by John Meaney
Something had changed.
Catacombs persisted for centuries or even millennia. If there was a change, it could not be in them. Yet odd whispers began now, falling silent whenever Donal neared a sarcophagus or a mausoleum. It was almost as if—
Don't be insane.
As if the dead were afraid of him.
Back at the apartment, Donal's breakfast consisted of cold black-sprout soup and coffee. If this arrangement was going to last longer, he was going to have to see about shopping and cooking. He checked his Magnus load, then dialed down to the concierge and asked him to call a taxi.
“I could get used to this,” Donal muttered after putting down the phone. “Maybe.”
The elevator that he rode down in was like a giant's bullet, very fast. It stopped at the fifty-ninth floor to take on two passengers, a man in a dark suit with a sine-wave weave, and a woman with ballooning features and too much jewelry, all of it real.
The man wore a monocle. Both he and his wife stared at Donal with superior mild curiosity, as though wondering what sort of new servant had been hired by the management.
When the elevator reached the ground floor, Donal pressed his palm against the elevator's steel wall and murmured, “Thanks.”
The couple sniffed and frowned, passing through the doors before Donal. But the elevator wall delivered a cold shiver, and Donal knew he had been right: it was a wraith capsule. He wondered how long the wraith had been in service.
When Donal told the taxi driver where he was going, disappointment descended down the driver's features. Probably he'd figured on a big tip from one of the rich bastards who lived in Darksan Tower, but a hard-faced man headed for police HQ didn't fit the type.
At the corner of Fifth and Avenue of the Basilisks, the traffic was thick with the rush-hour crowd, and the taxi slowed to a halt. The driver frowned, thought for a moment, then turned and said through the partition, “Know what, Mac? It'll be quicker if you walk.”
Donal looked at the sidewalks. The driver was unlikely to pick up another paying fare for a while. It was a fair assessment.
“Right,” he said, and counted ten bills from his wallet and handed them through the gap in the partition. “Keep the change.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Donal slid out and slammed the door shut behind him. “ 'Cause I'm a soft touch, really.”
The sky overhead was a medium purple, with no scanbats in sight. The faintest hint of quicksilver was upon the air, but it wasn't raining yet. Donal pulled up the collar of his overcoat and walked fast for five blocks, until he reached the familiar tower that was HQ.
“Hey, FenSeven. Met one of your cousins yesterday.”
“Yes-s-s.” Amber eyes glowed. FenSeven pulled back his upper lip, slobbering. “You are . . . mat-ed.”
“Thanatos, does everybody tell everyone everything in this place?”
“Not the . . . hu-mans.”
“Well. Good.”
Another two deathwolves rounded the nearest pillar and sat down next to FenSeven.
“Loo-ten-ant Riordan.” FenSeven performed the introductions. “FenSevenThree. GrimwalTwo.”
Both deathwolves looked young—too young for this assignment.
“Good to meet you both.” Donal tipped his forefinger against his forehead in salute. “And any daughter of FenSeven has a lot to live up to.”
The smaller wolf, FenSevenThree, ducked her head and gave a low growl of acknowledgment.
“See . . . you.” FenSeven nodded to Donal.
“Later, pal.”
Donal climbed the dark steps, passed through to the hall with the purple-and-white-checkered floor, and skirted a bickering group of young-looking, scarred whores from the dockside. On the granite desk, Eduardo—his lower body long melded into the granite—waved a hand toward Donal.
“You're wanted upstairs,” Eduardo called out.
“The commissioner?”
“That's the upstairs I was thinking of.”
One of the whores raised a finger and said, “Climb upstairs this.” A thin man who might have been her pimp backhanded her across the face. “Dumb pig, shuddup.”
A uniformed cop kicked the pimp in the side of the knee.
“Hey—”
As Donal turned away, Eduardo called, “Good to see you back.”
This from a man turning into granite. Perhaps Donal's experiences with the dead diva and the hospital could have been worse.
