The Iron Swamp (15 page)

Outside was a small buggy where another man was waiting to drive Pollo and myself to dinner. Evidently, Pollo was too overburdened with duties to chat, sitting silently in the back tapping his tablet with the ferocity of a person playing speed ball.

I was relieved when we arrived to see that it was not a sit down dinner. People walked around picking bite-sized items from the grills, bowls, and hot plates that ran down the tables. Most striking was the amount of color, not just of the food but of the people. Every individual seemed to be trying to outcompete the others for the most vivacious costume at the dinner – all of them cotton. Some wore nets that fanned above their heads, and sleeves that inflated like buds or opened like flowers.

Watching them from the entrance I felt more alone than ever. I had worn mud covered boots and dry-tops of colors varying from beige to russet since I was a boy. My father's ire bubbled beneath the surface as I remembered the mountains of homeless dying of badens in the streets. I knew nothing of this cotton world and didn't want to.

Walking over to the nearest dishes, I kept a keen eye out for the best place to stand where no one would talk to me. There were a few uncomfortable looking people successfully repelling audiences. It didn't look too hard to imitate, staring at their shoes and turning to the table to take more food if anyone wandered too close.

Clazran was talking to a woman I recognized from the network, one of the few not donning cotton. There were scavengers living on the outskirts of Cronos that looked healthier than Madame Jajaria. In places, her face was a light brown, but often as not it was marred by a wrinkle line as black as the night sky. Her hair was a bleached cream, not quite white, and her eyes were too green for a woman of her complexion.

Clazran's wraith.

Frightening and farcical, mocked by most, but never with open lips. She was the perfect woman to head the occult division of the SP.

Most people accepted that the Rathjarin had powers defying how we currently understood the laws of physics. A person only had to watch some of the footage from the Rathjarin War and the Immortality War to see that. But the Rathjarin were nearly if not entirely extinct, and those that remained were in no position to be using their gift. As a result, the imprint of the old rulers had all but faded from Cos. There were still remnants, and no doubt more of them than I knew, but I found it difficult to believe we needed an entire SP division devoted to their control. Even so, I would not be drawing the wraith's attention upon myself if I could avoid it.

Behind her was another figure who triggered a similar feeling. Weekus van Holf, who for all his body mass, looked less imposing than the old lady. His huge gray mustache attempted to detract from the pudgy childishness of his bald head, but it failed. He looked like a baby balancing a woolly slug on his lip. Yet despite this, van Holf could well be the Clazran of the next generation. He had succeeded Clazran as head of the SP, survived four attempts to oust him from the role, and countless attempts to oust him from Cos. What remained of the anti-van Holf brigade were headless bodies and empty houses.

Whether he was a fool pretending to be intelligent, or a genius behaving like a fool, was now largely irrelevant. He had killed so many people that no one left wished to find out. There was no SP chief in the history of The Kaerosh who was so secure in their position.

I looked away from him before he saw me staring. Face after face belonged to people that I recognized, and most of them were not people a low detective wanted paying him much interest. It seemed safer to turn my attention to the tables.

The food looked amazing. There were grills covered in sea foods, bowls of animal ribs, kebabs where every chunk was different, and things I didn't even recognize. I decided there and then, that no matter how disgusted I was by the gluttony of Clazran's elite, that I was going to take full advantage of the delicacies on offer. As far down the table as I could see, there was not a single repeated dish. I was going to have to be selective to make the best of it. I grabbed one of the kebabs, intent on eating only the most appetizing bits, and turned to come face to face with a man who circumstance took me a click to recollect.

Chapter 10

"Alright short ass," said Lisbold.

I was so surprised to see him that my brain needed to reboot. "I... What are you doing here?"

Wearing a black leather jacket and a tie, Lisbold looked like a fat kid in dress-up. He'd even run a comb through his yellow streaks, creating a fringe that looked to have been cut by a ruler. Absent its usual level of grease, each strand was so thin and pale that the right lighting would have balded him.

