Stealing Life

by Antony Johnston

  It was only as he stood that he realised Xandus had stuck him with the bill.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I’VE GOT TWENTY holovid units for you. Jalakumi Corp, top of the line... Yeah, original boxes, all the paperwork. You interested? I can show you... What? Ignore it, it’s nothing. I’m... Look, never mind where I am, just meet me at the lockup in two hours. All right.”

  Nicco closed his phone and sighed. He hardly noticed the grunting and yelping from next door any more, but evidently it was loud enough to be heard over the the line. The sooner he could get out and find a place of his own, the better. Not that there was much chance of that; even in Azbatha, not many people would rent a place to a ten-year-old boy.

  He dialled a number. It rang three times—it always rang three times—then picked up.

  “Razhko Investigations.” said the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Mr Razhko, it’s Nicco Salarum. I’m just calling to see...”

  “Kid, every day for the past three weeks you’ve called me ‘just to see.’ You don’t have to explain yourself. But today’s no different. I’ve got nothing for you. Look...” Razhko paused. Nicco wondered if maybe he did have something after all. Anything.

  “Look, kid, it’s your money and I’m not going to tell you how to spend it. But are you sure you want me to carry on? I mean, this is a real dead end. I’ve been doing this a long time and it’s not looking good. I don’t have anything. Are you sure you can’t just ask your mom?”

  Nicco sighed. “No. I already tried, and she won’t tell me anything. Please, Mr Razhko. Just keep trying.”

  “All right, kid. But really, you’ve got to stop stressing about it, you know? I promise, I’ll call you the minute I get anything.”

  “You promise?”

  “I swear on my mother.”

  Nicco wondered just how much that actually meant, coming from a grizzled muckraker like Razhko. He ended the call.

  “Razhko? Birrum Razhko?”

  Nicco was so startled he dropped his phone. He turned to see his mother standing in the doorway, cinching a gown around her waist.

  “Um...” Nicco considered his options, but couldn’t see any, beyond confession and outright denial. Neither would go down especially well with his mother. So he said nothing.

  “What in the fifty-nine hells are you doing talking to that lowlife? And exactly what is it I won’t tell you?”

  “I... I wasn’t talking about you.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Nicco.” She stepped into the room, then sighed. “By the watery saints, this is about your father, isn’t it? Oh, Nicco.” She sat down on the edge of his bed, and patted the space beside her. “Come here.”

  Nicco didn’t move. “You said he was a soldier.”

  “I know.”

  “You said he was from Varn.”

  “Nicco, listen...”

  “You said his name was Cheradd. But there weren’t any soldiers called that here in Azbatha, mum! Not when I was born! Mr Razhko checked!”

  His mother took a deep breath and invited him to sit beside her again.

  “Nicco, I didn’t know you’d be so... insistent about it. Not yet. You’re only ten years old. Not that anyone would know it, to look at you... Come here, please, and I’ll tell you the truth. I promise.”

  Nicco shuffled over to the bed and sat down, staring at the floor.

  “Your father was... nobody. He was just a sailor, a man who passed through one night and dropped in. I never saw him before or after that one night. He was just a mark.” She put her hand under Nicco’s chin and turned him to face her. She smiled. “He was a handsome man, I remember that. Just like you’ll be.”

  Nicco pulled his face away. “So he was nobody. Not important.”

  “I didn’t mean that...”

  Nicco felt tears welling up behind his eyes, but fought them back. “Why did you say he was a soldier?”

  “I thought you’d like that. That he was brave and macho, and all that stuff. I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “When were you going to tell me the truth? Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “Yes, I swear. I...”

  “Lilla, I’ve got someone waiting downstairs for you. Are you done?” Madame Zentra stood in the open doorway. She smiled at Nicco. “Hello, Nicco. I thought you were out.”

  He stood up. “I was just leaving.”

  “Wait!” Nicco’s mother got up, “Just wait here one second, okay? I have something for you.”

  His mother went next door, to her working room. Madame Zentra shrugged. She seemed as confused as Nicco.

