CHAPTER IV
Kajada
Bhaaj sat at Dig’s grave.
It was hard to believe that four years had passed since she, Jak, and Gourd had brought Dig’s cremated remains here, after the brutal finish of the cartel war. They’d spread her ashes across the ground, letting them mix with the dust. Hundreds of people had gathered to watch, standing back, leaving the three of them alone. More crammed the midwalks above them on either side of the canal. Many held tech-mech lamps or torches, their lights like fire-dragons in the darkness. Others came armed, including enough military hardware to get half of them thrown in prison. Yet no one attacked anyone else. On that day, and that day only, they kept a truce, dust gangers, drug punkers, cyber-riders, merchants, children, parents, guardians, and the surviving combatants of the cartel war.
They came to bear witness to Dig’s passing.
The Vakaar punkers showed up to make sure Dig really had died. Behind their impassive faces, inside the shadowed cavities of their souls, Bhaaj had no doubt they rejoiced. The Kajada punkers paid tribute to a leader they’d feared but also respected. They’d seen the difference between Dig and her mother. Jadix had ruled by fear, forcing desperate people to work for her through threats, blackmail, and violence. Yah, Dig was smarter than her mother, but that wasn’t what cemented her rule of the Kajada empire. She knew how to lead, how to build loyalty, how to make people want to work for her. In a different life, she could’ve turned into a great leader.
Instead, she became a nightmare.
Her enemies had felt the force of her vengeance with a power even Jadix had never managed. When Hammer Vakaar murdered Dig’s husband, the father of her children, a man she’d loved beyond all else, that rammed the final nail into the coffin of Dig’s transformation. Legends of her infamy spread across the aqueducts, across Cries, even across the Imperialate. In the end, she destroyed Hammer Vakaar in the chaos of war, bringing both cartels to their knees with her fury.
Of all the people who came to the memorial, no one had mourned—
Except Jak, Gourd, and Bhaaj.
In their youth, when Dig led their gang, she’d sworn they would know the universe wanted them. It didn’t matter that they had no parents. They had Dig, and she had the resources of her mother’s empire. They’d never starved, never felt alone, never lived the terror of a child with no one to care if they died. In those days, none of them fully appreciated the trade-off it demanded from Dig, that she had to work for her mother’s cartel, the drug trade she hated. Dig paid the ultimate price so her circle could have lives worth living. She gave up her soul for the people she loved.
None of Dig’s four children came to her memorial. They’d remained secreted with people Dig chose before she died, the few she trusted to keep them safe. Unlike her mother, Dig never let the drug trade touch her family. She had one last demand for Digjan, her eldest daughter. As Dig died, while Digjan knelt at her side and Bhaaj on the other, she told her daughter, “You see this Bhaajan person? You be like her, Digjan. Like HER. Not me.”
Like her? Bhaaj had thought Dig hated her for deserting the Undercity. She’d blamed herself for what Dig became. If she’d stayed as the sister Dig needed, would Dig have denied the cartel? Or would Jadix have killed Bhaaj one day, ridding herself of Bhaaj’s defiance? In retaliation, Dig would’ve gone after Jadix, probably killing her own mother. With the Vakaar cartel free to run rampant over the Undercity, Dig would have taken over the Kajada cartel anyway, to protect her people. Bhaaj saw no way their lives could have led to anything but a chasm they couldn’t cross. Never in a thousand years had she expected Dig’s dying words.
Suffocating with guilt, Bhaaj had done her best to give Dig’s daughter a better life, the life the girl wanted. Bhaaj helped her gain acceptance to the academy that trained starfighter pilots.
Now Bhaaj sat alone on a stump of rock by the wall where they’d held the memorial. She, Jak, and Gourd had carved a mural here, an image of four dust gangers, their faces too vague to identify, but their heights and clothes just like the four of them in adolescence. Those stone gangers stood together, forever at guard over Dig’s final resting place, four youths with their lives still full of promise. It was no great sculpture; none of them were artists. That didn’t matter. It stood witness to a legacy they would never forget.
Now a sphere of light surrounded Bhaaj, with darkness beyond. The canal stretched out in both directions, silent and thick with dust that looked red in brighter light but now showed as a black carpet. Caught by Bhaaj’s light, though, specks of azurite glinted blue in the dust. Thirty years ago, this territory had belonged to the circle her dust gang protected. Another gang claimed it now, one that earned both fear and respect because they ruled the territory that decades ago had belonged to Dig Kajada and also to Bhaaj, who now led the Dust Knights.
