Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2

by Hilari Bell

  His client’s silence gave Jase time to think, and soon worrying about weird bugs gave way to speculating about that mysterious leather bag in his pocket. His first chance to examine it came that night in Glennallen, after he saw Mr. Hillyard safely into his hotel room.

  Jase took a few minutes to go back out to the parking lot and spread a cover over the Tesla. There was no rain in the forecast, but he preferred not to come out in the morning and find his car covered with bees. He’d throw away that new wax as soon as he got home.

  When he reached his own room, Jase kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed, pulling out the small pouch before he even took off his suit. Judging by the way it squished there was some sort of powder inside, and the girl had done a lousy job with her knots. The cords that had wrapped neatly around it had come loose, tangling in his pocket, and Jase had to unscramble them before he could tackle the final knot that closed the neck.

  His grandfather would be appalled that anyone would use a medicine pouch to smuggle something harmful, and the old man had dumped enough culture guilt when Jase was little that his conscience twinged. But he wasn’t the one who’d chosen that disguise for their drugs.

  Was it time to try again with his grandfather?

  Jase groaned aloud at the thought. Getting to his grandparents’ house would take eight hours, and the last time he hadn’t gotten past the front door! The time before that his grandmother had let him in. His grandfather had asked his gruff question, always the first thing he said to Jase these days. After Jase had answered, he’d turned on the TV and refused to say anything more.

  But Jase couldn’t change the answer.

  His parents and his grandmother said that the gulf between his father and his grandfather wasn’t his fault, but Jase couldn’t help but feel things would be different if he’d been better at it, when his grandfather had tried so hard to indoctrinate him into Our Way of Life. He could still hear the capital letters the old man put on those words.

  But even if he wasn’t cut out for any of the Ananut paths, he couldn’t shake the thought that someday he might be able to get through to his grandfather. They’d both tried, in the beginning. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

  It was time to try again.

  He’d go next weekend, Jase resolved. Unless his father’s firm had another job for him. He was trying not to hope too hard for that, when the medicine bag’s strings finally loosened.

  There weren’t any drugs so powerful you’d get in trouble just touching them, right? If this was the kind of stuff that nuked people’s brains, he could always flush it. He would flush it, as soon as he knew what it was.

  Jase opened the narrow neck and looked in, but there wasn’t enough light to see anything. He tipped a small amount of the powder onto his palm. He knew nothing about drugs, but to him it looked like . . .

  “Dirt?” The word sounded loud in the empty room.

  Small brown crystals that looked like fine sand. Powdery dust that left a pale yellow smudge on his palm. It smelled dusty, not the chemical tang he’d been expecting. Jase quashed the temptation to taste it before he’d even stuck out his tongue. And he’d better wash his hands. Thoroughly.

  He really didn’t know about drugs. There probably was one that left yellow smudges. And it probably turned you into a raving imbecile with a single touch. And it didn’t show any sign it was going to affect you for about twelve hours, so you started to believe you were a flying goat just as your car was doing sixty around a forty-mile-an-hour curve.

  Because your car could do that.

  Jase tipped the drug, dirt, whatever-it-was, back into the pouch and tied it closed. If they didn’t even store it in an air-tight container it couldn’t be too lethal, but he’d wash his hands anyway.

  He didn’t know about drugs, and he wasn’t stupid enough to want to change that, not on a personal level.

  But he’d bet Ferd knew someone who did.

  ***

  The next morning they set off early—at least Jase thought 7 a.m. was early. And it didn’t matter that the sun was up, because this time of year it rose at four in the morning! Some Alaskans didn’t seem to need much sleep in the summer. Jase wasn’t one of them.

  Fortunately the day was clear, with only a scattering of clouds, so they might make it all the way to Anchorage on dry roads.

  After Glennallen came a long flat stretch where the swampy icky woods were dotted with swampy meadows and swamps. Then there was a hilly stretch where Jase let the Tesla out just a little, because it hugged the curves so sweetly.

  When you lived in the only state in the U.S. that didn’t have speed sensors outside the cities, you had to take advantage of it sometimes.

  Mr. Hillyard, who’d been silent all morning, finally looked up from his screen. “This is incredible.”

  “It’s got almost no drift on curves,” Jase told him, “because the battery weight is balanced over the tires. Maglev cars may use less power, and they can go fast if you don’t have to worry about braking. But for real performance nothing beats tires.”

  He flexed his hands on the steering wheel. In a car like this the driver could feel the road’s surface through the wheel, through the way the car handled.

  “That’s probably true,” said Mr. Hillyard. “But I was talking about the scenery. That glacier over there is the third I’ve seen this morning. What’s its name?”

  “I don’t know. Alaska’s full of glaciers.”

  “The car’s pretty incredible too,” Mr. Hillyard admitted. “Though I’m surprised your parents would buy it for a sixteen-year-old.”

  If he was questioning Jase’s father’s parenting judgment, would he question his legal judgment as well?

  “I’m paying it off,” Jase said quickly. “He didn’t just give it to me. It’s got one of the best safety systems on the road, even today. And I have to keep my grades up, and pay for my own insurance and maintenance. Dad’s firm has clients all over Alaska and northern Canada, with documents that need physical signatures, and more discretion than you can get dumping them at a small-town post office. Or clients who need someone to pick them up, discreetly.”

