The marshals’ office in Arafez was nearly identical to the one in Tingis and Syfax quickly threaded a path through the hallway traffic to the locker room where he took a quick shower and changed into someone else’s clothes and boots. With the slime and smell of the Zemmour Canal finally gone, he found the records room where he took one look at the rows and rows of cabinets before asking the clerk to find an address and any files on Barika Chaou. The young woman appeared to be in no particular hurry until he presented his badge for verification and she saw his name etched along the bottom of it. Within three minutes, Chaou’s file was in his hand.
The first few pages were standard. Education, work history, current and previous residences. But the list of known contacts and associates read as a who’s who of the wealthy elite of Marrakesh, Espana, and Numidia. It went on for pages, names of people followed by brief descriptions of how and why Chaou knew them. Bankers, diplomats, merchants, generals, admirals, princes, and countless others that meant nothing to him. The file was long, detailed, and therefore useless. It gave him a thousand leads and none of them were people he could reasonably shove up against a wall in a dark alley. Syfax flipped to the back of the folder to the errata and found a few pages of miscellany, some letters and memos, most of it several years old.
He tossed the file onto the clerk’s desk and rubbed his eyes.
“No help, sir?” the clerk said.
“Not really. Give me the one on Lady Sade.”
She hesitated for a bare instant before taking back the Chaou file and fetching the one on Lady Sade. It landed on the desk with a heavy thump and Syfax exhaled slowly. “Is there a shorter version?”
The clerk smiled and shook her head. “Sorry, sir.”
He opened it to find a longer and more detailed version of Chaou’s. Lady Sade’s entire family history, all of her business dealings and associates and all of their histories and associates, and on and on. Chaou was there, briefly. So was Fariza Othmani. But he only found them because they were listed alphabetically. There was nothing obviously helpful about either of them.
Syfax groaned and tried to ignore the gnawing in his belly. “All right, help me out. If you were rich and powerful, and doing something totally illegal, would you meet with your friends at your own house where you can control the security or would you meet somewhere else, somewhere hidden, somewhere private?”
“Do you mean Lady Sade and the ambassador, sir?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if I had to guess, I’d try the Onyx Club. Very exclusive. Tight security. And it wouldn’t arouse suspicion if every rich and powerful person in the country happened to be there at one time.” The clerk drummed her fingers on the desk. “Definitely the Onyx Club, sir.”
The Onyx Club was a long hour’s walk from the marshal’s office, but the major eventually found the towering building across the street from a massive park. The armored doors huddled behind a row of Hellan columns and the ground floor windows were all curtained. The upper windows revealed only the massive chandeliers suspended from the ceilings and the shadows of servants passing in front of the bright electric lights. Syfax paused long enough to observe the two small boys in matching blue uniforms standing side by side in front of the doors before he turned and strolled back to the corner, out of sight, to watch and wait.
Two hours later, as he leaned against a tree eating a bag of nuts he bought from a cart at the far end of the park, Syfax saw two people step out onto the street. The first was a woman, middle-aged and short and rather pale, who emerged from the Onyx Club and began walking along the sidewalk. The second was a young man in a red jacket who jogged out of the trees across from the club and caught up to the woman just as she was turning the corner.
Syfax grinned and muttered, “Good work, kid.” He crossed the street and slowly made his way over, approaching from behind Kenan so he could get a good look at the woman and hear them talking before the corporal saw him.
“Excuse me, Doctor Medina?” Kenan jogged up alongside her. “Are you Doctor Medina?”
“Hm, yes?” The woman stopped short and glanced at him with wide eyes. “Who are you?”
“Corporal Kenan Agyeman, marshals’ office,” he said. “I’m, uh, I’m part of the task force investigating the fire at your office last night. I’m assisting the fire chief and local police.”
“Oh? Oh, yes.” The woman blinked and her shoulders relaxed a bit. “Yes, what can I do for you, corporal?”
“Just a few questions.” Kenan clasped his hands behind his back. “Do you know a man named Medur Hamuy? Tall, muscular build, late thirties.”
“I don’t recognize the name. But if he was a patient of ours, then I’m sure we have…oh, no, no, all the records must have been lost in the fire.” Genuine dismay passed over the doctor’s face. “All the patient records, serial numbers, invoices. Gone.”
Kenan pursed his lips for a moment. “What about a woman named Barika Chaou? Short, older, silver hair?”
The doctor froze for a fraction of a second, but there was a tiny flash of fear in the woman’s face.
“Ah, yes.” The doctor offered a smile, obviously false and full of nerves. “Yes, a lady in the government service, I believe? I do recall that name, although I think it has been some time since I last heard it.” Her speech began slowly, but accelerated the longer she went on. “Yes, I believe she was a patient several years ago, back when I was first starting out here in Arafez. It was quite an unexpected honor to have such a distinguished person in my shop back then. I was still wondering whether I would have any success at all in this country, and suddenly, here was this very important lady seeking my services! Oh, that was a good day. But what does any of this have to do with your investigation of the fire? Surely Senora Chaou was not hurt in the fire?”
