by Wren Weston
Lila opened the file. “What is this?”
“Billing data on several of their clients. They were all sentenced in a drug raid six months ago on Wilson-Kruger property. Supposedly, some young wastrel son of the chairwoman was dealing black market heroin and trance tabs out of a club on the estate.”
“Club 137.”
“Yes. The club manager called Bullstow, not realizing that the chairwoman’s son was inside. The two blackcoats arrested the kid as well as everyone else they found with drugs, several of whom were Wilson family servants. Chairwoman Wilson, to everyone’s great amazement, disowned her son on the spot. Slack & Roberts stepped up to take the cases, since several of their lawyers hadn’t met their pro bono quotas for the month. At least, that’s what they claimed. These are from the company’s private files. Do you see anything strange?”
Lila thumbed through the papers. Given her familiarity with security and legal documents, it took only a few moments to spot an issue. “This source code is the same throughout the stack. 01435. I assume this is a code for pro bono work?”
“Is it? Why would a pro bono case need a billing source code?”
“Because paperwork is anal retentive the world over. Is it a pro bono code or not?”
Tristan took a sip of wine and shook his head. “No, it’s not. I’ll skip to the good part. The legal fees were paid, and they were paid from the same source. All of them.”
“What does the code mean, then?”
“No idea. When we dug a bit more, we found copies of the bank transfers. The sending account is from a bank in Burgundy. The Liberté. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” He gauged her reaction with a smug little smile.
Lila’s head snapped up. The Liberté was notorious in the Allied Lands and the rest of the commonwealth, especially among the highborn. They used it and other such banks in Burgundy as way to disperse bribes, to buy quasi-illegal goods, and to pay off spies. The more inept highborn used them to pay off hackers, thieves, and specialists in corporate espionage.
Of course, those weren’t the only reasons why one might use Burgundy banks. They also functioned as intermediaries, a way to shuffle funds in and out of the Holy Roman Empire. It had been traitorous to do business with the kingdoms of Germany and Italy for nearly two hundred years. If a highborn wasn’t hanged immediately for conducting business with the empire, then she’d be exiled from her family and her mark would be up for grabs.
She’d not get it back. Ever.
But that only happened if you weren’t good enough, weren’t sneaky enough to hide your trail from the government and the press. As an independent and neutral country, the Republic of Burgundy could help with that, though it was impossible to obtain a visa to do business in person. Member nations of the commonwealth had long considered Burgundy morally off limits for aiding their enemy in a time of war, at least officially, but the banks in Burgundy were accommodating. Despite their country’s status, they had a solid reputation for protecting the anonymity of account holders on both sides. It was what had kept them out of the war for so long, even though they slept between the two great powers. They had found a niche, they proved useful to both parties, and they would do anything in their power to keep it that way.
Liberté meant secrecy. Liberté meant scandal.
Lila flipped to the end of the file and scanned the transfer data. “You think this money is coming from Chairwoman Wilson.”
“Yes, but not from any account she could be tied to. That’s why I want to hire you. Find the owner of this account. Prove it belongs to Celeste Wilson. She’s been selling the workborn into slavery, and I want her in a holding cell where she belongs. In return, you get to bring down the chairwoman a great deal earlier than you thought possible.”
Lila stood up, laughing. “You want me to break into Liberté and steal account data? Are you mad?”
“Oh, is it too hard for you? I suppose I’ll have to tell Reaper and Toxic that their heroine can’t walk on water after all.”
“We’re not six years old,” she said, twirling her sapphire ring. “You can’t dare me. It has nothing to do with how difficult it might be. It’s about stupidity, and me not having any.”
In point of fact, Lila had already broken into the impenetrable bank once, as a test of her strength. It had been young and stupid and childish, and she wasn’t proud of it, but she had accomplished it at the age of fifteen. It was an age she had known would protect her from the worst of the fallout. But during the hack, she had been smart enough not to take any data.
Being caught as an adult was far more trouble than it was worth, especially if she had to steal data. The prime minister wouldn’t be able to save her even if he wanted to. “We don’t need to hack into the bank. There might be an easier way.”
“Enlighten me.”
“They arrested Simon.”
“Yes.” Tristan peeked at the file. “Simon Wilson-Craft, age seventeen, Chairwoman Wilson’s youngest son. The way I hear it, he was a good kid in his last few months of high school, not a wastrel son at all. Now he’ll be a slave for the next twenty years.”
Tristan shoved his mug onto the coffee table. “According to the bill of transfer on his mark, Simon will pick grapes in the Masson vineyard until he’s thirty-seven. Your mom was the one who bought him. As a present. Wrapped him up in a little bow and sent him to Chairwoman Masson as a gift for the Summer Solstice. Did you tie the ribbon?”
“My mother outbid Chairwoman LeBeau. No one else would.”
“Oh, is that what it is? Can’t let—”
“Chairwoman Wilson didn’t lift a finger to save her son from that woman. You might not be allowed to bid on members of your family, but your allies can. She didn’t ask them, though. My mother saved Simon. He would have been sent to a coal mine if she hadn’t stepped in, all because Chairwoman LeBeau wanted an easy dig at his mother during parties.”
