Their walk through the rain was a short one following a straight gravel road from the airfield past a group of warehouses to a series of long, low buildings with narrow windows and blank brick walls. One of the general’s aides led them to the third building and lit the lamp by the door, and then excused herself without offering a tour of the facility. But as Taziri glanced around, she saw that no tour was needed. The bunkhouse was little more than a long prison cell with dozens of beds.
She shrugged off her heavy jacket and dropped it on the first bed. “So, do you want the twenty beds on the right, or the twenty on the left?”
Ghanima rolled her eyes, kicked off her boots, dropped her jacket over the foot of the next bed, and collapsed in an undignified sprawl atop the green blanket. She groaned. “It’s scratchy.”
Taziri sat down to unlace her boots. “What’s scratchy?”
Ghanima flopped over, then flopped over again. “Everything.”
But when Taziri’s head touched the pillow, she wasn’t awake long enough to notice how scratchy the blankets were. The noise of the propellers was gone, the roar of the thunder and crash of the lightning were gone, and even the drumming rain was muted by the thick brick walls of the bunkhouse. She closed her eyes and plunged gratefully into a warm, dark silence.
Taziri awoke with a cold shock, an instant of physical pain and freezing panic. The room was unfamiliar, a long bizarre vista of identical beds repeating into infinity, barely visible in the pale light filtering through the strange little windows near the ceiling. She heard clapping and rumbling. But all of this she perceived only dimly because there were two enormous hands around her throat and she couldn’t breathe and her vision was dimming and the sounds of her own moaning seemed to be coming from far away.
Then she was rolling and spinning, and the pressure on her throat was gone. Taziri lay on the floor, gasping and massaging her neck, her ears roaring with muddled noise as though she was deep underwater or inside a drum.
“Taziri!”
Suddenly half of her senses snapped into focus and her mind clicked into gear.
Orossa. Barracks. Ghanima.
She scrambled to her feet, still dizzy and woolly-brained, but she could see the two figures struggling on the floor between two beds just a few yards away.
Ghanima. And a very large man.
Taziri lurched forward and promptly crashed sideways into the wall as her feet and inner ear completely failed to establish how to walk and balance. Her chest was still screaming for air from her bruised throat as her fingers clawed at the floor and she hurled herself upright again. Taziri paused to stare dumbly at her boot lying on the floor. Then she blinked and her body came to life. She snatched up the boot, wielding the steel toe-cover like a hammer, and smashed it across the back of the man’s head.
The man leapt up and turned to reveal the blackened features of Medur Hamuy. Bits of flesh hung from his face in tatters and open wounds oozed all manners of wetness and slime. His whole frame was bent and leaning, shuddering and trembling as he stuttered: “You s-s-sorry little shit, that’s th-th-three times in the head! I’m gonna kill you!” He buried his heavy fist in the engineer’s stomach.
Taziri felt her body being hollowed out as the air left her lungs and she lost the feeling in her hands. She fell back against the wall, again gasping for air, but her lungs only fluttered back in code that they wouldn’t be working for quite a few seconds. She leaned against the wall, trembling slightly between asphyxiation and vomiting, watching Hamuy charge toward her.
Then she heard a strange metallic clank and a scream that was neither male nor female, and suddenly Hamuy was lying on the floor with Ghanima standing over him with a bloody wrench in her hand.
For a long time, the two of them stayed very still, just breathing or trying to breathe. They stared dully at each other, glancing down occasionally at the corpse on the floor between them. Hamuy’s head now displayed a small crater on one side, and Taziri was grateful for the darkness that concealed the dark things sliding out of that crater.
Ghanima dropped the wrench and sat down on the bed behind her. Taziri pushed away from the wall, circled the body, and sat down beside her. Her chest still ached but she was breathing normally and her head was clear, her senses working. She sniffed. “You saved my life. Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Ghanima whispered. “Any time.”
“How did he get here?” She blinked. “Where’d you get the wrench?”
