Evening's Empires (Quiet War 3) (28 page)

‘You think he’s planning to leave Ophir,’ Riyya said.

‘Rav has a ship too. It’s docked at Down Town’s port.’

‘He might not forgive you for leaving him behind.’

‘He needs me. And it seems that I still need him.’

‘But can you trust—’

A window scrolled open in the air directly in front of them. A woman looked out, looked at Riyya.

‘There you are, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘What a time we’ve had, looking for you.’

‘I’m not coming back,’ Riyya said. ‘I won’t come back.’

She stepped sideways, but the window drifted in front of her.

‘I don’t believe I’ve met your little friend. Did he put you up to this?’

The woman was smiling, but there was no warmth in it. Her skin was pale and her hair was wheat-coloured and cropped short, but Hari could see the resemblance to Riyya in the bones of her face,
the shape of her eyes. There were two gold bars pinned to the collar of her white shift.

‘It was entirely my idea,’ Riyya said, and began to walk forward.

Hari walked beside her, sloshing through ferny water. The window drifted ahead of them.

‘You will have to stand in front of a disciplinary board, but I’ll be there with you,’ Riyya’s mother said. ‘I’ll speak for you. I’ll help you in every
way I can.’

‘If you want to help, stop and arrest the thief we’re chasing,’ Riyya said. ‘He stole something that’s connected to the murder of my father, and the hijack of my
friend’s ship. We need to catch him, and the person who hired him. We need to ask them some serious questions. You can help us, or you can get out of our way.’

‘I’m afraid that’s outside the Corps’ jurisdiction. As are the troubles of your friend Gajananvihari Pilot. Yes,’ Riyya’s mother said, looking at Hari,
‘I know who you are.’

‘Then you’ll also know why your daughter and I are helping each other,’ Hari said.

‘And why you should help us,’ Riyya said.

‘I’ll help you get through this,’ her mother said. ‘You have my word.’

‘But you won’t help me catch the people who killed my father,’ Riyya said.

‘You already know the answer to that. We have talked about it a dozen times.’

‘And you won’t do anything that will violate protocol. That doesn’t have a
precedent
,’ Riyya said, and bent and scooped up a handful of fern and mud and flung it
at the window.

Her mother didn’t even blink as the clot spun through her image. ‘You’re still grieving for your father,’ she said. ‘I’ll make sure that the board takes that
into account. You’ll be demoted. That’s inevitable. But I promise that any sentence they pass will be suspended. We put this behind us and start over . . . What are you doing,
sweetheart? Is that in any way sensible?’

Hari and Riyya had reached the low rail at the edge of the field. Riyya climbed over it; after a moment’s hesitation Hari followed her. They balanced on a narrow fringe twenty metres above
a steady traffic of trucks moving along a roadway. The window hung in the air in front of them.

‘I really think you should wait for the police,’ Riyya’s mother said.

Riyya took Hari’s hand. ‘Ready?’

Hari looked down at the drop. The railing was pressed against the back of his thighs. ‘I don’t know much about falling. Is this survivable?’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Riyya said.

‘Don’t let her do this,’ her mother said.

‘On the count of three,’ Riyya said. Her grip on Hari’s hand was hot and tight. She was watching a truck approach. Its big hopper was heaped with red sticks.

‘Wait,’ her mother said. ‘Wait, youngbloods.’

Her voice was slurred and something strange was happening to her image. It was stretching, breaking apart in fountains of coloured dots that spun and coalesced.

‘Wait,’ Rav said. ‘I’m coming straight for you.’

Hari looked all around, saw something small and white streaking through the air above the tiers of fields, a small boat or gig in the shape of a white, long-necked bird. Rav sat in the hollow
between its furled wings, behind one of Gun Ako Akoi’s manikins, the one with the silvery face and riveted corselet and conical cap.

The white bird shot past the edge of the field, curved back, and came to a halt directly in front of Hari and Riyya. It was coated in what looked like real feathers, ruffling in the warm breeze.
Its small head had a black mask, an orange beak. It extended a short pont towards them and Rav stood up and smiled at Hari.

‘You shouldn’t try to fly before you’re fully fledged. Hop aboard, youngblood. The little weathermaker’s friends are on their way.’

‘Riyya is coming with us,’ Hari said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then she’s coming with me.’

‘And you’ll both go directly to jail,’ Rav said, and pointed towards the elevator stack.

