After Dark

Chapter 3

HE HAD NOT handled that well. Emmett realized his mistake immediately. Lydia looked as if she had been flash-frozen in her chair. She did not move so much as a single muscle.

The dust-bunny on her shoulder stirred, but since it didn't open its second pair of eyes Emmett figured he was safe for the moment.

Lydia's lagoon-blue eyes gleamed with anger, however. It was probably just his imagination or maybe a trick of the evening light, but he could have sworn that her red-gold hair had turned an even more fiery shade. Unlike the dust-bunny, she did look dangerous.

"Perhaps I should explain," he said gently.

"Don't bother. I get the picture." She narrowed her eyes. "You're under the impression that I'm a thief? That I deal in illicit antiquities?"

Obviously a bit of diplomacy was required at this juncture, Emmett decided.

"I think you have connections in the underground market here in Cadence," he said deliberately. "I need those contacts, and I'm willing to pay well for them."

She slammed down her wineglass. "I am not a ruin rat. I'm a respectable member of the Society of Para-archaeologists. Okay, so I haven't worked on any licensed excavation teams lately, but I am in good standing with the Society. I've got enough academic credentials to paper a wall, and I've worked with some of the most noted experts in Cadence. How dare you imply—"

"My mistake." He held up one hand to silence her. "I apologize."

She was clearly not mollified. "If you want to hire a thief, Mr. London, I suggest you go elsewhere."

"I don't want to hire a thief, Miss Smith. I want to find one. Preferably with as little publicity as possible. To do that, I figured I'd need someone who knew the underground side of the antiquities business."

"I see." Her voice was as brittle as glass. "What made you think that I could help you?"

"I did a little research."

"You mean you went looking for a P-A who was not employed by a legitimate excavation team?"

He shrugged and took a sip of the truly awful wine. He congratulated himself on not wincing.

Lydia's smile was getting colder by the second. "Did you work on the assumption that any P-A who could not get respectable employment on a team or in a museum must be involved in the illegal trade?"

"It seemed like a reasonable theory. I regret any misunderstandings."

"Misunderstandings?" She leaned forward slightly. "Calling me a thief comes under the heading of insults, not misunderstandings."

"If it makes any difference, I'm not especially concerned with your professional ethics."

"It makes a difference, all right," she said ominously. "A big difference."

"Be fair, Miss Smith. No one expects to find a legitimate para-archaeologist working at a place like Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors." He paused. "And then there was that business with the body in the sarcophagus this morning."

"I knew you were going to hold that against me." She flung out a hand in disgust. "One lousy body and you leap to the conclusion that I'm up to my ears in the illegal trade."

"It wasn't finding the body that made me think you might have some contacts in the business, it was the fact that you seemed well acquainted with the victim. I'm told that, among other things, Chester Brady was a ruin rat."

Her mouth opened, closed, and then opened again. "Oh." After a moment she settled wearily back into her chair. "I suppose that could lead a person to some inaccurate conclusions."

"I appreciate your cutting me some slack on that point." He took another cautious swallow of wine and pondered the razor-thin view of the Old Wall. "So how did you come to know Brady?"

Lydia slanted him a meditative glance. Out of the corner of his eye he studied her expressive, intelligent face. He got the feeling that she was debating just how much to tell him. He would no doubt get the highly edited version of the story, he thought. She had no reason to confide in him.

Not that he didn't already know a good deal about her. In the past twenty-four hours he had made it a point to learn a lot. He was aware of the two days she'd spent trapped underground in the Dead City six months ago. His people in Resonance had briefed him on her medical reports—reports that were supposed to be private and confidential but that were extraordinarily easy to come by if you had money and connections. He had plenty of both.

This morning when he'd walked into her office and seen the gutsy determination in her eyes, he'd immediately dismissed the opinions of the para-rez psychiatrists. Whatever else she was, Lydia was not weak or delicate. He knew another fighter when he saw one.

