Bitter Angels (33 page)

“Okay. Yes. I accept asylum in the Pax Solaris.”

“Very well.” Misao made yet another note. “Your official acceptance of refugee status is hereby recorded and sealed.” He stood up. “As is my filing of an official complaint of attempted assault on a serving officer of the Solaris Guardians. An appointed legal representative will visit you as soon as you are transferred to port to explain your options and obligations.”

Kapa’s jaw dropped. Smith walked out of the room and let the door close behind him.

There were clearly advantages to being in the pay of the Grand Sentinel. She’d never been fed by the Clerks before.

Emiliya swung around the curve of a copper-sided dome and took off across the rooftops at a run.

Home. She had to get home. She had to tell her mother what she’d done. She had to see her siblings. She had to make sure they were all right, and that the Grand Sentinel wasn’t lying.

She had to be sure they were really free.

Her breath came short and painful. She stumbled and staggered, but she didn’t stop.

Emiliya made it to the Tables’ roof and threaded her way across, avoiding the ducts that were nests for snakes. The access door was long gone and she charged down the stairs, swinging herself over the rail, dropping down a full floor at a time, landing sure and steady on both feet.

When she emerged into the gloomy, dusty hall, it was empty. She remembered vaguely that it was water-market day. No one would have any time to be hanging around in here.

Which meant there was no one to greet her. It also meant there was no one to block her view of the open door.

She repeated that mantra until she was standing in the doorway and staring into the suite of rooms that was her mother’s home.

No one was there. Emiliya tried to tell herself that her family had just gone to the water market. She stumbled from room to room. The last room, in the far back of the suite, was her mother’s. Her entrance disturbed a snake on a window ledge and it slithered under the bed. The rustling patchwork blankets were still on the bed, but the clock was gone from the shelf. So was the only-semilegal active screen that Parisch had stitched together and kept working by sheer force of will.

Emiliya scanned the rusted shelves, looking for some hint as to where they had gone. But there was nothing.

“They wouldn’t leave without telling me,” she murmured. “Their account can’t have been cleared
that
fast. They wouldn’t go without me.”

But she’d been out in the black sky for at least a day, and then there was her interrogation, then she slept. She ate. All that time, with no one knowing where she was or if she would ever come back. Two days can be a very long time to wait when you’re trying to keep ahead of the Blood Family.

They must have left recently, because otherwise the place would have been stripped down to the stone by the neighbors. They hadn’t been taken by the Clerks. There would have been a secops on station here to greet her and tell her that her family was in custody.

Biting her lip, Emiliya lifted the lid of the clothes chest at the foot of the bed. Empty. She held the lid with one hand and with the other she picked at the corner of the bottom with two fingers. It was a hard scrabble, but she got it, and the chest’s seamless liner peeled back and lifted up. That was where the family kept its precious store of scrip and promissory cards. Little bits of positive balance hoarded like water ice.

Her arm trembled and she had to blink several times because her vision was beginning to fail her.

The space was empty, and Emiliya was forced to believe.

Then she noticed the wadded-up bit of writing sheet jammed in the back corner. Emiliya retrieved it and let the
false bottom settle back in place. She lowered the lid and sat on the chest. Carefully, because the thing had been used so many times it had grown fragile, she smoothed out the sheet. There, scraped out in her mother’s sprawling, unpracticed writing, were two words.

Emiliya stared. She blinked. She read the words again.

THANK YOU

There was a strange noise coming from somewhere, and she realized it was her, choking on her own breath. She pressed her hand against her mouth, then against her eyes.

They’d left her. Her family, with her mother no doubt in the lead, had left her. This was no spur-of-the-moment thing, either. It was too clean, too accomplished. Her mother had
planned
it. The second their accounts were clear. The second they had a positive balance. She might even have kept the bags packed from the moment Emiliya had gotten into the medical academy.

Inside, Emiliya raged and screamed. It wasn’t reasonable. After all, her debts weren’t cleared. She couldn’t have gone with them in any case, but
they
hadn’t known that. Her mother hadn’t known that. She hadn’t waited
for Emiliya, the one who freed her, to make it home. She’d just taken what she had and left, leaving Emiliya to fend for herself.

In her mind, Emiliya ran through the suite, smashing and tearing anything that would give beneath the force of her hands. She wept and howled and banged her fists bloody against stone and metal.

But if anyone had been there, they would have only seen her wipe her eyes and carefully fold up the ragged, wrinkled note to tuck away in the pocket of her medical whites.

