The Glass Galago (3 page)

He didn't answer.

*   *   *

Annela was six feet tall and built like a statue of Bounty—full breasted and round-hipped, with huge hands. The two women were cousins, though nobody would guess it to see them. Gale was unmistakably Verdanii, pale and knotted like a wind-blasted tree. Annela was a rare throwback to the copper-skinned, slate-haired islanders their foremothers had invaded and displaced on Verdan, centuries earlier.

She collapsed on a chair that looked barely big enough to hold her. “How far have you gotten?”

“Talked to the spellscribe, the girl, and a pro snoop from
Foghorn
.”

“A reporter—you? How'd that happen?”

“Irrelevant. She didn't tell me anything useful.”

“Did the Patents girl let you in?”

“No, she showed us the door. Could she be in on it?”

Annela nodded. “I've been thinking she might. It'd be the easy way to get that flask from her safe.”

“If so,” Parrish said, “She could have given it to any of the Convenors pushing for increased regulation.”

“Too risky.” Annela examined him minutely. “No Convenor would get caught holding the thing.”

Gale said: “Someone close to Rasa will have the flask. It is, literally, her life.”

“Who could she ask to hazard her that way?” Parrish looked sceptical. “It's too much to ask.”

“It's an expression of trust,” Gale countered. “Asking someone to let her suffer, perhaps die. It shows she has faith in their connection.”

He gave her a too-canny look. “I was raised by monks, remember? I know a sermon when I hear it.”

“Someone Rasa trusts to hurt her,” Annela rolled ice in her glass.

“Can't be many people like that around.”

“Her parents aren't in Fleet,” Annela said. “Her child's father?”

They went into her sanctum. Parrish—seas, was he in a huff?—remained in the outer office, seeking out the galago cage. Asleep, the creature was a lonely-looking bundle of glass fluff, aglow with color. Parrish took out the flask, rolling it in his hands.

“Is that boy who I think he is?” Annela murmured.

“Sloot hired him. He's to be the new captain of
Nightjar
.”

“Why're you dragging him around with you?”

“He's useful, Annela.”

“Have you told him about Erstwhile?”

“I've told him I'm courier to a strange and little-known place; he thinks I mean a minor islands in the outlands.”

Anella shook her head. “Then you're not yet certain of him. Cut him loose.”

“Teeth, not you, too! He hasn't killed anyone, Nella.”

“You remember Ramjo Fells?”

“No … wait. Bull-headed man, from Grimreef?”

“A good man, Gale. Stubborn, yes, but smart. He didn't believe in using the Convene to wring wealth from the weak nations. And, incidentally, widely beloved.”

An ally of hers, then. “He killed himself, that reporter said. While Parrish was on guard duty.”

“Niner Parrish, as he was back then and Fells had an unscheduled meeting that evening, a long one. Afterward, Fells sent a messenger to
Constitution
. Parrish said it was meant to be a request for a Watch investigator. His story was that Fells had taken bribes and was going to confess.”

“What did the message actually say?”

“The sheet was blank. Fells locked himself in his cabin–to await arrest, or so Parrish seemed to believe. He destroyed his papers, killed his secretary and took a lethal dose of maddenflur.”

“Then he
was
into something rotten.”

“The Watch took your pretty boy into custody for six weeks,” Annela said. “During that time, two of Fells' favourite officers drowned under mysterious circumstances.”

“If he was corrupt, you're better off without him.”

“Ramjo was loved, Gale. The storm of hysteria that blew up over his death … I know you can't be bothered to interest yourself in the news, but Parrish was vilified. They said he seduced Ramjo and drove him mad, that he killed him with his own hands, that he framed him in some scheme of his own making.”

“He was a criminal mastermind at seventeen?”

“Fell's friends and allies have been tainted by association. All of us on the starboard side of the government have lost face. The Watch has been poking into our affairs in the most insidious way. Fire the boy, Gale.”

“Pish. I'm not getting rid of someone because he's a political embarrassment to you.”

