Shit.
Dyhianna Selei had stepped back, but she stayed only a couple of paces away. I sat down slowly. “My greetings, Your Majesty,” I managed, my voice thick with sleep.
She inclined her head. “Major.”
Belatedly, I remembered I wasn’t supposed to sit while she was standing. I started to rise, but she put up her hand, staying me. She sat on the ledge, not too close, but enough so we could converse. Even seated, I towered over her. She wore a simple white shirt and blue leggings, with no makeup or jewelry, and she was still lovely. She barely looked thirty. Surely it violated some conservation law of the universe that one person could have such ageless health, intellect, beauty, and power. Then again, she also had a crushing job where, if she failed, it would bring about the fall of an empire. She couldn’t resign, leave, give up, or move to a new position. It never ended, not for a single moment. I couldn’t imagine anything that would be worth such a torturous responsibility.
I tried to gather my sleep-addled wits. “You honor me, Your Majesty. You didn’t have to come here. I could’ve come to the palace.”
She watched me with eyes the color of emeralds. No, not emeralds. Gems were hard. She had a gentle gaze. “The Uzan didn’t think you were ready to move.”
“I’m sorry they dragged you to this place.”
She smiled, like the sun lighting up the dawn. “I like it here. The Lock soothes me.”
I couldn’t imagine its excruciating presence soothing anyone. “You’re lucky.”
“They tell me you were in pain.” Her voice flowed like a clear stream, which made no sense as a metaphor on Raylicon. Our water lay mostly underground or frozen at the poles.
Concentrate, I told myself, trying to clear my thoughts. “So the Lock doesn’t always hurt?”
“Well, no.” She thought for a moment. “Most psions describe the effect as pressure. They use words like ‘purity of thought.’ Many see haloes of light due to their increased brain activity.”
Great. They saw angels and I screamed in agony. “I was fighting it, I think. The Kyle centers in my brain are waking up, and apparently my subconscious doesn’t like it.”
“Yes, I see that now.” She gave my a look of apology. “I shouldn’t have brought you into a Kyle link yesterday. I am sorry.”
Gods. That sentence contained so much strangeness, I couldn’t begin to answer, not to mention that the pharaoh had just apologized to me. In my experience, the more powerful the authority, the less likely they were to admit they made a mistake.
After a moment, she said, “Major?”
I took a breath. “You’re saying we were in a Kyle link during out last meeting?”
“Yes, that is right.” She didn’t seem to have a clue she had just stated the impossible.
“I can’t do that.” I thought of my experience with the Lock. “Even if I had the training to make a Kyle link, which I don’t, it would cripple my brain.”
“Apparently not.” She watched me as if I were a puzzle. “I pick up signals from you better than I do with most people. Or at least I did before; you’re shielding your mind better now.”
I hadn’t realized my shields had improved. “Why was it easier with me?”
“I don’t know.”
I blinked. “You must know. You’re the Assembly Key.”
She spoke dryly. “People think I know everything because I am reasonably good at solving puzzles. I don’t know everything. I can’t say why it is easier with you.”
Reasonably good at solving puzzles. That was like saying the desert had a little bit of sand. I needed to tell her why I had asked to see her, but if I went any further, I could be impaling myself on the sword of my blunt candor.
“Major?” she asked.
Go ahead, I told myself. Jump over the cliff. “May I ask you a personal question?”
Her gaze turned wary. “Why?”
“It has to do with Calaj’s case.”
“I understand you think she is hiding below the aqueducts.”
“Yes, I do.”
“The police can’t find her.” Dyhianna frowned. “They can’t find anything down there.”
“The Majdas sent them to look?” Damn. They wouldn’t get out of the Undercity alive. It was bad enough they had sent Duane down a few levels, but at least he had a good reputation with my people. Invading the Down-deep with a police contingent could be suicide.
“They didn’t send people,” Dyhianna said. “They sent bee-bots.”
My shoulders relaxed. Tech-mech bees we could deal with. Given her comment on the success of their search, or lack thereof, it sounded like the cyber-riders in the deep were just as adept at making shrouds to hide people as ours in the aqueducts.
