Bone Song (22 page)

Harald brought his bone-shielded motorcycle to an idling halt. The Phantasm extruded two curved stands, steadying itself as Harald swung his leg over and dismounted.

“Stay ready,” he murmured. “And keep watch.”

A sense of alertness seemed to radiate from the Phantasm as Harald left it behind him. He strode quickly down an alleyway, across which a row of low spiked posts was set: there to discourage bikes and cars from joyriding between the graffiti-decorated walls.

Tonight was too cold for the neighborhood youths to be out in force. Even so, a sudden burst of red-and-gold light washed across closed windows, and a series of loud cracks split the air: firecrackers and gunpowder candles thrown by young idiots who ought to know better.

As a rookie cop, Harald had nearly shot a fourteen-year-old boy for throwing a firecracker, when his galvanized nerves had reacted as if to gunfire. Now he knew the difference automatically—not just from his years on the street, but from the intervening years as a marine before returning to life as a cop.

And as a sergeant in the Fighting Sevens, he had once led his troop into a safe haven in the Kongal Rock Forest, in the disputed Fuerile Valley beyond the Zurinese border. Harald had used a native guide, one who'd lived in the military base with them and even cooked their food. The guide's name was Gam Sintil, or at least that's what they knew him as.

Fucking bastard snitches and traitors.

But no one realized that Gam Sintil's true sympathies lay with the separatists—until a crescendo of hexlar-piercing rounds crashed from among the fractal forest pillars, and half of Harald's troop were dead before they even recognized the ambush.

Kill the fuckers.

Harald had fought his way out with three wounded comrades. His only satisfaction had been when Billy—aka Corporal Bilken Flewelor—placed a round in Gam Sintil's spine. The bastard had been running and nearly got clear.

Billy's skull had exploded into scarlet mist a second later, from a sniper that Harald never saw. Harald just managed to get away.

Kill them all.

Just as Harald would do to Donal Riordan if it turned out the bastard was responsible for what happened to Sushana.

Harald used snitches. He was gentle and friendly with them, when appropriate. But he distrusted and hated them all.

This was an immigrant area, where refugees from Illurium made their homes. Harald already knew where to check first: a café called Stelto's, where Birtril Kondalis hung out eight evenings a week (with Hachiday reserved for worship at the Temple of Xithros).

The usual haunting music drifted out of Stelto's, and Harald pushed aside the metal-beaded curtains and slid open the heavy rune-carved wooden door. Its runners were well-greased, so the door action was smooth and soundless. Harald stepped into the opium-scented atmosphere.

Three long-faced men were sucking from helical pipes in the far corner. When they turned their eyes toward Harald, the irises were fully contracted, their pinprick gazes focused on a dream world that had little to do with Harald himself: it was just a reaction to movement.

On the right-hand side, where a family was gathered to eat, a round-faced man with coffee-colored skin—that was Birtril—closed his eyes and swallowed. Then he opened his eyes and forced a smile.

“Hello, Sergeant,” he said.

“Birtril. What have you got for me?”

“Huh?”

“Information. You know that's what I like.” Harald dragged a spare chair across the cheap linoleum floor and sat down at Birtril's table. He nodded to the thin woman and two young boys who were sitting with Birtril.

“Mrs. Kondalis,” Harald added. “Nice to see you. And the sons.”

Birtril's wife, Laxara, nodded, but warily. She and Birtril were all too aware of the true legal status of their marriage. Birtril's first—and by law, only—wife remained in Silvex City, back in Illurium.

The money that Birtril sent her every week was the only thing that prevented her from raising the matter officially. If Birtril's bosses at the embassy heard about it, his career in catering for diplomats would be ruined for good. And no one would get any money.

“There's, er, nothing going on. . . .” Birtril looked up as the café's owner, Zegrol (the original owner, Stelto, had passed away during a dispute in a nearby nightclub whose bouncers bore scimitars that they knew how to use) poked his head through the curtains at the rear.

Zegrol spotted Harald, observed his mood, and withdrew immediately. The curtains swung gently after he disappeared. Birtril gave a long liquid blink of unsurprised disappointment. “Honestly, Sergeant. No one in the embassy's up to anything.”

“Not even the driver of XSA899-omega-beth-del?”

“Huh?”

“Limo driver. Lean, pale skinned, black hair. Get a grip, Birtril.” Harald leaned toward him. “And concentrate, will you?”

“Um. . . Sure, Sergeant.”

Harald checked the two sons for signs of anger, but they were not yet old enough to appreciate the bind that Harald held them in and to realize just how much their parents must resent him. Laxara's feelings remained deeply hidden.

“So what's his name? The driver?”

Birtril's gaze shifted to his left. “Ixil Deltrassol. He's an ex-army driver. Keeps to himself.”

