Wicked Bronze Ambition

58

“I’ve been thinking,” I told Tara Chayne, around a mouthful of a particularly nasty vegetable mix, foully spiced, inside a wrap, the principal ingredient of which seemed to be gritty sand.

“I worry when you do that.”

We were having a snack at a place called Sasah. She was known there. She had enthused about the menu till I agreed to stop in. I regretted my weakness. I blurted, “This stuff is awful!”

Probably not the smartest reaction, which I realized a moment too late. So, naturally, I dug the hole deeper. “It has peppers in it. Bell peppers. Everything here has peppers in it. That’s sick. When I’m king of the world, as soon as we finish off the lawyers, we’re going to torch the pepper fields.”

She managed a strained smile. “You’ll just add a new angle to the underground economy. Your friends will start planting secret pepper patches, picking and packing by the peck.”

I answered with a gagging noise.

The nearest staffers, having overheard, looked baffled. Mental defectives every one, they couldn’t imagine anyone thinking that peppers were anything less than a blessing from the gods.

This town is afflicted with way too many freethinkers.

It does take all kinds, granted. But the world could get along fine without those nasty vegetables and, more so, without people compelled to put them in stuff that actual living, breathing human beings have to eat.

Sasah’s was a sidewalk cafe. It was in a fine part of town, just outside the Dream Quarter, including many big homes owned by top priests suffering through their vows of poverty and service. The mutts were right there with us, drawing scowls from other patrons and passersby. Staff did not have what it took to face us down, though.

Tara Chayne spotted me trying to slip my lunch under the table, where I had no takers. Not even contrary Number Two was hungry enough. “I rest my case. These are stray dogs. They never skip a chance to eat.”

“I believe I get it. Bell peppers don’t suit your taste.”

“Yes, dear. That’s true. Anyway, what I was thinking? Should we be making a move on this priest before his crowd collects those swords?”

She chomped down a gob of pepper chum like it was good. I tried to keep my reaction off my mug but couldn’t help recalling that she’d wanted me to kiss her.

She gave me a big smile. Her teeth needed work. Surprising, that, what with the options available to people with all the wealth and power she had. Colorful bits of pepper had gotten caught between several teeth.

“What are we going to do about your sister?”

“She’s good right where she’s at.”

“But. . family. .”

“Yeah? You try being her kin.”

But they lived together.

“Hell, Garrett, she’ll be fine as long as they think they can use her. Her personality being what it is, she might gloom them all into committing suicide before they figure out that she’s useless.”

She slapped some coins down. Too much. Showing off. “Sorry you didn’t enjoy it. Next time you pick, your treat. Let’s go find our man.”

While I was working out which foot went into which stirrup which way, I glimpsed Helenia, in ineffective disguise. Her crew included Womble and Muriat. The Director must be letting Helenia hone her field skills.

Family evidently meant a little something to Deal Relway.

“I have a cunning plan,” I announced. “Once we spot our man we turn him in to the Unpublished Committee. The Specials can handle the dirty work. They can make him disappear and then turn up at my place to chat with my partner. The Operators would never know.”

If she and I weren’t obviously involved, we would retain our freedom of action. Relway sticking an oar in anywhere wouldn’t surprise anyone who followed current events. That was what the man did.

Nobody, not even the Palace, could get him to stop.

I added, “The more I think about it, the better I like that.”

“There is a problem.”

“Yeah. It might look like Relway was being manipulated. He wouldn’t want anybody to get that idea.”

“You’re entirely too cynical. And you ignore the benefits of open communication.”

“Huh?”

“Just explain what you’d like done and why. Clearly. In short, declarative sentences. No asides. No parenthetical remarks. No historical justification or moralizing. The way you wish clients would talk to you.”

That sounded like. . Hell, I don’t know what. Maybe just something too sensible, simple, mature, and unlikely for human nature, especially if the nether half of the transaction was a nut job like Deal Relway.

“Overwhelming as a concept, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“The idea of just stepping up and saying something.”

She was messing with me, ringing the wind chimes of a lesser and tangled intellect. She pranced back to her original point. “There would be a legal problem if our man is a priest. Clerics are supposed to be handled inside their churches even when they commit civil crimes. That goes back centuries.”

I understood. There had been a stink about exactly that a few years ago. The Courts of Resolve ruled for a temple where a priest had committed rape, citing past practice, common law, and the fact that the cult was signatory to the Canonical Accord of the Synod of TiKenvile.

Life gets stupid once politics become involved.

“Got you. But what do you want to bet the Unpublished Committee doesn’t give a rat’s whisker?”

It wouldn’t go down in total secrecy, either, if ever it happened. Relway would want the priests to know that they enjoyed no more immunity than any other criminal class.

Yes. His branch of the Guard probably felt strong enough to begin eroding clerical privilege employing a time-honored tool: divide and conquer.

Every cult wanted to cut the rest down. There were hundreds to cut.

Relway might see a chance to establish the primacy of the Unpublished Committee because one of the Operators was a priest in TunFaire’s biggest denomination. If we told him.