Death's Head (16 page)

I nod, slipping three fat silver coins from my pocket. One goes on Lisa’s side of the bed, another goes on Angelique’s side, and the last goes into Lisa’s shoe. She’ll know to keep quiet about that one.

“Buy a dress,” I scrawl on a scrap of paper.

And then I’m out of there, eyes scanning the street to check if anyone’s been waiting for me. Dogs and a hen, a cat on a high roof, and a broken-tailed skink chewing a fly halfway up a filthy wall. It’s still early and I need to be somewhere else.

Can you hear me?

Just about,
I say.
It’s erratic. I can’t believe it’s meant to be like this.

It isn’t.

And I can’t get it out?

No,
he tells me, sounding reassured by my repeated questions.
You’re just going to have to work with that one.
He listens to me swear and agrees that a faulty kyp is not ideal.

I’m on my way back,
I tell him.

He hesitates.

Unless you want me to go straight there?

Where?

The Thomassis’ villa.

I can almost hear him wrestle with the questions, and behind his anxiety lie other voices, a mix of direct questions and fragments of thought. It’s like listening to a badly tuned military radio with everyone talking at the same time. Somehow that doesn’t seem right to me.

The voices,
I say to him before he’s had time to answer my previous question.
Should I be able to hear them?

And it’s his turn to swear.
You can hear other voices?

Hundreds,
I say.
It’s like a permanent headache. It’s one of the things that’s making me sick…
This is a lie obviously, but it’s a good lie.

You can turn them off…

A wind almost sweeps me from my feet. When it’s gone, I’m sagged against a wall being watched by a puzzled boy who’s clutching a broken stick of bread. Seeing me stare back, the child makes off before I can steal his family’s breakfast.

You there?
deCharge asks.
I lost you for a moment.

Yeah,
I tell him.
Still here.

I can turn it off?

Voices get louder in my head as I think about them and then fade, leaving silence and the voice of the little man who came to see me the night before. I turn him off completely, and then turn him back on again. A hundred voices, one voice, no voices. It’s all possible. I can hear deCharge properly now, complete with nuances.

What happened?
he asks.

Don’t know.
Although I do. OctoV’s just taken time out of conquering some part of the known galaxy to show me how to turn down the volume on knobs and sliders I didn’t even know existed.

Got you,
says the man.

Yeah…

How does it feel?

Clear,
I tell him.
Like we’re in the same room.

His relief is obvious.
And the voices?

Gone. All I can hear now is you.

Fuck,
he says, then repeats it, and for the first time I understand how worried he’s been, how scared for himself as well as for me.
First time that’s ever happened,
he tells me.
Didn’t even know kyp could glitch.
He thinks we’re bound together by adversity, so I throw him another crumb, something to feed back up the line.

My biology’s fucked,
I tell him.
Self-repairing. I guess it’s been fighting the kyp, that’s probably why it glitched, but everything’s cool now.

That stuff about my biology is checkable, and I know for a fact someone will check; they’d better, because I’m not going to forgive the general my experience with the slug for some time, if ever…

You wait,
he tells me,
while I check where we go from here.

I shake my head, watched only by the black cat, which is busy necking what’s left of that broken-tailed skink. As the skink’s head disappears into the cat’s gullet, I remember that deCharge can’t see me, and realize he’s probably still waiting for my answer.

No,
I say,
I’m going in.

Wait,
he tells me, but I’ve already broken the connection.

History is like a sandstorm. I can’t remember who told me that. But you need to choose carefully where you sit it out, because the silent center is often more dangerous than out on the noisy edge.

CHAPTER 21

I
’M IN
a bar on the far edge of Zabo Square when word comes in that a day’s work is available, a bar favored by ex-soldiers.

A dozen men stand up as one.

The work is available because I’ve called ahead to warn Senator Thomassi that a rival faction intends to upset his wedding. He probably still has people trying to track my call.

We’re to gather outside Villa Thomassi. The money will be good but only professionals need apply.

“Where have you worked?” asks a hard-faced man when I finally get to the front of the line. He’s head of security for the Thomassis, an ex-legionnaire judging by the way he holds himself.

“That’s confidential.”

The head of security glares at me. “You’ll need to do better than that.”

The Death’s Head dagger is in my hand before he has time to blink. In my other hand is the laser blade, although he doesn’t realize what it is until I cut a chunk out of a sandstone gatepost beside him.

“Does it really matter?”

His eyes flick from blade to blade, widening. “Is that real?”

“Which one?”

“The dagger.”

I nod, flip it over in my hand, and offer it to him hilt-first. He takes it gingerly, as if the handle might be poisoned.

“This really yours?” he asks, and then tells me the rate of pay before I’ve had time to answer.

Give terror a black uniform and a grinning logo, and let superstition do the rest. It’s a neat trick if you can pull it off. Just suggesting I’m ex–Death’s Head is enough to get me this gig.

So now I’m outside an ornate cathedral, trying not to melt in the heat as sweat trickles down my ribs inside my leather coat and a crowd of ragged children gather to watch the show. They’re drawn by the decorated hover and the music from inside, and by the weapons in the hands of the hard-eyed men lined up around me.

