I could think of one other situation where a duster might make it to adulthood with no scars. Taz looked in his early twenties, as healthy and as fit as a Majda prince, muscled from what had to be regular workouts, and more than adept at aiming that damn gun at me. Yah, you could be all of this if, for most your life, you had the protection of the most notorious killer in the aqueducts.
“Eh, uh, um,” I said articulately. “Tez? Taz, I mean.” I was stuttering like an idiot.
His gun never wavered. “Who the fuck are you?”
Yah, so, he might look like a prince, but he sounded like the proverbial boy next door, Undercity style. “Bhaaj,” I said, giving him my name, a gesture of respect. “Singer sent.”
“Lying.”
“No lying.” I lifted my free hand, the one with the splint. “Don’t shoot. I prove.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t blast me into slag, either. Moving slowly, I opened my pack and took out Singer’s gauntlet, lifting it so he could see that work of tech-mech wizardry. “Ask her.”
His fist clenched on the rifle—and he fired.
“Ai!” I yelled as the gauntlet spun out of my hand. He had shot with perfect precision, making a spiked fin on the bullet graze the gauntlet. Had that projectile hit me, it would have exploded my body. Even the barest touch of one fin sent the gauntlet spinning out of my hand and probably destroyed its tech-mech. Damn. Singer would be pissed.
Never taking his gaze off me, Taz stalked to where the gauntlet had fallen and picked it up. All that time, he kept that monster gun aimed at my trespassing self. He brushed his thumb over the gauntlet’s controls, his face impassive.
The comm activated.
Good gods. How had that shot left Singer’s comm undamaged? That could only happen if the fin on the bullet had touched no more than a layer a few molecules thick on the gauntlet. It wasn’t just a matter of aim; the fins unfolded in the air and the bullet spun. Either this Taz was incredibly lucky or he was the freaking best marksman I’d ever seen. I wondered if he had always been that good of a shot, if a shared interest had drawn him to Singer, or if she had taught him so he could defend himself. Well, yah, I shouldn’t assume Singer taught him. Maybe he taught her. Either way, they were well matched. I just hoped he didn’t decide to use that phenomenal talent to liquefy my body.
The gauntlet comm beeped and Singer’s voice rose into the air. “Eh?”
“You, where?” Taz asked her, still watching me.
“Went to Bhaaj,” Singer said. “She there?”
“Someone is.”
“Put her on.”
Taz extended the comm in my direction. “Talk.”
“Eh, Singer.” I was close enough for her comm to pick up my voice.
“Eh, Bhaaj,” she said. “Found him.”
“Yah. Got gun.”
“Taz, no shoot Bhaaj.”
He scowled at me, at the air, at nothing in particular.
“Taz?” Singer asked. “Bhaaj okay. Pain in ass sometimes, but okay.”
I wished people would quit calling me a pain in the ass. She and the Majdas weren’t any different in that respect, the Majdas just used words with more syllables to express their opinion. So I pushed people to answer questions they didn’t like. That was my job. I was good at it, too. Come to think of it, that could make me a pain in the ass.
Taz lowered the rifle. “Eh, Bhaaj.”
I nodded to him.
He spoke into the comm. “Why is she here?”
“Go with.” Singer told him.
“Go where?”
“To me.”
He frowned. “Why send her? You come here.”
A long silence followed. I could guess why. Of course Singer didn’t want him in Cries. More than ever, I knew we needed him there, and their baby, too, not just to protect them, but to help me negotiate a plea bargain for Singer. It would change how the authorities reacted if they saw her as more than an assassin, but also as the protector of this man and their baby.
“You go with Bhaaj,” she finally said.
Taz shook his head. “Singer—”
“Yah?”
“You trust?”
“Bhaaj? Yah.”
He had a strange look. “Really trust.”
“Yah.” In a voice gentler than I had ever heard her use, she said, “Bring her.”
