by Sharon Lee
"Trident Bearer," he rasped and turned to look at his chief, standing sad-eyed behind him.
"Trident Bearer."
"It is so, old friend," she said gravely. "Come aside, and let him who bears the burden now move on to embrace glory."
He hesitated, as if he had imperfectly understood her words, and one stepped forward from the crowd to put a hand in his. "Come, brother."
He went where he was led then, looking back over his shoulder until at last he was tugged into a tent.
Anjemalti looked at the chief. "It meant something to him, this." He shook the Trident, lightly.
She smiled, sadness plain in her face. "As it might, since once he had borne it."
"But he's idiot," cried Corbinye, slipping her knife away.
The chief shook her head. "That came later," she said. "When it went from under his hand."
Corbinye froze, then turned to look at Gem, standing so fair and so strong with all his plans and his cleverness. "Anjemalti . . ."
"Not mad yet," he said lightly, turning his face aside from her gaze. "Or no madder than always." He bowed to the waiting chief. "Lead on, I pray you."
They met no other folk until they were past the tents and going along a stony ridge. Gem pointed at the ship lying quiescent near a tumble of boulders.
"What ship is that?"
Ven kelBatien Girisco glanced over. "Of the former Trident Bearer Jarge Menlin and his companions."
He frowned. "And Jarge Menlin is—where?"
"There," she said. And pointed.
The woman could only be Saxony Belaconto, striding along with purpose. Corbinye felt surreptitiously in the back of her belt, fingers closing on the palm-sized weapon she had concealed there. Carefully, she pulled it forth and dropped her arm straight down along her thigh.
Witness for the Telios stepped back, eyes on the fat man, who looked ill, truth told. Ill and frightened and more than a little mad. He ran, where the woman merely strode, and skittered on stones, breathing hard in the unkind air. Witness felt tensions building, webs of power weaving themselves as event took sudden note and began to converge—
Anjemalti the Seeker, Trident-bearer, Beloved of Shlorba, Whose other Name is Chaos—Anjemalti the Chief went forward, and met the fat man.
"That's mine!" The fat man's voice was thin with exertion or heat, or both.
"Hello, Jarge," said Anjemalti, stopping and standing easily, the Trident caught in the crook of his arm and the sun making gold of his hair.
"Mine!" shrieked the other—and he lunged, clumsy and desperate.
Death's Warrior brought her gun up—and held her hand as Anjemalti shifted, half-twisting to avoid the lunge.
The fat man's hand closed on the Trident's shaft and he gave a shout that began as hosanna and became a strangled cry; his eyes went wide and his muscles tensed—and gave up their duty, all at once.
Anjemalti went down with the fat man, getting a shoulder under the vast weight, trying with youthful valor to break the other's fall. Witness for the Telios could have told him there was no need for it—the fat man was beyond feeling the scrape of stones against his flesh.
"Dead." The bright-haired Seeker said the word as if he did not know what it meant. "Dead."
"More's the pity," said the woman Saxony Belaconto. "But I don't doubt you'll do as well, Master ser Edreth."
He recoiled, but there was no need for that, either. Death's Warrior still held her gun, and this time her aim was clear.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
It was dark inside the GenShip, the verse ran through Milt Jinkins' mind, dismal dark and quiet.
Or, he thought irritably: Dismal dark and noisy. "Song-makers don't know anything about reality," he muttered and heard Ria laugh behind him.
"Songs aren't about what's real," she said. "No more real than heroes."
Milt sighed. She was right, he knew. Songs were about romance, and there was nothing romantic about the groaning, ancient system imperfectly cooling the air, or about smooth treacherous metal floors underfoot, or about rust patches, or about having to light your own way through some dark, decaying rabbit warren with a couple of repair lanterns hastily jerry-rigged to accept batteries stolen from an emergency beacon.
"Here's a branching," said Ria and put her hand on his arm. Ria was leader in this endeavor—she having done salvage work before.
While she went a few steps down this way and a few steps up that way, lantern held high, scanning the walls for who knew what mysterious signs, Milt activated the portable comm clipped to his belt.
"Remote team three-three-six to Ship three-three-five. Read me, Dez?"
