Nightwatch on the Hinterlands

by K. Eason

  His heart was beating a little too fast still, but that wasn’t because he was civ and gone soft. She’d surprised him, that was all. He folded his knuckles onto the desk. His tablet stared back at him from the desk’s surface, its screen dimmed to power-save, but he could still see the outline of Tzcansi’s 2D. He leaned hard onto his fists and flexed the muscles in his arms and shoulders. His gut might be a little softer—regular meals could do that—but he wasn’t.

  Heat prickled under his skin, a flush rising and ebbing again, like spring runoff in the Rust. Iari called him civ because to her, that’s what he was. Because she wore that slagging templar shell, because she had that socket in the back of her skull and the little machines in her blood, because she’d chosen those things. Because she’d wanted, she said, to do something about the Weep and the surge, because she’d wanted to fight Brood.

  And then she’d darkened his doorway years later, bloodspot spreading in one of her eyes, crusted blood on her nose, that templar armor beaten to a vakari hell, talking about Brood. In B-town. Now.

  Corso’s chest tightened as his heart kicked into way-too-fast. He rubbed the heel of one hand across it, as if he could press the pain out. Hard muscle, hard bone under that. But it was the skin he was feeling, the raised ridge of keloid, where a Brood slasher had opened him up—through regular army-issue armor, through skin and bone.

  Brood in fucking B-town.

  He shifted his weight to one fist, reached the other forward and tapped his tablet awake. Tzcansi’s image brightened. Sharpened.

  That was a good word for Tzcansi. Sharp.

  She wasn’t hard to find, if you knew where to look. Tzcansi owned a fistful of cafes scattered through her district, any one of which might serve as an office or a meeting place. For someone coming in cold, there would be surveillance work, identifying patterns. Putting the reconnaissance in P.R.I.S. A few days, if Tzcansi was predictable. A few weeks if she wasn’t.

  Corso wasn’t coming in cold, though. Corso knew exactly where she’d be, on any given day or hour.

  Iari hadn’t wondered how he’d found that image of Tzcansi so fast on his tablet, or why he’d had one at all. Iari hadn’t asked for an estimate how long it’d take him to set up a meeting. Hadn’t done any of the things a normal client did, when they retained his services. Corso couldn’t decide if that meant she didn’t care how long it took, or if the Aedis didn’t, or if the two things were equivalent. Or—and this was his suspicion—she had no idea she was supposed to ask. Maybe she thought a good P.R.I.S. kept files with 2Ds of all local ganglords on his tablet. Or maybe she thought Corso just knew every ganglord in Lowtown that intimately.

  He didn’t. But he did know Tzcansi. Corso had been on call me if necessary terms with her since she’d bought half the Vulgar Vakar two winters ago, after Mak had gotten arrested for being stupid and Devi hadn’t been able to cover the PK bribes.

  So Corso felt a little bit bad, but only a little bit, taking a fee to find her.

  * * *

  —

  Iari’s power core flat-out died twenty meters outside the Aedis gates. Then she had a choice: let Char haul her inside the gates like a broken doll or strip on the street. Gaer, Ptah bless him, figured out a third option. He jumped power from his rig to hers, some arcane tangling of cables that weren’t meant to mate up and a fistful of hexes to make sure they did.

  Once inside the gates, once Gaer untangled their rigs, Iari grim-stomped her way to the armory—Char in tow, Gaer peeling off to his own quarters, one of the guards stabbing comms and saying Yes, sir, she’s here.

  Comms. Right. She keyed her own. “Dispatch, this is Lieutenant Iari.”

  And before she’d even gotten a copy that acknowledgment, she got Tobin.

  “Lieutenant.” He must’ve been hovering over his comm. “You’re back.”

  “Yes sir. Heading to the armory, sir. Rig took some damage. I’ll be up to your office as soon as I’m clear.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Much as she wanted to say otherwise, she didn’t lie to Tobin. Ever. “Minor injuries, sir.”

