“And what?”
“I saw something ’tween her fingers. Like a bit of glass that wanted me to forget it. And she flicked it out right through the cable holding up that basket.”
“You’re saying she cut it deliberately.” I paused, hearing what she was saying, knowing on some level it must be true, but part of me wanting to find a flaw in it. “She was wearing most of a suit, just like the rest of us. How did she hide a Ghostie blade?”
“You don’t need to hide a Ghostie blade, it does the hidin’ for you.” Prozor turned from the window, frowning with concentration. “I think she must’ve had it stuck on her tin arm, somehow, where it wouldn’t show up. She had it in her flesh fingers—in her suit glove, I mean, not her other hand. If she had it hidden on her left arm somewheres, she’d have reached for it with her right hand, wouldn’t she?”
“But they took a knife from her already.”
“I think that was the one she meant for ’em to find. To put ’em off the scent, so to speak.”
I thought of how easy it would have been for Fura to fix a Ghostie blade onto her left arm, all of us long past the point where we paid that limb any attention. Prozor was right, as well. A Ghostie weapon could be lying in practically plain sight and your eyes would slide off it like a worn boot heel on black ice.
“Why would she do such a thing? She was furious about it.”
The plumbing continued to rattle away, but Prozor still directed a guarded look at the adjoining wall. “I can only think of one reason. She knew those parts weren’t worth much to us, and easily replaced. But it keeps us from leaving too soon.”
“We’ll leave when Strambli’s well, and not a moment sooner.”
“You’d say that, and so would I. But if Strambli took a turn … and you know what I mean by that … if there wasn’t a reason for us to remain, why wouldn’t we leave as soon as we were able?”
The plumbing gave a rattling shiver and then stopped making its din. Through the walls I heard Fura stomping around on loose floorboards.
“Why would she want us to stay here any longer than necessary?” I asked, entirely innocently of course, since I already had a shrewd idea of the answer and it began and ended with the name Lagganvor.
“She’s got her reasons—she just hasn’t got around to sharin’ ’em with the rest of us. When Snot-nose showed up and it became clear things had gone from bad to worse in this place, I reckon she started worryin’ we’d all get the jitters and want to clear out.”
“But it makes no sense. Why would she be the one who’s keen to remain? I know she was secretly hoping we’d fall in with her choice, and go to Kathromil. But we took the vote.”
Prozor nodded slowly. “We think we did. But she’s got a good case of the glowy in her now, and it turns coves sly, as well as makin’ ’em latch onto things that aren’t quite real.”
She closed the shutters fully and moved from the window. I sat down on my bed, trying to put on a creditable act of being thoroughly shocked and discomfited by these speculations of hers.
“I know it’s been getting worse,” I said. “I can see that in her and it’s been troubling me. But the more it takes its hold on her, the less she’s going to want to see reason about getting it flushed out of her.” My mind flashed back to the man in the gold room, convulsing in his chair, the string-wound stick jammed into his mouth. “I don’t want her ending up like Glimmery.”
Prozor faced me on her own bed, tucking her hands into her lap. I remembered how spiky and forbidding she had been when we first met her, how unimpressed by us she was, how unlikely it had been that I might feel warm thoughts toward her. Now she felt like a second sister to me, and closer than the one with whom I shared my blood.
“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you’d seen anything else about her?”
I skated the edge of telling her everything I knew, about the translated journals and the man she sought. We would be square then, but I would still have to explain to Prozor, this good and loyal friend, why I had not trusted her with this information until now.
Perhaps I even drew in a breath, ready to blurt it all out. Whatever Prozor had to say to me, I knew I would feel better in myself once the secret was shared.
But I could not.
The silence weighed. Presently Prozor pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll go and see how her ladyship’s feelin’, shall I?”
*
Fura knocked on my door. She was dressed to go out, in a blouse, waistcoat, long skirt and boots. She had rummaged through her hair, tangling it to her evident satisfaction, so that it formed an unruly black halo around her head and shoulders.
“Where’s Prozor?” I asked, realising she was alone.
“Gone ahead to scout out a table for us. If our luck’s in she’ll get the first round of drinks, too. Here.” She threw me a laundry bag, which I caught automatically, just as if we were playing a game of ball in the long upstairs hallway of our old house. “Little present for you.”
I opened the drawstring, and was immediately assaulted by the odour.
“It smells terrible—even worse than the other bags. I thought it was Strambli’s wound, making that chest stink as badly as it did.”
“Strambli didn’t make it any fresher, no, but I helped it along a bit, just to deter those coves from taking too close an interest in the contents. Worked, didn’t it?” She grinned, supremely pleased with herself. “I had to snatch a moment alone with her, when Eddralder wasn’t with her, but that was enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Open the bag.”
I let her in, pushing the door ajar behind her, and tipped out the bag’s contents onto my bed. There were a few nondescript items of underwear inside it, just off-colour enough to deter close examination, but these were merely padding or camouflage for the main items. There were two. One was small black pouch, about the size of a deck of cards, with a translucent block jutting from one end. The other was a compact grey box, which in some other life might have sufficed to contain a quantity of jewellery or make-up but which I fancied now served some darker purpose. I examined the small black pouch first, sliding out the translucent substance.
