No shooting. No guns. He was safe. Safe. Taking deep breaths, he repeated his new mantra.
She smiled and stood still with a pan in one hand and a spoon in the other, waiting for gods knew what. Liquid dripped from the spoon to the floor. When he didn’t speak, color rose to her cheeks. “Kal called me. I’m just making some breakfast.”
He went on staring. He supposed he was expected to say something, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything. Suddenly he wondered if Kalaes had told her about his breakdown the previous night and heat rushed up his neck.
Maera laughed then, a bright little sound, and disappeared back into what, in view of her words, had to be the kitchen.
He rose with only a little discomfort and made his way to the window. Daylight streamed through the horizontal bars. He shaded his eyes. Across the street, tall, gray buildings mirrored the one he was in. Some sparrows hopped on a windowsill and migrating cranes flew across the gray sky, necks outstretched. Below, he made out aircars and pedestrians hurrying by, dark blurs. A Gultur police helicopter hovered in the distance, half-obscuring a small square with concrete benches.
Elei frowned and moved away from the window, his gut clenching in apprehension.
“Bathroom’s the green door!” Maera’s disembodied voice drifted from the kitchen.
Elei went and opened it, and stared into the tiny closet with the urinal and the sink. It stank, even though it looked clean. He pissed and watched with fascination the dark yellow liquid swirl down the drain, wondering if dehydration was the reason he felt so light-headed.
“Breakfast’s ready!”
Or was it hunger?
He followed the cheery voice and the smell of food into a colorful kitchen, small and cozy. The shelves were painted blue, the counters red, the plates on the tiny table were orange. It was as if he was dreaming. Surreptitiously pinching himself, he sat in one of the rickety chairs, fully expecting the room to vanish. It didn’t. Good.
Maera turned toward him, pan in hand, dark eyes sparkling. Daylight entered through a small window and painted a golden halo around her hair. She grinned widely. “Ready for Maera’s special morning treat?”
He blinked and his lips pulled upward into a smile. How weird. He supposed it was kind of a reflex, a mirroring thing — like dogs snarling at one another.
Maera dished out a strange-looking mash with bits of brown and green. She sat, pulled her plate closer and dug into it with gusto.
Elei managed one polite bite before hunger won out. He bent over his plate and wolfed the food down, barely taking the time to breathe between bites. At some point, he looked up at the sound of a muffled snicker. “What?”
“Even Kalaes, sweetheart that he is, never manages to finish this. But you have.”
“It’s good.”
“It’s awful, and that’s me saying it, but it’s the best I can do.”
He shook his head. He wasn’t the best of judges when it came to food. As long as it wasn’t spoilt, it was good enough. “What is it?”
“Nutrition package, eggs and pepper.”
Pepper. And eggs. That had been the taste. On Ost, they were hard to come by. Anything apart from the government rations, mushroom harvests and the occasional fish was considered a delicacy. He’d never been able to afford pepper, but Pelia loved it and had made him try. Eggs were easier to find if you knew where to find the nests.
Maera pushed something into his hand. He curled his fingers reflexively around a smooth, cool surface and looked up to find he held a glass of colored liquid. He raised an eyebrow.
“Drink. It’s a vitaminized, mineralized serum. I snuck it out of the factory for you. You’ve lost quite a lot of blood.”
He toasted her silently and gulped it down. It didn’t taste bad, either — sweet and salty at the same time, with a faint aftertaste of rust. He was still thirsty and wondered if he could ask for another glass of serum or water or anything liquid, fully aware that these things were damn expensive, when she pushed the squat bottle toward him.
“You’re to finish it all, anyway,” she said. “You really should.”
Elei shrugged. That was fine with him, so he downed it in one go. He was actually starting to feel a little better. For one, his stomach had given up on trying to consume itself and the pounding headache had finally eased. “Thanks.”
Maera cocked her head to the side and gleaming curls fell in her eyes. “A pleasure. Will you tell me what happened to you? Kalaes said you didn’t talk much. Said you were in shock.”
