CHAPTER FOUR
I got him inside and sealed the hatch, making sure to engage the mechanical deadbolt I’d added after learning that the Patth had built secret back doors into most standard lock protocols.
The deadbolt could only be worked when there was someone inside, of course, so my next move upon returning to the Ruth would normally be to give a quick search of the ship to make sure no one had sneaked aboard in our absence. But in this case, I first had to take Tirano to the bathroom, point him to the shower and a towel, grab a towel for myself, then head to my cabin to strip down, dry off, and change out of my own soaked clothing. I grabbed my knee-length white nightshirt, set it just inside the bathroom for Tirano, and told him to meet me in the dayroom when he was done.
And after that I made a quick but careful search of the ship.
I was waiting in the dayroom, a couple mugs of hot tea and a selection of Selene’s favorite snacks ready to hand, when he emerged from the bathroom. “How do you feel?” I asked, running a critical eye over him as I offered him one of the mugs and waved him toward the array of snacks. His hair was still damp and clinging to his head, but he looked a thousand percent better than he had huddled outside the Ruth’s entryway.
“I’m well, thank you,” he said. He accepted the tea, frowned uncertainly at the snacks, then sat down on the foldout couch. “I’m sorry to have intruded on you this way.”
“Selene and I get intruded on all the time,” I assured him. “So what’s this all about?”
He paused to take a cautious sip of the tea. “I’m not sure,” he said. “This evening—”
“Hold that thought,” I cut him off, heading toward the hatchway. I’d heard a syncopated quadruple thud on the entryway hatch, today’s signal for whichever of us had gotten back to the Ruth first to unlock the deadbolt for the other one. “Be right back.”
I confirmed via the external display that it was Selene, and that she was alone, before I unlocked the hatch and swung it open. “Sorry I’m late,” she huffed as she stepped inside. The brief run through the rain from the car up the zigzag had left her far less sodden than my own hike across town, but she still looked pretty uncomfortable. “I had to drive—”
She broke off, her pupils showing a mix of astonishment and disbelief as she caught Tirano’s scent. “Gregory?”
“And it only gets worse,” I told her, closing and locking the hatch behind her. “First things first.”
I pulled out my plasmic. “Had a little incident on the way back,” I said, turning the weapon sideways and offering it to her. “I couldn’t see whoever it was who jumped me, but I persuaded him to grab my plasmic by the barrel. Afraid it’s been rained on, but I did what I could to keep it as dry as possible.”
“Are you all right?” she asked, her eyes on me as she carefully took the weapon by its grip and sniffed at the barrel.
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “Vertigo dart with a light load, and he didn’t even rob me. Best guess is he wanted to look at my ID and find out who I was.”
“He could have just asked,” she murmured. “It’s faint, but . . . yes. He was a Patth, Gregory.”
“A Patth?” I echoed, frowning. “Since when do Patth do their own dirty work?”
“Maybe there weren’t any Iykams around he could call on,” she suggested. “Though that seems a little odd.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “We typically travel in upscale Patth circles, where there’s always an Iykam or two to call on. I assume the more plebian sorts have to do everything themselves.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” she said, handing the plasmic back to me. “I never heard of a Patth being violent, though. Oh, and your attacker was one of the ones I smelled earlier outside the fish shop.”
“Explains how he knew who to jump,” I said, taking the weapon and dropping it into its holster. I’d have bet a stack of money my attacker had been Willie or Braun or some other thug on Lukki’s payroll.
Unless the Patth who’d attacked me was one of Lukki’s people. The Patth at the fish shop might have been sold to the Javersins the same way Tirano had been.
“Or he could have picked up you at Panza’s,” Selene suggested. “Did you find Lukki?”
“Oh, I found her, all right,” I said ruefully. “Officially, Tirano’s been indentured to the Javersin brothers. Unofficially, he’s a slave.”
Selene’s pupils flashed revulsion. “We’re going to get him out, though, aren’t we?”
“We’re certainly going to try,” I said. “Let’s go hear what Tirano has to say for himself.”
The Kadolian boy was standing by the snack selection when we arrived in the dayroom, his eyes turned toward the hatchway. “Hello, Selene,” he said, his voice sounding a little cautious as he went back to the foldout and sat down. “I’m sorry to have intruded on you this way.”
“It’s all right,” she assured him. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m unharmed.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s start with how you ended up outside the Ruth’s entryway wrapped in a Patth robe.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Selene’s pupils flash a fresh jolt of surprise at my comment, and caught the subsequent twitch as Tirano caught the shift in her scent. For a moment they just looked at each other, and then Selene gestured to him. “Go ahead,” she said.
“It was closing time,” Tirano said, speaking slowly as if choosing his words carefully. “It was raining. I had cleaned my hands and face when Galfvi came to me holding his robe.”
