Kingdom of Cages (11 page)

“That is completely cross-threaded,” announced Chena.

“Perhaps.” Nan Elle sounded much more serious than Chena would have expected. “But there are those who say that it contributed
to the destruction of the biosphere back on Old Earth.” Nan Elle planted a wooden cup full of something ruby-red on the table
in front of Chena. “Now you drink that.”

Chena picked it up and sniffed it. It smelled vaguely of cherries. It seemed okay.

A shaft of light cut through the room. “Don’t.”

Chena froze, the cup halfway to her mouth. A man stepped out of the light, removed the cup from her fingers, and sniffed at
it, as she had. “What’s this, Elle?” he inquired.

“It’s registered,” replied Nan Elle stiffly. “I can show you the permit.”

“I’m sure,” the man drawled. He set the cup down, out of Chena’s reach.

Now that Chena’s eyes had readjusted to the flood of daylight, she could get a look at the man. He looked about as old as
Dad had when he left. His deep brown skin darkened almost to black around his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. His wiry,
wavy black hair had been pulled into a roll. A wooden plug was shoved through one earlobe. His mended brown and burgundy clothes
were the same tunic and trousers everybody else seemed to wear, but he had a wide blue band around one sleeve.

It was his belt, though, that told Chena that this was the cop that Sadia had warned Shond about. He had a chip scanner clipped
to the leather beside a taser, and a holster that held something gun-shaped. Chena wondered what it fired.

She glanced toward the door. Human shadows moved near the threshold, and all thoughts of running went out the hatch. The cop
had backup. Better to just wait this out. With any luck, the cop would forget about her, or just tell her to go home.

“Elle, I’m going to search your house and your garden.” He sounded matter-of-fact and tired. “And I’m going to take your client.”

Oh, piss.
Fear ran through Chena. What if Mom found out? Mom was going to find out. Chena was probably fatally late already. Again.
Oh, no. Oh, piss.

Nan Elle just cocked her head up at the cop. “And you’re going to question me, of course.”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I’ll bother just yet.”

Chena looked from one of them to the other. This was a complete wonk-up. It somehow seemed as if they must have had this conversation
a million times, kind of like Mom and Dad and the endless late-night talks about money. But how could they have? Once the
cameras caught her…

Of course. Here they didn’t have cameras.

“Then why are you bothering with the search?” Nan Elle asked.

“Because I want to make sure you’re not hiding anything in plain sight,” he answered blandly. “It would be like you.”

“That it would.” She inclined her head. “I don’t suppose you’ll let the girl take her medicine?”

The cop looked down his long, broad nose at Chena. “No, I don’t think I will.”

“I’m sorry, Chena,” said Nan Elle. “But that is the way it is.”

“ ’S not your fault,” murmured Chena to her hands.

“Actually, it is.” The cop gestured at Chena to stand up. Chena obeyed. “There are lines I can’t let you cross, Elle.”

Nan Elle’s mouth seemed to sink a little deeper. “So you keep informing me.”

Chena didn’t dare look back as the cop herded her out the door. Her legs and back felt creaky and reluctant, and her dry throat
itched for whatever had been in that cup, but she swallowed against the feeling. She had bigger problems right now.

No new patients waited outside Nan Elle’s door, just a pale man and a dark woman, both with blue bands tied to their brown
sleeves.

“Be thorough,” said the cop to them. “Get under and into everything, and I want a record of what’s growing on the roof, and
don’t forget to check the aquarium pipes.”

“If you need to take care of this,” Chena tried, “I could just—”

The cop laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. Chena shut her mouth.

“Make sure she shows you all the registrations for whatever she’s growing,” he went on to his people. “I’ll be at my place
when you’re done.” He looked down at Chena again, measuring, judging, trying to see what she had and what she thought she
had. Chena shriveled.

He waved her to come on, and Chena forced her legs to move. He walked with a long, loose stride. She sort of waddled trying
to keep up. If he noticed she was having trouble, she couldn’t tell. He sure as piss didn’t slow down any.

He took her down one level and right to the edge of the village, so that they were practically hanging out over the river.
He pushed open the door to a small house with a roof that was more moss than anything else, and stood aside.

