City of Burning Shadows (Apocrypha: The Dying World) (9 page)

“Our director wishes to see you.”

Which meant they wanted to take me into the Crescent. Kaifail knew if they meant for me to come out again. “I’m actually on my way to another appointment, but I’m happy to check my calendar for a more convenient—”

I stopped at the unmistakable prod of the nose of a gun being pressed into my back. The man at my front remained polite. “I’m afraid the timing is not negotiable.”

I had no choice. “Then we’d better not keep the director waiting.”

Outside, two hovercars waited in the street, engines humming. They weren’t locked or secured in any fashion. Even in Miroc, no one dared steal from the Jansynians. I noted that these cars, like the one from last night, bore no logo. That thought did nothing to relax me. Nor did the six other Jansynians who came out of the station to join my escort. What sort of trouble did someone think I was going to cause that I needed nine armed guards to keep me in line?

I considered and then discarded the idea of trying to send a message to Amelia. So far, my captors hadn’t seemed interested in searching me, but if I went for my wireless or my NetPad, they might confiscate either one. Better to sit tight for now.

The trip across the city was quick when we could skim over the top of the street traffic. We reached the receiving yard in no time. A sprawling, gated lot with security checkpoints and armed guards to sort invited guests from the riffraff.

I’d never been through these gates, past the checkpoints, up the lift. Even when Seana and I had been together, she always came to me. Bad enough the Jansynians had to allow some of Miroc’s chaos to spill into their receiving area; if Seana had invited a human into their private haven, her career would have been over.
 

For all I knew, they were taking me to be tortured and killed, but I couldn’t focus on that because this was so interesting. I was going up there, into the Jansynians’ secret haven, and how many people got to say that? All these years I’d wondered, imagined, with nothing to go on but stories of questionable provenance and Seana’s vague answers to my questions.

The gates opened for my escort and we zoomed through, dodging through the mass of freight being loaded and unloaded as it passed in one direction or another through the Crescent’s single umbilical.

The lift itself was a marvel. A single tube that rose a hundred stories to connect the Crescent to the city below, encased in what looked like glass, but had to be something stronger to weather the occasional fire purges that swept through the Web. The lift was divided into a wide industrial platform and a smaller, furnished enclosure for people.
 

Three guards got out of the car with me, although not the same three who had captured me in the station. They escorted me onto the people side of the lift and we began to rise.

My escorts settled, keeping a careful eye on me, but obviously uninterested in the scenery outside. I was fascinated. As we moved up through the center of the Web, I couldn’t look away from the strange world outside the Jansynian glass cage.

An entire community had taken root here, thriving in the protective shadow of the Crescent, and this was my first close look at it. The girders and wires that supported the city above offered the framework on which had grown platforms, tents, and bridges of plastic, canvas, and rope. As long as one wasn’t afraid of heights, it was one of the safer places to be homeless in Miroc—close enough to the Crescent it made both criminals and law enforcement hesitate.

And even here, they clung to gods long gone. As we continued up, I caught glimpses of living spaces, suspended or wedged wherever possible, full of trinkets and reminders of better days. A group of lizards sat in a circle around a sword of Torin, passing bottles of water as they talked. A huddled cluster of human children sang beneath a rough replica of Fyea’s hammer. And all around, woven into blankets, painted onto walls, carved into floors, Kaifail’s doorway.

I stood at the inner wall of the lift, hands pressed against the glass, watching layer upon layer of habitation pass by. How many people here? How many who only a few years ago had jobs and lives? I couldn’t blame them for being angry. I was angry too, at the gods who had fostered such dependence and then disappeared without a word.

As we neared the top, I stepped back from the wall. Not soon enough. Up here, under the Crescent’s protective shadow, the Web had grown thick, but not so thick I couldn’t pick out the familiar face in a cluster of men and women sitting around enjoying the shade. Micah had seen me, too. He jumped to his feet as I passed. The lift moved on, giving us no more than a glimpse of each other, but it was enough for me to see the fear in his eyes.

