"What are you doing?" asked G'Kar, suddenly worried despite his good intentions.
"I am transferring funds to the Du'Rog family. I know that Ka'Het still maintains an account that is dormant. I can't restore their social status, but I can do what I must to help them to be comfortable. Whatever we do for them, it is long overdue."
As her fingers plied the controls, G'Kar paced nervously. "Won't they know where the money is coming from?"
"What difference does it make? If we haven't the stomach to destroy them, we must help them. Go bolt the front door."
"Bolt the front door?" asked G'Kar numbly.
"Yes, before my servant returns home. It is a signal we have used before. If he finds the front door bolted from the inside, he knows I am entertaining. He won't return until summoned." Da'Kal turned to her husband and smiled slightly. "You have been gone a long time G'Kar."
He nodded and rushed to bolt the front door. There was a romantic, dream-like quality about all of this—returning to his home in disguise, seeing Da'Kal after ignoring her for years, and bolting the door against the outside world. It was as if the years were melting away and they were young again, sneaking behind their parents' backs. Could the clock really be turned back? Could they return to a simpler time, before his life had been consumed with ambition and intrigue? He walked back into the sitting room and found Da'Kal shutting the curtain on the computer terminal.
"It is done," she said with a sigh. "This won't begin to make up for what you did to Du'Rog, but at least his family won't have to live like animals anymore."
"And us?" asked G'Kar in an urgent voice. "What is to become of us?"
As Da'Kal approached him, she untied the beige tunic from around her waist. "I am no longer in mourning."
She slipped the garment off her shoulders, and it fell to the floor. "This is twice today I have bared myself for you, G'Kar. No other woman would do that for you. You once owned every molecule of this body. Do you still want it?"
"Yes," he said hoarsely, as he lifted her in his powerful arms and pressed his face to her flesh.
CHAPTER 11
Mi'ra waited solemnly in line with the servants and tradespeople of the lower castes who were leaving Hekba City for the day. The line wound into a tunnel on the third level, where a series of moving walkways, called outerwalks, allowed them to travel many kilometers in a short time. With hunched shoulders and weary expressions, the plebeians stepped upon the conveyor belts and began their long march home.
The young woman tried to hold her head high, knowing she didn't belong with these commoners, but it was difficult. She knew that most of them were returning to better homes than the hovel she shared with her mother and her brother. They had jobs and at least some station in life, even if it was a lower one. She had nothing but her bitterness and the weapons stuck in her belt. Mi'Ra had believed that the memorial service for G'Kar would in some way cleanse her, or please her, but the finality of his death had just the opposite effect. Her father was dead, his tormentor was dead, and she felt dead, too. Without the Shon'Kar and the hatred which fueled it, her purpose in life was gone.
Perhaps, thought Mi'Ra, it was time to get away from Homeworld, time to explore the galaxy. The concerned human who had pursued her down the walkway had made her realize that there were other races out there, other places where no one cared about the Shon'Kar, the Kha'Ri, or the arcane aspects of Narn culture. She was an outcast here, but she would merely be an alien there—and that would be preferable. Mi'Ra knew she would be young and attractive for many more years. She had too much pride to stoop to prostitution, but there must be someplace in this wide galaxy where she could carve a new life.
Mi'Ra recalled how her mother's estate had been seized by the government as proof of illicit profits on those ludicrous arms-dealing charges. Like most of his peers, Du'Rog occasionally pulled a shady deal—a few of them with G'Kar as his partner—and kept less than scrupulous records. But no one could have predicted the fall he was about to take. The military had nearly tortured General Balashar to death, and they needed to produce him in court to name his contact for the horribly potent biological weapons. The weapons were especially successful on Narns, as if they had been formulated for them in the first place. Despite holding high rank in the Kha'Ri and the Fourth Circle, Du'Rog was embraced as the scapegoat.
The military executed Balashar post-haste, and G'Kar installed himself in a life of splendor on a distant colony—while her father died from the stress of fighting the unjust charges. Then the scavengers moved in, expecting easy pickings. Mi'Ra had to grow up fast in a short time, and she wasn't able to ward them off. The creditors and opportunists had picked her father's skeleton clean before she was strong enough to fight them. As part of the supposedly generous settlement, she and her mother and brother had gotten the deed to a house in this pit, the border zone.
The outerwalk deposited her in another pit, a so-called station where the stairs to the surface were covered with dirt and garbage. You literally had to climb out to reach the slum. There was a news-stand in the pit, but it had long been boarded up with adobe bricks and barbed wire. The only reason they kept the walkway running was that they didn't want anyone to have the excuse that they couldn't get home. If you didn't belong in Hekba City, then there had to be a way to get you out of there at the end of the day—to wherever you did belong.
Mi'Ra drew her PPG and dug in the toes of her boots as she scaled the garbage pit. She finally found a few clear steps where dust devils had strayed down the stairs, and the ascent got easier. There was nothing easy, however, about the sight of the border zone, with its depressing narrow houses. Each was two stories tall, although some had sunken on their poor foundations and looked no more than one-story. They were built quickly then forgotten quickly, left to rot with the firm knowledge that anyone who had sunk to this level had lost his place in Narn society. For a Narn who didn't know his place, there was no hope.
Mi'Ra stepped cautiously into the wind that blew across this treeless plain ninety percent of the time, or so they said. No one could remember the ten percent when it allegedly wasn't blowing. The decrepit row houses were supposed to be offset by impressive walls and archways that mirrored preinvasion architecture. But the constant feeling of running into walls made it seem like a maze, a place where society observed its freaks. At other times, the walls seemed like a prison, which is what they really were, thought Mi'Ra.
There were murders every night, but no one saw anything over the damn walls or the fear. The border zones were conveniently unincorporated, patrolled by rangers from the Rural Division, who showed a determined lack of interest in solving most crimes. In the ones they decided to solve, they acted as police, judge, jury, and executioner. Mi'Ra had finally realized that a race that could be cruel to other races could also be cruel to itself.
She skirted a familiar wall, trying to stay out of the light. There were cheap clay candles swaying in the archways and on a few porches. The government left candles and boxes of food at certain intersections every day, and a few conscientious people tried to light the border zone. Most just ignored the cheap candles, and the sand was littered with sooty clumps of pottery that had once been candles.
The young Narn padded down a hill and paused before an archway. A lone traveler could never tell what might be waiting in one of those infernal archways; at least this one had a clay pot burning. She was young and attractive, and her greatest fear was that some street pack would capture her alive. Mi'Ra slowed cautiously and put her PPG away in favor of her knife. In close quarters, she had more faith in her knife to inflict damage without risking a war.