by Sharon Lee
"Keldren aspires," Belaconto said softly and the old woman cackled.
"I think—" began Keldren Harcourt, hotly, but Nar Veldonis raised a hand.
"No, I beg that you don't."
The door chimed once more.
This man was big, red-faced, hard-bodied. He came alone, with a gun holstered under his left arm. "Damn' city's crawling with cops," he snarled. "News on the scanner that there's a 'crime wave'. Some damn' amateur." He snorted disgust and brushed past Belaconto's greeting, striding around the desk and dropping into the single vacant chair.
"Jenfir, Nar." He glared at Keldren Harcourt. "Shit."
"Thank you all for coming," Saxony Belaconto said, moving leisurely back to her desk. She folded her hands on the polished wood. "My man will be bringing the item in just a moment, if you will indulge me with just a bit more patience."
Corbinye pricked her ears. What man was this? Was it not arranged—she barely contained the outraged gasp. This upstart Grounder claimed Anjemalti as her crewman? Dishonor even to hear it said! How—
"Easy, bitch," Carmen breathed from behind her. "You don't want to get wasted before your boyfriend's here to see it. . .."
She swallowed, willing the body to relax; at the desk, Saxony Belaconto touched a stud and sat back.
* * *
The receptionist was afraid.
He was not afraid. No one could say that he was afraid. He was calm—see? Hands folded just so upon the knee; heartbeat steady and unhurried, pounding in his ears. He breathed—in . . . out. There was nothing to fear. And he was not afraid.
He had a plan. Edreth had drilled him, over and over: Make a plan. Review the plan until you know it like you know your own heartbeat, pounding clear and unhurried in your ears.
Gem reviewed his plan. Take the Trident and the stone into the office, where Saxony Belaconto and perhaps a guard or two awaited him. Corbinye would be there. A watcher—no doubt a watcher, but he had prepared for that. Even now was Number Twelve crouching by the proper set of circuits, awaiting the pulse that would destroy spider and sensor, together. Gem recalled that he was grieved over such a use of the spider, but that its death was called for. In the plan.
The plan: Into the office, the Trident laid on the desk—sweetly and gently, he must address her. She must see that he was not afraid. He would explain that Witness was essential to the Trident. Would pull out the box holding Sarialdan and place it in her hand, explaining that this object enhanced the power of the Trident. And while she was overcome with terror—in the diversion of her fear—Corbinye and he would flee. Straight to Dart and Linzer Skot and safety and blessed—peace.
The receptionist spilled a cup of tea over her keyboard and scrambled to mop up, towel and fingers trembling. She was afraid.
He was not afraid.
* * *
"Ms. Belaconto will see you now." The receptionist's voice shook with her terror. Gem inclined his head and came unhurriedly to his feet. He grasped the invisible Trident firmly in hands that did not shake and went leisurely to the door, across the threshold—
And nearly cried aloud in mingled frustration and confusion. He stood just inside the door, clenching the Trident against his side, plan shattered to countless shards of useless planning, Witness' breath cold on the back of his neck.
A sea of faces; a wilderness of eyes—He took a deep breath, denying hysteria; summoning those cool powers of observation that were a master thief's greatest asset.
Faces, indeed. Nine in all. Of them, he found and named Saxony Belaconto, Carmen, and—yes—Corbinye, brave in her scarlet shirt. Between them, six persons, and she standing with a guard on either side.
Saxony Belaconto's eyes were jewel-bright daggers; her face hovering on the edge of displeasure.
He bowed.
"Master ser Edreth." The voice suggested mollification. "Please come forward. You have brought the item?"
People. Who were these people? Gem straightened.
"I had not expected so large an audience, lady."
The old woman wheezed a laugh. "Wants introductions, does he? Cocky bastard." She tapped herself on the chest. "Jenfir Chung." A scrawny finger jabbed at the man next to her. "Nar Veldonis." Another jab, in the direction of the balding man. "Filbar Janns." She grinned, showing perfect teeth. "Satisfied?"
