So I said, “I think whoever attacked me is linked to the disappearances.”
“Which may be linked to the Desert Winds, where my sister is a member.” She considered me. “So you aren’t sure you should trust us.”
I couldn’t tell her it related to the High Mesh. For all I knew, the Majdas had ties to them. I also had to protect Jak. “I can’t break trust with my sources.”
“You mean the Undercity, yes?”
“Essentially.” Before she could press the matter, I added, “I did wonder about one thing.”
She tilted her head. “What is that?”
I paused, uncertain how to proceed. Although no one had risked protesting when Lavinda told the police to release me, I’d clearly annoyed the chief. If I also annoyed Lavinda, she might send me back to the cops. “Please forgive if my question offends.”
She spoke dryly. “Go ahead, Major.”
“It just seems odd for you to be so interested in the Starchild case.”
Her expression became unreadable, as if a shutter went down. “It’s personal.”
Damn. I’d just trespassed on the legendary Majda restraint. “My apology. I don’t mean to intrude.”
After a moment, she said, “It’s all right. I knew Chiaru when we were young, after I graduated from the academy and she finished her business degrees at Cries University.”
“The two of you seem very different.”
“I suppose. But we’re both empaths. Kyle operators tend to seek each other out.” She paused. “It can be—fulfilling.”
That sounded like more than friendship. “Can you sense her? It might help us find her.”
She met my gaze with a look I couldn’t quite place, one different from anything I’d seen with her before. “No, I can’t sense her.”
It suddenly hit me, that look. Lavinda was afraid. Not for herself, but for Chiaru, terrified even, that kind of fear that tore you apart.
“You’re probably too far away,” I said.
“I’ve always felt her presence.” She took a deep breath, reminding me of Lukas Quida. “And now I don’t.”
“Nothing at all?”
She considered me for a long moment before answering. “Major, I realize you aren’t a lawyer or a doctor. But our conversations are still protected.”
“Yes, they are.” The retainer I’d signed with the Majdas went on far more than I’d ever wanted to read about nondisclosure and the dire consequences I would suffer if I violated their stipulations. Regardless, I’d have respected her privacy no matter what. “Anything you say remains with me.”
“It’s just—I had a convulsion last night. My doctors are upset. No one knows what caused it.” She paused. “I found out later it happened in the same instant Chiaru died. She—she was the one for me, Major, more than anyone else I’ve loved before or since. No matter where we were, what we did, we always sensed each other.”
I stared at her. She’d just described a reaction more intense even than what Lukas experienced. No matter what scenario I might have imagined for this conversation, no way would it have included Colonel Lavinda Majda revealing that her greatest love wasn’t her husband.
“Gods,” I murmured. “I’m sorry.” I seemed to be saying that a lot lately.
She spoke with difficulty. “After the convulsion, I slept for a few hours. I dreamed Chiaru was talking to me. It felt so real. For an instant, when I woke up, I could have sworn she was there, sitting in my room.” Her voice cracked. “Then I remembered. She was gone.”
I wished I knew how to ease her pain. “Maybe you don’t feel her presence because she’s too far away.”
“Yes. Perhaps.” She didn’t look like she believed it any more than I did.
I’d assumed Abyss Associates and Scorpio Corporation had no link that affected this case. I’d missed the big one: the House of Majda. I could see why they’d wanted me at the Quida gala, now that I knew a Majda sat on the Scorpio board. The Metropoli deal impacted their financial holdings. They’d have grilled me after the party for my insights. But they had no link to Abyss.
No financial link.
Although marriage among the diverse peoples of the Skolian Imperialate included just about any relationship humans could imagine, Lavinda didn’t have that freedom. Her marriage to Prince Paolo had been arranged decades ago. If even after all this time, she reacted so strongly to Chiaru, their relationship must have been intense. Had Lavinda been anyone else, they could have married. Not so for a Majda; they hewed rigidly to the ancient traditions.
Lavinda had done her duty—and lost the love of her life.