The little rush of pure sexual awareness that went through him in that first moment was a warning. He had chosen to ignore it. That, he reflected, might not have been one of his smarter decisions. But he knew himself well enough to realize that he was not going to change his mind.

"I met Chester a few years ago," Lydia said after a while. "He was a strong ephemeral-energy para-resonator."

"A tangler?"

"Yes. But he came from nothing. No family, no proper schooling. He never went to the university. Never studied archaeology the way most good tanglers do. He was never allowed into the Society."

"That's not exactly a mark against him. Everyone knows the Society of Para-archaeologists is as arrogant and elitist as they come."

She glowered. "I agree that the Society is inclined to be a bit stiff-necked, academically speaking. But it's because of their high standards and strict admission requirements that tanglers haven't got the same disreputable public image as those ghost-hunters in the Guilds."

"The Guilds have standards," he made himself say in a neutral tone.

"Hah. What the Guilds have are bosses who run things the way gangster bosses run their gangs, and everyone knows it. In this town, the Guild boss is Mercer Wyatt, and I can assure you that whatever standards he imposes have nothing to do with academic qualifications or credentials."

Emmett contemplated the bright flash of anger that lit her eyes. "It's no secret that there's a lot of professional rivalry between hunters and tanglers, but you seem to have taken it to an extreme."

"Whatever else you can say about the members of the Society, we're respected professionals, not members of an organization that is only one step above an underworld mob."

"I believe that we were discussing Chester Brady."

Lydia blinked a few times, scowled, and then subsided back into her chair. "Yeah, Poor Chester."

"You said he never gained admission to the Society?"

"He preferred to work the, uh, fringes of the antiquities trade."

"Meaning he was a thief?"

"Well, yes. But I sort of liked him anyway. At least, when I wasn't mad as hell at him. He really was an incredible tangler, you know. Very few could resonate with the ephemeral energy in the illusion traps the way he could. I once saw him de-rez a whole series of vicious little traps in one of the catacombs." She broke off abruptly and dabbed surreptitiously at the corner of her eye with the sleeve of her shirt.

"How did you become friends?"

"He runs—ran—a little shop in the Old Quarter near the east wall. Sort of a combination pawnshop and antiquities gallery. Small-time stuff. Anyhow, a couple of years ago he ripped off a little tomb vase from the lab where I was working. I traced it to his shop. Confronted him. We got to talking, and one thing led to another."

"You bonded with a small-time thief? Just like that?" Emmett said in surprise.

Her jaw tightened. "I got my tomb vase back first. As a gesture of thanks for not handing him over to the authorities, Chester did a small favor for me. As time went on, he did other favors."

"What kind of favors?"

She turned her glass between her fingers. "He knew everyone involved in Dead City work, legal and illegal. He knew who could be trusted and who would rip you off without a second thought. He also knew who was hiding a major find and who'd just secured funding from questionable sources. There's a lot of competition among the excavation teams, you see. Inside information is useful."

"There's always a lot of competition when there's a lot of money at stake."

"It's not only the money. Careers are made and broken out there on the sites."

"So good old Chester clued you in on the players in the business?"

"Something like that."

Emmett looked at her. "What did you do for him in return?"

"I… talked to him. And once I listed him as a consulting source in a paper I published in the Journal of Para-archaeology." She smiled sadly. "Chester really got a kick out of that."

"You said you talked to him." Emmett paused. "What did you talk about?"

"Lots of things. Chester spent years underground. Illegally, of course, but he sure knew a lot of stuff. Sometimes we talked about how it felt to go into para-resonate mode with the really old illusion traps. The kind that can suck you into a nightmare before you know what hit you."

"I see."

"Chester was a loner, but even loners get lonely occasionally. And tanglers need to talk to other tanglers sometimes. The Society provides more than just decent career opportunities for ephemeral-energy para-resonators. It functions as a club. A place where you can meet and talk to other people, share experiences."

