Songs of Love & Death

“That’s the closest workable one on this level that I have the code for.”

“Since when do you need a code for a lock?”

“Since we only have forty minutes to do what we have to and get back.”

One of the Breffan guards raised his face, peering over the crowd of stationers. Spotting them? Nic couldn’t take the chance. The guard was already heading toward them. Nic put his arm around her shoulders, aware now of movement to their left. A deep voice, shouting. Then a sharp trill of high laughter.

“Looks like someone’s on his way to a party,” he told her, turning her quickly toward the group of drunken revelers. “Let’s go crash it.”

....

THEY STANK. SOMEONE—more than one someone, Serri guessed with fair accuracy, wrinkling her nose—had spilled sour ale on his clothes, and another someone standing far too close to her and Nic had pissed on himself. Or herself. Crammed into the small lift as they were—a nonstop to Level Ten—there was nowhere to get away from the stench and the harsh laughter and—

Vakare-be-damned, if that bastard behind her patted her ass one more time she was going to ignore Nic’s admonition to “blend in,” and clock the drunk right across his drooling face.

She inched closer to Nic, regretting that too because he smelled clean like soap and leather and, well, like the Nic Talligar she remembered.

It was Rez I wanted to hurt. Not you.

She played his words over in her mind as she listened to Nic ramble on in an unintelligible conversation with several of the drunks, his newfound friends. There was no escape, not from the drunken dockworkers headed for the Crimson Flask on Level Ten, and not from Nic Talligar who never wanted to hurt her.

So he said.

He never hurt you before. He was your best friend.

But how in hell was helping Rez cover his affair with Janna hurting Rez? If she lived through this, she was going to sit Nic down and demand an answer. And have Quin there to make sure Nic didn’t lie.

Though she might suffocate from the noxious fumes before that happened. She gave up and leaned her face against Nic’s jacket. And was surprised when his arms came tightly around her. And even more surprised to feel his mouth brush the side of her forehead.

He’s playacting. We’re just another pair of drunks headed for someone’s party.

But being held by Nic felt good. And it wasn’t just because he smelled good. It was because… he was Nic. Her onetime closest friend she never wanted to see again. Ever.

This was definitely not good.

The lift shimmied to a stop, doors opening. The whooping and laughing increased, along with general mayhem as the partygoers stumbled toward the bar’s entrance.

She and Nic stumbled along with them. Suddenly he yanked her sideways.

“Hey, party’s this way!” someone called out.

“Be righ’ there,” Nic called back, words slurred as he swayed against her. “Gotta puke.”

That elicited a chorus of groans and epithets as Nic bent over, one hand braced against the wall.

“Arm around my shoulder. Block their view.” His voice was low, urgent.

She steadied him and realized he didn’t want his new friends to see the tiny decoder in his hand. He was picking the lock on a door clearly marked “No Admittance.”

“I really don’t think they care,” she said quietly, meaning that he was accessing the door, not that he was pretending to be sick.

“Anyone watching?”

She turned slightly. The line of dockworkers in the corridor had dwindled. “Nope.”

He shoved the door open and pulled her inside. “They care,” he said, closing the door, extinguishing all light. Then light flared. Nic, with a small handbeam. They were in a storage closet.

“They care,” he repeated. “You ever know a Jabo dockworker who could afford drinks on the house for fifty people at the first bar, and now a second party here?”

“Someone’s rich relative died?”

He shook his head and played the beam around the room. “The woman with the long white braids on the lift with us is our hostess. Got paid good money for doing something interestingly illegal. And it involves filched cargo and bogus tariffs.”

“She works for Filar.”

“No. Rez Jonas.” He focused the beam on another door on the left wall. “This way.”

Her mind frantically processed the information and refused to let her feet move. “But why would he risk his own cargo? He’s working with you, isn’t he?”

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward. “I don’t know, and no, he’s not,” he said, putting the decoder against the door. “Jonas had no idea we’re tracking his cargo. Yours is one of several shipments the DIA tagged at the source. Some ended up at Able-Trade, some went to Fortune Exports, and some to Widestar.” The door unlocked with a low pinging sound. “We didn’t know where the problem was. Now I think we do.”

“But why would he want his own cargo stolen?”