Blightcross: A Novel Read online

  There was a knock at the door. Since part of the lab’s security measures were that the doors were not equipped with handles, she willed the locks to unlatch and opened it with a quick discharge of her power. She scrambled across the lab where the refinery’s mail clerk stood, holding a yellow envelope. His skin was grey and dull. She wondered if the man ever passed through the refinery’s outer gates.

  He held the envelope up to her. She instantly recognized her own writing. “I am sorry miss, but you forgot the postage.”

  She rolled her eyes. He couldn’t have just taken care of it and billed her? “Oh, sorry. Sevari’s got me working extra shifts up here. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She bit her lip, trying not to become angry at the fellow. “This month’s ship... has it already gone?”

  The clerk nodded. “Sorry, miss.” He looked at his shoes and she knew that he understood how important the postal service was to most of the refinery’s Ehzeri workers. There was no point in raising the issue and acting upset.

  “Is there any way I could send it on one of the luxury ships?”

  He scratched his head and peered inside. Vasi moved to block his view of the laboratory. “Afraid not. Those ships are already spoken for. Every last tenth of an ounce of weight.”

  She let out a deep breath. It was worth a try, anyway. After motioning for the clerk to stay where he was, Vasi hurried into the lab and found her satchel draped across the back of a chair. She sifted through copies of bank receipts, the few letters from home she’d saved, and jars of various remedies to find her bag of coins.

  The clerk was gawking from his station in the hall, and it made her feel naked. Nobody had told her explicitly that mail clerks were forbidden from viewing her lab, but these days, who knew what people outside Sevari’s research staff might think about the old vihs practices?

  “There. That should cover it.” She pressed a few coins into the clerk’s hand.

  He sifted through them once, and repeated the motion. “Look, it’s uh... gone up.”

  “Gone up?”

  “Postage to Mizkov.”

  “I know that, but why?”

  “Just the way it goes.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “You could always send it surface. Half the price...”

  “And it still won’t get there by the time next month’s flying boat comes through.” She went to get another coin.

  “Smart move. I hear the seagoing ships don’t get into Mizkov so easily these days. Something about—”

  “I know,” she said. “I know.” It was just hard to hear a Naartlander’s skewed version of her people’s problems. They knew nothing of the situation, only the filtered bits that made it all the way across the ocean. Only the bits that served the Valoii, their foster parent state Tamarck, and Naartland.

  And never mind the irony of her own people sinking the very ships used to carry the mail bags that carried hundreds, if not thousands, of bank notes sent by their own families meant to help them end the violence.

  Once she paid the clerk, he leaned in close and looked about, eyes darting. “Now, I wasn’t going to say anything...” He tried to see past her once more, but she edged the door closed enough to shut him out. “But I thought you should know.”

  “Know what?”

  “They’ve found another body.”

  “Another body?”

  “You haven’t heard anything?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, no. I don’t hear much news up here. This part of the tower is quiet, you see. And I have a lot of research... I mean work, to do for Sevari.”

  “Ah. Well, let’s just say that they found another Ehzeri body in the refinery. I think you should be careful.”

  It didn’t faze her at all; she had the second most secure room in the entire complex. “Thank you for the warning, sir.”

  He stepped closer. “But don’t say anything. The staff are trying to keep it quiet, right? They can’t have the workers panic. If they find out that I told you...”

  “I have better things to do than gossip, you know.”

  “Good, good.” He waved the envelope. “See you next month. And for the love of God, stay safe.”

  She uttered goodbye to him, and watched him scuttle towards the elevator.

  Now, why hadn’t Sevari warned her? The rules for research workers were totally different from the regular rules, and this should apply to sharing important information as well. Wouldn’t Sevari want his precious Ehzeri minions to watch out for a potential killer? Ehzeri with enough skill to do what he wanted weren’t nearly as common as the ones he employed in the refinery.

  Paranoia, that’s all. Sevari probably just didn’t want to disrupt her concentration. Besides, he would have informed the security staff, and protecting the refinery was their job, after all, not hers.

  The hall shuddered with the clank and rattle of the elevator. Out of the second one at the other end of the hall walked a boy in blue coveralls. She squinted and tried to figure out why there was a worker in this wing of the tower, before realizing who it was.

  “Rovan?” She came into the hall, reaching out to the door with her mind to close it and secure the locks. There was a slam behind her, and a drum roll of lock-fastening.

  “Ha ha, you missed the ship, eh?”

  At once she remembered the clerk’s warning and glanced around the dark, metallic corridor. “What are you doing up here alone? And yes, I did miss the mail this time. I hope you didn’t.”

  “Oh no, my package went all right. Mom’s going to have a new favourite, and it won’t be you.”

  Vasi punched him in the shoulder. “You didn’t answer me. What are you doing up here?”

  He shrugged. “Just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “And they allowed you to come here?”