“And?”

Birtril glanced at Laxara.

“Um, can we take a walk, Sergeant?”

“Well.” Harald smiled. “Of course. Let's get going.”

He stood quickly and helped Birtril get up, as though he needed assistance. It was a matter of maintaining dominance. Harald ignored the opium smokers and Birtril's family—his second family—as he left with Birtril beside him. But he kept watch in his peripheral vision.

Nothing happened as they passed through the hangings and out onto the cold street. Two youths on the corner, one carrying an unlit gunpowder candle, caught sight of Harald and faded into Raxman Alley. Harald was known here.

That was the way he liked it.

“Talk to me, Birtril.”

“I have no idea what he's done,” Birtril said quickly. “Deltrassol doesn't make friends. Not enemies but not friends either, you know what I mean?”

“Only if you use simple words.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. What are you hiding?”

“I'm not—Shit.” Birtril stopped by one of the metal posts. “I don't know about any crime he might have committed, okay?”

“Right, and who are his acquaintances, if he doesn't have friends?”

“I don't know. He spends time in Sir Alvan's offices, but then, he works for the man. That's all.”

“And?”

Harald stared hard, maintaining psychological pressure.

“There were rumors, and . . . I've seen Deltrassol's car parked where they said it would be.”

“Uh-huh. Continue, Birtril. All the way to the end.”

“The See-Through Look 'n' Feel,” said Birtril. “I happened to see him coming out of there.”

“You're sure?”

“Yeah, and the doorman said good night to him by name, like he was a regular or something, y'know?”

“Good.”

Birtril let out a sigh of relief.

“That's it, boss. Sergeant. That's everything I know about him.”

“I believe you.” Harald pulled out his wallet and slipped out three thirteen-florin notes. “Here, buy Laxara a new coat.”

Birtril slipped the money quickly into his pocket.

“Much appreciated, Sergeant.”

He waited, as if for permission to rejoin his family.

“Go on.” Harald nodded back toward Stelto's. “Laxara's waiting for you.”

“Thanks.”

Harald waited until Birtril was almost at the café door before calling out, “And I won't mention anything to Laxara.”

Birtril stopped, stiffening.

“About you being in Quarter Moon Alley,” added Harald. “I wouldn't want to speculate on what you were doing there. Know what I mean?”

Birtril's head hung forward, and he stood there in front of the door to Stelto's. His face was in shadow against the light, and perhaps he was crying: it was impossible to tell. Then he straightened by a small amount, pushed open the door, and went inside.

It banged shut behind him.

Harald stood looking at the closed door for a while. Then he remembered Sushana's battered face, and his own expression turned to stone.

A rocket burst high overhead, throwing out silver and black stars, emitting a screeching howl.

Reaching his motorcycle, Harald swung his leg over the saddle and settled into position.

“If this Deltrassol's a principal,” he told the Phantasm, “I'm going to rip his nuts off. But if he's just a stooge . . .”

The Phantasm rumbled and growled, engine revving as Harald took hold of the handlebars. It rolled forward, pulling its twin stands back inside itself.

“. . . then I'm going to make sure it's Donal bloody Riordan who loses his testicles, and more. For Laura's sake as well as Sushana's.”

The Phantasm accelerated into the street.

X
alia fought her way through
further barriers that Gertie found easy to slip past. For over a hundred twenty years, Gertie had glided along elevator shafts and the lesser-known aspects of police HQ architecture. She knew where solid stone offered clear passage and where security concerns had resulted in devious defenses.

Now Gertie hung back before the final labyrinth, directing Xalia.

*That way. See?*

*Yes. Thanks.*

There were risks in helping a fellow wraith, but Gertie had a perverse streak, and in any case she had been bored for days. And Xalia worked with Donal, was part of his new team, and Gertie's fondness for Donal had been growing with the years.

Xalia, meanwhile, slipped and squirmed and attenuated her form to a dangerous extent, fighting to breach the barriers. She wanted proof of Donal's complicity to take to Laura. But this fire labyrinth was of expert design.

*How are you doing, Xalia?*

Gertie's message came through blazing curtains of hot hex like a distant echo. Xalia directed a narrow beam of communication back through the labyrinth, more to see if she could than because she wanted to answer. She needed to concentrate.

*Fine. What did you think?*

Whether it was the tiny distraction of making that reply, Xalia could not tell—but in the next few moments, the bars of hex floating among the thinner shields grew fatter and hotter, strengthening their manifestation. Xalia pulled herself inward and held still, floating in place.

Then the bars brightened and began extruding crescent-shaped horns of crackling energy, and Xalia knew she was done for.

Going farther into the labyrinth was out of the question. Secondary and tertiary labyrinths began to swing and rotate through from the orthogonal pocket universes in which they were stored. They inserted themselves into the mortal continuum, filling the labyrinth's gaps.