A knock sounded, someone’s knuckles on the threshold. Emiliya jumped.
Did I leave the door open?
She couldn’t remember. She rounded the corner slowly, afraid to see who or what had come to her empty home.

Standing in the corridor threshold was Field Commander Terese Drajeske. Emiliya stared for a moment.

“Field Commander.”

“Dr. Varus. May I come in?” Terese Drajeske stepped in without waiting for an answer.

“How did you find…this place?”

Terese smiled, abashed. “Orry Batumbe said he knew several Varuses in the city. I’ve been going door to door.”

“Oh.” Emiliya gestured a little helplessly at the front room. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you.” The Field Commander settled gingerly onto one of the chairs made of disassembled crates. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Emiliya couldn’t tell whether the Field Commander recognized the lie for what it was. Most saints wore their emotions out in the open, but this one was different.

“I’m glad,” Drajeske said seriously. “Because you saved
my life, and my second’s life. I’d hate to find out you got pinged for it.”

“No, I’m fine.”
What is this woman
really
doing here? Does she know what I did to her second? No, the saints don’t think like that. They’ve never had to. She trusts Amerand and Amerand trusts me
.

“That’s good.” The Field Commander nodded.

Emiliya folded her hands. Maybe she’d be lucky. Maybe the woman would leave, and she could start working out what she was going to do next.

But the Field Commander didn’t budge. “May I ask you something?”

“Certainly,” Emiliya answered reflexively. She’d learned long ago never to appear to be reluctant to answer a question. It made people suspicious.

“If I wanted to get to Hospital, how would I go about it?”

Emiliya’s throat tightened and she regretted her agreement, but it was too late to withdraw. It was all right. She knew how to work an interrogation. Say as little as possible. Stick to the truth, but leave out the meaning.

She faced the Field Commander as if she were a casual stranger. Emiliya was used to people vanishing suddenly from her life. Her lover had vanished into the Security, then into the shadows. She set it aside. Her mother, her whole family, was gone in an eyeblink. She had already begun to set them aside. If she could do that, she could surely set aside a few hours spent with a woman pretending to fight for her life.

“I’m afraid I’m too far down the chain to help you with
that, Field Commander. You need to ask Commander Barclay or the Grand Sentinel. They’re the ones who can arrange the permissions.”

Terese Drajeske sighed. “I thought so. But I thought I’d ask, because there doesn’t seem to be any regular traffic between here and there.”

“No,” replied Emiliya politely. “Not really.”

“Which is odd, because there’s also not a lot of traffic out-system from Hospital; but according to all our records, it’s Hospital that’s helping finance the system.”

Emiliya tried to look abashed, but it was hard. “Sorry,” she said. “I really wouldn’t know.”

The Field Commander nodded as if she understood. Anger surged through Emiliya. How dare this person, this
saint
, this
alien creature
, even pretend to be able to understand what was happening here?

“So,” the Field Commander went on pleasantly, “how is it that you and Amerand and Kapa all know each other?”

The change of subject caught Emiliya off guard.
How did she know…never mind, never mind. Just answer the question
. “We were…we were neighbors on Oblivion and shared a ship during the Breakout.”

“Was it your idea to put Amerand on our watch?”

It was too much. Emiliya burst out laughing. The Field Commander pulled back, looking mildly offended. “I’m sorry,” gasped Emiliya, “but you really have no idea how far down the chain I am, do you?”

“The chain of command is proving extremely difficult to track here,” Terese Drajeske replied. “The Grand Sentinel, for instance. I’m having a very hard time arranging to talk with him.” She cocked her head. “But you knew he would help you.”

Which did not sit well with her previous claim of being far down the chain.
Mistake
. “He vetted me for the biosecurity team,” she said, and hoped it would be enough.

“And he told you what you’d be doing?”

Emiliya looked quickly away and ran her tongue across her bottom teeth. “We all of us just follow orders,” she said. “I was ordered to do your scans. Amerand was ordered to take your watch.”

“And Kapa?” asked the Field Commander.

Kapa. Skinny little boy who ran the tracks between the dead trains with the rats and the gangs on his heels. Kapa, who could jump farther and fly higher than any of them. Kapa’s skin and hands against hers. Kapa pushing her up against the wall, and her arms and her legs wrapping around him…all so very long ago. She’d followed him and fallen for him for the same reasons Amerand had—because they were afraid and he wasn’t, and they’d hoped that somehow he would take them with him when he finally flew away.

Kapa, who’d sworn he’d come back for her when he went into the academy, but then melted into the shadows and left her behind as easily as he had left Amerand.