Lorsk made the sign for “equivocation,” like the breeze blowing his hand to and fro. “Of what the faction might become. We’ve been the Djandjer-Pralsh, the ‘Siblings in Exile,’ long enough. When all this is done—when the White Arrows are defeated, and the Aival Surarchy takes their place—I’ll need someone at my right hand who knows what it was all for.”
Herask felt his face growing tight. Lorsk must have seen it too, for he said, “Besides you, friend. You’ll always have a place at my side.” Herask relaxed, feeling foolish for the unjustified moment of insecurity. Lorsk might demand absolute loyalty of those around him, but he returned it, too.
“Gau’s not ready,” Herask said.
“Not yet,” Lorsk agreed easily. He extended and retracted the blade they’d freed; Herask’s practiced eye noted its smooth motion with approval, though he knew it would stiffen up again. “He’s chosen an adult path, lived through a war, but I think he sometimes forgets he isn’t still a child among us. If our fresh campaign is to succeed, we need the adult Gau, not the surly child.”
Lorsk rose, rolled his shoulders, and shrugged his arms back into the sleeves of his cloak. “This campaign will be his test. But I would be remiss if I expected him to pass it without proper guidance.” His eye fell on Herask, with the focus Herask had learned to identify as an unspoken order.
He straightened to automatic attention. “Not from yourself, Commander?”
Lorsk sighed. “Gau’s and my relationship is complicated. He may be more receptive to education from you. And there’s nothing left to teach him that you can’t do as well as I.” He favored Herask with a smile. “You’re my strong right blade, after all.”
He bowed to Herask, in formal thanks for the treatment session. Herask returned the bow.
“Much as I appreciate them, is there anything I can do to require your ministrations less often?” Lorsk asked wryly.
“Continue with your daily exercises.” He said this without much force; Herask knew Lorsk already did them every day. He gave a smile equally as wry. “And don’t get any older.”
“You’re sure it’s the Father coming here?” Lorsk asked. He sat in the same chair from which he had berated Gau, but this time his second officers, Jarn and Herask, sat on either side in the small early-morning briefing. Their fourth successful raid had taken place only a few days ago and yielded a rich trove of intelligence courtesy of Ariveth’s data spikes.
Potential intelligence, Gau reminded himself. The raw data was still up for interpretation.
“The cable wasn’t that specific.” He glanced at Ariveth beside him. Like him, she stood for the debrief, her face closed and bland in Lorsk’s presence. “It mentioned a VIP guest at a meeting of deep-tier officials.”
“Could be another minister,” Jarn grunted.
“They’d have to be very deep-ranking to be a VIP guest of the Arrow,” Herask said. “A grand minister at least.”
Lorsk drummed his fingers on the armrest. “A meeting of deep-ranking Church officials, including possibly the Father. Likely the Aival branch’s grand minister and White Arrows director will also be in attendance.” Gau could almost see the paths of possibility spooling outward in Lorsk’s mind.
Jarn cleared his throat. “We have some time before the Father’s—before this official’s—arrival,” he said. “A month or more. How should we proceed, Commander?”
A small grin, revealing little more than the points of his teeth, formed on Lorsk’s face. “Keep up the pressure on the Arrows. We’ll keep them off-balance, ramp up our attacks if possible. Let them live in fear of what it’s all leading to.”
Ariveth cocked her head, and a steel Gau had never seen before flashed in her expression. “What is it leading to?” She glanced around at the rest of them in the silence that followed. “I can’t be the only one who’s curious.”
“A statement,” Lorsk said, with a conspiratorial smile.
He rose, and Herask and Jarn followed suit. Small tilts of his head addressed his two senior officers. “Jarn, if any new developments surrounding this meeting reach you, I want to be informed immediately. Herask, I want you to coordinate with Drej and Kevret and continue material preparations for the next raid.”
His medical and comms officers jabbed.
“Dismissed.”
