by Timothy Zahn
Corran’s forehead furrowed slightly. “So that’s how it works, huh? You keep quiet, and I owe you one?”
Karrde looked back along the command walkway. From around the corner of the aft bridge Mirax and Valin had reappeared, Mirax looking cautious, the boy tugging impatiently at his mother’s hand with the obvious wish to run to Daddy. “Yes, you owe me one,” he told Corran. “But be assured that when I collect, it’ll be something safe. I owe Mirax that much.” He considered. “Either that, or something vital that absolutely has to be done.”
Corran snorted gently. “That covers a lot of ground.”
Karrde shrugged. “As I said. It’s a big, dangerous galaxy.”
CHAPTER
12
The west wall of the Resinem Entertainment Complex was dirty and salt-encrusted, discolored with age and pitted by the debris from the explosion fifteen years earlier that had leveled the rival gambling hall down the street. From the far side of the fifty-meter depression that marked the explosion’s center the Resinem’s west wall was said to be rather attractive, the random bits of damage weaving themselves into intriguing visual patterns, particularly in the shifting glow of a Borcorash sunset.
But sunset was long past, and Shada wasn’t on the far side of the pit, anyway. She was three-quarters of the way up the west wall, digging her climbing hooks carefully into the various cracks and cavities; and from this perspective, all she could tell was that the wall was dirty and not much fun. Join a smuggling group, she thought darkly for about the fifth time since beginning her climb. Visit a side of the galaxy the tourists never see.
It wasn’t fun, but it was necessary. Very soon now Mazzic and Griv would be escorted onto the Resinem’s ultra-private top floor for a meeting with a smooth-talking Kubaz who represented a shadowy Hutt crime cartel. Griv was carrying a small case full of ryll, the Kubaz would be carrying a similarly sized case full of Sormahil fire gems, and in theory the gathering would break up with a simple and mutually profitable exchange.
In theory.
Somewhere in the distance off to her right an airspeeder swung around in preparation for landing; and as its landing lights sent a brief splash of pale illumination across the wall in front of her, Shada felt a fresh surge of depression sweep through her. She hadn’t been home to Emberlene for over twelve years now, not since Mazzic had hired her on as his bodyguard, but the grime and deterioration of this wall had brought all those memories back as if it had been yesterday. Memories of growing up amid the ruins of what had once been great cities. Memories of the death that had struck so often around her: death by disease, by malnutrition, by violence, by hopelessness. Memories of pervasive hunger, of eking out an existence by the vermin she was able to catch and kill, and on her share of the meager foodstuffs that came in from what was left of the countryside’s arable land.
And on the outworld supplies that finally began coming in. Supplies not donated by caring offworlders or a generous Republic, but earned by the blood and sweat and lives of the Mistryl shadow guards.
They were the elite of what remained of Emberlene society, commissioned personally in their crusade by the Eleven Elders of the People; and from her earliest childhood Shada had wanted with all her heart to be one of them. The Mistryl roamed the starlanes, a sisterhood of exquisitely trained warrior women, hiring out their services and combat skills to the oppressed and powerless of the galaxy and receiving in exchange the money vital for keeping the remnants of their devastated world alive.
A world whose people no one had ever even noticed, let alone cared about. Unlike, say, Caamas.
With an effort, she choked down the ripple of resentment at all the attention Caamas had been getting the past couple of weeks. The destruction of Emberlene was too far in the past to get emotional about anymore, even for her. No one in the galaxy had cared back when it was attacked; they certainly couldn’t be expected to care now. Yes, it was unfair; but no one had ever claimed the universe was fair.
From just above and to her left came a soft, questioning burp. Shada paused, looking up into the darkness, and spotted the reflection from a faint pair of close-set eyes looking down at her from deep shadow. “It’s okay,” she murmured toward the eyes, cautiously pulling herself up for a closer look. On this part of Borcorash it was probably a harmless blufferavian, but it never hurt to be careful.
