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Ghosts of Kaskata

Marisa Wolf


A film of peace lay over the city like the scum on standing water. Most days I wanted to scrape my fingers through it, get enough air to breathe. Leading up to Repatriation Day, I wanted to scrape my fingers through my own eyes. At least the blood would be real.

The onionskin of the planet was thickest around the city of Kaskata, stretches of water studded with bedrock that anchored the old, many-times rebuilt buildings. It had been decades since a new sinkhole opened and pulled citizens down a whirlpool drain, but pedestrians far preferred the arcing bridges between stable structures, rather than skittering along the ground. Even I preferred the bridges, usually, though with the revelry they were far too crowded.

I should have stayed inside, but I couldn’t manage that for the endless weeks leading up to the worst holiday the Empire bestowed upon us. Instead I walked the streets with my head down, eyes on the patchwork stone paths that had been re-laid after each of the four wars to end all wars.

Old smoke burnt the inside of my nose, a combination of celebratory skyfire and unwanted memories, causing a series of sneezes. I grunted in reply to each progressive “g’with you!” from the helpful passerby braving ground-level.

I needed a drink.

“Ah, g’with you there—wait, then, aren’t you—”

I needed an endless supply of big drinks. I ducked my head further, picked up the pace. Let the helpful tourist finish that thought—“aren’t you Tenobia Sabiron, bedamned dumb hero of the Empire?”—and next thing I knew there’d be a swarm of them, crowding too close, beaming and asking and wanting.

It’s always more around Repatriation Day. Half of the system’s population floods into Kaskata and goes dragging out half-buried history, cleaned up for display. All fresh and hopeful and eager and utterly, disconnectedly, wrong.

My city wasn’t mine around the holidays, and this was the worst one yet. Tourists from all over the Empire’s reach streamed down for the quarter century observance. Biggest Repatriation Day to date. Twenty-five years without war.

Kaskata had trees again, tamed ones that trailed flowering vines above the water in every direction and didn’t pull in prey with mind-numbing emissions. Arcing walkways that took you to the upper levels. Upper levels, even, that existed once more, were safe to visit, and were full of corporate headquarters and shops selling the most frivolous of “necessities.”

The marvels of peace. People had hobbies again, and smiled if you looked them in the eye. I didn’t do much of any of that, but it was nice to be in a place where those sorts of things happened.

Winding buildings studded the foreseeable distance, rising out of the blue-black water and stretching far too high overhead. They were made of metal and stone at their bases and blended into brighter materials and murals the higher they twisted, trimmed with the same bright lights as the bridges between them.

“A celebration!” Kaskata’s mayor said when the first of them was refinished. “A triumph!” the System General proclaimed. And they slapped each other on the back and built spun-glass connectors that would be the first things to crack the next time they broke out the big guns.

The city had become cosmopolitan since Repatriation. Before that, we were the muddy edge of the civilized galaxy, but when the last holdouts rejoined the Empire after the last last war, people from all over the sprawl settled into our shining beacon of cooperation and peace.

“Welcome to Kaskata!” The wall ad ahead burbled on loop, its cheerful noise grating layers off my eardrums. “We’re so glad you’re here! Why not celebrate Repatriation Day with one of our sponsors?”

The city was hell to live in, but I hadn’t managed to die in it yet.

I tuned out the nonsense of the commercials, their flashing colors more annoyance to ignore, but I didn’t walk fast enough.

An ad wrapped around the towering tree on the corner transitioned into the theme song of one of the bedamned sponsors and I tripped right over nothing at all.

“Ma’am? Ma’am! Are you all right?”

I must have been getting old, given that three tourists paused in concern rather than smiling and continuing on their way. I wanted to focus on them, wave away their solicitous interest, but “Ode to Midnight Raids” spun through the air. When had a corporation coopted that bedamned song?

Saliva pooled in the back of my throat in answer to the instrumental wail. Somebody put their hand on my arm. The night breeze fanned the flames.

No.

Burning meat, shadows shifting, implying motion for every dead body heaped on broken ground.

No.

Became motion in truth, the ground peeling away, opening to an array of gasses that would kill everyone. Tinny music, a counterpoint to the crack of flame or bone. Flashes above as a Bolide-class strafed downfield.

NO.

I shoved everything back in its box, blocking out the concerned bystanders and the low sob of instrumental music. I couldn’t remember where I’d been heading, so I turned at the tree and slid into the first quiet alley.

Tourists stayed on the main walkways, if they ever left the limned bridges, sticking close to the illusion of prosperous safety—tamed native plants, calm waters without dangerous bubbles, and burbling ads displaying products from across the Empire. Alleys were populated with drones early morning and late evening—trash pickups and supply deliveries and workers trying to crisscross buildings unseen—but midday gave me space to breathe.

So I breathed.

“Ode to Midnight Raids”—once a stirring anthem of loyalty and empire—had fallen out of style years ago. I wouldn’t have guessed its resurfacing as a corporate jingle.

Really thought I’d gotten good at anticipating the nonsense of the powers that be, but there were always new depths.

✧ ✧ ✧

The rest of the day passed successfully and I was back in my corner apartment before nightfall, pleasantly buzzed and well clear of whatever city-wide events were on the agenda.

I ignored the scrolling prompt on my wallscreen—“Review appointments for tomorrow?”—kept the lights low, the white noise high, and lay on my couch without a single thought getting through.

The wallscreen flickered, and I ignored it.

My white noise cut out, and I closed my eyes.

My wristlet, under the table across the room, chimed three times.

One chime for new messages, a setting I turned off at night. Two chimes for incoming call, a setting I turned off always. Three chimes? I didn’t even have a setting for that.

“No, thank you,” I said to the air of my apartment, and of course that did nothing at all. Another three chimes, and I sat up to see my wallscreen had changed from its gentle reminder to flashing URGENT MESSAGE WAITING.

“For fu—from who?”

The wallscreen didn’t correct my grammar, nor answer, because I didn’t like technology to talk to me, and also because this was yet another setting I didn’t have. Urgent message waiting? No one needed me urgently—I’d committed a great deal of energy over many years into ensuring that.

I cursed some more, shoved off my couch, and pulled the wristlet from under the table with my toes. My back launched its own brand of curses when I bent over to pick up the comm.

I flung the device away from me again before I finished consciously processing the name on the message.

It clattered against the wallscreen and chimed three more times. Nothing broke—the tech was too well made.

Urgent message waiting from: Corabess Angwol. So she was still alive. All the ghosts I had, and she couldn’t be one of them?

“Course she’s still alive,” I muttered, mostly to have some noise in the room that wasn’t bedamned chiming. I turned my back on screen and comm both, walked instead to the clouded display that formed my back wall and dialed the controls to clear it.

Kaskata at night sprawled in front of me. I’d used nearly all the bonus money the Peace Office had sent me to secure a ground-floor apartment in a quiet corner of the city, having long been done with air travel, but I loved the view of my city from above. Patrolling drones fed live views to my display, and I let my eyes drift over the facade of surface beauty.

