by Jenn Lyons
have you got to pay? Nobody gets by unless they pay!”
“One moment. Thanks.” I darted back behind the corner.
“We don’t have anything,” Campbell said. “You wouldn’t even let me bring my side arm.”
“Yes we do.” I looked at Jack. “Would you mind?”
The Kantari grinned and his form flowed again, until lying on the ground was a cold, inanimate laser rifle. I picked it up.
Zaladin looked impressed. “Useful. I should have made friends with a Kantari years ago.”
“Easier said than done. They’re picky about their friends.” I hefted the gun in my arms. “Now we have something to trade.”
“Won’t they be pleased…and disappointed when it disappears as soon as we’re past the barricade.”
“Buyer beware, handsome.” I grinned at him, then rounded the corner, holding the gun up above my head in a way that was visibly impractical for firing. “Look, we have this…”
That caught their attention. “Hand it over,” the same man shouted out. “We’ll lower the ladder. Just you, not your friend.”
I felt Zaladin tense beside me. “You take that up there and they’re not going to lower that ladder for anyone else.”
“I know,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. “I don’t expect them to.”
I walked forward as they lowered the ladder. It was the kind that was flexible, for ships and the like, and could be raised or lowered on a crank. I’m not sure where they’d found it—perhaps it was used in ore processing at some stage.
Immediately upon reaching the top, one of the men grabbed me from behind and the man with the fresh slash on his cheek took the gun, looking it over appreciatively.
“This will buy you passage all right,” he told me. “But how will you pay for your friend?”
I jerked my arms away from his companion’s grip, ripping the shift enough in the process that it was likely clear even in the dim lighting that I was inked. Maybe it would give them pause. “You bought yourself a rifle. You didn’t say anything about fuel cells.”
His expression darkened and he scowled. “Hand those over, now!”
“Aw, you should have said please.”
I kicked him in the face, drove a blind elbow behind me into his friend’s sternum, and then reached over and spun the wheel to lower the ladder. Zaladin climbed up with amazing swiftness and the rest of the leader’s friends poured from their hiding spots, shouting and cursing.
They were, even with the time spent in zero gee, athletic men, who were used to violence and comfortable carrying it out. Some of them even had some training; I could tell that right away. Still, we should have had little trouble with them.
I was dealing with a man holding a homemade knife when I heard the sound of falling metal behind me and realized that one of the impromptu barricades had collapsed, scraping against Zaladin as he fell. I looked back in time to see Zaladin’s eyes widen, something like panic spike through him, and then see him reach out to the man facing him.
His posture…his position…I knew that move. He couldn’t possibly mean to—
I started to turn, but even as I did, saw I wouldn’t be quick enough. He was moving so fast. No.
“Stop, no! Zach!”
Zaladin reached out and snapped the man’s neck.
Please don’t die, please don’t die, Keepers, please don’t—but even as I prayed I felt the prisoner expire, his mind shutting off abruptly and finally.
Zaladin stood there, looking down as the body began its fall, not fully realizing what he had just done.
There was a roaring noise, and every person on the wall looked up in terror, not knowing what could possibly produce a sound like that. Then the top of the wall collapsed or exploded under the weight of the creature that just seconds before had pretended to be a laser rifle.
“Look out!” I shouted. “Duck!”
Whisper Jack attacked.
Zaladin barely had time to hurl himself out of the way as a monster twice the size of a Meshikath hurtled through the space where he had been. His attack was punctuated by the sounds of screaming—screams of terror and shock—as every other man in the hallway ran for shelter. None understood quite what they were seeing, but they were all unanimous in their desire to get the hell away from it.
The creature itself was no race that I could recognize; it was monstrous amalgam of creatures from every corner of the known universe, including parts that were horrifically, terribly human. A dozen eyes looked down in rage and as many mouths screamed in anger.
[One rule I told you! ONE thing I said thou shalt not do in MY KINGDOM. One thing forbidden! YOU WILL NOT KILL. How dare you!]
