Idell led them to the inner door, knocked once, and then swung it open. Chrima urged Alania forward.
She and Danyl stepped into the presence of the mysterious Yvelle.
FIFTEEN
FIRST OFFICER KRANZ glared down at the man in the hospital bed—the man who shouldn’t have been there. The man who shouldn’t have been alive. He shouldn’t have been hiding in the Middens, and he definitely shouldn’t have been involved in the kidnapping of Alania. The fact that he had been—and the fact that he had apparently had company in the form of a young man the same age as Alania—made Kranz want to kill someone.
The man in the hospital bed would have been the logical choice, but unfortunately, Kranz didn’t want him dead—at least not until he’d had a chance to question him.
Which he might or might not have the opportunity to do. Medical Officer Saunders, Twelfth Tier Hospital’s Chief of Medical Staff, who had been a mere intern twenty years before when Ensign Erlkin Orillia had abducted one of the very special infants from the nursery, stood deferentially at Kranz’s right side, giving him an update on Orillia’s condition.
“. . . perforating bullet wound . . . passed through the tip of the right frontal lobe . . . no vital brain tissue impacted, but there’s swelling . . . deeply unconscious . . . time will tell.”
Phrases from the Medical Officer’s report on the damage caused to Orillia’s brain by the ricocheting bullet that had taken him down floated through Kranz’s own undamaged brain without taking purchase. He latched on to that last phrase, though.
“How much time?” he growled.
“There’s no way to know, sir,” Saunders said. “Head trauma is a tricky thing. Wounds that appear survivable often aren’t, and sometimes wounds that appear fatal prove survivable. Until he wakes up—if he wakes up—we can’t even tell how much impairment he will suffer. Even if he survives, he may not be able to provide you with the . . . intelligence . . . you require.”
Nobody in this whole City can provide me with the intelligence I require, Kranz thought savagely. Nobody in this City appears to have any. What the hell did that Provost think he was doing, firing down the tunnel when he knew Alania might be at the end?
“Keep me posted,” he said, then turned and left the room, not bothering to return the salutes from the two Provosts stationed in the hall or the additional six, his ever-present bodyguards, who fell in behind and beside him as he made his way out of the hospital and back toward Quarters Kranz. He hoped all of them were more competent than the Provosts who had gone after Alania . . . and failed so spectacularly to retrieve her.
When he reached his office on the fourth floor of Quarters Kranz a few minutes later, he found Commander Havelin waiting for him in the marble-tiled hallway outside the double doors. The doors opened automatically at Kranz’s approach; he waved Havelin through and sat down at his desk. He didn’t invite the Commander to sit. He’d already torn a strip off Havelin for what had happened in the Middens, so there was no need to rehash those events. “Where did they go?” he asked without preamble. “I’m assuming they didn’t drown themselves in the River.”
“Where they exited, there are . . . mines . . . in the lower reaches of the Middens,” Havelin said. “We thought they might have gone in there, but we explored them thoroughly, and they’re empty of life, though someone has been working them recently. There was also a pier, but no boat. That suggested a River escape, so we sent a drone down the Canyon. We didn’t spot Danyl or Alania, but we did find something unexpected: squatters in the old Whitewater Resort.”
Kranz’s eyes narrowed. “Whitewater? That place hasn’t been occupied since the River turned into the Black River. Who would live there?”
“Middens-dwellers who just kept going down,” Havelin said, contempt in his voice. “Scavenging garbage from the River, most likely. We saw some makeshift greenhouses where they must be growing food, and obviously they’re also the ones mining the base of the Middens.”
“And that’s where this mysterious youth and my ward are currently hiding?”
“I can’t confirm that, sir,” Havelin said. “But if they aren’t there, they’re dead. There’s a waterfall. And the water is foul. If they fell into it, I don’t believe they would’ve survived for long.”
