Law of Survival (16 page)

You bastard.
He could spot a weakness the way a carnivore scented prey. “I try not to get too wrapped up in what I look like.” Jani studied a dark blue trouser suit, and voted it
suitably somber. “That way, when I change, I won't know what I missed.” She yanked at the gown's shoulder fasteners, but they remained stubbornly fixed in place.

“Is this one of John's gifts?” Lucien stepped closer. “I think I know how it operates.” He tugged lightly at the places Jani had pulled without success. The seaming released with a sigh—the silk slid down Jani's body and puddled to the floor. His fingers followed close behind, down her arms, cupping her breasts, roaming over her stomach.

“What's happening at the embassy?” Jani could hear the hoarseness in her voice, and damned her weakness.

“SOS.” Lucien nuzzled her neck, then gripped her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Same old same old….” He pulled her close and kissed her.

Jani savored his taste, pressed her naked skin against rough polywool. Shocks spread across her body as though the cloth held static. Her weak knee sagged as Lucien backed her against the closet wall—the sight of the blue trouser suit shook the sense back into her. “Twenty minutes,” she gasped in his ear.

Lucien released her abruptly. He walked out of the closet and straight to the dresser. He braced his hands on the edge, his breathing irregular.

Jani resumed dressing eventually. When she walked to the mirror to check her face for smeared makeup, she ignored Lucien's pointed stare. “So what's the story?”

Lucien paced by the bed, lid in hand. “There are issues with Ani's tile. Believe it or not, some of the materials used in the manufacture could be classified as edible, and Shai's trying to use that as an excuse to can the project. Colonel Derringer ordered you called in.”

“Derringer's going to be there?” Jani hefted her duffel. “That will be the highlight of my evening.”

Steve and Angevin sat side-by-side at the desk, their heads bent together over an open file. They looked up as one when Jani and Lucien entered. Angevin smiled. Steve didn't.

“The idomeni embassy.” He slipped off the chair. “That's the only place you're goin'?”

“Yes,” Jani answered, because she knew Lucien wouldn't.

“Take some time, ya think? Couple hours?”

“Probably.”

“He's drivin'?” Steve followed them into the hall.

“Yes, Daddy.”

“We'll be waiting here for ya, Jan.” Steve trailed them down the hallway and watched them until the lift doors closed.

Lucien watched him in return.
“Âne-recolteur—”

Ass-picker.
“Be quiet.” Jani watched the floor indicator move. “Stop speaking French as though I don't understand.”

“I hate that little bastard.”

“Well, he hates you, too, so wallow in it.”

Except for the assistant desk, the lobby proved empty at that late hour, the street devoid of traffic.

“I'm parked in the garage.”

“I have trouble walking up and down that ramp.”

“The battery was low—I needed to charge it.”

“You just did this afternoon.”

“I drove a lot today, ran it down.” Lucien strode ahead of her at first. Then his step slowed until she caught him up. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

What the—?
Jani tried to shake off the unfamiliar embrace, without success. “What's with the bear hug?”

“Just trying something different,” Lucien said sourly as he pulled his arm away. “No one else seems to mind.” He stepped aside and let her precede him into the garage. “You know, the last time you received a summons like this, we were at the embassy for two days.”

“Don't remind me.” Jani edged down the steep ramp, her knee sagging with every stride. She felt Lucien's hand on her shoulder again, then her knee buckle. “Will you—!”

“I'm just trying to help—!”

A flash seared from the bottom of the ramp. A crack like a whip. Jani hit the ground and rolled behind a pillar. Tossed the bag aside. Reached for the shooter she hadn't carried for months, and cursed her empty hand.

I'm here for you,
augie told her. He spoke to her with the slowing of her pounding heart, the quenching of the sour taste of fear.
You'll never die as long as I'm around.

Jani heard the clatter of running, into the depths of the
garage.

There they go,
augie cried.
Get them!

She rose to give chase—

“Jani!”

—but the outer voice stopped her. She turned, and saw Lucien struggle to sit upright, his tunic smoking.

