Oh, no. The last thing Heuvelt needed was an actual criminal record on top of his accidental one. He dropped to the floor and started looking for a likely table to hide under as more agents came rushing in through the door, humanoid and Hylar both.

  That’s when Mr Slosh triggered some kind of smoke bomb. The bar filled with thick, inky black clouds, but there was still a little clear air near the floor, so Heuvelt crawled along on his belly toward the restrooms.

  The cloud really was thick and blinding, but didn’t seem to be nerve gas, or at least, not one that did anything untoward to humans. He knew some Hylar had ink sacs, used in the old days to release clouds in the water to let them evade predators, and it seemed Mr Slosh had replicated the effect for use on dry land. The data enforcement agents weren’t shooting blindly, at least. They must be pretty well trained.

  Heuvelt stuck close to the walls while he crawled, so no one stepped on him, though he saw some boots and mechanical feet go by. He reached the restroom door and slipped inside. The air was clear here, relatively speaking, though it didn’t exactly smell good; this was a multicultural colony world, and various sorts of aliens had relieved themselves of waste here since the place had been cleaned last. In deference to the stench, though, there was a small window, and since this bar made you pay in advance for drinks, there weren’t even bars on said window to stop patrons from escaping without paying their tabs.

  After glancing behind him to make sure no one was watching, Heuvelt climbed up on a trash bin and peered out at a tantalizing strip of horrible arid desert ground. There were various data enforcement agency vehicles parked here and there, but no actual agents in sight, so he might just wriggle out of this.

  He got his head through the window okay, but his shoulders gave him a bit of trouble until he twisted himself around at just the right angle, and wriggled a bit. Hadn’t he possessed considerable dignity once upon a time? Better undignified than imprisoned, though.

  He was halfway through the window when someone grabbed his ankles and hauled him out. He managed to cover his head so he didn’t get a concussion when he slammed into the trash bin and bounced onto the ground. He landed on his back, groaned, and looked up at the Winnaran bartender, who stood over him, aiming a slim black kinetic sidearm at his chest. “Did I not tip you well enough?” he croaked.

  She reached into her shirt and pulled out a badge hanging on a chain.

  “Ah,” he said. “As my father used to say when mother caught him canoodling with one of the gardeners, ‘All right then, it’s a fair cop.’”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It really was a very sad story.”

  “And getting sadder all the time, don’t you think?” Heuvelt said.

  Chapter 5

  Bianca and her family had just settled down to supper when they heard the sounds: first the terrified bleatings of the caprids out back, followed by a roar-like gale force wind rushing through trees. Bianca’s parents looked at one another, wide-eyed, across their small wooden table, but Bianca leapt to her feet and rushed for the door. She did grab a heavy walking stick on her way out – curiosity didn’t entirely override good sense.

  The ship she’d seen fly over the mech farm (or one just like it) was settling down in front of her house. Its presence in her front yard was as incongruous and disturbing as seeing a snake on her pillow. In the course of landing, the ship crushed the metal watering trough and obliterated an ornamental flowerbed her mother had put in during some of her rare free time.

  Up close and unmoving, the ship was, if anything, more menacing: gleaming black with silver highlights, and covered in cruel barbs, hooks, spikes, and spines, as if it meant to tear apart the very air as it flew. In general shape, it reminded her of a diving predator bird, and its lowered, beaked head was pointed right at her front door.

  That beak dropped open, and a ramp extended to the ground. The man from the Halemeeting hall, Undercommandant Voyou, walked slowly down the ramp, looking around as if inventorying the farm for auction. His eyes marked Bianca, but he seemed to take no more notice of her than he did of the house, the barn, or the trees. When he reached the bottom of the ramp, he adjusted his black gloves, wrinkled his nose like he smelled something foul, and opened his mouth.

  “You’re going to have to pay for that,” Bianca said. She stood with the walking stick leaning over her shoulder in a deliberately casual way.

