Bitter Angels (28 page)

“I think we’d better get to work.”

Someone had stashed my duffel in the corner of the room. I reveled in the luxury of being able to change into a clean uniform and fresh socks. I tightened the pocketed belt around my tunic and checked to make sure I had all my gear.

Orry had been back. My glasses lay beside my duffel. I picked them up and stared at them.

Two messages from David waited in there. I swallowed and stowed them away in my belt pocket again. I needed breakfast. I needed to start getting a handle on the situation.

I started making my way down the corridor before I could think the word “coward” too many times.

I went to the clinic first, but Siri wasn’t there. They said they’d released her as soon as it was lights up, because if she was well enough to be that much of a pain in the ass, there wasn’t a whole lot wrong with her. She had thought to leave me a note on a scrap of sheet.

Ah, the joys of early-morning snarkiness. Was there any better sign of a healthy subordinate? I tucked the sheet into my belt pocket and made my way to the battered dining hall. As I crossed the lobby, I found my gaze straying this
way and that. It took me a moment to realize I was looking for Amerand Jireu.

The place was mostly empty of diners. Liang had hired a lot of local cooks and other helpers, though, and they moved back and forth, cleaning up from breakfast and setting up for lunch. Liang himself sat at a surprisingly beautiful table made of reworked plastic and stone, carved and polished as smooth as a shell. The table was covered with platters bearing hot food.
Heaven smells like this when you arrive
.

“Good morning,” said Liang. “Sit. Eat.”

“Thank you.”

The food was impressively good, and there was plenty of it. Congee flavored with strawberries and raspberries, soft-boiled eggs, toasted potato bread, stewed tomatoes, and smoked fish and, for a real treat, ham steak. There weren’t many dry colonies that managed to raise pigs successfully. Chickens and ducks were much more the norm.

Liang nibbled a little toast to keep me company and listened while, in between bites, I told him what had happened out in the black sky.

When I finished he sighed. “Well, that didn’t take long.”

I squinted up, trying to look at his face and keep an eye on the tea I was pouring at the same time. “What didn’t?”

“Bring back the Guardians, and we get escalation.”

“You said there’d been violence,
and
a kidnapping.”
And then there was Bianca…

“One kidnapping, and that was a while ago. We’ve been able to keep things at least equitable with the local gangs. Something Captain Jireu has helped with, by the way.”

“Get used to it,” said Liang, sighing again. “It’s how the locals drink it. And you’re right, we’ve had some problems, but this is a whole different scale. The water smugglers are big business and high-level corruption. They’re well above quarreling over a few boxes of supplies that we’d’ve let them have anyway.”

“I see.” I pushed the stoneware tea mug away. “And that gives us something fresh to worry about.”

“The fact that someone is trying to kill you?”

“The fact that they aren’t. Whoever was paying this Kapa wanted us alive and under their control. Why?”

“I will assume that’s rhetorical.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to have to be for now.” I looked down at my empty plate, as if I was surprised to find my appetite had disappeared. “What can you tell me about what happened with Bianca Fayette?”

Liang’s eyes narrowed. He took a long, deliberate drink of midnight-black tea. I wondered briefly if he was just trying to prove he could do it.

“Bianca Fayette was probably a very good listener,” he said. “But she was a hazard to my operation here, and whatever happened to her was more than likely her own fault.”

He waited, not dropping his gaze, daring me to take offense. If I hadn’t already talked to Bern, I would have. “Do you really think she was killed in a robbery?”

He shrugged, irritated. “It could have been. You saw outside.” He nodded toward the courtyard. “Poverty breeds violence, and there’s a real problem between the OBs and the Baby Ds, and…”

“Why didn’t you complain?” I asked. “About Bianca?”

He set the mug down with a loud thump. “Everybody keeps asking me that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to complain about the Guardians?”

I took a deep breath to keep from snapping at him. Liang had been here for years, trying to help stabilize this place. This was a home to him. Those ragged people in the yard waiting for water were people he knew.

I focused on the important part of his statement. “Everybody’s been asking about your complaining to the Guardians?”

“All right, not everybody, but you and Captain Jireu.”

I frowned. “He investigated Bianca’s death?”

“Not as such, but he was the one asking me about her before you came.”

“Asking how?”

Liang told me about his conversation with Amerand Jireu. I found I did not like it that Amerand had been asking questions about Bianca. I did not like it that he knew both Emiliya Varus and the pirate Kapa. I did not like the feeling of being down at the center of a vortex with him.

I thought again about the hope in his eyes and found myself having to wonder just what he was hoping for. I thought about how he hadn’t had a Clerk standing beside him when he got back from being abducted by a pirate both he and Emiliya Varus knew.

I rubbed my eyes. I’d been in this thoroughly-screwed-up system for barely seventy-two hours and already I was having trouble seeing straight.

