The hummingbird killer, p.10
The Hummingbird Killer, page 10
Leo gestures round the basement with his good hand. ‘Take a wild guess. Maybe they finally figured out I write for the Free Press.’
He has a point. He’s earned himself a spot on the guilds’ hit lists a dozen times over. But he’s also been doing a great job of not getting murdered before this, so…
‘Why now?’ Isabel reaches for a dressing, fastening it over the injury. ‘You told me yourself, you’ve been writing for them for ages. What’s changed?’
‘Maybe someone sold me out.’ He sees her expression and says, ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. I already told you it was Hummingbird.’
She knows he wasn’t accusing her. But somebody knew to target him, right when they were becoming friends, and that timing is suspicious. Not that Hummingbird should be watching her, either…
One of the doors on the far side of the basement opens, and Ant emerges. He looks bleary, like he just woke up. ‘I heard voices,’ he says, eyeing Leo’s injury and Isabel’s ministrations. ‘What happened?’
‘Hummingbird,’ says Leo grimly.
Ant whistles through his teeth. ‘You got away? I taught you well.’
That explains how Leo learned to fight. ‘Yeah, for now. But I doubt they’ll stop at a single attempt, especially after I got one of their agents shot. I need somewhere to hide.’
‘You can stay here, can’t you?’ says Isabel. ‘I mean, isn’t that the point of this place?’
Leo and Ant exchange a glance. ‘In the short term you can stay here,’ Ant agrees, ‘but in the long term…’
‘There isn’t space for three. I know. Every additional person increases the risks involved in bringing supplies in, if me fleeing here didn’t give it away.’ Leo sounds resigned. ‘I’ll have to stay here until it’s safe to move, but we need a plan. Jem will be down once she’s handled the delivery, so we can talk it through. There’ll be a solution.’
‘Of course there will,’ says Ant. ‘But we should figure out why Hummingbird are targeting you. If someone’s leaked them names of Free Press members…’
‘We could all be fucked.’ Leo grimaces. ‘It’s the book, I’m sure of it. I knew it was a risk, but—’
‘Hey.’ Ant cuts him off. ‘We all weighed the risks. It wasn’t just you.’
‘But I wrote most of it,’ says Leo.
‘And they have no way of knowing that unless somebody sold you out. It’s not as if your name’s on it.’
Isabel looks between the two of them. ‘I’m missing something,’ she says. ‘I totally get if you don’t want to tell me, but—’
‘It’s better if you don’t—’ begins Leo, but Ant says, ‘We wrote a book, and it’s definitely going to piss off the guilds.’
‘A book?’ says Isabel. ‘What kind of a book?’ The Free Press have published a few, she knows, and anything they produce is likely to anger the guilds, but this sounds like it’s something new.
Leo sighs. ‘Sure, tell her everything.’
‘You’re the one who brought her down here,’ says Ant. ‘I assumed you trusted her.’
‘I do, but—’ Leo breaks off. ‘Fine. Whatever. We wrote a history of Espera,’ he tells Isabel. ‘The real history, not the guild propaganda kids get taught in schools. Ant did a bunch of archive research, and Sam got us some sources from outside the city. I did most of the writing. The Free Press released it about two weeks ago, and we’ve had people distributing it across the city ever since.’
There’s a long silence. ‘Well,’ says Isabel at last. ‘I can see why that would piss off the guilds.’
Ant says, ‘The more people know about the city’s roots, the more likely they are to realise how shallow they are. Knowing the guilds’ origins undermines the myth that they’re eternal and all-powerful, and the more people know…’
‘The more weaknesses they can spot,’ Isabel finishes. The idea is brilliant, in its own way. ‘Revolution through history lessons. It’s quite the tactic.’
‘You disapprove?’ says Ant, noting her tone.
‘Did I say that?’ She’s not sure she’s allowed to approve of Free Press tactics. They certainly don’t approve of her, and if their longed-for revolution ever comes the Moth will be one of the first with her back against the wall. ‘I think it’s… impressive. There’s a lot I’ve always wondered about.’
