Bone Song

by John Meaney

  This time there was manifest hatred in Feoragh's voice.

  “And the announcement,” she continued, “that the triplets are going to live for several decades longer than anyone anticipated is going to annoy the conspirators intensely. The fact that the triplets are performing soon in Silvex City is going to present an opportunity they won't be able to—”

  “There's going to be another hit? In Silvex City?”

  “Yes, and that's the message you need to get to Donal Riordan. That, and that I've narrowed down the list of possible contacts. With the layers of indirection they've put in place, I cannot tell with an accuracy of more than fifty-three percent, but my intuition says I'm right.”

  Laura looked at Feoragh steadily. A Bone Listener's intuition was worth more than facts, or at least that was what Laura's mentor, Captain Felthorn, had often told her.

  “You think you know who the Black Circle member is? The one who organized the hit on the diva?”

  “I'm not sure if that operation was his, but Councillor Gelbthorne has banking and energy interests that have to coincide with the Black Circle's long-term strategy. He's the person that Donal Riordan has to apprehend. I take it he has cross-border warrants?”

  “Yes, three blanks hex-entangled to Judge Prior's office.” If the judge filled in a name and signed any of the local copies, the corresponding warrant in Donal's possession would display the same information. “If you're really sure about this, we can go over there right now.”

  “And the airport?”

  Laura looked out at Alexa. “You still got them on the line? The airport cops?”

  “Just hung up,” Alexa called back. “Some guy called Piersen, said Donal's already gone through. I'll have to see if we can call the aircraft, but Piersen said it's impossible.”

  At his desk, Harald gave a tiny smile, his face hidden at an angle where no one should notice.

  The evening was falling outside, purple gloom enveloping the city, and Alexa had already switched on her bright desk lamp. Earlier, wraiths had cleaned the windows inside and out, so that the lamp now shined to produce a reflected interior. And in that reflection, Alexa had seen Harald smile.

  Seen him smile when she said Donal was unreachable.

  Alexa picked up the phone again and tried a different tack, asking the operator to put her through to the airline's reservation desk. If that didn't work, she would think of something else.

  Harald stood up quickly and muttered something about going down to the range. He looked like a man who needed to let off steam, but a gun range wasn't always the best place for that. The range master would soon spot an officer whose emotional state meant he shouldn't be shooting.

  Alexa watched him go.

  Laura slid open a desk drawer and stared at the Magnus lying inside. It was Donal's gun, the one he had not been able to take because no airline allowed anyone, besides on-duty sky marshals, to fly armed.

  She wished he'd been able to carry it with him.

  “You can wait,” said Feoragh. “The judge can wait. It will be three hours at least before the plane lands in Silvex City, maybe a lot longer—you know what the storms are like at the Illurian border. And the warrants amend themselves instantaneously.”

  “I know.” Laura looked back through the glass wall at Alexa on the phone, who was gesturing as she argued. “But we're not getting anywhere here. I need some kind of progress.”

  Feoragh blinked her liquid eyes.

  “I intuit the movement of powerful enemies against you, Commander Steele.”

  “Uh. . . Right,” said Laura. “Who in particular?”

  “Unknown so far, or I would tell you. But the thing is, they have made a mistake. Because they never should have killed Mina d'Alkarny.”

  “How—What do you mean?”

  “There are ripples of causation spreading through the Lattice, patterns that will reveal themselves among the information vectors. And . . .”

  “What?”

  “. . . and we are only human, or”—with a humorless smile—“at least as human as you, Commander. Bone Listeners are supposed to be impartial, and we are, but there is the matter of motivation.”

  Outside, Alexa slammed the handset down again and swore.

  “You want to get her killers, too, huh?” said Laura.

  Feoragh gave the minutest of nods.

  “Judge Prior takes a while to get motivated,” said Laura, watching Alexa cursing outside. “But I think he'll be impressed by your affidavit. At least he'd better be.”