“Galfvi’s the Patth worker at the fish shop?” I asked.
“Yes,” Tirano said, his eyes still on Selene. “He told me I was in danger and that I needed to run to my friends right away.”
“What kind of danger?” Selene asked.
“He didn’t say.” Tirano winced. “But he was afraid. I know him well enough. He was afraid.”
I nodded to myself. Selene was adept at reading a change in someone’s emotions by the subtle shifting of their scent, especially when it was someone she knew or at least had a reasonable baseline for. Tirano presumably had the same ability, though he probably didn’t have Selene’s more extensive skill and experience. “And then, what, he gave you his robe?”
“Yes,” Tirano said, his eyes briefly flicking to me before returning to Selene. “He said the spaceport was a long ways away and that I needed something to protect me from the rain.”
“He wasn’t concerned about the rain himself?” Selene asked.
“He didn’t say,” Tirano said. “He said he’d come back to me for the robe later. I was confused, but he was afraid, so I took his robe and left.”
“And came here,” Selene said.
Tirano held his hands out in a sort of helpless gesture. “He said to go to my friends.”
“And that’s us?” I asked.
The boy lowered his hands. “I have no friends,” he said quietly. “But you came to see me. I thought he must mean you.”
For a moment no one spoke. “Do you know where Galfvi lives?” I asked into the silence.
“Why?” Tirano asked, sounding puzzled.
“So we can return his robe,” I said. “Do you?”
“No,” Tirano said. “I think he lives in a house near the shop—not mine, but one of his own. But I don’t know where.”
“Can you maybe call him?” I suggested.
Tirano shook his head. “I lost my phone.”
“You can use mine.”
“I don’t remember his number.”
“What about the Javersin brothers?”
“I don’t remember theirs, either.”
“Ah,” I said. No numbers, no trackable phone, and someone else’s outerwear. If Tirano hadn’t already looked like someone on the run, all of that heaped together would definitely have done it.
“Maybe there’s some ID in the robe itself,” Selene offered.
“I’ll check,” I said, heading for the dayroom hatchway. “Be right back.”
Tirano had left the robe in a small puddle in a corner of the bathroom. I picked it up, wincing at the unpleasant cold wetness, and wrung it out as best I could into the shower stall. At least the boy had known enough to hang up his towel. Pulling it off the rack, I kneaded the robe with it, trying to wick out a little more of the water. I got to the lower hem.
And frowned. There was an unusual stiffness at the bottom of the robe. Not all of it, but in several sections. I flipped the robe open, trying to figure what might be in there.
I felt my throat tighten. There was a sealing strip all around the inner edge, disguised as a normal hemline, that created a long and inconspicuous pocket.
I thought about prying it open and seeing what was inside. But whatever it was, it deserved a bigger audience than just me. Wrapping the robe in the towel, I headed back to the dayroom.
I found Tirano back at the snack selection, looking over the assortment but not touching any of them. Selene was standing at his side, murmuring brief descriptions of each of them. Apparently, he wasn’t as familiar with such things as Selene was. Or possibly wasn’t familiar with them at all.
They both turned to face me as I came into view, though both had surely already smelled that I was on my way. “Here we go,” I said, stepping over to one of the fold-down seats and sitting down. I laid the towel on the deck and picked up the robe. “Let’s see what we can find in here—an ID, or address, or anything else that might be of interest.”
I bent over the robe and started unfolding it, not bothering to look at Selene, knowing she’d picked up on my comment. I got my fingers on the edge of the sealing strip and started working them beneath it.
It turned out to be harder than I expected. The strip was a very good, very stiff seal, the sort that a casual investigator might easily pass over. But I knew better, and after a few seconds I managed to get a fingertip through the seam. I pried it far enough to get another finger in beside it, and then just worked my way along it in both directions until the opening was wide enough for me to get my hand in there.
One touch was all I needed to know what I’d found. “Well, well,” I said conversationally. Prying the seam open a little farther, I pulled out the flat pack of commark bills that had been hidden there. “The Javersin brothers have an interesting bonus policy,” I added, holding the stack up for them to see.
Tirano seemed to shrink back from the bills. “That’s not mine,” he insisted.
“Well, it seems to be yours now,” I said, flipping through the stack. There were tens and twenties there, with a couple of fives at one end. “As my father used to say, Possession is nine points of the law unless someone else’s name is already on it.”
“How much is there?” Selene asked, her pupils grim as she stared at the bills.
“I’d say four or five hundred,” I told her. “And there are”—I felt around the edge of the hem—“probably ten more stacks in there. Depending on the mix of bills, it could be as low as a couple of thousand or as high as twenty.”
“It’s not mine,” Tirano said again.
