Undercity (8 page)

VII

The Caverns

Once before, I’d seen someone die by tangler fire. It wasn’t any easier to take this time than the first. The drifter fell to the ground in a violent seizure as the shot scrambled her brain. She convulsed so hard that her body arched high off the ground. It took several minutes for her life to end, and it seemed like eternity. I didn’t realize that I’d lunged forward until my foot hit a rock and I sprawled on my stomach. The thudding of the drifter’s convulsions covered my fall; otherwise my futile attempt to stop the murder could have ended with Scorch shooting me, too.

Scorch wasn’t done yet. She used the laser carbine to incinerate the drifter’s body, leaving nothing but a few ashes. Even as I watched, the breezes stirred them into the air. It wouldn’t be long before they dispersed altogether.

Without a backward look, Scorch boarded the flycar. Seconds later it soared away over the desert.

I didn’t move at first. When Scorch’s flyer was no longer visible in the parched sky, I walked to where the drifter had died. Most of the ashes were already gone. I clicked a hollow disk off my gauntlet and scraped a bit of the remaining powder into the container.

I headed back to Cries.

“Message incoming,” Max said.

I jerked, surfacing from the trance I had fallen into during my fourteen-kilometer hike across the Vanished Sea. I had just reached the outskirts of Cries, exhausted and numb.

“Message?” I asked.

“From Jak,” Max said. “Do you want to receive?”

“Go ahead.”

Jak’s voice growled on my gauntlet comm. “Got dinner, Bhaaj. Alone.”

Damn. I had forgotten to meet him at the penthouse. “Sorry.”

“Where are you?”

“Muttering Lane. Near the seashore.”

“Be there in—” He paused. “Three minutes.”

“Thanks.”

I kept walking, headed into a deserted industrial district. After a while, a sleek black hover car edged around a warehouse and settled on the cobblestones up ahead. I activated the dart thrower in my left gauntlet and kept walking. You could get a license to carry darts, which only stunned, or even a pulse gun, but not a tangler. Never a tangler. You couldn’t trace tangler shots and they made death into a slow torture. Police hated them. I hated them. Right now I didn’t like myself, either. How many people had died by Scorch’s hand because I saved her life all those years ago? And for what? So I could call in the favor decades later and figure out that she had sold or killed a Majda prince. If I had let her die, maybe Dayj would be all right.

Right,
I thought bitterly. If Scorch had died, someone else would have risen to fill the vacuum she left in the ugly side of the aqueducts, and I was a fool if I thought otherwise. This was what I had hated about the undercity, one of the reasons I had never wanted to come back.

When Jak jumped down from the hover car, I deactivated the dart thrower. I walked up to him and put my arms around his waist. He held me, my head against his shoulder.

“Want to tell me about it?” he asked.

“Not now.” I let him go. “Take me home?”

“Yah.”

I slid into the passenger seat and he took the driver’s side. Not that it mattered where we sat; neither of us drove. He entered our destination and the car headed back to my place. Its sleek black upholstery shifted under me, trying futilely to ease the tension in my muscles.

“Not hungry for dinner,” I said.

Jak was watching me. “What happened, Bhaaj?”

I took a breath. Then I told him.

When I finished, Jak said, “You could be next.”

I stared out the window at the outskirts of Cries passing below us, long stretches of stone terraces that went on and on, aesthetic and empty. I said only, “I know.”

“That name, Caul Waver, it sounds like an alias.”

“Apparently.” I shook myself mentally and said, “Max, any luck in finding either the name Caul Wayer or Caul Waver on the passenger manifest of any ship?”

“Sorry, nothing.” His voice came out of my gauntlet comm. “The port mesh system is well-protected.”

“I can have Royal check,” Jak said.

I squinted at him. “Who?”

“Royal Flush.”

“Oh. Yah.” I’d forgotten. He had named his gauntlet EI after the legendary poker hand that earned Jak the money to start the Black Mark. He’d been training that EI for decades. It was famous. Or maybe infamous was a better word. Jak never offered its services for free. “What price?” I asked.

His gaze darkened. “That you don’t get yourself killed.”

I managed a smile. “Deal.”

