Holly bit her lip. Meg had said she didn’t want to talk about it. Yet, she said more. And now there was a question burning just behind Holly’s teeth. It was like a flame pushing against her lips and if she didn’t let it out, she was going to burn. “You want someone who doesn’t argue? Who just takes you as the queen and doesn’t fight back?” Oh, Meg wasn’t going to like that, and Holly knew it.
Meg didn’t take the bait. “Nice try.”
“You know I’m right.”
“You know you’re a brat.”
“I am. But still right.”
“I want someone who isn’t a dick about everything. Who isn’t paranoid about closed in spaces, who’s easy going.”
“That’s every girl’s dream until she gets it. And then she wishes her man stood up to her just a bit and wanted to stay inside and be cozy with her all the time. Kidding about that last part. But let’s be honest, the best passion is in the struggle.”
“Whatever, Holly. You’re a romantic and that’s just shit.”
They were saved from a full-blown fight by Gabe striding into the room.
“Luce let me in.” Gabe had his arm around his daughter, who now came to his shoulder. “What are you ladies fighting about?”
“Gabe!” Holly said, striding across the room to give him a careful hug so that she didn’t spill the paint or get it on him.
He laughed and returned the hug.
“Hey, Gabe,” Meg said, greeting him with a curt smile. “Make yourself useful? Lucy get back to your reading. You can help when you’re finished.”
Lucy groaned and went back into the living area.
“A bit hard on her, eh, Meg?” Gabe asked.
“Don’t start with me,” Meg said without turning from the wall she was vigorously covering with paint. “One of us needs to keep her on track and push her. Otherwise she’d never do anything all day.”
Holly watched Gabe grimace as though he were biting back his response.
“Well, then,” Holly said, awkwardly. She handed him a spare brush. “I guess you could start with the brushwork.”
He smiled at her, but there was tension in his eyes. “Right, then.”
The three of them painted in silence for a few minutes, then Gabe stopped. “I have some news Holly. Did Meg tell you yet?”
“Not really. No. What’s the news?”
“Odeon’s given us some feedback on the mole. Nothing that will stick yet, but enough to know that we’re on the right track with who we’ve determined it is.” He grunted as he stretched to reach the top corner. “The other thing is that we’ve dredged up enough to know that not a single soul outside of the Shadow Coalition has seen the Heart.”
“I’ve heard that’s because if someone does, they either get killed or their rank increases so that they never have contact with anyone outside the Shadow Coalition. That way the Heart is protected.” Holly rested the brush in the cup as she wiped a bit of green off the window.
“But maybe there isn’t a Heart,” Meg said. “Maybe it’s just the Hands, and the Heart is a cover. Like in that old story. Oz? Something like that.”
“In that story there’s a person behind the story, though, I thought? Someone who pulls the strings and keeps up the facade.”
“What are you suggesting, then?” Gabe asked. “That there’s a person who is the Heart, but the whole concept is that it’s just to keep the lower level ranks in their organization in line?”
Meg glanced back at Holly, pausing with the roller up on the wall. “Yes, maybe that.”
Holly sighed. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m going to find the hands and this supposed heart. And they might die. I’m not sure. I haven’t decided yet.”
Gabe laughed. “You can’t just kill people, Holly.”
She gave him a look.
“Well, I know you’ve done it, you bad-ass you, but what happened with Graf you did for a good reason. And it was self-defense.” He gave her a sideways look. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“Of course it was, Gabe.”
“I’m not saying that if something happens to them—” he began.
“Gabe, no, please.” Meg said, cutting him off.
Holly shrugged, and looked at the floor. “I don’t even know if we’ll get back to the stupid base, anyway.”
Gabe studied her. “Why not?”
“All our plans keep falling through. At the moment, we’re looking for a way to hijack a tanker—“ she stopped when she caught their disapproving stares. “Just for a minute. And it’s for a good cause. If it even happens. It’s to save the children. There are thousands trapped on the base still. We need a ship that can carry them back to Kota.”