He reached out to her. “It's not a graze—it's a full-front hit.” He tried to bend his legs so he could rise, but they shot from beneath him as though he sat on wet ice.

Jani scooted to his side, her attention torn between assessing his wound and the dark interior of the garage. She reached inside of his tunic, and felt the tingle of residual charge as she dug out his handcom and flicked the emergency call. “I can't tell if it's dead or not—the display is fried.” She tossed it to one side and pushed down on Lucien's shoulders as he tried to rise. “Lay back! Stop fighting!”

“Why don't my legs work!”

“Nerve disruption. You just got hit by a bolt of lightning.” She had to push with all her strength to keep him down—augie had him by the throat and the pain had yet to break through.

She pulled away his belt, the metal buckle still hot enough to sting. The shooter holster cracked in her hands, the weapon within burned like a live coal. She tossed the belt and holster aside and tucked the shooter in her pocket. She could feel its heat through her clothes as she continued to work.

The smoking polywool came next. Jani searched Lucien's disintegrating trousers, removing a charred wallet, vend tokens, and a mini-stylus and pocketing them as well. The stink of burnt fabric burned her throat and made her eyes tear. She pulled away fragments of shirt. Underwear. “Oh—”

“What!” Lucien tried to raise himself on his elbows to look.

“Get down.”
Jani pushed him back. “You're burned. It's bad. Stop moving around.” She swallowed hard as the odor of charred flesh filled her nose. The burn covered the lower quarter of Lucien's abdomen—his right, her left—a sprawling oval of red-white blistering centered with charred,
leathery black. Second-and third-degree burns, compounded by whatever internal damage the impact of the pulse packet caused and aggravated by Lucien's moving around.

“Jan?”

“Yeah.”

“Am I still there?”

Jani glanced beneath the remains of Lucien's underwear. “Yup. The burn didn't spread that far.”

Lucien laughed. “Probably not a jealous spouse then.” The happy expression froze as sweat bloomed on his face. “It's starting to hurt.”

“Stop moving around.”

“Is that me that I smell? Medium or well-done?”

Jani rolled her duffel into a pillow and tucked it beneath Lucien's head. “Quiet.”

Lucien stilled. Then the pain broke through in earnest. He gasped and stiffened.
“Ça ne fait mal!”

“I know it hurts. I know.
Je le sais.”

“Ça ne—!”

“Paix, paix.” Hush, hush.
Jani pushed his damp hair off his forehead, whispering thanks when she heard the wail of an ambulance siren. She checked her timepiece. Only a few minutes had passed. Seemed like hours. Then she heard running. Instinct compelled her to reach for the shooter.

“Where are you!”
A woman's voice.

“Down here!”
Jani waited until she saw the skimgurney and Medibox before slipping the shooter back in her pocket.

The woman knelt beside Lucien as two other techs readied the gurney. She took in his uniform, then looked at Jani. “Augment?”

“Yes.”

“Ab-scan,” the woman said to one of the other techs. She probed Lucien's abdomen—he moaned and tried to push her away. “He's not rigid, but we could have shooter belly.” A male tech knelt at Lucien's other side—together, the two of them adjusted a portable scanner over Lucien's stomach while the second man applied restraints to his hands.

Jani walked down to the end of the ramp, to the spot
where she'd seen the flash. In the background, the techs talked in their own language.
Cardio-scan. Fluid replacement. Percent BSA. Debride.

She found the shooter in the shadow of a pillar. A late-model Grenoble, dull blue and ugly, but powerful from midrange on in.
The ID tags will be etched away. The markers embedded in the metal will point to a middleman-broker who went out of business five years ago.
And the professional who had pressed the charge-through would be halfway to O'Hare by now.

In the distance, she heard the nasal sing-song of a ComPol siren.

“NìRau? NìRau?”

Tsecha's eyes snapped open. He blinked into the dark. At first, he thought the Laumrau had begun bombing again, that Aeri had awakened him so they could flee to the shelter of the Temple cellars. His heart skipped. He gripped the sides of his bed and braced for the blast.