Bring her? Me? That didn’t make sense. I was bringing him. Oh. Wait. The baby. Of course.
Taz fixed me with a hard stare and shook his monster gun. “I bring.”
Singer’s voice snapped out of the gauntlet, harsh again. “No gun.”
Huh. How had she known what he meant? I bring sounded like he meant the baby. That more than any tests convinced me that he and Singer were psions. I doubted they could sense each other’s moods at this distance, but they clearly understood each other on an unusual level.
“No gun, not go,” Taz told her.
“Must come,” Singer said.
“With gun.”
“Cops catch you,” Singer growled. “Take you away. Take baby away.”
“Nahya!”
“No gun.”
Taz looked ready to shoot the ceiling. “You come here.”
“Can’t, Taz.”
“Later, yah?”
In a softer voice she said, “Maybe never again. Must come. Later is too late.”
“What happened?”
“Go with Bhaaj. Talk here.”
“Why?”
“Got to trust, Taz. Go with. Wherever she says.”
Then she cut the connection.
Taz scowled at me. If a look truly could have pierced, I’d have been gushing blood.
“What you do to her?” he demanded.
I met his glare. “Nothing. She came to me.”
He shook the gun, not at me but at the air. “She come home?”
“Taz.” I stood there, helpless to make this easier. What happened to Singer would depend on the deal I could work out with the authorities. “Can’t come home.”
“Why? I stay here.”
“She’s in Cries.”
He stared at me blankly, as if I’d spoken in another language. “Eh?”
“Cries,” I repeated. “Hiding. My place. She goes out, cops catch.”
“Nahya,” he said firmly, as if I were too slow to understand that Singer couldn’t be in Cries.
I waited.
Inside the cave, a child wailed.
“Ah!” He looked as if he were tearing in two. He pointed the gun at me. “Stay! No move. Come inside, I kill. Ken?”
I nodded. “I ken.”
With that, he strode into the cave. The child cried again.
I hoped no Majda spies had picked up Singer’s transmission. I had jammed their spyware at my penthouse, but her gauntlet wasn’t as well secured. Of course the authorities would question a signal that originated in the Undercity and went to an elite city tower. I had to do something, fast. I reached into my pack and switched off the shroud.
Bhaaj, Max warned. The Majda spy systems can now detect you.
I know. Link me to Colonel Majda’s private channel. If I was lucky, I could just leave a message. This second transmission originating in the Undercity, from me to the colonel, would indicate both signals came from me and, I hoped, direct attention away from my penthouse.
Lavinda’s voice snapped out of my comm. “Major, where the hell have you been?”
So much for luck. “My greetings, Colonel.”
“Have you found Calaj?”
“I think she’s left the Undercity and gone to the surface.”
“Where?”
“In the desert. She keeps moving.”
“What the blazes is she doing out there? Why can’t we find her?”
Good question. “I’m not sure. Colonel, I need to talk to the pharaoh.”
“You can’t just ‘talk to the pharaoh.’”
“It’s important to the case. I’ve been asking her the wrong questions.??
?
“What do you want to ask her?”
“I’ll tell you when we meet.” Glancing up, I saw Taz was walking out of the cave, holding a child instead of his gun. “I have to go.”
“Bhaajan, wa—”
I cut the connection and reactivated my shroud. I hoped she knew me well enough to trust I had good reason for breaking the link. Taz would never trust me if he found me talking to a Majda, with their distinctive aristocratic accents.
Singer had called her daughter “the baby,” but the child Taz carried was more than a year old. He had a pack slung over his shoulder, probably with stuff for his kid, though I didn’t doubt he had a weapon in there, too. The child regarded me with an intelligent gaze. She resembled her father, but I also saw Singer in her. Maybe they said “baby” because they hadn’t named her yet. It wasn’t unusual here, where names took time to earn and were private unless you honored someone by telling them. It was, I realized, why people called me The Bhaaj instead of Bhaaj, as a sign of respect, not using my name unless I revealed it to them, even though they already knew it from the whisper mill.
