Chapter 18
So Many Boots
Three blocks north of the embassy, they felt the rumble under their feet that meant the Caravan had left the immediate area. While there was always a chance that, despite them being back early enough, Constable Renker had forced his people out of the city, Dastou doubted it. Vaiss had gotten to it, and had taken it.
When his feet vibrated from the movement, Dastou had stopped. Maybe to think, maybe to let his frustration with his failure to notice all these traps sink in. Maybe fear for his subordinates. In this complicated day he felt all that at once, and could only look at the sky, still holding his boots and jacket. The sun was waning, signaling mid-afternoon, its light shining and warming him. The warmth made all his muscles feel better the second he was outside in the day again, made all his bruises seem to shrink to half their size. He took it in for another minute, breathing deep. No one complained. Nes and Saan felt the shake in the ground, too, and knew what it could mean. Trenna just followed the lead of awkward quiet.
Finally, the Saint looked at the street that was full of worker bees earlier and saw only ten left on assignment. The broken windows had all been patched up, the truck Hays flipped was gone, and nearly all of the small debris that flew far from the bombed Blackbrick Diplomatic Center had been cleaned up.
“Turn your head from the Cypher only if you wish to miss out on a miracle,” Dastou quoted, this time aloud.
“Saint Stanleslan coined that phrase, didn’t he?” Trenna asked.
Dastou knelt down slowly, trying not to grunt like an old man, and put on his boots. “No, his cousin, Saint Kierker said it first,” he corrected. “She was the more poetic of the two. They were the only ones of my kind that had a blood relation that close, within the same generation, and traveled together more often than not. People misquoted things between them all the time.”
The Saint finished tightening the straps on his boots, fixed his pant legs, and stood upright. Dastou stretched, careful not to bother his sewn-up cut too much, which was on the opposite side of his body as the “cut” from the “fight” before he was “captured.” He took a deep breath and an unsure step, then let that step continue into a casually-paced walk the rest of the way to the embassy.
When they got to the front double doors of the building, it was clear there was no one here waiting on them. No Igneous Counterbalance officer to make sure they arrived on time, no volunteer keeping an eye out for trouble. Nothing. The group went inside, the only noises they heard being the squeak of one of the door hinges and their own footsteps.
Blackbrick was aware of their embassy’s impressive nature and wanted to show off, so this whole building was decked out to do so, the lobby being the first chance. There were five luxuriously upholstered hand-made couches and a few lounge seats in the waiting area. Two gas-fed fireplaces behind glass enclosures were built into a wall, and the seating arrangement meant that groups of people could sit here and ogle the opulence. Earlier today the space was filled with those escaping the attack, and every piece of this nice furniture was stained with blood, concrete leavings, and dirt. Most of it was also moved slightly out of its original place during the mayhem and left there. There were tarps tossed in a pile near one of the, also stained. The carpeting featured a subtle pattern of local flora, a dark purple and dark green pattern mixed with some light grays, the whole of it marked with dirty shoe prints.
This place, when clean, reminded Dastou of a couple of eastern tribes that built stone castles the same way: all shiny stuff and over-designed things and big, wind-catching banners. In fact, the patterns of stitching in the rugs here signified that some were purchased from those same tribes. This place had so much wealth tied to it, and none of it had meaning. The Diplomatic Center itself signified freedom, self-governance, so on and so forth. It didn’t need the garishness of numerous conflicting designs; that was for the sake of politics, a visual representation of being high-and-mighty.
With his brief interior design critique session over, Dastou gave a flick of his head to order Nes to the reception desk. He looked at Saan and waved for her to scout around. Nes walked to the greeting desk where a receptionist would normally be seated while Saan started a search of the lobby.
“Hold on a second,” said Nes after reaching the big oblong desk a good five meters from Dastou, “the station needs a password.”