Four Osk turned to go. Gau had stepped aside to let the two officers precede him when Lorsk said, “And Herask?” The chief physician turned. “Take Gau with you.”
Gau noted Herask’s pupils widen, then narrow as some understanding passed between the two of them. What ploy of Lorsk’s was this? His immediate suspicion—that Lorsk suspected something of the larger game and had set Herask to spy on him—was quenched in the cold realization that if that were so, Gau wouldn’t still be breathing. No, this was some power play; what kind he couldn’t yet see, but he knew he didn’t like it.
But he couldn’t protest it here without seeming unreasonable and surly. Brilliant, Lorsk.
He meekly followed Herask out the door.
Predawn dew beaded Herask’s cloak as he led the three other Osk out of Tarbreak and the dubious shelter of its degraded tenements into the true outskirts. The shack city that clung to the city’s flanks like lichen on a rock would be a hive of activity even before the sun rose—indeed, it never truly stopped. Lives lived in the shadows soon learned to operate outside of arbitrary distinctions of day or night.
He led them by secret ways, through abandoned warehouses, tunnels that intersected sewers long cut off from drone service, alleyways turned into tunnels by constructions of plywood and plastic tarps. Their heads were never exposed to the open air. The line between Tarbreak and the nameless but living district that marked the true boundary of Diego Two passed, as always, without Herask’s conscious notice. He only knew he breathed easier of a sudden, for all that the shack city reeked of rancid cooking oil, rubber, rotting fruit, and half a dozen species living in extremely close quarters.
Conversely, Gau’s reticence as they entered the twisting thoroughfares of the undercity was palpable. He copied the others without protest, drawing his hood up to shadow his face and maintaining the same unhurried yet confident pace. Yet Herask noticed his gaze casing the narrow streets as though he moved through a combat zone, his scent acid-sharp with tension. Drej and Kevret picked up on it too, and kept Gau in the middle of their column without needing Herask’s signal.
It was a war zone for Gau, Herask realized. The Djandjer-Pralsh were known to the shadow markets, their existence protected by the brokers and cabals in exchange for useful intelligence and smuggling routes through the upper city. But Gau hadn’t had that protection the last time he was here. The shadow market brokers had found a use for him, like they found a use for everyone who washed up in their domain—but as a courier he’d been outside the connections that might have protected him, cut loose between drops and paid in endorphin caps as often as credits.
No one had watched over the child: not the Djandjer-Pralsh and certainly not the brokers. Not when it mattered.
Herask breathed through a sudden stab of guilt as they reached the first of their destinations. Beyond a threadbare curtain of what had once been brown velvet was a square room, the back wall lined with shelves of chemicals in anonymous metal cylinders. Drawn by the sound of their entrance, a brown-furred Wurfren emerged from a second curtained room at the back and bellied up to the counter.
The street chemist’s name was Shrenk. No lineage names for Wurfren, who raised their children anonymously in huge communal warrens on their homeworld and its related colonies. Shrenk was still smoothing the whiskers on either side of their snout, but on seeing Herask they let their long arm drop.
“Herask,” they said by way of greeting. “And companions. See you’ve brought a new one this time.” This last comment clearly meant Gau, who was doing his best to meld with the wall of the tiny shop.
Lorsk’s purpose beneath this excursion had become clear to Herask as they navigated th
e undercity. Gau lived with the Djandjer-Pralsh, but was not of them; likewise, he’d glided through Diego Two’s slums without touching them, though they’d marked him indelibly. He didn’t yet have the connections, the alliances, the friendships he was going to need to assume command of the faction in Lorsk’s stead.
It was time to change that. Herask took the conversational opening. “There are some rather special chemicals I hope you can provide for me.” He extended an arm to Gau, gesturing him forward. Slowly, pupils narrowed as though against a bright light, Gau came to stand next to him. “But first, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
As it turned out, the synthesis Herask had come to Shrenk for was beyond the Wurfren’s willingness to provide, though, they stressed, not beyond their ability. Shrenk could provide the faction with synthesized Urd venom that would withstand the usual tests, but not without drawing attention to the shadow markets. The disappearances of the precursor ingredients from Expansion bioweapons facilities was the kind of thing the Terrans would pay attention to. Unlike the regular influx of drug precursors, which the markets absorbed like a sponge, ignored by the Terran empire.