#

Everything went weird once we reached the top. Weirder, I mean.

The doors slid open and the lift filled with cool air. I stepped off into a sterile gray reception area where a smiling young Jansynian gentleman waited for me. “Mr. Drake. Please follow me.”

My guards followed, but at a distance. My new guide led me into a hallway and said, “This is your first visit to Desavris.”

As though I were a guest, not a prisoner. As though they received guests regularly. “Yes,” I answered cautiously. “I’ve never been to the Crescent.”

“I do hope you’ll find your stay enjoyable.”
 

Was this a joke, some enigmatic piece of Jansynian humor?
 

I’d have to parse my guide later. If there was a later. Right now, I was overwhelmed with the strange experience of being surrounded by Jansynians. I’d never been in the middle of any large group of them before. I’d never gotten the full effect of their…I didn’t even know the word.

All the races in the world, we’ve got our similarities and difference. By most measurements, the Jansynians are closer to human than any of the rest. They’ve got skin instead of scales or feathers, eyes in their heads, bodies that don’t change from one thing to another. They’re a little taller than us humans, a lot skinnier on average, but we could still shop in the same aisle of the clothing store if we wanted. Really, that’s what made the rest of it so creepy. They could almost pass for human, if you squinted your eyes a little and didn’t think about it too hard.

Except that they all looked alike.

Not exactly, I guess. If I looked really close—as close as I could pretend was polite—I could pick out maybe a shorter nose or fuller lips or some other tiny clue. But they were all the same height, the same androgynous build, the same pearly-white skin, and frosty-white hair and eyes the color of fresh ice cubes. It didn’t help everyone up here dressed in the same black suits, so I was walking through the crowded halls feeling like some distorted photo negative with my dark skin, light clothing, and a body that didn’t look like I’d been starving myself for the last six months.

Not a one of them was smiling, except my guide. He even made it look natural. How much had he had to practice?
 

We took another lift and came out into a fancier area, with cushy red carpeting and wood-paneled walls. Portraits lined the hall—serious, identical-looking men and women—but otherwise, my guide and my guards and I were alone. “Who are these people?” I asked, honestly curious.

“These are the current and former directors of Desavris Intercontinental. From today, back to the beginning, when Desavris was founded.” I didn’t miss the way he puffed up. “Desavris may be a young corporation, but our founders were some of the best minds in the world. We have the most holdings of any entity in Miroc, and we’re third largest, worldwide.” He caught himself and his smile slipped for a moment. “Second, I mean. Now.”

He didn’t elaborate; he didn’t have to. “Now that Jansyn’s church is gone.”

He nodded. “Most of their research and for-profit branches were swallowed by various corporations. We were fortunate to acquire many of their best and brightest.”

The guards had stopped back at the lift, and my guide led me to a door halfway down the hall. “Through here, Mr. Drake. The director is waiting.”

I took a deep breath, steeled myself for whatever interrogation waited on the other side of that door. But I underestimated the universe’s recent glee for turning my world inside out.

No team of torturers, no squad of toughs, no men with guns greeted me as I crossed the threshold. All the same, my hands went cold and I forgot how to breathe. Across the spacious office, behind an imposing desk, a woman waited.

Not
a
woman.
My
woman.

The director.

Seana.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Interrogated

In all our years together, I had never seen Seana in her native environment, but I had to say it suited her. As I looked around her office—anywhere but at her—I was impressed. The walls behind her and to either side were covered with monitors, all showing some different area of what I assumed was this building. To one side of her sprawling, glossy black desk, sat a computer far sexier than anything I could afford. Spread across the other side, an array of handheld gadgets ranging from the easily identifiable—touch-screen wirelesses and memory sticks—to the arcane—shiny black boxes with no obvious inputs and slim, flat arrays of blinking lights. No lack of toys for a director of the second-largest Jansynian corporation in the world.

And Seana—I couldn’t keep my eyes away forever—she hadn’t changed. Not at all. What had been wrong with me that I thought all Jansynians looked alike? I knew—how well I knew—the precise curve of her cheek, the arc of her eyes, the line of her jaw. The face I’d scrutinized with all the precise attention I’d given to any of my professional studies.
 

