Bringer of Light (6 page)

‘But they are powered by zepgen.’ Jarek resisted the temptation to add,
aren’t they?
He was sure he was right, or near enough.

‘Well, not exactly. Zepgen is a system for drawing power from . . .
elsewhere.
It can only be initiated by a certain type of mind, one capable of reaching outside the universe.’ Jarek knew that male Sidhe could do that. ‘A beacon is more of a gateway, a door left permanently ajar. That’s a much more complex and dangerous artefact.’

‘But still something you – your people – do.
Did.
For humanity, to help fight the females.’

‘Yes, we did,’ the Minister agreed with a slight smile. ‘But that was a thousand years ago.’

‘Can you still do it?’

The Minister said nothing for several seconds. The trees around the square remained still as a picture. Jarek could hear a faint hum, presumably that of the crowded streets beyond. Finally the Minister said, ‘We need to consider this.’ Jarek noted the use of
we
, the first time the Minister had used the word. ‘I have taken the liberty of booking you into a hotel; just ask any of those burly individuals over there to take you to the Cracked Emerald on Memento Street. Please do not worry about paying for the hotel; as Taro so elegantly put it: “it’s only credit”.’

At that, Taro chimed in, ‘Yeah, actually, we did have another problem that could be solved with credit—’

‘I know.’ He stood up as he spoke, making it quite clear he had no interest in prolonging the conversation. ‘I will be in touch in due course.’ And with that, the Minister walked off into the gloom.

‘Is he always like that?’ asked Jarek.

‘Oh no,’ replied Taro lightly, ‘sometimes he can be pretty fucking irritating.’

‘Nual, I don’t suppose you—?’

‘I can’t read him, Jarek, not at all. He is— What we actually interact with is a flesh golem that holds part of Khesh’s distributed consciousness.’

‘Ah. When you put it like that—’ When she put it like that, it was damn creepy. ‘Thanks for trying to ask whether he’d loan us enough to stave off the bloody Veryan Syndicate, Taro.’

‘Worth a shot.’

‘We should probably get going; it’ll be dark soon.’

Jarek turned to the rank of cabs, but Taro said, ‘We can walk to Memento Street; it ain’t far from here.’

‘Is that a good idea?’ Jarek wasn’t sure; the Three Cities had a terrible rep for street crime.

Taro turned and gestured at himself with both hands, inviting Jarek to take in his clothes. ‘City colours,’ he said, ‘and
who
wears City colours?’

‘Ah yes – Angels.’

‘S’right. And around here, people know not to mess with us Angels.’

Taro led them along a gently curving street with parkland on one side and buildings on the other. Larger roads radiated off every hundred metres or so, some smart boulevards, gated to keep out the riff-raff, others hosting outdoor parties of varying degrees of wildness. Memento Street, when they found it, fell somewhere between the two extremes.

The crowd on the Street was largely made up of tourists; many of them looked like out-of-system types rich enough to afford to travel on a starliner. A lot had bodyguards with them. The locals were easy to spot; they tended to be compact and dark, though there were also representatives of the other two cultures of the Confederacy of Three. One ethnic group had jewels stuck on – no,
embedded in
– the skin of their hands, while others were pale– skinned, with light brown or blond hair.

Jarek didn’t see any other Angels, but he did spot a few downsiders. They were conspicuous, not just because of their height, but due to their dress; they wore ill-fitting, ragged clothes, obviously cast-offs, and they hung around the darker alleyways, begging, hustling or hassling. They moved with the shuffling, careful gait of people in heavier gravity than they were used to. Most of the tourists were avoiding them. He noticed how Taro was enjoying the double-takes as people moved from wary distrust at the first sight of his height and build to what Jarek interpreted as cautious awe at his easy walk and stylish clothes.

Though the full red-and-black of Khesh City was reserved for Angels, a lot of people wore tokens – broaches, armbands, hair ornaments and the like – showing the colours of ‘their’ City. The paler-skinned types, from Yazil, displayed gold and green, while the jewelled lot from Luorna sported blue and silver.

