Saint City Sinners

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “No think!” I heard him yell. “No think! Move! One, two, kia!”

  A ragged chorus of kia filled the air. Beginners, I thought, working my boots off. The sedayeen leaned against the Shaman, obviously drained and exhausted, her cheeks reactive-pale and her eyes glittering.

  The sharp bite of hunger under my ribs reminded me I had to get some rest and food soon myself. “This is a safe place. You should be okay here for a couple days. By then, this will probably be over one way or another. Wait here for a couple minutes.” A pause, and I heard another solid barrage of wood meeting wood. It reminded me of a Nuevo Rio sparring-room, Eddie and Jace at staves while sunlight fell through windows onto tatami mats and Gabe stretched out, sweat gleaming on her pale skin.

  Back when I’d been human. In my mind’s eye I saw Japhrimel leaning against the wall, his hair ink-black, his coat swallowing the light.

  And his eyes glowing green under straight eyebrows.

  So he’d been trapped, and even McKinley admitted they couldn’t hold him for very long. Talking about trapping Japhrimel was like talking about beating Vinnie Evarion at cards on the old Vinnie, Video Sharp holovid. It just didn’t happen. He was just too old and smart. So he’d decided to go off on a solo expedition and leave me sleeping with McKinley, obviously expecting to be back before I woke up. And then what?

  When we have finished with your Necromance friend, I will tell you everything you are ready to hear.

  Maybe about the treasure, or would he tell me how helpless a demon felt after he Fell? That would have been nice, a little admission of need from him. A little human emotion.

  For crying out loud, Dante, keep your mind on business. Japh’s not your problem right now. If you don’t keep moving, you’ll drown. Barefoot but still wearing my coat, rig, and bag, I padded into the main space. There was a narrow strip of wood flooring before the mats started, I carefully arranged myself at the edge between “space” and “sparring space.” Bowed respectfully, my sheathed sword lifted in my left hand, my right hand a fist.

  Silence fell. Fifteen wide-eyed students in white gi and one nut-brown, leathery old man in orange robes looked up. The ikebana at the far end of the room under the kanji-painted scroll was a different red orchid. In any case, the rest of the room looked blissfully the same.

  Helps to have a friend that doesn’t age, doesn’t it, Danny? This time it was Lucas Villalobos’s whisper, painful in my ear. I was talking to myself in some awful strange voices lately. Occupational hazard of being a psion—sometimes the voices in your head are the people who matter most to you.

  Or who scare you most.

  Jado barked a command and his students went back to whacking at each other with more enthusiasm than skill. All normals, all probably rich kids. The fees their parents paid made it possible for Jado to combat-train psions with potential to become canny, deadly fighters almost for free. The last time I’d been here, there had been four empty spaces in the sword-racked room above, four of Jado’s true students out in the world. There might have been more, he trained a lot of psions. But the four missing swords always made me feel good in a niggling sort of way.

  Four swords gone. Five, now. But still four students. I wondered who the others were. Jado had refused payment after the first few classes; the normals he taught had subsidized me. For him, that was the equivalent of adopting me. He had some funny ideas about the student-teacher relationship.

  So did I, as a matter of fact. If my social worker Lewis was the father of my childhood, Jado was the father of my adulthood, the only male I always felt like trusting. I could never have said that to him, of course . . . but it was still there, unspoken between us. He was my last resort—but also my best resort.

  “Danyo-chan.” He stood at the edge of the tatami. “It must be serious, neh?”

  I didn’t have time for politeness. All the same, I bowed correctly. “You’re looking well, Jado-sensei.”

  “How can you tell?” But the corners of his eyes crinkled. His ears came up to sharp points above the dome of his skull. He smelled of a dry, deep, crumbling, scaled hole; a hot exhalation of cinders and meat charred so thoroughly it smelled like woodsmoke. It was, thankfully, not a human smell. “Is good to see you, my student.”

  “And you, sensei.” I didn’t have words to express how good it felt to see him. Jado didn’t play games, he simply taught, directly and with the smack of a fist or the deadly whistle of a swordblade. Of all the men I knew, human or not, only Jado might have truly understood me. “I have two little things I need kept safe for me. And I want to ask you something.”

