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CHAPTER ELEVEN

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Given there were two Ylps in obvious sentry positions by the back-room door, and given my general impression that Ylps didn’t trust anyone except themselves, my tentative conclusion was that the others at Braun’s meeting would be more Ylps.

I was right. Braun ushered me through the door to a cozy back room where two more of the spindly aliens sat stiffly at a small table, their serrated white eyes staring with unfriendly intensity out of their gray-furred faces. Both were dressed in the same drab brown clothing as the two outside, but the taller one also sported a wide scarf in muted shades of maroon and burnt orange wrapped a couple of times around his neck and shoulders. “Who is this?” the latter demanded in a singsong voice as Braun closed the door behind us, cutting off both the conversational hum and the air of suspicion that had been directed at me out there.

As my father used to say, When everyone around you is against you, at least you can say your social standing is consistent.

“Name’s Roarke,” Braun told him, guiding me to one of the empty chairs at the table and encouraging me to sit with a heavy hand pressed down on my shoulder. “He came and talked to Lukki at Panza’s a couple of nights ago. Right before she was killed.” He pressed the muzzle of his gun—a Blackman 4mm, I saw now—against the side of my neck and flipped open my raincoat.

“Is he the one who killed her?” Scarf asked.

“No,” I said.

“He says no,” Braun said. “Me, not so sure. Don’t think he killed Willie, though.” He pulled my plasmic from its holster and stuck it into his waistband. “He followed me from Ms. Parsons’ place and seems to think we want him here.”

“You should disabuse him of that notion,” Scarf said.

“Hey, I’m with you on that one,” I told him agreeably. “Unfortunately, it’s not up to me. You see—”

“Hold it,” Braun cut me off. Once again his Blackman delivered its silent warning to my neck as he reached into my coat and found my phone. He pulled it out—

“Thought so,” he rumbled as he saw the tiny indicator light. He hit the power switch, and the light went off. “Private conversation, you know.” He sat down on the empty chair beside me, pointedly setting my phone on the table in front of him where he could keep an eye on it. “Don’t want it to accidently go on again or something.”

“Purely unintentional, I assure you,” I said. “That model does that sometimes. Anyway, as I was starting to say, I don’t especially want to be here, either. But when you get a personal invitation and accept a stack of commarks, you’re sort of obligated.”

“Really,” Scarf said, the pitch of his singsong rising into sarcasm territory. “Which of us, pray tell, do your fantasy thoughts envision having done that?”

“It wasn’t any of you,” I said. “It was Lukki Parsons.”

“What?” Braun demanded.

“You heard me,” I said. “Lukki hired me as her backup.”

For a single heartbeat no one spoke. Braun broke the silence first, though with more of a snort than an actual word. “Right,” he said. “Her backup. And somehow she forgot to tell Willie and me?”

“Backups are supposed to be secret,” I pointed out. “To be fair—to be fair,” I added quickly, holding up a cautioning finger as his eyes narrowed, “Lukki never said she suspected either of you two of anything. But she was convinced she was being watched and monitored, and you never know when and where someone might be listening.”

“We were always monitored,” Braun growled.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” I said. “All I know is that Lukki contacted me and asked me to come keep an eye on this transaction.” I nodded back over my shoulder in the direction of Lukki’s place. “In retrospect, I wish she’d called us in a couple of weeks earlier.”

Another short silence descended on the room. “You said he didn’t kill your colleague,” Scarf said. “Why do you think that?”

“I saw him get shot,” Braun said, a brief shadow of anger and loss flashing across his face. “Couldn’t get to him in time, and the killer got away. But he was wearing one of those fancy hooded Patth robes.”

“It was a Patth?” I asked, hoping my look of surprise would mask my sudden uneasiness. Had Tirano left Galfvi’s robe back on the Ruth? Or had he been wearing it when he went to the fish shop, back to his house, and then to Lukki’s? I hadn’t seen it in the common room, but he might easily have stashed it in back before Selene and I got there.