Max, Bhaaj thought. Crank up my ear augs.
Done.
Her hearing ramped up until she caught the whisper of moving air, courtesy of her biomech web. Bio-threads networked her body, as did bio-hydraulics, enhanced musculature and an augmented skeletal system. It gave her more than double the speed, reflexes, and strength of a normal person, all powered by a microfusion reactor within her body. The army had implanted her first biomech web, and she’d upgraded it several times after she retired despite the great expense and many clearances it required. In her job, it proved invaluable.
However, it didn’t provide what she needed today. She had no doubt watchers were spying on her, but she heard nothing except the faint air currents, which circulated via conduits that networked these canals like blood vessels created from stone.
Bhaaj waited.
Shall I activate your optics? Max asked.
No. I can see well enough.
A rustle came from above, hardly more than a whisper.
Bhaaj got to her feet, slow and easy. She didn’t reach for the EM pulse gun she wore in a shoulder holster over her muscle shirt.
Smooth and efficient, a woman jumped down from the midwalk and landed a few meters away, sending dust spraying into the air. Bending her legs, she absorbed the impact of that drop with an expertise Bhaaj had rarely seen even when she’d trained soldiers. Tech-mech packed her gauntlets, including a lamp that shed light around her like the halo of a demonic angel. She watched Bhaaj with a cold stare and carried a machine gun, holding it in one hand despite its weight. Her tank top had ripped at the waist, showing her hardened abs, also the tattoos and embedded circuits that covered her body. One scar snaked from her forehead down her face to her neck. Whoever had tried to kill her had failed, and they’d no doubt paid a fatal price for that mistake.
Damn. This wasn’t Cutter Kajada, the current Kajada boss. The woman did have the Kajada insignia of a lizard engraved in her right gauntlet, identifying her as a punker for the cartel. Her left gauntlet displayed a knife with drops of blood on its tip. Great. Just great. A Kajada assassin had come to meet her.
“What you want?” the woman asked.
“Talk to Cutter,” Bhaaj said.
“Nahya.”
Bhaaj waited.
“Why?” Hostility hardened the assassin’s voice.
“Heard jib. Vakaar.”
“Fuck Vakaar.”
“Yah.” Bhaaj agreed, but she didn’t think much of Kajada, either.
A rustle came from her left, toward the center of the canal. In her side vision, she glimpsed a man in the shadows creeping toward her, slow and stealthy.
Max, do you register that guy sneaking up on me? she asked.
Yes, Max answered. And yes, I’d say he’s about to attack.
Combat mode on.
Done.
The world jumped into sharp relief as her body went into overdrive. Everything seemed to slow down, each second stretched into eons. The guy was a meter away, moving with what he probably thought was silence. To Bhaaj, he sounded like a giant stomping through loose gravel.
“You got no biz here,” the woman in front of her said.
Bitch, you not distract me, Bhaaj thought at the assassin—and whirled toward the guy. Despite her hyped-up speed, she felt as if she moved through invisible molasses. She brought up her knee, keeping her foot flexed, in the same moment that the assassin threw her knife. Bhaaj leaned to the side as she kicked out her leg, shifting enough that the knife whizzed past her head, slicing off a tendril of hair but missing her neck. Unleashing a roundhouse kick, she slammed her boot into the guy’s stomach and threw out her arm for balance. Normally she’d have bashed him in the head, but with her enhanced strength, that blow could kill him. She had no wish to end anyone, besides which, she’d be an idiot to whack Cutter Kajada’s minions.
Even as the guy doubled over and staggered back, the assassin was sprinting toward them. While Bhaaj spun to the woman, raising her fists, the assassin came at her with whip-fast strikes—what the hell? She was wielding her machine gun like a huge, misshapen truncheon. Why not just shoot? If she could catch Bhaaj with even a few bullets from that baby, it’d pulverize her. Its weight and weird shape had to make it hell to control as a bat, but that didn’t slow the assassin. At normal speed, that barrage would’ve been a flurry of motion. To Bhaaj, it seemed to crawl, letting her evade or block the strikes.
As Bhaaj danced away, her other attacker climbed to his feet despite the force of the kick she’d landed on him. Ho! This dude had cred with the rough-and-rumble. She moved fast, keeping both fighters in front of her so they couldn’t come at her from both sides. The man had a knife on his belt, but with the fight going so fast, he hadn’t drawn it yet.
