Just a fade. Like all the others. Money always made my job easier. A man with nothing could disappear without a trace, but the richer my enemy, the harder he had to work to conceal himself, the more fronts he had to defend. Money left a trail.
It was kind of like the place where Gorak Jespyn was hiding. Rich people bought big houses. Big houses had a lot of potential entrances, and a lot of places to hide. You could fill them with guards, but you'd never cover everything.
Sladek Dev was rich. Even his safehouses were mansions. Good news for me.
The information I got from his accountant was solid. Less than three turns after I kissed him goodbye, I found the man I'd been tracking. The heating pipes clanked and creaked in the high-ceilinged corridors of the mansion's upper floor, fending off the chill of the city. Shinestones cast a flat light across a floor of black stone sparkling with bright mineral veins. Huge rootwood beams spanned the corridors overhead, holding up smaller support beams that fanned out towards the peaked roof. That was where I hid, crouching in the shadow, listening to the footsteps of the approaching guard.
As he passed beneath me, I threw a looped length of chain down over his head, pulled it tight and then slid off the other side of the beam. The chain was still wrapped around my hands, turning the beam into a gallows. I dangled suspended in mid-air, my body providing enough weight to lift him two spans off the floor. He clawed at his throat, gasping, eyes bulging. He saw me hanging next to him, scrabbled at me weakly. I pushed him away with my feet. The gaze that met mine was pleading, panicked, helpless.
It wasn't a nice way to go.
His fight for life didn't last long. His muscles went slack, and pungent urine trickled from his trouser leg. I let go of the chain and dropped to the floor, and he fell in a heap.
I didn't like the necessity of killing the guards. It felt messy. I'd rather have tried to get to Jespyn without alerting anyone. But I considered it prudent to take out the three men who patrolled the upper floor, at least. Just in case Jespyn turned out to be tricky and managed to get off a cry for help. I didn't like the idea of three armed guards finding me standing over a dead body.
Besides, it didn't hurt to send a little message to Sladek Dev. A playful nip at his flank to remind him that it might not be wise to shelter a fugitive from Clan Caracassa, whatever the incentives. Because next time we might do something a little more drastic, and a little closer to home.
I stashed the body quickly and retrieved my bow and quiver from where I'd left them, hidden in the beams. The other two men would be at the door to Jespyn's chambers. I'd watched this place for half a turn before I made my move, and they always kept two on the door while a third one patrolled. It was a similar tendency towards regular patterns that made it so easy to cross the courtyard and scale the mansion wall unseen.
I peered around the corner of the corridor. Sure enough, there they were. Two dark-haired men with swarthy features, muttering to each other and laughing with the casual ease of long-time friends. The nearest one drew out a pair of cigarillos and gave one to his companion. I nocked an arrow as he brought out matches.
They both leaned in together to light their smokes from the same flame. I stepped out, aimed, and shot the nearest one through the back of the head. The force of the arrow threw him forward so that he butted his companion in the nose. It was almost hard enough to knock him out, but not quite. He recoiled, his face bloody and slack with shock. I shot him through the chest before he had the chance to recover.
I stepped over the bodies and listened at the door, wondering if Jespyn might have heard the noise of falling bodies. Probably not. By my reckoning, he was asleep, and had been for several hours.
For wrecking my vacation. For taking me away from my family. For making me betray my husband.
I opened the door quietly. If Jespyn was still asleep, he wasn't waking up again.
35
The lift from Veya to the surface wasn't built for comfort. It was a tall circular chamber of grimy black metal, with three levels stacked one on top of the other, connected by stairs. Each level was filled with seats in concentric circles, facing a central column which housed the enormous screw that the lift travelled up and down. By controlling geothermal pressure in the shaft, the chamber could be made to ascend or descend, slowly turning as it did.
I sat and listened to the screech and groan of metal on metal. The lights, resting in coiled iron sconces, dimmed and brightened fitfully without ever dispelling the gloom. They were a relatively new invention, powered by the motion of the lift itself. I didn't trust them. They seemed permanently on the edge of failing.
We rode the upper deck, of course. Though it was still too loud for easy conversation up here, it was the best available. The lowest level was a nightmarish swelter, where the heat from the shaft pulsed through the floor of the chamber. Our short vacation was Liss and Casta's treat, a moment of suspicious generosity on their parts, and they never did things by half measures.
'You must go! We insist! Spend some time with your family!'
'Our brother works you too hard. You and Rynn both. Between one thing and another you're hardly ever together.'
'We know how it hurts you.' This was Liss, fawningly sympathetic.
'We'll pay for everything.'
'Oh! Won't it be fun?'
'It's the least we can do for one so close to our hearts.'
I accepted, naturally. Turning them down would have led to consequences I didn't want to deal with. They got Rynn pulled from his escort duty – guarding a powerful friend of Caracassa, more for show than anything else – and persuaded Jai's tutors to give him a few turns' leave from military school. Then Jai asked if he could bring Reitha, and we said of course, and the twins said of course. So we were four.
I watched my son and his lover as we sat in the lift, surrounded by the din. Jai was fascinated by the lights. He hung on every sound, trying to understand the lift's mechanisms. He had such a wonderful mind, mystifyingly ordered and logical, endlessly interested in the way things worked and how to make them better. It was a compulsion; he couldn't stop himself tinkering with any device he laid his hands on. Our home in the Caracassa mansion had been full of disassembled lamps and clocks and spring-loaded toys until he went away. Without them, the place felt bare.
And yet, when Reitha touched his arm and leaned in to talk to him, I saw the other side to my son. The way he softened, the look in his eyes when he laughed. He worshipped and adored her. Beneath that rigid structure of thought there was an ocean of feeling. He was a sensitive child, prone to crying when young. Never really the physical sort. He learned to fake it around his father but nobody was fooled. Jai was always my child rather than Rynn's. The lift stopped several times on its journey to disgorge passengers and to take on new ones. It took hours to get to our stop, near the top of the shaft. Most of the passengers emptied out here. It was a small cavern, a junction from which a half-dozen tunnels led, and we walked into the middle of a bazaar. There were a multitude of hawkers, who had set up stalls beneath the glow-lamps in anticipation of the crowd. They sold the eggs of rare animals or offered cakes and drinks; they provided transport or sought to recruit labour; they displayed precious minerals from the surface. Some sold paintings of the night sky: depictions of the aurora, or of the mother-planet Beyl looming over the horizon, all purple and black streaks. Little groups of people waited to welcome associates or family. Militia crayl-riders patrolled the stalls, holding obsidian-bladed pikes. The air was stuffily warm and dry; the cavern echoed with voices.