The fact that Juvaszt said he needed “ships” was as close as the Kyvernat could come to acknowledging the truth of that.
Well, there was no need to exacerbate the Kyvernat’s wounded pride.
Too much, anyway.
“I will consider our strategic situation with that in mind.” Barrodagh paused just long enough to allow Juvaszt’s irritation at his apparent deflection to surface, and then added, “In the meantime, as you know, the Satansclaw is on the way from Charvann. I will place Tallis Y’Marmor under your command once he has discharged his duty concerning the Urian artifact.”
The Kyvernat jerked his head in assent, looking as if he had swallowed something unpleasant, and cut the connection. Barrodagh closed his eyes, taking the space of three breaths to enjoy a momentary pause, then opened his eyes and pulled up the rest of his queue.
o0o
TELVARNA
Two weeks into their flight, Marim woke from jumbled dreams with a sense of anticipation that at first she couldn’t identify. The subliminal hum of Telvarna around her... fuel stash? No! They were going to the nick planet, with...
She chortled as she rolled out of bed. The nicks! Not that she’d gotten the drama she’d hoped for.
Whatever was going on with Montrose and the Schoolboy happened in the galley, and if you nosed around there, Montrose had a nasty habit of snagging you and putting you to work. As for the Arkad, he’d slept two ship’s days through. When he came out on their fourth day out, Vi’ya sent him straight to Jaim, like promised. And he went.
Marim paused to consider that. When he’d arrived, he’d been the nick, or the Arkad. Somehow he was turning into Brandon, though she had never heard him ask anyone to call him that—unlike the Schoolboy, who had become monotonous with his “My name is Omilov, and I have earned the rank of Lieutenant.”
It was difficult to believe that Brandon really was an Arkad; at least, not the kind of royal nick you saw in wiredreams. For one thing, he talked even less than Jaim. For another, he followed directions like any other slub, as he was passed from hand to hand to do scutwork both necessary and unnecessary.
Marim had watched avidly from a distance. After the Arkad had to strip and rebuild the Eya’a’s tianqi, then the ship’s tianqi, Jaim sent him under the engine housings to check the wave guides and couplings. Then she saw young Ivard blushing and stammering as he directed him in shifting and unpacking crates of supplies. Even Lokri had had charge of him once, though he seemed to prefer avoiding the nicks altogether: the Arkad had to crawl under each of the consoles on the bridge, probing circuit nodes, while Lokri lounged, bored, tabbing lazily at his console.
Those next few days, after his work shift was over Brandon went straight to his cabin and slept.
Then, the rec shift just before Marim’s snooze watch, for the first time, the Arkad had stayed after he ate. He sat there at one of the consoles, reading something, but Marim noticed how everyone was aware of him. When she’d left to sleep, he was talking to Montrose about music.
Marim dressed and left her cabin. She found Lokri in the rec room. As she punched up a rice bowl, Greywing appeared.
“Hey,” Jaim greeted her. “Montrose let you out?”
Greywing’s freckled skin blotched with color. “Said I could be up for rec time.”
Marim had seen Greywing out of sickbay several times, probably checking on Ivard. As if the boy could get lost! But Marim was not going to interfere. “Where’s the Arkad?” she asked.
“Montrose has him working in hydroponics, since Schoolboy is cooking,” Greywing said. “I saw him when I left sickbay.”
“He’s practically cleaned the entire ship.” Marim whistled. “No squawking, either. Wonder if Vi’ya’s going to let up? Never knew her to be nasty like that before.”
Greywing snorted. “Not being nasty.”
“What’s the purpose, then?” Jaim asked in his quiet voice. “No fun when he just does what we tell him, and doesn’t even talk nick.”
Greywing’s watery blue eyes turned Lokri’s way, then she turned back to Jaim and shrugged. “You figure it out.”
Jaim shook his head, the tiny talismans woven into his six brown braids tinkling gently. “Rack time for me.” He slouched out.
Lokri got to his feet, lip curled in faint derision. “My watch,” he said, and also left.
Greywing eased herself down, her short, square body a contrast to Lokri’s elegant length. She put her hands around her cup of hot caf, her wounded arm still held close to her side.
