Pawn

by Timothy Zahn

  “Yes,” Mispacch said, the concern in her voice briefly overwhelmed by gratitude. “I did as you suggested: two of the quivers went to the men while I concealed the third to share among the women and children.”

  “Good,” Nicole said, feeling a small flicker of satisfaction. At least that part of the plan had worked.

  Unless Amrew found out about it, in which case he would probably be furious with Mispacch and Nicole both. Though right now odds were he wouldn’t live long enough to do anything about it. So much for the brief lifting of her mood. “I need to go,” she said to Mispacch, edging toward the exit. “I’ll try to get back later.”

  “Wait,” Mispacch said, reaching behind her smock and pulling out Nicole’s two missing inhalers. “On my return through the bushes I found these.”

  “Oh—thanks,” Nicole said, taking the inhalers and slipping them into her vest pockets. Back in the upstairs room, those would have been awfully handy. Now, when she didn’t need them, was of course when she got them back. “They must have fallen out of my pockets along the way.”

  “Yes,” Mispacch said, sounding puzzled. “May I ask a question?”

  “I’m sorry, but I really have to go,” Nicole said, taking a couple more steps toward the door. “Save it for later, okay?”

  “I understand,” Mispacch said. “I just wished to know why the two devices smelled so different.”

  Nicole shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “They smell different,” Mispacch repeated. “One of them … it would almost seem that it would do you harm.”

  Nicole stopped, an eerie feeling settling into her gut. Only one of them would do her harm? “Why do you say that? How could you know?”

  “Remember when you offered me your food,” Mispacch said. “From the smell, I was certain it would harm us. I can likewise conclude from the smell of your food and the smell of the device that they cannot both be acceptable to your body.”

  For a long moment Nicole stared at her. Jeff had said the inhaler stuff was a slow poison. Was that what Mispacch was smelling?

  But shouldn’t both inhalers still smell the same?

  Slowly, she reached into her pockets and pulled out the inhalers. “Show me,” she said, walking back to Mispacch and holding them out. “Which one smells like it would hurt me?”

  Mispacch took them and gave each a sniff. “This one,” she said, holding out her right hand.

  “Thanks.” Gingerly, Nicole took it back and gave it a long, careful look. As near as she could tell, it looked exactly like the other inhalers she’d used during her time aboard the ship. She turned it over, studying every square inch of its curved surface.

  And then, finally, she spotted it. Just below the place where the cylinder tube joined the rest of the inhaler was a tiny, almost invisible notch. “Let me see the other one,” she said.

  Mispacch handed it over. Sure enough, that one had no such notch.

  Experimentally, Nicole ran her finger across the plastic. The notch was nearly invisible to the eye, but her fingernail caught it just fine. If whoever had given that one to her had known about the notch, he could have spotted it with a casual flick of his finger. “What about this one?” she asked, holding up the notchless inhaler. “Does it smell like it would hurt me?”

  “It smells odd,” Mispacch conceded. “But it’s the same scent you had about you the first time we met.”

  Which had been right after Nicole had used the inhaler to get the arena door’s keylock code. Which meant the notchless one, however bad it might be for her, was the kind she’d been using since she came aboard. The other one was apparently something else. Something far worse.

  Sam had given her one of the inhalers. Jeff had given her the other.

  Which of them was trying to kill her?

  “I have to go,” she said, putting the inhalers away and once again backing toward the exit. “Right now.”

  “Be careful,” Mispacch called after her. “And come back to us soon.”

  Two minutes later, Nicole was back in the cool, gray corridors of the Fyrantha. Bungie had claimed he’d found hidden decks and rooms and supplies. Jeff had wondered whether some of those supplies might include weapons.

  For the first time in her life, Nicole hoped that Bungie hadn’t just been blowing smoke.

  * * *

  She’d left the main work area before getting any instructions from the Fyrantha, which meant her crew could be anywhere. But she’d noticed a pattern in the sequence of work sites, and she had a pretty good idea where they would be.

  Sure enough, she found them just three corridors away from where she’d expected.