Kenan shook his head. “No. Actually, I’m more interested in the electrical device you inserted into her arm so she could shock people with her fingers. And if there’s time, I’d like to hear about the bullet-proof armor in Medur Hamuy’s chest.”
The doctor froze yet again, this time her small mouth hanging open slightly.
Kenan cleared his throat. “Whenever you’re ready. Take a minute, if you need it. I have time.”
The round little Espani made several sounds as though she was beginning to speak and then suddenly forgot how.
“Kenan!” Syfax called out.
They both turned to look at him.
“Major?” Kenan beamed. “You’re all right! Are you all right? Are you hurt? You look a little tired.”
“I know how I look.” The major joined them and glared down at the woman in the green dress. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend here?”
“This is Doctor Elena Medina. She’s the one who put the armor plate in Hamuy’s chest and the shock device in Ambassador Chaou’s arm.” Kenan folded his arms across his chest. “She was just about to start lying to me about how we’ve got it all wrong, that it’s all a big misunderstanding.”
“Good work. Any word on Chaou?” Syfax glanced around at the empty street.
“We haven’t seen or heard from her.”
“Well, she’s in town. I lost her at the South Station this morning and I’ve been running down leads all day. I heard that wealthy government types like this club, the Onyx. We should check it out.” Syfax jerked his head back toward the club doors.
“Actually, major, I tried that but I couldn’t get in.” Kenan pointed at the park across the avenue. “So I waited in the park to catch the doctor coming out. I saw every person who’s gone in since noon, and Chaou hasn’t been here.”
“She could have arrived before you did. Let’s go.” Syfax strode away.
Kenan hurried after him, dragging the doctor by the arm. “But major, they’ve got private security in there.”
“I don’t care.”
“Here, sir, at least take my gun.”
He frowned over his shoulder at the corporal. “Nah, you keep it. I’m just going to take a look around. Not planning to kill anyone today.” He fished the Persian’s brass knuckles from his pocket and slipped his fingers through the rings. The metal was warm.
Syfax shoved through the double doors of the Onyx Club over the shrill cries of the two little boys in matching blue suits. He made it halfway across the carpeted foyer before three young men with thick necks and bulging arms hustled through an open doorway on his left.
The major frowned at them. “You know who I am?”
One of the men shrugged. “No police, no marshals, no exceptions.”
Syfax tightened his fist around the brass knuckles. A gun might speed this up, but then they’ll get their own guns, and then we’ll need bigger guns, and then the bodies start stacking up in the street like cordwood. And no one wants that.
For a moment, he considered apologizing to them ahead of time. Instead, he lunged at the closest one and smashed his fist into his windpipe, sending him reeling back against the wall, choking and gasping. Then the other two grabbed his coat from behind.
The major yanked forward and down, whipping his arms free of his coat and his attackers. As the men stumbled toward him off balance, Syfax delivered a flurry of heavy-handed punches to their heads. On a better day, he might have been a blur of martial artistry, but today there was only strength, relentless and barely disciplined. He smashed his knuckles into jaws and ears and necks and eyes as hard and fast as he could, taking only a few of their wild swings to his own upper body. He didn’t feel them at all.
One guard toppled over backward and bounced his skull on the wall. The other took a roundhouse to the side of his head and spun as he dropped to the floor. The three guards sat or lay on the carpet, clutching their heads and chests, shuddering and coughing.
Syfax massaged his hands. “Sorry, fellas. Nothing personal.” He picked up his coat and slowly pulled it back on.
The two boys in blue hid outside the doors, peering at them with wide unblinking eyes. Kenan arrived in the doorway a moment later, still wrestling with the heavy-set doctor. Syfax jerked his head at the corridor leading into the club. “Come on. Try to keep up.”
Syfax strode down the hall glancing into the open doorways on either side and seeing richly furnished sitting rooms and sun rooms and dining rooms, all decorated in very different styles: classical Yoruba, modernist Igbo, industrial Mazigh, azure Songhai, imperial Eran. Even one that looked like a Hellan theater and one that resembled an Espani chapel. Some were occupied, and the women who noticed the marshal studying them frowned back rather intensely. Most of the rooms were empty.
Syfax left the corporal on the first floor and sprinted up a wide stair to the next level and repeated his search. And again above that, and again above that. Until finally he stood at the center of the lush greenhouse on the roof, sweating, alone.
When he returned to the foyer, he found Kenan holding back his coat to display his holstered gun to the angry, battered security guards. His other hand held the doctor against the wall.
“She’s not here. We’re leaving.” Syfax strode out into the fading afternoon heat and stood on the sidewalk, glaring at the nearly deserted street. He took the spare moment to put on his new Persian glasses with the blue tinted lenses, but found they’d been broken in his pocket so he tossed them to one of the little boys in blue, who called out, “Thanks, mister!”
Kenan followed him out with the doctor in tow. “Where to now, sir?”
“I have no idea.” Syfax leaned toward the doctor, frowning into her round face. “But I bet you can tell us where we want to go. Let’s go find a nice spot to have a little chat.”
