THE THESSALY AFFAIR - CHAPTER TWO - THESSALY ĈEN
VI.
Next morning, it was on the bus back over to Valentino Hill. The key in my girdle weighed like a kilogram, but I dragged it out and shoved it in the lock. I went straight to the second-floor office. On the desk was an envelope of blue—single banknotes and a fiver—which Barsina expertly retrieved and put away before I got my mitts on it. I’m no good with money, and she knows it. I examined the desk for clues.
“Clues to what?”
“The hells if I know, but if Efan’s keeping mum about his investigation, that just makes me want to learn more about it.”
“I’m sure the Sir has a reason to keep it secret. It could have to do with the Syndex.”
“Hush, you and don’t say that word,” I said, pacing. “May as well talk about the Sekreto. What a nice, lovely office…pretty view of the garden…”
I leaned against the window-frame. The garden was in a state of disrepair. Weeds in the lawn plot, arborvitae all shaggy and shapeless, fountain dry. A gardener stood down in it with a gloomy expression, while his boy ripped weeds and tossed them in a barrow. “Hard to imagine Efan living in a place like this.” I’d seen him At Home in his family’s ancestral villa, but the Efan I knew looked more comfortable in a chair in a corner with a book, or with his feet on his desk in his flat, or next to me in bed. This was a nice house, too big for him, too fancy. Like Ĉen.
I went back to the desk. There was a globe, a nice, big one, with most of the world painted a brown and tan, and gray blankness. The Great Thalassa and Aulis and the Elbasan were underneath, the Little Thalassa was on top, with Clytemnestra all lone by itself, big salt plains around. Clean and dust-free.
I turned the globe slowly. All that desolate territory, which, I was credibly informed, nine parts out of ten no human eye had looked at below orbital level, much less walked on. Barren, all but lifeless. I kept turning. Mountain ranges without names, plains the size of the Elbasan, rifts, arms of the Upper Plateau.
I was turning towards the Western Hemisphere again, and the thick dust reappeared like the perimeter of night.
“No one’s touched this for a few years.”
“I imagine not, Miss.”
“Efan did, though. Turned it so the Eastern Hemisphere was upside.”
She looked skeptical, but joined me. I gently rotated it, now trying to touch it as little as possible. Back came the Savano, and the Calepegosan Dunes, and the Upper Plateau…
Back to Clytemnestra. I leaned in. “What d’ye see, Barsnjo?”
“A dirt mark.” She fished in her girdle for a cloth, and I waved her off.
“Evidence, Barsina. Evidence.”
She fiddled with the cloth, then put it away and took out her notebook. “Evidence of?”
“What he’s interested in. He turned the globe, got his fingers dirty, and stopped it at Clytemnestra.” I turned it. “Fingermarks.” I turned it again. “See, that’s the size of his fingertip.”
“What’s in Clytemnestra?”
“Damned if I know. Only the second biggest city in the world. Could be most anything.”
She wrote CLYTEMNESTRA: smudge down in her patient, cramped printing. “That’s on the other side of the world.”
“A bit of a chore to reach,” I agreed. “Which reminds me, we need to find a truck or a cart and get to work.”
My morning would not be complete without meeting Thessaly Ĉen on the stairs.
She looked at me, and I at her, and Barsina and the Ĉen woman’s girl looked at each other, I guess.
“How was La Stela?”
“It was fine. Hotels are never as comfortable as home.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“You’ve got the money, then.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll get his things.”
“Yes.”
She had a pained expression. Little brown bird me knew his things, had handled his things—handled him, for that matter. I wondered what that felt like, being popped into a marriage and finding out the man already had someone in bed. Been together a couple of years. History together. Not one, but two of ’em. Not counting that housegirl, and I never asked questions. But that was toffs for you, aristoi and epistarchs alike. Get enough money, and you have more servants. More servants—well, you do the math. It ain’t just men either. Women’s just the same.
It made me want to feel better about her, but she was still the wife, or would be, and she stood there two steps below trying to look faintly bored.
“Very well. Do you think this will just take a day? Will there be men?”
“I’m hoping not. We’ll be back in a couple three hours, Miss Ĉen.”
“Thessaly. Please. Dardana.”
“Thessaly.”
Then she offered her right hand, palm up, and there was me kissing her wrist again, and down and out.
“Miss is remarkably collected.”
“You think I’d be nasty?”
“Miss has been known to be unpleasant.”
“Only to those who ask for it. She’s behaving.”
“Where shall we go?”
“We’ll see if Narvi’s cousin is available. And maybe Narvi too. I’ve still got questions, Barsnjo. Plenty of ’em.”