Greywing was one of the best scantechs in the Rift Sodality or out of it. Rumor had it that three of the Rifthaven syndicates had tried to hire her, shortly before Hreem attempted to obtain her services by more violent means. She’d somehow known that his lethal pet tempath was coming to abduct her, and had escaped.
Vi’ya said Greywing was not a tempath, but that she had an uncanny ability to sniff out traces of ships and figure action-patterns that not only had saved them again and again but had made them reasonably wealthy. If Greywing had not been at the other base, Markham might still be alive, Marim thought, looking at the unprepossessing pale, freckled face before her.
Greywing and her little brother Ivard were both ugly, throwbacks to a time when humans had pale, thin skin, and they had constant eye trouble. But they were both talented in other ways. Not just good at sniffing out the intentions of ships, Greywing was also remarkably adept at reading people. But she didn’t always share what she read.
Marim slid into the seat across the table from her and smiled. “Lokri hates nicks.”
“So do I—sometimes,” Greywing said unexpectedly.
“But you don’t think Vi’ya does?” Marim prompted. “Or maybe she thinks it’s funny for the Arkad to be scrubbin’ Rifter engine castings.”
Greywing hunched her shoulders. “‘S what Lokri thinks. Let ’im. Not true, though.”
“So why’d she do it?”
Greywing narrowed her eyes, her lip curling. “Didn’t you see anything when you gave ’em the tour?”
“See what? The Schoolboy looked like we smell bad, and the Arkad kept eyeballing things like something was missing. Servants, I thought.”
“Markham, vacuumskull,” Greywing said. “Hit him, sting after sting. Must have. Anywhere he looked he’d see Markham—don’t you think he’d see right away who redesigned everything when he took us over?”
Marim’s mouth popped open. “Ha! Didn’t think of that. Even changed the tianqi scents, maybe those are familiar nick settings. Nasty thought.”
Greywing sat back, lips pursed in a small smile. “Knows Markham’s ship now,” she said. “After he been crawling around in its guts it no longer be a shrine.”
“Shrine!” Marim repeated, laughing. “Greywing, you been poppin’ hopper. Lost your mind.”
Greywing got up. “You got no mind to lose, Marim.” She snorted a dry, voiceless laugh, finished her caf, and went out, probably to check up on her brother.
o0o
In the galley Osri wiped his nose, frowned fiercely, and resumed chopping onions. “Damn these Rifters,” he muttered on each smack of the knife, “and damn squared that Light-accursed villain Montrose.”
His hand whacked down with increasing violence until a low, cultured voice startled him into nearly adding four fingers to the pile.
“Even strokes, Schoolboy, even strokes. Lumps are not acceptable in this dish. Unless your uselessness is repaired, and quickly, I fear I shall have to request the captain to invite you for a stroll solitaire out the lock. I can work faster, and more peacefully, alone.”
Osri ached to throw the knife at the old monster, but instead he forced his lips to acknowledge the command, and his hands to chop more evenly as Montrose vanished across the short corridor into the sickbay again, his voice a low rumble as he talked to that red-haired spacer with the burn.
Osri’s life had become hell ever since that first watch, when the captain ignored the carefully thought out spe
ech he’d said about his credentials, and what he felt was appropriate work for one of his training.
She’d led him straight to the galley and handed him off with a wave to Montrose—this giant, grizzled man with a flamboyant taste in clothing that a man of his age should long ago have grown out of.
“Chef and ship’s doctor,” Montrose had said, smiling. “And I can use an assistant.”
Osri had sneered at the obvious barbarity of employing a cook for health care—and Montrose had only laughed.
Osri paused and savored the image of the knife flying at Montrose’s bearded face. It would be great to see him panic—except he wouldn’t panic, Osri reflected bitterly. Being the Rifter murderer and thief he was, he’d probably just pluck the knife from midair by the handle, put it neatly away, and set Osri to scrubbing floors and walls again. And if he refused...
