His comment was uncomfortably shrewd. “Does anyone know where you are?”
Rish answered for him: “Whoever gave him your picture and address does.”
“Oh. Yes.” Tej winced. “Who did give you my picture?”
“Mm, mutual acquaintance? Well, maybe not too mutual—he didn’t seem to know much about you. But he did seem to think you were in some kind of danger.” Vorpatril looked down rather ironically at the bindings now securing him to a kitchen chair, dragged out to the living room for the purpose. “It seems you think so, too.”
Tej stared at him in disbelief. “Are you saying someone sent you to me as a bodyguard?”
He appeared affronted by her rising tones. “Why not?”
“Aside from the fact that the two of us took you down without even getting winded?” said Rish.
“You did too get winded. Dragging me up here. Anyway, I don’t hit girls. Generally. Well, there was that time with Delia Koudelka when I was twelve, but she hit me first, and it really hurt, too. Her mama and mine were inclined to be merciful, but Uncle Aral wasn’t—gave me a permanent twitch on the subject, let me tell you.”
“Shut. Up,” said Rish, driven to twitch a bit herself. “Nothing about him makes sense!”
“Unless he’s telling the truth,” said Tej slowly.
“Even if he’s telling the truth, he’s blithering,” said Rish. “Our dinner is getting cold. Come on, eat, then we’ll figure out what to do with him.”
With reluctance, Tej allowed herself to be drawn into the kitchen. A glance over her shoulder elicited a look of hope from the man, which faded disconsolately as she didn’t turn back. She heard his trailing mutter: “Hell, maybe I should’ve started with ponies…”
Chapter Two
Ivan sat in the dark and contemplated his progress. It was not heartening.
Not that his reputation for success with women was undeserved, but it was due to brains, not luck, and steady allegiance to a few simple rules. The first rule was to go to places where lots of women already in the mood for company had congregated—parties, dances, bars. Although not weddings, because those tended to put the wrong sorts of thoughts into their heads. Next, try likely prospects till you hit one who smiled back. Next, be amusing, perhaps in a slightly risqué but tasteful way, until she laughed. Extra points if the laughter was genuine. Continue ad lib from there. A 10:1 ratio of trials to hits was not a problem as long as the original pool contained ten or more prospects to start with. It was simple statistics, as he’d tried to explain to his cousin Miles on more than one occasion.
He’d entered that shop knowing the odds were not in his favor; a pool with only one fish required a fellow to get it right the first time. Well, he might have got lucky; it wasn’t unprecedented. He wriggled his wrists against his scarf bonds, which were unexpectedly unyielding for such soft, feminine cloth. Some sort of metaphor, there. This is not my fault.
It was By’s fault, he decided. Ivan was a victim of poor intel from his own side, like many a forlorn hope before him. Ivan had encountered overprotective duennas before, but never one who’d shot him from ambush the first time he walked through the door. The unfriendly blue woman…was a puzzle. He disliked puzzles. He’d never been good at them, not even as a child. His impatient playmates had generally plucked them out of his hands and finished them for him.
Rish was incredibly beautiful—sculpted bones, flowing muscles, stained-glass skin shimmering as she moved—but not in the least attractive, at least in the sense of someone he’d want to cuddle up to. Sort of a cross between a pixie and a python. She was shorter and slimmer than Nanja, and very bendy, but, he had noticed when the two women were dragging him up here, much the stronger. He also suspected genetically augmented reflexes, and the devil knew what else. Best appreciated from several meters’ distance, like a work of art, which he suspected she was.
Whose work? That degree of genetic manipulation on humans was wildly illegal on all three planets of the Barrayaran Imperium. Unless one had it done to oneself, offworld, in which case it might still be better to go live somewhere else, after. Nanja was certainly neither Komarran nor Barrayaran, or she’d have had a more visible reaction to that famous name and address where he’d shipped the ghastly vase. Not only Not From Around Here, but also Not Been Here Long.
