I’d been on Tambouret for three days now, trying to track down Draoi, but the magician had worked an enviable vanishing act. The first place I’d looked was in the undercity. The bare stone cell the construct had carried me to was bereft of any clues, the surrounding rooms dusty and unlived-in. Next I’d crept back to the clearing, fearing traps, wary of real or psychic ambush, but I’d found nothing, and I still couldn’t bring myself to touch the Wish-stone. I’d carried my quest back to Krystallya, scouring her ways for a hint of Draoi’s whereabouts, waiting for a scrap of luck to turn in my favour, caught up in the happy mayhem that was Carnival. This was the final night of the festival, yet the energy of the revellers was undiminished and the excitement at fever pitch.
I’d adopted the obligatory costume of the celebrant, an elaborate concoction of near-transparent golden tissue and deep blue shimmer-silk, a robe that was voluminous and only just concealed the essentials at one and the same time. I’d braided my hair with crystals and wound strings of the glassy teardrops about my wrists and ankles, but the rope of sapphires around my throat was real enough and had once graced my mother’s neck. I hadn’t taken them out of the vault since my father’s funeral; now I wore them as a totem, a charm for good luck, of which I’d need all I could conjure. I also wore a belt of scallop shells, the mark of a stranger and pilgrim, and I hid my face behind a gold-spangled mask, beaked and crested in the manner of a peacock. Taking a seemingly random path through the mountain, I laughed, sang and danced my way through the crowds, but my gaiety was false. Although my outrageous dress matched ten thousand festival outfits clear across Krystallya, I felt conspicuous to the nth degree and my heart was as heavy as lead.
I must have roamed for hours, working my way down through the levels of celebrations in the city. As I descended the noise became more raucous and the air staler, the delicacies on offer at the walkway stalls became poorer and the tin cups of carnival punch rougher, yet the costumes of the revellers were as rich and gaudy as ever. On the lowest galleries of all, close to the edge of Lowkrys, I might have purchased almost all of the illegal drugs and potions that the galaxy has to offer had I the mind to, but I passed them by, just as I refused all food and drink that the traders tried to press on me. Here in the bowels of the city I sang and danced less, but smiled twice as broadly, searching the choppy sea of faces for one I might recognise. As it turned out, my quest was fruitful, but not in any way I had planned.
There was a shout behind me, a cry of surprise that shaped itself into an intelligible name. “Caron! Ho there, my lady! Caron McVeigh!”
I froze and the crowd divided to flow around me. I knew that voice.
It couldn’t be! Zenni sighed, completing his scan. It is. Would it be too late for you to run away?
Herculeon SantDenis appeared at my elbow, beaming from ear to ear. He was a vision in purple, ruffled velvet, padded satin and a generous helping of spangles, in thigh-boots, cloak and wide-brimmed hat with an enormous plume, a pirate-king out of pantomime. The effect was sadly marred by the yellowing remains of a bruise down one side of his face and a cast on his right arm, which was supported in a violet lace sling. Perhaps I should have felt dismay at the Investigator’s sorry state of repair, but I couldn’t. My feminine illogic swung into play and I secretly relished his injuries. I hadn’t yet forgiven him for his part in my dream.
“Do I know you, sir?” I asked frostily.
“It is you, Caron.” He insisted, clutching at my hand and pumping it in a vigorous handshake. “I must admit that you make an excellent blonde, indeed you do!”
“You must be mistaken.” I tried to pull free, but his grip was too strong. “We’ve never met before.”
“Really, Caron!” He lifted his own demi-mask, which was in the likeness of a fox. “It is I, SantDenis. How could you not know me?”
I accepted defeat. “Oh, yes, it is you, Investigator. I didn’t expect to run into you here. How did you recognise me?”
The impossible grin widened. “A man would have to be ten years dead to forget those legs, my dear!”
Pity you can’t bottle his libido, Zenni muttered. You’d rake in a small fortune selling the stuff!
“How did you come by those injuries?” I asked, steering the conversation away from my anatomy.