*Vilnar, you mother—*

Xalia's curse was cut off as the first two horns of energy pierced her half-ethereal form, and pain flared along the length of her paranerves: a twisting agony such as normal human beings could never experience.

*Xalia?*

*It's got me.*

A long, thin thread worked its way among the sprouting new bars of the overlaying labyrinths. It was Gertie, extending herself to reach Xalia—or trying to.

In a moment of clarity, Xalia understood what Gertie was doing, and why. She remembered the way Gertie joked with Donal and how Donal had not shown any hesitation in accepting a freewraith as a task-force member.

Damn it, Xalia liked Donal, but if he was in league with the enemy . . .

*Gertie, I'm here to gather evidence against Donal Riordan.*

For a second, the extruded portion of Gertie's form withdrew, like a blind snake slithering backward from an electric shock.

Then she extended back into the ever-tightening labyrinth, questing, and after a moment Xalia understood that there was no sense in telling Gertie to get out of there. It would be quicker to show her how bad things were.

Xalia extended herself until her form impinged on Gertie's extrusion, wraith coexisting in the same space as wraith, just as two more crescent horns slipped inside her body. She howled, broadcasting agony along frequencies and energy fields unknown to humankind.

Gertie's form—such parts of her as Xalia could sense—throbbed and flared with shared pain as the cutting hex blasted along her own paranervous system. In the distance, a scream sounded.

*Now will you for fuck's sake get out of here, Gertie?*

After a hundredth of a second, Gertie's reply rang inside Xalia's paranervous system:

*This is my damned building, and no one does this to me!*

Then Gertie's form began to glow with a concentration of energy such as Xalia had never experienced before.

Donal, meanwhile, had the telephone number that he needed, the second link to Commissioner Vilnar's office, but with no hope that it could be offered as evidence in court. His technical expert, Kyushen, sat in shocked silence, unmoving, while stretcher bearers carried out the unmoving dwarf.

The dwarf's condition, if nothing else, made the evidence invalid.

It was not true death but a Basilisk trance, unbreakable according to every diagnostic Kyushen had run. Legally, such deep catatonia
was
death. No one in Tristopolitan legal history had ever awakened from a Basilisk trance.

Kyushen stared into nothingness.

“You feel bad.” Donal watched the stretcher bearers leave and the iron door swinging shut behind them. The displays that had flared so brightly earlier had faded to a few small, minimized, and dimmed-out ghosts. “And you could probably use your own instruments to change how you feel about that . . .”

Kyushen looked up.

“. . . but you shouldn't,” continued Donal. “Because you
have
killed a man, and you don't get over it, you don't accept it—you just live with it.”

“But I didn't mean to—you know.”

“Yes,” said Donal. “But it was always a risk, and we both knew it.”

Kyushen began to shake. His skin was pale, and this was the aftermath of shock. Donal watched the fit of shivering take hold of him.

“Relax,” said Donal. “Don't fight it. Let it pass through you . . .”

Kyushen closed his eyes and moaned.

“. . . because this is natural. Afterward, you will be okay.”

Some of these words came from Donal's subconscious, from the mesmeric trance the police mage had taken him into after the first fatal street shoot-out that Donal had been caught up in. Donal had killed three men, not just one, after Fredrix's throat exploded in gouts of scarlet arterial blood.

Donal had watched Sergeant Fredrix Paulsen—the nearest to a father Donal had ever known—gasp and shrink as his eyes grew opaque, and that was it: nothing left of the man save fuel for the reactor piles.

Two minutes later (though it might have seemed much longer than that to Kyushen), the shaking fit began to fade to a tremble and finally was gone. Kyushen slumped.

After a moment, Donal left.

Xalia screamed, rotating like laundry in a dryer, twisting in and out of reality as Gertie dragged her through tiny closing apertures of pain. Scalding agony defined the tightening labyrinths as Xalia's wraith form was ripped and torn.

Yet she remained essentially intact as Gertie's cunning use of power and topology took both of them through the fatal hex defenses, back to the perimeter. And then they were outside, basking in cool solid stone. Above them, the outer defenses roiled and burned.

Gertie's words rolled through Xalia's awareness.

*So what point did you prove here today?*

Suffering delineated every movement of Xalia's discorporate being.

*What . . . do you . . . mean?*

*You were trying to accuse Donal Riordan. Implicate him.*

Xalia billowed, her wraith form still ripped, insubstantial inside the solid stonework of the building. Her ability to concentrate was gone; her communication was weak.

*Yes . . .*

*Did you get any resonance of a personality in there? In the energies of the labyrinth?*

Xalia twisted, trying to focus.