“He's a target! You're going to be killed sooner or later. With people chasing him, you could be the one struck.”

It occurred to Gale that this might be why Parrish had been so ready to run from the brawl. He preferred being seen a coward by his former friends to possibly triggering the events leading to her prophesied death. “I'm sure that my long-promised murder, when and if it happens—”

“Don't bait the goddess, Gale.”

“—will be equally ignominious whether I'm the intended target or not.”

“Fire him for me, then.” Annela poured herself a second drink. “You were just lecturing him on the virtue of imposing on your friends, weren't you? Of testing one's bonds?”

She bit back an immediate refusal. She'd known Parrish a month; she and Annela went back a lifetime. “For you, I'll consider it.”

In the outer office, they saw Parrish make his choice, wrapping the glass inscription flask in a scrap of fabric–to contain the shards–and crushing it against the desk.

There was a faint hum, and the flames in all the lanterns flickered to umber. The hair on Gale's arms stirred; for a second, her teeth ached.

The galago shimmered and darkened. It was like seeing paint poured into a vase. It cheeped at Parrish as he opened the cage, clambering into his lap as the glass turned to flesh and fur. He dabbed at the blood where the cracks in its glass skin had formed.

“On Erstwhile, in a nation called South Africa, they call those things bushbabies,” Gale said absently.

“I guess it fits,” Annela said. “Ah—here's the information on the girl's lover.”

*   *   *

They spent the night poring over the girl's history, checking lest there might be other suspects. The best prospect remained the father of Rasa's child. A Convene clerk, he attended government debates, which meant he'd be able to keep track of how things were going.

“How do we prove he has the flask, if he does?” Annela said.

“Scare him,” Gale said.

Convenors were always getting lavish gifts: she had Bettona assemble a basket, innumerable glass flasks, and a silky pillow. She took the sack Parrish had used for the glass shards of the inscription and a paperweight and set to crushing the flasks into an impressive pile of mostly-clear glass shards, though she threw in bits of a red bottle, too. She put the pillow in the basket, piled the shards atop, and pulled the eyes off a hand-carved ceremonial doll. Then she soaked a bunch of the revolting dates in a mixture of water and leftover soup, pouring the resulting brown mixture through the pile, leaving it glistening, putrid, and soaking into the pillow.

“All right, Parrish, I want you to take this to the disposal pile for the trash barge,” she said, holding it out. “If anyone asks, it isn't the galago.”

“It
isn't
the galago.”

“Exactly. So you won't be lying, will you?”

His lip twitched. “Understood.”

“Try not to get beat up on the way,” she hollered after him.

“I'll give you this: he's pretty,” Annela said. “The view as he goes is almost as good as—”

“Stop that,” Gale said.

“You think a pile of broken glass and a bit of stink will make someone panic?”

“They'll think it's the galago's body. If you deny it emphatically enough—”

“Everyone will think I'm lying?”

“Including the clerk. He'll figure Rasa is at death's door.”

The reporter from
Foghorn
was the first to grab at the rumor, chasing Parrish to the garbage heap, then following him back to demand answers from Annela. The galago was dead, wasn't it? Not at all, Annela replied, it was still in her office. Could she produce it? No, it was sick.

It worked well enough: the Convene was in hue and cry by the time the opening bell rang. Someone demanded Rasa be brought in for examination. Annela weighed anchor on that: was it safe to move her?

Whipping the Convene into a state of hysteria, with everyone overtired and the prospect that if they didn't do something, soon, the girl might die, wasn't that hard.

Gale took a seat up in the gallery, watching Rasa's clerk. He fidgeted as he took notes. As the whole of the Convene edged into a frenzy, tensions rose:

“The girl might shatter at any minute?”

“How did the creature come to break?”

“The galago is alive,” Annela protested.

“Then produce it!”

“It's not in my possession anymore…”

He stood it for an hour and a half before asking a fellow clerk to take over. Gale followed him across the ship, deep belowdecks.

