The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2 Page 3

  “Already did,” Rhundi said, and cut the connection.

  Three

  If there was a better place to take a bath than the hot springs of Arradon, Brazel didn’t know about it. Not that he had many opportunities to actually take baths–the facilities on the Nameless only included showers–but he had trouble imagining how anything would compare to what Arradon made available. A perfect example of the economic hyperspecialization that was so common in the galaxy nowadays, fully half of the planet’s available surface area and nearly all of its subterranean areas were dedicated to resort areas for tourism, and the planet’s combination of enormous underground freshwater lakes and a way-above-average level of volcanic activity meant that geothermally-heated bathing facilities had become the entire planet’s calling card. The pool Brazel was grooming himself in was scented with a dozen spices and half a dozen more exotic oils, most of which he couldn’t have named even if he bothered to try.

  They made his fur soft and shiny and he smelled wonderful for a few days. It was grand. The Nameless stunk of ogre. Grond was here somewhere, too–the halfogre probably wasn’t bathing, but there were other ways to enjoy yourself–but no matter how much money Brazel invested in air scrubbers and the latest cleaning ‘bots, having a halfogre as a partner meant putting up with certain olfactory hardships. Gnomes had an especially acute sense of smell, and anything that covered up the smell of ogre tended to be overpowering in its own right. It wasn’t worth the trouble.

  He let himself sink deep into the bubbling water, puffing his fur out in what probably had been some sort of threat display hundreds of thousands of years before gnomes became civilized, much less took to the stars. It didn’t make his not-quite-one-and-a-quarter-meters-tall-without-his-boots frame look any scarier, but it certainly helped in letting the scents and oils penetrate through to his skin. He had reserved a full afternoon’s access to this pool and he didn’t intend to get out of it until he was clean and pleasant-smelling in places that he previously hadn’t even known were there.

  The gun pointed at his face when he resurfaced altered his priorities.

  “Rude,” he said. “I’m busy. Whatever you want, come back later.” He tilted his head back, lowering himself into the water again.

  The gun tapped him on the top of his head, upsetting his balance and forcing him to put his feet down. “Maybe I just wanted to see my husband,” she said.

  “There are security cams for that. I’m smelly. Or I was. You know I don’t like heading straight to you when I’m smelly.” He went back underwater.

  The gun rapped him on the head again.

  “Wives aren’t supposed to hit,” Brazel replied. “Especially with guns. And double-especially with my gun. Bother Grond.”

  “Husbands aren’t supposed to leave weapons just lying around where anyone can get at them, either. We’ve got a problem, Brazel. There’s Benevolence on Arradon. Not far from here. That pique your interest at all?”

  Shit, he thought.

  “It does,” he said, and climbed out of the pool.

  Rhundi was taller than Brazel was—typical for gnomish females—and her fur was a golden brown, several shades lighter than his. Most of the time she had it dyed. Today everything was tipped with a lovely green shade, matching her eyes. He’d had to hold her at gunpoint for a brief time on their first date, and she’d enjoyed getting the drop on him whenever she had the chance ever since.

  He spent a few minutes in a sonic shower, blasting the excess water out of his fur, then recovered his gun and the rest of his gear and got dressed. He sighed at the condition of his flight suit—he’d planned on spending some of his time between jobs getting everything he owned carefully cleaned and retailored, a task it didn’t sound like he was going to have time for. Rhundi looked impatient.

  “Have you found Grond already?” he asked.

  “He was playing chess,” she replied. “He wasn’t hard to find. You actually took a little bit longer to track down. He should be in my office already.” Brazel grinned. His partner was a lot more intelligent than anyone ever gave him credit for and he’d probably been toying with his opponent. He’d seen Grond win chess matches against two opponents simultaneously on more than one occasion. Brazel didn’t play, so the halfogre frequently slipped away to find a game whenever they were land-bound for more than a day or two.

  “How are the kids?” Brazel asked.

