Ties of Power (Trade Pact Universe)

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Copelup had told me we would catch our final transport here. As we waited, we were caught in a little wayward storm—the kind that sends down heavy drops of rain almost as an afterthought, and never really wets anything. I held out my hand to intercept one of the single-minded drops before it disappeared on the hot pavement.

  There, I had one. It was larger than a drop should be. And it had two eyes that regarded me without blinking.

  “It’s a fish!”

  My companion bent over my palm, plumes waving, then straightened. “It’s a fish,” he agreed placidly. “What were you expecting? A sagecow?”

  “I was expecting plain water,” I said, tilting my hand so as to better examine my odd catch. Its eyes only appeared large because of the magnification of the drop that held it. The tiny body was curled around a whitish yellow yolk sac.

  The water drop was shrinking as I watched, squeezing the hatchling into a tighter and tighter curl. It resisted with the occasional writhing motion. But there was nowhere to swim on my hand. “What do I do with it?” I asked.

  My Drapsk chuckled. “What do you normally do with fish? Eat it!”

  “Normal fish don’t fall out of rain clouds,” I said, avoiding this culinary suggestion.

  “Then drop it on the street, Contestant Morgan.”

  I closed my fingers protectively about the cold speck of life. The Drapsk pointed to a crew of other Drapsk working at one end of the street. They were hosing down the barely wet pavement, sending rivulets of water into the channels along the street, and in the process quite tidily collecting all the fish before they could dry.

  I turned over my hand and nothing happened. The fish was now firmly stuck to my skin. The Drapsk was making a rather dismal effort at controlling its amusement. I gently submerged my hand into the water now passing by my feet and shook it gently. The fish twitched once, then again, then was off and swimming to freedom.

  “And you hunt for magic to bring to your world?” I said to my Drapsk guide, wiping my hand on my tunic. “Raining fish seems a fairly magical event.”

  Skeptic Copelup, rocked back on his heels in the way of someone insufferably pleased with himself. “No magic. No such thing, Contestant Morgan,” he opined generously. “I’m here to prove that.”

  The sky was still spitting baby fish, so I backed under the roofed yet open framework I presumed functioned as a shelter for those waiting for transport. There would be terrible carnage—and a smell to match—on the town’s rooftops unless the rain picked up enough to wash those unfortunate fishlings trapped there down to safety. “This happens a lot?” I asked doubtfully.

  The Skeptic pursed his tiny mouth then answered me by reciting what had to be an encyclopedia entry. “The desert minnow lays drought-resistant eggs. When the streams and ponds dry, as they always do, the eggs are safe. They wait, in the sand, for the next rains, whether next season or the next decade. They wait, and wait, and wait.”

  I opened my mouth, thinking he was done. The Skeptic quelled me with an arrogant twitch of his plumes. “If a windstorm should happen to strike the desert, both sand and eggs will be whirled aloft. It does not take magic,” this with scorn, “to explain what occurs when those eggs arrive in a moisture-laden storm cloud. And such storms track from the desert up to this area, and rain on the town.”

  “Here comes our transport,” my Drapsk announced, quite cheerfully. I followed it, stepping carefully so as not to crush such well-traveled fish, and held my hands over my head to keep them out of my hair.

  INTERLUDE

  Even warmed and well-lit, as now, the cargo hold of the Silver Fox was not a comfortable part of the ship. Neither, Morgan thought, was this conversation.

  “I’m not arguing, Brother,” Huido said, a suspiciously saber-like click of his great handling claw hinting otherwise. “I merely state the difficulties. Where do you suggest I start looking?”

  Morgan—busy unpacking the cases Huido had brought, bypassing Plexis’ Port Authority being much easier for a station resident—glared at his friend. It was growing harder to restrain his anger, to keep from lashing out at random, especially when he was tired, as now, and frustrated, as always. A nightmare-haunted sleep spent trying to find Sira’s body in a larger, darker, jungle hadn’t improved his state of mind. “Ettler’s Planet.”

  “Ettler’s? Why there?”