Ghanima shrugged. “I always keep one in my jacket. You know, just in case.”
“Oh. Good.” Taziri frowned at the body. “So, uhm, I should go tell someone…about this.” She leaned forward to stand up, but Ghanima gripped her hand and she sat back again, and they sat together, very still, listening to the rain and staring at the floor.
Chapter 39
Detective Massi slouched in her seat on the train, staring at the back of the marshal’s head. Sometimes his little partner would come talk to him and sometimes he would go walk around or sit in other cars. Then there had been the excitement with the two men from first class who seemed to have disappeared into the rear of the train, and the marshal returned alone and soaking wet.
All very interesting.
Kella might have developed a more critical analysis of her hours on the train except the burning, aching pains all over her bandaged and sutured body kept her mind wandering. Her stomach demanded food, but she had none to give it. So she slouched in her seat, clutching her wooden cane and keeping the fabric of her scarf carefully arranged around her head to obscure her face. There was no reason to think anyone here might recognize her, but she wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous at the moment.
Risks are for rookies. I plan to retire in one piece.
After racing lightly across the highlands, the train slowed to a more ponderous and stately pace as it climbed the ever-steeper slopes of the Atlas Mountains, eventually encountering the switchbacks that forced the entire assemblage of cars to reverse up the long ridges before continuing forward along their crests. Then there were the three stops at the way stations to replenish the engine’s water supply. Slowing, reversing, climbing, stopping. Had the train been able to simply run straight from Arafez to Orossa, the journey might have taken less than three hours, but instead it took nearly six. As they rolled into the Lower City with much huffing and squealing from the engine, Kella peered out at the train station clock.
Midnight.
She waited as the passengers slowly awoke, rubbing their eyes and yawning and stretching. One by one, they slid out from their bench seats, gathered up their bags, and shuffled out onto the platform. The two marshals made a small show of “waking up” and then wandered outside with the others. Kella watched them amble across the platform and disappear into the shadows near the end of the station.
The storm was breaking up, the thunder rolling farther and farther away, and the rain fell in light sheets and sprays as the wind gusted through the empty city streets. The Lower City of Orossa was deathly still and silent, the darkness broken only by a handful of streetlamps still burning high above the street corners in a few lonely neighborhoods.
The Lower City was a city in name only as it contained none of the modern trappings of city life. The train station and airfield, along with a small cluster of government offices at the base of the Royal Road, were the only buildings in the valley that were not single-room houses. There were no telegraph offices, libraries, restaurants or cafés, theaters or museums, or even a fire department. Law and order flowed from the army barracks as needed, and it was rarely needed. The residents of the Lower City were far too busy farming their thin terrace plots on the mountainsides, and chasing their goats, and mending their fragile homes. There was no time to make trouble in the mountains.
Detective Massi limped out of the train, her cane knocking loudly on the wooden platform. This was her eighth time setting foot in the Lower City and once again it was in pursuit of a runaway criminal, though for the firs
t time she knew at least that her quarry would not be hiding in one of the small houses dotting the valley floor. This was not a place of luxury or even of industry. It was a place of worship. Kella peered up the mountainside, just barely able to trace the Royal Road up the slope in the darkness. There, a third of the way up, she saw the long black shape of the Mother’s Shrine half-buried in the mountain. She wondered if there would be time to visit it, afterwards.
Shivering, she pulled her coat tighter around her bandaged shoulders and hobbled out of the drizzle under the shelter of the station roof. Not waiting to see where the marshals went or whether the travelers in the first class car would disembark, she moved as quickly as she could manage through the deserted streets toward the General’s Square, the plaza at the base of the Royal Road where the only large buildings in the Lower City could be found, among them a single hotel. The distance was short, but her steps were shorter, truncated by a dozen wounds all threatening to open at any moment. She hobbled faster.
