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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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I was in the subdeck crawlway beneath the Ruth’s main deck and had removed the Number Two equipment bay’s inner plate when I heard the sound of the catches on the outer hull plate being opened. I got the DubTrub derringer ready, holding it below the edge of the opening where it would be just out of sight of anyone looking in from the other side, and waited. The last catch popped and the hull plate was lifted away—

“Everything all right?” Selene asked softly, crouching down to peer into the opening.

“Everything’s just peachy,” I said, trying to look past her shoulder. I could see someone back there, but it was too dark outside for a positive identification. “You find him?”

“Like chickens coming home to roost,” she said.

I nodded, breathing a little easier as I slipped the DubTrub into my pocket. Sign, countersign, all in order. “Zilor saw you leave, by the way, so you’ll need to come back in through the regular entryway.”

“I was planning to anyway,” she said, half turning. “Over here, Tirano.”

Selene and I, experienced as we were with the necessary techniques, could unfasten the plate, make the transition either in or out, and have everything buttoned up again in ninety seconds flat. Tirano, without a clue as to what he was doing, took a full two minutes just to get through the equipment bay and onto the mechanic creeper I’d prepared for him in the crawlway.

The heavy Patth robe he was still wearing didn’t help matters at all.

“I’ll close everything,” Selene said. “You concentrate on getting him upstairs.”

“Got it,” I said. “Tirano, I’m going to roll backward to the entrance to this little rabbit hole. Think you can stay with me?”

“I’ll try,” he said, his voice shaking a little. “Are you . . . ?” He broke off.

“Am I what?” I prompted. “Come on, we don’t have all night.”

“Are you going to shoot me in the back?”

I blinked. “No, of course not,” I assured him. “Did you think I was going to?”

“You’re carrying a firearm,” he said, still sounding nervous. “I can smell it.”

“That was in case you and Selene were intercepted by Braun or the Ylps.” I hesitated, but I couldn’t resist. “You know, the people you were trying to steal the Vrinks from.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal from them,” he protested. “I wasn’t.

“Sure,” I said, feeling ashamed of myself. As my father used to say, Never stand behind or tower over someone you’re questioning. It’s rude and patronizing, and anyway you need to be able to watch his expression and body language. “Sorry—I shouldn’t have said that. Come on, let’s go. I’ll tell you when to stop, and after I climb up I’ll help you out.”

“Okay.” He sniffed. “Is that more of the crab chowder?”

I rolled my eyes. All I’d done was get the quick-cook package out of the pantry and set it beside the cooker. I hadn’t even opened the damn thing. “Yes, it’s more chowder,” I said. “The faster we get up there, the faster I can get it started.”

* * *

He was on his second helping when I heard the entryway open. “Gregory?” Selene called. “Who’s here?”

“Just the pair of us in the dayroom,” I called back. “Everything good?”

“Just ducky,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”

“Okay.” I listened, my hand wrapped around the DubTrub, as she shut the hatch and double-locked it. Twenty seconds later she joined us.

Looking like she’d just taken a swim through a swamp. “What in the world?” I asked, goggling a little.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she assured me, looking at her arms with distaste. “Most of it’s just water, though there’s some oil and fuel mixed in.”

“And garbage?”

“And dead sea life,” she said. “I suppose that qualifies. It’s not too bad. Tirano, are you all right?”

“Whoa,” I protested. “We’re not moving on to Tirano until we finish with you. You fall in the river or something?”

“It’s not important,” she said, resolve and warning in her pupils. “We need to hear from Tirano now.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” I said, putting some irritation into my tone. I didn’t know if she was trying to avoid talking about something in Tirano’s presence or was setting up a hot badge/cold badge routine. If it was the latter, I might as well lay a bit of pseudoantagonistic groundwork for it. “But fine, let’s hear from Tirano. Starting with why you tried to kill all of us in the Loporr colony today.”

“I didn’t,” Tirano insisted nervously. “It was . . . no, I can’t tell you. He said I can’t tell anyone.”

“We’re not just anyone, Tirano,” Selene said earnestly. “We’re your friends. I’m one of your people. You can tell us.”

Tirano shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Suit yourself,” I said nonchalantly, standing up from my fold-down seat. “Badgeman Zilor still out there, Selene?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry, Tirano.”

“It was Galfvi,” Tirano said quickly, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “He said we were in big trouble, and that he was the only one who could get us out of it. He said this was the only way.”

