A Conspiracy of Whispers

by Ada Harper

  “Me? What kind of half-assed—you—the Empire—you said—if you think—” Olivia’s brows knitted, teetering somewhere between exasperation and residual fury. Her gaze landed on the crumpled, unconscious body of the Whisper Galen had tossed into a booth. She threw her hand to her eyes. “No, you know what? Never mind. I can’t deal with this right now.”

  “Liv—”

  “Later, Galen.” Olivia rocked, shaky and awkward as she pulled herself out of his lap, and Galen felt hollow and concerned. Olivia looked at Yoshi. “We need to move.”

  * * *

  Olivia cut through the cluttered Syn streets like an arrow, pulling Galen along in her wake.

  No, that wasn’t right. Not an arrow. He tuned in to the details. He could see the faint hunch of her shoulders, the tremble in her walk. She had a twitch to her steps, fast but more uncertain than the light gait he had grown to know so well. As if the city streets were suddenly more precarious ground than the Caeweld wilds. She was tense and she was shaken and Galen could do nothing more than follow, fighting the anxiety rising in his chest that wanted to do nothing more than grab her hand and run. They were exposed, fleeing through the streets like rabbits ahead of wolves. They needed to move, and they needed to get out of sight.

  A quick glance to his side said that Yoshi harbored the same concerns. The bartender hovered at Olivia’s shoulder, a tattooed hand drifting out toward Olivia but never landing. It hadn’t taken long into their brief acquaintance for Galen to understand how close the two were. They exchanged quiet words at each intersection, conferring with something on Yoshi’s pulseband that Galen couldn’t see. They were avoiding detection, picking paths that would avoid the Syndicate’s infamous system of FL-AIs, a fleet of all-seeing drones orchestrated by the government’s formidable AI that maintained the surveillance state of the Syndicate. Galen wasn’t sure how Olivia and Yoshi were predicting their routes, but he was certain it was too convenient to be legal. Occasionally, Yoshi glanced back and caught Galen’s eye, communicating wary curiosity.

  It evidently was not “later” yet, because Olivia hadn’t spoken two words to him since the bar. That was all right with Galen. He’d come to see her safe, not forgiving. And nothing was as normal as an annoyed, growling Olivia. The anxiety that had drowned him since their fight began to ease, reassured him that she was well, if not safe yet. Every time they stopped, Galen took up sentry, scanning the streets.

  The buildings pressed close overhead here. In the Empire, the streets of Chrysanthine were wide and ornate—at least the ones he frequented around the buildings of Ameranthe Court proper. But the Syndicate neighborhood they were in was faceless buildings limned with a sheen of dirt and graffiti.

  Olivia abruptly cut off the main street, leading them down another warren of alleys littered with cardboard, dumpsters, and misfortune. Most of the alley inhabitants wanted nothing more than to shuffle down into their sleep sacks as they passed; a few gave curious looks at Yoshi and Olivia before their eyes encountered Galen and quickly bounced away.

  “Whoa!” Yoshi threw out a hand and Galen instinctively folded behind a dumpster, pulling Olivia with him. They found shadows just in time to see a trio of FL-AIs hiss through the gap between buildings. When they’d passed, Yoshi wheezed, “That was too close.”

  “Hell. I should have noticed those.” Olivia stared into the space the drones had vacated. She slumped, a warm, wounded weight against his chest, so soft Galen knew to be worried. “They weren’t on the pulse?”

  “No, but it’s not your fault.” Yoshi’s lips screwed together, and he picked his next words quietly. “I think they’re deploying extra security. There will probably be sniffers at the station.”

  Galen wasn’t familiar with the term, but whatever it was made Olivia’s already poor mood chill. She stilled. “Why would they do that?”

  “Why...?” Yoshi stopped. “Liv, they know you’re caricae.”

  Her expression iced over. Olivia narrowed her eyes, green turned black in the half-light. “That’s—No. Not possible.”

  The neon above them flickered shadows across their faces. Yoshi sent an alarmed look to Galen before inching toward her, hand out. “But they do. They know you’re caricae and they knew to scruff you. That Whisper was studying the back of your neck from the moment he walked in. I saw it. Someone at Whispers knows—”

  “No.” Ice broke, Olivia flung out her arms, slapping Yoshi’s hands away with violence. She took a short, shocked breath, then abruptly turned away and marched farther into the alley.