  Kahkitah, watching with interest as Levi took apart a rein oscillator, was the first to spot her. “Nicole!” he whistled an enthusiastic greeting as she hurried toward them. “Carp, look—Nicole’s come back!”

  “About time,” Carp snarled, wiping sweat and grease from his forehead with his sleeve as he stepped back out of the wall alcove. “Where the hell have you been? Plato had to get Yuliya from red crew to get us our work—”

  “I need your help,” Nicole cut him off. “Jeff’s in trouble. I have to find Bungie right away.”

  “Bungie?” Carp echoed, frowning. “What for?”

  “Has Bungie hurt him?” Kahkitah asked, his bird trilling going suddenly dark.

  “No one’s hurt anyone,” Nicole assured him, deciding to skip over the previous night’s incident. Jeff and Bungie’s brief fight was irrelevant to the current crisis, and it never paid to overload Kahkitah with unnecessary details. “But that’ll change if I can’t find Bungie. The people in the arena have Jeff, and they’re threatening to cut off his fingers if I can’t get something for them.”

  For a second, the air was filled with a variety of surprised gasps and angry or disbelieving comments. In the midst of the noise, Carp’s voice cut through like a halberd axe. “What do you need from us?”

  If she’d been paying attention, Nicole thought later, she would probably have noticed Kahkitah’s back suddenly stiffen and his eyes lock on to something behind her. But she was so focused on the task at hand that such subtleties didn’t even register. “Bungie said he’d found stairways and decks that the rest of us didn’t know about,” she told Carp. “Do you know if there really are hidden places like that?”

  The whole group abruptly went stiff and silent. Even then, she didn’t catch on. “Well?” she demanded. “Are there secret stairways, or aren’t there?”

  “Yes,” Plato’s voice came from behind her. “There are.”

  Nicole spun around. The big-shouldered man was striding toward them, the look of an approaching storm on his face. Two steps behind him, his own expression strangely blank, was Sam.

  Nicole felt a sudden shiver across her skin. If Sam was the one who’d given her the poisoned inhaler … But surely he wouldn’t try anything out here, not with everyone watching. “You’re sure?” she asked Plato. “Secret places here, in this part of the Fyrantha?”

  “Again, yes,” Plato said. “Why do you need to know?”

  “She says Jeff’s in danger,” Levi said. “That she has to find Bungie—”

  “Yes, I heard what she said,” Plato cut him off. “I want to know why she thinks that’s going to help her find him.”

  “Because I know him,” Nicole said. “At least enough to know how he thinks. Are any of the stairs near the marsarvi-seven-seven area?”

  “One of them is,” Plato said, his expression starting to edge from angry to curious. “But there’s nothing interesting up there. It’s mostly just abandoned crew quarters, like the ones we’re living in back in the hive.”

  “Are there any food dispensers?”

  “Nothing that’s working,” Plato said. “At least, nothing we’ve ever found.”

  “But we didn’t really search out the place,” Carp added. “Bungie might have found something.”

  “Bungie’s limping around on a bad le
g,” Plato countered. “He isn’t doing a hell of a lot of exploring.”

  “What makes you think he’s up there?” Sam asked.

  Nicole focused on him. She’d known a few casual killers back at home, people who could murder someone and then go out and relax with a drink or two. Sam didn’t seem like the type who could do that.

  But neither did Jeff. And yet, one of them had given her a poisoned inhaler.

  Which one? More importantly, why?

  She didn’t have time to figure it out. All she could do was keep going and hope she got some answers before it was too late. “Like I said, I know how he thinks,” she told Sam.

  “So he’s somewhere in one of the deserted decks?” Plato asked.

  Nicole felt her forehead crease slightly. Plato’s voice had been just a little too eager … “Yes, he’s in that area,” she said evasively. “Thanks. I’ll let everyone get back to work now.” She turned her back on Plato and Sam and started walking quickly away.

  Not quickly enough. “Hold it,” Plato ordered, catching up with her and closing a big hand around her arm. “First of all, they’re not supposed to be working; you—all of you—are supposed to be working.”