The various districts glowed at every level—water reflected streetlights and inter-building walkways and rooftop landing pads and external lifts and spiraling bridges and ad-coated three-story trees—each with their own shades of color.

I focused on the muted Tehelet District, all deep blues and purples tracing some of the oldest surviving structures of Kaskata. The water throughout it rippled—the current on that edge of the city was always stronger, which meant less chance of deadly bubbling—and gave the faintest illusion of a swirl. A threat to pull me under. Even knowing it was all in my head, I couldn’t tear my eyes from it.

Bess would be there. I didn’t have to read the message to know.

✧ ✧ ✧

Night in the city allowed me to move unnoticed through its streets. Especially in high tourist season everyone focused on their own entertainments, not peering into the faces of passersby for glimpses of old fame.

I walked through clouds of conflicting scents—eight systems’ worth of food specialties blending and clashing with flowering trees and the underlying rot that belched up from the water.

That’s my Kaskata—few layers of pretty on top, sucking morass underneath.

I tucked my chin and fixed my eyes low. Fog gathered around the bridges, fuzzing the light as the electrostatic plates absorbed water from the air. I paused under Tyne Street’s lavender walkway, closed my eyes against the faint, cooling purple that washed underneath it. Not strong enough to illuminate anything, it left me as a bare outline of a person under a crossway on a random night. Unidentifiable. Anonymous.

She ruined it.

“Tenobia Sabiron.” Her voice, pitched low, shouldn’t have carried down my spine. I’d heard it in my ear for a limited stretch of time well-defined in my service records, but endless in my mind. Long nights under uncertain cover, bloody days in precarious canyons. Keeping me anchored when the ground underneath threatened to break at any moment.

“Bess.”

“I thought you might not meet me.” She stepped out of the deeper shadows past the crossroad, a strand of trailing fog wrapped around her face. Bess Angwol hadn’t aged, despite the fifteen years that lay between us and our last meeting. Maybe it was the night, forgiving in all the ways I refused to, but more likely it was time refusing to touch her.

I could understand that.

“You called.” I wanted her to get to the point, so I could get back to my life. I wasn’t the sort of person who lingered under bridges. I met clients in my office, after they’d been screened and processed, or referred by another client with the proper codes. I followed leads from behind a display as much as I could, to keep people from seeing me. Or to keep from seeing them.

“I’ve called before.” One side of her face, outlined in the eddying light from above, shifted as she smiled. Of course she meant to extend this meeting. There was no superior officer on the line now, to encourage her to be efficient. No gunfire, to pull my attention away.

“You said this was critical . . . ” I shoved my hands in the deep pockets of my coat, curled my fingers into my palms. The pressure of nails on skin kept my voice steady, bored, but thoughts crowded close in my skull. Had she lied? Was she pulling me out to drag me into some spotlight, make me a part of Repatriation Day again?

I ignored the useless questions and stood motionless under the bridge, willing her to get to the bedamned point. A gaggle of young somethings on holiday passed above us, belting the unification anthem with notably sexual additions. They crossed and were lost to the ongoing hum of the city before I learned what they managed to rhyme with “nebular,” and finally she lifted her too small shoulders in an elegant shrug.

“It’s bad, Tenobia.” Bess lingered over my name, making each of the four syllables itch. I’d told her to call me Tennie once, a lifetime ago when she was a partner, maybe a friend, someone I would have allowed to use my preferred name. She’d laughed. Tenobia is too much fun in my mouth, big girl. Whyever would I take anything less?

Very little made me flinch anymore, but that memory came clear and sharp as a stab in the side of my neck.

“Forgive if I don’t take your word for it.” I waved my hand in a “get along with it” gesture. She might’ve been able to make out as little of my expression in the half-light as I could hers, but she had a lot more practice and training in determining my state of mind from afar. I suppose I should have paid better attention to hers, but in my defense I was the one being shot at, while she was tucked behind lines on the monitors.

“General Muntrow asked me to bring you on board for this.” Bess stepped forward again, out of the tendril of fog. The soft purple from above highlighted the curve of her cheek. Some marvel of science had preserved her as she’d been the day I’d finally met her face-to-face. I’d been fighting the stretcher, delirious and streaked with too many fluids, still climbing out of the hole. She was pristine, too young for the battlefield, a stillness in the chaos of the field hospital.

“You’re safe, Tenobia,” she’d said, and I felt her voice from the tip of my head to the base of my spine. A line of familiarity I could hook my spinning mind to. “We have you. Tenobia—you’re with us. Safe.” I rode the comfort of her presence into unconsciousness, never sure if it was that voice or the drugs they finally got into me. But on the edge of blackness, I heard—or imagined to the point it might as well be real—one carrying whisper. “I have you now, Tennie.”

Bedamned memories. I bore them, as I bore everything, and waited her out.

“Cantel is dead.”

Time was bound to come for all of us, eventually. Even Bess. I waited.

“It . . . he was standing vigil over the Armistice.” She took yet another step toward me, one hand lifting. I tensed, but her hand was empty, her wrist bare. If she’d been luring me out to kill me, so be it, but I doubted she had it in her. I waited.

“It wasn’t . . . ” She tilted her face up, toward the underside of Tyne’s bridge or the moons or the bedamned absent gods, for all I knew. “He was murdered.”

I sucked in my breath. The vigil had become a sacred tradition ahead of Repatriation Day—even I’d taken part in it, during the early years when I still thought I . . . it meant something. For a beloved aging hero to die in his boots, standing guard over the treaty . . . well, they could make that a whole new generation’s martyr story. A celebration of the power of our lives in the peace that kept the stars safe. I could see the titles without effort—they had a lot of experience spinning one grunt’s loss into a shining story for the populace.

A murder, though . . . a murder of a hero doing his duty by the people, by the peace . . . 

That was a shining story of a decidedly different flavor.

“It’s not plastered over the feeds.” That was all I trusted myself to say, still unclear why she’d dragged me out for this. Couldn’t say I was surprised they’d held it close to their vest—Repatriation Day is the culmination of a whole lot of feel-good reminders of our duty to Empire and powers that be. Knocking that off course because someone got messy in the vigil room . . . they weren’t dumb enough for that.

“Of course it isn’t, Tenobia.” Bess tsked softly, a smile in her voice that wasn’t reflected in her face. Maybe it was the shadows. Maybe she’d always been good at faking something over the air I never would have fallen for face-to-face. “It’s only just happened, in the rooms attached to the Vigil space—”

“I’m sorry to hear it. Cantel was decent.” I hoped she’d take my inference that she wasn’t. Not like me to talk around a subject, but even when I said something straight out, she found a way to twist it into what she wanted me to have said. I kept talking before she had a chance to demonstrate her old skill.

“Doesn’t have much to do with me—I haven’t taken a Vigil watch in fifteen years, and I’m not about to go back to that room now. My thoughts to his people.” I turned, stepped away, knew better than to think she’d let me go.

