by Patty Jansen
Of course there was more behind the decision for going into the bath. Security monitoring was always weakest in the bathroom. That was the case in my apartment and all others I’d visited. There would probably be a camera somewhere, but it couldn’t be anywhere close to the bath or it would be visible and sounds in this room echoed too much to provide a good recording.
Before he came into the water, Veyada unfolded a kind of spindly device from his pocket. He set it on the ground, where it looked like an absurd spider with only five legs, and positioned it while lining up its “body” with the corner of the room above the door.
“What’s that?” I asked when he joined us.
“It’s a disruptor, Delegate.”
“Please, everyone calls me Cory.”
He nodded, but still didn’t look me in the eye. I wasn’t sure how to react to him, because as Ezhya’s guard, even a junior one, he ranked far higher than me or Thayu. Now he had been contracted to protect someone of lower status. How did that even work?
I continued, “Is it safe to talk?”
“As safe as it will ever be inside this building.”
Sheydu nodded. She sat on the seat opposite me, her legs stretched out so her feet touched the side under the bench where I sat. She had the body shape of a teenage Coldi girl: more slender in the waist than usual, and a flat chest, her arms wiry and corded with muscle. The skin on her upper arms had lost its youthful softness. I judged her to be well in her forties.
“You have a plan?” I asked.
She held her hand up. Be quiet.
All right, not as safe as I thought.
Veyada said, “I think you’re right. He doesn’t have any grounds to make more demands from you. Your contract was settled and paid, and if there was going to be any financial hardship on his part, he should have calculated that in his original claim.”
He was putting on an act, but I found myself getting angry all over again. “I paid enough—more than enough actually. His first claim was ridiculous.”
“There have been some rumours about that, yes.”
Blood rose to my cheeks. Damn! It was hot enough in this room already, and I didn’t need to be reminded of what might well have been a very stupid decision. “Tell me, what can I do? He holds us hostage here. I have no great knowledge of Coldi law, and even if I had, I still couldn’t think what—”
Sheydu was pointing at Veyada.
I mouthed, What? And at the same time I thought I understood. He knows about law?
She nodded.
Veyada continued, “Taysha takes advantage of you because you’ve shown emotional attachment to the lady. He seems highly amused by the way you form relationships in an irrational way.”
“Irrational?”
“So it seems to us. When you choose a life partner, there is no evidence of instinct at work, no reason, yet when you form such a relationship, it is for life, and you protect it with everything you have. He exploits that.”
That’s because I love her.
And love crosses boundaries.
And . . .
Damn. He was right of course. Coldi described their official relationships in contracts and any other relationships that formed were either hormonally determined or were nethana: loose, didn’t mean anything and could be discarded at will. Love certainly happened, but rarely between contracted partners.
I breathed out heavily.
“So what should I do about these new claims? I can’t pay him any more. I can’t give him what he wants. I don’t want to give him any more—”
Veyada opened his mouth.
“No, and don’t even think about suggesting that Thayu should fulfil her part of the contract. That’s not happening. You can say these contract relationships are purely rational for you, but I see fear of that man in her eyes.” Besides, if she had her second child, that child would live with us.
“I wasn’t going to say that. I understand that the notion of Thayu going back to him to complete his contract is offensive to you.”
“If I agreed to that, I’d want my money back,” I said in a low voice. Damn the man and his rude intrusions to hell. “Then what were you going to say?”
“The current circumstances justify your issuing a counter-writ.”
What? “But I don’t . . .” give ultimatums to kill people, no matter how offensive they are “. . . belong in your justice system.”
“But you do. Taysha has determined that through a diviner, and their judgements can be binding in some circumstances, clan matters being one of them. You can claim official membership of the Domiri clan.”
“How do you know that? Did he tell you that?”
“Because I have access to the ancestry diviners’ legal records. It’s there for all to see.”
What the fuck— I’d heard of those diviners, but I’d thought them to be part of superstition in lower-class Coldi, and didn’t expect them to make legally binding statements.
Veyada continued, “I would take it up, especially if you’re planning a long-term relationship with the lady. It could be very advantageous.”
Now he did look me in the eye, and he was serious. Me, a member of the Domiri clan. I didn’t even know that was possible.
Right. Here was another re-assessment of Asha’s opinion about me. He had sent me to a man whom he knew was my nemesis, not with two random junior guards because he had no use for them himself, but two people whose knowledge I was likely to need.
Come to think of it, Ezhya didn’t have any guards who would be of no use to me. Like Thayu, they would all be graduates of the security academy and would have one or more specialities.
And obviously Asha didn’t mind having me in his clan either.
Right. So rather than being an obnoxious boor—well, he was that, too—he was helping me, or, more likely, handing me tidbits to see what I’d do with them. What a typical upper-class Coldi thing to do. And damn it, I should have realised that, too, rather than let him rile me with his behaviour.
