But Rose was having none of that. She still wasn't sure how she felt about Brett, but she definitely didn't want him getting himself killed before she made up her mind. So she took it upon herself to teach Brett everything she knew about how to handle a sword, and she knew a hell of a lot. Brett, not for the first time, didn't get a say in the matter.
So the two of them spent most of their trip to the old leper planet of Lachrymae Christi dueling ferociously on the Hereward's bridge. Brett picked it up extremely quickly—not least because Rose was quite willing to cut him a good one if he didn't pay attention— and it wasn't long before the two of them were almost equally matched. No one else could have mastered Rose's many skills so quickly, but the telepathic bond forged between Brett and Rose when he first took the damned esper drug was still operating, on deep, dark, and unexpected levels. Rose had to show him something only once, and it was as though he'd always known it. The sword seemed alive in his hand, responsive as a lover, and the more he learned the more easily it all came. All he needed now was practice, to hone his reflexes and build muscle tone, and Rose sharpened his skills in the only way she knew how: by doing her level best to kill him every time they dueled. Brett did his best to kill her too; it was only polite. And so they stamped and lunged and parried, putting everything they had into every blow, dueling on long after anyone else would have had to stop.
But finally the timer they'd set in the bridge's comm panels went off, and they disengaged and stepped cautiously back from each other, breathing harshly as they slowly lowered their swords. They'd learned the hard way that they had to have a timer. Because sometimes the intensity of their dueling took them to another place—where nothing mattered but the clash of steel on steel and the search for heart's blood, where they would have dueled each other to exhaustion before either would give up. They put away their swords and nodded respectfully to each other, struggling to get their breath back under control. Brett produced a handkerchief with someone else's monogram on it, and wiped his face. Rose looked at him almost fondly.
"You make a good pupil, Brett. There's not much left I can teach you. But you'll never be able to beat me. Not until you develop the killer's instinct."
"I'll never beat you," said Brett, "because you're a homicidal bloody psychopath."
Rose shrugged. "It's a gift. I can't take any credit for it."
They stared at each other for a while, their breathing slowing, and then Rose moved slowly over to stand before Brett. She studied his face intently.
"This is all new to me, Brett. I never had a pupil before. Never had a partner, or a friend…"
She stopped, considering the matter thoughtfully. Brett stood very still. Rose was never more dangerous than when she was thinking. Besides, he didn't understand their relationship either, and he was curious to hear what she would come up with.
"I never needed anyone else in my life," said Rose. "Never wanted anyone, except to kill. As long as I had the Arena, and the blood and the suffering, I was content. Murder was sex, the killing stroke my orgasm. And I was happy. Then our minds touched, and in that moment I saw things… emotions, feelings, possibilities I'd never considered before. Sex was different for you; a joining, sharing thing. It was so much… more. I want to feel those things, even if I'm not sure why. I like teaching you… I like seeing you become more like me. But there are things only you can teach me."
"Oh, yes?" said Brett.
She moved another step closer. Brett stood his ground. It was like having a wild animal come out of the jungle and walk right up to you to stare curiously into your eyes. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead again. Their mouths were so close now they could feel each other's breath on their lips. They were both breathing heavily again, almost in rhythm. Rose was frowning slightly, as though considering a difficult problem. And then her bloodred leathers creaked as she took him cautiously, gently, into her murderous arms.
In the cargo bay of the Hereward, in a rough nest he'd made from boxes of the alien porn data crystals, the reptiloid Saturday was fast asleep. He'd been sleeping ever since they left Unseeli, his emerald green belly swollen and distended from all the people he'd eaten. He smiled toothily in his sleep, and occasionally his tail or his clawed hands would twitch as he dreamed happy dreams of slaughter and feeding.
None of the others had any intention of waking him until they absolutely had to. And then they'd do it from a safe distance, probably using something long to poke him with.