“I see,” Meg said, turning back to continue painting. “Then yes, you’d need a large ship for that. A zeppelin.
“Not a zeppelin,” Gabe said, speaking in a calculating tone. “They don’t hold enough people.”
“So a tanker, then,” Meg admitted. “That’s probably her best bet.”
“We’ll just pretend we don’t know, right Meg?”
“The problem is, how the hell am I supposed to fly it? So we need to find a pilot. There’s no way, though,” Holly said. “I usually think I can handle anything. But with this, right now, I’m exhausted. Ready to just throw in the towel. And I would. If I hadn’t seen one of the kids, this adorable little boy named Jasper. I told him I’d help him. I can’t back down now.”
“So, you could get the tanker and finish the rescue if you had a pilot?” Gabe asked, his brush making swish-swish noises as he worked on the corner near Holly and the window.
“Pretty much. There are some other hurdles, but that’s the biggest one at the moment. Everything is really hinging on that one.”
“Holly, I might know someone,” Gabe said.
She paused and turned to stare at him. “You’re kidding. If this is a joke, Gabriel Bach…” she let the threat hang in the air between them.
“Oh, it’s not. We can go see him as soon as we’re done here.”
She gave him an appraising look, then glanced at her sister. Meg nodded encouragingly. She believed him. So Holly would as well. “Yes, please. Immediately would be best. But I do have an obligation to finish this room for our Queen Mother.”
Meg laughed derisively. Gabe allowed himself a slight chuckle, as though aware that he didn’t exactly enjoy insider status on jokes about Holly and Meg’s mother.
11
The next morning, Holly waited at the opening to the alley just beyond the Earl’s Crown bookshop. Apparently Gabe’s pilot friend was meeting them somewhere nearby. The usual motley assortment of interesting people came and went into the alley. Men in top hats and suits walked by with monocles in their eyes or dangling from their jackets, while women in various dress styles with corseted torsos breezed along with them, feathers sticking off their hats. Being so close to Angelo’s shop, Holly recalled Shiro’s watch, which she still hadn’t returned to him. It would be nice to hop into Angelo’s shop for a rejuvenating sit in a chair, surrounded by all things velvet and old, to soak in the odors of time and a long-past world that she’d only ever seen images of.
And Angelo himself. His kindly manner always made her feel something, that she was connected to others. Her own father was kind, but demanding. Because Holly had rejected the family line of work—policing—she had never gotten that feedback that she was right with the world, and that her father was proud of her.
A tall, male Druiviin walked by, a female beside him, both of them wearing feathery wings on their backs attached to small vests that left their arms and midriffs exposed.
“There you are, kiddo,” Gabe said, seeming to materialize in front of her when the wings of the Druiviin finally slipped past. Being near the analogue alley, the world reeked of magic and possibility, and Gabe’s sudden appearance fit perfectly with that.
“Gabe,” Holly said, masking her surprise.
“This is such a weird place,” he remarked. “But it’s
where Old Scotch picked for himself, I guess.”
“Old Scotch?” Holly repeated.
“Yeah, that’s his nickname. His real name is Iain Grant.”
“Of course he’s got a nickname.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“I don’t.”
“Yours is ‘kiddo.’”
Holly shook her head. “Only you call me that, at your own peril.”
“Shall we go in,” Gabe asked, laughing and clapping her on the shoulder. His hand lingered there, until he slipped it down to her upper arm as he fell into step beside her. “What I can’t understand is how he even ended up here. This isn’t his scene. Ex-military. Very stoic. Very tough guy. You’re going to love him.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’ve already sold me on him. He sounds like a wonderful human.” She pulled her arm away from Gabe as they walked. His touch didn’t bother her, but the sense that he was controlling her, did. After living under the oppression of Graf for so long, Holly was determined to never be controlled.
“Sarcasm. I never tire of it. At least, not from the Wolfe sisters.”