“I hope for your sake,” Kranz said, “that that didn’t happen.” For all our sakes. If Alania is dead . . . He took the meteoric-iron dagger from his desk and turned it over and over in hands, which were otherwise inclined to tremble. “Assemble a force . . . an overwhelming force. Evict the squatters. Use whatever means necessary. Bring back any survivors for questioning. Rescue my ward and the boy she is with.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I want live vid of the operation streamed to my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
Havelin saluted, spun smartly on his polished boot heel, and marched out.
As the doors closed behind him, Kranz sat back. His hand clenched on the dagger’s hilt. Ex-Ensign Orillia, far from perishing in the Iron Ring, had clearly been hiding out in the Middens with Danyl, the candidate baby kidnapped two decades earlier and also presumed dead until that very morning, literally under the feet of Kranz and the Provosts. Kranz’s lips tightened. I’ve ignored the Middens too long.
Oh, there were reasons. Malcontents and troublemakers who fell out of the City and onto the garbage heap where they so richly deserved to be neatly ceased to be problems. They could not reenter the City without Passes, and their short, miserable existences trying to survive by scavenging trash seemed punishment enough. But now it seemed his laissez-faire attitude had come back to bite him. When I have Alania—when we have a new, improved Captain—we will deal with the Middens once and for all. I may not be able to empty the Canyon of trash—not yet—but I can damn well get rid of the parasites infesting it.
He tossed the dagger onto his desk and leaned forward again, flipping up one of the hidden display screens. Even with plans decades in the making and the future of the City hanging in the balance, he had a thousand administrative details to deal with.
The people of this City, he thought, just don’t appreciate how much I do for them.
Danyl followed Alania into the inner office of the exceedingly strange place in which they had found themselves, anxious to see the mysterious Yvelle, who clearly knew Erl. He couldn’t imagine who she was or why she would know anything about him, and his first sight of her did not enlighten him. She looked to be a perfectly ordinary woman, younger than Erl—perhaps in her mid-forties—with a few streaks of gray in her black hair but a mostly unlined face. She was shorter than Alania and, like Chrima, slim to the point of emaciation.
She wore a plain white blouse and a silver chain around her neck. She fingered a locket hanging from that chain as she watched Alania and Danyl enter her inner sanctum. Like the reception room, the corridor, and the large semicircular chamber, it had one glass wall showing the waterfall and the foaming black pool below it. The other walls were the same gold-speckled stone as the outer room, the carpet the same threadbare blue. The wall behind Yvelle was blank, although there were holes in it that had probably supported artwork once upon a time. The wall to their left had a row of metal cabinets missing a few doors and a sink. Two chairs of dark wood, upholstered in white, stood between them and the desk.
“Take off your backpacks and sit down,” Yvelle said without smiling.
Alania slipped out of the backpack Erl had given her—they still hadn’t had time to look inside it—and set it on the floor. She took the chair to the left, so Danyl, shrugging out of his own pack, took the chair on the right. The cracked synthileather felt hard and brittle beneath him. He wondered if either the data crystal Erl had given him or the reader that was supposedly in Alania’s pack had survived the harrowing descent down the stairs and along the River. If they had, would they really answer all h
is questions?
He doubted it. He doubted there was a data storage device in the world with enough capacity to contain answers to all the questions he had.
Nobu and Chrima lurked behind them. The imposing Idell continued to guard the door.
“Danyl,” Yvelle said. “It’s been a long time.”
“It must have been,” Danyl said, “since I didn’t know you existed until today.”
“You were a baby when I saw you last.” Yvelle turned her dark brown eyes to Alania. “You I have never seen before. Fortunately for you.”
“That sounds . . . ominous,” Alania said.
“It was meant to.” Yvelle returned her gaze to Danyl. “What did Erl tell you about me?”
“Nothing,” Danyl said. “The Provosts were at the door.”
