Our Lady of the Ice (39 page)

The grass was mowed, though. Weird.

The house had a driveway and a carport, but they were both empty. All the lights were turned off, as well. Eliana stood on the sidewalk and stared up at the house, trying to decide if she wanted to risk breaking in.

Mr. Gonzalez nagged at her. The bland name and the bland suits and his obsession with Sofia—something wasn’t right here. Or at the very least, something wasn’t clear.

“You lost?”

Eliana jumped. The voice belonged to a little girl, her hair braided into pigtails. She blinked up at Eliana.

“Do you know the man who lives here?” Eliana pointed at the house.

The little girl frowned. “No one lives there, miss.”

Eliana felt a surge of triumph—she was right. Something was off about Mr. Gonzalez.

“You sure?” She wanted to find out as much as she could. “A man I work with listed this as his address.”

The girl shrugged. “I’m sure. Sometimes these guys show up here at night, and there will be all these cars around. My mom makes me come in when that happens. But most of the time the house is just empty. I can show you.”

Before Eliana could respond, the girl took off running across the yard, her pigtails streaming out behind her. Eliana hesitated for a moment, then followed. Men showing up in groups at night?
Could be Cabrera after all. Except he didn’t keep houses, as far as she knew. His whole base of operation had been the Florencia. An empty house wouldn’t be enough of a smoke screen for a man like him.

A man like Diego.

She shoved the thought aside. The girl was waiting for her on the porch. Now that Eliana was closer, she had to agree the house had the air of something abandoned. The porch was coated in a thick layer of dust, and the windows were grimy.

“Here.” The girl pressed her face against the glass. “Look in. You’ll see. Nothing there.”

Eliana crouched beside her and peered in, her hands cupped around her eyes to block out the light. The girl was right. She was looking into a sizable room that was empty save for a stack of folding metal chairs leaning up against the wall.

“See?”

Eliana pulled away from the window. The girl stared at her with her hands on her hips. “I told you,” she said. “Nobody lives there. Your friend lied to you.” Her eyes glittered mischievously. “Is he one of the guys that shows up here?”

“I doubt it. He probably just wrote the number down wrong.” Eliana smiled. “Thanks for your help, though.”

The girl shrugged. “My mom says the guys won’t hurt me, but she doesn’t want me hanging around them. It’s a bad crowd.”

“Oh yeah? What else does she say?”

“I dunno. Not a whole lot. Just that they got too many wild ideas and they’ll get people killed. But I don’t see ’em killing anybody when they’re here. Just talking.”

The Independents. The word rang like a struck chord in Eliana’s head, and suddenly things made more sense. Not just the Independents, of course. The Antarctican Freedom Fighters. Cabrera had enough money to disguise his work, but Independent terrorists didn’t. And they met out here, in some shabby little house no one cared about.

And Juan Gonzalez had actually fucking written the address down on his information form.

“You know what?” Eliana said to the little girl. “You’ve been a huge help.”

The girl smiled, big and bright. “You’re welcome!”

Eliana left the house, her thoughts in a whir. She wasn’t exactly pro-Argentina, just pro-not-living-in-Antarctica, but that didn’t mean she trusted a group of terrorists. Still, the underlying danger struck a fire inside her chest.

She rode the train to the city offices, not caring that her clothes were rumpled and her hair was unbrushed. At the receptionist’s desk in the lobby, she asked if she could speak to Maria Nuñez.

“She works up in budgets,” Eliana explained as the receptionist ran her finger down the list of extensions. New, probably. “She’s an office manager. I’m a friend, and I just stopped by to say hello.”

“Oh, the budget office!” The receptionist entered in the extension and tilted her head against the phone receiver. Eliana could hear it ringing, distantly, and there was a burst of static when Maria answered.

“You can go on up,” the receptionist said brightly.

Eliana did. Her body was thrumming with something close to excitement, something other than sorrow or horror or fear for the future, and that was good.

