Prime- The Summons

  Xai wandered out into the courtyard while Joaquim was bathing, oddly mesmerized by the plant-life. She examined the great fronds of the leaves, their pulsing sap, the sharp cleanliness of their scent. There was something so pure about them. She ran her fingers gently over their waxy skin, fascinated.

  “Xai,” Joaquim called from the doorway. He had trimmed his hair, and was now wearing the space suit, a tall, handsome, dark skinned man of indeterminate origin and definite charisma. Her heart sank when she saw his expression.

  “Xai,” Joaquim said, coming to a halt before her, “I have to go out.”

  Xai paled. “You don’t want me to go with you,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Xai,” Joaquim replied, his tone very gentle, “the Third Circle isn’t a safe place.”

  Xai looked at him for a moment. The only thing she could feel was betrayal. “I thought I was a member of your Clan, now.”

  Joaquim frowned. “That’s not it,” he told her, annoyed. “It will be very dangerous, Xai,” he continued. “The worst sort are to be found on the Third Circle. You’ll be far safer here.”

  Xai looked at him, knowing disbelief was etched clearly on her features. “Very well,” she said, turning to go into the rooms.

  Joaquim caught her arm. He was scowling. They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Ancestors,” Joaquim said finally, almost as if it was a curse. “Get changed.”

  Xai practically sagged with relief. “Yes sir,” she said.

  Joaquim watched her tiny young form dart into the suite, his brow furrowed with worry.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  XAI AND JOAQUIM took a pod together to the Third Circle. Xai marveled at the precision of their flight, at the way they curved through space, jettisoned from one spinning wheel in a perfectly timed arc to rise and be caught in the magnetic beam emanating from the place they were to land. The stars in the distance danced with delicate, pristine fire, a wide, shimmering canvas forming the perfect backdrop to this huge and multifarious mechanical organism and she caught her breath—amazed by the sheer ingenuity of man.

  Joaquim was frowning, still clearly unhappy he was bringing her. Xai didn’t care. She was too glad to be with him.

  “This is a dangerous place,” Joaquim admonished, his tone very serious—lecturing, almost. He was sitting across the pod from her, lounging elegantly against the backdrop of the stars, the bando propped against his knee. “You can get a lot of information in gambling circles. That’s why we’re going. But for God’s sake don’t attract anyone’s attention.”

  Xai nodded, careful to keep any glimmer of happiness off her face.

  “Just stay behind me, all right?” Joaquim asked.

  “Yes,” Xai replied. Joaquim frowned worriedly again.

  “Do you know how to use that thing?” he asked, nodding at the knife strapped to her leg. The Rydian suit had a special holster at the thigh, and Xai had strapped the knife on at the first opportunity. She felt oddly relieved with it there, somehow more in control. It reminded her of the cian’xou.

  “Yes,” Xai told him. Joaquim nodded unhappily. The pod paused, and there was a moment of weightlessness, before they were towed down toward their destination.

  “Don’t use it unless your life is in danger,” he cautioned.

  “Why not?” Xai asked. He was beginning to remind her of Marcus’s mother, a woman to whom worry had been a natural state.

  “The bando,” Joaquim explained, “the baton—these are not considered killing weapons to T’lasians. I have heard Messinians were good with their hands and feet. If you can, use those. If you use a killing weapon on the Salak you will set all the T’lasians against you.”

  “Why did you let me take it, then?” Xai asked, disturbed.

  Joaquim scowled unhappily. “The Salak is a dangerous place. Someone tried to have me killed. You should have the right to defend yourself.”

  Xai looked out at the stars, not certain what to think.

  “Don’t worry,” Joaquim said as the pod docked on the Third Circle, his apprehensive expression belying his admonition. “Follow my lead.” Xai nodded, getting to her feet beside him. The door opened with a hiss.

  On the Fifth Circle the esplanade was set down in the base of the Circle, with the buildings soaring up around it. On the Third, the walkway was along the upper third of the Ring, and there were no buildings. The esplanade ran from one side of the Circle to the other, with nothing obscuring the sight of the stars and the gleaming lights of the other Circles. Periodically, along the floor, there were elevator shafts, which ran into the ground, or stairwells, out of which rose raucous noise.