Gem took another breath, mind racing heartbeat. Four Vornet chieftains ruled Henron between them. And all four were gathered in this room. Now. To see Gem ser Edreth deliver the Bindalche Trident—into Saxony Belaconto's hands? Was she to become chiefest of the chiefs? Or was this gathering to ensure that none gained ascendancy over the others?
"I thank you, lady," he said to the old woman. "But it appears the introduction slighted one."
She laughed again, like metal across glass. "Don't let Harcourt worry you, boy. I'd judge you his match any day—as long as you're careful not to turn your back on him."
"I—" began the squat, black-eyed man, and was cut off by the bald one.
"Play with the courier later," he growled. "I want to see this thing." He snorted. "Hesernym, right? And all we got to do is sit back and collect it." He snapped thick fingers. "Come on, ganef, show us the lolly."
The insult bit sharp. Gem stiffened, caught himself and looked to Saxony Belaconto, awaiting her word.
She smiled tightly and waved him near, though there was a bit of a waver to her usually graceful gesture. "Display the trident for us, Master ser Edreth. On the table, please."
He approached, stopped and let his invisible burden slide down until it rested, butt-end against the carpet, and leaning athwart his hip. "Corbinye!"
She stirred in her scarlet shirt, flipped the braid behind her back with a jerk of the head. Braid? He tried to recall if she had had a braid, before, then let the puzzlement go.
"Anjemalti!"
He strained to see her clearly, but there were shifting mists before his eyes. He wondered if he were going blind and shook that thought away, too.
"Are you well, Corbinye?"
"Anjemalti, I am." Her voice resonated with countless levels of meaning. He strained to decipher none of them, but looked instead at Saxony Belaconto.
"I suggest that my cousin might await me outside," he said mildly, careful of her dignity, here among her peers.
She laughed. "For shame, Master ser Edreth! Do you not want her to see the apex of all this striving? She's as much involved as you or I or any other here! She has a right to be see!" She turned her head slightly. "Don't you, Corbinye Faztherot?"
"In my judgment, yes."
Saxony Belaconto laughed again, though the face she turned back to Gem was paler than usual. "So very careful, your family." The laughter faded. "The Trident, Master ser Edreth. Quickly."
The Trident. Yes, certainly, that was part of the plan—to give her the Trident and then the Fearstone and be rid of the gods-blasted things—He bent his head and worked at the wristlet, carefully unwinding the slippery silk from the power stud. He recalled, as if from another life, that he had once thought the Trident to have been technology, and he almost laughed, though a mad alien stood at his back and his cousin stared black-eyed from across a sea of enemies.
Technology! And all this while it had the current running through it and showed no signs of life at all. Perhaps he should have asked the Witness—the silk came loose at last and the Trident shimmered into being.
"What's it wrapped in?" demanded Jenfir Chung. "The thief's trying to pull something," snapped Harcourt.
Nar Veldonis waved a languid hand as Gem glanced at Saxony Belaconto.
"Conductive wire," he said to her wild eyes. "It is only a moment to unwrap it, lady, so that you and the—honored—may see the thing complete."
"Unwrap it," she ordered, a rasping edge on the expensive voice. Behind her, Corbinye shifted; stilled.
Gem obeyed, patiently unscrolling the line until it was all coiled in his hand and the Trident stood free. He lifted it then and placed it gently upon the
table, frowning at the whine in his ears and the continued mistiness of his sight, which insisted that, here and there among the blasted and hopeless ancient circuitry, the Trident was beginning to . . . glow.
"That's a hesernym mine?" The bald man lolled back in his chair, unimpressed. Jenfir Chung laughed.
"You young ones always judge competence by beauty," she said. "Get you in deep trouble, someday." She tipped her head, like an evil, yellow-eyed old bird. "Me, I think it looks just as it ought."
Gem stirred, pulled his eyes from the intermittent glow of the Trident and raised them to look at Saxony Belaconto.
"There is something more," he said, in a voice that rang false in his own ears.
She frowned, the aquamarine eyes showing some white around the edges. "More? You are overzealous, Master ser Edreth; I commissioned only the Trident." The eyes flicked beyond him for an instant, and Gem felt the Witness stiffen. "And the operator, of course."
"Another—component," Gem insisted; "a connection discovered—by accident." He laid his hand against his pocket, careful that the gesture showed no threat. "By your leave, lady . . ."
