Trapped

jolly when a Spark has just confessed to being mentally unstable.

Dreamsinger let her laugh fade to an encouraging smile. 'But you were talking about your quest. It must be lovely to see the world… meet people… make a difference instead of constantly performing horrid rituals. What is your quest about?'

'We don't know, milady. There was just this, uhh, sort of a prophecy kind of thing. It said we'd go on a quest. No hint of what we should do.'

'Who gave you this sort of a prophecy kind of thing?'

The Caryatid cleared her throat. 'A detached dog tongue, milady.'

Dreamsinger didn't even blink. 'And it didn't give instructions?'

'No, milady. But we're, uhh, we've run into things that demand attention. Earlier tonight, there was a haunting. At Feliss Academy. And a girl was killed with what my friend believes was an OldTech bioweapon.'

Something changed in the Spark Lord's posture: a sudden stillness, an infusion of icy cold that wasn't quite hidden by the warm Hafsah illusion. 'You say your friend believes this?' She looked at me, then Impervia. 'One of these people?'

The Caryatid lifted her hand in my direction and opened her mouth to speak; but before a single word came out, Dreamsinger spun toward me, made the same three-finger gesture that unfroze the Caryatid, and caught me by the lapels as I suddenly fell free of my imprisonment.

'Your name?' she said.

'Philemon Abu Dhubhai.' Short concise answers. Spark Lords like short concise answers.

'Clan Dhubhai, Sheba province?'

'Yes. The late Governor Khadija was my grandmother.'

'Can you prove it?'

I thought for a moment, then reached into my pocket and pulled out my purse. 'Spark Royal gave her this; I inherited it.'

Dreamsinger examined the purse for a moment. Took it in her hand. Slapped it hard on a nearby table. Nothing but a jingle of coins from inside. She tossed the purse back to me. 'All right. What's your scientific background?'

'A doctorate from Collegium Ismaili. Phys-math.'

Her eyes narrowed slightly. My assessment of bioweapons would have been more credible if I'd had a degree in biology or medicine… but at least she realized I wasn't a scientific illiterate. 'Describe what you saw,' she said.

'A disease or parasite, like cottage cheese growing in the girl's nose and throat. Death by suffocation. It developed very fast: at supper she showed no symptoms, by 1:00 A.M. she was dead. The girl was the daughter of Elizabeth Tzekich, leader of the Ring of Knives. We thought the mother's enemies might have—'

Dreamsinger shook me so fiercely my teeth clacked together. If she was an eleven-year-old girl, she was a stunningly strong one. 'I see the obvious,' she said. The Sorcery-Lord pulled me closer. 'Are you certain the substance was like cottage cheese? It was white and wet, not dark and dry?'

'Very white and very wet.'

Silently, I wondered what kind of bioweapon created dark and dry deposits, but I knew better than to ask. Dreamsinger had moved her face so close to mine I could feel her breath on my nose: the smell of cinnamon and mint, just like my cousin Hafsah. 'Now, Philemon Abu Dhubhai,' she said, 'one last question and you must answer most truthfully. Is the disease contained?'

I swallowed hard. 'To the best of my knowledge, yes. We believe the disease was planted in the girl's room; she caught it there and died without ever going out. Those who found the body didn't touch anything, and the room is now sealed. But, uhh… the girl had a boyfriend. He's missing, and we don't know if he visited her while she was contagious. We don't think he did, but we aren't sure. People are searching for him near the school, but we came down here because he might have —'

Dreamsinger tossed me aside. Literally. Not trying to hurt me, just removing me from her sight. Like a child who casts away a toy that bores her. She turned back to the Caryatid. 'Dear sister, the dead girl's body is still at Feliss Academy?'

'Yes, milady.'

The Sorcery-Lord reached up and tapped one of the pearl necklaces looped about her throat. At least that's what it looked like to me — someone not befuddled by Kaylan's Chameleon might have seen something different. The necklace made a soft whistle. 'Spark Royal, attend,' Dreamsinger said. 'Give me Rashid. It's urgent.'

The necklace whistled again. Computer-controlled radio transmitter, I thought. Frustrating that I couldn't see it because of the Hafsah illusion. Two seconds later, a male voice spoke from the same necklace. 'Damn it, Dreamy, do you know what time it is?'

'No,' she said. 'I don't have a watch. My last one got broke.' Dreamsinger's voice had acquired a layer of little-girl sulkiness. How old was she? 'And even if I knew the time where I am, I wouldn't know what it is where you are. You could be anyplace from Gdansk to the Galapagos.'

'You know where I hang out these days,' the man answered. 'Right now, it's three-thirty in the morning.'

'A Spark Lord is always on call.' Primly reciting a lesson. 'We've got a potential outbreak, Rashid. Supposedly a bioweapon.'

'Says who?' asked Rashid — who had to be Lord Rashid, Science-Lord of Spark. He'd once visited Collegium Ismaili and spoken with several of my fellow students. (The promising ones. The ones with goals.)

