by Andy Graham
Nascimento watched the old man’s eyes bulge.
“That’s my old medal. I gave it to Chester this morning.”
“We’re arresting you for murder, Sir,” Orr said.
Stann laughed. “You’re nuts, son. I’ve been in Tear all day and my medal being at Chester’s place proves nothing. Do you think I’d have left it there if I wanted to kill her?”
“Many people have been convicted on much less evidence than that.” Orr pocketed his screen. “Come with us.”
“Make me.”
“Please, sir,” said Nascimento.
“Enough.” Orr pulled out a pair of hand cuffs. “C’mon, old man.”
Stann raised his fists. “Try and put those on me, son, and I’ll show you how we old men used to do it.”
Minutes later, surrounded by a mob of watching faces that had appeared from behind curtains, doors and water barrels, Stann Taille was bundled into the back of the jeep. A man with a mohican in paint-stained khaki trousers and a woman with red hair had tried to wrestle Stann free. They’d been shoved back at gunpoint. Nascimento got himself in Seth’s way as much as he could, never obviously, just enough to give the man trouble aiming the wild strikes of his baton. Once the door had been closed on the kicking veteran and his prosthesis had been thrown in after him, Nascimento turned to Orr.
“You OK?” he asked. “The old boy’s quicker than he looks. His knuckles are harder than they look, too.”
Orr dabbed at a thick cut over one eye. It streamed blood down over his split lip. “He got lucky. I don’t hit old men, neither.”
“I got footage of this, you bullies!” a woman yelled from the muttering crowd.
“Like I care.” Orr spat a mouthful of blood on the floor.
Stann Taille was rattling the grille on the back of the jeep. The villagers of Tear spread out, surrounding them, like an animal spreading its claws.
“This is not good,” Nascimento said.
The jeep engine roared. The harsh retort of a rifle shot snapped through the air. The wolfbark tree in the centre of the green shuddered.
“Next one hits flesh, not wood,” Seth yelled. “I got plenty to go round. Now back off before you all get buried in the buckets you used to piss in.”
The jeep bounced along the dusty road back to Effrea. Nascimento pressed his forehead into the window. The cold glass tugged at his skin as the jeep lurched over a pothole.
“Seems to me you formidable ex-10th legionnaires need to go back to school,” Seth said. “You got your arses handed to you by a one-legged, half-handed pensioner.”
Nascimento didn’t need to see Seth’s face to see the gloating smirk plastered across it. He concentrated on counting the litter that speckled the hedges like liver spots. Better that than listening to the alternating moans and threats that were coming from the back of the van.
20
The Map Room & the Husband
Ray had politely declined the crutch that Stella had found for him and was doing his best to walk naturally down the corridor. It came out like a stuttering hobble. He mistimed his step. A flash of pain speared his ankle. He bit back a hiss of air.
Stella fished a bottle of pills out of her pocket. “Take two.”
He rattled three into his palm and dry-swallowed them.
“That was three.”
“Three’s almost two. Close enough.”
She grabbed his arm. “One’s almost two, as well, but I only have one of my two children. You left the other behind. Is that close enough, too?”
“I’ll get him back. I promise.”
Stella’s fingers eased their grip. Her eyes didn’t. She indicated the pills. “It’s only a temporary solution. The pain relief won’t last for ever.”
“It might last longer if you hadn’t told me that. I thought you were the Placebo Queen. Let’s go, the sooner we can meet this mystery guest of Martinez’s, the sooner I can get going to find the kid.”
“Jake. Call him Jake, please. He’s a person, my little boy. Don’t dehumanise him any more than you have to.”
They set off down the corridor, Stella shortening her stride to accommodate him.
“I never said thank you for your help last year,” Ray said. “I never said sorry, either, for dragging your family into this mess. If I’d known what was going to happen, I’m not sure I’d have gone through with it.”
“I don’t want your thanks or your apologies. I want your help. And I want you to be honest, too. You can say you wouldn’t have tracked your twin down if there was a cost to my family, but it’s a lie which comes easy now because you know he’s dead. Once you discovered you had a brother who may be alive, nothing would’ve stopped you. Your family has a stubborn streak as deep as space is long. And like all stubbornness, there’s a large dose of selfishness in there.”
She held her hand up to silence his protests. The wedding ring, which she hadn’t been wearing during their first meeting in the Kickshaw, slid to her knuckles. “Don’t get defensive. Selfishness is not always a bad thing. Seen from some angles it’s a way of standing up for what is yours and what you believe in. Choosing your brother’s or family’s lives over another’s is selfish in a way, even though not many people would see it like that.” She took his hands in hers. “That stubborn, selfish streak got you your answer, if not your brother. I just want my family back. So please be as stubborn as you like.”
He smiled. “I think you called it bloody-minded persistence that time we met above the Ward.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She gestured to the door they’d reached. “This is us. You still insist on letting me go first?”
“You decided if it’s chivalry or chauvinism yet?” The reflection of the twin moons had been bright in the puddles on the pavement outside the Kickshaw the first time he’d heard that phrase. He pulled the door open with as much of a bow and flourish as his ankle would allow.