For an instant, the assassin left an opening on her right side. Bhaaj lunged in and grabbed the woman’s wrist, hitting her elbow to weaken her grip on the machine gun. Throwing her body into the move, Bhaaj forced her to drop the weapon. Even as the gun fell, Bhaaj caught it and jumped back. At the same time, she drew her own revolver, yanking it out of its holster so fast that the motion blurred even in her slowed timescape. She hefted up the machine gun in one hand and activated it with a flick of her finger, a move she’d perfected in the army. Aiming the big gun at the woman and her revolver at the man, Bhaaj stood with her feet planted wide and her arms outstretched, each of the punkers in her sights, each of them too far away to reach her.
“Not move, assholes,” Bhaaj said. “Or you die.”
Both punkers froze.
“Enough.” A woman’s gravelly voice came from the darkness beyond the reach of their lamps. “Not kill my punkers.” She walked out of the shadows behind the two Kajada fighters.
Bhaaj would’ve known this newcomer anywhere. Yah, Cutter Kajada loomed large in the aqueducts. Hardened and scarred, older than her lieutenants, with a powerful, muscled body and black hair buzzed close to her head, she looked like a throwback to the barbaric queens who had rampaged across the desert above during the Ruby Empire.
Cutter aimed her gun at the ground in front of Bhaaj, a tangler, a gruesome weapon that could fry the neural connections in your brain, sending you into massive seizures that didn’t end until you died. Bhaaj kept her guns trained on the two punkers, with Cutter between them. Given her enhanced speed, she could get all of them before they stopped her, and they knew it. They also knew they could probably finish her as well, even as they died.
“You want talk?” Cutter’s voice sounded like rocks scraping together. “So talk.”
“Hear buzz,” Bhaaj told her. “It say shit. Vakaar want Majda queen.” She shifted the machine gun just enough to put Cutter directly in her sights.
Cutter didn’t look surprised. “Not want queen. Want meeting with queen.”
“Fuck meeting,” Bhaaj said.
“Then fuck visit,” Cutter asked. “Queen meet with Kajada and Vakaar. Same time. Same place. Or leave.”
Bhaaj stared at her, certain she’d heard wrong. Meet with Kajada and Vakaar? Punkers from the two cartels did only one thing if they ended up in the same place: murder each other.
“Lie,” Bhaaj told her. “Kajada and Vakaar meet?” She spat to the side to let Cutter know what she thought of that claim.
“Not lie,” Cutter told her. “Queen meet us. Both.”
“Why?” This made so little sense, Bhaaj almost forgot to be pissed about Cutter sending two minions to beat her up or test her resolve or whatever.
“Queen come,” Cutter said. “We talk.”
“You screw with Majda queen,” Bhaaj told her, “then Majda screw with you. Big time.”
“Got no biz with Majda,” Cutter said. “Queen ask to come here. We not want.” Her gaze never wavered. “She want visit? Then she visit us. Kajada. Vakaar. Both.” Her voice hardened. “Or she goes.”
Bhaaj couldn’t imagine taking Lavinda to meet even one cartel, let alone both in the same place. “She leave aqueducts, you not stop her?”
“Not stop,” Cutter said. “But if leave, not come back. Come back, we kill.”
Well, bloody hell. Bhaaj had no idea what to say. She had to do something, though; her arm holding the machine gun was tiring, even with her augmented strength.
Cutter glanced right and left at her two lieutenants, and they responded by lowering their fists. They all snapped off their lamps, leaving them in shadows at the edge of the light around Bhaaj.
“We go,” Cutter said.
That done, they melted away into the shadows, leaving her alone with Dig’s grave.
Bhaaj walked up the stairs to Dara and Weaver’s home. She made no attempt to hide her approach. Sure enough, within moments, Captain Morah appeared at the top of the staircase.
“That was fast,” the captain said.
“Yah.” Bhaaj joined her, the two of them standing like combatants. “I need to talk to Lavinda.”
Morah frowned at her. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Nothing.” Bhaaj knew she had bruises, but she barely felt them. She walked past the captain, entering the foyer beyond. Her biz with Cutter Kajada couldn’t have been that fast; Byte-2 was back, already returned from his visit with Doctor Rajindia.
Lavinda was sitting on a bench, socializing with Dara and her daughters, and Jak stood by the far wall, talking to Weaver. They all fell silent as Bhaaj entered. One guard stayed posted by the entrance while the other Majda officers and all three Dust Knights remained in the foyer.
Jak came over to her. “You got beat up.”
She touched his arm, one tap, nothing more, but he’d know what she meant. Be wary.
Lavinda joined them. “Are you all right?”
“Yah, fine,” Bhaaj said.
