A Flight of Broken Wings, page 26
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
The river sparkled in the distance like an earthbound rainbow, reflecting the prismatic lights of the city.
“Geeti wasn’t kidding about the tourists, was she?” said Ashwin, gaping at everything with the wide-eyed wonder of a country kid on his first visit to the big city.
In a strange way, Ruban could almost relate. After all, he had once been the wide-eyed country kid awed by anything that wasn’t a sprawling corn field. “Nope. Thirty years ago, this place had nothing more than a tiny fishing community. As nondescript as they come, and poor as fuck. Then Jimena Washi – that’d be Casia Washi’s grandmother – swept to power as an independent candidate and within the next decade, Ibanborah had turned into one of the most popular tourist hotspots in the country, not to mention one of the richest cities. Now they have everything – the hippies, the pilgrims, the backpackers and the gangs.”
“And the food!” added Ashwin, gliding from stall to stall with an ever-increasing pile of junk food in his arms. Ruban could have sworn the Aeriel had cartoon hearts in his eyes every time his gaze landed on anything remotely sugary. Popping a handful of caramel popcorn into his mouth, Ashwin slurred through dessert-induced bliss: “I’d forgotten how good the food was on earth. And it’s only gotten better in the time I was gone. Vaan is in dire need of mortal chefs.”
“What for? Aeriels don’t need to eat.”
“And you don’t need to knife my mother. Life’s not just about the needs, my friend. It’s about the pleasures.”
Ruban rolled his eyes as Ashwin purchased an orange popsicle and slurped on it with an expression of ecstasy that would have put crack addicts to shame. “You’re going to make yourself sick if you keep going like that.”
The Aeriel tittered, confirming the Hunter’s suspicions of a sugar rush. “Advantages of immortality, my dear. ’M physically incapable of getting sick.”
“I’ll believe that when you’ve gotten all that syrup off your face. Honestly, you make Hiya look like the epitome of self-control.”
“Nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of hard labour,” Ashwin proclaimed, extending a hand to accept his stick of candy floss from the smiling shopkeeper.
“The only ‘hard labour’ you’ve performed all day is flirting with Luana,” Ruban grunted. “I’m gonna go make a round of the local Quarters. See if I can find any info on the body. Meet me by the river when you’re done courting diabetes.”
“Roger that,” said Ashwin, lifting the candy floss to his temple in a mock salute. Ruban decided he needed to keep the Aeriel away from Hiya, if only to preserve his own sanity. “Have fun investigating.”
In an inexplicable way, Juwi Mesrani, Deputy Hunter (East Ibanborah Division), reminded Ruban of Simani. The two looked nothing alike, of course. Simani was a native northerner – light-skinned, dark-eyed – with an ectomorphic body-type that would not have been poorly represented by a stick figure. Juwi, by contrast, was built like a baby bull, wide-set jade eyes stark against her dark-brown face.
Her mouth set in a grim line, shoulders taut with tension, Juwi paced the atrium of the Hunter Quarters like a caged lion waiting to spring. Her movements were so reminiscent of Simani that Ruban could have sworn he was watching his partner in another body. She looked like she was about to punch something.
“Forensics found sif particles in the wound, can you believe it?” she growled, her pace quickening. “Bloody sif in the stab wound and they say the case is closed. Orders from Ragah my foot. They’re knee-deep in the black market, man, everyone from the DSP upward. That’s why they’re all trying to push this thing under the rug.”
“So you don’t think this is a normal gang job?”
“Gang job?” Juwi laughed. “I grew up in this town, Kinoh. I know what gang violence looks like, and this ain’t it. Acid in the eyes? Sure. That isn’t exactly uncommon around here, despite what the tourism ads will have you believe. But gangsters don’t go around stabbing their victims. Not if they’re human, anyway. Why go through all the trouble of up-close-and-personal when a simple bullet from half a mile away would do the job, and better? A knife might have been used in a bar brawl gone wrong, which is what they initially thought it was. But then again, drunk tourists don’t usually pour acid into their victims’ eyes after offing them.
“This thing is all over the place, almost as if someone was trying to make it look like something it’s not. And all of that I could ignore, but you can’t argue with the forensic evidence. Sif particles in the wound – that could only mean one thing. And anyone who says otherwise is wearing a blindfold made of blood money.”