Osri winced at the memory of the drubbing that Montrose had given him on that never-to-be-forgiven first shift. The huge man had effortlessly swatted Osri’s fists aside with one of those tree-thick arms, then—squashing him companionably against a chest like a cast of metal ingots—informed him that, much as he detested violence, a thrashing would be “good for your soul.”
It had taken two days to recover from that—two days of feeling even worse than he had after surviving Lao Shang’s Wager.
Ever since then, he’d been stuck in this damn galley, first cleaning it from deck plates to bulkheads. Then came two entire ship’s days of exacting rules for tending vegetables in the hydroponics tanks, and the proper cleaning and cutting of them. After which he graduated to chopping and stirring and measuring. Then another round of cleaning. Over and over.
Two solid weeks of that, and the fiend finally consented to instruct him in how to... stir. Osri had put in more training hours before operating his first in-system aircraft. Stirring!
Montrose reappeared. Osri nearly jumped, relieved when he discovered that his hand had returned to the monotonous stirring. Bitter was his resentment of how habitual some of this cookery slubbing had become.
Montrose’s mighty paw looked incongruous picking up the tiny tasting spoon. He delicately skimmed the spoon across the top of the simmering sauce and held it out to Osri, who reluctantly opened his mouth. He knew that the sauce would be delicious—and that he would have to admit it, or be castigated as ignorant “as that nullrat Marim.” Much more repellent than praising his sauces was the prospect of being equated in any way with the disgusting Rifter vermin infesting this ship.
“Roll it around. Don’t bolt it like one of those hell-spawned syntho-paks. Now. There should be three different taste levels... First, the initial pungency...”
Osri swallowed the spoonful and glared at Montrose, who gazed at the bulkhead in pleasurable contemplation.
When Osri was scrubbing down walls in the dispensary, he had done some checking on the computer there and found a formidable bank of medical information, much of it in language Osri found difficult to decipher. If the man had not gotten a medical degree, he must have studied somewhere.
“... then it should blend into savory as you consider the intermingling of spices and the broth base...” Montrose went on, still looking soulfully upward.
Osri gritted his teeth. Then there was the pirate’s pleasant, helpful tone as if his perforce assistant were the most eager of volunteers. Not once had Osri’s most acrid sarcasm brought any reaction but a smile and an expansive answer.
“And last... the pure taste of the sweet phraef wine. Ahhh. Don’t you agree?”
“Certainly better than those it’s intended for,” Osri muttered, curling his lip.
Montrose’s wide, bearded face took on a long-suffering look. “I begin to fear you are hopeless, and I am wasting valuable time on a lead-tongued oaf. The chzchz herb was too strong and upset the balance of the second level. Never mind—it’s not completely ruined. Get back to your pastry dough, and remember: rhythm! Rhythm!” He grinned. “You would hate to get to the eighth kneading and discover that you must begin again.” Montrose pulled out a synth and set it across his lap. “I shall favor you with inspirational music to help you gain your rhythm.” Shutting his eyes, he began playing, his thick fingers dancing across the keyboard as a complicated melody filled the air.
Osri trod heavily across the little galley, cursing under his breath. A loud, rusty rumbling sound, not unlike a mowing machine badly out of adjustment, announced the presence of the second worst horror he’d found aboard this Telos-forsaken pesthole.
“Get away, you disgusting beast,” he snarled at the huge cat that appeared atop a storage cubicle. Its cream-colored fur was short and sleek, faintly striped with brown on head and ears, paws and tail.
The wedge-shaped head lifted, and its slightly crossed eyes fixed on Osri, the pale blue of glacier ice. The rumble increased in volume. The cat leapt to the floor and butted against Osri, its tail high, the big head wiping back and forth behind Osri’s knee, making his leg buckle. It obviously loved music—and conversation.
“Keep your foul hair away from my food,” Osri snapped at the cat. “Begone!” He waved his chopping knife at it.
The cat’s blue eyes widened. It opened a mouth full of needle-sharp white teeth and emitted a loud sound not unlike one of a lawn-tender sheering through a rock, then rubbed harder against his leg. The animal, it appeared, loved insults even more.
