“You must have done quite well, selling that nectar.”
“Apparently, I could have done even better. Please, tell me—how. Someday this damned occupation will end, and I’ll be able to go back into business. If there’s better profit to be made, I’d like to make it.”
“There’s only one use my party is interested in,” Avery said, “and it can only be done once. I’m afraid there’s no more profit for you … beyond what I’d be willing to pay to acquire the nectar. I assure you, I’ve arranged with my government to be able to pay quite a lot.”
“And what government is this?”
“Ghenisa.”
“You’re some agent of theirs? Forgive me for saying so, my friend, but you don’t look like a spy.”
“No spy,” Avery said. “Just a representative.”
“Of course, I suppose real spies don’t look like spies. That would rather be the point, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m not a spy,” Avery maintained, then thought of Sheridan. “And you’re right, they don’t look like it. Please, tell me where you acquire the nectar; where do you harvest the ghost flowers?”
“I have several villages in the jungle that collect it for me. I refine it here.”
“Then contact these villages. Have them send in a shipment.”
“With the fighting? No. They won’t come, not that they would, normally. I send people to collect it from them, not the other way around, and right now my people are scattered or dead. Some have fled, some have joined the fighting. Some continued working for me till last week, when I got word about the Octs and their lackeys moving against me. And you won’t tell me why?”
If I did, that would REALLY drive the price up, Avery thought. He made his voice firm. “I need access to the nectar.”
Coleel had studied him before, but now he looked Avery, slowly, from top to bottom, then back up. “If you’re not with Octung, and I can’t imagine you are, then are you with … the Resistance?” Avery caught the faint note of hope in his voice. Coleel, master negotiator, had tried to hide it, but it was there, hidden just beneath the surface.
This was something, Avery knew. Now if only he could figure out how to use it. “And if I were allied with them?”
Coleel shifted, and for the first time he looked uncomfortable. Suddenly Avery realized something, and when he did he almost laughed. The threesome Coleel had forced him to watch had not been a case of Avery catching him in the act at all—no, quite the opposite. Coleel had arranged for him to enter the room during the loveplay in order to seem more confident—in order to lever himself onto a platform from which to negotiate. It had been a bargaining tactic, no more, no less … though he had seemed to enjoy it.
All of this meant that there was something Coleel wanted. And Avery was beginning to suspect it had something to do with the Resistance.
“How are they doing, the Resistance?” Coleel said, and Avery thought he was trying to sound more casual than he felt. “Are they still winning against Octung?”
“It won’t be long now until their victory, I’m sure of it,” Avery said, since it seemed to be what Coleel wanted to hear, and it might even be true.
“I used to have a friend among them, a Colonel Gitteen. Is he still around?”
“I don’t know. I could ask.”
“Yes. Yes. Do.” But Coleel looked off, his gaze faraway.
Avery took a leap. “The Resistance will prevail. Octung can’t last long. And when they do, they’ll reward their friends, you can be sure of it. You help me out and I’ll make sure they know of it all throughout their ranks. You’ll be well set-up when the fighting ends.”
Coleel seemed interested now, though he was trying to hide it. “That would be … nice. But …”
“Yes?”
Coleel glanced up to the smoke dancing and writhing against the ceiling. “I … can’t stay in hiding forever. They’ll … catch me … eventually.” It seemed to cost him a lot to say this, to admit to his own weakness, his own poor bargaining position. “I’ve either got to flee the city somehow or … reach a place of safety.”
Avery nodded, seeing it now. “The rebels.”
“Yes.” Coleel fixed him with a hard stare. “Get me to their headquarters and I’ll help you get more nectar.”
* * *
Layanna half lifted herself up when Avery entered. Already she looked better, with a ruddier complexion and more life in her eyes. A low red glow lit the room from an alchemical lamp on a bedside table, throwing Layanna into an otherworldly, somewhat hellish light. Despite this, she seemed angelic with her cascading blond hair, high cheekbones, long neck and penetrating blue eyes.
“How did it go?” she said, as he came closer.
“I found him, but …” Avery told her what the merchant wanted from them.
She grimaced. “It won’t be easy for us to get through the patrols by ourselves, but with this man—”
“—and his two bodyguards—”
She shook her head. At least she was looking well enough to seem irritated, and it pleased him to be able to recognize it. “I don’t know if we can do it, Francis. I’m still not able to … I would be useless.”
He could see that this offended her. She was a god, by rights, she shouldn’t have to feel less than that. She shouldn’t have to feel the same as everyone else. Worse, with her weakness, she was a hindrance to them, which must be ten times worse.
“We’ll make it,” he assured her. “Hopefully Janx and Hildra will be waiting for us back at Vursk’s headquarters.”
When they emerged into the street, the green mist swirled even thicker than before, and weird glows could be seen pulsing in a much greater darkness. The songs and noise of the multitudes (however diminished at this hour) echoed strangely in the fog and seemed to come from far away, as if on another world. Avery felt unsteady.
