by Linda Gayle
Sayal’s pulse leaped. She imagined every little ache to be the ink taking over her cells. “Kels. Elion…”
Two pairs of hands immediately lay comfortingly on her body, and she tried to rise, but Ulvik pressed her shoulder down. “Hold on, missy. I’m not quite done.”
Kels, stroking her head, said, “She hasn’t been feverish, and her hair’s not falling out. What other symptoms might there be?”
She could practically hear Ulvik thinking in the space it took him to answer. “Bein’ honest, I’m not certain. Like I said, I ain’t worked much with this ink. Everything could be fine, just the way it’s s’posed to be. We can only hope, eh?”
“You’d better hope,” Elion growled. “Because if anything happens to her, I’ll have your bloody head on a pike.”
“Control your man, Cap’n,” Ulvik muttered. He slid his cold fingers along her sides, then under her armpits, under her jaw. “Sit up, my beauty,” he said. She did, nearly shuddering at the murderous expressions on both Kels’s and Elion’s faces, eternally grateful they weren’t angry with her. Ulvik put his monocle back on and looked into her eyes, then her mouth. He checked her reflexes.
“She had a scan this morning at the Dome,” Kels said. “She was clear except Canto picked up alien DNA. Your ink, I presume?”
“Nah.” Ulvik shone a pin light into her ears. “Wouldn’t show up on a scan. DNA’s shattered; part of what makes it safer.”
“Then what the hell was it?”
The inkman shrugged. “Dunno. Could have been the ink, I s’pose. Tricky stuff. Maybe not all the genes despliced. I leave only the essentials in place, remove the toxic chromos best I can. That’s how it’s done, y’know.” He leaned his knuckles on either side of Sayal’s thighs and gazed into her face, grimacing. “Well, chicky, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re not showing any signs of poisoning, but I also don’t see my tat. It’s the first time it’s ever happened to me, but I’ve heard of tats not taking.”
“What’ll happen to the ink, then?” Elion asked.
“Could be it’ll bind with her DNA but do her no harm. If we’re lucky, it’ll pass harmlessly out of her system. It’ll just biodegrade and flush out with the rest of the waste.”
How unappetizing, Sayal thought.
“How disappointing,” Ulvik said.
“Then why did it hurt when you touched me?” she asked.
He straightened and crossed his bony, lume-scarred arms over his chest. “Well, you did get poked about a million times this morning with a very sharp needle.”
Elion’s hand was between her shoulder blades, rubbing in circles. Kels didn’t seem to mind. She reached for Kels’s hand, and he twined his fingers around hers on the table.
Ulvik raised an eyebrow. “Still going into the games, then?”
Kels gave a short nod. “Tomorrow, unless she’s not feeling well.”
“The three of you?”
“Just me and her,” Kels said. Elion’s touch dropped away, leaving her cold.
“Well, good to know you can still make a living without your ship.”
Kels curled his lip. “Very funny. Treena told me you’ve got the jarouki riled.”
“Yeah, wanted ‘em good and hot for you, Kels. I know you like ‘em that way.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Elion said, and he came around to help Sayal off the table. His hands lingered at her waist as she stood in front of him.
“Am I playin’ all three of ya?” Ulvik put his knobby hands on his hips. “The captain only. You two, go get a room.”
Sayal thought she’d fall over, the wave of panic that hit her was so strong. She had to be in the same room as Kels if not right next to him, touching him, in order to leech away the effects of the toxin.
Fortunately Elion snapped, “In your dreams. I don’t know you won’t pull any funny stuff. I swear Kels’s drink was spiked last time.”
Ulvik sneered. “Don’t need none of that to beat your boss in a simple card game, flyboy. But if it’ll suit you, fine. Just stay on your side of the room.” He narrowed his red-rimmed eyes at Elion. “I got just the tat in mind for you. Lookin’ forward to it?”
Elion rubbed his cheek as if subconsciously feeling the needle there, and Sayal slipped her arm around his waist. “Come on, Elion. You know Kels will win.”
“So sure, are ya?” Ulvik turned to her. “How do I know there ain’t no monkeyshines between you three?” He swept his long finger over them.
