City of Burning Shadows (Apocrypha: The Dying World) (6 page)

He wasn’t a Jansynian. Human, but with skin that fair, he wasn’t from around here. He was dressed all in black, expensively tailored, but death in the afternoon sun. “You avoid my question.”

“Not sure that it’s any of your business.”

He smiled. Not charming, exactly, but something in it was trustworthy. “I
am
your friend, Joshua Drake. And I need to know.”

Of course he was my friend. “We’re scoping out a safehouse for a client. Jansynians are hunting her.”

“Are they?” He leaned in closer. I couldn’t look away from his deep blue eyes. “Have you seen these Jansynians? The ones who attacked your client?”

“No,” I whispered, overwhelmed with disappointment I couldn’t help this man. I wanted so badly to be of use.
 

“Ash!” Iris’s voice.

I blinked and looked around. Iris was next to me, frowning. I’d been…how long had I been waiting? “What did you find out?” The question came out brusquer than I meant as I tried to cover the fact I’d drifted off.

“Who was that?” she asked, irritable again.

“Who was what?” I looked around.
 

She took me by the shoulders, pointed me towards the other side of the street. “Him!”

I still didn’t know what she was talking about. “Iris, you’re going to have to—”

She pointed, and only then did I pick out the man staring back at us. Human, but dressed all in black and pale—he wasn’t from around here. Weird that I hadn’t noticed him before; it wasn’t like he blended with the crowd. “Who’s that?” she asked again.

“How should I know?” Now I was getting irritated.

“It looked like you were talking to him,” Iris said. “But, whatever. Let’s go. The faster we get this night over with, the better.”

#

As we headed out of the crowded downtown and into darker, less-travelled parts of the city, Iris shifted once more—this time, to an imposing, unkempt giantess. I envied the ease with which she did it, wishing I could learn the same trick.

If you want to be technical about it, magic is magic—whether it’s Iris changing her shape or me doing what I do. The thing is, for Iris’s people, it’s something they’re born with—part of who they are. Drinion wasn’t just the god
of
magic—Drinion
was
magic. The very essence of change. And Iris’s people are Drinion’s children—or were, before it became dangerous to speak the names of the gods.
 

Kaifail stole the secrets of magic and passed them on to his children—us—but it’s not in our blood the way it is for the shifters. If I were to try to do what Iris does….

Matter destroyed still wants to become energy, and if you don’t surround that act with the right controls and modifiers, you’re going to get one ugly mother of a bang.
 

That’s most of what those of us who have the aptitude for it learn in school. That’s where the rituals help—codified limitations you don’t have to hold in your mind. I couldn’t wrap my head around the complexities of what Iris did every time she made herself different; I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be able to do that purely by instinct.

On the other hand, Iris couldn’t do my kind of magic either. She simply didn’t understand it. So it all balanced out. I guess. Except that her skills seemed a thousand times more practical and useful than mine.

Iris led us into one of the rougher parts of downtown. My heartbeat pounded and it got harder to breathe. Streetworn toughs, human and otherwise, lurked in the shadows and watched us as we passed. Either they weren’t hungry for prey or Iris looked like more than they could handle. They left us alone. I kept a hand bundled in the fabric of my robe right at the neck, holding it closed. If Iris noticed, she didn’t say anything.

Our luck held until we reached a particularly seedy looking apartment complex and Iris stopped. There was just enough ambient light for me to make out the splashes of graffiti on the walls of the building and the muzzle of a gun poking out through a gap in one of the boarded windows. Iris rippled and shrunk back down to my size, but with a different face than she’d worn when we left our building. Her whole body was lean, harder-looking than I was used to from Iris.
 

From the shadowed doorway, a man’s voice called out, “Hey baby, you lookin’ for some fun?”

“Shut up, Vik.” Iris walked boldly up to the crumbling concrete porch. I followed, unable to look away from the gun pointed at us.

“Who’s your friend?” Vik asked as he stepped into the light. Bald, burly, and carrying his own very large gun, Vik was not a man I wanted to be on the wrong side of.

“Viktor, this is Ash. Ash, Viktor. It’s okay, Vik, he’s with me.”

