Outsiders, when they came to visit—and gawk at—the locals, used to drive cars like this down the King’s Highway, up until their use in Totus was prohibited by decree. Battine had never sat in one before.
“Not just any car,” he said. “Put on the safety belt. I hope you have a strong stomach.”
At least a dozen palace guards had reached the roof, and all of them were running straight at the airship. She wondered how sturdy it was. The wood panels encasing it wouldn’t do much good, but the rest of the vehicle was made of metal, rubber and glass, which might be more effective against a sword or an aberrant torch.
Damid urged the car forward, which felt very strange. It was like sitting in a carriage behind the horse and being pulled, except it was smoother and the timing of the forward-lurches were less predictable. He spun the wheel as they moved, aiming the nose of the vehicle at an empty space between the oncoming horde.
“Here we go,” he said. Then his foot stomped down and they rocketed straight ahead, accelerating far more quickly than any horse could.
The lip of the roof was ahead of them. It was a mader tall, plenty large enough to stop the car from attaining the open space on the other side.
“Relax,” he said, noting her concern. “it’s an aero-car.”
“A what?”
He hit a couple of buttons, Batt’s stomach dropped through the floor, and they rose up above the roof.
From the ground it must have looked like a small airship taking flight, something everyone in Totus was accustomed to seeing. (Even if the blimp on this one was too small.) In truth, they were riding away in forbidden technology, something every sovereign in the Middle Kingdoms evidently had access to if Fergo was to be believed.
As they soared over the castle’s outer wall, Battine wondered how many other royal truths were a royal lie.
“How did you know Ken had one of these?” she asked.
“I helped him get it,” he said. “Just like I helped him with the voicer.”
“I see,” she said. “You aren’t really a professor at Callim University, are you?”
“Oh, I am. But it’s not all I am.”
“And you know why they killed him, don’t you? The truth, this time.”
“I…might. Before we get to that, though, do you mind telling me where we’re going? I don’t know my way around.”
Part II
The Man in the Sky
Chapter Thirteen
Velon County Attorney Pillick Quibb thought of himself as a good man. He was pretty decent at his job, had a wife who liked him okay and a son who only hated him occasionally. He was well-respected by his peers, was a devout Septal, and donated to charity all the time. He thought that someday, if he kept on this nice, narrow, make-no-waves path, he might run for political office.
Not to say that Quibb was incapable of turning a critical eye inward.
A Murskite by birth, he’d been taught at a young age to understand that when one was referring to the stereotypical traits generally applied to persons of other nationalities it was reasonable to assume that they were overly general and unfairly negative, and therefore not to be taken seriously. It was, however, utterly correct when applied to Murskites. Specifically: Murskites were all supposed to be born diplomats, and that was actually true. Every last one of them.
(This did not mean they all worked as diplomats. Dib didn’t need that many. It did mean they were unswervingly diplomatic as a whole, as would likely be the case for any population attempting to thrive between the very different countries of Wivvol and the Middle Kingdoms.)
One of the requirements of being a good diplomat meant understanding oneself well enough to identify, isolate, and eliminate personal failings and biases. And Quibb was a good diplomat, which was to say that not only did he know he was not perfect, he knew in what ways he was not perfect.
So. Against the positives in his life—the job, the wife, the son and so forth—he might list the fact that he was a little too prideful; he was more likely to favor the argument of a woman showing cleavage than one who was not; and he could be vindictive.
But that was really the worst of it because again, overall he was a decent fellow.
Which was why he couldn’t understand why the gods were punishing him.
He’d looked through the case passed up to him from Yordon Llotho some seven times, hoping against hope to find something—either something more or something less—capable of turning it into a different case than the one that it actually was.
But there was nothing. The case somehow managed to have precisely enough evidence to bring charges, and yet that evidence was precisely insufficient to win in court. Detective Makk Stidgeon had utterly and completely fucked him, and all Quibb could do about it was ride it out.
Just for starters, the geniuses at Twenty-One Central arrested Calcut Linus. They arrested him and walked him downtown and booked him like he was just another criminal. Granted, Linus was a criminal, but he wasn’t just a criminal any more than the Midpoint Ocean was just a place to go swimming. Linus was the prime mover of criminality, the pagan god of crime, the final word in illegal acts. One didn’t arrest Calcut Linus and throw him in a holding cell.
What one did do was contact the county’s federal attorney—the C.A.—notify him of one’s intent to charge a wealthy and well-connected resident of Norg Hill, and ask him for the best way to proceed. If Llotho or Stidgeon had bothered to do that, C.A. Quibb would have recommended they stop what they were doing immediately and show him the evidence.
Then he would have told them to go get more evidence. This would have been his answer regardless of what they had, frankly, but in this instance what they did have was a case that depended on two things: a technology nobody believed even existed; and fingerprinting, which nobody had used in a court case in fifty-seven years.
And they expected Quibb to defend this in court.
Then there was the other thing, with Ba-Ugna Kev. Kev’s own daughter was on vid implicating him in a conspiracy to murder multiple people plus interfere with an active investigation. But that daughter also happened to be working for Twenty-One Central at the time confession was Streamed and happened to be the person who was actually on the un-doctored vid of Orno Linus’s backyard on the night of his murder.