But the face that bent over him was not Aeri's. Similar in shape but finer-boned, and much, much younger. Tsecha tried to look into its eyes, but it turned away.

What are you? Where is Aeri?

Then he remembered. That Aeri was dead. That the Laumrau were no more. That the war had ended long ago, and that he had not slept in his Temple rooms in Rauta Shèràa for a long time.

“NìRau, you must come to the meeting room.” Sànalàn, Aeri's body-daughter, addressed Tsecha's footboard to prevent any more unseemly eye contact. “Suborn Oligarch Shai bids you attend.”

“Nìa—?”

“There has been a shooting. Any more, nìaRauta Shai has forbidden me to say.”

Tsecha rose too quickly for his old bones, and dressed as though he indeed heard the shatterboxes singing outside his window. Fear drove him. That, and the triumph he heard in Sànalàn's voice.

 

Tsecha edged about in his low seat and leafed through the scant few pages that lay in front of him. When he leaned for
ward to study the words more closely, the table's pointed edge caught him in his stomach, forcing him to sit back.

He looked one by one at the others who sat on either side of him, along the table's two arms. Suborn Oligarch Shai sat in the slightly higher seat to his left, as she had the previous day; Sànalàn's seat placed opposite hers on the right arm. The two lowest ranks in the room, Diplomatic Suborn Inèa and Communications Suborn Lonen, occupied the tallest seats at the ends of the arms.

Tsecha found the upward slant of the table disquieting. He felt dazed, as he had the night when the bombs fell and Aeri had not come for him. The night when he learned that Aeri would never come again.

He pushed thoughts of his dead suborn from his mind, and studied the others again. They had dressed hurriedly, as he had, their hair disarrayed, their overrobes bunched and creased.
As though they, too, flee the bombs.
He looked down at the paper once more. His soul ached from tension, but he dared not let it show. “This is all we know?”

“The Service has thwarted our attempts at message interception, nìRau.” Lonen held on to the arms of her elevated chair as Tsecha had the sides of his bed. “They use cryptowave, and change the cipher with each word.”

“Cryptowave for standard communication is most unseemly.” Shai's roughened voice and harsh gestures defined her impatience. “This Pascal is known to us—we are entitled to be told of his condition, not to have to grab it from the air.”

Tsecha reread the few words Lonen had been able to decrypt.
Jani Kilian…Lieutenant Pascal…shot upon entering…burned…other injuries.
“Has any formal explanation yet arrived?”

“No, nìRau.” Diplomatic Suborn Inèa sat easily on her high seat. A perfect posture, of the sort Hansen had always called
angel on a pin.
“We have contacted Prime Minister Cao's offices for information. All they say is that”—she slipped into English—“
the situation is beneath control.”

“Under
control, nìa.” Tsecha suppressed a gesture of berating. He reread Lonen's report once more, in the hope that what he did not see was there to be found, and that he could
avoid the question that he knew the others waited for him to ask. But such, he decided as he turned the final page, was not to be. “Nìa Kilian was not hurt?” He heard Shai grumble in Low Vynshàrau and shift in her seat.

“We could not learn if she was, nìRau,” Lonen replied with a hand curve of bewilderment. “We could not learn if she was not.”

“This secrecy for no reason is repellant. This repellency defines the difference between humanish and idomeni more than any other thing.” Shai elevated the language from formal Middle to formal High Vynshàrau, so that her every feeling would be clearly revealed. “Our forthrightness in the midst of this secrecy leaves us at a disadvantage. If we request openly, we will only be told what Li Cao wishes us to know. Our interest will be taken as further reason to withhold—this I know from studying humanish, and truly.”

Tsecha could see the tension in the posture of Diplomatic Suborn Inèa, much more so than in Lonen's or Sànalàn's. As if she knew what Shai would say next.
So, it happens.
He remained silent, and waited for what he knew must come.

“Much of our behavior leaves us at a disadvantage in dealing with humanish. We speak as we feel. We act in honesty. We offer everything. Humanish take all of it, and return nothing.” Shai sat back in her chair and stretched her right arm out before her on the table, palm up. A gesture of pleading. “And so in the end are we left with nothing.”

