Shaman's Curse

by Audrey Faye

  His eyes passed over my face and kept right on going.

  I walked a few more steps, hoping he was just withholding his reaction long enough to get behind the two men at my back, but nothing happened.

  More ice invaded my spine. I’d been rendered invisible. Which meant the first man behind me had the kind of skills that put a lot more than my Talent in grave danger. I dug into the core of my spirit web, the parts he hadn’t touched and couldn’t—I’d need to be dead first, and even then there were protections the grandmothers had woven. Ones that would make sure my spirit went home.

  Evil leaned into my ear. “Stand down, Journeywoman. We both know you can make this harder for me, but the end result will be exactly the same. We require only a few more minutes of your cooperation and then the reason for this action will become clear.”

  He spoke like a man who knew far too much about KarmaCorp.

  I walked, not speaking a word. Gathering my energies. Assessing my surroundings. There weren’t any back alleys or dark crannies they could drag me into. This was far too dense a neighborhood to have such things on street level. We must be headed for transport. I started to enumerate the options in my head. Down into the tubes would be best. My Talent would strengthen underground.

  “Stop here.” Mr. Tolino sounded almost bored—like I was entertainment that he was disappointed hadn’t delivered.

  I blinked. We’d come to a halt in front of an elegant door, one of shiny metal that let me see the shape of the two men at my back, but not any of their details.

  It didn’t matter. To a Shaman, energy was like fingerprints, and I’d never mistake the feel of these two. Even Federation courts would accept that as identification—presuming I ever got that far. The sharp edges of the men behind me had dimmed somewhat, but I was far from out of danger. They were feeling more comfortable, and that didn’t bode well for me at all. Wherever they were taking me, it wasn’t far beyond this door.

  I let my eyes scan without moving my head, seeking clues, but it was one of the ubiquitous ground-level entries that served those in the know. Staff, delivery people, favored clients who needed a discreet entry or exit from whatever business lived on the other side.

  I didn’t have long to wait. A black-gloved hand reached forward and waved a slim chip in front of a scanner, and the door slid open. The corridor on the other side was dim, but clean, and there was a plaque on the wall indicating that we were now entering a property of the Incarion Hotel Group, who assumed no liability for deliveries until a management signature had been obtained.

  That almost made me smile. Lawyers to the rescue. Now I knew where I was, even if that was fairly mystifying information. This wasn’t a back alley. Incarion was a strong presence on most core worlds. Always planetside, offering the well-heeled business traveler a standardized, anonymous, appropriately luxurious hotel experience.

  “Move,” Mr. Tolino growled at my back. “And don’t try anything funny.”

  I didn’t ask which way—there weren’t a lot of choices.

  “I think we can dispense with the bad vid dialogue now. Mr. Tolino, we are done with your services. Thank you for your assistance.” The voice of cold and ice spoke, and then I felt an odd prick where my neck joined my shoulder.

  I grabbed for my spirit web and curled into a seed even as consciousness faded.

  20

  Whatever drug they gave me wore off fast and hard and had me leaping to consciousness in a well-padded chair in a very fancy hotel room. One I stayed in just long enough to make sure my feet were attached before I flung myself out of it, looking for someone to attack.

  Anyone.

  What I found was the face of a man who stopped me dead in my tracks.

  I’d never met him before, but even the lowliest KarmaCorp trainee would have recognized him on sight. Regalis Marsden. Head of the StarReaders. The closest thing the Federation had to an oracle—or in some corners, to a god.

  Fury and shock slammed into each other inside my chest and splintered my breath.

  When he didn’t move, or even appear to seem at all interested in my sudden reanimation, fury won. “You cut me off from source. From spirit.” I was so angry I could barely find words in Federation Standard. I wanted to flay him. “You had your thug amputate my Talent. That’s inexcusable.”

  He regarded me a moment, and then turned to face a bland painting on the wall. “I needed to speak with you. Would you have come quietly if Arico had asked politely?”

