by Kate Ormand
“Where are we going?” Kean asked.
“Dagman. You’re here to watch our backs. Take my signals.”
“Yes,” Kean said, hiding the nervousness that had hit him.
The farther in you got, wending your way between the tents and dwellings, the more Cruisers there were. Beside every battle wagon stood a single guard. Beside one wagon there was no guard, since it had been transformed into a stationary caravan. It was a solar-powered vehicle, now burnt out. No one knew how to fix those things anymore. Here a Wanderer and his son were dragging a barrel on wheels, bringing back water they had bought. Hawkerman stepped to one side to let them use the narrow path they were on.
“Thanks,” the man said. “Hey—do I know you?”
Hawkerman said nothing in reply. The limit of his courtesy had been reached when he made way for them to pass. The man’s frown cleared. “Hawkerman—it’s Hawkerman, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You got any room in your team for my boy? I’m looking to place him.”
“Sorry—no room.”
“I’d make it worth your while.”
It was common practice for families to apprentice their children to the top teams in return for goods. Hawkerman did not give the offer a second thought.
“I said no room.”
“Oh. That’s a pity. Sorry to trouble you.”
Hawkerman smiled politely. The boy kept his head down, and Kean was sure he was blushing. The father added to his son’s mortification by continuing the conversation. “Where you off to? Trading?”
Hawkerman only gave him a short smile and waited for space on the path.
When they were out of earshot, he said to Kean, “Never tell anyone your business ’less you have to. Most times when you give out information, you’re losing something and gaining nothing in return.”
“Yeah …” Kean was thinking. “Hawkerman?”
“Yes?”
“All those years ago … why did you bring me into the team?”
Hawkerman glanced at him, not surprised, not unfriendly.
“I didn’t bring you into the team. Cara did.”
He said no more, and kept to the principle of being economical with information when they came to the guard huts around the main well and Dagman’s residence, low down where the lake had been deepest. To Kean, the building was like a mansion, and the variously shaped metal props that supported it, put in over the years, made it all the more impressive. Five Cruiser guards sat in shade under the bowed veranda. Two of them were braiding their long hair, which was worn in a tight bun under their steel caps, both as padding and as insulation against the sun’s heat. When Hawkerman and Kean were close, two of the Cruisers got to their feet.
“Frumitch,” Hawkerman said.
“And who are you?” the younger of the Cruisers asked.
“He’s called Hawkerman,” the other told him. “Go get Frumitch.”
The young Cruiser bent and ducked through the low cat-hide door, and they all waited without words. Eventually a truly repulsive figure came out with the Cruiser. It was not just that he was squat and covered in some form of naturally recurring blisters, for physical defects were not remarkable here: it was the evil that lived in his eyes like a slow-moving worm.
“Hawkerman,” he said in a light voice that had a trace of a lisp. A fragment of metal shone in his mouth: a cosmetic implant in an incisor.
“Frumitch. It’s been some time.”
“So you want something.”
“I want some words with Dagman.” Hawkerman reached into his bag and brought out a knife, a simple kind used by the poorer people and also as a cheap article for purposes of trading.
“I got a million of them,” Frumitch said without expression.
“And you’d like a million more.”
“Well, there is that.”
Frumitch took the bribe and led the way through a dark anteroom into a series of passages. Kean saw steps leading up to the warehouse above this floor, and then they came to another, even darker room. It was the one that housed Dagman. Frumitch pulled back the hanging over the door.
“Hawkerman. I told him it wasn’t a good time, but he was insistent.”
A voice came out of the darkness. “Is it day or night?” It was a deep voice, thick and somehow soiled, Kean thought.
“It’s day, Dagman,” Frumitch lisped back.
“Better be good, then. I’m ready to sleep.”
Tinder flared and a taper was lit and applied to a lamp. The room must have been in the middle of the shack for there was no window and precious little air in here. It took Dagman some seconds to get the lamp lit, and as he did, Kean studied him in the fragile, wavering light from the taper. The top Cruiser had affixed no metal to the voluminous leather shift he wore, and he was naked underneath. Flesh hung down from his upper arms like sleeves full of fat, and his greasy hair tumbled down unbraided so that he resembled an enormous and extremely dangerous old woman. He was around fifty years old, with a heavy, crumpled face that crushed down onto a wide undershot jaw like a bulldog’s, with one wayward brown tooth sticking upward out of it. They said he liked his charjaw meat to rot a little before he ate it, so it was softer. You could smell his breath from here. The lamp at last took light, and he leaned back again, half falling onto the pile of skins that was his bed. More skins lined both floor and walls. It was like being in a savage creature’s den. The lamp lit only a small area of the room.
“Come where I can see you.”
Hawkerman and Kean stepped forward.
“Who’s the boy?” Dagman sounded tired and uninterested.
“One of my team.”
“He’s very white.”
“Yes.”
“Why’s he here?”
“He’s my witness. You’ve got yours.” Hawkerman jerked a thumb at Frumitch, behind them.
“He’s got someone else here, too,” Kean blurted out. His sharp eyes had picked out movement in the far corner of the room; it had seemed like one of the hangings on the wall had eased itself across into the darkest spot of all.
