The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - RASKOV (Part 1)

(Chapter 15, Part One)

In the street, two uniforms were waiting, hands on their belts and looking bored. Whatever uniform didn’t look bored, unless he was using his cudgel? I can’t ever recall having seen such a beast. Subaltern Alagon was also there, and he grimaced at me as I all but floated out the door, holding on to the ensign-captain’s arm.

“Any trouble, sir?” he asked.

“None at all.”

“Miss Fenek, is she—”

“She’s fine.”

“I mean, is she being detained, sir?”

“Does she look like she’s being detained, Alagon?”

“ … I suppose not, sir.” You couldn’t tell what Alagon was thinking, exactly, but he didn’t look like a man whose question had been answered.

“She was investigating a case, Miss Fenek was,” the ensign-captain said, “and required support from the proper authorities. Is that case concluded, Miss Fenek?”

“Successfully,” I said, almost giddy. “Oh, la, yes. Very successfully. Exceptionally. Total success. I know everything there is to know about the pork-mercanter’s missing daughter. And I’m up ten drachms. Oh yes, a whole ten drachms for about five minutes work. Wouldn’t you say, Barsina? Or ten?” I touched my cheeks, feeling the flush.

“ … I’m sure I don’t know, Miss … ”

Alagon deflated, looking sour. I don’t think he makes more than ten drachms a month.

“Alagon, I think you can head back into the Night Market,” Mardonios said.

Alagon nodded, and saluted. “Very good, sir.—Come on, you lot.”

The uniforms saluted Mardonios and followed the subaltern, thumbs in their belts, trying not to slouch while the ensign-captain was looking.

Barsina leaned against the door, making faint gasping noises. Tank-girls don’t always deal well with stressful and unusual situations. They prefer the predictable and the orderly, and tend to become panicky or talk nonsense until they calm down.  I don’t know if it’s intentional, but they’re easy to confuse and control that way, some people find.

She was rubbing the pale red marks on her wrists where she’d been tied and looking about her as if she’d just been pulled out of deep water.

“Let’s walk this way,” he suggested.

“Of course, of course, whatever you say,” I murmured. “Whatever you say, Sir.”

Barsina slid me a look.

I didn’t expect Mardonios to know the waterfront well, but he led us to a quiet promenade overlooking the wharfs and a clear view to the blue horizon where distant rain clouds boiled, where ĉebecs and daŭs and feluccas were crowded in together by the occasional steel-sided long-haul refrigerator ship from far across the Great Thalassa. There was a stone bench, and he and I sat—me still with my hand on his sleeve.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m all right,” I echoed. “Don’t I seem all right?”

“Of course you do,” he said kindly.

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Please,” he said.

“Barsina, sit down, you’re making me nervous,” I said.

“It’s not proper, with the Sir. I can’t, Miss,” she said firmly.

That certainly meant no. I didn’t have the will or the need to force her to sit. I took out my tobacco and forced my hands to be steady, smoothing out the paper, sprinkling the tobacco in a line, rolling it tightly, and licking it shut. I fumbled with a match, but he had an igniter and struck a yellow flame from its tube. I leaned into it, cupping my hand, and breathed in.

The smoke melted into my lungs, and I felt the nicotine spread. Oh, Ishara, I thought. Thank you for smoke.

I opened my lips and blew a little ring for her.

The ensign-captain, sitting right by me, clicked off his igniter, slowly put it away, and watched me inhale and exhale, letting it stream through my nostrils like a small brown dragon. I touched the rolled paper to my lips, drawing in as the touch of burning leaf flared and faded.

“Miss Fenek,” he said, “do you need help?”

“Help? I don’t need help,” I said. “What help would I need? I’m just working on my cases, Ensign-Captain. Help.” I made a small laugh of scorn.

He put his hands on his knees. “A little rat-faced man named Narvi insisted on seeing me an hour ago. He made a point of seeing me personally, which was bold of him because I think I was chasing him down the street the other day for theft, and,” he said, looking at me, “you seem to have interfered in the pursuit, now that I recall on it.”

Somehow, I felt he’d known all along.

“He told me, however, that he was your paid eyes and that you told him to get to me right away. He said that you felt in danger.”

“I most certainly did not say that,” I said, heated. “I said that I felt uncomfortable.” But I admired Narvi for the risk he’d taken and felt touched.

“You’d have felt quite uncomfortable,” he agreed, “once you were in Helioshad.”