While he spoke into his comm, telling Royal what we wanted, I watched, intrigued. Jak had one of the best networks in the undercity. Rumor claimed his system was even more extensive—and more shadowy—than the Cries military network. I didn’t try to see what pass codes he entered. Honor among thieves and all. I no longer stole from anyone, and I hadn’t since I entered the army, but I never forgot the code.

Jak glanced at me. “Can you give me the ashes of the woman Scorch killed? If Royal can ID them, it might help his search.”

I handed over the disk. “Max got a partial analysis. The DNA doesn’t correspond to anyone he recognized.”

Jak clicked the disk into his gauntlet. “You believe this Caul Waver is Prince Dayjarind?”

“Possibly.” I thought back to Scorch’s meeting with the drifter. “They said the name was on some manifest. It could be a ruse. Scorch killed that drifter so she wouldn’t talk. I’ll bet the drifter killed Krestone.” Thinking about the case helped me regain my equilibrium. “I want to know what that pin on Krestone’s body recorded.”

“Whatever Lavinda Majda talked about in the car.” Jak frowned at me. “You think Colonel Majda helped Dayj escape?”

“I suppose anything is possible.” It seemed about as likely, though, as me sprouting a new head. I thought about the other people in the flycar. “If I had to guess, I’d bet Scorch was spying on Krestone rather than Lavinda Majda. I can’t imagine one of the sisters betraying the family.”

Jak snorted. “Freeing a demoralized young man is hardly a betrayal.”

“I know. But they don’t see it that way.” I pushed back my dusty hair. “They have a point, Jak, however much we don’t like it. No way could Dayj deal in the undercity. Scorch would make byte fodder out of him.”

“You think she sold him?”

“I’m hoping I’m wrong.”

Max suddenly spoke. “I have new data on Oxil. Incoming.”

“Oxil?” Jak peered at me. “What is that?”

“Not what. Who. Just a second.” I closed my eyes as my node translated Max’s feed into images I could see. A forest of drooping trees and wild flowers formed. Oxil was walking a few paces ahead as she spoke into her gauntlet comm. The beetle-bot hummed in closer so I could hear.

“. . . nothing more,” Oxil said. “Her dinner date gave her a damn alibi.” A pause. “They may arrest her anyway. The source of her alibi isn’t at all reliable.”

I smiled, my eyes closed. “Majda police don’t like you, Jak.”

“Feeling is mutual,” he muttered.

Oxil leaned against the mossy trunk of a tree. I missed her next words, but then the beetle hummed in closer.

“—best if I don’t talk with you from here,” Oxil was saying. “The risk of detection is too high.” She paused. “All right. The cavern. One hour.” She lowered her arm, and the view receded as my bot flew away before Oxil noticed it hovering about.

I was about to withdraw when the beetle sighted two people through the trees.
Follow,
I thought to it.

We moved past the branches and came out at the Lake of Whispers. Corejida and Ahktar were standing on the shore together, their hands clasped as they gazed at the water.

Corejida was crying.

She made no sound, but tears ran down her cheeks. Ahktar slid his arm around her waist and she put hers around his. They held each other, their heads leaning together.

“They’ll find him,” Ahktar said. His voice caught.

“Yes,” Corejida whispered. “Surely they will.”

I felt small. Their son’s disappearance was killing them and I hadn’t done a damn thing to help. Not knowing if he was alive or dead had to make it even worse for them.

The scene faded and I opened my eyes to see Jak watching me.

“Oxil works for Scorch,” I said. “She must have been Dayj’s inside contact at the palace.”

Jak lapsed into dialect. “Scorch got him ID. Scared shitless Majda will find out.”

“Then should have killed me,” I said.

“Knew people’d look for you. And she owed you.” His gaze darkened. “Won’t stop her a second time. Paid her debt.”

He had a point. “If I don’t find Dayj, Majda fires me. Then Scorch kills me.”

“Yah.”

I wished he had a reason to argue the point.

Jak’s gauntlet hummed. He tapped the comm. “What?”

Royal Flush answered in that sleek, sensuous voice of his, the one that women fell in love with before they realized he was an EI. “I have data on Caul Waver.”

“That was fast,” I said.