  He smirked. “Of course they did. I’m your brother. They wouldn’t keep us apart, would they?” The kid knew of her privileged position, and she wondered if he meant that as a sarcastic remark. He didn’t appear to have any vihs-draaf whatsoever, like many of his generation, and his labour was strictly manual. Vasi knew why, as everyone did, but nobody wanted to talk about it, especially the empowered ones working for Sevari. People like Vasi.

  No, there was something cocky about the boy now, and it wasn’t bitterness about the discrepancy between the two. Maybe he met a girl he liked. That usually turned a sixteenyear-old male into an ornery little bastard.

  “You shouldn’t be walking around this place alone.”

  Rovan rolled his eyes and scuffed his heavy boots along the floor. “What’s going to happen in a stupid clock tower? Just a bunch of mouldy books and stupid things. At least the rest of the refinery has machines.”

  “There’s a murderer around.”

  He made a noise. “Whatever.”

  “I am serious, Rovan. Someone is after people like us.”

  “Like us? You mean you or me?”

  For a moment, her heart sank. “Like both of us. There’s no difference between us, Rovan. I wish you could see that.”

  “Oh, sure.” There was sarcasm, but no bitterness this time. “Look, I wouldn’t want your job anyway. The door is always locked. I bet you couldn’t leave even if you wanted to.” He flashed his hand, and on his fingers gleamed a single copper ring, with a clump of blue glass set into it. “I’ll be just fine without your old ways, sister. I’m going to get rich. Even if it kills me.” He smirked and made a stupid gesture.

  “Stop that.”

  “Just like Sevari. I heard he has a room full of women he owns, and that he also sells them on the side.”

  She slapped him lightly on the back of his head. “Rovan, shut up. He does not.”

  “He’s rich. I’m going to be like that some day, and all without any of your vihs stupidness.”

  It was enough to make her stand there silent and blinking. Perhaps puberty was hitting Rovan just a year or two later than normal. She had to come to terms with the reality that she could no
longer dictate his behaviour, and that the gulf between them might only widen.

  “I think you should find a better role model.”

  “Sevari has lots of gold. Didn’t you notice?”

  She pressed her hand to her face. Had she been this bad at his age? Of course not. This attitude was new and specific to young Ehzeri males raised in the shanty surrounding the refinery. In fact, their obsession with gaudiness and wealth made it entirely possible that one of them was responsible for these murders the postal clerk mentioned. All the more reason for her brother to smarten up and keep near a guard whenever possible.

  “Sevari has more than just gold, Rovan,” she said with a grave tone.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Mmhm. Now get out of here before I drop a message to your overseer.” She held back a litany of comments, directives, and sage advice. She had to settle with the comfort of knowing that Rovan had escaped a life—likely very short—of cultivating hatred for the Valoii and raiding their settlements. Maybe it wasn’t an ideal transformation, but it was more than they could have hoped for.

  Rovan batted the air. “Yeah, I’m so scared.”

  She watched him trot away, kicking at random debris in the hall. For a moment she wished to be back in the refinery, where she could keep an eye on him. He may be a decent worker with enough ambition to get by, but he was no fighter.

  If he died here, she would be responsible. Both in her family’s opinion, and her own. Maybe pulling him out of Mizkov had been a mistake...

  Vasi hurried back to her lab. The hallway was too cold, too dark. But if she could face this killer in place of Rovan, she would without a sliver of hesitation. The postwar zeitgeist might deem her vihs outdated, but it was more defence than Rovan possessed.

  She checked the locks, just to be sure. Now, faced with a dozen benches loaded with various works in progress, shelves teetering under the burden of too many uncatalogued artifacts, and the high stained glass windows depicting flowing, bright feminine goddesses framed by leaves, Vasi began to think—was there a way to find this person before they had the chance to take Rovan?

  Or should she just send him home? But he would never agree to return, not with the illusion of wealth... and there was still a part of Vasi that was relieved that he would never go back if it meant he would never know the horror of the resistance movement. The same horror she fought daily to forget.

  Leave it to the security forces. You have enough to worry about here.

  “Debt collection? Are you serious?”

  Capra smirked and shrugged and slumped against the brick wall. She glanced around the wall, into the street—a habit she had been unable to shake since going on the run— and when she was satisfied that Alim and the army was nowhere to be found, she relaxed a little.

  “Yes,” she said. “A job is a job, right?”

  Dannac pinched the bridge of his nose. His right eye closed, but the left remained open and twitched slightly. “I have acted as the bodyguard for the Bhagovan parliamentarians. I have assassinated Tamish agitators. I have broken into the banks of Yahrein to steal back what they took from us during the war. I will not descend to the level of... debt collector.”

  He had a point. They were a different class of undesirable. But this was the wrong time for caprice. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one stuck with bare feet and half of a stupid dress.”

  She had paced around the dingy lunch counter for an hour, and this had been the only job she could find. They needed to eat, at the very least. When she had spotted a grey-haired gentleman in the process of roughing up one of the men in blue, it had seemed like the opportunity they needed. And it was—the man was eager for some help.