I lingered in the doorway; she stood behind her desk. I didn’t know what to say, how to begin. Captive to captor, and seven years apart to make us strangers.
 

She broke the silence, alleviating my growing fear I’d stand here gaping like an idiot until the end of time. “Come in, Ash. Sit down.”

I stepped in, heard the door swing shut behind me, and took the offered seat, the whole time dredging through my stuttering brain for appropriate small talk. Something charming and breezy, the sort of opening line I’d heard Amelia use any number of times to show she was in control of the situation. “Seana why—how—what am I doing here?” No, that wasn’t it.

Seana’s right eyebrow twitched; the left corner of her mouth wrinkled. Tiny signals I could still read. Hinted expressions that spoke volumes. Even if her voice held none of the impatience I saw. “You requested this meeting.”

Something broke inside me. “And this—
this
—is how you respond? Armed guards to kidnap me out of the tube station? Dragging me up here against my will? I didn’t even know the message got through! I thought—” Even as my brain slid into emotional overload, I knew better than to finish that sentence. If I confessed to expectations of rough interrogations, it would only lead to questions of why.

Seana bore my outburst with her usual stoicism. “I’m a busy woman. I don’t have leisure to negotiate chats over coffee anymore. I told my people to bring you here and they did.”

But I wasn’t done. The words boiled up, burned in my chest. “Never a call to see how I was doing. After the Abandon, after the riots, after everything. Like you didn’t even care if I was still alive.”

“I knew you were alive.” Seana brushed one pale finger across her dark monitor and it came awake, showing a picture of me snagged from some ID or another. “Of course I knew.”

Flashing across the screen was, as far as I could tell, every bit of information on me that had ever been recorded. Starting with the official city copy of my birth certificate. My parents’ death certificates. Public school records, with the accompanying notes of concern regarding my early experiments with magic. The rejected scholarship application that had killed my chances at university and left me with only one career choice if I wanted to pursue my one real aptitude.
 

Had Seana gathered all this back when we’d been together?

Scrolling forward, the more recent stuff. News articles about the post-Abandon riots. A video of Kaifail’s church burning. My apartment complex burning. My hospital admission form and the attached release, dated six months later. “Stop it! Just, stop. Enough, okay?”
 

“I’m sorry,” she said. I believed she meant it, but I couldn’t tell what, of all her sins, she was sorry for. Sorry for sending men with guns to fetch me like some criminal, sorry for leaving me to my fate during the Abandon, sorry for the reminder of all that had happened, or even sorry for leaving me in the first place?

My one consolation was that she didn’t seem any more comfortable than I was. For all her talk of being busy, she certainly wasn’t pushing along to business.
 

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I thought this would be easier. I thought….” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Please, Ash, sit. We need to talk.”

I sat, reminded myself I’d contacted her for a reason.
 

“In truth, your message came at a fortuitous time. I have a problem, and you may possess the skill set to help me.”

I fought down a bitter laugh. Seana wanted my help. “Tell me something. Would you have gotten in touch with me if you didn’t need me to do something for you?”

She shrugged. “I’m not good with hypotheticals.”

That familiar bluntness—Seana had never been one to lie to spare my feelings—it drained away some of my anger. “What is it you want?”

She didn’t answer immediately, only watched me from across her desk. Silence stretched between us. Familiar, comforting. Reminding me of evenings together in my tiny apartment, Seana on one side of the couch working on her computer, me on the other side working on mine. We’d never needed chatter or hand-holding or any other sort of artificial reassurance of each other’s presence. Our intimacy had thrived in the quiet times between the demands of our two worlds.

She broke the moment, angled away from me to face her computer. She tapped her screen again and my life history disappeared, replaced by one of the camera feeds from the wall. I saw a workroom full of computers and circuit boards with a number of Jansynians who had layered white coats over their dark suits. She pointed at a man hunched in deep concentration over a keyboard. “My husband, Eddis.”