The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - SCYROS (part 2)

(Chapter 8, part 2)

“I think so, Miss Scyros,” I said. I put the teacup down on the little table by me, stood, and gave her another brisk, short curtsey. “I appreciate your time and patience.”

She rose, aflutter in white and black silk drapery falling in layers. “Let me conduct you out.”

She’s very tall, is Miss Scyros, for a woman, not much less than two meters, and I am not tall at all, so she towered above me. Her silver-gray hair was done in careful ringlets and bobs around her face with sharp white bangs, and she had some scent about her that was distracting me.

She laid a cool hand on my forearm. “You must come and see me if you tire of your girl,” she said. “I would make a good offer for her contract. Is she skilled?”

“She’s more than satisfactory,” I said stiffly.

She smiled thinly. “Skilled, then.” Then, rather boldly, I thought, she turned my forearm in both hands and ran her fingers across it. I wanted to whisk it back from her, but she regarded me with her riveting blue eyes, and I found I could not quite summon the will to do it.

“Miss Fenek,” she said, “I think you don’t have a hair on your arm.”

“I have tank-girl ancestry,” I said hoarsely.

“Ah,” she said, running her finger on my inner arm from elbow to wrist. “I had a … recent guest who was the same. Bare and perfect nearly all over when she came and quite bare when she left. Not uncommon, with all the children of tank-girls about.”

She began to adjust my braids and fillet and scarf. “I begin to think,” she murmured soothingly, “that you … are … ” and I still could not move when Barsina stepped forward and squeezed my hand. “Miss,” she said.

Suddenly, I could breathe and move and stepped forward before the woman twitched my hair off the back of my neck. I think I’ve mentioned I’m self-conscious about it because of a burn I got there when I was younger.

Miss Scyros clicked her tongue disapprovingly, but I turned and curtsied again, more respectfully than I wanted to because her will still weighed on me, but I avoided her eyes as though they were a cobra’s.

She walked us out, talking about the bird in the garden and the weather, and then we were in the street. I leaned against the doorpost while Barsina put on her sandals. I pulled a kerchief from my girdle and patted perspiration off my forehead.

“I told you we are seeing dangerous people, Miss,” she said. “She would not have let you leave if she could have caught your mind.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You saved me, Barsina.”

“I know, Miss,” she said. “She was very strong. It’s good she did not think to look at me and pin me with her eye; else, I could have done nothing. She will not make that mistake again. You must avoid her.”

I nodded. Now, you may say, how could a citizen like me be swayed like a common tank-girl? And like I told Miss Scyros, I would tell you the same thing: I have tank-girl ancestry. I haven’t got any body hair, and there’s aspects of my mind that are … vulnerable to people—like labor-brokers and madams and aristoi with lots of girls—who are skilled at ordering them and controlling them.

This is an occupational hazard for a private inspector who’s a woman, and once or twice, it’s almost been my undoing, but most of my clients are dolemen or small-time mercanters, and I like it that way. They don’t know enough, usually, to do more than boss a scullery girl around, and I’m hard to boss. Barsina fussed over my chiton and got me looking to her satisfaction, and as she turned, I arranged her mussed hair for her as well, spreading her loops and braids over the barcode serial number tattooed on the back of her neck. It’s pretty on her—nicer than my white and tan scars—and I wouldn’t have it not be there, but I didn’t like thinking about it just then.

“Nobody braver than you, Barsina,” I said.

“Miss flatters me,” she said. “Where would Miss go now?”

“Now I want to talk to this archaeologist,” I said. “Like, a lot. Oi. But I’ve got this thing in my girdle to shift to Alkimila, and talking to the murdered man’s daughter is probably a higher priority before she starts losing details, so we should go back into the Green Quarter. What time is it?”

She pulled the tablet out of her girdle. “A quarter past fifteen o’clock.”

“We’ll walk,” I said. “If we get there before sixteen o’clock, she’ll probably refuse to see us. We get there after sixteen o’clock, and maybe we just have to wait half an hour on her.”

So we walked. The city was still pretty quiet, and the sun was pretty fierce. Aulis is nearly dead on the equator, so it gets hot during the summer days, which you know if you live here. Of course, it cools off late at night, and you can get some cold winds and fogs off the Greater Thalassa. I’ve had cases on the docks where you can’t see ten meters down the street when you’re staking someone out, and that’s edgy for anyone, much less a woman. It sometimes snows around Festivalo in winter because of the cold air coming off the Montara Sierpento. I’m told it never happens north up the coast at Calypso, away from the mountains, because of some current or something. This is as well since they have jungles planted up the coast past there for the rubber plantaos, and I don’t think those things would take the snow well.

But today, we were happy to spend a deka or two at an ice-vendor and walk hand in hand down a near-empty street.

“What do you think now?”

“I think she knows nothing about the case,” Barsina said promptly. “She is very proud and open about her connection to the painting and the State Gallery and was candid with you about how it made her appear … I am surprised she spoke to you, though.”

“I was, too,” I said, “until she tested me. We might not have left there if not for you.”

“Miss is probably right.”

“I’d almost think the painting is not involved … if it weren’t for the missing key.”

“That troubles me too, Miss.” We continued our stroll until we dropped the little paper cones into an almost-full dustbin by the side of the street and wiped our hands on Barsina’s spare handkerchief.

“What’s an archaeologist, Miss?”

“Well,” I said, hoping to sound knowledgeable. “It’s a man that digs up old ruins and things and finds out about the past, you see.” I put my foot up on a lampost base, took out my tobacco tin, and began making a cigarette on my knee.

She nodded gravely and looked down the quiet street the way we came.

“I see, Miss,” she said, studying the few open vendors, the locked storefronts, and two militiamen flirting with a maid with a dark red chiton. “Not a job for a woman?”

“He had an assistant who was a woman, sounds like.”

“His girl, now.”

“Rather.” I shrugged. “I suppose it’s not illegal for a woman to be in the profession. I’ve never heard.”

She nodded again, a worried expression on her face. “I just wondered, Miss.”

“Did you see something?”

“I thought I did,” she said. “But now I’m not sure.”

I didn’t see anything either. “Come on then,” I said. “No need to linger.”

“Yes, Miss.”

( … This way to Chapter Eight part 1 … ) ( … This way to Chapter Eight part 3 … )