  His father had explained why this client had to come in for an off-the-books weekend meeting, but it had to do with proprietary contracts and competitors, and Jase hadn’t paid attention. Most of the clients he drove had competitors they were paranoid about. That was why they let the firm transport them, instead of taking a public flight.

  “You’re doing a good job,” Mr. Hillyard assured him. “I just . . . Does your mother approve?”

  “Not really. But she . . . Hey, how do you know I’m sixteen? I didn’t tell you. Do you know my parents, or something?”

  When a client was also a friend, Jase’s father usually mentioned it.

  “I don’t know your parents.” Mr. Hillyard’s gaze fell, his fingers fidgeting with the dead com board. “But I know about the lawsuit, of course. If you were three during Mintok v. the Native Corporation Acts, that was in 2081. So you’d be sixteen now.”

  “And three-sixteenths.” Jase had intended to sound cool and nonchalant, but some of the bitterness leaked in.

  “I’m sorry,” the client said. “But surely that case made it matter less. Legally, not at all!”

  The law didn’t decide what mattered. Not as far as Jase could see.

  “Of course, sir. We’ll reach Anchorage in a few more hours. Do you want to go straight to the firm’s guest apartment? Or would you like to stop somewhere for lunch first?”

  ***

  It was early afternoon by the time Jase finally deposited the client, and then commed his dad to report, and added that he was going to stop by Ferd’s on the way home.

  His father, already dressed up for the client’s meeting, said, “Tell your mother.”

  So Jase commed her too, then drove up the hill to Ferd’s house. Flattop Mountain was less a mountain than a long ridge that formed the southern border of the city. His father said the v
iew, which let residents watch the big freighters coming in to dock, added a zero to every house price. Jase’s mother said it was worth it. Ferd’s house was one of the more modest homes on the hill’s lower slopes. On the top were mansions. Jase’s house was somewhere in between.

  He didn’t have to com Ferd. He pulled into the driveway and beeped the horn, and several minutes later Ferd came out, hopping as he finished pulling on his shoes. He tumbled into the passenger seat as if he belonged there, then turned his wildly freckled face toward Jase.

  “Bro, that shroud. It’s just wrong.”

  Jase eyed Ferd’s neon green stretchie, decorated with a rotating spiral of DNA. It appeared to be mutating as it spun. “The suit? I was working. Everyone wears a suit to work. Your father wears a suit.”

  “Exactly. My father.”

  “Oh for . . . I’ll change later! Do you know someone who knows about drugs?”

  “I know someone who knows something about anything,” said Ferd. “Why?”

  Jase drove to a turnoff, where they could park overlooking the city. This time of day no one would be nuzzling there.

  Ferd’s eyes grew wide as Jase told him about the shootout at the border station, the girl, the pouch, and his own conclusions.

  “But if it’s something harsh I’m flushing it,” Jase finished firmly. “And if it’s as new as I think it is, it’s probably a nasty one. Because why disguise it in a medicine pouch, if it’s not so new that the border scanners can’t detect it?”

  “Let me see. It probably is new. Designer. And if the scanners can’t detect it . . .”

  Ferd untied the pouch and tipped a small sample of the powder into his hand.

  “Whoa.”

  “Do you recognize it? Know what it is?”

  “Not a clue. You’re right, it looks like dirt. A totally new drug. Bro, this is terminal! If the scanners won’t detect it . . . Well, whoa.”

  “Terminal? What happened to ’treme?”

  “’Treme is completely last year,” Ferd said. “Terminal is now the cool way to say cool.”

  “You were saying ’treme just a few days ago,” Jase protested.

  “Then it’s last week. Or month. Whatever. Focus in, bro. A designer that can pass scanners would be worth serious money!”

  “We don’t know if it can pass the scans,” Jase reminded him. “She threw it over the fence.”

  “Was she hot?” This was a question that could distract Ferd even from money.

  “Nothing special,” said Jase. “And if it’s a new designer, it’s probably harsh.”

  “Not necessarily,” Ferd said. “Buzz and Finn are designer, and they’re very mellow. Riffle and Keloscope are new, and they’re designed not to burn your brains out.”

  “I should go straight home and flush the whole package.” Jase knew he should.

  “Bro,” said Ferd, “it’s your car. I’ve got a cousin who’s in college in the city.”

  “Can he tell—”

  “No, but his roommate is a chemistry major. In more ways than one, Manny says. He’ll be able to tell us what this weird dirt of yours . . . That would be a good drug name. Dirt.”

  ***

  Jase agreed to bring the dirt to school and meet Ferd, who would provide a proper container and then get the stuff to Cousin Manny’s roommate. “He’s a chemist, bro. It’s going to take time.”

  Jase dropped Ferd off and went home, where he finally changed out of his suit while he told his mother about the shootout at the border—minus the biker drug girl and the pouch. At least it explained the sap and other stains on his suit.

  It had made the news, a biker gang and a bag of drug money that had somehow ended up flying all over the road on the Canadian side of the station. Despite all the shots that had been fired, there were only two minor injuries. No mention of a girl at all.