Ruban sighed, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “That’s pretty much what I thought. You’re sure this has something to do with the feather trade?”
“What else could it be? Wasn’t a Hunter that did this.”
“And you are positive it was an Aeriel that died?”
“Have you ever heard of a man being murdered with a sifblade?”
“Touché,” Ruban conceded. “Still, would’ve been helpful to have a proper autopsy.”
“You think? I wanted to wring the Chief’s neck, I did. ‘Orders from Ragah,’ horse’s balls! It’s a cover-up if ever I’ve seen one. They’re all dirty, right up to the goddamn IAW.”
Ruban rose to his feet, holding his hand out to the young Hunter. “Well, thanks for your cooperation, Mesrani. I really appreciate it. I’ll see what I can do from here.”
“You really plan to look into it then?” she said, her smaller hand wrapping around his in a firm grip. “Do you have clearance?”
Ruban raised an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”
Juwi grunted. “I s’pose not. What’s the worst that could happen? We’d just be discharged. I’ve always secretly wanted to work private security anyway.”
Despite himself, Ruban laughed. “I’ll keep your name out of it, Deputy. If it comes to it, they’ll never know we spoke about this case at all. Not from me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t need your protection, Kinoh. Didn’t join the Corps for the job security. Just give me a call if you need anything. I want to get to the bottom of this mess as much as you do. I feel like I’m being played, and I don’t like the feeling.”
Ruban nodded, his voice grave. “I will. And thank you.”
“You know, I really wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Shwaan smiled easily, catching the boy’s wrist between his fingers moments before he had fully withdrawn the tourist’s purse from her handbag. “That’s not very nice, is it?”
The boy stumbled, jerking backwards and trying to pull his hand away from Shwaan’s grip. His eyes widened with an almost manic desperation as he jerked violently in the Aeriel’s hold in a futile attempt to free himself. The boy was skinny, almost to the point of malnutrition, and he appeared to be small for his age – not that Shwaan knew what his age was, of course. Had he been human, the thrashing might have been a minor inconvenience to him. As it was, he held the boy with the ease of a child holding a particularly recalcitrant butterfly.
“You’re going to break something if you keep that up,” Shwaan informed him in the tone of one commenting on the weather. When that did not yield the desired result, he sighed. “Take a breath. Calm down. Really, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
The boy was trembling, and his eyes looked like they would pop out of his skull any minute now. After a few more seconds of violent jerking, his movements subsided to a more half-hearted wriggling as he gasped, defeated: “Look mister. Just-just let me go, okay? I will’na try ’nything, I swear. Y-you can have all my money, all of it! Just let me go. Don’t take me to the cops. Please, man. I din’na even take any of her money, you know that. I’ll gi-give you everything I have, I swear it on me life.”
Shwaan frowned, dropping to his knees in front of the boy. He loosened his grip on his captive’s wrist, but not enough to allow him to flee. All around them, tourists in various stages of inebriation turned to look at the pair as if they were aliens duking it out in the middle of the sidewalk. Of course, in Shwaan’s case, they weren’t that far off the mark.
“What’s your name?” he asked the boy, who looked at Shwaan as if he had grown a second head. Shwaan let out an annoyed huff, holding a chocolate donut out to the young man. “I am not going to take you to the police, and I don’t want your money. Plus, you can’t leave unless I want you to. So you might as well make it easier on yourself and just answer the question. It can’t be that hard to pronounce your own name.”
After a few more seconds of staring disbelievingly at his captor’s face, the boy seemed finally to come to a decision. Reaching out with his free hand, he snagged the donut, shoving the whole thing into his mouth at once. This was followed by another few seconds of silence as the boy chewed on the confection while peering suspiciously at Shwaan.
“Biskut,” he said finally, squinting at his companion through narrowed eyes as if daring him to challenge that statement.
At the latter’s elevated eyebrow, he snapped irritably: “You asked for me name, didn’ya?”
“Ah, forgive me. That’s a rather…unusual name.” At the boy’s enraged glare, Shwaan held out another donut – a peace offering. “It’s a good one, don’t get me wrong. Sounds a bit like a ‘biscuit’, is all.”