Maria had worked her way up enough that her desk wasn’t in the steno pool, which Eliana had expected, but rather was tucked away in a room at the end of a little hallway on her floor. The typewriter clattered as Eliana approached, drowning out the buzz of voices from the cluster of desks in the center of the room. The door was open. Eliana stopped in the doorway, and Maria looked up.

“You disappeared again,” she said, “and now I bet you want another favor.”

“I won’t be disappearing again.” Eliana sat down in front of Maria’s desk. The office was cramped, the wall squeezing them both in tight. But Maria was smiling. “At least not until spring.”

“That’s not exactly disappearing,” Maria said. “You’ll stay in touch.”

“Of course, yes.” Eliana looked down at her hands. If she even could stay in touch. “You know it’s not too late to start saving for a visa of your own. I can lend you some money—”

“Stop it,” said Maria. “We’re not having this conversation again.”

“I’m just saying. Things are going to get bad.”

“Things are always bad here,” Maria said. “But that’s the thing about a home. You stick around even when nothing’s going right.”

“They’re going to get worse,” Eliana said, but she could already see Maria’s expression glazing over, and she knew it was hopeless, trying to convince Maria to leave. Essie, too. There’d be no way of explaining what was coming in a way that they would actually believe.

“Just think about it, okay? Promise?”

“Sure, whatever. Is that why you came by here?”

Eliana shook her head. “I have to go by the records office. You want to come with?”

“You don’t need me. You’ve got the
PI
license.”

“Yeah, I know.” Eliana shrugged. She realized she had come by to warn Maria. To try one more time to get her to see the truth.

“I
always
want a break,” Maria said. “But let me finish this up first.”

Eliana nodded. Maria turned back to the typewriter and worked for a few moments more. Then she stood up and grabbed her purse. They walked to the elevator together. Eliana reminded herself that this was what it was like before Diego, when it was just her and her girlfriends and she didn’t need anyone else.

Maybe things could be normal again, on the mainland.

Maybe.

The records office was on the seventh floor. It wasn’t much to look at. The lights weren’t bright and clean like on Maria’s floor, and there was no rhythm of the typewriters or human voices, just the low fluorescent humming of the bulbs overhead. Eliana’d been up here a handful of times before, and she always forgot how still it was. Like a mausoleum built of paper.

A tall man stood waiting behind a counter, along with shelves and shelves of files. He was younger than the other man who worked here, although he already stooped a little, like the weight of information was bearing down on him.

“Hi, Javier.” Maria smiled brightly at him, and he returned her smile with a quiver. “This is my friend Eliana. She’s a
PI
.”

“That so?” Javier squinted at her. “Have you been in here before? I remember Leo talking about a lady
PI
.”

“Yeah, it was probably me.” Eliana pulled Mr. Gonzalez’s information sheet out of her purse and folded it over so that only the address was visible. She set it on the counter. “I need to find out who owns the house at this address. Here’s my license.” She slid that slim laminated card out of her wallet and set it next to the information sheet. Javier picked it up and held it to the light and made a great show of examining its legitimacy.

“Oh, come off it, Javier,” Maria said. “She’s real.”

“Got to be sure.” Javier tossed the license onto the counter and then wrote the address down on a piece of scrap paper. “Give me a moment.”

He disappeared into the files.

“It always takes forever,” Maria said, sighing.

“Yeah, I know.” Eliana leaned her elbows against the counter. Maybe this wouldn’t amount to anything. Maybe Javier would return and hand her a card with the name Juan Gonzalez written across it and she would be back where she’d started. She supposed she could take it to the police then, tell them about an
AFF
meeting place. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that. She trusted the police about as much as she trusted Independent terrorists.

Time passed. Ten minutes, maybe. Maria checked her watch. “This is taking a lot longer than it normally does,” she said.

“You can go back up if you need to.”

“Oh, that’s definitely not necessary.” She smiled over at Eliana. They were still leaning up against the counter, as there weren’t any chairs set up anywhere in the room. Maria started in on a story about Essie, who’d taken up with a new boyfriend, another Independent. Eliana half-listened, nodding her head at appropriate intervals. What was taking so long?

