Prime- The Summons

  “I am called Anna,” the woman said. “These are Subhir and John,” she added, gesturing to the two men with her. The young man named John nodded politely. Subhir—a tall man with a face like a hatchet—merely looked at Joaquim. “We are of the T’lasian Clan of the Panjim.”

  “Leave us,” Joaquim replied, his tone very hard. “I have done nothing against your people.”

  “Rumors circle the station,” Anna said calmly, as if Joaquim had not spoken. “People, seeking other people. A man and a girl, they say, recently arrived. They hold something of great value, for which others are willing to pay.”

  Joaquim looked at Anna, his eyes narrowed. “What does that have to do with me?” he said flatly.

  Anna shrugged. “We are T’lasians,” she replied. “We would not wish to deny you the opportunity of a counteroffer. Before—shall we say—that data is passed on to others, who might find it most interesting? A Rydian who fights with a bando as if he were born to it? And a girl who drinks a beverage only a Primer could love?”

  “You—” Joaquim began, his voice tight with annoyance. Abruptly, he stopped, all the blood draining from his face. Xai and the three T’lasians turned to see what he was staring at and the woman Joaquim had seen looked over, attracted by their attention.

  She was an extremely beautiful female by any reckoning, flagrantly lush, exotic, with great dark eyes, high cheekbones and a perfect mouth. Rows of dark braids ran down her skull to meet in a great knot at her nape, setting off the strong line of her jaw and the fragile cast of her neck. Everything about her seemed T’lasian, from the cut of her space suit to the sharp line of her lips and arrogant, pale, finely boned cheeks. And yet, she had no tattoos. Without them she seemed oddly naked, standing in the doorway, her tall form silhouetted by the distant light, regal and strangely lost.

  “Who is that?” Joaquim hissed. His eyes were wide and shocked in his emaciated face.

  Xai realized it then, as did the others. The woman looked like him—something about the curve of her chin and the way her dark hair sprang off her forehead. Somehow, they were related.

  “Who are you?” Anna whispered.

  The woman looked at Joaquim. For a moment they were poised there—he, half out of his chair, she, standing in the doorway. Then a man came up behind her and took her roughly by the arm. Words were exchanged. He pulled her away, his handling brusque. Joaquim rose fully to his feet.

  “Jo—” Xai started anxiously. “Julian,” she amended quickly. “Are you all right?”

  Joaquim looked away from the door and at Xai. His eyes were huge and distressed in his gaunt face. He seemed terribly shaken. “She is the image of Antonia,” he told her. “My sister,” he explained. “She died when I was sixteen. An accident. It broke my father’s heart.”

  “Who are you?” Anna repeated intently, her eyes wide with something like fear. Joaquim ignored her and sank back into his seat, his eyes fixed on the empty doorway.

  “Tell us your name, man,” Subhir said, his tone hard and unforgiving. “Or I will contact the authorities immediately.” Joaquim shook his head and looked at him, seeming to see the three T’lasians for the first time. “By the name of all the ancestors,” the man snarled, “I will.”

  “My name,” Joaquim said finally, biting off the words, his tone filled with barely suppressed fury, “is Joaquim Salazar Syng.”

  Subhir snorted. “Impossible,” he said. “You have not reached forty years.”

  “I was in stasis,” Joaquim replied. “She found me.”

  All three of the T’lasians looked at Xai. Xai nodded, and watched as three very different pairs of eyes widened with shock, alarm, and something that seemed very close to the initial glimmerings of hope. “Ancestors, man,” John said finally, the first to find his voice, “that was your daughter!”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  JOHN’S WORDS seemed to hit Joaquim even harder than the sight of the woman and he reacted with a speed that startled them all, grabbing the young man’s collar and jerking him across the table with a sharp, swift, surprisingly strong pull that left the boy sprawling on the hard surface. Xai barely had time to catch her Burrt.

  “Do not play with me, boy,” Joaquim hissed, a different man than the man Xai had traveled with, a hard and dangerous one. “I will break you in two if you even try.”