The boy shrugged, munching on his new donut, this one covered with pink icing. His struggles had subsided to nothing more than the occasional twitch of long, bony fingers. “I liked ’em as a kid.”
“Biscuits?”
He nodded, shaggy brown hair falling over his eyes like a ragged curtain drawn over vibrant dark gemstones. “So me mum just called me Biskut, ’cause I liked ’em as a kid.”
“Makes sense,” agreed Shwaan. “Do you still like them?”
Licking grubby fingers clean of pink icing, the boy grunted. “Sure.”
Rising to his feet, Shwaan tugged lightly at the boy’s hand before finally releasing his prisoner. “Okay. You can go now, if you want. I won’t stop you. Or,” he said, looking conspiratorially around them as if to ensure secrecy. “We could make a deal.”
The boy – Biskut – looked conflicted, one foot extended away from the Aeriel like a deer preparing to bolt, while the other wavered uncertainly, still on the pavement. “Yer a foreigner,” he said eventually, his tone accusatory.
“I am,” Shwaan admitted with appropriate contrition.
“What kind of a deal d’you wanna make?”
The Aeriel shrugged. “Some information. In exchange for a month’s supply of the best biscuits available in this town.”
“Okay…” the boy said, his tone suggesting he expected a catch. Nothing could really be that easy.
“Okay,” agreed Shwaan, turning on his heel. “Lead the way to the best biscuit shop you know of. I’d like to see what this town has to offer. On the way, you can tell me about the body they found in the river the day before yesterday.”
“So, you know about the murder?” Shwaan prompted, his fingers wrapped around a mug of steaming ginger tea. They sat on the steps of a roadside café not far from the riverbank, Biskut devouring biscuits and cookies of every kind ever invented by man while the Aeriel sipped more sedately at his beverage.
“’Course I know ‘bout the murder,” the boy said indignantly, cookie crumbs flying out of his overstuffed mouth in all directions. “It’s all anybody’s been talking about these last couple o’ days.”
“Is that so?” said Shwaan, letting a hint of scepticism seep into his voice. “So you know who he was? The murdered man, I mean. You know why he was killed?”
The boy smirked. “He wasn’t no man; that’s the one thing I know for sure.”
“No?”
“Are you kiddin’ me?” he said, in a voice that implied exasperation at stupid foreigners who had no clue about life. “You don’t stab a man when you can shoot ’im. And you certainly don’t melt his face with acid before dumpin’ the body in the river; not unless there was somethin’ in it as you didn’t want the cops to see.”
“Not that I doubt your expertise in the fine art of murder, my friend, but I have to say I don’t quite follow your reasoning there.”
Biskut scowled at Shwaan, popping a chocolate-chip cookie into his mouth to better deal with clueless foreigners. “It was an Aeriel, is what it was. An Aeriel as was killed.”
“A Hunt?” asked Shwaan, frowning.
The boy laughed, derisive. “Fat chance. Hunters would’na burn out a dead Aeriel’s eyes, would they now? They’d be proud of the kill, flaunt it even. ‘Tis the gangs that’d want to make a dead Aeriel look like a dead man.”
“A gang Hunted down an Aeriel? Why?”
The boy looked at him pityingly, lifting a can of cola to his lips before continuing. “It wasn’t a Hunt. ’Twas a theft.”
“A theft?” Shwaan repeated, genuinely mystified. “A theft of what?”
“Whaddaya think? Feathers, of course. They found some sucker of an Aeriel dead in front of the old Kinoh place by the river. Mum always says that house’s haunted, what with the witch livin’ in it and all. And so they got a sickle and chopped off its wings, poor bastard,” he explained with a relish bordering on the morbid.
Aeriels did not, of course, feel nausea, but Shwaan felt he was cutting that biological advantage rather close. He hoped he didn’t look as disturbed as he felt. The thought of having your wings chopped off, even in death, was not an agreeable one.
Not that Biskut would have noticed either way, in any case. The young man was by now far too engrossed in his own gory tale to spare much thought for his companion’s reaction to it. “And ‘course then they had to burn out its eyes, didn’t they? Couldn’t have a wingless Aeriel lying around. Aeriel feathers are guvmint property. There’d be raids and they’d all go to jail if the cops got wind of it. Or the Hunters. The Hunters are worse. They take it personal, you know, with the underground feather trade, like ‘tis their property bein’ smuggled off.”