Dreamsinger glanced at me. 'The report comes from one of the Sheba Dhubhais. He claims he knows science.'

'Hmph,' Rashid said… as if he doubted the possibility of my knowing anything. 'Which bioweapon is it?'

'Nothing I recognize. Cottage cheese in the nose and throat.'

'Hmm. Cottage cheese. Not dark and dry?'

'Not according to this Dhubhai fellow.'

Again, I wondered what threatening substance was dark and dry; but Rashid was speaking again. 'All right, I'll check it out. Where?'

'Feliss Academy.'

'Then I'm close already. Within a few hundred klicks. Meet you there?'

'No, I have other business.' Dreamsinger glanced at me. 'Tracking down a boy who may be infected.'

'If there's somebody sick wandering in public—' Rashid began.

'I know,' Dreamsinger interrupted. 'First, you tell me if it's really a bioweapon, and if it's contagious. I'll handle the sterilization.'

Rashid didn't reply immediately. Finally, he sighed. 'You're first on the scene — it's your call. I'll radio back as soon as I check the academy.'

The pearl necklace whistled once more. Dreamsinger turned straight to the Caryatid. 'Dear sister, this boy who's missing… do you have some belonging of his so we can do a Seeking?'

The Caryatid shook her head, shame-faced. 'I tried a Seeking but got nowhere. The boy's a powerful psychic. At least,' she added hastily, 'too powerful for me to find. So there was no point bringing his possessions with us. Besides, we thought Spark Royal would be annoyed if we removed anything of Sebastian's from the premises. That might be seen as tampering with evidence.'

'True.' Dreamsinger smiled: a sweet dimpled Hafsah smile. 'This Sebastian is a powerful psychic? That's…' Her voice trailed off. Judging by the look on her face, I guessed some worrisome possibility had crossed her mind; but after a few seconds, she turned to the Caryatid and said, 'Dear sister, you'd better tell me everything you know.'

It didn't take long — we didn't know much. Several times the Caryatid looked to me for help, but Dreamsinger glared me into silence: only the Sorcery-Lord's 'dear sister' was allowed to speak.

The Caryatid went through the facts (the dog tongue, the harp, the missing sword) and wisely omitted conjectures (the possibility of a doppelganger Rosalind) until she reached the explosion at Death Hotel. I could see she was aching to ask if Dreamsinger had caused the kaboom, but didn't want to seem insolent. Therefore, the Caryatid tried leading statements such as, 'The thread was sorcerer's crimson… like your cape,' in the hope Dreamsinger would say, 'That was me.' No such luck. The Sorcery-Lord stayed silent to the very end of the tale.

And the silence continued long after the Caryatid said, 'So that's everything.' Five seconds. Ten. Thirty. Dreamsinger appeared lost in thought, eyes lowered, brow furrowed. The Caryatid met my gaze with a puzzled lift of her eyebrows, but one does not disturb a pensive Spark Lord… not even when she looks like a teenaged girl and a teacher's instinct is to ask such girls, 'Would you like to talk about it?'

But I longed to know what was churning in Dreamsinger's brain. What did she know that we didn't? After all, she'd arrived in the neighborhood before she learned about the bioweapon… so she'd come here for some other reason. If this was a woman who got out so rarely she couldn't remember the last time she left Spark Royal, why had she suddenly left home to come to this turd of a village?

But I didn't dare ask. Grandma Khadija had drilled into our family the only way to deal with Spark Lords: never question, always obey. Anything else was suicide… or worse. And if you can't picture anything worse than dying, you don't know much about the Sparks.

With time on my hands, I stole a glance at Impervia. She'd been trapped in solidified air for several minutes; how well was she breathing? I remembered the sensation, like sucking air through a blanket… and Impervia had built up an unhealthy oxygen debt in her exertions during the fight. Now her eyes had an unfocused look, not turning to meet my gaze. She might have passed out inside her invisible cocoon — either that, or she'd deliberately forced herself to slide into some semimystic martial arts trance.

I hoped that was it. I hoped she hadn't completely suffocated.

Perhaps Dreamsinger saw me staring in Impervia's direction. With a sudden, 'Aha!' the Sorcery-Lord snapped out of her reverie and strode toward the bar. Her goal, however, was not Impervia; she moved to the spike-armed Hump and clapped her hand in front of his mouth. 'Speech only,' she murmured. 'Neck up, release.'

Her words must have been a command to the nanites who held the enforcer in place. While Hump's body remained frozen, a breath exploded from his mouth followed by a great and grateful inhalation. Apparently the spell had let go of his head, allowing him to breathe freely. Dreamsinger gave him five seconds to guzzle oxygen, then squatted beside his shoulder. 'Now,' she said softly, 'tell me about this town's Smuggler Chief. Name. Headquarters. Any defenses I might encounter on a visit.'

Hump gave a snort he probably thought was a haughty laugh. 'If you think I'll tell you shit, you're crazy.'