"Read you right steady." Dez's voice was startlingly loud in the noisy dark. "Any more sections coming loose?"
This was a joke, designed to make Milt cringe for his reactions when the breakaway section had fled the GenShip. However, he refused to feel guilt for his reflexes. Fifty times out of fifty-one, so he told Ria, his reactions would have been right on. Who built ships with breakaways the size of a moon?
"Not that big," Ria had said, and then: "GenShip crews are crazy, boy."
"Everything's stable," he told Dez now. "Dark, deserted. Cooling system's a bit rickety—ambient temp eighty-two, Fahrenheit. If it starts to climb, we'll back out. No use frying."
"Ria's the one thinks there's more to it than the metal rights," said Dez. "Happy with a share of that action, myself."
"Whyn't you say so?" demanded Milt. "Could've talked her out of it."
Dez laughed. "I'm too old a fool to try and talk Ria out of anything," he said. "I remember—"
"Hold it!" Milt's voice was sharper than he had intended. Dez cut off in mid-sentence and Milt tipped his head, trying to track the sound, a bare whisper of sound, half-heard under the din of the dying cooling system . . .
"Milt?" the comm inquired. "Ship three-three-five InRing to Remote three-three-six. Read me?"
Milt sighed and shook his head; thumbed the comm. "Read you fine. Thought I heard something new—damn ship's coming apart at the seams. Spooky, you know? Like the ghost ship stories the older kids used to tell the young ones in creche. . .."
"This way, boy!" Ria's voice echoed eerily off the metal.
"Partner's chosen the course," Milt told the comm. "Remote three-three-six out."
"Luck," said Dez. "Out."
She had found the engine room, or near enough. The walls were banked with machinery; here and there a status light glowed yellow. Milt stepped in and held his torch high.
"Wow."
"Easy to say." Ria was obviously pleased. "Might be more than salvage here, boy. Might get price as a working ship. Go-lights say she's able."
"It's an antique," he said absently—then her other words acquired meaning. He spun to stare at her in the light-lanced gloom. "If she's able," he demanded, "why was she abandoned?"
Ria stared at him.
"We're leaving," Milt said, determination fed by abrupt terror. And he heard a sound behind him, there in the ship where he knew there was none alive, his memory provided, crisp and clear from childhood. He heard a sound behind him and he was afraid to turn and see what was there—and he was afraid to stand one heartbeat longer, with his back to it, exposed—
"We're leaving," he snarled again, but Ria still stood there, eyes wide on him. He snapped forward, grabbed her wrist and yanked her with him as he spun back toward the door—
And let out a sound halfway between a gurgle and a scream.
A—spider—was blocking the doorway, its eyes orange and hideous, its mouth able to cut the likes of Milt Jinkins in very half, its body round and as high off the worn decking as his waist, suspended between eight legs, each of which ended in—a claw.
He swallowed another scream and dropped Ria's arm; fumbled in his belt for the gun and brought it unsteadily up.
The spider's lantern eyes blinked. There was a sharp hiss and a sense of something flying in the dimness and Milt felt sticky cord wrap tightly around the
wrist of his gun arm. He screamed and the spider yanked.
Desperate, he pulled back and another sticky rope snapped tight around his knee. Milt fell, tried to claw a fingerhold into the metal floor, felt the spider thread tighten around him and screamed again, for Ria to help him, to save him, to shoot it, kill it—
She may have tried. He heard more thread hiss by, heard a shriek that was none of his, followed by a strangling sob.
Milt had once known how to pray. He heard himself babbling the old words, as the spider pulled him in. In the end, it made no more difference than Ria's curses.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Using the Trident as a brace, Gem climbed slowly to his feet.
Witness stood off to one side, his face blank in that particular way that meant he was totally enclosed in his Witnessing.
Corbinye had put away her gun and stepped forward, sliding a steadying hand under his elbow. He looked at the ruin of Saxony Belaconto's face; at the blood that soaked her shirt, shuddered and closed his eyes.
"Was it necessary . . ." he began, and let his voice die out, because, of course, it had been.
"She was your enemy," Corbinye said. "What would you?"
