“It has been years since I held a baby. My little brothers. But I expect that one never forgets.”
I didn’t know if she was right or wrong in that. Before Park had handed me Omaha, I had never held a baby.
Chizu pinched a knot of noodles between her chopsticks.
“And perhaps you will tell me, while I eat, some of the turns of events you encountered.”
“Yes, of course.”
She bent her head and politely slurped her noodles. I picked up the bottle, shook it in the manner Park had instructed, tickled Omaha’s lower lip with the nipple, and held it for her as she began to eat while still asleep.
What Park had called a dream feeding.
By the time the bottle was empty, and Lady Chizu’s bowl as well, I had finished most of my story, and I handed the baby across the table. She woke when she felt new hands on her, and I expected she would cry, but she did not. Chizu played a game, first showing the baby her five-fingered hand and then hiding it and showing her the four-fingered hand. A game that made Omaha giggle.
“And my hard drive?”
I slurped my soup. It was slightly cold but still excellent.
“Lady Chizu, mistress of one thousand storks, I do not have it.”
She flashed the four-fingered hand at the baby girl.
“It was destroyed before you could take possession?”
I used the tips of my chopsticks to pluck a sliver of egg white from the broth.
“No. I held it in my hand. And I returned it to the man who stole it.”
She lifted Omaha from her lap and held her at eye level to herself.
“But you are here.”
I could see the tension in her neck, the effort she was making to disguise it.
“I am.”
She lowered her forehead, and Omaha reached out and ruffled her hair with both hands.
“To offer me what explanation?”
I put down my chopsticks and pointed at the diaper bag, and she nodded. From inside the bag I took Rose’s MacBook. I woke it from sleep, opened the new partition I had created while at Park’s home, placed it on the table, and turned it to face her.
She looked at the glen, the three adventurers huddled from the night’s cold around the dying fire.
“Ah.”
She said it with slight surprise and possibly a similar amount of delight. Though it could have been mild discomfort caused by Omaha yanking on her hair.
I laid a finger on the top of the screen.
“I do not have the drive, but I do have your property. I transferred the data from the travel drive, including the bill of sale and documents of provenance, and erased the partition where they had been previously stored. They are complete in every way that they were on that drive. And, to the best of my knowledge, as unique as the bill of sale states.”
She turned Omaha, facing her toward the screen.
“Teessa Delane. Founder Pale. And the Vitiated Man. Together they plumbed the Chasm to a depth of thirteen leagues. None have gone deeper. Their creators, all sleepless, have since died.”
She looked at me.
“The transference of these from one device to another impacts not only their value but their nature. I initially bid on these three in situ, as housed on the platforms from which the creators most usually played them. My broker failed to act quickly enough and could only ensure that the originals had been erased and his copies the only ones made. But he refused to renegotiate the price I had already paid. And further insulted me by insisting on a premium for the additional inconvenience he had suffered making the copies.”
I was still.
“He is dead now.”
She began her game of hands with the baby again.
“Yes, as you said. But killed in the course of his dealings with the Afronzo boy. Not for his offenses against me.”
I held an open hand over the laptop.
“This belonged to Rose Garden Haas, the mother of the baby in your lap. Sleepless herself, and a player. I transferred your property in her home, as she was in the first grips of the suffering.”
Omaha held tight to the thumb of the four-fingered hand as Chizu pulled lightly against her.
I continued.
“Does this addition to the provenance of your properties impact their nature and value in a manner that pleases you?”
She offered Omaha her five-fingered hand as well. The baby took each by a thumb and swung them together in a silent clap.
“It is a worthy addition, yes. I am pleased. Not that the woman should suffer, but it adds to the beauty of the item. Yes.”
Omaha swung the giant hands.
I turned the laptop toward myself, clicked back to the original partition, opened another application, and showed Chizu.
“And this is Cipher Blue. Elemental mage. She walked the length of the Clockwork Labyrinth alone and found its silent center. Created by Rose Haas, as surely as she created the child.”
Lady Chizu’s empire was built on engines of destruction and the men and women who wielded them. She had armed militias and insurgencies, rebels and strongmen. She had fielded mercenary armies of her own, seized governments, and held them ransom. Her guns had killed thousands.
She leaned forward, her hands encircling the baby’s torso, forgetting her discipline, letting the sickness inside twist her neck, and gazed at the young woman on the screen, sleeping in a perfectly silent catacomb.
“What do you want, Jasper?”
I pushed the laptop a few inches toward her.
“There is something I have to do.”
I stood.
“I need help.”
I bent and touched the top of Omaha’s head.
“And I need for her to be someplace safe. Until I come back for her.”
Chizu looked at my hand, so close to her person, and laid her four fingers over it.
“Yes.”
Omaha reached up and slapped at our hands, laughing, somehow comfortable under the touch of killers.
Park needed to protect his daughter in a world changing. He could only try to save the one he knew. Or slow its demise. I knew he would pursue justice, but within the limits of the law, however irrelevant it might have become.
It would never occur to him to simply kill both Afronzos.
I was of another mind.
Afrono’s security force had taken some recent losses. Eleven in all. Even allowing for extravagance, it was hard to imagine that Afronzo Senior employed more than fifteen to twenty former Israeli special forces. He might have many more sport-coated security guards, but they would be more suited to dealing with mail checks and property patrols than with covert terminations. Shooters, perhaps, but not killers. And any force that has recently had its numbers significantly whittled by a supposedly inferior opponent will suffer from a measurable loss of morale. Nonetheless, I’d need more than a great deal of luck.
My legs hurt. I’d have liked to have driven the STS up to the front door, but the Afronzos knew who I was. Even arriving in a hundred-thousand-dollar car I would not have been led into the patriarch’s presence. Neither the team they had sent to my house nor the one sent to Park’s had reported back. Whether or not additional men had been sent to investigate, they knew something was, at the very least, amiss. I’d crossed town twice on my adaptive ID. Once going south to Culver City and again heading north to Century City. Enough hours had passed for those journeys to have been logged any number of places. They must now know I lived.
Some camouflage was lent on my current journey by its being accomplished under the auspices of a Thousand Storks pass. It earned a sneer from the Guards, but to anyone looking for me via my NID, it would appear that I’d not left Century City since I arrived there in the morning. Still, a frontal approach would have required a vehicle more tanklike even than the Cadillac.
The Bel Air residents had been among the first to entrench their neighborhood, having fought a short but intense battle with the L.A. City Council over their right to do so. All streets entering off North Sepulveda and North Beverly Glen had been sealed by the Thousand Storks contractors that provided security for the entire community. Even along Sunset the access streets were closed; only the Bellagio entrance was still open. The decorative white stucco and black iron gates had been bolstered with more practical concrete barriers. A short maze of them meant to discourage any car bombers who might negotiate the thicket of spherical bollards that dotted the approach from the intersection. Patrolled by both Thousand Storks and dozens of private family security forces, there was at least one charity tennis tournament taking place there when I passed through the gate unhindered, as well as a wedding reception at the Hotel Bel Air, and a dog show at the country club.