“Check under the keyboard,” called Saan from across the lobby. She was at the restrooms near the couches and headed into the men’s lavatory first. The door barely hit the jamb to close before she came right back out a few seconds later. Dastou always did respect the efficiency taught early on to children of the Ko Monasi tribe.
Nes nodded to himself in satisfaction at the receptionist area. “Not under the keyboard, under the monitor stand. Still dumb.”
“Not everyone has our paranoia about security,” Saan said.
“Are you kidding?” Nes said after a few seconds. “They shut everything off and left a log-in layer running because it’s tied to security. A system like this, that could end up causing them memory leaks if they do it all the time.”
“Yes. Clearly,” replied Saan, not familiar with some of the tech jargon.
To be honest, Nes wasn’t as good with computers as he acted like. He knew more than many at the Academy, and therefore more than almost anyone in the world at large. The simple system set up in this building for saving data and other small tasks was more or less a joke compared to Dastou’s school, its security limited. The volunteers who set it up and the black market dealers that sold the equipment wouldn’t have thought much about keeping information safe. The fact is the Blackbrick Council or its underlings wouldn’t keep anything worth snooping on in these machines, saving their manipulations and machinations for in-person meetings.
“Oh, go surf a wave or whatever while I restart this,” Nes retorted to Saan’s semi-sarcasm.
“Hmph,” Saan said. “No one wanted to teach me how to surf. I did not have the patience or aptitude. Such as you with long-term relationships.”
“You’re one to talk, Ms. New One Every Six Months.”
Trenna was behind Dastou and evidently used to their banter enough that she was only half paying attention, instead pointing out something else to the Saint. “Aren’t you going to help them? Seems pointless to watch from a distance.”
“Well, that was a bold thing to say,” responded Dastou, raising an eyebrow to let her know he was joking. “Right now it’s best for me to stay here, centered and taking everything in while the minions look around. Also, I hurt.”
There was an electronic noise in the background, the ping of a computer starting up.
“Probably not the best idea to give your minions guns if you’re going to insult them,” Nes advised.
“It doesn’t matter when said minions don’t stand a chance.”
“Well, alright. That one goes to you.”
“As expected,” Dastou said with his chin haughtily pointed upward. “Is it booted yet?”
“Just now. The relay board is lighting up.” Nes was talking about a small, polished and painted wooden board with lights placed in it representing each meeting room and office in the building. “All white lights except for a couple,” said Nes, white meaning that a room was either empty or unassigned. “The security room is red, so the place is still on high alert, I guess. And uh, the main assembly hall is red?”
Saan had already checked the ladies’ lavatory, seating area and related crevices, and taken a peek into the fireplace for good measure. She was walking toward one of the hallways that led deeper into the first floor of the embassy.
“Are you asking me or telling me?” inquired Dastou.
“These doors work with a simple electronic lock signal, right?” asked Nes in return. “If a door is locked, it’s red. If it’s not, it’s white.”
“As far as I know, sure.”
“And the only meeting scheduled for today was ours, right?” Nes said. “That was hours ago, b
ut this means another meeting is happening in the big room on the first floor.”
“The confidential statutes they gave us,” Saan told them, “mentioned that on any day the Caravan was moored, no other appointments would be made, and any already planned would be rescheduled at the embassy’s expense. I am sure neither of you read that.”
Dastou and Nes looked at each other from across the lobby and shrugged at the same time.
Nes went back to looking at the computer. “Didn’t feel the need for all the details – I was just here to provide muscles and moral support.”
Dastou looked up thoughtfully, tapping his chin as if trying to figure something out. He over-dramatically tilted his head left and right as he talked in a sing-song voice. “So whoever is on alert in security knows we’re here, yet they haven’t come out to us, asking the expected question of: ‘if the Caravan is gone, why are you still here?’”
Trenna stifled a chuckle at Dastou’s child-like play-acting, probably because she never imagined such a thing of her god before today. Saan and Nes both knew this mood, and it meant he knew exactly what was about to happen, or at least what was about to start happening. Nes smiled at Dastou, and then at Saan, who rolled her eyes in annoyance but couldn’t completely hide her own amusement.
