Bone Song

by John Meaney

  Feoragh clamped her mouth shut and now stood catatonic, unmoving save for the blood that started at her lip and trickled down toward her chin.

  “Wake up,” said Donal, changing his mind. “Whatever it is, I don't need to know this badly.”

  But it seemed his decision was too late. Feoragh began to shiver, and her hands sprang off the bone nodes as though she'd been burned. Then, stiff as a two-by-four, Feoragh toppled to the floor.

  For a split second Donal thought that he wouldn't be able to react fast enough, but his body had already shifted and, the next thing he consciously knew, he was kneeling with Feoragh in his arms. Her head was two inches from the hard flagstone.

  He laid her down onto the too-cold floor.

  “Shit.”

  Now what was he supposed to do? Did this happen to Bone Listeners all the time? Or was Feoragh ill? Could something she had discovered inside the Lattice have made her ill?

  Donal shifted Feoragh into the recovery position, checked that she had not swallowed her own tongue, then got to his feet. There was nothing in the chamber—or cell—that would let him communicate with the outside world: no phone, no alarm button. Nothing.

  He went out to the colonnade, which led to other cells. No one was there.

  “Hello? Can anybody help?”

  From the balustrade he leaned over to stare down into the shadowed abyss crossed by thin stone bridges. Again, no one. He looked up at the undersides of further bridges, but there were no sounds of movement.

  “I have a Bone Listener in trouble!” Donal's voice echoed back at him. “Feoragh Carryn needs your help!”

  The shadows were still.

  “Thanatos,” he muttered, and went back inside.

  But Feoragh was already sitting up on the floor. When she saw Donal she stretched out one hand so that he could help her to her feet.

  “It happens sometimes,” Feoragh said before he could ask. “When the depth of information is too great, when there are thaumaturgical safeguards to navigate, we pay the price.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Oh.” Donal stared at the bone nodes, the titanium-and-bone struts that supported and linked those nodes.

  Do you feel—

  Yes, and I wish I didn't.

  “This isn't,” said Donal, “what I sensed near the reactors. They were dangerous and I knew it. Fragments of agony . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “This is different.”

  “We have clear information, incised deeply.” Feoragh paused, then: “The bones are a medium with a vestigial trace of their memories from life. New bones are formatted first, utilized later.”

  Donal nodded, only half-understanding what she meant.

  “Surely it's fuzzy,” he said. “The information. Unfocused.”

  Feoragh shook her head.

  “Information etching is a precise process,” she said. “There's nothing fuzzy about the results. Nothing at all.”

  She rubbed her fingers across her forehead in what Donal thought was an unconscious gesture.

  “What is the process?” he asked her. “The etching—how does it work, or are you not allowed to say?”

  Feoragh stared at him for an extended moment. Then: “Suffering,” she said. “That's where the focus comes from.”

  Donal had no idea how to respond to that.

  The information quest did more than disturb Donal. Bloodied, Feoragh seemed matter-of-fact about what it took to be a Bone Listener; and she had uncovered some positive results.

  She told Donal as much as she'd been able to discover about the people-behind-the-people-behind-the-people involved in the diva's and the other performers' deaths. There were “unfulfilled links”—as she described them—to Zurinam and other countries.

  Feoragh recited a short list, which Donal memorized.

  “But the clearest trail,” Feoragh said, “leads to Silvex City.

  Councillor Gelbthorne is the name you need. I rate him at ninety-three percent likelihood of belonging to the same group as Cortindo.”

  “Silvex City? That's in—”

  “Illurium, yes. And one of your colleagues is Illurian. Though she has no meaningful contacts that I can discover, she should be able to brief you on what life is like in Silvex City, when you decide to go there.”

  Donal scarcely noticed the “when” rather than “if.” The colleague that Feoragh referred to was Xalia, and what a wraith could tell Donal about surviving in the city, he was not quite sure.

  “Senator Blanz has been dealing with someone in Silvex City,” Feoragh added. “I can't track down the name. I'm sure that Malfax Cortindo knows it.”

  This made a kind of sense.

  “Cortindo's dead,” he said. “But why is his body still in stasis?”

  “I didn't pursue that question,” Feoragh answered. “There's no point in looking inside the Lattice for information that fresh.”

  “Shit.”

  Donal needed to get an autopsy scheduled. Perhaps Laura's influence . . . but even she couldn't move openly against Commissioner Vilnar. And if Vilnar really was dirty and suspected that Laura's task force was investigating him, he would have the power to shut them down, provided he resorted to dirty tricks.

  And Donal suspected that Vilnar, if he were fighting for his own survival, would have little hesitation in pulling out every nasty tactic he knew, from discrediting Laura or her officers to having them arrested or worse.

  There were many bad things that could happen to a police officer whose own superiors had turned against him—or her.

  “Talk to Padraigh,” Feoragh said. “Tell him I sent you.”

  “All right.”

  “That's not a promise that he'll be able to help you.”

  “I understand. Thanks. And thank you for—” Donal gestured toward the cell. “You know.”

  Feoragh bowed her head. “What else could I do?”

  “I don't know. But thank you anyway.”

