by Sharon
There was an instant's silence.
"You're top brass, Jase," Miri muttered, and the big man started slightly before he bowed to the delm.
"Sorry, ma'am," he said, schooling his big voice to a polite boom. "I need the Scout and Captain Robertson to step along with me, Priority One."
tel'Vosti grinned, but Emrith Tiazan only glared, letting the silence stretch until it became a danger even Jason felt. Val Con shifted slightly, drawing the big man's eyes.
"It is possible," he murmured, "that Delm Erob will wish to survey this top priority, as well."
Jason looked doubtful, but produced another bow on the delm's behalf. "I'd be happy to have your assistance, ma'am—and General tel'Vosti's, too."
Erob inclined her head, her arm still twined with tel'Vosti's.
"Lead on, Commander," she ordered. "We are delighted to lend our—assistance."
Designed to withstand the rigors of quick-freeze, the vacuum of freeze-drying and, coincidentally, the detonation of a small bomb, Erob's back-up freeze-plant made an admirable prison. The corporal on guard at the door offered the information that Doc Tien was still inside, guard-crew with her, all according to the commander's order.
Jason nodded and pointed to the monitor. "Take a look," he said. "It's the best I can tell you."
It was difficult to see anything but the size of the prisoner, with the medic and the guards all around. Still, Val Con felt his pulse quicken even as Miri turned to stare up at Jason.
"What'd you do?" she demanded. "Crack an Yxtrang across the head?"
He grinned. "Damned near broke my carbine. That brother's head is hard."
"Yxtrang?" tel'Vosti squinted at the monitor. "You captured an Yxtrang? Alive? My dear Commander! You bring us hope."
Erob turned her head stiffly.
"Hope?" she snapped. She glared at Jason, for all the worlds like a strike-falcon baiting a bear. "What good is it, Commander? Shall we start a zoo?"
Jason laughed, short and sharp.
"Guess you could at that," he said, stroking his beard. "Put me and him in the same cage. He's just about my size, give or take a headache." He shook his head. "But his worth is what he knows and where he was. Found him up the hunting park. Alone."
tel'Vosti and Erob got very quiet. "So close?" Val Con murmured and Jason looked down at him, suddenly serious.
"Up on the east ridge," he said; "buncha hundred meters down from the top. Couple klicks out from where Kritoulkas is holding line—show you on the map." He grinned again and pointed at the monitor. "But what d'ya think, Scout? Ain't he a beauty?"
"He does seem to be indicative of his type." Val Con turned back to the screen, trying to see through a burly guardsman to the prisoner himself. "You say you hit him across the head?"
"From behind," Jason admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "He'd just got through sending a fongbear on its way and I fell on him like the mountain coming down. Seemed like a good idea, but, damn, then I had to carry him out!"
Miri laughed, eyes on the monitor. "How bad's he hurt?"
"Doc's checking. Once I found out I was in one piece I real quick sprayed him with a double-dose of Sleep-it from my medkit. Put his gear in the other room, there. 'Spect the scout'll want to see it."
"Will you?" Miri muttered.
Val Con sighed. "I anticipate the need. Jason seems to have surmised that a scout will speak Yxtrang."
"Oh." Miri blinked. "Have to rig up a talkie, I guess."
"Perhaps." Inside the freezer-bay, the medic had straightened, shut down her monitor and moved toward the door, shooing the guards out of her way like so many chickens. Val Con felt himself go cold as her patient was finally and fully revealed.
Something of his shock must have reached Miri through their lifemate link. She leaned close. "Boss? You OK?"
"OK—yes." He spun as the door opened, claiming the doctor's attention with a hand-wave.
"That man—is he whole?"
She shrugged, Terran-wise. "He'll do. Sleeping pretty sound." She glanced down at the med-comp. "If he's got reactions anywhere approximating a Terran of like mass, he ought to be out of it in forty minutes—an hour at the outside."
"Hour to look at his stuff," Jason said. "And to figure out how best to ask him." He paused and looked straight at Val Con. "You can talk to this guy OK, can't you, son?"