“Thanks, Eduardo. Good to be here.”
From the floor, the pimp called, “Ooh, Edu-ar-do. What a lovely name. Are you a man or a statue up in your—mmmph.”
There was a dull crack, and the whores fell silent, while the pimp uttered a tiny moan.
Donal continued to the elevators without looking back.
Commissioner Vilnar's secretary, the lovely Eyes, turned toward Donal but continued working. Silvery fibers clamped against her eyes joined her to a switchboardlike console filled with tiny levers, which in turn linked her to the citywide network of rooftop surveillance mirrors.
Donal had never seen Eyes any other way. It occurred to him that if he passed by her in the street, he would never recognize her.
“The commissioner will see you right away, Lieutenant.”
“Is he in a good mood?”
Eyes's fingers paused, hooking the air, as though using imaginary controls to parse meaning from Donal's words. Then, saying nothing, she turned back to her console.
The doors to the commissioner's office parted.
Do you feel the—
No. Never.
It seemed to take an age for Donal to pass through the doorway, as if something were dragging at his skin. This was new.
Or I've changed.
Secure sites sometimes used time-distorting hex fields as one layer of protection. Such fields could slow down intruders long enough for deadlier countermeasures to swing into action, or for the intended targets to make an escape.
But here, inside police HQ? Were such defenses really necessary?
Commissioner Vilnar, fat unlit cigar in hand, pointed toward the black iron visitor's chair.
“Sit.”
“Sir.”
“You're on this task force, Riordan, which I am not fucking happy with, understand?”
“Um. . . okay.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“I mean I understand now, but I didn't before . . . Sir, I volunteered.”
“That zombie, what's her name—”
Donal felt his voice drop an octave. “Commander Steele.”
“—right, she led the squad that broke you out of the cabin, so I couldn't refuse the request. But . . .” Commissioner Vilnar let the sentence hang there. “I could have shit-canned you. That possibility is still there.”
“Sir? Am I under internal investigation?”
“No.” Vilnar placed his big pale hands flat on the desktop. “You called in IS to check out the gun range, which doesn't mean you're clean yourself, but it helps. Still, you allowed yourself to be ensorcelled in a high-profile assignment that I gave to you.”
“Yes. I remember.”
“There are people who weren't happy how that turned out.” Commissioner Vilnar meant important people, high enough in Tristopolitan society to matter. “Some of them tried to give me a hard time.”
“Oh.”
“Which is why I'm giving you a chance, because I don't like being threatened. By anyone.”
A smile tugged at the muscles around Donal's mouth. Underneath it all, the old man had this kind of iron strength. That was what Donal admired about him.
“If anything strange crops up in your investigation,” Vilnar continued, “anything that might affect the security of our city”—he meant the safety of his own career—“you'll let me know here, in private, as soon as you can.”
“Right, sir. I'll use my judgment on that.”
“Okay, you can go, Riordan.” Vilnar raised his scarcely existent eyebro
ws. “I gather there's some kind of commotion going on at present. Hammersen's network is causing waves.”
“There's an officer missing.”
“Right. Sushana something? But the street networks are shaking”—Vilnar gestured with a fat hand at his office—“from what I can gather up here.”
“I don't know anything about Hammersen's snitches,” said Donal. “Only that he has them.”
Harald Hammersen sounded like the most impressive of the team members that Donal had yet to meet. An ex-marine with the most widespread network of underworld contacts that any working police officer had come across: that was Harald's reputation.
“It would be interesting,” said Vilnar, “to learn more about that.”
“Yes,” muttered Donal, getting up from the chair. “I suppose it would.”
And if Vilnar thought that Donal was going to hand over any details he might learn about another cop's private network, then the commissioner was insane. After a moment, a tiny glimmer appeared in Vilnar's eyes: it might have been anger or amusement.
“Go,” said Vilnar. “And keep in touch.”