*Resonance?*

*Yeah . . . what kind of wraith are you, anyway?*

After a moment, Xalia drew enough energy into herself to be able to reply.

*Fuck off.*

Gertie chuckled.

*That's better. Now, as soon as you can work out whose flavor that was*
—she meant flavor of resonance—
*The sooner you can leave young Donal alone.*

*You like . . . him.*

Again Gertie was amused at Xalia.

*I like puppies too. Have you been in the deathwolves' den?*

If Xalia had had eyes, she would have closed them. Banter was too much. Everything still hurt.

*Don't . . . understand.*

*Young Donal's like a pet to me. You're like a neighbor's kid. And it's time you straightened out your own feelings about Laura Steele.*

*Fuck . . .*

*Well, you're a wraith, so maybe you shouldn't. Not with humans.*

This was too much. But the words that came next from Gertie were softer in tone, soothing, leading Xalia farther away from the burning labyrinth. The two wraiths began to sink downward, remaining inside the cool, solid, protecting stone.

*Come on, Xalia. There are groves and grottoes no one knows about anymore. Some have healing energies.*

*I don't . . . know.*

Gertie drew closer.

*Trust me. I can heal you.*

After a moment, Xalia replied.

*Yes . . .*

*Then come.*

Their descent through stone became faster.

Donal was in Laura's office. Laura had commanded the internal glass walls to darken so that she and Donal had privacy. They hugged and kissed, and she groaned when Donal ran his palms and fingertips along her thin blouse, across the silkiness of her bra, but they drew back from going any further.

There were too many officers and other beings in the building capable of sensing powerful resonances; lovemaking would have to wait until they were back in Laura's apartment. Donal blew out a long breath.

“Oh, Thanatos.”

“Yeah . . .”

Then Donal swallowed and looked at the now-opaque wall, as though there were something to see. He said, “I don't
want
to go, you know.”

“You don't want to visit a foreign country?”

Donal shook his head.

“I
am
scared shitless of flying, if you want the truth, but I can always get drunk. Foreign trips weren't exactly a feature of the orphanage, so I would like to go abroad. . . . That's not it.”

“I know.” Laura's voice grew small and quiet. “It's scary, isn't it? How fast things happen, like you and me.”

“Exactly.”

“You don't want to be apart from me, and that's good.” Laura gave a half-sad smile. “I feel the same way, love. But we both know you're going to Illurium because it's the only way to do the job.”

After a moment, Donal nodded.

“I guess. Listen, I don't want you in danger, but you could come with me and—”

“No, I don't think so.”

Donal rubbed his face. “Couldn't we make it a vacation for you, while I do the investigation work? I don't want you undercover—sorry, I know you're the boss—but we could set you up in a separate location. I'm good at shifting through alleyways without being tailed—”

“Oh, my beautiful man.”

Laura stepped close, laid the palm of one cold hand against his face—it felt deliciously soothing to Donal—and kissed him gently.

“What?”

“You treat me just like any other woman.”

“Well . . .” Donal smiled. “Not
exactly
like everyone else.”

“Ha. But that's the point.”

“Uh, what is?”

“What's in here.” Laura gestured toward her left breast. “I'm
not
like other women. People like me are carefully tracked wherever we go. I'm not even sure I'd have legal rights in Illurium.”

“Ah, fuck.”

Laura smiled beautifully.

“Whatever you say. Just as soon as we get home.”

Donal shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. Laura laughed.

“All right,” she added. “We'll get some initial planning done for your trip. Harald's contacts over there will be invaluable—Where is he, anyway?”

“Haven't seen him for ages,” said Donal. “Maybe at the hospital with Sushana?”

“No, I just called there a while ago. Viktor's with her. I think he and Harald are taking turns to watch over her.”

“Good.”

Harald was leaning over his bike, accelerating hard as he retraced his route along the Orb-Dexter Freeway, knowing he was within minutes of potentially destroying Commander Steele's happiness. Laura Steele was the best superior he'd ever served under, his marine service included. When she realized that Donal was a creature of the Black Circle, she would be devastated.

But then Harald remembered Sushana's face, the evidence of things done to her by Sally the Claw and his men. Viktor had been closeted away with one of the hospital doctors for what seemed like an age before coming out with a dead look in his eyes and brackets of anger in the muscles beside his mouth.

Harald would make someone pay . . . make everyone pay, beginning with Lieutenant Riordan and not stopping until he'd taken down Commissioner Vilnar. He needed just one more piece of evidence. But he had always felt there was something wrong in Commissioner Vilnar's domain. Odd energies had flickered and resonated in the commissioner's office, just beyond the edges of Harald's marine-trained senses.

The Phantasm motorcycle leaned into a corner, took the bend while startling a finely dressed old woman about to cross the road, then straightened up and increased speed once more.