Montrose chuckled and continued to play, without pause or error, a series of brilliant, complex compositions. Osri had no particular talent for music, but his Douloi education had equipped him to recognize at least one of them as originating on Lost Earth before the Exile. The cat provided a percussive accompaniment with its loud purr.
Muttering heartfelt imprecations, Osri braced his weight against the cat’s ministrations and slapped the lumpy white dough onto the kneading board.
FOUR
ARTHELION
Barrodagh paced with his lord along the gravel walkway that wound past tall hedges and nodding, graceful trees.
The gardens were just as the now-imprisoned Panarch would have experienced them, save for an infrequent rusty stain on the path underfoot, the last signs of the resistance that had met the invaders when Arthelion fell.
Except for the smell. From time to time the stench of boiled seaweed and fish overwhelmed the scents of flowers and herbs, a reminder of Eusabian’s destruction of the nearby bay during his triumphal descent in the Fist of Dol’jhar. Other times there was the sharp smell of urine, the ubiquitous stench of those damned dogs, causing Barrodagh to hold his breath.
That stink was a reminder that the Avatar’s will that the dogs be destroyed had not been carried out. Aside from the poison, only one had been killed, and that by one of the chuqaths now roaming the sub-level sector where the prisoners were housed.
Unfortunately, one of the chuqaths had also savaged a work party that the Palace commander Jesserian had sent to extend the wired access points around the detention area. When Barrodagh complained about losing two of his increasingly over-scheduled techs, Jesserian had reminded him that security in that area was highest priority. As if Barrodagh could possibly have forgotten.
Barrodagh sighed silently. A concern for side effects was not part of the Dol’jharian character—that was the province of their minions.
Breaking the peace in the distance came the sound of heavy machinery and faint curses from laboring men. Close by the only sounds were the crunch of gravel underfoot, the susurration of a gentle breeze, and the chattering of unseen birds. At a careful distance, two black-liveried Tarkans followed them.
As they walked Eusabian looked around, his arms swinging uncharacteristically free at his sides, his face relaxed. His long strides made no allowance for anyone shorter than he, forcing Barrodagh to scuttle alongside crab-like, trying to keep his eyes on his master’s face.
“Rifellyn has finally managed to normalize the Node’s navigational functions,” he continued. “They have reestablished normal traffic patte
rns. Trade is resuming, and the discriminators are back up, enabling us to detect and intercept anomalous entries. Juvaszt has requested and will be receiving additional reinforcements to protect Arthelion from any Panarchist thrust, and I have directed Jesserian to continue enhancing the local Palace defenses with mobile projectors, since the defense systems are still non-functional due to the doomsday word the Panarchists triggered.”
Barrodagh was able to pause and catch his breath when Eusabian stopped to examine a statuary group of several people struggling in the coils of a giant serpent. Their faces were heavily weathered and blurred, but the agony instilled in them by the sculptor was still clear. A sign on a black metal post nearby identified it, but Eusabian didn’t spare that a glance.
“Entili mi dirazh ’ult kai panarch,” murmured the Lord of Vengeance, his gaze traveling slowly down the statue. Thus did my curse entangle the Panarch. Then he tilted his head back to the bright sun, his eyes slitted with pleasure, and stretched luxuriously, knitting his hands together and turning his palms out.
Barrodagh watched nervously. Ever since their landing on Arthelion, Eusabian’s moods had been impossible to predict.
“The sun of this world is warm and pleasant,” said Eusabian. “My ancestors chose badly, it seems.”
Barrodagh looked around, unsure how to respond. That was an unlikely comment from the Avatar of Dol, whose authority in part devolved from his identification with the eponymic father of his race. Dol’jhar was the gift, or grant, of Dol, given to harden his people against the demonic forces that had driven them out of their original paradise. Barrodagh was sure that Eusabian didn’t believe those myths any more than he did, but that his lord should unbend enough to make such a comment was a measure of the changes his successful vengeance was effecting in him.
Eusabian laughed. “Don’t worry, my little Bori, there’s no one to hear.” Then he bent forward, his hands on his knees, looking at something at the base of the statue. “What is this?”
A rough piece of simple granite lay in the grass in the shadow of the marble agony above, its face smoothed and engraved with four short phrases.
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