"You didn"t think to mention that kind of detail in the interview?"
"I did. It"s just not in your report. I mean, how much detail does a patrol Justicar need, really?"
"I guess. And those were the guys who attacked you later?"
I shook my head. The report hadn"t described my attackers, either. I didn"t feel up to it, right now.
"Different guys. I guess I never really thought about the disconnect. You think that"s important?"
He shrugged. "I think it"s interesting."
"You want to base your investigation of the disappearance of the Fratriarch on "interesting"?" I asked.
"Well, interesting is all we"ve got. Where was this?"
I told him, as best as I could remember. It wasn"t close. At first the whiteshirts looked nervous, as they considered that kind of hike, but Owen spun up his rig and called in for a wagon. They were all very happy about that, and sat around talking about how happy they were until the wagon clattered into the square and we all piled in and made our way south, toward the Library Desolate and the place the Fratriarch and I had first run into those weird guys with their eye tattoos.
The square where Barnabas and I had stopped with the girl looked less sinister when I wasn"t being pursued. The fountain was still dry, and the dark windows of the surrounding buildings looked empty rather than menacing. The monotrain rails that ran along the perimeter were quiet. All service had been stopped on this circle while the attack was being investigated and the tracks repaired. I sat on the edge of the fountain and looked around.
"Only a few hours," I said. "You wouldn"t think the place would look so different."
"Perception colors reality," Owen said. "Looks the same to me."
"You"re familiar with this place?"
"It"s on our patrol route. It kind of always looks like this."
"Hm. Could have used you this morning," I said.
"It"s a long route. We only get through here once a day, I guess. But yeah, sorry we weren"t around."
I shrugged and stood up. "Let"s not pretend it would have made that much of a difference."
I walked around the perimeter of the fountain, looking for anything out of place. Just cobbles and street trash. This was the last place we had rested before making the final push to the train. Last chance anyone following us would have had for an ambush. Either no one had been here, or we had moved before they pulled the trigger. I didn"t think that likely. We probably lost our pursuers in our rush. Resting here had probably given them a chance to catch up, to figure out where we were going. The Library Desolate loomed darkly to our west. I turned that way and started walking. The whiteshirts followed.
We had run this part of the route, and I didn"t remember much of it. Twice I had to stop and backtrack, after taking lefts when I should have taken rights. I didn"t remember making a lot of turns, but walking the path now, it was clear that we had been dodging around like a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk.
"You plan your escape routes as thoroughly as you plan your rescues?" Owen asked at one point as we clumped back to the road we had just left. "Because this is either a very cleverly devised route, or you guys were just running scared."
"The Fratriarch does not run scared," I said. "But no, we didn"t plan this. We got spooked."
"You should have gotten an escort," he said. "We would have walked you home."
"That came up. Frat didn"t want it."
"That might have been a mistake."
"One of many, Mr. Justicar. Just one of many."
We ended up at the row of shops where Ca.s.sandra and I had pretended to argue while the two peculiar men pa.s.sed us by. We got there just as night was taking the city of Ash in its grip. The moon was barely over the horizon, painting the high buildings all around with silver light. The sky was clear, and our breath puffed out as fog. Reminded me of the coldmen. Lots of stuff reminded me of those freaks today.
"This is it. Our planned route continued around this corner, up to the Terrace Boulevard, and then home. Long walk, but straight, and lots of people." By now the Terrace would be empty, but the high lamps that lined it would still be burning white. "Those two spoiled that." I indicated their path with my hand. "Came right through here and around that corner. We took off, back the way we just came."
"And you said they were big guys?"
"Bulky. Never got a look at what they were wearing underneath those cloaks. Could have been armor."
"Hm." Owen paced the street, his patrol sticking close to the wagon. All the perimeter lamps on the stubby wagon were burning, bathing the vehicle in a circle of light. Good thing this wasn"t a residential district, I thought. "It seems weird that guys like that would be tailing you. They sound kind of obvious to me, like they"d stick out in a crowd."
"There was something about them. Something ..." I waved my hand, looking for the thought. "Something arcane. Like they were shielded. We just didn"t see them."
"Amon"s Betrayers are supposed to be able to do something like that," one of the whiteshirts said, from the safety of the wagon"s wide double doors. "Walk through the night like shadows, and you don"t see them until they"ve put the knife in your back."
"Your momma tell you that, Travers?" Owen said. "That"s what they do, just before they steal the candy off bad little boys. That"s what I heard."
"I"m serious," I said. "Fratriarch said it, too. Something about them we couldn"t see."
