Ambassador 4: Coming Home (21 page)

I cringed. I could just about hear her say, “My captain.” Except she didn’t. She was staring at Federza. Was she shocked by all this? Did she even understand it? It was impossible to tell.

I asked him, “So, tell me this: back when we had the trouble with Amoro Renkati, you gave me their contact because someone supposedly had a job for me. You didn’t send me in there because you wanted to convert me to their cause?”

“Hell, no. I sent you in there because I knew you didn’t take bullshit, and I wasn’t in a position to do or say anything about it myself.”

He’d been distant and aloof to me because he’d been afraid to be seen as an enemy by powerful people in the Aghyrian group. I remembered how
he
had sought me out in the clothing store downstairs. How I’d thought that he was trying to talk me into joining his cause, while he was actually trying to warn me and inform me. Which he had done quite successfully. And it had taken me this long to see it. Damn, I’d been an arse.

My ears did their thing again, but fortunately it was dark so no one could see it. “So, what can we do now?”

“You can come and join me in this prison.”

“Not likely.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

Another misjudgement on my part that had come to the fore in the last few weeks. Traders were allowed to carry heavy arms and were said to be a backup if a conflict erupted and no guards were present. They were said to be happy to use their weapons. Not Federza: he was afraid of armed conflict.

“Well,” I said, scratching my head, reordering a couple of major pieces of the story in my head. “We could go back to the island and set up a secure zone there. Ideally, all of this should go before the assembly as soon as possible, but since there is no session planned and many delegates won’t be at the island, we should probably alert Delegate Namion as soon as possible.”

“Are you kidding? He’s one of the people whose investment in the Tamerian project I haven’t yet been able to prove.”

I stared at him. “Delegate Namion? You’re serious?”

He nodded, slowly. “He and a good proportion of the Damarcian upper-class delegates are involved. I’ve got evidence of payments made by Delegate Vitani, who is Delegate Namion’s brother-in-law. The Damarcians never got over the fact that the
gamra
headquarters were permanently moved from Damarq to Barresh. According to them, Damarq was ideal, neutral ground.”

“Well, yes, but back then, the headquarters moved to the home of the elected Chief Delegate, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” It was also why
gamra
could never be on Asto. When Isandra Andrahar won and she lived in Barresh, and Barresh at the time was dilapidated, the council purpose-built the island, and the railways, and they did such a good job that the assembly voted to make it permanent.

Federza snorted. “The Damarcians say that Barresh is a stand-in for Asto. Too close. So they and a number of other investors acted on this mysterious data that had been sent to them to produce this superhuman race that was going to challenge the Coldi and with them, the entire established order.”

“But if Delegate Namion is involved then that would . . .”
make all of the island unsafe. Would make all of the city unsafe
.

He nodded in response to my unvoiced fear.

Shit. Reorder all the pieces in my mind again.

“I still think we should set up a safe zone on the island. I
still
think being at the
gamra
island will offer us protection. Once
gamra
shows clear bias in the direction of the Tamerians . . .”
Asto would be here in a heartbeat, and they wouldn’t be coming for tea
. That thought shook me deeply.

I continued, although I must sound incoherent by now. “Well, I think we have a much better chance at staying safe at my apartment.” I was clutching at straws of sanity. In one hit, it looked as if the entire world had gone nuts.

Which dumb, ignorant, utterly stupid young diplomat had said that
gamra
’s excessive formality prevented violence?

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Thayu had been listening with a darkening expression on her face. She now looked at her reader. “Evi says Asha’s guards have a van waiting outside. Backup has arrived and we should be able to get to the island safely. He says they flushed out some snipers and other undesirables.” Presumably related to the noise we’d heard upstairs. “Now is probably our best chance, while the Tamerians regroup.” She put the thing back in her belt. “I hate not knowing what I’m fighting.”

“We’ll do a good deal of research when we get home.”

She snorted. “And I’m not dressed for this either.”