  It was a surprisingly dark place, and even the signs in hundreds of different languages that flashed before their field of view could do nothing against the feeling of immense loneliness that it seemed to create. There was nothing before them but the heavens and the sight of the Salak. Xai could see, whirling past her eyes, people in the other Circles, immersed in their lives, but they were kept from her by the great expanse of space and its immense, impenetrable darkness.

  Men and women clustered beneath the stars, watching them with predatory eyes. It smelled of cheap perfume, sweat, and stalely sanitized air. “Looking for something in particular?” a young man asked in a sibilant tone of voice. Xai realized with a sudden shock that he had four arms and was several years younger than she.

  “Just the gambling halls,” Joaquim replied in a loud tone of voice.

  “There are better things to throw your money away on,” called an older woman. Or Xai thought it was a woman. She wasn’t sure.

  “And you’d be one of them, I’m certain,” Joaquim said with a smile. The prostitutes laughed and fell back to speaking among themselves.

  “How?” Xai asked as she hurried after Joaquim.

  “Indenture, most of them,” Joaquim said sourly, walking quickly, as if he were in a hurry to get away. “Most are heavily augmented. The term is usually five to ten years.”

  Xai turned back to get a last glimpse. A group of men—Edoxian traders, she thought—had come up to them. The sounds of bargaining reached her through the blue air. “They’re slaves,” she said bluntly.

  Joaquim nodded, his face grim. “Yes. To all extents and purposes, that’s exactly what they are.”

  Xai and Joaquim walked side by side for a while, passing entrances to what seemed to be hotels and bars. Prostitutes lurked against the panels, shadows, darkness against the luminescence of the stars. Occasionally someone would stagger past them. One man almost bumped into them, cursing. It was more sordid than anything Xai had ever encountered.

  Xai turned to look back, once, and saw what she though was the shape of a man in a robe, following them. The sight of the Messinian watching her came back suddenly, and she fought down a shiver.

  After five minutes of walking they came to the end of the causeway. A great translucent panel ran from one side of the boulevard to the other, with huge doors set in its center. They overlooked a great hall of brilliant light. Huge curving stairways led down several stories to a room that went back as far as Xai could see, filled with tables, gambling media, and thousands of people.

  Forty or fifty people stood outside the doors, illuminated by the light from the gambling arena. A group of young men and women from a culture Xai did not know were walking in the direction of the pods, speaking volubly to each other, obviously filled with excitement about the experience they had just had. There were several T’lasian men seated in the curve of the Circle, sharing a pipe filled with a harsh smelling weed. There were perhaps fifteen prostitutes of different sexes and ages. What looked like two access control droids stood positioned before the doors. As Xai and Joaquim came up to them, they appeared to rebuff the entry of seven or eight young T’lasian males, all wearing green robes.

  “Tata,” Joaquim cursed under his breath.

  The young men turned away from the doors, scowling. One said something to another. He
replied by pushing the other roughly away. He returned, his hand in a fist. Then a third saw Joaquim and called something out in T’lasian. As a group they turned toward Xai and Joaquim, hostility and drunkenness seeping off them in waves. Xai tensed and fell into Joaquim’s Second.

  “You,” said the first of the Tata in thickly accented Basic. He was the one who had pushed the other away. “Old man,” he continued. “Rydian. Who gave you the right to carry a bando?” The others came up behind him, sneering. They were all about Xai’s age—young, drunk, and, Xai was beginning to think, very stupid.

  Joaquim looked at the young men standing before him. “A friend of mine taught me to use it,” he said. His tone was surprisingly mild.

  “No non-T’lasians are allowed to carry the bando,” the young man said peremptorily.

  “My T’lasian friend,” Joaquim said, still in that calm, reasonable tone of voice, “told me that no non-T’lasian knew how to carry the bando.”

  One of the men sharing the pipe laughed loudly, amused. The Tata before Joaquim flushed. “You will give it to me,” he said.