“Yes, because picking grapes in the hot Saxony sun is so much better than—”
“It is better. Safer, too. Simon has always loved the Masson vineyard. That’s why he’s there. He might not be happy, but he’s not miserable and he’s safe. My family did the best we could by him, so go vomit your righteous indignation on someone else.”
Tristan dropped the folder on the coffee table with a slap. “Since your family still owns him, can you run down to the vineyard for a taste of your slave boy whenever you’re hungry?”
Lila’s face twisted in disgust. “Oracle’s wrath! He’s my best friend’s little brother.”
“Ah yes, of course, I forgot that you like to keep your friends on a leash. How is Ms. Wilson? Does she scrub your dishes after you eat? Wash your boots? Do you make her say ‘Yes, madam’ or is she—”
“Shut up about things you don’t understand. We did the best we could for both of them when they found themselves in very bad situations.”
“I think I understand the situation just fine.”
“Why? Because you grew up as a slave?” Lila asked, ignoring Tristan’s darkening expression. “I know who you really are, Tristan. I research the people I work with. You were well educated—tutored by Amala Devi, no less. I was impressed when I found that out. It explained a great deal, like how a slave can write like a senator.”
Tristan looked up.
“Yes, I know about that, too. You could have taken a servant’s contract anywhere with your education and abilities. You could have been a proper journalist, but—”
“I am a proper journalist.”
“A proper journalist can use his own name, but you can’t because you ran away before you aged out. Stupid, really. You had less than a year until your eighteenth birthday. Now you have those months hanging over your head and more time besides for cutting that thing out of your neck.”
“I don’t regret it.”
“No, but I imagine your mother didn’t appro
ve of your choice. You hate her a little for choosing to stay with the Holguíns, don’t you? Finally free, after all that time. She could take a servant’s contract with any other family. She’s free now, and well educated, just like you. She could go anywhere with her credentials. She could even open her own lowborn business if she saved up the capital or found an investor. Yet she stays with those people who bought her mark, day after day. She stays with him and the rest of that family. Out of comfort? Out of loyalty? Is she still his mistress? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you target the Holguíns so often.” Lila held up the mug with its last few drops of Sangre, and his eyes narrowed even more.
“I work in a security office, Tristan. Did you think I wouldn’t know? We get tagged all the time by Bullstow for security alerts, thieves stealing this and that. Chairwoman Holguín’s sons had a few Cruz trucks go missing last week. A few Cruz trucks happen to be downstairs in your shop right now. What a coincidence.” She tapped her boot against one of the ottomans. “If I cut away the cushion, would I find the Holguín label underneath? I knew you and your men hit their warehouse a few weeks ago—technically not their winery, so I suppose you didn’t just lie to me ten minutes ago, but I couldn’t figure out where you had stored all that wine. I didn’t know you and your people had moved into this place, though. That managed to slip past me.”
She sat down on the coffee table across from him. “It’s always amused me before, this strange habit and vendetta you have against the Holguíns. If your highborn father hadn’t retained Devi’s services, you would—”
“I would have grown up poor and stupid, indoctrinated and indebted to the highborn so that I’d take any contract offered, rushing into a different brand of slavery the moment I was released.”
“Not every family is like the Holguíns.”
“No, some are like the Randolphs. You’re so used to having everyone below you that you don’t even notice the imbalance. Ms. Wilson is not your friend anymore, Lila, not when you own her. Even the most well-treated slaves are still slaves.”
“Then they shouldn’t have gotten themselves into trouble.”
“Like her little brother?”
“Like your mother? Are you still working out your teenage angst? All that jealously toward those rich kids who had everything you couldn’t afford as a child? You claim to hate the rich and everything they stand for, but you sure do spend a lot of time stealing their toys and enjoying the spoils of their labor.”
“To fund my work,” he said, clipping each word sharply at the end. His eyes ordered her from the room, but she knew he would not ask her to do that. He still needed her as a tool.
“Not always. You keep the Amazon and other trinkets when it suits you.” She placed her mug on the coffee table. “Not to shoot down your brilliant plan, Tristan, but instead of hacking into Liberté and waving our butts to the militia and the Burgundy government, perhaps we should speak with Simon first. If he knows anything about this, he might be willing to talk.”
“To you? Why?”
“Because according to Alex, he has a little crush on me.”
“Poor kid.” Tristan hopped up, stamped to the door, and flung it open. The knob banged against the wall so hard that it left a hole in the plaster.
He didn’t wait for Lila to follow.
Chapter 10
Tristan’s sour mood did not improve on the hour-long drive to the Masson vineyard, located in Massonville, a city named after the highborn family. Unfortunately, Lila had not taken her Firefly. Dixon had already pulled out one of the trucks for their journey, offering a wink, a kiss on the cheek, and a wave to Lila as the pair pulled out of the garage.
Things were fine in the truck; at least, that was what she kept telling herself. Fine also meant awkward, for the truck was much too quiet. The radio did not work, for Shirley never wasted her time fixing unnecessary luxuries, and the silence only highlighted Tristan’s lingering annoyance.