“Really?” Nes said. “You ass, you could have said something.”
“Wait, what?” Trenna asked.
“Come!” called Dastou loudly, his voice echoing in the empty lobby. “Join me and watch the birds flock!”
The Saint high-stepped in a circle around Trenna, thoroughly enjoying himself, smiling wide, playing his crazy up for the cameras watching. Then he stopped abruptly after starting a second rotation, sucking air through his teeth in pain.
“The suture,” Saan guessed.
“And... a whole lot else,” Dastou repeated, wincing as he strode back into position in front of Trenna, careful not to touch his itching, stinging side. “I’m an idiot, I always forget that.”
At the very second he finished saying that, a series of fast, loud, and consistent boot-stomps made their way down the two hallways and to the fancy-yet-dirty lobby. It sounded like low-pitched applause with how many feet were hitting the floor. Saan and Nes had been walking back to the Saint during his high-stepping, and were a stride away when the noise came reverberating at them. When the foursome was close together again, two uniformed security officers jogged around the corner toward the foyer from each inward-leading corridor.
They wore protective helmets, crisp mid-tone blue uniforms with thin, perfectly clean white trim on seams and new gold-colored oval badges on the upper left chest. The pair of men carried brand new assault rifles, and Dastou registered them as cleaner versions of what the ragged enemies used.
Those first two uniformed guards were a few steps into the foyer as the rest poured out of the corridors, stomping their way to the first pair. It was like a flood made of people, and in no time twenty guards, mostly men with a handful of women in the mix, swiftly took position. Every other one of them stepped past the other half and got on one knee in perfect alignment. All of them, standing or otherwise, moved their rifles up, put their stocks perfectly on a shoulder, and trained the sights on the Saint’s group with a sharp ruffle of clothing and a distinct clicking metal gun parts. None of the barrels wavered, their aim synchronized – this show had been in the works for some time.
Saan instinctively had her hand on her machine pistol as she and Nes turned around to face the door at another cacophony of boots originating outside, though she didn’t draw. The Saint scarcely moved since he could see everything behind him thanks to reflections on metal and glass in the lobby, and caught sight of uniformed guards rushing along the sides of the building from left and right. Whoever gave them their signal was off the mark – they should have been here at the same time as the ones that flooded in from the hallways. Still, points for effort, Dastou thought.
The contingent outside the building entered professionally, two guards holding doors as others streamed inside. With identical numbers, they took identical kneed-and-standing positions and synchronized aim as the first score of guards. There were gaps in the configuration to Dastou’s immediate left and right, but he and his small group were, let’s say, surrounded enough to be surrounded.
“Dee, any ideas?” asked Nes, hands relaxed and ready to unclip his rifle from his back.
“Wait one second,” Dastou hinted.
“Wait for what, may I ask?” said the voice of an older man, muffled and blocked by the throng of guards.
The owner of that voice touched the security officer in front of and farthest left to Dastou, and the young man stepped aside to let Councilor Jandal Tryst pass. Still dressed in his official black robes, the violet stripe down his right arm indicating his representative area, he stepped closer to the flanked visitors. He halted within two meters of the Saint, far enough that he probably thought he couldn’t be attacked without retaliation. That was an entirely false assumption, and Dastou already thought up three ways to kill him before anyone could do a thing. The Saint would end up shot full of holes, though, and he had already worked far too hard to survive the day to slip up now.
A set of feet helped by a cane interrupted the new silence, and Constable Chenrov Renker walked in from the same direction Tryst did. While the councilor’s face was all success and self-assuredness, Renker didn’t exactly seem happy to be here, and said absolutely nothing.
“Wait for you,” Dastou told Tryst. “Though I’ll admit I’m surprised to see the constable.”