Tsecha toyed with the ends of his overrobe cuffs, rearranging them so as to expose the very edges of his many scars.

Shai understood the challenging nature of the gesture—her hesitancy before she spoke indicated such. Yet still she spoke. “We do not deserve
nothing.
We deserve to know all that the humanish wish to withhold from us.” She turned her palm facedown, a sign of an unpleasant decision having been reached. “Morden nìRau Cèel sent us here because of our strength, because he knew that we would nurture and protect all that was as idomeni in the middle of this chill unholiness. In doing so, we have sacrificed much, including that which we sought most to protect. Our sovereignty.” She drew her hands together, one atop the other, again palm down. The decision confirmed.

“I have consulted with Cèel these past weeks, and with our xenolinguists, and our behaviorists. Our conclusions concur. The humanish think us weak when we act as our way demands. They see our open disputation as disunity, our godly challenges as discord. They do not think us strong, and because of this, they feel right to hold back information from us, to break agreements and disregard contracts.”

“But you wished breakage of the Elyan Haárin contract, Shai, and truly,” Tsecha muttered without gesture, so low that only Shai could hear him.

Shai responded by raising the pitch of her voice, as in prayer. “Thus will we act strong as the humanish understand strong. Thus will we withhold our opinions, and keep our arguments amongst ourselves. Thus will we behave as one before them, as they behave as one before us.”

Lonen crossed her left arm in front of her chest in supplication. “NìaRauta Shai, we will damn our souls if we behave as false.”

“Then we will petition Caith to protect us, nìa Lonen, for only in this annihilation will we remain whole.” Shai bared her teeth for an instant only, a truncated expression that signified as much as a humanish shrug. Or as little. “We are the stones that form the Way. Although we are as nothing, other Vynshàrau will tread on us, and thus make their way along the Bridge to the Star.”

Tsecha remained quiet as the last tones of Shai's speech drifted through the air and settled, like Dathim's tile dust. He looked from figure to figure, searching for the subtle changes that would signal their agreement with the Suborn Oligarch. The elevation as they sat up straighter, to show their respect. The lifted curve of their left hands, to show their certainty of agreement. He saw them in Lonen, and of course, in Sànalàn, and in Inèa. He kept his own hands clasped before him on the table. He had reached his own difficult decision many years before—this night saw only the laying of another stone in his own long Way.

“Humanish secrecy defines itself not by what it does but by that which it leaves behind.” Tsecha heard his own voice, low and measured. He petitioned no one with his words. “Trails of blood, and humiliation. Former Interior Minister
van Reuter would attest to this, I believe.” He bared his teeth wide, in the truest idomeni fashion. “I have read of the humanish writer Sandoval, who wrote that secrets bind with their own weight, that to carry many secrets is to wrap oneself in a chain of one's own making.” He rounded his shoulders and slumped in his chair, a most obvious display of his displeasure. “You have bid us don our chains, at a time when we must move as free. You damn us, Shai.”

Shai tossed her head and fluttered her right hand once, a gesture of the greatest disregard. “I seek to save us, Tsecha. It is you who will damn us with your beliefs and your false predictions. You announce them before the humanish, and thus give them reason to fear and mock us. You claim to speak for the gods, and in the gods' names you will dilute and dishonor us!”

Tsecha sensed the mood of the room, the acceptance of Shai's words in the postures of the others. “You speak as you do, Shai, because nìa Lonen and nìa Inèa and nìa Sànalàn give you leave with their every movement. In this room, at this time, you know how each of us regards you, and use such as a basis to decide how you will next act. No indecision. No uncertainty. Yet you will take that away from us all and call it strength, and you dare to accuse me of dishonor!”

“It is settled, Tsecha!”

