by J. S. Morin
Hraim gestured with his rifle in Tanny’s direction. “What about the other one?”
“Who’s to take a chance like that?” Auzuma replied. “Not me. Not Mriy. This is a ritual hunt, not a rebellion. We stand together, but in two different places. This is your battlefield, but our hunting ground.”
“We’ll take them off your hands, so you can continue your hunt,” Hraim said.
“Do you have a fire we could share?” Mriy asked. Something in the way she said it sounded stiff and formal. What Esper didn’t know about ritual hunts could have filled a book—and somewhere on the omni, it probably did. New aspects popped up every time the wind shifted. Did a fire hold special significance, or was Mriy simply begging for hospitality?
Hraim glanced over at the snow-rollers. “We have a permanent camp set up. You can sleep in beds and have a fire for the night. Make your human prisoners understand that their lives depend on their behavior. And if that mongrel so much as looks at me, I’m shooting it and leaving it for the crows.”
Mriy repeated the instructions in English, knowing full well all of them had understood Hraim just fine. Of course, the less he knew about them the better.
As azrin hands hauled her into the lead snow-roller, Esper wondered just how much Carl might be willing—or able—to pay for her release.
# # #
The call wasn’t long in coming. “Yo, Mobius here,” Carl said into the comm. He set down his guitar between the pilot and copilot’s seats. He couldn’t remember how to play the outro to “Layla” anyway, so nothing of value was lost.
“Is comm secure?” a voice with a thick azrin accent asked.
“Sure,” Carl replied, kicking his feet up onto the control console. “How about your end?”
“As well, mine is,” the azrin replied. “I see face. You transmit.”
There was an old belief among humankind that you could tell a man was lying by looking into his eyes. You wouldn’t do business over a comm or with a guy wearing dark glasses. That was for suckers. Modern psychology said that was all bunk, and Carl knew just how bunk better than most. Apparently that tidbit of modern thinking hadn’t reached Meyang just yet.
“I really prefer voice only,” Carl replied. If no one saw your face, you could claim in court that it could have been anyone forging your voice imprint.
“My job, eleventy thousand terra,” the azrin replied. Carl supposed that was a lot like 11,000. “You. Face. Or no terra.”
Carl rolled his eyes and reached for the button to switch on the vid feed. “You’re the boss. Happy now?”
“Your fur. Blue?” the azrin asked.
“Yeah, it’s a funny story. I was—”
“No cursed fur,” the azrin replied. “Deal off.” The comm went dead.
“Yeah, well you’re no prize yourself,” Carl snapped, addressing a comm panel that was no longer transmitting. “Fuck. He probably wanted us to transport sentient eggs, or cloned scientists, or some other bullshit. When the hell is that azrin cultural enrichment field trip going to end? I’m sick of this flea-trap planet and its superstitious felid residents.”
He looked around the cockpit. “Where the hell did I leave that hat?”
# # #
The rebels’ refuge was nicer than Kubu had let on. Given Kubu’s communication skills, that might have been expected, but this went beyond understatement. The rebels had built along a hillside, using the soil for insulation. Despite needing a chimney for their fire, they were reasonably hidden from thermal scans.
Mriy and Auzuma were led inside, while Tanny, Esper, and Kubu were herded into one of the pens where the rebels kept wild game caught alive. The lone mountain goat that had occupied it before their arrival was slaughtered and brought inside for the night’s meal.
Hraim’s rebels gave Mriy a wide berth, but a few spoke briefly and quietly with the chaplain. It seemed that he was the less intimidating of the two, or perhaps Hraim had wanted to handle her himself. He came to sit with her, bringing two goat legs. He offered one to Mriy and took a bite from the other. “So, what sort of hunt was this?”
Mriy saw no reason to lie, this time. “My nephew was appointed heir while I was away. Three years off-world is not abandonment of my duties. I challenged to make the claim my own.”
Hraim pointed to Auzuma with his dinner. “And him? Seems old for a hunt.”
“My nephew brought the clan’s guardian. I wanted an even match. If we fight for the prize elk, let him match against the chaplain, while I face the guardian.”
