Bitter Angels (9 page)

In addition to the plants, handmade bridges and walkways had sent out tendrils across the roofs and balconies. As the trains and elevators became unreliable or hazardous, foot travel became more important. Some of these bridges were permanent, some actually artistic. Some were temporary and others more or less private property—enterprising families or gangs charged a toll for their use. This was the network I crossed with Hamahd following, all the time four steps behind me, no matter how fast or slow I went.

We passed the wealthy residents in their weighted, decorated clothes, as well as the more subdued but neatly turned out indentures who waited on them. They nodded in respect to my uniform. Some even raised their hands in greeting although they didn’t stand aside. They didn’t know me. I kept my rooms farther down, closer to the foundation streets. That made me unusual. Most of Dazzle’s secops lived up here. That wasn’t necessarily to be near the gentry, though. The last open tunnels to the farms were up here too. The farms were the most vital and most vulnerable point on Dazzle and have been ever since Oblivion died.

If you’re an OB, that is, if your family’s from Oblivion, you call the crossing to Dazzle the “Run” or the “Breakout.” If you’re a “Baby D,” from Dazzle, it was the “Invasion.” Whatever you called it, it was done on a massive scale. I was about seven, perhaps eight years old, when my parents, my older brothers, and I crammed ourselves in a ship, shoulder to shoulder with God-Alone knew how many other runners.
There was even less food in that hold than there had been back home, and no knowing if we’d be able to land, or if we’d be shot out of the black sky.

But there were thousands of us. We were sure some of us would make it. They couldn’t get us all.

They didn’t. They got a lot of us, but not all.

But what we arrived to was more disaster. When we starving refugees poured out of our ships, we ransacked the farm caverns. We staked out territory in them. Gangs rose up and fought over them. We, they, tried to bribe or enslave the growers.

This, as you can probably guess, was not a viable system. In the end it brought the Security and the Clerks, and Fortress itself, back to Dazzle. The initial Security Operation units landed with one mission and one only: make it safe to farm again. This was done with an efficiency that was cheered by all but the families of the dead.

Keeping the food growing and the water flowing is still the Security’s major mission on this world. As long as this was done, Dazzle let the Blood Family take what they wanted and keep hold of it however they could.

Even the people.

Especially the people.

Upsky Station took up the top floor of the old Starfire Grand casino. As Hamahd and I crossed the arched metal-work bridge to the roof, I was met by two secops and their unusually dull-eyed Clerk. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hamahd rake the man over with a stern glance. I spared a moment of sympathy for the other Clerk as I was palmed into the building on a check pad.

Upsky was unfortunately beginning to show its age. The walls needed paint, the carpets needed cleaning and repair.
So did most of the furniture. Much of the respectably shabby space was given over to the Clerks, who needed access to working screens so they could extract, compile, and record data on every aspect of the life and people of Dazzle. The murmur of voices, the clack of keys, the brush of fingertips and pages filled the hive. As usual, Hamahd left me here—with a respectful bow, of course, but without any explanation—and disappeared into the shifting swarm of his own people.

I tried to get myself to relax, but it was no good. He might not be following me, but he was in there, compiling his data, setting everything up in neat files just in case he needed them.

Just in case I made a mistake.

I kept walking along the old, faux-wood-paneled corridor until I came to the door with Favor Barclay’s name and rank shining on its black screen.

I touched the knob. It recognized me and the door clicked open.

My thin, dark commander stood behind his desk, but he was not alone. In front of him sat the Grand Sentinel Torian Leidy Erasmus, Dazzle’s Grand Sentinel.

“Come in, Captain Jireu,” said Commander Barclay. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”

“My duty, sir.” I bowed to him, then turned and bowed much more deeply to his superior. “Grand Sentinel Erasmus.”

The Sentinel was lean but fit, shorter than I was and much older. His face was lined and his eyes were dangerously alert and alive. He was not afraid to dress richly no matter where he went on Dazzle. Today he wore a shimmering ruby coat trimmed with onyx and gold and a black, full-circle cape made heavy with more gold and more gleaming scarlet thread.

Commander Barclay motioned me toward a smaller, harder chair than the one the Grand Sentinel occupied. I bowed again and took the seat indicated. A carafe of water and a glass waited on a table beside it. I poured myself a measure and drank the traditional welcome cup.

Both the commander and Sentinel Torian watched me patiently until I’d drained my cup, set it down, and smacked my lips politely.

Barclay nodded in approval for my manners and settled back in his chair, ready to get down to business. “The Sentinel is briefing me about the new arrivals we can expect from the Pax Solaris.”

The saints again. The back of my neck prickled.

“New arrivals, sir?” I said. I wasn’t supposed to know about this. So, until I got some signals as to how much trouble I was—or wasn’t—in I was not going to let on that I did know about it.

“Yes. It’s no secret,” replied Commander Barclay. “The Pax is sending us an influx of new saints, and your patch is going to receive most of them.”

“Yes, sir.” I accepted this revelation as I would any other order, showing neither enthusiasm nor distaste. After all, I already had an abandoned hotel full of saints under my jurisdiction. In fact, it might have been Liang Chen who had sent for the newcomers.

I allowed myself a sideways glance at the so-far-silent Sentinel. Seño Torian was the overcommander of all the Security, including the Clerks. He studied me with an appearance of mild interest. I waited, focusing my efforts on keeping my face blank but attentive at the same time.

I raised my eyebrows. “No, sir?”