Renker made a non-committal grunt and stepped forward to stand in the line-up of guards. “How many people of Blackbrick did you kill today? How many died as collateral damage of an attempt to kill you? I have no choice but to be here and support the result of such actions.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Dastou said honestly. “Now, what may I help you with, Tryst?”
“You are trapped,” Tryst answered swiftly, “with no way out, and you still speak as if you have some leeway here.”
“Have we met before? Or maybe you just weren’t paying attention to the fact that I plan on treating you like dirt at any given the opportunity.”
“Do as you like, foreigner,” Tryst said with practiced anger. “You are not so grand and loved in these lands that we do not think you are as easy to kill as anyone else in this room. Look at you,” the councilor said while scanning the Saint up and down. “Disheveled, injured, bloodied. I do not accept, respect, or capitulate to your supposed godhood.”
The guards didn’t flinch at the disrespect and low-talk given to Dastou. Maybe his dangerous legend was finally waning? Bad timing for it.
“Saint Cosamian Dastou,” started Tryst snootily, “Corporal Nesembraci Jaydef, Staff Sergeant Saan-Hu, and whoever...”
“Her name is Trenna Geil,” Renker sniped, interrupting Tryst so abruptly that the man turned to face her. The constable met his eyes and was not the tiniest bit deterred. “She is a former isolationist and an innocent adopted resident of this city.”
Dastou turned his head in time to see Trenna swallowing nervously. It was a surprise Renker knew so much about the girl, but when the Saint thought about it, it kind of wasn’t. This city was Renker’s baby, and of course she knew about a band of homeless criminals, right down to their names. However, the constable has a lot to do and may have deemed them harmless, until today.
“Her innocence,” Tryst said slowly, capitulating to Renker’s authority and knowledge somewhat, “must be proven.” The older man faced Dastou and his group again. “I, Councilor Jandal Tryst, place you all under arrest, as ordered by the diplomatic authority of the Blackbrick Council.”
“Under arrest for what, ‘may I ask?’” Dastou asked, mocking Tryst’s earlier words and annunciation.
“That will be revealed once you are in custody. Please abide by our laws in this land and submit to capture. Otherwise we will be required to use force.”
&n
bsp; “Sir, that’s not the law here,” Trenna said to Dastou just loud enough to be overheard by Tryst. “Because of my, uh, hobbies, I have to know a little bit about local ordinances. You can’t arrest people like this without saying charges or anything.”
“I know,” said Dastou. “The Counterbalances all respect that practice.”
Tryst was annoyed again. Just like in the corridor earlier where he tried to make Dastou sign some ridiculous contract, he was not being taken seriously enough for his liking.
“Let me take a wild guess here,” Dastou said to the councilor, “you’ve forced a change in those laws in instances of emergency, perpetuated by the bombing earlier.”
“Yes, we did,” said Tryst, unable to keep a touch of wavering out of his voice. He must have wanted to masterfully reveal the change to the rules in dramatic fashion, or maybe not have to say anything about it at all. “As leader of the Council, I have the direct power to seek the arrest of anyone on a temporary basis strictly on collected evidence, revealing the charges when I see fit. In this case it will be once said evidence is further organized and compiled.”
“And you think you can arrest me? You’re sure you’re capable of such a feat?”
Dastou’s words came out measured, ominous. There was no chance he was honestly thinking of attacking and his friends would know it that he was trying to stir up tension, which was working. Some of the blue-garbed guards bristled at the Saint’s tone, others looked at their comrades next to them with only their eyes, as if to ask “are we sure about this?” Tryst did his best to seem unmoved, but his face was easy to read.
“Where did you get the weapons?” Dastou asked, continuing to control the situation despite having forty rifles pointed his way. “We were hounded by people with their own weapons, a rare enough thing, and now you have all these gleaming ones. And they’re all the same at the ones we dealt with, right down to the smell of the lubrication oil.”