In the lobby of the hotel she found a young man dozing behind the front desk and she was careful not to disturb him. Just around the corner from the foyer she found a small lounge, and there she fell into a large padded chair and closed her eyes. She awoke a moment later to the sound of voices. Lifting her head a bit, she saw an elderly man with an iron gray beard leaning against the desk and speaking to the yawning clerk. After a brief conversation, the young man led the older one down the hall in search of a room, leaving the detective alone.
With a grimace, she stood up and slipped around the desk where she found the hotel’s log book. The current page indicated that new arrival was one Evander of Athens, wherever that was. But above that was an open entry, a reservation for a large party of adults and children listed under a single word. Arafez. Kella nodded, took a quick glance around for food and, finding none, she eased herself back into the chair around the corner just as the young man returned to his desk. He was beginning to snore again when Kella heard a small stampede of feet thumping through the front door, and accompanying the low mutters of several women she heard the soft whimpers and whines of tired children.
There was a very brief exchange in which Kella heard Lady Sade issuing instructions to everyone around her, and then the entire entourage gently stampeded down the back hallway to their rooms. When they had gone, the detective once again forced her body to stand and cross the lobby, this time heading out the front door into the dark, windy street. “Marshal?”
A pause. Then two figures stepped out from the shadows. The major looked exhausted, but his young partner seemed better rested and perhaps somewhat eager to draw a gun, judging by the awkward way in which he held his hands by his hips. He called out, “Who are you?”
Kella waved at them to follow her around the side of the hotel. “Detective Massi, third district police, Arafez. I was investigating Doctor Medina last night when the prosthetics shop burned down, or blew up, depending on which story you read. An associate of yours came to see me this morning. A pilot. Told me what was going on, or at least as much as she knew.”
The corporal snapped his fingers with a brief flash of excitement in his eyes. “From the hospital! I was there too, but I left before you woke up.” He suddenly frowned. “How did you get here? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“Probably, but I thought you might want some backup, so I took the evening train. I enjoyed your little show. Lots of shenanigans with Sade’s thugs.”
The major said, “I appreciate the help, but you don’t look to be in any condition to be, well, to be doing anything.”
“Really? Look who’s talking, mister tall-wet-and-unarmed.” Kella leaned heavily on her cane. “Tell me, do you have enough evidence to arrest Lady Sade? Do you have any evidence against her at all?”
The major frowned. “Not yet.”
“Well, I do.” Kella leaned a little harder on her cane. “Sade is staying the night here, in suite number one, and then they’re leaving in the morning at eight o’clock in a carriage to the Upper City.”
“How do you know all that?” asked the corporal.
“It’s called police work, kid.” Kella massaged her shoulder. “Listen, if we arrest them now, by ourselves, then they’ll just wriggle through the system and be back home before supper. I know these people. Sade, Othmani, Chaou. They own the courts in Arafez. Judges, advocates, juries, police. But if we get the Royal Guards to arrest them, they’ll be imprisoned immediately, and all their wealthy and powerful friends will suddenly forget all about them. I guarantee it. Even the old blue bloods are afraid of the Royal Guards. You can’t buy them. You can’t even talk to them. So I say we get the guards to notice something highly illegal about our friends tomorrow on the Royal Road. Don’t do anything tonight. You can get them in the morning. Got that? Can I count on you to get the guards moving?”
The major nodded. “You’re right. The guards are probably the only people we can trust right now. Kenan, give the detective my gun. She may need it.”
The corporal started to object, then thought better of it and turned over the weapon. Kella slipped it into her coat. “Thanks. If the guards don’t catch me with it, it might come in handy. Now go get some rest, major. You look like hell.” She turned and hobbled away toward the rear of the hotel.
“Where will you be?” he asked.
She glanced back. “Somewhere close to Sade.”
It took several minutes to explore the garage in the dark, feeling her way around the walls and stalls and tool benches. Eventually found what she was looking for and spent the next half hour finding a comfortable place to curl up and go to sleep. The place she found was not very comfortable, but she was too tired to care.