"Talk to it!" Emrith Tiazan repeated, somewhere between horror and fury. "Korval—are you able to speak to that thing?"
But Val Con was at the monitor now, studying the image of the man in the room beyond, thinner than his length predicted, stretched across a bed made of six hastily arranged packing crates, and covered with a standard merc pack-blanket. His short-cropped hair was light brown in color, the features of his face indistinct behind an intricate mask of tattoo.
"Korval." Erob again. He was mightily weary of Erob all at once, as he was weary of Jason and the war they had not yet engaged. This man here. This man. . .
"Korval!" Emrith Tiazan snapped, no doubt relying on the Command Mode to turn him. "I require response. Are you able to persuade that thing to speak to the point?"
It was a wrenching effort of will to turn away from the monitor and the image of the sleeping giant. He came about slowly, feeling his face stiffen into unaccustomed lines, as it would, of course, following the tutelage of the old tapes. He felt the proper phrase rise to consciousness, and then to his lips.
Erob's face showed fear; tel'Vosti's disquiet. Jason actively goggled. Miri alone moved—to stand between himself and her delm, and to lay her hand upon his sleeve.
"Easy, boss."
The old learning let him loose, so that he smiled at her through the hunger of his need, and lay his other hand over hers.
"Forgive me," he said to Erob's startlement. "The Yxtrang language is difficult and in some ways uncouth. In certain matters, however, it is perfection itself."
He glanced over his shoulder for a last lingering sight of the screen.
"I am able to speak to this man," he told Erob softly. "Indeed, we spoke at some length when last we met."
She stiffened. "Do not trifle with me, Korval."
Val Con regarded her blandly. "I do not."
It was tel'Vosti who moved this time, to take the old lady's arm and very nearly shake it. "Let the boy be, Emrith! This is not the time to stare a dragon in the face."
Val Con turned to Jason. "I will inspect his equipment," he said, his eyes straying back to the monitor. "Do give me a whetstone, and a length of good rope. I shall speak with him alone, when he wakes."
"Right!" said Jason. "Whatever you say."
Val Con nodded. "Exactly as I say." He glanced at Miri and smiled, suddenly and joyfully, into her worried eyes. "With my captain's permission, of course."
Nimbledrake: Between Planets
"That one," Liz snapped, certainty hitting her system like a jolt of Stim.
Beside her, Nova yos'Galan blinked, then fingered the controls, bringing the image into close-up.
"Look carefully, Angela Lizardi. You are certain?"
"Told you I'd know it if I saw it again," Liz said, shaking off the dregs of her drowse. "That's the one."
It wasn't much to look at, compared with some of the other Liaden clan sigils they'd scanned over the last couple hours, but made its point with a purity of line that Liz at least found—refreshing.
Nova yos'Galan had turned from her study of the screen and was looking at her out of wide violet eyes. "You are certain?"
Liz frowned. "How many times you want me to say so, Goldie?"
She had discovered rather early in their association that Nova yos'Galan did not care to be called "Goldie." She thus reserved the name for times of special aggravation, of which, unfortunately, there were many. The Liaden woman had a gift for setting a body all into angles.
This time, however, the nickname earned neither darkling glance nor frown of disapproval. Instead, Nova turned back to the computer display and fiddled the buttons on her
armrest until the sigil was replaced with a screen full of Liaden characters. She fiddled some more and the words dissolved. When the clan badge was back on-screen once more, Nova spoke, calmly and without inflection.
"That is the badge of Clan Erob."
Liz frowned again, trying to read something from the side of her companion's face or the set of her shoulders, which was about as useful as trying to read a meteor shield.
"If your friend held such a thing, she was of Erob, through Line Tiazan. Tee-AY-sahn," Nova breathed and grimaced. "Katalina TAY-zin. Pah!" She turned and looked at Liz once more, eyes shielded now, hard as amethyst.
"Be—very—certain, Angela Lizardi."
"Think I'm playing with your affection? That's the design. I'd know it if I was blind."
"Clan Erob," Nova said again, flat-voiced.
"If you say so. Got a problem, Goldie? What're they, the Capulets?"