Selene would probably have smelled it if he had. But she hadn’t mentioned it, and I hadn’t asked.

Fortunately, everyone else’s thoughts were already charging off in a different direction. “Why would a Patth wish him dead?” Scarf asked.

“No idea,” Braun said. “But I know there are at least two of them in town.” His face darkened. “Three if you count Galfvi.” He turned his glare on me. “I don’t suppose Ms. Parsons mentioned him to you?”

“Actually, she did,” I said. “And for good reason. That paper you were looking for on her desk? I’m pretty sure Galfvi has it.”

It was like I’d run a high-voltage current up their chairs. All three of them gave violent twitches. “What the hell?” Braun snarled. “You didn’t stop him?”

“I wasn’t there when he did it,” I explained patiently. “That’s why I said I’m pretty sure. But it’s all right.”

“How can it be all right?” Scarf demanded, his tone now dropped to violent threat level. “If he knows where the package is—?”

“It’s all right,” I repeated, loudly enough to talk over him, “because I also know where it is.”

The rising tension hit a plateau. “What are you talking about?” Braun asked suspiciously. “Lukki said she wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

“Anyone except her backup,” I said. “She wanted this deal to go through even if she got sidelined.” I glowered at the table. “Obviously, she was expecting to be detained, not killed. The point, Braun, is that she wanted you and Willie to make it work whether she was able to have a direct hand in it or not.”

“Fine,” Braun said. “Let’s assume you’re not building a three-layer bull sandwich. Where’s the package?”

I shook my head. “Lukki specifically told me not to tell anyone,” I said. “If I was needed, I was just supposed to take you there.”

“Yeah.” Earlier in the conversation Braun had set his Blackman on the table with his hand resting ready on top of the weapon. Now, he closed his fingers around the grip and picked it up, gazing thoughtfully at it. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“I have my orders,” I said, feeling a knot form in my stomach. This bluff had already taken me farther than I’d expected it to. And as my father used to say, The deeper the bluff, the more stuff there is to fall on top of you if it’s called.

“Orders from a woman who’s dead.”

“And whose murder you still might have been involved with,” Scarf added.

“In that case, why am I here?” I countered. “If I was after the package myself, why didn’t I just leave you three here to argue about it while I quietly loaded it aboard my ship and took off?”

“It’s not nearly that easy,” Braun rumbled, still fingering his Blackman as he stared at me.

“It’s easy enough,” I assured him. “Well? Waiting for an answer here. You want my help, or not?”

The three of them looked at each other, and I caught the slight tingle of ultrasonics as the two Ylps held a brief discussion between themselves in their own language. Braun was still holding his gun, but his attention was on the Ylps. His role here was apparently that of facilitator, ready to act on whatever they decided.

And if they decided I needed to be killed . . . 

Scarf turned to me. “Where and when?”

Silently, I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Tomorrow morning we head up the mountain to a place called Seven Strands,” I said. “As early as is convenient for you.”

“Seven Strands?” Braun echoed, his frown deepening. “Lukki said the package was in town.”

“Of course she did,” I said. “People eavesdropping on you, remember?”

“Yeah, but—” Braun broke off.

“I know,” I said, bracing myself. Abandoning the vagueness I’d been carefully playing so far was risky, but if the Javersin brothers’ offhand comment about native artifacts was correct, coming out with a more definitive statement could cement my role as Lukki’s backup and confidant. Alternatively, it could also get me killed. “But as my father used to say, Only an idiot hides a needle in a haystack. The place to hide a needle is in a tub of other needles.

Again, I held my breath, watching Braun closely. But if that comment was way off the mark, it didn’t show in his face or body language. “Yeah, fine,” he said. He looked questioningly at the Ylps. “Nine tomorrow morning? Eight?”

“Six,” Scarf said. “We leave at six.”

