Blightcross: A Novel (17 page)

“To live in filth and grime and sweep metal shavings for the men? When your own society would have the men doing just as humiliating work?”

“Actually, none of the work is humiliating to us.”

“See? Why did you leave, then? Oh, tell me everything. I'd die to hear of something beyond this stupid factory.”

They left the lavatory. A massive wall of window panes stretched across the hostel's main hall; a dingy field of squares. From here the factory dominated the view, black and sweating against the red sunset. For a moment, Capra was reminded of tales of the underworld. There was even a river here, just like the one that led into the land of the dead.

But maybe it couldn't hurt to put some of Tey's curiosity to rest. Superstitious people could often turn on a person for the silliest reasons, and forcing them to guess was usually one such reason. “I am working towards becoming a chef, you see. I just need to save some money first.” It wasn't exactly a lie. It's what she wanted to do. And she did need to save money before being able to settle into such a life. The part about using money to call off Valoii assassins was just a minor detail.

Tey appeared to stifle a salvo of chuckles. “A chef, you say?”

So Tey wasn't born yesterday. Better give her something, then. “Exactly. No more, no less. But instead, I have to run.”

“But you were able to see so many things, and the danger...”

“What of it? And I can see as much as I want as a chef. Really, there is nothing so special happening beyond the rule of civilization. Crime, base urges, avarice...”

Capra was downplaying her own life and it felt strange, but she partly believed it. Not so with Tey, who pouted at Capra's remark, as if confronted with a tear in her little world—a world preoccupied with the romantic and grotesque. The other women showed the same signs—all their talk centred around salacious situations, murders, and preposterous stories from the continent, and they were all extremely conservative underneath these fascinations.

Capra, of course, was not immune: she did enjoy the gossip about rogues and romances and stories about rough men taming the Blightcross desert and fighting with Tamarck's king over sovereignty, and of Sevari's lieutenant, Iermo Juvihern, who was one of the most romantic figures in recent history. Iermo had been a privileged surgeon from the continent—Prasdim, she thought—who had given everything to join Sevari's coup out of some mysterious loyalty to the man, or his ideals.

The women here spoke of brutality as virtue. Tey had been happy to tell Capra about Fasco, whose fame lent his namesake to one of the city's roads. This executioner would round up all suspicious characters he could find, and each week he would take the worst of them personally across the Golroot River's bridge and into the area of the desert known as the Hex. Anyone who entered the Hex contracted a condition that rendered the skin pocked and burned, made their hair fall out, and inflicted a kind of sickness. Fasco was horribly disfigured from his weekly forays into the Hex, but continued to bring anyone he saw fit across town and deposit them there to either find a way out or perish from the invisible death that permeated the desert.

Even now, Capra could still see the gleam in Tey's eye when she spoke of Fasco the Executioner; Fasco the Just. A wistful sadness, or regret.

“You seem disappointed, Tey.”

“Aw, it's nothing.” Tey no longer smiled, and her voice dropped into a monotone drawl. “You're just so feisty. I thought you'd be itching to take on the men, take down this factory... something, anyway. Something big, you know?”

She was nonplussed. These were conservative women— everyone in this part of the world was. They should be comforted by Capra's denial of romantic savagery, yet Tey seemed to feel threatened by an outsider's insistence that civilized behaviour was revolutionary, and that crime was conservative and stagnating.

“Listen, Tey.” She bit her tongue and reminded herself that these people were, at heart, honest. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I can.” Tey's disappointment vanished like a wisp of steam in the wind.

“Have you ever heard of a Baron Parnas?”

“Well, yes. Everyone has. He owns several oil field service outfits and serves on the labour relations council.”

Capra put on a devilish grin and began to recall the scam that had stranded her in Blightcross.

“It started with a conversation I overheard at a chemist's back in the Little Nations. The Baron had come to pick up a tincture of Hypericum and struck a conversation with the apothecary there. He was lonely and depressed, which I gathered from the prescription alone. I listened more, and he talked about his wife who had left him for a young aristocrat who was both more handsome and wealthy, and of course the Baron was left in a shambles ever since. I arranged a dinner with him by posing as a wealthy heiress, and from there I began to exchange letters with him.”

At the mention of love letters, Tey's face brightened, and they strolled through the hostel's halls. The setting sun sprawled across endless glass panes.

She left out the part about being hunted by Alim and trying to steal priceless artwork. The Baron's scam was enough to satiate Tey's hunger for romance.

“I had a husband once.”

Capra indulged in a breath of relief. Deflect away, friend. “You don't say.”

“Oh yes. Lousy bastard. Wouldn't drink a drop of beer, made him sick. A bit of a pansy, he was. In more ways than one. But that wasn't the worst part...”

An epic narrative ensued. One packed with grisly details and tittering, and Capra couldn't help joining in with Tey's stupid but contagious laugh. Only when they reached their room did she remember the situation's gravity.

A moment after they arrived, the lights winked out. The room plunged into a gloom lit by scraps of red light seeping through rectangular slits of windows. Women were already lying face-down in their beds, others rubbed strong-smelling salve into their knees and backs. Tey began to undress.

Capra looked around at the bedtime rituals. “Listen, I'll be back in a bit. I just have to go for a walk or something. I usually go to sleep much later.”

“Oh, no. You cannot.”

She cocked her head. The night before she had been so exhausted that she had gone to sleep the instant she came within falling distance of a bed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you cannot just wander the hostel aimlessly. It is not allowed. And you can't leave the compound. Did you not learn the rules?”

“Rules?”

“Leave must be applied for in advance. And they never give it unless you have a decent excuse. Of course, each month you can have two days in the city proper.”

“And if I become ill?”

“There is a surgery here. Quite large, actually. It even serves some of the rural populations.”