“Ten . . . ” She couldn’t seem to bring herself to say “Tennie” again, and settled for that half of a half of my name. “We need you.”

“Can’t see how.” I took another step, but damn it all if my left leg didn’t drag, slowing me down. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Worse, I knew what she had to say, and I wanted no part of it.

“It’s not only Cantel. Four other attendees—a retired general, two aides, and a star admiral—they’re dead too.”

I bit down hard on the side of my tongue. I didn’t care. I didn’t know any of them, or she would have said their names. Cantel had been a friend, would always be a brother . . . but these nameless, medal-plated suits meant nothing to me.

“The old Frontierists and Empirists are all very polite, but they’re all sure the other is upending the peace.” Bess made a low noise in her throat. “Neither trusts anyone else to investigate.”

“Why under the Empire’s bright skies would they trust me?”

“The masses love you.” A soft clip as she moved after me, but I didn’t turn. Let her stab me in the liver and call it a day. It would hurt less than everything I knew was coming. The air thickened around me, water vapor and tourist breath and frying meat and Kaskata’s guts swirling to take up space in my lungs that should have been held for breathing. I swallowed back the urge to spit, to cough, to scream.

“Can’t see how,” I repeated. “I’ve gone off the scope best I could.”

“That’s part of it.” Warmth in her voice that made the knots around my spine twist. “The less of you, the more they can tell good stories of you without you in the way.” For once she told me the truth. I’d appreciate it more if it had been fifteen years ago. “So, they love you, and whatever you find—”

“The combined generals will trust the answer because they can make the people take the answer I find.” I swiveled back to her, didn’t step back even as I found her closer than expected. “What if it was one of the generals? What if someone is trying to upend the peace?”

“They all agreed on bringing you in—if it is one of them, then having you, a Frontier soldier who became the hero of the Empire . . . ”

She trailed off, but it locked into place regardless. They could spin me, maybe better than they could spin anyone else. I’d leapt to the greater good, a lifetime ago and half the planet away, saving Frontier and Empire troops both when the world literally fell in around us. If a Frontierist was guilty of the murder, my catching them re-proved loyalty to the big picture over everything else. If an Empirist general had done it, my involvement meant the Empire was not above policing itself, proving all over again that former enemies could do well, rise high. Profit and prosperity. The Empire way.

The moisture of the air coated my face, collected under my eyes. I scrubbed a fist over my skin until it burned.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then it really might be war again, Ten. And none of us are too old to serve.”

I stared at the underside of the bridges above us, tracing the undulating movements of shadows between the lights without identifying any of them. Pictured them ragged and splintered. The buildings cracked open like nuts. Like an assistive weapons suit. Like the ground on the other side of the planet.

One day I might prefer to let Kaskata burn rather than jump to the Empire’s call.

After a moment, I realized today wasn’t that day, and turned to Bess. Better that I burn instead.

✧ ✧ ✧

Bess tried to get me in a lift to get to the building that held the Vigil rooms, but I’d given her more than enough that night. We walked.

There was no straight way to walk through Kaskata at the ground level—the stone paths wound along the water’s infiltration and around the stable, anchored buildings—and the bridges were still too crowded with celebratory visitors.

Faint notes of disconnected music intersected over us as we walked, none of the melodies forming together into anything recognizable. The moment I acknowledged it as the first thing that had gone right that evening, everything went a new kind of sideways.

“Ah . . . ” Bess made that breathy, introductory sound that meant I should prepare myself for what was next. I briefly allowed myself the fantasy of jumping into the bottomless waters to my right, then turned my head toward her.

“Tenobia . . . the general is going to be there.”

“You said Muntrow asked for me.” Of course, she wasn’t talking about Muntrow. He was an empty suit, tolerable enough, and wouldn’t have required that hesitant sound from her.

“They called about our arrival time—they expected us ages ago—and the aide mentioned . . . General Tiddok is waiting on us. You.”

I didn’t curse. The record should show I didn’t curse. My intestines managed to wind themselves over my lungs and squeeze until my stomach migrated south, but I didn’t curse.

Tiddok . . . Tiddok played both sides during the last war. He’d been with the Frontierists on record, claiming he wanted the Empire back in galactic center where it belonged, not out here mucking around with the ragged edge. But at some point he’d decided the wind was blowing a different way, and passed intel and gave orders that benefited the Empirists.

The details never came out—it’s good to have friends in the Empire—but there was enough for me to put together. That last, fractured night—the bombing, the charging, the burning—that was him, pulling strings on both sides. Everything that happened . . . 

My fingernails bit into my palms and my teeth pressed together until my jaw creaked. Tiddok. Tiddok could fall through the cracks of Kaskata, half-drown in the waters, get his dying body dragged through the bridges to be eaten by the shadows that flowed there, and still I would want to yank him out, set him on fire, stomp on the pieces . . . 

I forced out a breath, easing the pressure on my jaw. It had been decades. I could stand in the same room as Tiddok and not stab him in the heart. It would be fine.

✧ ✧ ✧

It was not fine.

“Still can’t get in a lift, eh, Sabiron?” Tiddok didn’t raise his head as we were escorted into the wide space of a sterilely beautiful suite.

“I’m here to look at the scene.” I snapped my jaw shut before other words followed, but he wasn’t stupid, he had to have heard the “not talk to you” that tried to follow.

“You’re here because Muntrow is trying to play politics.” Tiddok—broad shouldered, hair close-cut and steel gray, a few more lines in his face—kept his attention on whatever he was scrolling through on the table in front of him.

Two aides huddled in the far back of the room, their voices too low for me to catch, and the trappings of Repatriation Day—banners in the saturated colors of Kaskata, flags from the major systems, and the oversized interlocking design of the Empire—had been pressed and hung, but for the alleged headquarters of dealing with an Empire-threatening set of murders, it was empty, nonurgent.

It felt like the hollow skin of Kaskata itself. I strode through the room, eyes locked on the table Tiddok loomed over near the back wall, muscles in my back jumping as if the floor was about to fall out from under me.

It didn’t, but my breath went a little ragged in my chest by the time I placed my hand flat on his table. Bess moved to one of the long, low cushioned benches to the side of the general, her gaze on me.

“Sabiron.” Tiddok cleared the thin screen and put both his arms behind his back. I didn’t take my eyes from the table to meet his, though Bess’s soft scoff almost made me reconsider.

“You’re not going in the room.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s the anteroom of the Vigil room. It’s locked.”

“Cantel and a handful of others are dead inside, so presumably it’s opened already.” I studied the textured wood of the table, its wave pattern nearly identical to the one coating the walls of the Vigil room itself. If my memory could be trusted from the years I’d stood my own time in that small, somber room.

“Someone got in and out, or someone tampered with the systems to make the room deadly for those inside. Either way, no one goes inside.”

“You made me come down here to look at the feeds? You could have sent me a file.”