But at least he’d accomplished his other mission. Shrenk knew Gau’s face now, and Gau had participated in the discussion after his initial wariness, contributing some salient insights about the logistics of moving goods through illicit channels. The Wurfren chemist would remember him.
It was the first of a few stops in the undercity. From there, Herask led them to the weapons dealer through whom Drej had secured the aging Teluk Coalition plasma rifles. This time he was on the hunt for Urd flechette rifles, and the dealer didn’t disappoint. Kevret’s eyes had also lit with delight at finding a new shipment of diverted plastic explosives. Herask left her to haggle with the shop clerk while he and Gau went to the back room to arrange discreet delivery of the rifles with the owner.
From the weapons shop, the four of them followed a circuitous, seemingly meandering path that gave their paid informants ample time to check in with the latest tidbits on the activities of police and Arrow troops. By the time they reached their last destination, Gau had met three-quarters of the Djandjer-Pralsh’s spy network face-to-face.
He was notably tenser, meeting the representatives of the Baskar Directive over safe-passage negotiations, but Herask had expected as much. For one, the stakes of the meeting were higher than the other introductions he’d made for Gau so far: the Directive controlled much of the territory the Djandjer-Pralsh had traversed to get from Tarbreak to the higher circles of the city. The faction had carefully kept the true nature of their excursions into the affluent districts secret from their suppliers and informants, but nowhere was that secrecy so important as in their dealings with the Directive. If the Baskar cabal wished, it could quash the entire enterprise by rescinding its grant of safe passage.
Herask stressed this to Gau before the meeting as strenuously as he dared without insulting the younger Osk. But he needn’t have worried. Gau didn’t make a single slip during the negotiation, but stuck to their cover story perfectly.
By the time Herask’s party left the negotiations, dusk was falling and Gau’s mind was humming with new information.
He’d known vaguely that the Djandjer-Pralsh couldn’t have survived for as long as they had, as well as they had, without help. But knowing that was one thing; being directly introduced to the web of shadow market contacts and alliances that now aided their campaign— his campaign—was another. He hadn’t realized their number, for one thing. For another, he hadn’t expected to meet any of them.
As the four of them climbed a sloping drain pipe that led from the shack city back into Tarbreak, Gau indulged his curiosity and asked Herask if any of the people they’d spoken to had aided the faction’s original campaign.
“What,” Herask asked with a wry laugh, “you think we did it all by ourselves? The enclave couldn’t have fed itself without the shadow markets’ help, let alone secured weapons and intelligence for the campaign.”
A knot of remembered hunger tightened in Gau’s belly. His parents had tried their best to shield him from their marginal status, but there were things they couldn’t hide—like the fact their monthly food allotment rarely covered the entire month for three of them. He still remembered ghosts of tense conversations, held behind closed doors when they’d thought he was asleep. He only learned the reasons later, the assimilation policies that restricted movement and work licenses for non-Terran enclaves. If it hadn’t been for its illegal trade with the shadow markets for food and other supplies, Chii Ril would have been even more stretched and desperate.
Gau ducked a concrete overhang as they emerged into an alley tunnel of crates. “But why did the shadow brokers help us? What did they get out of it?”
Ahead of him, Kevret glanced back over her shoulder and squinted in surprise. “You really don’t remember?”
“Remember?” Gau said, a little defensively.
“You were quite young,” Herask said. He waited until Drej cleared the tunnel, and they walked on under cover of the gathering dark. “Maybe you don’t remember how bad public sentiment was toward the non-Terran enclaves.”
“I knew the Terrans didn’t want us there,” Gau said. “No matter what their xenologists said.”