Capra sat on her cot and took a deep breath. She felt trapped—they might as well have shoved her into a closet.

Deep breaths.

Closed eyes.

And then came a wave of rage against the bloody sheepfuckers and their damned rules. But she swallowed it. “Why... why don't I just take my monthly leave now?”

“They never do that. Never. You want those two days, you have to wait a month. Now, let's get you into bed. No sense agitating over it, after all.”

“Are you joking?”

“Why no, missy. Get to bed—if you keep this up, someone will complain, and then what? Do you want them to send one of the men in here? Because you can bet they will.”

“From the sound of it, you guys could use a servicing from them.”

She stood and stormed towards the exit.

Tey called out, “You only get one chance, Capra!”

Who did these people think they were? Capra thought of the posters she had seen pasted everywhere on the continent boasting of the great opportunities in Blightcross, of the wealth to be had and the freedom to enjoy. What the posters left out was that in order to obtain this unending wealth, one would have to go to bed when they were told.

She slammed the door behind her and calmed slightly at the illusion of openness coming through the grid of glass. Now that she was out of the barrack, what would she do? Perhaps leaving the factory wasn't the best idea—there were security checks and besides, it would take a while just to reach the barbed wire fence circling the complex.

“I think you should head back into the barrack.”

The voice belonged to Laik, and carried from the extreme end of the corridor.

“Laik, this is ridiculous. I am not a child.”

“You are a woman. We do not hire you to reorganize the way we do things.”

“Is this entire place just a big joke?”

“You owe me, Capra. I own you.”

She clenched her hands into fists and stomped towards him. “The posters you people plaster all over the continent mentioned nothing about your stupid rules. Even Tamarck is not as backward as you.”

“You are free to leave, Capra. This is not a dictatorship, like your land.”

“Then let me leave.”

“Go ahead. You can go to the refinery and enjoy your twilight years while you're still young, because the average lifespan of a refinery worker is forty. And, of course, they never report all accidents and deaths. I would guess the average is more like thirty-six.”

She bit her tongue. Why bother arguing? It would only have been for a day or two. But the bastard was wrong, and he would never realize it if nobody told him.

“Besides,” Laik said, a smart smirk beaming across the room. “You are much safer here.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

She grabbed Laik by his coveralls and shoved him into the windows. He struggled, but she applied leverage enough to keep him pinned. She quickly turned him around, wrapped his arms round his back, and mashed his face against the glass. “What do you know about me?”

“I know you are running from someone. I could probably find out by talking with the Corps captain here and asking about any unusual security bulletins.” Capra applied more pressure, and he coughed. Once she eased back, he said, “I heard a manager talking about a special joint operation between our forces and a Valoii soldier. They aim to flush out a war criminal. Then I remembered how you Valoii let your women fight for you. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who you are.”

“Say a word and I will throw you into one of those vats of molten metal.”

“Oh?” He kicked his leg and twisted so that Capra tumbled to the ground. He grasped a handful of her hair and jerked her head up. “I did you a favour, and this is how you repay me?” He punched her across the jaw. “No wonder Yahrein wanted to kill all of you freaks.” He raised his hand to strike her again, but this time she caught his hand and flipped him over.

“Then why did you bring me here?”

He smiled, in spite of Capra's advantage. “Because now I own you. I have my own personal slave living right here in this factory, or I get a reward from Sevari if I turn you in. Either way, I profit.”

“And if I kill you?”

“You won't, though.”

She spotted a weakness in his hold, and braced herself to snap his neck.

No—the whole point of running from the army was to stop killing. She could have made a fortune as an assassin, yet she chose to avoid adding to her list of personal atrocities. Laik was not worth that compromise. She could still kill, she knew, but not over something so petty. Laik wasn't worth
that
much to her.

It was this momentary lapse into contemplation that slackened Capra's grip enough for Laik to throw her from him, and he followed this with a kick to her gut. She gasped and rolled around in the dust.

“Give up now, and we can forget this happened. All I want is half of your wages.”

Did he really think she was going to stay long enough to make that worthwhile to him? “Sure.”

“And I will be notifying the security personnel to keep watch for unauthorized leave takers. If you leave, I will tell them who you are, and they will find you before you clear Redsands.”

“Sure.”

And with that, she stood up, ignored the aching ribs, and limped back to her barrack.

The ass was going to get it.

Dannac tried not to let the yacht's subtle bobbing in the water lull him into sleep. For some reason, he found it soothing. The sitting room was quiet and the plush couches offered a heavenly embrace to his sore back. The little man sitting across from him—the Ehzeri whose name he did not want to know—offered no conversation, either.

But sitting around accomplished nothing. He sat up and cracked his knuckles. “I am beginning to wonder if this is an elaborate ploy to waste my time.”

“He'll be here in a moment. He's very busy.”

“Who is this person, anyway?”

“A senior partner in the industry. This boat belongs to Kervin Rawles.”

“I have heard the name, but I cannot place it.”

“The transport mogul. Probably you in some way used his services in coming here.”

“And he owns this ship? He deals contraband?”

The man set his feet on the coffee table. “Everyone knows what he is into, and that is partly why he is so famous.”

“And, no doubt, why he is so successful in the world of legitimate business.”

A moment later, there was the sound of footsteps on the deck above, which carried across the room and descended. A man emerged from the door.

It was someone Dannac had never counted on seeing again, much less in Naartland. He stood and offered his hand to the old acquaintance. “Yaz?” he shook the man's hand, heart thrumming from this surprise.

“We were wondering about you, Dannac.” Yaz clapped his hands together and examined Dannac from head to boot. “You are looking well. I trust the operation has stood the test of time?”

“It has.” Dannac removed the scarf from his head to fully reveal the jewel.