"Well, okay. If the Fratriarch said it. But I"m still pretty sure Travers there is just pa.s.sing on fables." Owen walked down the street, his hand on his sidearm. "This way, you said?"
"Yeah, around the corner. They even looked back at us as they went."
"Stealthy couple of guys, making eye contact and sporting facial tattoos. I don"t know how y"all ever picked up on it."
"Stop being an idiot," I said. "If this is how you"re going to be, you and Travers and your d.a.m.n truck can just pack it up and go back to your station. File a report about your mothers, or something."
Owen chuckled. "p.r.i.c.kly, p.r.i.c.kly girl. Come on, folks. The strange men went this way."
"Not like they"re still going to be there," I said.
"Hope not," Owen answered, then went around the corner. I followed. None of the other whiteshirts moved.
This road began to ascend gradually as it led up to the elevated boulevard that cut across this part of the city. Another late addition to the city"s architecture, the boulevards served as direct routes for the foot and pedigear traffic that most citizens used, especially those who couldn"t afford the monotrain service. We followed it up for a while. Eventually the wagon clattered around the corner behind us, the patrol walking carefully behind it in a loose semicircle.
"Brave bunch of boys you"ve got there, Justicar," I said.
"They do okay. They"re good guys. This is just a ... kind of strange situation."
"Walking around at night with a woman?" I asked, looking back at the patrol. They were young, holding their weapons tightly in their skinny hands. "Yeah, it looks like it"d be a new thing for most of them."
Owen chuckled. "You"re probably not what they think of, when they think like that."
"Likewise," I said. "And this is where we stop."
"Oh, be cool. I"m just-"
"You"re still walking when I said stop. So stop." I knelt down and peered at the ground, then looked around. We were at the mouth of a narrow alley that had a thin trickle of water running down a gutter in its middle. The cement at my feet was splattered with something dark. I put a finger to it. It was cold, and gummy.
"Get those lights up here."
The boys obliged, after a few miscues and misunderstandings. I moved out of the way so the wagon could get good light on the street. It was spotted with dark, muddy blood. I looked up at Owen, then nodded down the alleyway.
"Put the wagon here, focus the beams down there," he said, directing the patrol. The wagon turned tightly on the avenue, its tall tires showing a remarkable agility. The whiteshirts mostly stayed behind its bulk. "Get out here, guys. Come on. Stand over here, like we practiced for building entry."
They did, eventually. They really were just kids, and not that well armed. There was a single bullistic and his ammo guy. The rest had thick staves with blades that snapped out of the top, should a riot turn political. I waited until they looked ready, then decided I"d be waiting all night. I pulled Owen close.
"I don"t want these guys getting in my way," I said.
"They won"t. Unless you decide to run away, of course, and then you might trip over them."
"Be nice. But be out of the way more."
He nodded. I drew my bully and crept into the alley.
You can"t sneak up on the dead. I smelled it pretty quick, going down that alleyway. The air was rimed with ice, and stank of dead meat and old blood. Oil, too. I found them in a little alcove off the alley, the entrance boarded up. Someone had kicked the door in. I went back and got Owen and his boys.
The room was filled with about a dozen of the coldmen, all deader than they had started out. Lots of injuries, from severed limbs to ruptured skulls. The wounds were savage. Something an animal might have done, or a madman. Someone had put a blade into their chests and smashed that gla.s.s and leather piston. It was that old air I could smell, air that tasted like the breath of tombs.
"Lot of "em," Owen said. "And well done for. Your tattooed friends might be on our side."
"Or against these guys. Which might be the same thing. Or it might not." I kicked through the corpses and their shattered weapons. "What"s this look like to you?" I asked, toeing a complicated metal box.
"Some kind of communications rig," Owen answered. He knelt down next to it and fiddled with a few dials. The top folded out into some kind of array, orbits of metal and wire telescoping open like a mobile. "Not too different from ours. Don"t see any input or output jacks, though. Like it"s a receiver with no speakers."
He folded the box away and got two of his boys to take it back to the wagon. One of the whiteshirts was in the alley, spinning up the Justicar"s rig to call in a team to cart off the bodies, when the ground began to rumble. We all knelt down and looked up.
The makeshift room was open to the sky, hidden only by a collection of pipes and other business from the surrounding buildings. I hadn"t given it much of a look when we got there, distracted as I was by the carnage and the stink. Now that rumbling grew into a roar and the sky was blocked out completely as something rushed over our heads.
The monotrain. We were tucked away just under some of the elevated tracks, our teeth rattling as the train went past. When it was gone I looked at Owen and jerked my chin up.
"Which circle was that?"