"By my leave, is it?" She moved her eyes again, captured the bull-necked man. "Keldren, Master ser Edreth has something in his pocket that he wishes me to have. Do me the kindness of fetching it here."
The man sneered, and Gem wondered how he dared it, came up from his perch on the table edge and walked down the room, promising mayhem with every swaggering step.
The palm he held out was ridged with callus, the fingers thick and strong. "All right, thief, let's have it."
Gem looked into the cold face, deep into the eyes, to the strain and the cruelty and the rabid self-interest within. He tasted the man's tension like lemoned salt, smelled the copper-stink of desperation, and smiled.
Slowly, he reached into his pocket, keeping each finger-move smooth and unassuming. Slowly, he fished the jewel box from its nesting-place and brought it, reverently, forth. Tenderly, he worked the catch, and laid the cover-cloth back.
With fingers that betrayed nothing more than thief's competence, he took the Fearstone up and placed it, all gentleness, in Keldren Harcourt's palm.
He screamed, did Harcourt, fingers convulsing into a fist. He spun back to the gather-table and screamed once more, shrill and despairing, before lunging straight at Nar Veldonis.
It was then that the Bindalche Trident exploded into light.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Harcourt took what Anjemalti gave him, shrieked like a man in mortal pain, and dove clumsily for Nar Veldonis.
He had covered barely half the necessary distance before the bodyguard pulled his weapon and fired. Corbinye saw the blood-flower bloom on Harcourt's shirt front, but the impetus of his terror carried him forward two more steps before death kissed his soul and he fell, the jewel spilling from his hand.
Chimi the guard cried out and leapt to his mistress' side, Carmen half-a-stride behind. Saxony Belaconto herself was standing, ordering Veldonis to control his man, while Jenfir Chung's gun-sworn came to her feet, weapon out, eyes beyond wary in a face gone gray with terror.
Down the room, Anjemalti staggered, hand before his eyes, as if shielding them. The stranger at his back reached out a steadying hand, all the while staring at the object that lay, forgotten, in the center of the table.
The guards had unlimbered their weapons, all attention down-room, Corbinye Faztherot mist and ash to memories apparently addled by the prevailing fear. At the table, Filbar Janns lurched suddenly upward, gun swinging out—
Corbinye slid three steps to the right, saw Anjemalti waver again and heard the one with him cry aloud in a tongue strange and exultant.
The lights flared, flickered. The house bracelet dropped from Corbinye's wrist and the door to the outer hallway sagged suddenly open. Someone screamed and Filbar Janns fired his gun as Anjemalti leapt forward.
Anjemalti fell. The lights flared one time more, then failed altogether.
Almost, Corbinye screamed. Training, or pride, kept her voice still; horror goaded her into a run through the blackness. She slammed into a body, snarled and pushed forward, heading for Anjemalti's last position, refusing to think that she might overrun him in the darkness, or that he was dead.
There were more screams from the blinded Grounders and Belaconto's voice, etched in hysteria, crying out for light.
Light of a sort miraculously came forth, grayish and weakly as it was, not quite enough to show her Jenfir Chung's body before she fell across it, and slammed painfully to her knees.
"Anjemalti!" she cried—and then she saw him, golden hair glowing in the weak light, an ominous splash of darkness across the whiteness of his sleeve.
She crawled to him, touched his face, pulled that lush grounder-length hair. "Anjemalti!"
His eyes opened.
Relief blurred what meager sight she had. She dashed a hand across her eyes and tugged at his undamaged arm. "Cousin, let us go. Quickly."
He licked his lips, struggled to get his knees under him. "The Trident."
"What?" She stared into his face as best she could, renewed her grip upon his arm. "Anjemalti, let it be! Give Saxony Belaconto joy of it! Come—"
"The Trident," he repeated, and she heard, with sinking heart, the note of command in his voice. She dropped his arm.
"Stay you here," she told him. "I'll fetch it."
It was grueling, though not overly dangerous. The remaining Grounders were deployed about the room, huddled in safe places from which now and then a shot would wing. Corbinye snatched the Trident from the table and crawled back, finding him not quite where she had left him, half risen to his knees, hand hovering over something on the floor.
