Soldier of Fortune (2nd ed)

by Kathleen McClure

Shortly after thirteen o’clock, Nahmin knocked on the door of General Rand’s office.

  “Come in,” Celia’s muffled voice called, and Nahmin entered.

  Unlike the the study, which had been designed for comfort, General Rand’s office was all Corps.

  Everything—from the plain metal desk, with its teleph and tel-gram machines, to the maps of Fortune pinned to the walls, to the radio station at the back of the room—was utilitarian, if not downright spare.

  The only nod to anything approaching luxury was the hot plate and tea station behind the desk.

  Nahmin, in his role as General Rand’s valet, had been in the room many times before, but in that guise had never shown the least interest in the inner workings of the Corps.

  Now, however, he allowed himself to study the maps, which marked with pins and bits of string the latest in troop locations, munitions caches and, most importantly of all, the crystal fields which had been the basis of the ongoing conflict between the Eastern Coalition and United Colonies.

  A conflict the Colonies believed at an end.

  He looked at Celia, seated at the desk which faced the entrance, digging through Rand’s files.

  If the Colonies only knew, he thought. “Ma’am,” he said, “there was a teleph on the main house line, from the Fourth Precinct. They wanted to let you know Quinn is still at large.”

  “Imagine my surprise.” She brushed a lock of hair from her cheek as she read through a file bearing the Eyes Only stamp.

  “How long do you intend to give the police to take care of Quinn?” he asked.

  She looked up. “You have doubts of the efficiency of Nike’s police force?”

  “On the contrary, I have no doubt whatsoever that they will utterly fail to apprehend him.”

  At that she laughed, and it was a credit to her talents that even that short sounding of amusement could send suggestive tremors all the way through to Nahmin’s cold, assassin’s core.

  “You may be right,” she admitted, sliding a few papers from the Eyes Only file she held, and then returning the file itself to the drawer. “But even if they fail, Gideon’s criminal record, and the evidence of his current crime, will prevent his taking any effective action against us. Though I admit, I’d relish another confrontation.”

  Nahmin didn’t think she meant the same sort of confrontation he’d have liked. “Assuming, that is, he is working alone,” he pointed out. “You’ll recall the general’s informant in Morton, the one who first alerted us to Quinn’s freedom?”

  “Finch, yes. What about him?”

  “Finch’s message indicated Quinn’s parole came from high up in the Corps, which indicates at least one member of the military believes there was more to the Nasa incident than previously suspected. Why else set a confessed traitor free?”

  “Possible,” she allowed. “But even if they have suspicions, there is nothing for them to discover.” She pulled a new file out of the drawer. “Jessup, whatever his faults, was meticulous about his work. There isn’t a shred of existing evidence that Jessup framed Gideon in Nasa, while everything points to Gideon as Jessup’s murderer.”

  Nahmin had to admit, it seemed quite rational when she said it.

  Of course, Celia’s particular skill, and what had first brought her to the Midasian spy-master’s attention, was her ability to make the unthinkable seem perfectly reasonable in the eyes of her marks.

  It was that skill which had Colonial engineers placidly handing over mockups of the latest in weapons’ technology during an assignation, airship captains sharing flight plans over a glass of wine, and members of parliament agreeing to a treaty that provided the Coalition states unprecedented access to crystal at one of Celia’s cocktail parties.

  Even Nahmin, accustomed to Celia’s prowess, had been surprised at the gullibility of politicians.

  And it was this skill which had subsequently convinced Jessup Rand—a loyal command officer without a mark on his record—to subvert every oath he’d ever sworn in order destroy Gideon Quinn.

  Quinn, Nahmin thought, who was the only one of Celia’s marks she’d failed to turn; which was why, despite her formidable skills at manipulation, he was still worried over what Quinn might yet attempt.

  Even as he thought this, the house bell clanged.

  Nahmin looked at Celia. “Are we expecting anyone, ma’am?”

