Dancer's Luck

by Ann Maxwell

  Serenely, as though nothing unusual had happened, Rheba continued eating.

  The rest of the meal was a long silence punctuated by burps. When tabletops and fingertips had been licked clean, the Daemenites relaxed and began congratulating each other on the quality of the meal. A few people called out to Seur Tric, asking him if some traveling Seurs had returned with new knowledge that he had used to reprogram the cook. Tric muttered and made a vague gesture with his hands, consigning questions and cooks to the Last Square.

  But the questioners were not to be so lightly put off. A group of people gathered around Seur Tric. They began to question him, then realized that the people with him were strangers. Oddly, Tric did not mention Daemen. Nor did anyone recognize him. All eyes were focused on Kirtn’s necklace. Apparently each and every ancient crystal worn by Seurs was known in detail to the rest of the Seurs. Rainbow was not.

  The longer they looked at the magnificent string of crystals, the more certain the Seurs became that Rainbow must have been responsible for the recent feast. Somehow the crystals must have been powerful enough to affect the core even at a distance. There was no other explanation possible.

  Kirtn’s disclaimers were first taken for modesty. When it became obvious that he was adamant, Seur voices shifted into hostility.

  After a particularly irate exchange between Seur Tric and his fellow Seurs, Daemen stopped translating. Fssa, however, continued to whisper discreetly in Rheba’s ear. She, in turn, whistled softly to Kirtn. After a few odd looks from the Seurs, she was ignored in favor of hot argument with Tric.

  “Apparently,” summarized Rheba, “the crystals are some kind of keys to the Zaarain machinery. Not all of them work, and the ones that do aren’t dependable. None of them has worked lately on the cook. Apparently their skinny state isn’t normal for a Daemenite. The cook has been all but starving them. But after I skirted the core currents, something clicked. The Seurs are raving about the dinner.”

  “Tonight’s dinner?” Kirtn whistled incredulously. “Even a hungry cherf would have sneered. If that was the best the cook could do, they should dump it and go back to charring shinbones over a campfire.”

  “Think what they must have been eating before tonight.”

  Kirtn’s stomach rolled queasily. “I’d rather not.”

  “They feel the same way. In fact—” She stopped whistling abruptly as Fssa poured a rapid stream of words into her ear. “Ice and ashes!” she hissed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They want Rainbow,” she said tightly, “and they’re not taking no for an answer.”

  XI

  Kirtn looked at the faces crowding around the table. Attention was centered on Rainbow hanging from his neck. The sight of his powerful body gave a few Daemenites pause, but only for a moment. Their need for crystal keys overcame whatever common sense or scruples the Seurs might have had.

  Beside Kirtn, Rheba’s hair stirred, shimmering with hidden life. He sensed the currents of energy flowing around his fire dancer as she gathered herself for whatever might happen. Fssa keened softly, Fssireeme warning of a coming energy storm.

  “Gently,” whistled the Bre’n. “Perhaps Daemen can get us out of this.”

  She said nothing; nor did her hair stop shimmering. She leaned over the table and spoke quietly with Daemen, pretending she did not know what was happening—and grateful that her mentor had kept Fssa’s gift hidden. It looked as though they would need an edge in dealing with Daemen’s people.

  “What’s wrong, Daemen?” she asked in Universal.

  Daemen’s face was drawn and his eyes were dark with worry. “Rainbow. The Seurs want it.”

  “Tell them that Rainbow isn’t mine to give or keep.”

  “They wouldn’t understand that,” he said impatiently. “It’s only a Zaarain construct, not a person.”

  “Then tell them that Rainbow is mine.” Her hair crackled, warning of fire-dancer anger.

  “I did,” he said tightly. “But things are different here. Zaarain constructs can only belong to a Seur. Technically, you’re violating our laws.”

  “You could have told us that before we left the ship,” snapped Kirtn, leaning forward until his slanted gold eyes were on a level with Daemen’s.

  “I didn’t remember,” said Daemen miserably. “I was so excited about being home again that I wasn’t thinking of anything else.”

