Law of Survival
Page 28
“You are unwell, Kièrshia? You do not act as bold as I have seen you at the embassy.” Dathim’s appearance seemed to alter his voice, making it sound merely foreign rather than alien. Deep. Rich. Not quite the twin of John’s inestimable bass, but definitely a sibling.
“I’ve had a very long day, ní Dathim.” Jani broke contact with the probing stare. And you’re making it longer. “You said you had something to give me, from Nema.” She reverted to English, since sitting cross-legged on a couch didn’t lend itself to proper Vynshàrau Haárin language postures. “Could you give it to me, please?”
“Yes.” Dathim twisted around, reached over the side of the couch, and came up holding a large idomeni-style briefbag. “NìRau Tsecha said that you will know what to do with these.” He dropped the bag in the empty expanse between him and Jani. “I know what to do with them as well, but nìRau Tsecha does not trust my judgment. This is most unfortunate—I must ponder ways to earn his trust, and truly.”
Jani watched Dathim as he unclasped the bag’s complicated fasteners. Did I just hear an Haárin employ sarcasm? He appeared perfectly serious, but Jani seldom met an idomeni who didn’t. Nema bared his teeth more than most of his race and took pride in the fact that he had a sense of humor and knew how to use it, but he was an exception to every idomeni rule. And now there’s Dathim Naré. The fact that he and Nema had found one another made her head ache. “Most as your dominant, ní Dathim, you possess a capacity to surprise.”
“Surprise is a good thing, is it not, Kièrshia? A good thing for gaining humanish attention, and truly.” Dathim undid the last fastener and pushed back the flap. “Surprise!”
Jani looked into the bag, and saw files and data wafers inserted in an array of upright pleated pockets. Files in burgundy folders. Files in white folders with burgundy trim. One file in a black folder. She tried to speak, but couldn’t think of anything to say that Dathim would understand, even taking into account his expertise in sarcasm.
“Oh shit, Jan.” Steve had wandered over to the couch. “Those are bloody Exterior Ministry Exec files.”
The words “Exterior Ministry” brought Lucien out of his chair. He lifted one of the files out of its pocket, looked at the information tab that ran across the top, and shoved it back into place as though the paper stung to the touch. “I don’t know about the rest of those files, but that one is classified ‘For Ministers’ Eyes Only.’ At this moment, we’re all facing at least twenty years in prison for violating the Commonwealth Secrets Act.”
Jani looked at Dathim, who had resumed his cross-legged sprawl and looked extremely pleased with himself. “How did you steal these documents? More importantly, why did you steal these documents?”
“I took them out of Anais Ulanova’s office. NìRau Tsecha wanted to learn more of your shooting, and believed that Anais Ulanova would possess information.” He still watched Jani with interest, studying her reactions to his every revelation. “I was taken there to look at places to lay my tile. I examined the lobby, but the tilework that nìaRauta Ulanova wanted there was not suitable, so they took me to look at the conference room that was connected by a door to her office. She had many stacks of files on her desk. I took something from each stack.”
Lucien slumped back into his chair. “I told her for years to seal that damned door.”
Dathim finally used an Haárin gesture, a brush of his open right hand across his shirtfront that indicated relief. “I am most glad she did not listen to you, Lieutenant Pascal, and truly.”
A glimmer of liveliness returned to Lucien’s face. Oh yes, the fact that Dathim recognized him definitely pleased him. “You know me?”
“I have seen you at the embassy, with nìRau Tsecha. And alone. The lieutenant who remembers what he sees.” Dathim regarded Lucien less intently than he did Jani. If he noticed Lucien’s fascination with him, he gave no indication. But then, odds were overwhelming that he had no experience with human sexuality or any idea what that captivation implied.
“When Anais figures out that you rifled her office, and she will, Commonwealth–Shèrá relations are going to get interesting. I think the term ‘major diplomatic incident’ is applicable here.” Jani fingered through the files. “And nìRau Nema expects me to do what with these? Return them?”