Nual had told them the other two cities were run in the same way as Khesh, and now Jarek asked if that was what the Minister had meant when he’d said
we
: the other two Cities.

She smiled grimly, and said, ‘No, the Concord is far more important than any one human’s request, however unexpected.’

‘So do the Yazil and Luorna City-minds even know their brother City let a renegade Sidhe hide here?’

‘I doubt it,’ she said quietly. ‘These three males have lived in a ritualised state of near-war for centuries – I don’t think they’d know how to begin to trust each other.’

So the
we
in question must have meant the other avatars of Khesh’s controlling mind, like the High Speaker, thought Jarek. Which was quite weird enough.

The buildings along Memento Street were low-rise but flashy, a mixture of hotels, restaurants, bars and clubs. Nual said this Street had a historical theme, which was why they were surrounded by unfamiliar cultural references, from the cartoon dogs in suits dancing holographic jigs above their heads to the projected images of women with curvaceous bodies and veiled faces.

Some buildings had damage to their façades, presumably as a result of the upheavals caused by the Sidhe weapon. Jarek suppressed a shudder: Elarn, under the influence of the Sidhe’s mental programming, had nearly killed the City, and she had lost her own life in the process. If Taro hadn’t been in the right place at the right time, she would have succeeded in destroying Khesh completely.

Despite the name, the Cracked Emerald showed no visible damage. The hotel was all gaudy floral décor and green and red cut-glass, though the rooms were clean and relatively spacious. Jarek was happy to sacrifice taste for comfort, especially when someone else was picking up the tab. After confirming that they could bill the meal to their account, they had a leisurely dinner in the hotel restaurant. Though the food beat ship’s rations, Jarek felt it left something to be desired. Nual pointed out caustically that, like the
Heart of Glass
’s own mess, the City was a closed environment, where everything had to be recycled.

Jarek usually tried to sync his body-clock to local time before landing, but because this trip had been unplanned, they’d ended up out of kilter, and the three of them found themselves wide awake just when everyone else was calling it a night. Jarek had no doubt Nual and Taro had pleasant alternatives to sleep, but he was reduced to channel-surfing a wide variety of trash, all that was available on the local holonet. He ended up watching some political channel, which was full of ratings, gossip and predictions of which members of the Assembly might incur the people’s disapproval enough to get ‘removed’ by an Angel. The subtleties were lost on him, and he couldn’t help thinking how macabre this set-up was – especially knowing that the whole thing was overseen and quite possibly manipulated by an eccentric, effectively immortal, alien. He was beginning to get the impression the mind at the heart of Khesh City looked upon those living within its bounds as something between wayward pets and a gigantic social experiment.

Finally he gave up and decided to go for a walk. The hotel staff were happy to provide him with a guard – all part of the service, apparently – but he took his gun as well. Better safe than sorry.

The bodyguard, a jovial man of about Jarek’s age, asked if he wanted to go anywhere in particular, which Jarek took to mean he’d be happy to recommend bars, brothels and other diversions, but all he really wanted to do was to stretch his legs and get some fresh air, or what passed for fresh air around here. The guard took the hint and shut up, falling into place behind and to one side of his charge.

About a quarter of the bars and clubs were still open, though the Street itself was largely deserted. Jarek decided to meander out rimwards; he doubted he’d actually be able to see over the edge of the floating City, but it gave him somewhere to aim for. Khesh’s night-owls were exhibiting various states of inebriation and desperation, but none of them bothered him. For a moment he wondered if he should take the guard’s advice after all; this place offered some interesting diversions . . . unfortunately they were likely to cost credit he didn’t have.

Lost in thought, it took Jarek a moment to notice that his guard wasn’t behind him any more. He caught movement out of the corner of one eye and spun round just in time to see a woman with a tranq pistol; his guard had just collapsed to the ground. Jarek went for his weapon, but the woman already had him covered.