  The Bre’n curbed his anger. He could hardly blame Daemen for being excited. “But you’re The Daemen,” Kirtn said reasonably. “You’re the king or whatever the local equivalent is, aren’t you?”

  The Bre’n curbed his anger. He could hardly blame Daemen for being excited. “But you’re The Daemen,” Kirtn said reasonably. “You’re the king or whatever the local equivalent is, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a ‘but’ hidden somewhere,” said Kirtn, disgust clear in his voice. “What is it?”

  “I’m The Luck,” said Daemen reluctantly. “'There’s no doubt of that. It’s my heritage.”

  “Go on,” snapped the Bre’n.

  “But . . .” Daemen stopped, obviously unwilling to continue. A look at Kirtn’s fierce expression helped to loosen Daemen’s tongue. He spoke rapidly, as though eager to have it over with. “But until the Seurs know what kind of luck I am, I don’t have any real power. That’s why the Seurs are ignoring me. If it turns out wrong they don’t want to be anywhere near me.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Rheba.

  The Bre’n whistled a sour note. He was afraid he knew exactly what Daemen meant. “Good or bad,” said Kirtn in succinct Universal. “As in luck.”

  Daemen winced but did not argue.

  Rheba simply stared at Daemen, trying to understand the ramifications of what he had said. “Do you mean that you won’t be a ruler until the Seurs decide whether you’re good or bad luck?” she said finally, incredulous.

  His handsome young face was drawn into tight planes that made him look years older. “'Please,” he said in urgent Universal. “Don’t say the other kind of luck again. If the Seurs hear you, they’ll think you’re cursing them. Then we’ll all be in the soup.”

  “In the soup?” she asked, more puzzled than ever.

  “A barbarian expression,” he explained impatiently. “They feed their criminals to the zoolipt. When you’re in the soup you’re in the worst kind of trouble.”

  Kirtn saw Seur Tric’s dark-eyed appraisal and remembered that Daemen’s uncle understood at least enough Universal to follow their conversation. He nudged Rheba’s leg under the table.

  She glanced at him, startled by the distinct image of a Bre’n hand over her mouth that had formed in her mind when he touched her.

  Seur Tric stood up abruptly, silencing the rest of the group. He surveyed everyone with narrowed eyes. “Today The Luck came back and already we’re at each other’s throats.”

  “You also got your first decent feed in months,” pointed out Daemen, puzzled.

  “Proving nothing,” shot back his uncle.

  “That’s right,” snapped Daemen. “Nothing has been proved. Not good and not other.”

  Uncle and nephew glared at one another. Kirtn had a distinct, cold feeling that The Luck’s return was not a matter for celebration as far as the Seurs were concerned. He wondered for the first time if Daemen’s mother had left the planet willingly or been exiled.

  What was it Daemen had said about his mother going out into the galaxy in search of new technologies because the old ones were falling apart? Was it that simple, or had the superstitious Daemenites shipped off their ruling family in a bloodless attempt to change their luck?

  Malaise blew over the Bre’n like a cold wind. The people who brought back the son of a deposed ruler were not likely to be greeted with enthusiasm.

  Grimly, Kirtn measured the distance to the exit. Far, but not too far. The Daemenites carried no visible weapons except for an occasional whip. Between Bre’n strength and Senyas fire, escap
e should be relatively easy. Certainly easier than it had been the first time on Onan, when Equality Rangers’ lightguns had blazed after them every step of the way to the spaceport.

  “Fire dancer.” He spoke in Senyas, his tone that of a mentor. “We’re leaving.”

  “What about Daemen?”

  “He’s home.” Dryly. “His fondest wish come true. What more could we do to him?”

  She winced at the irony in his tone. “Can I at least offer to take him with us? I can’t just leave him.”

  Kirtn’s eyes flattened and changed, cold as only a Bre’n’s could be. “Tric understands Universal. If you talk to Daemen, we’ll lose the edge of surprise.”

  She said nothing, merely looked stubborn as only a Senyas could be.

