Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

hour for the details to be worked out with Vandie’s lawyers. They were competent, but not in the same league as a legal mind like Jankowski. Ultimately they had to concede most of their points, and we all crowded round. Auberjois had joined the room. I was still there, too, over Auberjois’s objections. “She talks more when Carter’s in the room,” Vig had pointed out, and Auberjois couldn’t argue with that. So we settled into our places, started the tape recorder running, and Vandie laid it all out.

“This city’s fundamentally broken,” she said. “I was born here, but when I traveled I saw the world. Every city-state has problems, and gaps between the rich and poor. Only Titanshade is built so that the poor freeze to death if they can’t pay their bills.”

Vig said, “And you wanted to fix that?”

“It wouldn’t take a feat of engineering to boost the supply to the Borderlands. All it takes is the willpower to get it done.”

“And that’s what you had, the will to destroy the system?”

“No. To show that it can be done. In order to do that, we had to get in the ground and make a true map of the vents, get measurements on air flow and temperature.” As she dove into her explanation, Vandie pushed and pulled the photos from the warehouse, technical explanations of what was what. According to her, nothing was designed to damage the vent system.

“You didn’t make a proposal, take it before City Council?”

She rolled her eyes. “This city is dying. It needs treatment. If someone stumbles into the emergency room half-coherent and bleeding out from a gut wound, you don’t ask permission before stitching them up. If you see someone being robbed on the street, you don’t ask their permission to intervene and arrest the robber.”

“Arresting muggers doesn’t cause sinkholes,” I said.

Vandie smirked. “Neither did I.”

Vignolini circled his hands in the air, clearing the air of our dislike for one another. “You saw the bodies?”

“The old ones? Yeah. But we didn’t touch them.”

That was a lie. How else would Jax’s badge have shown up underneath one of them?

“Thing is,” she said, “the bodies weren’t the weirdest thing down there. There’re parts of the tunnels where the temperature jumps up or down. There’re parts where you don’t need lights, because the walls glow orange. And every now and then we’d find the buzzing rocks.”

“The what?”

“Buzzing,” she said. “They were . . . It was strange. They were regular rocks, big ones. But they got warmer the longer you touched them. And then everyone around you would get angry.” Her lips pulled back, perhaps with the memory of the feeling, perhaps with a general sense of disgust at being in that interview room. “It was the rocks that spooked Saul. After that, he wanted out.”

“The rocks spooked him?” Auberjois said. “I don’t understand.”

She smirked. “Go down and see them for yourself.”

“Well, that’s not happening,” said Vig, repulsion creeping into his voice. “Now that your operation is shut down, we’ll be making sure that no one ever goes into those vents again.”

“That’s a mistake,” she said. “This city’s future depends on our activities in the vents.”

All the detectives shifted uncomfortably. Even Vandie’s lawyers seemed put out. The idea of activities in the vents was like nails on a chalkboard, even for a roomful of people who made a living bringing the darkest deeds of the citizenry to light.

“What changed?”

“I found an investor,” she said. “Anonymous, at first. Someone contacted me about my work. All the issues we’d worried about, they were smoothed over, and I was told to contact them if we ran into issues.”

“Issues?”

“Like Saul,” she said. “The first time I contacted the backer, it was because Saul said he was leaving, and didn’t think we should keep our work secret anymore. When I met her, she told me not to worry, that the work was too important to stop and that she’d take care of everything.”

“And this was Paulus?” asked Auberjois.

“Who else would it be?”

That was the question. There was no rhyme or reason for Paulus to be involved with such a thing.

“So Ambassador Paulus volunteered to help you destroy the entire system that made her wealthy and put her into power? Seems like a bad financial move on her part.”

Vandie rolled her eyes. “I don’t know exactly why she did it. Maybe to get to the bodies we found? You’d have to ask her assistant. The one who’s always in the background. What’s her name, Gellica?”

I felt my arms twitch, a massive tell. In a game of poker, that’d cost me some cash. But in interview room 7D it did far worse. Vandie’s eyes opened a little further, and she knew she had me.

“The sorcery was done by Paulus. And she had someone on the TPD covering up for them. I can’t prove who it was, but I’ve got my suspicions.” Vandie’s gaze lingered on me. “Paulus indicated it was someone high profile.”

She was playing to the room, and feeding all the conspiracy theories we held in our hearts. And of course it wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t exactly lies, either. The strongest deceits are built on a foundation of truth, like a pearl grown around a grain of truth. I believed much of what she was saying, but I was almost certain that Paulus hadn’t been involved. But that still left the question of who was the sorcerer behind Vandie? While I was pondering that, Auberjois and Vig were pressing Vandie for details.

“You said she’d fix it. Fix it how?”

“One of the guys got some snake oil. And no, I won’t tell you who it was, so don’t ask.” She ran her fingers across the shaved sides of her head. “Paulus made a manna link between that and one of the buzzing rocks. I gave it to Saul, told him it was a gift, a thanks for keeping quiet.”

“You knew Saul had an issue,” I said. “You knew he struggled.”

“Yeah, well, it turns out his financial