  “What?” Voyou seemed as baffled as he would have been had a tree stump or a caprid talked to him.

  Bianca was pleased to see him taken aback. She pointed with her stick, and Voyou turned to look where she indicated: at the water trough, crumpled under one of the ship’s legs, and the flowers ground to mud and mush. “You should have looked where you landed.” She clucked her tongue. “That’s going to cost you.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You–” He stopped, took a breath, and said, “On behalf of the Barony of Letnev, please accept my apologies. Be assured, your parents will receive recompense. If it’s any consolation, the only other nearby landing zone my pilot deemed acceptable was the field near your… livestock… and I chose this location instead, since I did not wish to risk upsetting your animals.”

  Now it was Bianca’s turn to be taken aback. “Oh. Ah. That’s… thank you. Why are you here?”

  Her parents emerged then – they’d taken the time to change clothes, Bianca saw, her father in a clean shirt, her mother with a Halemeeting day dress pulled hastily on. “Don’t be rude, Bianca.” Her father’s voice seemed calm, but she knew him well enough to detect the undercurrent of anxiety. “How may we help you, Under­commandant Voyou?”

  He puffed up. “I am – ah. You recall my name. Yes.”

  Bianca was pleased to see him bumped off his equi­librium again. These Barony people certainly had shiny tech, and Torvald said they were a major galactic power (or had been), but if things didn’t go the way they expected, they wobbled like newborn caprids. Or maybe she was overgeneralizing about their species. She’d only met the one, after all.

  The alien said, “You are Keon and Willen Xing, Bianca’s parents?”

  Bianca felt a chill. She didn’t like this man knowing her parents’ names. Her mother and father shared a glance, then nodded mute confirmation.

  “Excellent,” Voyou said. “You ask how you can help me, but in fact, I am here to help you. May I come inside? I’m afraid it’s all rather complex.”

  “Are we in any trouble?” her mother said.

  “Trouble, Madame Xing? Absolutely not. Indeed, you may be the luckiest people on this planet. Except, perhaps, for your darling daughter.”

  Kind words and compliments. They just seemed wrong, coming from the undercommandant. Bianca thought of a snake on a pillow again.

  Her parents exchanged one of their infuriating pair-bonded-people-telepathy glances. When Bianca was little, she’d thought they could really read each other’s minds, and only realized later that they’d simply been together so long they knew one another’s habits of thought. “You’d better come in,” her mother said. “Can we get anything for your crew?”

  “No, they are amply provisioned.” Voyou made a gracious half-bow and gestured that they should lead the way.

  “Why are we lucky?” Bianca fell into step behind him.

  He leaned a little closer to her, and spoke low. “Your parents are lucky because we are going to give them a great deal of money. You are lucky because you get to leave this latrine of a planet.”

  “What–”

  “All will be explained.” He patted her arm. In a friendly way! Looking at him, you’d think his only interaction with a peasant like her would be hitting her in the face with a riding crop if she got in his way while he was crossing the street.

  Having an extra adult in the house made the small space seem terribly crowded, but the undercommandant said, “What a charming home you have,” and took a seat on the long wooden bench at the table like he was settling onto a cushioned settee. “I see I interrupted your dinner. I am terribly sorry. Please, feel free to eat while we talk.”

  Her mother hurriedly set a plate before him – root mash, a few thin slices of dried caprid meat, a sorghum cake – but he demurred. “I am so sorry, the biology of my people, it’s just different enough from humans that your food tends not to agree with us. It looks and smells delectable, however, I assure you. I would welcome a glass of water, though, if such is available?” Her father rushed to comply.

  Bianca pulled his plate toward herself and chewed on some of the dried caprid while staring at him directly. That seemed to make him nervous, which she found exceedingly interesting and wished to know why.