  “We’d planned, if anything happened to separate us, to meet here or on Ettler’s. I wanted a rendezvous, a place with a lot of traffic and few regulations, somewhere two people could travel easily without being noticed.” Morgan’s voice trailed away as he remembered Sira’s own interest in Ettler’s, to complete the passage she’d negotiated from him during their first meeting on the Fox, when she’d been a desperate fugitive. She was curious about everything.

  Grunting approval, Morgan unrolled the packaging that both protected and hid the several hi-tech and restricted objects within: Plexis being the best place to buy such equipment and conversely, one of the most difficult to smuggle it through. This had more to do with a desire to collect the appropriate taxes than to adhere to any particular Trade Pact regulations. He anticipated no problems; the Fox’s hold had a few unusual and well-proven hiding places of its own. He’d meant to show their secrets to Sira, but hadn’t.

  Odd. It was easier to remember Sira-of-the-past than focus on the present. His purpose continued to cloud her face in his mind. He forced himself to picture it, to see those gray eyes, sparkling with intelligence and warmth. He needed to know she was safe—at least, part of him did.

  He needed Huido.

  “I don’t like Ettler’s,” that worthy grumbled as if on cue, plate sliding over plate with an irritated hiss. “It’s a ball of dust. Why can’t I go with you?”

  “You won’t have to go hiking in the dunes. You’ve got the list of meeting places we’d arranged—”

  One of Huido’s mobile eyes peered over the rim of his lower head plate to better examine the sheet of plas he held delicately in one clawtip. Two other claws were busy negotiating the passage of a mug of beer. Then the claws hesitated in midair, the beer only half-poured.

  “Something isn’t right,” Huido stated, an ominous shudder under the words. Suddenly, all of his eyes riveted on Morgan. “Something about you isn’t right, Blood Brother.”

  Morgan’s hands tended to curl into fists these days. He deliberately flattened both, palms down on his knees, before asking: “How so?”

  Huido turned down the tip of one claw, a gesture meaning a foul taste or a warning of poison. “Your grist. Now I smell it clearly. And it carries the taint of another’s.”

  “You know Sira gave me some of her strength—” Morgan found himself beginning to explain.

  The Carasian’s broad head tilted, all eyes disconcertingly stayed level within the shadowed gap. “I have scented you since that time, Brother. This is different. Have you been attacked by one of the Clan?” A pause, then a repeat of the saber-rattling sound. “Would you know?”

  I know, Morgan thought sadly, but to himself. Huido’s suspicion only added evidence to his own, that Sira had unintentionally imposed her rage, her need for revenge, on top of his when she sent him after her enemies. “What you sense about me is not from an attack, Huido,” he said slowly, struggling to find an explanation for the non-telepathic being. “When we parted, Sira—gave me more of herself. She knew I’d need it to deal with her enemies.”

  “A gift?” Huido growled. “It smells to me like a curse.”

  Morgan whirled angrily, fists raised. “You know nothing about it—nothing! Are you going to help me or not?”

  The echoes of his shout filled the cargo hold, curling around the edges of bulkheads, knocking at open cases of weaponry—legal and otherwise—before sighing to silence over the hoard laid out for inspection on the low table between them. Morgan made himself drop his hands, unclenching his fists, shuddering with the effort to regain his composure.

  The Carasian might have been a carvi
ng, save for the movements necessary to continue pouring beer into the orifice at the tip of his top righthand claw, then to tuck that claw tip into the dark boundary serving him as a face. Clearly, he chose not to take offense, however justified.

  “Huido,” Morgan began unsteadily. “I’m sorry—” His control of the rage wasn’t as tight as he’d hoped. More reason to get away from anyone he cared about, where he could be free to loose it. He made himself sit back down.

  A satisfied slurp. Then Huido said ponderously: “Something about all this, about you, my Blood Brother, reminds me of long ago.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  The raising of a large claw silenced Morgan’s protest. “When we met, Brother. Then you owned such anger as this.”