Chena hesitated. Okay, he was a cop, but it was dark in there.

The cop snorted. “It’s my office when I’m here. Nobody’s going to jump you.”

Try it. Just try.
Chena’s hands bunched into fists, but she walked inside.

The place was dim and cluttered, a sort of cross between Nan Elle’s and Madra’s, with record sheets and books on the desk,
bundles of plants hanging from the ceiling, and yet more record sheets, which seemed to have leaves and flowers embedded in
them. There was only the one door.

The cop waved her to a chair, and Chena sat. The light slanted steeply through the windows and glowed dark gold. She glanced
automatically at her wrist before she remembered her comptroller was in Nan Elle’s pocket.

Gone. She rubbed her wrist. That was completely gone and she’d never see it again. The one thing she had from the station,
and one thing that it turned out would be useful down here, and she had given it away to a crazy old lady who hadn’t even
given her any medicine.

The cop circled the desk and pulled the scanner off his belt. He gestured for her to come on, and Chena gave him her chip
hand to scan. He looked down at the reader and grunted.

“Chena Trust. Here two days and already in the soup.” He touched a key on the scanner and its screen blanked.

“I didn’t do anything.” Chena spread her hands. “I just wanted an aspirin.”

The cop folded his hands together and rested them on his knee. “Who told you Nan Elle would have an aspirin?”

Chena shut her mouth so fast that her teeth clicked together. “I just heard,” she breathed.

“Right.” The cop sighed and smoothed his hand back over the top of his head. “Okay, Chena, I want you to tell me who you saw
coming and going out of Nan Elle’s while you were there.”

“I didn’t know any of them,” she protested.

“You have a good set of eyes and a quick brain,” replied the cop flatly. “You saw.”

Anger flashed through Chena and she struggled to suppress it. “There were a lot of people there. Why aren’t you picking on
them?”

“Because all of them have been around long enough to not tell me piss-all.” For the first time he sounded upset. “Did you
hear around what Nan Elle is?”

Chena shook her head.

“She’s a Pharmakeus.” The cop leaned forward, pinning her down with his gaze. Chena squirmed, but there was nowhere she could
actually go. “It’s an old word. It means poisoner. You will have heard that there’s a dead man in the village. He was poisoned
to death, so well we almost didn’t catch it.” He paused to let that sink in. “And you were about to drink what she gave you.”

Chena’s heart thumped so hard, she felt the vibration down in the soles of her feet. No. It couldn’t be true. Sadia would
never hand her over to a murderer. The cop was just spinning one out for her so she’d tell him what he wanted to hear. That
was all.

The cop kept staring at her. She tightened herself up inside and met his gaze. Just another superior, like on the station,
without even alarms and cameras to back him up. He didn’t know anything. He couldn’t know. Just wanted to scare her. Let him
try.

The door swung open and Chena just about jumped out of her skin. The cop leaned back with a satisfied smile on his face.

“Hello, Madra,” he said over Chena’s shoulder. “And I imagine this is Mother Trust and Daughter Teal.” He gave the full salute,
head, heart, and mouth.

Chena wished the floor would open up so she could drop straight through into the river and drown.

“There,” came Madra’s voice. Chena didn’t want to turn and look. She hunched down in the chair as if she could vanish inside
it. “Didn’t that turn out easy?”

“Thank you for finding my daughter, Constable Regan.” Mom stepped forward. Chena’s breath clogged her throat. Mom sounded
as if she were wound completely tight. She’d explode all over the place as soon as the witnesses were gone.

“I wish I could say it was on purpose, Sister Trust.” The cop, Regan, gestured at the free chair.

Mom sat without her spine bending an inch. Teal stood next to the chair, gripping its arm with both hands. She glowered at
Chena, and Chena shrugged back.

“How should I take that remark, Constable?” asked Mom.

Regan’s long face relaxed, just a little. “Not all that badly,” he said, and Chena felt a little better, until he started
explaining to Mom where he had found Chena. Mom listened closely, her forehead furrowing, one deep wrinkle at a time.

When he had finished, and Mom’s forehead couldn’t bunch up any tighter, the cop turned back to Chena.