“No, Captain,” said the Sentinel. He had a light voice, remarkably smooth for such an old man. None of us was sure of his exact age. He had most definitely had some Solaris-style life extension. Some even said he was the last living child of our Founders, Jasper and Felice Erasmus. But that couldn’t be true. That would make him the very first of the first-degree Bloods, which would make him the
Saeo
of the Erasmus System, as opposed to the new pairing of Esteban and Mai. I could not for one second picture anyone taking precedence over Sentinel Torian without his permission. “In fact, we believe they will be sending us at least one spy.”

I did not know how to answer this, so I said nothing. All the saints were supposed to be spies. I watched my herd of them faithfully. So far, all I had been able to find them guilty of was using the black market when they couldn’t find what they needed elsewhere. I kept files in case I needed something to hang on one of them in the future.

“Nothing to say, Captain?” the Sentinel asked, raising his eyebrows. For a moment, I thought he might be mocking me, and the prickling beneath my collar intensified.

“I’m sorry, Grand Sentinel. I don’t understand why Solaris would want to spy on us.” Poor, crumbling, scrapping, enslaved
us
.

Sentinel Torian’s voice went cold. “They see we are reunited and preparing to resume our place in the economic and political life of the diaspora worlds.” Out here, we do not use the word “colony.” “They are suspicious of our intentions and want to assure themselves that we don’t mean to threaten their precious stability.”

Sentinel Erasmus laughed out loud. “Excellent question, Captain. I like how this mind works.” He directed that comment toward Commander Barclay, who returned the smile briefly, looking relieved rather than pleased, I thought.

“What would you say,” the Sentinel went on, a faint smile still in place on his narrow, smooth lips, “if I told you, yes, we do threaten that precious stability?”

I chose my next words with extreme caution. “I’d wonder why, Grand Sentinel.”

“Because we mean to hem them in. We are in some very high-level and sensitive negotiations with other diaspora worlds. They are, like us, tired of this great hulk of Old Earth squatting in the middle of the Pax Solaris web, ready to take us apart if we are less-than-passive recipients of their commands and regulations.” The Sentinel sat back in his chair with his clean and well-kept hands resting on its arms and regarded me triumphantly.

“We have reached agreement with enough systems that we will be able to create a cordon for the Solaris. Once it is in place, if they want to be able to run their ships, their goods, and their castoffs out to us, they must allow us equivalent access to the Solaris worlds.”

Accepting our ships, our goods, and our castoffs.

Our criminals and spies.

It sounded perfectly reasonable, and well within the bounds of what the Blood Family was capable of. They didn’t
like the Pax worlds. The internal drive had come out of Solaris. The internal drive, more than anything else, was supposed to have caused Erasmus’s collapse. The Blood Family could not forgive that.

But something nagged at the back of my mind, buried under all the other worries and wariness. An old report, an old investigation, something to do with the saints. I reached for it, but having the Sentinel’s attention on me did not make thinking easy and it slipped away.

I turned to Commander Barclay. Now was the time to apply the first lesson I’d learned at the academy. Whatever your superiors tell you about policy, ignore it. It doesn’t matter. Only one thing matters. “My orders, Commander?”

Barclay waited a moment to see if the Grand Sentinel would choose to speak. When he didn’t, my commander said, “Your orders are to get to know this new group of saints. Keep an eye on them, but do not frighten them—and make sure they do not get themselves into any…trouble.”

Of course. “And will I be informed what trouble is, Commander?”

“As necessary,” said the Grand Sentinel.

And there it was. I was being made responsible for the new saints. If they did something successful—or unpalatable—it was on me.

“Is this clear, Captain?” There was an undertone in the commander’s voice. Until the new saints were gone, his attention would be on me. He didn’t like this either. He wanted to stay up here with the Clerks and the reports. He wanted to keep the markets open, and keep his home and family comfortable.

“Yes, Commander.”

I waited in silence while the Sentinel studied me, and
Commander Barclay studied the Sentinel. Evidently satisfied that Sentinel Erasmus was satisfied, Barclay said, “Dismissed, Captain.”

I stood and made my bow. Out in the corridor, my head began to ache again, the pain pulsing in time with my footsteps as I crossed back into the Clerks’ territory.

Hamahd was waiting for me, of course. The Clerks had some comm network that the rest of us were not allowed to know about. I’d heard some secops brag they’d found its frequencies, but I didn’t think it was possible. I suspected if that network existed, it was installed in one of those high-clearance wings on Hospital.

We walked out onto the rooftops. We took the arching bridge across to the Glorious roof, then a spiral stair down to the catwalk that we crossed to the Luxe. It swarmed with people lugging handcarts filled with jugs and cans, all coming back from the water market.

As we shouldered our way through the hubbub, Hamahd pushed closer to me.

“You should have told me about Kapa Lu,” he said.

I started. I couldn’t help it. Then I shrugged. “I didn’t think there was any need. I knew you’d have the records.”

“That, Captain, is not the point and you know it.”

“I’m sorry. Will you need to write me up?” I ducked past a woman hunched under a yoke slung with about a dozen gallon jugs.

“Not this time.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t.” We stepped over the ledge, taking a shortcut to the less-crowded roof on the old Fortuna, and walked on in silence for a moment. Then Hamahd said, “I like my post here, Captain Jireu. I like Dazzle and its amenities, faded as
they are. You are a good subject and I do not wish to lose you as my assignment. Therefore, I am telling you to take this new matter seriously.”

“I do.”

“Yes. But not seriously enough, I think. Something is changing. Our new
Saeos
have a plan.”

“There’s always a plan, Hamahd.”

“No,” whispered Hamahd. “Not like this.”

I waited for him to go on, but he did not. We crossed Old Cramer’s Bridge, which juddered slightly under our footsteps. I licked my lips and tried to force myself to think. I never ate or slept well aboard the hyperwired ship. It felt too much like being in a cage. I wanted to go home. I wanted to get some dinner and go to bed early.