  Morgan remembered. How could he not? “Different times, Huido,” he countered wearily, running one hand through his hair as though it would soothe the ache there. “I was hardly more than a kid.”

  “You had been betrayed.”

  “The past doesn’t matter.”

  “You had been betrayed,” Huido repeated, eyes converging to focus completely on Morgan, an unnerving amount of attention. “And you wanted revenge. I had never seen such rage in a being before, nor since. Until now.”

  Morgan sighed. “I take it you have a point?”

  Huido said slowly: “Only that you be careful. Your rage almost destroyed you once. You are not that young Human, granted, but now you have even more power, more anger. I would not see you turn it on yourself.”

  “No chance of that, my Brother,” Morgan said almost lightly. “This time I have a target within reach.”

  Before the Carasian could respond, the Human changed the subject. “Now, let’s go see if Hom K’tar has filled my order yet, shall we?”

  Chapter 17

  “HUMANS?”

  Copelup nodded his blind head, yellow plumes waving. “There is no Embassy for your kind here,” he reminded me unnecessarily. There were no Clan Embassies on any world, Trade Pact or otherwise.

  I gazed out the windows of the local transport, grateful for the chance to see my surroundings for once, and asked the obvious: “What’s an Embassy of any species doing in a border town? They belong on Embassy Row, near the shipcity.”

  “Embassy may not be the correct term,” he said apologetically, after hesitating a moment. I suspected the precise Drapsk was embarrassed. “I believe the Humans maintain this building and staff in order to exchange agricultural knowledge with the Makii. They have always been an adventurous Tribe—good traders, if prone to bringing home just about anything.”

  Since that last seemed a dig at me, I ignored it. I was learning to enjoy my sparring conversations with the Skeptic. He was opinionated, clever, and—whether deliberately or not—often funny. For my part, I seemed to supply him with all the openings he needed to make his point. If only, I sighed to myself, the being were a bit more forthcoming on the information I needed.

  What he did tell me was that I was to stay in the home of Madeline and Cory Brightson, a Human pair apparently overjoyed to host one of the Contestants for the upcoming Festival. Possible Contestant, as Copelup would doubtless remind me. I wondered if the Humans knew any more than I did. I also wondered if I could enlist their aid to get off Drapskii before becoming a Contestant at all.

  As I’d expected, though friendly and pleased to have another Human for company—a small and convenient deceit I noticed Copelup allowed me without comment—the Brightsons were as ignorant as I about what being a Contestant entailed. On the other hand, they were far more excited. This year’s Festival, it seemed, would be their first and was touted as the high point of the Drapsk calendar.

  “Only happens once every two years,” Madeline had assured me as she showed me my room, a cubbyhole off the main agri-lab, but with refreshingly angular Human furniture, including a comfortable-looking bed without a curve to be seen. “We hadn’t been assigned here in time for the last one, but the Murtrees told us all about it.”

  Before I could ask for more details—and more importantly, begin negotiations about my primary goal, to leave—a small voice called impatiently and furiously from somewhere down the long hallway. “Mom, there’s no grats left. Linda ate them all!”

  Madeline smiled apologetically. “Kids. You know how they are.” Actually, I didn’t, not having met more than a handful of Clan offspring in my lifetime, and no Human children beyond those avoided underfoot in crowds. Children. I found the entire concept more foreign than the Drapsk.

  “Supper’s at five, Fem Morgan. We operate very casually here. Just use the com if you need anything. Coming!” she shouted, moving away at a rapid pace that suggested whatever trouble was ahead had better look out.

  I eyed the com panel. As well announce directly to Copelup that I planned to evade him.

  During the flurry of introductions in the front office of the Humans’ research facility-cum-residence, I’d been showered with names, duties, and relationships I knew would be impossible to keep straight. The Skeptic had stood silently to one side, plumes atwitch. He was staying as well, somewhere, an accommodation within the overwhelmingly Human-scented building I suspected must be difficult for the Drapsk. I would have also suspected him of being amused by my slight cringing during the effusive welcome from the Brightson family, if it hadn’t been for the tentacle slipping inside his mouth for some discreet, troubled, sucking.