“—Wait, how did you know where I was?” I said.

“Narvi knew where the staged flat was.”

I paused, the smoke halfway to my mouth. “How? I didn’t tell him.”

“He’d followed the runaway-catcher,” Mardionios said, seeming amused. “He knew Caruano had a couple of men waiting there to pick you up if you showed. He knew you were being trailed, also. Only a fool would assume that a runner wouldn’t fetch Caruano, or that a convo wouldn’t be sent.”

Barsina made a frightened noise.

“Barsina,” I said.

“Miss.” She curtsied apologetically.

“Your Narvi did a good bit of work for you. He deserves some money for it. He probably saved your life. I ignored the fact he was pickpocketing yesterday.”

I took a long draw, held it, and let it drift out again.

“You don’t have seda-t in that, do you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Certainly not,” I said. “I couldn’t afford it if I wanted it.”

He took the cigarette, sniffed it, then gave it back.

“So I ask again, do you need help?”

“Not at all,” I denied. I looked out at the circling seabirds over the harbor. High, high, white-and-black in the sunlight. Free. “I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“I ask because Miss Testaferrata is a very determined and passionate young woman. She seems to have conceived the notion that you are a runaway servant of hers and a repeat runaway at that. I’m certain she intends to take you back to Helioshad, have you tortured, and execute you. Her father’s insisting on it, or she’ll lose her independence of action. She won’t put up with that. It’s that or your neck. It’s unwise to expect her to make a different choice.”

“She is either out of her mind,” I said, “or mistaking me for someone else. She called me Io in the restaurant last night. My gram was an Io, and I look a lot like her. I’m sure there’s many young women who look like an Io. Does she intend to spirit us all out of Aulis and hang us all?”

“Her hireman has denounced you, so I have to take it seriously,” he said. “I’m sure when she knows I’ve intervened—which should be within the hour—she’ll denounce you at the commissariat herself, and being an aristoi, that will be irrefutable testimony unless you can prove yourself a citizen. Are you a tank-girl, Miss Fenek?”

“Not at all,” I said. “That’s quite ridiculous.”

“It is easy to test,” he said. “If you are, your serial is tattooed on your arm and written in your genetics—and would have been on the back of your neck if not for that burn. You can also give me your blocknumber, which would help prove citizenship.”

“I—”

“You don’t give out your blocknumber,” he said.

“I don’t,” I said.

“I recall.”

“And I don’t care to be voluntarily genetically tested.”

He looked disbelieving. “Not even to save your life?—You may not have a choice.”

I bit my lip.

“You have a birth control capsule in your arm,” he added. “I felt it.”

“You certainly didn’t tell them that,” I said, looking right into his eyes. They were very blue, like his uniform.

His lips twitched. “I never clarified that, did I.”

“No.” I took another long drag. “—Is it illegal?”

“It’s rather antisocial, wouldn’t you say?—unless you’re a servant.”

I shrugged. I have no opinion about citizen fertility rates. “But not illegal.”

“If you’re a tank-girl,” he said, “it will be a long-term tank-girl capsule, not a small five-year citizen-style one. A nurse could run a tester over it and tell. Or someone, by touch, could feel that it was longer and wider than a citizen one. Just by feeling it in your flesh.”

I exhaled smoke. “I’m a citizen, Ensign-Captain. Are you going to hand me over to your friend the aristoi?”

“I intend to preserve justice,” he said. “As best I can. I want to uphold her property rights. I don’t want her forced into a marriage she doesn’t want. If you are a citizen, I’d like to demonstrate it to her satisfaction. If you aren’t … I’d prefer another solution to be found … ”

“Other than allowing me to be murdered,” I said thinly.

“Privately, legally executed. Other than that, yes.”

“Are you detaining me then?”

He looked at me, almost spoke, and thought again. “ … not yet … officially. But you come and go at my sufferance until I decide otherwise. I don’t think you should return to your office unaccompanied or stay there after dark. If you do, I’m certain you’ll be fetched out of it tonight.”

“If you put me in a cell, she’ll have me out of it even faster,” I said.

“There’s somewhere I need to go,” he said. “You’ll accompany me. And then you’ll stay at my flat tonight.”

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( … This way to Chapter Fourteen part 3 … ) ( … This way to Chapter Fifteen part 2 … )

… ( … This way to Chapter One part 1 … ) …