Chapter Nineteen

[cityofthehand]

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Chapter Nineteen



Ironically, once they were out of the basement, Yena commanded them to say nothing and keep out of the way. Maira and Naran sat shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall, silent and watching as Yena and Kei-zi dealt with the bodies and gathered help from the nearest Red Hand station by messenger. While they waited for the messenger’s return, they hauled the sorceress’s body up from the basement. Her floppy, limp form hung like boneless meat and her paled skin made a fish belly look creamy and warm. Yet inside, her gaping mouth showed charring and burning, her teeth had gone gray and black as if she’d immolated from the inside out. Yena and Kei-zi put her down next to the big man.

One drowned, one burned. More irony.

Maira hugged her knees to her chest and absently, anxiously toyed with the tip of a wooden splinter in her right forefinger. She stared into the big man’s fixed eyes. The professor never warned that others would die even if she did succeed. She turned away when she caught herself. The First Taye had strong beliefs about staring too long in dead eyes. She understood why now. Reality bent the wrong way in that gaze. Absence where presence ought to be. The quiet rankled and unnerved her. Desperate for noise, she opened her mouth to speak and Yena cut her off before a sound came out.

“Not yet. This place is not safe. Say nothing,” Yena replied, stooping down to gently pull the big man’s torn shirt together and button his coat over his body. She reached into a pouch on her belt and took out two large coins to put over the eyes. Old instinct had Maira thinking the coins were a waste and living people needed money more, but she silenced the thought.

It wasn’t practicality, just old jealousy. In the orphanhouse and the workhouse they’d had no money or food or shoes to give the children that died any proper burial. Sometimes, if lucky, pretty wildflowers or autumn leaves at peak made themselves available. One time at the orphanhouse they found a pile of machine parts, all the way from the Asna’isi Tract. The priestesses sold most of it for scrap, but let them keep a few of the gears and screws.

Maira, being the oldest and a month away from being sold, told the smaller ones gears and screws counted as money in the afterlife. She told them they sent their friend away a rich person. She suspected it was all a lie, but it made everyone feel better so she told it as though it were as true as the sun setting and rising.

When the Red Hand officers came, they seemed to know one of their own had perished. They pulled off their caps and hoods when they entered and assumed solemn faces and sharp salutes for the captain and lieutenant. None talked above a whisper. They threw suspicious glances at Naran and Maira until Yena or Kei-zi assured them they were innocent. Yena whispered to a group, just within Maira’s hearing, “They didn’t know. He did this to himself.”

Finally, Yena came to them with firm command in her bearing, brooking no question or disobedience. She marched them out of the shop to a six-seat covered rickshaw driven by two young Red Hands on small seats, pushing pedals to turn the wheels connected by a chain. Maira lifted her eyebrows. Fancy transportation indeed. These rickshaws were the latest fad in the rich neighborhoods. She’d seen them in the Capitol Complex, but never ridden in one.

Though why anyone wanted to became a mystery once they got going. The rickshaw bumped and shook over every cobblestone in the road. The wide vehicle couldn’t pass easily when crowds forced them to stop. She could have walked faster. When it did pick up speak, it wobbled horribly. She held onto the side and hoped it wouldn’t break apart and send them all flying.

The rickshaw took them to a building, surprisingly plain for the Capitol Complex, where a mix of uniformed and plain clothes Red Hand mulled around, coming and going. Only a few even glanced at them in the push-pedal rickshaw, as if it was normal.

Inside the building, Yena and Kei-zi received many deep nods by passersby. Some even stopped to stand at attention, feet together, posture stick-straight before bowing. Yena and Kei-zi merely returned the courtesy with acknowledging inclinations of their heads, barely enough to be nods. In the faces of those who bowed, Maira saw genuine respect rather than automatic courtesy. People liked these two here.

Up three floors they entered what Maira assumed to be their office. The spacious room had two screened windows, two big desks, shelves, several chairs and a long couch. The desks made stark contrasts of each other, one being flawlessly clean and the other hopelessly cluttered with papers, books, and several tea cups

I guess Yena’s perfect at everything, Maira thought until she saw Yena take the messy desk. Or not.

She and Naran sat at the couch. She noticed the couch over the armrest and half smiled. Instantly she thought that it must have meant they slept in their office a lot and worked long hours.

