“Yes, sir.” She wanted to grin and laugh in triumph, to dance and sing and ruffle Lijjen’s perfect hair.
A slight vibration hummed within Lijjen’s desk, beneath the blinking artifact light. There was nothing unusual or interesting in that, but she’d have wagered her twelve years-worth of pension that Lijjen’s recording mechanism had just signaled him it had collected the data from her light plate armor.
She fought a grin from her face. He’d find absolutely nothing on that recording, save a month of Patzer boasting, and her polite, resigned acknowledgements.
“Complete an excursion report within three days. You’ll be given a domestic command,” he said, looking down at a folder on his desk and making a show of shuffling papers. The man was a terrible actor. “You’ll perform a segment of the rostering duties, replacing Head Chuddar.” He looked at her a long moment. “Ask Chuddar if you need help. You begin when the ten-day cycle renews.” He paused again, waiting.
It would look odd if she didn’t ask, so she said, “Sir, if you don’t mind my asking, what came of that workshop?”
“We found nothing more than your Missionaries reported. We cleansed the place and left.” Did Lijjen seem more… relaxed? “Dismissed.”
She clicked her heels and took her leave.
If the renegades couldn’t be found by a bounty hunter of Patzer’s evident stature, she looked a little safer. Host chapterhouses didn’t have the authority to demote foreign members and her whole complement still had to finish off the year’s mission if they couldn’t find the renegades.
Gods, she owed Patzer a favor! The awful man had soothed some paranoia, convincing Lijjen to disregard her and put her to shuffling and spreading names around duty rosters. It was an essential position in any chapterhouse, but an awful one. Especially in a chapterhouse this large.
Her mind wandered, threading back to the past. She paced the corridors, unwilling to return to her apartment.
“Wonderfully done, Terese,” her father had said at the reception celebrating her promotion to head, his Holder robes freshly laundered. “Now,” he chuckled, clapping a hand on her shoulder, “you get to do rostering. Just remember it will all be over when you get your next promotion, and that nothing you do will be right and every Missionary, Assistant and Apprentice will be convinced you’re picking on them for the worst duties.”
A smile and bodily contact from her father at the same time. It had almost been the same thing as approval.
Lijjen had chosen her for rostering because she had an eye for detail and because it was the perfect assignment for a Head he wanted to forget.
She could recover. Just wait it out quietly. Patrol the streets when she needed space, sit in the officer’s courtyard when she needed sun. She had a large room with a wave speaker so she could listen to music by herself. She could probably get her Missionaries to visit her apartment with little fuss or notice. At the end of the year she would leave Polis Sumad with clerical experience and her head still firmly on her shoulders.
I should be happy, all things considered.
But the indignity of being humiliated for doing everything right!
Sumad Reach was doing something illegal, something possibly related to those hundreds of deaths back home. Somehow. Had she not worked within the Immersion Chamber she could shrug and turn a blind eye, marking the days left on her calendar.
Yet, because she’d ignored the rising queasiness in her gut, because she’d used the Immersion Project as an opportunity to progress a career based on the suffering of others, she couldn’t let it rest.
She had to fight it, whatever it was. But how? Where? More than anything right then, she needed a friend. Someone reliable, with good intentions.
She stopped where two corridors met to check the duty roster on a cork board and spied a name. She smiled. How appropriate that she should see it now.
Her eyelids weighed more than they should have and there was a sore spot under her foot. A month of dust and sweat clogged her pores and tangled her hair. She wanted to bathe, but that would have to wait. Instead she returned to her room, finally removed her plate and dug out a hooded, woolen jersey and simple trousers. She didn’t want to be recognized. She paused and rested her head on the door, her cheek cool against the darkened wood, then exited her apartment.
Many people walked the corridors in civilian clothing and nightwear. Given entire families lived in Sumadan chapterhouses, sundown saw relaxation of the rules.
She winced past common rooms of teenagers listening to music composed of complicated drum-beats. Her nostrils filled with wisps of cardamom and cinnamon near kitchens where late-night desserts simmered. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since that morning, when she and Patzer had passed over the border from the Refugee Territories. The scents dissipated once she stepped out into the cold, night air of the battlements atop Sumad Reach.
In Armer the social classes, political groups and religious denominations segregated themselves into neighborhoods of similar status. Houses and buildings were grouped together and linked by common design.
There was nothing like that here. Sumad’s dwellings and workspaces were jumbled and random. An empty stretch of broken buildings inhabited by powerheads and homeless sat next to what must have been a building full of middle-class tradesmen’s families, where a barricaded, barbed courtyard contained children playing during the daytime. A mercenary gang lived in an ugly square box fortified to the point of satire, next to an ornate and elaborate upper-class domicile with fountains, spires taller than Sumad Reach and even such extravagance as a lawn. She’d wondered how those elements lived so close to each other until one day she’d observed Street Keepers—Polis Sumad’s police force—chasing a thief. There was very little thief left by the time they finished.
The scent of oxen manure hung in the air. Below, wagons rattled and tram bells dinged. Miles south of the
