At the launch pad, Randa was already waiting with her team assembled. Morek-Li’s new base in Gamba was actually outside of Roma, but he needed someone available for information and intelligence operations in the city. Andie had since learned that Randa had run the intelligence program for all of Urok, and with that experience she was coming back to direct that operation in Roma. Morek-Li had managed to recruit an agent from within the King’s own personal cabinet, which was a miraculous feat. This agent needed a contact in Roma, and Randa’s primary responsibility would be getting the information he passed them without compromising the informer at all. It would be a delicate balancing act, but one Andie was sure Randa could handle.
Andie’s new role was not going to be very dangerous; she was not going to be involved in any of the fighting. Andie’s main objective was to make sure that the Resistance received the promised weapons and supplies from the Armada. She also planned to find a way to send a message to her family. It had been nine years, and she knew that they probably considered her dead by now. Part of her wondered if she wouldn’t be doing more harm by ripping open healed wounds when it still might not be possible to actually get back to Zenith. However, she had to let them know she was still alive.
As everyone was getting strapped into their seats in the transport, Andie allowed herself a rare moment to think about her family. They would be so different by now probably. She had changed so much herself. Were her parents still stationed at Dos Cientos? Was Jenna a famous architect yet? Did Uncle Mark still spend his days teaching at the Academy? What about everyone else? All of her friends? For all she knew, Kelly could be living out her merchant dream here on Corizen now.
All thoughts of her family were quickly banished as the transport door was sealed and the cabin began vibrating as the engines fired up. She closed her eyes and whispered good-bye to Faroi. Her life was changing dramatically once again.
♦
During the trip, Andie couldn’t relax. She knew if they could just get into the air without a survey ship spotting them, their transport would likely be mistaken for any other of the now common trading airships. But still she fretted, worrying that someone would shoot them down. Randa was much more relaxed about it. She told Tiran a story before finally allowing her to explore the cargo area. Tiran wandered over to the rest of the team, asking them questions and explaining to everyone loudly about the trip. “We are going to Roma where there are no beaches or fish. You will have to bring your own,” she admonished the amused crew. Andie watched her with pride. She was not shy in the least and a very precocious child. She was most definitely Laeren’s child though. Andie could hardly find a trace of herself in her daughter. Even the way she looked. She looked exactly like a Denicorizen child except for her skin. It was just a lighter shade of blue than everyone else’s. She had Laeren’s dimpled smile and large dark eyes with long eyelashes. She would probably have wrapped her father around her little finger just with her smile.
To Andie’s immense relief the trip was without incident. Randa gathered Tiran to her side as they made the descent into the shuttleport at Roma. Roma now had a bustling shuttleport, and nobody noticed when their group disembarked in typical trader garb. Andie emerged from the ship first, dressed as a Citizen in a smart trader’s pantsuit, her hair carefully braided and pinned up against her head. Jerrapo had worked her magic once again and found just the right costume, although it had been difficult to come by. Randa followed the tail of the group with Tiran in tow, playing the role of a peasant woman with her grandchild who had managed to find passage with the “traders.”
♦
Andie’s first glimpse of Roma was like stepping back into the past. It looked very similar to Omphalos, although not nearly as clean. Buildings towered everywhere, and people of all sorts bustled around. Andie only paused for an instant before she finished moving down the walk and inside the shuttleport without a glance behind.
The entire group, including Randa and Tiran, would wander around Roma separately, reaching their new homes at different times. Andie would have to find her way there on her own. She pushed all of her worries about her daughter out of her mind, knowing that she was safer in Randa’s capable hands than with her. Then she tried to focus on acting like the confident Citizen trader that she was supposed to be.
After exiting the gate, Andie turned to the right and moved in with the bustling crowd. What a busy place this was! And so big! It took her at least a half hour of deciphering signs to find her way outside. Once she finally made it out to the busy downtown thoroughfare, the chilling wind bit into her face and hands. Winter in Roma was not the most pleasant season. Momentarily she wished she was still back in Faroi, where it was summer.