"But Brady wasn't a member of the club."

She shook her head. "No. So he talked to me instead."

"In other words, Brady was an outcast tangler who sometimes pined for company, and you provided it?"

"That about sums it up."

"Any idea who might have wanted to kill him?"

"No. But there was always someone around who was unhappy with Chester." She made a face. "Including me. I've been struggling to get a private consulting business up and running. Last month he lured away my first important client. I was furious with him for a while. But it was hard to stay mad at him."

"I see."

Lydia straightened in her seat. "I think it's time you told me exactly why you wanted to hire me, Mr. London."

He leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the railing. "Recently a family heirloom was taken from my private collection. I have reason to believe that the thief brought it here to Cadence and sold it on the underground market. I want it back."

"You want me to help you trace it?"

"Yes."

"It's a Harmonic artifact, I assume?"

"No. As a matter of fact, it's not an antiquity from the ruins. This particular artifact came through the Curtain with my ancestors."

Her eyes widened. "You're looking for something pre-colonial? An object from Earth?"

"Yes." The barely suppressed excitement in her voice amused him. "It's not nearly as old as anything from the Dead Cities here on Harmony, of course. But it is, obviously, extremely valuable."

"Naturally." Enthusiasm lit her face. "Anything from the Old World is worth a fortune to collectors. So little remains."

"Yes."

Everyone knew that after the mysterious gate between worlds known as the curtain closed forever, the settlers on Harmony had found themselves stranded. Lacking replacement parts, the equipment the colonists had brought with them had ultimately failed. Everything that could be used had been stripped. Many valuable artifacts had been lost during the violent, tumultuous period known as the Era of Discord. Most of the rest had been discarded, lost, or destroyed in the two hundred years that had passed since colonization.

"What was it?" Lydia demanded eagerly. "One of the computers? An agricultural tool of some kind?"

"It's a box," Emmett said.

Her face fell. "A box?"

"A very special box. Hand-carved from some sort of golden-brown wood and trimmed with gold and silver metals. It's called a cabinet of curiosities. It contains dozens and dozens of small secret drawers. My great-grandmother claimed that no one in the family had ever found and unlocked all of them."

Lydia frowned. "I don't understand. It sounds like a work of art, not a piece of Old Earth equipment or a mechanical device."

"It is a work of art. Handmade by an Old World craftsman some four hundred years before the Curtain opened. One of my Earth-side ancestors had the wood especially treated to preserve it indefinitely."

"But that's not possible." Lydia's voice gentled, although she did not trouble to hide the disappointment in her eyes. "You know as well as I do that the settlers brought no art with them. Space on the transports was too limited. And the Curtain closed before trade between the two worlds could be established. Perhaps it's something one of your ancestors made after arriving here on Harmony."

"No," Emmett said. "The cabinet of curiosities is from Old Earth."

"But how did your ancestors get it here?"

Emmett glanced at her. "I'm told that my several-times-great-grandfather had no choice. He married just before he came through the Curtain, and his new wife insisted on bringing the cabinet with her. Apparently she was a strong-willed woman. Somehow, she convinced my ancestor to smuggle it on board the transport."

Lydia looked politely doubtful. "I see."

"You don't believe me?" he asked skeptically.

"Every family has a few quaint legends concerning its Old World history."

"You think I'm looking for a colonial-era box that one of my forebears crafted right here on Harmony, don't you?" She gave him a breezy, reassuring smile. "Don't worry. It really doesn't matter what I think about the provenance of your missing artifact. I don't have to believe that it came through the Curtain in order to find it for you."

"True, but there's a small problem with that approach."

"What problem?"

"If you really think that I'm semidelusional or just overly sentimental about an old family antique, you probably won't be sufficiently careful."

"Why do I need to be careful?"

"Because there are collectors who do believe that the box dates from pre-Curtain Earth. Some of them would no doubt kill to get their hands on it."