A smile flirted with the harsh lines across Stella’s face. “I’ll settle for chivalry for now, but don’t be getting any muscle-headed ideas. Leave the testosterone-blooded alpha male bursting to get out of your trousers hidden away, please.”
“So why are you letting me hold the door open for you?”
The smile blossomed into a grin. “Think of it as a child-friendly version of a sympathy shag.” She curtsied and stepped through the open door.
Stella had described their destination as the map room. As descriptions went, Ray thought, it was as spartan as you could get.
There were old maps and new maps. Some were made of material thick enough to survive a nursery. Another (in a glass tube) was printed on what looked like vellum. Several were rolled up into scruffy, dog-eared cylinders that huddled in corners of the room. Others were spread out on a central table, layered upon each other like an atlas shedding its skin. They were restrained by a variety of paper weights. A globe hung from the ceiling, spinning like a geographical mirror ball. Coloured glass, winking in the light, marked capitals and continents. Effrea, the capital of Ailan was a deep, vibrant red. But what really took Ray’s breath away was the wall opposite the door.
It had been sculpted into a detailed relief map of the coast of Ailan and its neighbours on the other side of the South Sea. Filigree letters and numbers swirled in lines around the edges. A huge nautical compass was designed around a grinning skull, one eye of which had a stone set in it. The colour matched the hue of the Ailan capital on the globe. The skull itself rested on crossed pistols. Ornate symbols had been stamped into the sea close to the coast: a trident, a fish, a horse, a bull and a whirlpool. Next to the trident, someone had drawn an improbably busty mermaid in chalk and added a phone number. Ray made a mental note of the number to pass on to Nascimento.
“What’s a map like that doing here?” he asked.
“Maybe someone got bored. I thought you people in the military had a high threshold for boredom, though?”
“Yeah, we’re highly trained to sit around for hours on end with nothing to
do.”
A faint smile crossed Stella’s face, as if she hadn’t really heard him. “Each of those symbols is a family of towers like ours,” she said. She tapped the icon of the whirlpool on the wall. “We had a day trip to this place a few weeks back; it’s where we found a lot of these maps. I’m not sure what they were doing there, but your mother insisted on taking them.” She gestured around the room. “I’ve never seen so much paper in one place. It’s incredible.”
Ray hobbled closer. “And where are we on this wall map?”
She tapped the trident. “It’s been my home since that evening when I was kidnapped for my own safety.” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “I’ve heard that line so many times I’m beginning to believe it really was the only choice. Given a choice, I’d rather die with my family than leave them alone to their fate.”
“No one’s going to die, Stella.” He stopped looking through the maps on the table. “No one who shouldn’t die, anyway.”
“That sounded dangerously like the throaty warble of a testosterone-blooded alpha male.”
“Give it a rest. If I get Jake back, do you care?”
“Of course I care. What gives you the right to decide who lives and dies?”
“I have as much or as little right as anyone else.”
“I don’t want anyone to die, Ray. I just want my son back. Then I want to go back to my husband and pick up from where this all started falling apart.”
“You think the VP will allow that?”
The door clanged open. The sound ricochetted around the room. Ray’s hand reached for the knife at his belt. Rose strode into the room, her face like a thunderhead. Hard on her heels was Kayle.
“We have a problem,” Rose said. “Someone just tried to kill Field-Marshal Chester.”
“It was made to look like an accident,” Kayle added. “Chester’s still unconscious.”
“How’s that a problem for the Resistance?”
“She was one of the few people with the authority—”
“And balls,” Kayle cut in.
“To restrain the VP,” Rose finished. “Now the Ailan military is prepping for war.”
Ray let go of his knife. “They’re always prepping for war. It’s normal for any military. That’s their job. Who is it this time? Mennai?”
An angry purple flush flooded Kayle’s face.
“They’re going after the Donian tribes,” Ray said quietly.
“Except this time,” Rose continued, “the mission to Donian is not just another Drive for Democracy. They are looking for total subjugation at all costs in order to get at the element under the mountains. They’re going to start with the Angel City and work out from there.”
“Where?” Stella asked.
“It’s the closest thing the Donian have to a capital. I almost died there.” Ray rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, overcome by a sudden weariness that transcended the pain in his leg. “We need to warn them.”
“I have.” Rose looked Stella straight in the eyes “There’s more.”
Stella shot Ray a look. The colour bled from her face.
“Maybe you should sit, Stella,” Rose said.
“Just tell me.”
“The Unsung picked up your husband.”
Stella gripped the edge of the table. Tendons stood out on the back of her hands in quivering lines. “I thought you were going to put him into a safe house?”
“They got to him before us. They weren’t very subtle about it. I’m sorry.” Rose could have been reciting a shopping list for all the emotion in her voice.
“You said you were going to protect him,” Stella said, her voice glacier still. “After all I’ve done for you and your family, you let them snatch my husband?”
“I didn’t let them do anything.”