Yet another surprise in a day full of them. I would never have imagined Iris knew people like this, much less worked with them. I smiled as best I could.

Vik’s grin was predatory. “Your boy’s nervous.”

Iris stepped forward, somehow managing to loom over a man with twice her mass. “Stop screwing around. Ash needs to sweep the place.”

“For what?” Vik slung his gun back over his shoulder and crossed his meaty arms. “Our security’s been good enough for Price before. What, she thinks we’re fucking up all of a sudden?”

“It’s different this time. And I can explain. But only after Ash has done his thing.”

Vik glared, but he stepped aside and let me through. I was glad Iris kept close. Especially as we moved through the hall and past a room with three more men like Vik.
 

Maybe I had been naive. It was no secret the influence the criminal element had in Miroc. The city’s bad reputation was one hundred percent earned. Even back when we priests had real authority, this city was nothing like Tala, where the gods and the churches kept folks safe. Miroc was the place where dangerous people came to disappear, where criminal enterprises could count their money undisturbed, where back-alley deals didn’t have to take place in back alleys.

The Ellsworths, the Ramiydhs, the Cuandos, the criminal families had as much influence over the city as the council did. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that to get things done, Amelia—via Iris—also worked through some questionable contacts. “Amelia trusts these people?” I whispered.

Iris turned to me and rippled through several different faces, settling back on the lean, hard visage these people knew. “Judging by appearances?”

Chastened, I said, “I just hope she knows what she’s doing.”

“Me too.” By her flat look, I knew Iris was talking about me.

The apartment building wasn’t large. Six two-bedroom units, all had seen better days. Four showed signs of occupation—by the men I’d seen here, I imagined. The fifth was storage. Guns and barrels of water and smaller bags of—I didn’t want to know.
 

The sixth apartment was obviously our safehouse. It didn’t have much in the way of furniture—a bed in each bedroom and a table with mismatched chairs in the front—but it was clean and secure-looking, with a new lock on the door and thick metal shutters over the windows.

I went over the whole building the same way I’d scanned the warehouse. The other men watched me as I moved through their space, but Iris’s presence kept them from interrupting. I was as thorough as I could be. If this job went bad, it wasn’t going to be because of me. It took an hour before I was willing to declare the complex safe.

Iris called all the men together—six of them including Vik—and explained the situation. They weren’t any more thrilled at the mention of Jansynians than Iris had been.
 

“Amelia wants to move Spark in here tonight,” Iris said over the grumbling. “Can you be ready?”

“Ready, sure, we’re always ready,” Vik answered. “And we know our business. But what kind of opposition are we looking at? We’re not exactly specced to be holding off a full tactical team here. Especially one armed with Jansynian weaponry.”

 
“Do your job right and it won’t come to that. If they can’t find you, they can’t hit you.”

That evoked more grumbling, but Vik said, “We’ll do our part, so long as Price does hers.”

Iris nodded and left without another word. I scurried to follow.

#

We had to go all the way back to the office to check in. Every tiny spark of communication in this city ran through the Jansynians’ net. We couldn’t take the risk they might be listening.

Amelia wasn’t alone in her office. Josiah and Vivian—two more of P&B’s “investigators”—waited with her. Both of them were visibly armed. I was starting to wonder if everyone in the firm was more than advertised. And were they thinking similar thoughts about me?

“Good, you’re back,” Amelia said to Iris and me. “I’ve been in contact with Micah and made the handoff arrangements.”

She woke up the wall with a touch. It was set on a map of the city. “You’ll be picking Spark up at the same location you went to this morning.”

Josiah squinted at the spot Amelia pointed out. “Right under the Crescent? I thought we were trying to avoid Jansynian attention.”

“Spark’s already there,” Amelia said, “and I trust our ability to move her safely better than I like the idea of her trying to get out on her own. Ash, since you’re their point of contact, you’ll be in the car with Josiah and Vivian. Iris will be in the air with an eye on the landscape.”

Vivian stepped up to the screen, smoothly taking over. “Once we’re certain we got away clean, we’ll rendezvous with Iris
here
,” she tapped a point on the map that was a couple neighborhoods away from the safehouse. “We’ll ditch Ash and the client and then continue to drive around for a while, in case we missed any kind of tail. Ash and Iris will escort the client to the safehouse, tuck her in for the night, and we’ll all celebrate a job well done.”