SantDenis’s delight evaporated. “We should talk. Let’s find a quiet backwater and I’ll buy you a glass of what a real Tambou drowns his sorrows in.”
“Okay.” I let him lead me through the masses, and into some distinctly unsavoury alleyways. After a dozen twists and turns the throng fell behind us and we entered a tavern that traded under the cheerful name of ‘The Rock’s Black Heart’. Herculeon found a table in its darkest corner and left me there while he bartered for drinks. The rest of the clientele looked me over as if I was a prize heifer up for auction.
I’m not sure you should be in a place like this. Zenni confided. Is it safe?
But of course, perfectly safe. It isn’t any of these poor creatures that I’ve come to do battle with, is it?
It was your safety I was concerned about, not theirs.
Erase your worries, partner. There are no demons here.
SantDenis came back to our table, bearing gifts. It would have been churlish of me to complain that the glasses were chipped and grubby, and that the greyish liquid they contained tasted like thin, peppered cabbage-water spiked with methanol. The Tambou unmasked and downed the foul stuff in one. He poured another from the dusty bottle and grinned at me. “I didn’t anticipate meeting you again, my dear. And what brings you back to our fair city?”
I sipped at my drink. “You wanted to talk, Investigator—so talk.”
If SantDenis had possessed eyebrows he would have raised one. “That doesn’t sound very like the Caron I know.”
“Then perhaps you didn’t really know her. Who broke your arm?”
“When you and your two companions vanished from the Opal Garden, I did everything in my power to track you down.” He seemed to puff up as he told his story, casting himself as the hero and swelling with righteous pride. “The trail led me into conspiracy, and I attended a secret meeting of dissidents, a radical anti-technology group led by a charismatic mystic. I didn’t care for the man at all, an arrogant pseudo-magician, nothing but a cheap trickster. It seemed to me that he might be behind the kidnappings. I planned to infiltrate the ranks of his supporters, but I was recognised before I could cut to the core of it.”
“So Draoi had a couple of his boys take you out back and suggest that you keep your nose out of his business?”
“There were six of them, I believe, and they thrashed me soundly for my trouble.” SantDenis scowled over the memory and washed the taste of it down with more of the brassica wine. “My injuries were so severe I was shipped up to Pentak Station for treatment. I discharged myself from the hospital, of course, eager to get back on the case, but by then word had come through from Terrapol that all of their missing citizens had been safely recovered. I had my doubts over the truth of that, I will admit, but here you are, in the pink of health!”
“Yes, here I am.” I spared a withering glance for the company, the nearest of which were eavesdropping for all they were worth. At my stare they pretended interest elsewhere. “And what of the conspiracy? Has Draoi been taken into custody?”
“No.” That was probably the straightest answer I’d ever get out of him. “The authorities don’t take him seriously. They’re happy to watch and wait, convinced that his lunacy is harmless, sure that it will blow over.”
“They may be wrong.”
Herculeon leaned back in his chair and the movement dislodged something from the ruffles of his shirt, the cruciform pendant, in reality set with a deep purple stone instead of ruby. I hid my shudder at the sight of it. “It isn’t only the colour of your hair that you’ve changed, is it, my dear? My sweet Caron was an innocent, a guileless young girl, but you’re a woman, experienced and self-assured. You’ve gained ten years worth of wis
dom in as many days, and you know more inside information about this case than any civilian has a right to.”
“Your point, SantDenis?”
“How could I not see it? May the djinn devour my living eyeballs, how could I be so blind?” He slapped his forehead with his good hand. “You were the agent from Terrapol!”
Anna, we can’t risk telling him what we are! Zenni said urgently. He’s too small a fish to trust with a secret like that.
I smiled tightly. “I am not at liberty to confirm your guess.”
“And will you deny it?”
“No, I can’t do that either.”
The Tambou nodded slowly, all his doubts fusing into one dark nodule. “And what brings you back here, my friend? Not mere pleasure, I’ll be bound?”