  “I told you, Jeff’s in trouble,” Nicole said tartly, trying unsuccessfully to pull her arm free. “Bungie may be the only one who can help.”

  “How?” Plato persisted. “What can a walking waste of skin like him possibly do?”

  Nicole clenched her teeth. They were listening closely, all of them. And after all of Plato’s warnings about fighting, this wasn’t going to go over very well.

  But she had no choice. “The Cluufes in the testing arena want weapons,” she said. “Better weapons than they’ve got now. Bungie said he’d found interesting stuff in the hidden decks. I’m hoping he found something I can trade for Jeff’s life.”

  Plato’s expression didn’t change. “Really.”

  “Really,” Nicole assured him. “I’m hoping—”

  “What makes you think Bungie’s gone up the marsarvi-seven-seven hidden stairway?” Plato interrupted. “There are at least three other hidden stairways I know about, and probably some I don’t.”

  “Because he went on one of his extended walks while we were working there,” Nicole said. “When he—”

  “Extended walks?” Carp put in. “That’s what you call goofing off?”

  “When he came back,” Nicole said doggedly, “he had the kind of look I’ve seen on him before when he’s found something he thinks might pay off someday.”

  “That’s why you think he’s there?”

  “Yes,” Nicole said.

  For a long minute Plato just gazed at her. Then, to her surprise, he gave a curt nod. “Okay,” he said, letting go of her arm. “Let’s go. Sam and I will help you.”

  “He won’t like it if anyone except me shows up,” Nicole warned.

  “I don’t care what he likes or doesn’t like,” Plato retorted. “Besides, Sam needs to take another look at those arrow wounds. Come on, I’ll show you where the stairs are.”

  “You want us to help?” Levi asked. “There’s a lot of space up there to search.”

  “You got work to do?” Plato countered. “Then stay here and do it.”

  Carp grimaced, but nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Everyone, back to work.”

  Reluctantly, Nicole thought, the crew turned back to their jobs. Nicole looked at the hard expression on Plato’s face, and the empty one on Sam’s—“We can take Kahkitah,” she said suddenly. “Carp won’t need him again until it’s time to close the wall section.”

  “We don’t need him,” Plato said. “Sam and I can handle any lifting we need to do.”

  “It couldn’t hurt to have a little extra muscle along,” Nicole persisted. “Kahkitah, do you want to help us find Bungie?”

  “We don’t need him,” Plato repeated, his tone warning her to drop the subject.

  “We don’t need him, either,” Levi spoke up. “Nicole’s right—he might be useful.”

  Plato hissed out an exasperated-sounding breath. “Fine,” he said. “But if he comes, he does what he’s told. Exactly what he’s told. You got that, Kahkitah?”

  “Yes, of course,” Kahkitah said, sounding puzzled as he walked over to them. “I always try to do what I’m told.”

  “Sure,” Plato said. “Is that it, Nicole? You want to bring some tools, too? Maybe a cutter, in case Bungie’s built himself a bunker?”

  “No, this is fine,” Nicole said through stiff lips. “Can we go now?”

  “Your wish is my command,” Plato said sarcastically. “This way. Try to keep up.”

  sixteen

  The stairway was six corridors away from the spot where Nicole’s crew had been working the day Bungie wandered back before lunch with that self-satisfied smirk on his face. The entrance was between two other doors, covered by a slightly wider section of wall than the one Nicole had gotten through during her escape from the Micawnwi hive.

  “This is it,” Plato said, peering in at the dimly lit staircase as Kahkitah held the wall section open. “So. We go up, or down?”

  “Neither,” Nicole said, waving both directions down the hallway. “He’s here. Somewhere.”

  “He’s here?” Plato stared at her. “Then why the hell did you ask about hidden stairways?”

  “Because he told me he’d found hidden stairs,” Nicole said. “I needed to see if they really existed and where they were.”