"Must have been the Hamilton Stone," he answered. "You were on the Pershing when you were attacked."
"They meet up," I said. "Those circles intersect, north of here."
"Yeah."
There was some junk in the alleyway, crates and an old discarded manifold. I dragged those into the room and piled them up, then clambered to the level of the tracks.
"You really shouldn"t do that," Owen said.
"You"ll make a great mom someday." I pulled myself onto the tracks and squinted around.
As with all buildings in the city, the surrounding structures had an open framework at the level of the train. It wasn"t necessary, as the impellor could go right through them, but people didn"t like living in the constant surge of those engines, and why build walls if you don"t have to? I felt that surge now, my bones vibrating as it pulsed through me. There, between the iron grid of the open buildings, far away at the center of this particular monotrack orbit, I could see the impellor tower, shimmering sickly in the moonlight.
"They were waiting," I said. "Waiting for us to come by."
"How could they know you were coming this way?"
I looked over at Owen. He had clambered up beside me, his hands white on the railing at the edge of the tracks.
I smiled. "You really shouldn"t be up here," I said.
"G.o.ds help me if I implied you would make a good mother someday. G.o.ds in heaven help me."
"They couldn"t know. Whether they were waiting for us to come by the boulevard, or ride by on these tracks." I shook my head. "They just couldn"t know."
"Unless someone told them. Someone who knew where you were going and how best you might get there."
"Someone from the Library? Maybe. But we didn"t come this way, even though we planned to. And they still found us."
"Not this batch, though." Owen looked down at the mess of bodies, and his nervous patrolmen trying to organize them. "But another. Which means they could have been watching multiple routes."
"Which means we"ll find other groups like this, watching other tracks?"
Owen looked thoughtful, twisting to peer along the track and around at the city. "Maybe. Maybe if we make a map of other paths you could have taken. I"ve had enough fun up here, for now."
He climbed down, leaving me alone with the periodic pulsing of the distant impellor. The rails began to rumble again, and I sighed and followed him down. The train came by a minute later, but I barely heard the roar.
This is how I usually spend my nights when I spend them with men. We crawled through alleyways, we rumbled down boulevards, we stopped monotrains so we could walk on the tracks and poke through alcoves and cringe when the impellor"s invisible surge washed through our bones. It was filthy.
We found two more places where we"d been watched, where someone had sat and waited for the Fratriarch to come by. Mostly they were improvised rooms, cobbled together from driftwood or old crates, hidden in alleys and under tracks. We found another of those communication rigs, this one still active. We shut it down and took it. I felt something when I was close to it, like a voice in my blood, but then it faded. There were signs these guys had been there for days. At one place we found a body, some old guy who must have stumbled on their hideout and paid with his life. He"d been dead almost a week, wrapped in some kind of sheeting that masked the smell. We even found a lookout on the closest waterway, accessible only by depthship or a really good set of lungs. The last place we looked was along the Pershing circle, trying to find where the guys who had actually attacked us were hiding. It was almost dawn.
It was an easy place to find. Just had to figure out where we were when they had attacked the rails, and then backtrack a little bit. It was a nest, built into the open gridwork at the level of the train, shielded from view by barrels taken from a local distillery. There was no communications rig here, just some kind of tube that was charred at both ends and smelled of gunpowder. From here I had a clear view of the crash site, and the surrounding square. Patrols milled about, whiteshirts circling nervously and black-robed Amonites working on the track. I sat down on the little platform and swung my legs over the edge.
"So," Owen said, sitting beside me, "what do we know?"
"We know where they waited. That there were a lot of them, spread out all over the city. They knew we were coming, and how."
"Not necessarily. We"ve only looked in places we knew you could have gone. There might be other sites like this, all over the city."
"That"s a cheery thought."
"Yeah," he said. "Means there could be a lot of those guys."
"We also know that someone killed some of them. Either because they were following us, or knew we were being followed." I rubbed my face and looked down at the street, far below. "That"s something."
"Really, we still don"t know much of anything," Owen said.
"We know the Fratriarch is missing."
There was a shout, far away, and we both looked up. In the distance, there was a commotion around the crash site. Amonites were rushing away, all of them running toward a white-robed man who held one hand high in the air. They threw themselves at his feet. The other Alexians at the site were milling about. The tracks and other buildings blocked much of our view.
"They"ve found something," I said.
Owen stood and spun up his rig, the swirling orbits of the helmet closing around his head and eyes as it tapped into the communications grid.
I didn"t wait. I jumped to my feet and, invoking a little trick from the book of Morgan, leapt the distance to the track. I ran along the rails, toward the crash site, bully out, heart pounding.