The Occasional Diamond Thief Read online

  Occasional

  The ^ Diamond Thief

  By

  J. A. McLachlan

  http://www.janeannmclachlan.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  To the Reader

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “She speaks Malemese?”

  I stop walking mid-step in the hallway. Dr. Eldrich’s voice carries through the closed door of my parents’ room, even though he’s speaking quietly. They have to be talking about me—I’m the only one who can speak Malemese, besides my father.

  “She has an ear for languages, like Itohan.” My mother, Owegbé’s voice is low but clear. They must be standing just on the other side of the door, where they can speak privately without disturbing my father. If I hadn’t been walking past right at that moment, I’d never have heard them. I creep closer to the door to hear them better.

  “He taught her?” Surprise makes Dr. Eldrich’s voice rise.

  “She taught herself four years ago from language discs at the library. I suppose she thought it would please him. Itohan was ill for months after hearing Malemese spoken again, by his own daughter.”

  “I remember.” Dr. Eldrich’s voice is low again, mimicking Owegbé’s hushed response. “You didn’t tell me what had set him off.”

  There’s a moment’s silence. I feel a rush of heat to my face, anticipating what Owegbé will tell him. But all she says is, “There was no need. I made sure it wouldn’t happen again.”

  Right. Of course she wouldn’t tell him the whole story. But I remember that day, and how she “made sure.”

  My father was sitting alone in his den, scrolling through the bills and invoices on his business comp, not really doing anything; Etin handled most of the financial details of their independent trading business. When I walked in, his eyes were half-closed in the vague, listless look he always had. I glanced around to see if there was anything new. The room was a jumble of things to look at: shelves with artwork and knick-knacks from his travels; vivid shots of alien landscapes on the walls; photos of strange-looking people he had met as well as of family, crowding his desk. He began to smile when he saw me—and then I made the stupid announcement I’d practiced, in Malemese, “Father, I have learned to speak like y…you…”

  I stuttered to a stop as he leaped up, his chair crashing to the floor behind him. A garbled cry, half-shout, half-whimper, came from deep in his throat. Owegbé, Etin, Oghogho, all came running to the door of the study where I stood terrified before my father.

  Why hadn’t I noticed he only spoke Malemese when he was ill with one of his fevers? But I’d been only eleven then, a kid.

  Father’s arms never left his sides. I stood there, frozen with fear, watching his fists clenching and opening as the force of his emotion battled the strength of his willpower. Owegbé realized what I’d done by my father’s shouted accusations; she ran in and slapped me so hard I fell to the floor.

  She would have hit me again except that Etin rushed in, yanked me to my feet and pushed me out of the room. I ran down the hall and outside, and just kept running. I don’t even know where I went, I was crying so hard. When I finally crept back home at dinnertime, father was ill in bed. I never called Owegbé “Mother” again.

  I shake off the memory and glance down the hallway. Owegbé could wave open the door at any moment and find me here, listening. The room I share with my sister Oghogho is just steps behind me, across from our brother Etin’s room. I should move back so if Owegbé opens the door it would look like I’m just leaving my room. I start to step back, but then Dr. Eldrich speaks again: “His lungs are failing.”

  Instead, I move closer to the door.

  “They no longer send sufficient oxygen to his brain. We could give him a new lung, but his heart is also weak…”

  “He doesn’t want to live.”

  “I’m sorry.” Dr. Eldrich’s voice trails off for a moment. I lean right in against the door.

  “I’ll have an oxygen tank couriered over. Perhaps if we can build up his strength a little…”

  “No. Let him find peace at last,” I hear Owegbé say.

  I almost fall into the door. She can’t mean what I think she means, she can’t just give up on him—

  The door swishes open. Owegbé stares at me. After a startled moment, her face turns dark and tight, her eyes so furious I start to tremble and can’t speak, though I want to yell at her, tell her she can’t, she can’t just—

  “It may prove useful now, if Akhié can still understand Malemese,” Dr. Eldrich says, still looking at my father. He hasn’t even noticed us. “But don’t let her speak it. I don’t know what the effect might be if he heard it spoken around him.” He turns and sees me standing outside the open door, frozen in my mother’s glare. He doesn’t say anything. He just comes over beside her. I’m totally caught eavesdropping, but I’m too relieved to be embarrassed, because she can’t kill me with him standing there.

  She takes a deep breath, like it’s all she can do not to hit me despite him being there. “Your father will speak only Malemese, now,” she says. I can’t even look at her anymore, because her voice is so calm, is such a lie. “You must translate, tell me what he needs. Can you still do it?”

  Why won’t he speak Edoan? I want to ask, Why Malemese? What happened to him there? But I know she won’t tell me—maybe she doesn’t know herself—and I’d only anger her more. I nod without looking up.

  “You heard the doctor? You won’t speak Malemese?”

  I nod again. I want to scream: I get it! But even more, I just want to get away from my mother.