I recognised it instantly.
There was not enough of it to make anyone’s fortune, but it was handsome piece nonetheless, and better than the rough item that had come with Fura from Trusko’s ship. It was lookstone: one of the oldest relics known to crews, found in all baubles and believed to originate from the Second Occupation.
Squeezing it gently, I raised it to the level of my eyes, which were facing the blank wall between our rooms. The lookstone, frosted until then, gained a greasy transparency. Within the bounds of that little rectangle, the wall melted away. I could see into Fura’s room, just as if there was a neat hole drilled into the wall, a hole which moved obligingly if I shifted the angle of the lookstone.
I squeezed a little harder, and the lookstone peered right through into the room beyond the adjoining one, and then further still, until I was staring down a sort of tunnel that went all the way out of the hotel, into the hot, dark night over Port Endless. Further still, and the lookstone offered a glimpse of the space beyond Wheel Strizzardy, out through the swarm of ships hauled close by, each vessel becoming glassy as my vision swept through it, so that for a moment I saw a blueprint-like fascination of ribs and spars, of struts and decks and divisions, of machines and tanks, of crews of tiny living skeletons busy with their chores.
“I brought it to trade with,” Fura said, “if we get into a fix and run out of quoins, but mainly to keep ourselves safe. We can spy on each other very easily, so we’ll always know if the other one’s in trouble. Keep it with you from now on. I’ll always have my piece on me.”
“Did you think it likely they’d have confiscated something as harmless as lookstone?”
“No, although I wouldn’t have put common pilfering past them, and I saw no good reason to throw ’em our prize takings like doggie biscu
its. Take a gander at the other item, though. It’s a prettier piece by far, and not what you’d call harmless.”
I opened the box’s hinged lid. Inside was a padding of purple silk, in which lay embedded a semi-transparent object that, under other circumstances, I might have taken for a toy pistol, or perhaps some novelty ornamentation to be worn with an evening gown. It was dainty, with jewelled ornamentation and a scarlet blush to its mostly transparent body.
“Where did you find this?”
“Among Bosa’s effects. Kept under her desk, which I took to mean it was one of her favoured trinkets.”
“It’s not Ghostie,” I said carefully, studying her expression.
“No, but just as rare—or nearly enough. It’s a volition pistol. Eighth or ninth Occupation, so I believe. I’ll be straight with you—I was planning on keeping it as my own.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because I’m left-handed, and it turns out that a volition pistol needs flesh and blood to work properly. It’s much better that you have it, considering.”
“That’s very sweet of you.”
“It’s an energy blaster, with a self-renewing power core. Variable intensity settings, from a nasty sting all the way up to high lethality. We’ll test it later. I want to know it can disable a cove, without killing them.”
“Lost your taste for killing?”
“Lost my taste for complications. For now. Take it out of the box. Get a feel for it, like I never could.”
I took out the little weapon. I had small hands, but even so I could barely curl two fingers around the grip.
“Why is it called a volition pistol?”
Fura smiled. “Just be careful who you point it at.”
*
The bar across the road was a flight of steps down from street level, a warren dug a long way back into the bedrock, with rooms, passages and snugs connected together in a geometry that was puzzling enough when sober, which I very nearly was despite Mister Glimmery’s wine, and would have been downright perplexing otherwise.
There were no windows, just a few electric lights and some sickly lightvine that had been encouraged to fester over the ceiling and walls. Flickerboxes were on in a couple of corners, and a robot or two was bustling around clearing tables. There were clients of every sort, from coves in vacuum suits, some quite well-heeled types, all the way down to slouching or comatose drunkards. Even a few aliens were there, either keeping to themselves—reading newspapers or suchlike—or engaged in some sort of shifty business with their monkey companions. They had their own concoctions, drinks that shone vivid green or blue.
Prozor had found a snug for us, and already done the honours with regard to our drinks. Fura and I squeezed in next to her. Fura had a coat on over her blouse and waistcoat, but she shrugged out of it now that it was warm in the bar, and set her forearms onto the table, the metal one clacking against the wood. Pressed against Prozor, I felt the bulge of the volition pistol against my chest, where I had squeezed it into an interior pocket of my own jacket.
“I squawked Surt, and then I squawked the ship,” Fura said. “There’s no news on Strambli yet—but then I wasn’t really expecting any, not for a few hours.”
Prozor took the head off her beer with a swipe of her hand, then licked at her palm with an unhurried catlike attentiveness.
“What did Tindouf have to say?”
“I only spoke to Paladin. Told him to maintain squawk and sweeper watch, and keep Tindouf on his toes.”
“Did you mention the ship that might be dropping by?” I asked.
“The one Glimmery asked us about? It’s probably nothing.”
“The way Glimmery put it,” I said, “it sounds like it could be the survivor of the two ships that were on our stern.”
“Speculation, until we have something more concrete.” Fura sipped at her own beer. “We can’t go jumping at every shadow. Ships trade shots with each other all the time, especially in the Emptyside. We gave ’em the slip around the swallower, anyway. There’s no reason for them to follow us all the way to Wheel Strizzardy, especially after we showed ’em our fangs.”
