“Fuck the gods,” Hilo breathed in astonishment. He gathered himself to leap Lightly down after her—thinking only of giving chase and making sure she still died. Then his eyes landed on the van below. It was parked in a loading zone but there was no one inside. Ayt’s Steeled body had warped the roof and caused one of the doors to buckle so it was cracked partway open.
Hilo remembered the note he’d received, the warning that he’d been trying to understand before the attack on Ayt had made him forget the immediacy of some other danger. He took several steps backward and then the van below the window detonated in an explosion that demolished the ground floor of the building and engulfed the side of the structure in an expanding fireball that traveled faster than the screams of the people it swallowed. Hilo had time only to register disbelief, to think of his wife and children, before the force of the blast reached him and the third-floor boardroom collapsed, bringing hundreds of kilograms of concrete rubble down on him.
CHAPTER
26
Nekolva
The address that Ema had given to Bero belonged to the end unit of an old rowhouse in the north part of the Docks not yet gentrified by waterfront condominium buildings, shops, and tourist attractions. Bero had grown up not far from here. When he was a child, the rows of industrial brown living quarters had been populated by dockhands and cannery workers. These days it seemed to be filled with Uwiwan and Oortokon immigrants who worked the city’s lowwage factory and service sector jobs. Bero double-checked the slip of paper and approached the door cautiously, glancing up and down the street. The neighboring unit appeared to be unoccupied; the windows were still taped up against last year’s typhoon season, and the yellow eviction notice on the door was so faded it was not legible. A tarp-covered eight-meter-long motorboat was moored in the water right across from the rowhouse.
Bero tried the door. It was locked. He jiggled the knob, trying to judge how hard it would be to break in, when the door jerked open. The shape of Vastik eya Molovni, with his thick arms and curly burnt-orange hair, stood in the dim entryway like a demon. Bero jumped back from the foreigner’s terrifying glare.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Molovni exclaimed.
“She told me to come here,” Bero blurted. He hadn’t expected to find Molovni here. It was only half past two in the afternoon. Wasn’t the Ygutanian supposed to be carrying out his great plan? Weren’t the Espenians supposed to be stopping him? “She told me,” he repeated. “Ema. She said you’d get us out of town. She gave me this address.”
Molovni’s disbelieving stare and the twitch of his heavy jaw made Bero suspect that the man was debating whether to close the door on him or kill him. Deciding, apparently, that neither option—Bero free or Bero as a dead body—was an acceptable liability, he swore under his breath in Ygut, seized Bero by the front of his shirt, and pulled him into the narrow apartment, shutting the door behind them.
“Have you told anyone else?” Molovni demanded, pushing the slighter man against the wall with enough force that Bero lost any doubt the nekolva agent, though he wore no jade, possessed enough Strength to put Bero through the side of the building if he wished. “Anyone at all? Any of those other clanless fools?” The man spoke in a fast growl, his thick accent distorting the words so that Bero didn’t immediately understand what he was saying. Molovni drew an Ankev pistol. “Have you?”
“No!” Bero sputtered. “I haven’t told anyone.”
Molovni’s brutal face leaned in, close and menacing. Bero was still not sure if Molovni possessed any sense of Perception, but apparently satisfied that Bero was telling the truth, the Ygutanian released him and stowed the Ankev in his waistband. “You can’t come,” Molovni said, scowling at Bero as if he were a stray dog in the garbage. “No matter what the girl told you. There’s no room for anyone else.”
“That’s bullshit,” Bero exclaimed. “You’ve got a boat, don’t you? You can’t fit one extra person?”
“You are an idiot,” said Molovni. “I’m not talking about the boat. Where do you think we’re to go? There’s a ship waiting on the other side of Gosha Island to take us to Ygutan under asylum. The men on that ship, they will only take the people I’ve told them to expect. You? They will shoot you.” Somewhere in the distance, an ambulance siren started up. Another one followed. The Ygutanian locked and bolted the door behind Bero. “Find your own way out of the city, if you’re trying to run from the clans. Or hide in the apartment next door, I don’t care. But now that you’re here, you can’t leave. Not until I’m far away from this fucking island.” He turned away from Bero and began to ascend the narrow stairs.