“This is rather too delicate to trust to intersystem communication.” Tiddok scowled, and I didn’t have to see his face to know it.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and couldn’t have said if I hoped to find a flask or a weapon. Neither materialized, and I forced my voice level without the support liquor or firepower would have provided. “What is the point of bringing me down here to look at corrupted data?”

I was sure I sounded eminently reasonable, but Bess’s fingers flickered like she was trying to send me a message. I fixed my eyes on Tiddok’s chin and warned myself off from too closely analyzing anything Bess did. Instead I kept talking, watching Tiddok’s posture tighten.

“I imagine you’re going to have me look at a screen that shows Cantel and the rest right up until it flickers, or goes hazy, and then clears on them dead, yeah?” Still Tiddok didn’t speak, and for the first time I considered how much they wanted me on this.

Was it enough that I could put hands on Tiddok, slam the top of my head into the weakest part of his nose? Scream until the two aides in the far corner did something other than hunch and mutter?

I shoved the thoughts away as fast as they surfaced. Maybe they wanted me enough to keep me safe for now, for whatever show this was meant to be, but that need would pass. Tiddok’s memory wouldn’t.

“I’m sure someone of your talents—”

“Cut the waste. You have a way in, because you confirmed everyone is dead. You don’t want me in there. What are you waiting to tell me?”

He moved then, slowly, a ship maneuvering to dock, and Bess straightened but didn’t stand from her perch. “I didn’t want you on this.”

“I figured.”

“You’ve spent too much time in the bowels of Kaskata. Even Cantel goes upsystem once a year, sees the progress the Empire has made.”

I lifted a shoulder and leaned my hip against the table, slouching for good measure. I wanted to give him the exact impression he had of me. Unprofessional, messy, beneath his notice. Some of it was true.

“You solve the small problems of smaller people.” His lips curled over the words, his eyebrows drawing together. Like I should be insulted. Like it should hurt.

I smiled, tugged it bigger and brighter for good measure, and finally met his gaze. I did help regular people solve their relatively minor problems. And if he thought that would wound me . . . then he had no idea what I did with the rest of my time.

“You have no business in these levels.” His voice clipped each word, but no further tension showed in his body. If I’d annoyed him, he had the discipline to lock it down. No points to me. “I told Muntrow you were as likely to fumble this on purpose, try and sink us to your—”

“Bowels?”

“Charming. I can’t imagine why we didn’t put you to better use.” He glanced at Bess, who kept her eyes focused somewhere above his head and allowed only the slightest twitch of her lips. Some points to me.

“Yet here you are. Putting me to use.” I took my hands out of my pockets and crossed my arms. “So if we could all be about it . . . ?”

“Sabiron.” Tiddok said my name through visibly clenched teeth, took a breath, and attempted a different tack. “Tenobia. What do you imagine you will do in that room? Break out little analytic bots? Find a note in Cantel’s clenched fist that identifies his killer? Scent the murderer on Admiral Jorit’s body?” He snorted. I don’t think I’d ever heard him make such a sound before. Even Bess blinked. “You’re not going in. We brought you down here to show you what footage we have, allow you to study the scene over recordings that are too delicate to send offsite, and provide you with what effects we have of the victims. Even you have sense enough to know that.”

The infuriating part was that he was almost entirely right. “Almost” because either the room had opened, or it had been tampered with and a properly equipped suit would keep me safe. “Almost” because there very well was a chance there was something in there that would tell me something, and the fact they didn’t want me in there meant bedamned something.

Arguing with Tiddok was like diving below Kaskata’s surface. You didn’t get anywhere worth going, and if you came out of it at all, you were worse for wear and smelled like death.

“Give me what you got.” I shoved my disgust and frustration into one of those imaginary caverns and resettled my weight on the balls of my feet.

Tiddok tapped the screen between us on the table and it came alive in four sections, different views of the anteroom of the Vigil space. Six people in various poses, their body language casual, talking amongst themselves.

“No sound?”

“That feed was cut.” Tiddok didn’t add detail, and before I could ask the important questions—had it been cut before everything happened? Did Tiddok cut it so I couldn’t hear what was going on?—the door between anteroom and Vigil room opened, and Cantel strode in.

The upper-right corner view stuttered first, closely followed by the upper left, lower left, lower right. They fuzzed into illegibility before the door closed behind Cantel. I squinted and reached over without being asked, pulling the pictures backward.

The person closest to the door stood up as Cantel walked in. Was he leaving? Was he the murderer? “Who—”

Tiddok held a hand out to the side, and the two aides hurried toward us. I glanced from the screen to their faces, and swallowed a sigh. They were the two extra people in the room, the one who’d stood up and the one hanging closest to the exit door talking to another aide.

Before I could ask, they were talking over each other to spill the story. Was that what they’d been muttering about in the back? Getting it straight? I unwillingly snagged Bess’s gaze, and she twitched her shoulders and mouthed an apology.

“I went to get Cantel’s evening meal—”

“The Admiral’s aide asked me to get some for him and—”

“Everything was normal in the room when we left—”

“It didn’t make a sound behind us, I didn’t know it had locked until—”

“We came back and the door didn’t work and I called—”

They continued for a stretch of minutes better not to re-create. If they had had anything helpful to say to me, it was buried in the stewing and scheming they’d done in this very room before I even got here. As they spoke I tilted my head back toward Tiddok—a general of his experience knew better than to leave suspects in communicating distance—and he cut in as though the aides had already stopped speaking.

“Tonkins and Renould were recorded every moment after they left the room. Not a sign of tension or unusual stress, and they’ve been attached to my billet for three years.”

Ah. Not overtly suspicious from background or service, and under his protection. Delightful.

“And no reason to believe anyone in that room had cause to kill everyone else?”

“As best we can tell, each individual was shot once.” Tiddok tapped the screen, and the dark fuzz cleared back into focus on the dead. “No sign of struggle or any of them reaching for their weapons.”

“So . . . you think five shooters?” My throat itched, too dry and in want of a flask I’d neglected to bring. Each body lying in the re-visible room looked like they’d died in their sleep. Minus the blood splatter. All five were in active shape, and had visibly holstered weapons on them.

“No.”

“You obviously think something, Tiddok, so if you’d make this go a little easier, that’d be swell.”

Bess covered her mouth with a hand, and I turned further away to have less view of her.

“I think something was flooded into the room to relax them.”

“That’s why you won’t let me in?”

“Sensors have glitched once. We’re not opening those doors.”

He could have said. Saved us all the argument. Got me a gas mask. Before I could argue the point again, the general plunged onward. “Then a shooter, probably from this—”

“The corner, yes. They’re all oriented away from it. I don’t remember the cabinet from my Vigil days, but everything else in the room is the same.”

“Tradition keeps us from redecorating,” Bess interjected while Tiddok glared at me. “The case is to display the updated treaty.”

“There’s an updated treaty?”

“Original treaty states we’ll revisit every quarter century.” One of the aides—I’d already forgotten if he was Tonkins or Renould—supplied eagerly. Tiddok turned his glare on him, and they both backed into their original positions against the wall.