Finally, Javier emerged from the stacks. Maria straightened up. “Finally!” she said, teasing.

“Sorry about the wait,” he said. “I had to cross-reference. The address you were after was missing about half its paperwork.”

Eliana frowned. Maybe this would be complicated after all.

“Really?” said Maria.

“It happens sometimes. There’s so much here. But the house’s purchase date was back when we used the old registry. You remember that, Maria, before we switched all the records over to the computer?”

“I do indeed.”

Eliana didn’t care about any of this. “Did you find out the name?”

“Yeah, I did. It’s, ah—well, a bit unexpected.” Javier laid a notecard on the counter. Eliana picked it up. When she read the name, all the air went out of her body.

“Well?” Maria asked. “Who is it?”

“Alejo Ortiz,” Eliana said. “The house belongs to Alejo Ortiz.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

MARIANELLA

The stairs leading to Eliana’s office were colder than outside. Marianella stopped in the middle of the stairway and tightened her coat. She wondered if she had any right to ask Eliana to do this, after everything that had happened. It had been Marianella’s fault that Eliana had gotten so entangled in Sofia’s plans in the first place. Did she really want to entangle her further?

She told herself there was no harm in asking. And of course she intended to pay Eliana. But they needed to find out where that code had come from. The maintenance drones had no idea. Marianella and Sofia had both sat down with them, rummaged through their memory banks, asked them questions in the language of computers. The answers had been strange, utterly inhuman, but they’d still been clear enough that the answer was no.

And so Marianella continued up the stairs. The office light was on, and the muffled clatter of a typewriter spilled into the hallway. Marianella ran one hand over her hair and opened the door. She remembered the first time she’d walked into this room, how terrified she’d been that her entire life was about to unravel.

Funny that a simple line of code in a maintenance drone could make her feel that way again.

Eliana looked up from her typewriter, hands still poised over the keys. Her eyes went wide.

“Marianella,” she said.

“Hello.” Marianella shut the door and slipped out of her coat, an old out-of-style thing, nothing like the furs she’d worn her first time here. “How are you?”

Eliana looked away.

For a moment, they stayed like that, posed. The sunlight illuminated the side of Eliana’s face. Marianella watched her.

It was the moment before a conversation. The moment, too, before an apology, which Marianella realized she would have to offer before she asked anything of Eliana.

“I’m sorry there wasn’t a proper funeral for Diego.” Marianella’s voice was harsher in the silence than the typewriter. “I didn’t know what she was doing until after she had done it.” She didn’t say the rest—that she had screamed at Sofia for her sacrilege, that she had gone to one of the empty cottages and said a rosary for each man who had been killed, twenty-eight in total, including Ignacio Cabrera. It had taken so long that the human parts of her body could no longer support her, and so the mechanical parts had activated, and she had finished her prayers almost entirely as a machine. She had emerged from the cottage, shaking and trembling, after saying the final rosary for Diego.

“He wasn’t religious. It doesn’t matter.”

Eliana didn’t seem to mean it. Marianella took a hesitant step forward. When Eliana didn’t protest, she walked the rest of the way to the desk. Eliana watched her and didn’t speak. Marianella sat down, and Eliana slid the typewriter to the side, opening up the space between them.

“I prayed for him,” Marianella said.

“Why?”

“Because everyone deserves to have a prayer said for them when they die. Especially when—” Marianella stopped. She knew it was a silly superstition, about the smoke and the souls of the dead, but she believed it anyway. Believing superstitions kept her closer to human, and she wanted to be as human as possible right now.
“Especially when they aren’t given a proper funeral.”

“I doubt he noticed.”

“Don’t speak that way.” Marianella said it before she could stop herself. Eliana frowned, and Marianella leaned forward, her palms damp with anxiety. “Eliana, I didn’t just come here to apologize for the funeral. I came—I have a job for you, although I understand if you won’t take it, but more than that I want to apologize. For everything. For Diego’s death. For putting you in danger.”