  “I wish you’d commed,” his mother said, her gray-green eyes serious. “I knew you’d be at the border right around that time, and I was worried.”

  “So why didn’t you com and ask if I was OK?”

  Jase pulled a stretchie over his head and felt better. Ferd was right about a suit being halfway to a shroud, but the firm’s drivers had to wear them.

  “I almost did.” His mother sighed. “But I didn’t catch the news till evening, and your father pointed out that if you had been injured we’d have been notified hours ago. I’m trying to accept the growing-up you. It’s not easy.”

  “Um, OK. Whatever.”

  It made her laugh and hug him. In front of the mirror over his dresser. And because some part of him was still thinking about the three-sixteenths comment, for the first time in years Jase noticed how much paler she was than his dark, square, undeniably Native self. That was one of the things that had made the court case so devastating—that he looked one hundred percent Alaska Native.

  He would visit his grandparents again, next weekend, Jase resolved. Even if it meant putting off finding out about the “dirt.”

  By the time he went to bed he’d stopped thinking about his grandparents, consciously, but that night he had a Native dream.

  An elderly Native woman sat in a grove of pine trees, the bushy kind that grew wild in the lower forty-eight and some places in Alaska too. The woman’s smile was warm and inviting. Grandmotherly. Jase noticed that the hovering mosquitoes left her strictly alone. And given the antique leather clothing she wore, it wouldn’t be because her repel-vacs were up-to-date.

  “Oh, carp. I know I’m feeling guilty about keeping that pouch,” Jase told her. “I admit it. But did they have to send an ancestral grandmother to scold me?”

  Her smile faded. “So you do have it. Where is it?”

  “Look,” said Jase, “if it’s something that nukes people’s brains I really will flush it. But if it’s harmless what’s the problem? Do you have any idea how much auto insurance costs for a kid my age driving a Tesla?”

  She looked confused by this, but she pulled the smile back on with an ease that made Jase wonder about its sincerity.

  “I’m not here to scold you, boy. I’m here to warn you. In a short time, if he hasn’t found you already, you’ll be approached by a very handsome young man. You mustn’t trust him!”

  “Is it his stuff? Is he a dealer?” The girl had no way to identify him . . . unless she’d seen him get into the Tesla and drive off. There were maybe a hundred Teslas in Alaska, but Jase’s was the only one old enough to have tires.

  “He’s evil,” the old woman said seriously. “He’ll try to corrupt you, and ultimately destroy you. You must not trust him. Don’t even talk to him if you can avoid it.”

  Evil and corruption were pretty much what drug dealers did. And Jase was about to become one? He should probably think about that, but for now . . .

  “OK. But if I’m supposed to avoid him, it would be nice to know what he looks like.”

  Jase would gladly avoid the person to whom that little pouch really belonged—and who’d probably just shot up a border station too! But how could a manifestation of his own subconscious warn him away from someone he’d never seen?

  To his surprise, the old woman held up cupped hands and a wavering image formed between them, like a palm-sized holo-generator.

  “That’s ’treme! Will it be on the market soon?”

  The old woman scowled. “Look at him. Has he found you yet?”

  Jase peered at the teenage boy who smiled between her hands. “No. He looks young, for a dealer. Is this a current ID?”

  The guy in the luminous image looked only a few years older than Jase, but he was man-model handsome, which was one strike against him already.

  “He’s not . . . he’s not to be trusted,” the old woman repeated firmly. “You’d be far safer if you gave us the pouch. Where are you now?”

  “How can I give you something in a dream?” Jase gestured to the woods around them. Though he was sitting in his own bed, which looked very out of place in this wild glade. “It’s back at my house,
anyway.”

  Tucked behind some half-full coolant jugs in the garage, where neither his parents or the cleaning woman ever poked around.

  “Where is your house? Are you in Whitehorse? What’s your name?”

  It seemed to Jase that his subconscious should know that already. And her grandmotherly smile had evaporated.

  “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  The way she hesitated before replying reminded him of the last lying client he’d driven.“Please, may I come to where you are? It might make this easier.”

  “Sure,” said Jase. “Why not? And make what easier?” As far as he was concerned, he could go back to sleep anytime now. This nosy grandmother was beginning to annoy him.

  For a moment he thought he’d gotten rid of her, because the woods vanished and his own room appeared around him. But then his closet door opened and the old woman stepped out. She was still clearly a Native, but the archaic leathers had turned into jeans and a rain jacket.

  “How come you came out of the closet instead of through the hall door?”

  It might have been simply because the foot of his bed faced the closet, and the hall was off to the side, but she shrugged.

  “I’d guess that’s where some of your dreams center . . . unless the pouch is in there.” She turned toward the open door, clearly ready to look.

  “Hey! Keep out of my stuff. What do you want, anyway?”

  She’d already lost interest.

  “Not there,” she murmured. “Not that it matters.” Her gaze went to the window and she frowned. “It can’t be that dark. Not in Canada, this time of year. Where are we?”

  “It’s not dark,” Jase said. “I opaqued the window. And we’re in Anchorage, not Canada.”