Kella awoke slowly to the muffled sounds of footsteps and voices and heavy things being loaded into the carriage. A fire purred somewhere nearby, and boiling water bubbled and steam hissed. The entire carriage trembled slightly. She wanted to roll onto her side, but the narrow space she had crawled into behind the carriage’s rear seat cushion would not allow any movement at all. It had taken quite a bit of crawling around in the dark to find a place to hide, only to discover that there wasn’t any such place. Every board and bolt on the steam carriage had been carefully crafted to maximize the interior space for greater passenger comfort, leaving no clever little compartments for baggage, food, or unwanted stowaways.
With no other option, Kella had identified the thickest seat cushion against the back wall, gently tore it free, and carved out a small hollow space for herself by removing quite a bit of the cushion’s stuffing. After disposing of the feathers under the horses’ feed, she had slipped down into her burrow and tacked the cushion back into place over her from the inside, hoping that she had left no trace of her handiwork in the cabin.
A dull yellow glow near her head indicated that some faint hint of the morning sun was touching the cushion through the carriage window, and the occasional thumping and rocking of the entire vehicle told her when a bit of luggage was placed on the roof and when a passenger entered the cabin. Eventually everything and everyone was stowed, including two adults pressing their backs against the thin cushion covering the detective’s body.
“…thank you again for letting me join you.” An older man was speaking, one with a distinct accent. The old man from the hotel? “…certainly have a lot of children here with you…”
“…to be trained in the palace as…”
Then the steam carriage jolted into motion, crossed the cobbled streets, and then stopped abruptly. Kella held her breath. The Royal Road checkpoint. The guards.
A long pause followed and Kella listened to the passengers answering the guards’ questions. Then there was more thumping as the guards inspected the carriage, and luggage, and the passengers. Eventually the search ended and the coach rumbled to life again, beginning the long journey up the Royal Road to the Upper City of Orossa.
Damn it! Where are those marshals? What are they waiting for?
The detective lay crus
hed into the rear wall of the coach without air or light, and only the hard rattling of the wooden wall behind her skull. Within minutes, her entire body was aching and throbbing. The cacophony of the wheels and the engine’s pistons made listening and thinking equally impossible, so she gave up doing either. But inside the cabin, the slow drive up the mountain road passed in near silence, broken only by a dull murmur that rippled through the passengers as they remarked on the Mother’s Shrine in passing.
A conversation began suddenly between two speakers sitting quite close to Kella’s head. They spoke in Mazigh, but in an older dialect that Kella struggled to understand.
“My lady?”
“Not now, Barika.”
“You must understand, I was following your instructions to the letter. She brought the wrong animal. I did everything I could think of to give you time,” Chaou said. “And I was very careful in covering my tracks. I flew to Chellah, took the ferry halfway to Khemisset, and changed coaches several times.”
“And yet the marshals followed you the entire way,” Sade muttered. “Fariza told me that a Redcoat showed up at her front door moments after you slipped out the back. Your incompetence is shocking. Did you really think I would be unable to replace one animal with another? Luckily, I had the new cat ready before your marshal arrived and arrested Medina. Idiot. We may still need her, but there wasn’t time to arrange her release last night. And what do I have now? Riots. Riots in my own city. And why do I have riots in my own city, Barika?”
“Well, there are always riots, my lady.”
“No, Barika. I have riots right now because you led the marshals to the beloved Doctor Medina, who is now behind bars, which has sent the working classes into a frothy-mouthed frenzy. And apparently that marshal also found time to lead a small army of beggars to a temple where they demanded asylum with armfuls of starving children, a temple where a very nasty little newspaper reporter happened to be. Thank God that Shifrah managed to get Hamuy out of jail before anyone in the press discovered he was there. With any luck, he crawled off into a ditch to die quietly.”
Aetherium (Omnibus Edition) Page 40