Melni clenched her fists to stop them shaking. “At first, you said?”
“The tone changed as soon as Captain Liso beat them to the Desolation. A formal request for a summit was made, by Alia Valix herself. Top-level diplomats from the Northern Triumvirate and our Presidium will meet in four days in Fineva. Alia Valix has asked to speak to both sides.”
The motivation, the ramifications, eluded Melni. Too many things were happening at once. “Why?”
“Speculate.”
Not this again. She tried, as she often had when sitting alone at night in her flat, to think as Alia Valix. Airships, police in relentless pursuit, the attack on Anim’s listening post, and then a fleet of warships chasing this submersible to the dividing line. Right to the edge of war. Yet the instant Caswell crosses to the South, she asks for a summit. She knows she has lost, Melni thought. But has she, really? The North had enough might to get their supposedly kidnapped employee back. Maybe Valix didn’t want to risk him dying in a full-scale battle. But that didn’t resolve, either. They’d tried their hardest to kill him in Combra. They’d come perilously close. Why stop now?
She said, “Valix is afraid of what he might tell us. They could come after him, kill him, but not quickly enough. Not now.”
Silence from the other end.
Melni went further. Alia Valix, always one step ahead of everyone. “So…whatever he might give us, she…she is going to give it to us first. That must be it. Own the conversation, take away the value he provides, the leverage he gives us.”
“Not bad, Agent Sonbo.”
“What will the speech be about?”
“Nobody knows. Except perhaps for the man with you. If he really is her top scientist—”
“That part is birdshit. Forgive my language. He is an assassin. He was there to kill her.”
“Are you so sure? Absolutely sure, Agent?”
The question, the tone, made Melni pause.
Before she could reply, the stern voice from Riverswidth went on. “You just happened upon this ‘assassin’ inside the supposedly impregnable Think Tank, which I may add you also just happened to gain entry to simultaneously. Two incursions on the same night? And there is just enough birdshit oddities in this man’s story to keep us confused but curious? You will forgive us if we are skeptical.”
“I…are you saying it is all a ruse? They have tried to kill us at every turn.”
“And just barely missing, at every turn.”
Melni swallowed. She considered that, refused to believe it. She’d been there. Herself, shot through the arm. Caswell, even now, near death in the medical berth three decks below. “To what end?”
“I should think exactly the end we now fall helplessly toward. A Valix operative, from the Think Tank to inside Riverswidth in less than a week’s time. A brilliant plan, is it not? Worthy of a genius, you might say.”
The floor beneath Melni’s feet seemed to drop away from her, and not from any motion of the boat. Her stomach twisted in knots. A cold sweat suddenly coated her brow, her neck, her arms, as if pushed out by the pressure within. She gripped the edges of the table until her knuckles turned white as snow.
“Are you there, Agent?” the voice asked.
“What am I to do now?” Melni asked through gritted teeth. She saw her own career, not just her covert mission in Combra but the entirety of it, ending. “Do you want me to kill him? Say his injuries were fatal?”
“If you do that I am certain the summit will be canceled, and I would very much like to hear what Valix has to say.”
“What do you plan to do, then?”
“Ah,” the stern voice replied. “Here is the runner now with a reply from the Chamber.”
The dull hum of static filled Melni’s ears as the woman apparently read the leadership’s response.
“Exactly as I had hoped,” the woman finally said. “14772, I have revised orders for you.”
“Prepared to comply, with gratitude,” Melni said automatically, picturing herself entering Caswell’s room and covering his mouth and nose until the life drained from him.
“The man with you will be,” the woman said, “brought here. To Riverswidth.”
Melni let go of the desk. “Is that not exactly what you just—”
“Precisely, Agent.”
“I do not follow.” But she did, in her heart. She understood exactly what they intended to do. She pictured Caswell, shivering, naked, chained up and groveling for rancid food in one of those dank cells above Riverswidth.
“Should he wake you are to maintain the impression that he is seen as friendly. Tell him you have resources here that can help both you and him accomplish your missions. Should he suspect our true intentions you will apprehend him and bring him in against his will. Either way, we shall learn everything we can from him before this summit takes place. Does that resolve?”
Melni’s gaze slid to the bracelet. That small betrayal, that infernal seed. “It resolves,” she said.
—
He woke once, a few hours later. Confused, brow beaded with sweat, lips pale and as thin as his eyes. He kept those eyes closed despite the dark room and managed only to whisper a single question: “Did she survive?”
“She did,” Melni told him. “In fact she has invited both sides to a summit. In a neutral place, four days from now.”
“Four days,” he repeated. He repeated it several times, and this seemed to content him.
Caswell drifted back into his fitful sleep after that.
He did not wake again on the sub. Nor during transfer to the WS Bright Fragment, a sleek new warship named for the famous folktale. Nor during the day and night that followed as the massive boat powered along the Lungwyn coast toward South Vorseland and finally to Dimont.
Bright Fragment was a massive ship with a full hospital. They gave Melni her own quarters, then confined her there for the voyage. The captain and her senior crew were kind enough, but it had become clear to Melni within a few minutes of stepping aboard that, at least while Caswell remained comatose, she was to be treated as potentially under the influence of the enemy.