  Lilla returned quickly and held out a clenched hand. “This is for you.” It was a pendant necklace, a teardrop of golden glass engraved with interlocking lines. Nicco took it and stared. He’d never seen anything like it.

  “It was his,” said his mother. “He took it off and forgot to take it with him... I was going to give it to you on your thirteenth birthday. The same day I wanted to tell you about him.”

  Nicco felt the tears coming again, but he bit his lip and closed his eyes. He wouldn’t let himself cry in front of his mother, not over this. “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said his mother. “I think it’s a good luck charm.”

  Nicco opened his eyes and looked at the pendant. It was nothing, just a bit of scratched glass. His mother could have bought it herself in any market, just to appease him. But he didn’t let himself think such thoughts. Instead, he closed his hand around the pendant and thought of a handsome man, sailing somewhere on the Demirvan Sea, laughing as he told his shipmates about the night he spent in Azbatha ten years ago and the brothel that was so good he accidentally forgot to pick up his good luck charm when he left.

  It was all Nicco had. It was better than nothing.

  “NICCO?” TABBY STOOD over him, eyes wide. “I said, what do you want to drink?”

  “Get...” Nicco hesitated. “Oh, just get us a couple of bottles of sparkling amber. I’m buying, remember?”

  “I remember,” said Tabby as she walked away. “But I worry about you sometimes.”

  They were in the White Fatty. It was early evening and the place was starting to fill up with clients, drinkers and assorted ne’er-do-wells. As Nicco looked around, he realised he was rubbing his father’s pendant through his shirt. He stopped, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. Why was he thinking about that? Xandus had been interested in his pendant, and Nicco couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t just an aesthetic interest. Something about the wizard’s eyes, the tiniest hint of surprise, when he’d first seen it. Nicco was too disorientated at the time to notice, but thinking back... He should have asked him, pushed Xandus for an answer. Was it Shalithi? Had his father gone the entire length of Turith? Was it something in the pattern? Could it mean something? Or had Xandus thought perhaps it was a magical charm? If only. A silly little good luck charm was one thing, but if it had actually had some sort of power he might never have gotten into this mess with Bazhanka. And sadly, that wasn’t the case.

  But that look in the wizard’s eye still bothered him.

  Xandus’ number was still written on that scrap of paper in his apartment. He could go home and call the wizard right now. It was a simple question. It was probably nothing, after all. Xandus probably just liked the look of it. His clothes had been odd enough, perhaps he thought a glass pendant was all he needed to top off the ensemble. Yes, it was probably nothing. Just a vain wizard—weren’t they all?—admiring a bauble. Besides, contacting Xandus right now would be a mistake. It was too soon after the hand-off, after the theft. Nicco couldn’t afford to do anything that might further connect him to the wizard.

  No. Best to leave it. It was nothing.

  “I said, I’m thinking of becoming a man.”

  Nicco blinked at Tabby as she poured his glass of amber, a deep and rich golden wine that fizzed and sparkled.

  “Oh, you’re listening now, are you? Honestly, Nicc
o, it’s like you’re on a different planet. You haven’t even told me what we’re celebrating yet.”

  Nicco took his glass and raised it, smiling.

  “I’m sorry, love. I’ve just been thinking a lot about... the past. But don’t worry about it, we’re here to celebrate the future. Things are looking up.”

  He chinked her glass with his and drank. The wine sent a warm glow down his throat and across his body. It was the first drink he’d allowed himself since that night in the businessman’s apartment. It felt good.

  Tabby smiled at him and leant forward, speaking quietly. “Have you got a big job?”

  It was already done and paid for, but he couldn’t tell her that. She’d guess it was him who stole the necklace if he did, and until Governor Werrdun scurried back to Hurrunda and the police moved on to something else, Nicco couldn’t risk her gossiping to one of the girls. Nicco had learnt that early on, when the slightest thing he told his mother would suddenly find its way around every girl in the brothel.

  He smiled back at Tabby. “I might have.”