“A job.” Eliana’s voice was small, far away. “What kind of job? One for Sofia? I’m getting pretty tired of doing things for her when she clearly hates me.”

They looked at each other across the desk.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Marianella said, but she didn’t bother explaining further. It wasn’t hatred, only bitterness. Humans were the enemy.

“Things have gotten worse since she took over,” Eliana said. “The power flickers more often. Food’s more expensive.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t exactly great to start out with, but I get the feeling she doesn’t have the city’s interests at heart.”

Marianella wasn’t going to lie.

“No,” she said, “she doesn’t.”

“You’re not going to stop her.”

“She doesn’t intend to kill anyone,” Marianella said. “She only wants to send the humans away, back to the mainland.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

Marianella hesitated. After all, Sofia had ordered the deaths of Cabrera’s men without hesitation.

“That’s too kind for her,” Eliana said. “Sending us away to live someplace warm. Feeling the real sun.” She sighed and rapped her fingers against the desk. “Luciano showed me a rainstorm. Did you know he could do that? Share memories?”

Marianella nodded.

“He showed me a rainstorm, and now I remember it like it happened to me.” Eliana gave a hard little smile. “I’d like more memories like that. I’d prefer they be real, though.”

Marianella didn’t respond. The room was freezing, even with
the radiator rattling away in the corner. Past Eliana’s head was a window that faced a cold gray building that grew, Marianella knew, out of a cold gray sidewalk. She thought about those years before she’d met Hector, when her life had been on the mainland, out in the countryside in a big white stone house, with gardens and horses. The wind had swept down from the mountains, smelling of rain.

She missed it. God, she really did miss it. She’d always thought moving to Hope City had been a way of starting over, and maybe it had been, twenty years ago. Maybe the amusement park wasn’t what she needed to start over again. Maybe the answer wasn’t with Sofia after all.

“I forgive you,” Eliana said abruptly, jerking Marianella out of her memories. “But not Sofia.”

Marianella nodded.

They sat for another few moments. Then Eliana dragged the typewriter back in front of her.

“So tell me about this job.” Eliana took up typing again, her gaze fixed down on the paper in the typewriter. “If it is for Sofia, do you think she’ll get me a one-way ticket to the mainland on one of those icebreakers of hers?” Eliana peered over the edge of the paper, and Marianella realized she was serious.

“Yes,” Marianella said. “I’m certain of it. But only in the summer, when it’s safest—”

“No.” Eliana went back to typing. “I want out sooner than that. The city’s already delaying me for my visa application, even though I’ve got the money. If she wants me to help her, she can put me on one of her ships before the docks open up.”

Marianella gaped at Eliana. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “Ships capsize all the time—”

“That’s my deal,” Eliana said. “If she can get me out of here before the city can, I’ll do it for her. But I’m not getting caught up in whatever she’s planning. I know it’s not shipping us away to the mainland.”

Marianella sat for a moment. She needed Eliana’s help, but she didn’t want to put her in that kind of danger.

But if Eliana was right, if Sofia was planning on harming the humans of the city . . .

“Fine,” Marianella said. “I’ll get you a place aboard one of the shipping liners.”

“Thank you.” Eliana typed out another few words, then pushed the typewriter aside. “To be honest, I’ve been looking into something that might involve you—might involve Alejo Ortiz, anyway.”

“Really?” Marianella frowned. Her chest twisted with a slight break of anxiety. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t really know. It’s a bit of a strange—connection.” Eliana thought for a moment. “It’s about the man who hired me to investigate Sofia. Remember him? When I came to the park the first time?”

Marianella nodded.

“He showed back up here a few days ago, asking for the same thing. Any information I had about Sofia.” Eliana’s voice pitched forward in urgency. “I told him no, but then I went by his house. He didn’t live there—no one did. This neighborhood kid told me it was a place where the
AFF
meets up. Not in so many words, but reading between the lines, it seems fairly likely. So I went looking for who really owns the house, thinking this guy’s name was a fake. And it turned out—turned out the house’s owner is Alejo Ortiz.”