“As they soon will be again,” Yvelle said. “A drone flew over fifteen minutes ago. Erl promised me they would not find us, but in truth I knew the moment I heard from him that this would happen. I do not expect an attack today—it will take time to organize—but I expect one tomorrow, probably as soon as it’s light.”
Danyl heard a rustle behind him and knew Nobu and Chrima had just exchanged glances.
“It’s because of me,” Alania said in a small voice. “I don’t understand any of this, but I know it’s because of me. There was an attack on Twelfth Tier, people trying to kidnap me. I ran away and ended up in the Middens by accident. Danyl and Erl rescued me, and then the Provosts came. They followed us all the way down here. I don’t know why, but they’re determined to get me back.” She took a deep breath. “Let me turn myself in.”
“No!” Danyl shot her an angry glance.
“It’s too late for that anyway,” Yvelle said in a flat voice. “By now First Officer Kranz knows that Erl hid Danyl right under his nose for twenty years. It’s no longer just about getting you, Alania. It’s about getting both of you. And he’ll stop at nothing.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell us why?” Danyl growled.
“I can’t,” Yvelle said.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t. No one has ever told me why you are so valuable. I know nothing more now than I did twenty years ago when I stole you from Twelfth Tier Hospital and handed you over to Ensign Erlkin Orillia . . . the man you know as Erl.”
Danyl felt as if he’d been sucker punched. “Twelfth Tier . . . you mean . . . I was born to an Officer?”
“I don’t know your parentage,” Yvelle said. “All I know is that there were seven candidate babies, and I was ordered to abduct the first one I found who carried certain genetic tags, as identified by a scanning device I was given. You were the first baby who tested positive for those tags, and so you were the one I abducted.”
“What about me?” Alania said.
Yvelle glanced at her. “You were missing that evening. I don’t know why.”
“That’s two of the seven,” Danyl said. “What about the other five?”
“They don’t matter,” Yvelle said flatly, but Danyl thought he saw a flicker of a shadow cross her face. She’s hiding something.
“What was the significance of the genetic tags?” he asked.
“I wasn’t told.”
“Who gave you your orders?”
“There are those,” Yvelle said, “who believe there should be a change in the way the City is governed, who do not believe we should live and die at the whim of the Captain and her hatchet man, the First Officer.”
“Rebels?” Danyl asked. His heart beat faster, and he leaned forward. “They really exist?”
“They exist,” Yvelle said. “They existed twenty years ago. They still exist. They call themselves the Free Citizens—the Free, for short. Erl was one of them, much higher up than I. He received word this morning from someone in the City—I don’t know who—about the failed attempt to abduct Alania and her completely unexpected descent to the Middens. Erl was ordered to pass you along to me . . . and I was given new orders as well, instructions for getting you to the leader of the Free, the man who gave me my mission twenty years ago. I know him only as Prime.” She looked at them both, unsmiling. “By sending you to us, Erl signed the death warrant for our little corner of freedom. We cannot stand against the Provosts. If we fight, we will die. If we flee, we will be hunted down. Our only hope is to hand both of you over to the Provosts when they arrive.”
Danyl stiffened. Nobu’s hand descended on his shoulder, pinning him to the chair. “You said it’s too late for that,” Alania said.
“I said it’s too late for you to give yourself up,” Yvelle corrected. “That wouldn’t help us; we would still be punished. But it might not be too late for us to give up both of you in exchange for leniency.”
“Erl wanted you to help us!” Danyl protested.
“I met Erlkin Orillia exactly once, the night I handed you over to him,” Yvelle said. “In twenty years, we have exchanged only a handful of messages. Occasionally his contacts in the City have provided us with necessities we could not scavenge. Occasionally he has guided someone to us whom he thought could be of help to us, someone who would otherwise have been lost to the gangs. But I built this community, not him. It’s a mean existence, scouring the Black River for whatever detritus finds its way down it from the Middens, mining the lowest levels of the garbage heap, growing what food we can in greenhouses and meatvats, but at least it’s an existence free from the heavy hand of the First Officer. For twenty years, we have been as free as any people can be in the shadow of the City. So the question I must ask myself is this: is what I have built here in the last twenty years more important than the cause in which I enlisted when I agreed to steal a baby from Twelfth Tier?”