That part’s true. She’s read more history than most civilians, sneaking into the old library at Cocoon, and still there are gaps in her knowledge. But this is a huge risk, especially if they’ve got unapproved sources from outside the city, which will rocket it up the list from Banned to Super Immediate Death Sentence Illegal. If the guilds find their distribution channels, anybody involved will have a target on their back, and the scale of the operation means they’re putting their trust in a lot of people – any one of whom could have sold them out.
‘We’ve been working on it for years,’ says Leo. ‘We weren’t sure it would ever happen, but people need to know the truth. We want to do more of them. Learn more, print more, share what we know.’
‘Great. So you can get yourself killed twice over.’
‘People have been lied to for long enough,’ he says. ‘You must have noticed all the stuff they left out when you were at school.’
It’s true the incomplete curriculum at the Fraser rankled with her, and the rest of her education was worse. ‘So that’s the plan? Tell people everything, unfiltered, and see what sparks it lights?’
He shrugs. ‘I’m not necessarily expecting this to bring down the guilds.’ Of course he isn’t. He’s not that kind of abolitionist. ‘And there’s definitely stuff missing. We don’t have much internal history of the guilds – we couldn’t get the sources for that.’
At least that means Cocoon probably isn’t anywhere in the pages of their history. ‘Good, because this is already incredibly illegal,’ she says. ‘Using guild files would be the only way to make it worse.’ Isabel takes a moment to breathe, trying to think this through logically. She thought the basement was the worst secret Leo would share with her, but she underestimated him. ‘Does Mortimer know about this?’
‘He…’ Leo hesitates. ‘He’s one of our distributors.’
Of course he fucking is. Maybe that’s why he’s ignoring her texts – too busy building false bottoms into all his cabinets to hide contraband. ‘I am going to murder him.’
‘Please don’t,’ says Ant, who doesn’t even know what a joke like that means coming from Isabel. ‘We like him.’
‘Yeah, so did I, before I realised he’d been lying to me for two and a half years.’ But that’s not a priority right now. ‘So, you said you wrote it – you think that’s why Hummingbird are targeting you, Leo?’
Leo shrugs, and winces when it jogs his injury. ‘That’s my best guess. Like you said, I’ve been writing for the Bulletin for years. Nothing’s changed about that. But the book’s a new step, and they were always going to retaliate.’
‘And if somebody sold you out…’ begins Ant.
‘We need to figure out who else is compromised. I know.’ Leo gingerly moves his injured arm. The dressing holds, and he gives Isabel a nod of thanks. ‘First step is figuring out who told them I was involved.’
‘The first step is to make sure you’re safe,’ corrects Ant. ‘The rest comes afterwards. My guess is that they’ll want to lick their wounds before they try again.’
‘They can just send someone else,’ says Isabel bluntly. ‘Hummingbird aren’t short of agents. They could have people all across the city targeting anyone they think is involved.’ Injuring those two agents bought Leo the time to get here, but it won’t keep him safe in the long run.
‘Well, aren’t you Miss Optimism,’ says Ant.
‘She’s right, though,’ says Leo. ‘They have the advantage of numbers. We can’t compete with that.’
Isabel retrieves her phone and texts Mortimer.
heard you were taking history lessons. please tell me you’re safe.
It’s as much as she can say on the unencrypted line. Then she turns back to Leo and Ant. ‘You need to warn your people. Tell them to go underground.’
Leo takes out his own phone, but Ant snatches it from his hand, crushing it underfoot. ‘You’re not messaging anyone,’ he says. ‘If Hummingbird have your name, they could be bugging your phone, too. I’ll get a message out on the radio later. For now, there’s nothing we can do for them but hope.’ He glances at the other closed door. ‘I’d ask Sam to code a few warning messages for us, but she’s having a rough one. She refused to come out of her room earlier, and I don’t want to bother her with this until I’m sure it won’t make her worse.’
The fugitive life isn’t easy for someone of Sam’s age. Isabel feels a momentary pang of sympathy, remembering her own bad days. She’d offer to try to talk to the kid, but she doubts anything she’d say would help.
‘Then what am I meant to do?’ asks Leo. ‘Sit here and imagine them killing people I care about?’
