Kingdom of Cages(182)

Farin leaned in close to Willie. “Where’s the boy, Willie? Where are you babysitting him? I’ll bring by one of the girls to take him off your hands, and you won’t have to bother anymore, okay?”

“ ’Kay,” agreed Willie comfortably. “Got him in the caves. Cave number six.” He waved his hand vaguely westward. The effort seemed to exhaust him, because his head sagged and his eyes drooped shut.

Not yet, damn you! Farin shook Willie’s shoulder. “With Chena?” Willie peeled his eyes open and giggled. “Heeeere, kitty, kitty, kitty.” He leered, and spittle dribbled out the corner of his mouth. “You got time. Lop’ra’s not letting her go until the hothousers pay up. Could take weeks the way she haggles. Heeeere, kitty.” He snorted with laughter, and his head fell forward against his chest.

“Willie?”

In answer, Willie snored.

Farin got to his feet, running both hands through his hair. Willie snored again, and Nan Elle emerged from the darkness behind the pile of baskets. Leaning heavily against her cane, she shuffled past Farin without a word to bend over Willie and peel back one eye.

“Hmph.” She pressed two fingers against Willie’s throat and held still for a moment. “Strong batch, but he’ll be all right,” she said, straightening up slowly.

As soon as Farin saw Chena on the boardwalk the previous afternoon, he’d sent word to Nan via a rower they both knew. He’d expected a letter back, but instead she’d shown up at his door with a set to her jaw that he hadn’t seen since the last time someone in the village died from her attentions.

“Did you understand all that?” he asked. A boyhood habit. He’d never quite shaken his belief that Nan knew everything.

“Yes, I did.” Nan looked down at Willie, slumped and snoring. “It means we have a chance to save ourselves, as well as Chena.”

“I’d be grateful if you’d tell me how,” he said blandly.

“If we have the cure to the Diversity Crisis in our hands, we may just have a chip for which the hothouse must bargain.”

Of course. Everyone knew that the only reason Pandora, a clean world in the middle of the Diversity Crisis, was being left alone was that the hothousers had promised the Authority that they would come up with a cure for the Diversity Crisis. If the Authority found out the hothousers did not have any such cure, Pandora’s isolation was over.

Farin sucked thoughtfully on his cheek. “No matter what Willie says, we can’t have much time.”

“No.” Nan paused, considering. “Stem’s librarian, I think, is a friend of yours?” Farin nodded. “Wake her. See if she’s got a map of the caves. You may have to risk going overland. Your kitchen’s good enough for me to boil up some of Chena’s concoction. If she made it all the way back to Stem, she must have gotten past the cameras.” Nan paused, and the smile on her face was proud. Farin knew what she was thinking. Only Chena Trust, her apprentice, had ever beaten the mote cameras. “I’ll need to wake up Ada for some more mint.”

“I’ll walk you,” said Farin reflexively.

“Didn’t I just tell you what you were to do?” snapped Nan, also reflexively, Farin knew. She was frightened, he could see it in her eyes, but she was determined to see this through.

Farin straightened his shoulders. “Then I’d better get going.” If Willie was right, they probably had until morning to narrow down Chena’s possible locations.

But if Willie wasn’t right? Farin’s jaw tightened and he glanced toward the shuttered window. There was no way out of the village tonight. Not for them anyway. They’d have to trust the unconscious man at his feet.

Shivering at that unwelcome necessity, Farin slipped out the door.


When the door shut behind her grandson, Elle turned back to the unconscious man. There was good reason to kill him where he lay. He abetted the tailors in kidnapping Chena. He could wake too soon and alert his masters about what had passed here. His account would be fuzzy, to be sure, but he would know he’d been questioned, and by whom.

But she did not move her hands. She just stood there and watched him sleep. She wished she lay beside him. She felt old, as if every one of her sixty-eight years had settled on her back.

How did the world turn over so fast? She shook her head. How can you stand here asking such questions when there’s work to do?

Elle turned down the lamp until the light sputtered out. Then she eased the shutters open a trifle and peered outside.

Clouds obscured the moon, but after a long moment she could distinguish the slopes of the dunes and the slightly paler boardwalk. Nothing stirred that she could see. Perhaps whatever watcher the constables had set had gone off after Farin.