“Yes.” Dathim gave a human-style shrug. “He said that you would see to them. He called this an ‘incident,’ too. He said that he is quite good at them.”
“Oh, yeah.” Jani glanced up at Steve, who looked sick to his stomach.
“We could turn them over to someone in my department.” Lucien spoke to Jani, but he looked at Dathim. “Certain people owe me favors. It would be a no-questions-asked return. The best way to go about this, in my opinion.”
Jani pretended to consider Lucien’s offer, then shook her head. “If Service Intelligence turns them in, Exterior is going to think they took them in the first place. Service and Exterior are just starting to get along again—I don’t think we want to risk scuttling any tenuous truces over this.” In truth, she didn’t want Intelligence sticking their nose in. Not after the way they bobbled her parents’ transfer. This needs to be handled by someone I trust. Someone she could…persuade. She knew where she needed to go—she just needed to get there without tipping off Lucien.
“One of the ministry Doc Controls?” Angevin had joined Steve, placing herself in such a way that he hid her from Dathim’s view. “Stuff happens. ‘So-and-so left her briefbag behind after a meeting’ is the standard excuse. The Ministries exchange unauthorized acquisitions all the time.”
But the Ministries won’t let me analyze these files before I give them back. Jani closed the bag flap and dragged the strap over her shoulder. “I’ll think of something.” She stood, not quite as shakily as Lucien, and limped across the room toward the kitchen. “Steve, run interference for ní Dathim while he leaves.” She pushed past the sliding door, then leaned against the counter until she could dredge up the strength to walk to the cooler. “I just need some juice.” And one of John’s meal bars. That would provide enough energy to get her through the next few hours. “Hours.” She yawned as she cracked the seal of a dispo of lemon tonic.
Jani had leaned her head back to drink when she heard the kitchen door open. She didn’t bother to turn around. If it was Angevin or Steve, the melodious howls of shock and dismay would soon fill the air, and if it was Lucien…. She felt her body tighten in anticipation of his touch, and gave herself a mental swift kick.
“You are not as you should be.”
Jani’s throat stopped in mid-swallow. Her head came down, luckily over the sink. She spewed, coughed, and sneezed tonic—the bubbly astringency filled her nostrils and burned her sinuses. Her eyes teared as though she wept—she felt the damaged right film split. “Damn—!” She grabbed for the sinkside dispenser, yanked napkin after napkin, blew her nose and wiped her face. Then she turned, taking care to cover her exposed eye.
Dathim stood just inside the doorway. The prospect of entering a humanish kitchen seemed to have tempered his boldness. He touched the edge of a counter, the handle of a cupboard door. “I surprised you again.” Then he drew his hand back and examined his fingertips, as though he expected the contact to leave a mark. “You surprise easily, and truly.”
Jani watched in amazement as Dathim opened a drawer and removed a serving fork. “Is there nothing you fear, ní Dathim?” She spoke in Vynshàrau Haárin, so that her words would better express her shock at his actions.
“I am already damned, according to the Oligarch. What difference?” Dathim turned the fork over, then returned it to its holder and slid the drawer closed. “This kitchen is cleaner than I expected. We are told that humanish leave their food on the counter for the insects and the parasites to season.”
“We sometimes leave out food, but it’s covered. The production is tightly controlled and the food itself is treated, so there are no parasites.” Jani gestured around her. “Do you see any insects?”
“I fell on my knee. It is as nothing.”
“Lieutenant Pascal was hurt.”
“Yes. He was shot in the lower abdomen. As you saw, he is weak, but he will recover.”
“He stares at me.”
Jani racked her brain for the right words. “He has never seen an Haárin with short hair.”
“Ah.” Dathim brushed his hand over his stubble. “You have damaged your eye?”
“Yes.” Jani probed behind the dispo to wipe away a film fragment that had slithered down her cheek.
“Then you must be in pain.”
“No.”
“Eyes hurt when they are damaged.”
