Shadows of Self (39 page)

He didn’t hear anything right off, though oddly he
did
notice MeLaan whispering to herself. As he listened, she modulated her voice, making it deeper—though still feminine. She repeated a few words to herself.

“She woulda been a twofie,” Wayne noted, eyes still closed.

“Hm?” MeLaan said.

“Your bones,” Wayne said. “Woman you’re wearin’ right now. Twofie. Second Octant. Raised on the outskirts.”

“And how do you know that?” MeLaan asked.

“Heard her curse as I was helpin’ her,” Wayne said, feeling a stab of regret. The woman had just been doing her job, trying to keep someone from being killed.

She’s still doing her job though,
he thought, cracking an eye and looking at MeLaan.
Her bones are, at least.
Given the choice, if he died while trying to do something important, he’d rather that his bones get up and see it done right. Hell, with some kandra friends, he could be annoying Steris well into the afterlife.

“Like this?” MeLaan said. “Second Octant, touch of agave farmer?”

“Nice,” Wayne said. “Draw out the end of your sentences, pitch them lower. Get some real twofie into that voice.”

“Is this better?”

“Yeah, actually,” Wayne said, sitting up. “That’s damn good.”

“TenSoon would be proud,” MeLaan said. “I can still get a difficult accent right, when I need to.”

“Difficult?” Wayne said. “The twofie accent?”

“With agave farmer.”

“Common mix,” Wayne said. “Once, I hadda do a guy who grew up on the northwestern coast, raised by deaf parents, only talking once in a while—who had then moved in with the Terris fundamentalists up in the mountains there.”

MeLaan frowned as a servant bustled past carrying linen. Some of the executive staff were going to be staying through the night, what was left of it, and guest rooms needed to be prepared. “I don’t know if I can do that,” MeLaan said, talking in a slow, deliberate way, with a hint of Terris and a lot of slurred words. “But it does sound like fun.”

“Ha!” Wayne said, turning on the accent, which was actually more clipped than MeLaan had made it. “Good, but you’re trying too hard. Being raised by parents who can’t hear doesn’t make a chap stupid. He just looks at the world differently, see?”

“Not bad,” MeLaan said. The next servant who passed gave them a glare as she had to pick her way over their outstretched legs in the hallway.

“It’s better if I have a hat,” Wayne said.

“A … hat.”

“Sure,” Wayne said. “Hats is a disguise for your
brain
. Helps you think like the person what wore it last. You wanna know a guy? Put on his hat.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re surprisingly wise?” MeLaan asked.

“All the bloody time.”

“They’re idiots. You’re not wise, you’re playing them. You’re doing this on purpose.” She grinned. “I love it.”

Wayne tipped his hat forward, smiling and leaning back again. “I’m not lying ’bout the hats though. They do help.”

“Sure,” MeLaan said. “Like bones.”

He cracked an eye at her. “Does it ever … bother you? Knowin’ you might live forever?”

“Bother me? Why would it? Immortality is damn convenient.”

“Don’t know about that,” Wayne said. “Seems to me that it would be nice to finally be
done,
you know? It’s like … like you’re running a race, and you don’t know quite where the end is, but you got an idea. An’ you only need to make it that far. I can do that, I figure. But you, you don’t have no end.”

“You actually sound like you
want
to die.”

“Someday,” Wayne said. “Huh. Maybe I should get into politics.”

MeLaan shook her head at him, seeming bemused. “It can be daunting,” she admitted a short time later, “to consider eternity, as Harmony must see it. But anytime I get bored, I can just live a new life.”

“Put on a new hat,” Wayne said. “Become someone else.”

“Switch it up. Be bold where once I was timid. Be crass where I was respectful. Makes life interesting, dynamic.” She paused. “And there’s something else. We
can
die, if we want.”

“What, just like that?”

“Kinda,” MeLaan said. “Don’t know if you’ve read the accounts. They’re blurry about this topic anyway, but near the end of the World of Ash, Ruin tried to take over the kandra. Control them directly. Well, TenSoon and those in charge, they were
really
terrified by that. So they planned, and we all talked. And about a century after the Catacendre, we figured out a way to stop our own lives. Takes a little concentration, but sets the body into a spiral where we just … end.”