  “I don’t go anywhere with assassins.” His energy of ice and cold had been brutal. Soul killing.

  “Careful where you step, Shaman. I will permit you some latitude in this room, but I will not permit you to malign trusted associates. Arico works for the greater good, just as you do.”

  We might have different definitions of that. “He imprisoned my Talent and drugged me. I presume he did both on your orders. I’m here under duress, Mr. Marsden, and I suggest you get to your point before the rest of this drug clears my system and my anger carries a bigger punch.”

  The drug was already clear, hastened by some tricks older than my trainee days, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  He regarded me a moment longer, and then his face slid into an entirely creepy smile. “I do believe Yesenia threatened me in much the same way the first time I found it necessary to arrange her expedient delivery into my presence.”

  I managed not to gape, but just barely. I wondered if he knew how much of a miracle it was that he still walked on two legs.

  “My known presence here would cause ripples that are both undesirable and unnecessary. I understand that you find my methods distasteful, but it is not your place to question them. You will listen to me now, Journeywoman. And you will do your job as your Fixer oaths dictate you must.”

  No one got to kidnap me and demand obedience, but he’d given me a very useful tool when he’d brought up Yesenia’s name. She didn’t take orders from anyone unless they suited her purpose. That was something I could emulate—and the man in front of me didn’t need to know. I nodded my head fractionally. He could make of that what he wanted. In the end, Talent or not, orders or not, offensive treatment or not, I would have a choice. Standing quietly until I understood the choice I wanted to make wasn’t a weakness.

  “Good.” He turned back to the entirely bland painting on the wall and studied it as if it were a priceless masterpiece. “You were sent here to ensure that the important new Harmonium technology does not adversely affect Shamans working in or near its presence. Please update me as to the status of your mission.”

  The StarReader place in the KarmaCorp hierarchy was murky. I didn’t report to this man, but it seemed highly unlikely that I was supposed to refuse him information. “I have verified to my satisfaction that the technology indeed affects Shamans, although I believe it would normally only do so if their standard protections were incapacitated for some reason.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Or if they were lazy.”

  I wasn’t going to bash my fellow Fixers. “I can’t say. I didn’t have the opportunity to run a complete test. There may well be legitimate field conditions that would put a Shaman in proximity to the technology at risk.”

  He waved a hand, dismissing my careful words. “Then we must do a better job of training our people.”

  That was easier said than done, but also the wrong battle to pick—and I wasn’t going to get the chance to pick many of them. “I believe it is also impacting untrained psychics and sensitives. People who don’t meet the threshold to require training. Perhaps even latents.” I felt my energetic spine straightening. Let him try to train that hodgepodge of abilities into absolute compliance.

  He raised an eyebrow, but never looked away from the painting. “That would be an undesirable effect.”

  I didn’t bother agreeing with a statement of the obvious.

  He shrugged, and this time he looked at some point over my right shoulder. “That may be a price we have to pay. We can w
ork with the Psychs to reduce the testing thresholds that require mandatory training.”

  That was nonsense. “As I understand it, the reason low-level sensitives aren’t trained now is because they lack the ability to significantly harness their gifts.” Weak abilities, weak control.

  “Training can be improved.”

  I opened my mouth and shut it again. That was madness, and the man in front of me had to know it. The Harmonium technology was already launching, and most of the people he spoke of were untrainable. Something else was on the move here. I quieted. I was reacting instead of using my gut and my head and my Talent. They’d all been messed up by the snatching that had landed me here.

  I stood quietly. Breathing. Gathering.

  A whiff of displeasure crossed his spirit web. He took three measured steps over to the next piece of institutional art work. “You took a trip to Leonardo Spaceport. I presume you are now aware it contains a node.”

  I kept the lines of my spirit web tight. I had no idea what he could read or not read, but we’d just arrived at the purpose for this little chat, and I didn’t want him to learn one hair more from me than I wanted him to know. “Yes.”

  “That is not information you are authorized to have.”