  Harald was crouched low over his Phantasm Mk IV, traveling at a hundred mph along the overpass. This late at night there was little traffic, though it was still dangerous as he hurtled from the orbit opening in the two-thousand-foot skull that overlooked the city's midtown.

  He accelerated, weaving between three freight trucks and their loads of scared-looking lizards in their crates, destined for the food markets. The Phantasm's handlebars had already morphed to their lowest configuration, and the engine growled, certain in the knowledge that there was more power to give should Harald need it.

  Then there was a spiraling down-ramp and Harald took it at speed, feeling the bike's joy as he banked the continuous turn through some thousand degrees of curve until he was on the level.

  The bike shot forward between two vast supporting pillars, screaming through blood-red stoplights as horns honked—even at this hour there were people to be scared by his tactics.

  He slowed, followed a zigzag route through nine city blocks, then turned into the gentle off-ramp that led onto Avenue of the Basilisks. It was the same street but several miles away from police HQ: the avenue stretched for over a hundred blocks.

  There. He could see the green headlights now.

  Brijak, his snitch, had been telling the truth. There was a bonded warehouse exactly where Brijak had said.

  A lone low-slung car was pulled up at the gate. Its driver got out and talked to the security guards for a couple of minutes before getting back inside the car and driving off. The driver had been wearing a dark suit, and he had scanned the streets—security conscious—before walking over to the guards' booth.

  But there was no way he had spotted Harald.

  When the car moved off, Harald waited nearly two minutes before setting the stealth switch, turning the engine into mumbling life, and moving slowly in the correct direction. There was only one sensible direction for someone leaving the warehouse district.

  Harald didn't open the engine up to norma
l power until he was on the expressway. Red strontium-vapor streetlights turned the highway into a glistening blood-red river as Harald gunned the Phantasm, bringing the car into sight.

  He remembered the way the driver had checked the surroundings. Damn it. As Harald followed along the high expressway, the bastard had to have spotted the Phantasm trailing him.

  When the car took the off-road that ended five miles later at the Avenue of the Basilisks, Harald took the penultimate exit, the spiraling ramp that rush-hour drivers crawled down carefully in their complaining cars. For a minute, he would be out of sight of the car's rearview mirrors.

  Now Harald manipulated switches and spoke the keywords that he preferred not to use: they made the Phantasm uncomfortable. It stretched out, wheels rotating as it elongated its chassis in preparation, then it hunched back and raised its handlebars into a vertical attitude.

  A shivering change washed over its bone-pale skin. The fairings broadened and darkened toward green. It no longer looked like a Phantasm.

  To a motorcycle enthusiast, its outline was closest to a Maleville 7, a low-performance classic. It was the best the Phantasm could do for disguise.

  Up ahead, a car swung into view. Green headlights, a cautious driving style—yes, that was the bastard.

  “Let's go.” Harald laid his hand flat on the fuel tank. “And thank you.”

  The first stop was at the rear of a garment store that should have been deserted at this hour. In the alleyway around back, the car stopped.

  The driver got out and crossed to a metal door, then spoke a password that Harald was too far away to lip-read. Silver sparks flickered across the metal as a hex field dissipated. The man opened the door and went inside.

  Harald left the bike. It was gently thrumming in stealth mode and fully armed should anyone touch it in Harald's absence.

  On foot, Harald went down the alleyway, keeping to the edges as it opened out to a yard paved in black oily gravel. Despite the footing, Harald moved with scarcely a sound. At the lighted, barred window, he peeked inside.

  Two short men with square jaws and massive shoulders and arms were shifting a coffin-size container into position on a table.

  The man in the suit was standing in an internal doorway, only partly in Harald's line of sight.

  They said something more, then the dark suit disappeared from the doorway and Harald realized the meeting was already over. He moved fast, disappearing into the narrower alley just as the metal door banged open.

  “—course it's light when it's empty,” a rough voice was saying. “Obvious, ain't it?”

  “Then you won't have any problem being there.” This man's voice had a trace of an accent. “Will you?”

  “Er . . . No, boss.”

  Harald waited in case they might say something obvious, like a place or time. If they did, he would have to evaluate whether it was the truth or a fabrication—the latter would mean they'd spotted him.

  But there were no further words as footsteps crunched across gravel and the car door opened and slammed shut almost in time with the building's metal door. Harald was already moving. Beneath the car engine's sound, he could hear a deeper rumble as the bike switched itself out of stealth mode in readiness for the chase.

  “Well done.”

  By the time the car pulled out onto the Avenue of the Basilisks, Harald was already riding the still-altered bike in its Maleville form, following from in front. The car overtook him but not at high speed; this was close enough to police HQ that the driver would not want to be stopped. Not tonight.

  Then the car pulled off to the right, into Kilbury Circle, and Harald had to think fast, taking the bike into Melville Square and cutting through a small alley, knowing that he could no longer afford to be spotted. He'd thought the car would pass him, but this was the way life turned out: there was no use worrying about it.

  There.

  Harald caught a glimpse of the target car, saw the wash of its lime-tinged headlight beams play across a garbage can—they were into a residential area, five-story town houses from the turn of the millennium replacing the huge towers—and he turned the bike to follow.