“Nice,” Wayne said, nodding. “That makes a lot of sense. Always have an escape route planned. Oh, and your ‘a’s are still off; you carried them over from your own accent. They aren’t nasal enough. Draw them out, if you wanna sound like a real twofie.”

She cocked her head at him. “You’re wasted as a human.”

“Nah,” Wayne said. “I’ve barely had a few mouthfuls today.” He reached in his pocket and checked his flask. “Well, maybe a wee more than that.”

“No, I meant—”

He grinned at her, and she cut off, then grinned back. He tipped his hat to her, then closed his eyes and continued listening. A short time later, she stood up and started pacing the hall, and he could hear her saying her “a” sounds to herself as she walked.

He listened for a good long while, catching nothing abnormal, though he was pretty sure the sanitation-minister guy was lying about his education. That fellow had never been to the university—or if he had, he hadn’t hung around long enough to pick up the proper words. Wayne was mulling this over when he heard something out front. A voice, faint but unmistakable.

He scrambled to his feet, causing MeLaan to jump.

“Gottago,” he said. “Watchdaidiot.”

“But—”

“Berideback,” Wayne said, clutching his hat and running down the hallway, his long Roughs-style duster flaring to the sides. He raced around the corner and dashed toward the front of the mansion.

“He said to deliver it here,” the woman was saying to the butler. “So I’ve brought it. It was a simple task—he just needed something made. Hardly worth waking me…”

She turned to him. A radiant, glorious woman, built like a good Roughs fence—just tall enough, lean, but strong too. She had dark hair, which he’d compared to a pony’s on several occasions—and it was right unfair that she should get mad, considering she kept it in a tail and everything. She wore trousers, because skirts were stupid, and boots, ’cuz stuff needed to be kicked.

The whole world could be going wrong, but seeing her made him forget. He grinned.

In return she gave him her special scowl, the one just for him. It was how he knew she cared. That, and when she shot him she tended to aim for places that didn’t hurt too much.

“She’s with me,” Wayne said, running up.

“Like
hell
I am,” Ranette said, but she let him steer her away from the butler.

“And one wonders,” the butler said from behind, “how His Grace’s life can be threatened, when we’re letting every dust rat in the city saunter up and—”

He cut off as Ranette spun, her pistol out. Wayne caught her arm in time to stop her from firing.

“Dust rat?” she muttered.

“When’s the last time you bathed?” Wayne said. Then winced. “Just … you know, curious.”

“Guns don’t care if I stink, Wayne. I have things to do. And I
don’t
like being ordered around.” She shook a little cloth pouch in her left hand. Behind, the butler had grown very pale.

Wayne got her into the sitting room. She didn’t stink, despite what she said—she smelled of grease and gunpowder. Good scents. Ranette scents.

“What is it?” Wayne asked, snatching the pouch once they were out of sight.

“Something Wax asked me to make,” Ranette said. “Who got killed over there?” She pointed toward the still-open secret door down to the saferoom. Murder always caught her attention, if only because she’d want to see the bodies and judge how well the bullets tore up the flesh.

Wayne rolled a small metal object from the pouch onto his palm.

A bullet.

His hand started to shake.

“Oh, for Harmony’s sake,” Ranette said, plucking the bullet from his hand before he could drop it. “It’s not a gun, you idiot.”

“It’s a part of one,” Wayne said, shoving his hand in his pocket and breathing deeply. He could hold a bullet. He did that all the time, for Wax. The shaking subsided. Something seemed odd about that bullet though.

“So if I gave you a splinter of wood, and told you it had once been in a rifle stock, you’d go to pieces then too?”

“Dunno,” Wayne said. “You think I understand how my brain works?”

“I’d say there’s a logical fallacy in that statement,” Ranette said. “Maybe two.” She tucked the bullet back into the pouch. “Wax here?”

“No. He’s off detectiving.”

“Then you’ll have to take this,” she said, handing him the pouch. “His note insisted it was important. Half powder as he asked, piercing bullet, forged not to shatter.”

He
could
hold a bullet. He took it, then tucked it away immediately in his duster. See?

“So, uh, want to go get a drink?” he said. “You know, when the city is safe. Or maybe before it’s safe? I don’t mind none if the pub’s a little on fire while we drink.”