Pulling her cloak closer, she started down the street. Randa had decided that since Andie had never been to Roma, she should just go directly to the new base. Her directions were to walk three blocks south and then take a series of left turns until Andie arrived at the building. Shouldn’t be so bad, Andie thought.
Little did she know . . . she got lost. The left turns Randa had described simply weren’t there, at least not to Andie’s eyes. So she kept going, wandering around the busy but dilapidated section of the city. It was four hours before she found herself back where she had started. Hungry and exhausted, she was beginning to wonder if she would ever find the right building. Finally, Andie decided just to try it once more.
This time she found the first of the left turns easily. It was a tiny alley full of shadows and garbage. No wonder she had missed it. The Resistance sure knew how to pick the shabby locations. After that it was easy. It only took another fifteen minutes for her to find herself in a little basement apartment with boarded windows and rust-streaked walls.
“Well,” Randa greeted her, helping Andie out of her cloak, “you finally made it. I was on the point of sending someone to look for you.”
Tiran ran out of a room. “Mommy!” she clamored and hugged her tightly. “Gramma said you’d come.”
“Hi, sweetie. Did Grandma find you a room?”
“Yes,” she said dejectedly. Her little mouth turned down in a pout.
“Well, what’s wrong with it?” Andie asked, her brow furrowed.
“Oh, Mommy, it’s dirty, yucky,” Tiran complained. Andie kissed her forehead.
“We’ll clean it up, Tiran, I promise.” She led her daughter into her new room to put her back to bed. Tiran was right; it was very dirty. The walls were cracked and peeling, and there were cobwebs in the corner. A single light bulb swung from the ceiling, dimly lighting the room. Two single beds stood at opposite sides of the room, with a battered metal chest of drawers. But the beds had fresh blankets and sheets on them, and Andie noticed that Tiran had already scattered her few beloved toys on the floor. Andie lifted her gently and tucked her back into her bed.
“Good-night, Tiran,” Andie crooned softly.
“‘Night, Mommy,” she yawned. Andie put out the light and started to leave the room.
“Mommy!” Tiran cried. Andie moved back to her side. “It’s too dark!”
“Honey, I’ll leave your door open, and Grandma and I will be right outside if you need us.”
“Will you sleep in here?” she wanted to know. Andie repressed a sigh.
“Yes, darling, I’m sharing the room with you. I will be in later,” she explained patiently. Tiran seemed satisfied with that, and Andie kissed her goodnight once again.
When Andie came out of the bedroom, Randa led her into another, larger room in the back of the apartment. It was well-lit and equipped with terminals and a large round table. For a moment Andie had to shake her head in disbelief. In Faroi they had gone so long without such things that she had forgotten what it was like. Even electricity seemed like a luxury. Faroi’s generators had been used only for the absolute essentials.
“This will be our headquarters,” Randa explained, waving her hand. “We shou
ld be able to monitor any of my missions from here.”
“Where is the rest of the team staying?” Andie asked curiously.
“A few have been assigned to some apartments that were rented out for us. The rest had to find themselves a spot in the nearby boardinghouses. I’m giving them a couple of days to settle in. Come, I’ll show you the rest of our new home.”
The rest of the apartment was fairly small. There was a room barely bigger than a closet for Randa to use as a bedroom. A tiny bathroom was tucked next to Randa’s room. The main living area was nearly bare with an ancient sagging sofa taking up almost all of the floor space. Stuffing was poking out of tears in the armrest, and it was so filthy that it was hard to tell what the original color had been. Andie grimaced but figured at least they could cover it with a sheet. Finally, there was a short galley kitchen with a rickety little square table. Though it was small and old and dirty, it still felt like luxury compared to her sparse hand-built home in Faroi. Once it was clean it wouldn’t be a bad place to live at all.
