Drops of Blood like Neon Stars
14: ‘Pay Increase
Herron Studios was a large office building with two guards on the front door. Lissa wasn’t sure whether they were well-trained and expected regular trouble or merely ornamental. (Dd offices usually need guards?) Either way, they didn’t stop her as she marched right in, walked up to the front desk, and said in her best impression of her sister’s tone that she needed to speak to Holland right away.
If the receptionist asked for ID, she’d be in trouble, she knew. But Taira was very well known, and her dealings with Holland were also well known after that scandalous handshake, and the receptionist quite probably had standing orders relating to Taira because she picked up the desk phone, had a short and quiet conversation, and waved Lissa right on past.
Lissa wasn’t sure if the man who escorted her on into the building was a guard or not. He might be there for security, or simply as a courtesy to help her find her way. He led her to a large meeting room on the ground floor and made her a coffee from the machine (Taira’s favourite coffee, he knew it by heart) in the corner while she made herself comfortable.
She didn’t know much about office buildings, but this was a room obviously designed to impress rather than be practical. It was on the ground floor, for one thing, which struck Lissa as an inconvenient place for a meeting room unless you didn’t want to hold up important visitors in elevators. It was unnecessarily large, with the polished mahogany meeting table also large to fit the space, making Lissa feel like she’d shrunk several inches; the carpet had a soft unworn look that suggested it was frequently replaced, the walls were papered with a beautiful design instead of painted a dull shade of off-white, and even the lights, though probably actually neon like most of the Scarlet City’s lights were, were somehow designed to look like incandescent bulbs.
There was a telephone mounted on the wall near the door, even. A phone to contact others in the building wasn’t a terrible idea in a meeting room, but this was a full, ornate booth, with a brass handset and painted fittings, and, when Lissa looked closely, a switch to change access from the internal to the external phone system. A place like this probably found it well worth their money to maintain an external line, but would they really be accessing it from this meeting room? No. Fitting this phone for something so extravagant was just showing off.
Lissa thanked the man (guard? Escort?) for the coffee, took a sip, and tried to look like she enjoyed sugar as much as Taira did. Fortunately, he didn’t try to make conversation with her, but busied himself at the coffee machine again, and it was soon evident why; she’d barely brought the cup to her lips when Holland strode in.
“Taira!” Smiling widely, he offered her his fingers – not in a handshake, but in a blood offering.
Lissa hadn’t expected this. She should have; as a high profile Abby, Taira probably got this sort of thing all the time. But Lissa couldn’t do anything with it. She couldn’t fool anyone pretending to drink, and as soon as the blood was in her mouth it would be immediately, humiliatingly obvious that she was no Abby.
Fortunately, one trait that Lissa and Taira shared was audacity.
With a mischievous grin, Lissa ignored the offered hand and raised her own instead, offering a handshake – hand level, fingers hooked, a shake between equals. “I thought we’d moved on from that,” she said with a wink.
Holland laughed uproarously and hooked his fingers around hers, gripping tightly, an intimate shake between trusted friends. “That was a spectacle, wasn’t it? Did you see how they reacted?”
“Did you see Bertrand’s face?”
“I thought he was about to kill at least one of us right there on the steps!” He accepted a coffee from the escort and sipped it. “So what brings you down here on such short notice? No truly critical problems, I hope.”
“It’s a problem, but we can handle it.” Lissa would need more information to bluff effectively. “How are things on your end.”
“Everything’s good. We’re ready to go when you are. Once the papers have all been formally signed and the shipment arrives, we can mobilise.”
Shipment? What shipment? “Great to hear it.”
“How did you convince the humans, anyway? That must have taken some manoeuvring.”
“A politician never reveals her tricks,” Lissa said breezily. “Just waiting on my signature and the shipment, huh?”
“Provided you can get the increased number through without the fuddy-duddies on the other side noticing.”