  Toothpaste doesn’t go back in tubes like that. “It falls within the parameters of my mission.”

  “You were charged with keeping Shamans safe from the Harmonium technology.”

  Shamans are never safe. “I was charged with investigating potentially unexpected impacts of the tech. Like all Fixers, I’m expected to use my brain while in the field. If the tech affects the nodes, it will profoundly affect the work KarmaCorp does.”

  “Not all consequences are as you perceive them, Journeywoman. That is my job. Yours is to follow orders and stay within your mission parameters.”

  He was poking at me, trying to get me focused on the personal attack and take my eyes off the ball that mattered, but it was a weak play. Underestimating me was a mistake, and Regalis Marsden wasn’t supposed to make those. So either this truly was one, or he was playing me on multiple levels. Neither option was at all comforting. “I don’t believe it’s standard practice for the head of the StarReaders to interfere with the mission of a Journeywoman Fixer.”

  He turned to face me and raised an eyebrow. A lion yawning. A warrior barely registering me as a threat. “I’m merely here to encourage you to do your job. Go determine how Shamans can best shield themselves from the technology. Leave the nodes alone.”

  I couldn’t do that. The nodes were the great mother, and I served her first—but with everything in me, I knew I couldn’t trust that knowledge to this man. “I’ve heard your encouragement. May I go now?”

  He turned his back to me and looked out the window, or what pretended to be one. “You may. Do not overreach, Leticia Ravencroft. There is more at stake here than you will ever understand.” He spun on one foot to face me. “You are a child, but even children can break things.”

  This was theater—and I understood theater. I marched myself over and put my nose a handspan from his. “I come from a world where children are treated with trust and respect and very little gets broken. If there are reasons I need to walk carefully, you’re going to have to give me more than the word of a man who had me forcibly grabbed off the street and drugged. I’m not the one overreaching.”

  His face didn’t so much as twitch, but his spirit web flashed with surprise.

  I knew when to press. “You’ve spoken nothing but lies and distractions since I got here. We can’t train every Shaman to perfection, and you know it. We certainly can’t protect every weak sensitive that way. And if you know I’ve visited a node, I presume you’re also aware the tech will impact them.”

  I didn’t think a face could get any harder, but his did. “I see impacts on levels you aren’t even aware exist. I am not required to explain myself to you. You are bound by oath to obey KarmaCorp directives, and I have just issued you one. Stay away from the nodes, Journeywoman. You play with a danger you don’t even comprehend.”

  Next time I had the KarmaCorp rule book in my hands, I was going to pay a lot more attention to the fine print on who got to boss me around. In the meantime, I was going with my gut. “You kidnapped me, but you didn’t toss me on a shuttle back home. Which means I’m still here and I’m still working. My job is to be the eyes and ears you have on the ground, and I won’t allow you to blind and deafen me. Not without a reason, and I’ve yet to hear one that’s anything more than egotistical mutterings.”

  He swung back to his damnable artwork. “You will sit in Yesenia’s chair sooner than you think. Those mutterings you so disparage will keep the Fixers who work for you alive.”

  I blinked. For a moment there, Regalis had almost sounded human. “What might happen one day isn’t my focus right now.”

  “Yes, it is.” His voice was quiet, but diamond hard. “You sit at a nexus of decisions that reach far into the future, Journeywoman. Believe me, I would much prefer to have tossed you on a shuttle back home, but the stars are clear. Your presence here is necessary.”

  And that clearly burned every single one of his nerves. “Is yours?”

  He didn’t answer. He only stared a hole through a painting I was very certain he hadn’t actually seen.

  21

  I flew into the almost austere dining room of the Order and slid to a halt beside the table where Elleni sat quietly reading, eating from a small plate of nibbles. She took one look at me and turned off her tablet. “Come, my quarters are quieter.”