“Unless they have injured coves, and damage, and this is the nearest port of call,” I said. “Then they might limp here for entirely practical reasons. We should determine their plans, and whether or not Glimmery means to offer them safe haven. Then we ought to find out how far out they are—whether it’s days or weeks, depending on how badly we got them. And then we should take every care to make sure we are long gone before they catch sight of our sails, and start piecing together what we are.”
“If they ain’t already smoked us,” Prozor said.
“We’ll concern ourselves with that ship … if it even exists … when we have confirmation of it,” Fura said. “Paladin will be the first to inform us. He can use his sweep with impunity now, so we’ll have ample warning.”
I understood her meaning. We were docked close to a world that was already employing powerful sweepers of its own, to monitor nearby space traffic, so there was no loss of concealment or surprise in using our own.
“In the meantime,” I said, “one of us should check on Surt. She’ll need to know her way to the hotel, and I don’t like the idea of Sneed showing her the way.”
“We’ve shopping to do first,” Fura said. “All of us. And it’ll be easier and quicker if we take on separate items. The suit parts are our first priority. You and Proz can sniff out a bargain or two, can’t you?”
“And you?” I asked.
“I’m mindful of the condition of our skull. While it’s still sending, we ought to be prepared for the worst. I’m going to scout out some of the local wares, and see if anything fits our needs.” That decided—to her satisfaction, at least—she set down her drink and pushed up from her chair. “We’ll meet here in a couple of hours? Stay sharp, and if you feel that Sneed or his men are shadowing you, give ’em the slip as best you’re able.”
Without any great ceremony, we left the bar and went our agreed ways. Fura crossed the road, and I soon lost her in the passing of pedestrians and trams.
It was still raining. Prozor and I backed under an awning for a few seconds.
“I was wondering if you were going to bring up the accident with the basket,” I said. “Then I was more than a little glad you didn’t.”
Across the street, under an awning similar to our own, a man was trying to light a match. He kept taking one out, striking it, then discarding it when the match failed to light—but he persisted, taking out those matches with a strange and dogged regularity, until on the twelfth or thirteenth occasion the flame took.
“I thought we’d be better off seeing what she’s up to,” Prozor said, stepping aside as the awning billowed and discharged half its cargo of built-up water. “We need a new skull eventually, that’s plain, but it’s not half as important as the provisions or the suit parts. Mainly I think the good cap’n just wanted an excuse to send us off on an errand, so she could get on with her own—whatever that happens to be.”
I was about to answer her when a pair of trams crossed in front of us, and when my view was clear again, instead of the man with the match what caught my eye was Fura, doubling back the way she had come, crossing over to our side of the street (unseen by Prozor, since I blocked her sight-line) and eventually vanishing back into the entrance to the bar we had all just left.
That familiar anger burned in me again. I was being lied to, by my own sister, and lies were a risk to us all. I felt a tingling in my fingers, a rawness under my nails, and realised it was the memory of digging my claws into Surt, for a crime she had not even committed.
Now I imagined a different neck under my grasp.
I slowed my breathing, forcing the anger to diminish, becoming as cool and faint as one of the oldest stars in the Swirly, those stars that were here before monkeys and would be here long after us; red-gold stars for whom our frantic little adventuring of worlds and Occupations and Sunderings was but a
moment between vast slow inhalations.
When I was certain there was no chance of her coming back out again, I extended a hand beyond the awning.
“I think the rain’s easing off a little.”
15
I need not labour the shopping expedition. We had an inventory of the parts that needed replacing, no shortage of quoins, and also no shortage of places that sold the sort of wares in which we had an interest. We had to be a little scrupulous, though, not to throw our money around as if it had no value to us. Hard bargains had to be driven, false economies weeded out, dishonest merchants given the full and merciless lash of Prozor’s opinion. Which they were.
When we were done we had accumulated four replacement helmets of tolerable integrity, as well as sufficient hoses, valves, regulators, filters and lungstuff recirculators to cobble together four life-support systems. It was a mongrel assortment, but then so were the original items, and none of it would look out of place next to our remaining suit parts. We carried the new items in heavy clanking pannier bags, for which there was a refundable deposit.
I will not say that we were pleased with our success, because our heads were filled with entirely too many qualms for that—Fura’s behaviour, the question of the damaged ship, the troubling interest of Mister Glimmery—but nor were we displeased, and I felt a quiet satisfaction that we had already scuppered Fura’s delaying tactics, at least in this one regard. She must have thought it would take more than one shopping expedition to meet our needs, perhaps several days of it, but she had not allowed for Prozor’s tenacity and quick wits.
We were a few minutes early, so before we returned to the bar we went back to the hotel. Prozor needed to use the toilet, so she hurried back to our room while I lugged the bags up two flights of stairs to our landing, and then along the corridor to the lock-up. Halfway through that process I was perspiring so much that I took off my jacket and opened our door just wide enough to toss it onto my bed. I went back down to the sixth floor, collected the remaining panniers and sweated them to the lock-up.
Shadow Captain Page 25