"A moment of weakness, cousin. Forgive it." He opened his eyes and turned his head with the intent of smiling at her—and instead twisted free of her hand, crying out, "No!"
The turret of the grounded Vornet ship was moving, slowly and with deliberation, adjusting angle as it turned, until it was pointing down the ridge, to the sparse green base—Pointing at the tents of Tremillan Tribe.
"Devils!" Ven kelBatien Girisco screamed, snatching at her belt. She plucked loose one of the dangling trinkets and hurled it at the ship.
There was an explosion, minor, kicking up clods of earth and small stones, not quite halfway to the ship. The chief screamed again, this time something wordless and potent and ran forward, fingers working at another of her belt-fobs.
"No!" That was Corbinye, three steps gone on a course that would intercept the running woman, and the turret was moving again, homing in on this nearer meat, freeing the tents of danger and they would both die—
Gem leapt, slamming into Corbinye and knocking her to the hard earth. He held on grimly as she struggled, letting even the Trident go so that he could keep both her hands from around his throat, shielding her body with his own.
The second explosion was louder—the chief may have scored a hit.
The third explosion was louder still and the ground they lay on kicked and buckled, slamming them backward, to land with identical breathless cries amidst loosened dirt and rock-shards. The Trident slapped hard across Gem's legs and Corbinye twisted so fiercely he feared for her back and let her go, twisting himself to come up in one smooth motion, Trident held ready.
The earth outside the ship was splintered, torn, ravaged, glazed here and there to glass. Witness was on his feet a little distance beyond the worst of the devastation, a cut leaking bright red down his square cheek.
Of Ven kelBatien Girisco, Chief of Tremillan Tribe, there was no sign at all.
The turret was moving. Grindingly slow, as deliberate as fate, as inevitable as pain, the turret was again taking aim upon the tents below.
"None to warn them," Corbinye's voice was grief-laden. "Hyacinth downhill and more. No weapons here to stand against that. Valiant—oh, valiant, Grounder Captain! Your courage should have bought their lives. . .."
Gem stared, watching the black muzzle making its fatal, deliberate adjustments, feeling the weight of the Trident in his hand. He looked at it; saw the perfection of the new circuitry, the winking brightness of the jewels, the baleful eye of the Fearstone. He lifted it, weighing its balance in his hands.
He began to walk toward the ship.
"Anjemalti!" Corbinye's voice, carrying panic, fear and other things, which almost he could name.
"Bold, O Seeker!" The voice of the Witness rose even above the moan of the ship's engines, audible now as he walked closer.
They let him come quite near, those within the ship. Let him come nearly to the edge of their closest range, before the turret began to move again, away from the tents, sweeping down as it moved to cover him.
* * *
Milt awoke to light, and people, and the knowledge that he was bound, hand and foot. He lay on his side on a cold metal surface. His impression was that he had been roused by a kick.
"Come along," said a cool, hauntingly familiar voice. "Open your eyes, Grounder. I know you for wakeful."
Reluctantly, he did open his eyes, to the sight of scoured metal and a pair of boots—black leather and so thin he could see the outline of the feet within them. The hems of the blue trousers worn over the boots were frayed and the fabric had a slight shine.
"So," he said to the boots. "My eyes are open. Big deal."
"And ready to converse," the voice commented. "Eil."
He had a bare moment to wonder what an "Eil" was before another pair of boots crossed his line of vision and he found himself suddenly hoisted by the cords binding his arms behind him. His shoulder-joints popped painfully and he took a sharp breath.
"Get your feet under you!" a man's rough voice snarled in his ear. "Are you even too stupid to stand?"
He twisted and managed to make his feet obey him. For one moment he stood, swaying and off-centered by the tightness of the cord binding his legs together. Then Eil withdrew his hold on the arm-ties, Milt tottered—and crashed to his knees.
The cool-voiced woman sighed. "It will do. Look at me, Grounder."
He craned his neck to do it, hating the attitude of supplication. She let him look his fill and when he had memorized her from her short, pale hair, to her enormous black eyes to the hash-mark on her fraying sleeve, he said, "You're the one who was organizing the evacuation."
