"Keep your voice down. What was the bargain, then? What payment did he promise you?"
Sibbio shivered again. "There was to be no payment. He promised only not to reveal some of our other... activities to the rulers of Azras."
"Illegal activities?"
"Yes. And he named some of them..." He trailed off, staring pleadingly at her.
"It's the truth-I swear by God's presence it is."
Blackmail, then... which unfortunately eliminated the chance of backtracking a payment drop. "Did he tell you the villager's name, or say why he wanted him beaten up?"
"No."
For a moment the rooftop was silent as Jin considered. If Sibbio was telling the truth, it meant his mystery caller had at least a passing familiarity with
Azras's underworld and its activities. At the same time, paradoxically, that knowledge must be fairly limited for him to have picked such an obviously small-time group as Sibbio's to handle his dirty work.
Unless this was as well organized as Azras's criminal underworld got. She made a mental note to check with Daulo on that one.
Either way, Sibbio was clearly a dead end. "There's a small knife by the chimney over there," she pointed, getting to her feet. "You can roll or otherwise work your way over to it and cut yourself free. Your friends are still at the apartment you broke into; collect them and all of you get out of Azras."
Sibbio's mouth fell open. "Get out... but this is our home."
"Too bad," Jin said, letting her voice harden. "Because for the next few days it'll be my home, too... and if I see you again while I'm here, Hebros Sibbio, you'll be taking that premature trip to see God that we discussed earlier.
Understood?"
He nodded up at her, a single nervous motion of his head. Jin didn't especially like threatening the boy, but she liked the thought of him talking to Mangus even less. "Good. Let's both hope I never see you again."
Moving quietly across the roof, she reached the stairwell that she'd brought
Sibbio up by and opened the door. He would make it to the knife, eventually, unless he lost his balance first and fell off the roof. As far as she was concerned, it didn't much matter what happened.
Nevertheless, she waited silently at the open door until he was safely away from the roof's edge.
She was two blocks from their apartment, visions of a soft bed hovering siren-like in front of her eyes, when she spotted the two cars parked at the building.
Instantly, she shut off the lights and pulled over to the curb, keying in her optical enhancers' telescopic and light-amp capabilities as she did so. Both cars were empty, but-she flipped briefly to infrared-the tires and drive shafts were still warm. And though her angle was bad, it looked very much like the lights in their apartment were on.
A cold chill ran up her spine. From what she'd seen of both village and city life, midnight visitors weren't exactly commonplace on Qasama. Could they be messengers from Milika, perhaps, bringing news from Daulo's father?
Or had Mangus hired a back-up set of muscle?
Jin cursed under her breath and started the car forward again. The direct route through the front door was out, of course-even if it was something as innocuous as a message from home, there was no plausible excuse she could think of as to why she, a woman, would be out alone at night. And if Daulo was in trouble, she had no intention of walking straight into his attackers' arms, anyway.
But there were always more indirect routes to be had...
She pulled around the next corner, parking the car a block away in a handy row of similar vehicles. Keeping to the shadows, enhanced senses alert for trouble, she made her way back to the apartment building, arriving at the side opposite to theirs within a couple of minutes. The building didn't offer much in the way of handholds, but she didn't have time for a long climb, anyway. Taking one last look around, she bent her knees and jumped.
She made it onto the roof without any sound louder than a slight scraping of shoes on roof tiles. Crossing it, she squatted down at the edge and scanned the courtyard below for signs of life. There weren't any that she could see. Not surprisingly; with no access to the courtyard from outside except through the individual apartments, there would be no reason for anyone to watch the place once they'd established she wasn't hiding there. Setting her jaw, she eased over the edge, scrabbled for handholds that weren't there, and dropped to the ground.
The downside landing wasn't nearly as quiet as the upside one had been, and for what seemed like a long time she crouched motionlessly, auditory enhancers at full power as she waited for some kind of reaction. But the inhabitants of Azras must have had the city dwellers' traditional ability to sleep through noise, and after a minute she rose and loped across the courtyard to the rear of their apartment.
Through the sliding glass door, she could see the diffuse glow of lights from either the foodprep area or living room. Unfortunately, that was all she could see-the arrangement of the rooms didn't allow a direct view into the front of the apartment. An ear pressed against the glass yielded nothing. Into the valley of death, and all that, she thought grimly; and, pointing her little finger at the door's lock, she fired a burst from her metalwork laser.
The crack and spitting of flash-vaporized metal seemed to thunder in her ears, but there was no reaction from inside. Sliding the door open a crack, Jin slipped inside, closing it behind her. From the living room ahead came the faint scraping of shoes on rug.
She held her breath and keyed her auditory enhancers to full power. The sound of breathing came to her... the sound of one person breathing.
So all the company's left? Apparently... but there was no point in taking chances. Curling her hands to rest her thumbs lightly against the triggers in her third-finger nails, she straightened her little fingers into laser firing position and stepped around the corner.
Daulo, standing at the window, spun around as if he'd been stung. "Jin!" he gasped, seeming to wilt. "God above, you startled me."
"Sorry," she apologized, glancing quickly around. Daulo was indeed alone "I thought you might be in trouble," she added, dropping her hands back to her sides.
"I am," he sighed, walking unsteadily to the couch and sinking into it. "But you're in more. They know who you are."
"They who?" Jin asked, her heartbeat picking up again. "Mangus?"
"Worse. The Shahni." He hissed between his teeth. "I just had a visit from one
Moffren Omnathi and two of his men. They've identified you as the outworlder they're looking for. I managed-maybe-to persuade them that you'd stolen my car and headed north toward Sollas."
Jin took a moment to digest that. She'd known it would happen eventually. But she hadn't expected it quite so soon. "Did you tell them we'd been working together?"
"Do I look stupid?" he snorted. "Of course not. I played the total innocent, telling them you were a stranger who'd talked me into bringing you to Azras and then disappeared. Fortunately-I guess-they found that signaller you left, and decided you'd used it to listen for me to go to sleep so you could sneak in and take my car keys."
Jin bet at her lip. "As good a theory as any, I suppose. I just hope they didn't make it up just to make you think they believed you."
"Well, they left, didn't they?"
"Maybe. Did you actually see them go?"
"I saw the car pull away, yes."
"One car? Because there were two here when I drove up."
Daulo muttered something under his breath and started to get to his feet.
"Should I-?"
"No, don't look out," Jin stopped him. "If they spotted me coming in, it's too late. If they didn't, you don't want to seem unusually suspicious."
Daulo exhaled a ragged breath. "I thought they seemed too willing to believe me.