While Brett and Rose grew closer and the reptiloid slept, Lewis Deathstalker and Jesamine Flowers caught up on their quality time. To be exact, they'd taken over the main cabin, locked the door securely, and hadn't left the bed for two days, except for certain necessary trips to the food synthesizer or the bathroom. They were currently standing together at the foot of the bed, both entirely naked, looking at themselves in the full length mirror on the wall. Jesamine was frowning. She studied her famous face and figure with critical, merciless eyes, turning this way and that to check all the angles and find her best side. Lewis stood easily beside her, one arm draped companionably around her slim waist. When he looked at them both together, in the mirror, he saw Beauty and the Beast, and wondered, not for the first time, what someone so breathtakingly beautiful saw in an ugly brute like him.
"Oh, God," said Jesamine. "I look awful."
"What are you talking about?" said Lewis. "You look wonderful. You always look wonderful. If you were any more perfect, you'd be banned as harmful to the eyes."
I've got a roll of fat around my middle, my tits are sagging, and I'm actually afraid to turn round and look at my bum. I can feel it heading towards the floor as we speak. This is what having to live without full-time beauty technicians does to a woman. I'm not as young as I was, you know. Once a woman reaches a certain age, she has to spend a lot of time taking care of herself, or it all falls apart in the middle of the night and she wakes up looking like her mother. It's a fact."
"You look fine to me," said Lewis. "You look great. I wouldn't change an inch."
"You say the sweetest things, darling man." Jesamine kissed him absently on the cheek, and then went back to studying herself in the mirror.
Lewis sighed, but had enough sense to do it internally. Even with his limited experience with women, he knew they were venturing onto dangerous ground here. Women never saw themselves as they really were; inside they were always judging themselves against some imaginary perfect image they picked up in their youth and never broke free from. Jesamine Flowers was famous as one of the most gorgeous women in an Empire full of beautiful women, and here she was scowling at her reflection as though she'd just acquired jowls and a mustache.
Lewis looked at himself, and had no illusions. He was built for stamina, not speed, and his muscles were made for action, not posing. He let the fingertips of one hand trail unhurriedly across the various new scars he'd acquired since leaving Logres. There were quite a few of them, from swords and guns and explosions—places where death had touched him briefly, in passing. Scars were a new thing for Lewis. As a Paragon on Logres he'd had automatic access to regeneration machines, so that even the worst wounds never left a permanent mark on him. The Hereward had no regen tank. He had to heal naturally, and he hated it. It was slow and uncomfortable, it interrupted his thinking—and it left scars.
As if he wasn't ugly enough already.
Jesamine put a gentle hand over his, as it traced a long scar down his left side. "You got that one fighting to protect me, in Traitor's Hall, in the Bloody Tower. I remember. You've been through so much pain for my sake."
"You're worth it," said Lewis. "I was never really happy, never really alive, till I met you."
Jesamme laughed quietly, and put an arm round his waist. "You always know the right things to say, my dear. But when this is all over, you're going straight into a regeneration tank, and we're getting rid of those awful scars."
"They serve a purpose," said Lewis, his harsh features falling into
familiar dark lines. "These scars are reminders—to be more careful, more thoughtful about everything I do, because I can be killed so easily out here, and so can you. If you were killed… I wouldn't want to go on living, without you."
She kissed him, to stop him saying such things, and afterwards Jesamine looked at Lewis's face for a long time, tracing its harsh lines with a gentle fingertip. "You have a face like a force of nature, Lewis. Hard, unyielding, but not unattractive. You could have altered it—become anonymously handsome, like everyone else. Why did you never change it?"
"Because then I wouldn't have looked like me anymore. It would have been like wearing a mask. Wearing a lie. With me, what you see is pretty much what you get. I never changed my appearance for the same reason Anne never changed hers. Because we're proud of who we are."
They both turned away from the mirror at the same time, and sat down together on the end of the bed. There were things they needed to talk about, things they'd been putting off, but the time had come. They could feel it. Lewis jumped in first, as he always did.
"We can't go to Haden. We're not ready, Jes. Not yet."
"Yes."
"Have you ever been to Lachrymae Christi before?"