“It was settled days ago. Before yesterday's meeting, when Anais commended the idomeni for their forthrightness, you already knew of this plan. You have studied the hiding lesson well, have you not, Shai? We both know that there is more to this than contracts.” Tsecha tilted his head to the left until his ear touched his shoulder, and let the anger wash over him like the cold season air to come. “Say her name, Shai! In the name of annihilation, say the name of the one whom you will keep from this place, in the name of your new-found secrecy!”

Shai's voice lowered in menace. “Until we have received sufficient information regarding the condition of Lieutenant Pascal and the reason for the attack on him, we cannot allow your Kilian within these walls. Nor can we allow you to leave the embassy compound. It is a precaution—”

“It is cowardice!”
Tsecha shouted now, his voice rever
berating off the polished stone walls. “Wanton disregard of the truth you have denied since we lived at Temple. And now you will take this new truth that only you and your behaviorists see and use it as a way to separate me from my Kièrshia!”

Shai tensed, then raised her hands in argument. “Your Kilian—”

“My Kilian, my Jani, my Captain. My Eyes and Ears. My student. My teacher.
Mine.”
Tsecha forced himself silent. His heart pounded; his face burned. So unseemly, to rage in such an uncontrolled way. “You have learned well, Shai. In a few months, you have become as Anais or Li Cao. You will shut me up in this place, for my
safety.
You will keep me from my Jani and my Jani from me, for my own good. When has protection ever destroyed so utterly that which it was supposed to defend? Tell me, Shai, and damn your soul if you lie of this!”

Shai sat still. Then she rested her arms as Tsecha did. As a secular, her sleeves lacked the red banding that complemented
à lérine
scars so well. Her pale scars seemed to fade into the sameness of her skin.

Tsecha studied Shai's exposed arms for the ragged red of fresher lacerations, but could see none, not even the self-inflicted hack to the forearm that signaled the end of a bout.
It has been a long while since your last challenge.
He looked down at his own arms, and the spare scattering of red.
It has been a long time since mine.
How they would slash and stab at one another, the smooth parries of youth replaced by the deceptions and strategems of age.
I await your challenge, nìa.
It would no doubt prove an interesting encounter.

“You may well pronounce my soul damned, nìRau ti nìRau. You are my Chief Propitiator, my intercessor with the gods, and such is most assuredly your right. In the ways of the gods, no Vynshàrau is your dominant.” Shai pushed away from the table, whatever challenge she felt to make put aside for another time. “But when you act as ambassador, you become a secular, and all seculars in this place answer to me. I have ordered that you will not leave this place. You will, therefore, not leave this place until I lift the order. For your safety.” She stood, her overrobe falling in wrinkled
folds to the floor. “Glories of this too-late night to you, Tsecha.” She swept out the door behind Lonen and Inèa, and finally, his Sànalàn.

Tsecha gestured in easy agreement as the door closed. “Yes, nìa.” He thought again of his Hansen. How he would pace and rail at times like these, when the Laumrau or the humanish Consulate had acted in some stupid manner and he knew nothing could be done to stop them. Tsecha tried to recall the comment Hansen used in those situations, which twinned so well the one he found himself in now.
Pissing into the wind.
Yes, that was it, and truly.

 

Tsecha tried to sleep, and failed. Tried to pray, and failed again.

He dressed. He walked. Throughout the embassy, and the altar room where he would soon pass his days, much to Shai's rejoicing. Out on the lake-facing verandas, where even in the dim of night, Vynshàrau contemplated, wrote, discussed.

Across the lawns. Past the buildings. He knew where he went, though what good it would do, he could not say. He wondered if Shai now had him watched, or if she felt her confinement order eliminated the need.

He had just reached the treeline when he heard the sound. He paused to listen to it, such a contrast to the rustle of leaves and crunch of undergrowth. The high-pitched
sweep sweep
of stone against metal. Odd to hear it in this place, at this time. It was a sound of the quarries, the weapons forges, and during the time of war, the hallowed courtyards of Temple. The steady hasp and scrape of a Vynshà sharpening a blade.

Tsecha followed the sound to a small clearing. Why did it not surprise him to find the crop-headed figure seated on a stump, stone in one hand, ax-hammer in the other? “You work so early, ní Dathim?”