“I take it your meeting with the Kajadas didn’t go so well,” Lavinda said.
“Nothing unexpected.” Bhaaj spoke bluntly. “Both Kajada and Vakaar want to meet with you. Your guards can come, but they can’t bring their weapons.”
“Like hell.” Captain Morah joined them. “Is this a joke?”
“No.” Bhaaj kept her focus on Lavinda. “If you don’t want to do it, neither cartel will stop you from leaving the Undercity. But you will leave.”
“Good,” Morah said. “This visit was a mistake.”
“No.” Lavinda frowned at her, then turned back to Bhaaj. “What do they want?”
“Hell if I know.” Bhaaj lifted her hands, then let them drop. “I’ve never heard of the cartels cooperating.”
One of the Majda guards snorted, a woman with the black hair, black eyes, and the aristocratic features that suggested she had relatives among the nobility. “Cooperation, hell. To do what? Murder Colonel Majda, I’d wager.”
“Lieutenant Warrick, enough,” Lavinda told her. She studied Bhaaj as if she were a puzzle to solve. “What’s your take on this meeting?”
“It’s hard to say.” The cartels knew she made the Dust Knights swear off drugs, which won her exactly zero friends among them. “The leaders of both cartels want to meet with you. They’ll come in force, because neither wants to risk the other using this meeting to, uh, remove obstacles to their trade.” They’d love the chance to smash as many rival punkers as they could corral together. “Hell, I don’t know if they can even exist in the same place without it turning into a blood bath. If you do this, you could get hurt.”
“And if I don’t?”
“They’ll let you leave.” Bhaaj met her gaze. “And you can never return, neither you nor any other emissary. They’re making a stand, asserting that this is their world. They don’t want you here.”
Lavinda frowned. “Then why ask me to meet them?”
“I don’t know.” Bhaaj had gnawed at that question like a lizard with a dead wasp-rat. She glanced at Jak. In his casino, he had an ear to just about everything. “Any whispers on this?”
“Small whispers. Cartels not want Majda to notice them.” He lifted his hands, then dropped them again. “So why meet queen?”
“To hold her for ransom,” Captain Morah said.
Jak switched into Cries speech. “They know that if Majda gets their colonel back through ransom, their next step will be to pulverize both cartels.”
Ruzik stepped forward. “It’s a test.”
“You think?” Bhaaj asked.
“Makes sense,” he said.
“To test what?” Lavinda asked. “If I’ll let them continue breaking the law? They’d be fools to draw this much attention if that’s what they want.”
“Maybe they’re testing your intent,” Bhaaj said. “Your courage.” It seemed an odd way, though, both cartels coming together.
Captain Morah spoke. “Do you think they’re lying about allowing Colonel Majda passage out of the Undercity if she won’t meet with them?”
“I’d say they mean it.” Bhaaj spoke dryly. “Everyone here will be glad to see you all leave.”
“I’d rather not go,” Lavinda said. “If that means I have to meet with them, I will.”
“Ma’am, we can’t allow that.” Although Captain Morah sounded calm, Bhaaj felt her tension like an invisible cord stretched tight.
“You don’t have the authority to stop me,” Lavinda said.
“That’s true.” Morah didn’t sound the least bit conciliatory. “But General Majda does.”
Well, shit. They would have to invoke Vaj.
“My sister approved this mission,” Lavinda said.
“Contingent on your safety,” Morah said. “I’m required to contact her if it that safety appears compromised.”
“I don’t know if it’s compromised,” Bhaaj admitted. “Cutter claims they’ll keep a truce with Vakaar for the meeting.”
Morah snorted. “Right. And I have some property in the desert I’d like to sell you.”
“Captain, listen,” Lavinda said. “We knew this trip involved risks. Well, this is a risk. In my judgment, it’s not enough to end the visit when we’ve barely started. If we let any possible threat scare us off, we’ll never develop a relationship with the Undercity.”
“Why would we care?” Morah seemed genuinely baffled.
Lieutenant Warrick spoke up. “Yes, we’ve heard it, that we should have better relations with the only other city on the planet, but I mean, what the hell? This isn’t a city. Why are we dancing around here as if we don’t dare insult a bunch of slow-witted drug addicts, gangsters, and homeless people who have nothing to offer the rest of us?”
Ho! As many times as Bhaaj had heard that bull-crapalooza, she’d never stopped wanting to turn whoever said it into a smear of plasma.
“Yah, and fuck you too,” Tower said. Apparently she had no trouble speaking the Cries dialect when she wanted to.
