23

The next few days were spent settling into the routine of being Renzi Llionorco. He got to know Isilla and Anizé, and Isilla’s sons Mando, Nenli, Oscez, and Tendiz. He was invited to meals with them regularly, though Anizé took his food ration cards in exchange. The meals were meager offerings of tinned meat, canned chiles, undercooked beans, and rice that had gone sour, but Wenthi knew Renzi would never complain about such dishes.

A point Nália would often remind him of when his concentration lapsed and she was able to bubble up to pester him. She teased him that he had grown up with his mother’s servants, that even now with a patrol dorm in the rhique 9th Senja, he had jifoz servants taking care of meals and cleaning. She told him he’d never gotten his hands dirty once.

Go shit yourself. I actually lived through Great Noble. Where were you when Rodiguen was building camps? When the city was being bombed? People marching and starving on the Burning Road? I actually lived that.

[People are still living that shit, tory. And shit yourself, I was born in a purge camp.]

And I was a child in one. Just me and my sister, and you have no idea what it took to keep her alive in there.

[Because she’s llipe? Oh, poor thing suffered once.]

Does that mean she—a toddler—deserved to have her head smashed in like so many threatened? To be starved?

Nália was quiet for a moment. [No, of course not.]

And we lived like that, just the two of us with whoever we could get to take care of us, for two years until the war ended. First in the camps, and then wandering the ruins of the Smokewalks after a bombing raid wrecked it.

[So you know. And yet you’re blind to what’s still happening here.]

He had learned how to keep her in a box, how to dip into her knowledge and skills. He hadn’t cracked into her real secrets yet; she was able to keep that boxed from him. He spent most nights on his mattress focusing his thoughts on breaking through her defenses.

The days, he learned Street Xaomico. He chatted up Lajina at her taco cart in the zocalo, Mister Jendix at the carbon shop, Mister Osceba with two daughters and the mechanic shop at the bottom of the alley. He met “Doctor” Ojinzen, the holy woman of the temple, who tended to the spirit icons, and was also a regular lover of Miss Dallatan. He met the boys who liked to loiter in front of the carbon, the old men who spent the day dozing in the zocalo. He met every dog of Miss Dallatan and all the other neighbors. He met the cat that had no owner, but always managed to be in his apartment at sunrise.

Miss Dallatan gave him a few jobs for coin, which was good, since all his food ration cards were going to the Henáca family. Not that coin did him any good in getting petrol for the cycle. No amount of coin changed the fuel ration card, and his was pitiful. The jobs were mostly delivery—a bundle here, a package there, nothing that seemed explicitly illegal from what he could tell—but the tank of the ’goiz 960 was getting light, and he wasn’t going to be able to put anything in it for several more days.

No wonder Nália had gotten into the petrol thieving racket. She needed to keep her own tank full.

When his ration day came up, he drove down to the fuel station at the bottom of the hill, at Circle Hiatea, with its statue of the Sehosian general of the same name prominently displayed in the center. The jifozi line was immense, though the pumps for rhique and llipe sat unused. He waited in line for an hour, until the service attendant came out and said the jifozi line was shut down. No more fuel rationed out to them.

While waiting, after thumbing through a magazine that gushed over Lathéi and her fashion choices, he had chatted up a pair of young jifozi women—real cycle cats like Nália, decked out in tight-riveted raw denim pants and jackets, shaded visors, and painted helmets. When the petrol station worker announced ration was used up for the day, the cats said they knew another one in the 12th that they could try. He rode with them to check it out, only to be stopped by patrol at the other side of the circle. They checked everyone’s cards and declared they had no cause to cross into the 12th unless they had legitimate business there.

Fortunately, one of those patrol officers was a fellow named Andorn, from Wenthi’s cadet cohort. Wenthi gave him a wink as he told them they were getting courier jobs with a shop in the 12th, and they would get their transit cards soon, but they needed to fuel their cycles here to be able to work. Andorn clued in, and told them they could pass, but not before giving Wenthi a clap across the head and telling him not to think he was getting away with any bullshit.

They were able to fuel up—or at least half the tank, since that’s all he was rationed—and get back into the 14th without trouble. The girls mentioned a party out by the trenches in Ako Favel, and that gave Nália a moment of panic. Wenthi went out there with them, hoping it would give him some sort of lead to the cycle gangs and the petrol thieves. These ladies seemed like the type to be involved in that.

Instead it was just a burned-out lot, with cheap carbons, decent corn, and a loud band of guitarists and fiddlers. Wenthi soon found himself whispering to his spirits to send the patrol to bust it up. Those whispers were answered around seven on the fifty, as a dozen patrol cycles came roaring up. He got grabbed by a pair of patrol, who gave him a few smacks and threw him down, kicking him in the dirt a few times. The kicks weren’t too hard—again, Andorn was in the group, and had obviously cued them in to make a show of it. It probably looked good for anyone who noticed, but it still stung. Someone threw a carbon bottle that cracked one of the other patrol across the head, and most of the group ran off after them. Andorn stayed behind for a moment.

“Assignment?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yeah,” Wenthi said.

Andorn gave a fake kick. “That’ll probably help you out. Good luck.” He dashed off.

Wenthi got on his feet and stumbled over to his ’goiz. One of the girls was by her cycle, kicking it up.

“You all right?”

“I’ll make it,” he said as he got on his cycle. “But I’m gonna roar out of here.”

“Same,” she said. “See you on the stone.” She jetted off, ripping through the lot so she could kick a wave of dust up at some of the patrol before flying away.

Wenthi didn’t waste time getting out. Not that it would matter. It was clear this assignment was going to take as long as it would take.