  “No, but it is quite possible my sudden bereavement has reached the ears of the gentry.” She slid the last of the files back into the drawer and closed it. “Best answer it,” she said, stacking the papers she’d culled, which would be hidden until she could pay a visit to the antiquities dealer who served as her courier. “We shouldn’t disappoint the maudlin hordes.”

  Nahmin gave the short bow suitable to a valet and departed the office while Celia began the transformation from efficient intelligencer to grieving widow. But when he opened the door, it was no maudlin aristocrat waiting, but Celia’s pet twins, Rey and Ronan Pradish.

  “We found Quinn,” Rey said, elbowing her way past Nahmin, who found himself looking forward to the day Celia ordered the siblings’ deaths.

  “Not we, exactly,” Ronan corrected, showing more clarity of thought than he’d exhibited since Quinn dislocated his elbow the night before.

  “Then who has?” Celia asked from behind Nahmin.

  He stepped aside, allowing her to face the twins. Tears, intended for a different audience, were already drying on her cheeks. “Surely not the police,” he said, taking a position at Celia’s left.

  “The Ohmdahls,” Rey admitted.

  “Do we know any Ohmdahls?” Celia asked Nahmin. “Are they on the social register?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “The Ohmdahls are the buffoo—the friends of the twins who helped us apprehend Quinn the first time.”

  “How lovely.” Celia turned her attention to the twins. “And have they apprehended him for you, again?”

  “Not this time,” Ronan said, as Rey appeared too angry to speak. “But Freya told us they spied him passing through their neighborhood. Being curious, she and Rolf followed him to some busted up shack on the old Riverside docks. She also said,” he added, “that he looked bad. Injured, maybe, or sick.”

  “I suppose being shot while jumping from a window could do that,” Celia murmured, looking at Nahmin.

  He took the cue. “How well do you know these Ohmdahls?”

  The twins looked at each other, and shrugged. “Pretty well. Well enough to know they’re not the quickest drones in the hive.”

  Celia hummed. “Is it possible they only saw what Gideon wanted them to see?”

  “I’d give it fifty-fifty odds,” Ronan said, after a considering beat.

  “In that case, it would be a pity to disappoint him, don’t you think?” she said with a smile that went all the way to Nahmin’s toes.

  “Should I fetch your coat, ma’am?” he asked, recalling her desire for another confrontation.

  “Sadly, I believe it best if I remain here, and available to the police.”

  “We can take care of him,” Rey said, her eyes flashing. “It would be my greatest pleasure.”

  Ronan looked less certain, but he didn’t dissent.

  “Then I will leave him in your most capable hands,” Celia said, giving each a caress on the cheek, the simple touch nearly enough to melt them, Nahmin noted. “And after, we will celebrate; just the three of us, yes?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rey murmured.

  Whatever lucidity Ronan had gained seemed to have been lost again, and he merely nodded, dumbly.

  Nahmin waited until the euphoric pair had departed before looking at his superior.

  “Best follow them,” she said, all trace of the eager seductress gone, now. “Make absolutely certain it’s done.”

  “Ma’am,” he nodded. And then, because it was her, and he was only mortal, added, “And then we may celebrate?”

  He took her smile for a promise but, unlike the twins, held no illusion that her
promise meant more than what it was, payment for services rendered, and as easily forgotten as the stack of starbucks Madame Rand had paid for the previous night’s catering.

  39

  The clocks were chiming fourteen noon when Ishan Hama, Mia, Tiago, Officer Prudawe, and four other officers from the Ninth Precinct house stepped onto the sagging Riverside dock.

  Ishan, breathing through his teeth, found it amazing that, despite over a decade of disuse, the place still reeked of fish.

  “Not much left of it, is there?” Officer Prudawe asked, eying the slumping excuse for a boathouse which sat midway along the finger of rotting wood Mia had led them to.

  “Puts me in mind of an ancient abstractionist my husband was fond of,” Ishan replied. “Any second now, and it will melt into the river.”