“I shot back when Calaj fired at me,” I said. “Did the bots find her body?”
Dyhianna shook her head. “No trace of her. No trace of the jumbler shot, either.”
Huh. That shot had disintegrated a wall. Either ISC hadn’t sent their bees deep enough or the deepers had already fixed the damage. If they had found Calaj’s body, this investigation would end, and with it any danger from Calaj to the pharaoh. Yet no matter how many battles I had fought, I hated to end life. And Calaj was one of our own. I wanted to stop her, not blow her apart.
I tried again. “Your Majesty, may I ask about your lineage?”
“It’s not exactly a secret.”
“People know about your family, yes. But very few know specifically where you descend from.” I certainly didn’t, other than the nebulous descended from ancient Ruby queens.
She shrugged. “We came from Raylicon. Everyone does.”
“You aren’t everyone.” To put it mildly.
She considered me. “All right. Ask your questions.”
“It’s, uh, about your skin.”
“What about my skin?”
“It doesn’t look like everyone else’s skin.”
Dyhianna glanced at her arm, then back up. “It looks normal to me.”
I plunged ahead. “The first time I saw you, my apology, but I didn’t think you looked like royalty. You’re, well, smaller. Your eyes are green instead of black. Your skin looks translucent.” Almost stuttering, I added, “I mean, not literally, but it gives that impression.”
She spoke quietly. “Who do you think I look like?”
I knew I should shut up, but being an idiot, I said, “A deeper.”
“What is a deeper?”
“Someone native to the region of the Undercity below the aqueducts.” I wondered if you could be jailed for profaning the lineage of a pharaoh.
She blinked. “But almost no one is down there.”
That was it? That response was her only reaction to my suggestion that her revered dynastic lineage came from the deepest levels of the worst slum on the planet?
“More people live there than you think,” I said. “You just can’t find them.”
“So I suggested to the Majda police captain.” She grimaced. “Takkar, I believe is her name.”
Her expression fit my thoughts about Takkar exactly. “Your Majesty, please know that I don’t mean to insult your heritage.”
Dyhianna spoke dryly. “My exalted ancestors were a bunch of warmongering barbarians. Tell me why you think these atavistic predecessors of mine might have had ties to the Down-deep.”
“The large size of your eyes,” I said. “Their green color also means they have less melanin. Same for your skin. Something in their skin also reacts with airborne agents down there to create bioluminescence. I have it too. I’d bet you do as well.”
Her expression remained neutral. “What agents?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “This is all conjecture.”
“And Calaj?”
“Her genetic map indicates at least one of her ancestors had Down-deep heritage.”
“So you are suggesting that Secondary Calaj, myself, and you are all related?”
Great. Not only had I insulted her dynastic lin
e, I had implied she shared that lineage with a murderer and a slum rat. My feeling like slime, however, didn’t negate my conclusions. “I’m sorry. But yes, distantly related. It would be many generations ago.” Many generations, as in thousands of years, but still, the genetic stock of the Undercity.
“Why are you sorry?” she asked.
I was hardly going to repeat my thoughts. Hell, she might have overheard them. She wasn’t reacting today as she had on the bridge, though, so maybe I really had done a better job at shielding my mind. Or maybe the Lock had burned out my Kyle centers. I could always hope.
She spoke again, saving me from having to answer. “You have nothing to apologize for. From what the Uzan and Majdas tell me, you have been through hell these past few days. We should thank you for service.”
This conversation felt surreal. “It’s no problem. I’ve seen worse.” I hesitated. “Your Majesty, did Calaj know about the Kyle tests the doctors did on my people?”
“I don’t think so. How would she?”
“I wondered if she were one of the officers studying the results.”
“If that were true, it would be in the files we gave you.”
That pretty much did away with the only plausible theory I could think of for how Calaj might have known about the Down-deep test results.
“Will these conclusions about our heredity help you find Calaj?” Dyhianna asked.
“I think so. They could help me understand what motivates her.”
“The Majda police captain wants to send troops to the Undercity to search for her.”