Kels said, “They don’t have to stay. If you’re afraid their being there’ll make you so nervous that you’ll lose, then fine.”
“Nah,” he growled. “Then I won’t have your mate and his lovely, milky skin at hand when you fold. Don’t want to risk him runnin’ off on me.”
Elion opened his mouth to fire another rebuke, but Kels said, “Speaking of which, where’re the locks to the Nova? We’ve got business aboard, and I want her over in the loading docks before twelve-hour.”
“The only thing you’ll be loadin’ is your bags on a rental flight.” But Ulvik produced what looked like an ordinary door pad from his pocket.
Kels and Ulvik continued to snap back and forth at each other as they left the workshop and strolled toward a back room, and Sayal finally supposed it was all part of the game. By the time they sat at a tarnished metal table in rickety chairs, Kels looked grimly determined, and Ulvik’s gray-green skin had adopted angry orange undertones.
She took the chair to Kels’s left, but Ulvik waved her back. “Way over against the wall if you please, both of you. No lookin’ at his cards. And no talkin’ neither.”
“C’mon, Sayal,” Elion said, dragging two chairs away from the table. The room was small, only about four by four meters, and they couldn’t move all that far away, which was fortunate. As she sat, Sayal attempted to open the psychic link between her and Kels and immediately recognized his signature energy. Elion, to her right, rubbed her shoulder again.
He couldn’t seem to stop touching her, and though his face remained unreadably composed, through the bond she shared with him, she sensed his desire and growing affection for her. His presence and strength would help her too. For a moment, she allowed herself a congratulatory sigh of relief. Everything was going as planned. This shouldn’t be so difficult.
Thumping into his seat, Ulvik cast a narrowed gaze over Kels, then pulled a clear container from under the table. Within the large cube, several dark shapes moved—scorpion-like creatures as big as her hand. They waved double-pronged tails over their segmented backs, their serrated pincers clacking so that even she heard them over a meter away. Ulvik shuffled the deck of round jarouki cards and passed them to Kels, who shuffled them also. Ulvik gave seven cards to each of them; then he opened a lid on the top of the bug box and dropped in the remainder.
The hissing jarouki swarmed the deck, scattering them about the bottom of the box, their tail stingers curled over their backs, at the ready. Sayal didn’t realize she’d reached over to Elion and was squeezing his arm until he put his hand over hers. She stared at him, hardly able to form words. “By the Fates…”
Ulvik observed her with a gleam of cruel satisfaction. “First time seeing this, eh? Not a pretty game by any means. Survival of the fittest. Care to join us, chicky? Plenty of venom for everyone.”
“Shut up and play,” Kels snarled, fanning out his cards.
Elion pried her off his arm and curled his fingers around hers to hold them against his thigh. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it didn’t quite cut through the worry.
Kels and Ulvik studied their spreads. Sayal leaned closer to Elion and whispered, “What are the rules exactly?”
Ulvik’s annoyed scowl came up again, but Elion said, “She wants to know how it’s played.”
“I’ll tell you, my beauty,” the inkman said. “The game itself’s simple. Seven rounds of play, and in each round we’re lookin’ for a different combo. Could be pairs, suits, colors, get it?” She nodded, and
he said, “Trouble is, you need to draw and exchange cards to fill out your hand, and that’s where these little lovelies come in.” He gave the container a jiggle that set the creatures snapping and hissing. The hairs rose on Sayal’s nape. “Exchangin’s not so bad, ‘cause you’re allowed to drop ‘em in, but it’s the drawin’ that makes life interestin’. Gotta get past my precious darlings if you want the new cards bad enough.”
“How toxic are they?”
Ulvik bared his gray teeth. “Big guy like the captain, probably just make him real sick. Someone like you… I’ve seen ‘em nix a few players who didn’t know when to quit.”
“Ah well…” She swallowed rising bile. “Thank you for the explanation.” At least the actual poison wouldn’t be flowing through her when Kels got stung, yet she would be absorbing the effects of it, and there would be little way to hide it from Elion’s keen eyes, or the captain’s. She’d have to sit very still and mask it, or convince them the disappearing tattoo caused her discomfort.
Unfortunately she didn’t realize how difficult that would be until Kels reached into the box for the first round of cards, and a scorpion sank its stinger into the back of his wrist.