“So the cabinet’s the only new thing, and also is likely the direction the attack came from.” But I couldn’t go in the room. “Do you have details on who made it, delivered it, installed it?” Tiddok inclined his head fractionally and I rolled my eyes. “Give me that, a copy of the new treaty, and all of these people’s schedules since they’ve been in Kaskata and ahead. Your aides, too. Where they were staying, any tracking you did. And pull this video back; I want to scan it for the last few days.”

I forgot I wanted a drink, and I didn’t even glance up to see how irritated the general was by my demands. Cantel’s dead body was centered in my head, and I had work to do.

✧ ✧ ✧

Of the five people murdered, four spent very little time in Kaskata. There were no immediate overlaps in their saved calendars, and nothing obvious connecting them, so I started by tracing Cantel before he arrived at the Vigil room the evening before.

His apartment was the top of a building in a newer quarter of the city. Bare tables, minimal furniture, screens dark. No note left in case of his sudden death.

According to the data I could find, his time was spent either off-planet, in his apartment, picking up food from street kiosks, or at a bar called Canned Air.

I’d never been—I rarely came to the far northside corner of Kaskata. The area had been near entirely rebuilt after the war, old and new sitting together with all the grace of the desperately flashing lights lining each bridge and doorway. I had a headache before I got to the bar, and didn’t have the sense to talk myself out of going in despite the late hour. Canned Air was a midrise, half a block from his apartment, and took up half the floor of its twisted building. Each of the rounded windows facing outside were tinted to lessen the brash lights; each of the internal walls were lined with screens that blared bright enough to make the point moot.

Cantel had always seemed the quiet, serious sort. This bar didn’t fit—but there was enough going on to keep your thoughts from collecting, so that could have been the draw.

I made my way through irregularly spaced tables and gyrating bodies to get to the salvaged-looking metal bar set against an inside screen. I focused on the bartender to keep from having to recognize the image on the display. Despite the harsh contrast of the lighting, I managed to decipher when his face turned vaguely toward me.

“Saddleback on the rocks.” I dipped my chin at his acknowledgement, then tapped my credit chip on the bar and scanned the area. Most of the tables had three or more occupants, but the seats at the bar hosted the more solitary sort.

“TO REPATRIATION!” someone bellowed from the general mass of bodies. A mix of replies answered, undecipherable over the throb of music, but the enthusiasm was middling. Not too many tourists, I guessed, though I hoped the knot of younglings shaking their bodies with no discernable rhythm weren’t homegrown.

“Round of drinks on me, in honor to the Empire!” the same voice continued, and the response to that drowned out the music. The screen in front of me blinked, then switched to a counter. Each current patron had a randomly assigned number synced to their comm, allowing them to claim their drink and the bar to charge the drunken Empirist. No comm, no luck.

Efficient. I switched my comm off and slid it into my pocket, then watched the bartender to make sure I’d get my drink before the masses descended.

I did, and it burned appropriately throughout my chest. I tipped in answer to his generous pour, then moved toward the far corner as the bar got markedly more crowded.

None of the solitary stool dwellers seemed to like the invasion much, though none got up. Wouldn’t do me any good to try and talk to one now, in the midst of all that shoving, so I eyeballed the scattered tables in the darker side of the place. They all had occupants, but the tallest table, tucked against the wall, had three seats and one person. He didn’t seem in a rush to fight the crowd for a free drink, so I wove closer.

“Any of these chairs free?”

“I drink alone.”

“Got it, friend.” I brushed two fingers from my free hand against my opposite shoulder in acknowledgement, and he sat up straight.

“I meant—I drink alone, so no one’s using the seats. You can sit.”

He’d been military, or close enough to recognize the gesture. It had been a calculated guess—most Kaskata residents around my age fought one way or the other, and he was a little too plainly dressed to be a tourist.

“Thanks. Was going to hang around the bar a bit, but . . . ” I shrugged, and he picked up the conversation beautifully.

“But some Empire-loving tourist had to show off his leave pay. I get it.” His voice indicated neither approval nor disgust, but his hand wrapped around the only of the five glasses in front of him with liquid in it, and even in the flickering light I caught the whitening of his knuckles.

“Not my scene, really. A friend of mine recommended the place, but . . . I didn’t think this kind of thing was his, either.”

“Oh?” He lifted his drink, his eyes somewhere along my jawline. “It’s not usually like this. Quieter. Darker.”

“Huh. Maybe that’s a little more like him.” I took a healthy swig from my glass and repositioned myself so most of my back was against the wall. “Should have waited until he could come too.”

“He’s busy?”

I snorted. “Something like that. Vigil-ing.”

At that he looked up enough to meet my eyes, his own widening—and then widening more when he recognized me. Bedamn it all.

“I was . . . going to say I was surprised you knew Cantel, but . . . of course you do. I didn’t know—he never said . . . ”

“We’ve known each other a long time.” Eventually this guy would hear Cantel had died, one way or the other, and I didn’t want it to come from me, or have him remember too much of the conversation and wonder about whatever story the Empire came up with.

“Haven’t we all,” he muttered into his drink.

“You two close?” I spun my glass between my hands, resisting the urge to knock it back. Refills weren’t going to be quick.

“We drink together more often than not.” His eyes flicked to mine and away. “Sometimes more than others.”

“More leading up to the Vigil?”

“Less. There were a lot of meetings this time around. Guess for the big celebration.”

“Twenty-five years,” I muttered, carefully noncommittal.

“Sure.” He drank, pulled in air through his teeth, and clunked his glass down harder than necessary. “So much to celebrate.”

“Bet Cantel loved that. Time with the generals.” My fingers drummed against the thick material of the table before I could stop them, and I dropped both hands to my lap.

“Generals. Sponsors. It’s a big to-do this year. All the corporations are wanting front-row space in the Vigil room.”

“Huh.” Neither Bess nor Tiddok had mentioned that. “Corporations in the Vigil room?”

“Not for the Vigil itself, of course. In the anteroom, when the doors open. One of them said it’s been so long since the war, the people need to see more than military supporting the peace. Remember who helps keep it running.”

“That’s . . . something.” I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth and managed to mostly swallow back the noise climbing out of my throat. “Corporations buying ad space for Repatriation.”

“Dumb.” His head hung lower, and he ran a fingertip along the rim of his glass. “It’s all so dumb. Cantel . . . ”

He stiffened, and I did too. It was an overreaction—this stranger had given no hint that he’d known something had happened to Cantel. He couldn’t be coming up with a story to throw me off the path—there wasn’t even a path I’d gotten onto, yet.

The silence held between us, punctuated by the occasional “woo” from the crowd finally thinning at the bar.

“I told Cantel, years ago.” His eyes focused over my shoulder. He pressed his lips together, held his shoulders straight. “It was me. I dropped the bomb on you.”

Tension loosened in my gut, and I shifted in my seat. He’d been steeling himself for this moment, not casting for an alibi. I put my hands flat on the table between us, swallowed my words.