"God, no, darling! Can't think of many who have, by choice. It may not be a leper colony anymore, but it's still a desolate bloody place by all accounts, at the arse end of civilization, with no comforts to speak off and not a single theater worth playing. Whole planet is one big jungle, and they probably eat tourists on sight."
"We have to go there, Jes."
"I know, I know…"
"Tobias Moon is still there—still alive, supposedly. The only remaining survivor of the Madness Maze, from the age of the Great Rebellion. Owen's companion, and his friend. If he's still alive, and if he'll talk to us, Moon could tell us things that no one else could."
"Not the only Maze survivor," said Jesamine. "Samuel Chevron turned out to be really John Silence, remember?"
"Was he? He claimed to be Chevron to us, and Silence to Carrion, but he also claimed to be dead. So I think I'll take everything he said with several grains of salt, until I've some way of confirming he is who he says he is."
"Carrion recognized him as Silence."
"Carrion has been living as an Ashrai for two centuries. After that long, probably all humans look the same to him."
"But he might be John Silence. And he said we should go straight to Haden." Jesamine frowned, and shuddered suddenly. "He wanted us to go into the Madness Maze. I don't think I could do that, Lewis. Not ever. It might kill us, or make us something other than human, and I don't know which scares me more."
"I think we're all scared of the Maze, Jes," said Lewis, kissing her bare shoulder reassuringly. "All the more reason to acquire as much dependable information as we can before we even think about going anywhere near Haden. Besides, Haden is the one place Finn will be sure to think we're going to. You can bet good money he's arranged a really nasty surprise for us there. No, first Tobias Moon, and then we'll think about Haden—and the Maze."
"He could be dead. No one's seen Moon for years."
"He was a Hadenman, before he went into the Maze. God knows what he was afterwards."
"I don't think God has anything to do with the Maze," Jesamine said softly.
Some time later, fully dressed and properly turned out, they went back to the bridge. Rose was sitting cross-legged on the floor in one corner, polishing her sword blade with long, easy strokes of the cloth. She didn't look up at their entrance. Brett was sitting slumped in the pilot's chair, scowling at nothing. He jumped up immediately when Lewis came in, and slouched over to lean against the far wall. Lewis hid a smile. He knew what was wrong with Brett Random. The con man had emptied the medicine cabinet of every drug worth taking, and never being one to plan ahead where his pleasures were concerned, had used them all up. Brett had spent the last several days entirely sober, loudly declaring it to be an unnatural state, and that he hated it. Even alien porn had lost its thrill. Although he would never have admitted it, Brett was actually grateful to Rose for insisting on dueling lessons. They stopped him going crazy from boredom. He shot Lewis and Jesamine a sulky glare, for being so cheerful.
"Well, look who's finally emerged from the Cabin of Joy. I take it the bedroom gymnastics are over, for now? You're using up your gos, you know. If you're not careful, you'll run out."
"Oz, talk to me," said Lewis, ignoring Brett with the ease of long practice. "How much further to Lachrymae Christi?"
"We're there!" said the ship's AI cheerfully. "We dropped out of hyperspace and moved into high orbit just over four hours ago. No one else could have got you here this quickly. I'm just a navigating fool. Grease my circuits and call me Speedy! You don't appreciate me, you know."
"We're here?" said Lewis. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you were otherwise engaged," Ozymandias said loftily. And very noisily, too. Far be it from me to interrupt. If you're ready to get involved in the mission again, I'll bring you up to date on everything that's been happening."
"Don't you get snotty with me," Lewis growled. "You're just a porn smuggler's ship's AI with a quick personality overlay."
"I'm also the only one around here who can work out hyperspace reentry coordinates," said Oz, unruffled. "So keep a civil tongue in your head. I don't know what it is about Deathstalkers, but they're always really crabby first thing in the morning. I blame it on bad potty training. Now then, I've run a full scan, to the limits, of my sensors, and there's no sign of Imperial ships lurking anywhere in the vicinity."
