by R A Fisher
Son of a bitch. How did a glorified security guard like Thayn throw a shaft into the plans of a Kalis?
If the voice had any answers, it didn’t say anything.
19
Smuggling
It took nine months from the sinking of The Gull for Ormo’s people to find the crates. They were close to where Syrina had last seen them, still caught in the loop currents, but it had been a harsh winter. Two of the five had been destroyed, and another two had leaked enough to ruin most of their contents. One had survived, beaten but intact. Ormo had kept Syrina busy in the meantime with irrelevant tasks. Busy enough to keep her from working on anything she cared about. Busy enough that she was sure that was what he intended.
It was spring by the time Ormo’s people had finished sifting through what was salvageable—two years since Syrina had first departed to Fom on Ka’id’s ship. It seemed more like twenty to her. Since Triglav, Syrina had been counting the days until she no longer needed Ormo, and each one dragged slower than the last.
She didn’t know what to say after she’d read the condensed report. Most of the surviving documents were unrelated to anything that concerned her. NRI conducted shady businesses all over the place, but any other company that operated in Skalkaad did, too. Hood Manufacturing, though, that was interesting.
Syrina stood just inside the big double doors of Ormo’s Hall. He’d glided up to her with the report, slippered feet chirping across the floor, and walked back to his dais to contemplate her from a distance. No invitation this time to approach his throne.
In the past two hundred years or so, a handful of companies had sprung up within Skalkaad that operated outside the Fifteen’s realm of influence. The Syndicate tolerated them, as long as they paid their taxes and either kept a low profile or were unusually innovative. Hood Manufacturing was one of the latter. Without their contributions, the more refined naphtha engines that powered the Syndicate’s ships wouldn’t exist yet, and probably wouldn’t for another decade or more. Rumor had it they were working on airships that could survive the harsh Skald winter, too.
Such contributions had earned Hood the Syndicate’s grudging respect. But unlike other conglomerates that operated without Syndicate oversight, most of which could be traced back to some plutocrat or low merchant, Hood’s hierarchy was even more obtuse than NRI’s. Rumors persisted that it was a Ristro spy operation, throwing the Syndicate an occasional technological bone to keep the High Merchants off their back. There’d never been any proof of that, though, and not for lack of looking. Hood had survived an inquest and five tribunals. If there had been any evidence that they were linked to the Corsairs, they would’ve been put to the torch decades ago, innovative or not.
Carlaas Storik was an avid note-taker. The lone crate that had survived the winter had contained detailed outlines, in Storik’s own handwriting, of two separate meetings in Fom with a man named Asapalashvari. Storik noted him as an unofficial contact with Hood Manufacturing. Nothing suspicious in that by itself, nor anything in the notes that hinted at Hood being anything but a legitimate business. Hood and NRI had similar interests and did similar work, and both were licensed to do business in Skalkaad and in N’narad.
Where it got interesting was Ormo’s note scrawled at the bottom of the page, in his small spidery script. A man named Asapalashvari was known to the Syndicate to be one of the chief advisors to the Astrologer running the Ristro prefecture of Chamælivishi. Since Ristro culture dictated that each given name be unique, it was almost certainly the same guy.
“Hood,” Ormo grumbled. His voice rolled clear and deep across the chamber to Syrina from where he perched on his dais at his end of the Hall. “We have all the pieces. The Corsair Asapalashvari to Hood, from Hood to Storik, who runs NRI, which is run by Kavik.”
“But as usual, we have nothing hard,” Syrina said. “It might even be why they’re funneling tin through Hood in the first place. Ma’is Kavik has got to know any investigation into them will die like all the others. Even Storik just calls this guy an unofficial contact, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. There’s nothing in here that will hold up.”
Ormo rustled a nod. “But we have a name. Asapalashvari is a powerful man, at least according to what little information we have on the Ristro hierarchy. His connections to Hood are irrelevant. Although, if we could prove them, we might bring them down as well.