  Her parents didn’t eat. They just stared at Voyou, like they were waiting to see if he might do a trick, or bite someone. “We’ve heard some interesting stories, about your daughter,” the undercommandant said. He picked up the cup of water, gazed into it, and then put it back down without drinking. Bianca couldn’t imagine what the problem was. That water was fresh from the rain barrel. There hadn’t even been any bugs in it last time she checked, and they always picked those out anyway. “Would you tell me a little bit about how Bianca became part of your family?”

  Her father glanced at Bianca, coughed, and said, “Ah. Well. It was almost nineteen turns ago now, I think, right, Willen?”

  Her mother nodded silently. What was that look on her face? Bianca thought she’d seen every possible expression either of her parents was capable of producing, but the way Ma looked now was calculating? Speculative?

  “I was out in the eastern forest,” her father went on. “We were having a real hard go of things that year. Lost half our flock to heartstone, and the crops were only just middling. I went out to gather mushrooms, hoping for some to eat, maybe a few to sell. There’s always good foraging, bird-of-the-wood, green lady, witch fingers, especially after a hard rain–”

  “This was soon after a hard rain?” The under­commandant’s attention was fixed on her father like a laser tracking sight.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes, a big storm, blew over trees that had stood for two hundred years. There was flooding down the valley, a bridge even washed out, and I mean a good bridge, stone and all, not a plank someone had thrown across a gap. We haven’t seen a storm like that since, thank the moons.”

  Voyou nodded like this was confirmation of something he’d suspected. Who cared about the weather twenty years ago? “You were gathering mushrooms, in the forest, you say. But aren’t those forests dangerous for a man alone?”

  Her father nodded. “They can be. But I went in the middle of the day, when the nightclimbers are deep sleeping in their holes and boles.”

  “I’d heard there were other dangers in these woods,” the undercommandant said. “Relics of a past time, that can cause people to sicken and die, or suffer more immediate hardships.”

  “That sort of thing happens,” her mother said. “And none of us wants to see it happen to our children, so we make sure they know how dangerous the woods can be. But…” She looked at her husband.

  He picked up the thread. “When someone digs up something dangerous, it’s the talk of the town for years afterward. Such things are rare, is what I mean. It could be we overstate how likely the danger is. In truth, I can’t remember the last time someone picked up a glowing piece of glass and died puking with their hair falling out. Not since I was a child myself.” He looked at his daughter. “We didn’t really mean to mislead you, Bianca, it’s just–”

  “I know,” Bianca said. “I know you made the forest sound scarier than it is. I’ve been halfway an apprentice to old Torvald for years now, and half the stock at his mech farm was scavenged from the forest. I’ve even gone foraging with him once or twice, but just on the edges – don’t worry.”

  “Please go on,” the undercommandant murmured, apparently fascinated by this familial back-and-forth.

  Bianca’s father blinked. “Ah. I just mean, I felt fairly safe going to gather mushrooms. Back then I had a walking stick with a jolt-tip on it. Do you know what that is?”

  “I would assume some sort of electrical discharge weapon.”

  “That right,” he said. “Torvald fixed it up for me. I figured if I ran into anything nasty, I’d give it a spark and drive it away. As for the other dangers… I know well enough not to pick up glass that shines all blue or yellow or green on its own, or to go digging around the edges of any bit of metal I see poking up out of the ground.”

  “Did you see any metal poking up out of the ground that particular day?”

  “Oh, no, no.” He shook his head and held up his hands and Bianca thought, Wait. He’s lying! He’d looked flustered in exactly the same way when he tried to convince her that her pet felid had run away, when really she’d been eaten by a nightclimber. “No, nothing out of the ordinary happened. I just filled my basket with bird-of-the-wood and such, and then I heard this squalling. Sounded like a child in trouble, so I followed the sound. There she was, baby Bianca, just laying naked on the forest floor, crying her lungs out, and it’s lucky I found her before a predator did–”

  “I am offering you an opportunity to revise your account,” the undercommandant said. The worst part was, he didn’t even sound menacing. He sounded kind. “I understand, this is the story you’ve told for so long, perhaps it has come to replace the truth, even in your own mind. But I’m afraid the truth is what I must have.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Her father twisted a napkin in his hands. “I found Bianca in the forest, just like I said.”