  “Liv!”

  “Fuck this. I’m making a call.”

  “Who are you calling?” Galen asked softly. He knew what shock, what denial as an act of desperation looked like. When he saw it with his men, it was usually solved by quickly getting them out of combat. That wasn’t an option here, not with Olivia prowling like a caged cat.

  “Wallis. My Whisper handler, she’s—she can straighten this out—”

  “What’s the possible results of that?”

  Olivia pinned him with a distracted glare as she flicked her wrist up and tapped her pulseband. A hazy light ghosted over her eyes signaling she was connecting as she talked. “Don’t patronize me. I was just there. Why would she have let me go if she... This has to be a mix-up.”

  A whimper strained out of Yoshi’s throat. “You can’t do that. They’ll try to triangulate your location. They know, Liv—”

  “They don’t,” Olivia snarled, and Yoshi raised his hands. She turned away, but the alley only provided so much shelter.

  Yoshi bent over his wrist, fingertips flickering over an implant that glowed to life beneath his skin. He sent a wide-eyed look back up to Galen. “I’m just telling Em—er, my husband, what’s going on. He...well, he can help.”

  It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was more than Galen had gotten up till then. Yoshi moved toward the alley entrance, watching the street for more FL-AIs or Whispers. Galen hesitated, doubting the wisdom of leaving the kindhearted bartender on guard duty, but a growl of frustration pulled him back. Olivia’d finished giving her authorization details but it sounded as if Syndicate bureaucracy was everything it was reputed to be.

  “Listen to me, you little twit, I have Whisper agents bleeding out on my floor so if you don’t want three agent deaths on your hands I need to talk to Wallis now.”

  The men they’d left at the bar were not fatally wounded, but it was a good bluff. The answer hunched Olivia’s shoulders. She kicked the bricks as she passed. “I know she’s there. Put the genta bitch on the line!”

  Another curse. Olivia took a breath. Her voice moderated. “Whisper Wallis. You must be aware that agents approached me at a bar—I believe there’s been a misunderstanding.” Her feet slowed. “I’m afraid I can’t make it to headquarters right now. The trains are packed—” The air rushed out of the alley. She stopped. “What did you say?... That’s absurd. My file—”

  She listened too long for it to be good news.

  Olivia lifted her head, pain seared her voice and Galen felt it all the way to his chest. “I have done everything the organization ever asked of me, every assignment you gave me, every—What did you call me?”

  Olivia’s chin twitched like she’d been struck. Galen took a step toward her.

  She stared at the brick without seeing. “How did you—when?... No.” Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. It was a visible moment when she chose to strip her voice of emotion, like plucking thorns embedded in skin. “I have three of your so-called ‘real’ agents subdued. But by all means, rush the bar if you want them all dead.”

  Her breathing was fast, shallow, seeking control. A swell of pain tugged through the place in Galen’s chest that had started to belong to Olivia. Fingers clenched around nothing. “Goodbye, Wallis.”

  The call ended with Olivia’s head down, staring blearily at the pulseband on her
wrist. Galen risked a step. She exploded before he could reach her. She screamed, ripped off the band, and smashed it against the wall. A sob broke in her chest. She flung a kick at the dumpster before falling against the side of the alley.

  The mangled sounds she made didn’t just pull at Galen’s protective instincts, it snapped them entirely. His hand clenched. He needed to pull her into his arms, keep her knuckles from bloodying, keep her heart from breaking, keep her soul from being crushed by this filthy city. He needed to...

  ...let her make that decision for herself. It physically hurt, but he forced his hands back down.

  Neon flickered. Drones buzzed somewhere distant. Olivia’s hunched shoulders trembled.

  “Do you know what she called me?” Olivia’s voice threaded out of her, weak from shock. The words were slow at first, then pouring out of her faster. “An experiment. A failed experiment. She knew and—My government considers my existence an experiment. She said my final order as a Whisper was to turn myself in. For compliance and caricae processing. My right to my body is just on loan, can be revoked at any time when the people in power find it inconvenient. Do you have any idea how that feels?”