‘Yep,’ says Ant. ‘Join the club. It’s what we do all day, and it sucks.’ He glances at the clock. ‘Jem should be down any minute. I’ll go set up the camp bed in my room for you, okay? And then we can figure out a plan.’ He clasps Leo’s shoulder in a gesture of encouragement. ‘I’m glad you got away,’ he says. ‘Let’s count our blessings, shall we?’
Isabel’s glad too, but certain details about Leo’s story aren’t adding up. ‘You said they were waiting outside your flat?’ she asks him when they’re alone. ‘Why not break in?’
He shrugs. ‘Too much of a challenge, maybe. Mum had the whole place wired up with security before she died.’
She can imagine Toni doing that, though she’s surprised Leo’s stayed in the same flat for so long. ‘Then they must have been keeping tabs on you long enough to figure that out,’ she points out.
Leo considers this for a moment. ‘Shit,’ he says finally. ‘So they’ve been planning this for a while.’
‘On the plus side,’ says Isabel, trying for optimism, ‘that means they’re unlikely to make any rash moves now that their first attempt has failed. They’ll need time to come up with a better plan.’ And then they’ll try again, and this time, they won’t underestimate Leo, and he won’t escape.
These bright sides get darker every day.
‘By the time they do that, I’ll be gone,’ says Leo. ‘Jem will figure it out. This is what we do.’
We. The Free Press. Isabel knows it’s not her place to solve this particular problem – she shouldn’t even know about it. But she wants to help.
The basement door opens, and there’s Jem. ‘Isabel, somebody needs to man the desk,’ she says. ‘Can you head back up?’
Isabel looks at Leo. ‘Go,’ he says. ‘If we need you, we’ll call you. Until then, it’s best if you stay out of it.’ Because you already know too much, he wants to say, and can’t in front of Jem; she can see it in his eyes.
‘Let me know if I can help,’ she says, as earnestly as she can, and heads back upstairs.
She works through her tasks mechanically for the rest of the afternoon, her mind still on Leo. She double- and triple-checks the locks on the back door, but he doesn’t seem to have been followed. There are no unwelcome visitors to the library, nobody demanding to inspect their store cupboards, and even if somebody made it down to the archives, they’re unlikely to find the secret door. But she wouldn’t wager her friends’ lives on that.
She wants to know the names of the agents who came for Leo, so she can make sure they don’t try again. She wants to find the person who sold him out, and silence them for ever. What’s the use of being a hired killer if she can’t protect her friends? They came for Leo. That can’t go unpunished.
When Jem eventually reappears at the end of the work day, she looks tired and worried. As they’re preparing to lock up, she says, ‘This is why I didn’t want Leo to show you the basement. I’m not paying you nearly enough to get dragged into all our drama.’
‘And you don’t trust me,’ says Isabel lightly.
‘It’s not that,’ says Jem, and she sounds like she means it. ‘Though it doesn’t matter how much Leo and I trust you. There are a lot of people involved in this who don’t know you, and right now, they’re all at risk.’
Isabel understands. ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help…’
‘I need you to work some double shifts,’ says the librarian. ‘We’ll all have to, since Leo can’t work any more. Can you manage that?’
She’ll have to skip some training sessions, but it’s not like she needs them. ‘Sure. Whatever you need.’
‘Thanks, Isabel.’ Jem’s smile is wan and strained. ‘You know libraries. Non-stop excitement.’
‘So it would seem,’ says Isabel. ‘Secret rooms, assassination attempts… I’m intrigued to know what’s next.’
‘Hopefully, a deeper appreciation of cataloguing,’ says Jem, ‘and a lifelong affection for pre-processed acquisitions. Can you work tomorrow morning? Leo normally does Thursdays.’
Isabel mentally runs over her commitments. She’s meant to be calling by the Comma office to see Kieran tomorrow, but there’s no reason she can’t go earlier. ‘I’ll be late,’ she says, ‘but I can be there.’
Jem nods. ‘All I can ask for. You’re a lifesaver.’
‘Nah,’ Isabel says, because she’s anything but. ‘Just a really great junior library assistant.’
And she gives her colleague a grin she hopes Jem can’t tell is fake.