  “Yes.”

  If Laura had still been alive, she would have shivered at the Bone Listener's tone.

  Donal thanked the scanwraith as he passed through the final gate to the outside. A cold wind held steady across the tarmac, and in front of Donal a thin woman clutched at her wide white hat with one hand, her dress and coat with the other. She walked with tight paces, trying to keep her balance on her stiletto heels.

  They headed for the steps that attendants had already wheeled up to the plane. The aircraft's propeller blades were still, pregnant with the possibility of whirling motion, waiting to drag the metal craft aloft.

  The thin woman's husband, portly and dressed in a double-breasted suit, kept his head down as he walked, making no attempt to help his wife. Donal shook his head and checked out the other passengers walking with him. All of them looked more richly dressed than he, though they couldn't all be flying first class.

  And he wondered, as he continued across the tarmac, whether the scanwraith would have allowed him to carry his most precious accessory aboard after all. But that was spilled milk: the Magnus was safely locked in Laura's desk drawer back at HQ.

  The first of the passengers was already climbing the steps, while at the top two stewardesses in black capes smiled their welcoming smiles.

  Traveling first class still meant having to climb the steps by yourself, though Donal could imagine some future service whereby wraiths would lift the passengers up into the aircraft. The wind tugged at Donal as he ascended. When he gripped the rail he felt how cold it was: almost enough to make the skin stick.

  He waited a moment for the woman ahead to reach the top, then moved up two steps at a time to reach the hatchway and enter the plane.

  “Welcome aboard, sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You'll be seated over here.”

  In first class, the portly man with the thin wife was already making himself comfortable, sipping the brandy that a stewardess had poured for him. Drawing a fat cigar from a silver case, the man placed it between his lips and sucked hard, igniting it. A near-invisible curtain surrounded his chair, sealing him off from the rest of the cabin.

  Donal had always hated cigars. The thought of the essence-of-flamewraith that was used to soak self-igniting tobacco—that was a new wrinkle that made him despise the man further.

  “May I fetch you a drink, sir?” The steward who spoke was thin and effeminate. “Perhaps a sherry?”

  “Whiskey,” said Donal. “Single malt, raw as you like.”

  “Ah, very good. Thank you, sir.”

  As the steward went aft, Donal checked the other cabin crew, seeing the limp-wristed men gossiping with the stewardesses and noting the two stewards who looked different: lean rather than thin, with enlarged knuckles and some scarring around the eyes.

  If any of the other passengers noticed, they would probably feel worried, but for Donal, the Federal Sky Branch officers represented added security. Still, he regretted now having asked for a window seat: if there was some kind of action, the best place for Donal to be sitting would be next to the aisle.

  Yet it had been twelve years since the Goladol Separatist Alliance had hijacked a series of aircraft, seven in all, and forced them to fly to Zurinam. Since the last two loads of passengers had been executed by the Zurinese authorities—the hijackers had deliberately landed the plane during the eighth day of Weeping Week, when nonbelievers were not allowed out of their homes, and the gla
diatorial bishops had wept even as they carried out the sentence on the innocent foreigners who'd been forced into Zurinam—people had fought back, and security had been tightened.

  The last two attempts had been only partially successful, and the rebels had not even tried for the past nine years.

  Still, Goladol Province remained part of Illurium. If the few news reports that made it past the border censors were credible, trouble persisted in the region. No wonder that the Tristopolitan and federal authorities collaborated to keep security tight.

  “There you are, sir. One fine whiskey.”

  Donal hoped it was not too fine, but when he sipped it the liquor seemed to become mist, an intoxicating mist. He closed his eyes to appreciate the overlaid tastes.

  Despite himself, Donal laughed.

  “Make sure your seat belt is secured, sir.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  There was a central bulkhead up front, some ten feet back from the entrance to the flight deck. Black curtains screened off the small area, and at first Donal assumed it was a secondary galley, perhaps a wet bar for first-class passengers only.

