24. TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FOUR
ATTILATIA
Location: Shrokan District, Seraphinden
Two ten-days spent looking for Tessel Velenquash, and Attilatia was beginning to feel like a mutt chasing its tail.
The man had been the third son to an oligarch.
He’d taken the position as Hand to Baem Limtush of Limtush Pharmaceutical—also a Sergeant in the Red Wing—sixteen years ago.
The last record of him was his being fired for reasons of mental instability.
Being let go was a boon compared to what might have been.
Velenquash was one of seven different hands that had served Limtush over the past twenty years, and he was the only one that hadn’t died prematurely. At least, not on record.
After asking skeptical librarians in both the Skywalk and Korshuva’s public record repositories, Attilatia realized finding a current address for Velinquash wouldn’t be a simple task.
Her request for access to Seraphinden’s census data had been refused, which left her with her least favorite option to get the information she needed: tit for tat.
She stood poised at the blue swinging doors to the Shrokan messenger station, fist raised.
Chaos, she might even go so far as to say she liked Celestar, so why couldn’t she knock?
Why not share more proprietary information and hope it didn’t come back to bite her? Why not bleed a little more dignity?
Attilatia sighed. In a world governed by Chaos, there were certain universal principles which remained resolute, invariable, and constant, and they offered her strength. Nothing would happen until something moved.
She rapped twice.
A husky voice drifted through the slats in the wood. “Come in”—a giggle—“I’m all alone.”
Attilatia pushed her way in. Celestar sat upon his stool, bottom spilling over its sides. His round face split into a brilliant smile. “Atti!”
She gave him a curt nod. “Celestar.”
“Who are you here to find?”
“You.”
“Oh, I’m not your type, darling… but maybe I could be.” Another giggle.
Attilatia pulled her oculars onto her forehead, squinting in the light from Celestar’s multitude of mismatched candles. “Much as you fill my heart with endless joy… No. I need information from your book.”
Addresses, names, trade records, tax records.
Celestar kept it all, written in his perfect calligraphy, beneath the counter of the Shrokan messenger station.
But he collected fees in the form of information, and he was as particular as an art collector in deeming its value.
Sometimes he’d hold on to his secrets, no matter the notes presented.
And sometimes he folded like a gladiolus in a tropical storm for cheap gossip.
“That being?” he asked.
“Tessel Velinquash. Oligarchy. Once affiliate Red Wing command. Where I find him?”
Celestar slipped off his stool and dove beneath the counter.
He surfaced a moment later holding a tome so large, were it put to contest with the average nose, she was sure the tome would win.
He slapped it onto the counter and thumbed through its pages until something made him stop and hum with excitement.
Attilatia leaned over the counter, but he snatched the tome away. “Ah ah ah. What do you have for me?”
Her mouth twisted. She’d been prepared for this, but now she wasn’t sure it would be enough. “I... I might be seeing someone.”
“Someone… interesting?”
Attilatia shrugged. “Depend who you ask, I suppose.”
Celestar’s eyes flitted to the ceiling. Chaos. Of course it wasn’t enough. He would need to know who, of course. And sharing that might be more dangerous than asking about the Shadewalker.
“Atti, Atti. I have always been so impressed with you. Powerful men. The most powerful. Making their big speeches and big decisions from their big, squishy armchairs. Pushing money and lives around.” He ran a long, manicured finger along the dirty countertop.
“And you get them to give you everything you want. You see them naked and screaming.”
“Harness you enthusiasm. If I got what I want, I no keep coming back here because, I assure you, what I want is no to get fucked repeatedly.” She tilted her head. “At least, no by scum of patriarchy.”
Celestar waggled his tongue. “We both know I need a name.”
Attilatia tried not to let her disappointment show. She prepared her response. Ah. Well, I be leaving then, or the like. Something that wouldn’t reveal she had already searched for Velinquash everywhere and come up with less than she could pinch between her fingers.
“Or, alternatively, you could just tell me what you do want,” Celestar said.
She stared at him, lips parted, and for a moment she saw the warm, beating heart that sometimes protruded from behind Celestar’s mask of enigma and flirtation. That was a quality trade: asking her what she wanted in exchange for what she needed.
The answer came unbidden. “Freedom.”
Few things came free, and freedom the least of them.
Celestar closed his eyes. She thought she might have seen the ghost of a tear at the corner of his eye. “Freedom.”
He gave her a sad almost-smile. “Do you ever wish you were a man?”
What did that have to do with anything? She snorted. “While I might desire freedom that come with being man, it not worthy exchange for cock-mindedness or obstinacy.”
Celestar scribbled a note on a piece of paper, folded it expertly into the shape of a swan, and pushed it across the counter to her. “And your man… is he obstinate or cockminded?”
“Remains to be seen. My best guess, probably so. Good at hiding it.”
She knew how she sounded. She knew what people said behind her back: that the blood in her veins was channeled straight from the depths of the sea.
A part of her wanted to leave it that way—to walk out without another word.
They’d made their exchange. She owed Celestar nothing…
but, as she reached for the doors, she hesitated.
People didn’t start off the way she was. How did she get here? She remembered something Pinto had once said to her: that the art of conversation was not made with a single stroke.
She turned. “Celestar?”
“Yes?”
“What do you want?”
Information covetable by politicians and thieves, researchers and whores. Secrets by the hoard. Information that could have him both arrested and elected. That she already knew.
It was a long time before he finally responded without the usual singsong to his voice, a thing she could only take to mean he spoke honestly. “Perspective.” He looked at his malformed feet. “With my condition, I lost hope for what most consider freedom long ago.”
Attilatia tried to think of a response that wasn’t politely dismissive. Silence seemed appropriate.