  His nostrils flared as he sniffed. “A healer and a kami-talker.” His tone was reflective, easy. Behind him, staves whirled; students darted curious glances at me. “There have been inquiries made of you.”

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t want to bring trouble to his door—but my list of living friends was getting really short. I needed his help.

  He waved that away, tucked his hands in his robe. “Take them into kitchen and serve them tea, student. I will make certain you are undisturbed. My house is yours.” A slight bow, only the briefest suggestion of a bending in his torso.

  I echoed it, my left shoulder throbbing as I moved. I realized the right leg of my jeans was still crusted and flopping from my encounter with the hellhound. I was hardly inconspicuous. “Jado-sensei?” There would never be a better time to ask.

  “Hai?” He still looked amused, his dark eyes lingering on my face. His bare feet were horny and callused, and barely seemed to move when he walked.

  I lifted the sword a little, watched his eyes come to rest on it. He looked pleased, and my heart swelled with probably-inappropriate pride. It mattered, that Jado was pleased with me. “Did you give me a blade that can kill the Devil?”

  “The sword kills nothing, Danyo-chan. It is will, kills your enemy.” He made a small clucking sound, shaking his gleaming brown head. “Young, too young. Older, you would not ask silly question.” He bowed again, waited for my answering bow, then whirled and bellowed at his class. “No! Thousand curses on your eyes, no! Fight! No curiosity, fight!”

  I took two careful steps back, bowed to the sparring space, and exited into the hall. The Shaman and the healer looked at me strangely, and I found I was grinning like a holovid comic.

  All things considered it was the best I could do. It was already afternoon, and I had a date with Lucas at dusk. I left Cam and Mercy with Jado, and had the relieved sensation that I could just forget about them for a while. If they weren’t safe there, nowhere in Saint City would shelter them. And now that the Chill cure was circulating among the West Coast clinics, the Mob interest in killing a simple Shaman and sedayeen would hopefully lose some plascharge.

  But not the business between me and the Tanner Family. That was just starting.

  I plunged back into the dense urban wilderness of the city, just one face among many. It says something for city life nowadays that even a part-demon Necromance with a holovid face can pass unremarked on the streets.

  I bought two six-packs of synthprotein shakes meant to keep heavily augmented bouncers up to weight and drank them all while I sat on a park bench in the lower city. The park had a nice view of the bay, a hard glitter under the afternoon sun breaking through gray clouds. Each empty can I chucked into a nearby botbin, hearing the whoosh of the crumpler as it swallowed.

  When I was finished, I shook myself, got to my feet, and headed for the streets again.

  Saint City pulsed under my feet, ringing with every step. I had about four hours to twilight, so I moved a little faster than a human would, slipping between normals. I passed a Shaman at the corner of Marx and Ninth, a thin blonde woman with sodaflo can-tabs tied to her staff. They tinkled and chittered as I passed, but she merely set her back against a wall and regarded the street, wide-eyed, her feet in a stance I recognized. Another combat-trained Shaman with no sword. Who knew there were so many of them around? Her eyes, dark as her hair was golden, na
rrowed as she watched me go by. Maybe she would recognize me from the hunt for Lourdes, when my face had been plastered all over the holovids.

  Maybe not. That had been a long time ago, and my hair was down, tangling over my eyes.

  That made me think of Cam, who was a puzzle. I was almost sure I’d caught her reaching for a hilt. But why would she leave any weapon at home while she was squiring a sedayeen around?

  I made it to the Saint City South precinct house in half an hour. There I had my first stroke of luck in a long time. The man I wanted stood in the usual smoking-alcove near a botbin, curls of synth-hash smoke rising thinly around his gleaming bald head. He hunched his turtle shoulders and shook his head, his hands shaking a little. I judged it about half-past a desperately needed drink. His knee-length tan synthwool coat flapped desultorily in the faint breeze; the clouds scudded in earnest over the sun.

  Thank you, Anubis, I prayed silently. Thank you. I’m about due for something good.