Grinning widely, he walked over and put his arm around me. "We're both the President's honored guests for our great service to the nation." He slapped me on the back before taking a few shells containing pink cubes that looked like soggy marshmallows.

It was not my finest hour of deduction, but I was still blanking. "Why?"

He ran his teeth over a skewer of meats, dragging half the contents into his mouth. "Damn that's good," he said, before he'd properly tasted it. "You're here because you told on the Commissioner, and I'm here because I told on his son."

My chest sank. "Rake told
you
what he did to Welker?"

Lisbold looked affronted. "Wadda ya mean
you
?"

Inside I was a pit of flame, but outside my eye barely twitched. "Nothing."

"Damn right you don't." He poked me in the chest with the empty skewer. "I'm your new partner now, so you better show me some respect. Any ideas you have, any clues or hints you come across, you run them past me."

I looked down at the little oil stain in the center of my white shirt. "Agreed, and of course you'll do the same for me?"

He shrugged. "Whatever you need to tell yourself."

My fists clenched. He didn't have the courtesy of a fracking blood worm to numb its prey before it ate them. For the first time, I realized how different Rake and Lisbold were. Both of them were bullies and had earned my hatred, but I could see now that their motives were entirely different. To Rake, it was a joke. He bent my carded figure, not because he wanted to hurt me, but because he didn't understand how it would hurt me. It was a game to him, and my reaction to it was almost an irrelevance. It was only Lisbold who took pleasure from suffering. He hated himself, and his only release from the jealousy that ruled his every waking thought was spite.

"Look, Lisbold," I said as he helped himself to another skewer. "We don't like each other, but it's in both our interests to solve this case, so how about we put all that behind us?"

He regarded my outstretched hand for a click and then grabbed it, crushing my knuckle as he pulled me towards him. "Listen you tiny piece of dis, this is my opportunity not yours, and you're going to do everything in your power to make sure I get given the credit for solving this case."

It was like being back in school when Fader and Colcheck used to follow me home pretending they were spy planes, smacking me on the head whenever they went past. A hundred memories flashed across my mind of children picking on me simply because I had no defenses against them.

"Once I'm in the special police," he continued, "maybe I'll speak to someone about getting you in, but if you try to make this about you, I'll beat you to death with a shovel." He let go of my hand, allowing me to pull away. "That clear?"

We weren't in school anymore. I wasn't a defenseless child, and Lisbold had no weapons with which to threaten me. If that was how he wanted to do this, then I would destroy him.

I nodded while I conceived of what pit of knives I would place in front of the blind idiot. In his mind, we were still in an age where power was a reflection of physical strength, but that age hadn't existed for millennia. He probably thanked Cythuria for the luck that whispered a secret in his ear capable of getting him out of the pond and back in the sea again. But small fish didn't last long in the sea, not so close to monsters like Clazran and Vins. Lisbold was mine.

"I'll see you tomorrow then," he said, and walked away.

Far from suppressing my appetite, Lisbold had doubled it. I walked along the table taking food almost indiscriminately. It was all finger food, and I could empty my plate as quickly as I filled it. Half way down the table, I ate a slimy thing in a darkish kite shell which forced a momentary pause, but I washed the taste away with a piece of rare steak that melted in my mouth before I could chew it. That one was good enough for a second.

"You look to be enjoying yourself," said a voice from behind. "What do you think of the floor?"

It was stone, meant to make the palace look venerable, covered in an oval rug decorated with patterns of Kaeroshi soldiers fighting for independence from The Sodalis. Each battle had its own section, spreading from the center point out to each table. It was mockery to house such a rug in Clazran's palace. People died for this.

The man smiled, apparently not expecting a response. "And how are those baby webble hearts?"

I answered still with the delicious taste in my mouth. "Is that what they are?"

