The Stickpin

  Walter Jon Williams

  Copyright (c) 2018 by Walter Jon Williams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form.

  OTHER BOOKS BY WALTER JON WILLIAMS

  The Second Books of the Praxis (NEW!!!)

  The Accidental War

  Fleet Elements (forthcoming)

  The First Books of the Praxis (Dread Empire’s Fall)

  The Praxis

  The Sundering

  Conventions of War

  Investments

  Impersonations

  Quillifer Series (NEW!!!)

  Quillifer

  Quillifer the Knight

  Novels

  Hardwired

  Knight Moves

  Voice of the Whirlwind

  Days of Atonement

  Aristoi

  Metropolitan

  City on Fire

  Ambassador of Progress

  Angel Station

  The Rift

  Implied Spaces

  Divertimenti

  The Crown Jewels

  House of Shards

  Rock of Ages

  Dagmar Shaw Thrillers

  This Is Not a Game

  Deep State

  The Fourth Wall

  Diamonds for Tequila

  Short Stories

  Daddy’s World

  The Stickpin (Set in the world of Dread Empire’s Fall)

  Prayers on the Wind

  Collections

  Facets

  Frankensteins & Foreign Devils

  The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories

  THE STICKPIN

  1.

  “I’m so glad to escape for a day,” said PJ. “It’s getting grim up in the High City.”

  “Yes?” Sula said.

  “So many of my friends are gone. The clubs are almost empty except for the servants and the Naxids.” PJ lifted a hand to caress one perfectly-tailored lapel. “And such a vulgar group of Naxids they are.”

  Sula looked up at him. “How so?”

  “That Lord Treshmak was speaking the other day— and in such a loud voice— about the profits he’d made selling furniture confiscated from— well— ‘saboteurs’ is the word they use, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. That’s the word they use.”

  So perfect was the day— brilliant sun in the viridian sky; a light cooling breeze; trees in their autumn colors— that a person could almost forget that Zanshaa was a city under occupation. The Naxid police were nowhere to be seen, and the Urban Patrol in this district were comparatively civilized.

  The Petty Mount was a modest hill that leaned against the east end of the High City, just below the Couch of Eternity where the ashes of the Shaa Masters sat in their white marble sepulcher. The streets were full of people enjoying the day, visiting the boutiques or sitting beneath colorful umbrellas in the cafes. Video monitors shone in the bars, where people watched the football game between Tor-byee and Andiron. On the street corner, a trio of Cree serenaded the passersby simply for the joy of it.

  The greater centers of fashion on the High City had faded with the evacuation of the government and the most prominent citizens. Even those who could afford the High City tended to avoid it, with its checkpoints and Naxids in their brown and green and blue and black uniforms all scurrying on errands for the new government.

  The result was added life in places like the Petty Mount, which had always maintained a lively culture that was less formal than the High City, and served as a source for high culture’s less orthodox ideas. For Lady Sula, stranded on Zanshaa by the war but fortunately not without resources, it was a perfect place to spend one of her rare days off.

  “Oh!” Sula said, as if just remembering. “I’ve got to pick something up here.”

  She stepped into a small boutique with a sign that said ‘OPENING SOON.’ PJ drifted in after her.

  The store was small and smelled of wood polish. Counters and racks held antique, refurbished clothing. A tall Lai-own loomed behind the counter, her long feathery hair hanging down over her tall collar.

  “Yes, madam?”

  “I think I have a package waiting for me. The name would be Nickerson.”

  “I’ll check, madam.”

  The Lai-own stepped into the back of the store. PJ looked over a rack of bright, braided waistcoats and made a little tsk of distaste.

  “I don’t know what our grandfathers were thinking of,” he murmured. Sula smiled.

  Lord PJ Ngeni was a slight, balding man, one of nature’s exquisites. He possessed both a delicate mustache and an unerring fashion sense. Like Sula, he had been stranded on Zanshaa by the evacuation. Or rather, he had stranded himself— he had volunteered to look after Clan Ngeni’s substantial local interests as a means of sparing himself the company of his wife, who had evacuated.

  PJ had been in love with someone else when he married. The lovers had been crossed not so much by the stars as by the ambitions of Clan Martinez, who seemed to have sprung from their provinical world for the sole purpose of wrecking some of the old families before fleeing the oncoming Naxids.

  Sula had been among those wrecked. It was something she and PJ had in common.

  The Lai-own returned with a package. Sula admired the brilliance of its wrapping.

  “Could you put it in a bag, please?”

  She took the bag and carried it out of the store. PJ followed, an amiable smile on his face.

  “Did you say Nickerson?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a coincidence. I know Lord Butler Nickerson from my club.”

  “Let’s sit down and have a bite.”