“And,” I added, ignoring his comment and bringing my stack back for a sniff, “it smells a lot like fish. Any thoughts as to how this largesse came to be in your possession, Tirano?”
“I already told you,” the boy said, his eyes and face looking haunted. “Galfvi gave me the robe to keep the rain off.”
“He did say Galfvi said he’d be back for it,” Selene reminded me.
“And now we know why,” I agreed, setting the bills on the deck beside the towel. “Well. It’s been a long day, we’re all tired, and whatever’s going on here it’s not going to get settled tonight. Tirano, you’ll have to sleep in here—that foldout converts to a bed—”
“He can sleep in my cabin,” Selene put in.
I frowned at her. Her pupils had an unyielding look about them, the kind of expression that said she’d made up her mind and there wasn’t a chance in hell I could talk her out of it.
I tried anyway. “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “The foldout’s comfortable enough—”
“He’s staying in my cabin.”
“—or I could put him up in mine—”
“He’s staying in my cabin.”
As my father used to say, Arguing with a brick wall almost never gets you anywhere, and people give you funny looks when you do. “Fine,” I said, giving up. “You want me to go make it up for him while you two figure out what we’ve got that he’ll eat?”
“I can go,” she said, moving toward the hatchway. “The Dungeness crab chowder should be fine.”
“Okay.” And if it wasn’t, we’d eventually find something the kid liked.
And if I wound up eating the chowder myself, it would hardly be the worst thing that had happened to me today.
* * *
As it turned out, Tirano was more than happy to eat the chowder.
But only if he could eat it alone.
“Can I not eat in my room?” he asked, some pleading in his voice. “I don’t—I’m not used to eating with others.”
“Maybe it’s time you expanded your horizons a little,” I told him shortly. I already wasn’t happy with him taking over Selene’s cabin, and this just added an extra layer to my discomfort.
Which was silly, if I was being totally honest with myself. There wasn’t anything the boy could do in there while eating that he couldn’t do once he settled down for the night.
But I’d been attacked twice today, and been soaked to the skin, and I still hadn’t had my hot shower. I wasn’t in the most accommodating of moods.
Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for Tirano, Selene was.
“I really don’t see why you gave in,” I growled as I spooned some chowder into my own bowl.
“I’m sorry I upset you,” Selene said. She was gazing down into her chowder, her pupils hooded and unreadable. “But he’s been frightened and cold and hungry. I thought it would be for the best if we could avoid adding more stress to the day.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not a child, you know,” I said impatiently. “And as for being cold and wet and hungry, so am I. Plus I was attacked. Twice.”
She looked up at me, surprise and a hint of guilt in her pupils. “Twice?”
“I also had a short run-in with Lukki’s thugs at Panza’s,” I told her. “Actually, I figured it was one of them who fed me that vertigo dart until you said it was a Patth.”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “But you said Tirano wasn’t a child. In many ways, he truly is.”
I snorted. “Because he doesn’t know what kind of snacks Kadolians like?”
“That’s just a symptom,” Selene said, her pupils going a shade darker. “It’s . . . I’m not sure how to explain it, Gregory. I’m not sure I should explain it.”
I waited, my general irritation at the way the day had gone fading into anticipation. Selene didn’t talk about herself very much, and she talked about the Kadolian people and culture even less. “I’m listening,” I said encouragingly.
She again lowered her eyes to her bowl. “Are you familiar with the term changeling?” she asked after a moment.
“I know the human folklore version,” I said, frowning. “It was a fairy or troll secretly substituted for a human baby and left to be raised by the baby’s parents. You’re not saying that Tirano . . . ?”
“No, not like that,” Selene said. “But it’s . . . similar.”
She took a deep breath. “Our children are not like humans,” she said. “They must be nurtured by their parents or another Kadolian adult, guided and disciplined, until they are six to nine years old. Without that ethical framework in place, they are unlikely to become properly functioning adults.”
“Actually, that’s not too far off from how humans are socialized,” I said. “Though I don’t know if there’s a specific age we need to be taught by. Tirano said he was ten. Is that true?”
“I don’t know for certain,” Selene said. “He does have the usual physiological markers for that age. But the crucial question is how old he was when he lost his parents.”
“Any idea what happened to them?”
Selene nodded. “We talked a little while you were getting Galfvi’s robe from the bathroom. He says they died in an accident a few years ago, and that he was basically on his own until Lukki found him and took him in.”
“Yeah, like a fox takes in a chicken,” I growled. “So how long has it been since then?”
“He doesn’t remember,” she said. “But typically Kadolian children have a new syllable added to their names every two years until they reach youthage. If Tirano is his full name, as he says it is, that means he was between six to eight when he was orphaned.”
“Terrific,” I muttered. “So right in the middle of the crucial timeline.”