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” I said, sitting back down. I glanced at Selene, hoping for a clue as to whether our bluff had actually broken Tirano down to the truth or if he was just gearing up for more lies.

But there was nothing I could see either way in her pupils. Clearly, she was still having trouble reading the boy.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” Selene said. “Tell us what kind of trouble Galfvi says you’re in.”

“He said”—Tirano swallowed visibly—“that me helping Lukki collect Vrinks from the Loporr colony is a big crime. He says that if the badgemen catch us we’ll go to prison for the rest of our lives.”

“I think he’s exaggerating,” Selene said gently. “There are extenuating circumstances and mercy protocols that would certainly be invoked.”

“Was he exaggerating when he said that was why Lukki and Willie were killed?” Tirano asked bluntly.

I saw a wince flash across Selene’s pupils. “We don’t know why they were killed,” she said. “It could have been about the Vrinks, but it could have been about something else entirely.”

“We still have to get off Alainn,” Tirano said. “He said we need to buy passage on some ship.”

“Not too many to choose from around here,” I pointed out, watching his pupils closely. Something unreadable flicked across them, but too quickly for me to try to read. “So why did Galfvi think that siccing the Loporri on us would get you out of all this trouble?”

Tirano flashed a look at me, then went back to looking at Selene. “He told me we needed enough money to run,” he said. “I told him we were going up to the colony”—his face contorted—“and he said I should cut off the strands from the Vrinks. All the strands, from all the Vrinks.”

“How many did you get?” I asked.

“Thirty-six,” he said. “He told me we needed fifty, but . . . I bumped one of the Vrinks.” His face went all tormented and pleading. “I didn’t touch him on purpose. I didn’t mean for the hunters to come after you.”

“It’s all right,” Selene soothed. “We all got out without getting hurt. Where are the strands now? Did you give them to Galfvi?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t seen Galfvi since the night he disappeared. The night he gave me this.” He plucked at his Patth robe. “We just talked by phone.”

“I thought you said you lost your phone,” I reminded him.

He dropped his gaze to the deck. “I know,” he muttered. “I didn’t.”

“Where are the strands now?” Selene asked.

“Here.” Tirano dug into an inside pocket.

And drew out a fistful of thirty-centimeter threads of silver-silk.

I didn’t care a spoiled fig for the world of fashion, or the bank accounts of the rich and snobby, or whatever passed for esthetics or bragging rights at that stratospheric level. But here and now, watching the ordinary lights of the Ruth’s dayroom turn them into shimmering, glistening, living strands of solid light took my breath away.

As my father used to say, The rich spend a lot of their wealth on stupid, wasteful, and prestige-signaling garbage. But every now and again, they get it right.

With silver-silk, they’d definitely gotten it right.

Carefully, I stood up and walked over to Tirano. Just as carefully, I eased the collection of strands out of his grip. “Selene?” I asked quietly, still staring at them.

“The official market value of a thirty-centimeter strand of silver-silk is six thousand commarks,” I heard her voice through the sudden pounding of my heart.

“The official value?” I asked.

“There’s also a black market,” she confirmed. I looked at her, to find that while I’d been letting myself be dazzled she’d been working her info pad. “There, a thirty-centimeter strand can bring seven or eight thousand.”

Which meant I was holding somewhere between two hundred and three hundred thousand commarks in my hand. An odd thought crossed my mind: that this made the sixteen thousand Galfvi had lifted from the fish shop look pretty shabby in comparison.

“What were you supposed to do with them?” Selene asked.

“He said he’d call me about getting on a ship,” Tirano said. “But I only got thirty-six.”

“Don’t worry, we’d be more than happy to settle for that,” I assured him. “Do you have a schedule worked out with him? I assume you’re not supposed to just call whenever you feel like it.”

“He said he’d call me,” Tirano said.

“Have you tried calling him?” Selene asked.

“Four times,” Tirano said. “But he didn’t answer.”

Selene looked at me. “Or he can’t.”

I nodded. Standard bad guy paranoia dictated you used one phone per call, dumping the old model and grabbing a new one the minute the conversation was over. “No problem,” I said. “Tell you what: Finish your meal and then head back to my cabin and get some sleep. You look like your day’s been almost as long as ours.”

“Possibly even longer,” Selene added. “Can I get you more chowder?”

“No, thank you.” Tirano quickly scooped the last two spoonfuls into his mouth. “I’m done.”

