by O. J. Lowe
Power corrupts. The oldest tenet in the Book of Gilgarus. He’d heard it so many times that the words threatened to lose their edge, a soundbite that didn’t convey the true magnitude of the words.
Baxter and his lot were supposed to be the good ones as well. Apparently, they had enemies who lacked most of the compunctions that the Vedo did. Wade couldn’t prove Baxter had done what he’d done but he wouldn’t like to meet the enemies of the Vedo if it were true.
His thoughts were interrupted by Pree clearing her throat. They were reaching the edge of the forest. He took one look at it, rolled his eyes. Typical Burykia. Even the forests were smaller, more compact than those in other kingdoms. Smaller was relative, of course. The barepines still dwarfed either him or Pree. He looked across at her and shrugged.
“Are we in the right place?” he asked. Up in the distance, he could see a plume of smoke from his seat in the speeder, a hint of life. Someone was out there, and they’d made a fire.
“Only one way to find out,” she said, unbuckling her belt. She stretched out her arms, slid from her seat. He removed the key, moved to join her, locking up behind him. Neither of them left their weapons in the speeder. Not if they were moving into unfamiliar territory. The risks were too great to ignore. “I had a look through the intelligence. We’re in the right area. That guy pointed us out here. Can’t really be too many more places.”
“What are we waiting for then?” Wade said. His stomach was already starting to growl again, he rubbed at it with his free hand, tried to ignore it. That chocolate hadn’t been that long since, he probably should see a Unisco doctor the next chance he got. Couldn’t hurt.
“After you,” Pree said. He rolled his eyes, stepped away from the vehicle and out into the ocean of trees.
They’d found the cabin, followed the plume of smoke lazily peeking above the treetops. It wasn’t hard to find, just out of the way enough for someone not to want to bother unless they had to. Wade had seen worse places to live. He could see the attraction. He and Clara had set up their reserve in Canterage, they lived in places like this when they were there. All the staff did. Their other jobs took their time away from the dragon reserve more and more these days. He didn’t like to have regrets. What he did was important. Wishing things were different felt like it cheapened their work.
First sign they got of life was the woman on the porch, kinetic disperser across her knees, her expression not even close to being welcoming. Life looked like it had hit her hard, she raised the weapon as they approached.
Neither of them went for their weapons. It would have been suicide. The woman definitely had the Rocastle look about her, they saw that immediately in a way the picture hadn’t been able to emphasise. Same heavy build. Same sort of wavy hair, even if it was greying black rather than the rich purple they’d come to associate with Harvey. She didn’t raise and point it at them, neither did her hands move away from it.
“Private property,” she grunted. The voice was different. Deeper than when her brother spoke, ironically, Wade thought. “Can turn around or you can…”
“Are you really going to threaten to shoot us?” Pree asked. She sounded delighted. “For walking? That’s adorable, I didn’t know people still did that.” She shot a sideways glance at Wade. “Did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Wade said. “But I suspected.” He looked away from her, gave the woman a weak smile. “Ma’am, we’re from Unisco. Are you Lola Myers?”
“Yep,” she said. “And I’m not talking to you.”
“You’re not in any sort of trouble,” Pree piped up. “We just want to talk to you about your brother.”
“I’m definitely not talking to you. I don’t have a brother.”
“Big guy, similar height and build and acts like he’d rather be your sister…” Pree offered. “That guy. Ring any bells?”
“Why are you out here?” Wade asked. He glanced around the forest, made a big show of it as he did. “There’s not much here. Not unless you’re hiding, then it’s good. Add in the paying solely in credits at the nearest store… You’re trying to stay hidden, aren’t you?”
“Ain’t a crime now, is it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not. You’ve done a good job of it. We didn’t find you until last night. And we’ve been looking for you.” He nodded as he said it, hefted his fingers into his belt. “If we struggled to find you, I doubt your brother will have much luck.”
