Bitter Angels (35 page)

“Really?” murmured Siri.

“Really,” Vijay repeated. He nodded toward a door marked with a green spiral, the sign for a public restaurant. Siri shook her head. “And my would-be employer showed up today spitting mad and badly shorthanded. Wanted to know if I could work cargo and keep my mouth shut.”

“Did you find out where the cargo was bound for?” Siri pointed toward a tiny cart where a woman swirled a wok
made of hand-beaten metal over a small heating-coil stove. Vijay shrugged.

“I’m a genius, I am. And he was really pissed. I bought him a few drinks and let him rant. Do you have any idea how god-awful the local moonshine is when you mix it with the local tea?” He grimaced.

“Sounds like a very macho combination.” Siri broke off as she approached the woman with the wok. She was swirling peanuts in hot oil and chili powder. After a little dickering Siri exchanged a couple of battered sheets of scrip for two patchwork bags of very hot nuts.

“And I am not man enough.” Vijay chuckled and bent down so Siri could pop a peanut into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully. “Hey, these are good.”

“Found her yesterday when I was out and about,” Siri mumbled around her own spicy mouthful.

They moved on so the woman could serve other customers, and Vijay reached across to fish another peanut out of the bag. “So, what’s the word on your end?”

Siri bit her lip, considering. “There’s something you should know,” she said softly. “But it’s ‘out there.’”

“Everything about this place is ‘out there.’” They moved into the shadow of a sagging building. “Today I broke up a fight between two guys over a string of dead rats. Seems the person who brought back the most was going to get the extermination contract.” He made a face and popped another peanut. “What have you got?”

She turned to Vijay. She shivered.
Shawn?

“It’s up to you, but be careful.”

Moving close, leaning on his shoulder, as if she were
only a woman whispering suggestions into her lover’s ear, Siri told Vijay what she had learned from her encounter with Natio Bloom.

To her utter shock, Vijay burst out laughing.

“Okay, okay,” she murmured. “Enough for the witnesses.”

“Buddha wept, Siri. You had me going for a minute.”

“You don’t believe me.”

He looked at her, opened his mouth, and looked again. “Siri, what’s the punch line?”

“You don’t believe me.” She backed up a step.
Shawn, something’s wrong
.

“I can’t hear. They’re too loud. Siri, they’re too loud!”

“Talk to me,” whispered Vijay. “What’s going on?”

She felt herself staring. She felt herself shaking. In the back of her head, Shawn struggled as if against chains. “Too loud, Siri. It’s the voices. They’re here. Here now!”

Something was wrong. Something was wrong and it was coming from Vijay. And she’d just told him everything she knew.

She forced a smile. “Some joke, isn’t it?” she says. “Bloom’s quite the character. Siphoned voices. I won’t need to go on the ghost tour now.”

“I guess not.” Vijay pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head. “But no more of that, okay? I’m too wound up for that kind of joke.”

“Okay,” she murmured to his chest and tried not to shudder as he stroked her back. “Okay.”

When she reached the bottom, Siri stood still, facing the shaft of light that came from the hole above. Dust motes drifted like tiny stars. She set her back to the wall so nothing could sneak up behind her and slid down until she sat on the cracked concrete, her knees drawn up to her chest.

“Vijay wouldn’t,” Shawn answered softly.

“That wasn’t Vijay.”

“We only saw him postsurgery the once before he went under, and it was dark…”

Siri wrapped her arms tight around her legs. I
f…if they can siphon a person’s voice out and keep it in the network…could they put it into somebody different?

“Hospital the size of a planet,” said Shawn bleakly. “They might be able to build the body just for the purpose. If they’ve collected all those voices, all those essences. If they could load them into constructed bodies, they’d make the perfect spies.”

“I know, Siri, and you do, too.”

Siri sat there, paralyzed. She didn’t know. She didn’t
want
to know. It was too much. It was too terrible. But she couldn’t doubt Shawn. He was her Companion. She had to trust him, that was what he was there for, to be the one voice she could trust no matter what.

Siri bowed her head.
Vijay!
She screamed his name in her
thoughts, half-enraged, half-horrified. She had to press both hands to her mouth to keep from crying out loud.
They got Vijay too. And I told him everything!

“We need to tell Terese,” whispered Shawn.

Siri shook her head violently.
What if Terese doesn’t believe me? She didn’t believe me about the thing everybody thought was Bianca’s body. What if this time she thinks I’m crazy? She’ll ship me back home
.

She couldn’t breathe. She wondered if there were nanos in the dust. There could be. Nanos in the dust getting into her blood, isolating her essence, separating it out, getting it ready for siphoning.

“What do we do, Siri?”

She felt Shawn nodding. He understood without her saying it why they truly couldn’t tell Terese what was happening. This thing, this construct, that held Vijay’s voice might not properly be a live person, but she didn’t have time to waste convincing her commander of that. Terese would probably have to take it up the line, and by the time clearance came back down to take it apart, it would be too late.

She’d have to bring Terese definite proof. When she opened up the construct and exposed its workings, Terese, and Misao and the whole chain of command, would see she was right. They’d be able to refocus the mission, and Vijay and Bianca would be freed.

