Just nine months of pretending. Then home to Pella.
Their boots scuffed the dry clay. They closed in on the shack.
“There’s only five in there,” said Toornan. “Four big men, and an old man who looks like the bookkeeper.”
“Jools,” said Terese, “did the dossier say how much traffic this trading post gets?”
“If it’s the place in the mission brief, it doesn’t have a name,” said Jools. “The post has erratic business, like the rest of Chastity Territory’s trading stations. Some days there’s no trading at all, others it’s bustling. I suppose that’s normal for places with no established roads, that keep—”
“All right,” Terese said, squinting against the sunrise. “When we get there, you two guard the door, I’ll speak to them.”
She was certain her two Missionaries turned their heads to one another behind her back.
“Is that safe?” Jools said.
Terese patted the shockpole at her waist and forced a smile. “I’ve faced worse, Jools. I’ll call if I need help.”
A burly man with a nail bat leaned against the door-less, rough-arched entry; locked doors in the Wastes gave the mistaken impression there were things of worth inside. Cenephan traders working outside a Wall took their goods home each day. An old hand-pulled cart was parked off to the side. The man straightened.
“Right, you three.” He clapped one hand with the bat. “I don’t know you, and any fool can carry a shockpole. Show me—”
Terese ducked close, hefting her shockpole and sticking him in the belly. The blow wasn’t heavy, but the shockpole’s vibration charge staggered him.
The man wheezed and collapsed, his eyes open but his body immobilized.
One down, four standing. “Watch him, Jools.”
Light entered the single-storey clay house through a barred hole in the ceiling. A sharp-jawed man waited, arms folded, inside the larger room. She guessed he was the boss. Flanking him was an old man, likely the trading gang’s bookkeeper, next to a blanket with technical wares. There were no women; trading outside a Wall was a hazardous activity in the Refugee Territories.
The last two men had their club and machete ready as she entered. They came at her. She emptied her mind, her instincts taking over. The men were troublesome, but blades weren’t as dangerous as the grasping, sharp claws of screaming cadvers.
She stepped close instead of countering. Made it look like she’d rely on her shockpole, then used her knees. Spun, instead of following through on a strike. In only heartbeats, the two men lay prone and paralyzed on the shack’s clay floor.
Terese thumbed off her shockpole and hung it at her waist, then turned away from the boss and the old man, lifting the back of her shirt and exposing the lower half of her Seeker tattoo. The colorful, almost lifelike insignia of a flame in a cage, so detailed and vivid that counterfeit versions of the tattoo were either impossible or too costly. And certainly too dangerous to keep.
She turned around.
“Nice shockpole,” the boss said, his voice nasal. His face and tone were politely casual.
“Your men will be fine,” Terese said. “You can believe my tattoo is real or not. You’re still going to answer my questions.” She checked behind her. Neither Jools nor Toornan were visible. It was time.
She retrieved the paper from her belt, pushing it at the old man. He took it and fingered his unkempt white beard. She almost let out a sigh of relief when he squinted at its first line.
He can read! Thank you, Gods!
Terese gave him a graphite stylus when he looked up in surprise after reading the first few lines.
She held a finger to her lips. The old man nodded eagerly, understanding the circumstances she’d explained in the note, and set to writing.
“I’ll have answers from you,” she said to the boss, tapping her shockpole. “I’m tracking chaos.”
The boss examined the old man frantically writing, then Terese, his eyes narrowing. “All who live in Polis’s light aid the Seekers without hesitation, Miss Seeker,” he said. No mention so far of her foreign accent.
She made her voice deliberately haughty for the listeners. “There are chaos mechanisms moving through trading stations out this way. The Royal holograms sent to the chapterhouses have reported chaos energy surges,” she said slowly, buying the old man more time to write.
“Never mess with chaos,” the boss said. “There’s stories about the borderlands, and further east of here. We’ve enough problems with cadvers. We don’t want chaos about. It’ll bring more of ‘em.”
The old man put the stylus and paper down hurriedly, fetching an electric fan from the blanket with the wares and putting it before Terese. The boss looked at the fan, bafflement plain on his face.
“No, no, don’t deny it. You’re not masterminding a smuggling operation, that’s obvious. But you’re a cog in a grander set of gears. You still have information. You know something I don’t.” She slowed her voice and kept it calm. “Tell me where the rest of the rogue trading stations are.”
The old man gestured desperately at the boss, communicating some familiar idea with wide sweeps of his arms. Terese hoped the boss understood her intentions.
The boss regarded her for a long moment. “I assure you, Seeker, I don’t trade with the Darkness. I can’t scan for chaos, not like you can, and I can’t vouch for all my patrons, but I don’t touch nothing if I reckon it’s got chaos. Bad for business.”
Terese pointed at the blanket loaded with mechanisms in the corner. “That one there. It’s a currency counter. You do know the law about trading with currency?”
The boss never blinked. “Cenephan refugees are not permitted to receive currency energy.”
“And so, you will be relieved to part with useless stock.” She clicked her fingers at the old man, who fetched the currency counter for her, leaving it beside the electric fan.
Terese bent to inspect the counter. The mechanism was a thick, upright metallic rod just over a foot
