Bone Song (21 page)

“What?”

“Well, they'll probably wish they
had
died. The process may last minutes or an hour, perhaps two hours at the most. But time flow is a matter of internal mental states.”

“You mean it'll last longer for them.”

“For years, or at least that's how it'll feel.” Kyushen gave a soft smile. “Maybe even centuries. Longer than a normal lifetime.”

“So you'll be doing them a favor. Making it feel like they live longer.”

“In agony.”

Donal shrugged. “Actions bring consequences.”

Kyushen nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “They do.”

Harald walked into the task-force office and sat down at his desk. There, he stared into space, not speaking.

“Hey,” called Alexa. “Are you all right?”

Harald looked at her. “I don't think so.”

“So what can I—”

But Harald had already opened his desk drawer and pulled out yellow report folders. He placed them on his desk blotter and began to leaf through loose typed pages. It was movement for movement's sake: Alexa could see that Harald wasn't really reading the reports in front of him.

Laura came out of her office, pulled a visitor's chair into the gap between Harald's desk and Alexa's, and sat down.

“Any news on the pterabat?” Laura asked Alexa.

“Sorry.” Alexa checked the list of official addresses and telephone numbers she'd written down on her notepad. There was now a line drawn through every number.

“I tried every official agency I could think of,” she added, “starting with the Federal Air Force and the Civilian Flying Authority. I even tried the weather service, in case one of their observation balloons spotted anything.”

The wraith-enabled sentient balloons were often referred to as Behemoths, an emotionally charged term that Alexa avoided, in case Xalia was offended. Not that anyone had seen Xalia for a while.

“What about the FAF? A pterabat can't cross into federal airspace without anyone noticing.”

“Come on, Laura.” Alexa tapped her notepad. “The border's thousands of miles long, in largely unoccupied territory. The chances of seeing an intruder are minimal if they keep low to the ground, beneath the scanseers' hex casts.”

“Is that an expert opinion?” Laura gave a half smile. “You sound pretty definite.”

Alexa colored a little. “I got one of the CFA officials talking. He's a nice guy.”

“Oh, yeah?” managed Harald, though his voice sounded empty: ribbing Alexa, but unable to put his heart into it. Not with Sushana still critical.

“What did he tell you?” asked Laura.

“Just what I said. The broadcast masts send out their waves at a thousand feet. In bad weather at night, even a pterabat can fly below hexar altitude and avoid the banshee patrols.”

Harald rubbed his face. “Did it definitely come from Illurium? The pterabat, I mean. Couldn't it have taken off and landed inside our own borders?”

“Well, David said—” Alexa stopped, and looked at Laura, then Harald. “Leave me alone. He
is
nice. He works for the CFA's safety board, and he said that a pterabat is too large for a normal small airfield, certainly not the kind of thing you can care for on an isolated farm or whatever.”

“He's not married, is he?” said Laura. “This David?”

“I don't—Look, he might not even call me again.” Alexa blew out a breath. “Thanatos. Anyway, David doesn't think you could arrange the flight from anywhere but an airport unless you were
very
well organized. And there were no flight plans of pterabats that could have matched our suspects. None at all.”

“But it's not impossible,” said Harald.

“No. A pterabat could have taken off and landed inside federal airspace. It's just not likely.”

“Why do you ask?” said Laura. “You have any other information, Harald? A reason for discounting Illurian involvement?”

Harald shook his head.

“Just being logical, is all. Making sure we don't focus all our attentions on one trail, when it's not a definite one.”

Laura said, “You were the one staking out the embassy.”

“I followed the driver to—” Harald stopped. “I've got nothing against Donal.”

Alexa looked surprised.

“What's wrong with Donal?”

“I just said—”

“What you said in words and how you tensed up your voice are two different things,” said Laura. “I heard it, and so did Alexa.”

Alexa looked unhappy. Then she nodded.

