Bone Song (20 page)

“One moment.”
Eyes was too self-confident to lie and say that she would have to check. She was quite capable of telling anyone that her boss was too busy to talk.
“Putting you through, Lieutenant.”

There was a click and a scrape, and Donal imagined Eyes flicking a toggle switch on her console. Could she listen in on these conversations?

No matter. If Vilnar trusted her, then she could; otherwise, he would have taken countermeasures.

“Riordan.”

“Sir. I'm at the OCML, where Cortindo's body was stolen.”

“You think that's news to me?”

“The theft? No, sir. And I assume you know that Dr. d'Alkarny was killed during the break-in.”

There was a long pause, longer than Donal would have expected.

“Is there any progress on that? On her death?”

“Almost certainly the two suspects we have in custody killed her. I'm expecting confirmation on that shortly.”

“Confirmation?”

“Sir, Dr. d'Alkarny was a Bone Listener. She might have been able to visualize her dying moments in sharp focus, so that the vision could be . . . retrieved. Later.”

“You mean they're carrying out an autopsy.”

“There hasn't been time,” said Donal, “to get the magistrate's authorization for a PM.”

“And?”
Vilnar's tone was dry. He might not be a street cop anymore, but he understood bureaucratic systems and how to bypass them.

“Someone's doing the autopsy right now. Unofficially.”

There was a sound on the line that might have been static, might have been Vilnar exhaling.

“Good. Let me know how that turns out. Good work, Riordan.”

“Er . . . One thing more, sir. Cortindo's body was in stasis.”

“It was? But his death was weeks ago, when you . . .”

“When I killed him. Yes.”

There was more that Donal could say, but this seemed the wrong time to say it. Instead, he added, “But that was just a bureaucratic hitch, I think. It's the dwarves who are the main lead.”

“Dwarves?”

“The two suspects we have in the cells. They're four feet tall, if that, but powerful.”

“Ah.”
Papers rustled at the other end of the line: Vilnar checking documents on his desk.
“Yes. I see.”

So Vilnar already had copies of the arrest-and-detention reports.

“And the task force? Are they making any other progress I should know about?”

Donal hesitated.

“Commander Steele is very capable, sir,” he said finally. “But one of their other officers was kidnapped and rescued, and none of it looks like it's leading anywhere. I'd say the task force is . . . distracted.”

Let Vilnar think that the trail had stopped instead of leading directly to his office.

“All right.”
Vilnar coughed.
“Keep me informed.”

“Yes—”

But the line was already dead. Donal listened to the oceanic wash of static hiss, learning nothing. He put the receiver down and left the waiting room, failing to notice the faint misty movement, nearly invisible, against the wall where the phone was attached.

Long wraith fingers curled back, the insubstantial hand palm up. Then the wraith raised her middle finger and gestured toward the doorway where Donal had disappeared.

*Screw you, lover boy.*

Xalia disappeared back inside the wall.

Harald addressed the rest of the team (Sushana excluded—it would be a long time before she left the hospital) with his eyes flatter than usual, his voice toneless. The results of the autopsy conducted by the young Bone Listener Lexar were conclusive as far as the task force was concerned.

Presenting the findings before a court of law would be a different proposition.

Donal leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, unsure why Xalia had moved away from him when he entered the room.

“Surely we can put the Ugly Twins at the scene. I saw them on the roof, for Thanatos's sake, while an unregistered pterabat took off into the sky.”

“A pterabat,” said Laura, “that not only failed to file a flight plan but escaped detection by any surveillance system. None of our launched copters managed to spot it.”

“Damn it.”

“Well, yes. The dwarves' green van wasn't identified for sure either. The only link”—Laura nodded toward Harald—“is Dr. d'Alkarny's dying memory of the dwarves attacking her. If we can retroactively get the magistrate's authorization for Lexar to perform the PM, then we'll be able to submit that much evidence.”

Alexa held out both hands.

“Well, then. That
is
enough, isn't it?”

“To get the foot soldiers,” growled Viktor. “Not the ones who ordered them to kill Mina.”

Harald nodded slowly.

“Shit,” said Alexa.

For a few moments, nobody spoke. Then Donal shifted against the wall. “You said something about a weapon, Harald? An ax?”

Harald shrugged.

“Lexar says it was Illurian.”

“Another connection to Illurium,” muttered Laura. “And you've got contacts of your own there, haven't you?”

Donal raised his eyebrows. Harald said, “I was there for nearly two years. In the military police, seconded from the marines.”

“Yeah, like one ax,” muttered Viktor, “is going to lead you to the shop that sold it. One shop from an entire country. Assuming it
was
Illurian . . . This Lexar can't be certain, can he?”

