Melissa Scott - Shadow Man

Warreven didn’t answer for a long moment, and Tatian risked a quick look at 3im, then had to swerve again to avoid a running group. Ȝe was still motionless, slumped against the cushions, but then 3e turned to look at him, 3er good eye open and afraid. “I don’t know. God and the spirits, I didn’t—” Ȝe broke off, shook 3er head hard. “Not to my place, anyway.”

“No.” Tatian took his hand from the steering bar to input a query, searching for the city’s traffic system. It was unreliable at the best of times, and he wasn’t surprised to see the familiar system down message flicker along the bottom of the windscreen. “The port, then, maybe,” he said. If we can get there. “If not, the Nest.”

“The Nest?” Warreven was trying to sound more alert.

“EHB—the Expatriate Housing Blocks.” Tatian reached for his input pad again, tried to call up a city map. The system fizzed under his skin, produced a cloud of static, hazing the windscreen, and then cleared. He studied the map for a moment, then turned again, heading for the ring roads that would feed into the main road to the starport. There was only one that led to the port complex, and he opened the throttle further, set the rover careening through the narrow streets. The first main street was less crowded than he’d expected; he turned onto it, slowed down behind a shay with company markings. He heard sirens again, glanced nervously into the mirror, and then keyed the surroundings display. Red lights flared on the map, showing the mosstaas ’ reported positions, but the nearest was four streets away. The shay turned off ahead of him, onto a side street that the map seemed to show would be a shortcut to the ring road. Tatian started to follow, then hesitated, looking at the narrow lanes, and kept to the route he knew.

The rover topped the first of the hills, and the road opened out into one of Bonemarche’s many little squares. Light flared, streetlights and firelight, and Tatian saw that the central square was filled with bodies. Most of them wore the multicolored ribbons of the Modernist rana, and one held a drum, its sides glossy in the firelight. The nearest—a fem, tunic pulled tight and knotted to reveal every nuance of %er body’s curves—pointed and yelled, the words indistinct, muffled by the rover’s systems. Tatian hauled on the steering bar, sent the rover skidding around the corner of the square, and saw something shatter in the street behind them. Warreven twisted in 3er seat, staring back at them.

“They were on my side,” 3e said, after a moment, and settled back into 3er place.

“I didn’t think you had a side anymore,” Tatian said. Warreven looked up sharply, face setting into an angry mask, but then, before Tatian could say anything, apology or mitigation, 3er glare faltered.

“Apparently not.”

“I’m sorry.” Tatian fixed his eyes on the dark street ahead, very aware of the locked and barred doors to either side.

“I—” Warreven shook 3er head. “I’m not. I was right—I’m still right about the laws, and I’m right that Ternelathe could have done something. But, God and the spirits, I didn’t mean for him to die. I didn’t think Tendlathe would do that.”

“Tendlathe?”

“Didn’t you see?” Warreven asked. “Ten shot him, the bastard, he had one of those little guns. In his pocket, I guess.”

Tatian took a breath, let it out slowly. He hadn’t seen that, had seen only the three of them, Tendlathe, Temelathe, and Warreven, weirdly lit by the bonfire. He had heard the shot—a small sound, he thought, it could have been a palmgun—and seen Temelathe fall. Fall forward, he thought, which I think means the shot came from behind. Tendlathe was behind him; so was a good part of the crowd, but they hadn’t seemed that angry yet. And Warreven said 3e’d seen Tendlathe do it. “Do you think anyone else saw him?”

“Do you think it matters?” Warreven shook 3er head again, jammed 3er hands into 3er hair. “The door swings both ways. I forgot that.”

Tatian glanced warily at 3im, but saw only the blind eye and the twist of 3er swollen mouth that could mean anything, or nothing. He said, “What happens now?”

Warreven turned 3er head so that 3e was looking out the rover’s window. “I have no idea.”

Tatian looked away, concentrating on the road. Two streets more, he thought, then one more. And then he turned the rover onto the access road, and braked hard, the rover slewing as it came to a stop, barely avoiding the shay stopped ahead of him. There were more shays beyond that, shays and rovers and heavy company-marked triphibians, warning lights flashing as they tried to edge their way onto the port road. Tatian swore under his breath, seeing more vehicles jamming the port road—not just off-world vehicles, either, not just company marks, but battered four-ups that had to be local. He touched his wrist pad again, changing the parameters of the map, and watched the lines writhe across the base of the wind- screen, the same shifts running painfully along his nerves. As he had feared, specks of red light flashed into existence, blocking the port road: the mosstaas had already set up a barricade of their own.

“We’ll have to try the Nest,” he said aloud, and Warreven looked at him.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a roadblock on the port road,” Tatian answered, and slammed the rover into reverse, barely missing the nose of a shay as it pulled up behind him. He ignored the driver’s angry shout, hauled on the steering bar until the rover swung around again. There was barely room to pass, and he felt the side wheels bump up onto the sidewalk, jolt down again hard. “They move fast.”

“Tendlathe moves fast,” Warreven said.

That was not a pleasant thought, but it was logical: of course Tendlathe would take over, Tatian thought, and turned onto the first street that led in the right direction for the Nest. And that means real trouble for me—and Warreven, too, of course, but I thought I might get out of this with my job…. He blocked that thought—there was no point in borrowing trouble—and fixed his attention on the road.

The Nest’s perimeter fences were lit, the first time Tatian had ever seen that, glowing blue against the night. He slowed the rover, for the first time that night glad of the NAPD markings on the machine’s nose, and edged up to the entrance. As he got closer, he could see security on the gates—company security— recognizable even without the usual matching uniforms, identifiable by the off-world weapons and the casual competence with which they held them. Company rivalries had been put aside; the Nest would be defended. He lowered his own security field, lowered his window as well as he pulled up to the gate. A tall woman leaned toward him, face shadowed by her helmet, coveralls bulging over body armor.

“Yeah?”

“Mhyre Tatian, NAPD. I live here.”

“ID, please?”

He could barely see her face under the helmet, saw mostly the movement of her eyes as she scanned the car. Her stunrifle was still slung, but behind her he could see a mem—not in uniform, except for the badge hanging around þis neck—with a laser cradled at the ready. “In my pocket,” he said aloud, and reached, with exquisite care, into the pocket of his shirt. The woman watched, unmoving, took the folder he presented and slipped it into her belt reader.

“All right,” she said. “What about 3im?” She nodded to Warreven, still slumped in 3er seat.

“Ȝe’s a friend,” Tatian said, and no longer cared what she would think. “Ȝe’s herm, they’re killing herms in the street. I want 3im safe.”

The woman’s eyes flickered, and he knew she was thinking of trade, but then she nodded. “Open your cargo compartment,” she said, and he did as he was told. He watched in the mirror as she ran a handheld scan over the empty space, and then stepped back again.