by Patty Jansen
* * *
By the time Izramith could finally convince her stomach to accept some food and keep it there, the light was bright outside. She dozed on the large bed when the door opened and Dashu came in.
She wore her black uniform again, with a five-pointed star embroidered on the chest. Her hair was, Asto-style, tied back in a tight ponytail. She bowed before the bed and proceeded to unpack several items from a bag. Something made out of cloth.
"What's that for?" Izramith asked, raising herself on one elbow.
"Your clothes. You can't go about the streets looking like you've come straight from Hedron."
"I have come straight from Hedron."
"Yeah, well, you still can't walk around looking like it. People will put the two together and figure out that you're a guard."
And no one liked having Hedron guards around in a visible way. She let herself fall back on the bed. This place was so plush and sophisticated, full of history and pretty things, albeit aged pretty things. So they weren't used to a woman who looked like a fighting machine, huh? Well, what did they hire her for anyway?
"Come on, we've got a meeting. You need to have a bath."
Damn, yes, another damn meeting. And what a way to say you stink. And what was worse, she'd fully intended to read Daya's information and be prepared, but she'd been far too sick to have remembered.
Izramith pushed herself off the bed. Whoa, that felt… not good at all. The world span around her.
"Are you going to be all right?"
"Yeah." Quit fussing, I'm not a weakling. She grabbed the clothes off the bed and made for the bathroom.
But her first steps were very uncertain and she bumped her shoulder painfully into the doorframe. She was just about well enough to remember how much she hated being sick.
Someone had been in the bathroom to clean the mess she vaguely remembered making in the dark. All the jars in the basket that had fallen off the shelf next to the bath were back in their position. The soaps and powders that had spilled on the floor had been mopped up, and the stack of towels that had tumbled into the bath had been fished out and replaced with dry ones. Any—uhm—substances that had missed their intended places had been cleaned up.
Damn, had she been that much out of it? She had never even heard anyone come in.
She stepped out of her Hedron-issue grey nightclothes and slipped into the warm water. The jars and pots in the basket carried labels in various languages, including Coldi, and she selected one that said hair gel and hoped it would clean her hair rather than oil it. The stuff smelled unfamiliar and oozed cold over her head. Riiiight, not sure about this.
"Are you all right?" Dashu came to the door. She stared at Izramith's upper arms. The opposite wall was one big mirror and Izramith glanced at her reflection, including the cross-hatched initiation scars on her upper arms, which were about twice the width of Dashu's.
"Yes, perfectly." Seriously, what was it with the snooping? Couldn't a person even have a bath in peace?
She rinsed off her hair by ducking under the water and climbed out with a feeling of regret. How she'd love to sit there a bit longer. But she wasn't here to laze around.
She dried herself and grabbed the clothes Dashu had brought. The trousers were calf-length and fitted well enough, but of the two tunics, one was too small. The other strained around her upper arms in a way that made the little frilly bits on the hem of the sleeves stand up. It looked… stupid. And yellow. Seriously?
Feeling like she could barely breathe in the tunic, she returned to the main room.
Dashu looked her up and down. "That looks better."
"It's too tight. I can barely move." Izramith turned around and held her arms in front so her shoulders strained against the fabric.
"Hmmm, yeah. I think you may need to get a men's shirt."
"You have any…" less ridiculous "… other colours?"
"What about the blue one I brought?"
"It doesn't fit at all. Can't I wear a uniform like you?"
"You're not in the official employ of the council."
"Then I want to wear my grey tunic."
"You're meant to look like a visitor."
"Even visitors can move their arms. I would wear my grey things if I were visiting." Seriously, was there anything more stupid to argue about than what to wear?
Dashu let the argument hang in the air. She didn't say that she would bring other clothes or ask Daya what she was allowed to wear.
They left the room via the gallery and navigated the guesthouse's many courtyards to the main courtyard, where the guesthouse's patrons sat at pretty metal lacework tables with pink tablecloths. There were plates and cups on the tables and waitresses walked around with trays of food.
A Pengali waitress showed them a table. Dashu pulled out a chair for Izramith, and went to get her tea—which was pink—and a plate with a couple of slices of curious bread with a dark swirl inside. A group of Damarcians on the next table raised eyebrows at the pair of them. They were two elderly couples, the four of them dressed in rich clothing. The men both wore lots of rings, and one of them had a fortune of diamond studs in his ears.
Izramith remembered the first meal she had in Indrahui, or rather, the first meal she had missed out on because she turned up too late in the hot and dusty mess tent.
There had been none of this gentile business, no one waiting on her. Seriously, how could she tell Dashu that it was annoying and she could look after herself?
And she hated the way the damn tunic restricted her movements. Why couldn't she wear a black shirt like Dashu?
At least while she ate, the last feeling of sickness subsided.
"Feeling better?" Dashu asked, her expression anxious.
"Much better."
"Beware, because your adaptation is not settled yet, although you may feel fine now, it can come back with a vengeance."