“I’m all right.”
Dathim’s lips curved in a disturbingly human-like smile. “You have eyes like mine, but you do not want me to see them. You are my dominant according to nìRau Tsecha, but it shames you to look as I do. Just like nìRau Tsecha. He takes an Haárin name, but he lives as born-sect, because to live as I do would shame him.”
Jani shifted her footing to take the weight off her aching knee. “Shame has nothing to do with it, ní Dathim.” She waited for her knee to stop throbbing before she risked speaking again—the pain made her voice shake. “I am not your dominant. I am a humanish female who had an accident. The way my doctor chose to repair me resulted in genetic changes that have led to my looking a little like you. That’s all.”
“NìRau Tsecha chose you before you had your accident. He believed you could lead us through difficult times. Those are his words. I have never led, so I must submit to his experience in such things.” Dathim took one step farther into the kitchen, then another. He opened the cooler, removed a dispo of grapefruit juice, and studied the label.
Sarcasm. Jani hoisted her lemon tonic to brave another sip—
“You look most odd standing there with one hand over your eye.”
—and brought it back down just as quickly. “Ní Dathim—”
Before Jani could finish, Dathim strode across the narrow kitchen, grabbed her wrist, and yanked down.
“You—!” Jani threw the dispo into the sink and let the bag slide to the floor, then used her freed hand to try to loosen the Haárin’s brutal grip. She wanted to use her legs and teeth as well, but she didn’t want the sounds of a fight to reach the sitting room.
Then she looked up into Dathim’s face, saw his bared teeth, and stopped struggling. “Let. Me. Go.”
“Green. Not a common color for Vynshàrau, except near the north where our lands border those of the Oà. Many Oà have green eyes.” Dathim pushed up Jani’s sleeve, revealing her healed à lérine scars. Then he released her and took a step back. His air of self-satisfaction dissipated. “Which eye is the fake, Kièrshia?” He lapsed into his language. The pitch of his voice turned guttural. His shoulders rounded. “Decide, or leave the Haárin be. Leave nìRau Tsecha be. He fights his suborn because of you. He fights everyone because of you.”
“Sànalàn? He’s fighting Sànalàn?” Jani massaged her right wrist, which bore the imprint of Dathim’s fingers. “It’s because of what he said at the meeting, isn’t it? I knew she’d be angry, but I didn’t think she’d challenge him.”
“It is another incident.” Dathim resumed both his English and his examination of the kitchen appliances, opening the door to the oven and looking inside. “In truth, Shai will not approve this fight, but nìRau Tsecha will not retract his acceptance.” He ran a finger along the inside of the oven, like a chef performing inspection. “He does this for you. What do you do for him?”
“I never asked him to do this for me. I never asked him to do anything. He never asked me, either. He just told me, ‘This is what you will be!’” Jani heard her voice fill the small room, knew it carried to three pairs of ears beyond, and didn’t care. “I am unfit to lead. I have no skill in government. I have a past that makes me dangerous to know. I want to be left alone.”
“You want to be left alone.” Dathim opened another cupboard and removed a prepack dinner from the shelf. “Yet when nìRau Tsecha gives you documents and says, ‘Dispose of them,’ I do not hear you say no. Such causes me to think that you do not wish to be so alone, no matter what you say. Such humanish confusion—it is not sound. You need to decide, Kièrshia.” He stood quietly and read the back of the package, as if he had no interest in Jani’s reply.
Jani watched him study the container, return it to its place, and remove another. “What do you want, ní Dathim?” Her fatigued brain traveled in loops and whorls, driven by anger and confusion. “Why are you doing this?”
Dathim closed the cupboard and turned to face her. Over the past minutes, he had performed acts that would have earned him expulsion from his enclave, yet he seemed as relaxed as if he had just arranged his tools or worked some tile. “I tire of sneaking off the embassy grounds in the night. I want to visit this damned cold place in the day. I want to sell my tilemastery here. I want to live here. Many of us wish the same.”