“I should have known—I should have seen.” He blinked rapidly, keeping his eyes clear. “I want to believe I would have done differently, if I’d—if the people—”

I hadn’t kept such perfect posture in fifteen years, not since I realized they’d never stop trotting me out if I didn’t slink away. I held still and listened as the phrases spilled out of him, nodded in the right moments, made soft noises. Maybe he had dropped that last bomb on me—odds were one of the tens of Bolide pilots and bombers and navigators who’d made this confession to me had been the one to press the button. They’d all dropped bombs on someone, so the words were real. The least I could do was hear them, tell them they were forgiven, give some measure of the peace the powers that be pretended we all had now.

It didn’t help me find Cantel’s killer, but it was a little bit of a Vigil of my own.

✧ ✧ ✧

I’d lost count of the drinks, but my walk home remained distressingly sober. Despite the lavendering of the predawn sky, tourists were still out and singing snatches of songs I did my best to ignore. I focused on the lights chasing underneath bridges and the cool edge of the wind, chin tucked into my collar and eyes on the steps in front of me.

Maybe that was why I didn’t see the figure at my door until it was too late.

“Tennie?”

My fingers curled for a weapon I didn’t have, but the shadow resolved into a woman a decade younger than me, her shoulders slumped, her face lined with the shape of the mask she wore most of the day—construction reinforcement maybe, or mining. Someone who went deep under Kaskata on a regular basis, probably not here to kill me. Seeing Bess and Tiddok had me all kinds of jumpy; this wasn’t the first time I’d come home to an unexpected guest needing my help.

My office was the front room of my apartment. It was a luxury, a suite and a half of rooms all to myself in a city teeming with the Empire’s second bests and least-haves. I had official office hours and everything, but the people who came to me with real problems—the ones I did my actual work for—there was no telling when they’d need someone.

Don’t sleep much, anyway.

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Evane. Vick’s my cousin. He said you could—”

Vick. Always with the timing. “Inside, Evane. Hall’s public.”

She quieted and nodded like her head was too heavy for her neck. I pressed a button on my wrist to open the door and gestured her in ahead of me. I didn’t think she was here to kill me, but Cantel and the suits couldn’t have thought death was waiting for them outside the Vigil room, either.

“There are a lot of Vicks out there—he tell you to tell me anything?”

“Oh.” She straightened, turning slow toward me, hands open to show they were clear. “He said the other side of the bridge stinks just as bad, but at least it’s new.”

“Got it. That Vick.” I waved toward the more comfortable chair in my office and considered getting another drink.

This was all Vick’s fault—my real business. His parents, like a whole lot of Kaskata parents over too many generations, had named him Victory for a win two wars ago. Things hadn’t gone well for them next time around, and by the time the last war, my war, was settled, it’d gone even worse for Vick.

Family of sympathizers, some Empire mucker had whispered, and the jobs dried up. Restaurants were always full when he wanted to eat. The bridges closed for construction before he could cross. Amazing what they could do with the automated programs that tailor ads to passerby’s comms. The corporations would never admit it, but everything helpful for making money does a second duty for the good of the Empire.

That’s the win-win they’re always on about.

“I need to get off the planet, Tennie,” Vick had said after a handful of rounds at Pin’s, around a Repatriation Day a long time ago. “There’s still a shore the Empire ends on, right? A side of a bedamned bridge they don’t own.”

I’d had a favor pending from a cargoloader—I’d helped him find his daughter, after she ran off with a group of bridgehangers—and had exactly enough alcohol in me at the time to decide it was a great idea.

No one was ever supposed to know, but the Empire’s pets aren’t the only ones that can whisper.

My public work was like Tiddok said—small jobs for small lives. Missing kids, middle manager dipping into the till, finding who got clever and flashed the bridges on and off to say rude things to the highrises.

Just an old hero helping out the little guy. Keeping the Empire flowing along at a different level.

Underneath it, like the predators that got inside the waterbridges and ate their fill before they were flushed, I helped a few people get out of the Empire’s shadow. Out of Kaskata, out of the Empire-dominated systems, unnoticed and unmissed.

It was only a matter of time until at least one was missed.

Only a matter of time until I was the one who got flushed—into the bowels, like Tiddok said.

Probably not smart to take a new client with Empire attention on me and dead Cantel and friends poised to blow up the city. Not like there was a smart time to spit in the Empire’s wind. Not like I was going to say no.

“Tell me what’s going on.” I decided not to fight my better sense—I poured us both a drink and settled in for another dawn without sleep.

✧ ✧ ✧

After Evane left, I turned one of my wallscreens to the aerial view of Kaskata and another to project various clips of information about Cantel and the rest. For good measure, I pulled up a few windows worth of information I’d need to get Evane and her two sons out of Kaskata before the Repatriation Day celebrations were over.

My eyes unfocused—overstimulation, lack of sleep, endless rivers of alcohol, who could say why—and eventually I gave it up and crossed the room to lean against the image of my city in daylight. Thick cloud cover diffused the sunlight, and the colors tracing Kaskata’s bridges and buildings deepened in response. The trees unfurled their trailing branches, people moved about their business, and I stared at all and none of it.

Evane wasn’t leaving Kaskata because of the Empire. She’d gotten on the wrong side of a corporate mucker. Corporate types were trying to buy into the Vigil—buy the Vigil itself, maybe.

I stared at my comm a long time before I tapped the command that would put her face on my screen. She answered right away, and I couldn’t tell if that was worse or not.

“Tenobia.” Bess’s voice was too warm, her eyes too big.

“What’s not on their schedules?”

“Hello to you too.” Her expression didn’t flicker, but she glanced up, over the recording’s eyeline. “I appreciate your faith that I can deliver miracles, but can you give me more specifics?”

“Cantel went upsystem every month over the last year, but there aren’t any details in his calendar. Who was he meeting with? The admiral blocked meeting times off, but without names. The general put nothing on his calendar, but his aide was all over galactic center.”

“I can see if the combined generals have other—”

“Bess. Fifteen years ago you tried to sell me to KasCorps. There’s no way you didn’t stay twisted in on all the lucrative military-corporate deals.”

“You said you wanted to get your hands dirty. Make real change. I didn’t try to . . . ” She breathed in so hard her nostrils flattened, then shook her head a fraction of an inch. “The star admiral’s family are the majority owners of Dessux.”

One of the large transport companies—made sense; no one got the Admiralty of several systems without a whole lot of credit backing them.

“Did the general own Starfarers or was he in someone’s credit chip?” I pulled up information on the side of Bess’s overly familiar face, scrolling through the latest stories of Dessux. Nothing jumped out.

“That’s not how this works, Tenobia. It’s—” I heard the effort in her voice to stay level, and fought the urge to smile. “The general worked for KasCorps after his retirement, but retired from them as well.”

KasCorps I knew all too well—they were responsible for any number of overly efficient programs, including ad-tracking and a topflight scheduling program that mapped you the clearest routes to get you to work, meetings, and dinner reservations. Homegrown brilliance, made good on an Empire-wide stage.