“Meg taught me everything I know about it.” She grinned despite herself. The alley was full of costumed pedestrians, as always. The odors of breakfast wafted through the air: baking rolls, the sugary fragrances of syrups and sauces, sizzling bacon, and the less familiar scents of Druiviin, Constellation, and Centau foods.
“I should have skipped breakfast at home and eaten here. I forget that this place specializes in old foods.”
“Are we meeting Old Scotch at a restaurant?” Holly asked, waiting for a Centau dressed in furs to pass, and then continuing on.
Gabe chuckled softly. “Not at all.”
Soon they came to a shop that was snuggled between a Druiviin costumier and a Constie shop that specialized in rarities and trinkets of yesteryear. The terms of some of the signs made her laugh inside—translation into the universal language from the original language didn’t always work. A shop called something like Oddities of the Sort One Might Find on Axcia in Times Long Past in the universal language might be something as simple as Odds and Gobs in the Constie language.
“This is it,” Gabe said, heading up the stairs into the shop that was dwarfed by the surrounding spires. All the buildings in the alleyway were two to three story separate structures with pointed roofs, eaves, and windows, with doors that creaked on hinges when opened. The one Gabe led Holly into was called Create Like Your Life Depended on It.
“That’s a serious sign. On the one hand, artsy, on the other, urgent. I feel so mixed up inside.” Holly laughed.
Gabe paused at the door and glanced back at the bamboo sign at the foot of the stairs. “That’s just Iain’s style. I don’t know if he has a sense of humor. But, well, you’ll see.” He turned to go inside.
“Oh, wait,” Holly said, following him. “You mean, this is his shop?”
But Gabe was already calling out to Iain. “Scotch! Hey, you in here?”
There were displays everywhere and goods stacked upon them. Free-standing shelves ran parallel to the walls, which also held shelves of things like canvases and tubes of paint. An entire wall featured rows and rows of paint-brushes, along with a v-screen running a video about how to use a paintbrush. It was currently playing a woman describing how to mix oil paints and which kinds of brushes worked best with oils. The stuff was so archaic. Holly paused and inhaled. The place smelled strange. It recalled the smell of Meg’s condo while they’d been painting the day before, but there was an underlying fragrance that she was unfamiliar with. But that was the whole point of Analogue Alley—a romanticization of the past. Bringing back archaic traditions that, some would argue, were better left in the past.
There were other paints stacked in shelves. Acrylic. Water. And pencils and pens. There was clay as well, and chalk and charcoals. Everything seemed so tactile and real. She wanted to walk up to all the objects and touch them.
“Well, bust my balls, if it isn’t Gabriel Bach, the worst detective the City of Jade Spires has ever seen.” A man emerged from a back room. Holly looked up and moved toward the center of the shop, where Gabe was laughing and clasping the man’s hand in a firm forearm shake.
“Scotch. This is my ex-sister-in-law, Holly Drake.” Holly smiled and offered her hand. Scotch took it and shook it gently, while meeting her gaze with his own.
“A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Drake.”
“And you, Scotch?” she asked.
“Scotch is fine, thank you,” Iain said, nodding.
Holly noticed Gabe staring at the floor, as though lost in thought. Holly waited for him to say something more. When he didn’t, Holly searched for something to ask Iain. “So, how did you come by your nickname?”
“Someone figured it would be funny to reference my heritage, rather than my name. Some drunk bastard during a bar sing-along. We were all drunk.”
Gabe still hadn’t made a move to say much more, so Holly continued to try to engage Iain. “How long have you been running this place?” She glanced around. It reminded her of Angelo’s, but only in the old format sense of the materials. “Do you know Angelo?”
“Angelo. Of course. We get drinks together occasionally. You know him?”
Gabe looked at Iain then, his eyes narrowed.
“What, Bach? You think I would lay off the drink after what happened? No. A man has to survive, and since I’m not running a ship anymore, what’s the harm?”