“Yes, and he’s resigning.”

Liang froze in place. He blinked. “Okay,” he said, slowly.

“You need to know, I’m not here just because of Bianca Fayette. Erasmus has been classified as an extremely active hot spot. Whatever Field Coordinator Fayette was doing…it may or may not have made it worse. It’s one of the things I’ve got to find out.” I got to my feet. “I need to meet with my people, then I need someone to show me where her body was found.”

“Okay,” Liang said again, and I left him there trying to wrap his mind around our conversation. Something in me did not want to make this easy for him, and even though I knew I wasn’t being fair, I just walked away.

For several centuries, computer encryption had made interception of electronically transmitted data next to useless. Codes could be based on randomly generated, one-time-use keys 2 million characters long, and every transmission device could encrypt right at the source. The improved technology had returned spying to its basics.

Miniaturization was our ally on this one. Last time Siri had been here, she’d canvassed the city with her toolkit and her fixit skills, generally making herself useful to people who didn’t have the resources to make basic repairs. Everywhere she went, she’d laid down a network of near-invisible
microcables like cobwebs, connecting them up as she could, turning patchwork into a listening network.

Officially, we were allowed exactly one transmission terminal, and one hour a day to use it, and then only to call our ships out at the habitat. Other than that, we couldn’t transmit anything wirelessly. The Clerks might not be able to understand what we were sending, but they could tell a transmission was happening, and, given enough time, pinpoint the originating device. They’d warned us about this. But they hadn’t realized—and hopefully still didn’t—that it was still possible to wire a city for sound, if you were patient. If you were good.

Siri was both. She’d learned from Bianca, and however far wrong she had gone, Bianca had still been the best.

As I crossed the threshold, Siri lifted her glasses.

“First job.” I gestured toward the windows. The illumination outside flickered as if a lightning storm were passing through. “You are doing something about the light.”

“On it.” Siri tapped a note onto her glove. “But I’ll probably have to get some kind of permission from the city authorities and all that.”

“How are you feeling?” I stepped around the tables and the junk to stand next to her. A green-and-yellow bruise made a bright blot for her cheek, but she looked alert. More, she actually looked cheerful.

“I’ve got a headache, but I’m all right.”

“I take it the network’s still there.”

“Amazingly enough, yes. In fact, fixing the lights will let me lay down some new cable.”

I nodded. “Hear anything good this morning?”

“Not yet.” She frowned. “There is something going on. It’s right beneath the surface, but I can’t get hold of it yet.”

I frowned. “What kind of something?”

Siri just shook her head. “I wish I knew. It’s more a feeling than anything else right now. But something’s changed since last time.”

“And not for the better?” I finished for her.

Siri grimaced. “ ’Fraid not. Sorry.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” I said casually. “We want to focus on movement, especially for any shifts in or around the habitats and the gates.”

“Already on it. And you’ll want this.” Siri handed me a sliver drive. “Reports.”

“Thanks.” I tucked it into my belt pocket.

“And we had a visitor this morning.”

As I raised my eyebrows, she told me of her encounter with the Master of Dazzle.

“So, it’s not just a gut feeling.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Move as fast as you can with him. We do not have time for a slow dance.”
If Bianca had a chance to set something in motion, it might still be in motion. If it can be traced back to her, to us…

“Understood,” Siri was saying. “But if Bloom really does have anything, he probably won’t be giving it away for free.”

“We’ve got a budget. Use your discretion. If he wants out of here, we’ll arrange it.”

“Yes’m.” Siri dropped her glasses back down over her eyes and settled back, listening, following the gossip lines, the power lines. I had already ceased to exist for her.

It was 11:00 local time, and Amerand had not shown up yet. I made myself put off worrying about him. I had one more of my people to check on.

I went back to my room. It was stifling hot in there, and there was a smell I didn’t want to think about, but I didn’t open the window. I shoved the bed up against the threshold. It was a lousy barricade, but it was all I had.

I sat on the floor and rested my back against the wall. I pulled my glasses out of my pocket and slotted the drive into place on the earpiece.

On a normal mission, Vijay would have just sent me a coded message, but he couldn’t in the Erasmus System. The Clerks would be too likely to spot and trace the unauthorized signal. Probably Siri and Vijay had not even met to hand off this sliver. Probably they had made use of their local knowledge and arranged a drop site so as not to be seen together too often, or to have Vijay risk blowing his cover completely by being seen with me. But perhaps they had met, just long enough to exchange a glance, a swift touch of hands. Just a moment to see each other and to know that all was right.

I tapped twice on the earpiece to activate the sliver. The world in front of my eyes went dark. Then, slowly, light and color unfurled until I was standing under Dazzle’s uncertain lights. Here they were too bright and too yellow. I was too tall, my arms were too big, too masculine, and covered in crude red tattoos that bunched and swirled on my skin.