Kei-zi shut the door and sat down, absently ordering a pair of ink pens to rest perfectly parallel with the edge of the desk.

“Now, we can talk,” Yena announced. “Everything is secure here. I wasn’t sure what was being watched or overheard at Niuschka’s shop. Sorcerers have their ways of spying on others. No offense.” She tipped her head to Naran.

“None taken,” he said. “I would’ve told you the same. Niuschka was a notorous sneak. Gods only know what traps are in there. I hope you told your people to be careful.”

“You knew him?”

“He was a business acquaintance.”

“Why were you and Maira there?”

Maira took a deep breath and pressed her hands to her forehead. She felt a sore place on her scalp where her hair had been pulled so hard it nearly ripped out. “It’s a lot to explain.”

“I should tell you I already know you only told Lord Shadow half a lie. Professor Decaran did tell you something. He gave you instructions to complete a very important task. Am I wrong?” she asked. A self-satisfied smirk lit up her face. Maira let out another sigh. The woman had probably know all this from the minute she talked to Lord Shadow, and merely let Maira think she was getting away with something.

After gathering her thoughts, she told Yena everything she’d told Naran, leaving out only that the device was hidden next to her heart. That much she did not think she would tell any of them until it was over. For their own sakes.

“I’m sorry I had to lie to you so many times,” she said.

“No need to apologize. I would done the same. So you say the device is hidden and secure?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s completely safe, that’s all I want to say.”

“Are you sure? What if someone accidentally stumbles on it?”

Maira caught herself before she laughed. “That won’t happen. You’d have to know exactly where it was. Nobody would go looking there unless they knew, believe me.”

“I believe you think that’s true,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Is it a matter of not trusting us? Kei-zi and I would protect it’s location with our lives. Nobody outside this room would ever need know.”

“It’s not that. I want to trust you, but I can’t be sure of anyone but myself,” she said, shrugging. She studied her new boots, frowning that they were already a little dirty and scuffed and so were her pants.

“Fair enough,” Yena said as if that resolved everything. Maira’s head shot up. “That still leaves us with the question of who killed Professor Decaran, and what their intentions were. For the moment we’ll assume they were after the device.”

“What if it was for something else?” Maira asked.

Kei-zi answered, “Then we’re fucked anyway, because we’ve got nothing. Either they got what they wanted or we don’t know enough to stop them. This is all we’ve go, so we run with it until we know better.”

“How much progress had you two made on discovering the device’s purpose before you went to Niuschka’s shop?” Yena asked. She twirled an ink brush between her fingers gracefully but absently, like she didn’t realize she was fidgeting.

“Not much,” Naran answered. “We identified a rare component, but I still don’t know what it’s supposed to do.”

“Do you think you can figure it out?” Yena asked.

Naran shrugged. “Andaric was an inventor. It may not be like anything I’ve ever seen or have references for.”

Yena considered this for a moment, tapping the brush’s wooden end on an open book before she spoke. “Then we come at it from another angle. We find the go-between and then the person the device was meant to be delivered to. That should answer some questions.”

“So we’re going back to the Tsaqa Tract?” Maira asked. She thought of Reva and eagerly longed to return and find out if all that happened there was real, if the magnificent house had been more than a dream. Without reason, longing and sadness swept over Maira like thinking of a lost friend.

She didn’t think she had fallen in love with Reva, though it had been so long since Maira let herself think of romance she might not know. Having a lover seemed too risky, even when she was safe in Tayeland, making decent money.

“No,” Yena said.

“Oh.” She hoped her disappointment wasn’t obvious, because she would not explain Reva to anyone. A protective jealousy swept through her. She didn’t have to tell everyone everything. Reva and that dream were hers to keep. Maira shook her head and made herself focus on the conversation.

“Then how?” Naran asked.

“We have enough intelligence from the Tsaqa Tract. It’s one of the easier places to get agents into. If Decaran used a trader there as a go-between, we probably know them. It’ll be easier to search our records against what you know and see if anything matches,” Kei-zi said. He crossed his leg and bobbed one foot up and down. “If you’re willing to help us.”

“Of course,” Naran said. He looked to Maira. She nodded.

“Mr. Al-Shahd, would it be possible for you to retrieve the research materials you were using, particularly your notes and the drawing of the device? That may be helpful to us,” Yena said.