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Chapter Seven
By the time the captain and Ulvik were into their sixth round, Elion didn’t know who looked worse—the inkman, Kels, or Sayal. Kels at least had his back to them, but even so, Elion could see his friend’s shoulders slumping, see his breathing growing ragged as the poison took its toll, see the blood trickling between his knuckles when he dragged his hand from the jarouki box.
His hand had to be almost numb if not completely so by now. Part of the challenge of the game was grabbing all the cards you needed in one try, but that became more difficult as play went on and the unavoidable stings fried your nerves, rendering your fingers nearly useless. Kels had switched the cards to his left hand a couple of rounds back. His right dropped to the table like a brick, but he had the three cards he needed.
Ulvik looked even worse. Lids drooped over dead-looking eyes. His lips hung slack, and a snail trail of drool slithered down his chin. Surely he couldn’t hold out much longer. Kels was ahead, but not by much. If they survived to round seven, it was anyone’s game.
Elion had played jarouk in the past only if he was so completely bankrupt, he had no other options. He detested the chills and nausea brought on by jarouki stings, even if the effects lasted only a few hours. Understandably it was always a high-stakes game with huge pots for the taking if you didn’t puke your guts out, lose consciousness, or simply cave before your opponent did.
Kels was hanging tough, but it was Sayal who really worried him. The poor angel must have had a weak gut, for as soon as the captain had taken the first hit, she had started to sweat and had gone downhill from there. Several times Elion had tried to convince her to let him take her outside, but each time she’d adamantly shaken her head and insisted on staying. Now, doubled over, her golden brown complexion gone ashen, she stared holes into Kels’s back. What a quick but fierce bond of loyalty they’d formed.
Funny thing was, Elion wasn’t feeling all that well himself. As the night wore on, his belly began to tighten and his skin grew feverish, almost as if he were taking the hits himself. Even his hand felt foggy and sore. He shook it now. Saints, this game couldn’t end soon enough.
Ulvik groaned and dropped two cards into the box. While he pushed his unresponsive fingers over the floor of cards, the jarouki swarmed his hand.
Sayal whimpered. He touched her shoulder. “Sayal, I’m taking you out of here now.”
“No… I have to…stay until the end.”
“You’re not doing anyone any good.” He swallowed down a wave of nausea. Saints, maybe it was the heat of the room or the smell of blood. “A bit of fresh air will do us both good.”
Tremors racked Ulvik as he blinked sweat out of his eyes and gazed down his nose at his new cards. He tipped back his head, perhaps to focus; then farther back, his mouth open…and then he tipped all the way until his chair crashed to the floor and his spindly form sprawled on the cement.
“Ulvik?” Kels inched up from his seat to peer over the other side of the table. Elion stood and went to the inkman. The fella was almost blue. He pressed his fingers to the side of his throat and felt a steady pulse.
“He’s out cold.”
“Thank the saints.” Wiping his arm across his forehead and letting out a moan, Kels tossed his cards onto the table. “Crack and ruin, I feel like shit.”
“Think we ought to call Treena?” Elion tried not to puke as he dragged the inkman’s sweaty, stinking body around to a more open area. Neither Kels nor Sayal were in any shape to help him. “I’m sure he could use a little nursing.”
“Yeah.” Coming unsteadily to his feet, Kels pressed a button near a vidgrid on the wall. In seconds Treena’s decorated face appeared.
She sighed. “Oh, dear, this can only mean one thing.”
“Your pop’s hit the floor, luv,” Kels said.
“And you? Feelin’ a bit buggy, are you?”
“Let’s just say I’m glad my ship has a decent crapper in it, ‘cause that’s where I’m heading.”
“I’m glad you won her back,” Treena said. “Daddy was much too hard on you. Speakin’ of hard-ons, Kels, now that you’ve got your ship, d’ya think tomorrow we might…?”
He grunted out a laugh, leaning heavily on the wall. “My work here is done. Maybe next time.”
She pouted prettily. “All right, then. Don’t forget me, Kels. I know I won’t forget you. I’ll head over with a shot of jack for Dads. Ta!”
“Ta,” he said and palmed off the connection.
