The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - MARDONIOS THEN SCYROS -

(Chapter 7, part 2)

I checked the wanted posters but saw nothing more to alarm me.

“It was nice of the Sir the Ensign-Captain Retired to compliment you, Miss.”

“It would have been better to do it when he wasn’t retired and to my face.”

She put on her sandals in the street. “Where now, Miss?”

There was a sleepy vendor of skewered chicken with lime slices near the door of the commissariat, and I stopped there. The skewers, lying above hot coals, were a kvara each, and we hungrily nibbled them crossing the Market. “The labor broker first,” I said. “She’s in Strato Paraidos, I think.”

“Miss, do you think you or the Sir the Ensign-Captain can solve this case?”

“Do you think we can?”

“I do,” she said fervently. “You for certain.—But if you don’t, neither of you?”

“Then be glad you’re not one of Fortunato’s servants,” I said. “They’ll nail them up on the execution grounds outside of the city, the whole lot of them, on the theory one of them did it or that one of them could have prevented it.”

It wasn’t fair, as far I was concerned, and thank the Lady, it didn’t happen often, but the law was clear: unsolved murders and living indentureds did not mix. If you had the one, the other had to go.

It makes sense in its way. If a servant fails to stop a murder, well, she’s guilty too, yah? Slow and lazy—or malicious—when it’s her job to ensure her Sir or Miss is safe. If no one outside the household committed the murder, then it’s an inside job, and that means they all should know, yah? No one gossips like indentureds, trust me. If a tank-girl is bent enough to kill, or if a former citizen is ice-picking her contract-owner, they’re a danger to anyone else who buys their papers. Everyone else, on account of the presumed gossip, is a conspirator.

Case solved. You don’t even have to figure out which one it was, which is a big time-saver.

It’s ugly enough when one or two are involved and guilty, like that one incident of the baker’s girl who put him into meat pies a couple of years back, but there were fifteen or more servants and freedwomen in the Fortunato house. Instead of one lingering, ugly death, there’d be nigh on a score of innocents. I was nearly sure none were guilty.

Another thing to fret about, another reason to stay on the case despite the growing dangers.

We caught an almost empty Gold Line bus, and my girl rattled a couple of dekas in the farebox. A man leaped aboard late as the operator put the machine in gear. I didn’t pay heed because people always run to catch the bus. We took the back bench in the women’s section by the stairs to avoid leers in the mixed-sex area. I slipped my fingers in my girdle and reassured myself the odd package was still there, stiff and flat in its bit of brown oilcloth. I wondered uneasily what I was toting around town. It must be illegal, and I had a bad feeling it was unusually so. And Miss Fortunato was the beneficiary of my generous assistance to Solene Zenithar … and Miss Fortunato’s patro was lying on a slab in the commissariat morgue … and Meisje was involved … Meisje dead a thousand or fifteen hundred years or whatever it was … and Meisje had been Miss Herme Scyros’s painting …

How does a labor broker even get a fifteen-hundred-year-old painting from Earth?

Barsina was tapping my knee, and I saw him. He was a fat man with a red face and a square burgundy pillbox cap. He looked closely at me, and I sighed internally. What was this going to be?

He moved back in the aisle to the edge of the women’s section—and then a row inside it. I looked around, but the only other woman was elderly and reading a blue novel, and the bus conductor was on the open-top deck arguing fares with another passenger.

“This is for women,” I said, pointing at the sign. “You go back to mixed—there—”

“Yah, yah,” he said. “I’m looking for someone.”

“I’m sure it isn’t me.”

“Maybe it is,” he said. “You Dardana Fenek?”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Who’re you?”

“You call me Demetri,” he said with a grin. He had some pale gums, did Demetri.

“Maybe I won’t call you anything,” I said. “Mist’ Demetri. Maybe we’ll part ways.”

“Maybe I gotta case for you.”

Barsina’s hand was firm on my leg, which I like, but unfortunately, when she does it in public, she’s usually warning me.

“What kind of case?”

He moved to the row right below ours, putting his elbows on the grab bar and looking up. “Well, me and the missus, we got a daughter, yah?”

“Daughter got a name?”

“Zerah,” he said instantly. “So she gets in trouble with a boy, and they run off to Aulis a couple months ago.”

“Got stuffed, eh?”

“Yah.”

“Boy’s name?”

“Amador,” he said as instantly. “Nice kid, seventeen, dumb as a xenosnake.” He laughed, all pale gums. “So we think they’ll wise up, come home, yah? Make me and the missus some grandparents.”

“Where you from?”

“Cyme.”

I knew Cyme. It’s a market town fifty kilometers north of the Kosmohaveno.

“She convos us finally, things are fine, she’s four months along, then five, Amador’s got a job—”

“Doing what?”

“’Prentice Longshoreman, put some drachms down for the guild, learning the unloading and loading, yah? Good money for a seventeen-year-old. But two weeks ago, Zerah doesn’t convo anymore … can’t raise her tablet, we send letters, no answer. So I put all my business on hold and come down—”

“What’s your business?”

“Pork,” he said. He reached in his vest and pulled out a card. Demetri Valeth, Pork Dealer, blocknumber such and such. Such an address, Cyme.

I put it in my girdle.

“Their address,” he said, pointing at my midsection, “is on the back of that card. And no one was there, and the landlord ain’t seen them since they paid rent first of month.”

I pulled it out, rotated it, and in a stiff, feminine country hand was the address in ink.

“What class is your wife?”

“Agrios, Miss Fenek. I’m a mercanter. She married up.”

Did she, I thought. I supposed she had, though other than money and status, he was no prize. Well, he paid her fee, I guess.

“What’s the names again?”

“Zerah,” he smiled. “And he’s Amador Maliki. And I’m Demetri Valeth. From Cyme.” He offered his hand.

Barsina was reluctantly writing all of this down.

“I charge by class. Ten drachms for mercanters, plus expenses.”

I offered my hand, and he sweatily shook and slipped me a ten drachm bank note drawn on some institution in Cyme.

“I’m on other cases,” I said, “but I’ll go by there and start investigating. I don’t make guarantees.”

“You’ve no idea,” Mist’ Gums smiled, “how happy that will make the Missus.”

( … This way to Chapter 7 part 1 … ) ( … This way to Chapter 7 part 3 … )