Authors: Finder
"What'd he do?"
"Nothing terrible. I just had to convince him I wasn't there in the line of duty before he'd say anything to me but, 'I don't know where he is, and I'm not telling.' "
"Sheesh. I'd think Yoshi is exactly the kind of criminal a cop would want."
"Nah. I'd feel sorry for him, and let him go. Oh, and when I told him that not only was I not on duty, but I was a friend of yours, he said, 'No way!' I'm surprised he's still speaking to you."
"I'm surprised he dares, the lunk." I owed the lunk another favor. A little of the awkwardness had fallen away during that conversation. "So what's the news?"
"They're letting Linn go home this afternoon."
"Already?"
"He's still pretty limp, but they need the bed. The number of cases is still on the rise."
"Have they figured out any kind of treatment yet?"
"Nice lead-in for my next piece of news. Hawthorn's lab boy, Malicorne, is on limited release, provided that he works with the people who are trying to develop a vaccine. Which means he's going to spend his days shoulder to shoulder among the test tubes with Milo Chevrolet, which will either broaden his outlook or drive him to suicide. Milo says if Malicorne gives him any trouble, he'll tie him up and make him watch Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes until he can say, That trick never works.' "
"Are they having any luck, though? With the vaccine?"
It was a moment before she said, "It may be a long time."
That was almost a comfort, really; nothing could have saved Tick-Tick, not even finding the lab sooner.
"What about Saquash?"
She ran her hands through the cropped part of her hair. "Nothing's decided yet. The judges' council has heard the accusation, and commissioned the gathering of evidence. I gave them copies of Linn's and my
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files yesterd
ay, and you'll probably be called to tell your part of the story. Justice takes a little time."
"If… what'll happen to him?"
"If they decide he's guilty? Depends. But they may ask for banishment."
I turned away to the kitchen window, and pretended to be tidying the counter.
"Does that seem too light? Toby's been here for almost ten years. His life is made here. And in all those years he never went back."
"No," I said, looking at the skyline. "Not too light. Maybe too heavy." If he was banished, how could he make it up to the city? How could he put back what he had taken out? One of the things he'd taken out was Tick-Tick, and somebody had to make good on that loss, didn't he?
"Oh, and Weeping Birch's charter is suspended, pending the resolution of Toby's case. If they have any excuse to, the city will vote to revoke. They've been wanting a reason for months." I heard her get out of the chair, and after a moment she was standing next to me. I smelled her shampoo, which only smelled like shampoo, and not like rosemary or mangoes or cloves. "So there. Is that enough vengeance for you?"
I shook my head, "You were right. Vengeance isn't mine, either. Justice is, maybe, because I live here, and I wouldn't want to if there wasn't justice. But that's not the same as vengeance."
Sunny brought her index finger down lightly on my shoulder. "I dub thee Sir Gareth."
"Sunny—" Oh, Lord, had I ever called her by her first name to her face before? I could feel my ears turning red. I shot a sideways glance at her. "The night Tick-Tick died—when we—"
"It never happened," she said, with a little crooked smile.
I turned around, braced both hands behind me on the counter, swallowed hard, and said, "Yes, it did."
She regarded me gravely, her hands deep in the pockets of the gray linen jacket. "But if that's so, what if it never happens again?"
Ouch? I think so. 1 think that's what that is
. "Then I guess it doesn't. So I should stop holding my breath, huh?"
She looked past me to the window, with the not-seeing-much expression I was coming to know. "That night, neither of us had much chance to consider it beforehand. It was something that happened to us more than something we did. I don't know about you, but I'd like to do a little thinking now."
I felt as if something was slipping away from me, very gently. "No problem."
Sunny chuckled, a real, full-throated, genuinely amused one. I stared at her. " 'Ye lie, ye lie, ye false'—I don't remember the rest of the verse. I tell you what: In six weeks I'll come around and take you out to dinner, and we can talk about it then. How's that?"
I swallowed again, and wondered if it could be good for one's insides to be made to feel like a volleyball
She went to the door and glanced back over her shoulder at me. "Now I'll go tell Yoshi you're in jail."
"Bad cop," I croaked. "Go lie down by your squad car."
She narrowed her eyes. "Get a haircut."
By the time she got downstairs into the street, I had my voice back. I sprinted up three platforms to the front window and yelled, "I'm growing it out!"
Late that afternoon, Tick-Tick's brother arrived on her doorstep.
The first news I had of it was a voice with an Elflands accent down in the street calling, "Excuse me?
Hello, the—the building. Is someone there?"
Damn, had everybody else in the place gone out? And one of them must have closed the front door. I bounded to the window again and stuck my head out.