  “You did find her in the forest. That I believe.” The undercommandant had one hand under the table. It emerged, holding a sleek black weapon, some kind of sidearm, an energy pistol or flechette gun or something else Bianca had only read about and never seen. He rested it on the table, not pointed at anyone. “You did not find her ‘just like you said,’ however. The truth, please.”

  He glanced at his wife, and the undercommandant barked, “You need not look at her! Look at me!”

  Bianca gripped the knife by her plate, but the undercommandant noticed the movement, and his weapon shifted – pointed now at her mother. “Mademoiselle Xing, I would not advise that. You might very well bury that blade in my throat – you seem to me to possess the will, and I respect you for it. But I would surely discharge my weapon in my dying moments, and then there would be two bodies here, instead of none. Listen. Your parents have not told you the truth about your origins. Aren’t you curious?”

  Bianca didn’t release the knife, but she did glance toward the end of the table where her parents sat. “What is he talking about?”

  “We… we just didn’t want you to feel different, Bee,” her mother said.

  She’d always felt different, in a hundred ways. “Different how?”

  “You’re a very special young woman,” Voyou said. “More special even than your parents know. Why don’t you tell us the true story, Monsieur Xing? Then, when you’re done, I can fill you in on some context you might be missing.”

  Her father looked down at his plate for a moment. When he looked up, there were tears shining in his eyes. “Bee, it doesn’t matter where you come from. You’re our daughter, and you always will be. You’re ours.”

  “The story, please.” The undercommandant put the gun back in his lap and returned his hands to the tabletop. Bianca carefully put her knife back down beside her plate. Even when she exhaled, she still felt somehow like she was holding her breath, every muscle tensed in anticipation. There was some secret in her life, and it was about to be revealed.

  “As best I remember,” her father began, “it happened like this.”

  Chapter 6

  Keon Xing was a man with only a few things to call his own: he had a little house, a half-sick flock, a few fields of crops all torn up from a storm, and a wife who’d once been happy and beaming and full of life, but who spent more and more time now crying, or just gazing off into space. She loved him, and she loved the farm, but most of all she wanted to share that love by starting a family… and try as they might, they couldn’t seem to have a child.

  She blamed herself, though Keon told her she shouldn’t. He’d done a fair bit of scavenging in his youth, going deep into the forest in search of ancient remnants to sell to the mech farm, and he thought he might have been exposed to something that made him sterile, or at least diminished the likelihood of having children. The wise woman said it might be that, or “Maybe just bad luck.” The life of a small farmer on Darit certainly had enough of that.

  Keon went out that morning to forage for mushrooms, yes – with the crops beat up by the storm, they needed all the food they could get – but he also went out because he needed some time alone, and thought his wife might like some as well. Willen had been so excited just a few days before, thinking they’d finally hit lucky, and they’d start a family at last… but it turned out she was just late on her monthlies, and there was no baby on the way. She’d put on a brave face, but he’d seen her shoulders move up and down with silent sobbing as she pulled weeds in her little flowerbed. He couldn’t stand to see that, so he fled, and in his own sadness and distraction, he looked up and realized he’d gone much deeper into the woods than he’d intended. Subconsciously trying to put distance between himself and his troubles, maybe.

  Now that he was in the forest, though, beneath the dense and dripping trees, he felt guilty about leaving Willen alone in her grief. What kind of man am I? he thought. I can’t give her a child, can’t comfort her in her sadness, can’t–

  He shook it off. Keon was a practical man, and he could at least bring home supper. There was some bird-of-the-wood right there, yellowy-orange shelves of fungus clinging to a tree that had fallen over in the storm. There must have been a kilogram or more of the mushrooms, and they really did taste a lot like poultry when you cooked them right. He filled the basket he carried on his back, and, somewhat cheered, continued to forage.