“Enough,” Bhaaj told her. To Lavinda, she said, “My apologies.”
“You’ve nothing to apologize for.” Lavinda turned to Warrick. “What the hell is wrong with you, talking that way about our hosts?”
Warrick changed her tone. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Permission to speak?” Although Warrick wasn’t active military, it didn’t surprise Bhaaj that Majda security followed similar protocols.
“Go ahead,” Lavinda said. “But take care, Lieutenant.”
Warrick spoke carefully. “Colonel, I don’t understand why you are endangering your life. It’s honorable that you’d like to meet people here on their own terms, but surely better ways exist to integrate the Undercity into Cries culture than risking your life.”
Lavinda’s voice cooled. “We didn’t come here to assimilate anyone into our way of life.” She turned to Dara, Weaver, and their oldest daughter, who had stayed a few steps back from them, wary and waiting. The two younger children stood in the archway to their home, watching everyone with obvious fascination. “My deepest apology for any offense we have caused,” Lavinda said to Dara and Weaver. “We thank you for opening your beautiful home to us and mean no disrespect.”
Dara glanced at her daughter.
“Queen say good home, good invite,” Darjan told her parents. “Say loud guard is ass-bat.”
“Ah.” Dara and Weaver nodded to Lavinda, accepting her apology.
Captain Morah spoke to Lavinda. “Ma’am, Officer Warrick should never have spoken as she did. But she has a point. Surely a better way exists to improve contact here than meeting with drug dealers.”
Bhaaj practically had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from speaking. Despite her differences with General Majda, she agreed with the decision to keep secret the full extent of why the government wanted better relations with the Undercity. The less people knew, the less chance that unscrupulous, treasonous, or enemy agents would try to exploit the people here.
Lavinda met the captain’s gaze. Everyone waited.
“Colonel?” Captain Morah finally asked.
“You and your officers received an upgraded security clearance before we left, yes?” Lavinda asked.
“That’s right, ma’am.”
Glancing at Bhaaj, Lavinda motioned to Ruzik, who stood flanked on one side by his brother and on the other by Tower. “Do they understand the clearance they received?”
Ruzik answered in the Cries dialect. “Yes, we understand it.”
Lavinda glanced at Dara. “And you? Your family?”
“We ken,” Darjan said. “Already talk with Bhaaj.”
Lavinda looked around at them all. “What I’m going to tell you is secured. None of you can speak of this beyond myself, Major Bhaajan, and my sister, General Majda. To betray that security is treason. If you do, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Captain Morah said, echoed by her two officers.
“Yah, ken,” Ruzik said. “We talk, we die.”
Lavinda spoke dryly. “That about sums it up.” She turned to Captain Morah. “One third of the population here are Kyle operators with enough strength to work the Kyle net. In the population below the Undercity, what they call the Down Deep, half of the people are full Kyle operators.”
The Majda guards gaped at her. Ruzik, Byte, and Tower already knew, but Bhaaj doubted they realized the full significance of Lavinda’s words.
“Holy fuck,” Lieutenant Warrick said.
“But how?” Captain Morah asked.
“We think it’s why our ancestors retreated to live underground,” Bhaaj said. “They couldn’t take the pressure of other human minds. The methods that Kyles use to protect their minds come from modern-day science. My ancestors had nothing. So they withdrew here.” Hints existed of other reasons, too, but for now, this explanation was enough.
“How was that possible?” Morah asked. “Wouldn’t they die?”
“Why would we die?” Bhaaj asked. “Being empaths doesn’t make us physically weaker.”
“But the mortality rate here.” That came from the other Majda guard. “It’s huge.”
“Yah.” Bhaaj fought down the resentment that never left her, not even after decades. “It used to be the highest in the Imperialate. Poverty, starvation, violence, and no formal medical care does that to you. Kyle traits have nothing to do with it. But just leaving or making drastic changes isn’t a viable option. The environment here, everything about the way we live—it interacts with our brains in ways we can’t yet explain.” They’d only begun to understand how the fragile lives they’d built nurtured their minds. Like the music. Her people sang all the time, and their songs echoed throughout the canals. It even affected the operation of their bizarre tech-mech creations.
Morah spoke carefully. “I understand why you want to continue, Colonel. But we need to let someone up the chain of command know what’s happening.”
Lavinda scowled at her. “If we do, they’ll report to my sister, and Vaj will pull us out.”
“Lavinda, she has a point,” Bhaaj said. In her side vision, she saw Morah stiffen as if Bhaaj had threatened them, which was odd since she’d just agreed with the captain.