The same vid that Calcut Linus tacitly was not on.
Her involvement muddied up everything, and in a case—two cases, really, but intertwined—that could hypothetically put away both Kev and Linus for murder, the waters had to be crystal clear.
That would have been the second bit of advice from Quibb to Llotho: distance his people from the case before bringing it in. But hey, why listen to him? He was just the guy who was about to stake his rep on two near-guaranteed losers.
As it stood, Linus was out on recognizance, having never actually seen the inside of a cell—his lawyers were at Twenty-One Central before Linus even got there, motions in hand. And a bulletin was out on Kev. Quibb hadn’t wanted to do even that much until they’d gathered more evidence on the bombings, but he was overruled by the Federal Attorney, who was basing his decision on the popularity of the confession vid.
Kev’s daughter, meanwhile—Viselle Daska—was facing charges of her own. Of the three, Quibb thought the case against Daska was the strongest. Naturally, then, she was the only one nobody could locate for certain.
Not that Kev’s whereabouts were definitively known. There were rumors that he was on Lys. He had no property on the space station, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Ba-Ugna Kev had the right kind of friends.
With all this going through Quibb’s head, it was no surprise he didn’t hear the hostess the first couple of times she addressed him.
“Oh, sorry?” he said. She was a young, pretty one, with short brown hair and doe eyes in a short skirt and heels that could destroy an ankle with one wrong move. He thought she was either from the northern reaches of Inimata or possibly Pethis.
“I said your table is ready,” she sai
d. Her first name was Anga, which didn’t illuminate her origins any. “Follow me?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She smiled appealingly, and led the way to the back of the room.
They hired her to be pretty and to know how to smile appealingly. It wasn’t a mandatory thing so much as it was just good business. Every upscale restaurant in the city did the same. Pillick Quibb ate in enough of them that were someone to blindfold him, drive him to a restaurant and remove the blindfold only long enough for a glimpse at the hostess, he’d be able to pinpoint exactly how far from the center of town they were, based on her attractiveness and the length of her hemline.
These were things he thought about when he wasn’t dwelling overmuch on his job.
One train leads to the death of my career, he thought, and the other to the death of my marriage.
He followed Anga to the table. It was on the rooftop patio, right up against the low wall that was there to prevent anyone from accidentally falling to their deaths while offering almost no protection to those meaning to do so deliberately.
It was Quibb’s favorite table, and each day at 10:30 it belonged to him.
The view was spectacular. The restaurant was called Javi’s Grace, and it would have been a draw regardless of where it was because the food was excellent. (They served an inventive fusion of rustic Punkoah and western Botzis cuisines with an occasional foray into Inimatan standards.) But the location was what really made it a big deal: Javi’s Grace took up the fourth floor of a downtown office building that sat at the edge of Mausoleum Park.
Mausoleum park was one of the downtown’s biggest attractions. The name came from the large square stone edifice in its center, a monument to the country’s dead in the War of Many—a worldwide event that was catastrophic and also a very long time ago. (The last veteran of the War of Many was an Unakian veteran named Ellow, and he died fifty-three years before Pillick was born.) The mausoleum itself took up very little space, but was built on nearly two hecters of granted land in the center of Velon. Geoghis quarter—where the park sat—was an underdeveloped part of Velon back then; most of the commerce was closer to the river. But once the office buildings started showing up there was a lot of pressure put on the city to allow the annexation of some of those two hecters.
But they couldn’t. The law was clear: the original charter for the mausoleum stated in no unclear terms that there could not be any structure aside from the memorial itself on the granted land.
Still, the pressure to do something with the space—it was nothing more than an open field consisting of untended scrub grass and dirt for much of the mausoleum’s existence—mounted. The decision to have it all landscaped properly and turn it into a nice park was, in hindsight, an obvious one.
Hardly anyone went to the park to visit the mausoleum itself anymore. Pillick wagered that a fair number of Velonites didn’t even know how the park got its name.
But then, the War of Many was a really long time ago.
“Here you go,” Anga said, pulling out the chair for him and shoving a menu in his hand. He knew the menu better than she did, but took it anyway.
“Thank you,” he said warmly, but she was already gone.
He sat down and set the menu aside, already knowing what he wanted. Just to make that clear, he waved to get the attention of the waitress. He didn’t recognize her, and didn’t want her thinking he was waiting for someone to join him. He wasn’t; he was there to dine alone, like always.
Interestingly, he hardly ever actually dined alone at Javi’s Grace.
Everybody in town knew that there were two ways to have a conversation with the local county attorney. One way was to call his office and make an appointment. The other way was to be at Javi’s Grace at around 10:30.
More things got done the second way. Every conversation over lunch was both unofficial and off-the-books. As a public official, Quibb’s office records were available for discovery, and a surprisingly large number of citizens didn’t want anyone to know they’d had a conversation with him. (He joked on more than one occasion that the only people who showed up for meetings in his downtown office were the ones looking to establish an alibi.)