“Any questions?” Amelia asked.

“Lots,” I said.

Vivian took me by the arm. “We can talk in the car,” she said. “Let’s go get things moving.”

The car was a hire and while it was necessary, I shuddered to think of what it cost. Not for the car itself, but the fuel. Given it had been four months since Miroc had received an outside delivery, driving had become prohibitively expensive. But what choice did we have? It wasn’t like we could keep a Fyean hidden as we took the tube across town.

“This’ll be easy,” Vivian said as she settled into the huge back seat with me. Hire cars had to be spacious enough to accommodate the larger races. Anything short of a giant would be comfortable back here. Through the window, I saw Iris jump up and shift in the air. A falcon flew up into the night sky.

Josiah drove while Vivian talked. “Seriously, Ash, just relax. We’ve done this plenty of times before.”

“Have we?”
 

Vivian grinned and elbowed me. “Welcome to the pro circuit.”

I checked out the window, but if Iris was there, I couldn’t spot her in the dark. “I’m not the only one uptight.”

Vivian shrugged. As she talked, she pulled her two pistols from the harness she wore under her jacket and checked their load. “Iris’ll settle down once we’ve got Spark to safety. That’s when everything gets easier.”

From where I sat, that was the point at which our real problems would begin. “It’s not like we’ll be sending them a memo that Spark’s out of reach. They’ll still be looking for her.”

“Amelia’s got plans,” Josiah said.

Vivian patted my knee. “Focus on what’s in front of you. Smooth handoff. Spark to the safehouse, and then we all get to go home. Worry about the rest when it happens.”

She made it sound so easy, but as I leaned back in my seat and listened to Vivian explain the handoff process, I couldn’t keep from staring out my window at the glowing dome of the Crescent growing larger and larger, like a monster waiting to swallow us.
 

CHAPTER FIVE

Chased

Josiah turned off the car’s lights as we reached the warehouse’s street. He sat at the intersection longer than was necessary, letting our eyes adjust, then moved forward at a casual pace. As we got close, I noticed one of the side freight doors was open and a makeshift ramp had been set up. Josiah eased the car up and through the open door into blackness.

The door slammed shut behind us and sudden lights blinded us. I lifted my arm to shield my face, but Vivian tugged on my elbow. “Let them see you.”

The lights faded to a reasonable level and I saw Micah in front of our car. Standing next to him, a lizard with a gun he was just lowering. I got out, followed by Josiah and Vivian.
 

Micah waved me over. Tonight, he was calm and polite, no trace of the anger that had sparked between us this morning. “Is everything in place? Are we good?”

If he could be businesslike, so could I. “We’re ready if you are.”

“Great. Vogg, I want you to meet Ash. Ash, this is—”

The lizard bowed, touching his clawed fingers to the horns atop his head. “I am Vogg Asad’Korel, Sentry of Miroc, Warrior of the Fourth Circle. It is an honor to serve you, Priest Ash of Kaifail.”

“Just Ash is fine, really.” I lifted my eyebrows at Micah.

“Vogg is Spark’s bodyguard. He’ll be coming with you.”

I looked back at Vivian. This hadn’t been in the plan, but she nodded. “Welcome aboard, Vogg. Let’s get moving.”

Micah and I went up to the office where Copper waited with a second Fyean who had to be Spark. They sat together on the floor, bickering as only sisters could over the wiring of a circuit board that lay between them. Copper still wore the plain leathers she’d had on earlier, but Spark was dressed in a long desert tunic of bright sunset hues and the wire wraps atop her antennae were a dark silvery metal.

After introducing us, Spark took her sister’s hand. “You sure you won’t come?”
 

“They’re not after me.” She leaned forward, pressed her forehead against Spark’s. Their antennae brushed, then Copper pulled back and pushed her sister at me. “Keep her safe, Mr. Drake.”

As we walked, I couldn’t keep from stealing sideways glances at Spark. She caught me at it and smiled. “You’re not used to being around my kind?”

“No,” I admitted. “I’ve never been out of Miroc, and as far as I can tell, this isn’t a popular city for you Fyeans to visit.”