But Remmiau was still faster. He retreated and launched two throwing daggers in blinding succession. Livier’s eyes went wide as the first pierced his chest; the other opened a red line along his neck. He aimed the shotgun just as Grignal grabbed Remmiau’s coat and yanked him backward, shielding him.
Pain tore into Grignal’s back and shoulder as the shotgun roared.
Grignal howled. A warm trickle of blood crept greedily down his back. He shoved Remmiau away, then twisted toward Livier. The bald man stared up, fear contorting his face. He pumped the shotgun to chamber a new round, but Grignal grabbed his arm.
The gun fired wide.
Quidam shouted, and Grignal heard him fall to the ground.
Grignal, enraged by the blooding of one of his own, whipped Livier by the arm, sending him fifteen feet through the air like a suit stuffed with rags. He crashed against the brick wall and dropped lifeless to the ground.
Three more knives flashed through the dim night. Two men dropped. The four at the rear had picked up the case and were heading for the door they’d come through. The remaining two had drawn swords. A dagger from Remmiau clanged off the metal shield one of them was holding.
Far above, a red light began to flash. An alarm rang with it, out of sequence with the flashing. The lights in the windows began winking out.
“Get that case!” Remmiau shouted. “Grignal, get that case!”
“We’re done,” Grignal grunted through gritted teeth, backing up.
“Oh no we’re not!”
While Quidam remained on the ground nursing the bloody shotgun wound along his shin, Remmiau ran forward and retrieved two long dirks from their sheaths. Jacque followed, pulling his rapier. They engaged the enemy, and the sounds of steel rang out.
Remmiau and Jacque were good—very good—but this was too much. They’d be overwhelmed in seconds.
Grignal had no choice.
He charged and bellowed, allowing his footsteps to fall heavy on the asphalt. The sound echoed about the small space. Jacque and Remmiau sidestepped while Livier’s men retreated.
One, foolishly, tried to meet his charge with a thrust of his sword. Grignal met it with an upturned palm, allowing the blade to slip through his hand until hilt met palm. Grignal gripped the man’s wrist and whipped him aside. The man’s scream was cut off by a meaty thump.
Blood spurted as Grignal pulled the sword free. He slipped sideways along the stair railing and reached for the case. Two swords swiped and connected as he yanked the case from the confines of the stairs, scraping three of the enemy against the red brick.
Grignal retreated, only now feeling the sting of the wounds along his palm and massive forearm. “Can we go now?”
“Right as rain, son.” Remmiau backed away and winked. “Right as rain.”
* * *
As night moved toward dawn, Grignal lugged the case over his good shoulder.
“You’re being unreasonable,” Remmiau said behind him. He was helping Jacque with Quidam.
They were at ground level, in the western section of Alé Surçois. The park that housed the circus sat at the intersection of three major streets, the glass buildings that surrounded it looming like headsmen waiting for the appointed time. One hundred feet up, the city closed back in, leaving the dozens of fiberop skylights to fend off the darkness.
Flocks of single- and two-person vehicles zipped counterclockwise along the narrow road rimming the park. This early, the only foot traffic was from businessmen and -women in blue unisuits cutting across the park to get to work. Several of them watched Grignal with wide open stares; he could only imagine what he must look like now with the amount of blood he’d leaked in the last hour. His breathing had become labored and raspy, and his shoulders ached, both from the wound and the weight of the chest, but he wouldn’t stop, not until he’d reached Bayard.
Ahead, the big tent stood in the center of the park, a huge canvas sign above it pronouncing “Le Cirque de la Lumière” in bold red lettering. Their personal tents hunkered like a horde of yellow-and-white yurts.
Jacque brought Quidam to the troupe’s medic, Le Chat, but Remmiau followed Grignal.
“Come on,” Remmiau said as he ran ahead and turned to face Grignal, “you want more cut, is that it?”
Grignal ignored him. He reached Bayard’s tent and dropped the case. By then, many of the three dozen troupe members were clustering around, straining to see what was happening.
Remmiau stared them down. “You’ve all got things to do, don’t you?”