“Bold,” Hraim replied, nodding. “Very old thinking. Sounds like something I’d expect one of mine to do.”
“What about them?” Mriy asked. “What are the sons and daughters of Meyang doing so far from cities? These lands are meant for hunts.”
“And we hunt them,” Hraim replied. “That goat you’re gnawing is no pen-raised cattle. You can feel the strength in those muscles as your teeth tear through. We’re too few to fight back against the humans, but we won’t let them turn us into their kind. Weak. Store fed. Reliant on technology. Not us.”
Mriy noticed that many of the rebels were young, not much older than Hrykii. They hung on Hraim’s words, though none moved close enough to join the conversation. They hung on the fringes of the common dining hall, watching.
“How much do you make selling hostages to the occupiers?” Mriy asked. It was a question she’d never have considered three years before, but the Mobius and her wandering times had taught her to think of the costs of things. The worlds made much more sense when you saw how money flowed. Desperate thieves and dishonest businessmen had seemed such strange creatures before she had met so many of them in person.
“Most of them get 10,000 terras per head,” Hraim replied. “Hard to spend, though, since they look for us in the cities. This holy woman, maybe we’ll get 20,000 for her. Some church must miss her by now.”
“The One Church,” Mriy added.
“All the better,” Hraim replied. “Those fiends spit on God’s commandments and have more wealth than the Profit Minya, blessed is his name. Be good to have some of that back from them. They owe more than they can ever repay.”
“What of food, shelter for the night?” Mriy asked.
Hraim yawned. He had finished most of his goat leg as they spoke, and the weight of sleep was heavy on his eyes. “We’ve penned humans overnight before. They’re dressed for it. We’ve never had one freeze, yet. And they won’t starve in a single night. I don’t want the dining hall smelling like burned meat.”
Mriy finished her meal, and a young rebel with lusty eyes led her to her borrowed sleeping quarters. The offer of his own was plain in his manner—the low growls, the touch of his hand on her back—but Mriy ignored him. She had bigger problems, because no one was going to be paying for Tanny or Esper’s rescue.
# # #
Carl woke to the sound of the comm built into his datapad. He hummed along with the opening bars of “Smoke on the Water” as he fumbled to accept the call.
“Whazzit?” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
“This the Mobius?” a voice on the other end asked. It was human, which was a damn sight better than fur-fearing locals.
“Yup,” Carl replied. There was a long pause. “This is the part where you tell me why you called.”
“I… I’ve got an object—let’s call it an item—and this item needs delivering,” the voice on the comm said.
“Listen, pal,” Carl said, stopping to yawn and stretch. “I can tell you’re new at this, so let me help you out. You tell me what you’ve got—a box, a sack, a herd of somethingorothers, a person—how big it is, how much it weighs, whether I need to feed it or keep it cold or whatever. Then you tell me where to bring it and how soon you need it there. You offer me a price and we haggle until we agree on a number. This isn’t a holovid; it’s just business.”
“Oh.”
“Take a minute,” Carl said. “Collect yourself. I just woke up, and I gotta piss.” C
arl muted the comm.
When he came back, his contact was better prepared. “It’s a box. Weighs 0.65 kilos. Fits in hand. I need it delivered to a ship waiting at an astral depth of 3.80, just outside the Meyang System.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Carl replied. It was a local drop-off. The poor slob on the other end of the comm probably worried that he’d get searched at customs, and his buyer probably had warrants out on his ship and crew.
“I need it there by 7:00 tonight,” the voice said.
Carl blew out a long breath and scanned the datapad for the time. It was 9:32 AM, but the Mobius kept to Earth Standard Time. “That local? What’s it in Earth Standard?”
There was another long pause. “I’m two hours ahead of Earth Standard, so 5:00 PM for you. Can you manage by then?”
“Sure,” Carl replied. It was seven and a half hours for a quick pickup and drop-off. “What’s the job pay?”
“How does 50,000 sound?”