14 MARĈANDI (TO BARGAIN)
‘Frue por vi, Noktopapilio,’ says Kieran, looking up from his paperwork. Early for you, Moth. ‘Don’t normally see you at this time in the morning.’
‘Donu la dosieron al mi, Kieran,’ says Isabel, hoping the Esperanto will make him more inclined to hurry. ‘Mi jam malfruas por laboro.’ Give me the file, Kieran. I’m already late for work.
His laugh is condescending. ‘How is the library job going these days?’ he asks, still in Esperanto.
‘Great. The file, Kieran?’
He opens his desk drawer and takes out a thin blue folder. ‘Be careful with this one,’ he says, putting it on the desk.
Isabel takes it. Curious to see what kind of job Ronan’s chosen for her this time, she flicks the file open. The mark’s based in Sledmere, an industrial borough near one of the city gates, and they’re—
‘A smuggler,’ she says aloud, surprised enough to slip back into English.
‘Suspected,’ Kieran clarifies. ‘Confirmation appreciated before elimination. Allow for at least two visits.’
‘I don’t need you to plan my hits for me.’ It’ll be a challenge, that’s for sure. If the mark really is a smuggler, she’ll be ready to defend herself. A little trickier than petty thieves and adulterers – and a lot more useful. ‘Why now? What’s caught Comma’s attention?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t ask questions. And you ask too many.’
‘Confirmation, though?’ she says. ‘I didn’t think Comma usually bothered with proof.’ Two visits mean double the chances to interrogate the smuggler, and if anyone in this city knows where to hide someone on the run from the guilds, it’ll be the person who makes their living moving contraband. If Isabel can get the mark to talk, maybe they can tell her how to keep Leo safe.
‘Ronan wants to be sure we’re hitting the top of the food chain and not another lackey. There’s a bonus in it for you if you give us the final piece to shut down her operation.’ Kieran nods towards the file. ‘It’s all in there.’
She’ll read it later, work out why this mark’s a threat to Comma. Abolitionist leanings, she’d guess; maybe she refused to sell to the guilds. That’s always a way to make enemies. Even agents sometimes get a hankering for forbidden items – tech, or uncensored media, or food the city doesn’t typically import. A smuggler who keeps the guilds on their side will live a lot longer than one who doesn’t.
‘Deadline?’ she asks, signing for the file with a half-hearted squiggle and shoving it in her bag.
‘Open-ended. It’s a guild target, not a commission. But don’t linger.’
That gives Isabel time to figure out how to approach this. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ she says. ‘Delightful to see you as always, Kieran, but I’m afraid I can’t stay to chat. Places to go, people to murder, you know how it is.’
‘Get out of my office, Isabel Ryans,’ he says, and she goes.
It’s a long day at the library. She shares her morning shift with Jem and her afternoon one with Beth, and they’re both anxious and on-edge, working out where to hide Leo and how to get enough supplies for three fugitives instead of two. She doesn’t tell them she’s tackling it from her own angle, because there’s no way to explain the file in her bag without outing herself, so she keeps her head down and does her work.
When she gets home, Laura’s out. Isabel heads for her bedroom anyway, locking the door in case her flatmate comes back early. Then she spreads the contents of the file on the floor.
The mark’s apartment block is one of the industrial accommodation complexes near the wall, on the boundary between Sledmere and Grindalythe. Sledmere’s industry is concentrated on food production, while Grindalythe focuses on manufacturing. The mark’s official workplace is a factory in Grindalythe, but her work history used to put her on the other side of the border. Not much in it, either way. Wages are shitty for all but the highest-ranking jobs there, and she doesn’t have one of those.
It’s not hard to guess why somebody in that situation might turn to smuggling, especially so close to the south-west checkpoint. But that means the apartment can’t be her only base of operations. Living quarters in an industrial condo like hers are cramped. Many factory workers bunk with half a dozen other people; the mark has slightly more privacy than that, but the tiny studio flat shown on the floor plans has no space for storing contraband. Still, the reinforced glass in the windows and subtle security enhancements suggest Comma are right to suspect the mark – she’s up to something.