The caution turned out to be unnecessary. It was indeed a blufferavian, resting on a nest built into a particularly deep niche in the wall. From beneath its wing she caught a glimpse of a couple of speckled eggs.
“Don’t worry, I’m not hungry,” she soothed the creature. Once upon a time, she remembered darkly, she’d been quite good at catching avians that size. They’d tasted much better than the city’s scavenger insects …
Shaking away the thoughts, she shifted her weight to free up one hand and pulled a safety anchor off her climbing harness. Her Mistryl instructors would probably have criticized her use of a safety line, pointing out that it took time to fasten the anchors and that a true Mistryl would never slip in the first place. But her climb training was many years in her past, and all the speed in the galaxy would gain her nothing if she fell before reaching the rooftop.
On the other hand, if there was anything to Mazzic’s suspicions about this meeting, getting up there too late would be just as futile as not getting there at all. About two meters of wall left, she estimated as she glanced upward, with maybe twice that number of minutes left before Mazzic and Griv arrived upstairs. Locking the slender, nearly invisible safety line into the anchor, not waiting until the faint hiss of the molecular welding between anchor and wall had faded away, she passed the blufferavian’s nest and continued her climb.
She had made it to the top, and was just reaching a hand up toward the edge, when she heard a faint sound.
She froze, listening, but the sound wasn’t repeated. Easing her hand down, she pulled another safety anchor from her harness and set it against the wall as far to her left as she could reach. Hoping the hissing sound was too quiet to be heard by whomever was up there, she locked her safety line into the anchor and also locked the feed at her harness. Now, if she was shot at when she poked her head up over the edge, dropping down would swing her around that point in a tight arc to pop up a meter and a half to the side. It wasn’t much, but in a gunfight the ability to throw off an opponent’s aim even that much could make all the difference. Easing her blaster from its holster, she flicked off the safety—
“Hello, Shada,” a soft voice said from directly above her.
She looked up. A cloaked figure was standing at the edge looking down at her. But even in the gloom Shada could see enough of the other’s face … “Karoly?” she murmured.
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” Karoly D’ulin said. “Just put your blaster up here on the roof, would you? Then come on up.”
Shada reached up and set the weapon beside Karoly’s feet. Then, remembering to unlock the line feed from her harness, she pulled herself the rest of the way.
Straightening up, she took a quick look around. Here at the edge the roof was flat, but a few meters inward it rose at a sharp angle another meter or so before flattening out again. Beyond the rise Shada could see the top of the long skylight enclosure that crowned the upper room.
The room where Mazzic was about to get down to business.
“You’re probably the last person I would have expected to see up here,” she commented, looking back at Karoly.
“I imagine so,” Karoly agreed. She’d picked up the blaster while Shada was finishing her climb, and now tucked it away somewhere inside her cloak. “You can take off those climbing hooks, too—we’ll be going back down by one of the interior stairways. Just set them down on the roof, if you would.”
“Of course,” Shada said, unstrapping the hooks from her forearms and setting them down on the roof beside her. They weren’t all that useful as weapons, but Karoly obviously wasn’t interested in taking chances. Kneeling dow
n, she undid the foot hooks as well, then straightened up again. “Happy?”
Karoly pursed her lips. “You act as if we’re enemies, Shada. We’re not.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Shada said, studying the younger woman’s face. It had indeed been a long time since they’d worked together—almost twenty years, in fact, since Tatooine and that near fiasco with the Imperials’ Hammertong project. The memory Shada had brought away from that incident was one of Karoly as young and inexperienced and a bit prone to becoming flustered.
But the memory wasn’t the woman who now stood before her. Sometime in those twenty years Karoly had developed grace and poise, and an air of considerable competence. “How did you know I’d be coming up this side?”
“We didn’t,” Karoly said, shrugging. “The rest of the approaches to the rooftop are also being watched. But I thought I spotted you slipping around the side of the building in that layered blue dress of yours, and I guessed you might try this way.” She gestured to Shada’s elaborately coiled and plaited hair, then at her tight-fitting combat jumpsuit and climbing harness. “I must say, the dress suited that hairstyle better than the fighting gear. What are those things holding it together?”