“You know I’d sooner shoot myself, Wayne,” she said with a sigh. “And Misra would shoot me if—by chance—I did go, come to think of it.”

Wayne frowned. That was nowhere
near
the vitriol he normally got from her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head, glancing back toward the entryway. “It’s bad out there, Wayne. People still on the streets, thronging together, shouting. I’ve seen crowds like this before, in the Roughs. Usually right before a man got strung up, law or no law. Those were towns of five hundred. What happens when it’s
five million
who start acting like that…”

“Probably the return of the Ashen World,” Wayne said. “What better time to finally profess your long-requited love for a certain handsome fellow what don’t mind none if you smell like the inside of a barrel of sulfur?”

She gave him the glare again. He grinned. But then she didn’t shoot him. Or even punch him. Damn. This was
bad
.

“They’re starting to gather outside,” Ranette said, distracted. “Chanting slogans about the governor.”

“I need to check that,” Wayne decided. If the governor wasn’t going to let him in and watch him close up, maybe he could learn something about Bleeder’s plans out in that crowd. “Get back to your house, lock the doors, and keep your guns handy.”

It was telling that she didn’t offer the slightest objection to his order as he strode toward the door out into the mists.

*   *   *

Captain Aradel regarded the governor’s writ as he would the last will and testament of a beloved family member: with both reverence and obvious discomfort.

“He names me lord high constable,” Aradel said. “But … rusts, I’m no lord.” He looked up at Reddi and his other lieutenants.

“Perhaps,” Reddi said, “the appointment conveys a title, sir.”

“The governor can’t just appoint someone to the peerage,” Marasi said. “A new title has to be ratified by a council with a quorum of the major house seats in the city.” She bit her lip as soon as she said it. She didn’t mean to be contrary.

Aradel didn’t appear to mind. He carefully folded the writ and slid it into his jacket pocket. She’d found him gathering a sizable force outside of headquarters, preparing to still malcontents and ring constabulary bells to let the people living nearby know that at least someone was patrolling this night. Phantom sounds floated through the mists. Distant shouts. Clangs. Screams. It felt like hell itself surrounded them, shrouded in a veil of darkness and fog.

“Sir,” Marasi said. “The governor said that he wanted you to do two things. First, send a detachment to forcefully quell rioting in the city. Second, bring up a smaller force to guard him as he prepares to address the people near the mansion. You’re not to turn protesters away there, but elsewhere in the city … sir, he counseled you to be firm of hand. Very firm.”

“Rusting idiots deserve it,” said Lieutenant Mereline, a woman with short blonde hair.

“No need for bloodthirst, Lieutenant,” Aradel said. “I seem to remember you cussing out the Hasting family with some regularity yourself.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m setting fire to the city,” Mereline said. “The high houses being bastards doesn’t excuse being bastards ourselves. Sir.”

“Well, the mansion seems a good enough center from which to operate,” Aradel said. “Chip, you and the messengers run to the other constables-general and ask them to meet me at the governor’s mansion with their officers. We’ll coordinate the city lockdown from there. Everyone else, let’s double-time it that way. If His Grace wants to talk to the people, I want a nice
thick
barrier of police bodies between him and his constituents, understand?”

The group bustled into motion, the bell ringers setting out in front, the messengers scattering—one even taking to the skies; Chip was one of the Coinshots. The rest of the constables fell into a march. An uneven one—they weren’t soldiers—but no less resolute.

“Sir,” Marasi said, walking quickly up to Aradel, “there’s something else I need to tell you, if you can spare a moment.”

“How important is it?” Aradel asked, pausing at the side of the group.

“Very.”

Reddi cleared his throat behind them. “Perhaps you should discuss it while traveling to the mansion, sir. If the governor really is planning to address the crowds…”

“Yes,” Aradel said. “Innate suddenly appointed me lord high constable; that immediately worries me about what other kinds of impulsive things he’s capable of doing tonight. Let’s do this on the move, Colms. Reddi, bring along the rest of the constables as smartly as you can. I’m going to the mansion ahead of you.”

Marasi nodded. The things she wanted to discuss would be best said in the privacy of a carriage anyway.

Except …