“Harvey’s tenacious. When he wants something, he sticks at it,” she said. “He might not have many good qualities, but I suppose that’s one of them.”
“Can we ask you a few questions about him?” Pree asked. She sounded almost gentle, Wade was surprised. He’d never associated the Spectre with being gentle. More the sort who’d hook extremities up to electrical outlets to get answers. “Just a few and we’ll be gone. We don’t want to take up your time, but your brother’s a bad man, I think you know that, and we want to make sure that he’s dealt with appropriately.”
She considered it, thought about it for a few long moments, her lips wobbling as she thought. Wade stroked his chin. Eventually she looked up at them, slid the disperser down onto the ground, resting it against the wall. “You better come in.”
Whatever he might have expected to see when they entered the cabin, Wade thought, it hadn’t been this. Outside, it looked dumpy. Unimpressive. Not unlike its owner. Entering, he could see that the inside held hidden depths that hadn’t even been hinted at. It had been outfitted, waterproofed. Derenko had done it to their base on Carcaradis Island, not a big job but he was surprised that she’d bothered. She’d clearly expected to be hunkered down here for the long term. The walls had been painted white, something strangely sterile about them. He'd been in hospitals that had more character.
“Nice place,” Pree said. He’d always found her sincerity a little lacking. This instance was no difference. She kept her face neutral though, even to him. If she had any strong emotions about the place, she wasn’t displaying them.
He couldn’t ignore it but from the woman, he got only fear. Sheer naked terror, not for herself but for someone else. Wade glanced past her, saw the bed at the far wall and understood.
She saw him looking, bowed her head. “That’s why I don’t want to talk to you. I just want to hide here until the end. Then I guess I’ll leave. Go somewhere else and live out my days.”
They both moved to the woman on the bed, her eyes closed and her breathing light. He studied her, could barely see the rise and fall of her chest. Her bones stuck out against her flesh, protruded almost vulgarly into the air. Veins crawled across the translucence, gave her skin the colour of old bruising.
“Damn,” Pree said. Wade glanced at her, saw the way her face fell. He guessed why. Maybe it was just him but the whole place stank of death. The companion was near. She wasn’t long for this world.
“She’s not got long left now,” Lola said. She stepped up to join them, a hot water bottle in hand, swaddled in a towel embroidered with tiny red cherries. “Months at most. She’s just waiting for it to come.”
“I’m sorry,” Wade said. It felt painfully inadequate. Maybe they could have helped her if Baxter was here, if any of his Vedo were here. They had healing abilities. Baxter had healed him. Shown him how to do it himself if ever it was needed. He’d proffered more but he’d refused it.
Right now, he hated himself for doing that. Seeing someone in pain like this rammed home the implications of that decision. Could have done so much. In the end, he was doing nothing.
“It’s fine,” Lola said. “Not your fault. She had a good life. Well, my bastard brother aside.” She spat the words aside with bitterness, the bile in them startling him as he looked at her.
“I take it he’s not been here then,” he said. “That’s who we’re looking for.”
“If he showed up, I’d shoot him,” she said. She meant it as well. He could tell. There wasn’t a hint of hesitation or doubt in her voice. Just convi
ction. “I wouldn’t stop until my cells ran dry.”
“Ma’am, you do know that you can’t say that to law enforcement professionals,” Pree said, not quite admonishingly but with a hint of amusement in her voice. “On the other hand, you’d be doing the kingdoms a favour and neither of us were listening to what you just said. Carry on.”
“Either of you got brothers?” She looked more at Pree as she said it, who nodded. “It’s always fun, if you’re their only sister. You’re in a rivalry from the moment you’re old enough to realise it. Maybe even before then.”
Wade looked at Pree. “That true?”
She nodded again, her eyes distant. “More than you’ll ever know.”