Harald closed his eyes, exhaling, then opened them again. “Vilnar assigned him here, remember? Whether you recruited Donal or not, it was still Vilnar who he reported to before and who agreed to second him to you.”

“What are you saying?” Laura's voice was like ice.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
You
asked
me.
” Harald stood up, report folders in hand. “I'm going to the hospital. Give Viktor a break.”

Laura looked at him for an endless moment, then said, “All right. Send Viktor home to rest.”

“I'll try.”

Laura watched Harald go, expecting the door to slam behind him. When it gently clicked shut, she gave a tiny jump nonetheless. Then she realized that Alexa was watching her with care.

“Do you think I'm losing it?” Laura asked Alexa.

“I hope not,” said Alexa. “Because if you are, so am I.”

Unsure what to make of that, Laura nodded and returned to her own office, where she could stare at the big wall map of the city she'd pinned up and wonder what to do next.

I
t resembled dissection.

When Donal entered the interrogation room, the sights that hung before him were not what he'd expected. Instead of a screaming, twisting body streaked with wet, glistening blood, he saw a still, pale, dwarfish body almost obscured beneath the multitude of bright, multicolored images suspended in the air throughout the room's space. The suspect looked to be in a coma, his face rigid.

Meanwhile, Kyushen sat against the far wall before a small table, manipulating a rack of delicate equipment such as Donal had never seen.

Still, it looked like vivisection: but of the mind, or perhaps the soul, rather than the body. Frames of golden light hung in the air, bearing legends such as:

[[image schoolJourneyDaily [
qlist: [duration: variSec dftval=30min,
        painLink: Beating* dtfval = new Beating(severity:=3.2),
        adrenalDump: seq = new seq[dftlen = 5]
        tempList: seq = getDump(dumpType
        .stratagem.levelOne).
        ]
plist: [ flee (inp SurroundPic: minGestalt, inp Howling:
        audioChord)
        [ initRun(speed:=currentState.physioMax()),
        attempt [ executeStratagem(nearFit(tempList))]
        success [ wait(22), watch(maxPoss), continue]
        otherwise [ initRun(speed:=recalc())]
        self.propensityElasticity:=sub1.
        ]
]
] end_image]]

None of which made sense to Donal. The frames were stacked into patterns linked by rune-labeled arcs, like
containment–materialization, precursor
, and
conjuration.

“Oh for fuck's sake.”

Donal deciphered what the shining frames meant by remembering his own childhood.

That bloody orphanage.

Because these were the prisoner's memories of being beaten up while traveling to and from school. These were the behaviors that had turned him into what he was.

Kyushen leaned back in his chair and wiped sweat from his face.

“Sorry, Lieutenant. Tough work. He's been neatly ensorcelled with protected hex.”

“Er . . . You mean you can't get into his mind?” Donal gestured at the images. “But aren't these—”

“Part of Dilvox's soul, yes.”

“Dilvox?”

Kyushen pointed at the strapped-down dwarf. “That's his name.”

There was a glowing light in Kyushen's eyes that had nothing to do with the flame script reflected and dancing across his corneas. He was a knowledge seeker. This was his drug of choice.

“So . . .” Donal looked around at the glowing frames. “Are you getting near the core of his thoughts yet?”

“Oh, no.” Kyushen looked surprised. “That'll take hours, at least. These are mesolayer templates for recurrent behavior. I need to send him into deep trance.”

Kyushen's fingers moved across the dials and tiny switches. New, complicated geometrical patterns of dark blue and dark green shifted into being among the flame-script frames.

“We can perform instant traces and step through the actions of his potentiated thoughts.”

“Potentiated,” said Donal.

“Yeah, stored.”

More displays opened up, and then Kyushen's fingers moved across the equipment once more. This time the captive dwarf moved beneath his bonds. Then he screamed, a howl of awful agony that Donal had never imagined a human throat could utter.