“But how could anyone not notice that the victim was an Aeriel? Eyes are hardly the only things that distinguish a man from an Aeriel.”
Biskut shrugged. “Well, ‘tis not just the eyes. They usually chop off the hair too, and dye it somethin’ darker. Though I guess they would’na need to do that in Zaini, would they, if they all have hair like you? That’s ’bout the right length for an Aeriel, if an Aeriel fancied a braid, and black hair.”
Shwaan laughed. In less than an hour of acquaintance, this boy had noticed the one thing about him that could have given him away. The one thing that all the trained Hunters in Ragah had ignored with a blasé indifference that had surprised even him. His hair was exactly the right length for an Aeriel, if the Aeriel fancied a braid, and black hair.
“So this gang,” began Shwaan, in an attempt to distract the boy from that line of reasoning. “They found a dead Aeriel in front of the Kinoh House and chopped off his wings for the feathers. Then they burned out his eyes and dyed his hair after cutting it short, to make him look more human. And then what, they dumped this body into the river for the police to find at their own leisure?”
The boy nodded, nibbling slowly on an oblong biscotti. He seemed to have had his fill of desserts for the day.
“Still, that might fool a casual observer. But those are just cosmetic changes. They’d know the victim was an Aeriel the moment they examined the body closely.”
Biskut shrugged. “Maybe, but why would they? Ain’t no policeman’s gonna get his knickers in a twist o’er some dead dude nobody gives a fuck about. The Hunters came nosing ‘round for a bit – guess they might’ve suspected somethin’. But then they got called off and the police didna give any fucks. Even if they knew – and I don’t think they did – the gangs would just pay ‘em off and be done with it. Don’t matter so long as the TV people don’t get wind of it. The TV people cause all kinds of trouble. And then the cops have to go on raids and make arrests and have all kinds of shitstorms hittin’ the streets.”
Shwaan stepped into the café and paid the cashier, then caught up with his juvenile quarry in a few quick strides. “Still, I’m curious. What do these gangs plan to do with the hacked off wings of a dead Aeriel?”
He knew about the feather trade, of course. Humans had hoarded Aeriel feathers since the time of Zeifaa, in the same way they hoarded gold and diamonds. Shwaan didn’t really understand the mortal obsession with all things shiny, but he was aware of it. After all, his sister had paid the real Ashwin Kwan largely in undamaged Aeriel feathers for the loan of his identity – he supposed the things must go for a pretty price. Especially now that the only remaining source of supply was from Hunted Aeriels, and he didn’t suppose their feathers remained in pristine condition after the Hunt was over. Still, it seemed a little much to go through all that trouble just for a collector’s item, no matter how fetching.
Biskut, for his part, was looking at him like he was an idiot. “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are ya?” the boy grinned.
“I suppose not,” Shwaan conceded, smiling sheepishly.
With a longsuffering shake of his shaggy head, Biskut deigned to explain. “Don’t you foreigners know anything? The guvmint takes all the feathers you get on Hunts. Now the gangs, they don’t like that. So they kill their own Aeriels. Or if they’re very very lucky, they’d find one just lying around, waitin’ to be picked, like the one outside the Kinoh House. So they make like the dead guy was…well, a guy; so the guvmint won’t come lookin’ for the wings. And they take the feathers and sell ’em.”
“Sell them to whom?”
“To whoever would be stupid enough to pay a fortune for a shiny feather, obviously. You wouldn’t believe the kind of money some morons would pay…just to put the thing in a lantern and watch it burn pretty. You know how they light up when you burn ‘em, right? The feathers I mean.”
Shwaan nodded.
“Yup, that’s what they do with ’em. Can you believe it? All that cash, up in smoke for a li’l bit o’ firework. Me brother used to run errands for the gangs sometimes, right up until Mum caught ‘im and put ‘im to rights. God does give all the money to all the idiots in the world, doesn’t he though?” With that philosophical pronouncement, Biskut let out a deep breath and came to a halt near the river, his feet buried in the cool sand.