“Man like that wasn’t living on his residuals.”

“You’ve done actual research?”

I stared at the screen—easier to look her in the face with tech in the way—and waited her out.

“I heard—but am not sure—he was getting courted by Stivven Industries.”

“Weapons.” I left the quick search open, considering what I needed to find out once I disconnected from Bess. “Checks out.”

“Tenobia . . . ” She drew my name out, like she was telling me something. Like a warning. Told myself I was reading too much into it—having her back in my life was no good.

“What about Cantel?”

“What about him?” Her forehead wrinkled enough to make the exasperation in her voice feel real.

“Who’d he work for?”

“No one, he was almost—almost—as stubborn as you.”

“But?”

“He was taking meetings.” Bess sighed, looked upward again. “With at least three big players—KasCorps, Stivven, Central Mining.”

“Anything else that would be helpful for me to know?”

“Our old channel still works.” Her face disappeared from my screen so quickly I blinked at it for a full minute before I realized she’d disconnected.

Each of us mech-suited soldiers had had a dedicated line to our operator. Tight-band, all but guaranteed to break through the worst of Kaskata’s gaseous interference, tied to specialty equipment that I’d definitely meant to destroy when I fled the Empire’s sinksand.

Except . . . I hadn’t.

Decided I’d deal with that later, and got into what I did best—sifting through the morass of information on the feeds for meaning.

✧ ✧ ✧

I found it, though it hung together on half a dozen frayed vines. Still, I’d solved cases on less, so I played through it as I walked toward Kaskata’s tallest building, situated in an island of its own in the perfect middle of the city.

The corporations the dead admiral and general had played for were planning a merger. It wasn’t public, but their communication strategies had shown a marked similarity over the last year, and there were enough financial shenanigans that it was a solid conclusion. Didn’t seem hostile on either end, so it didn’t make sense for a power player on either side to take the other out.

So, who would care?

Dessux was wildly successful in transport because of their proprietary predictive software, mapping ship movements, galactic debris and drift, all the things that impacted interstellar travel. Stivven’s explosive weapons pulled top credit lines because of their adaptive tracking programs—as I’d learned twenty-five years ago, they were real hard to shake even when a crumbling planet got in the way.

I didn’t tell Bess I was going to KasCorps. I knew Tiddok and the other generals wanted updates, but this was more like a guess, and I didn’t trust them to restrain themselves—whether they’d jump on the lead or shut me down, it wouldn’t give me answers. I could toast Cantel with an open heart if I had answers.

“Ode to Midnight Raids” played as the door opened. Every fold of my intestines twisted until my legs threatened to give out. I swallowed bitter spit, forced myself forward, and stepped into the absurdly shiny waiting room of KasCorps. Spun glass and enormous windows combined with silver bright light tracing every curving edge made me squint despite my best efforts to look serene.

A woman sat at a lone desk in the middle of the blinding room, and I blinked to orient as I approached. The music came to its dramatic, crescendoing end, and my shoulders eased a breath before the stirring string introduction resumed.

“Do you have it on loop?” The words blurted out before I could be smart enough to stop them.

“It’s my favorite song.” The woman, impossibly young, didn’t look up from the multiple projected screens between us. The displays were specifically opaque so I couldn’t see what she was looking at, but still left her visible. “And it’s Repatriation.” Her smile was as bright and empty as the room. “How can I help you?”

“Here to see Allende Curoe.” I noted her immediate change of posture and added as casually as I could, “I’m Tenobia Sabiron.”

She looked at me then. I wasn’t the topflight promotional hero I’d once been—most kids her age probably wouldn’t have known who I was a month ago—but the twenty-fifth celebration was pulling out all the dusty classics.

“I am so sorry, Citizen Sabiron, I didn’t expect you, I would have had something waiting to greet you! Oh, is there a different version of the song you want—I have them all—”

“No, thank—”

“The one with words? It’s the best—the beat builds and the chimes come in, ‘Midnight raider, where do you come from? Midnight raider, as the ground falls in—’”

“This one is lovely,” I said, with my most screen-worthy smile. The skin along my jaw pulled at the unaccustomed motion. “Can Director Curoe be available for me?”

“Oh! Please, one second.” She made more pleasant noises as she scrolled through the projection in front of her. As it remained invisible to me and my eyes had since adjusted to the room, I noted more details—like the proliferation of gurana vines anchoring the corners. So like Kaskata, de-thorning a lethal creature and making decoration of it.

Within moments the young lady was standing and beaming at me, and a door opened in what had previously been a seamless wall between vines. “If you’ll follow me?”

The halls were lit at normal levels, so I registered no details while my eyes re-readjusted, and then we were at our destination. The young lady smiled again, told me the director would be in momentarily, and hummed “Ode to Midnight Raids” as she left me in the unoccupied room. I didn’t sit at the delicate desk, nor in the too-angled chair near the door.

More plants—miniature versions of the great corner trees, pots overflowing with watery tendrils—filled the tables and shelves at differing heights against the rounded walls and waved idly in the unmoving air. The humid warmth, underlined by an antiseptic burn, scraped at the inside of my nose, and I pressed one and then the other of my nostrils closed with the back of my hand to keep from sneezing.

“Tenobia Sabiron herself, in my very own building.” The voice—crisped to the finest central-Empire accent—entered the room before the woman herself, and it took a distressingly long moment for me to discern her movement from that of the plants. “I’d ask what brings you here, but that seems remarkably disingenuous, wouldn’t you say?”

“Would I?”

Allende Curoe was tall and laser-thin, closer to Bess’s build than my own. Her eyes were a cold greenish-brown, her hair dark and pulled back. She raised her eyebrows. “I imagine you know very well why you’re here, and since you’re here you’re smart enough to know that I would know why you’re here . . . I do own all the best tracking software, as I’m sure you know. Hard for you to hide from me. Which makes me curious what you hope to accomplish with this visit.”

“Were you aware two of your rivals were plotting a merger?” I pulled a data slip out of my pocket and walked it between my fingers. Her eyes didn’t so much as flicker toward it.

“Shall we do disingenuous after all? Very well. Yes, of course I did. I’d be a disappointment to my shareholders if I didn’t.” She smiled, continued into the room, and slid behind the desk. A trailing edge of a tiny tree slithered closer to her, and she brushed it back without looking.

“Those plans have been put on hold due to some recent events.”

“Are you referring to the murders in the Vigil room?” Curoe tsked, stretched out her elegantly clothed arms, and stroked the looping leaf of a taller tree draped near her shoulder.

“How did you hear about that?”

“Tracking software, Midnight Raider.” She lifted a shoulder and leaned slightly over the desk. “Do you know, it also pings when there’s nothing left to track?” Her expression shifted, less smile and more blade.

“Your company wouldn’t be well-served by Dessux and Stivven merging.”

“It would not.”

“The pause in their plans works in KasCorps’s favor.”