  “Not much different,” Rhundi said, thumbing a recessed wall panel to summon the direct lift to her office. The response vaguely alarmed Brazel. Rhundi had never dispensed with their children’s welfare in three words before. She was more concerned about the Benevolence than she was letting on.

  The lift door slid open and the two entered Rhundi’s office. She was right. Grond was there already, sitting comfortably in the only piece of furniture in the office suited for a halfogre. He was dressed in what he called his “civilian” clothes, a basic long-sleeved, belted tunic over loose, comfortable pants–which meant that he wasn’t openly displaying any tattoos, scars, or anything sharp. He was also wearing his reading glasses. He had a thick book in his hands and another sitting on his lap.

  “Been waiting long?” Rhundi asked.

  “Not long,” Grond rumbled. “But I had a few minutes. What’s going on?”

  Rhundi settled in behind her desk, an oversized (for a gnome, anyway) ornate wooden affair, and pushed a recessed button somewhere. The entire desk shimmered, the holographic antique look fading away and being replaced with the modern console desk that it actually was. She waved one hand at an icon on the desk surface and another at Brazel and Grond, beckoning them over. The desk surface projected a holographic image of a black-armored Benevolence agent having a conversation with an alarmed-looking clerk behind a counter somewhere.

  “Just one?” Brazel said. “Maybe he’s on vacation.”

  “There’s two,” Rhundi said. “The second stayed behind on their spidership. He’s not left the dock since they got here–probably right around the same time you guys did. They’re in a marked Benevolence ship and the agent has been moving around in full armor. I’ve had camera ‘bots tailing him since the second they hit the ground. He either hasn’t noticed them somehow or doesn’t care that they’re there. He’s literally just traveling around bothering people, but no arrests or violence that I’ve heard about. No purges. I want to know what he’s doing here. This video’s live, so he’s nearby.”

  “You could ask,” Grond said.

  “I could find out on my own, too,” Rhundi replied. “And that’s a lot less likely to result in getting lied to or arrested. Last I checked, Benevolence weren’t generally too forthcoming with answers when gnomes got impertinent with them, and I don’t have anybody who I’m willing to risk on being polite right now. So it’s up to you two.”

  “You’re sure they’re alone?” Grond said.

  “As sure as I can be,” she replied. “He’s clearly looking for something and they haven’t found it yet.”

  “So what do we do about it?” Grond asked. “We can take care of two of them, especially if we get some help and go after them separately. But that’ll bring two dozen as fast as they can get here. We have a way to find whatever they’re looking for before they do?”

  Brazel shrugged, wrinkling his snout in a gnomish gesture of disgust. “We need to find out what they’re looking for first. Specifically. Rhundi, you have any contacts that they’ve actually talked to? Who’s this in the holo?”

  “That wasn’t far from here,” she said. “I don’t know who he is yet, but I can find out easily enough. The ‘bots are all over the place.”

  “Comm us an address,” Brazel said, standing up. “Grond and I will pay them a visit. Keep an eye on the agents and let us know if anything changes.” He waved to Grond and headed toward the lift.

  “Mind if I borrow these?” Grond asked Rhundi, holding up the books.

  “Just bring them back. Bring him back, too,” she said. Grond nodded and f
ollowed his partner out of the office.

  Four

  Namey had the local coordinates before they even got to him, and it took no more than half an hour in atmosphere to get where they were going. The two didn’t talk much on the trip. Brazel was deep in thought, Grond busy with his books. He was ready for business by the time they landed, though, wearing just enough weaponry to be able to handle a brawl but not enough that he’d be looked at twice by Arradon’s rather meager security forces.

  The shopkeeper the Benevolence agent had been spotted harassing owned, of all things, a jewelry shop. The vendor was a gnome, but the place was sized properly for bigs, so Grond followed Brazel inside. The walls were lined with glass cabinets, mostly displaying necklaces and rings, with a few larger pieces of artwork and statuary lining the walls and on shelving across the back of the store. Brazel fought to avoid wrinkling his snout. Most of the wares on display were far too gaudy for his tastes. There was a younger female gnome sitting behind the counter.