  “Is that what you’ve been working on? I haven’t seen you for almost two weeks.”

  “Yeah. You know, research and all that.”

  Tabby downed her drink. “Poor baby, all work and no play. I know what you need, though. Come on, let’s take this bottle upstairs.”

  Best idea she’d had in weeks, as far as Nicco was concerned. He followed her to the elevator.

  All of Zentra’s girls lived on the premises, another legal tangle and a lucrative tax dodge to boot. Tabby’s room was on the fifth floor, the same floor where Nicco and his mother had lived before he moved out. But he’d been coming back to see Tabby for so long, and the memories of his mother were so far in the past, that Nicco hadn’t felt sentimental about it in years.

  For some reason he couldn’t place, tonight was different. As he stepped into the thickly carpeted elevator with Tabby on one arm and two bottles of sparkling amber under the other, he couldn’t help thinking about it. Tabby’s mother had been a working girl too, two floors down from Nicco and his mother. Tabby was four years younger than him, but that hadn’t mattered when they were growing up, the only two kids of their generation living at Madame Zentra’s. They’d played together, fought together, watched holovids together. Until Nicco moved out, when he was just thirteen, they were inseparable. But as Nicco carved out his career in burglary, the short, gawky young girl he used to play with faded into the background. He had work to do, jobs to pull off, a name to make. He didn’t even visit his mother—they’d fought over the move—so why on earth would he go back to see some girl he used to sit and play childrens’ holovid games with?

  Then Nicco’s mother contracted cancer five years ago, and everything changed. For the next two years he made weekly visits to the brothel. His mother had stopped working, but Madame Zentra was a job-for-life kind of woman and Lilla Salarum had worked for her since the age of sixteen. She’d earned a sickbed for as long as she needed it.

  They exited the elevator and walked along the corridor, passing his mother’s old room.

  Nicco hadn’t even thought about Tabby during his first few visits to his mother. He’d seen her around, the very first day, but didn’t realise it until two months later, when a beautiful young woman with long, black hair stepped into the elevator with him and giggled. Her name was Tabathianna—Tabby for short. She was working here herself now, and had watched him come and go for the past two months as he fretted over his mother. She knew he didn’t recognise her, and why should he? The awkward, skinny, messy-haired girl with freckles that Nicco knew had blossomed into a confident, curvy woman with sparkling eyes and an easy smile. She introduced herself, and Nicco almost missed his floor in surprise.

  They slept together for the first time that night. Five years and countless nights later, here they were again.

  Tabby skipped through the doorway and jumped onto her bed. Nicco entered, closed the door behind him with a kick and held up the wine bottles and glasses. Enough navel-gazing. It was time for some good old-fashioned fun.

  She sat up against the pillows, her long legs stretched out, and gently pulled the hem of her dress up with her fingertips. “Forget the wine,” she breathed. “Strip for me.”

  Nicco grinned and put the bottles and glasses down on a table beside the door. “Right you are.” He pulled his sweater over his head and threw it at her. She caught it and laughed, smoothing it out over her chest and sighing. Nicco unbuckled his belt, never taking his eyes off Tabby.

  Dimly, he was aware of muffled noises from the corridor. A woman’s voice, shouting in protest. Nicco barely registered it. It was nothing to do with him.

  He was forced to quickly reconsider that thought when the door burst open behind him and two of Wallus Bazhanka’s faceless thinmen dragged him, half-naked and yelling, out of the brothel and into a skycar.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “NICCO, MY DEAR boy. What trouble and anguish you cause me.”

  Wallus Bazhanka sat behind his desk, his massive bulk framed by an equally giant chair. The dark leather squeaked under his weight as he shifted from one elbow to the other.

  “I’ve got the bloody money!” said Nicco. “You could at least have had the decency to pick up the phone and call me yourself. These creepy sods dragged me out of bed!” The thinmen flanked Nicco, one on either side of him—just like his first encounter with Xandus. The comparison wasn’t lost on him, and he almost laughed.