“Whether or not he’s with Hood Manufacturing, he is in contact with Storik, which means it’s likely that he’s also been in contact with Kavik himself. Any High Merchant in a position to speak to someone that close to an Astrologer would rue passing up the opportunity. If such a meeting has taken place, there will be evidence of it somewhere.
“And if Kavik met with him, they didn’t go as Kavik. Appearing in the guise of a High Merchant would be too dangerous for both parties.”
Syrina frowned. “So how does that help us? They wouldn’t even know it was…”
Ormo’s not after Ma’is Kavik. He’s after who Kavik really is.
A chill went down Syrina’s spine. Ormo wanted to get rid of another High Merchant, and he needed her to do it.
Ormo shook his head, the movement barely discernible in the shadows that crowded his throne.
“To think, all this time I was concerned that Kavik could be working with the Church for his own profits, when it seems they’ve been working with the Corsairs, against Skalkaad.”
“But what can you do about it?” Syrina knew the answer but wanted to make him say it. “You know Hood will be a dead end. All we have on Storik is some notes that cover legitimate meetings—whoever they’re with, there’s nothing illegal in them—and Ma’is Kavik isn’t going to just confess to anything if you ask. In fact, they’ll fight you every step, and in the end, they’ll win because you don’t have any proof solid enough to bring down another High Merchant. Even if Kavik does keep evidence lying around somewhere that proves they’ve been working with the Corsairs, they’re not going to keep it anywhere where you or I can get at it. At this point, all you can do is tie the whole NRI project up in tribunals for a few years and toss a few low merchants like Lees to the dogs before it all fades away. There might even be another full investigation into Hood before a lack of evidence and a few friends in the right places gets the whole thing dropped yet again. A few of the other High Merchants will even help cover for them because they’ll be afraid to lose their line on new technology Hood might come up with. After it’s all over, Kavik can continue doing whatever he’s doing, only more so. He might be set back, but he can be confident he won’t be bothered about the same thing again.”
“We have a name,” Ormo grumbled again, “who may hold all the answers we need.”
His words hung in the vast space of his hall.
“You want me to go to Ristro,” Syrina said, with a defeated sigh.
Ormo slumped back into his throne with a grunt. “It’s the only place where proof of these transgressions may exist. At least, the only place where, as you say, you might obtain such proof. This man, this Asapalashvari, has answers. The Astrologers are compulsive historians. If they, or one of their aides, are working with a traitor within the Merchant’s Syndicate, it will be documented somewhere in Ristro, and the information pertaining to it will have spread throughout the hierarchy. Even if they don’t know it’s a High Merchant, the nature of the alliance will make it important enough for them to document, and it will contain all the clues we need.”
“And there would be enough evidence there to hold up against one of the Fifteen?” Syrina asked.
“Enough to act on now and present as evidence later, if such a presentation were ever to become necessary.”
Syrina hesitated. She hated Ormo, but she still didn’t want him to think she might be afraid.
“And what about the fact that Kalis don’t come back from Ristro? At least according to everything you taught me.”
Ormo’s silk robes whispered as he leaned forward in his throne
. “That is true, Kalis Syrina. Your kind does not return from the Ristro Peninsula. In fact. few people do. Those who go willingly go to stay, and the natives who leave keep their secrets too well. If it were otherwise, we would have a better understanding of our oldest enemies. You are, however, different.” He coughed a cynical laugh. “You’ve not been bound by my teachings for many months. Why start again now?”
“I don’t speak Ristroan.” Syrina’s voice was soft.
“You learn fast, even for a Kalis.” Ormo’s voice grew harder. “I’m not asking for a favor, nor am I requesting advice or debate, as lively as that would no doubt be. Prove to me you’re different from the others. Prove once and for all you’re still faithful to your Ma’is, by again doing what has never been done. Prove that you’re worth all the extra trouble.”