All the energy drained out of Marianella’s body.

“Now, I’m not accusing you of anything,” Eliana said quickly. “I was just wondering—the connection with Ortiz—” She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s so goddamned weird.”

“Weird that Alejo has connections with terrorists?” Marianella laughed. “Not exactly.”

Eliana looked up at her. “You mean he
does
?”

Marianella leaned forward, keeping her voice low. “He does. That’s why he hasn’t reported my nature, because I know that he took a significant portion of his campaign funds from the
AFF
.”

Eliana’s eyes widened. “I fucking knew it!” she said. “Christ. So I guess if I report him—”

“He would reveal my nature, yes.”

Eliana rubbed her forehead. “What does he want with Sofia?”

Marianella shook her head, but she was thinking about the culling, and the men who’d killed Inéz. Alejo’s men.

Why would Alejo care about culling robots?

Why would Alejo want to investigate Sofia?

“The man who hired you,” Marianella said. “What was his name?”

“Juan Gonzalez. I figure it’s a fake.”

Marianella nodded. No Juan Gonzalez worked for Alejo, but that didn’t mean anything. “What does he look like?”

“Pretty unremarkable, I guess. Youngish. Black hair. Always wearing a gray suit and gray hat. Really light brown eyes, though. They’re practically golden.”

Marianella went cold all over.

She thought about the day Inéz had died.

“Andres,” she whispered.

“What?”

“His name is Andres Costa.” Marianella looked Eliana straight in the eye. “He’s one of Alejo’s aides.”

“What!” Eliana pushed away from her desk and paced back and forth across the room. “One of Alejo’s aides came here asking about Sofia?” She stopped, looked over at Marianella. “He knows about her taking the city over. He has to.”

Marianella shook her head. “No, he couldn’t possibly.” But he clearly knew
something
. He’d told her Andres was in the park for city business, but why would a city man need to hire a private investigator to look into Sofia? To gain access to her schematics? Alejo was doing something, but Marianella couldn’t see it.

Marianella shivered and wished she hadn’t taken off her coat.

“So what were you coming to see me about?” Eliana said. “This job, what was it? Did it have to do with Ortiz?”

Marianella shook her head. The mysterious code had almost slipped her mind. “I doubt it.” She took a deep breath and explained to Eliana what they had found in the damaged maintenance drone. Eliana listened, nodding, her brow furrowed with concentration.

“The blackouts,” she said. “You found what’s causing the blackouts.”

Marianella nodded.

“And you’re sure a human had to program that in? It’s not some robot—”

“Yes!” Marianella threw up her hands. “I’m sure. It’s not the maintenance drones. They like to brag—well, maybe that’s not the right word exactly, but they’re always open whenever they do something—destructive.” She thought of the burning power plant, the twenty-six dead from the whims of the maintenance drones. “And I don’t know what this is. That’s what we wanted you to do. Find out.”

Eliana started pacing again. “It sounds like
AFF
work, doesn’t it? At least the code does. But I don’t know why they’d want to mess with the power.” She sighed. “The city’s always blaming the
AFF
, which tells me the city’s responsible. I bet they’re trying to make it look like the
AFF
’s done it, but my money’s on the city.”

“Why?” Marianella said. “I think it’s entirely possible the
AFF
could be responsible.” She paused. “You aren’t as familiar with them as I am, working with Alejo.”

“But the city wants to root out the terrorists.” Eliana paused by the far wall, then made her way back across the room. “If the terrorists are putting our livelihood in danger, that makes the common folk not want to join up with them, you see? So the city makes the blackouts look like
AFF
work, and people start seeing the
AFF
as
terrorists
and not freedom fighters.”

It made a convoluted sort of sense, Marianella had to admit.

“How about this,” Eliana said. “Let’s look into this Andres Costa first. He’s got ties to the
AFF
, and we can see if that leads us to anything about the code. If not, we can start looking into the city.”

“Yes,” Marianella said, after a pause. “Yes, I think that sounds good.”