He nodded, bowing so we were almost eye to eye. He was not much more than a head taller than me, wearing glasses with rims as thick as the eye pieces within. I hadn't seen glasses since I was a kid. Only the worst most incurable defects still demanded lenses, and most people who needed those either got implants or wore contacts. The thick, cyan rims made almost everything else about the man seem like background. Even his brown Kaeroshi dry-top and boots barely registered. "I'm Reggie Nealson, the Sodalian ambassador for Gys."

I stopped shoveling food into my mouth. "You're a Guardian?"

Nealson smiled. "I am, but be careful not to sound too reverent. Clazran won't like it if he sees you getting on with me."

"Are there many Guardians here?" I asked, failing to take his advice. When The Kaerosh split from The Sodalis it kept the term Guardian for its political leaders, but the vice of the Kaeroshi fakes was only matched by the integrity of their Sodalian counterparts.

"Sadly, I am the only one." He waited for me to respond, but for the second time this evening my neurons were firing duds. "Clazran invites me because he likes making me watch people eat this stuff. I declined his invitation once, and I was banned from all official meetings for a month. They nearly had to replace me."

"I don't really know what most of this is," I said. "If I'd known I was eating the hearts of endangered animals, I wouldn't have."

"You must," he said. "Your every action tonight is being recorded and assessed. Take one now and eat it in front of me."

I did as he asked, and found it difficult to be sorry about it. "You seem sure enough they aren't recording this conversation."

"No." Nealson patted his breast. "They are, but I have a scrambler. All they are hearing now from any listening device in a three met radius is static. I use one every time; it is nothing to worry about."

"Fair enough," I said, suddenly aware that Lisbold's conversation had been recorded. Everything he'd said made him sound completely useless. The idiot didn't even need me to bring him down. He was going to do it all on his own. "So why don't the other Guardians object to eating these meats?"

"Oh they do, they were just smarter about hiding it than I was. I'm a vegetarian, and that made things more difficult."

I nodded. I was too busy eating to notice that there were no vegetarian dishes. "But surely you aren't the only vegetarian in the room?"

He gave a wry smile. "I think probably the majority of the people in the room are vegetarians. It's Clazran's sense of humor to fill a banquet full of expensive food that no one can eat, but we don't need to waste any more time discussing the food.

"It was a brave thing you did standing up to the Commissioner, and I understand it wasn't the first time. If you were born in The Sodalis, you might be a Guardian yourself."

I snorted. Sodalian Guardians were selected by the most rigorous assessment for moral fortitude in Cos. Since the formation of the government, there had not been a single Guardian to abuse their power, and it was said that the exam used Rathjarin theurgy that made it impossible to cheat. Five cycles distant, the suggestion that I might have been accepted into such an elite would have been a source of pride, but not now. It was too far from the truth even to flatter me. "I only handed that report in because Fache forced me."

"Oh no," Nealson shook his head. "You had other options. You could have gone to the Commissioner and told him about Fache. The good doctor would have disappeared, and you would have been elevated."

I wasn't sure how he knew so much about it, but Guardians were legendary for their intellect. "And not getting a man killed for trying to do the right thing makes me fit to be a Guardian?"

Nealson adjusted his huge glasses. "Not quite, but a lot of men in your situation would have taken the other option."

I didn't doubt it. Lisbold walked by close enough to fill me with fresh revulsion. He was wearing some deodorant or perfume that smelled like honey, now forever ruined for me.

Nealson watched him go by. "I'm not so keen on your new partner."

"Me neither. Rake was his friend," I said, and added "and a good man." I remembered the women in the truck that he called dyke bitches. Really he was a bad man who cared deeply about one good thing, but it didn't do any harm to say.

"Really?" Nealson said. "Most people with his background don't end up like that."

"What sort of background?" I asked, before I could stop myself.

"Parental abuse. His mother called the police a few times, but seeing as the father was high up in the police force nothing ever got done."

"He was raped?"

Nealson raised an eyebrow. "Don't think so. The reports were only ever about violence. His mother was hospitalized a couple of times, but he and his sister seemed ok."

That explained little. It was definitely rape that Rake reacted to so strongly.