“Yes, sir.”
He went out, passing Eyes, who was bent over her console, fingers flickering across the tiny levers. Just as well. If Donal had said anything, it might be a bad decision.
You want me to spy on Laura?
Donal really didn't think so.
In Gertie's elevator, Donal muttered, “Take me to the gun range, will you?”
*What's the matter, lover? Need to pull your trigger desperately?*
“Just do it, Gertie.”
*Well.*
She dropped him fast down the shaft. At the subterranean level of the range, she dragged him to a bouncing halt.
*Go play with your bangs.*
The invisible hands that expelled him into the lobby were rougher than usual.
While Donal was blowing targets apart on the range, an army of informants was working the labyrinthine byways of the less-than-legitimate world. The people involved ranged from fruit-stall owners in Mixnatine Market close to the docks, who turned a blind eye to the odd carton that slipped away from the delivery trucks belonging to the large chain stores, to a corrupt enforcer working for Sally the Claw.
This enforcer had been exposed by Harald Hammersen three years before, with photographs taken by city technicians. Harald sent him back to work in Sally C's organization with the understanding that spying on his own boss was preferable to the official Tristopolitan execution pit, where wraiths with ravening, insane minds manifested hard talons and claws and beaks to satiate their hunger on the living.
“Dropping the hammer” was what Harald threatened as the last resort. He looked pale and thin, with dead white hair and strange eyes, and there was a rumor that he had once eaten an informant's eyes when said snitch failed to notify Harald of an arms shipment arriving at Buldown Docks inside crates of herring.
Whether the stories were true or not, Harald made tactical use of their implied threat. That was one of the reasons that Brijak Nelsan, a hard-faced stevedore with hooks for hands, was willing to share a bottle of vodka with Harald in the untidy “office” space at the rear of his warehouse. Nets strung across old boxes formed a kind of swing in which Harald sat, watching Brijak's face grow redder as he drank.
“You?” Brijak offered the vodka bottle.
“No. You finish it.”
“Ha.”
“So what have you heard?”
“Nothin'.”
“Brijak . . .”
“Nothin' about why there's a bonded warehouse in North Dock that's going to be empty tomorrow night. I mean, no guards at all.”
“A robbery?” Harald was disappointed. Sushana was missing and he was learning about a stolen shipment of cigarettes or booze.
“Dunno. Maybe a transport.”
Harald ran his fingers through his white hair. He had the skin of an eighteen-year-old and the hair of a grandfather, but he was neither. His hands were slender but iron-hard.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“The transport? You wanna get on a ship to, I dunno, Zurinam, how would you go about it?”
“You mean, other than buy a ticket like a normal person would?”
“Normal?” Brijak smirked. “Don't know much about what that means.”
“Tell me.”
“Stuff's en route to another dock, just passing through here. Steal something, and eventually someone notices. But add a little extra shipment, who's gonna find out? 'Specially when you can just fill in some blank paperwork to make it right.”
Harald thought about this. “You mean, someone's breaking in to put a crate inside the warehouse? Not to steal one?”
“What I said, ain't it?”
“Huh.” Harald pulled out his billfold, counted out three blue twenty-sevens, a single three, and an eleven, and passed the notes over. “Interesting story.”
“Was it what you was after?”
“No, but you've done well, all the same.”
“Told ya. Sure you don't want a swig of this rotgut?”
“Some other time.”
Harald went out quietly. Outside, on its stand, his bone-colored motorcycle stood waiting. Its ceramic duckbill snout was close to the ground, the headlights like angled eyes, the handlebars swept back like twisted horns.
When Harald drew closer, he saw a smear of bright red across the bill.
“What happened?”
Something faint glimmered inside the headlights. Harald crouched down, breathing in the dockland scent, and then he saw it: the faint trace of blood, dark upon dark. Two hundred yards away, two figures, bulky in shapeless clothes, were helping each other to limp away as fast as their broken limbs could manage.