And sometimes the conversation had to be unofficial because it would look bad for Quibb. Which was what he was thinking when Calcut Linus walked over.
“Hey!” Linus said, taking the seat opposite Pillick without it being offered. This was around 10:50. Linus had been halfway across the room for the past ten minutes, staring at the C.A. while pretending not to. “What are the odds, huh?”
Pillick had just polished off an appetizer of fried tentacles and the first of two drinks. (He allowed himself only two alcoholic drinks at lunch, no exceptions.) He’d been enjoying the view and the lack of company. Later, he expected to worry that having nobody turn up at the table to barter a deal or just to angle their way into his good graces was a sign that Twenty-One Central’s mess was already having a negative career impact, but decided that was something he wouldn’t allow to get in the way of a good meal.
Then Calcut walked over.
“Very good odds, actually,” Pillick said. “My dining habits are well-known. I can’t talk to you, Mr. Linus.”
“Oh, we’re not talking,” he said. Calcut waved his hand in the air, as if conflict-of-interest was an insect he could swat away. “Here, I’ll show you.”
Linus turned his chair sideways so that he was facing the interior of the restaurant.
“See?” he said. “Now we’re not talking. I’m speaking. You just happen to be in earshot.”
“Calcut…”
“C’mon, Quibb, there are no Veesers here, no drones. Nobody allowed this far into Javi’s is snapping a voicer image. We’re fine.”
“You’re misapprehending me, Calcut,” Pillick said. “My concern is not the appearance of an inappropriate conversation; it’s the fact of one. I can’t help you, and I don’t want your help. Even if you were here to confess, I’d tell you to go do it to law enforcement instead.”
“Confess to what? I didn’t do nothing.”
Calcut had certain syntactical peculiarities that always perplexed Quibb. The man was well-educated and about twice as smart as people thought he was. He knew perfectly well that I didn’t do anything was the correct phrasing. He made a choice to say it wrong, and he only ever did it when he was discussing things he did, or things he knew about, that were illegal.
There was a part of the county attorney that wanted to bring Calcut into court and put him on the stand just so he could find a way to use this knowledge to full effect. Somehow.
That would never happen, not unless Stidgeon found more evidence. And even then, calling Linus to the stand would probably be a mistake.
Stop strategizing, he thought. You’re drowning the case and you know it.
“I was just over there eating,” Calcut said, “and I looked up and there you were. Knew I had to stop by. It’d be impolite not to. So how’s things?”
“Calcut, really.”
“He wants me for killing my own brother, Pillick,” Linus said, with unexpected ferocity. “That detective, Stidgeon. He and his captain, they’re off their pills. You know that.”
“I can’t…”
“It was that kid Jimbal. We all saw the vid. And don’t talk to me about this Daska bitch. That whole family’s out to fuck me. What, you think she and daddy don’t have ways to spin up this kinda story? It’s personal is what it is.”
Quibb didn’t answer. He sipped his water and looked out over the park, and waited for Calcut Linus to go away.
“Hey, how’s that kid of yours?” Calcut asked. “Drogy, right?”
“Doragy. He’s fine.”
“Still off to university, yeah? Next year? I hear he’s real smart. I’m sure he’ll make a name for himself. Send him my regards. And to Yeenie too.”
“I’ll do that.”
Linus got up and held out his hand. Pillick ignored it.
“We’
re not having this conversation,” Quibb said.
“Right, I know,” Linus said. “Good to see ya anyway. Oh, one more thing: any luck finding Ba-Ugna Kev?”
“I don’t…no, but I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“I got a short list of people I like to keep track of. He’s one of ‘em. My friends know this about me. I know you’re looking for him; maybe I can help?”
“I’m sure your food is getting cold, Calcut.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Good to see you, Pillick.”
Quibb’s stuffed chicken arrived a minute after Calcut left, as did his second drink. He mostly just picked at the food; Linus’s audacity took the wind out of Quibb’s appetite. The drink was quite welcome, though.
About ten minutes into his unenthusiastic repast, Colah-Hix Wandire turned up at the table. Colah-Hix was an elder statesman in the insular world of Velonian litigation. When Quibb was coming up, the old man was a major power broker; these days he mostly did estate planning.
“Spare a dorin for your time,” he said.
“I have all the time for you, Colah,” Pillick said, smiling. “How’ve you been?”
“Pink as a newborn, spry as a tenner. Was that Calcut Linus over here a few minutes back?”
“You know it was.”
“It’s just, my eyes aren’t what they were.”
“Despite being as pink as a newborn and as spry as a tenner.”
“But my eyes are twice the age as the rest of me,” Colah-Hix said. “My prostate too. What’d he want?”
“Oh, he was just here to threaten me,” Pillick said.
“Yeah?”
“It’s reflexive with him. Not sure he even knows he’s doing it.”
“In what way?”
“Asked about the family. Wanted me to know he knew their names, as if a two minute skim of my bio wouldn’t pull that up on the Stream.”
“That it would,” Colah-Hix said. “But what was the nature of the threat? What did he want you to do?”
The Madness of Kings Page 16