They crossed the street, found a footpath in the park, and deposited the doctor on the grass in a nook between some trees and a large brown stone where they were unlikely to be noticed, had there been anyone else in the park to notice them. Syfax leaned against the rock and felt the subtle warmth captured in the stone seeping into his sore back. He eyed the Espani woman, a lumpy figure of soft, bulbous curves and great sagging breasts that hovered around her lower ribs. The puffy flesh around her jaws and cheeks made her face seem unnaturally young and smooth, but her bright green eyes stared back at him with a piercing intelligence.
“So.” Syfax sniffed. “Barika Chaou electrocuted me yesterday afternoon on a ferry boat using a device in her arm. Tell me about that.”
Medina shook her head. “No, no, no. I know a thing or two about the police in this country. I have rights. Rights of prisoners, yes?” The doctor glanced back and forth between her captors. “There have to be witnesses and papers. I get an advocate. There are rules for this sort of thing. I’m allowed to contact my patron.”
“Absolutely.” Syfax squatted down so he was almost at eye level with her. “And who exactly is your patron, Doctor Medina?”
The woman hesitated. “The governor of Arafez, Lady Sade. She will vouch for me, and provide my advocate, and ensure that my rights are protected. I demand to see Lady Sade.”
“I would love nothing more than to haul you in front of the good lady. We could tell her all about your little experiments. I am sure she will be shocked to hear all about them.”
Medina blinked, not in a cringing fearful manner, but in a perfectly blank and unresponsive way. Passive, doe-like.
Syfax grinned. “Then again, maybe she wouldn’t be so shocked after all?”
Medina’s eyes widened.
“She knows, doesn’t she?” Syfax leaned closer, shoving his exhausted grimace into the doctor’s fat face. “She knows. Lady Sade isn’t just your patron. She’s your employer. She hired you. Hand-picked you, didn’t she?”
Kenan shuffled a little closer to them and spoke softly. “You think the governor knows what the doctor has been doing?”
“I think Sade has been telling the doctor what to do.” The major stood up, watching carefully as the doctor’s blank stare of confusion shifted to a cold, naked fear. “This little dance isn’t Chaou’s number at all, is it? It’s the governor’s show. Sade’s calling the shots. She owns the doctor and the ambassador.”
“What?” Kenan frowned. “But why? Lady Sade has everything. Wealth, power, respect, even popularity. Why would she be involved in medical experiments and attacks on airships?”
Syfax stood up. “For the same reason that anyone commits a crime. She wants something she can’t get without breaking the law.”
“But she has almost everything already!”
“ Almost everything.” Syfax nodded. “In fact, I’d say the only person who has more than Lady Sade is the queen.”
“What?” Kenan barely managed to breathe the word. “The queen?”
“Yeah.” Syfax blinked slowly. His body longed to lie down and stop. Just stop everything and sleep. “So we’ve got this fancy doctor who specializes in hiding machines and weapons inside people. And we’ve got Chaou, a crazy nationalist who blew up half the transportation in Tingis a week before the queen’s birthday, which is just the sort of pastoralist stunt that gets folks all pissed off at the government. And they both work for Lady Sade, a rich old broad whose family lost half of everything with the end of the castes and all the new laws. What’s that all add up to, kid?”
Kenan looked at him sharply. “They’re moving against the queen. An assassination? We need to report this immediately!”
“Nah, we can’t do that. They’ve got moles and spies everywhere. If their people get a whiff of this, they’ll find a way to screw up any operation we put together. More importantly, we’re a little shy on evidence right now. All we can pin on Chaou is the dead police captain in Chellah. We can’t implicate Sade at all yet, or even the doctor here. Nah, we need to keep this quiet for the moment.” Syfax glanced away to stare into the trees. “We need to set up a sting.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Kenan said. “Even if they did kill the queen, there must be a dozen princesses in line to take her place. It’s not as if Lady Sade stands to inherit the throne, at least not any time soon.”
“Maybe not. But these aren’t stupid people. They obviously have a plan and the means to carry it out.” The major knelt back down again. “Doctor, I’m going to give you an opportunity right now to tell me everything you know about Lady Sade. What she’s doing. Who she’s working with. Everything, right now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Medina smiled nervously.
“That’s all right. We’ll toss you in a cell and go see Lady Sade on our own and just tell her that you’ve agreed to help our investigation anyway.”
“No!” The doctor lurched forward, an imploring hand stretching out toward the major. “Don’t do that! You can’t!”
Syfax shrugged. “Why not? I don’t care if there’s a little misunderstanding between you and her. Doesn’t bother me. Of course, if you do help us, and we do arrest her, then Lady Sade won’t be able to do anything to you. Your choice. Offer’s good for the next two minutes.”
The doctor hesitated only a moment. “You have to hide me. Far away. You’ll have to protect me from her, from her people. She has people everywhere.”
“Yeah, we’ve noticed. Don’t sweat it. You’ll be safe enough.” Syfax paused. “Well?”
Medina slumped a little lower, her body losing what little definition it had as she resigned herself to speak. “I don’t know much. They took the cat last night and they’re leaving on the train this evening. They didn’t tell me anything specific, and it was late and I was tired and there were a bunch of them I didn’t recognize.”
“Wait, slow down.” Syfax glanced up at Kenan but he had nothing to offer. “What cat? What train? Start at the beginning.”