He had secreted the flask within the cabinets of the wine cellar, tucked in with all the other bottles. The glass of the inscription was dark: its letters glowed faintly, until he wrapped it.

Sommelier's gonna catch hell over that little lapse in security
, Gale thought.

The clerk led her back up to the deck, staring at the bottle, miserable.

“So Rasa asked you to let her die?”

He turned, startled. She saw a struggle play out on his face: he didn't know her, she was nobody, maybe she just wanted blackmail money. Perhaps she should suggest it; it might be interesting to see who he'd contact, how much they'd pay. Smoke out a conspirator.

Then he whirled. Parrish had faded out of the shadows, trapping him between them.

The clerk held the bottle out over the rail. “I'll drop it.”

“And doom the mother of your child to a slow, painful end?”

“I swore…” he said.

“You swore to help her interfere with official debate,” Parrish said. “But you serve the Convene, don't you? Took an oath? This isn't some minor infraction. The principle you've violated—”

“Principle?” he sputtered. “Day in, day out, our exalted leaders … it's all my island this and our economic interests that. They don't govern for the common good.”

“Admirable speech,” Gale said, “Except you and Rasa were paid to rig this game.”

He shook the bottle. “I'm a whore among whores, so what?”

“Rasa may have asked you to let her die,” Gale said gently. “You don't have to do it. You can decide the price is too high. You can change your mind.”

“Her suffering serves no further purpose,” Parrish agreed. “She's been exposed.”

The clerk's face was wet with tears. “Nobody knows anything.”

He flung the flask overboard.

Parrish moved with the slick grace of a dolphin. He was over the rail, diving into the black waters, almost before the bottle had begun its fall.
It will sink like a stone
, Gale thought,
it's full of sand
.

“Man overboard!” she roared. The clerk was staring in amazement at Parrish's abandoned doublet. The galago sat atop it, right next to his boots.

He'd been ready.

As the alarm pealed, Gale stomped over to the man, furious. “If he doesn't come up, you've murdered two people instead of one.”

“It was wine,” he said, tone sullen, and the thing that made her want to punch him was that it was true: without the scripped bottle bearing Rasa's name, it was only his word against hers.

Lights were cast downward, at the sea on the port side. Gale joined the spotters, staring downward. At least Parrish wasn't floating on the water in a heap of bones and linen.

What if he just never surfaced?

“How long has it been?” one of the Watch asked, and she tried to think. Ten ticks? Thirty?

“Fifteen since the alarm,” someone else responded. Of course: nobody was speaking to her.

Constitution
‘s aura of discipline kept civilians off the deck while the rescue attempt was underway, but faces crowded all her portals. The upper decks, where Convenors strolled among small gardens and discussed affairs of state, were filling with people.

Among them were the glass woman, Rasa, and the reporter, Pyke. It was good politics: show the pitiable victim of the Patents office to the crowd. Rasa's glowing eyes were fixed on her former lover. Did she know he'd thrown the flask away?

“Sixty,” said the Watch.

He's a sailor. He's a good swimmer. He's athletic
. Gale stared at the obsidian waves.
Don't vanish on me now, cub.

Perhaps I should fire him. I am getting stupidly attached.

“Kir,” the Watch said. “The person thrown overboard…”

“I threw nobody!” protested the clerk suddenly. “This servant is making a fuss for no reason.”

A frown. “A false alarm…”

“He's down there,” Gale insisted. “Look, his clothes.”

The Watch took them in. “Shoes off? You say he was thrown?”

“He dove,” she conceded, “But—

“Eighty ticks.”

Surely he could hold his breath for a couple of minutes.

“There!” Searchlights to the stern of Constitution swivelled and there was a rush of personnel. Gale moved to join them, but the Watchman held her back. “Sorry, Kir. Until this is straightened out—”

She shook her head, not caring. They were bringing something up now. Alive, or dead? It was all shadows; she couldn't make him out.

Then he was walking toward her, under his own power … and he had the bottle in his hand.