“It was ensorcelled in some way,” said Harald. “Coherent flux thingy . . . I can't remember what he said.”

“You weren't taking notes?” Alexa's tone was half joke, half accusation.

“No, there was a scribewraith writing an official record.”

“Without a time stamp, I hope,” said Laura.

If the wraith had time-stamped the record, it would flag the autopsy as having taken place before legal permission was granted. That would be enough to make the findings inadmissible as evidence.

Liquid waves rippling through a melting human body . . .

The sudden image passed through Donal's mind, and he shook it away, remembering his fellow hospital patient called Andy: the man with an inability to prevent his body from morphing into random shapes. The man who had nearly ruptured his flowing body, almost dying when the healing-field generator on his bed had failed.

“I might have accidentally discharged a sparkler,” murmured Harald, “before the wraith sealed the entry.” He looked at Xalia, and shrugged. “Sorry.”

*That's not funny.*

“I know.”

*No, you don't. You're not a wraith.*

“Sparklers hurt. I know that much.”

Xalia drifted above the floor, making no reply. She obviously disapproved of Harald's using the sparkler to drive the scribewraith out of the autopsy room.

Laura sighed. “This isn't helping, gang.”

“Sorry.”

“Maybe it is,” said Donal, ignoring the strange look that Xalia seemed to be giving him. “Are you saying, Harald, that this ax was unusually ensorcelled? And strongly?”

“Um...Yeah. That's what Lexar implied.”

“So it would leave a strong trace in the Ugly Twins' auras, right?”

Harald nodded. “You're right. We should get Lexar to—”

“No.” Laura slapped the table. “We don't use Bone Listeners to torture living people.”

“Maybe we won't have to.” Donal pushed himself away from the wall. “Maybe there's someone else who can follow the trail. Dig down inside the prisoners' auras.”

His subconscious mind had delivered the memory of the unfortunate Andy melting on the hospital bed. When the healing field failed, Sister Felice had called in the experts.

What was the young genius called? Kyushol? Kyushen?

Something like that.

Xalia drifted closer.

*I want to be there when this interrogation happens.*

Donal tried to focus on her wraith form, but it seemed to be slipping in and out of reality.

“All right,” he said eventually. “If you want to.”

*I do.*

“Then I'll make a phone call.”

For a moment, Donal thought Xalia was going to say something. Instead, she shook her near-invisible head, and then her whole insubstantial form sank down inside the floor and was gone.

“I hate it,” muttered Alexa, “when she does that.”

Laura was staring at Donal.

Now what?
Donal wondered.

“I'll see you all in a minute,” he said, and went off to call the hospital.

S
ister Felice sounded softly charming
on the phone, and for a second Donal wondered why he had not tried to see her after leaving the hospital. But there was Laura, and the suddenness of what he felt for her was still startling.

Sister Felice sounded glad that Donal was well and only a little puzzled by his asking for the young thaumaturge's name. It was Kyushen Jyu, he learned, and technically he was Dr. Jyu—holder of a ThD, not an MD. He never used his title, in case someone thought he was a medic.

When Donal got through to Kyushen, it took a while to persuade him that a trip to the city would be interesting enough to drag him away from his normal work. It was only when Donal mentioned an Illurian artifact—an ax—ensorcelled with hex coherence that Kyushen became interested.

“Coherent hex waves? A resonator blade?”

“Um, yeah,” said Donal. “I think that's what they said.”

“Oh, man.”

“But you can follow the traces inside the prisoners' auras?”

“Auras? Are you on something? There's no such thing as auras, apart from some people's visual metaphors. They're not, like, real.”

“Oh,” said Donal.

“Look, modern thaumaturgical engineering is based on IIH, which makes procedural hex as antiquated as . . . as an antiquity. You know?”

“Do I need to know what IIH stands for?”

“You haven't heard of Image-Inclined Hexing.”
It was not quite a question.
“Everything in the world has qualia and propensities, and in IIH that's how we model it, in hex. We combine the two concepts, see, instead of separating out the teleological functions from the entities they act on. That's the old-fashioned way.”

“Right,” said Donal. “Well, obviously.”

“That makes all the—Look, I'll explain it all clearly when I get there.”

“I'll look forward to that.”

“All right,”
said Kyushen.
“I'll be there at six
A.M.
”

“Six? That's a little—”

There was a click, and then the line buzzed. Donal stared at the receiver for a moment.

“—early,” he said.

And put the receiver down.

Laura poked her head around the doorway. “You got through to your contact?”

“Yeah. We're going to try some Image-Inclined Hexing,” said Donal. “I think.”