  They stopped at an outdoor café and sat beneath the umbrellas. Traffic eased past by on humming electric motors. PJ had a Kyowan and a little honey cake, and Sula ordered the most expensive thing on the snack menu, which was hot chocolate.

  Quality chocolate was in short supply after the retreating loyalists had blown up the Ring and prevented imports from coming down. Sula had bought stocks of chocolate before the evacuation, along with tobacco and coffee, and was now realizing majestic profits on her investments.

  She was selling the chocolate off the ration, for cash. She supposed she could be shot for it, but then there were so many things to be shot for nowadays.

  The chocolate arrived, creamy and foaming, and she sipped the luxurious liquid happy in the knowledge that every bit of chocolate she consumed only increased the value of her own private supply.

  “You were talking about Lord Butler Nickerson,” she said.

  “Was I? Oh yes.” PJ dabbed at his lips with his napkin and put his drink on the table. “The Naxids have offered him a directorship in the ration authority, with full participation by his clan. He’s considering the offer.”

  “The Naxids have kept the ration authority to themselves. Why would they open it up to a human clan?”

  PJ’s mouth gave a little twitch of distaste.

  “I suppose they think it might put a better face on it if they included another species in their scheme.”

  “The scheme would be worth a lot of money to Lord Butler, I presume.”

  “Indeed it would. But . . .”

  “He doesn’t want to be hated by every human on the planet.”

  “Or assassinated, yes.”

  So far as Sula could tell the ration scheme served two purposes. The scheme forced everyone on the planet to get a new ID, which gave the Naxids an additional way of finding and arresting anyone they didn’t like. And the scheme allowed certain clans— some of which hadn’t supported the Naxid cause to this point— to reap enormous profits off a state-granted food monopoly.

  None of this had anything to do with getting foodstuffs to the people who needed them. In fact there had been plenty of food before the Naxids came, and now there was less, and it cost much more.

  “Which way do you think Nickerson will jump?” she asked.

  PJ made a sour face. “He’ll go for the money, I suppose. The only sort of people left in the High City are the voracious kind.”

  Sula reached out and put a comforting hand over that of PJ. She’d sensed that he was at the end of his rope in the High City, watching the encroachments of the Naxids on the gracious life that he had known. That’s why she had suggested an outing in the Lower Town.

  PJ smiled, and then Sula caught something out of the corner of her eye that sent alarms scurrying along her nerves. She looked out at the street and saw one of the grey and black cars of the Urban Patrol ghosting up the street.

  PJ sensed her tension and looked over his shoulder. Sula drew her hand back and opened her jacket.

  Sula had checked with her sources in the Patrol— and out of it— before venturing to the Petty Mount. There had been no partisan activity in the last few days, which had provoked no Naxid reprisals, which meant that no hostages were being shot. And if no hostages were shot, the Patrol weren’t rounding up new hostages to replace them.

  There shouldn’t be any cause for worry.

  But . . . .

  The car slid by. It held two pale, cadaverous-looking Daimong, and their windows were open as if the Daimong were enjoying the warm day.

  The car passed. Sula buttoned her jacket.

  PJ reached for his Kyowan and sipped.

  “The gifts and Nickerson remind me of a story,” he said.

  “Please tell me.”

  “This happened to
Lord Nickerson, Lord Butler’s late father. I suppose you never met his wife, Lady Amanda.”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “A formidable woman, a captain in the Legion of Diligence. She wore the black uniform with pride.”

  Sula suppressed a shiver. The Legion of Diligence ferreted out crimes against the Praxis, with great rigor and almost no limits on their power.

  PJ finished his honey cake. He licked his fork.

  “Old Lord Nickerson must have grown a little tired of his wife’s diligence,” he said, “because he acquired a lady friend, a dancer in the chorus at the Penumbra. He set her up in an apartment across from the Old Bridge, and all went well until the Solstice Festival. There was a formal dinner, which he would attend with Lady Amanda, and then— Lady Amanda not being the sort for light entertainment— he would pay a visit to the Penumbra and his lady friend.”

  Sula sipped her chocolate. A lovely rich taste. She wondered how they prepared it.

  “Nickerson bought gifts for both his ladies. Jewelry for his wife, heavy handmade stuff, with her crest embossed on every piece, along with quotations from the best poets expressing his eternal love. And for the dancer he bought more jewelry— not quite as nice— but also with suitably romantic inscriptions. He also gave her some clothing of a fairly—” He touched his mustache. “—intimate nature.”

  “Let me guess,” Sula said. “The messenger company got the addresses mixed up.”

  PJ was disappointed. “How did you know?”

  “Because you wouldn’t have found out about it otherwise.”

