Chapter 19
DHOMHES
Stron's absence had become a terrible measure of time.
Dhomhes moved through the complex with four guards, listening to the search reports. The passenger line was being brought inside. One guard had Sereya's last sighting: Adryel near the bottom of the ramp, then hidden from view by other arrivals.
Not on the transport. Not among the passengers entering housing.
He had stood beside the ramp promising safety, and someone had taken a female almost within reach of his hand.
The first reports from the main corridor yielded nothing. A guard ahead turned toward a maintenance access. There were sounds beyond it: an impact, metal rattling, voices carrying unevenly through machinery.
Dhomhes went down.
By the time he reached the turn, the fighting had stopped. A male was speaking, but the words broke against the running equipment. Dhomhes caught a tone of insolent calm that made him move faster.
Then the passage opened enough for him to see.
Stron held a knife level in the yellow light. His knife. Blood marked Stron's mouth, and his armor stood fully extended. Adryel was against the wall beyond him, upright, watching the male facing the blade.
He took in the rest in one sweep. A weapon on the floor. Disturbed dust. Adryel's hand near her side. The prisoner measuring the new arrivals without much hope of doing anything about them.
“Take him,” Dhomhes said. “Alive.”
Two guards moved in. The male went without a fight.
Stron crossed to Adryel and put a hand against her face.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said. “But Stron—”
“I know,” he said.
Dhomhes stayed out of the space between them. The guards searched the prisoner before taking him up the passage. He watched their hands, the prisoner's shoulders, the places where a concealed weapon might still turn a captured male into a fresh disaster.
One of them sent the prisoner's identification to his comm. Burk. The Kerde policing record opened beneath the captured male's image. Dhomhes saved it before looking up at Stron.
Stron glanced toward him.
“He came for a data chip. Evidence against the Rhysgarrds. Says they sent others.”
Dhomhes held his gaze, then nodded. He had questions. They could wait until Adryel was out of this tunnel.
The guards took Burk around the turn.
“Well,” Dhomhes said. “That was interesting.”
“Not the word I would use,” Stron replied.
Dhomhes looked at Adryel, then back at him.
“She needs to be checked by a medic.”
“I'm fine,” Adryel said.
“You were just grabbed off a transport ramp by a Kerde policing guard who turns out to be a Rhysgarrds operative,” Dhomhes said pleasantly. “You'll see the medic.”
She opened her mouth.
“He's right,” Stron said.
Adryel looked at him. Whatever she found in his face persuaded her to close her mouth again.
Dhomhes excused himself before either of them could notice how much effort the pleasant tone was costing him.
At the top of the maintenance stairs, he put his hand against the wall and drew one slow breath.
Then he called his lead.
By the time he reached the operations room, every part of the landing was being checked again.
He wanted to know how Burk had reached Kantenan, how he had reached this complex, and which door had taken him from an apparent worker or passerby to a position behind Adryel on the ramp. No one yet had answers worth keeping.
He refused the first attempt to give him one that sounded tidy.
“Find out,” he said. “Then tell me.”
Burk had been searched and secured. The weapon was held separately. Dhomhes looked at the first image from the cell and thought of the minute he had told Stron he worried too much.
His comm sounded.
Sereya.
Please tell me when you know about Adryel.
He called her.
“They found her,” he said as soon as she answered. “She's with Stron. They're going to the medic.”
Sereya closed her eyes.
“Was she hurt?”
“She's walking and speaking. I don't have the medical report yet.”
Her breath came out shakily. “Thank you.”
“Are you in your room?”
“Yes.”
“Does it suit you?”
“It has a door that locks. I've become fond of those.”
“So have I.”
She studied his face through the small projection.
“Wash that hand before you come,” she said.
He looked down at the shallow scrape across his knuckle. He had caught it on the stairs without noticing.
“I will.”
He should have ended the call. There were people waiting, a captured operative downstairs, a security failure that deserved his entire attention.
Instead he said, “I promised I could keep you safe here.”
Sereya went quiet.
“You brought us here to try,” she said at last. “You didn't bring him here to hurt her.”
“He got past us.”
“Then find out how. But don't give him all the rest of you while you're doing it.”
Dhomhes looked at her for a long moment.
“I'd like to see you when I can.”
“Come.”
“It may be late.”
“I'll tell you if I'm too tired. You needn't decide that for me.”
He smiled a little.
