“You’re right. I learned a little more about Hunter Covington, by the way, but not a lot. He has a woman.” Zoë relayed the description Harlow had given. “Sounds like she’s not a willing partner. Could be a bondswoman maybe. Don’t know if it’s any use, but I thought it worth a mention.”
“Got it,” said Wash. “Our resident fruitcake has calmed down a bit. You’ll no doubt be glad to hear that, but not as glad as I am. Simon’s managed to pry her out of her dining-table fort. Now she’s playing her flute in the cargo bay. Inara’s keeping her company. You’re missing all the fun.”
“Why is River playing the flute?”
“To make Badger’s crates go to sleep. They’re restless and they need a lullaby, apparently. Tell you this, Zoë, my blood pressure’ll be a whole lot lower once we get the band back together and are heading for our drop-off.”
“I hear you, dear. And I agree.”
“You keep safe, Zoë. Got that? Don’t do anything crazy.”
“Ditto, Wash.”
They cut the link.
Just then, Harlow walked back out through the double doors. Zoë merged deeper into the shadows. He sauntered down the street in the opposite direction that he had taken her.
She swung in after him. As before, he seemed in no rush. His movements weren’t cautious — just a guy in a giant, silly hat and an ankle-length yellow coat out for an evening stroll. He entered the main square of shops and administration buildings where Alliance Day crowds packed the sidewalks and spilled into the street, waving flags and beer bottles, and yelling at each other. Harlow made a few turns after he cleared the square. Nothing evasive; he didn’t seem to be trying to shake pursuit. When he reached a warren of small, single-story buildings, he ducked down the walkway that ran between them. He stepped up to an innocuous-looking front door, opened it, and entered.
The glass in the building’s peeling windows was painted opaque white so Zoë couldn’t see inside. She crept up to the door and pressed her ear against it. She could hear nothing.
As she loitered in the lee of the building opposite, she tried to contact Jayne. Nothing, not even static. What if he had been kidnapped too? What if there was some conspiracy afoot to abduct every member of Serenity’s crew one by one?
Just bad comms. Has to be.
Then Harlow reappeared.
Zoë kept him in her sights and herself out of his as he continued his rambling, returning the way he’d come. It was difficult to limp stealthily but she did her best. The pain in her leg was more than a mite trialsome but she refused to let it distract her. She’d been injured worse during the war and still managed to acquit herself handily on the battlefield.
Once more she pondered all the bitterness that had been spewed at Taggart’s that night, and that was embodied in the DEATH TO ALL TRAITORS graffiti. The history of the Unification War had been rewritten to benefit the victors, Zoë knew that. She wasn’t naïve. But the Browncoats hadn’t been the aggressors. They had mustered because the Alliance had posed a threat, not because they wanted territory or power or any other thing. They just wanted to be left in peace. Nor had they betrayed anyone, unless standing up for your right to live free was considered betrayal.
Was this what children were taught in school now? That the Browncoats as a group were just one step above Reavers? It sickened her soul.
Pay attention. You’re on a mission, Zoë reminded herself.
Gradually, their surroundings became more and more familiar. She started to recognize the storefronts and bars of the neighborhood. And then it dawned on her where Harlow was headed. Under her breath, she unleashed a withering torrent of Mandarin curses.
Wincing from the pain in her leg, she closed distance as, some fifty feet ahead, Harlow calmly approached the headquarters of a certain not altogether reputable individual, who went by the name of Badger.
8
Allister seemed to be recovering some of his wits as he and Jayne walked to his apartment. To Jayne it was obvious the kid had never been in a fight before. It wasn’t just that Allister hadn’t managed to land a decent blow on his opponents. He had been shocked by the violence itself, as though he just hadn’t been expecting it and didn’t know how to cope with it. That, as much as the blows he’d received, was what had left him stunned and shaken, and only now, nigh on a half-hour after the event, was he starting to get over the experience.
Jayne, at Allister’s age, had already known his fair share of scraps. But then he’d always been a rough-and-tumble youth who let his fists do most of the talking because his mouth wasn’t so good at it.
“Maybe,” Jayne said to him, “you can explain to me why someone as young as you was hanging out at a dive like Taggart’s.”
“Just wanted to celebrate Alliance Day, like everyone else,” Allister said. “Taggart’s seemed as good a place as any. You never drank underage?”
At that, Jayne could only shake his head guiltily. “Got me there, kid. But you could’ve chosen any bar. There’s plenty a whole lot nicer’n Taggart’s, and plenty where you’re less liable to get your head busted.”
“Maybe I wanted to be where the action is.”
“Or maybe you wanted to be nowhere near home.”
Allister looked furtive. “Kinda.”
“So’s you’re less likely to bump into someone who’d recognize you and could rat on you to your mom. She even know you’re out?”
The kid shook his head. “She doesn’t pay much attention to my comings and goings, on account of how sick she is. I look after her, do my best for her, but I need a life of my own. You understand? I need to get out now and then, have a little fun. Caring for a sick person ain’t easy, ’specially one with Foster’s Wheeze. Mom’s coughin’ all the time, sometimes like as though she’s going to choke up a lung. I never know from one day to the next how bad she’s gonna be, but I do know she’s not likely to get better.”
Jayne sympathized, perhaps more than Allister realized. His little brother Mattie suffered from an incurable respiratory disorder not unlike Foster’s Wheeze: damplung, and it blighted his life and that of their mother too.
Eavesdown’s riverside district might once have been pretty— desirable, even — but its heyday was long past. The river itself, which had never been graced with a name, was a slow, turgid waterway clogged with weed, junk and sewage, and the houses which clustered along its banks were low, mean edifices with tumbledown roofs and sagging walls.
Allister led Jayne up a precarious outdoor staircase to a fourth-floor apartment that was not what you might call spacious. Anyone who got it in mind to swing a cat in there could expect a lot of thumping and irate meowing.
On a cot in a corner of the main room lay an emaciated woman whose complexion was the color of cream gone sour. Blood-flecked tissues were scattered around her like gruesome confetti, and dried encrustations scabbed her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. The air smelled of stale sweat, human waste, and, beneath it all, the faint whiff of rotten flesh.
The woman managed, with some considerable effort, to raise herself as Allister and Jayne entered. Her hair hung lank about her face like damp seaweed, while her eyes were sunk so deep in their sockets, they were almost lost, like pebbles embedded in deep hollows. Jayne could tell she had been attractive once, before the sickness had ravaged her. She was still fairly young, although her haggardness made her look about a hundred years old.
“Allister?” she said in a frail voice. “That you?”
“It’s me, Mom.”
“Your face. Those bruises.” Her brow furrowed. “What happened to you? What have you been doing?”