  At his side, Mia shrugged, upsetting the draco, Elvis. “It’s not so bad as it looks,” she said, a bit defensively.

  Ishan imagined she was right. He imagined it was a great deal worse than it looked. “Why would Quinn choose this place for a meeting?”

  At the question, she shrugged again, but her eyes weren’t on the boat house, they were scanning the surrounding area, as if she were looking for something.

  Or someone.

  Quinn? Ishan wondered. He also looked around, but there was no one, and nothing, to be seen. Only the river, grey in the overcast winter light, and the length of dock, strewn with rotting bits of hemp and upended fishing boats with their hulls staved in.

  And, of course, the boathouse which was, at Mia’s urging, their destination.

  “He don’t want to cause no trouble,” Mia had explained, looking remarkably at ease in the Ninth Precinct’s detective pool.

  The girl was now seated in the chair Tiago had been occupying, while the draco perched on the chair’s back, and added the occasional chirp or hiss to the conversation, like a reptilian chorus of sorts.

  “If last night is an example of Quinn not wanting to cause trouble,” Ishan said, “I shudder to think what would happen if he did want to.”

  “I already told you, he didn’t do no murder,” the girl protested.

  “But he did, at your own admission, do damage to private property, commit at least one theft, and instigated public mayhem.”

  “The damage weren’t on him,” she said, loyal to the last. “And it was more borrowing of private property.”

  Ishan smiled thinly. “And the mayhem?”

  “Depends,” she said, scritching the draco under its chin.

  “On what?”

  “On what mayhem means.”

  Tiago, standing over the young pair, smiled at that. “It means to cause a commotion,” he told the girl. “Among other things.”

  “Oh,” she said, biting her lip as she thought. “Yeah, I suppose he done that.”

  “My point,” Ishan said, “is that whatever your Mr. Quinn meant, his presence has caused all manner of trouble for the citizens of Nike.”

  “Except it ain’t Gideon’s bein’ here that caused the troubles,” Mia said, her eyes glimmering with determination. “The troubles was already there, hidin’ like, until he come in and turned on the lights.”

  Ishan still wasn’t certain he agreed with Mia’s assessment of Quinn’s presence in Nike, but he had agreed to accompany her here, to a section of the Avon docks that had been abandoned for many years.

  The party was perhaps twenty paces from the boathouse when Ishan spied movement through an open sliver of wall.

  He held up a fist, and around him, the other officers drew their weapons.

  He gestured in a circle, and they peeled off to surround the building.

  “Stay here,” he ordered Mia and his son.

  Mia looked ready to protest, but Tiago put a gentle hand on her arm—not too close to the draco—and she settled back.

  Ishan started for the boathouse door, his own weapon charged and ready in his hands.

  Despite Mia and Tiago’s assurances to the contrary, nothing he’d learned thus far of Quinn indicated he was anything but dangerous. Because of this, when the door he approached began to creak open, it took an act of vigorous will not to shoot first, and apologize later.

  He was particularly relieved he’d resisted the urge when it was Hive Master Donal’s head that appeared around the door.

  “DS Hama.” Donal’s face split into a grin. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  “That is very interesting,” Ishan said, carefully easing his finger away from the trigger, “as I was in no way expecting you.” Then he paused. “We?”

  In answer, Donal swung the door further open, allowing Ishan to see who else was inside the boathouse.

  “Sir?” Prudawe called, from his right.

  “Weapons down!” he called out, then looked at Mia, who was trotting up to join him. “I don’t suppose you would care to explain.”

  “It’s complicated,” she said.

  “And best discussed inside,” Donal added, opening the door, and gesturing expansively within. “As I believe more company will be on the way, shortly.”

  “And Quinn is not here, I take it?” Ishan asked.

  On the other side of the room, Tiago spoke with the handful of children who’d been waiting inside with Donal.

  Every one of them, Ishan noted, appeared to be suffering from malnutrition, and varying levels of abuse.

  “Mr. Quinn had other business to see to,” Donal explained. “But he did ask me to deliver a message.”