Jak stood with me on the midwalk of the Lizard Trap canal. Red dust had sprinkled across our clothes, my leathers and his trousers and muscle shirt. Ruzik and his people were on the floor of the canal talking trash with the Oey gang. Led by Pat Cote, the Oeys included Pat’s lover Tym and two other kids. All in their late teens, they ranked highly among the knights in both leadership and tykado. Near them, a cluster of children were playing skip-jacks, throwing little stars carved from cacti-stalks, a native plant our ancestors had engineered to grow underground. Several adults sat on the midwalk across the canal cooking over a fire. Smoke rose in tendrils and drifted away through air vents in the ceiling. The aroma of grilled vegetables drenched in spicy pizo sauce filled the air, making my mouth water.
Chalkdust, an eleven-year-old girl, sat near the adults, engrossed in an algebra book with graphs floating above it. I’d bought the book from a school in Cries that would never let an Undercity child enroll. It didn’t matter. None of the kids here wanted to attend such a school. It would feel like prison to them.
In my youth, I’d filched my education from the Cries education meshes. Hack, the cyber-rider in Ruzik’s circle, had stolen time on the Cries University mesh to learn physics, until he reached a point where even I couldn’t always follow his work. Previous to Chalkdust, though, no one in the aqueducts had owned a math book. Hell, many kids here couldn’t read. No one liked it when I required schooling for the Dust Knights. The kids wanted to belong to the most elite fight club in the Undercity, though, so they learned. Chalkdust loved math. Our bargain was simple; I brought her the books, and she taught herself everything they had to offer. She’d blasted through pre-algebra in half the time it took most students, and now she was conquering algebra. Such a small thing to own her own math book—and such a large step for my people.
Jak followed my gaze. “You remember?”
I glanced at him. “Remember?”
“The math games we played. Me, you, at her age.”
“Yah, I remember.” I’d loved those games. “You calculated probabilities so fast, it was like you had a tech-mech brain.” He’d kept winning big at poker, until none of the gambling dens would let him play. You could get killed for counting cards, and Jak was a master at it. I’d long suspected that was why he ran the high-stakes games at the Black Mark. At the glitz tables in the big room, he fixed the games in favor of the house, but the card games in the back rooms depended on skill. You could play however you wanted as long as you had enough credit for the buy-in.
“You find the worm at the Black Mark?” I asked. I’d told him what Daan claimed, that a dealer at the Mark was passing messages for these execs in the High Mesh.
“Yah, found him.” Jak scowled. “Bez.”
I remembered Bez from the card game where I’d located Daan. “He snitching?”
“Said a slick paid him to pass whispers.”
“What whispers?”
“Secret place for meetings. In the desert, under the desert.” He waved his hand as if shunting away the dealer. “Tonight I tell Bez. No more job.”
“Jak, nahya. Don’t kick him out.”
He scowled. “Why? Betrayed my trust.”
“Didn’t harm the Mark.”
“Harmed my trust.”
“Yah. I ken. But Jak, you fire him, he tells the slick, we lose everything.”
“Lose what? A bad
deal?”
“My lead.” The minute Bez told his Cries employers he could no longer pass messages, they’d know something was up. My lead would evaporate. “I need to follow. Find their meetings.”
“Won’t work. Bialo told you about the High Mesh. He’ll tell the slicks you know.”
“He won’t. They’d kick him out.” I shrugged. “Begged me not to tell.”
“Think he can fool them?”
“For a while.” Probably not long, though. I needed to move fast. “Tell Bez: He works for us, he keeps his job. Double agent. Bez tells you their next message. You tell me.”
Jak considered the idea. “I could do. Bez is young. Not so smart.” Dryly he added, “Doesn’t ken optos. He’s getting shit for passing messages. Could ask ten times as much.”
It didn’t surprise me, given how rarely we used opto-credits. Bez probably wanted them to buy junk on the black market. “You find any other execs who go to both the Black Mark and the Desert Winds?” My shoulders stiffened. “General Majda?”