  Joaquim smiled, a blossoming of that unexpected charm. “Certainly,” he replied. “But what will you give me in return?”

  The hostility in the young man’s face pooled into rage and he lunged toward Joaquim, a short baton seeming to appear magically in his hand.

  It was almost beautiful, the elegance with which Joaquim moved. He parried the blow with the butt end of the bando and moved to the side, leaving the young Tata to stagger past him. Then, turning, he swung the bando out so that the whip end wrapped around the young man’s ankle. He jerked it and the young man fell to the floor. He tugged it again, and the bando came loose from the young man’s ankles.

  “I do not think I will take your offer,” Joaquim said mildly.

  The first Tata’s companion snarled something. Five of them moved toward Joaquim, in a slight crouch, their hands in fists. Two moved for Xai, wielding sticks.

  Xai slipped into t’ei, Ready Stance, and backed away slowly. “Do not fight your next enemy until the first is fully vanquished,” Dea Boet had once said. She focused on the tattoos on the young men’s faces, on the gleam of their teeth, beneath snarling lips, on the careful movements they made toward her.

  Joaquim was moving easily in a circle, trending toward her. He was worried about her, Xai could tell. One of the T’lasians feinted to his left. Almost faster than the eye could follow, he slipped his bando out. The butt end swung around to connect with the young man’s head, a sodden, thick blow, and he fell without a further sound. The other T’lasians faltered, fear finally seeping into their faces. The two facing Xai turned slightly, instinctive movements toward their comrades, their bodies moving before their minds had grasped the danger.

  Xai lunged forward, feeling her muscles bunch and flex in the routines she had spent her whole life learning. She was upon them before they had realized it, darting underneath the guard of the first to bring a solid blow to his belly, spinning on her foot to bring the other square across the second man’s face. She moved with the blow, brought it around, and swept out the first’s feet. They fell to the ground one after the other and she was past them, moving toward Joaquim just as one of the T’lasians slipped underneath the wide swing of the bando and inside his guard, his arms wrapping around the older man’s waist as he pushed him to the ground. Xai heard Joaquim grunt with pain and then, ominously, nothing else, as he fell beneath a crowd of angry young Tatas.

  She fought with rage, then, and something like desperation. “Hatred sweetens the skill of our hands and makes our blows harder,” Te’meit Wu had once said. It was true. She brought down one with a sharp blow in the back of the neck, pulling him out of the crowd. A second turned, ducked the strike she sent to his face, and hit her roughly in the stomach. Something struck her hard across the shoulder and she turned. A baton caught the edge of her chin, sending her staggering back, the acrid taste of blood in her mouth. With a snarl she pulled the knife from its place on her thigh.

  They stopped then, four of them, circling her warily. Joaquim lay on the ground, blood on his face. The T’lasians sitting in the curve of the Circle rose slowly to their feet, their expressions hardening.

  “Let them go,” said a voice behind her. Xai turned.

  It was the Messinian. He was holding a Rydian Deathstalker rifle, and he seemed prepared to use it. The Tata stepped back reluctantly from Joaquim’s recumbent form. The young T’lasians in the shadows sat back down slowly, murmuring to each other.

  There was no time to worry about how he had found her. She had to get Joaquim away from this place. Xai holstered her knife quickly and moved toward Joaquim. The Messinian moved with her, radiating competence. “Don’t worry,” he said in Basic, his tone low and reassuring, “they’re drunk. They won’t hold it against you tomorrow. And his bio-signs are all right.” He knelt beside her, his eyes on the young men loitering angrily before them, the rifle prominent in his hands.

  Xai leaned forward to pull Joaquim up. As she did so, her mother’s pendant fell out from behind her suit and swayed over his face, gleaming brightly in the blue light. Joaquim moaned and shook his head slightly, his eyelids fluttering. The Messinian gasped, a sharp indrawn breath, and wrapped his fist around the pendant.

  “Kesta’s name!” he whispered in Messinian. “Where did you get this?” he asked, looking up at Xai.