  There wasn’t so much as a pin drop in the room, so I assumed she meant we’d have better privacy. I swallowed and tried to get my pell-mell run through the streets of Galieus out of my system. I’d needed to touch my wild, but now I needed to be calm. To think. To borrow Elleni’s serenity and her very sharp mind and figure out what had just happened.

  It took all the way up the narrow stairs to her room in the rafters to find some semblance of the maturity I should have walked in with. She turned, smiling, and gestured me toward the two hassocks in the open space at the foot of her bed. “Or you can pace, if you like, although there’s not a lot of room in here.”

  It was spacious by inner-planet standards. “I might have broken a few traffic rules on the way here.” Jumping off walkways was discouraged by enough signs that it clearly happened on a regular basis, but based on the reaction I’d gotten, a lot fewer people ran along the hand rails.

  They were dead easy after jungle branches, even with fingers to avoid.

  “I see.” Elleni folded herself into a neat, compact shape on a hassock, one that looked like she could sit and meditate for days. I’d never lasted more than a couple of hours, but it hadn’t been my form that had hampered me.

  I took a far less refined seat on the second hassock and breathed stillness into my scattered brain. “I walked the streets. I found the heartbeat. Then I got snatched by a couple of thugs, drugged, and taken to a hotel room to have a chat with Regalis Marsden.”

  Elleni’s serenity shattered. “The head of the StarReaders?”

  “Yes.”

  “He kidnapped you?” Her hand reached for my forehead in a maternal gesture older than time. “What drugs? Are you hurt?”

  Questions and caring that soothed my soul, but I wasn’t sure we had time for either. I wasn’t going to give Regalis enough time to change his mind about tossing me onto a shuttle. “He knows the Harmonium tech impacts the nodes. He knows the Leonardo Spaceport is a node. He wants me to leave the nodes alone and stick to the strict interpretation of my mission, or else bad things will happen.”

  She snorted. “You’re not a child.”

  On that, we were in absolute agreement. “I’m not, but he has more than enough power to have sent me back to Stardust Prime in a tightly sealed box. He didn’t. He says the stars require my presence here.”

  This time, Elleni merely looked poleaxed. “Did he happen to say why?”

  �
�No.” I hadn’t asked. “But he tried to make very clear that I wasn’t supposed to touch the nodes. Almost as if—” I paused, because words had power, and this was a terrible thought to bring to life. “—as if he was intentionally impeding the safeguarding of the nodes. He knows the tech impacts sensitives. He made noises about improving training, but we’re talking about millions of people with weak control. He knows that won’t work, and yet he told me not to interfere. To make sure Shamans were protected and to leave everything else in his hands.”

  Elleni was very still now. “When the Harmonium tech is in wide use, if we don’t do something with both the nodes and the sensitives, what would happen?”

  A whole lot of things had dropped into place in my head during my pell-mell run. “The tech would reach for untrained sensitives and psychics, just like it reached for me when I dropped my shields. And if a node happens to reach for them too, even gently, that human connection somehow makes the Harmonium tech’s garbage pile look like something the nodes can trust.” An unholy mingling of energies, with no caretakers. No guardians.

  Elleni looked as sick as I felt.

  “The tech would destabilize the people involved, just like it did for Jonas. Which might even make the nodes reach for them harder.” The great mother, protecting those who hurt. “Or they might just wander too close to a node one day, and whenever that happened, they would become a channel. The nodes would poison. Perhaps weaken, perhaps strengthen, but the great mother would be contaminated.”

  I wanted to wail, but I hadn’t come here to be comforted. “There has to be a reason Regalis is willing to allow this.”

  Elleni’s face was pinched and tense. “Yes. I imagine so. I’ve never met him, but people I respect consider him to be a potent force for good in the universe.”

  The temper tantrum still raging inside me wanted to paint him as evil. He’d grabbed me off the streets and done things to my ability to connect with my own Talent that were unforgivable. But I needed to be very careful here. Far more was at stake than my ego. “He serves the higher good. And maybe when you do things at the level he does, you have to accept sacrifices that the rest of us can’t conceive of.”