She could not find it within herself to blame them. More unsettling than this treatment was the promise of what waited within the soaring towers of Riverswidth, only just visible on the dusty horizon out her porthole window.
Melni’s mission, so near success, had in truth been a failure. Alia, Valix Corp., the NRD…all of them had known of her role and the turning of Onvel from very early on. Every thing she’d reported, every scrap of intelligence slipped into that drawer in Croag & Daughters, was now just so much paper. All of it would be considered unreliable, useless.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, she might now be bringing a trained killer into the very heart of the Southern opposition. The fact that this possibility had never even occurred to her hurt her most of all. She felt like a fish swimming with serpents. A child among adults, sipping juice while they drank cham, speaking as if she knew everything there was to know and not realizing just how shallow that well really was.
She opened her window to breathe the air coming in off the azure waters. It smelled less of the ocean and more the machinery of the ship. She stayed anyway, eyes closed and nose poked proudly through the opening, until the first scents of her homeland came carried in on the warm breeze. Pleasant smells, a flood of nostalgia. The scents of home, of childhood, of memory. Dust and sand and baked bricks. Olives and spices beyond count. Phantom scents, she felt sure, but memory had a way of filling in such blanks and she had no desire to complain.
She was home. A second-class desoa, maybe, but she was home.
Whatever they planned to do with her, this at least they could not take away. She would face their questions and whatever consequences followed, and with any luck, she’d be dismissed to a civilian life. She could see her sister again, perhaps repair the rift that had formed between them so many years ago. She’d never see the man Caswell again, or know his fate, of that she fe
lt sure. The mystery would grate on her for the rest of her life, but at least it would be a life lived out of danger. Unless the North came. Airships and soldiers and naval monstrosities all powered by equipment directly or indirectly invented by Alia Valix, the woman Melni had been sent to spy on. To convert, if possible. Interrogate and eliminate if not.
Instead she’d made a gigantic mess of things, left the South’s espionage apparatus in Combra in tatters, and brought home a mystery man who might in fact be a carefully placed weapon.
“Meiki Sonbo.” She whispered her own name, her real one, to the sprawling skyline of Dimont. She hadn’t used the name in years, hadn’t even realized she’d given Captain Liso her assumed identity. It had become automatic to do so.
A long sigh escaped her lips. She’d have to forget everything, she thought, but only after they were done asking questions of Melni Tavan. Until then, she decided, she would keep the name, if only for herself. If only to remember.
Once in harbor she was transferred again, this time to a small craft of nondescript coloration and marking. She took a seat in a common room just behind the control area and avoided eye contact with the plain-clothed crew. Whether Caswell was aboard, or if they planned to question him on the warship, she had no idea. They took his bag from her before she left. She wondered what they’d make of the strange assortment of supplies inside.
Soon the little craft turned and weaved away from the huge military ship and began the winding journey upstream. In the hour that followed Melni did her best to clear her mind of the future. She replayed the events of the past week, focused herself on the task of remembering. They would want it all, she knew, and she saw no reason to hide anything. Except, perhaps, for Caswell’s “ride home.” And the needler tube concealed in her clothing. And the bracelet. Melni resolved to keep those things to herself until the situation, and the South’s intentions, became clearer. Betrayal or not, she knew on a level beneath conscious thought that something was not right here. She knew something else, too: Caswell had been truthful with her, right from the very beginning. Except for claiming he was a Hollow Man, and even that he took back.
Which meant only one thing: Valix was the liar here.
Riverswidth, as the name suggested, spanned the width of the Riv Dimont—the river of two hills—which bisected the capital city, Dimont. Calm brown waters flowed at a languid pace below the whitestone archways of the ancient bridge. A hundred feet wide and more than a thousand long, the original span served as a pedestrian walkway between two early nation-states. Eventually traders realized neither state could claim ownership of the bridge itself, and therefore laws regarding street commerce did not apply. Unification eventually nullified these legal loopholes, but the market had become so entrenched and seedy that the new post-Desolation Presidium had ordered it completely torn down. Replacing the old shanty storefronts were modern offices, as well as meeting halls, and even the estates of the Presidium. Riverswidth went from a treacherous, murder-soaked black market to the seat of military and intelligence power for the Unified South in less than a decade.
Melni watched the river-spanning compound glide toward her and fought back tears. She loved this place. Not just Riverswidth but all of it—the city, the people, the memories. Not a day had passed in Combra that she hadn’t dreamed of returning. Yet for all her long-term planning and analysis of her life, she never saw herself returning here a disgrace, a failure.
She stared at the hundreds of windows that faced the sea and wondered how many bureaucrats were gazing down upon her now, mentally hanging her up to blame for the brink of war upon which all of Gartien now stood.
A cool shudder rippled through her as the little watercraft slid beneath the walls of Riverswidth and up to one of the dark, slimy private docks below the complex. The wooden structures were fairly new, bolted on to the original stone columns that supported the massive structure above. A pang of latent grief for Old Gartien coursed through Melni as she studied these columns. The bottom ten feet were colored differently than the rest. Once they’d been under the river’s surface, only to be exposed later when the planet cooled in the aftermath of the Desolation. All that water, now packed as ice on either pole.