“Wow, you can smell that?” asked Nes, his curiosity overriding his love of things going wrong for people he didn’t like.
“I smelled it earlier,” Dastou answered, never taking his eyes off Jandal Tryst. “At the same time I was collecting smells to figure out what the bombs were made of, I picked up gun oil, and lots of it. I figured there was a stockpile of weapons in the embassy somewhere. It was supposed to be blackmail material; I didn’t think we’d also find them in use by the people who set the bombs.
The accusation was clear, and there was more nervous movement by the guards – hands tipping down, hips shifting, shoulders slouching.
“These men and women,” Dastou continued, “are holding the exact same weapons as the people who killed so many innocents earlier today. Today, I repeat. No one is stupid enough to think that’s a coincidence.”
“Enough!” Tryst yelled. He couldn’t possibly guess how much Dastou, knew, or that he already said all he knew, but the implications being slung around weren’t good for him.
Glancing around for a moment, Renker was mostly still, and appeared to be unsatisfied with how things were going. The constable turned around and walked away from this mess after hearing Tryst yell like an upset toddler.
“What?” Tryst said after he heard the cane strike carpet and craned his neck to see that the constable was leaving. “Where are you going?”
“I’ve seen what I needed to see,” Renker said. “Heard plenty, too, and you clearly don’t need some middle-aged woman limping around and slowing these fine guards down. I’m going home to rest before tonight’s IC meeting. It’s going to be a long one.”
After Renker was out of sight, Tryst returned his gaze to Dastou’s group.
“I’ll ask again,” Dastou said with a smile. “Where did those weapons come from?”
After a handful of seconds in which Tryst didn’t seem to want to answer, the tension in the room was abruptly bent in a different direction when the receptionist desk’s phone rang. And rang some more. Almost everyone cast their attention in that direction, and some of the guards lowered their rifles from a perfect firing position. Dastou smiled, Saan holstered her machine pistol, and Nes let his hand drop from getting ready to take press the single-button release of his own weapon. The fact that he hadn’t gotten his gun ready at all, and he should have as soon as those first guards were in view, told Dastou a lot about how the corporal was doing psychologically after his first real combat scenario, his first kills. Nes might be in a better state of mind soon enough, but for now he was slow to react. Thankfully that was better than panicking and shooting like a mad man at the slightest threat.
“Well, is anyone going to get that?” the Saint wondered aloud while looking directly at Tryst and tilting his head toward the ringing phone. “I think it might be for you, Mr. Important.”
“What are you talking about?” Tryst said bitingly, then pointed at the guard closest to the desk, the same one that let him pass earlier. “You there, pick that up.”
Dastou kept a steady, true smile on his face as the assigned security guard went around the desk – which was made of some very nice reddish wood, by the way – and grabbed the handset of the phone, holding it up to one ear hole on his helmet. He stood there for a few seconds, looking at the phone’s base as it rang one more time, hands half-reaching down for it.
Saan sighed. “Press the button that says ‘Reception Desk’ first, then tap the blinking red one,” she told the confused guard.
“Um, right, yes. Thank you, ma’am,” said the polite guard, his voice muffled a touch by his full face visor.
Dastou was trying not to laugh while Tryst practically growled at the well-mannered sentry. Nes snorted.
“Hello?” the guard said into the handset after pressing the necessary buttons. A second passed. “Councilor Tryst? He’s here.”
Tryst scowled, his mouth forming a tight line.
The guard continued on the phone. “What? Just that? Alright, I’ll relay it to him. Uh, you have a great day, too.”
Dastou couldn’t hold it in and laughed brightly. Trenna giggled with a hand over her mouth, the sides of her almond-shaped eyes crinkling with amusement. The helmet visor was unfortunately transparent, making the blushed cheeks of the guard visible.
Tryst shifted uncomfortably where he stood as the guard put the handset down. “Well,” said the Councilor, almost yelling, “what was that about!?”
“It was a message for you, sir,” the guard replied nervously.