“Well. That's nice.”

“It's more fun than sex. Or so my contact implied.”

“And does he have a girlfriend? Has he ever had a girlfriend?”

“I doubt it,” said Donal. “And how did you know my contact's a he?”

“A lucky guess.” A smile dimpled Laura's pale face.

“Well . . . you up for some hex later?”

“If you play your cards right, Lieutenant.”

“I'll do my best, Commander.”

Xalia moved from her concealed position inside the solid wall into the corridor where Harald was standing with a sparkler in either hand. Xalia shivered, which was the wraith equivalent of a living human jumping with fright.

*What are you doing here?*

“Watching you drift out of the stonework.”

Xalia floated back a little, wary of the unlit sparklers.

*I don't like those things.*

“And how about Donal Riordan?” asked Harald. “Do you like him?”

Xalia shook her head, stopped, then nodded.

*Like, yes. Trust, no.*

“Alexa said he did a good job.”

Like a slow tornado, Xalia corkscrewed around in the air. Then she untwisted herself and descended closer to Harald.

*He's spying on us. For Vilnar.*

Harald blinked and looked at Xalia with placid eyes.

“That's not good,” he said.

Back in HQ, Donal noticed that Viktor had disappeared. He mentioned it to Alexa, who stared at him for a moment, then said, “He went to the hospital.”

“Oh, Thanatos,” muttered Donal. “I'm sorry. Sushana.”

“I know.” Alexa relented. “You've never even met her, but some of us have known her for a long time.”

“Undercover work is dangerous, in lots of ways.”

“You're saying she was crooked?”

“No.” Donal leaned against a desk. “Brave and determined and under a lot of stress. It takes guts to do that kind of work. I'm not surprised that Viktor's with her.”

“He's not
with
her, not in the sense you mean.”

“Okay.”

“Everyone needs someone.”

“Um, yeah.” Donal hoped Alexa wasn't propositioning him. It had happened before with other women on occasion, and he hadn't always seen it coming. “The thing is, with Laura—”

“If you hurt her,” said Alexa, “one of us will kill you.”

“Ah.” Donal smiled. “I'm glad we've got that clear.”

“Well?”

“I won't hurt her,” Donal said. “And if anyone else does, I'll kill them myself.”

“That's good enough.” Alexa held out her hand.

Donal looked at her, then reached over. They shook.

“What are you two up to?” It was Laura, coming into the main office.

“Team building,” said Donal.

“He'll do,” said Alexa. “Just barely.”

“I'm sorry I asked. Donal, are you sure you want to do this?” Laura held up a long slim envelope on which a stylized silver airplane had been embossed. “Incognito and without official powers, you'll be in a lot of danger.”

Alexa frowned. “You're not talking about undercover work for Donal, are you?”

Donal said, “We were talking about Sushana. But this is different. I'm just visiting Illurium as—”

“The department will never pay for that,” said Alexa.

“Er . . . What do you mean?” Donal pointed at the flight ticket in Laura's hand.

“Ask Laura who booked the ticket,” said Alexa. “Ask her who paid for it.”

Laura put the ticket down on the desk. “Does it matter? Really matter?”

“Come on,” said Donal. “Laura, you didn't pay for that yourself, did you? It'll cost a—”

“I live in Darksan Tower.” Laura looked amused. “You still haven't figured it out, have you?”

“At least,” said Alexa, “he's not after you for your money.”

“What are you two talking about?”

Alexa pointed at Laura. “Your girlfriend, Lieutenant Riordan, isn't just your superior officer. She's one of the richest women in Tristopolis.”

Laura shrugged. “Stinking rich,” she said.

Alexa pointed at Donal. “But you better still remember what we said.”

Donal nodded.

“I won't forget.”

But Alexa was frowning, and Donal thought that he understood: after talking about the dangers of undercover work, he was volunteering to do the same kind of thing across the border in a foreign country, where the justice system was swifter and harder than the one at home. And while he would not hurt Laura deliberately, if he got himself killed, that would be the worst thing that could happen to her. All this, Donal read from Alexa's expression.

“If we don't get a more specific lead,” he said, “then I'm not sure it'll be worthwhile going to Illurium at all. Can you cancel that ticket without losing your money?”

Laura shook her head. “Doesn't matter. But you know that Harald has a lot of contacts in Illurium. You'll have resources to call on.”

“Snitches,” said Donal.

“Maybe. I think some are more highly placed than that.”

Alexa said, “How can we get more leads? There's nothing to go on.”

“The Ugly Twins,” said Donal.

“They're not talking, are they?”

“Not yet.”

