But always, just as he flung himself headlong over the brink of disaster, somehow Staun would be there, to catch his straining, outstretched hand, to save him before he could self-destruct … Never letting go, no matter how Tree cursed and fought to get free. Holding him the way Ma had held him, when she was alive … holding him for as long as it took, until the nightmares faded, and he had cried himself to sleep.…
Staun had never broken his promise. In the filthy coveralls of a day laborer or in Hegemonic blue—with his own fists, or laying his badge on the line, Staun LaisNion had protected his younger brother like an avenging saint. He had never given up on the worthless, thankless little bastard who was only half his kin: Always forgiving him … always loving him, even when Staun’s slap knocked Tree across the room as they got home, and his voice broke as he shouted, “Goddamn it, I can’t take any more of this shit! If you don’t kill yourself, you’re gonna end up killing me!”
And there in the bowels of hell, his hand had shoved Tree out of Death’s sight-line one last time, as his own body took the full force of the burn that should have killed them both.…
“No, Staun—!”
Tree woke, sitting bolt upright, his brother’s name still ringing in the stagnant air of their apartment. Staun …
He fell back on the ruined mattress, drew up his knees and sank his teeth into the wad of blankets half-covering his naked body; lay still while the agony of his sudden motion ebbed slowly, slowly back into the range of the bearable.
He levered himself up again, shifted a centimeter at a time until he could reach his clothes, and the pain medication he had brought with him from the hospital. He took a dose of the inhalant, then lay back, letting it begin to work before he even tried to get out of bed.
Staun’s notebook lay beside him. He remembered falling asleep with it clutched in his hand; remembered fever dreams shot through with fragments of his brother’s past that bled into his own the way their life’s blood had pooled on that cold metal floor.
The notebook held everything from lessons Staun had learned during academy days to last week’s shopping list: the database was peppered with vivid descriptions of each new experience they had had since arriving in the strange, hermetically sealed world of Carbuncle, and sharp-edged insights about people they knew … the good, the bad, and the ugly.
There were also stomach-knotting glimpses into the depths of loss, fear, and despair that his brother had tried to keep from him all those years: the pain that life had force-fed them both like fistfuls of broken glass, that Staun had somehow been strong enough to carry until at last he’d reached a place where he felt safe enough to call them by name, and purge them one by one.
And always there was the wellspring of hope and resolve that had never run dry for Staun the way it had for him, no matter how often or how deeply his brother drank from it.…
There was also a large file on Tree.
Tree had opened the file with the same commingled grief and revulsion that he felt now every time he faced a mirror. He had read the file from beginning to end, like a voyeur; watching his life strobe by: a portrait of Nyx LaisTree, as a work-in-progress.…
But his brother’s memories of too many things in his past hardly resembled his own. Time and again he saw the truth he knew distorted by the lens of Staun’s sometimes grudging, yet always unyielding, belief in him.
Staun had never lost faith in the grieving, guilt-ridden boy trapped inside the hellion who punished them both with his suicidal self-destructiveness … who had survived, in spite of himself, to become the man Staun had always known he could be—streetwise and stubborn, but also smart, honest, fair. Someone who had every right to wear the uniform of a Hegemonic Police officer with pride.…
Tree’s final waking thought, already dissolving into dream, had been of searching for Nyx LaisTree in the mirror of his dead brother’s eyes, and finding a complete stranger.…
Tree closed his eyes, and chose a random file; hit AUDIO PLAYBACK, choking down his grief as the notebook began to recite in a haunting imitation of his brother’s voice.
Registering the date, Tree realized that the entry was one from the day they’d first seen the shape-shifter in Blue Alley. “Why is experience something you never get until after you need it?” Staun had written. Tree wondered whether he’d meant life in general, or simply his damnfool kid brother.…
He fast-forwarded for the length of an indrawn breath. “… in her eyes, never seen anything like it. She’s so fucking good, too. Why can’t anybody else see that? The guys are assholes, the way they treat her.… and I’m a coward not to say anything.