Her companion’s elegant gengineering was almost Cetagandan in its subtlety—but the Cetagandans didn’t make human novelties as such. Their aesthetic boundaries in that material were very strict, not to mention restricted, reserved for more serious and long-range goals. Now, animals—when Cetagandans were working with animal or plant genomes, or worse, both at once, all bets were off. He shuddered in memory. He would be glad to cross Cetagandans off his list, renegade or otherwise. He would be ecstatic.
Ivan peered around the dim living room. He was not, he assured himself, tied up in a small, dark place. It was a spacious, dark place, and not pitch-dark in any case, given the ambient urban glow from the window. And on the third floor, well aboveground. He sighed, and remembered to keep wriggling his weary feet. The nasty plastic ropes securing his ankles to the chair legs did seem to be slowly stretching. Perhaps he should have tried harder to escape, earlier. But the two women had been taking him right where he’d wanted to go, inside, for just the purpose he’d come, to talk. True, he’d been envisioning friendly chat, not hostile interrogation, but what was that quote Miles was so fond of? Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake. Not that they were enemies, necessarily. He hoped. By could have stood to be clearer on that point, in retrospect.
The next most likely suspect on the body modification front was, of course, the planet and system of Jackson’s Whole, an almost equally unsavory hypothesis supported, alas, by any number of small hints the two women had let fall.
Jackson’s Whole did not have a unified planetary government—in fact, it claimed to have no government at all. Instead, it was ruled by a patchwork of Great Houses—116 of ’em the last Ivan had heard, but the number shifted in their internecine competitions—and countless Houses Minor. They tended not to hold large, unified territories on the planet’s surface, but rather, interpenetrated more like competing companies. Granted, the system, or lack of it, did make it less likely for the Jacksonians to pull together for, say, a major military invasion of their neighbors. But a person who had no House allegiance or employment there was a very unprotected person indeed.
Ivan had no trouble imagining all sorts of colorful reasons for the two young women to be on the run from the Whole. Any sensible persons not aligned with the power structure—structures—would be better off emigrating, if they could manage it. The real mystery was why anyone from there would be chasing them. Assassination wasn’t that casual a business expense, not with interstellar distances in play. If the two had made it all the way to Komarr but were still this afraid, someone with resources must really care, and not in a good way.
The room was not growing smaller. Nor darker. Nor damper. Nor changing in any way. But dear God this chair was getting hard. He hitched his shoulders and wriggled his butt, recalling all those dire warnings about deep-vein thrombosis and long rides in shuttle seats. As if he didn’t have enough paranoia running through his aching head right now. Though his legs had stopped with the post-stun pins-and-needles, and were down to just pins.
So how had the two women fallen in together, and what was their relationship, really? Was the blue woman friend, business partner, servant, lover, or bodyguard to the other? Some combination, or something even more arcane? When, inevitably, he’d had to pee, Rish had taken the con in the argument over whether it was safe to let him up. Ivan’s plaintive, How long do I have to spend not attacking you to prove I’m not attacking you? had moved the warmer Nanja, but not the gold-eyed other. In the end, Nanja had left the room, and Rish had held a plastic jug.
Decanting his bladder was too much of a relief by then for Ivan to be embarrassed, much. Rish’s strange beauty did not diminis
h close up, it just grew ever more detailed, almost fractal, but he’d stayed shriveled in her hand nonetheless, too alarmed to be aroused by her cool touch. She’d been as impersonal and efficient as a trained medtech. Which was undoubtedly just as well. Ivan couldn’t vouch for how things would have gone had the task fallen to her partner.