“Of course.” Royal sounded smug. Given his programmer, that figured.

“What do you have?” Jak asked.

“I found the identity of the drifter that Scorch killed,” Royal said. “She worked at the port. I checked the meshes where she had access and found the passenger manifest we need. It says Caul Waver left Raylicon seven days ago, bound for Metropoli.”

Damn. “Eleven billion people live on Metropoli,” I said.

Jak grimaced. “It won’t be easy to find him.”

“If he actually went there.” It made sense, though. Metropoli was one of the most populous Skolian worlds. Its copious seas teemed with life, which I suspected Dayj would like.

Jak met my gaze. “Time to tell Majda.”

“If I tell Majda,” I said, “they’ll focus on Metropoli.” It would take immense resources to search such a heavily populated world, pulling their attention away from Cries, which was probably exactly what Scorch wanted. Maybe she had let me live so I would follow Dayj’s supposed trail to Metropoli and lose him forever.

“If I go to Majda now,” I said, “I’ll miss Oxil’s meeting in the cavern.”

“What cavern?”

“Not sure. Oxil is meeting someone in a cavern. My guess? It’s in the Maze.”

“You go to the Maze,” Jak said, “you’re going to die.”

“No, I’m not.”

“That’s right. Because I’m coming with you.”

“No.” I didn’t want Jak risking his life for my job. “I was hired to do this. You weren’t.”

“You remember how rizzed you got when I disappeared seven years ago to collect my money? You thought I had died.”

“Yah.” I would never forget. When he had showed up at the Black Mark after three tendays, grinning and rich as sin, I’d been ready to throttle him.

His gaze darkened. “I won’t go through that with you.”

We would see.

* * *

Jak and I strolled with the evening crowds, tourists or Cries locals out on the town. Or more accurately, under the town, though just barely. We were on the Concourse, the only undercity locale with businesses the above-city considered legitimate. Cries looked after the Concourse, kept up the lights, did repairs, and even sent bots down here to clean up. The city council had ideas to convert this area into a park. So far they had done nothing more than talk; the undercity bosses had enough influence above-city to push the idea far back in the urban planning queue. The Concourse was supposed to be part of the undercity, but if any of our actual population came up here, the police chased them back to the aqueducts or threw them in jail for the night.

My beetle had followed Scorch here, but it lost her after she entered the Maze below in the aqueducts. I didn’t intend to enter the Maze the same way I had before. Last time I wanted her to know I was coming. This was different.

Nowhere in the crowds on the Concourse did I see anyone from the aqueducts except Jak and me, and we knew how to blend in with above-city types. Every now and then, someone from the undercity did find employment on the Concourse. They usually spent their earnings here, for supplies or food. We didn’t use money in the aqueducts; the economy worked on barter. Some people spent their above-city chits at Jak’s casino, mixing with the glamour-riz crowds from Cries.

“No dust rats here,” I said.

Jak’s voice took on an edge. “Little Jaks and Bhaajs still aren’t welcome.”

So it hadn’t changed. When we had come here as kids, it had usually ended in trouble. A few vendors just shooed us away, and a cloth merchant had once given me a clean shirt, but such kindness was rare. Most shop owners called the police or used us for target practice, intent on cleaning up the scourge of dust rats.

We were no angels, either, though. I had done stupid things in my youth, letting hunger cloud my judgment. One time, a cop caught me filching jabo fruit from a café. I told him the truth, that I hadn’t eaten all day, but he didn’t believe me. He said I was too pretty to shoot, that maybe we could work out a deal. When he put his hands where I didn’t want him touching me, I threw him over my hip and ran like hell. I managed to escape back into the aqueducts, which was why I didn’t have a record, but it had been close.

My strongest memory of the Concourse, however, came from another day. We hadn’t done anything wrong that time. A vendor saw me and Jak running by his stall, two undercity adolescents. We hadn’t stolen anything; we were just two kids out for a lark, enjoying the sunshine streaming through the skylights, a sight so rare for those of us who lived underground. The shop owner fired iron balls at us, pelting our bodies, leaving us bruised, bloodied, and beaten, Jak with two broken ribs and me with a cracked femur, our joy in the sunlight ruined.