Halcyon The Complete Trilogy (37 page)

Kenan shook his head. “No. Actually, I’m more interested in the electrical device you inserted into her arm so she could shock people with her fingers. And if there’s time, I’d like to hear about the bullet-proof armor in Medur Hamuy’s chest.”

The doctor froze yet again, this time her small mouth hanging open slightly.

Kenan cleared his throat. “Whenever you’re ready. Take a minute, if you need it. I have time.”

The round little Espani made several sounds as though she was beginning to speak and then suddenly forgot how.

“Kenan!” Syfax called out.

They both turned to look at him.

“Major?” Kenan beamed. “You’re all right! Are you all right? Are you hurt? You look a little tired.”

“I know how I look.” The major joined them and glared down at the woman in the green dress. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend here?”

“This is Doctor Elena Medina. She’s the one who put the armor plate in Hamuy’s chest and the shock device in Ambassador Chaou’s arm.” Kenan folded his arms across his chest. “She was just about to start lying to me about how we’ve got it all wrong, that it’s all a big misunderstanding.”

“Good work. Any word on Chaou?” Syfax glanced around at the empty street.

“We haven’t seen or heard from her.”

“Well, she’s in town. I lost her at the South Station this morning and I’ve been running down leads all day. I heard that wealthy government types like this club, the Onyx. We should check it out.” Syfax jerked his head back toward the club doors.

“Actually, major, I tried that but I couldn’t get in.” Kenan pointed at the park across the avenue. “So I waited in the park to catch the doctor coming out. I saw every person who’s gone in since noon, and Chaou hasn’t been here.”

“She could have arrived before you did. Let’s go.” Syfax strode away.

Kenan hurried after him, dragging the doctor by the arm. “But major, they’ve got private security in there.”

“I don’t care.”

“Here, sir, at least take my gun.”

He frowned over his shoulder at the corporal. “Nah, you keep it. I’m just going to take a look around. Not planning to kill anyone today.” He fished the Persian’s brass knuckles from his pocket and slipped his fingers through the rings. The metal was warm.

Syfax shoved through the double doors of the Onyx Club over the shrill cries of the two little boys in matching blue suits. He made it halfway across the carpeted foyer before three young men with thick necks and bulging arms hustled through an open doorway on his left.

The major frowned at them. “You know who I am?”

One of the men shrugged. “No police, no marshals, no exceptions.”

Syfax tightened his fist around the brass knuckles.
A gun might speed this up, but then they’ll get their own guns, and then we’ll need bigger guns, and then the bodies start stacking up in the street like cordwood. And no one wants that.

For a moment, he considered apologizing to them ahead of time. Instead, he lunged at the closest one and smashed his fist into his windpipe, sending him reeling back against the wall, choking and gasping. Then the other two grabbed his coat from behind.

The major yanked forward and down, whipping his arms free of his coat and his attackers. As the men stumbled toward him off balance, Syfax delivered a flurry of heavy-handed punches to their heads. On a better day, he might have been a blur of martial artistry, but today there was only strength, relentless and barely disciplined. He smashed his knuckles into jaws and ears and necks and eyes as hard and fast as he could, taking only a few of their wild swings to his own upper body. He didn’t feel them at all.

One guard toppled over backward and bounced his skull on the wall. The other took a roundhouse to the side of his head and spun as he dropped to the floor. The three guards sat or lay on the carpet, clutching their heads and chests, shuddering and coughing.

Syfax massaged his hands. “Sorry, fellas. Nothing personal.” He picked up his coat and slowly pulled it back on.

The two boys in blue hid outside the doors, peering at them with wide unblinking eyes. Kenan arrived in the doorway a moment later, still wrestling with the heavy-set doctor. Syfax jerked his head at the corridor leading into the club. “Come on. Try to keep up.”

Syfax strode down the hall glancing into the open doorways on either side and seeing richly furnished sitting rooms and sun rooms and dining rooms, all decorated in very different styles: classical Yoruba, modernist Igbo, industrial Mazigh, azure Songhai, imperial Eran. Even one that looked like a Hellan theater and one that resembled an Espani chapel. Some were occupied, and the women who noticed the marshal studying them frowned back rather intensely. Most of the rooms were empty.