  “Leave us alone,” Xai replied in Basic, pulling Joaquim to his feet.

  “Who are you?” the man repeated intently, his gleaming metallic eyes wide with surprise. “What is your name?” he asked in Messinian. “Give me your name!”

  “Leave us alone,” Xai snarled. Without another word she dragged Joaquim into the gambling hall.

  The access droids made no sound as they passed between them, out of the darkness and into the brilliant light of the gambling hall. The Messinian stayed on his knees, outside the doors, watching them go, the rifle forgotten beside him.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  THE GREAT HALL seemed to go on forever, but Xai did not stop until she was well past it, in a back room near the privies, in what seemed to be a changing area, behind several screens. She set Joaquim down carefully on a bench there. He sat, groaning slightly, his hand to his side. “What was that all about?” he asked huskily.

  “He’s Messinian,” Xai said. She felt out of breath with fear.

  Joaquim moved his hand across his chest. “He saved our lives,” he murmured.

  “I’d like to think I had something to do with that,” Xai said tartly, looking through the spaces in the screens to see if they had been followed.

  Joaquim laughed weakly, then groaned. “Gods, yes,” he replied. “You’re right about that. You saved my life. Child, you certainly can fight!” He looked up at her, his green eyes gleaming with something close to delight. “And here I was, worrying I would have to protect you.”

  Xai said nothing and redoubled her vigilance, feeling mollified. Joaquim rested his head against the wall for a moment, his eyes shut, breathing deeply.

  “Very well,” he said finally, rising slowly to his feet, “let’s go get a drink and recuperate from our battle, shall we?” He washed his hands and face in a basin of water beside him. Xai did the same and followed him back into the casino.

  Unlike the entrance of the casino, the back of it was a warren of rooms, each with a different motif. Some were deathly quiet, with people sitting in almost darkness. Others were filled with people shouting. The gambling went from betting on simple questions of luck, like the turn of a die, to issues of skill, with fights and tournaments. Liberally interspersed between all of the different gambling chambers were dining and drinking rooms. It looked like most of the casino’s customers had used them—Xai thought perhaps half of the people there were under the influence of some sort of drug. Their eyes gleamed unnervingly in the dim lighting, and Xai slipped closer to Joaquim, into his shadow.

  Joaquim finally found a bar to hi
s liking—a large, dark place with small tables, smelling thickly of alcohol and smoke. He chose a small table in the back and sat down, wincing slightly. Xai followed him, trying to seem collected.

  A human waiter came up to them, a young T’lasian man in a space suit and a supercilious expression. “What will you have?” he asked, glancing around the room as though their response was of absolutely no importance to him.

  Joaquim drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table. His good spirits were obviously returning quickly. “I’ll have an Andorian Highball,” he said finally, with some relish.

  The young man looked impatiently at Xai. “Do you have Burrt?” Xai asked. She was startled by the almost plaintive tone of her own voice.

  The waiter cocked a condescending eyebrow. “This is the Salak,” he said haughtily. “We have everything.” He turned and stalked away toward the bar.

  “Sorry,” Xai said to his back. Joaquim started laughing.

  “May we join you?” a woman asked. There were two men with her—all three T’lasians in grey robes. Without waiting for a response they sat down. Xai recognized one as one of the young men smoking by the front door of the gambling hall. The other two were older, around Joaquim’s age, with hard faces and a dangerous air.

  “We thought perhaps we might do some business,” the woman said, cocking her head to the side and examining Joaquim’s face. She had a beautiful voice, a husky contralto, thick with attractiveness. Joaquim seemed to sharpen, his eyes tightening slightly, lidding, becoming wary.

  “There is little I am willing to negotiate,” he replied. The older man and woman exchanged a veiled glance. Then the young waiter returned, placing the Burrt before Xai and a tall glass in front of Joaquim. The sight of the three T’lasians robbed him of his arrogance and he showed Joaquim the credit checker as if he was in a hurry to get away. Joaquim looked into it, and the young man departed, glancing back one last time, his face anxious, almost frightened.