“Can I teleport from here or is the building warded?” he asked, pointing at the ceiling and then the walls as if indicate something all around them.

Yena turned in her chair, opened a desk drawer, dug through it and took out a coin sized silver talisman with a hole in the middle tied on a piece of twine. He caught it easily in one hand when she tossed it to him. “That’s good for one outgoing and one incoming teleport. After that, the magic becomes inert.”

“Smart,” he said, examining it with an approving look. Maira remembered the key in her pocket and pulled it out, handing it to him to return to the archives.

“Oh, and if you’ll inform Lord Shadow’s agents where we are and what’s happened.”

Maira sat up straighter, alarmed. “Why? That’s the last thing we want. If Lord Shadow got the device -”

Yena held up a hand and Maira silenced. “I don’t trust him anymore than you do, but this is the agreement. I gave my word that neither I nor my mother would keep you from him. That means keeping his agents apprised of your whereabouts. It was the only way to get his oath he wouldn’t interfere with this investigation.”

Outraged, she came off the couch with a huff. “You can’t make a deal like that behind my back, like I’m a fucking donkey in an auction. What gives you the right?” Naran reached out to pull her down, but she sidestepped away with a furious glance at him for even trying.

“The murder of a man gives me the right. Others remain in danger while his killer is free. If I had known more before I faced the Tract lord you deliberately pitted against my mother, I might not have had to make such agreements.”

Guilted by the words, Maira looked away from Yena’s cold gaze. “I had to lie,” she insisted.

“Of course. But understand that at the end of this I am still responsible for finding a man’s killer. And nothing will keep me from that. Neither you nor Lord Shadow nor any sorcerer nor even my own feelings.”

Maira nodded. Yena lifted her chin at Naran to send him off and he spoke a word quietly, then disappeared with nothing but a thin curl of smoke left behind him. Maira waved it away and sat down again. No one said anything for a long time.

“Your hands seem better than they were,” Kei-zi said, to break the uncomfortable silence.

She looked at them, now more scabbed than blistered and shrugged. “I suppose. I’m lucky nothing got infected.”

“Must have had a very handy healer looking at them, then,” Kei-zi said and snickered.

Yena groaned at the pun and rolled her eyes. “You are legally allowed to kill him for that if you want. Go ahead, I won’t mind.”

“Do I get his boots?”

“Hey now. These are the finest Callura leather. I’ll be passing them down to my children, thank you very much.”

Yena laughed again. “You have to get someone to mate with you before you can have children, Kei-zi.”

Maira hid her giggle behind the back of her hand. Yena balled up a piece of butcher paper with dried bread crumbs on it and threw at her him, laughing. She looked nothing like the cold, calculating woman who had just issued such an intractable warning a moment before.

The ambassador’s features were nowhere in that laugh. It must have been Yena’s other parent who passed on such looks, as they’d passed on the skin tone and build and face shape. Then Yena must have been that parent’s child in her looks, because her skin and build and face shape were not Ambassador Walksbetween’s. Then Yena smirked mischievously, a delighted devil in her eyes. When she smiled like that, however, she was entirely her mother’s creature. Maira saw nothing but the ambassador.

Naran teleported back in and the laughter immediately confused him. He gave them all curious looks. “I’m happy to see you’ve patched things up. Or did I teleport into the wrong office?” he asked, raising his brows. They all laughed harder at the face he made.

He leaned to the side to hand Yena the folded drawing of the device. Maira didn’t know why it was funny, it just was. Maybe after all the death and blood and seriousness, they needed something to be amusing. Yena shook her head to let him know it was nothing to worry about even as she still chuckled, and pocketed the drawing after a quick glance.

Kei-zi rose from his seat with a sigh, straightening his dress. “Now, to the records archive. In case you hadn’t spent enough time today thinking you were going die horribly in a basement.”

When they arrived in the labyrinthine, tunnels of the records archives, Maira realized that Kei-zi’s joke had not been entirely a joke. The rounded, tunnel-like halls stretched indefinitely in all directions, lined with boxes and shelves who’s organization seemed haphazard at best. A few shelves down, the halls converged in a hub where a lone half-Tsaqa Rok sat with one wing, an eyepatch over one eye and monocle held in the socket of the other. The Rok’s bearing spoke of vitality even though their short blue hair showed gray at the temples and crown.

Yena and Kei-zi both bowed to the records keeper with genuine respect in their faces, and got a smile in return.