“Oh, they never actually read most of what they sign,” Lissa said. Increased number? Increased number of what? The context made it sound like he had to be talking about increasing the number of new Taipays, but that couldn’t possibly be right. They could only afford to feed so many. “Of course, the available food supply puts restrictions on what we can and can’t get away with…”
“So you see my concerns, then,” Holland said. “You seemed pretty annoyed when I first insisted on waiting for the shipment.”
The escort, still in the room, cleared his throat. “I believe a more correct term than ‘shipment’ would be ‘immigrants’,” he said. “We should show respect to the humans in our sister city, especially given how many of them are going to be our colleagues once all the paperwork is signed. It’s really a monument to your diplomacy skills that you were able to pull it off, ma’am, given how reluctant humans are to discriminate by blood type.”
Oh. Oh no.
Taira had somehow wrangled for a mass immigration of type A humans, to feed a massive ’Pay expansion. How? The human city could only hold so many people, because they only had so much uncontaminated water. And if the plan was an equal expansion of Bees, like Taira had said…
What was going on?
Fortunately, Holland misinterpreted Lissa’s look of stunned shock. “Don’t worry,” he said, patting her arm reassuringly, “Sila here is fully up-to-date on the situation. Invaluable to our expansion logistics, in fact. You can trust his discretion as much as mine, isn’t that right, Sila?”
“Indeed, sir. Though I will leave the two of you alone for your meeting. I know it’s a wasted effort at this point, but I’d rather be an accessory to as few additional crimes as possible.”
“Not crimes, Sila. That’s why we’re waiting for the paperwork to go through. It’s all above-board. Not our fault if the old conservatives aren’t paying attention,is it, Taira?”
“Right,” Lissa said, trying to pull herself together. How big was this new expansion? What was Taira doing?
That was a later problem. For now, she just needed to stop it. As the door closed behind Sila, Holland and Lissa each took a seat at the stupidly oversized meeting table. Holland sipped his coffee and smiled at her.
“So, what big emergency brings you down here?”
“The shipment,” she said. “We might have to wait another month or so.”
“A delay?”
“It’s the serial killer. The humans know he’s targeting type As, so – ”
“Ugh, they’re still pushing that? I thought your opponents had dropped that and scapegoated that big-eyed kid, what’s his name.”
“Benny. Things are complicated and they’re dragging their feet on the issue. I need to handle things delicately and placate the humans while not letting my opponents find out about the shipment so we can get the whole thing tucked away before they realise what a weapon they have on their hands. It could take some time, ad I need you to halt any expansion until then.” Okay, Lissa thought, set up this, which will force Taira to back you up so she doesn’t put you in danger, then use the time you buy to get to the humans and prevent the immigration wave somehow. That’ll topple the plan.
Holland nodded, looking unsurprised. “See, I knew this would be more complicated than you made it out. Good thing we didn’t go forward before the shipment got here, right? You’re a very impressive politician, but one thing us poor little ’Pays learn trying to make it in this world is caution and restraint.”
“That’s two things,” Lissa said automatically. She sipped her coffee. “But yes, you’re right, waiting was a good call. I’ll sort this out and get back to you.”
“Fantastic! Now, while you’re here, I – ”
Holland was interrupted by the phone on the wall ringing. He frowned at it.
“Never should’ve gotten that thing installed in here,” he said. “Nobody ever just sends a runner with a memo to me any more.” He strode over and answered it. “This is Holland. Yes, I – an external call? Who under the sun would be calling me personally at this hour?” He frowned, glancing at Lissa. “Okay, patch it through. Look here, I don’t know what you’re – ah. Hmm.” He was mostly silent for a good minute, except for occasional murmurs of ‘I see’ or ‘understood’. Then, with a solemn look on his face, he hung up the phone, types a short number sequence into the keypad, and turned to Lissa.
“That,” he said, “was councilwoman Taira, warning me of a potential spy in my building. Your name is Lissa, right?”
Derin Edala 