It kept attacking, throwing arms like scythe-blades against the spots on the ground his victim rolled around desperately avoiding the attacks by millimeters. His luck wouldn’t last, I knew. Eventually Whisper Jack would stop playing around. All the while it shouted telepathically, its voice so strong that it was impossible for me not to hear it. Indeed, I wouldn’t have been surprised if everyone within several hundred meters could hear it, telepathic or not.
[You are weak. You are weak and stupid and so you solve your problems with death and blood, and fool yourself into thinking this makes you strong. Ignorant little fool. Destruction is easy. Death is easy. Easy is weak.]
There was a kind of pause, a heartbeat skip, and in that moment, Zaladin stood up and turned to face Whisper Jack, not dodging and not moving out of the way, but standing still and defiant, or maybe still and surrendering.
“Kill me then,” he said. “We both know I deserve it.”
“Stop it,” I said. “What are you doing? What are you both doing? Get away from him!”
A dozen sword blades stopped mere millimeters from his face, the one lone man standing there as Whisper Jack surrounding him like an army of blades. As I tried to move closer, Whisper Jack stretched an appendage towards me like prison bars, blocking my progress. They stared at each other, and this time, whatever was said was something that I couldn’t hear.
Then, with a silver quick flash, the Kantari was gone.
We were alone.
I looked around us and noticed the small little detail that had cost a man his life: when the boxes had fallen, they had hit Zaladin on the arm, opening a gash. Nothing fatal, nothing deep, but a bleeding wound, and the blood that had splattered down to the ground had not been red, but gold.
Zaladin had killed to protect a secret I already knew.
I sat down with my back to the wall, knees drawn up, staring out at nothing. He stood there in the center of the hallway, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
Finally I broke the silence. “I just have one question.”
“Just one?” His voice sounded numb.
“Yes.”
He turned and looked at me, and it honestly broke my heart a little to see just how perfect a job he’d done with his disguise.
“Is Stewart Campbell dead?” I asked Zaladin.
NINETEEN.Julia
“When did you realize?” Zaladin asked. He sounded tired.
“Is he alive?” I repeated the question. I was angry; had been angry; could now allow myself the luxury of being angry openly. That emotion burned, slow roasting coals, as it had since I first realized that the man who was with me looked like Stewart Campbell but was not him, that Zaladin had intended on using us, using me, as unwilling conspirators in his next assassination.
He was silent for a time, and then nodded. “Yes. The sedative will wear off soon. He’s tied up in a storeroom in the forward loading docks. Your turn.”
If he was lying it was beyond my ability to tell, but that was no guarantee: for a Sarcodinay, Zaladin was very good at lying. “I realized just before Jack walked through the door. Your mind doesn’t feel the same as Campbell’s.”
The look he gave me then was shocked; he hadn’t meant for me to read his idle fantasies. I think it unsettled him. It sure as Rio unsettled me.
“You knew
and you—” He shook his head. “Why didn’t you call for help?”
“We don’t have time for this. Whisper Jack is not reliable. You may have noticed. And I need you—” I choked a little and growled at myself. “Kaj-Shae Threllis is holed up with an active self-destruct that requires two people working in tandem to deactivate and he has a High Guard with him. I need whatever you’ve been using to take over Sarcodinay computer systems, and I need your combat skills. Right now, he’s a cornered rat, and cornered rats aren’t predictable. So congratulations, you’re my new partner. At least until we’re not in danger of blowing up. Are we clear?”
I hopped back to my feet, looked up and down the corridor. I had to hope that Whisper Jack had us basically pointed in the right direction, and not on some complicated loop that was a short cut only to someone who had memorized every air vent. “This way.”
“So back in that closet—”
“Yes. I knew who you were then too.”
He put his hand on my arm. “What I said back there—”
“You meant every word. So did I.” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “And that was one hell of a kiss. A bit metallic though. You might want to watch that if you’re going to keep seducing human girls.”
“Funny, none of the human girls ever complained about it before.”
I stopped as I found myself grinding my teeth. “Have there been a lot of human girls?”
He smiled. “One or two.”
“What—?” I put my hands on my waist. “No. You can’t have sex with humans. Sarcodinay don’t do that. You...you can’t do that. We’re close enough to allow