“Okay,” Selene said. “Use the bathroom—take a shower if you want—then get some sleep. And don’t worry. By morning we’ll have a plan ready to go.”

“All right.” Tirano’s eyes drifted to the strands of living light in my hand. “Can I . . . ?”

“We’ll hold onto these,” I told him firmly. “We’ll keep them safe.”

He looked at me, looked at Selene, then gave a tired-looking nod. “Okay. Good night.”

He stumbled through the dayroom hatchway and headed aft. Selene stepped to the hatch, leaning her head against the inside wall. I waited, not moving, watching her in silence.

Two minutes later she nodded and turned back toward me. “He’s been to the bathroom, and is in your cabin,” she reported, walking over to the foldout and sinking wearily onto it. “Another two minutes and he’ll be asleep.”

“As long as he’s behind a closed door,” I said, resisting the urge to go down the corridor and double-check for myself. Selene generally knew what she was doing, and now wasn’t the time to make her think I had doubts about her skills or her judgment.

Whether I did or not, it wasn’t time for her to think that. “Let’s hear about your midnight swim. How did you find which boat was Lukki’s?”

“You suggested to Braun that he check it out,” she said, looking puzzled that I was even asking.

“Of course I did,” I said, also wondering why I was asking. All she’d had to do was walk along the docks until she caught Braun’s scent, then go to whichever boat he stopped at. “Sorry. Brain glitch. I’m guessing the dock was locked?”

“Locked and fenced off,” she said. “I had to swim around it.” She looked down at herself. “It wasn’t particularly pleasant.”

“I can imagine,” I said. Though of course I couldn’t, not really. All I was getting was a faint whiff of the watery mix. She’d gotten the stink full blast. “Anything useful aboard?”

“They definitely used it to move Vrinks,” she said. “Probably this latest package. Their scent was strong, no more than seven to ten days old.”

“Any sign of Galfvi?”

“His scent was there,” she said. “The boat’s a cabin cruiser style, the hull a fiberline composite, with a covered cockpit and galley. There was also room for four bunks, but all but one of them had been removed.”

“Probably to make more space for the Vrinks while they were being moved.”

“Yes, that’s where most of the Vrink scent was,” Selene confirmed. “And Galfvi’s, too.”

“Could you tell if he’d slept there recently?” I asked. “It would be nice to know where he disappeared to.”

She shook her head. “His scent wasn’t on the remaining bunk. It was concentrated at the fore section of the cabin, with a bit on the deck between the cabin and the dock.” Her pupils took on a look of wry humor. “Most of it, actually, was on the starter module.”

Only on the starter? Not on the wheel or throttle?”

“No, and not on the driver’s seat or docking controls,” she said. “He tried to start it, and when he couldn’t he left.”

I nodded. That still left the question of where he was, but it made sense that Lukki would have made sure her boat was properly secured. “Interesting. Okay. Timeline?”

Selene’s eyes unfocused, her pupils settling into a look of concentration. “The night we visit the Javersin brothers’ shop he steals money from the safe, puts it into his robe, and gives the robe to Tirano for safekeeping.”

“For safekeeping, or because he doesn’t want to get caught with it.”

“Or both,” Selene said. “He then goes to Lukki’s apartment to find where she hid the Vrinks. Maybe Lukki sees him coming out of her building, so he kills her—”

“Whoa,” I said. “He kills her? You sure?”

“Who else could it have been?”

“Well . . . ” I paused, running through the possibilities. An ambitious Braun? A suspicious Scarf? One of the Patth currently beating the bushes looking for a portal, killing her for some unknown reason? The Javersin brothers, or Kiolven and Venikel, or some semi-random Bilswift resident, for even more obscure reasons?

Selene herself?

I watched the reaction in her pupils as she spotted the sudden change in my scent. Lukki was the one who’d enslaved Tirano and drawn him into this tangle of kidnapping and sapient trafficking. If Selene thought killing Lukki would somehow free him, would she actually take such a drastic step?

I had no idea. I’d seen Selene in many situations, but never in full mama bear mode. But this wasn’t the time to confront her with such suspicions. “I wouldn’t put it past Badgeman Zilor,” I improvised. “You’ve seen his single-minded obsession with Galfvi. If he tried to get to him through Lukki, and if the threats went sideways, he might have overreacted.”

Selene shook her head. “I don’t really see him doing something like that.”

