THE THESSALY AFFAIR - CHAPTER TWO - THESSALY ĈEN
V.
V.
We’d taken his official ground-car there. We took the bus back.
And he didn’t offer to drive me.
I hadn’t felt so empty in a long time. Not since I waited for death all night in the Palace of Justice.
We sat in the women’s section, and even the sniggering young layabouts at the back of the men’s section making personal remarks about us didn’t bring out my snappy comebacks like they should have.
I could tell that worried Barsina.
Her hands fluttered near, then drew back, and she finally took my fingers in hers and held them.
“It’s not his fault,” I said by the time we crossed Orvendista Strato. “His father chose the girl. He had to marry someone. I’m not someone.”
“Miss is someone.”
“I’m no one.” I put my foot up on her knee. “Eh?” The iron manumission anklet was right there, quietly rattling with brass bangles Barsina had chosen for me. “Right there. There I am. That’s all I am.”
“Miss.”
“Well?”
“The Sir—” She stopped. “He loves you. You know it.”
“Now he’s got a wife. So now I have to share him with her, and you, and Irodiada knows he may tumble a bit with that servant he’s brought from the flats.”
“Miss, I can stop—”
“No! That makes me petty and low, Barsnjo. You love him too. And it ain’t proper—not doing work. You’re the most proper girl I know.”
“Strato de Papagoj!” yelled the bus driver.
“Next stop is ours, Miss.”
“Yah, yah.”
We piled out at the corner, the layabouts trying to pinch my bum. I turned, gave the first one a death glare, pulled out my longest hairpin, and snarled.
Hooting, they hared off.
“We’ll make it work,” I said. “We’ll make it work.”
“This way, Miss.”
“Got something I need to do.”
Reluctantly, she followed me across the Night Market, making admiring remarks about produce, but I was not to be distracted. Smack, smack, smack, went my sandals. We crossed by the fountains, the Heroes of Demetra 14th statue, and through the tangled byways of the Florist Mercantry, emerging in front of the commissariat.
“Miss, are you sure—”
“Barsina,” I said. “The little pillock all but told me about it this morning, leaning right there with his newsjournal. I’m gonna wring it all out of him.”
“Yes, Miss.”
Up the worn orange steps, and into the lobby. “Oi!” I said.
The desk warrant looked up from his terminal. These days, they know better than to cause trouble, but I knew for a fact that my ears had caught the words “Mardonios’s slags” more than once.
I put my hands on the counter. “Ganzorigo, is Alagon in?”
The warrant, who was not a skinny man, blinked at me. “Subaltern’s in the interview room,” he said.
We sat on a bench outside it for twenty minutes. I stared at my fingers, the nails Barsina worked to keep neat, the old, old work calluses. I looked at them hard. Things had come a long way since I was young. I couldn’t just run off or make stupid choices. I wasn’t anybody, but I had obligations. And I was obliged to be the concubine.
“So let’s find out what we can about her,” I said.
“Miss?”
The interview room door banged open, and a couple of rozzers hauled some malefactor therefrom and down to the cells. Subaltern Alagon came out, rubbing his forehead and looking at a notebook.
“Oi, you,” he said, looking up and seeing me.
I bent my eye upon him. “You knew.”
He recoiled, closed the notebook, and put it in his sash. He screwed up his face, pained, then jerked his head at the interview room and went back in.
I shut the door behind us. Alagon leaned against the wall, rubbing his hands as if he’d gotten them dirty.
“You knew.”
“Yah, the word was out. Surprised you hadn’t heard.”
“Shit, everyone in here’s laughing at me?”
“Nobody’s laughing, Miss Fenek.”
“What happened to Nosy-panties?”
He looked uncomfortable and shrugged.
“Who’s this girl?”
“You—” He shut his mouth. “Yah, I get your question. She’s Thyatiran. I think she’s about twenty-six. She’s an epistarch like the Mardonioses. Rare earths is what they’re into for money—on the Upper Plateau, and they got involved in those Zoan mines too.”
“Uh huh.” I brought my hands together, fingertips to fingertips. “Where’s the Mardonios connection?”
“Financing,” Alagon said. “Leastways, that’s what we think.”
“‘We’?”
“Me and some other juniors. Trying to figure it out. Ensign-Captain hasn’t been chatty about it.”
“All happy, eh, keeping it to himself, on the deka?”
Alagon raised an eyebrow. “Well, he hasn’t told any of us exactly.”
“How exactly do you know?”
“Usually it’s me interrogating in here,” he muttered.
“Well?”
“Nosy-Panties—”
“That’s more like. Cough it up.”
“Heard it. In a club.”
“Who?”
“Me. Some aristoi playboy talking about it.”
“You hang out in some nice clubs, Alagon.”
“I got a little blue,” he said, defensive. “It was payday, and Vargos is getting married, too, so we took him down. This chozzer was drinking and talking, and I heard the word Mardonios come out of his mouth. He had things to say about this girl I wouldn’t say about her, seeing as he’s my estro.”
“Like what?”
Barsina’s hand plucked her notebook from her girdle and her graphite stylus with it. Scritch, scritch.
“Like—” Alagon scratched the back of his head. “He says that he plucked her a couple years ago in Calypso.”
I took a breath. “He’s lying?”
“Nosy-Panties, no way to know, but men say a lot of things. But he seemed to think it was pretty funny to say, him getting between her legs and she marrying Ensign-Captain and all.”
“Yah, I’ll bet. Who was this chozzer, so I can kick him in the stones for Ensign-Captain?”
“I don’t know. I should know ’em, all, what with Night Market and Green Quarter being the Ensign-Captain’s patrol, but I don’t. There’s a damned lot of them, and half of ’em go out of town half the year, or into space, or to the hells for all I know. He’s not up in front of the beak with me behind him ever, I know that. He’s money though. Thirty-odd, brown hair. They kept pouring wine, and kept it coming. I know a family label when I hear it, and these were family labels. Ulankas. Banerjees. Top cups like that, no water added. No plonk.”
“First you heard of the wedding?”
“First any of us did. We looked at each other like, Oi! The toss-pot! But it was out then, and we had to come in next day and see th’estro Himself and act like nothing.”
“When was this?”
“Three weeks ago now, and we’ve been biting our arses to keep our jaws shut.. Estro’s been not himself ever since.”
“This thing he flew to in Helioshad—real investigation or was he with her?”
“Real, far’s I can see: the Big Man, Deniz, he sent him on it.”
“What’s it about?”
“Hush-hush,” Alagon said. “I dunno a thing, but if I did, I don’t think I could tell you. You know how,” he coughed, “they get.”
“I do,” I said. And I did. “You recognize anyone with him?”
“I’d had a couple cups,” he admitted. “And they all looked alike, you know, and some of them had masques, and girls on their laps. I wasn’t on duty, y’know!”
I raised a hand. “I know,” I said.
I put my thumbs in my girdle and looked at the floor.
“I’m sorry about all this, Nosy-panties. But a man can get married, and big families…well, it’s all money, ain’t it?”
“I know.”
“He couldn’t marry you. He didn’t have a choice.”
I looked at him. “I didn’t expect him to.”
“He thinks the world of you, estro does. You—” He stopped. “When you—you nearly got executed, he was frantic. He went through a lot.”
“Not near as much as I did.”
“I know, I know. Nothing like. But it about killed him, and, well, he worked hard, all the way to the end, to make things come out. He’s, well, um, fond of you. Loves you,” he muttered. “Y’know.” He rubbed his face. “If I learn anything else, Fenek, I’ll tell you.”
“Thanks, Alagon.” I said.