  And much as he wanted to see her, she knew what he’d say. “Then you come see me after you see medical. Clear?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Then Tobin cut off, which was good. Iari wasn’t sure she could do more questions. She was all over cold sweat under the rig, heart beating a little too hard, lungs just a little too small. She cleared the armory door with one hand on the jamb pulling her through.

  Most times you got out of a battle-rig with a wall-mount. Hooked the torso in place, cracked the seals, got the top half of yourself out. Then you anchored the boots, reached up for the overhead bar, and pulled yourself the rest of the way.

  The times when the rig was too damaged for the wall-mount, you just got out however you could. Iari unsealed the torso—didn’t take too much work, slagging Sawtooth had cracked most of the seals for her—and took the rig off panel by panel, until she had a little pile of plating stacked around her. Then she anchored her lower half, reached up. Almost gagged when she reached overhead for the rack, it hurt so bad.

  Ribs. Right. She muscled her way out instead (still gagging). Climbed out of the bottom like a fucking green recruit, human or alwar or some other frail species without shoulder strength to just lift. She regretted the tile floor’s chill. It soaked through her skinsuit’s soles like water. Turned her whole body to shivers.

  Char observed from the armory doorway. The riev offered no comment about their own condition, no complaint.

  Of course not. Char was riev. They didn’t comment or complain. They also didn’t use personal pronouns or get Brood-poisoning and try to beat templars to death. And until the decomm, they’d all been a we, and us. That Oversight-with-a-capital-O, or whatever, that Pinjat might’ve been trying to restore. That was why all of them referred to themselves in the third person. The way other people saw them, because they didn’t have a self.

  Except Char. Char was an I.

  Iari leaned on her elbow. She typed, one-handed, the repair order into the wall-console turing and tagged it priority. That would route the request up to Tobin’s office. Assuming he approved it, it’d bump her rig to the top of the queue.

  And if Tobin didn’t approve, well. She could take a day or two off, or however long it took Corso to find Tzcansi (she should’ve asked). She was sure, though, that Corso would find her. So if Tobin was pissed about how today went, at least Iari could take that information to him. Show him she’d made some progress. This alleged Oversight repair, this corrupted riev, it was too big to just drop.

  Iari closed her eyes. Pressure throbbed behind her eyes. Sensible, then, to close them and lean her forehead against the cool wall and let Aedian stonework hold her up. It was very, very hard to breathe. Ribs. But the thundering in her ears, that wasn’t ribs. Neither was the nausea and the absolute certainty that if she tried going anywhere, she’d fall down.

  Char said something. Rumble-rumble-Lieutenant-rumble. And then she heard Char coming, little tremors through the stone floor, as her vision went from grey on the edges to black, all black, like void.

  * * *

  —

  Iari fixed her stare on the wall and pretended Sister Diran wasn’t doing unpleasant things to her needle-socket. That there wasn’t a squad of test tubes on the counter, racked and standing at attention, all of which gleamed redly, and that her arm wasn’t crooked around a soggy gauze square soaking up the leftovers.

  She could ask Dee how much blood she needed, sure, but she’d get voidspit for an answer. So instead, she asked, “What happened to Char?”

  Dee’s breath smelled like cinnamon and cloves, warm on the back of Iari’s neck. Contrast to her frigid fingertips as she jabbed Iari’s needle-socket with a diagnostic wire. “Who?”

  “The riev. One-armed. Brought me here?” Iari dredged her
memory. Flashes of corridor between armory and hospice, an unyielding pressure across her back, under her arms. The cool hardness of riev plating, except for where the armor had split; those crevasses were hot, hotter than fire, hot as Ptah in his purest form. The heart of a riev. Iari touched her shoulder through the hospital robe, and felt the fresh raw of a burn.

  A gust of cinnamon exasperation, and Diran withdrew the wire. “Last I saw, it was scaring the interns in the hallway. I told it to wait outside in the courtyard. It declined.”

  “Char. They, not it.” Iari unbent her elbow. Under the gauze, a faint bruise radiated out from a central hole.

  “Whatever. I think they would’ve waited in here, if I’d’ve let them.” Dee made that little sniff that signaled a general dissatisfaction with the current object of her attention. “I don’t see anything wrong with your needle-socket. All the diagnostics are coming back fine. That tells me there’s something wrong with your nanomecha, and I need to run more—where are you going?”