Deep breath, Delegate Wilson.
“So. This counter-writ. How is that going to work from here, while we’re locked up? Who would carry it out? To be honest, I’m not a fan of sending someone a piece of paper with an order to have him killed for a minor transgression.”
“Another strange habit of your people. This thing called mercy.” He used the Isla word. “If someone has committed an offense, why lock them up, feed them and then release them when they’re angrier than when they committed the offense and will only re-offend?”
“We have a forgiving nature.”
“And you also have some of the most violent conflicts in all of the settled worlds, some of the greatest mass murders of people by people, by their own leaders, or by other leaders.”
And Asto’s colonisation had been aggressive, but they had barely shed blood and despite the fearsome size and know-how of their army, had rarely fought any wars.
Touché.
I’d had this discussion with Nicha so many times and he always won it.
There was something about Coldi nature that Earth people could learn a lot from, if we could only determine what it was.
“Please, Delegate—Cory—listen to this because it is important advice. Taysha has offended you deeply. You have played along with him to appease Ezhya. But through offending you with these further requests, Taysha has offended Ezhya as well. Our laws are very clear in this respect. Trust has been broken. You have the right to issue a writ to Taysha. You should do this, so as not to set a precedent that people in power can mess around with foreigners unused to our laws.”
“Is that what you would do? I don’t mean if you were Ezhya, because . . .” Ezhya rules ev
erything. “But if something like this happened to you, or Natanu, would you send him a writ?”
“No. Any of us would go straight to his private rooms and shoot him.”
Crap.
I looked down at the surface of the water, expelling a breath. I knew he was right and I’d known that something was seriously wrong in the relationship between Ezhya and his seconds once Asha started deflecting my questions about Risha. Taysha had tried, but failed, to take the command hub and Risha had fled?
With a chill, I remembered something Amarru had told me when I was training for my job at the Exchange in Athens: “Chief Coordinators don’t retire, generally speaking. Most of them never make it to old age. As their years in power increase, so does the importance of a loyal security network that can go into absolute lockdown to see their leader through the worst crises. Still, virtually all Chief Coordinators die by the hand of a fellow member of the Inner Circle.”
So the fight was on. I’d never expected to be caught up in it.
Veyada went on in great detail about possible wordings for a writ and their precise meanings. I knew that people had special interpreters for these things, people who specialised in writing the exact amount of offense received and intended with their choice of pronouns and tone.
The wording of Taysha’s writ to me, he assured me, had been very offensive, designed to provoke.
I didn’t like talking about this while in the man’s apartment, and certainly didn’t like the suggestion that I should kill him without giving him the opportunity to respond, but we did settle on a text for a potential writ to go out as soon as I was near a place where I could find a calligrapher. Since that was not going to happen any time soon, I guessed I was safe from this arcane custom for a while. When Ezhya came back, he was welcome to “deal with” Taysha in any way he saw fit.
That probably made me a coward.
Meanwhile, Sheydu had gotten out of the bath, wrapped herself in a towel and sat in the corner reading something. The loose texture and dark spots of the skin on her legs made me re-assess her age. She was likely closer to sixty than forty. A veteran with vast experience in her field. I had an ominous feeling that I’d soon find out what that field of expertise was. It probably involved the subject we’d studiously avoided talking about: how to get out of this room.
So, was this talk about writs a smokescreen, too?
Once we got out of the bath, I was uncomfortably reminded that the water was cooler than the air in the apartment. My clothes stuck to me with sweat by the time I’d dried myself. I put on my suit over my clothes, but it seemed to give me little comfort. If only I had that adaptation medicine.
While we had been in the bathroom, the last of the hazy daylight had departed and the white sky was now dark.
A brown tinge hung at the horizon from the lingering daylight. The slice of the city visible from the window twinkled with a kaleidoscope of colours. There were street lights on posts or strung from wire, and lights attached to walls, functional lights and lights that created multi-coloured patterns on walls and roofs. Taller buildings and towers or spires sported patterns of smaller lights: curved or blocky in intricate colour combinations. Some flickered as if to some inaudible beat.
“It’s very pretty. Is that taller building over there the armed forces base?”
There was no reply from the guards. I looked over my shoulder.
Neither of them had sat down, but lingered near the door, both looking at screens. Veyada had to have a feeder, because a feeder log scrolled over the screen.
Sheydu came to me and showed me her reader. The screen said, Put on your outside suit. Take everything.
I mouthed, “What’s happened?”
She gestured, Later.
I pointed to the ceiling. We’re going up?
She nodded, still listening to something in her earpiece. Sounds of bumps and thunks came from elsewhere in the building, nowhere close to us. Was this finally the promised diversion?
That was it, then. No idea how they thought they could get out and past Taysha’s guard. Likely, there was some more “dealing with” involved, but deep inside I’d known that when I decided to come here.