  “By all my ancestors,” John gasped, his young, frightened face less than ten centimeters from Joaquim’s, “I swear it! Her name is Joaana Kumar, daughter of Mika! The one you—” He paused, obviously uncertain as to what to say. Joaquim held John sprawled across the table for a further moment, before pushing him back into his seat. His face was rock hard and angry as Xai had never seen it.

  “She has no Syng markings,” he told the boy. “She has no markings at all,” he added. His tone made the words an accusation.

  “You never acknowledged her,” Anna said bluntly.

  “I never knew she existed,” Joaquim snapped, his face tight with annoyance. “How could I? I have been in stasis for thirty-five years. And why didn’t Ricardo have her tested? He knew I loved Mika.”

  The T’lasians exchanged glances. For all their apparent toughness, it was the older two who seemed most shocked by Joaquim’s words. “That is not what the stories say,” Anna told him.

  “She was pledged to the ancestors!” Joaquim snarled, “I would not have made love to her had I not planned to claim her! I had spoken with both Ricardo and Indira about it! They knew my intentions. I was going to speak to the Keeper of the Records when I returned.”

  “But you did not return,” Subhir said, his tone almost gentle. “Indira died, and Ricardo said nothing.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, two men, very alike, tall, dark-skinned and light eyed, with hard, impassive faces. Something very close to rage surged across Joaquim’s face. “Tell me,” he demanded.

  Subhir opened his hands. He seemed almost apologetic. “They say Mika told Ricardo you were to claim each other, but that he denied it. He said he would not legitimize another of your by-blows purely on her word.”

  “She was ancestor-pledged,” Joaquim snarled.

  “Yes,” Subhir replied. “So she was banished from the ranks of the Chosen. As was her daughter.”

  Joaquim looked at the other man, his face becoming very still and cold.

  “He would not,” he said.

  Subhir shrugged, an unexpectedly diffident gesture from so hard a man. “He did,” he replied.

  Joaquim examined Subhir’s face. Then, abruptly, he sat back, his expression pale and weak. His whole world seemed shaken by what the other man had said.

  “Joaquim,” Xai asked. “What does that mean?”

  Joaquim looked over at Xai, very sad, suddenly. “Ancestor pledged must be chaste—this law reaches back to Lasia itself. Mika…” he looked away, his gaze filling with visions of the past. “She was the most perfect thing I had ever encountered,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Young—younger than you. I seduced her on the last night of the Salak. She could not resist me any more than I could her.” He sat in his seat for a moment, remembering. The three T’lasians and Xai waited, watching the course of memory across his face. The T’lasians seemed almost to pity him.

  Joaquim looked back at Xai, returning to the present. “The only way to wipe this dishonor from the annals would have been for me to claim her,” he explained. “We T’lasians set great store in true love. A man foolish enough to sleep with an ancestor pledged, and an ancestor pledged, foolish enough to accept him—well, only madness or real love would make that happen. We forgive the mad—they are mad and don’t know what they do. As for love—is it not a madness? That I did not acknowledge it as such, that I was not willing to do so, would say she had willingly broken her vow simply for carnal pleasure. For that, she would be banished from the People, no longer one of us. The penalties were higher for her. She had been chosen—a great honor, reserved for few.”

  Xai nodded, understandi
ng. They were outcasts now, and Joaquim was the cause of it. “Death is easier than the pain of ones we love.” Tal’ei Xein.

  “Where are they now?” Joaquim asked.

  “With Mika’s brother,” Subhir replied, “Hanuman. He keeps them.”

  “It must be the ancestors’ will,” Anna said suddenly. The other two looked at her. “It must,” she repeated. She turned to face Joaquim, beautiful and dangerous, like a snake, attractive and deadly at once. “Syng,” she said intently, “for that is what I believe you are, you must know the truth of it. Ricardo seeks to take us into alliance with the Rydians. He seeks to break Prama’s vow, the vow all our ancestors took, that which makes us who we are. The Syng founded the People—we all know the nature of that debt. It is written,” she added, gesturing to her cheek, “on our very faces. How can we deny it, without being considered oath breakers?