  “All right,” snapped Kirtn. “Wait until I’ve instructed the ship. Then you can stay here and talk to the pretty smoothie until your teeth fall out!”

  Surprise, anger and hurt warred inside Rheba. Only the danger of their situation kept her from a shocking display of emotion.

  He ignored her. Whistling softly into his transceiver, he explained their position.

  There was no response.

  He whistled again, very sharply.

  Nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Rheba, forgetting her anger.

  “The transceiver is dead. I can’t raise the ship.”

  Her hand shot out and closed over the elaborate clasp that was a disguised transceiver. Gold lines rippled across her hand as she probed. “It’s working, but there’s no power from the ship. The Devalon is in max defense mode. Nothing goes in and nothing goes out.”

  “Defending against what?” he demanded. “Whips and plastic knives?”

  But even as he spoke, he manipulated the clasp so that it switched to emergency send/get mode. If Ilfn had had enough warning to leave a message capsule outside the ship, the transceiver’s squeal would call it up.

  Rheba’s fingertip hovered near the clasp, waiting until he was finished.

  “Ready,” he said tersely.

  Her hand burned gold as energy poured into the transceiver, replacing the ship’s energy that had ceased the moment it went into max defense mode. The transceiver came alive. The send/get mode squealed—and struck a message.

  Ilfn’s whistle sounded in a compressed, lyric summary of the situation. Something had gone wrong with the downside connectors. There was enough power to keep the ship’s vital functions and defense going, but no more. The Devalon had analyzed the situation and concluded the ship was under attack. It had given a five-second warning, recorded Ilfn’s message, and shut down.

  “We’ve got to go back,” said Rheba, glancing around the room with eyes that were more gold than cinnamon, danger and fire growing in their depths.

  “What good would that do? We don’t have enough power to take off.”

  “Ice and ashes!” swore Rheba. Then, “If I were inside, maybe I could hash the downside connectors until we had enough power.”

  “Assuming you could get energy where the Devalon couldn’t— and that’s quite an assumption, fire dancer—if we breach the ship’s security to get inside, we might leave it defenseless. Until we know more about the nature of the attack, we’d better tiptoe.”

  She did not disagree, but impatience flared in every akhenet line.

  Daemen, who had listened to their whistles and curt Senyas words without understanding either, leaped into the silence. “If you wouldn’t mind just loaning Rainbow to me, maybe I can solve this problem.”

  Seur Tric broke in with a demanding burst of Daemen’s native language. The young man turned and answered impatiently. Hidden in Rheba’s hair, Fssa translated.

  “What do you mean those crystals aren’t mine?” asked Daemen, glaring at his uncle. “They came to the planet with me. You have no right to those crystals, nor to impede me in any way. Be very careful, uncle. I am The Luck!”

  Tric’s face changed, anger and fear overwhelming whatever affection he might have had for his nephew. “You are your mother’s son in arrogance, at least. She couldn’t find a single Luck-forsaken thing to improve our lot, yet how she screamed when we refused to let her go among First Square’s savages in search of the fabled First Installation. We saved her life by giving her the last ship we had, but was she grateful? No! She raised you to be as Luck-forsaken a whelp as she was!” He made a strangled sound. “Why in the name of Luck didn’t you die? We were better off without your mother. We would have been better off without you. Better to have no Luck at all than to have Bad Luck!”

  For a moment, Daemen was too shocked to speak. Then, slowly, as though to be sure that there was no possibility of misunderstanding, he asked, “Did you exile my mother?”

  “And all her Luckless family,” agreed Tric grimly. “If she died out there, we didn’t want any of her children living here to inherit The Luck. We wanted to be free of you.”

  Daemen’s eyes paled until they looked more like ice than rain. “A lot of good it did you,” he spat, looking around the group of listening Seurs. “Centrins is worse off than when mother left, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” he yelled, standing up and staring at each Seur until the Seur looked away, unable to stare down The Luck. “You should be blessing your Luck that I’m back. Now maybe you’ll get something better than garbage to eat every night!”

  “Or something worse,” muttered Tric.

  “What could be worse?”

  “I’m afraid we’ll find out.”