It was times like this that Carl was glad he didn’t leave the comm open while he listened. Otherwise his client would have heard him choke on the beer he had just cracked open. He finished coughing and sputtering and composed himself. Fifty thousand was just another day scanning in on a time clock, he told himself. “Yeah, I guess it’s easy enough. I don’t have anything else going on today. Transmit coordinates, and I’ll come make the pickup.”
Carl brushed his teeth as the client worked on that, then called down to the engine room and woke Roddy up, letting him know about the job. A pickup the two of them could manage just fine. For the delivery, they were going to need Mort. The edge of the system at a weird astral depth was child’s play with Mort along. Without him, they might as well have been sitting atop the ship’s hull with oars for all the good it would do them.
Settling into the pilot’s seat, Carl put them on a heading for a place the azrins called Ishiy Pa, but which ancient Earthlings had named Athens—give or take a hundred kilometers. They’d be there in minutes, but that end of the trip wasn’t the trouble. He found a comm ID for the Yinnak and put in a call.
“Who calls?” an azrin voice demanded.
“I need to speak with Mort, the human wizard you’ve got staying with you,” Carl said.
“Who. Calls?” the azrin said more slowly.
“Shit. Doesn’t speak English,” Carl muttered. Not for the first time, he wished more people wore translator-charmed earrings. Understanding people who didn’t think you knew their language came in handy once in a while, but nowhere near as often as it was a royal pain in the ass. He dusted off the few words of azrin he’d picked up and keyed the comm. “No. Azrin. Speak. Human.”
“You wait,” the azrin replied. Carl breathed a sigh of relief.
“Who is this?” a new voice asked.
“This is Carl Ramsey, captain of the Mobius. I need to speak with Mort, the wizard that—”
“Mort!” the azrin shouted. Carl flinched and pulled the datapad away from his ear, though by the echo, it had not been shouted directly into the comm. “Some ship captain wants to speak with you.”
“Bleeding blue blazes, Carl,” Mort’s familiar voice carried annoyance clearly over the comm. “We were watching a holovid of the Mongol invasion of China. I finally convinced them that their local fictional productions were shit. I still think they’re mostly watching to see gruesome human deaths, but it’s an improvement over the wooden acting and fairy-tale plots their holos are crammed with.”
“Glad you’re having fun, but I’ve got us a job,” Carl said. “It’s hot to go, and I need a wizard for it. Delivery is in astral space, just outside the system. There’s always a chance we might wear out our welcome in the process, so I’d like to get everyone rounded up before we head off. We’ve got just over seven hours left to make the drop, and I’ll be picking it up in the next fifteen minutes. I can get to you in under an hour.”
“Don’t rush on my account. Our intrepid hunters aren’t back yet.”
“They’ve got to be just about done by now. Any chance you can prod things along?”
“I came down to prevent that sort of thing, not cause it.”
“Yeah, but this is just a family matter,” Carl replied. “I’ve got business up here.”
“Head on over,” Mort replied. “But I’m not leaving until they get back—on their own.”
Carl punched the comm hard enough that he worried he might have broken it. “Dammit! Why do you have to act like such a fucking…” Carl searched for the word, but nothing described a wizard who gummed up the works. If Mriy wanted to inherit a chunk of this blasted planet when her mother died, fine. But it was getting in the way of easy money—which was never as easy as advertised.
# # #
Esper had never been in a cage before. It was nowhere to be found on her list of things she wished to experience in her lifetime. She might have listed setting foot on an Earth-like world or two, but not setting face on them. If there was one good thing to be said about the animal pen where she and Tanny had been locked up, it was that it had been kept clear of snow. That and the wall of snow that came right up to the bars on one side shielded them from the worst of the wind.
“Hold still,” Tanny scolded. They were lying back to back, where Tanny could reach the cord that tied Esper’s wrists together while her own were similarly bound. “I’ve almost got a grip on it… almost… shit!”
Tanny was breathing hard, her huffing as loud as Kubu’s panting from the next cage over. He seemed none the worse for wear after his ordeal, other than being hungry—not that he wasn’t always hungry. A part of Esper had doubted he would survive those horrible wounds. She wasn’t a miracle worker; her magic only sped natural healing. That meant that if someone had kept Kubu from bleeding to death or suffering infection, he’d eventually have pulled through on his own. She could hardly imagine running into a full-grown version of him, wild and hungry, and fully able to devour her in a bite or two.