“Yes, I figured that much. What was the message?”
“It was one word: ‘Goner.’”
Saan and Nes knew what that word meant and relaxed further, their shoulders loose, their postures unconcerned. Trenna must have gotten the meaning, too, letting herself become more confident and calm.
“’Goner?’” Tryst repeated before glaring at Dastou. “Is that some kind of threat?”
“You can think of it that way if you wish,” Dastou answered. “I, however, will take it as my cue to leave.”
“You are not leaving!” Tryst immediately countered, his whole body annunciating the words and a few thin gray hairs moving out of place at the top of his head.
This reaction was an exaggerated version of what happened when the politician tried to have Dastou sign the contract that would impede his travel a few hours ago. To deal with a Saint you had to roll with some punches, and this forcibly-retired man was surprisingly thin-skinned the moment his practiced scenarios were not in play.
“You are under arrest,” Tryst continued, “no trickery will change that.” Guards, bind their hands right this...”
The high-pitched sound of suddenly shattered glass and the simultaneous flat thud of an impact cut off Tryst’s order with a definitive edge, filling the air in the space with an unassailable counterpoint. Glass rained down from one of the higher windows of the lobby, tinkling softly against carpet and on some of the uniformed guards closer to the main exit, some of them ducking as if they weren’t fully protected. In a display of at-minimum hal
fway decent training, Blackbrick’s people all went on high alert again when the noise was gone and the glass had fallen, pointing their guns at the four people they were trying arrest. While a vein on Tryst’s left temple flared up, Dastou showed no change in his semi-sarcastic attitude. Instead, he moved his hand slowly – he wasn’t stupid enough to get shot, after all – and pointed down at the councilor’s feet.
The noise of the window being shot through hadn’t masked the sound of the actual bullet hitting the carpet where Dastou indicated, but no one noticed it until his finger was aimed there. A puff of carpet fibers was still in the air and Tryst’s face grew red with ire and embarrassment as he stared down at a black, burnt-out hole between his feet.
“Now, Jandal,” Dastou said disrespectfully, a hand on his hip, “you’re going to let us walk out of here. Because while the handful of snipers on rooftops behind me won’t be able to save me, any one of them will be able to kill you if someone moves toward me with intent to capture or attack. I have the feeling that you’re not willing to risk your life today or any other day, so tell your people to stand down.”
Tryst balled his hands into fists at his sides, his posture tight. This situation had gone as far wrong as it could have for him. Instead of a scene where he arrested a Saint in dramatic fashion in front of the leader of the local Counterbalance, securing fame and respect in the process, he got left behind by Renker, told off, threatened, and manipulated.
“Additionally,” Dastou said, “don’t follow us or they will fire. If there is a hint of pursuit, I promise you Councilor, you will die within a day, somehow, someway.”
“That rhymed,” Nes pointed out.
“Shut up,” Dastou said with mock exasperation. Nes smiled as his friend continued to address Tryst. “These other people,” the Saint continued, “here in the nice, new uniforms have no responsibility for this situation, despite the guns pointed at us. You, councilor, will be the only person my snipers will aim at. Ever.”
A bead of sweat dribbled down from Jandal Tryst’s thinning gray hair to his forehead and reached an eyebrow. It took a few seconds for the man to respond while Dastou, Nes, and Saan looked directly at him and nothing else, and Trenna again understood the hint to follow their lead.
“Let them go,” Tryst growled between clenched teeth after wiping the bead of sweat away from his eye. “Do not follow. They will pay for their crimes soon enough.”
That last line may have been bravado in the face of inadequacy, but Dastou doubted it. Tryst had something further in the works. The Saint turned around and started for the doorway, and to their credit the sentries didn’t delay in opening a path. Stepping between those guards and on broken glass from the shot-up window, Dastou’s group left the embassy the way they came in, and he did his best to avoid glancing back at the forty people behind him with guns.
~~~~