“You know how parents aren’t supposed to have favourites? Well ours did. No dad after he ran off, mum… Well she liked me more. I know you probably don’t see it now, but I used to be happier. Light up a room with your smile, they said. I did that.” She didn’t sound sad as she said it, more wistful. Like she didn’t miss the past itself but missed what it had meant for her. “This came out of the blue. It took a lot from me. I’ve given her everything to try and help her. None of it did any good.”
“And what about your brother?” Pree asked. Still gentle. Whatever else she might lack, she knew how to handle an interrogation. Knew how to get through to people. It was a skill you couldn’t teach. You either had it or you didn’t.
“She never liked him. Well, she might have at first. As he got older, Harvey got harder to love. We still tried. We tried like hells. But it’s not always possible. Childish pranks turned mean. Mean tricks became spiteful. He’d do stuff out of spite that was just plain nasty in the end.” She sighed, her voice laced with sorrow. “We never knew why. Someone told us that some people are just born nasty. I never wanted to believe that. Mum found it harder to forgive him with every passing antic. Sometimes I wonder if that made it worse.”
She paused, slipped the heated water bottle between the covers, tucked them back up beneath her mother’s chin. It wasn’t cold in the cabin, but Wade wondered how suitable it was to have someone in her condition here. Mind you, if she was dying and the hospital had accepted there was nothing they could do, it was hardly going to make her condition falter further.
“Eventually he did something he couldn’t take back. Mum kicked him out of the house. He tells people he ran but he was cast out. She couldn’t put up with him anymore. Typical Harvey. A born liar. Sometimes he’d pit me and mum against each other, just because he could. She tried but she had a temper. And me, well, I was younger then.”
“Lola, you can’t blame yourself for this,” Pree said. She reached up, patted her on the shoulder. “Harvey Rocastle made his own choices. Nobody put a blaster to his head and made him do them. Some people ARE just born bad, that’s been my experience. Your mother shouldn’t blame herself either.”
“She doesn’t.” Lola shook her head. “She blames him. Harvey was a sick puppy, she’s said so herself on many occasions. We always expected to hear about him winding up dead, she wanted to write that on his headstone. You know what you need to do with a terminally sick puppy?” She didn’t wait for them to respond. “You drown them before they start to harm anyone around them because they don’t know any better. You know how bad someone must be for their own mother to even think about that? Unconditional love went out the window in our family a long time ago.”
“Is that why you’re hiding?” Wade asked. “So that he can’t find you?”
“Something like that,” she said. “I got in touch with him a year or so back, told him what had happened. I wanted him to know what was happening with his mother, even if he wouldn’t care or not. He deserved that.”
“I imagine he didn’t take it the way you thought he would?” Pree said, raising an eyebrow in amusement. “It would be a very troubling world if people did act the way you wanted them to.”
The disgust in Lola’s voice was palpable. “He wanted to help.”
“That bastard!” Wade said. He tried to hide the sarcasm, couldn’t quite manage it. She shot him a venomous glance, he was suddenly very appreciative of the fact that she’d left her weapon outside.
“My brother left,” she said. “He didn’t bother when she was well, all the shit he got up to ruined mum. The stress did for her. We got on without him. We moved on. Even when I married, we stayed close. Mother and daughter. Together. We didn’t need him then, we don’t need him now.” She laughed, bitterness in her voice. “Some people just don’t take no for an answer. You say it so many times and it runs off their back. Then you start to ignore them. Hope they’ll go away.”
“They never do though, do they?” Pree said.
Lola shook her head. The bitter mask slipped, replaced with glumness. “He started sending credits,” she said. “More than we’d ever be able to spend. He was throwing them at the problem. Wouldn’t do any good. I never spent them. Cheques would come, letters begging to talk would be with them.”
“Do you still have them?” Wade asked. He tried to sound offhand, wasn’t sure how much he was succeeding. Lola nodded. “Any chance we can examine them? For clues.” He looked at Pree. This could be interesting, an opening they’d looked for. Since Reims had been stripped from her, Claudia Coppinger had still been able to move her credits around and they had very little evidence as to how. If she was paying Rocastle and Rocastle was sending it along to his sister who hadn’t cashed it all in, things could have light shed on them very quickly.