  So despite the warmth of the welcome, the confusion and foreboding of entering a mass of excited humanity, and the honest exhaustion I felt, there was room for troubling thoughts. Whatever was going on here was important to the Drapsk. And what was important to them, I suspected glumly, was going to interfere nicely with my plans to leave.

  “More dessert, Sira?”

  “No, thank you, Cory,” I said quickly, discovering no room left for what I’d already eaten, let alone space for more. Then I covered up a yawn. I’d tried for a quick nap before supper, but that attempt failed when Copelup showed up at my door interested in my opinion of several music tapes. I hadn’t been sure if he wanted to test the limits of my hearing or simply drive me mad. The bell announcing this meal had been rescue indeed.

  Or would have been, I thought, if supper with the Brightsons had involved more eating and less competitive vocalizing.

  Between the bedlam of fifteen adult Humans and their six variously-aged offspring, I found myself seriously wondering if Copelup had tested my hearing to see if I could survive this.

  There was one advantage. I’d been given a seat thoughtfully away from the youngest children, whom I observed needed to physically subdue their food before consuming it with owl-like looks of satisfaction. This arrangement put me beside Grant Murtree, the very same person I’d been told had attended the last Festival. Copelup sat with another Drapsk at the end of the table—its placement near an open window surely meant as kindness in a room redolent with food aromas and warm mammal. The Humans politely wore no perfumes, but there was a certain tang to the air even I noticed. After a comment from one of my Human hosts, one of the younger Murtrees was removed, not without a wordless howl of complaint, from the room.

  I could feel Copelup’s attention on me throughout the meal, but I thought he was too far away to hear any conversation. Regardless, I kept my voice low as I continued pumping my table companion for information.

  “You were saying, Grant, the Festival is attended by offworlders as well as representatives from all of the Tribes?”

  Like the Brightsons, and almost all of the Humans at the table, Grant Murtree was short, slightly rounder than most Humans of my acquaintance, swarthy of complexion, and tended to squint fiercely. I found out later this resemblance was due to most of the agricultural staff being selected from the same Human world, Ladin 5, in order to provide the Drapsk with a physically similar Human Tribe. Humans could be very accommodating to local custom when they wished.

  Grant’s voice was soft and well-educated, the only accent to his Comspeak a r
ather charming tendency to lengthen his vowels. “Allie’s the one who really pays attention to the social details here,” he admitted, as if this were a lack I’d find reprehensible. “My specialty is plant engineering. You should ask her, Fem Morgan.”

  Since Allie was the Human who’d removed her odiferous offspring moments before, she was unlikely to be back soon enough to answer my questions, but I didn’t bother to point this out. “Call me Sira, please,” I said.

  “Sira,” he acknowledged with a nod. “But you’re a Contestant. Surely they’ve told you all about it.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said darkly.

  The Human chuckled. “Maybe not. Working with the Drapsk frequently involves, shall I say, unpredictable gaps in information?” He offered, then poured me more sombay. The noise level was dropping as children vanished from the room, but I trusted it would still keep most of what we said private. “Take the Festival,” Grant continued. “A great deal of it is similar to celebrations you’d find on any Human settlement: lots of food and drink, music, entertainment. There’s an exchange of gifts, but we were advised not to participate.”

  “Why?”

  Grant smiled. “We suspect the gifts are along the lines of betrothal exchanges. Not exactly within the scope of our arrangements here.”

  Betrothal? “Then the Festival has something to do with their,” I paused delicately, “reproductive processes?”

  Madeline had been leaning over, listening to this last exchange. “We’re not sure about that,” she interjected, with an involuntary glance at the Drapsk at the other end of the room. “Norm’s made a few discreet inquiries—he’s our animal physiologist—but they’ve been very—reticent about their biology.”

  “Many species are,” I noted dryly.

  She colored. “Well, naturally we didn’t pry further, but from what Allie told us, the Festival does involve some kind of selection or sorting process.”