So had undertaking the chore indicated anything except the price of winning the argument, or that Rish was protectively older, or what? Maybe the two women were escaped slaves. They could ask for asylum—slavery was entirely illegal in the Imperium, even more disapproved than gaudy gengineering upon humans, despite the inevitable legal brangling about where mere unfavorable indentures left off and the real thing began. If Rish was a created slave, she might be valuable enough to pursue. Hell, maybe Nanja had stolen her, now there was a thought. That’d tick someone off…
For a planet with a mere nineteen-and-something-hour sidereal day, this was turning into a damned long night. Ivan eyed his out-of-reach wristcom and tried to estimate the time left till dawn, and his non-arrival at work. His credit chit, used at the shipping shop, would surely give ImpSec a Last Known Location. Nanja’s co-clerk would come under questioning about as soon as the investigating officer could scramble there, and probably wouldn’t even need fast-penta to identify Ivan. ImpSec—not Service Security, for reasons Ivan had not yet confided to his quarry—would probably be knocking on the door before the two women had finished arguing over whether to feed their famished prisoner any breakfast. Pleasant, well-upholstered Nanja, Ivan imagined, would take his side…
His breath stopped at a faint scratching noise from the living room window. The flat was three floors up; there was no wind within a dome to move, say, tree branches against the polarizing glass, even assuming there were any trees on that side of the building. He hadn’t had a chance to look. He opened his mouth again, exhaling as quietly as possible. Well—he scraped for optimism—maybe ImpSec hadn’t waited for morning…? And if you believe that, I have a cousin who will sell you the Star Bridge in Vorbarr Sultana…
A hiss, a faint glow, as a narrow plasma beam cut a large hole in the window. Ivan thought he could see two dark shapes briefly limned in the dark beyond. Three floors up? They had to be riding some kind of float pallet, out there above the alley. The panel of normally unbreakable glass was eased back soundlessly out of the way.
Ivan had quite expected ImpSec to come collect him, yet another reason not to exert himself unduly in pointless escape attempts. But not at this hour, and not by that route. It seemed Nanja’s paranoia was more urgently justified than he’d thought.
Ivan became uncomfortably aware that he was still tied to the bloody chair. Even if he could, by some heroic effort, rip his feet out of their restraints (shedding his shoes in the process), his wrists would remain bound to the chair arms. The most he’d be able to manage would be a sort of barefoot, crouching waddle toward his probably-armed foes. Maybe he could swing around and hit them in the shins with the chair legs…? Ivan had no desire to be stunned twice in one day, even optimistically assuming they bore stunners and not some more lethal weapons.
Ivan sank back and waited till both dark shapes had oozed through the gap and stood up, before calling out in a carrying voice: “If you’re after those two women, I gotta tell you, you’re hours too late. They packed their bags and flew ages ago.”
A low-voiced huff from the dark that might have been, What the hell…? A faint double gleam from night goggles as two startled heads turned toward him.
“You may as well turn on the lights,” Ivan continued, loudly. “You could stand to untie me, too.” He bounced in place and thumped his chair legs, as if for emphasis.
The shapes trod forward. One reached to shove up his goggles and hit the light pad on the wall; the other yelped, “Ow!”, clapped his hands over his eyes, and hastily dragged down his own light-amplifying eyewear. Cheap civilian models, Ivan observed, wincing against the sudden glare, not that anything more exotic would be required for this sort of sortie.
The first intruder strode toward him. Waving a stunner, Ivan noted wearily. “Who the hell are you?” the man demanded.
Two males. Komarran accents. And heights and general builds, though Komarran phenotypes were not nearly so uniformly blended as Barrayaran. It was all their centuries of trade, and passing traders, when Barrayar had been cut off from the Nexus at large. Dark clothing that might pass as street wear.
“A few minutes ago, I’d have said I was a completely innocent bystander, but now I’m starting to think I might be someone who was mistaken for you,” said Ivan amiably. “I don’t suppose you could untie me?”
“And why are you strapped to that chair?” added the other, staring.
“Tortured, too,” Ivan supplied inventively. Nanja, Rish, wake up! “Horribly. For hours.”
The second man peered in suspicion. “I don’t see any marks.”
“It was psychological torture.”
“What kind?”
