by Alma Boykin
Both storms broke the next day. Rada answered a summons to the lesser throne room three hours after noon. She’d seen clouds building to the north when she’d done her morning exercises, and warned Sgt. Nahrk to be ready for heavy weather later in the day. “At least they are not calling for twist-winds here,” and she’d pointed to that part of the weather briefing.
“No, Lord Mammal, and that’s a relief. The ground crew will move your ships to shelter even so.”
By one hour after noon, everyone in the Palace twitched, rustled, and kept looking to the sky. Rada wanted to shoot her staff with tranquilizers just to stop their constant motion. The arrival of one of Schleer’s bodyguards came as a relief. “Lord Ni Drako,” the huge male announced, “his Imperial Majesty wishes to see you in one hour.”
“I hear and shall obey.”
Rada left her weapons, aside from her sword and boot dagger, in her office. She walked through the corridors at a steady pace, neither hurrying nor dawdling. She nodded to the two Palace Guardsmen standing outside the doors to the throne room. One reached over and opened the door. Rada stepped inside, waiting until she heard the door shut and the lock slide home before advancing toward the throne. Out of the corners of her eyes she noted six of the Great Lords standing on either side of the door. Apparently Schleer wanted witnesses.
Two of the King-Emperor’s bodyguards seized her. They grabbed her arms, pinning them behind her back. Rada heard as much as felt the metal restraint cuffs snapping shut on her wrists and arms. The big males shoved her to her knees before pushing her to the floor and grinding her face against the wood. Rada stayed calm. If she died, it would be on her terms, not dancing to Schleer’s tune.
Rada heard the door to the imperial family’s wing open, heard Schleer snarling, “And if you do not stop protesting about laws and contracts, you too will be explaining your failures to the Judges of Hell!” Four sets of feet entered the room, and two sets came down from the dais toward Rada. She heard Schleer wheezing and smelled illness on his breath as he panted, “Pull the furbearer upright.”
Armor-clad forefeet dug into Rada’s elaborate crown of braids and pulled her up by her hair. She kept her face impassive. Schleer would get no pleasure from her pain. Rada saw Keershan standing on the dais, watching his sire, one of the King-Emperor’s bodyguards close beside him. Keershan hid his disgust well, Rada thought. Only a faint tremor in the Prince Imperial’s tail tip gave him away.
Schleer gasped for breath. “You. Failed. Drakon IV.” He sucked air between each word and Rada wondered why he’d not brought a medic with him. “You. Killed. My. People. Mammal.”
He backed up, moving so that he stood directly in front of Rada. She held her silence. The guards beside her stepped out of the way as Schleer drew a blast pistol. “What,” he fought to breathe. “What. Say. You. Mammal?”
“I have kept my vows.” No trace of emotion colored Rada’s words or appeared on her face. She knelt at attention, serene and motionless, as if content with whatever fate held for her.
Schleer stared at her. “You. Lie,” he growled with disbelief and disgust. The King-Emperor began raising the blast pistol. He hesitated, making choking sounds, his eyes bulging. Rada reached for him with her healing touch but stopped herself as one of the guards clamped his forefoot onto her shoulder. She looked to Keershan, but the other bodyguard held the prince back. Behind her, she heard the Great Lords rustling. No one spoke.
Schleer gasped and choked. He’d dropped the pistol and began clawing at his own chest, ripping first his robe and then his skin open as if trying to get air into his lungs. Schleer rolled onto his flank, then his back, and Rada saw brown and white foam on his muzzle. Oh fewmets, she thought. Roll him onto his flank! The forefoot on her shoulder moved to cover her mouth, preventing her from warning anyone. Schleer vomited up bloody phlegm, then inhaled it. He tried to cough but his failing heart and liquid-filled lungs could not take the strain. The reptile shuddered and twitched, tongue lolling. Rada felt his terror and anger both before she raised her shields again.
Only after the body stopped moving did the four guards permit Keershan to move, still holding Rada on her knees. Keershan darted out of the throne room, returning with a medic. The six nobles walked forward until they all had unimpeded views of Schleer’s remains and they watched the medic closely. The purple-clad Azdhagi bowed to the body, then to the Great Lords. He sniffed the King-Emperor and felt for a pulse under the foreleg and again at the base of the lower jaw. Then the medic turned to the dais and bowed low. “His Imperial-Majesty is dead.”