“Six it is,” I said, nodding. “Okay. I’ll meet you there and we’ll—”

“Whoa,” Braun cut me off. “You’re not meeting us anywhere. You’re riding with us.”

“After you spend your sleep time within our lodging,” Scarf added.

“I’d really rather not,” I said, an unpleasant tingle running up my back. If I couldn’t get back to Selene to work some overnight setup, this whole soap-bubble house could blow straight off the tub. “I don’t sleep well except in my own bed.”

“None of the rest of us are going to sleep well, either,” Braun said. “Why should you be different?”

“You also, Braun, will not be permitted to leave our lodging,” Scarf added.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Braun assured him. “Like they say, I can sleep when I’m dead.” He gestured at me with his Blackman. “On your feet, Roarke. I think we’re done here.”

“I think we are,” I said, standing up. The stage had been set, but from this point on everything was completely out of my hands.

Whether this worked or it didn’t, whether I lived or died, was all up to Selene.

* * *

The Ylps had set up shop in a small hotel a couple of blocks away from both Lukki’s apartment and the Black Rose. Apparently, Lukki had liked keeping things within easy walking distance.

Unfortunately, with such a short walk, and with Braun and all four Ylps watching me like a nest of baby hawks, there was no opportunity for me to slip away into the night.

The Ylps’ suite consisted of a single bedroom plus a common room that featured a foldout couch like the one in the Ruth’s dayroom. Unfortunately, it was only big enough for one, and Braun laid claim to it. I had to make do with some couch cushions and spare blankets on the floor.

As I’d predicted, I didn’t sleep very well, with a restlessness that consisted of three parts concern over the coming day, one part Braun’s snoring, and one part the presence of the two Ylpea guards sitting in back-to-back sleeping positions in front of the room’s door barely three meters away from my impromptu bed. I had no idea how soundly Ylps slept, and with both of them heavily armed I worried a bit that an unintended noise on my part might startle them into doing something we would all regret.

The Ylpea sleep cycle included times when their mouths opened and shut in time with their breathing, and for a while I toyed with the idea of getting a couple of knockout pills from their hidden compartment and seeing if I could feed one to each of the guards without getting caught. Braun was sleeping with my plasmic and phone under his pillow, but if I could get hold of the Ylps’ weapons we’d at least be back to a level playing field.

But again, not knowing how deeply the aliens slept—and knowing full well the consequences should the trick fail—ultimately dissuaded me from the idea.

Eventually, fatigue overwhelmed my concerns and I fell into a restless sleep.

I was jolted awake four hours later by a nudge from Braun’s boot. “On your feet, Roarke,” he ordered. “Time to put up.”

“Or be shut up?” I suggested. Untangling myself from my blankets, I rolled up into a sitting position, wincing at the general complaint from my muscles.

“Something like that.”

“Yeah,” I said, snagging my shoes and starting to put them on. “By the way, when you get to that sleeping-when-you’re-dead thing, be sure to warn them that you snore.”

He grunted. “Funny. Come on—I’ve got some meal bars. You can eat on the way.”

The Ylps had acquired a nice twelve-passenger van for our trip up the mountain. The two guards hustled me all the way to the rear and into the right-hand corner seat. One of them settled in beside me, with the other taking the left-hand end seat in the next row forward. Unless I could dematerialize and flow out through one of the van’s side windows, it was clear that I was here for the duration. Scarf and the other Ylp took seats in the front row, Braun climbed into the driver’s seat, and we were off.

“Going to be a bumpy ride,” I warned Braun as he maneuvered us through the morning Bilswift traffic. “That mountain road is pretty rough. You couldn’t get us an aircar?”

“What, so that everyone for fifty kilometers around could watch us?” he called back. He reached to the van’s control board, and I heard the snick as my side window unlocked. “If you feel sick, do it out the window.”