“Captain, Lieutenant, it’s odd to see you down here. Don’t you have any new cadets who need whipping into shape?”

Kei-zi sat on the corner of the desk, grinning flirtatiously as he crossed his legs, dress hitched up a little to show his muscled thighs. “Afraid they haven’t sent us any, my love.”

“That’s because you keep breaking them.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

“You made the last one cry and beg to be sent home to daddy,” the records keeper said, casting a glance up at him that was very serious. “Now tell me what it is you want. Not that I don’t appreciate you coming down to show your friends how well you can wax my desk with your arse. It is always quite the show.”

Maira barely contained her snicker. Naran elbowed her like they were children giggling during prayer. The records keeper leaned and looked past Kei-zi to the two of them standing there.

“Who’s this?” they asked, squinting through the monocle. “Come closer. What have you brought me now, Lieutenant?”

“This is Naran al-Shahd, and this is Maira Aialah. They’re assisting us on a very important case,” Yena explained. She stepped aside and gestured to the desk with a flat hand, palm up. Maira and Naran both approached and the records keeper stood and removed the monocle, letting it dangle from it’s gold chain.

“A sorcerer. A nice bit of power to you, too,” they said, scanning up and down Naran’s height. “Not too bad to look at, either. Wouldn’t mind you waxing my desk for a while. What do you take?”

“The masculine,” he answered. “I don’t think I could ever surpass the lieutenant’s powers of ass waxing, unfortunately,” he said, with an improbably straight face that forced Maira to bite her lip to stop herself cackling.

“Few could. Besides, you’re already spoken for, you just don’t know it yet. Important man. They’ll tell stories about you, you know. Dashing sorcerer, brave heart, quick wit. The gods whisper your name in their rumors, they’ve picked a pretty tune for you to dance, too, and you’ll dance it well.”

Yena smiled, but not out of amusement. “I should have warned you about Zajeh. Zie may or may not be able to see into the future.

“Sounds a bit cliche doesn’t it?” the records keeper said and zie sounded somewhat pleased about that. “Some old thing down in some dark creepy place, one eye and a cane, telling people their futures in a spooky voice. They always have one in those plays they have, you know, the ones in the parks where they don’t start playing until people have given enough money or somebody gives all the troupe enough liquor.”

“I’ve seen a few,” Maira said. Most everyone had. The shows came around the Tayeland when the first batches of seasonal wine and whiskey went to market. They paid them in barrels and when the actors couldn’t wait to dip into their salaries, the plays got raunchy. And hilarious. And exciting if the actors were willing to take off their clothes and skip right to the fights and romantic scenes.

“Just so you know, sweetheart, I’m nothing like that. I earned my abilities. Used to be a soldier in the old days. I took my visions right off an enemy officer. Ripped the power right out of her. Since then when I see someone I hear the heavens and earth all whispering. Like leaves rattling in the wind telling me this and that. Who they love, how they’ll die, how many children, their saddest day, what they ate for dinner. But not you. When I see you there’s only silence.”

The back of Maira’s neck prickled the way it had when the big man in Niuschka’s shop laughed. “Is that bad?”

“I’ve got no fucking idea,” the records keeper replied and plunked back down in zir seat. “Honestly, stealing powers is a waste of time. If you ever get a choice, steal the fucker’s shoes and clothes and money, but leave their powers be. Maybe the universe just doesn’t have anything to say. Either way, you two’ll be all right in the tunnels.”

“Thank you,” Yena said and gave a small courtesy bow. “We need to access the Tsaqa intelligence records.”

“How far back?”

“No more than a year, wouldn’t you say?” Kei-zi asked, turning to his partner. She gave an assenting nod. “Yeah, about a year, if you could.”

“Of course. The doors’ll be open when you get there. If you need further back, just let me know. Anything up to ten years is around in the same area. Older than that you’ll have to go to the permanent storage areas. These two don’t have any lung problems, do they?” zie asked, pointing at Naran and Maira. Kei-zi shook his head. “The dust down there would choke a mule. Bad place to be if you’re just getting over lung sickness.”

“I don’t think we’ll need anything there, but thanks for telling us,” Kei-zi replied. “And I meant to ask. How’s your supply of whiskey?”