  “Boss around?” Brazel asked.

  “She’s busy,” she answered. “But I can help you with anything you need.” She looked with alarm at Grond.

  “I don’t really think you can,” Brazel answered.

  “We already paid our binda for the month,” she said, looking just a little bit more alarmed. Brazel filed this information away for later reference. He hadn’t been aware that there was anybody extorting from the local businesspeople. Rhundi would certainly be interested in that information if she didn’t already have it.

  “What’s your name, dear?”

  She blinked. “Xurrin.”

  Brazel smiled, trying his best to look charming. “Xurrin, I’m not here about protection money, and I’m not here to hurt or threaten anybody. But I’m also not here for jewelry. Now, I’m gonna guess that you don’t normally actually work behind this counter, am I right?”

  Xurrin didn’t answer, but her fur flattened, tight against her body.

  “Okay. So I’m right. I’m also gonna guess that your mom owns the place, and that she’s in the back trying to keep Dad from puking his guts out in fear. How am I doing?”

  Xurrin stood up abruptly, the stool she’d been sitting on clattering to the floor.

  “What do you want?”

  Brazel held his hands up. “Just to talk. And to help. I promise. But you really want to go get your parents for us right now. And maybe you’ve sold your last earring for the day, while you’re at it.”

  Grond locked the door.

  Xurrin stood still for a moment, frozen with indecision.

  “I promise, dear. We’re harmless, at least to you guys. Go get your parents.”

  She turned and fled into the back of the store.

  A few moments later, two adult gnomes walked back in. Both looked rather shaken.

  “This is my place. What do you want?” the female asked.

  “I’m Brazel,” Brazel said. “This is my partner Grond. We wanted to ask you some questions.”

  “I think we’ve answered enough questions from strangers for one day,” she replied.

  “I gave you our names, though, so we aren’t strangers,” Brazel said. “We know you had a visitor earlier today. We just want to know what he wanted.”

  The gnomes exchanged a look.

  “C’mon,” Brazel said. “If we were dangerous, you left your kid running the store. We coulda snatched her first and started from there. We’re just here for information.”

  “He was … he was Benevolence,” the male said.

  “I know,” Brazel said. “He had a cloud of my nanocameras following him the whole time. I don’t have any audio, though. We’re trying to figure out what he’s doing here. What was he asking you?”

  “He was asking about a statue,” he said. “If anybody’d tried to sell us anything lately. I told him we don’t do secondhand, though. We’re not that kind of shop–”

  Brazel interrupted him. “A statue? What kind of statue?”

  “About this big,” he said, holding his hands about 30 centimeters apart. “A sphere on top of a wooden base. Sounded really simple.”

  “A Benevolence agent in full armor came in here to ask you if you’d bought a statue recently?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Then he asked a bunch of other questions about where somebody might go if they were looking to sell artwork to somebody. I told him I didn’t really know. He got upset and left.”

  Now it was Brazel and Grond’s turn to exchange a look.

  “He just left?” Brazel asked. “No threats, no promises, nothing? He leave a card or a comm address or anything like that? Say he was coming back? Anything? He just walked in and asked a bunch of polite questions about secondhand statuary and then left?”

  “Nothing,” he responded. “Which, now that I think about it, is kind of weird.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Brazel said. He scribbled a comm address on a nearby receipt pad and handed it to him. “If he comes back, let us know.”

  The gnome nodded, still too shell-shocked to do anything other than agree.

  “And maybe go ahead and take the rest of the day off,” Brazel added. “Neither of you really look in shape to be negotiating with anybody right now. You get somebody clever in here they’re going to rob you blind.”

  The two of them left.

  “Rhundi,” Brazel said, opening a comm channel. “You still following the agent?”

  “He’s still in the neighborhood,” Rhundi said. “Still going around from place to place. He’s visited a few stores and–get this–a brothel.”