  “Afraid,” sneered Daemen. “No wonder you got rid of Mother. She wasn’t afraid of anything.”

  “I know,” sighed Tric, “I know. As long as other people did the suffering, she wasn’t afraid at all.”

  Kirtn grabbed Daemen just as he lunged at his uncle. The Luck struggled uselessly in Kirtn’s hard grip.

  “If killing him would help,” Kirtn said conversationally, “I’d do it myself. Would it?”

  “What?”

  “Help.”

  Daemen sagged in Kirtn’s grasp. “No. It would just make things worse. But he’s wrong about my mother,” said the young man fiercely. “He never saw her in the Loo slave Pit. She fought for her children until she—she—”

  Kirtn stroked Daemen’s black hair in silent sympathy. The Loo slave compounds had been worse than any hell dreamed of by distant philosophers. That the child Daemen had survived at all was a miracle that made Kirtn believe that Daemen had every right to be called The Luck.

  “What should we do now? They’re your people,” added Kirtn at the young man’s startled look. “You must know them better than I do.”

  Daemen frowned, then leaned closer to Kirtn, as though depending on his strength to stand. “Run for your ship,” he whispered. “If only half of what the slaves told me about Rheba is true, the Seurs don’t have anything that will stop her.”

  “They’ve got something that stopped our ship,” said the Bre’n dryly. “We don’t even have the power to lift off.”

  “Bad Luck!” swore Daemen. “I forgot about the core drain.”

  “The what?”

  “The core drain. It’s part of the spaceport. It can give energy to ships—”

  “Or take it away,” finished Kirtn.

  “Yes.” Daemen looked miserable. “I remember we had trouble making it work when we took off. Mother laughed because she thought her Luck was working to keep her on Daemen. She was furious when Tric figured out how to reverse the core to make it give energy instead of take it away. I guess . . .” He swallowed several times and then whispered, “I guess her Luck wasn’t always good.”

  It was a difficult admission for Daemen. It did not make Kirtn feel very good, either. If luck was inheritable, and it was beginning to look as though at least bad luck was, then anyone who was close to Daemen would be caught in the backlash. The Bre’n had a sudden, queasy feeling that was exactly what Satin had meant when she had told Kirtn to kill The Daemen.

  On the other hand, Daemen had survived Loo. His
luck could not be all bad. The Loos, however, had paid a high price for his survival. Not that the Loos were innocent bystanders—they profoundly deserved being burned to ash and gone—but it was not a comforting thing to think of. What was good luck for Daemen might be sudden death for anyone nearby.

  Rheba’s hand wrapped around Kirtn’s arm as though she knew exactly where his thoughts had led him. “It’s just superstition,” she said in Senyas that dripped contempt. “Besides, even if it is true, Daemen has brought nothing but good luck to us.”

  Pointedly, Kirtn looked at the hostile faces circling him.

  “He’ll get us out of it,” she said confidently.

  But she was still touching Kirtn. He sensed her desperate question in his mind: Won’t he?

  “Let me try my idea,” said Daemen.

  As one, Kirtn and Rheba focused on The Luck. “It had better be good,” said Kirtn flatly. He took off Rainbow and hung the beautiful crystals around Daemen’s neck.

  The Seurs muttered restlessly but did not interfere. Tric’s mouth thinned into a grim line. With a curt gesture he turned to face the Seurs.

  “We sent The Luck out into the galaxy to find technology. In its new incarnation, The Luck has returned. Now we will test the strength and kind of Luck that came back to us.”

  The Seurs muttered again, but again there was no real objection. Testing The Luck was one of the oldest rituals they knew, and one of the most sacred.

  Tric read their agreement in their silence. He gestured imperiously at the exit, then strode out without waiting to see who followed. The Seurs shifted restlessly, then moved in a body after their leader.

  Rheba and Kirtn looked at each other. They would never have a better chance to escape, but what good would it do if the Devalon was grounded?

  “Come on,” said Daemen, guessing their thoughts. He took Rheba’s hand. “You can always run if the test goes bad.”