Four scooters were rising from the collar at the base of the stack, spreading out as they accelerated through the tattered remnants of Riyya’s storm.

‘She helped us,’ Hari said. ‘Now we must help her.’

He and Rav stared at each other; then Rav shrugged. ‘Sentiment will be your downfall, youngblood. Climb aboard, both of you. We’ll give these bravos from the Climate Corps a run for
their credit, and when we’ve shaken them off we’ll head directly to the docks.’

‘No,’ Hari said. ‘We’ll head to Down Town. I need to have a few words with my uncle before we leave.’

‘Are you sure you want to do this on your own?’ Rav said.

‘It’s family business,’ Hari said.

‘Just you and him and his killing machine.’

‘He won’t use it against me.’

‘Your people are very different from mine,’ Rav said.

They were sitting amongst dry weeds on top of a half-ruined tower, looking out across clumps of palms and stretches of zebra grass towards the Pilot family compound. It was early in the morning
in Down Town’s sector. Riyya had ridden the elevator to the docks and Rav’s ship, where she would be safe from the Climate Corps police, and her mother.

Hari said, ‘Of course, if there should be any trouble . . .’

Rav said, ‘I’ll be right there.’

‘I want you to call the police.’

‘You think I can’t deal with a single myrmidon?’

‘I’m not worried about the myrmidon,’ Hari said. ‘I’m worried that my uncle may have taken other precautions.’

As he walked along the wide empty road towards the family compound, dawn light brightening in the sunstrip high above, his shadow wheeling hugely behind him, Hari thought that
it would be much easier to go up and head out after the thief than do this. Easier, yes, but then he’d never know if his uncle had betrayed him. He’d never know what his uncle knew
about his father and his family.

It was like one of Professor Ari Aluthgamage’s hinge points. Diverging paths leading to very different histories.

The gate recognised him. He walked past the dry bowl of the fountain in the weed-grown courtyard, down the short corridor with statues of his ancestors on either side, through the big double
door into his uncle’s chamber.

Tamonash Pilot was eating breakfast at the far end of the long, blue-tinted room. Looking up as Hari walked towards him, greeting him warmly, telling him to sit down, asking if he would like a
little something.

‘I came here to talk,’ Hari said. He shrugged his kitbag from his shoulders and sat on the other side of the little table.

The myrmidon behind Tamonash was shuttered and still, but Hari felt its attention sweep over him. He had to assume that the machine hadn’t noticed the packet he’d sent before
entering the room, or the response he’d received.

‘I’ve been very worried,’ Tamonash said, although he did not sound or look worried, perched on his chair in black pyjamas, white hair falling around his face as he bent over
his bowl of porridge. ‘You did not come back from your appointment with that tick-tock woman, I could not contact you, and then the Climate Corps contacted
me
, and asked me to verify
your identity. What kind of trouble did you get into, Gajananvihari?’

‘Nothing I could not handle, Uncle.’

‘The Ardenist led you on, no doubt. You would do better to listen to the advice of your uncle rather than that of your so-called friends.’

‘Talking of friends, where is your friend Mr Mussa? His ship has just left Ophir. Did you have a falling-out?’

‘Mr Mussa’s business is his business, not mine.’

They were staring at each other across the breakfast clutter. After a moment, Tamonash smiled and said, ‘You have been on an adventure. Perhaps you’d like to tell your uncle about
it. Did the tick-tock woman help you find what you are looking for?’

‘Actually, I lost something,’ Hari said, and opened the kitbag and showed Tamonash that it was empty.

Behind the old man, the myrmidon shifted very slightly.

Tamonash looked at the kitbag and then looked at Hari, his spoon halfway to his mouth. A pearl of porridge splashed on the hammered-brass tabletop. He said, ‘What have you done with the
tick-tock’s head?’

‘It was stolen by Mr Mussa.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. He is an honest trader.’

‘I was knocked out by a little cluster of microbots exactly like the microbots of Mr Mussa’s avatar. You remember, I’m sure, that I told you a djinn is protecting me. It
reached out to the microbots, and they exploded. A series of very bright flashes that knocked me out. I chased the thief to the port on the opposite side of the world. The port from which Mr
Mussa’s ship departed soon after the thief escaped.’

Rav had tagged the cryoflask when he and Hari had arrived at Ophir – ‘Of course I did, youngblood. Don’t expect me to apologise for what turned out to be absolutely
necessary’ – and his son had tracked it from Gun Ako Akoi’s palace to the elevator stack, tracked it as it had risen to the docks, and to Mr Mussa’s ship.