Puzzlement flickered in the depths of the violet eyes, and was gone in the next instant. "Indeed, no. Clan Erob is none other than our eldest ally. We were to have shared genes again this generation, as I recall it."
"That so." Liz chewed on it a couple seconds. "Damned if I can see why you're cooked, then. If Redhead and that brother of yours are married—and I ain't believing that 'til I got it from Redhead herself—but if they are, seems to me you oughta be booking the band for the reception and pulling together a guest list."
"Hah." The stiff golden face relaxed into what passed for her smile. "But you see, I, too, entertain some . . . astonishment . . . at this lifemating. My brother Val Con, you understand, is not—biddable. It would require but a word in his ear that he must marry to Erob and we should find him looking in all directions, save that one."
Liz laughed. "Him and Redhead are well-matched, then. And you and the rest of the family better stand back!"
"Well," Nova's smile deepened, actually touching the depths of her eyes before she turned her attention back to the screen. "Our search is made easy," she murmured, plying the buttons and shutting the search program down. "We to Lytaxin, Angela Lizardi, there to put our various questions to my brother and to Miri Robertson." She rose, shaking her golden head at the blank screen before glancing down to Liz, pale lips still curved in her slight smile.
"And to Delm Erob, most naturally."
"Sounds like a plan," Liz said and climbed to her feet, stretching tall. "You know how to get us to Lytaxin, I take it."
Nova bowed slightly. "Simplicity itself."
Erob's Hold: Freeze-Dry Prison
"This guy is a soldier?" Miri's voice held palpable unbelief.
Val Con looked up from his frowning inspection of the captive's pack.
"All Yxtrang are soldiers," he said, only half-attending what he said. "This one had been something more, once." He gestured with a mouse-nibbled ration bar. "He seems to have fallen on evil times."
Abruptly, he pitched the bar back into the pack and stood frowning into its depths. "Something's amiss."
Miri laughed. "Screwier than a hive of hurricanes," she agreed. "Take a look at this rifle."
He laid the pack down and went to where she had the bulky long-arm arranged across two packing crates. He knelt opposite and looked at her quizzically, but she only grinned and waved a hand. "All yours."
The rifle was clean and well oiled; to first and second glances a proper, soldierly weapon, though something about that nagged Val Con as he bent closer to inspect the firing mechanism and auto-circuitry. He checked, glanced up at Miri.
She nodded. "Looks like maybe him and the weapons-master wasn't on terms."
"So it does." He rocked back on his heels, brows pulled sharply together. "And no need for him to be carrying such a thing at all."
"Why not? Makes sense to take a rifle with you, if you're going for a stroll in enemy territory."
"It does indeed, for a soldier," Val Con said softly. "But not for a scout."
Miri blinked. "Scout?"
"Explorer, it would be rendered from Yxtrang. But—scout, yes."
She shifted carefully, drawing his eyes. "You said you know this guy?"
"Ah, no." His smile flickered, banishing all but a shadow of the frown. "Merely, we had spoken once, many years ago. I held captain's rank then—very young and very certain of immortality." He grinned. "Shan all but ordered me out of the scouts, when I told him the tale. I've rarely seen him so angry."
Miri looked at him carefully. "Which tale was that?"
"The one in which I caught an Yxtrang scout studying the same world I was conducting studies upon, snared him, spoke with him, and then let him go."
"Thought you should've cut his throat for him, is that it?"
"Thought I should have rather cut and run at the first indication that there were Yxtrang of any sort on-world." He smiled again. "Shan has a great desire for those of us under his care to behave with what he considers to be proper caution. But he sets so bad an example, cha'trez. . ."
She laughed and shook her head, pointing at the rifle, the pack with its load of defective gear. "Hell of a way to outfit a scout."
"I agree." The frown was back. "Even if he were sent as a decoy—an explorer might conceive of such a plan. . ."
"Let himself be captured?" Miri stared. "Yxtrang don't let themselves get captured, boss. You know that."
"Yes, but this one has had experience of being captured," Val Con said, "and is a scout besides. Though it would be rational to equip a decoy well, to bolster the fiction that here was a soldier upon some other mission."