Donal opened his mouth to tell Kyushen to stop, then saw the sardonic expression on the man's face: the expression that said,
All laypersons react this way.
Donal clamped down his feelings.

“Is that all you can manage?” he said. “A bit of pain? I can do that with my bare hands.”

“Wait 'til you see this.” Kyushen twisted three dials. “Now I have him reliving his memories of three nights back.”

This time the howling was loud enough to make Donal curl up with his hands over his ears, and it continued until he could take no more. He stumbled toward the interrogation-room door, and it swung open at his approach. He stepped through, and the big door swung back.

Ensorcelled bolts clicked shut of their own accord. In the corridor outside, there was silence.

“Thanatos,” said Donal, to no one there.

But perhaps a ripple of movement passed across the wall, just beyond the edge of his peripheral vision. Donal squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.

“Shit,” he muttered, knowing he would have to go back in.

My prisoner.

For no good reason, Donal reached inside his jacket to his shoulder and drew out his Magnus. He clicked open the catch, slipped out the magazine to check the heavy load, then pushed it back in place.

Donal grabbed the door handle and went back inside the interrogation room.

Xalia was in darkness, rising through cold stonework, aware of the vertical rivers of not-quite sound defined by a nameless sense that was akin to remote touching: a tactile sensation of icy metal pipes that were yards away.

Xalia's density in the material dimensions was close to zero, maintaining the minimum containment necessary to stop dissipation. She was on a knife edge no human could appreciate: rotate any more of her self out of the mortal universe, and she might never find her way back.

She had been in Darksan Tower and with Laura's permission had roamed up and down the shafts and communicated with some of the wraiths imprisoned there. The tower was a vast, labyrinthine, ancient place, but it paled beside the dark history and complexity of police HQ.

Ward fields repelled Xalia.

If it hadn't been for Sushana in the hospital and for the dead Mina, there was no way Xalia would have tried to penetrate this place.

The ward fields stretched horizontally across the whole of police HQ at this level. Layers of standing hex waves filled resonance cavities in the stone floors for only one purpose: to prevent quasi-material forms like Xalia from passing through to the upper levels of the building.

To the levels where senior officers like Commissioner Vilnar had their offices and secret vaults.

Far below, other ward fields, beginning at the minus-fiftieth floor, prevented wraiths (and sprites and ectomists) from reaching the dark secrets of the torture chambers. Not to mention the entombed bones of earlier commissioners.

But Xalia was high up in the tower, higher than she had ever climbed. She floated with tortuous care between webs of high-tension hex, among intricate three-dimensional mazes of deadly energy. One lapse of concentration and she would be fried out of existence, in all universes.

Vilnar had sent Donal to spy on Laura—and worse, to seduce her. Once Xalia had proof that she could show Laura, there was no doubt in Xalia's mind about what would happen next.

Donal would suffer, perhaps die in some lonely alley, waiting for backup that would never arrive.

Xalia was slipping through the third layer of defenses when a fiery sentence sprang up in her awareness.

+Who are you?+

Xalia stopped her ascent. For a split second she began a sideways drift, but there were HT hex lines close by. She brought herself to a halt.

*Who's asking?*

The reply came cold and loud.

+Have you ever considered the nature of eternity?+

*What?*

+The length of time that persists beyond your existence.+

It took a moment for Xalia to decide that was a threat.

*Fuck off.*

And for a few more moments, silence filled the solid stone. Then a cold rippling passed through everything, including Xalia, and she began to understand the nature of the being that guarded the upper layers. It was a tesselan, an aggregation fashioned from families of wraiths that were torn apart, twisted into new forms, and reprogrammed with a single quasisoul by master practitioners from the darkest schools of mind-control mages.

+I will eat you.+

*I don't fuckin' think so.*

+And tear you apart, and take you into myself.+

Xalia was already moving.