The records keeper chuckled. “I could use a bottle or two. The good stuff, from up on Midway Round. But no matter how you ply me with fine liquor, you know our love will never be, lieutenant.”

Kei-zi put a hand to the middle of his chest, feigning a lovelorn sigh. “How many hearts must you break?”

“As many as it takes,” zie said and winked at him as he slid off the desk and onto his feet. “You know the way. Go on.”

Yena and Kei-zi gave departing bows to Zajeh before they went to the long, narrow room crowded with functional gray metal shelves. In the absense of chairs or a table, Maira sat on the floor and waited while Yena and Kei-zi retrieved the things they needed. Without warning, Yena droped a thick tome into Maira’s lap.

“Read,” she commanded, her shadowed face softened by the hint of a grin. Beside her, Naran untied the string around a loose stack of a few papers. She glared at him, wondering why he got the small pile and opened the book. The binding gave a hard cracking sound as she did. She braced herself for the inevitable headache of reading in low light and flipped to the first page to lines and lines of scrawling reports, signatures, and dates. Ah. They’d given her the log book to scan through for anything promising. At least it was (mostly) legible and in Pahali or Domainish.

Maira took comfort that Yena had a thick book in her hands as well and the drawing on the ground beside her. The room fell quiet except for the sounds of breathing and pages turning. At length, the silence and relative warmth pulled at Maira. Her eyelids drooped heavily and she struggled to remain awake and attentive to the reports in front of her, which were far less interesting than she would have guessed. Most involved paying people off to snitch about trade violations or smuggling or thefts or conspiracy to smuggle and thieve.

A hand patted her knee rapidly, lightly. Maira came to attention with a sharp gasp, woken with a start that made her heart pound instantly. She clutched the book close as a shield and stared straight ahead. Naran was staring back at her.

“Sorry,” he said, looking a bit startled himself. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I wanted to ask a question.”

“It’s all right. What is it?”

“When he told you about the garden and the honeysuckle, what were his exact words?”

Maira thought back to the sound of the professor’s voice, straining for lucidity in the last moments of his life. “He said everything was beautiful in the garden that night. It smelled sweet like honeysuckle, there was singing in the air, all the blue lights.”

“He didn’t say just honeysuckle, though? He said ‘like honeysuckle’, right?” Naran asked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. Why?”

Naran leaned in, as they all did to hear him. “I may have something. There’s a report here about meetings with a trader by the Sealight Carnival. It says they met her in her garden next to the Celestial Church of the Waters. And most importantly, she imported ambergreen.”

Yena and Kei-zi said “Oh” as if this were very illuminating. Maira just blinked. “Ambergreen?”

“A powerful potion base,” he explained. “Mostly only sorcerers, Tsaqa mystics and Dhatan witch-farmers use it. It’s too dangerous to transport pure. It’ll eat through glass, metal, wood, anything. You have to dilute it just to get back to the city. Most cut it with something before they sell it. And doing that smells like honeysuckle.”

Yena held out her hand. “Let me see.” She scanned the paper Naran gave her, then handed it off to Kei-zi. “Sister Matsuda. She’s well connected enough to be involved in something like this. Did Decaran have any need for ambergreen?”

“Maybe, especially the gem in the device is green.”

“Explain,” Yena said.

Naran took a deep breath. “Ambergreen comes from the trees in Undominated forests. It comes out amber colored like sap, but anything it touches turns green. Hence the name. If Andaric used it on the stone, it would turn green and would likely be able to radiate the effect of a spell over a large area.”

“The kind of thing that could easily become a weapon,” Yena said.

“Exactly. The device could easily taint the air or water with ambergreen if used right. Or wrong, I should say.”

“It would turn people green?” Maira asked, looking at her own skin. She didn’t fancy going changing colors, but it didn’t seem that bad.

“Worse. It would cause anything inside them to grow out of control. Infections, tumors, even plant matter or meat they had eaten would come alive and grow until it burst from them.”

Maira shuddered and didn’t dare look down at her chest or contemplate the fragile glass held there.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell us where it is now?” Naran asked.

No. All the more reason to keep it contained within herself. “Yes. It’s safer where it is.”

“In that case, Kei-zi will escort you two back to the safehouse,” Yena said. “I’ll visit Sister Matsuda myself. Be safe, all of you.”

Kei-zi looked up at his partner as she stood in one fluid movement. “You too, Yena,” he said softly.