“Thanks,” I said, eyeing the window. It was big enough to be sick out of; not nearly big enough to escape through. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

* * *

The trip up the mountain was every bit as unpleasant as the one from the previous day. I mostly watched out the left-side windows as best I could, hoping to spot a gap or other weakness in the Patth fence that Selene and I might have missed on our recon. But with the Ylp beside me blocking most of the view, and seated all the way across the van from the relevant windows, I didn’t see anything useful.

We’d been traveling about an hour, and had passed the jeep trail Selene and I had used to get to the river, when Braun turned off onto another rough trail, this one heading to the right and continuing upslope. We bumped along for about half a kilometer, the top of the van scraping against the low overhang of tree branches, until we came to a small L-shaped clearing.

And there, towering over us, was Seven Strands.

I’d never gotten around to researching what exactly the Strands were, but I’d sort of vaguely assumed they were part of an odd rock formation, or maybe some distinctive plant with seven tendrils or fronds or something. Instead, it was a series of suspension footbridges, seven of them, radiating outward from a platform five meters above the ground built around a thick tree at the edge of the clearing.

The bridges were about as simple as such things could get. The framework was a rope mesh holding wooden planks that served as the walkway’s floor. Chest-high ropes connected to the support mesh on either side of the walkway provided stability and a token effort at keeping travelers from falling. The bridges headed off in different directions: four toward various points farther up the mountain, one north toward the river, one south in the direction of a lush valley, and one to the west in the general direction of Bilswift.

No. Not toward the city itself, I saw now, but angling a little north of it. Specifically, straight toward the area the Patth had cordoned off with their fence.

The area where our hypothetical portal was supposed to be.

And if the bridge remained five or more meters above the ground its entire length, it might just get us over the Patth fence without triggering the sensor buds.

“Who the hell is that?” Braun growled as he rolled the van to a halt near the base of the Strands’ tree.

I lowered my gaze, pushing back the flurry of possibilities tumbling over themselves in my mind. At the far end of the clearing, unseen from the spot where we’d entered, was our rental car.

Leaning against its side, her arms folded casually across her chest in the embodiment of casual nonchalance, was Selene.

I let out a silent sigh of relief. Gimmicking my phone so that the indicator light showed it to be on when it was off and vice versa had been easy enough, and Braun had played into the gambit exactly as I’d anticipated. But there had been no guarantee that Selene would be listening in when the phone went active in the Black Rose’s back room, and there’d been even poorer odds that she could come up with something on the fly in the next few hours that didn’t involve calling in the badgemen for what could easily have degenerated into a bloodbath.

I still didn’t have a clue as to what she had planned. But in her stance, and in her pupils, I could see the anxiety-edged confidence that she had things as much under control as she could.

Of course, as my father used to say, Thinking you have a situation under control simply means you haven’t yet figured out all the ways it could go sideways.

In the meantime, Braun had asked a question. “That’s my partner, Selene,” I called to him. “She’s here to help.”

“Since when do we need help?” Braun retorted. “And since when did we add another person? You said Lukki hired you as backup. You, not we.

You, we—what’s the difference?” I countered. “It’s a pronoun, not an ancient prophecy carved in stone.”

“Whatever,” Braun bit out. “So what do we need a Kadolian for?”

“What is a Kadolian?” Scarf demanded. “I do not know this species.”

“She’s a tracker,” I told him. “Lukki used to use a local Kadolian named Tirano to dig up some of her other packages. He’s not available right now, so Selene will work for us in his place.”

“What do we need a tracker for?” Braun asked, his eyes on Selene as she walked toward us, his hand resting on the grip of his Blackman. “You said you knew where the package was.”

“I knew where it was as of a couple of days ago,” I corrected. “But packages can be moved.” I looked at Selene, caught her microscopic upward nod. “And we’re wasting time,” I added, gesturing toward the platform and its radiating footbridges. “Shall we?”

Braun turned to Scarf. “Your call,” he said. “We believe him and we go, or we decide he’s lying, kill both of them, and go back and start searching the city.”

Scarf looked back and forth between Selene and me. “We believe him a little,” he decided. “We trust him not at all.”

