Bitter Angels (36 page)

He leaned forward so I could not mistake what he said. I had brought myself into his space, and now he would not let me go. “Now you turn up, and
you
are taken off by those smugglers, and one of the few genuinely good people I’ve met in this system goes over the edge.” Rage shook his frame.

I made myself focus on the important words. “Bianca Fayette had contacts with the water smugglers?”

“You better believe she did. Here, and on Fortress. She probably could have given a full list to the Blood Family if she’d felt like it. I take it this is something else your superiors didn’t know about.”

I had no answer for that. Instead I asked, “Do you know how much time she spent with Torian Erasmus?”

“She practically had a standing engagement whenever he was over here.” Liang cocked his head. “What I’m really trying to figure out is whether you’re here to cover up what Fayette was doing or keep on with it.”

For a moment I couldn’t even breathe. When I was finally able to make myself speak, I said, “I am leaving this room now. I am going to continue my operation and I will expect your cooperation. I will be making a full report of this conversation to the Marshal-Steward. If I have even the first inkling that you are undermining me, I will have you removed.”

“You do that,” he said. “You do all of that. If you’re so starry-clean, you go ahead.”

“I’ve heard you,” I said, and walked to the door. I opened the lock and left him there.

I walked across the lobby with no real destination in my
head. I couldn’t even see straight. Eventually, I found myself in the dining hall. This time it was almost half-full, mostly with Erasmans, sitting on the long benches, drinking from bowls, tearing apart loaves of bread and sharing them out with their families.

I sat down on an empty bench.

I should have known better than to listen to him. I should have cut him off before he’d spoken a word.

My head started to ache. I folded my arms on the table and rested my forehead on them.

I thought I was used to the blows from Bianca’s secrets, but this one had caught me off guard. We’d combed through all Bianca’s reports and Jerimiah’s fragmented memories. There was next to nothing about the Grand Sentinel. That was one of the reasons we hadn’t been sure if he worked any real power. If he had, Bianca would have known. Bianca always knew where the real power was. It was what made her so good.

I thought about Jerimiah and his fragmented memories. I thought about Liang’s telling me Bianca partied with the smugglers and spent time with Torian Erasmus that she didn’t report. I thought about Siri, sitting in my room at the Palmer House and telling me Bianca was still alive.

I thought about how there were very few ways a person alone could work a genuine takedown. I thought of all the ways you could betray an oath, about human greed and
weakness, and how those who lived too long served too many masters.

I thought about what it would take to cut out your own Companion so it could never betray you. So the Guardians would truly believe you were dead and never seriously come looking for you. Bianca was one of the few Guardians who knew the loss was survivable because she knew me.

I missed Dylan. I missed David. I hated being alone. I hated myself for being fool enough to walk into this morass. I wanted to go home. Now. Even if David had left me for good. Even then, it couldn’t be worse than this. I squeezed my eyes shut. No. That idea was just making this mess worse because that was the pain that wouldn’t leave. “I see our chief has had his little chat with you.” I lifted my head. Orry was standing there holding a bowl and a cup of something that steamed. “Here, eat this.” He set them down in front of me. “I can’t…”

“Eat.” He produced a spoon, lifted my hand, and wrapped my fingers around it. “I’ll feed you if I have to. Starved, you do no one any good.”

I spooned some porridge into my mouth. It was bland, but it was hot, and after a few mouthfuls I found myself eating steadily until my spoon scraped the bottom. “Better?”

I nodded and pushed the bowl away. “Have you got a Bianca story to tell me, too?”

He shook his head. “Not me. I just work here.”

“I’m starting to get the idea nobody ‘just’ works here.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not, but I do my best.”

“Why? You’re supposed to be here making things better.”

He grimaced. “I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s the
first mistake. This place is rotten to the core. Trying to make it better just gets the rotten on you.”

“And you think that’s what happened to Bianca?”

“And Bern and Liang.” His smile was crooked and more than a little sad. “It’s probably happening to you too, only you haven’t noticed it yet.”

“And what about Amerand Jireu?”

Orry sighed. “You need to be really careful around Amerand…did you know Liang’s been helping him look for his mother for the last four years?”

“No.” Something else I didn’t know.
Misao had it so right. We went in on this one blind
. “Is she…a hostage?”

“Yes and no.” Orry waggled his hand. “She and his father sold themselves into debt slavery to buy him his slot in the Security. This was after they risked everything to pull all three of their kids off Oblivion in the Breakout.”

“So he’s got more family?” I thought about Finn Jireu—thin, dried-out, and tough as leather despite his obsequious pardon-pardon.

“He
had
more family,” Orry corrected me. “His oldest brother was killed in the riots that came after Oblivion’s children landed on Dazzle. His younger brother was killed in the riots that came after Oblivion died. After that, his parents decided they had to get him somewhere safe, and the only safe place was the Security, and the only way in for an OB was to pay the fees, and the only way to pay the fees was peonage.”

“Amerand told you all this?”

“Liang did. In bits and pieces over the years. Amerand’s parents were swallowed into the peonage workforce. Eventually, he was able to find his father and get him swapped out by claiming him as a servant.” We looked at each other,
silently acknowledging the obscenity of that. “But his mother vanished. She might be farmed out on a diaspora world somewhere. Or not.” Orry shrugged once more. “The point here is that if there’s anyone who might be ready to do a personal takedown of the Blood Family, it’s Amerand. He might just decide to push things if he thinks we’re bringing about the end times.”