  It didn’t take long for it to sink in exactly why the man was willing to part with twenty pistres each in exchange for completion of a “small errand.”

  Dannac went back into the street, and she followed him. “Listen, it’s not so bad. It’s just a simple eviction, you see. I mean, unless the man has the money, but I don’t think anyone is expecting that.”

  He spun round and she collided with him. The thump reminded her of the sound of a body collapsing on a marble floor. “An eviction? Well, you would know about those, wouldn’t you?”

  “That was cheap.”

  “It was the truth.”

  She stared at him for a moment, and there would have been uncomfortable silence were it not for the otherworldly clanking hammering the air from all directions.

  “Listen,” she said, having already learned not to take these kinds of remarks too personally. “The man just wants us to kindly escort from the premises a single occupant who hasn’t paid in months. We barely have to do anything, and he said he’ll pay us half up front. Even if he stiffs us for the rest, it’s still a steal.”

  He let out a low growl.

  “Otherwise we might as well just set up camp here in this alley with these fine people here.” She glanced to where three people huddled under a makeshift lean-to. There was a pall of smoke above them, yet the chemical burn in her nose could not be burning scraps of food or smouldering cheroots.

  “Ten up front?”

  “That’s right. Ten up front, and that’s for each of us. All we have to do is meet him at his property.”

  She braced for another of his diatribes about how he would only work for the rich, and only work against the rich, and how he would not profit from stomping on people who had nothing. She stared at the hazy orange sky, tracked the flying boat’s course to the northern province that had been their original destination. She was somewhat disappointed, since she had never seen fjords before, or the large sea mammals she had heard about.

  He simply nodded and said, “All right.”

  “What?”

  “I heard some of the elites on the ship talking about this place. I think it would be best if we didn’t have to sleep under a bridge tonight.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Mostly indignation about the crime rates and praise for the district’s oligarch.”

  “Till Sevari?”

  He nodded, and they continued their stroll through the city. She squinted at the smudged scrawl on the back of her hand and tried to remember their client’s directions. He had mentioned something about an underground transport system, but he might as well have been directing her to the edge of the world for all she understood.

  A few blocks deeper into the city, they found buildings in which the setting sun blazed through giant gashes in the masonry, and Capra was never sure which buildings were part of the city’s fever of construction or which were derelict. But once they went west, towards what the nameless man at the lunch counter had called Corwood Park, Capra’s sweaty clenched hands relaxed at the sight of the neat rows of townhomes. High rent areas, reasonable people. The guy from whom they needed to collect probably had just run into some bad luck and would offer no resistance.

  She smiled lightly, and Dannac glared at her, as if the minute gesture were the equivalent to laughing at a funeral. “Why does everyone your age smile at their own abject failure?”

  “I wasn’t smiling at our failure. It’s just that these rows of homes are almost like the little towns in Uvrow. It was cold there, but I really liked the pubs. There was always a good pub down the road from wherever you were staying.”

  “Do you ever stop thinking about the continent? Those bloody Little Nations?”

  “No. It’s all that keeps me going, Dannac. I thought you would have known that by now.”

  “I thought you wanted to own a restaurant. You can do that anywhere. If you were smart, you’d do it here in Blightcross. The business growth here seems unprecedented.”

  “I never said I wanted to own anything.” But before she could drift into fluffy visions of her plans, she found the street in question and began to search for the address written on her hand. “It should be right here...”

  She scanned the block for any sign of the grey-haired man they were to meet. She fou
nd him pacing in front of one of the townhouses, cracking his knuckles and wringing his hands.

  “Sir! My colleague and I have decided to accept your offer.”

  “Ah. Are you sure?” He looked at Dannac for a moment, and the questioning lines in his forehead smoothed, as if the Ehzeri’s presence had answered a silent question about how this woman was going to perform an eviction.

  Capra extended her hand to the man. He ignored the gesture. He ignored her altogether, and she couldn’t understand why, since he had given her his attention at the lunch counter.

  “Now,” the man said to Dannac, “I should tell you that this man has dispatched two bailiffs previously.”

  “What do you—”

  Dannac raised his hand and cut her off. “Just the one man?”

  “Of course.”

  “I have dealt with worse.”

  The man’s eyes flicked to Capra. “She one of your healers? Is that your edge?”

  Dannac nodded.

  She tried again. “But—”

  “Just one condition. I want all of the money up front. You can stay here and watch. I can assure you the fight will not last long, if he chooses to start one.”

  The man chewed his lip and fiddled with the buttons on his coat. All the while, Capra’s gaze flitted between both men, and she wondered if she had stepped into a vivid dream where she had become a phantom. The men seemed to have an understanding, or at least Dannac was pretending that they did. Had the man thought that Capra were just a runner, just a secretary, for Dannac?

  It was unthinkable.

  But, she reminded herself, the rest of the world was not used to new ways of the Valoii.

  “Fine.” The man dropped four coins into Dannac’s palm. She was about to snatch her share from him, but by now realized that the act was important.