Stella swept the sheets of paper off the table, scattering them to the floor. The vellum map in the glass tube smashed against the wall. “You didn’t let them?” she yelled. “It’s never your fault, is it, Rose? You burn bridges and friendships where it suits you. This obsession of yours with revenge is burning away your humanity. You’ve become a mono-dimensional caricature of a human, worse than those you espouse to hate. You sacrificed your family. I will not let you do the same to mine.”
She stalked towards the older woman, anger scratched across her face. Kayle stepped next to Rose, hands on the butts of his revolvers. Ray placed a hand on Stella’s shoulder, holding her back. Her body was shaking. Ray recognised his mother’s expression. “What aren’t you telling us, Rose?”
“They’ve threatened to kill Dr Swann’s son and husband unless you give yourself up, Ray.”
Stella screamed. She pulled free of Ray’s grip, grabbed a map off the table and ripped it to shreds. Kayle moved to take it off her. Ray blocked his way. One of the paper weights slammed into the nautical compass, blinding the skull in his one good eye. Stella spun back to Rose. Her hair tumbled around her face in ragged waves.
“Who?” Stella said through clenched teeth. “Who made this threat?”
“Who do you think?”
Stella pushed the damp hair out of her eyes. “Is he responsible again?”
Rose nodded mutely.
“How do you know that for sure?” Ray asked.
Martinez stepped into the room. “You’ve met the someone,” he said to Ray. “Here’s the some-two.”
A slim woman with oil-black hair stepped through the door, a long coat draping her from shoulder to toes. Bright blue eyes the colour of a spring sky swept the room imperiously.
“Bethina Laudanum?” Stella gasped.
“What’s the president doing here?” Ray said.
21
A Plastic Tube
It was the tube coming out of Chester’s mouth that finally did it for Beth. The beeping machines surrounding her weren’t a problem, neither were the multicoloured lines that twitched on the monitor bank. They reassured her that under the bandages, Field-Marshal Willa Chester was still alive. Even the missing big toe, gone since childhood, that gave Chester her much-imitated limp was reassuring. But the clear corrugated tube that pulled Chester’s bottom lip down into a drooling angle, the sound of her breath whistling through that tube? That had the opposite effect. As silly as it sounded, it made Beth realise that her friend and colleague of over fifty years was very, very human. It made her realise Chester may die.
Someone had left a bottle of muse berry juice on Chester’s bedside table. Beth snatched it up and stalked out of the room. The corridors of the military hospital were thick with staff being busy. Some seemed to be bustling in place. All looked anxious to be seen doing something. One look at Beth’s expression, and a path opened with no need for her guards. No one wanted to be in the president’s way today.
She left, ragging her official car through the streets of Ailan herself, and came here, to her, to this sweat-box factory farm, where the soil sucked at her shoes with slurping noises like a drunk eating porridge. “Any news?” she asked.
An aide scurried over. “You just asked a minute ago, ma’am.”
“I didn’t ask that, I asked if you have any more news?”
“No—”
“And you still have no idea who the figure seen leaving Chester’s apartment just before the explosion was?”
“He looks like an engineer.”
“Am I paying you to state the obvious?”
The aide’s voice faltered. “None of the departments and divisions know anything about the engineer. No one knows who he is.”
“Better. Go on.”
The aide scratched at the stubble on his chin. “We are still making enquires and will let you know as soon as we know?”
“Good.” Beth dismissed him, cursing him and the humidity in this place. The heat was doing nothing to cool her mood but she refused to take her coat off. She had no desire for the informal look today. Jackets-off was reserved for when you wanted to be seen really trying to connect with the public.
/> She slapped at a nearby branch. Berries splattered onto the earth. Her guards, already tense, took a half-step towards her.
“I know who’s behind this,” she hissed to herself. “I know the explosion was a warning, not an accident.” She took a swipe at another branch. “But I have no proof.” Not knowing annoyed her. She had not got where she was by not knowing the secrets of the country. Her usual sources had failed her, which, and it galled her to admit it, was why she was here.
In front of her, the Famulus placed a single muse berry into her basket. Her scrawny, twig-like fingers handled the small purple fruits with excessive care.
“You probably only eat what’s fallen to the ground,” Beth muttered under her breath, toying with the juice bottle in her pocket. “You probably call it something pretentious like ‘what nature has reclaimed’. Either that, or you tell the flock that follow you that you feast on gluten-free oxygen. The more exotic and unattainable you seem to them, the more you fuel their insecurities and drive them deeper into your lying arms.” It was exactly the type of thing her VP would have said. The man she was convinced was behind Chester’s accident. That realisation made Beth’s foul mood vile.
Unaware of her mutterings, the Famulus eased her cart into motion. The thick rubber wheels of the cart ran in deep ruts.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” the Famulus said, once Beth caught up with her. She pointed at a bush. The muse berries, covered in a light spray of water, twinkled like bruised stars. “So much energy is being wasted generating so much heat for something so small? So much money is being invested into something so forgettable? The country is struggling to feed and heat itself as it is, surely you should step in?”
Beth followed her down the aisle of bushes, organising her thoughts, wondering how much she should give away. “Ailan’s energy reserves are fine.” Lying to this woman was too easy. At least the VP was devious enough to be interesting. “And I will thank you not to tell me how to do my job.”