Chapter 18
The sound of someone moving around outside her room woke Fiona with a start.
She turned her head, found Hal already out of their bed, naked, his focus on the door.
“Trayla?” she asked softly.
He turned back. “Maybe.” He slid on the uniform pants he’d worn the night before and went through the door, closing it behind him.
Fiona pulled herself up, swung out of bed herself—enjoying that the height of the bed was Balcoan and human-sized, rather than the higher beds of the Grih—and pulled on the dressing gown that came with the room.
Given she hadn’t heard signs of fighting from beyond, she guessed it had been Trayla.
She had slept with her reflector bracelet on, and she enjoyed the comfort of knowing it would protect her as she opened the door and stepped out into the shared lounge of the suite.
It was morning—she had obviously managed quite a few hours of sleep—and the room was flooded in light.
Trayla, Natta, his handler and Hal all turned to her.
It looked like there was an uncomfortable tension in the room.
“Natta, you look better.” She was pleased to see he looked completely healed.
“I heard it was your turn to go to hospital.” He was studying her as if assessing whether she was really okay, and she sent him a smile.
“I fortunately don’t like the taste of grilko. It saved me.” She looked over at Trayla, and saw her new friend was also watching her, hands clasped together. “You all right, T?”
Trayla blinked. “Better, now I know you’re okay. You should have woken me last night.”
“I was too tired to do anything but collapse,” Fee told her. “I was barely making sense, so there was no good reason to wake you just to let you know I was going to bed.”
“You shouldn’t have been asleep—” Natta’s boss, Lieutenant Crin, started speaking, but Hal stopped her with a chop of his hand.
“It was after two in the morning, we entered extremely quietly, and Trayla had been working for almost a full day and night by then. With no one to switch off with.” Hal outranked Crin, and her eyes widened at his rebuke.
“Point taken. My apologies, Corporal.” Crin inclined her head in Trayla’s direction.
“That said, as we all seem to be here, let’s order some breakfast and talk this over.” Fiona yawned. “I need to shower, though.”
By the time she was showered, dressed and stepped back out into the lounge, breakfast had been delivered. And to her relief, it looked as if someone, probably Hal, had made sure there were plenty of Balcoan dishes included, not just the standard Grihan fare.
Trayla looked as if she’d dived through the shower, too, and Hal had been right behind her in the bathroom.
She’d flicked him a look as he’d stepped under the water, and he’d smiled at her.
“It was your idea to order breakfast,” he reminded her.
“I know.” She watched him a moment longer. “I’m just too darn dedicated, is all.” She grinned. “And hungry. I think they might have pumped my stomach last night.”
She was in the lounge, helping Trayla lay out the breakfast the hotel had brought them on the big dining table, when Hal stepped out of their room. His casual clothing seemed to surprise the rest of their company, and she watched their reactions as he eased himself down at the table beside her.
“I’m getting the sense you are considered a Big Deal,” Fiona said, looking over at him. “Is that because you’re the captain of a battleship?”
Trayla’s eyes widened and her nostrils flared, and Fee guessed she was right on the money. “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said at the shocked silence from everyone else and the raised eyebrows from Hal. “Will your dread and awe hinder you from speaking out?”
Trayla smothered a quick laugh, then cleared her throat. “I am a little intimidated, but no.”
“I might have been, before, but after that look Captain Vakeri just gave you, I don’t think I am anymore.” Natta looked amused.
“What look was that?” Fiona asked.
“Exasperated,” Natta said.
Lieutenant Crin seemed more and more shocked, and Hal leaned forward.
“I’m here because Fiona is extremely important to me, not in my role as a battleship captain. Let’s put rank aside for now.”
Fiona didn’t know if Crin was capable of that, but she said nothing, and Fiona began to put food on her plate.
“Does anyone have Baruke’s status as of this morning?” Hal asked.
“I do.” Eazi must have decided to speak to the whole group, because the other Grih at the table all reacted with surprise. Hal was obviously getting used to it because he barely flinched.