He looked like her. It almost undid me. I would
never
have mistaken him for her, but you could see her in the straight, rather high-bridged nose, the long eyes, the undercut lower lip.
He called up, "Is this where—" He dropped his chin to his chest for just an instant, then tipped his head back again to look at me. "Is this where the one who called herself Tick-Tick lived?"
"You're her brother."
He seemed surprised. "Yes. I was—I am."
"Come on up," I told him, and pulled the ring that unlatched the door.
"This way," I called over the balcony railing when he came into the atrium, and after that let him find his own way up. He stood in the doorway half timid, half arrogant, and each one made the other harder to deal with, I bet.
"Come in. My name is Orient." This one wouldn't want to shake hands.
"Do… don't humans usually have two names?"
I couldn't keep from smiling a little. "Sometimes."
"Oh! Oh, of course. You are the one who was her partner."
That surprised me. "I didn't think she kept in touch."
"In touch? Oh. No. That is, there are those who doùwho write to their families, who visit—and I asked that they convey word of her, when they could." He scowled at me suddenly. "I did not have her spied upon. Some families do, whose children have fled."
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"No, I don't think she would have le
t that happen." Once I saw him up
close, I was willing to guess that
he was older than Tick
-Tick. He wore an expensive-looking wide-skirted coat in a sober sha
de of dark
green, and a silk cravat, and had a heavy gold ring with what was probably the family crest embossed on it on his left hand. He looked like a fine upstanding pillar of the Faerie community. He also looked completely out of his element and aware of it, about evenly concerned for my good will and his dignity.
I slung another assortment of stuff off the dairy-cow print chair and said, "Make yourself comfortable.
And I didn't catch your name."
"I—my name of custom is Vissa. You may use that."
"Thank you." I did know my manners, and that included Faerie manners, so I offered him food and drink before asking him what I could do for him.
He refused the refreshments and said, "I have come to take my sister home."
I'd thought it might be something like that. I filled the kettle and lit the fire under it, which would have been an embarrassing gesture if the gas hadn't decided to flow today. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him watching the procedure. Not scornful, not amazed, just interested. "What happens to the bodies of dead people is always a big topic with humans. Some of us figure the occupant has moved out, and
they're compost. Some of us think there's still a connection between the dead person and the body, and that what happens to the latter affects the former. And some of us think it doesn't matter one way or the other, but that the people who are still living should be content with the arrangement, whatever happens to the remains." I couldn't think of Tick-Tick as "remains" yet, but it had been two days. Sometimes a strange artificial distance would set in, as if she'd gone on an extended jaunt into the Nevernever and I didn't expect her back for a month. I think it was what Ms. Wu had called denial, and I was pretty sure it wouldn't last.
"And where," asked Vissa, his chin up, "do you stand, on the matter of the bodies of the dead?"
Haughty—but not as haughty as he might have been, I realized. I knew some nose-in-the-clouds feel-my-pedigree Truebloods who would have asked what the opinions of humankind had to do with the
funeral customs of real people. "I'm not sure," I told him, rummaging in the cupboard for the new tin of Earl Grey. "This is—" my voice cracked; I took a deep breath and backed up. "This is the first time I've had to think about it, really. But my first impulse is to respect her wishes."
He made a harsh noise which wasn't quite a snort, and said, "And have you some way to ask her what they are? I have none."
"No. But I—she was my best friend for four years. And from that, I'd say that if you want her at home, you should leave her here. Because that's what she thought of Bordertown as."
He shook his head, a quick impatient gesture that was a little like one of hers. I couldn't call back the picture of her doing it, though. Such a short time, and already she was sneaking away. This was proving to be one of the few sensitive discussions I'd ever had that I would have preferred to be able to conduct on the telephone.
"I will believe that this was her home, as any place may be that shows the exile a kind face, that offers food, shelter, work to do, and a circle of friends. But the place of one's birth and raising may show one whatever face it may and still be at the center of the heart. Its loss leaves a hollow place, like a nutshell
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without the me
at. She would
not have spoken of it, for one does not speak of what one thinks cannot be
mended. But I cannot believe
she did not feel the loss."
I thought about the place of my birth and raising. Maybe it was an attachment that only occurred in the landed gentry. "Are you sure you're not judging the way she felt by the way
you
do? I'm sorry to keep on about this, but I was here, and I can't remember her ever suffering from anything that looked like homesickness."
I had the impression that he thought I was just being dense, that I was missing his point. He turned his hands palm up and spread them wide, as if opening a box, as he said, "Her spirit should be sent forth from the home of her kin. How else can it be? Generations of our family have been sung to their rest there. We held that land as ours before any human nation that still stands was formed."