itself a free city, even, blasphemously, independent of the archbishop in Tyrsh. Every time an official showed up from the Island, it reminded everyone that the Grace wasn’t in charge. If the auditor felt the disdain of those around him, he showed no sign of caring.
“Where is the commissioner of this circus?” he snapped, at a cowering secretary, his voice and accent brimming with the contempt of an Islander forced to come to the mainland for a duty that’s beneath him.
The secretary cringed and pointed down a short hallway.
“Xereks Lees,” the little man spat as he stepped through the door.
The commissioner was an old man with a thick wreath of white hair wrapped around his ears, and a spotted, pale head. His nose was bulbous and ruddy, and he had a mole on the left side of his face that sprouted a few long strands of brilliant white hair. His eyes were clear, gray, and angry.
“Who are you?” he demanded, unintimidated.
“Hayden Temm, Under-Commissioner, Trade and Import Oversight Regulator under his Holiness, Archbishop Daliius the Third.”
The commissioner shifted, but he didn’t look any less irate or any more cowed.
“And what brings you to Fom?”
The commissioner’s tone dripped with sarcasm, but again, the auditor showed no sign of caring.
“Xereks Lees,” he said again. “Do you know who that is?”
The commissioner thought for a moment. “The name sounds familiar. Skald, from the sound of it. But, no, I can’t place it. Who is he?”
“He is a low merchant and foreign exporter. Tidal Works. He uses an importer here, Stysha N’nareth. He may be the head of an espionage ring working for one or more of the Fifteen, the entire Syndicate, or some other entity.”
In the commissioner’s eyes, anger was falling away to suspicious curiosity.
“And you’re saying Stysha N’nareth—who I do know well, by the way—is involved in this spy ring?”
Temm shook his head, but his green eyes were still hard. “We don’t know. It’s probable that she doesn’t know of Lees’s other activities. Nothing is certain. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
The auditor tossed a sealed envelope on top of the papers already strewn across the desk. The commissioner picked it up and examined the seal before cracking it open. When he was finished reading, he laid it back on the desk and looked up at Temm.
“You want N’nareth audited.”
“I want every page, every note that mentions or can be connected in any way to Lees or his business pulled and delivered to my room at the Summer’s Prayer Hotel within the next three days. Two days would be preferable, but His Holiness is nothing if not flexible.�
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“Three days? One of the biggest importers in Fom? It would take…”
Temm glared at him, frosted green eyes never unlocking with his.
The commissioner swallowed. “Two days. Of course.”
Syrina was happy. She was going to get a lot more than she needed on Lees, but she could dump it all on Ormo and let him figure it out. She had other business.
There was a risk that Lees would hear about the audit and get spooked, but she was guessing N’nareth wouldn’t say anything, and there was no one else to tell him. The woman would lose Lees’s business if he was innocent and be incriminated if he was guilty. Better for her just to wait it out.
Syrina went back to N’talisan’s workshop the next day, this time naked and across the rooftops. Triglav followed, skimming in and out of the low clouds. It was still early, and the door was open to let out the constant heat of the Tidal Works. Only one of the assistants was there now, tagging and documenting a collection of tiny metal pieces laid out on a dark cloth at one end of the table. A large book lay open on another table next to her. She wasn’t one of the three that had been there when Rina had visited, and Syrina wondered how much help the Church provided N’talisan with. The low door that led down to the Tidal Works stood ajar. Across the alley, a vent whistled and sputtered little puffs of steam.
Syrina opted to wait. It might be easier and quieter to do the job underground, but she’d never find him down there, and Triglav would be useless if she needed him.