  Galen reached out for her. Olivia stumbled, blinking at him with a sudden, sad thought. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

  “Liv—” Galen tried to breach the distance but Olivia recoiled and it was like he stumbled against an invisible wall.

  “Don’t. I’m not blaming you, just—not right now.”

  It took a hard moment for Galen to reel in the wounded feeling in his chest. A touch at his arm told him Yoshi had rejoined them from the mouth of the alley. Olivia didn’t raise her head when Yoshi came to a stop in front of her. The hunch on her shoulders rang with tension. Olivia was always somewhat tense, on guard, especially under stress. But it had always been a confident, outward-facing tension. Head high, teeth bared to the world. This was a cutting edge pointed inward.

  She was dimmed. This city had dimmed her and Galen wanted to raze the buildings to the ground for that. He knew it was the same irrational instincts that had pulled him across war-torn borders after a woman he’d only just begun to know rather than returning to his own country. He knew it was ridiculous, this overriding need, the anxiety when her well-being was uncertain or she wasn’t in his sight. He knew it all, but he also knew...he knew his heart hurt.

  “Liv.” Yoshi pulled her into a hug by the shoulders and Galen forced himself to not feel the jealous hurt that twinged in his chest. But the feeling was obliterated when Olivia dropped her head to Yoshi’s shoulder and shuddered a sob.

  “There, hang on—hey—shhh, shhh.” Yoshi briefly looked beseechingly to him, eyes full of his own tears, before he murmured soft reassurances into Olivia’s hair. Able to reassure her when Galen couldn’t. They curved into each other, and Galen realized why she spoke so fondly, so protectively of her bartender friend. He wanted to pack them both off somewhere far away and safe.

  Galen’s empty hands worked at his thighs. He hated feeling helpless. He stood a silent guard, making sure nothing intruded as Olivia quietly pulled herself together. It was all he could give her. When she finally raised her head, her eyes were rimmed with red.

  “We should get moving.” Yoshi wiped his own eyes. “We can’t stay here.”

  This, at least, Galen could do. He nodded, leaning out to check the streets again. “Is there someplace safe nearby?”

  “Safe? Not after Liv threatened a national hero,” Yoshi said with forced brightness. He lightly chucked Olivia’s shoulder then appeared to think. “We can go to my place.”

  Olivia sharpened to alertness. “What? Yoshi, no. They’re going to be crawling all over the bar and your place—you should get Em and Jael out—”

  “Already ahead of you.” Yoshi tapped his implant grimly. “But I didn’t mean my flat. I meant my...other place.”

  An understanding passed between them that Galen couldn’t hope to follow. Olivia’s eyes widened. “It’s vacant—and you’re sure you want to go back there?”

  “Yes and yes.” Yoshi squeezed her shoulders. “It’ll take them a while to look there. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The way to the apartment led them even deeper into the Cauldron. It gave Olivia time, time to pick through the rubble and decide which pieces of herself to pull back together. The foot traffic got thinner, the buildings older, the alleys narrower, until they finally got to an ancient housing complex that looked more like the ancients’ idea of a mushroom farm than an urban development. Yoshi lead them up a downright prehistoric lift until they got to the door.

  Predictably, the lock was jammed. Dust drizzled down on them as Olivia forced the doors apart. The room was dim, and Olivia paused in the door, blinking at the rotted interior in dismay. Yoshi bobbed around her, quickly finding some portable lights to illuminate the place. Suspicion rose. “Yoshi—”

  “Just needs an airing out!” Yoshi nearly tripped over a half-empty ration bottle and a nest of trash that held all the signs of a quaramesh party for one. He kicked it out of sight, smile never faltering. “Just like I left it.”

  “You were supposed to rent this place out—the bills, Yoshi!” Olivia was horrified. The interior of the flat had never been much—typical Cauldron prefab with age-stained walls and leaky pipes, but it hadn’t been a squatter’s paradise. It obviously hadn’t been maintained or occupied by a proper resident for years. She felt Galen at her back and reluctantly stepped in so he could help her wedge the door closed. “What the hell?”