"Think he's an escapee—a deserter?"
Val Con shook his head. "In that case, one would be certain to appropriate working weapons, good food—the edge on that survival knife is so dull he could only use it as a crowbar or an ice-chop!"
Miri sighed and came to her feet. "Puzzle, ain't it?" She glanced at her watch. "We're at twenty-five minutes."
"So." Val Con rose. "I'd best have these things with me."
"I don't like you going in there by yourself to talk to him," Miri said, suddenly not his partner, but his lover and his lifemate. "Take a guard."
He smiled and came close, touching her cheek with gentle fingers. "It will be well, Miri." He bent and kissed her forehead. "Besides, he's tied up."
Dream and memory danced for the pleasure of the Gods of Irony.
In the dream, he was caught, trussed like a rabbit and swinging from a tree, blade and pistol riding, remote as the Home Troop, in his belt.
In the dream, he roared abuse at his captor, who sat cross-legged on the moss below, absorbed in sharpening his knife. Memory provided an odor beside alien air, which was the scent of the oil the other applied now and then to the surface of the whetstone. The slide of blade along stone was comforting, a commonplace in a situation for which there was no analog.
The smell and the sound persisted, though the dream began to fray. The smell and the sound and the ropes, crossing snug over his chest, pinning his arms to his side, binding his ankles tight.
He opened his eyes.
Light stabbed, igniting a rocketing pain in his head, throwing reality momentarily awry, so that he snarled out of memory:
"Isn't that knife sharp yet?"
"The knife," answered the soft voice that had haunted his sleep these long, weary Cycles, "is sharp again, Ckrakec Yxtrang."
The sharpener lifted his head then, wild brown hair tumbling half into eyes like sharp green stones, and his face—the face—the face of his ruin, smooth and unchanged through the Cycles—though not quite. The right cheek now carried a mark very like a nchaka, or maturity scar.
"You!" He had meant to roar; instead a harsh whisper emerged as he tensed against the ropes.
The Liaden scout bowed from his cross-legged perch atop what seemed to be a packing crate. "I am honored that you recall me."
"Recall you!" The trade language failed him in that instant. Almost, breath failed him. Abruptly, he relaxed against the bonds and lay his head back, exposing his throat.
"If the knife is sharp," he growled in the Troop's own tongue, "use it."
The scout selected a strand of rope and tested the quality of the edge. Shaking his head, he took up the whetstone once more and resumed his sharpening.
"It would be more pleasant," he said, so softly it was a strain to hear him above the burr of stone stroking steel, "were we to talk."
"Talk." He twisted his head to stare, mouth curling into a sneer. "Still no taste for a soldier's work, Liaden?"
The unkempt head rose, bright eyes gleaming. "I see I have not made myself plain." He lay the whetstone by, and held the knife carelessly in one hand.
"The last time we spoke I was graceless," he said eventually in High Liaden. "I neglected to give you my name and rank. Nor did I request yours." He slid from the crate to the floor, blade still negligent in a frail hand.
"Shall we play the game out?" the Yxtrang demanded in Trade. "Though if you imagine that puny knife is enough to—" He hesitated because the little Liaden had moved silently out of his line of sight.
"Play the game out?" That soft, womanish voice, so compelling, unforgettable, once heard . . . The scout came back into sight. He brought the knife up, as if considering its ultimate merit, and brought it flashing down, suddenly held very business-like, indeed.
The Yxtrang stiffened, anticipating the pain as the blade sliced between his left arm and side, neatly parting the ropes.
"I am currently attached to the local defense force," the scout said in conversational Trade, as he moved south relative to the position of the Yxtrang's head. "A military necessity, as I am sure you understand. My name is Val Con yos'Phelium, Clan Korval, and I hold the rank of Scout Commander."
The knife flashed again, parting the ankle ropes. The scout nodded and jumped back to the top of his crate, folding his legs neatly under him.
"You are?" he asked in quiet Terran.
The Yxtrang lay unmoving, considering the knife, the scout's smallness, his own reach and the distance that lay between them.
"Your name and rank, sir?" The Liaden persisted, this time in Trade.