Surprise flickered in her bony face. "Mael Faztherot," she said, "Acting Captain and First Mate. You will have a name."
"Will I?" His voice carried an unwise suggestion of snarl, and she frowned.
"Churlish, are you not, Grounder?"
"You want my opinion?" He glared at her. "I think I've got cause to be a little rude. You scare me to death, you tie me up, you don't untie me, you—where's my partner?"
She regarded him blandly. "Partner?"
That frightened him. He stared at her dumbly, tongue darting out to moisten lips gone suddenly dry.
"Your name," she prompted him.
"Milt Jinkins," he gave it around the terror in his heart. "There was a woman with me—my partner—when the, the—"
"When the Arachnid found you drawing weapons upon it," she finished for him, "and took steps to defend itself." She paused. "It seems to me that I do recall another Grounder. Perhaps I will let you see her. After you answer some of my questions."
"I want to see my partner!" Milt cried. "And I want to see her now!"
Shockingly, she laughed. "But you are scarcely in a position to insist upon anything, are you? Churlishness does not buy your partner peace. Recall it, and answer well. What is the frequency of the reporting line into the mother ship that hangs outsystem?"
He stared. "I don't know," he said finally, with no hope of being believed.
She shook her head. "Now that is a pity, because there are several other things along this same line that I need most desperately to know. Perhaps an aid to your memory?" She snapped her fingers and Milt heard the small clicking sound he had heard in the hallway just before Ria had called him to the control room. The—Arachnid?—hove into view and extended a claw.
Milt whimpered and bit his lip.
"Come," said Mael Faztherot. "Why make it painful? I will have the data eventually, you know, and it matters not at all to me if you are alive at the end of my questions. If it matters to you, then speak, and live to tell tales to your children."
"I—I don't know," Milt whispered, staring at the Arachnid in fascinated horror.
"Ah, stars take a stupid Grounder!" the woman said, sounding thoroughly out
of patience. "Eil!"
The first blow went across the side of his head, just above the right ear, hard enough to snap his teeth together through the end of his tongue. The second disintegrated his vision into a flare of piercing colors.
"Come, man," said the woman. "You're a pilot, and I'm loath to see such ruined. Tell me the frequency and have done."
He turned his head aside and spat blood. Looked at Eil—a towering brute with the same startlingly pale hair and out-of-proportion eyes—and then at the woman.
"Frequency ten eighty-eight," he said, not caring that his voice shook, "on a duplicating sub-light and hyper-band."
A look of infinite sadness crossed Mael Faztherot's face. She sighed and shook her head. "Eil," she said.
Chapter Sixty
"But," Veln said, and not for the first time since breakaway, "how can we know what's to do, Uncle? All very well to say we're aiding the Captain against enemies of the Ship—"
Finchet threw him an amused glance. "That's insufficient for you, is it?"
Veln stamped his foot on the slate floor and glared right regal, for all he was every bit of ten Standard Years old. Finchet was hard put to hold his laughter inside.
"All the universe," Veln said, in the tone of one reciting Regs for those of less encompassing intellect, "is the Ship's enemy. The Crew must ever be, be—"
"Vigilant," said Finchet, running an eye over the various gauges set into the back wall.
"Vigilant," repeated Veln, unmollified, "and ready to give battle. To die, if Ship or Captain demands it."
"Well?" asked the gardener mildly. "What's amiss, then?"
"The Captain sets most of the Crew to battling The Combine, while he and, and—the Grounders—while they go to aid other Grounders, who are also our enemies!" cried Veln. "Surely you see that's wrong! My father—"
"Your da was a fierce man and a hard one, and I mean no dishonor when I say so. There's no dishonor in the truth, nor ever there was, no matter what they might be teaching you tin-side." Finchet frowned and rubbed his chin, considering the hot young face before him. "It's no sense saying what Indemion would have done in such a wise," he said, in a milder tone, "for truth is that he'd have never got himself tangled in Grounder affairs. He was a Ship's man, your da, and he thought always of the Ship's best." He shook his head. "Not to say that he always thought right or well. But he did his best. No dishonor there, either."