“Good baby,” I said.
Taz nodded, accepting the high praise, but his posture remained tense.
I didn’t like taking a child through the Maze. “Have to squeeze through cracks.”
“Know better way.” Taz looked like he had bit into a sour fruit, revealing that secret to me.
“I follow,” I said.
After Taz and I left the Maze behind, we followed the midwalk of a major canal. Even if my augmented hearing hadn’t picked up the sound of people following us, I would have known. It was just too juicy a sight, Bhaaj accompanied by the best-looking man in the Undercity, and he was carrying a child. The whisper mill would go wild.
Fortunately Jak knew I’d come for Taz; otherwise I’d have been in it deep. Not that he would show his displeasure. He’d just vanish. The last time I’d come home, eight years ago, he had vanished for weeks, off to get money someone owed him. He never told me, he just disappeared. I thought he had goddamned died. I knew then he’d never forgiven me for enlisting. He was the one I most regretted leaving, but he hadn’t asked me to stay. He hadn’t wanted to leave here and I hadn’t wanted to stay. Nothing would have changed that no matter how hard I tried to convince him. In the end, I’d left Raylicon and the bitter memories behind forever.
Or so I thought. I’d come home twice, eight years ago, and again last year. This time, somehow I worked through my tangled emotions. I didn’t hate the Undercity, I hated what it did to my people. It was only when I realized I might have it within me to help that I knew I could stay. So Jak and I played this unending dance. No matter how much we lived in our time apart, somehow we still knew the steps when we saw each other again. We never committed, never gave promises, never expressed emotions, the two of us caught in the pain that had saturated our lives, the deaths, scars, violence, and losses.
I wondered how Taz felt about his hidden life with Singer. Right now he seemed in shock.
“Ever come out to canals?” I asked.
He spoke in a low voice. “Nahya.”
No wonder the aqueducts stunned him. A major throughway like this one was an impressive sight, the ruins intact, the midwalk wide enough for three people to walk abreast, the bottom of the canal more than two meters below us, the other side over ten meters distant, and the ceiling far overhead, held up with arches, struts, and vaults designed by the ancient architects. It awed me, and I saw it all the time.
Taz’s daughter fussed, and he bounced her as he walked. When we came within a few meters of the Foyer, I took him to the hidden entrance I had used the last time I entered the Undercity. Once we slipped into the cramped passage, he seemed more comfortable. I led him along its twisting way until we reached a crack that would let us out behind the market stalls on the Concourse, out of view.
“Here,” I slid off my pack and took out a blue pullover. It was the most expensive article of clothing I could find in my limited Cries wardrobe that would work for a man, and that he could easily pull over his clothes. “For you.”
Taz frowned at the shirt. He lifted it up and smelled the cloth. Then he rubbed it against his cheek. He tilted his head as if faced with an unsolvable puzzle. “Too soft.”
“Yah.” I shrugged. “Need to wear anyway.”
“Why?”
“Disguise.”
“Eh.” He handed me his daughter.
Self-conscious, I took the girl. Taz must have accepted Singer’s trust in me more than I realized; otherwise, he’d never have let me hold his kid. The girl regarded me curiously, with large eyes.
After Taz pulled on the shirt, he looked less Undercity. His trousers were handmade but well tended, with no dust. Although his hair was well trimmed for the aqueducts, out here it looked ragged compared to the neatly clipped citizens of Cries. Under scrutiny, he would never pass for above-city, but that magnificent face and build of his were a far better disguise. If we were lucky, his appearance would so distract people, they wouldn’t notice his clothes.
I gave Taz back his daughter, then shrugged into my leather jacket, with its climate controls and weapons shielding. I might look ready to beat up someone, but the jacket was more upscale than anyone expected for the aqueducts. With Taz and his child, we just might pass for tourists. At the least, the jacket covered up the gun in my shoulder holster.