“Open the doors,” Keershan ordered, his voice harsh. The guards obeyed his command and as the brown-green prince stalked down to the main floor, the Great Lords, still silent, spread out and bowed to the Prince Imperial. He in turn bowed to his sire’s corpse, then wiped Schleer’s muzzle clean with the hem of the late king’s robe. “Release the Lord Defender.”
Rada shifted position, bowing until her head touched her knee as the guards, Great Lords, and medic all prostrated themselves before the new King-Emperor. She heard thunder rolling. The storm had reached the Palace. Rain began pounding the roof.
“Call the priests,” Keershan commanded. “Lord Defender, notify the minister of war and the Palace Guard that King-Emperor Schleer has joined the Ancestors. His obsequies will be held at an auspicious time. You are dismissed.”
“It shall be as you command, Imperial-Majesty,” Rada murmured. She got to her feet, limped backwards five paces, bowed again, and departed. Behind her she heard Great Lord Shu intone, “the Pack is satisfied.”
«What in the name of unhatched eggs happened?» Zabet demanded that night.
“His Imperial-Majesty died of heart failure.” Rada finished a bite of sausage in berry sauce and then poured the rest of the sausage and sauce into her bowl of watergrain. “In short, of natural causes.” After all, it was only natural that Schleer’s heart would fail under strain when he had two fully blocked arteries, compromised cerebral circulation, and the worst looking lungs Rada had seen outside of a teaching specimen. She wondered just what Schleer had been smoking or inhaling to cause that kind of damage. The Healers refused to say.
«If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Azdhagi Ancestors were looking after you. That or Schleer just wanted to scare you and went a little too far.»
Rada rumpled her tail in a shrug. “So, what coronation and mate-taking gift are we getting for his Imperial-Majesty and the Queen-Consort?”
Rada had already decided that Zabet did not need to know just how close her Pet had come to dying, nor how the Great Lords and Schleer’s bodyguards had accelerated the succession. If anyone tries to tell me that there are no checks on the King-Emperor’s power I will skewer them, Rada thought behind her shields. So much lies below the surface here. I don’t think even I will ever understand the Azdhagi. She suspected that the reminder of the power of the Azdhag Pack had shaken Keershan to the core. It had certainly focused Rada’s attention!
Zabet, already finished eating, pulled up the gift list. «A kilo of powdered cassia bark, two small tapestries of hunting scenes, and enough first combing millow fleece for two winter robes, short length.» Zabet poked Rada with her tail tip. «And the fleece needs to be combed and baled.»
“Of course.” It had to be complicated. Nothing in her life, even accession gifts, could be simple. Rada shifted and winced as the edge of the heavy body armor under her dress dug into her hip. She’d wait a few more hours to take off the armor. The air should have finished clearing by then.
5: Stray
“He wants a set of what?” Rada blinked at her ‘Boss’ with mild disbelief before looking at the goods request again.
«You can read» Zabet snapped, tapping the printout with a silvery talon. «There are at least four antiquities Marts that deal in sets like that.» The True-dragon sniffed, her whiskers stiff and ears tipped back.
Rada rolled the document and tucked it into her belt-case. This wasn’t th
e place or time to argue over the Marts, not with passers-by already staring at them. Local regulations limited where mammals could go without getting travel passes, and the Wanderer-hybrid didn’t want to attract official attention. “There’s no point in lingering, is there Boss?”
Zabet whapped her pilot’s leg with the end of her tail and then stalked toward the closest transport hire stand. «Quit dawdling and get your tail over here.» Rada’s ears started to flatten and she felt her own tail bristling but she followed without a word, spoken or otherwise. The colony dome made her uncomfortable as it was, and the sooner they got to the landing pod, the sooner they could leave Darekie’s World.
The True-dragon peered at the destination selector through a translation scanner, selected the landing pod, and stepped back gracefully as the warning chime sounded. A rusty brown vehicle trundled up to the hire stand. A door opened and Zabet stepped in, Rada close behind. The mammal made absolutely certain that all of her tail had cleared the door before putting her credit ring into the payment receptacle. An unpleasant squawk sounded, the ring emerged from the box and the transport rumbled onto the pick-up point for out-bound trams. Rada braced as the suction gate opened, pulling the tram-capsule into the flow.