That was my fault, of course. I still managed to underestimate how quickly a situation could blow up.

“What do you think?’ I asked Federza. “Are you taking my offer for a ride out of here?”

He pursed his lips and thought for a bit, staring into the distance. “Yeah. All right. Either way, my days are probably numbered. Might as well die trying to save the world as we know it.”

He rose and collected a number of things into a bag.

Then he offered Lilona his arm and led her into the corridor, saying something about food supplements that he could provide her with that were certain to make her feel better.

My head was reeling.

I wondered how much she had understood of the conversation. In any case, it must be painfully clear to her that unless Kando Luczon backed off and came clear, there would probably be an armed conflict of some kind—that Asha wasn’t sure the Asto military could win. Especially not if the ship could count on the assistance of goodness knew how many Tamerians. Although I wondered how long that collaboration would last, because I was sure that Kando Luczon had no loyalty to anyone who would help them. If Coldi were an “all-purpose colonising race” meant for front-line work, and not meant to be fertile, I could only imagine what the ship folk thought of the Tamerians.

Damn.

Evi and Telaris waited at the bottom of the stairs, each carrying a military grade weapon that I was sure didn’t belong to them. The keihu prison guard was also there.

We were halfway up the stairs when Federza stopped. “Wait.”

He squeezed past us and went back down. He ran down the corridor and came back a moment later with a set of noodle tongs. “These are mine. My grandfather gave them to me.” He stuck them in the inner pocket of his jacket and continued up the stairs.

That was when the explosion struck.

T
HE GROUND TREMBLED.

Evi, who was at the front of the group, tumbled a few steps down. He was followed by a couple of bricks that we managed to duck but that bounced down the stairs until they landed in the puddle at the bottom.

Then the light went out and we were plunged in total darkness.

“Great,” the guard said.

“Everyone all right?” Telaris asked.

Several people said that they were. There were a couple of big thuds upstairs. People running. A crash. Shouting.

“What now?” the keihu guard said.

“There’s an emergency light in my room.” This was Federza’s voice.

“If we can find it,” Thayu said. Being Coldi, she saw even less in the dark than I did, and it was so pitch black that I wasn’t sure if that was possible.

We managed to get down the stairs, while the noise from the guard station above us intensified. Shouts, alarms, rumbling. People running.

“Are those shots?” Telaris said.

“Likely,” said Federza. “Likely Tamerians have been in hiding in the surrounding buildings ever since I came here.”

It seemed like every curtain you shook around the place had Tamerians falling out of it.
That
thought was frightening. Just how many of these emotionally blank fighting machines were there?

We listened. I didn’t hear any shots, but Indrahui ears were better than any of the rest of ours, and mine especially were still ringing from the explosion.

We shuffled along the walls, running our hands over the rough, algae-covered stone. Evi at the front would shout if something came up, like “door” or “pillar” or some such.

We finally reached Federza’s room, where he shuffled about finding a light. A pale glow filled the room. It came from a glowing orb that sat atop a wire coil. This was the oldest and most basic form of light in Barresh, cheap and efficient. The pearls were charged at the solar plant. They glowed when two pieces of metal came in contact with the surface. I kept some of these things in a cupboard in my apartment, too. They were great for power outages, even if the greenish light looked like something out of a zombie movie.

“Now what do we do,” I asked, looking around the circle of pale faces.

“Wait until it calms down upstairs?” Thayu said.

“They’ll probably come down here before that time,” Reida said.

“We could dig in and defend ourselves,” the guard said.

Thayu protested, “What with? We have two decent guns, a couple of single-shot jobs, no explosives, and most of us here have no training.”

There were some nods at this.

She looked at the ceiling, searching for a vent of some such. “There has to be another way out.”

The guard shook his head. “We can’t escape. It’s a jail.”

Federza said, “Ha, ha, ha.”

But Thayu said, “You want to bet?”

The guard gave her a suspicious look.

“It’s an
old
jail,” Federza said. “As far as I know, no one has done anything to actively upgrade security in the last hundred years.”