“I don't like thieves much myself—”
The headlights flared amber, then dimmed.
“—but I'm glad you didn't kill them.”
Harald swung his leg over the saddle.
“You ready?” He took hold of the raised handlebars, which reconfigured themselves as he gripped, bringing his hands lower. “ 'Cause I am.”
The bike growled into life.
“I need to talk to you,” said Donal, waving at Laura. “If . . . that's all right.”
Viktor and Alexa looked up from their desks. Whether they sensed something was happening between Laura and him, Donal had no idea.
“Can it wait?” Laura was standing over a purpleprint of some building.
“I've just been chatting with Commissioner Vilnar.”
“So did you shoot the old bastard?” Alexa's tiny nostrils flared. “I smell smoke and cordite.” She licked her lips. “Yummy.”
Donal looked at her for a moment, then turned and followed Laura into her office. The door swung shut behind them, deadening the sound from outside.
“Thanatos,” Donal said. “Am I the only normal one around here?”
For a moment, Laura's face was a pale mask. Then she relaxed and half-smiled. “If you're the most normal person we've got,” she said, “then Death help all of us.”
Donal glanced at the visitor's chair, decided he would remain standing.
“How would you rate me as an undercover operative?” he asked.
“If you're asking could I send you in as Sushana's replacement”—Laura's face was a mask again—“the answer's no, even if I could find a role for you. You're not a sorcerer, and she was specifically—”
“That's not what I meant. Vilnar wants me in here so I can spy for him. On you.”
“Oh.” Laura blew out a cold breath, steaming faintly in the warm room. “That makes life interesting.”
“Yeah. I don't suppose Eyes is a spy you've planted on him?”
“I wish. That cold bitch is a mystery to me.” Laura's breath steamed again, and she saw Donal looking at the dissipating vapor. She half-grinned, half-looked about to cry. “Shit. I'm just so funny. What do you see in me?”
“The most amazing person,” said Don
al, “that I've ever met.
Or just about, anyway.”
“Hey.” Laura blinked. “What do you mean, just about?”
“I had quite a crush on Sister Mary-Anne Styx, back in the orphanage. Everyone else thought she was a hard bitch.”
“Oh.” Laura looked at her desk, as if its blank surface had become interesting. “Guess I can't compete there, then.”
But there was more to it than that. If Donal had known the words, he would have asked Laura about the traumatic transition into paralife—but not here, and not now. Not in the office.
Instead, he told her, “I'm going to do what you said and follow the trail. If Vilnar's dirty, there'll be a link between him and Alderman Kinley Finross somewhere in the Archives. All I've got to do is wade through several lifetimes of boring shit to look for the shining nugget, right?”
“Right.”
“And—”
Donal threw his fear aside. Life, and paralife, were too short for nervousness or complexity.
“I l—” He closed his mouth.
Laura's eyes widened in surprise, as she processed the words he had almost spoken.
Death. It's too soon. Or something.
He blinked, not knowing what had come over him.
Do you hear the—
Not now.
Donal turned and banged into the door, moving fast enough to take it by surprise. It recovered with a jolt and swung open, letting Donal into the office, where Viktor and Alexa were staring at him.
The door shut behind Donal, and he passed through the office, heading for the elevators. He was almost there when applause sounded back inside, along with laughter, and Alexa called, “Way to go, Riordan!”
The muscles of Donal's face tightened in what might have been a grin as he stepped into the shaft and began to free-fall. For perhaps twelve seconds he dropped, heart thumping as he tamped down his fear and refused to yell, and then invisible hands surrounded him and slowed his descent.
*Where you going, darlin'?*
“All the way, Gertie. The Archives.”
*Then I'll forgive you. Maybe.*
She continued to lower him, under control, inside the two-thousand-foot shaft.
*You got a real hankering for dead things, don't you, lover?*