“She knows I stare at her; I just wish she knew why, I just want to talk to her! I want to—Hell, even without the name thing, is a patrolman allowed to ask an inspector to go on a date? Is that fraternization? Do you have to salute? ‘Beg pardon, ma’am, you wanna have a couple beers with me, after work?’… Shit, it’s Gundhalinu—”
Tree sat up on the ruins of his mattress, replayed the final words in disbelief. PalaThion? Staun had had a secret crush on the Warrior Nun? For how long—?
Gods … had he and Staun ever really know each other at all?
He dropped the notebook, suddenly unable even to form a coherent thought. He sat, head bowed, while grief leaked through his fingers and dripped from his chin, soaking the mattress like tears.
After a time either as brief or as endless as eternity, he raised his head again, and saw his reflection in the skewed, shattered mirror on the wall across the room. He touched his face as he stared at the fractured image—at what had become of his possessions, of his life, of him. The sense that he had only wakened out of one nightmare into another still haunted him, as it had in the hospital. As if it was still happening to him.…
It was still happening to him. His physical pain had ebbed until it was no more than the dull ache of despair; finally he was able to get up, and get dressed. Stumbling through the mess on his floor he reached the doorway, and went down the hall. His brother was dead. His best friends were dead. Everyone, dead—
“They had to restart your own heart three times, LaisTree. “Jashari’s voice still haunted him, like the truth: like the holos of the crime scene still burning holes in his vision … surreal, indelible images of his own bloody, broken body lying among the mutilated corpses.
Maybe he was dead. Maybe this was hell. He had no idea anymore even of how to tell the difference. All he knew for certain was that the world he had accepted as reality his whole life was gone; all that was left where it had once been was a gaping hole, like the gaping hole the plasma beam had left where his brother’s heart and lungs should have been. He knew how his brother had died—how they had all died—because Jashari had made him look at the pictures, again and again, always claiming that he was the only one who knew why it had happened.
But he didn’t know why—any more than he knew why fate had stripped him of even the memory, left his mind as sterile as the Police had left the bloodstained murder scene in their search for clues.
All he knew was that the murderers were still out there, free and alive and breathing—like every fucking dog and rat and maggot in the festering sore that was Carbuncle—while his brother, the best human being he had ever known, would never draw another breath. And it was his fault—because he couldn’t remember. And that was the real hell of it.
There was only one genuine memory he still possessed from that night … one person who might be able to answer his questions about what he had done, or why this had happened to him. Who could tell him whether he really was in hell, or only deserved to be.
And at least he knew who he had been, once: Hegemonic Police Officer Nyx Ambiko LaisTree. Which meant that there was one thing he still knew how to do … and that was find her.
* * *
Tree entered the club called Behind Closed Doors and limped across its empty dance floor to the bar. There was no one in front of the bar, or behind it.
“We�
�re not open.” A pale Tiamatan dressed in offworlder clothing emerged from a shadowed recess along the wall; his annoyance was obvious, even from across the room.
Tree’s breath caught as the room and the voice and the face suddenly catalyzed a memory: he was dancing … dancing with her … and the Tiamatan had cut in, telling him to go—“Hegemonic Police,” he said. “I’m looking for a woman.”
“Aren’t we all?” The Tiamatan smiled sardonically as he leaned against the bar. “Well, some of us, at least.…”
Tree took a step forward, his jaw tightening.
The Tiamatan’s smirk fell away. “What’s her name?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
The Tiamatan gave a soft snort of laughter. “Then I don’t see how I can help you.”
“She’s a ’shifter.… she wears a sensenet.” Tree controlled his sudden urge to throttle an answer out of the man. “She comes in here all the time, to pick up paying customers. That means you probably both work for a Samathan named Berdaz, who really owns this place. Now, who is she and where does she live?”
The Tiamatan looked him up and down, taking in his bandages, his rumpled street clothes. “You know, you haven’t even shown me a badge … Officer LaisTree.” He met Tree’s gaze with a measuring stare. “Would that be because you no longer have one—?”