  Iari slid off the cot and stood up. Floor in the hospice was cold as the armory’s, but worse, because it was bare skin to tile now. She was in an actual room, though, not the curtained and partitioned triage unit. Whatever was wrong with her, it didn’t rate a med-mecha’s constant surveillance.

  Iari looked around for her skinsuit. Saw it draped over a stool by the turing console like shed skin. It was what, half a meter across the floor? Iari reckoned a couple of steps, if her legs held. Seemed like they might; her knees were steady, and the first step went well enough, anyway.

  “You don’t need me here to run tests. You have all my blood already.”

  “You’ve got cracked ribs.”

  “Yeah. And I have to give a report to the Knight-Marshal.”

  “You’re not fit for duty.”

  “Dee. Ptah’s own sake. My battle-rig’s in pieces. I’m not going anywhere off-compound. If there’s something wrong with my nano, you can come find me.” It sounded braver after saying it than it had in her head. In there, something wrong with my nano had sent all kinds of cold shivers through her gut.

  Dee’s face said she shared that feeling. “There shouldn’t be anything wrong. That’s the point. You’re certain you didn’t ingest Brood fluids? No contact with open wounds?”

  “You find any cuts on me?” Iari shrugged out of the hospice robe. Let it fall in an off-white puddle onto the tiles. Yeah. She’d reckoned it’d be ugly under there, all that bruising. She probed gingerly at the spongy, hot skin. That was clearly the point of impact, where the rig’s seals had buckled; but even that was just a welt rising up out of the sea of purple-red. The skin itself was unbroken.

  “No.” Diran took a short, nervous-energy step. Her hands flexed and fluttered. She had nice hands. Long fingers. Fine bones. Skin darker than Iari’s, warm and creamy brown. You could see the shadow of her tenju grandmother in the squared-off stubborn of her jaw, if you knew where to look, if you’d ever got Dee to admit that grandparent’s existence.

  Iari had.

  Jareth said, in Meditations Book Six, Chapter Five, that all experience led to knowledge. That even mistakes, especially mistakes, were necessary and valuable lessons. Iari reckoned she’d be happier with a little more ignorance about Dee. But then, Jareth had a lot to say about happiness, too.

  Diran lifted her chin. Narrowed her eyes. Clenched her jaw and made that tenju grandmother that much more obvious. “I can make you stay.”

  Oh, for the love of the Four. Iari shook out her skinsuit. Raised a cloud of stale sweat, a spangling of skin-flakes. She grimaced and shifted (careful, careful: lose balance now, and Dee would have real cause to keep her), and started to put the foul thing back on. “Medical order? Sure. You want to do that, go ahead. Then we’re both miserable. Or I go report to Tobin, and I take Char with me and you get your hallway back. We both win.”

  For a fistful of heartbeats Dee stood there, not really blocking Iari’s path to the door. Then she stepped aside. “I’m going to make sure the Knight-Marshal knows you’re leaving against my advice.”

  “Void and dust, fine, whatever. If he tells me to report back here, I will.” Iari paused long enough for the door to retract. Took forever. Slagging thing, creep-creep-creep in its track. She eeled through as soon as she had enough space. And yes, there was Char, taking up more than their share of the corridor, even pressed against the wall, slumped and trying to be as compact as possible.

  They straightened. “Lieutenant.”

  “Char.” Iari was eye-level with the rent in Char’s chestplate. “Got to get you repaired. Come on.”

  The way out was—Iari blinked, oriented, aimed herself down the hallway—that way. She damn near flattened a junior healer who slewed out of a room with a trayful of vials full of—oh, Ptah’s fiery breath, looked like piss—and into Iari’s half of the corridor. Little alw, eyes the size of plates and blue as summer skies.

  Iari folded out of the way (let Char do that, too, please, oh Elements). Muttered, “Sorry,” and kept her hand on the wall for support. Every step made her knees ache. And her hips. And every joint, toes to skull. Too much synning. Let the nanomecha rest a little (Rest? What did that even mean to little machines?), and those aches would recede.