“How do you get eyes that good?” Dagman asked.
For a moment Kean thought it might be Snakebite lurking there, having somehow beaten them to his master. Then the figure detached itself from the shadows and stepped forward. It was a big man, broader than Snakebite, and strangely stooped. He was hidden under a buckskin cloak and a hood that reached so far forward that for all you could see into its depths, there might have been no face within it at all.
“You got anyone else here?” Hawkerman asked with a trace of sarcasm. He was apparently not surprised that Dagman had a bodyguard or assassin near his side.
“No, since you ask. He won’t bother us. What’s the deal, Hawkerman?”
“It’s a problem.”
“What problem?”
Hawkerman told, carefully and concisely, the events that had transpired between him and Snakebite. When he was done, Dagman closed his heavy eyelids and ruminated. After a second or two, he said, “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“Snakebite will come along with his account of the story. I want your guarantee that if he makes it a vendetta, you won’t back him—and I want him to know it.”
“Why wouldn’t I back him? Facing down a Cruiser, making use of his transport—that could give men the wrong kind of message. I can’t guarantee you anything that would hurt business, you know that.”
Then we’re all going to die, Kean thought. It didn’t seem possible it was going to end like this. They should have stayed in the outlands and never returned.
Hawkerman’s tone was as flat as before. “What’s bad for business is Cruisers messing with what they don’t understand.” He got down on his haunches to look Dagman full in the eye. “Out there are all the goods you haven’t already got. Out there, we have to look after the things that look after us, or we can’t make it back with the goods. It’s just that simple. You don’t trade water
in the flatlands. It’s the one thing you offer. You don’t tear down whole trees and burn them. He didn’t know the rules, so he paid.” He got up again and waited.
Dagman considered the angles. His eyes came up and fixed on Kean. “What’s your opinion on this?”
Kean looked at Hawkerman, whose gaze did not deviate from Dagman. He trusts me, Kean realized.
“Well,” he said, and thought of a saying of Hawkerman’s: Don’t waste lies where they’re not necessary. He said again, slowly, “Well … the country out there, it’s hostile, and it’s big. I mean really big. When you travel, you know how big it is.”
Dagman waited, but Kean left it at that. He had almost forgotten about the hooded man when there came a short bark of laughter from him. Dagman turned his heavy head to the man and then back to Kean, and he was smiling, too, showing his few teeth. “You’re saying we should know our limitations—stick to running the Lakes?”
“Um … well … maybe I am.”
“Maybe you’re right, too.”
Hawkerman said, “I wanted you to have this.” He took from his bag Snakebite’s belt. “It’s the tax your man paid, for getting things wrong. Now we’re here at the Lakes and asking for a ruling from you, so we pay our taxes to you. Like always. You see, nothing has changed. I have respect.”
“Respect? You certainly got nerve,” Dagman said, and began to shake with laughter. Kean had not known how tense Hawkerman was until he felt the team leader relax at his side. Dagman stopped laughing. “You steal the thing he values most and you give it to me. That’s very appealing.”
“Well, seemed to me, if you haven’t got a use for it, Snakebite could pay you plenty to get it back.”
“Oh yes!” The chieftain laughed again. “He will want it back!”
“You tell him he’s on his own in all this.” Hawkerman tossed the belt to Dagman.
“I will do that,” Dagman said, admiring the belt in his hands. “But if there’s killing and you start it, we do not have a deal.”
“I understand you,” Hawkerman said coolly. He nodded to Dagman, and they left the room with Frumitch. There was no doubt in Kean’s mind that in that room, men had died in violent circumstances, and he was glad to be out of it.
SEVEN
When they were safely away from the dwelling, Kean said, “Snakebite has a lot of men. Shouldn’t you have finished him off when you took his belt?”
“You ever going to learn anything? There’s no percentage in putting yourself in the wrong. You listen to me: Snakebite can’t just come on in while we’re here and cut us up. Not at the Lakes. They belong to Dagman when all’s said and done, and he’s going to tell Snakebite to hold back, because if Cruisers go around the Lakes killing for personal reasons, it damages confidence in them. Scares people off. See, Kean, once you start to do business, there are little rules that come into being everywhere.”
“Yes. I guess so.”
“Now, first thing Snakebite’s going to do is go right to Dagman and say, ‘Look how bad I was treated,’ and when he’s done that, he’s finished because Dagman’s greedy and took the belt. To keep it or barter it back, he has to believe he has a right to it in the first place—so that means he has to go along with my side of the story.”
“If it had been me, I’d never have brought us back here.”
“I don’t give up my way of life for scum like Snakebite.” Hawkerman tapped him lightly on the back. “You did well in there. Knew where to start and where to stop.”
Kean was pleased.
If you were this good at skin maintenance, it was quite easy to save a little filler during lessons. Essa needed less than anyone else, and the extra she secreted in a spare container she strapped under her tunic. Getting hold of maps and duty rosters was harder, and eventually she realized she had to learn them by heart at the workshop and from the copies Bonix was allowed to keep at home. He was delighted at her diligence in learning her trade, so there was no need to be secretive there. Getting herself put down for duty during a Feast Day was the easiest thing of all, since every Arconian wanted to be present at the games in the Measureless Chamber, and those that couldn’t fit in there created their own sports events in other arenas.