Over the next week, Andie and Randa did their best to make the little apartment more like a home. In the morning, Randa would shop at the local market while Andie worked on scrubbing the accumulated years’ worth of dirt off the walls and floor. In the afternoon and evening, Randa would meet with some of her team and study her reports that came in by terminal. Andie ventured outside a few times, trying to familiarize herself with the city. Eventually she felt confident of at least the general area around the shuttleport. After she put Tiran to bed at night she studied maps of the city as well. She couldn’t be sure just yet where she would be meeting her contact from the Armada, and the last thing she wanted to do was get lost.
Five days after their arrival in Roma, Randa called an emergency meeting. Two of Morek-Li’s head operatives from Roma had returned from Gamba with an urgent assignment for Randa, as well as the details of Andie’s upcoming meeting with the Armada’s agent. Andie settled Tiran down to play in her room with strict orders not to interrupt the meeting, and then joined the others in the back control room.
Four people were already seated at the table. Two were members of Randa’s intelligence team. The other two were the ones that had come from Morek-Li, whose names Andie couldn’t remember. They briefly introduced themselves as Jenner and Uma. Randa and Andie joined them at the table, although Andie left the door cracked in case Tiran called.
“Commander Bruche,” reported one of Randa’s agents, “all of our team members have reported in and they have all found places to stay.” Randa nodded in satisfaction. “Then we are ready to move on to our current problem.” She went on to detail the situation in Croask. The Resistance had taken control of the shipping port recently, and so far the local Nobles had failed completely in every attempt they had made to retake it. However, now they had appealed to Jaory Kruunde, as governor of the Blue Plains, to come to their aid. Andie shuddered at Jaory’s name. Most of the complacent Nobles had been taken by surprise at the general uprising throughout the planet. Jaory, on the other hand, had apparently foreseen this possibility. For years he had been building up his own army and his own military defenses. The Resistance had not even tried to fight in his Blue Plains district yet. If he came to the aid of Croask, it could go very badly over there. Still, that was on the other continent. Andie wondered what Morek-Li expected them to do from Roma.
“It seems that Jaory has been coordinating his plans for an attack with members of the Royal Guard. Our agent in the King’s Cabinet has managed to get detailed information about their tactical plans and a timetable.” There was a collective gasp from around the table.
What a wonderful benefit this would be for the Resistance! If they could just crush Jaory once and for all! Jaory was proving harder to overcome than the King.
“Tomorrow night we need to get this information from the King’s man to the courier heading for Croask. He will be waiting by the shuttleport and leaving on the last flight to Urok.”
The group discussed a few methods, and Randa finally decided on having several handoffs between agents, plus a few decoys. It was, she believed, the best way to protect the informer’s identity.
Randa’s word was law. They accepted her decision silently. Then Uma turned to Andie. “Mistress Sirra, we have had word from the Armada. You will meet the Armada contact tomorrow in the open marketplace. We will have you working with a merchant in the main plaza. The contact is supposed to look for the purple flag,” she paused as she handed Andie a small business flag, “and he will ask for change for a single joya. After this, you are free to arrange your meetings to your liking.” Andie accepted this in silence. Her biggest worry was speaking to the man in Union Basic. She knew her accent and vocabulary were simply terrible now after years of speaking primarily in Denicorizen.
“Looks like tomorrow will be a busy day,” she observed lightly to Randa.
“May Veshti sustain us all. It is going to be a very long day,” groaned Randa. The Roma assignment was off to a flying start.
17. Reunion
Andie rose early the next morning for her trip to the main plaza. Randa had been highly amused at the idea of Andie posing as a merchant. “Most of the people in that plaza are regulars,” she snorted. “You’ll attract more attention trying to pretend that you actually work in a booth than you would just browsing among the vendors in the actual marketplace. Who came up with this idea?” She was braiding Andie’s hair back up, trying to make her look more like a trader again. Apparently the current trend among traders was hair cropped so short it was hard to see the difference between the men and women. Andie figured they could just cut her hair off to match, but Randa had been horrified by the mere mention of the idea. Instead, Randa had determined that as long as Andie’s hair was neatly put up, she wouldn’t stand out too much.