As she worked to balance on her feet during the half-hour passage, Rada mused yet again that bipedalism was overrated, at least when it came to moments such as this. Her four-footed form would have no trouble balancing. But then not only could she not carry anything, she’d have to be on a lead. No, absolutely not, no I am not going to be led around by Zabet, not on this planet, she snarled silently. Damn parochial crustaceans. Her weak leg started aching before the tram was halfway to the landing pod. Add that to the Mart problem and Rada had more than enough material to use for a grump, working herself into a truly foul mood by the time the tram-capsule brushed the bumpers at the spaceport entrance.
The pair stopped at a display projection and glanced at the departure and arrival times before going out to Rada’s ship. The position of Darekie’s World’s three moons had shut off normal transport for the moment and no inbounds or departures appeared on the listing. «Good. Let’s go,» Zabet pronounced. The True-dragon led the way through an airlock, down a long tunnel, and through a second airlock to the section reserved for timeships. Only the Dark Hart appeared when the door opened, much to Rada’s relief. The planetary system’s odd gravitational flows interfered with her ability to sense the distortions in the time threads that warned of other time ships traveling through the area. As soon as Rada stepped inside the cramped vessel, the psycho-symbiote in the ’Hart let her know that it did not care for Darekie’s World one bit, confirming Rada’s discomfort.
As Zabet began calculating what sorts of fees and commissions she’d be willing to pay to obtain the client’s desired item, Rada and the symbiote selected a destination. The two creatures established mental contact as Rada entered the coordinates of the place and time into the master-processing computer. Then she began singing under her breath and closed her eyes. The symbiote took the information and reached into the time threads, pulling temporal energy through the ship’s power system. A second voice joined Rada’s as the creature, boosted by the power system, guided the Dark Hart along a time thread. Rada watched inside her mind as the creature showed her the six-dimensional track of the time ship. This would be a quick first trip, just far enough to clear Darekie’s System and to return to four-dimensional space. Rada selected a nice, stable moon of an uninhabited planet with a quiet star, and soon the creature’s harmony returned to Rada’s melody, then faded away as the ship appeared in “real space.”
«All right,» Zabet began as soon as her pilot ‘woke up’ from the steering trance. «Here are three antiquities Marts and a fourth that sometimes handles exotic textiles. We should have no problems getting a tapestry set from any of these.» The reptile tapped some keys and the data appeared on Rada’s computer screen.
“Un huh, sure, Boss. Number one is run by Da Kavalle, number two is Da Peerlan’s main depot ship, and number four belongs to Boozer and his clan. Do you really want to try dealing with those crooks again?”
«Oh Hell no! Boozer still says that I owe him four thousand credits and the slimy scrap of protoplasm undercut my final art bid at Crissels last month, that scum-dwelling bastard of a foot-rot fungus.» The images that accompanied Zabet’s hot words made Rada grin a little, and she made sure that she kept her back to the irate reptile. «Well fewmets. I thought the Brotherhood still ran that first Mart.»
“They still own it, but they turned the daily operations over to da Kavalle until the Brotherhood finishes with a crusade.” Rada suspected that tarqi da Kavalle would be the order’s next target once the Brothers saw how blatantly the Traders skimmed the take, but it wasn’t her job to police the universe. “I hate to say it, but I think we’re going to have to go to the source for these tapestries.”
Zabet grumbled and went back to her computer. Rada stretched, then fished around in her travel satchel and found some dried meat to gnaw. Only people who did not have to travel on a Trader scout ship ever imagined that the experience would be fun, Rada thought. If Zabet had been a normal-sized True-dragon they’d never have been able to do what they did. As it was Rada had been forced to steal external cargo pods for some of their larger cargo, including the requested tapestries. Four two-meter by at least two-meter rugs will not fit in here she decided, no matter how we fold and vacuum pack them.
Zabet sat back and groaned, her whiskers twirling and her forefoot to her eyes in a theatrical gesture. «We have to go to Earth, to the mid Pre-Industrial era, to find anything along the lines of what Glik wants. To the European continent.» She sighed aloud and gave her pilot a very pained look.