He gazed blearily at Elion. “We do have jack on the ship, right?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” On the ship. Sweet words to his ears. He could hardly wait to board her, and he knew Kels felt the same way, even if he was wobbling on his feet. “Sayal,” he said. The girl had her head in her hands. He looked at Kels, who peered worriedly at her. “I don’t know what’s got into her, but she started looking poorly as soon as you started playing.”
Kels shoved himself off the wall and went to her. He crouched down before her and swiped the hair from her brow. “Princess, what’s the matter?”
“It’s my back, I think,” she said, sounding as if she was about to burst into tears.
Kels’s alarmed gaze swung toward him. Elion knelt quickly beside Ulvik’s supine form and slapped his cheek. “Ulvik, wake up. Hello in there. Get up now.” But no matter how he shook him, the inkman remained unresponsive. “I’ll get the jack from the Nova.”
“Let’s just take her there,” Kels said. “Ulvik as much as said he couldn’t do anything for her. At least there we have medical supplies.”
“All right.” Elion went to help Kels lift Sayal to her feet. Her sleek curtain of hair fell over her cheek, and her head hung. She turned into his embrace, her arm around his back. “I’ve got her,” he said, glancing at his captain. “You’re not looking so healthy yourself. Can you make it?”
“Yeah.” Kels mopped his sleeve over his face; then he took the com for the Nova from the table. He thumped his right hand, still limp and swollen, against the bug box, and the jarouki hissed at him. “Thanks for a terrific game, you ugly fuckers.”
Then he turned to Elion with the com held up triumphantly. “Let’s go home.”
Elion nodded and held Sayal tight against him while he followed Kels out a back door into a lot shared by Ulvik and other merchants, where ships might land to deliver or pick up goods. And there, in a pool of silver light, sat the Ash Nova in all her blue-black steely beauty.
The very sight of her seemed to bolster Kels, who limped to her side and pressed the lock into a slight depression. A ramp descended, and Elion breathed in the metallic, sweaty, oily, leathery scent of a deep-space swiftcraft that had been closed up too long. Saints, he loved her. Even Sayal lifted her eyes to gaze upon her.
“The Ash Nova?” she asked weakly.
“Yeah. C’mon. I’ll take care of you. That’s it. One step at a time.” He guided her up the ramp.
Kels had entered before them, and by the time Elion had Sayal on level ground, Kels was lovingly smoothing his hands over the control panels. Elion half expected him to drop to his knees and kiss the cold steel flooring, which he might have, had he not apparently been seized by a wave of nausea just then.
Kels hurried in the direction of the ship’s head, leaving Elion to half carry Sayal to the medical bay.
“Here we are,” he murmured, easing her down onto a cot that whispered from the wall. Anxiously, he studied her for signs of ink poisoning. He discreetly stroked her hair, but none came free. As he seated her, he tested her skin with the pads of his fingers but sensed no hardening there. Her golden green eyes were closed, and she breathed through her mouth.
He sat beside her, trying to pinpoint what ailed her. For whatever reason, his own symptoms of nausea were passing. Probably had been the closed-in, airless room. He peeled up her blouse, afraid of what he might see, but her lovely, burnished skin was neither marred, nor was it hot to the touch.
“Sayal, sweetheart, tell me what I can do for you. Do you feel like you’re going to hurl?” he asked as gently as he could. There was just no polite way to ask someone if they were going to puke.
Kels’s boots pounded through the corridor. He stumbled in and rummaged noisily through a drawer until he found an aerosol jack injector. He slapped it against the skin of his chest. With a brief hiss, it spit the drug into his bloodstream. For all that it was vaguely illegal, jack was the best antinausea stim in the universe. Sweat soaked and pale, he crashed back against the wall and blinked up at the ceiling, gasping in air. After about five seconds, he gave an almost sexual moan of relief and sagged.
“Fucking saints, I hate jarouki,” he growled. Then he patted the wall of his ship and said, “But it was worth it, baby. You know I love you.”
Still unresponsive, Sayal leaned, or rather fell, against Elion’s arm, unconscious or close to it. He braced her up. “I don’t know what to do for her, Kels. Her back looks the same, and she’s not running a fever or anything that I could work with.”