Well, shit. Leave it to Captain Takkar to come up with the worst idea. Their search wouldn’t work; my people would vanish, aided by our cyber riders. My people would hate Majda after that. The Imperialate would never get its détente with the Undercity.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Yes, well, Takkar didn’t like it when I told her that, either.” Wryly, she added, “If I wasn’t the pharaoh, I swear, I think she would throw me in jail.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “She often says how much she’d like to do that with me.”
“Has she ever actually carried through with the threat?”
“Not yet. But if she can ever find a valid reason, I’m sure she will.”
The pharaoh smiled, and I felt less intimidated. Anyone who affected Takkar the same way I did was all right in my book. Perhaps I could ask her for one more thing.
I spoke carefully. “The deepers value their privacy.”
She studied my face. “But?”
“They have a small, ingrown community. It leads to birth defects.” I didn’t want to trust an outsider. Talking to her about the deep bothered me at such a gut level, it felt painful. But I couldn’t let this go. It was too important. “Your Majesty, they need help.”
She continued to watch me with her too-perceptive gaze. “What kind of help?”
“Medical. But it’s risky. Introducing above-city procedures, tech, expectations, anything that might interfere with their way of life—it could destroy them.” I hoped I wasn’t making a mistake, revealing such a unique people to one of the most powerful figures in three empires, a sovereign with a vested interest in using them for their Kyle abilities. If I erred trusting her, I could bring great harm to the very people I sought to help, my people, those who shared the blood of my ancestors.
Yet they were also the pharaoh’s ancestors, I felt sure. Beneath her fragility, I sensed a great strength, the same steel will that kept the deepers going millennia after millennia in their strange world. If we traced their genetics, what would we find? They had access, from their buried caves, to the Lock, probably also to Izu Yaxlan. Even the blue light that filled the Abaj command center evoked the deep. And the Abaj were the traditional protectors of the Ruby Dynasty. Coincidence? Maybe, but the links were all there.
The pharaoh spoke again. “I need time to think on this, Major.”
I nodded, hoping I hadn’t set into motion events I would regret. “Of course.”
Dyhianna stood up. “Let me know if you discover any more about Calaj.”
“I will.” I stood slowly, still woozy from my experience in the Lock. “Thank you for coming.” Beyond her, I could see the Uzan standing by the entrance across the pyramid. Four unfamiliar Abaj stood with him, fully outfitted Jagernauts in black leathers, which jumblers holstered at their hips. Their massive gauntlets glittered as they monitored the pyramid, and their gazes swept over me with antipathy. I might be among the best fighters in the Undercity, but these Abaj could dispatch me with no effort, and they looked as if the slightest provocation would set them into action. They were the real thing, the pharaoh’s bodyguards, every bit the killers of legend.
Dyhianna inclined her head. “Thank you, Major, for your work on our behalf.”
With that, she left, sweeping out of the pyramid with her guards. A chill ran up my back. Precognition? No, I didn’t believe it. Yet about this I had no doubt; Dyhianna Selei Skolia might seem innocuous, but someday our “titular” ruler would become a true pharaoh in every way, even if it meant overthrowing her own government.
VIII
Lizard Trap
Beyond the aqueducts, deep within the darkness, a narrow passage wound through the rocks, lit only by a small sphere of light from the stylus hanging around my neck. The tunnel widened into a chamber with natural rock pillars created by eons of dripping water. On my left, roughly hewn stairs curved up into darkness. I stood at their base, frozen, unable to go farther. I’d climbed those steps plenty of times. It was ridiculously simple. Just go up. Yet I remained at the bottom, staring.
No Undercity stairs would ever look the same to me again. It had been nearly twenty hours since I staggered out of the Lock with pain stabbing my head like the punishment of a vengeful goddess against my lowly trespassing self. The Abaj had called a flycar to take me “home,” that is, to the building in Cries where I sometimes lived. I’d gone upstairs, eaten, and slept for hours. Only then had I returned to the Undercity. I should be fine. Yet here I stood, staring at stairs I knew better even than my apartment, and I couldn’t freaking move.