  Bazhanka raised a hand for quiet.

  “I am no longer interested in the money you owe me. In fact, we are going to make a deal, you and I. For my part, I will release you of all debts owed to me.”

  Nicco’s face must have been a picture, because Bazhanka smiled.

  “Almost too good to be true, isn’t it? An enormous weight off your shoulders, I’m sure. And the task you shall perform for me, in return for this favour, is so small and simple that it is barely a thing at all. Such a trivial act, to secure a man’s freedom from obligation.”

  Here it comes, thought Nicco. What did he want for it this time? Another trailer full of skycars? A bank job? Corporate espionage? All of the above? Nicco cleared his throat. “So what is it? What do I have to do?”

  “You must return Governor Werrdun’s necklace.”

  THEY HADN’T EVEN waited for him to button his trousers back up. Bazhanka’s thinmen grabbed an arm each and dragged Nicco along the corridor in Madame Zentra’s, back into the elevator.

  “I’ve got the bloody money!” he protested. “And it’s not even due till tomorrow!”

  They ignored him.

  They continued ignoring him as he was taken through the lobby, past a very displeased Madame Zentra, and bundled into the back of a skycar parked outside. In fact, they ignored him all the way across town. He tried reasoning with them, but it was useless. He tried telling them to call Bazhanka, but they were deaf to his pleas. He tried asking them if he could call Bazhanka, to no avail.

  The skycar sped through the aerial highways of Azbatha’s skyscrapers, crossing flight paths and cutting off anyone who dared get in its way. Nicco had never been driven in a skycar by thinmen before, and he was pretty sure this’d be the last time.

  They were heading south, which confused him. Downtown, and Bazhanka’s club, was a couple of miles west from Madame Zentra’s place. Where were they going? After a few minutes he saw Riverside up ahead, and the skycar slowed to make a descent. Nicco finally realised where they were taking him.

  They landed in a palatial estate on the edge of the Nissal Straits, on a skypad big enough to accommodate an airship. The central figure of the estate was a grand, baroque mansion in green-black sea stone, an antiquated building material that hadn’t been used for two hundred years. The house extended over the Nissal Straits on stilts, with a boating jetty running the width of the mansion. A hundred yards of garden, edged by high walls infested with security cameras, surrounded all three sides of the dwelling on t
he land side. Nicco counted at least twenty men patrolling the grounds as the skycar made its descent.

  It was the single biggest estate Nicco had ever seen in Azbatha. You could have built four skyscrapers housing thousands of people on the footprint, and anywhere else in the city they would have. But this was Riverside, exclusive home to the rich and famous, where land was a status symbol.

  And only one man in the city could afford a place this big.

  The thinmen hauled Nicco from the skycar and frogmarched him into the house, past half a dozen armed guards who seemed to be as wary of the golems as Nicco was. They took him in the main doors, through a large reception hall and along two corridors, stopping in front of a solid door. One of them knocked, and Nicco heard Bazhanka’s voice on the other side shout a curt, “Come!”

  The office was long and wide, a cavernous room that could comfortably hold a large crowd. But there was only Bazhanka, sitting behind a heavy wooden desk at the far end of the room, his hands folded across his outsize belly. The mob boss watched, motionless, as his thinmen pushed Nicco down the room toward the desk.

  NICCO HAD ASSUMED Bazhanka wanted the money a day early. That the urgency with which his thinmen dragged Nicco from Tabby’s room was just their usual brand of overzealous obedience. But he’d assumed wrong. And now, for some unfathomable reason, Bazhanka wanted the necklace.

  Did he know for sure that Nicco had taken it? How could he? It was tempting to lie and say he still had it, just to wipe out his debt to Bazhanka. But he’d be found out soon enough, and Bazhanka would probably double what Nicco owed him once he discovered the bluff. Or offer the same for Nicco’s head.

  “What in the fifty-nine hells do you care about some ambassador’s baubles?” Nicco said.

  “I care a great deal about the welfare of Governor Werrdun, as it happens. Where is the necklace?”