He waved his hand in dismissal. “Majdas never come to the Mark.”
“Anyone else?”
“Seven execs total, counting the three in your case. Also an artist.”
“Inna Starchild?” I’d seen her artwork when we’d visited her home.
“Yah, Starchild. Only big names, famous, rich.”
I thought of Lukas. “Mara Quida’s husband?”
“Not him.” He looked intrigued. “Someone else you know, though. Slick called Bessel.”
I recognized the name. “Personal assistant to Lukas Quida.”
“You going to follow these slicks?”
“Yah, you bet.”
He touched my arm. “Only bet on what you can win, Bhaaj.”
It was good advice. I wished I could heed it. I didn’t like where this investigation was taking me, but I had to act soon. The longer it went on, the greater the chance people would realize how much I knew. Although it worked in my favor that Daan Bialo underestimated me, I doubted I would be as fortunate with the people in charge of this High Mesh.
Whoever they were.
The lowest end of the Concourse lay hundreds of meters below the desert, a cramped alley with faded stalls. I walked through the smoky air, headed toward the upper boulevard. As I continued on, the haze cleared and the street widened into an avenue. Higher quality stalls appeared, with yellow canvas walls and blue streamers hanging from their roofs, rustling in the air currents. I stopped at a stall between a café and a carpet stand, a small but respectable location. Nothing about it spoke of world-shaking events or even a little excitement. Nothing—except for the burly man standing behind the counter. Weaver. Today the first Undercity vendor in the history of Raylicon legally set up shop on the Concourse.
“Eh, Weaver,” I said.
“Eh, Bhaaj.” He motioned at the tapestries, glassware, and pottery stacked on the counters. “Got stuff to trade.”
“Looks good.” I nodded to him and to Dara, his wife, who had the day off from bartending to help out Weaver. Darjan, their fourteen-year-old daughter, had come as well. Dara seemed nervous, uncertain about this strange idea, her husband “selling” goods on the Concourse. Darjan looked delighted.
At this early hour, the Concourse was quiet except for the vendors setting up their stalls. I couldn’t believe this day had come. Last year Weaver couldn’t get a license because he had no birth certificate. Fixing that took time, but he finally got proof that yes, he had indeed been born. We spent another year caught in the Cries bureaucracy, which threw obstacle after obstacle in his path. I didn’t ask the Majdas for help; the Undercity needed to make changes itself, without depending on outsiders to do it for us. Weaver had no interest in setting historic precedents; in the end, he persisted because it pissed him off that Cries made it so difficult.
Today he won that fight. Today the Undercity stepped into the world of Cries on the same footing as its privileged inhabitants.
“Stay a bit?” Weaver asked me.
I smiled. “Yah, I stay.” I wouldn’t have left for the world.
A chime rang, reverberating along the Concourse, the opening of the business day. A trickle of shoppers and tourists turned into a flow as people poured onto the boulevard. On a typical day, people thronged the street. A few would even go to the end, either out of curiosity or because they couldn’t afford the pricier shops. I stood to the side, watching customers wander in our direction.
Before today, the “commerce” of my people on the Concourse had consisted of thieves stealing food, tech-mech, or trinkets. I’d been no different in my youth. Sometimes when our children ventured up here, the cops rounded them up and dumped them into the windowless orphanage in the desert. The kids either escaped or were freed by their kin and friends. The few who never made it back ended up as laborers on water farms in the desert, a miserable existence away from the beauty of either Cries or the Undercity. When the cops caught adults, they threw them in jail. The courts usually released them after a few days, except for the drug punkers, who went to prison. That had all worked against Weaver getting his license, but he never gave up, determined to prove to Cries that people like him existed in the aqueducts, a family man with a trade.
A woman came to the stall and peered at Weaver’s glassware, especially the delicate vases glazed in desert colors. “These are beautiful.” She looked up at him. “Do you have more? They’d make nice gifts for my family.”