Tree looked down; his hand covered the Hegemonic seal on his belt buckle.
“That’s what I thought. Now, why don’t you go away and leave me alone, like a good boy?”
Tree closed the space between them with one stride, catching the Tiamatan by the front of his expensive tunic. He jerked the man forward until they were face to face. “You’re right, Motherlover, I don’t have a badge anymore. That means there’s nothing to keep me from beating the shit out of you, if you don’t tell me what I want to know—” He twisted the knot of clothing, gritting his teeth against the pain it caused him. The Tiamatan began to make inarticulate choking sounds. “I’ll report you!” he gasped.
“You want to bet that any Blue on the Street will take your word over mine, even without a badge?” The Tiamatan’s pale skin had turned deep red. Tree let him go, shoving him back, and watched him wheeze. “Who is she? Where is she?”
“She … she lives in Azure Alley. Up by the palace.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know.”
Tree’s hand caught the front of his tunic again.
“Gods and Goddess, I don’t know! That’s all I know—”
Tree released him, and left the club.
He made his way up the Street on foot all the way to Azure Alley, cursing the slowness of his stumbling, crippled body, and the tricks his eyes played on him every time he caught sight of a blue uniform; cursing this miserable backwater planet that didn’t even have a decent public transit system in its only major city. At last he reached Azure Alley, and turned into it.
The Upper City was a part of town he rarely saw. Most of the crime, and most of the Police, stayed in the Maze, or down by the warehouses and docks in the Lower City. The Upper City held the exclusive townhouses of wealthy Winters and offworlders, the kind of people who settled their problems privately, through networks of influence and means of coercion to which no ordinary Blue had access. He realized belatedly that Azure Alley was not the sort of neighborhood where he could go up to strangers’ doors, bandaged, bruised and unshaven, and expect people to answer his questions about a woman who—
“Are you looking for the Changing Lady?”
He turned, startled. A group-of native and offworlder children sat together in the middle of the alley, drawing a mural of colorful scrawls on the impervious, immaculately clean pavement. The small girl who had called to him got up and started forward, looking at him in wide-eyed fascination.
“The Changing Lady?” He hesitated. “You mean, a woman who always looks different…?”
The girl nodded, her red curls bobbing. “And she always has guests. My Da says she’s a who-er.”
“Kefty!” A bigger girl came up to the child and took her hand impatiently. “No talking to strangers!” The older girl glared at Tree as she dragged her sister away.
“Wait!” he called. “Please … where does she live, the Changing Lady?”
“In Number Twenty-three, with the red flowers!” the smaller girl cried, before her sister pushed her firmly back down into the circle of artists.
Tree sighed, relieved; his relief faded as he made his way down the alley to Number 23, which had a window box of red flowers below its diamond-paned windows. Its entrance was discreetly set in shadows beneath a second-story balcony. He banged the door knocker, not giving himself time to think about what he was doing.
The sound echoed loudly in his ears before the Upper City’s proprietary silence could smother it. Quiet returned; even the voices of the children seemed muted and distant.
He waited, twitching with fatigue and indecision, shifting from foot to foot to ease the pain in his side and back and leg. He raised his hand to knock on the door again, then lowered it and began to turn away.
The door opened behind him. He turned toward the sound.
The woman he remembered from the club—Newhavenese, stunningly beautiful—was standing in the doorway, gazing at him with an expression he couldn’t name. He stared at her, struck dumb by a sudden, powerful emotion he couldn’t name either.
“Come in,” she murmured.
He went inside, and she closed the door. He stood in the softly lit elegance of her living room, abruptly feeling self-conscious as he observed his surroundings. All the furnishings were from offworld, but from no world in particular, as if the room was meant to suggest whatever setting a person’s expectations brought to it.
He realized that the room reminded him of Newhaven, even though he had never lived in a place remotely like this. He turned again, looking back at the woman.