Izramith snorted. Pampering was for weaklings. "I'm ready to do work." Show me something I can work with. Guns, spying equipment, anything as long as it wasn't more talk or stupid frilly yellow clothes.
They finished the meal in uneasy silence, and left the guesthouse for the council building, where, according to Dashu, the team was waiting and thrilled to meet her.
Good grief.
They entered the building through the back entrance in the alley behind the Exchange.
In the near-empty foyer three people sat on the couches.
Facing her was a young man from the local keihu race. He was unusually lanky for his kind, had a heavy brow which gave him a serious look, and wore his curly hair in a ponytail. His eyes were kind and brown, and it was a pity about the ugly keihu nose—broad, with a longitudinal groove across the tip—because otherwise he would have been quite handsome. He wore the same black uniform as Dashu, with the council emblem of the five-pointed star.
The other two people had their backs to her. Judging by the black hair with the metallic sheen, one was a Coldi man also in council uniform, and the other had the typical bronze hair of an Indrahui.
At the same time as they looked over their shoulders at Izramith, Daya entered the room through a door on the other side.
"Ah, you're all here." He clutched a reader and some documents to his chest. "Sit down. We have a lot to discuss."
Izramith walked around the couch with the Coldi and Indrahui man to the empty spot next to the young keihu man.
Daya had sat in the single chair and shuffled his reader and a couple of folded up papers on his knees.
Izramith sat down. Looked up—
—Met the gaze of the Coldi man.
Her cheeks flushed with heat and her mind flooded with insane impulse thoughts: he was an upstart, needed to be put in his place. He was here to make her life a misery, to contest everything she said. He was Asto Coldi of course. There was absolutely no way she wanted him on her team.
She clamped her hands between her knees. Blood roared in her ears. What the fuck? The man hadn't even introduced
himself and had done nothing to justify this reaction.
With great difficulty, she kept herself calm by looking at his knees instead of his face.
Daya had started talking. "… are the people I told you about yesterday, a small confidential task force and specialists in the field in which I want you to work. First, let's introduce each other. Izramith, this is Eris Havaru, the head of Barresh's newly instated special security branch." The keihu man nodded. "Eris has worked as security officer at the Trader Guild headquarters in Kedras. His family are merchants and he has many commercial connections." The man looked much too young to have any of that kind of experience.
"One member on your team who isn't here but you will already know is Dashu Omi. She's your tech specialist and is taking delivery of some equipment right now, and may join us later."
Izramith nodded, still feeling flustered and hot and not quite alert. Her stomach was also squirming a bit, as if it was still deciding what to do with the weird breakfast she had eaten.
"This here is Wairin." The attention shifted to the Indrahui man, a giant with the characteristic skin that was so black that it had a green sheen. His bright green eyes met hers in that typical emotionless look that Indrahui did so well. He wore typical Indrahui fighters' garb: trousers and shirt made from tough brown fabric. What the heck was he doing here, fighting someone else's war while his own world was torn apart with conflict?
Daya continued, "Wairin has a lot of experience in undercover operations in conditions of war." Yeah, she bet. "He has seen active combat duty and is handy with traps and hidden explosives."
Did he know that she'd served in his native land? "You're from Pataniti?"
He shook his head. "I'm from Makitan."
At least that was far enough away from the blood-soaked plains for them to have never run into each other.
Explosives specialist, huh?
Daya continued, "The last member of the team is Loxa Azimi. He's one of the guards in—"
Izramith looked up again, and the heat was back, more ferocious than before. Her heart was pounding with it. The rest of Daya's words drowned in the roaring of blood in her ears.
Loxa similarly grabbed the armrest of the couch with a white-knuckled hand. The muscles in his legs strained under his trousers. She didn't dare look into his face. The breeze brought a waft of a musky scent that said fight me.
And she wanted to do just that, hang the consequences.
Daya reached over the table and broke the line of vision between them. From the corner of her eyes, she saw that Loxa brought his hand to his head and rubbed his face. He stared at his knees.
Izramith un-balled her fists and tried her very best to calm herself.
This was ridiculous. She didn't even know him. He now leaned back to his seat, pointedly not looking at her, but his cloying scent drifted all around her.
She could only look as far up as his knees. His hands twitched as well.
This is not going to end well.
She could ignore this feeling when facing Thimayu, but this was so much worse. There was no way she was going to spend time working with him like this.
Daya was still talking as if he noticed nothing, "… will be in liaison with the brother of the groom. As bonus, he has the best knowledge in town about Mirani security."
Damn, he was now talking about the Mirani family, and she had missed their contact's name.
Pay attention, stupid.
Daya put his reader on the table, touched a button and a projection sprang in the air. It was a map of the streets of the city. It looked like a builders' plan, and indeed the emblem of the Damarcian Master Builders Guild hung over the projection.
"The wedding parade is to follow the route marked here." Daya pointed at a circuit that lit the streets in blue. "This is what we have done so far: along this course, we have identified points of risk where someone with ill intent can hide, with or without knowledge of the owners of the property in question. These places need to be made safe before the parade. The families in the houses have all been visited by our team and have agreed to cooperate. They will all be given passes."