Reida was frowning. “Isn’t there a drain behind the cells on the other side of the corridor?”

The guard frowned at him.

“When it rains, you can hear the ringgit calling inside the drain. It echoes and it’s really noisy, and it’s annoying because you can’t sleep, but it means there is a drain pipe somewhere, doesn’t it?”

Oh, for the advantage of having a team member with a propensity to get himself arrested for petty offences, like climbing into rich council daughters’ bedroom windows.

Thayu took out her equipment and started doing a scan of the corridor and the cells opposite the guard station. I let her do her thing, and wandered to the stairs by the feeble light emitted by my reader. A wall at the top of the staircase had collapsed and an avalanche of bricks blocked the way. It probably wouldn’t be impossible to get out that way, if it weren’t for the fact that we’d probably be watched by whomever was firing guns up there; and I didn’t want to take chances guessing which side they were on. There was still a lot of noise upstairs: people running around and shouting, things falling down, doors being slammed.

I only hoped that Sheydu and Veyada were all right, and that Nicha had been smart enough to stay at home. His son needed him.

I went back to the end of the corridor where Thayu had completed her scan.

She reported on her findings at the table that had been Federza’s desk. “It shouldn’t be too hard to get out.”

The guard made a disbelieving noise.

“No, it isn’t—and of course there is a big difference between trying to escape from a cell without anyone noticing, and trying to get out of the jail with the blessing of the guards.”

He said nothing.

“Right. So, Barresh is a lot like Athyl. Going places in secret usually involves walking through tunnels, even if in Barresh, they’re tunnels for drainage, not the remains of an old civilisation.” She glanced at Lilona, who sat with her hands jammed between her knees. Not feeling well, I thought.

Thayu flicked to another screen on her reader which displayed a three-dimensional schematic produced from her scan. “Our little jailbird here is right. A fairly large drainpipe runs behind the cells on the other side of the corridor. We’re unlucky that it’s a fairly recent pipe, not one of the old system, which have walls of soft stone; but we’re lucky that it’s a recent pipe because it contains a one-way valve, which is in the in the storeroom opposite this room. It’s not wet season yet, so the drain is fairly empty. If we push out the valve, we can get out that way.”

“Only one problem. The door to the storeroom is locked. The key is upstairs,” the guard said. “If you can get it, you might as well leave the station that way.”

“We don’t need the key.”

The guard raised his eyebrows. “You can’t force the door open.”

“Our colleague Sheydu, who is not here, regularly has serious things to say about security, both on the island and in town. All of your security infrastructure is based on the capabilities of people like yourself, and maybe Pengali capabilities. This is a serious mistake. We’ll give you a demonstration.” She jerked her head. “Reida. Open the door.”

Reida got up from the table, grinning as if he’d been waiting for this moment. He went into the corridor and retreated a few steps until he stood with his back to the opposite wall. Then he ran to the door and kicked. The door shot open, clanging into the wall. The lock fell out and bounced over the floor, shedding rivets and other little parts along the way.

“That open enough?”

The guard gaped at Reida. “Those times we locked you up in here, you could have just escaped like that?”

“Yup.”

I rarely ever saw the full force of Coldi strength and it was a beauty to behold. No doubt Thayu would have had even less trouble with the door.

The guard scratched his head. Reida smiled at me. He said in a low voice, “Those cell doors are bolted with a huge piece of metal. I couldn’t break that. Believe me, I tried.”

Thayu kicked the broken lock aside and went into the room, shining the light from her comm over the walls. The storeroom contained piles of crates and boxes, most of them with Mirani script that I couldn’t read well enough to guess the contents.

She directed the light to the upper right corner of the back wall. “There.”

The valve was a box the size of a good suitcase set into the wall near the floor. Inside the recess were two metal slabs with a rubber rim. In case the jail flooded, water could escape through here, but because the flaps opened only in one direction, water couldn’t come in if the drain was full.