“It does.” Curoe straightened in her chair once more, and several of the miniature plants around her shifted, sensing a shift in the air. “Ask the question you want to ask, Tenobia Sabiron.”

“Did you have the star admiral and general killed?”

“No.” Her eyes held mine, unblinking.

“The aides? Citizen Cantel? Were they your targets?”

“All five were vital pieces of what I needed, Sabiron. But I didn’t have anyone killed.”

“I have evidence.”

“You have conjecture.” She still hadn’t blinked, and it took all the discipline I’d once had to hold myself still in front of her. “You can’t record in here, if you’re hoping to surprise something from me.” Allende flicked her fingers, toward unseen tech or the plants themselves—neither was beyond her. “All in all, you have very little, and I’m afraid the general has known me since I was quite young. Conjecture will not be enough.”

“The conjecture is quite compelling.” Unconsciously I’d matched her accent, and I cleared my throat, slumped my shoulders, charged on. “A financial trail between Dessux and Stivven, projected impact on KasCorps, blanks spots in your and Cantel’s schedules.” I brandished my data slip, as though it had anything on it I hadn’t already sent to Bess. “I’ll find who you hired and—”

“You won’t. I didn’t hire anyone.”

“Then—”

“I killed them.” Her smile didn’t falter—if anything, it widened. Finally she blinked, but I remained pinned under her gaze. “Thanks to you, in fact.”

I kept from gaping at her, but it was a near thing. The ache in my head intensified.

“The plants. The air.”

“Hm. You’re not going to argue?” She tilted her head, then twined a vine around her hand. “Knew I liked you. You were at an event for my father, right around the time you broke your contract with KasCorps, and in your speech you said we had a duty to get our own hands dirty. ‘Peace takes more work than war, and we all have to get our hands in the guts of it.’ Do you remember?”

My brain sluggishly suggested I should protest that I was never in a contract to break, but then snagged on the rest of her words. I might have said it, or something like it. I had tried to inspire people toward betterment once—in my defense, I’d been young and often a bit drunk.

“So you decided to . . . ” The words were hard to summon. I forced my back straight, used my height. “Got something in there to drug them, hold them still.”

“Get my hands dirty.”

“We’ll trace the weapons . . . ” I snapped my jaw shut—didn’t need to tell her that. My eyes were sagging, one eyelid heavier than the other.

She didn’t seem affected by any of it, her voice shifting into a singsong, like I was some kid and it was her turn to lecture. “The problem with peace is no matter how hard you work, it slows down. Growth lags. Profits stall. You can’t possibly be sad that hack is dead?”

I didn’t ask which of them she considered a hack; my credits were on the admiral. “You can’t possibly think killing them solves all your problems?”

“Well, it will make me a lot of money . . . ” Curoe folded her hands neatly. “And the resulting war will triple that. So, I won’t get in your way if you don’t get in mine.”

“Meaning?” It took effort to focus on her. My gaze kept slipping to the vines that slithered in my peripheral.

“I know about your smuggling operation. Freeing the little people of the big bad Empire. Tiddok and his ilk won’t agree, but every system needs a pressure valve to release the overflow. I’ve no problem letting people run out to the end of their ties.”

Twenty-five years ago, I did a dumb thing. There were any number of ways it could have been fine. I could have died. Clean, over. I could have failed. Probably still gotten credit for trying—the Empire could have spun that.

But for the recording. One scared kid ahead of the line, pointing his screen my way. He didn’t even edit it—it went out live. The flames outlined me without specificity—in the night, in my armor, I could have been male or female, Empirist or Frontierist, old or young. The ground opened. The bombs fell. I charged into the messy middle of the field, grabbed soldiers of all stripes, and cleared the spreading collapse by the edge of my toes. More bombs. I got blown up and sank into a hole and somehow survived, my armor and dumb luck protecting the mixed crew under me. It was brave and dramatic and defiant and perfectly timed for a populace so bedamned sick of war.

They made a hero out of me. A show. An excuse. With the helmet off I was young enough to be adopted by all, pretty enough to look up to without being beautiful enough to threaten. Smart, so they didn’t have to script me, and smart, because I let them. Humble beginnings, so I had no backing to take and hold power without the already powerful deciding I could.

I smiled and I shook hands and I bowed over the Repatriation Act and I opened curtains and I made small talk and I beamed from screens and I died, over and over and over again.

Because of a video. Soldiers had done what I’d done and more, in my war and others. But that video went out, and the Empire made it the paragon of what they wanted to happen anyway.

I’d had a lot of time to think about the power of a recording device uploading live.

In this case, Curoe wasn’t wrong. Normal recordings probably wouldn’t work in here—no head of a corporation is going to let their secrets go that easy. But I hadn’t uploaded to the general public. I’d sent it to Bess, on our old line. Could punch through any of Kaskata’s mess, natural or human.

Having the Empire’s suits learn about my smuggling was a blow, but if they were really trying to avoid war, this would give them everything they needed. If Bess got it to them. If they wanted to avoid war.

Always ifs.

“They’re not going to do anything to me.” Curoe delivered the words gently, perhaps thinking my long silence was shock. “We all know the peace will crack apart again eventually, and timing it right helps us control what we can. And all you have is conjecture.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” I inclined my head, then glanced down as though my wristlet comm had buzzed. “Then I suppose I’ve wasted my time and yours.”

“Not entirely. I did rather want to meet you. I’m not . . . disappointed.” She twisted her hand, and squeezed a strand of tree vine.

She was—bedamn me and the absent gods, she was drugging me with the tree’s uncut pollen. A layer of solidity in my conjecture, more evidence Bess could do something with.

“Thrilled to hear it, Director.” I didn’t hide the edge to my words, and her smile deepened once more. Those eyes warmed not at all. Joke was on her—I’d breathed far worse, and though it slowed me down, her tiny trees weren’t enough to snag me. She must have shot Cantel first. “I suppose we’ll let matters lie as they are.”

My hand tightened at my side, but I didn’t reach for my weapon. I didn’t know what else she had in here, if she thought she wasn’t winning. My death in her office would be hard to spin, but not impossible, not with her resources.

But she nodded her head, believing me. All that time I’d spent lying to everyone, myself included . . . it paid off in that moment.

I couldn’t leave fast enough.

✧ ✧ ✧

I’d done all they’d asked, but I didn’t trust Tiddok not to come for me, for my operation, despite the job. Bess would probably leave me the time I needed to slip out the way I’d sent so many before. Faulty airlock, friendly logistics manager, pack of food and a few weeks of napping and hiding, then off into the wilds of unclaimed frontier.

But that meant leaving Kaskata. That meant being too far away when the peace crumbled again and all the mess bubbled out to sweep the little people away. Because Curoe was right—whatever and however the Empire papered over the tension now, it was always only a matter of time.

There was another way to slip off the board. Under, instead of out. Kaskata has all those bridges to pull us up—over the water, over the caves, over the uncertain ground that might open up at any time.

There were hiding places aplenty. People who moved between the cracks.

All cities have ghosts. It was past time I became one of them.


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Framed