Syfax left the corporal on the first floor and sprinted up a wide stair to the next level and repeated his search. And again above that, and again above that. Until finally he stood at the center of the lush greenhouse on the roof, sweating, alone.

When he returned to the foyer, he found Kenan holding back his coat to display his holstered gun to the angry, battered security guards. His other hand held the doctor against the wall.

“She’s not here. We’re leaving.” Syfax strode out into the fading afternoon heat and stood on the sidewalk, glaring at the nearly deserted street. He took the spare moment to put on his new Persian glasses with the blue tinted lenses, but found they’d been broken in his pocket so he tossed them to one of the little boys in blue, who called out, “Thanks, mister!”

Kenan followed him out with the doctor in tow. “Where to now, sir?”

“I have no idea.” Syfax leaned toward the doctor, frowning into her round face. “But I bet
you
can tell us where we want to go. Let’s go find a nice spot to have a little chat.”

They crossed the street, found a footpath in the park, and deposited the doctor on the grass in a nook between some trees and a large brown stone where they were unlikely to be noticed, had there been anyone else in the park to notice them. Syfax leaned against the rock and felt the subtle warmth captured in the stone seeping into his sore back. He eyed the Espani woman, a lumpy figure of soft, bulbous curves and great sagging breasts that hovered around her lower ribs. The puffy flesh around her jaws and cheeks made her face seem unnaturally young and smooth, but her bright green eyes stared back at him with a piercing intelligence.

“So.” Syfax sniffed. “Barika Chaou electrocuted me yesterday afternoon on a ferry boat using a device in her arm. Tell me about that.”

Medina shook her head. “No, no, no. I know a thing or two about the police in this country. I have rights. Rights of prisoners, yes?” The doctor glanced back and forth between her captors. “There have to be witnesses and papers. I get an advocate. There are rules for this sort of thing. I’m allowed to contact my patron.”

“Absolutely.” Syfax squatted down so he was almost at eye level with her. “And who exactly is your patron, Doctor Medina?”

The woman hesitated. “The governor of Arafez, Lady Sade. She will vouch for me, and provide my advocate, and ensure that my rights are protected. I demand to see Lady Sade.”

“I would love nothing more than to haul you in front of the good lady. We could tell her all about your little experiments. I am sure she will be shocked to hear all about them.”

Medina blinked, not in a cringing fearful manner, but in a perfectly blank and unresponsive way. Passive, doe-like.

Syfax grinned. “Then again, maybe she wouldn’t be so shocked after all?”

Medina’s eyes widened.

“She knows, doesn’t she?” Syfax leaned closer, shoving his exhausted grimace into the doctor’s fat face. “She knows. Lady Sade isn’t just your patron. She’s your employer. She hired you. Hand-picked you, didn’t she?”

Kenan shuffled a little closer to them and spoke softly. “You think the governor knows what the doctor has been doing?”

“I think Sade has been telling the doctor what to do.” The major stood up, watching carefully as the doctor’s blank stare of confusion shifted to a cold, naked fear. “This little dance isn’t Chaou’s number at all, is it? It’s the governor’s show. Sade’s calling the shots. She owns the doctor and the ambassador.”

“What?” Kenan frowned. “But why? Lady Sade has everything. Wealth, power, respect, even popularity. Why would she be involved in medical experiments and attacks on airships?”

Syfax stood up. “For the same reason that anyone commits a crime. She wants something she can’t get without breaking the law.”

“But she has almost everything already!”

“
Almost
everything.” Syfax nodded. “In fact, I’d say the only person who has more than Lady Sade is the queen.”

“What?” Kenan barely managed to breathe the word. “The queen?”

“Yeah.” Syfax blinked slowly. His body longed to lie down and
stop
. Just stop everything and sleep. “So we’ve got this fancy doctor who specializes in hiding machines and weapons inside people. And we’ve got Chaou, a crazy nationalist who blew up half the transportation in Tingis a week before the queen’s birthday, which is just the sort of pastoralist stunt that gets folks all pissed off at the government. And they both work for Lady Sade, a rich old broad whose family lost half of everything with the end of the castes and all the new laws. What’s that all add up to, kid?”

Kenan looked at him sharply. “They’re moving against the queen. An assassination? We need to report this immediately!”