  Should’ve already, Iari thought. It’d been hours now. That wasn’t impatience talking, either, that was experience. Something was wrong with her nanomecha. Dee wasn’t lying about that.

  She felt stupid asking, but, “Char. You feel all right?”

  “I am within operational parameters.” The riev made a grinding noise not unlike one of Gaer’s laughs. “Barely.”

  “Okay.” Iari had to give up the wall as she came to the hospice’s main door. The door that led up the back stairs to her quarters was just over there. She could see her slagging window, shutters open to the breeze and the ledge the cats used to get in and out. And she had to cross the courtyard to get there.

  The Aedis courtyard was a massive piece of real estate, ringed on all four sides (one for each Element) by barracks, offices, officers’ quarters, the kitchen, the library, laboratories, the hopper hangar, everything. A whole little city with mooring to land an aethership in the center (two, in emergencies). The temple dominated one end of it, furthest from the main gates, massive doors thrown wide to daylight. So a single riev, scout-class like Brisk Array, didn’t stand out immediately.

  Except for the eyestalks. Those were distinctive. So was the sudden burst of movement, from absolute stillness to brisk trot, straight for them.

  There were usually templars training in the yard; it was mostly empty now, with Peshwari’s unit fully deployed in B-town. The handful remaining paused in their exercise to watch Brisk Array, to notice Char, to notice her.

  Fantastic. There’d be gossip all over the barracks by midafternoon. Lieutenant Iari and the riev.

  Brisk Array squeaked to a sudden stop and snapped a salute, right fist to left shoulder. “Lieutenant.”

  That wasn’t going to help the gossip. Neither was this: Iari returned the salute. “Brisk Array. I’m glad you’re all right. I was afraid Sawtooth might’ve gotten you.”

  A trio of eyestalks bent toward Char. “Brisk Array was ordered to avoid engagement and to alert the templars.” He sounded faintly accusatory.

  Char made that faint rumbling noise again.

  Iari cleared her throat, forestalling—what, a riev squabble? Was that even possible? “You saved our lives. Mine and the ambassador’s. You and Char both. I know riev collect fees for their service, so.” She bounced a look off Char. “Any repairs you need, in addition to whatever your regular rates are for this morning, I’ll see you get them.”

  “Lieutenant,” said Char. “Brisk Array and I have determined that we wish to remain in service.”

  “In service. What, on retainer?” She could make that argument to Tobin.

  “In service,”
Char repeated. “As templars.”

  Iari blinked. “Oh.”

  Brisk Array tilted an eyestalk at Char, what passed for trading looks. “Please,” said Char. “Lieutenant. Will you take our petition to the Knight-Marshal?”

  Supplicants usually did that themselves: appeared at the gate, requested admission, requested an audience with the resident Knight-Marshal. Except supplicants had to be Confederate citizens, and riev were—what were riev, legally?

  That wasn’t her decision, though, was it? Hers was a lot simpler. Tell them yes, or no.

  She stared at the rent in Char’s chestplate. At the stump of their right arm.

  “I will,” she said. “I’m going there next.” After a shower, a change of clothes. Iari took a bite of breath. “Char, I can’t promise what he’ll say.”

  “I know. We know.” Char saluted again. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  Iari drew a deep breath, regretted it, compounded that regret by waving her arm and shouting, “Corporal!” at a dark-haired human in the training yard.

  Iari didn’t know her well. Another of the unassigned who kept to herself, rotating through unloved and unpopular nightwatch shifts. Young, and markedly not one of Peshwari’s unit. Which made her available right now, and that was all Iari needed. Luki might be dull as a stone (apologies to Chaama), but even stones could serve.

  Luki turned out to be unstonelike. Her eyes were sharp, flicking back and forth between the riev and Iari. But she didn’t stare, didn’t stutter, didn’t hesitate when Iari said take Char and Brisk Array to the armorsmith, get them patched, tell Jorvik it’s priority one. Said, “Yes, Lieutenant,” and then, “Come with me, please,” and suddenly Iari was alone.