Maximum Offence (19 page)

Come to that, probably my belt as well.

What I get is an old woman. Grey hair waterfalls from a high forehead. She’s dressed in a shift that is white and almost clean. A string of pearls hangs round her neck, and a silver brooch fastens a cloak at her shoulders. I’m not sure how she can stand the smoke and heat in here, but she barely seems to notice them.

‘Ahh,’ she says. ‘My voices were right.’ Dark eyes examine my face, and she scowls when she sees the wires to my jaw have gone.

‘You died,’ she tells me.

‘I know.’

She looks at me closely. ‘How do you know?’

‘My own voices told me.’

Gripping my head, she turns it towards her lamp and stares into my eyes. Her gaze is unforgiving, and unexpected from an old woman in a rotting city on the edge of a stinking sea in a habitat that’s taking longer than it should to die.

‘He tells the truth,’ she says.

Franc nods. ‘He always does,’ she replies. ‘Not an endearing quality.’ She has to be quoting Haze or Vijay, no way would she come up with a comment like that on her own.

The old woman smiles. Her name is Kyble. Or maybe that’s her title. Pulling a wineskin from her belt, she yanks off the stopper and holds the skin to my mouth. ‘Drink,’ she says.

‘Not if it’s going to send me back to sleep.’

She shrugs. ‘Die then.’ Putting the stopper back in her flask, she turns to leave the room.

‘Kyble,’ Franc says.

The woman looks back.

‘Please?’

With a sigh, Kyble gives Franc the flask.

The next three days pass in a haze of smoke, bitter wine and memories of Franc raking embers, rebuilding endless fires and stacking herbs onto burning coals until the smoke gets thicker and my memories uncertain. One morning Rachel appears carrying a tray of food for Franc.

Looking round, Rachel screws up her face.

And then, wandering over, she peers deep into my face. Maybe she thinks I’m unconscious. ‘How can you stand it?’ she asks Franc. She’s talking about the heat, unless it’s the smoke. Alternatively, it could just be the smell.

‘You get used to it.’

Rachel snorts.

‘Remember Ilseville?’ Franc’s voice is flat. When Rachel doesn’t answer, Franc says, ‘I do. He kept you alive. He kept me alive. Haze would be dead if it wasn’t for him.’

‘That’s why you’re doing this?’

‘One reason.’

‘What’s the other?’

‘None of your fucking business.’ Stripping dried berries from a branch, Franc busies herself arranging the berries into small heaps. After a few seconds, Rachel leaves. Next morning Kyble cuts the ropes tying my legs. ‘Move your toes,’ she orders. So I do. ‘Now try your whole feet.’

I can move those too.

We work our way up my body. My ankles will twist and my knees will bend, but lifting either leg is near impossible. My fingers work, my wrists turn.

‘Who made this?’ Kyble asks, tapping my prosthetic arm.

‘A woman.’

‘Someone like her?’ asks Kyble, nodding at Franc.

I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Someone like you.’

It’s the right answer. Although it invites more questions. These need answers before she will leave me alone. I am tempted to tell Kyble to shut up, fuck off and take her curiosity elsewhere. But in answering questions I pay a debt. And Kyble is not my enemy, or I would be dead and the rest of the Aux too. I have a good idea, though, whose enemy she is.

‘Caudillo Pavel,’ I say.

She spits from instinct. ‘The only person who calls Pavel caudillo,’ Kyble says, ‘is Pavel himself.’

She sees me smile sourly.

‘So,’ I say. ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend?’

‘In your ejército also?’

‘Also in my ejército.’

Shaking hands involves gripping wrists while folding back one finger. Kyble doesn’t mind that I fumble the greeting. ‘Clean him, feed him and bed him,’ she tells Franc. ‘Any order you like. Although cleaning him first might be best.’

To me she says, ‘They’ll be back today. Your caudillo, and your angry little servant.’

When Kyble lets herself out, she’s chuckling.

‘Who is she?’

‘Someone who hid you,’ says Franc. ‘When the Silver Fist swept through this city and everyone else wanted to give you up.’

WALKING OVER TO THE WINDOW, I FIND MYSELF FACING ROTTING canvas. So I rip it down and toss it on the fire, which doesn’t improve the smell. But that doesn’t matter, because opening the shutters lets in the afternoon wind.

Two young women glance up from the square and look away, probably because I am naked. About the only thing you can say for Enyo Square is that it isn’t full of goats. There are no trees, no flowerbeds, no statues . . . None of the things I’ve come to expect from a square.