Four armed women escorted her up a slippery stepwell and into the bowels of the South’s intelligence headquarters. Almost everyone she passed reminded her of Caswell, with narrow eyes and a median complexion. Their eyes were almost all light blue, however, in stark contrast to Caswell’s near-black. She could feel those ice-blue stares slide over her, instantly marking her for what she was: not native. A desoa. Melni had grown used to being in the North, where her pale skin and purple eyes, while not anything like the native Northerner’s cham-colored skin and amber eyes, was at least considered exotic rather than some kind of defect.
To her surprise she was not interrogated, nor even questioned. Not even a perfunctory debriefing. The escort led her to the property office, where her personal effects were handed to her in a sealed paper bag. Things she’d had on her the day she’d departed for the long, convoluted journey to Combra. The clothes she’d had on. Her backpurse. Keys to a tiny home on the city’s eastern edge. A simple silver necklace with a charm she’d received on her firstwords.
“Am I being dismissed?” she asked those around her. Blank faces looked back. One of them shrugged.
The property master regarded her over the rims of his wire-frame glasses. “There is a carrier waiting for you at the low end. House arrest, until this is sorted. That is the word that came down, anyway,” he said, his gaze darting upward at the last to imply the Situation Room on the top floor directly above them. “These four will remain with you, and someone from Situations will be in contact if and when the need arises.”
The members of her escort did not look especially happy about their assignment.
“But I have—”
“That is all I know, Agent,” the man said. He went back to his paperwork.
Melni sighed. “My house is too small for five.”
“Which is why,” he said without glancing up, “you will be staying at the Hotel International.”
It was a state-owned hotel on the coast, primarily used for visiting politicians and their staff. The hotel was well appointed, with great views of Flat Bay and the ocean beyond. Every room was monitored, every word recorded. It was better than a prison cell, but only just. Wondering when she’d be allowed to visit her own home, or seek out her sister, Melni scribbled her signature for the sack of items and followed her new family out into the middle span of the old bridge, which served as a walkway from the northern High End to the southern Low End.
A reinforced cruiser awaited her, in the sand coloration of the Army. Melni spent the drive along the edge of Riv Dimont watching her true home blur past. For all her internal complaining while in Combra, it somehow seemed more like home to her now than this place. So much color here, so much noise. It smelled terrible. Kids in filthy rags ran up and down the narrow, crowded streets. Almost everyone was on foot. Exposed pipes and the occasional power line crisscrossed above. Compared to the gleaming world Valix was building, this place felt half a world and half a century away. Finally the squeaky old vehicle turned and dropped into the maze of hundred-year-old apartment towers and street-level shops that made up most of the city.
The Sun blinded and baked relentlessly. No one seemed in a hurry to get anywhere, or happy with the prospect of facing another day. Errand runners dawdled along on their signature white bicycles.
By the time the carrier thundered up to the Hotel International’s staff entrance her shirt was soaked with sweat and her mood as sour as Combran grapes. A porter greeted them and, after being momentarily flustered by her desoa looks and her four armed escorts, led Melni to a rather incredible suite of rooms on the top floor overlooking the ocean. To her at least it seemed the type of place a head of state would be afforded, and for a moment her mood brightened. Perhaps she was not the pariah after all. This thought lasted until the s
ober realization that her four new best friends would be staying here with her, with the bedroom assigned to Melni at the back farthest from the exit. And the room, so high up, offered zero chance of escape by scaling the outside wall.
Melni decided to make the most of it. She threw open the windows to let in the sweet ocean air, heat be damned, then went to the communal lav. After a long shower, first hot then cold, she tapped hospitality and ordered lunch: eggs fried with sea salt, a basket of toasted brown bread with seasonal jam, leaf salad dusted with tree nuts, plus juice and a whole pot of strong, spicy cham. Cuisine shunned by every mealhouse in Combra on principle.
She ate slowly, sipped her cham on the balcony to the concert of waves crashing below, then slept. The sheets were stiff and smelled of flowers, the mattress deep and soft in the Southern style. She’d missed that comfort while abroad, had complained about it to herself on countless occasions. Now she found the opposite to be the truth. The North, with their thin, stiff sleeping pads, had the better idea. This bed felt as if it wanted to swallow her.
Still, she found sleep.
—
Activity outside woke her at sunset. Wrapped in a soft robe, Melni moved to the balcony and simply watched and listened. The beach below was separated from the city by a long boardwalk. Hundreds of people strolled its length in the warm glow of the setting son. Couples arm in arm. Families with giggling children. The wealthy, here on the coast. Not a desoa among them, most likely. She wondered if their mood was in ignorance of the stand-off with the North, or because of it.
She sat on the balcony until her weariness returned. It didn’t take long. Melni stood and turned her back on the world. She went to the welcoming bed, lay down, and slept again. Wonderful, dreamless sleep. In the heat of the morning she’d kicked away her blankets and robe, waking naked and sticky with sweat almost five hours later. Humidity and heat, she’d forgotten what a burden they could be. Funny how the nostalgic mind edited out such details.
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