  Ishan turned to Mia, currently digging through the rubbish at the far end of the boathouse.

  “I never said he’d be here,” she told him, not looking up from her labors.

  He shook his head and looked at Donal. “And the message would be?”

  “The message was to be delivered in three parts,” Donal said, clearly enjoying his role. “The first being, ‘You’re welcome.’”

  Ishan had never been a tooth grinder, but even now, he could feel his teeth beginning to grind. “For what?”

  It was Mia who answered. “For this,” she said, emerging from the rubbish pile with a lock box, which she proceeded to drag across the floor.

  From the looks of it, the thing was so heavy, Ishan feared it would crash through the questionable flooring.

  “I already unlocked it,” she added, a bit breathless as she stopped next to the detective and the keeper.

  Ishan looked at the box, then at the mass of children, then at Donal.

  None of them looked worried about what one might find in a locked chest, but then, none of them were coppers.

  Please let it not be… anything to worry over, he thought.

  Holding his breath, he opened the box.

  He let out the breath, and stared down for a moment, then looked at Mia.

  “That’s just the small stuff,” she said, rocking back on her heels as she also examined the contents. “Easy to stash, easy to fence, if need be.”

  “I could retire on this,” Ishan said numbly.

  “I could finally get the underground agri-center finished,” Donal added with a huff.

  “Gideon thinks we should give back as much as we can,” Mia said with only a hint of disgust.

  “Gideon thinks?” Ishan looked up.

  “It was his suggestion,” Donal inserted, “that the children, having suffered under a cruel and corrupt influence, be offered Sanctuary and an opportunity to rejoin society under keeper protection.”

  Ishan felt a bit weak at the knees. He almost sat on the lockbox but for the certainty the floor would give way beneath their combined weight. “And does this corrupt influence have a name?”

  “Ellison,” Mia said, the name falling from her tongue like acid. “Erasmus Ellison, our fagin.”

  On the other side of the room, a small child of undetermined gender cursed the sounding of that name.

  “And that would be the same Erasmus Ellison who claimed Gideon trounced him in your wheat field?” Ishan asked Master Donal.

 
“It was Elvis here what trounced Ellison,” Mia said proudly.

  Ishan looked to the rafters, where Elvis was observing the proceedings. “Good on Elvis,” he murmured, wondering how on Fortune he’d write up this report. “Keeper Sanctuary is your privilege, and the children’s choice,” he told Donal. “Though I will wish to take their testimony against the fagin.”

  “We’ll give it, right?” Mia looked at the dodgers, small and solemn and hungry, who all nodded—some enthusiastically, some fearfully—but all most definitely.

  “Bravely done,” Ishan said to the children, then looked at Donal. “And what is the second part of the message?”

  “The second part is more in the way of being a favor,” Donal said.

  “What sort of—” Ishan began, only to be interrupted by Elvis, swooping down to Mia’s shoulder with a low keen.

  It was the same haunting noise he’d made when the Rand carriage pulled up in front of the Elysium the previous night.

  “I believe,” Donal said as Mia’s eyes, wide and frightened, met his, “you’re about to find out.”

  40

  This time Ronan skipped the shock stick.

  Like his sister, he now held a live crysto-plas pistol, its grip thrumming reassuringly in his palm as they crept up to the decrepit boathouse where Gideon Quinn had supposedly taken shelter.

  “Movement,” Rey whispered, and both went still, their gray on gray clothing blending into the warped wood of the dock.

  Ronan peered up through the hood of his tunic to see the last hint of a shadow passing the cracked glass of a window.

  He checked their distance—twenty meters, give or take. “Door or window?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Door,” she mouthed. “High and low.”

  He nodded, and pulled his left arm from its sling.

  He still couldn’t use it but he wanted the arm free for balance. And, he could admit, for the pain, because pain fueled anger, and anger would see Quinn dead at his feet.

  As one, the siblings made a fast, hunched-back dash for the crookedly hung door.