forty-four #3
They were the closest to Hannu’s size, but she still required a belt, and the long-sleeved top was baggy on her limbs.
When stuck with her plain brown hair that she pulled up into a bun to keep it out of the way, she looked more like a fresh recruit than the kind of experienced mercenary who would accompany Sulim di’Graelic to a clandestine meeting elsewhere on the small continent.
“You have to look more confident.” Even though every mercenary on Cerilyn wore black, Sulim had quickly learned the differences in the cuts and emblems accompanying each tribe’s members.
She and Hannu stuck out with their plain black clothing, regardless of the V-necks cut across their chests.
The Third Tribe crew going about their business in Bow Village looked askance at them from the moment they arrived.
Sulim knew better than to make eye contact with contract assassins and professional undercover ops who put a lot of her skills to shame.
I out-hack any of them, though. Sulim was willing to bet her money on it.
“Everyone here expects us to carry ourselves with a certain… swagger.”
Sulim didn’t know how to demonstrate besides keeping her shoulders squared and her chin up enough to see what was going around her.
Her sunglasses transformed into small holographic lenses when she pushed on one of the screws.
It allowed her to check for messages on her communicator without getting it out and alerting everyone around her.
“Sorry, but the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in six hundred years is… this.”
Hannu fell in line behind Sulim as they entered a day-club in the middle of town.
The proprietor met them at the counter. After Sulim gave him the code for the meeting, he ushered them through the door behind him and down a flight of stairs into the underground passages that created a second city beneath the surface village.
Sulim knew which auxiliary room to enter for their meeting. Already, a waitress from the club was there, serving flavored water to the two women from Third Tribe who awaited Sulim.
“You brought a friend?” Eyne, Sulim’s old acquaintance from Qahrain who took the same ship as her to Cerilyn before being recruited by Third Tribe, showed more interest than her partner, a short, mute woman named Nem.
But Sulim knew how to read Nem’s poker face like she knew Eyne put up a front of investment.
She’s more amused than anything else. “That wasn’t on the roster. Where’s Sonall?”
Sulim took a seat across from them and gestured for Hannu to sit next to her. “In Spear City, doing the other half of our search. This is… Hannu. She’s with me as far as Chief Mira is concerned. Don’t worry. I trust her.”
While Nem remained still behind the table, Eyne twisted her neck and coughed before letting her next bout of laughter rip through the room.
“Is that code for sleeping with her, Sul? Because she doesn’t seem your type. You like your women… well, you like tops.”
Sulim wouldn’t let the first woman she ever slept with embarrass her.
That’s her whole thing, especially since she joined Third Tribe.
Sulim was well aware of the tactic. Catch them off guard so you always have the upper hand.
While she had not anticipated this course of conversation, Sulim was prepared for anything.
“Hannu isn’t a mercenary. She’s just dressed in blacks to avoid detection in town.”
“Sulim, sweetie, we know every member of your tribe by face and gait. We had her pigeonholed as an outsider immediately. Now, Hannu…”
Eyne directly spoke to the woman who had been quiet this whole time.
“You’re on hallowed ground here. We were under the impression that we were only meeting Sulim today. Her bringing that partner of hers wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, but pardon me, you’re not exactly what we expect around these parts. What are you? A scholar? Researcher? You’re built like one.
What’s your last name?”
Before Sulim could feed Hannu an answer, the woman blurted out, “Adelah.”
Sulim groaned.
“Adel…” Eyne’s eyes widened, but not as large as Nem’s. “That’s a julah name. Holy shit! Sulim, you brought a fucking julah here?”
“Would you relax? She’s a priestess. Takes a whole vow about not harming anyone with her sorcery.”
“Oh, yes, and we saw how that went with that new chief of yours. Whom you’re also sleeping with, by the way.”
“According to you, I sleep with everyone.”
“God, I wish. Slutty Sulim would be the most dangerous mercenary in the universe if you ever used your seductive qualities for more than flirting. Ha! Another julah on Cerilyn.”
“Quite a few right now,” Sulim said. “For reasons we discussed yesterday.”
When Eyne switched back to serious, she didn’t waste time. “Yes. Your cipher took us ten minutes to crack, by the way. New record. You’ve really raised the bar this time.”
“Well? What do you think?”
“About our chief holding one of your Relics? Well, this whole thing is insane, but we can’t deny that our birdies in the trees have seen a tall, blond bastard moving through the jungle. They know a julah when they see one, and have not interfered. But we all know about it.”