“You never know what someone’s capable of until push comes to poke,” I pointed out. “Anyway, that’s Kreega’s problem. So Galfvi gets a location and heads out. What then?”

“He heads to one of the places Braun showed us, the house near the river with the blue-and-white picket fence outside—”

“Wait a second,” I again interrupted. She’d seemed to show some heightened interest in that particular house during Braun’s tour of greater Bilswift, but she hadn’t said a word to me about it, not then and not later. “The Vrinks were there?”

“They were there,” she said. “Not now. They were gone at least a day before we arrived.”

“Ah,” I said, watching some of the pieces come together. “Okay, let’s recap. Lukki meets with me at Panza’s, decides for whatever reason that there’s trouble afoot and she needs to move the package. She hustles—alone—to where she and the others stashed the Vrinks, moves them elsewhere, and heads back home just in time to get shot down in the street.”

“Galfvi finds the listing for Lukki’s hidden lair,” Selene picked up the narrative. “It’s close enough to the river to use the boat, so he goes to the dock to get it and go pick them up.”

“Only it’s locked down,” I said. “So . . . what? He finds a van to steal?”

“There was no scent of vehicle emissions beneath the car overhang,” Selene said. “My sense is that he would want to make sure the Vrinks were in fact there before doing something that could attract the badgemen.”

“Lucky for him he did it in that order,” I said. “Because the Vrinks weren’t there, and he’d have been stuck with a hot van. So what does he do then?”

Her pupils clouded over. “He calls Tirano.”

“And tries to work out a Plan B,” I said. “Because the sixteen thousand commarks he stole from the fish shop isn’t nearly enough to get them off Alainn, at least not fast enough.”

“Yes,” Selene said, her pupils going puzzled. “But why now? Why did Lukki suddenly think she had a problem?”

“No idea,” I admitted. “Maybe she had a conversation with Tirano that didn’t feel right. Maybe she had one with Galfvi.”

“Or maybe,” Selene added quietly, “she had one with you.”

I stared at her, my world turning suddenly sideways. I’d been so busy wondering if she’d killed Lukki during the time we were apart that it had never occurred to me that she might have the same question about me.

And if she was wondering if I’d had a hand in Lukki’s death, it was for damn sure Detective-Sergeant Kreega was, too.

“You know I would never kill anyone in cold blood,” I said, forcing my voice to stay calm.

“I know.” She looked me straight in the eye, her pupils taking on an edge of hurt. “Just as you know neither would I.”

I hesitated. But since she’d started this conversation . . . “And if there was a good reason?” I asked, forcing myself to meet that gaze. “One that would make it self-defense or defense of someone else?”

“Do you think I killed her?” Selene demanded.

“I don’t know,” I shot back. “Do you think I did?”

The frustration and betrayal faded from her eyes. “No,” she said tiredly. “Not if you say you didn’t.”

I took a deep breath, feeling my own spark of anger subsiding. “Likewise,” I said. “I’m sorry, Selene. I didn’t expect to walk into a murder on this job, let alone a bunch of them.”

“I know,” she said, lowering her gaze. “We need to get out there and find the portal. The rest . . . it’s really none of our business, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” I agreed. “But we’ll still see what we can do for him.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I assume we’re leaving him here tomorrow?”

“I don’t see what else we can do,” I said. “There are way too many people out there looking for him. You’ll need to impress on him that he should not, under any circumstances, talk to Galfvi or anyone else without one of us here with him.”

“I’ll try,” she said. “If I can find his phone, we’ll take it with us.”

“Good idea,” I said, though I privately doubted she’d succeed. Tirano had clearly been taking skullduggery lessons from Galfvi. “Meanwhile, we should get some sleep.”

“Yes.” Selene hesitated. “Do you want to sleep in my cabin?”

“No need,” I assured her. “Galfvi’s convinced him they need to get off Alainn, and I’m pretty sure Tirano caught my offhand reminder that right now the Ruth’s their best bet. It’s generally considered bad form to kill the pilot of the ship you’re hoping to hitch a ride on.”

“Yes, he noticed,” she confirmed. “So you’ll sleep here?”

“It’s more comfortable than the engine room,” I said. “Besides, here I’ll be able to hear if he pops the entryway and heads out for a walk.”

“You think he might do that?”

“Not really,” I said, eyeing my partner of all these years, a partner I’d always thought I knew.

But then, I’d been wrong before.


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