“Don’t you think it’s going to look just as suspicious if I spend the day sitting at the back of Orrin’s booth? What Citizen would do that either?” Andie protested feebly. At least if she was working in his booth she wouldn’t be so bored. She didn’t have a definite time for the arrival of the Armada guy, only that it would be sometime this morning. It would be a long morning if she had to just sit around and wait. Randa yanked at the top of Andie’s head as she tucked the loose end of Andie’s braid under to pin. “You are going to look like one Citizen trader meeting another,” Randa sniffed. “It would make so much more sense if you just pretended to be business associates and had a meeting somewhere. Very few people are going to understand your conversation anyway. Not much we can do about it now though.” Clearly, Randa did not think much of the Armada’s arrangements. She shook her head again and handed Andie the weapon to strap around her waist. No trader went about unarmed these days. The merchants, since they carried cash for their booths, were even more heavily armed. For that matter, very few peasants went around unarmed right now. They were forbidden to do so but that didn’t stop them. Not while a revolution was in full swing.
“Here,” Randa unlocked a case and handed it to Andie. Andie gingerly removed the poison tipped knife and slipped it in the sheath on her calf. It was hidden by her knee length boots but it felt awkward.
“Is this knife really necessary? Shouldn’t my laser be enough?” she asked uneasily. What if she accidentally nicked herself?
“Trust me,” Randa reassured grimly. “I hope you never need to use it, but if you do, you’ll be glad it’s there.”
The poisonous knife, called a kirkuna, was a much-feared Denicorizen weapon, one preferred by criminals and thugs. The poison on the tip prevented any blood from coagulating, leaving the wound to bleed continuously. If the antidote was not administered in time, the victim usually bled to death. It had been a knife like this one that had killed Laeren.
When Randa had proposed that Andie carry one of the ghastly kirkunas Andie had been appalled. At first she had flatly refused. No threat seemed serious enough that she woul
d ever use the same kind of weapon that had killed her husband on another person. But Randa sternly insisted that Andie have some extra protection, especially since she would be meeting alone with some strange man.
“Here’s the antidote,” Randa added, passing Andie a small vial of liquid. “Just in case.”
Andie held up the antidote and swirled it around. Barely a swallow of a clear liquid swished within the vial. She sighed heavily. If only they had kept a supply of it in Faroi. Unfortunately, no one had ever dreamed they would need such a medicine in their peaceful little colony.
With all her weapons in place Randa pronounced that Andie was ready to leave for the marketplace. Fortunately she didn’t have to wait long. Orrin, the man whose booth she would be haunting all morning, showed up just before dawn. Andie grabbed her winter cloak and threw it on. Randa hovered, for once her face openly nervous.
“It will go fine,” Andie reassured. “This should be easy, Randa. Don’t worry about me, just take good care of Tiran while I’m gone.” Randa quickly kissed her, and then Andie started out the door with Orrin.
The early winter morning was ice cold but clear. Her breath rose before her in steam, and she shivered involuntarily. Orrin didn’t seem to be bothered by the weather at all; he kept his hood off and didn’t even bother to wear any gloves. He climbed into his transport and Andie followed him. Glancing into the back, she saw that it was filled with crates of Orrin’s wares. In Roma’s open air marketplace, the merchants had to bring their goods with them every day. No wonder Orrin had such massive, muscular arms. If he loaded and unloaded this transport every day he must be one strong man. She shivered and wrapped her cloak tighter while she waited for Orrin to get the transport running. Fortunately, it had a heater, but she suspected that she would not be so lucky once they arrived at the market square.
The Legend of Sirra Bruche (Roran Curse Book 1) Page 23