“Do you think it could be Nerilis Dunsman?” Sulim asked, while Hannu gasped.
“Let’s just say that when you told me what you’re plotting over in Second Tribe, it made me think twice about dismissing you. Your intentions, anyway.”
“What’s that mean?”
Eyne sighed, cracking one side of her neck while her hand massaged the other.
Age and life and Cerilyn had been as good to her as they had been to Sulim, who had started cutting her hair and avoiding the sun.
Eyne, on the other hand, let her dark hair grow wild and had acquired a tan one only saw on the docks and farm fields of Qahrain.
Funny, since Third Tribe mostly stays inside, underground, or in the trees.
Did Eyne use her same flirtatious wiles on assignment?
Because nobody was a bigger, more atrocious flirt than Eyne, who decided to make sweet juice out of a shit situation by seducing any girl in the Second Tribe fortress she could find.
Including me. It hadn’t been difficult. She merely wished that Eyne wasn’t such a troublemaker.
But she was the best contact Sulim had in Third Tribe, especially since Eyne and her partner Nem had moved up the ranks to become one of the chief’s most trusted teams.
Eyne knew things from the inside in ways that Sulim knew Second Tribe.
They fed each other information, which sometimes included warnings and hot stock tips on the Federation market.
“You say that your julah chief divined that one of the Relics is our chief’s dagger. Do you know anything about it?”
“No, but I’m assuming it’s important to him.”
“I don’t know the whole story, but I’ve seen it plenty of times. It’s still covered in old blood. After a few years, I’ve concluded it’s his mother’s. Either the crazy old fuck killed her himself, or his father did. I haven’t decided.”
Nem cleared her throat and shook Eyne’s arm for attention. Whatever silent language they shared, it was spoken in only a few seconds of acknowledging one another.
“Right,” Eyne said. “He’s killed a few people himself with that dagger. Always washes off the fresh blood. Keeps the old. I’m still convinced it’s his mother’s. Anyway, there’s a big, fat reason it can’t be the Relic you’re looking for.”
“Why?”
“Because the mother-fucker woke up in the middle of the night, convinced that he had a vision from the High Priestess, and chucked it into a vat of acid. He destroyed it. There’s no way that it’s the Relic anymore, if it ever was.”
Sulim was speechless.
“You have a vat of acid lying around?” Hannu asked.
Eyne almost looked shocked that Sulim’s traveling companion spoke. “How the hell else do you quickly get rid of bodies? We don’t have a pit to chuck the dead into! And we can’t go cremating everyone who dies around here! So, acid! And the bones are buried!”
“You personally saw him do this?” Sulim asked.
“Sure did. Man went screaming in his nightclothes through the hallways, rousing Nem and me here from a good night’s sleep. A whole group of us followed him down into the undercroft and watched him do it. Only now am I really understanding what might have happened.”
“Shit.”
Eyne shrugged. “Sorry you came out all this way for me to tell you that. Honestly, even if you wanted it, I’m not sure what we could have done to help convince him to hand it over. Unless that’s what the High Priestess was trying to do last night.”
She suddenly choked on her spit. When Eyne had her faculties again, she exclaimed, “Wait, isn’t your chief the daughter of Nerilis Dunsman and Her Holiness?”
Hannu assumed the prayer position at the High Priestess’s title. “I see word really has gotten out,” Sulim muttered.
“My own julah contact on Terra III informed me. I have to say, Sul, you’ve got good taste in women. Second only to me.”
“I don’t recall you ever getting into bed with Mira.”
As they awkwardly laughed over the circumstances, Sulim ruminated on this new information.
We really came out here for nothing, huh?
Even if she couldn’t secure the Relic today, she could at least confirm its existence and plot their next move.
Now, we have nothing. She should contact Mira via communicator before driving back home through the jungle.
With any luck, they’d be back before dinner.
Sulim exchanged more information with the others, although none of it was earth-shattering when more important things loomed on the horizon.
Neither Eyne nor Nem could help with figuring out what the Relic could be now—all Sulim knew, and Hannu wasn’t much more knowledgeable, was that Relics could change over the years.
Or in the radical case of one being destroyed in normal circumstances.
“So, now what?” Hannu asked after Eyne and Nem left.
Sulim sat quietly, tapping her thumbs against her mouth as she steepled her fingers and attempted to formulate a plan.
“I don’t think we’ll get many answers around here,” she eventually said.