“Works for me.” Braun drew his Blackman and gestured to a rough-hewn and rickety-looking ladder leading up to the platform. “Ladies first?”

“Ladies first,” I agreed. “Selene?”

She nodded her thanks and climbed to the platform. There she waited until we were all assembled with her. “As Mr. Braun knows, these bridges can be treacherous,” she warned. “I’ll lead; perhaps Mr. Braun should take the rear position.”

“Sure,” Braun said. “Roarke, you’re in front of me. The rest of you fill in wherever you want.”

A moment later we set off, Selene in front, Scarf and his companion behind her, the two Ylp guards behind them, and Braun and me bringing up the rear.

The bridge was actually less nerve-racking than I’d expected. It swayed back and forth pretty seriously as we started our walk, but once we left the clearing and were back into the forest proper the movement lessened considerably. I wondered about that until I spotted the guy lines from the underside of the rope mesh anchoring us to some of the tree trunks on both sides.

It was an impressive bit of engineering, I had to admit. But I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if there was a windstorm strong enough to affect even the bigger trees the bridge was connected to. I hadn’t noticed any wind during Bilswift’s evening rainstorms, but higher up the mountain the weather patterns could be different.

“The ropes stretch,” Braun said from behind me.

“Come again?” I asked.

“I said the ropes stretch,” he repeated. “When they’re wet. When the big winds come they always bring rain with them. The trees sway, the ropes stretch, and nothing breaks or comes apart.”

“Ah.” I frowned over my shoulder at him. “And you brought this up why?”

“Saw you looking at the guy lines,” he said smugly. “Figured you were wondering about that.”

“Actually, I was,” I confirmed. “You’ve got a good eye.”

“Lukki didn’t keep me around for my looks,” he said, his voice going dark. “So if you didn’t kill her, who did?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “One of her competitors, maybe.”

“She doesn’t have any,” Braun said flatly. “Not here. Not for this particular kind of package. No one but Tirano could find that for us.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him gesture toward Selene. “And your Kadolian. We hope.”

“Yes we do,” I murmured, a small piece of this mystery suddenly solidifying. This was apparently the route Lukki and the others had used to get to whatever this package was that everyone wanted, with Tirano leading the way. Even since we’d climbed up to the Strands I’d wondered how Selene knew the route or how she even knew what the package smelled like.

The answer, I realized now, was that she didn’t. She wasn’t following the package.

She was following Tirano.

“Well, if it wasn’t a competitor, maybe a dissatisfied customer,” I suggested. “Was all your work local, or did you just stage from Alainn and get most of your acquisitions from off-world?”

There was a short pause. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Don’t think this is a subject we ought to get into.”

“Suit yourself,” I said with a shrug. “Personally, I’d like to know why she and Willie were killed, if only to make sure Selene and I don’t meet whatever criteria the killer is using to pick his targets. How many times have you been up here?”

Braun snorted. “None of your business.”

“Fine,” I said offhandedly. “I was just looking for patterns. That was always the first step in a hunt: Find the target’s patterns and try to anticipate their next move.”

He was silent another few steps. I watched the Ylps in front of me, making a private bet as to when one of the branches we were passing under would snag the tall Ylp’s scarf. “Eight other times,” Braun said. “You wondering if Galfvi might come here?”

“He will if he wants the package,” I said.

Which was a complete lie, of course. There was no way Lukki would have left the package up here, especially if this was where she’d picked it up in the first place.

No, the package was somewhere in Bilswift, and Galfvi was probably making plans right now to grab it and get it off Alainn. Our only chance to stop him was to get this little side trip out of the way and get back to town.

I could only hope Selene had gotten Tirano to tell her what the package was and had figured out how to put together a replacement that was close enough to fool Braun and the Ylps. If not, there was a good chance Galfvi would get away with his scheme.

And an equally good chance that Selene and I wouldn’t leave here alive.


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