  *****

  My parents’ room, which is now my father’s sickroom, is beige like the rest of the house, but instead of the usual clay tile flooring it has a thick, soft rug, terra cotta, the color of dirt. It looks okay with the simple, bare beige walls and the white oak dressers. Owegbé has ‘impeccable taste’. But I wish I could take my father into his cluttered, colorful den. Maybe his gaze would focus again if he had something to look at. I get up from the chair beside his bed and turn to leave.

  “Vienada preem.” Come closer.

  He’s speaking Malemese. I’ve been called in often over the past weeks to translate. For the last few days he hasn’t spoken Edoan at all. I’m the only one who can understand him now. I’d be happy about that, about sharing something only with him, if he knew he was talking to me.

  “Vienada…” Come.

  What would have been impatience when he was well comes out now as only weariness. I go closer, stopping two feet from the side of the bed. I can’t look at his face, so I stare at his arm
lying on top of the bedcovers, long and limp alongside his covered body. It’s dark against the white sheets, and so thin I can see the veins standing out under his skin.

  Slowly his forearm rises. The fingers move slightly, beckoning me even closer before his arm drops back onto the pale sheets. I creep forward until I’m nearly touching the bed.

  “Look at me,” he whispers in Malemese.

  I don’t want to raise my head. I’ll look into his eyes and he won’t recognize me. I should be used to it by now. But each time I hope it will be different. Maybe this time, I think as I lift my head, because he seems to be speaking directly to me. But then he calls me Owegbé or Etin and gives me nonsense instructions that I can barely understand to translate. Mostly, he just calls for water, or fumbles about in agitation until someone guesses his need and helps him.

  “I haven’t given you much reason to love me, Akhié.”

  I stare at him. I can feel myself grinning like an idiot but I don’t care. He knows me! He recognizes me, even if he is still speaking Malemese. He’s getting better!

  I mustn’t upset him by answering in Malemese.

  “No reason at all to love me,” he repeats sadly. He turns his head, glancing restlessly over the sheets that cover him to stare unseeing at the air in front of him.

  “I do!” I cry in Edoan.

  It’s no good; he hasn’t spoken or responded to Edoan for over a week.

  “I love you, Father!” It’s like he can’t even hear me in Edoan, like I’m not even answering him. What if he dies thinking I don’t love him because I didn’t answer? It might be too late already, the way his mind wanders. He’s staring into the empty air, no longer focused on me at all.

  “I do love you,” I whisper, this time in Malemese.

  He starts as though I’ve hit him, and pulls himself onto his elbow, leaning toward me eagerly. “Ahhh!” he cries, staring just above me.

  The look on his face… a second ago I wanted to hug him, and now I can’t help backing away.

  “Sariah! At last!”

  I look over my shoulder. There’s no one there.

  “All these years I’ve pitied you and hated you, because of it. At last you’ve come to claim it back!”

  I peer around the room, afraid to move. Who is he talking to?

  “Take it! Take it!” His hand moves in a jerking gesture toward the dresser. The agitated movement nearly makes him fall back against his pillows. He holds tight to the side of the bed.

  What if someone hears his raised voice? Only its weakness has prevented it from carrying beyond the room, but someone could walk by any moment and hear the shrill urgency of it. “Shhh!’ I whisper, “shhh!”

  “There, in the top drawer!” Again the desperate gesture. Whoever he thinks I am, my only means of quieting him is to do as he insists. I hurry over and open the dresser drawer.

  “Back. Left.”

  I hear him gasping for breath and half turn to tell him to lie down, to rest. His eyes are bright with fever. He gives a sharp nod toward the open drawer. I give up and reach into it.

  What am I looking for? I pat at the folded clothes. Should I pretend to find something? Would that calm him? I hear a soft rattle in his breath that frightens me. I have to get him to calm down.

  “The corner… behind… wood.” Every whispered word is punctuated by that horrible rattle. He’s so certain, there has to be something here; he’ll only be satisfied when I bring it to him.

  I’m about to give up when I feel a narrow crack between the backing and the bottom of the drawer, in the far left corner. A piece of leather seems to be stuck in it. I pull on it, but it resists. I hear a gasping breath from the bed. Getting a firmer grip, I pull with all my strength. Slowly, the thing comes free. A leather pouch, no bigger than my two thumbs curled together, lies in my hand. I hold it up to show him.

  He nods, a small jerk of his chin as he sinks back against the pillows. “… inside, just as… it from you.” I can barely make out his whispered words over the rattle of his breathing.

  “What is it?” I hurry over to him, risking Malemese again.

  “You know! It’s yours…your heart…”

  I almost drop the pouch. Does he really believe it holds someone’s heart? It seems to grow heavier in my hand, and colder…

  He whispers something. I bend over the bed, my ear only inches from his mouth, trying to sort the breaths that are speech from the background of labored breathing.

  “…no one knows about it …take it away …I’m done with you at last… Sariah!” His words end in a sudden, harsh rattle. With a soft sigh his head slides sideways, mouth half-open.

  “Father!” I grab his hand, shaking it. “Father!”