“So, Niece, you were just about to tell me what you saw?” His eyebrows lifted in innocent inquiry, but there was a challenge
in his gaze, as if daring her to lie or leave something out while her mother was watching.

Anger bubbled inside Chena, but there was nothing she could do. She described, as best she could remember, the half dozen
people she had seen in line, and the crying baby. He shuffled through his record sheets and occasionally imprinted a marker
against a note to refer back to later, but she could tell from the way his face tightened that she wasn’t telling him anything
useful.

Good,
she thought with sour satisfaction.

The cop was not the only one who didn’t like what she was saying. Teal kept staring at Chena with a smoldering anger Chena
couldn’t figure out. What was her bug? It wasn’t like she missed out on anything particularly good. Then again, Teal always
figured if Chena didn’t take her along, whatever it was that happened must have been good. Chena sighed inside her head. She’d
have to help tell an extra long story later to make it up to her, or she’d be whining at Mom for days.

“Is there anything else we can do for you, Constable?” asked Mom when Chena finished her story. She planted both hands on
the chair arms and was getting ready to stand.

The cop frowned at his record sheet. “No, I’m afraid not.” He stood, and so did Mom. Chena managed to push herself to her
feet without wincing. Teal took Mom’s hand like a little kid, peering at Chena from behind her with that same glaring anger.

Chena just shrugged at her again, but Teal had already turned away, her chin tilted smugly upward.

They left, with Chena tagging along behind.

“Mom—” she started to say.

But Mom didn’t let her get any further. “I cannot begin to tell you how angry I am with you, Chena Trust.”

Chena swallowed. Here it came. Mom walked another few angry strides before she turned on her oldest daughter.

“I get home from my first day on my new job, and I find your sister down by the dock, practically in tears, saying you had
not come to meet her and that you’d probably been dragged off to be chopped into bits. I look for you in the dorm, and you
are not there. I look for you in the dining hall and the library, and you are not there. Where do I finally find you? In the
superior’s office for having attempted to get your hands on an illegal substance!”

“No, Mom, that’s not what happened!” Chena took two steps forward, pleading. “I just wanted something because I hurt, that’s
all. I was told I could get some aspirin up there. I thought she was a doctor!”

Mom’s face didn’t soften a bit. “And who told you this?”

“Sadia, but she’s okay, Mom, she really is.”

“Did she warn you where you were going?”

“No, but—”

“Then she is not okay!” Chena cringed from the force of Mom’s shout. In the next second, Mom straightened up and pressed her
hand against her forehead. “I’m sorry, Chena, but you had me extremely worried. This is the second time in as many days you’ve
wandered away I-don’t-know-where, and this time when you specifically promised to be there for your sister.”

“I didn’t mean to be late!” Even to Chena the apology sounded wispy, but it was all she had.

“I’m sure you didn’t. But you should be aware you are breathing very thin air right now, young lady.”

Chena subsided. There wasn’t much else she could do. She looked over the rail, down at the darkening village. It would be
evening soon and all the living roofs were dimmed and edged in gray.

“Teal, will you do me a favor? Will you meet us down in the dorm’s common room? We’ll be right there.”

“Okay, Mom.” Chena turned in time to see the smug sweetness on Teal’s face as she trotted obediently away.

But Mom didn’t give Chena much time to be angry about it. As soon as Teal was down the nearest set of stairs, she met Chena’s
gaze. Her eyes had sunken in behind a pair of dark circles that hadn’t been there when they had left the station.

Mom studied her for a long time. Chena didn’t know what she was looking for. She kept thinking Mom would speak, but she didn’t.
She just turned away again and rested both hands on the railing, watching the river below them slip between its mossy banks.

Chena felt her chest tightening as she tried to guess what Mom would say. Would she be grounded? Would she say Chena had let
them all down? How much better Teal was acting, even if she was just the baby? Would she maybe say something about Dad? Or
how long they’d have to stay here?

“Why are you doing this?”

The question was so soft and so distant that for a minute Chena wasn’t sure Mom was talking to her. But she turned her head
and focused her tired eyes on Chena. Chena dropped her own gaze and shurgged. She didn’t know what Mom wanted to hear. She
didn’t even really understand the question.