Amberlough(84)

Malcolm’s head popped out of his collar. “What?”

“Didn’t spread, sir.” Tito held his hands up like he was apologizing. “Just … the marquee’s a little scorched, and the lobby—”

Malcolm didn’t wait to hear more. He snatched his watch and wallet from the bedside table and was gone. Tito scrambled after him.

“Queen’s cunt.” Cordelia threw her sheet aside and dressed in a hurry. On her way out the door, she took the small brown box of Tory’s ashes and put it in her purse. He’d want to be there, if the Ospies hadn’t got him burnt up first.

*

They took a cab. Malcolm never took cabs. This early, traffic was light and they reached the Bee just as the sun was coming up in earnest.

“Mother and sons,” said Malcolm, letting the oath out like a breath he’d held too long.

Soot and smoke streaked the front of the building. The gilding had peeled from the double doors, showing wood burnt black. White paint splashed the wreckage with an Ospie quartered circle in a circle.

The fire had started in the ticket booth, where the glass was broken in the front. “Figure they threw it in that way,” said Tito. “Lucia got here early to tidy up, and called the hounds. They sniffed around but weren’t much help. Blackboots own ’em now. She rang up Ytzak after they’d gone. He says he thinks it were some stupid kids with a handle of white blinder stuffed with a rag. Anyone cleverer would’ve used gas or paraffin. He says.”

“Does he?” Malcolm stepped across the gutter and crossed the footpath. He ran a thumb along the charred counter of the ticket booth. “Guess we’re lucky, then.”

“We gonna do the show tonight?” asked Tito.

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Cordelia. “Of course we are.”

Malcolm didn’t say anything.





CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

“Thanks for coming,” said Cyril, after the waiter had left them alone with their drinks.

The dim lights of the Crabtree House slid over Cross’s silvery hair as she nodded. “It’s been a while since I dropped in at the Crab. It’s changed a lot.”

“You could say the same about most of Gedda.”

She shrugged. “The seeds were there. Even before I went off. You know they were. Bless Amberlough, but our state takes first prize at putting the squeeze on. There were times I was glad to be in Liso—at least there everybody who wants you dead will say it to your face. Here it was all—”

“Shake with the right, shoot with the left?”

“You said it.”

“Makes emigration sound like a treat, almost.”

“Better hurry if you’re going.” She looked into her whiskey like it would solve her problems. “From what I hear, the Ospies are coming up with a whole set of travel restrictions. And I hear a lot; Veedge has me working Ins and Outs under the new management—you heard Koryon appointed him emergency director?”

“I heard.” Cyril wondered how Van der Joost would feel about Cross’s nickname. Probably nothing could really get him pinned, now that he had his little puppet in place. Koryon had been fourth in line for Hebrides’s position, and only too happy to follow Ospie orders.

“Technically, I’m still hobbled,” Cross added. “At least in the official Foxhole books. They said it’s for my protection—never know who might be pinned over one of Ada’s people switching sides—but I figure they just don’t want to pay me regular.”

“That’s how they’re doing mine as well. Expenses, no extra. I have to be on my best behavior; if the Ospies freeze my assets, I’m scratched.” There were better reasons, but Cross didn’t need to know them.

She made a face. “Bit-pinching fishwives. At any rate, Veedge brought in a bunch of new division heads. I’m under Nikita Krahe, doing customs and immigration. It’s a mess for now—old protocol, new orders, lotta spats over nothing. But watch out when they get it ironed flat. Things’ll change fast.”

“How’d you end up with the beat?” Cyril asked. “Ins and Outs, I mean.”

“I was doing it in Liso,” she said. “Monitoring trade. Since the Spice War, it’s been a murderer’s game over there, and they’ve got some interesting folk fighting up through the ranks. Just looking after Amberlough’s assets in rough country.”

“So, what do you do now? Catch smugglers?” He kept his hands relaxed around his glass, but inside his brogues he curled his toes tight.

“Just assessing the climate. Veedge wants everybody acting nice when the primary reps take a dive and the Ospies level with new regulations. He says I might be up for a promotion if I do good work.”

“‘Take a dive’?”

“Yeah. Acherby’s got a deal with them—they drop out of office and he consolidates power. They get plum positions in his new government.”

“What’s going to rattle folk? Besides the obvious.”

“Cargo limits,” she said. “Ospies want to keep Gedda’s goods in Gedda. Anything going upriver is golden. But you try to take it out of the country, the taxes’ll scratch you. Ask me, the salt folk are going to be madder at the riverboat captains than they are at the unionists. There’ll be fights at the docks for sure.”