I don’t like this. I think he’s trying to get rid of us.
It was a win-win for Ormo. If she succeeded, he got everything he wanted. If she failed, he was rid of a liability.
“Of course, Ma’is Ormo.” She tried and failed to suppress a smile at the voice’s distress.
Ormo wouldn’t be able to see it anyway.
He was still a moment, a dark shape hovering in the shadows atop the dais. “Good. I would suggest getting in touch with some of your old contacts in Valez’Mui. There may still be a few who can assist you with passage to—”
“I don’t need to go all the way to the Yellow Desert. I think I might have another way there.”
“Good, Kalis Syrina. Take your time. Do what you must.”
That, we will do.
Syrina left the Hall without responding to either of them.
The journey to Fom was spiked with memories of Triglav, but Syrina forced herself to think about the job ahead. She traveled as a short, fat thin-haired smuggler named Darius N’uld, a Fom native who’d been living in Valez’Mui for the past ten years. Another wealthy unknown traveling to the Crescent City, with fingers where they didn’t belong. One of a million.
N’uld checked into a sprawling inn that smelled of smoke and cedar. It was called The Milking Flats, and the sign depicted a painting of a busty woman holding high a glass of white fluid Syrina could only hope was supposed to be milk.
The little man entered the arched open doorway with the nervous hesitation of a man who knew he was in a place that was beneath him while trying to cover up how he felt because he was afraid of the people he found there. It was moldering single-floored wooden square a quarter span from the edge of the Lip, surrounded by brick and wood markets and filthy vendor stalls.
He stayed in his small room for two weeks, only coming out twice a day for food and when he needed to use the outhouse hunkered in the alley against the back wall. Rumors about him abounded among the staff. There were dares between a few to sneak into his room while he ate in the pub next door, but no one did. His tin was good, and he was paid up for the month. Curiosity wasn’t worth getting fired over.
The pirate worked at night, so Syrina did, too. Every dusk, she slipped out the window of her room and crept up to the rooftops. Then she’d skip over the top of the Lip and down the cliff to Velnapasi’s place, where she kept to the shadows and watched who came and went until she’d found someone suitable.
Then Syrina followed her for a week and introduced the woman to Darius N’uld.
Darius N’uld blinked and swallowed, but his expression remained hard. “I have a package, and I have tin. What’s the problem?”
Marsa Marsan tapped her fingers across the top of her yellow pine desk in a steady rhythm and glared at him with tiny black eyes set over a tiny pointed nose. Angry smashed grapes mounted above the crooked beak of a fighting cock. N’uld was a puny, grotesque man with a flat nose and piercing, watery green eyes.
“The problem is,” Marsa Marsan said, “I don’t deal with pirates, and I don’t know who does. What’s your problem?” She flipped a curly strand of salt-and-pepper hair from where it tickled the corner of her eye.
N’uld produced a ream of paper from his satchel and tossed it onto the desk. “Look, I know people who know people who know you. Know what I mean? I have a box that needs to go to Ristro, and you’re at the end of the trail I followed to get it there. I’m not a spy, all right. I’m not some customs creep coming around to sniff you out. Just a businessman who needs to get something to Ristro so both you and I can make a lot of tin. And no, the proper channels won’t do for this sort of thing. Too slow and too many questions.”
Marsa Marsan thumbed through the folder, making a point of taking a long time to do it even though she could tell what was in it the moment N’uld dropped it on the table. Receipts, shipping manifests. A bunch of transactions she’d done with a bunch of different people that all looked fine on paper, but all of them had one thing or another to do with the goddamned pirate Velnapasi.
She studied N’uld, frowning. “So then, what are you shipping?”
“Are you going to do it, then?”
Marsa Marsan shrugged. “I doubt it. Not if I don’t know what it is.”
“So you’re admitting you deal with Ristro?”