I could do it here, as Thomassi and Aptitude come out of the cathedral, but I’d be cut down in seconds and the door is too narrow to let me get a clear shot at everyone else.

And then there’s my other problem.

Sweet little Aptitude.

Thinking about her in clichés makes it no better. By the end of today I will have failed someone, and such is the training the legion enforces that I know whichever way it goes, I can’t afford to fail myself. It’s the worst failure,
the failure that makes you fail others.

The old saying sits in the back of my head, all buffed up and shining, but it’s no use because I still don’t know where my real duty lies.

Aptitude Wildeside looks just like her mother.

The same dark eyes as Debro and the same intense gaze, her cheekbones high and her lips full; looking at her is like seeing Debro made young again. She’s wearing white, as befits a bride, and her hair is up, braided and folded around her skull in a complicated pattern held in place with pins.

She’s young, just not as young as her inexperience suggests.

And she’s beautiful.

A perfect body and a perfect face, probably matched to a keen and inquiring mind. Her dress is expensive, her jewelry beyond price. There are diamonds the size of quail eggs in the handle of the fan she carries as she exits blinking into the sunlight and is led toward her wedding vehicle.

I’m not sure what kind of hover it is, because the thing is buried under frills and bows, but from what I can see the vehicle is new. And the driver keeps it completely still, so that it barely rocks as a step unfolds and Aptitude climbs into the backseat, doing her best to smile.

Her eyes flick across my face and I’m forgotten.

Just one of a dozen men called in at the last minute to provide security.
A precaution,
Senator Thomassi tells Aptitude, not specifying against what. I’m there when he says it, as invisible to him as I am to her.

We line up on both sides of the vehicle, which moves away at a speed that allows us to keep her safe. On its way here, the hover contained only Aptitude; now it contains both Aptitude and the senator, who holds her hand tightly. Aptitude has tears in her eyes, and they don’t look like tears of happiness to me.

The veil is back from her face and her eyes are skimming the streets as if seeing them for the last time.

I should have done this last night.

It would have been cleaner and kinder to spare the kid the trauma of finding herself married to a man who’s outlived three wives and is ancient enough to be her grandfather, if not far older than that. The high clans of Farlight live longer than normal people. Well, what I call normal people, who are probably not what the Thomassis call people at all…

“You want to take your pay or do another shift?”

I’m tempted to take the shift. It’s a neat way to get into Villa Thomassi—maybe too neat, and something warns me to play it straight. So I pocket the cash, which comes to a handful of silver pieces, and walk back to the bar where I first got news that jobs were on offer. Most of the others follow.

A group of us order beers, and two of the men go upstairs with a dark-skinned girl. The others begin to drift away as darkness creeps across the huge square. Music comes from a café nearby. So the owner of our bar responds with some music of his own.

Obviously enough, the songs clash.

A thin woman is cooking lamb in the yard behind our bar, fat falling into the flames and turning the night air greasy with the smell of griddled meat.

I keep looking for Farlight’s famed elegance and failing to find it. Zabo Square is vast. So vast, in fact, you could fit the whole of Fort Libidad into one corner and barely use a quarter of the space. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could fit the whole city of Karbonne into Zabo Square as well.

“Something out there?”

It’s one of the men. He’s watching me watch the square.

“Just thinking how big it is.”

“You new here?”

I listen for criticism in his words, but the question is exactly that, a simple question…So I nod, and he tells me his name is Pietro, and he’s been in Farlight for five years, and it took him a while to get used to the noise and crowds. Pietro warns me against pickpockets and swindlers, and tells me to be careful of people who want to be my friend. He smiles as he says this, and offers to buy me another beer, leaving me wondering if he can see the incongruity in his own words.

Incongruity?

Stumbling over the term brings a scowl to my face. Explaining quickly that I was remembering an old sergeant, we both agree they’re fuckers and best forgotten. Then I buy another round, although I haven’t yet drunk the beer he bought me, and Pietro says he’s going upstairs to see if his friends have finished with the dark-skinned girl.

He asks if I’m interested in taking a turn.

So I thank him for his offer, and tell him I have stuff to do.

CHAPTER 22

Z
ABO SQUARE
is in darkness. An edging of light filters from the cafés and cantinas around its perimeter, while its black center stretches away beneath my feet. Villa Thomassi is on the far side, three streets back and hidden behind wrought-iron gates and a thick canopy of trees. I’ve memorized its position for this moment.

A man comes to the gate as I rattle it. He’s one of the few who stayed on to take a second shift and I want to apologize and say it’s nothing personal, but I’m already lowering him to the ground, and the edge of my laser has cauterized the wound to his throat, sealing its edges.

Dragging him close, I lift
keys
from his belt.

I ask you.

Heavy brass keys, with curiously cut end bits that turn out to be the Thomassi arms. I know this, because the same arms are carved into the gateposts and welded in steel to the wrought iron of the gate.