  But then he saw the steward returning the whiskey bottle to the galley that was set aft and noticed the watchfulness of one of the hard-looking stewards as he passed the black drape. This was some kind of secure facility.

  Maybe an armory?

  It was another eight minutes before the last of the passengers was aboard, still filing down the aisles toward the economy seats in back. The propellers jerked and began to rotate even while eight insubstantial wraiths were hauling the steps out of the way.

  The cabin vibrated, and the plane slowly turned on its nose wheels until it was pointing along the runway for takeoff. Overhead, the blank purple sky seemed darker.

  The engines rumbled.

  Donal took another sip of whiskey.

  “Welcome aboard, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Captain Yershwin, and we are ready to take off. Please settle back and enjoy.”

  The lights outside became a blur as the engines dropped in pitch. Then the lights were dropping away and the aircraft was rising, a pale-green glow emanating from the engine housings as hex-protected turbines drew power from the necroscopic cells embedded in the wings and fuselage.

  Going to Illurium.

  Donal shook his head again, then tossed back the remainder of the whiskey in one long, beautiful gulp.

  Alexa was alone in the task-force office. She had another mug of coffee on her desk, but she wasn't going to drink this one: she'd spend the rest of the evening having to go pee. How Donal drank the amount he did, she didn't know.

  Perhaps men's bladders were bigger or something. Maybe when Sushana was well enough to chat again, Alexa could ask her. She might know.

  Having failed to get a message through to the airport before Donal left, Alexa wasn't sure what to do next. A sensible person would go home.

  A sensible person would never have volunteered to be on Laura's task force.

  If they scored a spectacular success, then perhaps the task-force members would be slated for recognition and promotion—but no one likes a snitch, let alone a police officer who rats on fellow officers. As long as they investigated corruption outside the department, it was manageable.

  Even then, the city politicians could damage anyone's career prospects with a whisper or innuendo, or even some discreet (yet unsubtle) blackmail.

  But Alexa was determined to make commander herself someday. When she pulled open the left-hand drawer of her old desk, it revealed a stack of books from the collection she mostly kept at home: the dry tomes she needed to memorize and understand in order to pass her sergeant's exam next month.

  Some of the books were slim volumes with cheap covers, and she'd hardly looked at the one on top: Surveillance II—Reading Lips. Alexa had all seven volumes of the Surveillance series, plus the “unofficial” eighth volume that no officer could afford to be seen reading: the one subtitled Running Away.

  Everyone knew that the books were intensely practical, but to be seen reading a book on running away was to invite weeks or even months of ongoing taunts and insults. It wasn't just this department: surely every police force in every city of the world was the same.

  Alexa pulled out the volume on lip-reading and opened it atop her desk. She skimmed through the chapters, looking for interesting passages to reread. The author was good at telling personal anecdotes, humorous and possibly exaggerated, in order to highlight the points she was making. Then Alexa put the book down and closed it.

  There were other esoteric skills of use to plainclothes officers, and one of them consisted of deep trancework. Harald had given her some pointers, taking her through basic mesmeric inductions and suggestions, showing her how to manipulate other people's minds, and her own.

  Since beginning the work, Alexa had not yet put a suspect into a trance, but she had used visualization to improve her scores on the gun range, and she had Harald to thank for it.

  Harald. I don't like the way you smiled tonight.

  Beneath his gentle ways, there was a dangerous side to Harald: the product of his years in the marines, where he had learned skills that were unknown and unthinkable to the civilian populace—and to most police officers.

  Something's wrong.

  Part of trancework, deriving from its original uses in medicine, entailed developing the ability to revisit memories, to relive past events in such detail that a person could explore stimuli they had not consciously perceived when the events happened.

  In therapy, such work allowed the patient to make happy memories more vivid, more intense, and to anchor them in a world of confident thinking. The reverse procedure allowed them to make a traumatic memory lose its painful hooks.