“They’re lacquered zenji needles,” Shada told her. “Mazzic likes me to look decorative.”
“Useful camouflage for a bodyguard,” Karoly said. “Speaking of camouflage, I’d guess one of the needles must be a disguised signaler or comlink. Just drop it on the roof, all right?”
Shada grimaced. “You don’t miss a trick, do you?” she said, pulling the signaler out from its place behind her right ear and adding it to the pile of climbing hooks. “I’m so glad we’re not enemies. Who is this ‘we’ you mentioned?”
“I have a client with me.” Karoly nodded toward the higher section of roof. “He’s over there.”
Crouched beside the skylight with a sniper’s blaster rifle? “Doing what?”
“Nothing that concerns you,” Karoly said. “As of right now, you’ve been pulled off the job.”
Shada frowned at her. “What are you talking about? I’ve been with Mazzic for over twelve years now. You can’t end that kind of relationship with the snap of a finger.”
“We can, and we are,” Karoly said. “It’s clear now that Mazzic’s group isn’t going to become the galaxy-spanning organization that the Mistryl hoped when they first planted you on him. And with Talon Karrde’s Smugglers’ Alliance all but defunct, the Eleven have decided you’re just being wasted here. It’s time for you to move on.”
“Fine,” Shada said, taking two steps back away from Karoly along the roof edge and craning her neck as if trying to see if she could catch a glimpse of Karoly’s client. “I’ll tell Mazzic tonight that I’m resigning as his bodyguard. We can leave in the morning.”
Karoly shook her head. “I’m sorry. We leave now.”
Shada looked back, leveling a hard stare at Karoly and surreptitiously gauging the distance between them. Three meters; just about right. “Why?” she demanded. “Because your new client wants to murder him?”
Even in the dim light she could see Karoly wince a little. But when the other woman spoke her voice was firm enough. “I suggest you try to remember who we are, Shada,” she said. “We’re Mistryl. We’re given orders and we follow them.”
“I’m also Mazzic’s bodyguard,” Shada said quietly. “And once upon a time the Mistryl were given honor and obeyed duty. Not just orders.”
Karoly snorted under her breath. “Honor. You have been out of touch, haven’t you?”
“Apparently so,” Shada countered. “I’ve always tried to believe that being a Mistryl put me a few steps above the garbage heap of mercenaries and assassins-for-hire. Forgive my naïveté.”
Karoly’s face darkened. “We do what’s necessary to keep our people alive,” she bit out. “If some slimy Hutt wants to back-blade some other slimy smuggler, that’s none of our concern.”
“Correction: it’s none of your concern,” Shada said. “It is mine. I have a job to do, Karoly; and you can get out of my way or you can get hurt.” She reached up to her harness and locked her safety line—
Karoly’s hand seemed to twitch, and suddenly there was a small blaster in it. “Freeze it,” she ordered. “Move your hands away from your body. Empty.”
Shada held her arms loosely out from her sides, fingers spread to prove she wasn’t holding or palming anything. “You’ll have to kill me to stop me,” she warned.
“I hope not. Now turn around.”
This was it. Arms still held away from her body, Shada rotated ninety degrees to face the skylight—
And taking a step backward, she dropped off the edge of the roof.
She’d half expected Karoly to get a quick blaster shot off before she disappeared over the edge. It didn’t happen; Karoly either freezing with surprise or else too self-controlled to fire uselessly. But Shada didn’t have time to speculate on which it was. The safety line snapped taut, and suddenly she was caroming off the wall as she swung down and to her right, pivoting about that last anchor she’d set near the rooftop. Another two seconds, she estimated, and she would pass the midpoint of her oscillation and swing up again to the rooftop where Karoly and her blaster waited.
She had just those two seconds to find a way to take down her onetime friend.