Unfortunately, this squared very neatly with the Amerand I had seen: the young man who moved with a kind of forced poise. He was trained to violence, raised in a place where finding the right level of corruption was a survival trait. Had my half promises been the final straw? My throat tightened. They could have been.

“Would Amerand kill his Clerk?”

“If he thought the Clerk had hurt a friend or family, he might. Loyalties get very personal here. There’s nothing else to trust but the person next to you or, better, the person who shares your blood.”

My hand tightened around the cup. I thought about the dead I’d left behind on the ship. Wasted lives I’d had no time to mourn, blood I’d had no chance to come to terms with.

Then I thought about Emiliya Varus and her meeting with the Clerk. I thought again about the tangled chain of war and murder. It was not only loyalties that were personal here, it was command. There was nothing objective and very little exterior. Your power on Dazzle depended on whom you knew—and whom you frightened.

“Why are you still here, Orry?” I asked suddenly.

Orry stared at my empty bowl. “Because while I’m here to help, maybe one of those kids out there doesn’t get sold into slavery.”

“Orry,” I said. “If Amerand Jireu is accused of murder, why haven’t they picked up his father? His father is hostage to his good behavior, right? If Amerand does something wrong, his father gets punished too.”

Orry stared at me. He opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

“I don’t know. That should have been done as soon as the accusation went through.”

“But it was his father who came to tell me Amerand was in custody.” We stared at each other. “Something is very wrong here.”

“And in a new way,” said Orry, with something like wonder in his voice. “Congratulations, Terese. I didn’t think it was possible.”

There were a thousand things I should have been doing at that moment, but understanding was more urgent than anything else. I had to know why Kapa and Emiliya Varus and Amerand Jireu had all been tossed into my path. I had to find out which side Amerand was really on and what it meant that Emiliya Varus was on speaking terms with Grand Sentinel Torian. Until I understood that much, I would remain caught in that spinning wheel.

“Orry, I need a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“I need you to get a message to Finn Jireu for me.”

He turned his head so he looked at me sideways. “What kind of message?”

“I need you to say that if anyone needs to talk to me for the next two hours, I’ll be conducting an investigation of the place where Bianca Fayette was found. But you’ll have to
show me where it is.” I hadn’t even been able to do that much yet.

Orry narrowed his eyes. “All right. Bring that big-ass gun of yours and we’ll go.”

Five minutes later, with my weapon slung on my back, Orry and I went down into the street. The crowds were thin this morning. People watched us from doorways and alleys, but hurried about their business as soon as we caught them looking. The parakeets rose in lemon-lime flocks from the trash heaps and the snakes warmed themselves on the ledges.

I was able to walk with Orry around three corners, and across a bridge over a ragged gap where a tunnel roof had fallen in. We parted ways at the base of a huge stone tree. Orry turned left, and I kept straight on, going slow, trying to follow the landmarks he’d recited for me.

At last, I stopped by a subway entrance that was now no more than a circular hole in the street. The skeleton of a spiral staircase led down into the dark.

I paused, looking into that hole and steadying myself. I could feel Bianca’s eyes on me, waiting with infinite patience as she could once she’d really hunkered down. When all that patience was directed at you, it could drive you faster and harder than the worst threat because you knew no matter what you did, she’d still be there when you were done, just where you’d left her. Waiting.

Naked struts juddered under my boots as I carefully climbed down. Stone muffled the noises from overhead but magnified the joints’ rusted creaking. The smell was of stagnation. If the vents were functioning, they were clogged. It was hot and close and still. There was dust and fermenting waste somewhere, and a lot of feces. I choked
once and coughed, telling myself to get over it, I’d smelled worse.

It worked, mostly.

Finally, my boots touched the floor again. Thick shadows and too many rustling sounds filled the tunnels, reminding me that the lost, the hidden, the rats—and whatever hunted them—all waited down here with me. Something big moved and I turned on my heel, bringing my gun around. Footsteps moved through the darkness, fleeing. I relaxed just a little and pushed my weapon back, but I flexed my hands in their armored gloves and my mind settled into its fighting stance.

The space under the stairs was black. A single grey beam of illumination shone from the top of the stairs like a spotlight. My back was on high alert, stiff and prickling. I shouldn’t have done this. I should have picked a different meeting spot. I shouldn’t have climbed down into Bianca’s tomb alone.

But I wasn’t alone. She was behind me. I could feel her breath. I could hear its echo in my own harsh breathing.

I adjusted my uniform cuffs and brought my right hand-light up so I could shine it into the space under the stairs.

The space was mostly bare stone. A little dirt had drifted into the corners, but not a lot of refuse. The residents of Dazzle scoured their home for any scrap that could be turned into something else and carried it away.

The stone was stained with age, maybe shit, maybe blood.

I switched off my light.

The darkness was immediate. My throat closed. My heart sped up. My breath rang in my ears, too loud and too hard. All at once, I was sweating bullets inside my gloves and under my armor. It was all too heavy, and yet I was too exposed. Darkness can see you. Darkness creeps under your
skin and into your head. Daylight thinks it sees, but darkness knows. Darkness is what you carry in a hole in your head. It’s already inside you, waiting to find that little crack, that break so it can leak into your brain and fill you up.

I didn’t see anything. Of course I didn’t. I hadn’t expected to. I just wanted to be there, where they found her, to try to understand what she’d been
doing
here. That this was a probable blind spot in the Clerks’ network where I could reasonably be expected to be spending time was a bonus. I could wait for Amerand here, and maybe at the same time find some lost last part of Bianca in myself. I could say the prayers and swear the oaths that I held dear and begin to come to terms with wasted blood and wasted life.