*You and what horde?*

+I need no other—+

But they were at the nova-bright webs deep inside the stone now, where lethal energies burned and a vast powerful form like the tesselan guardian dared not move. Sensing the huge capacity for resonance from the tesselan, the dumb, mindless energies of the fire webs were already closing in.

Xalia elongated her form and slipped
inside
the fire webs.

And now she was really in danger.

*Ah, shit.*

From behind, the guardian's words were bright.

+That was fatally stupid, little one.+

Xalia tried to move forward, but the ravening lines of energy beat her back, and a deep realization flooded through her: she was about to die.

Donal stepped back into the interrogation room. The original frames and glowing patterns were now obscured by arrays of flowing light, webs in which glyphs and icons moved.

Beyond the blaze, Kyushen was scarcely visible at his workbench. Equipment hummed and crackled. The dwarfish prisoner whose soul was being flayed was completely out of sight, hidden by the vast display of light and movement filling the stone-walled room.

“Thanatos, what are you doing to him, Kyushen?”

“This is the running soul.” Kyushen's voice was made indistinct by discordant clicks and moans from his instruments. “The actual thoughts generated by the schemata and images. See: there's a propensity being invoked in order to return the qualia associated with—”

“You're insane.”

“On the contrary. See.” Kyushen's sleeve was painted in kaleidoscopic hues as he pointed into the midst of the visual maelstrom.

“There.
That
structure is completely inconsistent with rational thought, at least of the human variety.”

“Are you saying the prisoner's not human?”

“No, I'm telling you he's clinically insane. It would take some powerful mage therapists to work any kind of rechanneling to solve the guy's problems.”

Donal stared at the shifting light for a few moments.

“We're not here to solve his problems.”

“No. We're not.”

“But I can't let you—”

“Hush. There. Bloody Death, I've got it.”

“What have you found?”

“Wait. This is the trace I've got to follow, just stepping through these invocations . . .”

Donal started to ask a further question, then closed his mouth.

“There's a phone number,” muttered Kyushen.

“You're kidding.”

“It's a resonance impression.” Kyushen looked up at Donal. “He didn't perceive it directly. I'm going to have to trace the impressions and build a shadow.”

Donal shook his head.

“You mean it's guesswork, not memory.”

“If we get a complete image, it will be accurate.”

Donal wanted to ask how Kyushen knew that but decided not to. Kyushen's fingers flicked across switches and toggles.

“I'm getting it . . .”

Fingers moving faster across the console.

“No. Damn . . .”

There was nothing Donal could say or do to help.

“Ah. . . Hades.”

“You've lost it,” said Donal.

“Oh, no.” Kyushen looked up. “I can tell you exactly where the call came from: seven-seven-seven, two-nine, three-five-one, seven-two-zero.”

Donal stared at him, then nodded.

“Keep a log,” he said. “Of everything you find.”

“Of course.” Kyushen shook his head. “What did you expect me to do?”

Donal said nothing, but his mind was whirling. This was the second piece of evidence.

I expect you would bury it, if you knew you'd just fingered Vilnar.

Because if there was a more dangerous enemy than a police commissioner, Donal could not imagine it.

Xalia tried, but the pseudofire that could destroy her wraith form, inflicting pain that would last a subjective century, beat her back. The fire web was squeezing and burning her out of existence: a time-dilating immolation.

*Fucking bastard place.*

Then a cool wave passed through the web, clearing a passage.

*Who—*

*They call me Gertie.*

Xalia recognized the wraith now. When Laura rode the elevator tubes upward—elevators that were irrelevant to Xalia—Xalia sometimes flew up alongside, so she'd gotten to know some of the captive wraiths.

*Gertie? Aren't you trapped in elevator seven? Bound to it?*

*Well, there are binds and binds, aren't there?*

Uncertain what to make of that, Xalia matched her own vector's rotational frequency with Gertie's: it was like two corporeal humans holding hands. Together, they slipped through solid matter, heading up toward the place that might unveil the truth.

Commissioner Vilnar's office.