Holly looked back and forth between them, waiting for one of them to tell her “what happened.”
“I’m not your keeper, Scotch. Just don’t want a repeat of what happened.”
“I’m already a disgraced commander. What could be worse?”
“Being a disgraced commander in prison. Again.”
“You were in prison?” Holly asked, feeling a sense of understanding creep into her.
Iain sighed and turned away. He went back behind the counter where an old style register sat upon the glass display case. Stacks of boxes reached the top of the counter. Iain snatched a knife off the counter and cut the top box open and began pulling out supplies.
Holly cleared her throat. “I was in prison too. Wrongfully. I’m not here to judge.”
“Good, because there’s no reason to judge me, miss.”
Gabe looked at Iain with a bemused expression on his face. “It was just a drunk and disorderly problem. Some damages. A bar fight.”
Iain paused in what he was doing and glared at Gabe. “Someone slandered me.”
There was some heat in the conversation, making Holly feel like a third wheel. She distracted herself by picking up a metallic tube of oil paint that Scotch had just pulled out of the box and placed on the counter. The color was Cadmium Red Deep. It pressed a satisfying weight into her hand. “Was your bar fight in connection with the nickname?”
“No, that was months before. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say. The bastards who gave me the name . . .” he shook his head, inspecting a container of paint brushes.
Holly waited, but he didn’t continue.
Gabe watched the other man carefully. “Eventually they found out he’s an ex-commander. Discharged. Turned it into a case of ridicule. Scotch fought with them.”
“We are no longer friends,” Iain said. He glanced at a v-screen and compared the products he was unloading to it.
“Scotch spent the night in jail.”
“A few nights.”
“That’s how we met,” Gabe finished. “And Scotch is one of my best friends now.”
Holly looked at Gabe. Why hadn’t she ever heard of him, then? “What about the others? Did they also get in trouble?”
“They ran off before we got there. Scotch was the only one left. When I found him, he was trying to calm the owner of the bar down, telling her he would pay for the damages.”
“And I did. I keep my word. And I don’t run when things get hot.”
Holly studied Iain’s face. He had a firm ja
w with craggy features like he’d just climbed down from the mountains. His hair matched that sense, a bit unkempt and graying. But there was a gravitas to him that Holly liked. Though Gabe and Iain had both just shared a story about him that lent a sense of wild danger to the man, he seemed collected and under control. He hadn’t run off when the police came to break up the disturbance. Iain had accepted the stripes. He was responsible.
“Why did you leave the military?” Holly asked quietly. If she was going to charge him with a ship, she should know what he was capable of and what he wasn’t. Otherwise she saw no reason to put a tanker in his command and task him with flying it.
Iain put the v-screen down and focused on Holly. He leaned to the side against the heavy boxes and folded his hands in front of his stomach—not in an aggressive way, however. It was a pause to listen and take seriously what he was about to say, and it struck her more as the style a mentor would take with their student.
“The conflict got to me.”
That was it. Holly glanced at Gabe, who was just turning away and moving to the shelves on the other side of the room. Holly understood: she was on her own with this one, but then Gabe spun around, suddenly.
“Tell you what. You guys hungry? Ever since we got to weirdo alley, my stomach’s been growling.”
“Good idea, Gabe,” Iain said. “You alright with that?” He addressed this question to Holly.
She nodded, though her mind was spinning in circles around what he’d just said about the conflict. Did he mean the one conflict? The big one?
Apparently, she wouldn’t be able to ask that here. Iain had disappeared into his back room and she could hear him barking orders at someone. Holly shot a look at Gabe, who was currently holding a small paintbrush, running his fingers over the soft bristles.
“He’s got an employee,” Gabe said without looking up.
12
Iain picked the restaurant. It was a fusion joint, serving breakfasts from both human and Centau cultures. Which made for a delectable balance between sweet fruits and salty meats like bacon and ham.
The Colossus Collection Page 57