The startled blufferavian didn’t even have time to squawk as Shada snatched it from its nest. She managed to grab one of the eggs with her other hand; and then she was swinging back up toward the roof.
And her two-second grace period was over. Even as she cocked the bird over her shoulder in throwing position Karoly appeared above her at the edge of the roof, hurrying toward the spot from which Shada had jumped, her eyes and blaster tracking down the side of the building. She caught sight of Shada—floundered off balance for a split second as she tried to halt her forward movement and shift her aim—
And with a grunt of exertion, Shada hurled the blufferavian at her face.
There was no time for Karoly to think, no time for her even to pause and evaluate. There was a sudden confused flurry of wings in front of her as the blufferavian tried to recover its equilibrium; and in the absence of thought, powerfully ingrained Mistryl combat reflexes took over. She jerked back, the movement eroding her precarious balance even further, twisted the muzzle of her blaster toward the incoming missile, and fired.
The blaster bolt caught the blufferavian dead center, and suddenly the flapping wings became a turmoil of flame and sparks and acrid smoke. Karoly ducked away from the fireball, twisting her head to the side—
Just in time to catch Shada’s thrown blufferavian egg squarely across the bridge of her nose.
She gasped as the egg splattered into her eyes, throwing her free hand up to try to wipe away the semiliquid mass blinding her as Shada hit her safety-line feed release again and vaulted up on to the rooftop. Circling a couple of meters to her right to get out of the line of fire of the blaster still waving in her general direction, she angled in.
She reached Karoly just as the younger woman got her eyes cleared, kicking the blaster out of her hand as she tried to bring the weapon around toward her. The blaster hit the edge of the roof behind Karoly and bounced off into the darkness below. “Shassa,” Karoly hissed the old curse, jumping to her right out of Shada’s reach and producing a gleaming knife from somewhere. “Shada—”
“I’m obeying my duty,” Shada said, sidestepping to her right away from the knife tip. “You’ve still got the option of getting out of my way.”
Karoly hissed something else and lunged forward. Shada sidestepped again toward her right, feinted toward Karoly, took another quick step to the side and then changed direction back toward the skylight.
But Karoly had anticipated the move. Blinking more of the egg out of her eyes, she took a long step the same direction, her knife waving warningly. Shada countered by stepping perilously close to the roof edge and taking two quick strides along it i
n an attempt to get around onto Karoly’s left side away from her knife hand. Karoly spun around in response, knife held ready. “Don’t make me do this, Shada,” she snarled.
Snarled. And yet, Shada thought she could hear a buried note of pleading there as well. “All right, Karoly,” she said softly. “I won’t.” Snapping on her climbing harness’s feed lock again, she leaped backward one last time along the edge of the roof—
And the safety line that her carefully choreographed sparring maneuvers had threaded neatly around behind Karoly snapped up tautly to catch the younger woman across the tops of her low boots. Flailing her knife uselessly as her feet were yanked out from under her, she fell with a painful sounding thud flat onto her back.
Shada was on her in an instant, one foot coming down on Karoly’s knife wrist as she slapped away the other hand and then jabbed stiffened fingertips into the soft spot beneath her rib cage. With an agonized grunt Karoly folded up around the impact and toppled over on her side. Shada jabbed again, this time behind Karoly’s ear, and the younger woman relaxed and lay still.
Breathing hard, Shada reached over and snatched the knife from Karoly’s limp hand, cutting her safety line before she wound up tangled in it herself. The fight hadn’t taken long and had been reasonably quiet, but odds were that Karoly’s client had heard the ruckus and would be coming to investigate. If she could arrange to meet him halfway—
A movement at the corner of her eye was her only warning. But it was enough. Even as she threw herself to the side in a flat dive a blaster bolt sizzled through the air where she’d been standing. She rolled back to her knees, eyes sweeping the raised section of rooftop and locating her assailant: a prone figure in a black poncho and hood, the protruding snout of his blaster rifle tracking toward her. Snapping her hand up, Shada threw Karoly’s knife toward him.