  “A Benevolence agent visited a brothel.”

  “You heard me.”

  “Let’s make sure we’re in agreement here,” Brazel said. “He’s not here for a bath, or as a tourist. He wouldn’t be in full armor and in a Benevolence ship. That’s not a person in that armor, it’s a Benevolence agent, and he knows that there’s no way he’s going to relate to anyone as anything other than Benevolence while he’s wearing it. If he was here for something legitimate he’d be out of uniform and on his own ship. And they’re plainly not here as part of a political delegation or a legal proceeding because Benevolence love overkill for that shit. If he was security of any kind there’d be a dozen of them, not two. Which leaves only one real possibility, and I don’t think I like it very much either.”

  “Impostor,” Rhundi said.

  “Impostor,” Brazel echoed. “Which means he is simultaneously rather clever and the most dangerous kind of idiot.”

  “Agreed,” Rhundi said. “I’d rather have actual Benevolence here than some moron impersonating one and drawing attention. And he’s managed to steal a spidership? Not on my planet. Go see if you can bring him in.”

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Brazel said.

  They headed to the port where the spidership was docked and waited for a few hours. Grond took to a rooftop nearby, watching the ship, and Brazel staked out the docks themselves. There was no need to be overcautious about watching for the agent, since the armor would ensure that everyone around cut him a wide berth. Brazel would probably know he was on his way well before actually spotting him. The sun was setting, so the agent would almost certainly be returning to his ship soon, if he didn’t want to stay somewhere on-planet.

  Grond was examining the ship through binoculars. Something about it seemed off, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

  “Braze,” he said over the comm.

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think that’s a spidership, man. It just doesn’t look right. You ever seen one of these things actually docked?”

  “I haven’t,” Brazel said. “And I’ve been too busy fleeing when we’ve seen them in action to take too close of a look, as I’m sure you already know.”

  Spiderships were the Benevolence short-range, disposable fighters. They generally carried no more than two crew. A spidership had an ovoid central unit with up to eight flexible “legs” that the pilot could point in just about any
direction. The legs could be used for either propulsion or assault but not both at the same time. The advantage was that spiderships could be insanely maneuverable, or insanely destructive, in the hands of a talented pair of pilots. The disadvantage was that one generally had to be chosen over the other.

  Grond finally figured out what was bothering him.

  “I don’t think those things balance on their legs, do they?” he asked. The spidership in the dock was perched on the tips of its eight legs, its central sphere held a meter or two above the ground. That would run the risk of damaging both the guns and the maneuvering jets. That seemed like a terrible engineering decision. He felt like Benevolence engineers were probably smarter than that.

  “No idea, Grond,” Brazel said. “‘Ware the entrance. Everybody just got really agitated all the sudden.”

  Grond tore his gaze away from the ship and looked at the main entrance to the dock. A lone figure in full-body black armor, wearing a black cape over his shoulders, strode in. The crowd parted around him in a wave as he moved.

  “There’s our guy,” Brazel said. He snorted. “Check out the cape.”

  “Did he have that on in the jewelry shop?” Grond said. “I can’t imagine he did. I don’t remember making fun of him. Why the fuck is he wearing a cape?”

  “Capes automatically make you twenty percent scarier,” Brazel said. “At least, they do if they’re black. Capes of any other color just make you easier to trip.”

  “Not Benevolence. No way.”

  “No way,” Brazel agreed. “How long we gonna wait?”

  “Another hour, unless he leaves, in which case we hightail it back to the Nameless and chase him,” Grond said. “Give him time to settle down and maybe see if we can catch him sleeping.”

  “I think that’s the first time anybody’s ever said the words maybe we can catch him sleeping about a Benevolence agent,” Brazel said.

  “I’m not talking about a Benevolence agent, though,” Grond said. “I’m talking about a fucking idiot in an ill-advised party costume. I doubt the armor’s even real, and I’ve got a couple of theories about the ship, too.”