“You want to leave the embassy grounds?” Jani watched as Dathim nodded. “Cèel will never allow you to establish an enclave in Chicago, and neither will my government.”
“What Cèel wants is of no consequence. And if the things we offer please humanish enough, they will let us come, because they want what pleases them. But if they hesitate, you will persuade them, Kièrshia, that such is the proper thing to do. They will listen to you, because your past makes you dangerous to know, and because they smell the blood of Knevçet Shèràa when you speak.” Dathim offered another close-lipped smile. “It is past our time to establish an enclave here. Even when humanish lived outside Rauta Shèràa before the war, they did not extend us an invitation to live here. And many of us wanted to come.” He looked around the kitchen as though it were land he wished to purchase, then at Jani, his smug attitude returned. “Surprise, ná Kièrshia. You will soon not be alone.”
CHAPTER 23
Dathim left quietly, a reluctant Steve at his back. Angevin, rattled unto silence, adjourned to Jani’s desk and poked through the dwindling stacks. Lucien remained in his chair, gaze moving briefly to Jani before settling with eerie concentration toward the door.
Jani sought refuge in her bedroom. She refilmed her eye, then focused on the mechanical task of transferring the Exterior documents from the idomeni briefbag to her duffel. When Dathim’s parting words threatened to punch through her thought barrier, she dropped a file or fussed with a clasp to ward them off. The ploy even worked the first few times she tried it—
You will soon not be alone.
—but it couldn’t work forever.
She sat on the edge of the bed and pushed up her right sleeve. Her scars caught the light like silken threads. She could imagine the skin reddened where Dathim had grabbed her, even though the impress of his fingers had long since faded.
Which eye is the fake, Kièrshia?
Jani blinked slowly, mindful of the fresh filming. “They both are, strictly speaking.” She tugged the sleeve back into place, then dragged her duffel onto her lap and closed the fasteners. “That’s what happens when your doctor builds you from whatever he finds in his basement.” She tried to smile, but Dathim’s words persisted in her head.
They will listen to you…because they smell the blood of Knevçet Shèràa when you speak.
Jani sat quietly. Then she pushed her duffel back onto the bed, rose, and walked to her closet.
Her knee griped as she stood on her toes to reach the toiletry case, which taunted her from its resting place in the rear of the shelf. She tested the hanger bar for strength, then braced her left foot against the wall and pulled herself up, a move to which both her lower back and sore shoulder took vigorous exception.
She opened the bag slowly, as though she expected the contents to leap out at her. She put on the redstone r
ing—it slid easily on the third finger of her right hand, as it had for months. The soulcloth, she looped around her left wrist like a bracelet in the manner of a Vynshàrau soldier reclaiming his soul after a battle. Her long-dried blood had stiffened the fabric, making the tying difficult. She finally settled for winding the loose ends around the length and tucking them.
She stood and regarded her changed hands. John had switched out her left arm several times that summer, for reasons he had refused to make clear at the time. But now she could see—he had needed to play catch-up with the rapid changes her real arm had undergone. The longer, thinner fingers. The narrowed palms. The brown skin tinged with gold, as though she suffered from liver disease.
Jani held her left wrist up to her nose and sniffed the bracelet. The cloth smelled old, musty. Cold, if an odor could be classified that way. “The blood lost its smell long ago.” She pulled the cloth from her wrist and the ring from her finger and thrust them back in the bag. Then she shoved the bag as far as she could into a dark corner of the shelf.
The night had grown cold and crisp; the dry air pulled the moisture from her eyefilms. Jani tugged up the field jacket collar, wishing she’d thought to stuff a pair of gloves in the pockets. Her stomach grumbled, and she rummaged through her duffel for one of John’s meal bars. The fact that she had crammed the Exterior files into the bag complicated the search, already made difficult by the dark and her fatigue-dulled attention span. She pulled up beside a chrysanthemum-filled planter to search more easily.