She had discovered a ten-minute opportunity on the third level, when the corridors around the Archive should be empty. Twenty minutes later, there came another ten minutes without passing patrols. There would still be a guard on the doors, but she had no need of doors. Not now.
It was corner work. Only the fear factor gave her doubt in her ability to cut a right-angle flap close to the floor at the junction where the Archive met with the Conference Chamber. Right around the next corner were more guards on the door of the Conference Chamber. None of the Pacifiers would leave their posts—not for anything, she kept telling herself. She was going to learn all she could about Arcone, and if it took more than one of these forays to do it, well, so be it. The days of blind duty were done.
Everything went smoothly. Walking the corridors, timing her moves up the ramps to the third level—getting into place, at least, was easy. But she felt so exposed under the permanent phosphor lights. She was about to become a criminal. She walked past the doors to the Archive, carrying her notes tablet as a talisman to ward off questioning. Head held high, she went past the two guards and turned into the last corridor. Ahead of her was the corner, getting nearer and nearer: her destination and her destiny.
Now she could see nothing else. She couldn’t even hear well with the blood that was pounding in her head. The corner had not been rebonded for a long time, she realized, so her task would be easier than it might have been. She knelt down and took out her scalpel. Hesitated. This was it.
“Elessa, of Bonix and Marran.”
The quiet and terrible statement came, it seemed, almost at her shoulder. She jumped to her feet, the speed of her movement betraying her guilt, she was sure, and turned to the voice, already knowing who it was.
Grollat.
He had no particular expression on his face, and there were no clues in his dark, deep voice, either.
“What are you doing, Elessa?”
“I—I saw an imperfection. I wanted a closer look.”
“It’s not usual for a scout to make examinations while holding a scalpel. And if I had not arrived at the moment that I did, what would you have done with the scalpel?”
She blundered on desperately. “I thought I might see whether there was plastic fatigue—farther in.”
He said dryly, “How much farther in?”
She had the sense not to say anything now. Silence, the refuge of the frightened criminal.
Grollat held out his hand for the scalpel. “Give it to me.”
She did so, wordlessly.
He contemplated the razor-sharp implement, turning it this way and that in his hand. “I could make you tell more lies. There’s a skill to it—leading the victim on. Or I could have waited until you cut the wall. Until you could see into the Archive itself. Then what would your punishment have been?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.” He eyed her dispassionately. “But I didn’t do those things. Come with me.”
“Where?” Oh no—why did she always speak before thinking?
He was walking away. Should she run? Where? There was nowhere she could hide and no one who would hide her. He knew it and did not look back. She hurried to catch up with him and walked by his side.
They passed the Pacifiers at the Archive doors and walked the winding corridors until they reached the ramp that curved down to the next level. Along a hallway, down another level, passing the stupendous walls of the Measureless Chamber. From it the shouts and calls of the hundreds of spectators rang out through the empty walkways they negotiated at the main junction. The sound was so animated that Essa could almost picture the colorful scene in the arena, with families leaping up from their seats on the stands to urge on their favorites in some race or game. She could have been in there right now,
celebrating, carefree, only a very small part in the scheme of things but a person who belonged. Instead, she was going with this fearsome man to—what? And where?
Grollat stopped at a lift portal. Once the few lifts had been powered; now they were operated by a pulley system. Two of his men stood guard at the opening. Grollat nodded to them, and one of them called down the shaft, “Gather up!”
Essa waited with Grollat until the tall rectangular box rose up into place. It was propelled by a Pacifier who hauled at one of the two synthetic chains at the side of the lift. When it came to a stop, perfectly aligned in the portal, Grollat took Essa by the arm and they stepped in.
“Pull below,” Grollat ordered, and the attendant took the other chain, bent down, and pulled. They began to descend the dimly lit shaft. But where were they going? She opened her mouth to speak, and at the same instant, Grollat shook his head at her and turned his eyes to the Pacifier. She shut her mouth.
They passed another portal, and Essa saw a reservoir engineer going by in the corridor, recognizable by the waterproof tunic he wore. So—that was it. They were going down to the reservoir, and she would be incarcerated in one of the cells …
However, when they stopped and left the lift, they were in a wide hallway facing a single door. There were no guards here. This was one of the few doors that had a lock, and Grollat took out a key. On one side the hallway opened into a corridor; the other side was blocked by one of the cumbersome pillars that rose through the center of Arcone on the lower levels.
Grollat pushed the door open and walked in. Essa followed.
They were in the main room of a three-chamber apartment. It was brightly lit by a whole series of phosphor globes in the ceiling, which seemed strange here, since there was some kind of window, a long thin one in the far wall, which let in yet more light. Had the apartment belonged to Essa, she would have left it as dim as possible; as it was, you saw all too clearly how messy the place was. Clothes were scattered on the couch along with an unfinished plate of food. The walls were devoid of decoration, and there was a layer of dust on the floor.