“Sadly, no.” I decided to give him a small piece of the truth. “Terrapol misled your superiors—not everything was recovered. Something was left behind.”
“Not a person, then?” The lure of mystery had him on the hook, and such was his nature that it displaced his misgivings. “An object?”
“Perhaps.”
“And so you were despatched to seek out the missing item? Is it a precious thing?”
I glanced again at our curious neighbours and spun out the riddle for their benefit. “To its owners, yes, although it has no monetary value. It isn’t anything that can be easily bought and sold.”
“Now that sounds more like my little flame-haired tourist, a whiff of magic and mystery, a mystical and spiritual quest—”
“Whatever.” I scraped the chair backwards, moving to leave. “I’ve no time for idle chit-chat, SantDenis. I’ve work to do.”
“Wait.” Something in his look held me there, something in the open honesty of his glass-green stare and the yellowed mess of bruising across half of his face. “Please.”
I sat back down, knowing with a sure and certain sinking feeling that my own path and Herculeon’s were still tangled together. “Five minutes, and then I must go.”
“At the time of our last meeting I was furious that my superiors had ordered me to liaise with an agent from Terrapol—with you. It implied a lack of trust in my abilities, an insult and a betrayal, given my past successes in the field.” Herculeon confessed, dipping his head in the ghost of a bow. “Had we pooled our resources, perhaps we would have found your friends sooner. So—I am at your disposal now.”
Refuse his services. Zenni advised. Working in concert will hamper your use of psionics.
His local knowledge could speed up our search. We might mislead him, use his fears to our advantage.
You’ll tell him you’re a spook? How will he react?
Let’s see. As the tiger had smiled at me, so I did at the Tambou. “Don’t throw your hand in with me so hastily, Investigator. Do you recall our little chat in the forest, when you confided in Caron? Didn’t you tell her about your fears over who, or what, Earth might send to help you?”
His eyes went very wide, their pupils yawning as black as the pit. “A spook? Caron, my dear, do tell me you aren’t... No, you just couldn’t be one of those monsters!”
I unhooked the paper and feather peacock mask, dangling it on its ribbon. “Caron was simply an illusion, a disguise as fragile and false as this. I am something else.”
SantDenis muttered in his own tongue, a curse or a prayer. “How could you deceive me so?”
“I was ordered to.” I gave him a moment to come to terms with this revelation, watching him down a third glass of cabbage-ferment. “If you still want to help me, I need to find Draoi. Where should I look?”
“I never had a chance to locate the magician-priest’s den. The catacombs of Lowkrys stretch for miles. We might search them until the last trump without success.”
“If you were at the clearing, you saw Draoi’s henchmen—the silver-skinned woman, the giant humanoid construct and the brown-haired Tambou. Might we have better luck looking for them?”
He considered this, frowning. “Yes, I saw them. That giant simulacrum is hard to miss, but I doubt that we’d find it about the city tonight—nobody sane would let a combat-unit wander freely during Carnival. The Tambou though, I know him. He’s a bully and a petty crook, a coward who steals purses and paints obscene graffiti on walls. His name is Kayno Mantoux.”
“Where would we find him?”
SantDenis grinned. “If he isn’t in gaol yet, he’ll be raising hell in Lowkrys. It’s four hours short of midnight, so we’ll find him drinking in a pot-house—any later and he’d be out a-whoring, and by dawn he’ll be in the thick of a brawl, breaking heads, or I don’t know Kayno!”
“What are the chances of tracking him down?”
“Good enough.” He placed his empty glass on the table and spun it like a top, twice, three times. “You will need my help in this. No off-worlder can visit Lowkrys alone.”
“Perhaps I can.”
“What, will you shapeshift into a Tambou?” His amazement softened into a wistful smile. “Ah, but I’d like to see that! You’d make a pretty little imp, I’m sure. So, if you aren’t really Caron, what do I call you?”
“Anything you like, as long as it’s polite.”