Most of them remained until Ijia stepped into the circle. Her long black hair was pulled back into a tail, and she wore only a tattered cotton robe, but she still exuded authority. She inspected the nondescript case and gave Remmiau a good long stare. Finally she gave the crowd a few quick shooing motions. They began dispersing immediately.
“What is this?” she asked, staring up at Grignal.
“None of your business, darling,” Remmiau said. “What’s mine is mine.”
Ijia turned to him, blinking her long lashes once. She jutted her chin toward Le Chat’s tent. “When you put the troupe at risk, it’s everyone’s business.”
A disheveled and half-dressed Bayard exited Le Chat’s tent and paced over to Ijia’s side. One side of his handlebar moustache was bent, which somehow made him seem angrier. “He’s going to be out for weeks.”
The muscles along Remmiau’s jaw flexed. “No one will even notice. The boys can cover for Quidam”—he stabbed a bony finger at the case—“and that’s my bloody catch.”
Ijia returned her attention to Grignal. With one raised eyebrow, she commanded him to tell her everything. He told her as best he could, though he didn’t know enough to tell her everything. Remmiau had withheld too much.
“Where was it headed?”
“Is headed, darling. Is headed. To Balgique-en-Leurre. It’s a simple pick-and-pop.”
“Not so simple any more,” Bayard said. “Who’s in it?”
“No one special. No one the Boys in Red would care about.”
“That’s not true,” Grignal said. Had Remmiau been talking with an outsider, Grignal would have kept his mouth shut, but the troupe was involved, and the troupe came first. Remmiau should know better; he was letting his greed get the best of him.
“What do you mean?” Bayard asked.
“Remmiau knows. He said as much to the men we got the case from.”
Remmiau’s look of hatred bore into Grignal.
Bayard stared at Remmiau as the clatter of breakfast came from the mess tent.
“It’s only rumors,” Remmiau said.
“And who’s rumored to be in there?” Bayard asked.
“Aw, come on, Top Man, this is my business.”
“Spill it, Remmiau, or I’m wrapping you and the case in a pretty little package for the Men in Red.”
Remmiau tightened his lips to a thin line and shook his head. “It’s the première’s daughter, all right?”
Bayard’s eyes looked like they were ready to pop out. “Jaubert Rousseau’s daughter is in there?”
“Yes, but we can use this. We’ll get top money for her we play this right.”
Bayard alternated glances between the case and Remmiau. Then he stalked toward his tent. “Come with me.”
Everyone but Remmiau left quickly. No one wanted to be in the line of fire when Bayard got his mustache in a dander.
* * *
The shotgun wound burned like hell until the troupe’s medic, Le Chat, removed the last of the birdshot. It would be another few days before the pain subsided, another week before it healed completely.
Throughout the day, Grignal kept expecting uniformed men to storm into the park and round everyone up. He made several mistakes at practice that afternoon until Ijia had had enough. She finally sent him away, telling him to calm himself before the show, which only made things worse.
When the show commenced, the scenes crawled. Ijia left her homeland and her lover at th
e behest of the devious Remmiau. She explored a world she had never seen, only to return to a place that had changed drastically in her absence. And her young lover... He had turned into a monster, played by Grignal. She could see little of the boy she had once loved, but the eyes, she realized. The eyes were his.
Grignal’s act began by spinning two steel loops in a circle. Ijia leaped and moved between them, through them, over Grignal in an acrobatic ballet of sadness and joy. Bayard stood backstage, studying the crowd. The rings nearly slipped from Grignal’s grasp when Tinker came to converse with Bayard.
Remmiau came onstage soon after, gesticulating broadly at Ijia while three white-robed sirens sang on a platform high above the stage. Remmiau took note of Grignal and drew his daggers. The final act progressed from a few missed shots to Remmiau throwing perfectly aimed daggers into Grignal’s arms and legs and chest. Blood flowed. The audience gasped. Remmiau’s strikes were stronger this night, and his tattooed eyes lit with a certain glee that had been absent for some time.
Grignal eventually succumbed to the onslaught; he could protect Ijia no more.