And I am looking down onto the sloping roofs of the other houses. They’re made from crumbling red tiles patched with sheet metal. An upper window in a building opposite lets into a bedroom where a woman is breast-feeding a baby. She must be precog, because she turns to meet my gaze.

A second later her shutter shuts.

‘Sir . . .’ Franc leads me away from the window. A second after that, she pulls what is left of the canvas from the fire and stamps it out with her bare feet. ‘Poppy,’ she tells me. ‘You’re feeling the effects of poppy.’

She’s wrong. I’m not feeling anything at all.

Certainly not as much as I expect to feel, given the raw skin covering my lower gut, which is puckered at the edge and sunburn pink. ‘Franc,’ I say. ‘About Colonel Vijay. You know he’s . . .’

‘We know who he is, sir.’

‘I’m sure you do. You’d have to be dumb not to. What I want to know is how he ended up joining Neen’s hunt for Shil.’

‘Originally, sir, the colonel intended going on his own.’

I make her repeat that.

‘Neen insisted on going,’ she says, knowing how absurd that sounds. Neen is a sergeant. Colonel Vijay outranks us all.

‘He told Neen to stay and then changed his mind?’

‘Yes, sir. That’s exactly what happened.’

Never issue an order you know will be broken. Never threaten punishment you don’t inflict. Never make promises you can’t keep. Sounds to me like Colonel Vijay is learning.

———

I wash myself, because I can’t see why Franc should. And I’m rinsing off the soap when Haze wanders into the attic, carrying my pistol. Without looking at me, he puts the SIG carefully on a table. After a second, I realize it’s because I’m naked. He is a strange boy, and I mean more than the braids twisting from his head.

‘
Haze . . .
‘ I say.

Turning back, he hastily looks away. So I tip what remains in my jug over my head and dry myself on a sheet taken from the bed. Believe it or not, that does improve matters.

‘You’ve lost your head dressing . . . ?’

Haze checks to see if he’s in trouble. He’s not. ‘Kyble knew,’ says Haze. ‘Told me not to be ashamed of what I was.’ His words come out in a rush.

‘And were you?’ I ask.

He nods.

When Franc returns, Haze leaves.

The bread is stale and the fruit spoilt, apart from the figs, which are unripe as bullets. I eat the lot because I’ve eaten worse. And worse is better than none at all, and I’ve eaten that too. As I wipe crumbs from my mouth, Franc steps back to strip off her singlet, unbuckle her boots and climb out of her combats.

‘Kyble’s orders?’

Franc nods and I laugh.

She is straddling me when Colonel Vijay comes into the square. Although Haze must say something, because the colonel shouts from outside, and then waits for a minute, before beginning to climb the stairs. By this time, I’m wearing the sheet I used to dry myself and Franc is back in her clothes. Well, mostly.

He barely looks at her.

‘Tracked Pavel to a city in the mountains,’ he says. ‘It’s walled, bigger than this, with guards on the gate. Looks locked down to me. So either they’re expecting us, or they’re expecting some other kind of trouble.’

His voice is clipped; it takes me a second to realize he’s angry. Another, to realize it’s with me.

‘Sir . . .’ I begin.

‘No,’ he says. ‘You’ll listen.’ Stamping to the window, he glares out at the square and then stamps back again. ‘You,’ he says, nodding at Franc. ‘Leave us.’

Saluting, she heads out without needing to be told twice.

‘Three points,’ says the colonel. ‘One, you cost us a trooper. Two, we have lost a week because of you. And three, you don’t commit suicide in my time. Neen’s on the edge of going rogue.’

He turns, scowls at me.

‘And I don’t blame him.’

He means it. The little fuck is siding with Neen.

‘You think you’d be alive without me, sir?’

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’

‘Let me repeat it.’

‘
Sven . . .
‘

‘Sven nothing,
sir
. You’d be dead.’

I’m seconds away from putting him through a wall. Here I am on some fuckwit habitat in Uplift space, on a mission so secret that no one’s prepared to tell me what it really is. Because, sure as fuck, it is not about finding a missing U/Free. At least, not just that.

I’m pretty sure Colonel Vijay knows.

‘
One
,’ I say. ‘Shil disobeyed a direct order to retreat.
Two
, you almost blew the entire fucking mission with your little meltdown in the hub. And
three
, I’m bored shitless babysitting some little fuck with a chest full of medals for battles he didn’t fight.’