“On this final night of the festival we honour Santa Leonie, Our Lady of the Dawn. The tales say of her ‘tall she was, with tawny hair and eyes that changed hue to match her mood, and her carriage was drawn by peacocks’. Perhaps blind luck made you choose that mask, or perhaps it was fate, and then there’s your inconstant-hued eyes—well, indeed, such signs are potent and should not be ignored. You shall be my Leonie then, until the sun rises, and I shall be your loyal servant.”
I looked into his mind, but he was only a little drunk and his desire to help me was genuine. “So be it. Let’s go.”
SantDenis took a final swig from the bottle, replaced his fox mask and led me out of the Rock’s Black Heart.
***
Down into the undercity we went, deep under the mountain, far deeper than I’d ever guessed the caverns went. SantDenis was right—it seemed to go on forever, the labyrinth that was Lowkrys. The sub-city was an unlovely place, a low-roofed warren lit by yellow oil lamps and smoky candles. Here the rock was grey, duller and less cleverly worked, the air cool and moist, and the Tambou free to be themselves, no longer tame or subservient. Revelry there was even this deep in the city’s guts, louder and more urgent, the crowds boisterous and drunk. Many of the citizens knew SantDenis, some calling out a greeting or ribald comment as we passed, others muttering a low curse and turning their faces away. We kept to the edges of the throng in a slow progress through the underworld, searching each noisy tavern and every ill-kept dive on the way.
It took us two hours to find Mantoux. I’d all but given up hope when I picked out the familiar mop of curly brown hair retreating into the crowd. I tapped SantDenis on the shoulder and pointed out our quarry.
“We have our man.” Herculeon agreed. “It may be somewhat difficult to make an arrest in the heart of this throng.”
“I don’t want to arrest him—I only want to talk to him.”
“Am I to understand that this ‘conversation’ would require a quiet, lonely location with no witnesses?”
“If you don’t approve, you don’t have to help me.”
SantDenis grinned, savage under the vulpine mask. “Oh, I do approve! I owe Kayno a few knocks myself. This is a good part of the undercity for our purposes. If we panic him, we may run him into any one of a score of blind passages.”
I matched the grin. “You’ll make the first contact?”
SantDenis began the chase, weaving in and out of the morass like an eel, while I worked my way around in front of the Tambou. My reward was the sight of Kayno’s face when the Investigator clapped his good hand on his shoulder; adrift, thunderstruck, the happy alcoholic glow turned to ashes in his mouth.
“Hold hard, Mantoux!” SantDenis’ voice boomed out over the background buzz of the crowd. “Stand firm, man, for you’ve grave charges to answer�
�”
Mantoux broke free and ran. I moved to block his path, glaring down at him, using all the advantage of being a head taller than most of his race. “We meet again, imp! Where’s your master?”
He stared blankly at my mask and my crystal-spun blonde hair, then intuition sparked in his mind and his mouth fell open. Caught between two hounds, poor vulnerable prey now instead of predator, he fled blindly. I tracked the fiery arrow of his panic through the crowds and followed more sedately, avoiding the knots of anger and protest, the jostled victims of his careless passage. SantDenis reappeared at my hip and we zigzagged unerringly through a maze of narrow, dusty tunnels. Kayno was in shock—that and the drink must have displaced his inner map of Lowkrys, for I felt his laser-bright surge of fear as he ran into a dead-end alley.
“We have him,” I said to SantDenis.
“Far ahead?”
“Not far.” I read Mantoux’s intention to retreat, so I held him at bay, locking his knees solid with TK. We didn’t hurry to reach him, letting him stew in his own terror. When he saw us walking up the narrow passageway, his eyes went wide but he said nothing.
“It isn’t polite to run from a lady who asks you a civil question—didn’t your mother teach you that?” Herculeon slapped our prisoner along the jaw with his sound hand, nearly taking the Tambou off his feet.
I grabbed a handful of Kayno’s luxuriant curls and hauled his head back until he whimpered. “I’ll ask again, imp! Where’s your master?”
The Beauty of Our Weapons Page 25