Stop being stupid, I thought. Climb.
I put my foot on the first step. I went up one step. Another. Unlike the Lock stairs, which had followed a precise spiral, these wound unevenly, a natural progression of ledges created by nature rather than humans. In one place, an overhang blocked the way. The rare person who discovered this staircase on her own would stop at this dead end, puzzled perhaps. She might assume she’d found a sculpture created by a dust gang with some symbolic meaning, stairs that went nowhere. It wouldn’t surprise me, actually, if someone in the Undercity had created such a work of art.
In reality, the overhang acted as a gate. I knelt down and pushed its bottom edge. A pin dropped somewhere, a thunk of stone on stone, and the overhang shifted, opening a space about two handspans tall between its bottom edge and the ground. I lay down and scraped under the barrier on my back. When I made it through to the other side, I stood up, brushing off my clothes, and shoved the bottom edge of the gate into place with the toe of my boot. That done, I resumed my climb, step by excruciating step. By the time I reached the top, my heart was beating much too hard, but of course that came from exertion. Just exertion, nothing else. Never mind that I was in excellent shape.
I’d reached a foyer-like cave. I walked across it to a stone archway with vines engraved along its borders. In the room beyond, a sculptor had carved benches into the wall and engraved them with flying lizards. Blue cushions softened their seats. Tapestries hung on the walls, depictions of life in the Undercity woven in shimmering threads, red, blue, green, gold. They offered far more vibrant works of art than the paltry imitations sold by Concourse vendors, who claimed their wares were genuine Undercity crafts. Right. Those vendors had no idea. These exquisite tapestries and engraved benches were the real thing, never seen in Cries or even on the Concourse.
“Dara?” I called.
A man appeared in an archway across the room, Dara’s husband Weaver. Dark-haired and tall, he was in excellent health. As a bartender at Jak’s casino, Dara supported her family well.
“Heya,” he said. “Dara’s got work.”
“Ah.” Usually she was home by now. “Didn’t mean to disturb.”
“Back soon.” He motioned me to come inside. “Come with.”
I followed him into another room hung with tapestries. A lamp stood in one corner, its tinted glass glowing red, blue, and gold. The other corner sported a water desalination set and plants with blue flowers genetically modified to survive without direct sunlight. A curtain of blown-glass beads hung in an archway, sparkling blue and green, and handwoven rugs covered the floor, their artistry as exceptional as the tapestries. Weaver created all of this beauty, with no idea he was an artistic genius. A toddler was playing with a pile of soft balls on one rug, and a nine-year-old girl sat against one wall, ensconced in a pile of cushions, reading. Holos of ancient queens glowed above the screen of her book.
“Crinkles,” I said, by way of greeting.
The girl looked up. “Heya, Bhaaj.” A two word greeting, expansive for an Undercity kid. She went back to her book.
“Here.” Weaver indicated a pile of cushions against another wall.
I sank gratefully into their softness. Sliding off my pack, I opened it up and reached around the bulky shroud for a bottle of water. I offered it to Weaver. “Snap.”
“Eh. Good.” He grinned as he accepted the bottle. With no fanfare, he strode away, through the bead curtain, setting the little orbs clinking. He had designed them so that when they jangled, they played music, a sweet melody that never sounded the same twice. They started up again when he came back out. He brought three glasses, all tinted blue at the bottom and shading into pale green at the top. I wondered if he knew the glass looked like water in the ocean. Probably not. He had never seen a body of water under an open sky.
The first time I saw a lake, the sight froze me in place. It was on a world whose name I didn’t remember, one of many places the army had sent us grunts for training. I would never forget. The lake had seemed so vast, its wind-rippled surface glittering in the sunlight. I stood on the shore staring with my mouth open until my sergeant yelled for me to get my ass moving. I ended up with a demerit for breaking formation, which normally would have mortified me; I did my damnedest to make sure no one could claim I didn’t deserve a place in the army. But that day, I’d cared only about the magic I witnessed, all that fresh water glowing under a blue sky.