Next morning at five o'clock, the smell of coffee woke Donal. Laura, already dressed in an olive-green skirt suit, was holding a silver tray with a poured cup of coffee.

“Uh,” said Donal.

“Morning, sweetheart.”

“Mmm.” Donal took the coffee and sipped. It was hot. “Ah . . .Thanks.”

“You sure you don't want me to meet the charming egghead for you?”

“Yeah. No.” Donal rubbed his face. “You'd frighten him off, dear.”

“Is that a compliment?” Laura leaned down and kissed him. Her cold lips felt extra-chilled this morning. “Or an insult?”

“Not fair. I'm defenseless.”

Laura ran her hand down his cheek. “Easy prey.”

“I—” Donal picked up his wristwatch from the crystalline bedside table. “Look at the time.”

“You don't want me to join you in the shower?”

“Well, Dr. Jyu will wait for us, I'm sure.”

“You're not sure at all.”

“Um, no . . .”

Laura was already walking out of the bedroom. “Don't be late. I'll wait by the front door.”

The Vixen pulled up just behind the purple taxi that was dropping off Kyushen Jyu, at the steps of police HQ. Donal and Laura alighted and turned to watch Kyushen, who hadn't noticed them.

As Kyushen passed the deathwolves, the wolves' eyes glowed amber—that was more or less normal—but then the entire pack, FenSeven among them, lay down on their bellies, front legs outstretched, and opened their mouths in lupine grins, tongues lolling and teeth bared.

“That's quite a display,” said Laura.

Donal caught up with Kyushen in the main lobby. Kyushen had already caused a wave of diagnostic hex to pass over Eduardo's counter block where his lower body was melded into the desk itself.

Eduardo was grinning. “Why, thanks, Dr. Jyu. I never really thought of myself as special in that way.”

“Are you kidding?” Kyushen gestured into being a silvery mist, which formed itself into floating runes. “Best hemimorph I've ever seen, and the integration gradient is spectacular. You mind if I write you up for one of the journals?”

“Uh, sure. I mean, no, I don't mind. Will my picture be in it?”

“Yeah,” said Kyushen. “Definitely some TRS, maybe some—”

“What's TRS?” asked Donal.

“Oh, hi, Lieutenant. Thaumatic Resonance Scanning. Don't your forensic folks use it for analysis?”

“I don't know.” Donal thought back to the shattered room in the OCML where Dr. d'Alkarny's body had been found. “The prisoners I wanted to, er, introduce you to—”

“Oh, the test subjects. Sure.”

Eduardo frowned, but whether it was the reference to prisoners as test subjects or whether he resented Donal's taking Kyushen's attention, Donal could not tell.

“They killed the Chief Medical Listener.”

“Surely she didn't try to listen while they were still alive. Why would she be amused by them, anyway?”

“Huh?” It took Donal a second to recognize Kyushen's misunderstanding. “No, I mean, they really killed her. Literally.”

“They murdered Dr. d'Alkarny?”

“That's what I'm telling you.”

“Awesome. I mean, really bad.” Kyushen put his hands in his pockets. “Like, how far do you want me to go?”

Donal said, “What?”

“Look, human thought is kind of transient, but it's formed from neural patterns that build up over time. Pattern persistence is . . .Say you have an image you form habitually in your mind.”

Donal's eyes shifted to the left as he thought of Laura.

“That's what I mean,” said Kyushen. “You've just instantiated a pattern that you've used before, though each instant—that's a technical term—is uniquely different from the previous instants.”

“Um. . . If you say so.”

“But you also learn, for example, strategies of learning. That produces metapatterns that are used to create patterns, which are then instantiated. Got it?”

Donal decided it was time to show that cops aren't stupid. “And there are metametapatterns, I take it, that produce metapatterns.”

Kyushen smiled. “You've got it.”

“And when you asked about taking it all the way?”

“When you look at the room around you,” said Kyushen, “most of it is hazy background, but you build a mental model of what the room looks like.”

“All right.”

“But hidden parts of your mind might find details that the foreground patterns ignore. There are tricks to pulling new patterns out of background haze. You're filtering through a debugging frame because the whole point is you're stochastically analyzing apparent noise that the foreground didn't . . . sorry, am I losing you?”

“No.” Donal stared into Kyushen's eyes. “You were trying to tell me how difficult your job is.”

“Partly that, maybe . . . But the tracing tools dig deep into neural structures. Pain is entirely a neural construct.”

“You mean, the deeper you dig, the more it hurts.”

“Well, oversimplifying—yes.”

“And you want to know how much pain the suspects should undergo.”

“Yes.”

“If you take it all the way, extract everything you can, will it kill them?”

“Unlikely. It's just . . .”