The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - SCYROS (part 1)

(Chapter 8, part 1)

She looked at me, and folded her elegant hands.

“Meisje,” she said. “Why do you ask? How do you know this name?”

“Miss Azzopardo was kind enough to show me the new exhibit early,” I said. “It’s a striking work, and she said you were the benefactress for this particular painting.”

“I am,” she said. She opened a drawer, pulled out a news magazine, and pushed it across the desk at me. An engraving of her was on the cover, printed in colors, in front of the painting in question. Her arms were folded, and her well-formed face was settled in a knowing smile. The girl looked at you, over her shoulder, like a servant on her way out of the room. I wondered if she was a mercanter or an epistarch. Epistarchs can legally engage in labor trade.

“You must read Emerging Discourse?” she asked me.

I leaned forward and picked it up. It was as heavy as a book, with heavy, parchmenty paper. “I read what they have at the library,” I said. “When I need to research.” I smelled the rich ink and paper scent coming off of it. “I think Emerging Discourse is a bit pricey for me at the bookseller’s.”

“Of course,” she said languidly. “I understand. Practicing economy is a virtue in a woman.”

The gold chain around her neck suggested that she understood less about economy than she claimed. I also knew she couldn’t possibly care about a woman’s virtue unless there was money to be made ruining it.

“You should read it more often, even when you don’t need to,” she suggested sweetly. “It’s the hallmark of a well-rounded person.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Why do you want to know about her?”

I raised a finger for patience. “Understand, Mist’ Petro Fortunato engaged me because he felt attempts were being made upon his life.”

She seemed curious. “You say ‘attempts?’ I heard only about the ground-car crash.”

“Attempts,” I repeated, seeing no need to clarify.

“You don’t seem to have been good at your job.”

“He didn’t hire a bodyguard,” I said, “but a private inspector. And he hired me too late.”

She sat back in her chair, looking amused. Her hair is silver but youthful: whether her hairdresser makes it that color or what, I don’t know. It certainly doesn’t make her look old. Instead, she looks no age at all. Her features are canny like the desert fox’s, and her eyes drifted from me to Barsina and up and down us so that I could all but see the numbers scrolling behind her eyes. I wonder if she has any real friends who are women if she looks at them all like so much meat.

“Meisje is very old,” she said. “Irreplaceable. I felt it my social duty to put her in the State Gallery. A painting of such antiquity is a treasure for the whole world, not one woman’s house.”

“Why wasn’t she in the State Gallery to begin with?” I asked.

“She was lost for a long time,” the labor-broker told me, quiet-like. “She was found a few years ago and given to me.”

“Why?”

Her lip curled. “In exchange for a girl.”

I can’t say I was surprised. “Lost where? Found how?” I said. I tried to sound not so staccato, but I’m afraid I failed. She gave me a bemused look and elaborately overlooked my rudeness. I couldn’t help it, I’m afraid. I just sound that way sometimes.

“On the other side of the Montara Sierpento, in the Blight, there’s a ruin, which the Sub-Director of Archaeology from the State Academy excavated several years ago. Under it was an extensive chamber or vault, and Meisje was one of the items inside.”

“And she came to you how, again? For a girl?”

“Oh, he and I go back years,” she said, not quite listening. Her eyes drifted left and up, looking almost dreamy. “He took me up there and showed me the excavation, a whole town buried in sand by some storm hundreds of years ago. Zoan, it was called.”

“Zoan,” I said. “I’ve heard that name before. I don’t remember where … ”

“It was a technopole,” she said, “with a large scientific establishment and cloning center and the first city held by the Caballardo. The exact position was lost for a few centuries, but he found it. He found it.”

“What is his name?”

She looked at me less dreamily and with an edge of irritation. “Mullinax. Mist’ Aldvestro Mullinax. He’s an epistarch, Miss Fenek.”

“Of course,” I said. That was evident from his career, at least.

“Am I being questioned, Miss Fenek? I must say, I am not used to it.”

“There’s aspects of the case that Meisje seems to touch, and I want to understand why. If it’s an illusion, I’d like to be able to disregard it and pay attention to the relevant facts.”

“It must be an illusion,” she said, flat. “This was five years ago.”

“Mist’ Mullinax is still the Sub-Director of Archaeology?”

She shrugged. “So far as I know.” She looked at her nails, indifferent.

“And the girl?”

“What about her?”

“Was she one of your, ah, contracts? From your, er, school?” I gestured toward the part of the building where I supposed it must be.

She smiled thinly. “No,” she said. “Although I assure you she went through there later, of course. For finishing. He is pleased with the results. I do not pass inferior product for … explicitly bed purposes. No, he had an assistant, much younger than him, who caught his eye. She proved impervious to his charms.”

“Couldn’t be wooed?”

“No. And she is athletic, and he is not, so more vigorous methods would have … disrupted the camp and been a crime.”

I thought about Nunzia Azzopardo and Fortunato.

She fell silent a moment. Barsina was busily scritching in her notebook.

“Must she do that?”

“She assists me,” I said.

The labor-broker looked at me with disfavor. “Really.”

“What became of his assistant?” I asked, guessing the answer already. “It must have been something quite clever.”

I guessed correctly that the citizen’s vanity would loosen her tongue, even though I could tell she knew my trick. “Nothing dramatic. Many young women enter my doors to avoid the inevitable that might befall them in debtor’s courts. Many are brought by guardians eager to dispose of them and retain an inheritance. Others … I do not like to share my methods too freely, but my girl Tala can be … unusually persuasive with women of a certain sentiment. They may regret it soon, but in the meantime, they surrender their citizenship willingly.”

“And you arranged this in exchange for the painting.”

“And gave her my … training course, yes, after she endured her new status in the desert with him for a few months—under Tala’s guidance and persuasion when needed, of course.”

“Of course. This was a fair trade for him?”

“More than,” Miss Scyros said. “No one in the world could have given him her but me, and no one in the world could have given me this painting but him.”

“Yet you gave it to the State Gallery because … ”

She looked at me contemptuously. “Do you not understand the wealthy?” she said. “Money is nothing. Prestige is everything. As no one could give me enough money to pay for Meisje, no one but me could give Meisje up. The prestige is incalculable. And while I could not sell her, I could give her away, and the demand for my girls would be endless, and therein is wealth to go with my unlimited prestige. All for the simple trick of turning a mousy archaeologist’s assistant and putting her on her knees in exchange for a bit of old canvas, wood, and paint. Are we done here?”

( … This way to Chapter Seven part 3 … ) ( … This way to Chapter Eight part 2 … )