“Yes,” Selene confirmed. “But there are some other indicators. I presume you’ve had trouble reading his pupils as well as you read mine?”
“I can hardly read his pupils at all,” I admitted. “I assumed it was just his age or the different environment he’s in.”
“No, that’s part of our training,” Selene said. “On the other hand, you can see how he’s much better with gestures and facial expressions than I am.”
“Trying to be better, anyway,” I said. “So mimicking the nonverbal cues of all the other species around him?”
“Something like that,” she said. “Though our faces aren’t nearly as amenable to that kind of expression as human ones.”
“Let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “Aside from trying to play human, are there any other consequences to this lack of proper training?”
“Yes, and they can be very serious ones,” she said, her pupils going grim. “Kadolian changelings can drift ethically into crime, psychopathy, or sociopathy.”
“Like he could steal some money or someone’s robe?” I suggested. “And then lie about how he wound up with them?”
“Exactly,” Selene said. “But it’s worse. You know how I can read lies through a shift in the person’s scent. But that assumes the liar knows he’s telling a lie and feels some remorse or discomfort about it.”
“Oh, lovely,” I muttered as the full impact of that hit me. “So if Tirano doesn’t realize he’s lying, or doesn’t think lying is wrong . . . ?”
“Then his scent wouldn’t change.”
“And you wouldn’t be able to tell,” I said, nodding. “So how do we—?”
I broke off as the triple tone from the entryway announced a visitor.
“Great,” I growled as I stood up. “Probably our unhelpful Ihmisit bureaucrat trying to kick us out again.”
“Or else Galfvi’s here for his robe,” Selene warned as she also stood.
“Well, if it is, he’s not getting it,” I said as we stepped through the dayroom hatchway and headed aft. “Not until we sort all this out and figure out where all that cash came from.”
The triple tone sounded twice more before we reached the entryway. Dropping my hand to my plasmic, I turned on the outside display.
And felt my stomach tighten. It wasn’t Perrifil standing out there in the rain, or Galfvi, or even my Patth attacker here for round two. Giving Selene a quick look, I keyed open the hatch.
“Mr. Gregory Roarke?” the uniformed woman outside asked in a formal tone.
“Yes,” I confirmed cautiously. The last time a badgeman had showed up at the Ruth’s entryway I’d been subsequently hauled off on suspicion of murder. “You?”
She held out her ID, just in case the badge on her chest wasn’t clear enough. “Detective-Sergeant Tandra Kreega,” she said, her eyes shifting to Selene. “You’re Mr. Roarke’s partner, I assume?”
“Yes, this is Selene,” I said before Selene could answer. “What can we do for you?”
“There’ve been a couple of incidents this evening I need to talk to you about,” Kreega said. “May I come in?”
“What kind of incidents?” I asked, staying exactly where I was.
Her lips compressed briefly. “Two disappearances,” she said. “One of them was a boy named Tirano. One of your people, I believe,” she added, looking at Selene. “The other was a Patth named Galfvi who works with Tirano at Javersin Brothers Seafood.”
“You say they work together?” I said, resisting the reflexive impulse to express surprise over there having been a second disappearance. A response like that—commenting on one bit of news while ignoring the bit of news you already knew—was the kind of unthinking mistake badgemen were always watching for. “Okay, so maybe they’re just out on the town together or something. You said they were boys, right?”
“The Kadolian is a boy,” Kreega corrected. “The Patth is a young adult. It’s very wet out here, Mr. Roarke. May I come in?”
Technically, I knew, I could refuse. Without a warrant or probable cause she had no right of entry. But upright citizens with nothing to hide usually didn’t object to taking a wet badgeman in out of the rain.
More to the point, with a couple of Bilswift’s citizens having apparently dropped off the edge of the planet, I didn’t want Kreega suspicious enough to try to get official permission to search the ship.
Not to mention that if I didn’t let her in, her Plan B for getting out of the rain would probably be to invite us to the station for whatever conversation she wanted with us.
I already had one stack of wet clothing in my cabin. I didn’t really want to add a second to the pile.
“Of course, of course,” I said, backing into the corridor to let her enter. “Sorry. Come in.”
“Thank you,” she said, shaking the water off her hat outside as she stepped over the threshold. “Afraid you’re going to have to get used to this weather as long as you’re here. Afternoon and early evening rains are typical of Bilswift this time of year.”
“A little rain never hurt anyone,” I said. “The dayroom will be more comfortable than standing here in the corridor.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kreega said, gesturing me to lead the way. “Oh, and there was one more incident this evening I didn’t mention.”
“A mugging?” I suggested as I headed down the corridor, wondering if someone had witnessed my attack. “Theft? Pillage?”
“Oh, nothing so pedestrian,” Kreega said as she fell into step beside me. “Seems we’ve had ourselves a murder.”