“The leader is being discharged this morning and his daughter is going to take him home and stay with him for another day while he recovers fully.”
“Is his security with him?” Trayla asked.
“They’ve been stood down, just in case they were involved in the poisoning. I don’t think Baruke trusts his own people at the moment,” Eazi said.
“So who’s watching him?” Natta paused in the process of loading up his plate.
“He’s asked General Olna for four Grih soldiers, which she’s given him, while they look for new Balcoan guards for him that are not part of the current team.” Eazi’s tone was neutral.
“While he’s got Grihan guards, he’s probably not going to do anything too interesting in case we spy on him,” Hal said, and he sounded genuinely disappointed about it.
“Like what?” Crin asked.
“Like speak to the group that was whispering in his ear not to deal with Fiona.” Hal explained the conversation they’d had with Baruke the night before.
“So this Bost person was keeping him away from Fiona, and telling him the delivery issues for Paxe’s ship were a result of a demand and supply problem.” Natta bit into a piece of fruit thoughtfully. “We need to find this person.”
“First, we need to find Trayla’s handler,” Fiona said. She’d forgotten about Lieutenant Grogan, but looking at Crin, she suddenly remembered they were one short. “Is he all right?”
“We can’t locate him.” Crin lifted her shoulders. “I’ve been told the matter has been handed over to General Olna, that there’s a team looking for him.”
“He could be in serious trouble.” Fiona thought of how they’d found Natta, and her breakfast suddenly sat like lead in her stomach.
“Or, he could be working for the other side.” Eazi’s comment threw a rock into the relatively calm pool that had been their conversation so far.
Crin and Natta looked shocked, Trayla looked sick, and Hal looked interested.
“How likely is that?” Fiona asked. “Did you catch any hint of which way we should lean?”
“I have looked over all the visual comms I could find from the streets and inside the shops he followed you into. There seems to be no hint of him signaling or communicating with anyone else,” Eazi admitted.
“Then he goes into a large building, and to me it looked as if he was using it to cut through so he could get in front of you. And he never came out the other side.”
“You’ve given this information to the general?” Crin asked.
“I have. They’ve found nothing in the building, so either he changed his appearance before he came out, or he left in a hover from the building’s underground parking area.”
“I’m worried about him,” Fiona said. “Just thinking of what happened to Natta . . .”
Trayla nodded, obviously thinking the same.
“Or he’s compromised,” Crin said. “Because his insistence on being the one to follow you two yesterday seemed too strident to me at the time. I thought it was strange.”
Fiona recalled the tension in the kitchen yesterday, but she had missed most of the conversation, only coming in at the end.
“What did Grogan know about Fiona’s plans in Distani?” Hal asked.
“I’m not sure.” Crin leaned back in her chair. “I was only told that our people had been assigned to keep Fiona safe while she was here. Grogan seemed to know more than I did, but he wasn’t willing to share.”
Hal glanced over at her, and Fiona gave a nod. That meant Grogan was either in danger, or able to cause a lot of trouble.
“It’s good to keep in mind he could be working against us,” she said.
“But it sounds as if the general has that end of things covered. What we would have been doing today, before the poisoning incident happened, is try to get back into that warehouse to see what we could find, including more parts for Paxe.”
“How did the poisoning change things?” Natta asked.
“We told Baruke most of what happened in the warehouse and what we found.” Fiona still wondered if that had been a good idea, but it had felt like the quickest way to find out where the Balcoan leader stood.
“So he might have sent people to the warehouse himself, to check out the story?” Trayla moved her empty plate away and rested her elbows on the table. “That doesn’t mean we can’t still go, does it?”
“Is the market running again today?” Fiona asked. “Because if the warehouse is still under the Security department’s control, the players in this strange game may decide to go look for more parts at the market while they still can.”
“It is running.” Natta stood. “I feel like we should get there as soon as it opens.”
Fiona checked the time, nodded. “I think some of us should go to the warehouse, others to the market, and keep in touch.” She turned to Hal, found him watching her.
“I’m with you,” he said.