He screwed the lid back on the bottle and placed it on the table, carefully, afraid he’d drop it. He pressed his hands together, then changed his mind and rubbed them on his pants. In shock? Well, it made sense. He tried to remember what he’d told Kalaes the previous night, but all he could think of was blood, more blood, a sea of red.
“He said you worked for Pelia.”
“I did.” He paused, trying to march his thoughts into order. “For a year I drove her aircar and watched her back. Kind of a bodyguard, I guess. She had Falx and his men, but she said she trusted me more.”
He watched his fingers, pale against the black fabric, pressed so hard his nails were white. He tried to relax them. Lately they’d spent some time talking, Pelia and him. That is, Pelia had done most of the talking. She’d discussed politics and the rumors of revolt and had offered him nuts and fruit from the greenhouses on Ert. She’d said, sounding serious, that she trusted him with her life.
“She shouldn’t have.” Shouldn’t have trusted him. He hadn’t been able to protect her and save her from dying.
“Shouldn’t?”
He said nothing.
“Kal said you mentioned a shooting. That she was killed.”
“Yeah.” He felt he had to tell Maera about it, tell someone about it, build a tombstone of words for the woman who’d taken care of him, so he took a deep breath. “I’d just driven her home after work. I turned off the engine. She was telling me a tale about a King and I turned to tell her… to tell her it was a children’s tale, nothing more.” His trembling hands were clenched in hard fists. “She laughed, she said something about my age, and… And then I saw a stain, like a red flower on her chest. Her blouse’s white, you know, and there’s — there was this red flower, this stain spreading, and then another.” He raised his fists, couldn’t unclench them. “She grabbed my arm.”
A hand landed on his shoulder, and suddenly it was Pelia’s hand on his shoulder and he just couldn’t believe, couldn’t understand what happened. She was saying something, but he couldn’t hear. She was pushing something into his pocket and all he could think was why?
“Elei?”
“She took out her gun. I didn’t see it, but I felt it.” His throat closed when the memory rose from some murky depth. He hadn’t remembered this part to tell Kalaes. Now it hit him like another gunshot. “She pressed it to my side, right here.” His hand uncurled one finger at a time, sought the spot above his hip, there, under the bandage, the healing wound, “right here, she was the one who shot me.”
His ears rang and he relived the impact, the white-hot pain in his side, the disorientation. Why would she do such a thing? She’d been like a mother to him.
“Elei.” Maera touched his arm, feather-light. “What are you talking about?”
“Pelia shot me.” Dammit. His fingers curled around his plate and, before he knew what he was doing, he threw it at the wall. He barely heard the crash but saw the shards flying. Maera made a strangled noise in her throat and reached out to grab him.
He pushed back his chair and fled the room before she could.
Chapter 8
With his back against the wall of the bedroom, Elei watched Maera walk in. He folded his arms across his chest like a shield and lifted his chin.
Maera wasn’t happy; Elei could see it in the tightness of her mouth. He guessed there was nothing to do for it. She’d asked for the story.
Then again, it might have been
the broken plate that had upset her so. Maybe they’d been her favorites, those orange dishes, and now there was one less of them, because of him. He couldn’t understand what had made him do it; he didn’t usually react like this.
Unless cronion was sensing danger through his memories. Cronion was a brutal one, always out to protect its own. Yet his right eye hadn’t twitched and no colors painted his vision.
“Come here,” Maera said softly. “It’s all right. Honest.” She sounded like someone coaxing a wild animal out of hiding.
Maybe that’s what he was.
She reached out and tugged at his arm, her lips tilting just a little. Her hand was warm and surprisingly strong. He wondered what her job was and found he didn’t have the energy to ask.
She pulled him away from the wall, wrapped him in her arms and her smell of moist earth, and then released him and led him by the hand back into the kitchen. When she sat him back down into his chair, he didn’t resist. She’d swept the ceramic pieces to one side. She sat in the other chair and placed her hands on the table. There were fine scars on them, like delicate spiderwebs.