Rada hid a smirk as she entered coordinates. Zabet would not be able to do anything outside the ’Hart, forcing her to rely on Rada, because humans in that time and place did not recognize the commercial rights of other species. Not that it would be much easier for Rada, but she’d been to that general time and place before and knew enough of the common language, Latin, to get by. Plus she could pass for human, something her boss most certainly could not do! “Did Glik specify a type of image or sequence it wants, or should I just look for something nice?”
«Something nice and not religious, maybe something with gardens on it? Apparently garden scenes are becoming popular again.» Zabet sent a general image of what she thought their client had in mind.
“Ok, tapestries, four, generic with gardens. As I recall, the best weavings came from the far western part of the continent, Burgundy and Flanders I think they called it,” Rada offered as she got ready for the jump.
«That sounds right.»
The trip passed smoothly, although Rada and the symbiote noticed an odd little knot in the time thread, a few weeks at most prior to Rada’s intended destination date. It seemed mild enough that Rada opted to ignore it and to land at the original destination. As they got closer Rada and the creature ever so carefully shifted the exact spatial place of arrival, trying to find an uninhabited location not far from her goal. To her mild surprise they found one very easily, and not in one of the swamps or rivers that filled the area. The time of year would be mid-autumn, in 1349 by the local calendar.
Rada checked her clothes. She wore a long-ish skirt over breeches, a shirt with long sleeves and a high collar, and a long, loose vest, all in shades of cream and brown. Practical boots and a wide belt finished the outfit. According to the computer, “respectable” women covered their hair, so with a grumble and mutter the Wanderer found a long enough piece of pale brown fabric and improvised something close enough to suit. As she did so, Zabet sorted enough specie to pay for what they wanted.
«Try to use more silver and copper than gold, OK? And don’t flash the cash,» the True-dragon ordered her “House pet.” Zabet poured the coins into a leather-looking pouch and tossed it at Rada’s head.
The Wanderer caught it backhanded. “Yes, Boss. I have as much desire
to get robbed as you do,” she reminded the reptile. “First I get transportation, then tapestries, then we depart.”
«Correct. And don’t waste my money on crap!»
With that vote of confidence ringing in her head, Rada eased out of the timeship and looked around. They’d landed in a nice brushy copse of trees, near a road but not so close as to be seen. A light breeze rustled the leaves, some of them already turning brown and gold. Rada picked her way through the brush and started down the “road,” a rutted, wide, dirt track through the woods toward the trading center of Groenbos. She walked steadily. The sunlight felt pleasantly warm on her face and the wind kept her from overheating. Her bad leg twinged a bit at first, but the walking seemed to do her much-abused knee some good.
Alert but relaxed, Rada strolled along and took note of her surroundings, comparing them to what she’d learned in class. The Dark Hart’s map had showed the town with a forest close by and farmland between the woods and the town. The arrangement made a certain sense, given that everyday life and economic activities depended on wood. Proximity to the town gave farmers both a market and a source of protection the next time someone came raiding or waging war through this area, while open fields served as a buffer zone and a refuse disposal system for Groenbos. The only reason Rada knew even the basics of western European history was because she’d had to study some of the battles and politics when she served with Krather’s Komets and the Adamantine Division. Now, being able to recite the lineages of the local rulers served as more than just a way to win bar bets. Not that she expected to encounter anyone besides peasants and merchants, unless her luck collapsed on her. Again.
After walking for an hour or so, Rada stopped. She’d entered what should have been fields full of grain or fresh harvest stubble. Instead, weeds mixed with the crops and untended pasture, interspersed with tilled but weedy strips. Rada looked around, shrugged, and kept walking, now looking for a more prosperous farm with livestock. She saw a large house-like building set back from the road, and after watching for guards, Rada turned toward the complex. No smoke rose from the structure, nor did she hear sounds of daily life. She stopped, listening very carefully for any hint of activity. Nothing. Senses on full alert, Rada risked lowering her shields, extending her mental senses to try and catch a whisper of human emotion or thought. Only silence and emptiness filled her “ears.” She brought her defenses back up and slipped forward, easing from a low wooden piling fence to a heap of stones, head constantly moving, scanning the buildings and fields for activity.