Lila didn’t bother trying to make conversation.
What would they talk about, anyway? Motorcycles? Wine? Music? The stars? Early on in their working relationship, they used to talk more, joke more. After their first job together, Tristan had even taken her to the top of the Victory Tower and pointed out the constellations. It was something that no one had ever bothered to teach her as a girl and something she’d never seen the point of learning. The stars weren’t useful to a young chairwoman-in-training, and even less useful to a future militia chief.
Perhaps the stars and their stories only belonged to the poorer classes.
She still remembered lying on the hard stone, pointing up at the sky, and laughing as they made up their own patterns and stories, half-drunk from stolen bottles of Sangre. There was Whiskers, the manic kitten, who Frigg had put into the sky after biting her ankles one too many times. Rind, who had been put into the sky because Odin was afraid she’d lop something precious off his body should he fall asleep. Amoeba was a hideous monster that kept growing and growing every time one of them suggested a new limb or a new attachment. They decided finally that it was put into the sky to give drunk people something to talk about in the middle of the night.
Lila hid her smile. They had almost been friends.
She’d been stupid to think it, though. He’d shown his true face, for the next morning she’d dug in her pockets and found her palm missing.
Lila had sped to the hotel on her Firefly, pushed past a bleary-eyed sentry, and fired a tranq dart directly into Tristan’s neck before he even opened his mouth. Dixon had thought it funny until he learned what had angered her. He’d sheepishly led her into Reaper’s room. They’d found the chubby hacker bent over her palm, muttering to himself, still trying to break her encryption.
Reaper had cowered the moment he saw her temper, claiming that he had found it in Tristan’s room and just wanted a peek.
Tristan never denied stealing it, though he wouldn’t admit to giving it to the hacker.
They’d fought nonstop ever since.
Lila’s half-smile turned into a scowl, but she kept her mouth shut. She sent a quick message to Sutton, asking her to handle the morning’s holo-meeting with the other Randolph properties, suppressing a snicker when the commander messaged her back.
Anything to keep me away from the Beast tonight.
Lila didn’t waste the rest of the drive. As the bluebonnets passed by her window in a blur of violet and white and blue, she jotted down notes on her palm, ideas on how to dig into Zephyr’s identity.
Such thoughts left her when an alert flashed on her screen. The snoop had dug through the third layer of Prolix’s identity.
Why had she agreed to go to Massonville? She had bigger things to worry about than investigating Tristan’s conspiracy theories.
She hadn’t agreed for Tristan, though. She cared about Simon, a boy scarcely older than her younger brother Pax, a troubled brother she had not even seen in several days, even though he lived right across the hall.
She was an awful older sister.
Tristan pulled into an empty, crumbling parking lot near the shore of a lake. Several weathered picnic tables and benches had been scattered around the area, lying in pools of mud. “The vineyard is a kilometer up the road. I suggest we walk the rest of the way, unless you want to stroll in to the great house and ask for permission.”
“It’s best if no one knows I’m here. If you’re right and Chairwoman Wilson hears that I visited Simon a day after Slack & Roberts blew up, it might put him in danger.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Tristan opened the truck door. “It’s best if the friend who visits is a nobody like me. I doubt a manager would report that to either family.”
Lila buttoned her coat against the chill, and the pair strolled down the muddy road toward the vineyard, one side lined by stubby trees and rocks. Few cars drove by, and Lila turned her head toward the lake each tim
e one passed as though fascinated by the water and the scattered rocks at the bottom, visible through the surface.
It wasn’t hard to pretend an interest. Lila had always been so busy, first with the hospital, then with the militia. She’d rarely even seen the lake, much less spent an entire day on it. She squinted at the boats prowling the water, filled with bundled families and fishing poles, the air punctuated with random shouts and random giggles. Lowborns, no doubt, with enough resources to afford a small vessel and a day off work to enjoy it.
The Randolphs probably didn’t own a boat. Not unless Jewel had bought one.
For the experience.
Lila rolled her eyes, patting her hip when her palm vibrated in her pocket. I’m glad, her father had written. I’m depending on you, Lila girl.
“Who was that?” Tristan asked grumpily.
“The prime minister.”
“Ah, is he sending you off somewhere to do more of his dirty work?”
“No, it was about my last job.” Lila slipped her palm into her pocket. “The work is far from dirty. There are things he can’t get Bullstow involved in and problems that they aren’t able to solve. Someone has to do it.”
“He uses you?”
“No one uses me.”
Tristan spun around to walk backward, studying her face. “Some father.”
“My father is a good man.”
“Fine. Convince me. What was this last job about? Why did he risk his eldest daughter’s reputation? Why did he need you to break into Bullstow when he has access to the whole network?”
Lila considered Tristan’s attitude, his silence on the way over. She had never told him much about the jobs her father sent her on, even when he was a part of them, and she didn’t want to trust him now with the knowledge. She settled on half knowledge, the only knowledge she ever gave him. “Someone has been bribing the highborn.”