"That's odd," Brett said immediately. "You'd have thought the Durandal would have sent at least one starcruiser to stop us making contact with Tobias Moon."
"It's not odd at all," the AI said condescendingly. "As you'd know if you'd done your homework on Lachrymae Christi. I did provide you all with complete files on the planet. Lachrymae Christi is one big jungle, full of vicious, aggressive, and semisentient plants of such a predatory nature that animal life never got a look in here. All of these plants have a mass consciousness called the Red Brain. And Big Red is apparently very picky over who gets to orbit his world. Really bad things have been known to happen to ships that don't pay attention to his warnings. The only ships allowed to land at the only star-port are trading ships, strictly by appointment only. However, I have contacted one Natashia Wells at the starport, and she's willing to talk to a Deathstalker. Shall I put her on?"
"Might as well," said Lewis.
"You don't appreciate me, you really don't."
"Hello there, uninvited ship!" said a snappy female voice from the comm unit. "Don't start kicking your equipment, we've lost picture again. It's going to be one of those days, I can tell, and me with one of my heads. This is Natashia Wells, hailing you from the St. Beatrice Memorial Starport, letting you know that you are not at all welcome— unless you're carrying comm unit spares. Or chocolate. You aren't, are you? I thought not. If it was up to me, I'd tell you all to go to Hell by the express route, but Tobias Moon vouches for you, and I don't get any say in the matter."
"At least now we know Moon is still alive," Jesamine said quietly.
"What was that?" said Natashia. "Speak up! I hate muttering! So, you're Lewis Deathstalker and companions, on the Hereward. You wouldn't believe what your ship was carrying the last time it tried to dock here. Anyway, you're late. We've been expecting you for days. Moon assured us you were coming a week ago, and that man is never wrong—which is actually kind of creepy when you think about it, so let's agree not to. Now then, I have to check my list. According to Moon, Sir Deathstalker, you should have with you… one diva, one confidence trickster, one homicidal psychopath, and a reptiloid, whatever the hell that is. Is that correct?"
"Well, yes," said Lewis. How did Moon know that? "Trust me, I'm no happier about it than you are."
"If it was up to me, I'd shoot the lot of you down right now, on general principle," said Natashia. "But no one ever list
ens to me. No good will come of this. My computers are sending you landing coordinates. Don't get it wrong. We're the only starport on the planet, with strictly limited space on the landing pads, by choice. We don't encourage visitors. Hell, we do everything but throw rocks at them and insult their mothers, and still they keep coming. So, land where you're told, and then follow directions to the nearest city. It's a bit of a walk, but you can probably use the exercise. You'll be met at Mission City, which is absolutely stuffed full of fascinating history about this planet. If you care for that sort of thing. Be sure to buy some souvenirs, as they're cluttering up the place. Talk to Hellen Adair, and she'll get you to Tobias Moon. And behave yourselves—the Deathstalker name buys you a certain amount of leeway, and Moon's usually a pretty good judge of character, for an ex-Hadenman, but even so…"
"We're not welcome," said Lewis, interrupting a speech that threatened to go on forever. "Trust me, we get the point."
"Tourists," Natashia said succinctly, "are like hemorrhoids. They come down, they hang around, they turn red, and they're a pain in the arse. Land and be damned, and see if I care. And don't contact me again. I have some serious napping to be getting on with."
The comm line went dead. Brett sighed heavily. "It's all going to end in tears, I know it."
The Hereward touched down uneventfully at the St. Beatrice Memorial Starport. It was the only ship on the landing pads. Lewis led the way out, after instructing Ozymandias to run full security measures at all times, but not to shoot anyone unless he felt he absolutely had to. The group gathered outside the airlock and blinked about them in the gray light from the overcast sky. The landing pads were barely half a mile in diameter, surrounded on all sides by the savage crimson jungle. Not all that surprising there was no one there to greet them. No control tower, no customs post, no signs of human civilization at all. It was raining, a sullen persistent drizzle that dampened the spirit as well as everything else. Saturday sniffed loudly, unimpressed.
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