  “But if you are here,” she continued, “if you speak out and challenge him for leadership of the Clan, this madness may be averted. You could step in, before we lose forever that which makes us what we are. Council starts in two days—it’s well known that he plans to bring it to vote then. They say he will call in Prama’s debt. There are no other Syng’s to challenge—they all died years ago.”

  “There are rumors some Clans will leave the Salak if he does,” Subhir added. Joaquim looked at him, his expression startled and dismayed. Subhir nodded. “I know those on the Panjim council. They say the Panjim may go.”

  “You would be known as oath breakers?” Joaquim asked, sounding profoundly shocked.

  “Would you put the People under the dominion of the Emperor of the heavens?” Subhir retorted.

  Joaquim shook his head slightly, as if he did not want to admit the words.

  “If you doubt us,” Anna said, “ask other T’lasians. These are hard times, and all the Clans feel it.”

  “We are your People,” Subhir murmured, his tone oddly gentle. “But Joaana is your daughter, and Mika your beloved.” He rose to his feet then, and the other two followed, standing looking down at the man before them. “If you are not willing to do it for us, do you not owe it to them?”

  Joaquim stayed in his seat and watched them leave, as they went out the door and back into the casino.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  AS soon as they were out of the doorway Joaquim rose to his feet, his face pale, his expression distant. “Come,” he said, and strode out of the bar. Xai took a last, hurried swallow of her Burrt and darted after him.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, as she followed him down the wide hall.

  “We are going to the Keeper of the Records.”

  “You’re just going to announce yourself?” Xai asked. “Don’t you think that might be a little dangerous?”

  Joaquim stopped in the middle of the hallway. A tall woman in Andrazian dress staggered past them, obviously drunk. A man followed her, slipped his arm around her waist, and whispered something into her ear. They both laughed, and moved past the screens. Joaquim ignored them both, his green eyes sharp with determination.

  “They know we are here,” he told her. “We have very little time.” He glanced up, into a darkened room with people huddled silently over screens.

  “Thirty-five years,” he murmured. “I keep forgetting that. I keep forgetting that for all of them, so much time has passed. To me it is a week, less than a week, a fragment of time. I am the same. But the world is greatly changed.”

  Joaquim looked back at Xai then, his expression bleak. “I left her. I left when I should not have. She asked me to stay… She was so young. But the Duo offered so much. I thought with that, I could buy my own ship. We would be free of the Clan. We could go where we wanted.” He looked away again, at the dark room before him. “It’s not an easy life,” he said abruptly, “for those who betray the ancestors. It is such an ancient tradition. One is always looked on with some suspicion. We are a people known by our word, to break the word given to the ancestors…well. It is looked upon badly. But we have a saying—the living have needs the dead can only remember. It was a life I would have taken willingly. And so I left her here, by herself. She was only seventeen.”

  “Seventeen?” Xai blurted.

  Joaquim smiled at Xai, an abrupt flash of that mercurial charm. “Mika and I are amao méall,” he told her. “Heart sworn. Her age had nothing to do with it.”

  “Still,” Xai said uncertainly.

  “Do you think I loved her merely for the cast of her cheek and the shine in her eye?” Joaquim asked, insulted. “Do you think now that she is seventeen years older than me, that I would love her any less?”

  “No,” Xai said quickly, “not at all.”

  Joaquim subsided into gloom once more. “But perhaps she has. Thirty-five years is a long time. Too long, perhaps, for one as young as she.”

  Joaquim scowled. For a moment he just stood there, in the gloom, his expression set and angry. “I must undo what I have done,” he said finally. “I must do what I neglected to do and which my brother,” he added with scorn, “would not.” He began to stride down the hallway once more, his stride swift enough that Xai had to jog to keep up with him.

  “Records and its Keeper are on the Second Circle,” Joaquim told her. “Two sorts of people are allowed free access there. T’lasians, because they are T’lasians. But victors of fussa are also allowed free access to Second Circle during the Salak in which they have won. It is custom. To win at fussa, one must have in the very least the heart of T’lasian.”

  “All right,” Xai said uncertainly.

  “You and I,” Joaquim explained, “are going to win at fussa.” He continued his steady progress down the hallway.