“Nah, we can’t do that. They’ve got moles and spies everywhere. If their people get a whiff of this, they’ll find a way to screw up any operation we put together. More importantly, we’re a little shy on evidence right now. All we can pin on Chaou is the dead police captain in Chellah. We can’t implicate Sade at all yet, or even the doctor here. Nah, we need to keep this quiet for the moment.” Syfax glanced away to stare into the trees. “We need to set up a sting.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Kenan said. “Even if they did kill the queen, there must be a dozen princesses in line to take her place. It’s not as if Lady Sade stands to inherit the throne, at least not any time soon.”

“Maybe not. But these aren’t stupid people. They obviously have a plan and the means to carry it out.” The major knelt back down again. “Doctor, I’m going to give you an opportunity right now to tell me everything you know about Lady Sade. What she’s doing. Who she’s working with. Everything, right now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Medina smiled nervously.

“That’s all right. We’ll toss you in a cell and go see Lady Sade on our own and just tell her that you’ve agreed to help our investigation anyway.”

“No!” The doctor lurched forward, an imploring hand stretching out toward the major. “Don’t do that! You can’t!”

Syfax shrugged. “Why not? I don’t care if there’s a little misunderstanding between you and her. Doesn’t bother me. Of course, if you do help us, and we do arrest her, then Lady Sade won’t be able to do anything to you. Your choice. Offer’s good for the next two minutes.”

The doctor hesitated only a moment. “You have to hide me. Far away. You’ll have to protect me from her, from her people. She has people everywhere.”

“Yeah, we’ve noticed. Don’t sweat it. You’ll be safe enough.” Syfax paused. “Well?”

Medina slumped a little lower, her body losing what little definition it had as she resigned herself to speak. “I don’t know much. They took the cat last night and they’re leaving on the train this evening. They didn’t tell me anything specific, and it was late and I was tired and there were a bunch of them I didn’t recognize.”

“Wait, slow down.” Syfax glanced up at Kenan but he had nothing to offer. “What cat? What train? Start at the beginning.”

Chapter 34. Taziri

After an elderly butler informed her in a rather brusque manner that Doctor Medina was not at home, nor likely to come home for the rest of the day, Taziri stood in the middle of the quiet street and stared up at the early afternoon sun. It was a bright, clear day and a gentle breeze was blowing from the east. A good day for flying, even if it was going to rain later. She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and started walking.

It took most of an hour to find the bed-and-breakfast again and when she stepped inside Taziri felt the temperature drop quite a bit. Several people sat scattered about the dining room, chewing on bread, sipping tea, and reading their newspapers. Evander sat in the corner, his head leaning against the wall, snoring softly. Taziri dropped into the seat opposite him and watched the old Hellan jerk awake with a grunt.

“Oh, you’re back? Where are the others? Is it time to leave?”

Taziri shook her head. “No, it’s time to sit and wait.”

“Didn’t find that doctor woman, eh?”

“Not yet.”

“Just as well.” Evander shrugged and sat up a little straighter. “Women are all trouble, and Espani women more than most.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” The older man sighed. “Well, I can’t just sit here all afternoon. My hip is killing me. The boy with the tea said there’s a train to Orossa that leaves tonight, and I suppose I should be on it since you people don’t seem very interested in getting me there any time soon.”

“That might be best.”

Evander shook his head wearily as he climbed out of his seat. “Well, take care of yourself, young lady. I suppose I’ll be seeing you again at some point, when it’s time for me to head home to Athens.”

Taziri offered a polite smile. “I suppose so. See you then.”

The doctor left and the engineer sat alone at her table for a few moments watching Evander’s untouched tea cooling. What was there to do, really? She knew nothing more than what little the detective had told her, and she hadn’t found the doctor. That short list of failures sat uneasily in her belly. The longer she sat, the more the images and sounds of the previous night intruded on her calm with a riot of faces and shouts and adrenaline and fear.

With a shudder, she left her seat and the inn and trudged up the narrow streets toward the high walls of the Arafez airfield. She crossed the grassy field toward the
Halcyon
, glancing only once at the other airship moored at the opposite end of the field. It was an older courier ship, larger and more angular than the
Halcyon
, and visibly dotted with rust. The two ground crew men nodded at her as she passed.