“Why would you say Pelia shot you?” she whispered. “Did you have a fight?”
“No.” He shuddered. “I told you. She was happy.” And it made no sense.
“Well, shock jumbles our memories.” Maera splayed her fingers and he watched, mesmerized. Her nails were narrow and pale and her knuckles sported dark lines. “Listen. Pelia can’t have shot you on contact, or even point blank. It would have killed you, or at least destroyed your insides. There would be dakron powder residue around the wound, and burns. I’ve seen it happen. I used to work at a hospital.”
He bowed his head. So his mind was playing tricks. Frustration made his hands shake. “I was shot.”
“Has to be a stray bullet. Maybe even the same one that went through her, killing her.”
If he couldn’t trust even his own memories, then he had nothing to go on. He prodded the image, the sensation of the gun pressed to his side, and it fragmented, mingling with other memories of faces, places and times. It was like sinking into mire.
Maera reached out and caught his wrist. “I knew Pelia.”
Her words descended into the quiet. He let them, feeling his gut tighten, and hoped they might go away, swim off like fish.
When he looked up, her dark eyes were bright. She released him. “Won’t you ask me how?”
No way had Maera grown up in Ost. He would have known. She was way too cheerful for that. Way too happy. So … “Pelia used to live here.”
“Yes. Years ago, when I was very young. She rescued me from the streets. I was sick, close to death. I think it was a plague of aioran flukes, we got a lot of those back then. Some said it was the flooding of the lowlands that caused the outbreak. Pelia cured me. She knew a lot about parasites and medicine, said she’d studied them.”
Elei nodded. Of course she did. Pelia was the head of PharmaMed Company.
“She first rescued Kalaes. Then me. Then others. Placed them in Kalaes’ care one day and took off.” She spoke matter-of-factly, betraying no emotion. “Pelia never returned. We never heard from her again. Until now.”
Elei shifted in his chair, uneasy. No wonder Kalaes was so pissed with her. “And did he take other strays in after she left?”
She looked up sharply. “Kalaes? A few. Why?”
He shrugged, cursing himself for asking, for not letting go. “Nothing.”
She watched him intently for a moment, and he wondered why. “Kal… He has a weakness. And Pelia took advantage of it.”
“What weakness?”
“He wants to protect the weak.”
Elei looked away. He wasn’t weak.
Yet he wanted to stay.
“Who would kill Pelia?” Without a warning, she jumped to her feet and began to pace. Her combat boots squeaked. Her trousers were stained at the hip, a green stain, maybe from cooking earlier on. “Did you see who shot her?”
He was about to say no, remembering the blood blooming on her white blouse, blinding crimson, but stopped himself. When she’d grabbed his shoulder, he thought he’d seen something outside. Though, that had only been his mind playing tricks, hadn’t it? Like a dream half remembered, changing every time you thought about it.
Screw this. Tell her. “I saw a helicopter. It had no numbers, just a symbol.”
She halted and some strong emotion flickered in her eyes. Was it anger, or fear and sorrow? “Do you remember the symbol? Was it the police disc, or the quarantine hand?”
“Not clearly… Maybe a cone.” He saw again the blood glistening on his hands and smelled the acrid dakron fumes. “It was a cone.”
“A cone?” Maera shook her chestnut curls. “I don’t know what it stands for.”
Elei shrugged, not knowing either.
Maera turned her back and paced up and down the room once more, like a caged animal. “Did something happen that day? Something must have been out of the ordinary. Did Pelia say anything? Do you know why she got shot?”
Elei forced his mind back to the last evening. “No.”
Pelia had been all smiles and giggles. He’d never seen her like that; usually she was a serious, brooding person. It had started when they’d left the labs. He remembered wondering if she had good news about her research, but she said nothing, so he didn’t either. It wasn’t his place to ask her. She was his boss, even if she treated him like her son.