  Detective Lew Horman worked Vice. He and I went way back. I’d done Necromance work off and on for the Saint City police, he’d been my liaison to the normal cops more than once. I’d also dropped several useful pieces of information about Chill dealers to him in the past. Whenever I’d come across any distributors in my journeys through the shadow world of the quasi-legal, I’d turned them over to Horman. Sometimes he couldn’t do a damn thing, being hamstrung by procedure, but more often than not he acted on my tips. We’d had a grudging almost-partnership for a long time, despite his disdain for psions and his general slobbishness.

  He was also one of the few cops Gabe had ever paid the high compliment of calling “incorruptible.”

  I started casting around for an inconspicuous way to approach him—hugging the shadows on the opposite side of the street and crossing in a blind spot, scanning the roofs and alleys. No nosy little eyes that I could see. Nothing out of the ordinary. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

  You’re getting paranoid, Danny. You need a safe place to rest for a few hours. Even if your body’s demonic, your mind is still human and you’re blurring with fatigue. This one thing, then hole up and rest so you’re fresh for tonight. You’ve got a couple visits to make, and a few hours of rest will help you go over the file again. You can also take a look at the book Selene gave you.

  I melted around the corner and found myself face-to-face with my last best chance.

  “Hullo, Horman,” I said pleasantly. My emerald sparked, sizzling to match my rings. “I need to talk to you.”

  22

  What the hell?” My voice hit a pitch just under squeak.

  Horman flinched. He pushed me back into the alcove, stood with his three-quarters profile presented to me, watching the empty street. He smelled of synth-hash, half-metabolized Chivas Red, and the decaying of human cells. Mixed with the chemical wash of Saint City hover traffic and biolab exhalation, it was a heady brew. My own smell rose like a shield, I didn’t allow my nose to wrinkle. The heaviness of incipient rain blurred on the freshening wind. I smelled electricity, suspected a storm. “But I just got into town!”

  His hands shook, a smudge of ash drifting down from his cigarette. “You the suspect now. Half the cops in Saint City are looking to bring you in full of projectile lead as a copkiller, deadhead. The other half won’t interfere ’cause they know they’ll get their own asses singed with hoverwash.”

  Suspecting me of killing Gabe. Why? Trying to hang it on me instead of Massadie? “Where does that leave you, Horman?”

  Sweat gleamed on his bald pate. “Gabe came to me few days ago. Said she had a line on somethin’ big. I told her not to get involved, told her she was retired and should stay that way. She told me you’d show up if anything happened to her. I been spending hours out here waitin’ for you.” Horman shivered, popping up the collar of his coat with his free hand. He flicked ash out onto the pavement.

  Oh, Gabe. Looking out for me again. I swallowed, heard the dry click of my throat. “Listen, what do you know about a guy named Gilbert Pontside?”

  “Homicide, Old Division. Hates psis.” Horman shrugged. He was swallowing rapidly, sweating Chivas. He knew how dangerous it was to be out on the street, but nobody thought I’d be stupid or suicidal enough to try the cops. That was valuable information right there.

  You hate psions too, Horman. “So why is he responsible for investigating Eddie Thornton’s murder?” I dug in my bag, but he shook his head.

  “If you got the original file, don’t let me see it. Lots of people been looking for that, it ain’t worth my career to have a peek.” He hunched his shoulders even further. “I figgered Gabe lifted the original, tricky bitch.” He paused. “Pontside. Investigating a dirtwitch murder? A dirtwitch married to a Spook Squadder? I din’t hear that, they got a lid clapped tight on this one.”

  “Suspicious, isn’t it?” I took a deep breath. It was time for me to go on faith. “Eddie was killed because he came up with this.” I held up the vial, rescued from the depths of my bag. “It’s a cure for Chill. I don’t know who killed him yet, but it’s beginning to look like the biotech company he was working for and the Tanner Family have something to do with this pile of crap. I’m told a bounty is out on me. Is it official?”