There were people at Unisco who made it a habit to follow the credits. They’d gotten very good at it as well, for credits spoke a lot louder than most other evidence in Wade’s experience.
“I’m not spending them,” she said. “It’s blood money. I know some of the stuff he’s done in the last year. None of it was exactly shy about being kept out of the media, was it? The psycho dancer aiding Claudia Coppinger. One of her hands.” She was shaking now, her voice rising in the confines of the cabin. “You know why else I don’t want him here? I know what he’s done. I know what he’s capable of.”
She gestured towards her stricken mother, Wade got the impression the tears were being held back but barely. “If he sees her like that, he might do something he can’t take back. He’d say he’s doing it out of mercy. We’d both know he’d do it just to stick it to her.” She wiped her eyes, straightened herself up. “My mother is going to die when she’s ready, not when Harvey decides to try and stick a pillow over her face as some demented act of what his addled mind sees as mercy. I’m not ready to let her go yet.”
“To move on is the nature of being human,” Pree said. “Without death, life is pointless. Everything needs a culmination. You can only validate a life when it comes to an end.”
“Divines, Pree,” Wade said. He shook his head, the sound of disgust slipping from him. “Cheerful much?”
“You want hope, go see a zent,” she said, turning back to Lola. “Mrs Meyers. We can’t promise you much. But if your brother ever finds you, I hope that day doesn’t come, but it won’t be because of us. We’re obligated to tell our bosses that we spoke to you. We don’t need to tell them where you are. That’s going to remain our secret.” She shot a glance at the comatose woman, shook her own head. “I’m very sorry for your loss. I know she’s not dead yet, but…”
“You’ll have to forgive Agent Khan,” Wade said. “She was out sick the day they taught people skills. She’s good at other stuff though.”
“You have no idea,” Pree smiled. Even though her mouth had curved into a grin, her eyes narrowed at him. An implied threat? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t want to know.
Lola Meyers vanished towards a cupboard at the back of the room, Wade took the opportunity to study her mother once again. He shook his rust-coloured head. Such a waste. He didn’t want to inquire about the disease. Something wasting. Something terminal. Something that took life and ruined it beyond recognition, made it barely worth living.
That was what was wrong w
ith what Claudia Coppinger preached. She spoke of creating a perfect world, a better one than what they had. She’d never wipe it out. Nature would always win. There’d be a culling sooner or later. Something she couldn’t see coming and it’d be the thing that damned her cause. He didn’t believe in someone giving them a better world. He’d always thought the way to make it a better place was for everyone to do their small part rather than it being gifted to them.
He cast his thoughts aside, watched as their host returned with a cardboard box, they could hear it rattling with every step she took. “Everything,” she said. “Everything he ever sent after he found out she was sick. I remember the one time he made a call, she spoke to him once. Never again. Demanded that I not let him through. She took a turn for the worse not long after that.” She sighed. “I hate being their referee. But what can I do? It’s family. Nobody said it would be easy.”
“You need anything to help make this easier?” Wade asked. “Anyone to come out here?”
She shook her head. “I got this. I used to be a nurse. I know what I’m doing. Get the medicine every week, it’s delivered to the closest store, I walk out and get it. They weren’t happy about me doing it this way, but they were relieved I guess. Not many beds in hospitals around here. Especially not for a foreigner who has no hope. Occasional progress report sent in and they’re happy.”
“There’s always hope,” Pree said. Her words surprised him, he shot her a sideways glance. She’d never given the impression much that she was one to believe. “If you don’t have hope, you might as well give up.”
He knew what she meant. Maybe Lola Meyers did as well, she hugged them both. “I can’t say it’s been a pleasure. I’d rather you hadn’t found us. But if you get the shot on my brother, take it. He’s dead to me. Soon I’ll have nothing. But maybe that’s better.”