THE BEST LIARS IN LAYA (Companion story to The Future Chosen) ~ongoing

1. Catch Her If You Can

"So when I find her, what do I do?"

"You talk to her. Just talk."

"If she doesn't want to talk?"

"Then you try your damn best to be charming."

"That's all?"

"That's all. Jesus, Emil."

Emil found her.

Years ago, he was asked to find a mysterious woman and talk to her. He hadn't been given a lot to go on. Just a screengrab from a security camera, details from an employment record.

Then Emil found the woman, whatever her name was. Based on the word of a bartender who had fifty reasons to lie, her name was Cera. He upped his tip an extra fifty to even get that name. Worth it if it was true.

Cera would be at the festival tonight, was the info he got. In Laya, her country of origin, they celebrated with all-night festivals the harvest, the moon, the longest day, the brightest star. All the festivals looked the same, as far as Emil's research could tell. Scholars from the region said it was because it didn't matter what it was for; the festivals were the reasons.

It was his third day, on this third trip to Laya, and the closest he'd come to finding her, the woman, Cera maybe. All told, Emil didn't spend a lot of time in this country. While it was best to always travel with caution, Laya was the place that caution was made for. The kind of place where, if you locked eyes with the wrong person, if you did something as benign as wear the wrong kind of shirt, brought the wrong attention to yourself, you might just wake up beaten and broke—if you woke up at all.

But everyone knew that, and it was why Emil was here in place of Andres, the person who actually needed to find Cera. Emil himself had no other business with her, didn't know her at all, didn't know she existed until she showed up in grainy security camera footage and was implicated in the attempted murder of a friend.

Attempted. Lourdes survived it, and the role of the mystery woman in the island hospital was never clear. But it was something, and Emil's friend was not the type who let things go. And Emil liked traveling. Hunting. Those things.

There were fireworks almost nonstop, leading up to the actual start of the festival at midnight, and Emil wasn't sure why Layans enjoyed this. It had to remind them of the chaos of their lives; why celebrate it? Why welcome it?

The bartender said she would be working tonight, and provided no other details on what that meant. Was Cera going to be one of the performers, twirling sticks on fire by the beach? Was she serving one of the overpriced "genuine local" drinks in dark amber bottles? Or was it the other kind of work that you can supposedly get if you knew how to ask for it, on this stretch of beach?

To be honest, Emil was more than a little excited. This was the closest he'd come. In Isla it was more difficult to disappear, but even with the money and the right friends, finding someone in Laya was still a game of slippery tag. The money wasn't even particularly useful, because liars took money and then lied. Emil stopped giving Andres regular reports on having nothing to report; as long as his friend was busy working in actual government, and Lourdes was alive, the lack of any progress didn't need to be added to his worries.

He picked a corner, where he could look like he was watching the dancers on the sand. It was a busy night, and he wasn't the only tourist there. This part of Laya attracted visitors, and he might have looked like prey to some. That was something he was still working on. Laya and Isla had the same ancestors; looked the same, spoke mutually intelligible languages. The way he was tagged as foreign had everything to do with the way Isla's culture diverged, and he was hoping to shed that, and be able to travel Laya more freely. These trips were practice.