Bitter Angels (10 page)

Except Hamahd—my Clerk—who never said anything he did not have to—had just told me I was in a bigger mess than I had believed, and he had started it off by talking about Kapa.

We stepped off the spindly bridge onto what had once been a broad balcony and now was a kind of thoroughfare. I stepped to the side so a man with a load of reclaimed sheeting on his back could get past. I turned to Hamahd.

“Hamahd, please go ahead and make sure Liang meets me at the station, would you?”

His face was passive as he bowed, and I took it as a sign of approval. “Yes, Captain.” He set off at a much faster pace than I had been using.

Fear spread like an old ache through my guts and I suppressed it. I thought about going home and decided I should risk the delay. It would take even Hamahd a little while to hunt up the saint. I had time to check in on Father.

In fact, given all that had already happened, I had better.

Most of the huge old buildings—the theaters and casinos and brothels—had been broken up, each becoming its own village with the interiors rearranged according to the evolving needs of the inhabitants. Every so often someone got a little too enthusiastic with their rearrangement, and whole floors came down. There was still a mound of rubble where the Ultima had been.

My own door faced the open street. The only way to it was to cross Bidden’s sagging bridge, and climb down the rattling ladder to our balcony. Once a sliding crystal door had opened onto the tiled space, but I had replaced it with a new door of reforged and bolted metal. I rapped out our particular signal. Eventually, the bolts slid back and the door creaked heavily open.

“Welcome home, Captain.” My father, Finn Jireu, bowed and held out his hands for my coat, just in case anyone was watching.

Fifteen years ago, my father and mother had sold themselves into bondage to buy a slot for me in the Security
academy. The minute I got my rank and a steady posting, I started searching for them.

So far, I’d only found Father. Calling him my servant allowed him to live in my home, sleep in his own bed, have space and place and a little dignity. As a lieutenant, I was allowed a human servant. As a captain, I was allowed two. The arrangement twisted my guts, but if this game would keep him with me, I would play.

I touched his shoulder to assure him we were alone for the moment. He nodded and straightened up. “All right?” he asked in his thin and raspy voice. His coat was plain pale blue and his trousers straight buff brown. His boots were clean and new. Everything absolutely appropriate to his position as a waiting man, except for his sharp expression.

I shrugged. “I’ve got to get down and talk to Liang Chen,” I said. “Something’s up with the saints and God-Alone knows what.” I pulled Emiliya’s letter from my coat and handed it over to him. “Can you get this to Mother Varus?”

“Sure, sure. Sit down and eat, Captain Son.” Our small dim flat smelled of hot duck and garlic and my stomach was already growling. “I know, you’ve no time to make a proper meal of it.” He waved my words away before I could say them. “I’ll take Mother Varus the leftovers as well.”

I sat cross-legged on the carpet with my father, wolfing down steamed buns filled with duck and cabbage. For this brief time, I could pretend that there was nothing waiting outside the door. I poured him a cup of strong tea and heard the local gossip, although I only half listened. It was enough to hear his voice, steady if thin, and to know that for the moment, he was all right. No matter what came next, for right now, I had made at least one member of my family safe.

“Eh?” I looked up from the dumpling I’d been poking to pieces. Father cocked his head at me.

“The
Saeos
. This baby of theirs should be due in another month or two. Do you think we’ll be required to make a turnout?”

Ah, yes. Sometime back, our rulers had announced they were going to have an heir. And weren’t there three or four others in the first degree that were due at about the same time? Details trickled back.

“I’m sure of it. They’ve even hauled old Master Bloom out to design the party.”

My father’s mouth twitched. “The self-proclaimed Master of Dazzle running a baby’s natalday party? Oh, I bet he’s loving that.”

I shook my head. “Don’t underestimate him, Father. He has more disguises than any of us knows. I’d bet a gallon of pure water the best is his look of being a broken old man.”

Father nodded, but I wasn’t sure he believed me. There was no time or reason to argue the point. I got to my feet and Father rose as well and walked me to the door. I embraced his thin shoulders when I left, and he slapped me softly against the arm for showing sentiment. Feeling obscurely better, I made my way down to the foundation streets.

My Security house, No. 39, took up what once had been a string of boutiques for the tourists. I captained fifty Security, more than twice the usual number. This was because of the “OB troubles” down here, and because we had a water market.

Despite the Security and the Clerks, the way Fortress really controlled the Erasmus system was through the water.
Of all the moons in the system, only Fortress had its own supply. The rest of us had to import it.

Of course Fortress said they were committed to keeping a continuous and adequate supply of potable water, but somehow it never quite happened. The water markets only opened every other day, and it took every secop we had to keep them from turning into riots. The Security had to escort the carriers to fill the tanks. The Security had to keep order in the square where the excess was bought and sold at approved times. There was always talk of reservoirs and of getting the central plumbing working again. I did not expect to live long enough to witness these miracles. Why would Fortress voluntarily give up so much control?

My official job was to keep the streets peaceful. What that meant was I had to make sure that Dazzle’s children did not kill too many of Oblivion’s, and vice versa. I spent a great deal of time talking. I spent almost as much time tracking the shifts of turf, following the rise and falls of gangs, guilds, and families. My runs in the black sky were fairly regular too. I was one of the few licensed pilots on Dazzle—a status that allowed me to see Emiliya and other old friends. A status I kept in part because of Hamahd’s good reports.