  The flat had belonged to Yoshi’s previous partner—the abusive boyfriend whose death had facilitated Olivia’s inglorious introduction to Yoshi. The Whisper organization typically took over any relinquished assets of targets unless they had family, and Yoshi hadn’t been with the altus long enough to count.

  Olivia had managed to pull some paperwork trickery and get the place listed under Yoshi’s trust. She’d told herself that she’d felt guilty for bungling the job and traumatizing him, but perhaps even back then Yoshi had worked his way past her defenses. She hadn’t expected Yoshi would feel comfortable living where his partner had died, but this... It’d been intended as an income stream, to help him as he made a fresh start.

  “If it’s really my place I get to decide what to do with it.” Yoshi addressed the floor with a petulant tone. He wandered toward the galley kitchen. “At first I was worried that...his...friends would come round, and then I didn’t want to deal with the memories and then...” He shrugged. “I just figured a forgotten place might be useful.”

  “For your future career as a quar-addled hobo?” Olivia began picking her way across the apartment. She wrinkled her nose at the unidentified brown staining the shutters before closing up the windows tight.

  “For trouble. Mine or my friends’.” Yoshi found a cupboard to mumble into.

  “If you are saying you wasted three years of renter’s income to give me a bug-out room I’m—”

  “Does this thing lock?” Galen interrupted mildly.

  Too mildly. Olivia leveled a frown at him. She returned to the door and jimmied open the controls. By the time she’d jumped the pulse override and saw the lights above the door turn to a nice, locked red, Yoshi had already drafted Galen into service sweeping rubbish from the kitchen area.

  Olivia could recognize that she was being managed, and instead diverted herself down the apartment’s hallway. It was short enough to miss if you blinked, but the toilet was where she remembered it and not in too vile condition. Frankly she’d expected worse.

  Worse was reserved for the single bedroom. Olivia cracked the door open just long enough to verify that whatever had died in there was indeed, actually dead, and the windows were drawn and locked, before retreating. She returned to the kitchen with some cloths that she’d found in the back of the bathroom closet—they’d only looked mildly filthy.


  She tossed one at Yoshi’s head. “I hope you still remember how to clean.”

  “I’m a bartender,” Yoshi said, as if that was an answer in itself. They’d cleared the main living area’s floor of the worst offenses and righted three creaky-looking chairs around a table. Olivia was 90% certain they’d be down to two once Galen tried to sit in one.

  Galen stated the obvious. “We can’t stay here for long.”

  “We just needed to get off the streets before the FL-AIs got out. Once Wallis realizes I’m not going down in a blaze of glory in the bar, they’ll lock down the stations with...” With sniffers. Because they knew she was a caricae now. And her life was over. Olivia grimaced at that train of thought. “I need to figure out a new way out of the Cauldron.”

  “Maybe out of the city.” Yoshi wiped down the counter without looking in that way all bartenders seemed to have mastered. He radiated concern. “Liv—”

  “Later.” Later, more and more of Olivia’s brain was being carefully diverted to the mythical Later. Later was a black, bottomless chest, buried deep, with reliable locks and all the time in the world. It really was a handy trick, even with Galen frowning concern at her. “We’ll need to figure out logistics. Get Galen back to his own country.” She paused and happily spun on a new target. “You. You’re the Empire’s Red Wolf and in the middle of a war. Lady’s bits, I still don’t know how you managed to talk Lyre into letting you come alone—”

  Olivia couldn’t say what, precisely, changed in Galen’s face but she sucked air through her teeth. Galen held the neutral look a hair too carefully. She swore. “She didn’t. Blue hell—she’s here?”

  “Probably watching the perimeter of this building for us as we speak, yes.” Galen followed Olivia as she stormed to the window. She threw back the blinds she’d just finished securing. “She knows better than to get caught.” And after a beat he added: “Far corner, halfway down the alley.”

  “I see her,” Olivia muttered. She made zero effort to hide her glare toward a melt of shadows down the block. A cautious scan of the street didn’t show the extended presence of FL-AIs yet, but it was only a matter of time. It would be helpful to have an advance lookout while they figured out next steps, but Olivia would have almost taken Wallis over the Empire’s spymaster at her back.