The young man Eris nodded.
"On the day before the parade, we'll set up an exclusion zone where only those with a pass can come. This work is all pretty straightforward and agreed-upon by the council."
He paused and looked around the room. Those eyes gave her the chills.
When he continued, his voice was softer and more intense. "The problem is the large guesthouse on the corner of the Main Square and Market Street, as you will have seen in your brief."
Izramith nodded, too ashamed to admit that she'd been too sick to read it. She swore she'd do it as soon as she had a moment.
"The guesthouse is a large, rambling old place where anyone can stay cheaply and without presenting ID. Most of the time, the owners have no idea who stays overnight in their rooms. Many are itinerant workers, usually labourers. There are also a fair number of ex-soldiers from Miran, who live there long-term. They hire entire dorms and sub-let beds to their friends or whoever pays. The guesthouse has been linked to much of the smuggling and criminal activity in town, and much as we'd like to think that we're making inroads on that front, there is a lot of work still to be done. As you can see, the route goes past the guesthouse, around the corner into Market Street, exposing the parade to danger on two sides."
"All right, so if the guests are all short-term visitors, why don't you simply close the place for those days? Or give permits only to people whose ID checks out?"
"Two reasons. The most important one is that Barresh is short on accommodation. If we close the guesthouse, there would be hundreds, perhaps as much as a thousand, of young workers without anywhere to stay."
"There wouldn't be, because you let them in when their ID checks out."
"I understand, but that will still leave lots of people who don't have ID, don't want to be checked or whose ID has expired or has been stolen—or who entered the city on stolen ID in the first place. There is a hard-core group of long-term residents at the guesthouse. We've only had border controls for about seven years. Before that, we were a Mirani protectorate and Mirani ex-soldiers would come back here after completing their period of duty. When the Mirani army was withdrawn from Barresh, they stayed behind. Most of them have lost contact with their families. They don't have ID, have no money to leave, or pay for another place to stay and have not taken up our repeated offers for new ID. If we toss them on the street, they'll create trouble."
All right. "Was that the second reason?"
"No. The second reason is more delicate. A local family owns the guesthouse. It is registered in the name of Risan Semisu, who is a direct cousin to Jisson Semisu whom you met yesterday."
The councillor with all the jewellery.
"The Semisu family is well-respected, and is not under any suspicion. I would count Jisson Semisu as a friend. His cousin, however, is a strong supporter of freedom from what they call institutional prying or corporate espionage, so he has refused council access to the building on principle. His guests, he says, are poor and disenfranchised Mirani ex-soldiers and refugees and lowly-paid workers. We haven't had anything to fear from them in six years, so why should we now?"
"Doesn't that mean he's got something to hide?"
"I'm pretty sure that the guesthouse does hide things, but I'd be surprised if he knew about it. He bought the place with the view of redevelopment and takes no commercial interest in the running of it. For him, it's merely a placeholder business until he gets the go-ahead from the council to refurbish the place."
"But he won't let you search the place?"
"I suspect he would, if presented with the right arguments, but a bit over a week ago we tried to conduct an audit of the population with the view of making it secure, and the manager denied us access. Not only that, he took the matter to the people's forum session of the council and presented the arguments in such a way that the council voted in his favou
r."
"Why would they do that?"
"Many councillors were already uneasy about access given to guards to climb on their roofs and search their gardens. They wanted to see proof of our claims that searching the guesthouse was necessary."
"Illegal people aren't enough reason?"
"Not if they've been illegal for seven years or more. You must understand some of the local sentiments. A fair number natives of Barresh take pride in not having ID and being illegals in their own town. It is not because they have anything to hide but because they dislike all forms of external control. Privacy and freedom have a very strong history in this town. It goes back to the time of the hero of Barresh, Omarion Baku, who was stripped of his ID and his Trading licence and still continued travelling and his Trading business."
"As pirate."
Did she imagine it or was there a sharp intake of breath from Eris? Everyone looked at her, including Loxa, whose eyes focused on her knees.
"Yes." Daya nodded. "Except don't say anything bad about Omarion Baku in the presence of locals, unless you're keen to get into a fight."
"So, as I see it, you and a few others on the council have wanted to clean up the guesthouse for a long time, and the wedding is a cover for us to do so?" No wonder he'd said nothing about this yesterday.
Daya gave her an intense look. "I would appreciate if you were not to repeat that outside this room."
In other words: yes. The look in his eyes chilled her.
"So. We can't go into the guesthouse with a full search party in uniform, but it's a very open place and nothing stops people going in separately for whatever reason they think will pass scrutiny. Maintenance, deliveries, laundry, anything. You can also watch it from the street and you'll have access to any communication made from the guesthouse to the Exchange. You can scan those records for the identities of guests and the content of their messages.
"You will not have an authorisation from the council to do this. Many in the council do not agree with your being here because of the reasons I gave earlier: privacy and freedom. They don't want outsiders prying in their business. I could only get your appointment through the council by assigning you general security duties. You will do routine security work. The rest you will do without authority, outside council hours."