  “So he is in there?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Nicole said as patiently as she could. “Look. If you’re trying to hide from someone, you don’t give clues about where you’re hiding. Like if you find a secret room and want to hide there, you don’t let anyone know that you know there’s a secret room. But if you don’t plan to hide there, you might tell people about it so that they’ll think that’s where you’re going to hide. Right?”

  “Okay,” Plato said slowly. “But you might also say that if there wasn’t a secret room and you wanted people to waste their time looking for one.”

  “Right,” Nicole said. “That’s why I asked if there were hidden stairs. He told me he’d found some stairs, so that meant he didn’t actually go up them.”

  “But if he didn’t use the stairs he could be anywhere,” Plato objected. “We’re right back where we started.”

  “No, we’re not,” Nicole said, looking back and forth between their confused expressions. This wasn’t that hard to understand. “He figures I’ll tell you about the stairs. He’ll also want to know when you start a real search for him.”

  “I know!” Kahkitah whistled, waving one hand excitedly as he continued holding up the wall section with the other. “He’s hiding someplace where he can see us!”

  “See us, or hear us, or know some other way that we’re here,” Nicole confirmed, impressed in spite of herself. She would never in a hundred years have figured Kahkitah, of all people, would have followed her reasoning on that one. Especially since Plato and Sam clearly hadn’t.

  But if they hadn’t gotten it before, they were on top of it now. “So he’ll know when we’re getting close,” Plato said thoughtfully, “and when he’s going to need to either run or get ready to fight. Huh. I wouldn’t have pegged him as that smart.”

  “Oh, he’s smart enough,” Nicole said, a shiver running up her back. “Smart enough to get himself in trouble. Not always smart enough to get out of it again.”

  “He’ll need a supply of food and water,” Sam said, looking down the hallway. “Someplace to sleep…”

  “I know where he is,” Plato said suddenly. “Come on. Kahkitah, put that wall section back down. Quietly.”

  He headed off the way they’d come. “Where are we going?” Nicole asked, hurrying to catch up.

  “There’s a room in the next corridor that backs up against the stairs,” Plato said over his shoulder. “We’ve never figured out exactly what it is—a ready room, a lounge, maybe even a holding cell. It’s got a supply of
water and a walled-off section with a couple of beds.”

  “And he’d be able to hear someone in the stairway?” Nicole asked.

  “Don’t know,” Plato said. “Probably. We checked it once, right after he went missing, but it was empty.”

  “He would have dodged around a little at first,” Nicole said. “Probably had his eye on the room all along and just had to wait until after you searched it before he could move in.”

  “What about food?” Sam asked.

  “Nothing in the room,” Plato said. “But if he was able to figure out the lock code on the storage closets he’d have had access to food bars. The other thing about the ready room is that there’s plenty of space for him to walk around and get his leg back in shape without having to come out into the open.”

  Nicole frowned suddenly. Bungie’s leg … and Plato had even mentioned that the wounds had come from arrows.

  But how could Plato know that? She hadn’t told him, Bungie certainly hadn’t told him, and Sam had promised to keep it quiet.

  Unless Sam hadn’t kept it quiet.

  “So,” she said casually, watching Plato out of the corner of her eye. “How long have you known?”

  He shrugged. “Pretty much since it happened,” he said just as casually. “Sam told me the morning after he patched him up.”

  Nicole turned and looked at Sam. “What did you think I was going to do?” Sam demanded hotly. “That idiot is going to get us all killed if we don’t do something about him.”

  “He’s right,” Plato said. “If I’d had the resources, we’d have done a full sweep for him earlier. Now that we know where he is, we can finally end this.”

  “I hope so,” Nicole said, another stray fact dropping into place. “So you were the one who switched out the keylock on the arena door?”

  “What, you thought it had fallen out by itself?” Plato scoffed. “Not that it did a damn bit of good. What did you tell Jeff to make him go in there with you?”

  Nicole shook her head. “Nothing. Going with me was his idea.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet.” Plato hissed out a breath. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to nail Bungie to the floor, and we’re going to get Jeff out of the arena. Then we’re going to weld the doors shut and you will never go in there again. Deal?”