  “’Course it ain’t. Official means visible, and someone wants this kept quiet.” His eyebrows drew together. “There ain’t no cure for Chill,” Horman mumbled. He shot me a quick dark glance, his forehead wrinkling even further. But there was a ratty little gleam in his eyes I’d seen before. Horman had just made a connection.

  A good connection, please. Please, Anubis. “I’ve got a Shaman and a sedayeen who worked over on Fortieth who say different; their clinic was bombed and a bunch of goons tried to off them this morning. Plus, why would a Spook Squadder and a Skinlin be killed like they were, and have it kept this quiet, unless they had something huge, huge as a fucking Chill cure?” I took a deep breath, dangerously close to pleading. “You know me, Lew. I’m a psion and a bounty hunter. I paid my mortgage with a little bit of illegal action like everyone else. But I don’t go around killing my friends. I never went in for assassination. Ever.”

  Gabe was about the only friend I had left. Why would I kill her? The thought that I could even be accused of killing her made me sick to my stomach.

  And feeling just a little explosive.

  He shivered. “What you want me to do, deadhead? Gabe trusted you, they say you killed her.”

  Score one for me. If he believed I killed Gabe, he wouldn’t be out here waiting for me. He especially wouldn’t ask me what I wanted him to do. Looks like my luck’s beginning to change a bit. About damn time too.

  My fingers were deft and quick. I shoved the vial of Chill cure in his coat pocket, tugging sharply on the material so he could tell what I was doing. “Figure out what this is, see if I’m telling you the truth. Visit a couple of your Vice stooges and put the word out that I’m going to erase whoever killed Gabe. Also check the West Coast Chill clinic datanet. They should have the formula for the cure flashed worldwide by now.”

  “A cure’s gonna put me out of a job.” He didn’t sound upset at this eventuality. As much as I’d lost to the ravening monster that was Chill, he’d lost more. I’d attended the funeral of his teenage son years ago, the kid had gotten hooked on Chill and died on a bad batch of contaminated drugs. He hadn’t been the only casualty—the distributor cutting Clormen-13 with bad thyoline had soaked most of the city with it—but it had been the one thing that solidified Horman’s innate cynicism.

  And his hatred of Chill.

  I made a short snorting sound. “You’re a Hegemony officer, you’ll get a pension. Besides, you can always chase unregistered hookers. That’s a lot more fun. Or XTSee brokers, vox sniffers, bitfoxes, permaspray junkies. . . . Or corporate harassment cases.” I didn’t have to work to sound amused, the maniacal urge to giggle was rising again. My left shoulder throbbed with pain.

  “You bitch.” Horman’s aura flushed brittle re
d with fear. His cigarette had burned down to the filter, he pitched it into the botbin with a convulsive jerk. Didn’t look at me. “What you doing this to me for, Valentine? I never did nothing to you.”

  “And you were out here waiting. Call it a favor to Gabe. Consider me just the hand of Vengeance coming home to roost.” I slid past him, out of the alcove, as light rain spattered on the sidewalk. Glanced up to check hovertraffic, the streams of cigar-shaped personal hovers and the larger whaleshapes of transports moving in their aerial ballai. “If you can, let some cops know I didn’t kill Gabe. Let them know Pontside is the officer on record in the original file investigating Eddie’s murder. But for Sekhmet’s sake don’t get yourself in trouble.” I paused, my tone turning soft and reflective. “I’d hate to have to avenge your death too.”

  “Goddammit—” Horman began, but I was already gone. I knew what I needed to know.

  Half the cops on the Saint City force might well think I’d killed Gabe. But the other half didn’t think so, and Horman had been allowed to stand quietly out in his smoking alcove, taking nips off the bottle of Chivas brought to him by his partner. Someone else knew that a normal was the officer on record for a psion’s murder, maybe someone had even figured out from the scene of Gabe’s homicide that everything wasn’t quite kosher. Despite Horman’s shambling exterior, he was well-respected among Saint City cops—one of the good old boys. If he dropped a quiet word, it would get around.

  I had just bought myself some breathing room. Or more precisely, Gabe had bought it for me, by telling a fat foulmouth cop who reeked of soy whiskey in no uncertain terms that I was to be trusted no matter what the brass said.