‘Don’t,’ she said.

Jarek made a show of moving his hands into sight. ‘I realise people probably say this to you a lot,’ he said as casually as he could, ‘but you’re making a big mistake.’ He studied her covertly; she wore inconspicuous clothes, had light brown skin and was quite young, but she was already hard-eyed. Her gun-hand was unwavering.

‘Let us be the judge of that, Sirrah Reen,’ she said.

Oh shit, she knew who he was.
But who exactly was
she
? The Veryan Syndicate? Surely they hadn’t caught up with him already—

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions,’ she said. She wasn’t an offworlder: that accent was local.

Jarek tried to spot the other part of the
we
, but as he started to turn his head, the woman gave a twitch of her gun that was convincing enough to make him keep still and stay focused on her. ‘Ask away,’ he said. At least while she was talking she wouldn’t be shooting.

‘Not here; follow me. I’m going to do you the courtesy of assuming you won’t try anything stupid.’

He obeyed; he couldn’t see any other choice right now. As they moved off he got a brief look at the figure he thought he’d seen out of the corner of his eye: a man, probably another local, with a much larger gun. He was wearing gloves – in fact, Jarek now realised, they both were.

The man fell in behind Jarek, with the woman leading the way. He risked a quick, desperate glance around, but if anyone on the half-empty Street had noticed the unconscious guard and the kidnapping in progress, they weren’t doing anything about it.
Shit
– how was he going to negotiate his way out of this when he had fuck-all to bargain with?

She was leading them towards an alleyway. Once they were off the main drag his options would narrow, so he needed to stay calm and think about what assets he’d actually got on him. His com? If he could dial a preset he might get through to Nual or Taro – if they weren’t entirely occupied with each other. He couldn’t ask for help, but they might overhear what was going on, maybe trace the call . . . at any rate, it beat waiting to find out what his captors had in store for him. He eased his hand round in front of his body.

When the guard hit him across the back of his knees he was too surprised, too shocked by the sudden pain, to catch himself. He landed hard on the ground.

‘Get up.’ The man spoke as though Jarek had tripped deliberately. His voice was clipped and efficient.

Jarek found himself staring at the ground – not ground at all, really, because it was completely artificial. Odd shade of grey too. At the same time a tiny panicked voice at the back of his mind was screaming,
Start crawling, just get away before it’s too late!

‘I said, “get up”.’ Now the man sounded bored.

Jarek felt a last twitch go through his arms as he suppressed the suicidal urge to try crawling off. He pushed himself upright, slowly and carefully, a little dizzied by the blood thundering in his ears. His kidnappers watched. He wondered if he could feign injury, but the pain at the back of his knee was already subsiding. These people, whoever they were, knew what they were doing.

‘Keep those hands where I can see them,’ said the man once Jarek was upright.

He did as he was told, feeling tremors going down to his fingertips. If he was going to do anything, he needed to do it now – but he was out of options . . . Except that something was nagging at the back of his brain.
Hands, something about hands
. . . And then he had it:
hands
– or, more importantly, gloves: these people were wearing gloves because they weren’t Kheshi: they were from Luorna. The gloves were to hide the implanted jewels that would otherwise identify them! Good, so now he knew who was fucking him over. That was a start.

The light level dropped as they entered the alley. Jarek’s eyes were still adjusting, and at first he thought he’d imagined the shadow that crossed the entrance. Then he heard an impact, followed by a strangled gurgle, behind him, and he whirled –
no, you idiot, there’s someone pointing a gun at you!
– to see—

Nothing. The mouth of the alley was empty. The man had disappeared into thin air. Jarek pressed himself to the alley wall and looked back at the woman, who appeared to be as surprised as he was.

But she was still pointing her gun at him. ‘Throw me your weapon.’ Her voice held the beginning of a quaver.

Jarek hesitated; she obviously meant to carry out her plan alone. ‘No,’ he said after a moment. Possibly a mistake, but the odds had just evened up.