Chapter 12
* * *
I WENT to the bedroom and wrestled myself into my second suit. I checked the key in my pocket before I did up the fastenings. Then I strapped on my belt and bracket with the gun after checking the charge level. Then the tanks and that hot helmet. I slipped the breathing mask over my face and turned on the cool air supply, something I’d sworn not to do indoors, but I was so damn hot. It was night, too, and I had no idea how long it would be before I could get to my adaptation medication.
Back in the hall, Sheydu crouched next to the door with the spindly spider thing that Veyada had also used in the bathroom and whose function wasn’t quite clear to me. When I came in, she looked up, rose and took something from her pocket.
“Take this.” She handed me a parcel in waxy paper with something in a clear bag stuck to it. That piece of electronics I recognised: a detonator.
“You know what to do with it?”
“Think so.” Gamra had made me do a weapons and self-defence course.
Explosives were for getting oneself out of locked rooms.
“Put it away somewhere safe.”
I opened the fastening to my suit and slid the parcel inside my inner pocket of my outer suit, separated from the key by a mere layer of fabric.
Sheydu sat down facing the door, poking some very thin and stiff wires between the door and the frame. Veyada stood behind her, leaning against the wall. He had unclipped his gun from his arm bracket and held it, half-raised pointed at the door. He gestured for me to stand behind him.
I pointed at my own gun.
He gestured leave it. Quite relaxed.
Sheydu clipped on an earpiece, connected some wires and listened. Then she said something in code. She jumped to her feet and retreated to the other side of the door. There was a brief fizzing sound and the door popped open.
Someone outside gave a surprised exclamation.
Veyada jumped through the doorway and fired once, twice, three, four times in rapid succession.
Sheydu calmly swiped her gear off the floor and stuffed it into her pockets.
“Quick, get out of here.”
We ran out, Sheydu leading the way, then poor old me, sweating, struggling with all my gear, then Veyada. I spotted a couple of people on the ground. I hoped Veyada had used the stun setting, but knew he likely hadn’t. The dealing had well and truly begun.
We ran down the corridor the same way we had come in, around the corner, another corner and up a flight of stairs. The gear was heavy. I didn’t seem to have put on the tank properly, because it bumped against my back. I was so hot and felt sick. Dizzy, in a just-go-away-and-let-me-die-here kind of way.
By the time we were on top of the stairs, I was ready to black out. The fact that night had come didn’t seem to have made it any cooler.
Sheydu crossed the upstairs gallery and led us into a long corridor with windows on one side that looked out over some sort of internal courtyard. There was a roof over the top and lush vegetation lit by a couple of lights along a path.
Ahead the corridor ended in a set of double doors. Three guards stood before them. These ones wore silver suits and red sashes, like Sheydu and Veyada. Thank heavens, we were back on Ezhya’s territory.
As we came closer, one of the guards shouted, “Hey, there.”
Sheydu stopped. Her face showed apprehension.
Next to me, Veyada tensed.
“We want to get into the hub,” Sheydu said. “We’ve come from Barresh with Ezhya’s personal approval.”
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The man’s face showed no emotion. His left hand had moved close to the gun bracket on his right arm. From that position, he could pull the weapon out in an instant.
“We have Ezhya’s command key,” Sheydu said.
“We don’t need it. We’re fine.”
“Ezhya may not be back for a while. The Exchange needs to re-align the nodes. Some may be damaged. Let us through so that we can install Ezhya’s running routines and secure our positions.”
The guard’s hand went closer to the gun’s grip. “Stay away.”
“On whose orders?”
He didn’t respond to that.
Sheydu whispered, “What’s up with him?”
Veyada whispered, “No idea, but we’ve a got a problem.”
“You got any smart ideas?”
“Maybe.” Veyada glanced aside past where I stood. There was a plain and unmarked door in the wall. In one step, he opened this door and pulled both of us inside a dark and narrow hole like a broom cupboard. He slammed the door shut behind him and locked it.
To my surprise, he vanished into the darkness at the back of the cupboard. Sheydu pushed me after him.
I stumbled along following the walls by touch. The helmet and visor hampered my vision at the best of times, but now I only saw the annoying projection of the atmosphere biometrics in the corner of my visor. There was a way to turn off the display, but right now, I couldn’t remember how to do it.
The passage seemed endless. Our footsteps sounded muffled in the cramped space. Every now and then we passed a small light mounted on the ceiling. It was hot here. The helmet display showed increasing temperature. Where the hell were we going?
After a while, we got to a set of steps going down—I almost tripped and fell—and then a door that was made of thick concrete. It reminded me of the war shelter dug into the back yard of the house in New Zealand where I’d grown up. As kid, I’d found it a scary place, where my mother kept a supply of cans and packaged food just in case. The war had never come to New Zealand, but I could still see her setting down the box to open the fat concrete door with both hands and then disappearing inside its dark maw.