Undercity Read Online Free PDF Page B

creations of an artist’s imagination. What greater freedom is there than to visit a place that doesn’t exist?”
    “If it doesn’t exist,” she asked dryly, “how will you find it?”
    “I think he went to the sea.” I let loose with one of my intuitive leaps. “He feels he is vanishing. And he lives by the Vanished Sea. So he went to find a sea that exists.”
    “That strikes me as exceedingly far-fetched.” She sounded puzzled, though, rather than dismissive.
    “Maybe.” I waited.
    “Raylicon has no true seas,” she said.
    “So he’s never seen a real ocean.”
    “We have found no trace that he went offworld.”
    “Then either he faked his ID or he didn’t go offworld.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “I’m paying you for that analysis?”
    Well, all right, it didn’t come out sounding brilliant. I tried again. “I think he will try to buy a false identity and passage offworld. He was wearing expensive clothes the day he disappeared. The gems alone on them are worth a fortune. He didn’t lack for resources.”
    The general shook her head. “Takkar and her people checked the black market, not just in Cries, but across the planet. They found no trace of his gems.”
    “I can do it better.”
    She gave me one of those appraising Majda stares. “You certainly don’t lack for self-confidence.”
    “With good reason.”
    “What do you need, then, to find him?”
    “Complete freedom.” I met her gaze. “I work on my own. No Chief Takkar, no surveillance, no guards, no palace suite, no records of my research, nothing.”
    “Why? We have immense resources at your disposal.” She continued to study me with an unsettling intensity. “What do you have to hide?”
    “Nothing.” I shook off the odd sense that she was trying to look into my thoughts. “I know this city in ways your police force never will. But I won’t get anywhere without privacy, not where I’m going. If people think Majda is looking over my shoulder, they won’t talk to me.”
    Vaj stood there with the sunlight slanting across her tall form. Finally she said, “Very well. We will try it your way.” Then she added, “For now.”
    * * *
    A visitor showed up as I was preparing to leave my palace suite. The knock came when I was packing my duffel. I opened the door to find Captain Krestone and four male guards outside. A hooded figure stood in their midst.
    I froze, flustered. That hidden enigma had to be a Majda man. His dark blue robe had metallic patterns embroidered along the hems, probably thread with real gold spun into the strands. I saw a shadowed face within the cowl, but no details. No clues to his identity.
    I wasn’t certain if protocol allowed me to address him, so I spoke to Krestone. “My greetings, Captain.”
    She wasted no time. “Prince Ahktar wishes to speak with you.”
    Ahktar. Dayj’s father. Good. “Yes, certainly.”
    Krestone handed me a scroll tied with a gold cord. I blinked. The Majda universe had almost no intersection with the one where I lived, where few people even used paper, let alone parchment. I unrolled the scroll. Inked in calligraphy, it granted me permission to speak with Prince Ahktar.
    Bewildered, I stepped back so the prince could enter with his retinue. It was only after Krestone closed the door, staying outside, that Ahktar pushed back his cowl. He resembled Dayj, but the arrangement of his features was somehow different, so that he had nothing of his son’s spectacular looks. I had also discovered that his family, the House of Jizarian, held the lowest rank among the nobility. Whatever Corejida’s reason for marrying him, it wasn’t for his appearance or aristocratic status. How refreshing.
    “My honor at your presence, Your Highness,” I said.
    He inclined his head. His strained expression was one I had seen before, an expression that was the same regardless of person’s rank or wealth, the anguish of a parent faced with the loss of a child. Whatever else I thought of the