“You must have a better idea.” Lavinda spoke wryly. “You usually do.”
Morah breathed out, her tensed posture easing. It hit Bhaaj then. She’d addressed Lavinda—not just a colonel but also a royal Majda heir—by her first name. A great insult. Lavinda reacted with no offense, though, business as usual, obviously no problem. It wouldn’t occur to either of them to be upset, only to pretty much everyone else in the universe.
So DO I have a better idea? Bhaaj asked herself.
Are you addressing me? Max asked.
What? Oh. No, just thinking hard.
Because I do have an idea.
Really? What?
Use Angel as your go-between. She’s up in the city, so what happens here won’t affect her. She also won’t report to General Majda unless you ask her to.
Majda will know if we contact her.
Um.
That didn’t sound good. What, Max?
Ask Ruzik.
How would you know anything about private talk between Ruzik and Angel?
I pick up traces of chatter. From their, uh, comm links.
Max, for flaming sake. Her EI wasn’t supposed to violate their privacy. Besides, Ruzik and Angel had protections on their gauntlets that could block even the nosiest snoop-spiders. How can you do that? They have top-notch security.
They do indeed. Max paused. Mine is better.
So. He admitted it. Bhaaj already knew he could update himself with dark-mesh tech most people had never even heard of, let alone put in their EI. She spoke to Ruzik. “You and Angel. Talk secret? Majda not know?”
His expression turned neutral, no trace of reaction. “Eh? Not ken.”
“Fine,” Bhaaj said. “While you not kenning what I say, you talk to Angel private, yah? Say what goes here. Say we have check-in. We not check-in, she tell Majda.”
Ruzik met her gaze with no trace of a reaction, like a mask had dropped over his face. After a moment, though, he said, “How often check-in?”
“Every hour,” Bhaaj said. “Until after meet with punkers.”
Ruzik nodded. Done.
Lavinda looked from Ruzik to Bhaaj. “I didn’t get all that.”
“He’ll stay in contact with Angel,” Bhaaj said. “If we need help or don’t check back with her, she’ll contact your people.”
Lavinda frowned. “The moment he contacts Angel, my ‘people’ will know.” She didn’t even try to hide the fact that Majda security was spying on them.
Bhaaj met her gaze with the blandest look she could manage. “They won’t know.”
“They have the best intel on this planet,” Lavinda told her. “Hell, the best available to the General of the Pharaoh’s Army.”
“Yah.” Bhaaj said nothing more. The less the colonel knew, the better. Plausible deniability and all that. Besides, Lavinda already knew what they could do. Except for this visit, Bhaaj always hid from Majda sensors during her work in the Undercity. If her people thought she was letting Majda spy on them, they’d never talk to her.
After a moment, Lavinda said, “All right, I get it.” She glanced at Captain Morah. “His wife, Angel Ruzik, will be the go-between with Majda security.”
“Just Angel,” Ruzik said. “I am here.”
Bhaaj couldn’t help but smile. “Thinks you take your name from Angel.” She glanced at Lavinda. “Ruzik isn’t named for Angel. He’s just Ruzik. Angel is just Angel. One name.”
“Ah.” Lavinda spoke to Ruzik in the Undercity dialect. “Good name.”
He inclined his head to her.
Bhaaj turned to Dara and Weaver. “I go. Set up cartel meet.” She motioned to their younger children. “I send Dust Knights to take little dusters. Make them safe.”
“Agree,” Dara said. Weaver nodded.
Dara’s eldest daughter stood taller. “I get Knights.”
“Yah,” Bhaaj said. “Go.”
As Darjan took off, Bhaaj spoke to Ruzik. “Send Tower, yah? Check exits.” They needed a good escape route in case Lavinda had to leave fast.
When Ruzik glanced at Tower, she nodded and left the foyer, her long legs eating up distance, her loose curls shaking around her shoulders. It bemused Bhaaj that people thought she and Tower looked alike. They did both have those wild curls. She’d cut hers off in the army, exasperated by her inability to make them behave, but now her heavy braid reached her waist.
Lavinda was speaking to Ruzik. “You talk to Angel now?”
“Eh?” Ruzik asked.
“You go,” Bhaaj said. He’d never talk to Angel in front of them. “Come back later, eh?”
“Yah, good.” With that, he also left, the scarred Dust Knight striding off to speak with his warrior goddess of a wife who, at least for today, was being civilized.
Bhaaj headed off then as well, to set up their meeting with the killers of the Undercity.