Crystal Heat

3

“Don’t know if you remember me, Lylunda. Amalia Eskurat?”

“Forget the prettiest girl on Babalos Street?” Lylunda bowed, touching her fingers to lips and heart, her face carefully blank. Jaink! She’s younger than me, but she looks a hundred years old and all of them hard.

“That’s kind of you. Perhaps it was true, once. You look tired. Has Grinder been working you too hard?”

Lylunda grimaced. “How I look comes from 0 Beloveds chanted the whole night under my window. I maybe managed three hours’ sleep. I’m giving serious consideration to moving into the keph vault’s Overnighter.”

Amalia nodded. “Not a bad idea. Come “walk with me, I’ll show you around.”

She moved slowly along the flags of the walk in the arcade that ran round the outside of the court. “See the names on the doors? There’s mine. Grinder’s generous. When one of his women gets pregnant, he moves her in here. And the apartment is hers for the rest of her life. Some of the others have gotten married and brought their husbands here. He doesn’t mind. You’ll meet most of them at dinner. It’s like in a palace, you see. Everyone comes to dinner when Grinder says he wants it formal.”

When they reached the back of the garden, Amalia opened a door and gestured Lylunda through. She stepped into a smaller garden with graceful, dark-leaved minikuna trees, their long withes blowing like hair in the evening breeze. By each tree there was a small grassy mount with a flat stone on top. Each stone held a small urn. Amalia walked to one, stood looking at it. “My daughter,” she said. “She killed herself when she was seven. I don’t know why. She was always a sad child.”

Lylunda shivered at the flatness of the woman’s voice, a gray hopelessness she’d never felt, no matter how tight things got. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“No matter. It’s been five years now. Life keeps on in spite of everything. I come here so I can tuck her away for the night. Not really, of course, I know that, but…” Her voice trailed off. “We’d better get back now. She’s the only child here, you know. The rest were mothers. Once you give Grinder a child, you belong to him even after you’re dead.”

There was no change at all in her voice, the same soft sad murmur, but Lylunda knew she was being warned to walk very carefully or she’d find herself trapped the way all these women were. As she moved through the door, she set her hand on Amalia’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze to let the woman know she’d gotten the message.

The days that followed slid past with little to divide one from the next, even the Harrowing of the Izar. She missed most of the Harrowing, having moved into the Overnighter, a room opening off the kephalos’ terminal chamber, no bigger than a closet with a basin and a toilet and a narrow, lumpy cot that made sleeping an endurance sport. Except for meals she spent her time with Bug and did her best to avoid Grinder and his men, though he insisted she dine at his house at least twice a week.

After three weeks, the Aptzers retired to the Temple, satisfied with the havoc they’d wreaked on the guilty. The Izar came to life slowly, warily, like a wounded animal checking itself for more hurts. Lylunda moved back to her room on Saltoki Street.

She was getting restless. No one had come after her, not that she’d noticed. And Grinder would probably have mentioned it if someone on Star Street started making snuffling noises pointed in her direction. Maybe the Kliu hadn’t got onto her world of origin. She didn’t talk about it much in the Pits, only in a blue mood when she was high on pelar. Jingko iKan knew where to find her but he was no chatterer. It’d take more than a dollop of Kliu gold or a threat or three to pry his mouth open. Maybe she’d broken her back trail effectively when she came here.

“You be coming to dinner tonight?”

“Don’t think so, Bug, everything I own is starting to smell, so I’ve got to do a wash and my hair’s so gungy, if I leave it much longer it’s going to rot and fall off.”

“Don’t you like us?”

“It’s not that. Truly, Bug. I just need some time to catch up on all the stuff I couldn’t do because of the Harrowing.” She made a face, looked around the long narrow room, and sighed. “Button things up for me, hm? I’ve got to get some air.” She laughed at the face he made, gently tapped his cheek as she turned to leave.

There’s another problem, she thought as she climbed up the stairs to the double doors that locked the vault away from the main part of the warehouse. She tapped the code into the keyplate and waited for the door to slide open. I think he’s getting the notion of pimping for his father. Away to keep me here. Ba da, can’t even trust Bug.

She glanced up at the landing m front of Grinder’s office. He was leaning on the stair rail, watching her. With the weight of his regard heavy on her shoulders she left the warehouse and walked briskly along the street, stepping over the drunks and ignoring the beggars. At least half of them were watchmen anyway, with Panicbuttons in their pockets to warn of security raids or challengers to Grinder’s rule or even the chance stray from straighter regions of the Izar.

Grinder’s notions-ba da, they scare me. So far I’ve managed not to see what he’s getting at, and Jaink be blessed, he hasn’t pushed me on it. But with Bug starting up… I think its about time I went somewhere else. Or I’ll end up in an urn in that poor sad garden.

When she reached her home street, she stopped at Okin the Baker’s shop for a fresh loaf of bread, traded sass with his oldest daughter, a fine freckled girl with a plain face but lively eyes and a livelier mouth, got a ready cooked bird, a cup of noodle soup, and a dollop of tuber salad from Sutega’s Take Out next door, declined Halfman Ike’s offer to sing her a song if she showed him her legs, and went laughing to her doorway, feeling better about things.

A man stepped from the street as Lylunda fitted a key into a lock. She swung round to face him when his shadow fell on the door, her hand going to the belt where the stunrod couched.

“Elang-mun Lylunda?” He wore a black leather vest with brass buttons and a round badge pinned high on his shoulder, the sigil of the courier service drawn with blackened silver wire set into the white ceramic surface.

“Courier? Whose?”

“The Anaitar of the Erzain. Hizuffi-jaz Gautaxo.” He bowed, touched his fingers to his brow and mouth. “And you are Elang-mun Lylunda?”

Her father. Not only her father, but the top cop of the Behilarr secret police. She’d known his name, but not what he did. He knows about you, Meerya said, the words almost lost in her struggle for breath. He’s very important so he can’t acknowledge you, but he asks about you all the time. It was him paid for your schooling. He did love me, you know. And he held you when you were a little thing. But she didn’t tell me who he was or what he did. Anaitar of the Erzain. Expeditor of the Question.

Lylunda’s face went tight; she took the key from the door, held it in her hand as she moved away. He stepped aside as she got close to him, followed her from the recessed doorway and into the street where his guards were waiting. A short distance off Halfman Ike had parked his wheeled box against a light pole and was juggling two of his knives. And she recognized one of the layabouts from near the warehouse. She turned to face the courier and the two guards who stood a short distance off; no one from the High City ventured into the Izar alone. “Yes. So?”

He bowed again, handed her a paper folded three times and sealed.

She broke the seal and read what was written.

One finds it necessary to summon you and speak with you. The Courier will bring you to the Erzainzala where speech is possible without ears to hear. There is no question of arrest or detention. You will be returned to your residence when the interview is complete.

She tore the note in half, tore it again and again until it was reduced to small fragments. “Hold out your hand. You’d best see he gets these back. I’m to come with you?”

“If you will, Elang-mun.”

“I need to put my purchases away.”

“We will wait, Elang-mun. Though it would be best not to linger.”

“Yes. I can see that.”