“That address,” Celestar continued, nodding at the paper swan in her hands. “Does that get you closer to your freedom?”
It made her play Roskaad’s game. Would that get her closer to escaping Nelfindar? Probably not, but it was the best option she had. She shrugged. “Possibly.”
“If not that, then what will?” He said it like he’d set it on the table between them.
Favors: the flip side of secrets, on Celestar’s two-faced coin of business. Give her a favor, and he could take one later. Her future was just uncertain enough to indulge him. There might be another way to escape.
“Has you heard… about this queen of raiders?”
Celestar sat back in his stool, hand to his chin. “I’ve heard some things.”
“Like what?”
“Rumors, mostly.”
Year: 743 Post Cataclysm: 5 years previously
Location: Shrokan District, Seraphinden
At port in Seraphinden’s dock, Mitek pulled Fankalo into the navigation room. With the door closed behind them, the space rang with his shrill laughter.
“Out with it,” she said with a scowl.
Had he held it in for another moment, he might have exploded. “Celestar just worked us immunity from Nelfinden border patrol!”
That was worthy news. It just about made them invincible.
Smugness stole over Mitek’s expression. “You owe me big time.”
Celestar had always seemed to hold something against her; this win was fully thanks to Mitek. She crossed her arms. “Fine. What do you want?”
“I want you to give me a compliment.”
“Urrrgh. Can’t I just take an ass-kicking? Or give you an extra week to whore around Shrokan’s wharf?”
“No way. You owe me a compliment, and you have to mean it.”
Fankalo’s fingers flexed. Grave-like silence. Then—“You have nice hair.”
“Knew it.”
Attilatia tried to hide her disappointment. “Do you think it possible I find her?”
Celestar sighed. “The Queen of the Raiders is an inflated reputation, completely hollow, with nothing backing her. She represents opportunity for you like the coal sketching on a cafe menu represents food in your stomach. I would not advise you to take a bite, should you find yourself starving.”
“But she is real?”
“She is real,” he acknowledged.
“A woman no get grand reputation without foundation to build on,” Attilatia mused. “She move beyond the borders. If you have way to connect me… I can give you anything you want.”
A shadow of distaste on Celestar’s face.
“I’ve always liked you, so I’ll be frank.
She is Fate-touched, and she has used that to build an exaggerated following.
They’re con artists with gentle hearts. The aura of danger and bloodlust built around her?
It’s a facade. It is only a matter of time before the tales she has built crumble into mist.”
Year: 746 Post Cataclysm: 2 years previously
Location: Casowhatan Sea
“Kill me,” the bedraggled trader captain spat, tied to the mast by Fankalo’s men. They would leave one of his crewmen free when they moved out with their haul.
Fankalo’s dagger found its sheath. “I’m not taking lives today.” Not that she ever did, but he didn’t need to know that.
“You’ve taken everything else, you might as well.”
“Everything else?” She laughed. “It would seem you have confused money with worth. Ridiculous, really, when the value of notes is purely conceptual. Your life is irreplaceable.” She leaned in.
“See, the land and the sea hold every resource we could ever need. And yet venalists like you take those resources and find a way to turn them into deficits. Money is a game, nothing more. One you were trapped in. I would like to think I’ve finally freed you of it. ”
The trader writhed, but Zeb’s knots held true. Beads of sweat flew from his mustache as he screamed. “Fucking bitch! Bleeding hypocrite. If it’s a game, why take anything?”
Fankalo smiled and turned for the gangplank to the Rapture. “What can I say? I like controlling the board.”
Celestar’s expression grew jaded. “You know that I know things. That’s why you come here.
Trust me when I tell you, the Queen of the Raiders will not live on in the history books beyond a line of smudged ink.
You want a way out of Nelfindar? Ally yourself with the Groundling cause.
You may find things begin to turn in your favor. ”
Attilatia nodded, realizing that he might have just saved her life. When the time came for him to reclaim the favor, she hoped he found fair exchange in something less monumental.
“Of course, these are only the speculations of an uneducated, morbidly disabled messenger station attendant.” Celestar winked at her. “Who really knows what the future holds?”
Who indeed? Attilatia held up her paper swan and made it undulate through the air. “I think, time to take my friend for swim, eah?”
“Indeed. Wouldn’t want him to get thirsty. Don’t be a stranger, Atti? I’m here for you.”
She fidgeted with the hems of her sleeve. Linger long enough to not be unkind, and suddenly people wanted to be her friend. Was it really so simple?
“Thank you.”
The doors screeched shut behind her, putting her out onto Shrokan’s wharf-front street.
Desolate of utilities and teeming with vagrant life, Shrokan was a district Attilatia made a habit of avoiding whenever possible.
But something was different today that she couldn’t pin with a thought.
The streets seemed busier than ever, and yet…
they felt less threatening. Like the people here weren’t waiting for their next victim, but moving somewhere with purpose.
She passed a row of cracking adobe homes and backpedaled, bright colors catching her eye.
A mural had been painted against the wall, so brilliant and unexpected in its desolate surroundings that her mouth popped open.
The bust of a man. She knew that face, brushed in violet and orange and green—Roskaad Thyatira, eyes spotted with yellow stars.
It was the sort of thing that Patricians might have paid generously for.
A shame it had been marred: a crude black Ratka maimed it, so that it appeared as though the General Prime was looking out from behind bars.
Attilatia had a sudden feeling akin to something breathing down her neck.
She flinched before shoving her hands into pockets, continuing up the slope towards Poqualle.
Nearly twenty minutes passed before she dared to unfold the paper swan in her pocket.
What she assumed to be the address of Corporal Limtush’s sole surviving Hand was written in Celestar’s neat calligraphy.
‘Pajanak. Third floor.’
The asylum.