  PJ gave a little chuckle. “True. And it wasn’t just me who found out— it was everyone on the Street of Righteous Peace. Because Lady Amanda drove Lord Nickerson right out of the house, the both of them in a state of partial undress, Lady Amanda waving the lingerie in one hand and her pistol in the other and screaming at the top of her lungs.”

  “A formidable lady,” sipping chocolate, “as you said.”

  “And of course Lord Nickerson then had no place to go but to the lady friend.”

  “Who by that point had acquired the jewelry with the inscriptions of eternal love dedicated to someone else.”

  “Indeed. She refused to let Lord Nickerson in the apartment, or give the jewelry back. Which was a mistake, because it enabled Lady Amanda to have her arrested for theft and sent to an agricultural commune for several years.”

  Sula sipped her chocolate and contemplated this. She pictured herself chasing Martinez down the street with a pistol.

  “My sympathies are with Lady Amanda,” she decided.

  PJ raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

  “I guess I’m not a forgiving sort of person,” Sula said.

  They paid and drifted down the street. Sula went into several of the boutiques and tried on things but did not buy. Her current existence was peripatetic and she didn’t need more wardrobe.

  When she found a stickpin that was perfect for PJ she bought it for him. It was gold topped with a diamond that had been carved into an idealized woman’s face. It didn’t look at all like the woman he loved and lost, on the whole a good thing.

  PJ flushed with pleasure as Sula put the stickpin into his lapel.

  “Thank you, my— ah —” he stammered, then frowned. “What name are you using now?”

  “It’s I who should thank you,” Sula said. “You’ve taken my mind off things for a few hours.”

  They left the shop and drifted down the hill, leaving the Petty Mount for the high-toned district of Grandview. The shops were more expensive but on the whole less interesting. Then on the street right ahead there was a blare of collision alarms followed by a crash, and Sula looked up to see Naxids.

  There had been an acccident. Sula unbuttoned her jacket and slowed the rate of her approach. One of the Naxids seemed to be wearing a lot of braid on his brown civil service uniform.

  Apparently the Naxid was high-ranked enough to rate a limousine, a chauffeur, and a pair of guards to ride ahead of his car on their two-wheelers and clear the way. One of the guards had swung wide in a turn and ended up running head-on into another vehicle coming the other way. His body was under the car, tangled with his two-wheeler. The other guard bent over him, apparently in conversation. The official had come out of his car to examine the accident. The other driver, a Torminel, stood there uselessly, no doubt wondering if he were about to become a hostage.

  “Police showing up soon,” Sula said. “Let’s hurry out of here.”

  Turning around abruptly would look suspicious, so they quickened their steps to pass the accident before the Patrol arrived.

  The official, having satisfied himself that all that could be done was being done, returned to his vehicle.

  Sula’s nerves began to tingle.

  As they came to the corner, she said, “Stop a moment. Let me adjust your stickpin.”

  PJ obediently turned toward her. Sula performed the adjustment, then held the shopping bag between the two of them while she rummaged in it for a brief moment.

  “All right,” she said, “Let’s cross the street.”

  They walked behind the stalled car, Sula on PJ’s arm. As she passed the big limousine Sula dropped her shopping bag and kicked it beneath the car.

  PJ turned and looked puzzled. Sula clamped his arm and pulled him on.

  “Your package . . . ?” PJ said vaguely.

  A few paces past the corner Sula hailed a taxi. The cab made a U-turn and pulled up to the curb.

  “Hurry,” Sula said. As the door rolled up she and PJ dived into the back seat. She told the driver to take them to the central station.

  The taxi had barely pulled away when the limousine behind them erupted in flame.

  The cab driver stopped. “Hey!” he said, turning around. He was young human with hair arranged in black and white stripes.

  A piece of the car landed nearby with a crash that made everyone jump. Sula drew her pistol from the small of her back and showed it to the driver.

  “Keep going,” she said.

  The driver’s eyes widened. He looked from the pistol to her face.

  “Hey!” he said again. “You’re the White Ghost!”

  “Do I have to shoot you to prove it?” Sula asked.

  The driver turned to his controls and accelerated. PJ stared out the back at the burning limousine.

  “I say,” he said. “Who was that?”

  “Who cares?” Sula answered.

  The bomb had been meant for Lord Butler Nickerson, not necessarily to kill him but to detonate close enough to deter him from lending legitimacy to the Naxids’ ration scheme. Fortunately for Lord Butler’s present peace of mind, Sula was unable to resist a high-ranking target of opportunity.

  But her bomb factory was working around the clock, and there would be another package for Lord Butler within a day or two.

  “Nickerson packages,” she observed, “have a habit of going astray.”

  THE END

 

 

  Walter Jon Williams, The Stickpin (Dread Empire's Fall)

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