Herask smiled, but it was decidedly bitter. “That was one thing we learned. Hostility toward non-Terrans was high after the Rreluush-Tren war. But these things come in cycles; it should have ebbed after a time.” His expression grew pensive.
“It didn’t, because the Universal Church was stoking that particular fire for all they were worth.”
“In public?” Gau asked, curious in spite of himself.
Herask snorted. “There was some of that. Crude stuff bandied about in lower parishes. We were no different than the Thicket, an infection to be contained and so on. It was a smokescreen for them to put pressure on higher tiers—government officials, policymakers—people who mattered.”
Gau jabbed. The Church had acted no differently than a savvy faction on Oskaran might have, bringing its arguments for non-Terran containment to influential and potentially sympathetic leaders who could plausibly deny that same influence when it came time to pen their policies. And Chii Ril and the other enclaves got pushed to the margins and beyond, with no one to bring their protests to . . .
That thought led to another, clicking smoothly into place in the empty spot left by the blur of his early memories. “The Djandjer-Pralsh’s campaign was a formal interfactional protest?”
A small but satisfied grin split Herask’s snout. “The closest we could launch on this world, at least. The other enclaves supported us then, as now. Our protest was meant to stand for all the marginalized species of Diego Two.
“I can still remember some of how that first broadcast went.” His voice took on a deliberate register, quoting from memory. “ ‘There are many sentients who would gladly wear the name ‘citizen,’ but your government has denied it to them.
For the honor they do you in coming here, offering their skills and their labor, your government has consigned non-Terrans to slums. You have made them lie, and eat carrion, and slowly tear each other apart to survive. You have watched their children starve.’ ”
“I remember that one,” Drej interjected. “It was just after the five-year celebration of the Rreluush-Tren ceasefire. Our first . . .” His prosthetic hand made a fist.
Herask nodded. To Gau, he said, “Now imagine that rendered into the voices of half a dozen species stuck in Tarbreak, going out over the planet’s newsfeeds. Jarn engineered the effect—he may still have a copy, if you want to listen to the full.”
Conversation halted as they turned into the last alley before home, the one beside their reclaimed tenement. Herask extended the tip of his blade and turned it in the slot-like keyhole jury-rigged beside the door.
Despite himself, Gau was curious to listen to that recording, if only to see where the Djandjer-Pralsh had got their mess
age wrong. Though he suspected he knew. It hadn’t been the message that had been wrong.
“And you expected the Terrans to listen?” He only realized he’d spoken aloud when Herask answered.
“The Terrans may not understand our factional system, but they understand violence. They understand the language of protest when it is delivered in a form they cannot ignore.”
He withdrew his blade with a hard and final shick. “That’s why we started blowing up parades.”
Chapter Seventeen
Daikar almost didn’t take the call when he saw the ID on the console’s screen. He’d been dozing, even though it was well into dusk, one of the two active periods when he should have been up and about. But doing what? Shomoro had had him cut out of the command structure, cut off from the work he’d been doing in Intelligence. He supposed he should be packing to leave for Ril, to rejoin the Fleet. But somehow over the last three days he’d lost all resolve in that direction—in any direction.
So finally, as much to stop the console’s annoying ring as anything else, he answered Water Dancer’s call.
He left the visual pickups off. There was no need for her to see his straggly mane, desperately in need of a dust bath, or the hollows under his eyes. “Yes?” he snapped at the black screen.
Her translator-flat answer was just as clipped. “I think you need to get out of your apartment for a while. Meet me by the number three pier bar in an hour.”
He immediately sensed the shape of a cover story in her innocuous suggestion. The Rul would be aware this was an unsecured channel; he didn’t have access to the secured kind anymore. “And will the valchna be your treat, this time?” he asked, more sarcastically than he’d meant to. Part of him blamed Water Dancer for this turn of events—after all, if she hadn’t convinced him to support her plan, he would still be part of Teluk Intelligence.
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