  “I think you can relax,” he shouted above the slipstream, and squeezed inward with his knees.

  There was a warmth against his inner legs: a signal of gratitude as the bike began to morph itself back into default shape.

  It lengthened and lowered its configuration, paling back to the color of dried bone.

  Harald lay forward, close against the armored fuel tank, and the Phantasm growled its delight as its natural form returned. It banked over as Harald directed the hard-accelerating turn, and they arced into Pallas Heptagon.

  Slowing now, the car had already passed along two sides of the heptagonal central park. On the other side of the road, although it was late, lights were burning in many of the grand old buildings. Outside two of them, soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms stood on guard duty.

  This was the diplomatic district, where embassies and consulates had stood for centuries.

  The motorcycle switched its lights off and slowed simultaneously with Harald's decision to do just that: it was no longer clear which of them was the rider and which the vehicle. Sometimes they acted together like a single being.

  Coasting to a silent stop, the Phantasm-and-Harald reflexively chose the darkest spot. A large parked limousine with obsidian windows and flared fins helped obscure them. They quietly observed the target car slowing and then halting before armored gates that let into a yard beside one of the older and more luxurious embassies.

  A white-helmeted guard came out of a sentry box, looked in at the car's driver, and nodded. At the same time the armored gate slid to one side on impressively quiet rollers—Harald assumed that diplomats liked to sleep soundly—to reveal a darkened yard.

  The car slid forward and disappeared from sight as the gate rolled across and clicked into place. Pallas Heptagon was still once more.

  Harald squeezed his knees and the bike slipped into stealth without his having to use the controls. Then it rolled backward until they reached the next corner of the heptagon, before spinning around and taking them out of there, heading for the nearest police phone.

  It was late, but there was at least one person that Harald knew would not be asleep. Every member of the team had Laura's home phone number, and the police HQ switchboard had it set up as if it were an internal extension.

  Harald wondered what he was going to say.

  Sushana was missing, that was the thing. Was any of this going to help? A bonded warehouse, a covert shipment—it might have nothing to do with Sushana's disappearance.

  There was an all-night convenience store on the corner. Here the houses were dark and crumbling. Harald stopped and parked the Phantasm.

  “I'll just be a moment.”

  The engine purred.

  Inside the store, Harald nodded to the owner, a tall man with pale-brown skin and three purple scars along his left cheek.

  “Have you got any maps?” Harald asked. “Local maps?”

  “Yes, I think we have—” The man started to point, then his gaze flickered toward the street outside. “Is that your motorcycle?”

  “Uh–huh.”

  “Please, shall I call the police? I think a man is trying to steal it.”

  Harald felt himself relax, listening.

  “Everything's fine,” he told the store-owner.

  “But he is going to take your motorcycle!”

  Flicking through the maps, Harald found the one he wanted. He pulled it open, checked the index, turned to the Tristopolitan Midtown section, and found the page that showed Pallas Heptagon. As he'd hoped, the embassy names were marked.

  The man he'd followed had entered the Illurian embassy.

  “Please, sir, I'm thinking I should really call the—”

  A scream echoed from the street.

  “No need to panic,” said Harald.

  There was no need for the switchboard to pat
ch Harald through to Laura's home. She was in the office, as was Donal. He'd found a small cot to sleep on from among the four set up in the supply room at the end of the corridor.

  Viktor and Alexa were in the squad room, bruised arcs beneath their eyes, showing the strain. Waiting was worse than being on the streets.

  After a while, Viktor pulled on his leather coat and said he had to get out. Alexa, staring into space, scarcely acknowledged the words.

  When the phone rang, Donal was standing in Laura's office, while she sat, flicking through the same reports she'd already read twenty times. Donal felt sweaty and unclean, his shirt rumpled and his suit in need of a dry-cleaning, his tie half undone.

  Laura picked up the handset.

  “Harald? You've found something?”

  There was a pause.

  “Sounds thin,” she said then. “Sounds like you were following a different kind of lead. . . . No, I don't blame you: a bonded warehouse job is big news. Coincidence?”

  Laura listened some more, then glanced up at Donal.

  “We might be in luck,” she said into the phone. “Let me talk to Donal a moment. Just so you know, Donal's uncovered another trail, and it also pointed to Illurium. To Silvex City.”

  Laura covered the mouthpiece with one hand.

  “Harald's found a driver from the Illurian embassy,” she told Donal, “who's connected with a bonded-warehouse job. They're going to deliver some container to the warehouse.” She continued with the details that Harald had given her. “What do you think?”

  Donal was used to running his own team. It was good of Laura to recognize that.

  “Go with it,” said Donal. “But don't commit all our resources.”

  For a few moments, Laura considered.

  Into the phone she said, “Sorry, Harald. Just planning. D'you have any input?”

  She listened, eyes hardening.

  “Intelligence,” she said then. “Damn it.”

  Donal guessed what they were talking about. “You want to call in the spooks?” Even to someone used to freewraiths, some of the DIO's operatives were hard to take. “They'll crawl all over the place and shut us out.”

  Laura tapped her desk with her diamond-hard fingernails.