“Give me a minute, and I’ll try again,” Tanny said. She twisted and rolled to face Esper’s back. “I need another look at those knots.”
“Maybe it’s special cord,” Esper said. “It might be meant to cut and not untie.”
“I don’t care what it’s meant for. I just want to get loose.”
“What do we do if we get ourselves untied?”
Tanny heaved a sigh. “We’ll figure that out if we get that far.”
“I could try magic,” Esper suggested.
“Mort showed you a trick for getting loose from something like this?”
“Not exactly,” Esper replied. “But he showed me the general principles of arguing with the universe. I could improvise.”
“Let’s save that as a last resort, all right?”
Tanny flipped back-to-back again with Esper, and the tugging at her wrists resumed. Esper gritted her teeth as the cord dug into her flesh and rubbed the raw wound. She didn’t say anything about it to Tanny; Tanny was doing everything she could to help them escape. She didn’t need Esper whining and complaining the whole while.
“Mort did teach me how to set things on fire,” Esper said softly as Tanny worked. “But I don’t think I could to it to a person. I… I just thought you might need to know that.”
“Figured as much,” Tanny said between grunts of exertion. Esper could barely feel her hands, with the cord cutting off circulation. She could only imagine Tanny’s struggles to untie a knot with hers still bound. “Just wish they’d used a fiber rope instead of this synthetic shit. I’d stomach some burns to get loose, but not the temperatures it would take to melt this stuff.”
Esper kept quiet and tried to focus her thoughts anywhere but on the pain in her wrists and ankles, but the latter wasn’t so bad through the fabric of her pants. She couldn’t tell whether the numb feeling down in her feet was lack of circulation or the cold. The azrins had taken their boots.
The tugging at Esper’s wrists finally stopped. Tanny fell back, panting. “Not gonna happen. Even if
I could get a grip, my fingers are too numb to loosen the knot.”
“Magic’s turn?” Esper asked. “What should I try?”
“Nothing that can explode or burn,” Tanny replied. “I dunno, maybe make the cord stretchy or brittle. Mort doesn’t usually go in for half-measures, so I’m guessing here.”
“I’ll try stretchy,” Esper replied. She closed her eyes and envisioned the cord being rubber—soft, pliable, elastic. She described the imagined cord in detail, the words kept inside her head. The universe would hear her either way. When there was no immediate effect, she began again. Then a third time and a fourth. By the fifth she was growing cross with the universe, and told it so. By the sixth recitation, the universe had just about had it with her nagging.
A jolt shook the ground and rattled their cage, though not enough to damage it or break loose the lock. Esper flinched; she would have jumped if she hadn’t been tied hand and foot.
“What was that?” Tanny asked. It was the first time Esper had heard a tremble in her voice.
“I argued with the universe, and I think it just said ‘no.’”
# # #
Mriy crept through the darkened hideout. The rebels kept no sentry, no night watch. And why should they? Their prisoners were caged and secured. Their two guests were on a ritual hunt. At worst, they might have suspected Mriy and Auzuma to depart before dawn to resume their hunt. Waking their hosts would have been far more rude than departing without a farewell.
Mriy’s makeshift room had been a corner of a supply closet. Auzuma had been given space in the dining room, with a bed of blankets not far from the hearth fire. It was a concession to his old age and a sign of respect from the rebels. A young warrior enjoyed cold air for sleeping, but old bones liked to feel a fire’s warmth.
Auzuma snored, curled up head-to-feet, with one arm over his face. Mriy approached with a hunter’s stealth, as if he were prey. Her first instinct was to clamp a hand over his mouth to silence him while she assured him who she was. It was a human’s holovid plan. It might have worked on human sleepers, but if she did that to Auzuma, old warrior instincts might have taken over and she could have found herself brawling in the middle of the room before Auzuma realized what he was doing. Instead, she whispered.