‘It is a very interesting story,’ Tamonash said, ‘but the evidence is entirely circumstantial.’

‘The thief knew the djinn would trigger the microbots. Who told him about it, I wonder?’

‘You lost the head of Dr Gagarian, and you come here making wild accusations—’

‘Swear,’ Hari said. ‘Swear on the honour of our family that you didn’t.’

The myrmidon jacked to its full height, turret head prickling with the muzzles of various anti-personnel armaments, targeting systems throwing a pattern of red and green cross-hairs and dots
across Hari’s torso.

‘I would be careful, if I were you,’ Tamonash said. ‘Making wild and unfounded accusations can be very dangerous.’

‘We should both be careful,’ Hari said, and sent a command to the repurposed battlebot that stood amongst the line of old machines that faced the view of Earth’s icy sea.

The myrmidon took a step forward, flanking Tamonash, as the battlebot marched to the centre of the room. Its clanking tread shivered the floor. It raised its two pairs of flexible arms, the
multitools at their ends spun, and the teardrop of its body blistered and dimpled with internal adjustments. Many of its sensors were offline or permanently disconnected, but Hari believed that the
basic array would be more than enough to deal with the myrmidon, believed that the myrmidon’s tactical weapons, designed to put down human assassins, would be no match for the bot’s
mass and armour and hardened nervous system.

‘Now I did not know that was still functional,’ Tamonash said thoughtfully.

‘There’s only a fractional charge in its fission batteries,’ Hari said. ‘But it should be more than enough.’

For a moment, there was dead silence in the cold, blue room. Then Tamonash smiled and gave a verbal command to the myrmidon, telling it to stand down. Saying to Hari, ‘We are family. We
should be able to talk to each other without making silly threats.’

Beside him, the myrmidon retracted various muzzles and discharge spikes.

Hari sent a command to the battlebot. Sharp spurts of compressed air hissed as it lowered its arms.

‘Why did you do it?’ he said.

‘It is a long story, nephew. Long and painful. It began many years before I met Mr Mussa.’

‘Then you admit that you and he—’

‘Allow me to tell it my way. From the beginning. But first, please, have some tea,’ Tamonash said, and poured a measure into a white porcelain cup and set it in front of Hari.

Hari drank the bitter black tea and smashed the cup down. ‘Now tell me everything. From the beginning.’

‘Do you know what a coin is?’

‘A kind of portable credit.’

Nabhomani had once brought several coins back to the ship. Handing them out as presents, laughing, saying, ‘Look! Look how far we’ve fallen!’

Tamonash said, ‘When it comes to family, love and hate are two sides of the same coin. I’m sure you were sometimes angry with your brothers, Gajananvihari. But you always loved them,
no matter what. It was like that with me and your father. I loved Aakash when I was about as young as you were now, and he was two years older. And then things changed, and the coin flipped from
love to hate. All because of your mother. All because of Mullai. Who was once my lover. Did Aakash ever tell you about that? I thought not.’

Tamonash leaned back in his chair and crooked one leg over the other and clasped his hands across his belly. The nails of his bare feet were painted bright red. He wore a silver ring on one big
toe.

‘It began when Aakash had the idea to turn our family’s fortune around by buying a wreck of a ship, renovating it, and using it as a base for trade and the research into old
technologies in which we were both interested. We were young, we were ambitious, it seemed that there was nothing we couldn’t do. And I was in love with Mullai, and she was in love with
me.

‘We had first met, Mullai and I, when we bid against each other for various salvaged machines. This was on Ceres, where she had been born and raised. I won the bid, we fell to talking
about the defunct ship that Aakash and I were refurbishing, and when I returned to Ophir she came with me and joined our crew.

‘I named it. Did you know that? I named the ship
Pabuji’s Gift
. An homage to our family’s long history. The fashion amongst baseliner families and clans to undo the
homogenisation of the True Empire by reviving old traditions and customs is beginning to fade now, but it was still strong then. Like many others, our family had traced their ancestors, given their
children names of their storied dead. So why not name our ship for the local god of the region where our family lived before it was scattered across Earth and other worlds? Aakash said at first
that it was a silly superstition, but I prevailed. And I wonder now if it was part of the reason for his betrayal. That he betrayed me to assert his strength, his will over mine.