"Anjemalti, I have it," she hissed. "Will you come?"
"Yes." His hand swooped, captured, and slipped the captive something into his pocket, then he shambled to his feet, heedless, it seemed, of the possibility of bullets, and ran for the door.
Cursing, Corbinye followed.
The empty halls were lit by emergency dims, and the pace Anjemalti set through them tried her pitiful new body to the strain-point, and then beyond. Her world shrank to these necessities—to stay moving, to keep him in sight, to hold to the accursed Trident, to not, to never, fall.
The door onto the street gaped open, spilling the gray light of First Dawn into the foyer. Anjemalti stepped through to the street and waved his hand at a cab.
It wasn't until the machine had pulled over and opened its door to admit them that Corbinye realized that the stranger who had accompanied Anjemalti to the conference room was standing at her shoulder.
"Leave us," she snarled at him. "Take your freedom as gift and run!"
He gave her back no answer, eyes and face so unremittingly bland that she thought for an instant he was blind. Then reddish lashes quivered in a faint blink and the face altered somewhat.
"I am Witness for the Telios," he said, voice as bland as eyes. "I travel on the whim of the Smiter."
"He comes with us," gasped Anjemalti, half-falling into the open cab. "Corbinye . . ."
"Yes." Very plain where duty lay, with the Captain injured and half-swooning within sight of his enemy's stronghold. She slid beside him, cramming the damned Trident in crosswise and ungainly, barely leaving room for Witness to fit his broad shoulders.
The cab's door descended and there was an inquiring thweep from the autopilot, then a scratchy "Destination sir or madam. This unit requires instruction."
"Anjemalti, where do you take us?" But the swoon had overtaken him and in the dome-light she saw the sleeve dyed crimson to the wrist.
"The spaceport," she told the robot, sternly overriding the body's instinct to cry. "Hotpad Sixteen. With all speed, if you please."
"This unit is programmed to obey all local limits. This unit's key is known to appropriate local municipalities." There was a whir of catching tape; then: "Spaceport processed as destination. Sub-address Hotpad Sixteen. Verification sought."
>
"Verified," Corbinye snapped, and very nearly the body had its way with its stupid tears as the cab gently pulled out and merged with the light dawn traffic.
She reached instead to try and work with the sodden sleeve, thinking to see how bad the wound was, for surely it had not been bleeding as heavily as that before—
Anjemalti stirred, coming half out of his faint. "Let be," he muttered.
"It bleeds, cousin. I thought to bind it at least until—"
"Linzer will have a kit," he mumbled, words slurring badly. He stirred yet further, eyes slitting open, though she doubted they focused on any one of them there. "The spaceport," he said, with painful distinctness.
"The cab takes us there even now."
Restlessness left him at that, as well as strength. He had barely croaked out a "Good" than his body went limp against the cushions and he was lost to all sense.
Corbinye shifted, abrading the back of her hand on one or another of the bits of broken garbage littering the hilt of the Trident. She bit back a curse and pointed at Witness.
"You! Are you keeper of this thing?"
There was a slight pause, as if her words had to travel some little distance to reach that place where he was himself.
"I am Witness for the Telios," he said eventually, in his colorless voice.
"So you had said. I ask if that means you are guardian of this object."
The response came more quickly this time, as if she had somewhat engaged his interest.
"Shlorba's Smiter guards itself best," he said.
Corbinye curbed her temper with an effort. "Then to whom does it belong?"
"To itself," replied Witness. He paused, then gave fuller answer, since these were worthy questions, and some that the Telios asked among themselves. "Some say also, to events, or to the Sister, even to the Chief who currently it favors. Others say that indeed the Smiter is holy because it may alter the event in which all the rest of what is finds itself enmeshed."
Anjemalti's cousin turned her face to the Trident for a moment's study out of quick, fierce eyes. Witness found his secret heart approved her—a warrior of purity, who would carry what the Chief commanded without desiring it for her own. Such things were written, and some few Remembered, but to have found such a one here, where he had so lately despaired of the fat man, sang of the potential for vast change in the state of what is.