Panic flashed across Weaver’s face. He’d been learning Cries speech, but in this moment, faced with his first customer, it looked like it all flew away. I hesitated, not wanting to intrude—
Darjan stepped forward and smiled at the woman. “Yes, ma’am,” she said in an accented version of the Cries dialect. “My father has many vases. Other colors, too—blue, green, silver. Would you like to see them?”
The woman returned her smile. “Yes, that would be good.”
Back in the stall, Dara let out a discreet breath. She seemed as nervous as Weaver.
The woman bought six vases, each for a hundred credits. She gave Weaver a voucher for the amount. Darjan entered the woman’s code into her mesh pad and registered the sale in the account we’d set up for Weaver’s business.
After the woman left with her purchases, Weaver turned to me. “A number? This is the bargain? A number?” His scowl was thunderous. “Six vases. Worth three snap bottles of fresh water. I just lost that.”
A feeling hit me that I didn’t know how to describe. Triumph? Pride? Tears? “You got six hundred credits. Six hundred. Trade for two hundred snap bottles.”
He stared at me. “What?”
“Yah.” Darjan gave her father a classic look of teenaged annoyance. “You know. Told you. Snap bottle is three credits. You got six hundred.” Her annoyance melted. “Good bargain.”
“You ken these credits?” he asked her.
“Yah,” Darjan assured him. “I ken.”
I spoke softly. “Congratulations.”
They all blinked at me, perplexed by the five-syllable word. They knew I had no intention to insult them or make a joke big enough to warrant such a word. The only other possibility was that I considered what had just happened worth that many syllables.
Dara sighed. “Ah, Bhaaj.”
I grinned and she laughed, as much with relief as humor. Today life was good.
I rode the lift to my penthouse, feeling like a barbarian among all the elegance. Gold and black panels tiled the lower half of the car and mirrors graced the upper half. My reflection looked back at me, a woman in black trousers and a worn muscle shirt with no sleeves. A trace of dust covered my clothes. My gun sat snug in its holster and I carried my leather jacket over one arm. Tendrils of hair curled around my face, pulled out of the braid that fell down my back. I smirked, enjoying the dissonant image.
“Max,” I said. “Find me everything you can on Bessel, the assistant to Lukas Quida.”
“Will do. Also, Jak wants to talk
with you.”
I tapped my gauntlet comm. “Jak?”
“Bez got another message.” Jak used the Cries dialect. We switched back and forth when we spoke to each other, depending on our subject matter, to the point where I often didn’t notice which dialect he and I were speaking. “Bez was supposed to tell Daan Bialo to go to a meeting,” he continued. “Except Daan never showed up, so Bez couldn’t give him the message.”
I tensed. “What meeting? Where?”
“You aren’t going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“The starship ruins on the shore of the Vanished Sea.”
Ho! Why the hell would they meet at the ships? “They can’t go there.” The lift doors opened, creating an archway. I walked into my living room. “It’s off limits to everyone except the army and a few scientists they let study the ships.”
“Yah. But that’s where Bialo is supposed to meet them. Tonight, in about thirty-five hours.”
Not good. The army controlled access to the ships, and the Majdas controlled the army. If the High Mesh met there, that meant either the Majdas let it happen or else the Mesh was violating military security big time. “Let me know if Bez hears anything more, yah?”
“I will.” Jak’s voice darkened. “And don’t do it, Bhaaj.”
“Do what?” I knew what he meant, but I couldn’t give him the assurances he wanted.
“Those ships are off-limits to you, too.”
“Don’t worry.”
“I mean it, Bhaaj. Be careful.”
“I will. I promise.”
After we signed off, Max said, “He’s right. You can’t go out there.” Then he added, “Not that such trivialities have ever stopped you.”
“If you mean my job is dangerous, then yah. That’s why I get paid so much.” If I still had a job. “Can you bring up your record of the security mesh at the Majda palace?”
The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3) Page 18