“What will happen to us if you turn us over to the Provosts?” Alania asked.
“I don’t know,” Yvelle said. “They clearly want you alive. That does not mean you will enjoy whatever plans they have for you.”
“Then you should turn us in,” Alania said. “You should save your community.”
“No!” Danyl glared at her, then turned back to Yvelle. “No,” he repeated. “Yvelle, if we’re somehow important to the effort to overthrow the City government—I admit I don’t understand how that can be true, but clearly someone in the City thinks it is—then you can’t turn us over. Do you think Kranz will let you just sit down here in peace and quiet now that he knows you exist? If you hand us over, he’ll take us, say thank you, and then march you all back to the City as prisoners. You’re right—by sending us here, Erl has guaranteed the end of this place. But at least if you help us escape, send us on to this Prime person, then maybe the world gets that much closer to a time when no one has to fear the Provosts or Kranz’s ‘justice.’” He leaned forward. “You’ll only be buying time if you turn us in, and probably not very much of it. But if you help us escape, you may be buying freedom for everyone.” Though I can’t imagine how . . .
Yvelle lowered her eyes and fingered the locket at her throat. “I was young when I abducted you,” she said in a soft voice. “Not much older than you are now. And I did not do what I did out of any noble commitment to the cause of freedom. I did it to exact revenge. I did it because the City killed my husband, aborted my child, destroyed my life. I would have done anything to take that revenge. I did do . . . anything . . .” Her voice trailed off. She released the locket. She raised her head. “It is not entirely up to me,” she said then, her voice stronger. “I founded this community, but I am not a Captain or First Officer who rules by dictate. We must have a meeting.” She looked past him. “Chrima, will you see to it? Half an hour. No more.”
“I’ll spread the word,” Chrima said from behind them. Danyl didn’t turn around, but he heard her exit.
“Have you eaten?” Yvelle asked then.
The question startled Danyl because he realized they had; not more than three hours ago, probably less,
he’d been sitting at the dining table in the quarters he shared with Erl, as he had every day of his life. Three hours and everything had changed—though the change had really started the moment Alania fell into his world. That must have been all of five hours ago.
“Yes,” he said. “We have.”
“Then I suggest you wait here,” Yvelle said. “Nobu, stay with them. Guide them to the meeting room in half an hour.” She stood. “I need to think.” She walked past Danyl and out the door.
Danyl looked at Alania, who raised her hands in a “what now?” gesture. Then he twisted around in his chair to look at Nobu, who had said nothing to him even while they were in the shower together being disinfected. He still didn’t, staring at Danyl impassively. He was remarkably self-controlled for someone who couldn’t have been older than seventeen.
Danyl turned back to Alania. “How are you doing?” he asked.
She smiled a little. “I haven’t had enough time to think to figure that out.”
“Well,” he said, “you’ve got half an hour. As for me . . .” He sat back in the chair, rested his head on it, and closed his eyes. It had been a very strange day, and right now the best thing he could think to do was try to take a nap.
Amazingly, he succeeded.
SIXTEEN
ALANIA STARED AT the dozing Danyl and envied him. He sat with his head lolled back on the cracking white synthileather of the ancient chair, mouth slightly open, chest rising and falling steadily. She knew she could not emulate him. She fizzed with nervous energy, so much that her hands trembled.
The attack on Twelfth Tier . . . the fall into the Middens . . . the flight from the Rustbloods . . . the journey to Erl’s . . . the renewed flight down the stairs, pursued by Provosts . . . the journey down the River . . . It had all taken place over a single morning, but already her old life seemed a million miles away and a million years in the past. As for her future . . .
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