Siri straightened herself up and smoothed down her tunic. She’d have to play this very carefully. But she was
trained and she was practiced. Nobody would see anything was wrong. Nobody.

Siri climbed lightly up the spiral stair and turned her face toward the base. She strode purposefully through the empty streets.

She did not see Vijay emerge from the doorway and stare after her.

But I needed to see what she’d do next. I needed to know if the conspiracy she was involved in was official or illicit.

She’d left her mother’s home and gone straight to the Clerks.

And the invisible Grand Sentinel Torian Erasmus was on the other end. I should have known, but he’d covered his tracks well. We’d gone over what data we had again and again. Looked at one way, he was an actual player. Looked at another, he was just another of the Bloods picking over the leavings of Jasper and Felice Erasmus’s system to see what he could get out of it.

Now that the Clerk was gone, Emiliya Varus, who had heard Amerand promise to help us, was dissolving into hysterical laughter. I made myself stand and watch, although my feelings bled for her. Whatever she had done, it was not going well, or easily.

Which led to the question: If she’d killed the Clerk, and Torian was pulling her strings, why did Torian want Amerand’s Clerk dead?

Eventually, Dr. Varus straightened herself and walked rapidly down the corridor, finally banging through the door at the end that led, I knew, to the crumbling, much-mended staircase.

I was worried. No, that’s not right. I had been worried before—now I was frightened. For myself, for her, and most of all for Amerand Jireu.

The problem was, there was next to nothing I could do. Amerand, already under suspicion for murder, would probably have treason added to the charges. If I barged in demanding his release—assuming I could even find him—I’d only confirm that he was working with us.

The lights dimmed for me. I felt stone under my hands. I tasted old blood in my mouth.

Nothing was going the way it was supposed to. I had next to no time before I had to head back to Fortress into whatever cage they had waiting for me there, and I hadn’t even scraped the surface of what was happening on Dazzle. Siri had come back from her meeting with Natio Bloom subdued and said she’d have to verify the info he’d given her before she knew what kind of source he’d turn out to be. I was supposed to put on a public face and make nice with the citizens council, who’d sent their invitation via Bloom. I was supposed to help Siri sort through our fragmented and barely coherent data about the real power structures of the Erasmus System. I was supposed to find out who’d killed
Bianca and how these people were going to make war against us.

But I couldn’t leave Amerand without at least trying. If for no other reason than that he was my only connection to Emiliya Varus, and she was my only connection to the Grand Sentinel. It was a slender thread, but a whole lot was hanging on it.

Around me, doors began to open. People emerged cautiously, as if in response to an all-clear signal I couldn’t plug into. I didn’t wait any longer. I headed for the stairs to make my way back to the Common Cause house.

Liang didn’t like me or the Guardians. That was all right. But he did like Amerand. He wouldn’t leave him to the Clerks’ tender mercies.

I threaded my way through the people queuing at the single tap in the base courtyard. I opened the door for the lobby and saw Liang standing at the base of the curving stair, one still figure in the midst of noise and bustle.

Waiting for me.

“My office,” he snapped. He marched away before I could say anything, and the force of his anger almost lifted him off the ground with each step.

I didn’t try to talk. I just followed him down a flight of stairs, then through a whole series of aesthetically curved, time-stained hallways, and into a room about the size of a storage closet. He had to jiggle the door to get it to shut all the way. When it was shut, Liang snicked the latch closed. The light panel in the ceiling buzzed erratically as it worked its way up to full brightness.

Liang faced me.

“What have you been saying to Amerand Jireu?” he demanded. “What did you promise him?”

“It doesn’t look that way.” Liang folded his arms. “Captain Amerand Jireu gets back from being kidnapped by smugglers and spending sixteen hours cooped up with you, and his Clerk either falls or is pushed to his death from the rooftops.” He paused, and added, “It takes a hell of a long fall to kill someone in this gravity.”

“You do not believe Amerand Jireu killed his Clerk,” I replied evenly.

“I don’t know.” Liang’s admission was both brutal and bitter. “The Clerk is dead. No one wants to talk about it, but the word is out there. I’m asking again: What did you say to Jireu?”

“As if I’d tell you that I urged him to commit murder in direct contravention of my service oath.”

Liang didn’t even blink. His steady gaze was just one goad too many. I moved forward, right into his space. “I don’t know what Bianca Fayette did that’s got you so mad at the Guardians,” I said evenly, “and I don’t know what kind of frame the Security is trying to build around Amerand Jireu, but neither I nor mine did this thing.” I drew myself up to my full height. “You either tell me what this is really about, or you get the hell out of my way, Seño Chen.”

For a long moment, we stood like that, both of us stretched to our breaking points. I watched a vein in Liang’s temple throb unsteadily as he tried to find words strong enough for the emotions dammed up inside him.

“You’ve seen what we’re up against here.” He swept his hands out. “Field
Coordinator
Fayette comes on the Tour. She’s supposed to conduct a full evaluation, start getting us resource coordination, help us work out what’s really going
on so we can make substantive change. What does she do? She sends her entire crew off and stays behind partying with the ambassador and the smugglers.”