  “But Joaquim,” Xai asked, hurrying after him, “what’s fussa?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  XAI glanced nervously down the long causeway. Thousands of people milled about on the floor, watching the distant horizon of the space station’s curve. “You must be joking,” she said, trying to keep her tone from sounding absolutely appalled. Joaquim folded his arms over his chest and shook his head, his expression set and serious.

  There was a thunderous roar of feet slapping swiftly on a metallic surface and six huge beasts shot into sight on the broad curve of the ceiling. The crowd cheered wildly, pounding their fists on their thighs. The animals jostled against one another. There was a collective gasp from the crowd and a man fell from the back of one of them with a piercing, abruptly halted scream. Almost faster than Xai could fathom they had swept past where she was standing and off into the distance. “You must be joking!” Xai repeated.

  Joaquim shook his head again, turned, and strode through the people exchanging papers on the floor and in the direction of the stables. Xai stared, horrified, at the slow motion replay of the last seconds of the race being projected up above them.

  Fusset were the oddest beasts Xai had ever seen. About five meters long, they were wedge shaped animals with long, muscular tails which, when running, curved over above the animal’s body to reach down before the animal’s face. Each animal had six legs, which could apparently not only move with tremendous speed, but could also adhere to the walls.

  “I can’t get on that!” Xai cried, aghast, as she chased after Joaquim. He ignored her. “Joaquim!” Xai repeated anxiously. He had walked out off the main causeway and into another long hall. The people here were mostly T’lasian, moving about with a clear sense of purpose. Stalls lined one wall. Disconcerting, bestial noises emanated from them, along with a sharp, musty smell. Xai fought down a shudder.

  Joaquim strode into a broad painted circle on the floor. About ten pairs of people, mostly T’lasians, stood inside it. Everyone inside the circle wore space suits. Some held bandos, others different sorts of whips and sticks. As a group they looked up at the broad dais before them. Fifteen T’lasians in robes stood there. Xai noted almost absently that those on the dais were more rotund and prosperous looking than their compatriots on the floor.

&nbs
p; “Joaquim, that’s an animal!” Xai hissed. Joaquim ignored her words and jerked her into the circle beside him, his eyes bright with a very intent, extremely suppressed emotion.

  “Shh,” he murmured into her ear. “Do you see that man up there on the dais? The one with the beard and the red robe? That’s Ricardo.” Xai looked up and saw him—a tall man with a wide girth in a burgundy robe. He seemed quite senatorial. All worries about the idea of racing disappeared at the sight of his imposing, regal face.

  “Aren’t you afraid he’ll see you?” Xai whispered.

  Joaquim shook his head. His eyes were very sharp, his lips twisted. “I’ve no tattoos,” he replied, his tone steeped in sarcasm and disgust. “Ricardo never had time for non-T’lasians. Besides, I’m dead.”

  Xai scowled at Joaquim. Joaquim grinned—a hard, angry grin. “I’ll keep my head down,” he whispered.

  A plump woman in a blue robe strode to the front of the dais. “Are we ready?” she asked. There were murmurs of agreement. “Very well,” she said. “Let us begin, then.”

  “Wait!” a woman cried from the crowd. Joaana Kumar strode into the circle, followed by the Messinian. Both darted Xai a very direct look as they came to a halt on the other side of the circle. Joaquim cursed softly underneath his breath and looked studiously at the floor. Xai wondered what she could have done to so offend the gods.

  “Are you satisfied?” she hissed at Joaquim.

  Joaquim darted her an oddly entertained glance. Something about the situation seemed to amuse him—a fact which aggravated Xai to no end. “How was I to know she would be a fussa rider?” he asked.

  “She’s your daughter!” Xai snapped in reply. Joaquim grinned at her reply, annoying her further.

  “Very well,” the woman in the blue robe said. “The circle is now closed. No more riders will be admitted. These are those from which a winner shall be chosen. Team leaders, take your shards.” Joaana Kumar strode to the front, along with others, to take a shard out of a large pot hanging off the edge of the dais. There was a distant roar from the crowd.