The colonel flushes.

‘Must be hell, sir,’ I say, ‘having Jaxx for your father. All that money, all those houses.’

‘You have no fucking idea.’

‘You’re right,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t. Never met my real father.’

‘Surprise me,’ he says. ‘I take it your mother was a whore?’

‘No, sir.’ I say. ‘That must be yours.’

Blocking his punch, I step back. Everyone has buttons; it’s just finding the right ones to push. All the same, for the first time, Colonel Vijay seems to know what he is doing. So I take another look and realize his face is thinner, his eyes harder. Wind has turned his skin to leather. ‘Some fancy tutor teach you to fight?’

‘A sergeant,’ he snaps. ‘No one you’d know.’

‘Horse Hito?’

He steps out of my reach. ‘You know Hito?’ Colonel Vijay sounds surprised.

‘Yeah,’ I growl. ‘Horse gave me the knife I used on Paradise. Went with me to have my arm fitted. Introduced me to General Jaxx. One of life’s good guys . . .’

Colonel Vijay is reassessing.

I’m not at all sure I like being reassessed by some smug little shit. Only the smug little shit is fading before my eyes and someone else is taking his place. Guess all Vijay Jaxx needed was to get out from under his father’s shadow.

‘So,’ I say. ‘How do you know him?’

The colonel laughs. ‘He’s the old man’s pet assassin.’

First I’ve heard of it.

THE AUX SIT UNDER AN OLIVE TREE IN A YARD BEHIND KYBLE’S house. Neen rests his back against the ancient trunk and Franc has her back to Neen. Haze is lost in thought, and Rachel is judging distances in her head, flicking her gaze between distant roofs as she mutters numbers. As for Franc, she picks her nails with a throwing knife.

Franc is the only normal one among them.

All turn to watch as I shut Kyble’s door and stamp across the yard to where they sit in sullen silence. We are the Aux, we don’t behave like this.

‘All right,’ I demand. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

They look at one another.

‘Neen,’ I say.

He hesitates. So I yank him to his feet. Not difficult; I just twist my fingers in his collar and lift. The body of a farm boy, all whipcord thin, but no real weight.

He is fast, though.

Seems I’ve swapped one fight for another. That’s fine, because this is a fight that needs to happen. The moment I block his punch, he punches again. The blow comes close, but not close enough. A punch like that can rupture your throat.

Knocking him down with a backhand, I move forward to stamp his gut. This time Neen gets lucky and his heel clips my thigh. Rachel moans, although that might be at the grin which suddenly brightens my face.

Right on cue, Colonel Vijay appears.

‘Stop.’ He glares at us, sweeping his gaze from where I stand to Neen lying in the dirt. ‘This is . . .’ The colonel hesitates. I think he’s overdoing it, but it’s his idea and it’s a good one.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I see. A competition match.’

Seniority is abandoned for competition matches. You approach the ring a colonel or a trooper and take back that rank on leaving. But in the ring . . . It’s bullshit, obviously. No one but an idiot cripples someone five ranks above. Life is too short for that kind of stupidity.

However, the
precedent
is there.

In the army, precedent is everything. It means you can do what you want, and insist someone else did it first. The colonel and I have a deal. He forgets what I said in the room upstairs and I don’t kill Neen, unless necessary. As he points out, good sergeants are hard to find.

‘Almost as hard as good COs,’ I tell him.

He laughs. Then realizes I mean it.

Sitting himself against the tree, Colonel Vijay says, ‘What rules?’

‘No rules,’ says Neen.

‘You OK with that?’ His question is for me.

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Never been big on rules myself.’ Neen’s sneer nearly costs him his life. He is so busy looking mean he forgets to watch me. As my arm flicks out, my fingers reach for his throat. All I need is my thumb and finger around his larynx and this match is over. It’s a nasty way to die, but a good way to kill.

At the last moment, Neen twists away.

So I reach forward and he backs away. And suddenly we have Kyble watching, as if she knew this was going to happen. Perhaps she did. Although you probably don’t need precog to know that this was coming to the boil.

Neen and I are both angry. We’re both angry about the same thing. I think Neen should have kept Shil at the gate. He thinks I shouldn’t have made Shil think that running back was expected.

Same incident, different readings.

Happens all the time. There will be six versions of this fight. Unless we give them an official one. ‘Begin,’ says Colonel Vijay.