As Ijia pleaded with Remmiau to stop, Grignal cried for the loss of his love, bringing the crowd to absolute silence.
Grignal wasn’t surprised, for the release of emotions had come easy. It wasn’t from the pain; it was from the fact that Remmiau felt betrayed by Grignal. He felt that Grignal couldn’t be trusted any more. But it wasn’t Grignal’s fault. He had had no choice but to give Remmiau up to Bayard. In time Remmiau would see that Grignal had acted in his best interests—in his best interests and the troupe’s.
In the meantime, if it helped Remmiau to be more sadistic than usual, then Grignal would let him. The wounds would heal soon enough.
* * *
After Grignal had washed the blood from his arms and chest and had given the wounds time to close, he borrowed Ijia’s datalink tablet—one of only two the troupe paid the costly uplink for—and retreated to his tent. He sat gratefully on his creaking cot as the din of the crowd filtered through the tent walls. The show had been packed, and many were still wandering the park, sampling the games and fortune tellers and bric-a-brac stalls.
Grignal scoured the interlink for Jaubert Rousseau and any mention of his family. Oddly enough there were plenty of articles of Jaubert but Grignal could find none that mentioned his wife or daughter. He eventually found one about Alé Surçois’ last election nearly three years ago. It had a picture of Jaubert Rousseau standing on a podium, one arm around an elegant-looking woman and the other, presumably, around his daughter. Grignal read the caption. Première Elect Jaubert Rousseau, with wife, Ettienne, and daughter, Sidanne.
Sidanne. What a beautiful name. Just like the girl herself. She had hair the color of dark wheat, styled with bold, angular cuts, the sort desert city girls seemed to favor. The article said she was twelve, but with the professional makeup and styling she looked fifteen at least.
What set of circumstances could have led her to this? Who would have the stones to do such a thing to the daughter of a première? Remmiau had a reputation among the darker alleys for getting the job done, so it made some sense that he’d been contacted, but why transport her at all if it was merely for ransom? Perhaps whoever had taken her felt she had to be far outside the première’s reach before contacting him. Perhaps they felt it would be a protracted negotiation and keeping her outside the city was safer.
Grignal considered the destination. That Sidanne was being sent to a city like Balgique-en-Leurre was a clue. It was a large city, larger than most shield cities, and yet it had decided against erecting a shield, and its rulers had chosen to remain free of the tram line circuit. The reasons, like most things on Altarus, could be found in politics. Balgique-en-Leurre was rooted firmly in the badlands. Many of its residents had been tainted by the badwinds, and many others had been rejected or ejected by the larger cities. As backwards and poor as it might be, most if its residents felt like they’d found a true home, and they refused to kowtow to the tram cities.
Balgique-en-Leurre was also famed for its temple, the home to one of several surviving religions on Altarus and the one almost universally adopted by those with psychic powers. Was Sidanne the key to some plan of theirs? Had they foreseen some event that involved Sidanne? Had they kidnapped her to prevent it? Or to cause it?
Grignal stared at the picture of Sidanne, imagining what she must have gone through before being put in the cryosleeve. She would feel nothing at this point, but he still imagined her lonely and helpless inside the unremarkable grey case.
One of the young trampoline acrobats popped into Grignal’s tent, saying Bayard wanted to see him. He rushed over to Bayard’s tent, pausing only to send an apologetic glance to the mother of a toddler scared witless by Grignal’s presence. Bayard had decided to hide the case in the city. He had researched the best place to leave it, one that might give them an option to pick it up again if they so chose.
Grignal felt uncomfortable abandoning Sidanne—it felt like he’d be leaving her to die alone and unwanted like a piece of trash—but Bayard’s word was like a gavel struck, and so Grignal waited until early in the morning. In a city the size of Alé Surçois, and as large as he was, no time was perfect, but several hours after midnight was as close as he was going to get. He wrapped the case in a harness and climbed the nearest building when Ijia signaled that that park was clear enough. He reached the top, and continued, higher and higher, spanning buildings and bridges and walkways.