Her eyes had shone, a luminous gray, and it had been infectious, that unrestrained laughter. Elei remembered how light his heart had felt; he thought he’d never felt so carefree and hopeful before. She’d talked about enrolling him for another course at the academy, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening with her smile, and she’d ruffled his hair and patted his cheek. She said he’d done so well in the first course, he should go on to study, take a SDA course in mechanics or in electronic design or—
“What happened afterwards, Elei? After Pelia was shot?”
Maera was down on her knees before him, holding his hands. He hadn’t noticed when she’d stopped pacing or when she’d knelt. He really should concentrate. Focus on the present.
“After… There was so much blood she kept slipping from my arms…” He shook his head, eyes stinging. “I carried her out of the aircar.” He’d been bleeding too, and hurting, and had almost dropped her twice. “I tried to stop the bleeding, but it was too late, and she stopped breathing, and I couldn’t bring her back.”
And he’d wept then, gods be damned, because he loved the woman like the mother he’d never had, and she was dead. Then more shots had rung out, bullets ricocheting off buildings and aircars, shouts and deafening noise.
“Did the shots come from the helicopter? Are you sure?”
Sure? A snort escaped Elei. Was she kidding him? “I don’t know.”
“Okay. What happened then?”
“Falx came with his goons, tried to hold me down. ‘Where is it?’ he kept saying. ‘She doesn’t have it. I’m damn sure you took it. Where is it?’”
His hands squirmed in Maera’s grasp. They’d kicked him and pressed their guns to his head, describing all the things they’d do to him if he didn’t cooperate. Caught in the memory, he struggled with the urge to pull away, to break free. Stop it. This is Maera, not Falx.
“What did he mean?” Maera frowned. “What was he talking about?”
“I don’t know.” Elei wrenched his hands from hers, buried his fingers in his hair. “And whatever it is, I don’t have it. I don’t have anything.” Anything at all.
The memories rushed back, clearer than the previous day. With cronion pumping him full of adrenaline, he’d pushed Falx’s men off him. He’d rolled and twisted and drawn his own gun. Though dark had fallen, he’d opened fire on them, surprised and scattered them. Cronion had allowed him to see them clearly in the night. He’d weaved through the narrow alleys and passed through people’s homes, scaring their kids and ruining their carpets with b
lood. He’d jumped out of a window down to the street, not too high, but his watch had been ruined, his wrist half-twisted.
For a long while, the only sound had been his harsh breaths, his heavy steps, the buzzing in his ears. Avoiding the obvious choice, the fast hoverbarges, he’d run to the streetcar lines. Amazing how the ancient vehicles still ran the old lines between the cities of Ost. Their wheels negotiated the road system just fine, but due to their weight, off-road areas — most of Ost really — were off limits.
The streetcar took him to the shore, to one of the cargo ports. There he’d looked for a private, clandestine ferry. As Gultur patrols marched up and down the port main street, he almost gave up. But he’d found a boatman lurking behind an old storehouse, willing to take him across. He’d hidden between the boat benches, curled in a ball of misery, and hadn’t surfaced until they left the shore far behind.
“So they think you have something they want. And the Gultur were trying to get it — or destroy it. But you don’t have it.”
“No, I don’t.”
She waited, silent, for him to say more. She seemed morose, and her down-turned mouth looked out of place on her normally smiling face. “Are you sure? Where else did you go that day?”
“The same places. Home, then work.”
“No clues then.” She exhaled loudly. “Well, at least you’re here,” she said, cheer returning to her voice, “and you’re safe”.
Right. That was what he kept telling himself. They’d given up, hadn’t they? After all, they must have realized he had nothing they wanted. Nothing anyone wanted. The one person who had believed in him was now dead. He had no money, no friends, and no home. And Kalaes took in no strays, not anymore.
“Did Kalaes say that to you?” Her voice sharpened. “He’ll get such a scolding when he comes home.”
She sounded horrified, and he was horrified himself that he’d spoken the words aloud. I’m really losing it. He needed to pull himself together. Then he realized he’d told himself that a number of times already and it didn’t seem to be working.
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