“A developing habit of mine.”
“I've noticed.”
The call ended. He washed his hand before returning to work.
Stron contacted him after the medical visit.
Adryel had needed treatment for a wound along her ribs. The news made Dhomhes briefly incapable of a civil answer. He waited until he could ask the practical questions without making Stron endure his anger too.
Then Stron told him about the chip.
It was safe. Adryel had hidden it in his family crest before the flight; he knew now what he had been carrying. Burk had gone after a thing she no longer had on her body.
Stron gave him the rest with Adryel's permission. She had worked as a waitress in one of the Rhysgarrds' clubs. She had copied financial records and other files, and kept recordings of conversations the family had never expected a server to save.
Dhomhes looked at the freight inquiry still waiting on his desk. Adryel might have carried the missing part of it all the way to Kantenan.
He asked for a protected examination copy when she was ready to provide one. Stron would ask her. The original stayed where she had put it.
With a named suspect and Adryel's account, the Kerde office released the lodging record it had withheld from his broader inquiry.
Sret had died in the same unit listed on Adryel's application.
Nine days later, Adryel had enrolled. Burk's request to question her was attached to the file, along with his questions about the Rhysgarrds.
Dhomhes put the returned record beside Stron's account. They would need Adryel's statement when the medic cleared her. For tonight, no one outside this call needed to know who held the chip.
“Who knows?” Dhomhes asked.
“You. Us.”
“Keep it that way for the moment.”
“I wasn't planning an announcement.”
“I thought I'd ask before you commissioned the banners.”
Stron made a sound with very little humor in it.
“What are you doing about him?”
“Finding out who comes looking.”
There was a pause.
“You think someone will?”
Dhomhes looked at the holding-block plan on his desk.
Burk had been close enough to Adryel to seize her. He had failed and survived. Whoever had helped put him there would want to know what had happened, and whether he had managed to get the evidence despite the failure.
“I think someone will find the uncertainty uncomfortable.”
“Keep it away from Adryel.”
“I intend to.”
He ended the call and brought his lead closer to the plan.
The cell block lay apart from the guest rooms, connected through the working corridors. There was no reason for a volunteer to go there by accident.
“The next rotation,” he said. “I want an interval outside Burk's door.”
The male looked at him.
“An interval?”
“Long enough to notice. And use.”
His lead studied the approach.
“Roemary.”
“Perhaps. I want to see whether she'll go to him when she thinks she can.”
“And if she brings a weapon?”
“We stay close enough to stop her using it.”
He marked where the guards would wait beyond sight. The guest corridor remained guarded. His lead would release the cell lock remotely once Roemary reached it, leaving her to mistake a supervised opening for a careless guard rotation. The approach and the release would both be recorded.
The housing desk had already passed on Roemary's request to see the detained Alliance staff member.
Dhomhes had the clerk give her the block and cell number, with instructions to wait outside for the incoming guard before asking about a visit.
She would have a reason to approach the door, and a change of guard to watch.
Whether she waited as instructed was up to her.
His lead regarded the plan for another moment.
“You'll watch it yourself.”
“Yes.”
There was no point pretending otherwise.
He reached Sereya's room before the arranged change of guard.
She opened the door in her gray dress, without shoes. Her hair was loose. It took him an instant to get past that to the cup in her hand.
“They brought tea,” she said. “I asked for another cup.”
“An optimist.”
“You said you'd come.”
She stepped back to let him in.
The room was small, but the bed was made and the lamp gave a warmer light than the refinery corridors. Someone had put a chair by the window. Sereya had moved it close to the table and found another.
He set his comm where he could see it, then sat.
For the first time since the landing, no one immediately asked him to decide anything.
Sereya poured the tea.
“I warned her,” she said.
He looked up.
“Adryel. On the ship. About Roemary. Only that she was planning something. I didn't know what.”
“I saw you sitting together.”
“I don't know whether it helped.”
“You gave her what you knew.”
Sereya turned the cup between her hands.
“She thanked me.”
The surprise in her voice hurt him.
“I expect she meant it.”
“Yes.” Sereya's mouth softened. “I think she did.”
For a little while they drank the tea. It was too strong. He liked it better than anything he had been brought all afternoon.
“I thought there would be fewer pipes,” she said.
He looked toward the window. It faced an illuminated crossing of lines between two buildings, an impressive view if one's interests happened to be pressure and flow.