“Officer LaisTree,” she said, and smiled. Her smile was so warm and welcoming that he could almost believe she was glad to see him. “You’ve come at last, to see if I got safely home.”
“Tree,” he said, looking down. “It’s … just Tree, now.”
“Tree.” Her eyes flickered over his face, down his body, taking in the bandages and street clothes. Her expression shifted, deepening and softening as she met his eyes again; he looked away from it. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
He looked back. Her face, her body, were everything he remembered, everything he’d ever wanted in a woman.… “About what?” he said flatly.
“About what happened. That night.…”
He forced his gaze to let her go. He stared at the furniture, at the floor with its subtly patterned carpet. “I guess you know more about that than I do.”
Her expression turned puzzled.
His hand rose to the bandages on his face, fell away. “I don’t remember anything, after you … after us—” He shook his head. “I don’t remember any illegal raid on a warehouse full of contraband; I don’t remember walking into an ambush, or how they died—” His voice roughened. “They all died, except me. On my nameday, on Saint Ambiko’s Day. We were the Nameday Vigilantes. But I guess you know that.”
Her eyes were fathomless pools. She neither nodded nor shook her head; she seemed barely to be breathing.
“The last thing … the last thing that I really remember … is being with you.” He moved toward her; his hand rose on its own to caress her cheek. “I wanted you to be safe.”
She nodded, unblinking, trapped in the spotlight of his gaze.
His hands closed over her arms as his pain and grief suddenly catalyzed into fury. “You told someone, goddamn you! Who did you tell—?”
She made a small, startled noise as his grip bruised her flesh, but she didn’t struggle or try to pull away.
He let her go, backing off, looking anywhere but at her as the soul-killing pain inside him slashed his resolve to ribbons. He wiped tears from his face; furious at himself n
ow. “I’m waiting,” he said hoarsely.
A tremor ran through her, as if she was fighting the urge to put more space between them. She stayed where she was, rubbing her arms while she gazed back at him in clear-eyed reproval. “I went home. I didn’t speak to anyone else that night! I went directly home.…” This time she put a hand on him; her touch was as soft as a drawn breath. He flinched as if she’d struck him. “I waited for you. I thought you’d come. I was sure you’d come.”
He looked at her hand on him, up at her face again. “Why?”
She blinked. “Because … because you said that you would. Because I wanted you to.”
“Don’t lie to me!” He stepped back out of reach, shaking her off.
“I’m not,” she said, still holding his gaze.
“Everything about you is a lie—”
She stood motionless in front of him, refusing to look angry, to look ashamed, to look away. “Not everything,” she said.
He suddenly realized that she wasn’t lying … that he knew she wasn’t lying. He reached blindly for something to hang on to, and found her outstretched hand.
She led him to the couch; he sank onto it gratefully. She left him there, coming back with a drink in a fluted, ruby-red goblet. He took it from her and swallowed its contents.
“Gods…” he gasped, as the liquor slid down his throat. “What—?”
“The water of life,” she said, smiling. “Just the drink. But it should clear your head.” She sat on the couch an arm’s length from him.
He took a deep breath, somehow experiencing every cell and nerve ending in his body at once with ecstatic clarity. He looked down into the empty goblet, before he passed it back to her.
She took it from him; sat turning it pensively by its fragile stem. “So,” she murmured, looking up at him at last, “you came here because dancing with me is the last thing that you remember…?”
He nodded, letting the couch support his dazzled body. “I thought—” He broke off, remembering what had come next in the only way he could, from the official report. “That night … there was a laser crossbeam security system, with a failsafe so sophisticated our equipment couldn’t even sense it. And the weapons … they used plasma rifles, not stunners. Somebody set off a frag grenade—! Gods, what the hell was going on in there? And who was doing it? Nobody knows, except me. And I can’t remember.…” He slumped forward, propping his head in his hands. “I thought if you’d … told somebody, it might give me a lead.” He looked up at her again.
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