Nearly an hour later, he made it to the top of one of the city’s tallest structures—a commercial building that had fallen on hard times. Less than seventy percent of the space was filled, and few of the businesses required anything resembling tight security. As Bayard had guessed, Grignal found no cameras mounted to the top of the building. There was a crysteel communications tower and an access door leading into the building, but otherwise it was clear.
Grignal nestled the case near the base of the tower, where it met the stairwell’s brick enclosure. Wrapped by the beaten tarp as it was, it looked hidden enough.
He moved to the edge of the building, for he was breathless from the climb. City air was always stifling, but up here it was less so. Grignal had long ago learned to enjoy the small victories in life. He breathed in the dry air and the scent of ozone and the fainter smell of artificial pine. The shield glimmered. This high up, he could hear its telltale thrum. The tram yard, only a half-mile away, held seven white trams, each with several hundred cars. Grignal wondered what it would be like to travel that way, to take one day to reach the next city instead of two months.
A personal transport swooped over the terminal and landed at the top of a building several dozen stories higher than the one upon which Grignal stood. What kind of power must a man like that wield? The owner of a great company? Jaubert Rousseau himself?
What sort of life might Grignal have had if he’d been born instead of manufactured in a Kyngani clone vat? He flexed his hands, examined the rugged skin of his forearms. He felt strange that there were no scars, that the Kyngani-bred ability to heal was so utterly complete. He had been grown—grown. He had never truly felt like a Kyngani. He felt much closer to the land and the cities and even the badwinds than those of his own race. It felt like Altarus had given birth to him.
And so when the armistice had been signed, and the Kyngani were preparing to evacuate, Grignal had chosen to stay. How could he return to a planet he’d never seen? It meant nothing to him. It meant less than nothing. Altarus was the only home he’d ever known, and he knew even then he loved humans. They were complex and inventive and beautiful in their own way. His own race had never treated him like more than an inventory number attached to a weapon.
Another transport flew above the building. Grignal ducked as low as he could manage and waited for it to pass.
He turned to the case in its nook. It had sounded, for a moment, like a young girl was whimpering.
Grignal told himself it wa
s impossible, but as he stared at the case, he wondered if he could leave it here. Sidanne might be found, but then again she might not. She might find her way to safety, but unsupervised recoveries from cryofreeze did not always go well. It was too risky, Grignal thought. Why not wake her up now and make sure she was safe? She couldn’t incriminate the troupe, and in fact, her safe return might ease up the attention that would surely be focusing in on the troupe even now.
Grignal, feeling like he’d given himself a direct order, dragged the case into the open and removed the tarp. Cryosleeves typically had a failsafe shutdown sequence once its integrity was compromised. The only ones that didn’t, in fact, were those used to hold highly secure parties in cryogenic freeze, ones that interested parties would rather have dead than kidnapped.
Grignal picked up the case, and hugged it to his chest. He locked his hands together and squeezed, compressing the case, harder and harder. The blood in his veins pounded; the tendons in his wrists screamed. The hinges of the case were pressing so deeply into his chest that he was sure it was drawing blood. And still it held.
He released a growl and renewed his effort. Minutes seemed to pass. His head throbbed. His bones were cracking. Surely they were...
He released one final scream.
And the case gave. A sharp hiss released into the air.
Grignal set the case onto the concrete tiles. A dent rested along one side, just below the security pad, and two of its corners had sizable gaps. Grignal tore the handle off the access door and used it to lever the gaps wider. He was finally able to creep his fingers under the lid and rip the case open.
His arms went limp; he staggered backward.
Lying within, under transparent glass, was Sidanne.
A readout and keypad were embedded within the glass near the ruined lock. The glass—or the liquid beneath it—tinted Sidanne’s skin blue. Electrodes covered her shaved head, her naked chest and arms and legs. Her skin, even tinted as it was, seemed extremely pale. The effect could be from the freezing process, but Grignal couldn’t explain away how positively emaciated she looked. Her knees and elbows stood pronounced against the rail-like limbs attached to them. The knuckles on her hand protruded like those of a ninety-year-old arthritic. Her jaw stood out against her sunken cheeks, and every single rib seemed to be fighting to escape her skin.
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