  My scream brings everyone rushing to the room. Owegbé pushes me aside. “Itohan,” she moans, her voice so low she might be whispering a secret to him as she bends over the bed to embrace him. Her face is so twisted with grief I hardly recognize her.

  I can’t breathe. In all my fourteen years I’ve never seen Owegbé like this, never imagined her capable of tenderness, or grief. It’s awful to see her so changed, and terrible to know that she has so much love, but none to spare for me. My sister pushes me further aside, crowding up close to Owegbé. Neither one of them has spoken to me since I started caring for father. The way they push me aside now makes me want to scream again.

  “Come away,” Etin whispers, pulling me out into the hall.

  He puts his hands on either side of my head, his thumbs wiping away the tears I didn’t know till then were on my cheeks, ignoring his own tears. “You spoke Malemese to him, didn’t you?”

  I start to pull away but he holds onto me. I open my mouth to deny it—

  “He was already dying, Akhié. He’s been dying for years. It isn’t your fault.” Etin pulls me into a hug. After a moment, I hug him back, and begin to cry harder. He holds me and lets me cry for a few minutes. Before I’m anywhere near ready to stop, he releases me. I feel like I’m going to fall, but his hand is still on my shoulder, supporting me. “You should go off somewhere. Don’t return until evening. Let them mourn without seeing you.” He gives me another quick hug then pushes me gently toward the door. “Don’t look so guilty when you come back.”

  I watch Etin go back into father’s room. The whole family’s there, all but me. I look down at my hand, curled around the leather pouch. Stuffing it into my hip pocket I run down the hall, pull the front door open with an angry jerk, and leave. It shuts noiselessly behind me.

  All I can think is, they don’t want me, as I hop onto the transit strip and drop into a seat. The people around me block my view of the city rushing by as it picks up speed. Usually I stand at the edge, my arm wrapped around one of the poles, where I can feel the speed and see the low, almost seamless line of pink and copper brick buildings racing by on either side. I like the way the sun shines brightly on the hollow red clay tiles of their roofs, shaped to deflect its heat, and turns their windows into rubies as I flash by.

  Today I don’t notice anything, even when the crowd of people dwindles and the buildings are clearly visible. I look up only when the ruby reflections have long ceased and most of the remaining walkers have swung off to enter the low, windowless hotels for space travelers. A little farther and there are no buildings at all, only rough fields of red dirt and scraggly weeds, and a few clumps of tall, spindly trees, their long fronds drooping in the hot sun. I’m at the edge of the huge fields that surround the landing areas of the spaceport.

  I get up and move to the edge of the transit strip, balancing myself hand-over-hand against the poles. The tug of the wind increases. I ignore the cord that will signal the strip to slow down—I haven’t used it in years, nobody between the ages of twelve and thirty does. Instead, I lean with one hand against the cool curve of a pole and stretch out my other hand, slipping it into the looped strap hanging just above my head. The strap is attached to a rotating metal disc at the top of the edge pole. Pushing off lightly, I swing mys
elf over the edge of the transit strip, dangle a half instant watching it move just below my feet, then let go. I drop with my knees slightly bent onto the ground. The entire manoeuvre takes only a few seconds. It’s so automatic I barely noticed what I’m doing, until someone jostles me from behind.

  “Sorry,” the man mutters, grabbing my shoulder to keep from falling. I step aside, wondering why the idiot didn’t take a second to adjust to the change of speed before dropping, or pull the cord and wait for the strip to slow, like most people his age do.

  “You going to spaceport?” He says in Central Ang with the heavy drawl of Coral, one of the Inner worlds. I stare ahead, pretending not to understand.

  “…backward people with archaic travel-ways…” I hear him mutter in Coralese as he turns and heads for the spaceport.

  The mid-day sun is hot. I scuff my feet on the dry, red dirt, feeling the heat in the soil through my sandals. I squint up at the sky, brilliant with sun from horizon to horizon, as constant as people are inconstant. I hate my family for sending me away, for wanting to grieve without me. Maybe that’s not fair—Etin was only trying to protect me from revealing my secret—but it amounts to the same thing. I wish I never had to go home.

  Then it hits me: my father’s dead. I’ll never talk to him again, or see his smile, or even wave my hand in front of his unfocused eyes when he’s thinking about something or remembering something or whatever he does when he goes away like that. I’ll never again be mad at him for it, when I’m trying to get his attention; or feel the way I feel when I have his attention, when he looks at me like there’s nothing else in the world as important to him right then as I am. No one will ever look at me like that again.

  I stumble and almost fall, but I catch myself and blink hard. I can’t think of my father, not yet. I need to get somewhere no one will see me. My legs are trembling so much they barely hold me up. I force them to keep moving, up over a small rise and down the other side to where I can’t be seen from the walkways or the transit strip, if someone rides by.

  I sink to the ground. I want to cry, it hurts so much, but I guess I did too good a job of holding back my tears because now they won’t come. I reach down and grab a handful of the warm, dry soil of Seraffa and hold it against my cheek. A single tear runs into it, leaving a narrow trail of red mud across my face.