One more thing to keep in mind during…whatever was to come.

I entered the Security house through the central front door, stopping to palm the active pad on Hamahd’s desk. Hamahd gave me a cursory glance and added his print for confirmation. We nodded to each other and I walked to the former storeroom that was my office.

It was a comfortably furnished storeroom now, with a desk and a screen, chairs, a cabinet, and at the moment, the cross, pacing Solaris saint I had sent Hamahd to bring me.

“I hope there’s no problem, Captain Jireu?” One of the things I like about the saints is they are reflexively polite. Liang Chen was angry, but because I had been courteous, he was incapable of being anything else in return.

“Nothing new. Will you please sit down?” I took my seat behind my scarred and listing desk and gestured him to the best and newest chair.

“Thank you.” Liang sat, crossing his legs and his arms. He was not tall, but he was solid in a way very few of us from Erasmus are. “How can I help you?”

I had considered and discarded multiple approaches on my way down. My relationship with Liang was complicated, to say the least. We neither liked each other nor hated each other. We both pitied each other for very different reasons, and we needed each other.

Finally, I decided I would imitate the Grand Sentinel and be direct.

“I have been told that a new group of workers is arriving from the Pax Solaris.”

Liang shrugged his shoulders, plainly irritated I was talking about such a small thing. “It’s the usual rotation. We aren’t allowed enough hands to do what we really need to, so the people we do have burn out pretty quickly.”

I watched Liang for a moment. In addition to polite, he was inherently honest, something else I liked about the saints. They said what they meant and meant what they said, and if they didn’t, you could tell right away.

“So there’s nothing about them I should know?” I could make Liang’s life difficult and chose not to, and he knew that. He did help the people down here, kept thirst and the
worst starvation at bay. I was grateful for that, but it was no different from the gratitude I felt for Hamahd—it only went so far, and no further.

Liang shrugged again. “I don’t know for sure. Might be they’ve finally decided to investigate Bianca Fayette’s death.”

I blinked. “Bianca Fayette?”

He frowned. Real anger deepened the lines on his brow and stiffened his shoulders. “Yes. A member of the Guardians who was…found dead a year ago.”

That was it, what I had been trying to remember.

A dead saint. It happened now and again. The foundation streets were not necessarily safe, even for those who understood them. I had seen the report. I had seen the place it happened and supervised the transfer of the body to the saints. When they did not raise a stink with the guard or Commander Barclay, I had forgotten about it.

“I take it you were not satisfied with our investigation for…I’m sorry, what was her name?”

“Fayette,” Liang said, slowly and clearly. “Bianca Fayette.”

“You were not satisfied with our investigation for Seña Fayette?” Not that there had been any. The body had been more liquid than solid by the time we’d been notified of its existence. Whoever or whatever had killed her was long gone.

Then it occurred to me that no one had come to investigate any of the other deaths we’d had among the saints in the past five years. But then again, none of them had been Guardians.

“Your people said it was simple robbery.” Liang lifted his shaggy eyebrows. “Is there any reason to believe otherwise?”

“You must think there is or you wouldn’t have made the request for an additional investigation. At least, I assume
you did?” I didn’t assume anything. I was fishing, but Liang didn’t seem to notice.

“Just for form’s sake.” Liang looked away. As I said, you could tell immediately when the saints tried to lie. “We are in a dangerous neighborhood. Coordinator Fayette wasn’t careful enough.”

Which was what I had been thinking, but hearing it from this mild, polite little man was both incongruous and uncomfortable. “That’s a little cold.”

“For a Solaris saint, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Liang blew out a sigh and rubbed his hands together. “I suppose it is. But I’ve got no time for those who can’t remember the difference between immortal and invulnerable.” He put his hands on the chair arms, getting ready to push himself back up onto his feet.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry.” He grimaced, probably because he realized he’d just delayed his own retreat. “Bianca Fayette was a licensed immortal. Some of them forget that just because they’ve been chemically fiddled with, they are not immune to being bashed over the back of the head. Which is what you said happened to her?”

“I’d have to look it up, but yes.” I watched him. I’d never heard a saint speak this way about anybody. I’d never heard them speak openly about their immortals either. I wonder what that did to them, the knowledge that death was a choice. What must it be like not only to own your life, but eternity along with it?

Liang finished standing up. “Bianca Fayette tried to turn a profit from her time here. That’s not what we’re here for.”

It took me a moment to digest this. I suppose, if I had
bothered to think about it, I would have thought saints were human and therefore vulnerable to corruption. I had never considered the possibility I would hear one of them talk about it. I didn’t want their secrets. But now it looked like I would have no choice but to take them.

“Why didn’t you ship her home?” I asked.

The corner of Liang’s mouth twitched. “As if any of us would have real jurisdiction over a Guardian.”

“I see.” For once, something Liang said about the Solarans that made perfect sense.

“Maybe.” But Liang’s eyes did not hold the benefit of even that much doubt.

“Sorry to have dragged you down here for this.”

He sighed one more time, deflating into himself. “That’s all right. I was coming down anyway. A friend of mine sent a message from Werethere. They’ve gotten a shipload of emergency construction workers from Oblivion. He’s asking to see if there’s any word of your mother.”

“Thank you.” I had to work to keep my gaze steady. There was no way Hamahd was not listening to this conversation.