“Well,” Ivan said, beginning with the first thought that rose to his mind, “they took off all their clothes, and then—”
The first man said, “Don’t talk to him, you fool! The job’s gone wrong. Toss the place and let’s split.”
“Hey, it gets better—don’t you want to know about the ice cubes…?”
“Should we grab him, instead?”
The stunner wavered in doubt, steadied, pointing all-too-directly into Ivan’s face. “Decide on the way out. Stun him first.”
And ask questions later? In some nastier locale, much harder for ImpSec to find…? Dammit, Miles could have talked two such goons into untying him. Yeah, and probably suborned them to his cause before the ropes hit the floor, to boot. The trigger finger tightened…
The staccato buzz of a stunner beam came not from the Komarran, but from the shadows of the darkened hallway. Two pulses, two direct head-hits, the most effective if you could make the aim. The range was short. The invaders dropped like sacks of cement.
Ivan controlled his involuntary flinch. “About time you two woke up,” he said cheerily, swiveling his head.
Rish padded into the light, followed at a more cautious tiptoe by Nanja. Neither woman wore filmy nightwear, Ivan saw to his disappointment. And apparently neither slept bare, more’s the pity. Instead, both wore body-hugging knits suitable for the gym. Or for snapping awake in the middle of the night and dealing with unpleasant surprises.
“You know, if anything I said maybe led you to think I didn’t quite believe you, I mean, about being a touch twitchy about uninvited visitors, I take it back,” Ivan began. He nodded to the two lumps on the floor. “Anybody you know?”
Rish knelt and turned them over. Nanja followed to stare down into their faces.
“No,” said Rish.
“Local rental meat,” said Nanja, in a more disgusted tone. Her face grew suddenly tenser. “They’ve tracked us. Not only to Komarr, but all the way to here. Rish, now what do we do?”
“Follow the plan.” The blue woman rose and stared down at the unconscious pair. “Kill them first, I suppose.”
“Wait, wait!” said Ivan, a twinge of panic running through him. She meant that, even if she didn’t sound very enthusiastic about it. “I mean, I agree with your diagnosis, local hirelings. Suggests they probably don’t know much. And I don’t think they were assassins—cappers. They were kidnappers, I bet.” He added after a moment, “And don’t I get any reward for saving you from them, just now? I mean, a kiss would be nice, but untying me would be more practical.”
Nanja, after long look at him, nodded. Under her blue companion’s disapproving glare, she knelt and undid Ivan’s bonds. He vented a whoosh of relief, rubbing his wrists and ankles before carefully standing up. The room only spun a little.
He really shouldn’t push it, but faint heart never won, and all that. He bent his head and presented his cheek to her, just to see what would happen.
A hesitation. A widening of her eyes, which, clos
e up, were a clear sherry color, lighter than her skin, very striking framed with her long black lashes. To his unconcealed delight, she stretched her neck and bestowed a neat peck on his cheekbone.
“See?” he said, in an encouraging tone. “That wasn’t so hard.” The spot tingled pleasantly.
He poked an invader with his toe in passing, as Rish knelt to go through their pockets, then stuck his head out the big rectangular hole in the window through which a faint draft now coursed. A float pallet of much the sort used by techs to effect repairs on tall building faces hovered just below the frame. It bore a large plastic bin, typical of receptacles used to haul away soiled linens in hotels or hospitals. Empty. You could just about fit two stunned women into it, Ivan judged, if you folded them up snugly. Ah, the classics. But a cheap, common object; no one would look at it twice, so long as it wasn’t trundled through some very inappropriate location.
He drew back inside and turned to the two women. “Yep, kidnapping. Not murder. Unless they meant to kill you and then cart away the bodies, tidily. Any guesses which?”
Nanja stood hugging herself, looking cold. “It could be either, I suppose. Depending.”
“Any idea who would be sending you budget ninjas in the dark before dawn? No, silly question, belay that. Would you care to share with me who would, and so on?”
She shook her head. The clouds of curls bounced in a forlorn fashion.
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