Marsa Marsan’s expression froze, but N’uld just smiled and produced a small stack of papers from the folds of his baggy trousers. He dropped it on the desk, too, on top of the folder. She picked them up and examined them. Promissory notes from the Syndicate Bank of Skalkaad, each one worth a hundred Three-Sides.
She raised an eyebrow. “The Syndicate Bank?”
N’uld snorted. “Don’t pretend you’re too good for them.”
Marsa Marsan frowned again, but she was thinking. A Church official wouldn’t try to entrap her with Syndicate Bank Notes. They’d use cash. Tin was easier for them to get and harder for her to turn down. The fact that this guy had a whole pocket full of these was as close as she was going to get to proof that he had nothing to do with the Church.
“All right.” She smiled and counted the notes—ten—before folding them up and tucking them into her blouse pocket.
Her gaze never left the little man’s. N’uld smiled back at her, but there was no triumph or gloating in his glittering weepy eyes. More like relief.
“More after the package is away to Ristro,” he said. “Ten thousand, total. I’ll have left Fom by then, but you can be sure your payment won’t be delayed. Do we have a deal?”
Marsa Marsan’s smile drooped into a conflicted glare. She didn’t like to take people at their word, but there was something about the squash-faced little man that made her think this time she could make an exception.
“Deal.” She showed N’uld to the door.
He shook her hand, his eyes enthusiastic. “I’ll leave instructions on where to pick up the crate. It’s a standard shipping box, eight hands a side. I trust that won’t be a problem?”
Marsa Marsan patted the pocket that bulged with the bank notes. “No. No problem at all.”
Syrina sneaked back into her hotel room long enough to dress as a temple boy before she headed over to a shipping depot to reserve a crate. Then she waited until dark and dropped instructions for Marsa Marsan into her mail slot and made up a package with the rest of the bank notes. That, she dropped off at a courier’s office with instructions to deliver it to Marsa Marsan in one week. After that, she found a quiet alley to ditch the temple boy in and slipped back to the depot to wait.
She sat on the roof until the slate of the Fom sky began to grow brighter, eyes closed, breathing deep, calming her mind. As soon as the predawn light began to spread, she went down to the crate and slipped inside. It was a tight fit, even for her. She needed to sit with her knees drawn up against her breasts and her neck bent forward. She double-checked the lid for the safety release and eased it over her until it latched.
It was the same type of crate the NRI documents had been stored in. Copper and pine, waterproof, and airtight. A normal person would last maybe twenty minutes locked in there—a fact Syrina tried not to think of as she lapsed into the trance that would keep
her alive long enough to reach the open sea.
Awareness was a fuzzy, far-away thing in the cramped black space. She’d timed the pickup well, and she was aware of being jostled around as the crate was lifted and carted through Fom. Muffled sounds of voices and wheels lurching through ruts and crashing surf came to her like half-remembered dreams. After a while, she felt herself lowered down, down, until she came to rest close to the sound of the sea.
Then came ages of stillness and the constant white static of the ocean, peppered with bursts of human commotion, and then stillness again. She waited, mind far, far away but distantly aware that her body was dying, sinking in the blackness of stale air and the smell of herself.
And the voice would come. You’re fine. You’ve got ages. Stay focused.
And for a little while, she’d imagine the air fresher, the box a less cramped. And she’d feel the cold stillness coming over her again, and again the voice would come and push it away. But each time, it lingered a little closer.
Another burst of activity. Her crate lurched, almost snapping her from the meditation. She sucked in a sharp breath of hot dead air. Her heart pounded against her ribs.
No, the voice said, tone calm. Not yet. Everything is fine. You’re fine.
And Syrina thought she could feel a cool, fresh breeze from somewhere beyond the trance. Her chest calmed, breathing stopped. The stillness halted but remained this time, clammy and frigid, pooling in the bottom of the crate. Somewhere in her mind, past the meditation and the voice, another voice said it was taking too long. She should’ve been on the ship by now, in the air where she could breathe.