  For police officers—for surveillance officers in particular—such skills had additional uses.

  Alexa's eyelids fluttered as she thought back to the sight of Donal and Laura, visible through the glass sides of Laura's office, after Donal returned from the Archives. It was the day he met the Bone Listener Feoragh, who came here today—

  No. Wrong time. Alexa shifted her memory to when Donal came from the interrogation that he kept silent about, working with Dr. Kyushen Jyu. After that, black-suited medics took one of the dwarf twins away to a secure ward.

  Yes . . .

  Alexa sank a little deeper.

  This memory.

  There was something here, something going on. She thought that Harald might know what it was, because of the way he'd looked at Donal.

  Alexa had the time pinned. Now she had to slip back in memory and revisit that time. She closed her eyes and began to count backward from seven hundred, her eyelids fluttering as she leaned back in her chair and smiled.

  Her awareness slid deep inside.

  In the past, she saw Laura's lips move, saw Donal turn so his back was to Alexa, but the tension in his shoulders was a kind of eloquence. Then he turned, and in her memory this time—unlike her first experience of these events—Alexa could lip-read every word that Donal said.

  “Seven-seven-seven.” Donal paused, then: “Two-nine, three-five-one, seven-two-zero.”

  “That was in the dwarf's—” Laura stepped to one side, so that Donal's shoulder obscured Alexa's view of her face.

  But it was enough.

  I don't believe it.

  Shuddering, Alexa began taking deeper breaths, feeling like a diver beginning to ascend. Donal had said that the commissioner was implicated. That Commissioner Vilnar's involvement was confirmed, from a second source of evidence. Alexa was sure of it.

  Donal had told Laura that Vilnar was a suspect.

  Yet Harald's attitude toward Donal had changed for the worse.

  Not him.

  It was hard to believe. Especially with Sushana in the hospital.

  Harald, a spy for Vilnar? Impossible.

  Eyelids fluttering, Alexa slipped back into her memories.

  Five minutes later, her eyes snapped open.

>   “Harald, you fuckin' cretin.”

  An hour into the flight, there was a soft moan from beneath the deck. Startled, Donal looked outside, in case part of the wing had dropped off. There was nothing save the strong green glow of turbines against the indigo night.

  Another moan sounded, followed by a drawn-out growling. The hard-faced stewards were already moving toward the rear of the aircraft. Donal realized they were heading for whatever part of the plane connected with the cargo holds.

  Was one of the animals down there emitting the sounds? Donal remembered his glimpses of the caged creatures. Some of them could be dangerous if they got out.

  Outside, in the far distance, a sheet of white lightning flared. This was a sign of the Transition Tempest, of the turbulence and concentrated hex that forever roiled in the skies above the Illurian border.

  Yet the flight time, according to Captain Yershwin's announcement shortly after takeoff, included two more hours before they reached the perpetual storms. This was too soon for hex-induced phenomena to manifest themselves.

  But down in the hold, an awful screech was followed by a chorus of yowling. Whatever the disturbance was, it was affecting more than one of the beasts. In fact, it sounded like all of them, as they gave howling vent to fear and rage.

  One of the stewardesses hurried forward, complexion pale, then stopped as she reached the black drapes beyond the forward bulkhead. Donal had wondered what was hidden there.

  “Excuse me.” He raised himself up and stepped over the feet of the white-haired woman in the next seat. “I beg your pardon.”

  “You be careful, young man.”

  “I'm really sorry, ma'am.”

  “No, I mean, if you're going to help with those dangerous animals, you be very careful.”

  “I'll try.”

  But without a weapon, Donal wasn't sure what he would do if the beasts got free.

  “Please don't worry.” It wasn't Captain Yershwin's voice over the speaker but that of a younger man. “This is First Officer Smeltil. Please be assured that we have everything under control. Remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened.”