I turned off the visual portion of my shroud and sound dampers. We couldn’t use them on the Concourse. Up close, in a crowd of people, especially in bright light, the optical functions wouldn’t work that well. The shroud would still project holos showing our surroundings instead of us, but our bodies would show like ghosts or distortions in the air. It would draw more attention than if we walked in plain view. If I left on the sound dampers, our voices would just sound oddly muted to anyone close by. We were better off if we didn’t talk. I left everything else operating; the IR, UV, radio, sonar, radar, neutrino, biomech and mesh modulators that hid us from probes.
I motioned Taz toward the break in the wall. “We go.”
His forehead furrowed, but he stepped through the opening—and froze.
I waited. “Got to go.”
Silence. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Taz?” I asked.
“White thing,” he said.
I had no idea what he meant. “I go first,” I offered.
He stepped back into the tunnel. His expression remained impassive, but I could tell something had rattled him. Puzzled, I stepped through the crevice. Nothing much showed on the other side. We had reached a cramped lane behind the market stalls, but you couldn’t see far in this thick haze—
Oh. Of course. The haze. He had probably never seen mist. It didn’t often happen in the Undercity, or anywhere in Cries for that matter, given the dry desert air and monotonously clear weather. I looked back at him. “Is okay. Like smoke.”
He stayed put. “What burns?”
“Food. People cooking.” It wasn’t the only reason; the collision of colder air from the aqueducts with the warm air of the Concourse also contributed, but most of my people had no referent to understand what that meant.
Taz stepped through the opening, holding his daughter, who had fallen asleep. It amazed me that his arms hadn’t tired yet. He looked around the hazy area. “Too light.”
It seemed dim to me, with just one street lamp in this part of the Concourse, but compared to the aqueducts, it was bright. As much as I want to give him time to adjust, we couldn’t risk lingering.
“Come with.” I set off for a hidden route behind the stalls, where we could pass unseen through much of the Concourse. We walked in the haze, unable to see more than a few feet—and came to a wall. Damn! Someone had blocked this passage. I stood in front of the barrier, a smooth expanse of synthetic whatever, a material my people never used. Cries had put up this barrier to stop us Undercity types from sneaking around the Concourse.
“Go through?” T
az asked. Born in the aqueducts, he would assume holes, crevices, and other inner spaces existed through any barrier. Our options here were much more limited.
“No passage.” I turned around, surveying the area. On my left, I could make out the backs of several market shacks through the haze. I headed toward them. “Over here.”
We followed a cramped passage between two stalls and came out onto the lane that comprised the Concourse. The woman tending the stall to our right gaped at Taz. When I glared at her, she flushed and turned away, pretending to be occupied with the pottery in her stall. The man in the stall on our left was talking into his wrist comm. If he was contacting the police, my attempt to disguise us as tourists hadn’t worked. Coming out between their stalls certainly hadn’t helped.
“Hurry,” I muttered to Taz. We needed to be gone.
We set off at a brisk pace, walking past the faded stalls. As we went farther up the Concourse, the haze cleared and the stalls we passed looked less dingy. No other customers were down this far, though, which meant we drew too much attention. Many of the female vendors stared at Taz. My cynical side assumed they weren’t calling the police because they were less likely to associate criminal behavior with a man blessed by his looks, as if beauty somehow made a person more trustworthy. Given the scars many of my people accumulated—the damaged bodies, emaciated frames, and cyber implants—they looked wrong to citizens of Cries. Often I gritted my teeth with repressed rage, but today I was grateful our health and supposed normality worked in our favor.
The Concourse widened and cafés appeared, nestled between more upscale stalls selling rugs, pots, metalwork, carpets, artsy clothes, and other “Undercity” souvenirs. A bit further and the stalls became little boutiques with brighter colors and quaint signs hanging from their eaves. More people were out strolling in this region of the Concourse. Two police officers were striding toward the end of the Concourse, but they ignored us. Good.