Fires of Nuala

by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

  Dead Asset:

  A partner supported in a scam by others

  who has neither present nor

  prospective value — compare goldbrick.

  Chapter Four

  GUAARD HALL

  THIRTYSEVENDAY, SEXT

  “And you have worked for Rover Consortium for how long?” the voice continued, maintaining a pleasant neutrality.

  “About twelve years Terran, Sans Sleep,” Darame replied easily, her eyes focused on her bracelet of tiny freshwater pearls.

  “Have you always worked in the promotion and relations branch?”

  “Public Promotion and Relations,” Darame stressed, knowing that word was important in some legal dictionaries.

  “What branches of Rover Consortium have you worked with?” the voice asked specifically.

  “Various branches. All trainees serve in multiple positions, until their skills can be matched with the proper department,” Darame went on, her gaze tracing an intricate whorl of pearl. “I served in every branch in existence at the time I was hired, and was placed in PPR about eight years ago Terran.”

  A bundle of nerves this time out. How could things fall apart so quickly? Where was Halsey? Brant certainly knew she was here; she had asked for a representative of the Caesarean Embassy to be present while she was questioned, and the senior ambassadors assigned all “monitors.” If Brant did not know, he would know soon.

  They are asking the wrong questions, a tiny voice whispered within. Darame knew a myriad number of techniques, had been investigated more times than she cared to remember. This interviewer had glossed over her actions last night. Because a guaard was present then, and was expected to keep a close eye on her? Because a man with the power of a prince claimed she was with him, and it sufficed?

  Her fingers remembered the roughness of the frage, in Caesarean but not for casual eyes; written in a very ancient code, meant for those with no eyes to see. Always have options. Halsey had drummed it into her head at an early age, but he never stated it save when he was very concerned. He doesn’t know what’s going on, either. Not comforting — Halsey was the brains of the outfit, the one person who should know every aspect of the job. If one of their own operatives was not involved, then who?…

  “I think that covers everything for the time being,” the guaard said quietly, his voice void of emotion. Reaching, he gently disconnected the probes running to her arm and temple. “Leave word where you will be staying, and please do not attempt to leave the city until further notice.”

  Staying? She controlled a wince. Good question. Probably the hostel. Saints be damned, how could she have lost control so completely? And in front of the one person she could not risk offending. Glancing up as the door slid open, Darame stood and moved out into the hallway, the silent Caesarean aide following.

  They call it healing.… Even the fertile people are mutants. Darame could not stop the shiver that ran through her. Dropping those pills — that she could explain away, ignore, even. But running into the bedroom…

  Sheel knew. He had to know. How often did it happen? Were there even Nualans who questioned his talent? Could it change him in some strange way, make him one of the irradiated sinis?

  Could it change the people around him?

  “Woman?” The aide’s purely Caesarean mode of address pulled her back from her thoughts. Had she caught his name? Careless, very careless today.

  “Yes?”

  “Second Ambassador Brant would like to speak with you.”

  “Of course.” Darame hesitated, wondering if she should send some sort of word to Sheel, at least to let him know his word was still worth something. As if she had doubted it… Then she flinched as she heard movement behind her. There he was — Had the youth been in the room the entire time? Guaard certainly moved silently.

  She did not even know his name. First Sheel was going to stick a knife into him; then he was sent to — guard? Shadow? — the off-world woman. Me. Why? No way of knowing right now, but she was starting to recognize Nualan syntax, and some major nouns and verbs. Had to get her hands on a language probe immediately.…

  Glancing at the dark, smooth face, Darame spoke to him in Caesarean: “I need to go speak with one of the ambassadors. You don’t need to come if you have somewhere else to be.”

  “Seri Sheel requested I remain with you until you returned to the temple,” the youth replied in a low, musical tone.

  “As you wish,” Darame said, nodding to the aide to lead the way. Requested? Instructed.…

  Embassy Row was close to wherever she had been taken for questioning. The building owned by Caesarea Station had been designed, if not constructed, by Caesareans; it was lasered stone, the edges sharp and clean, glass windows covering the west wall and skylights facing east. No doubt the furnishings would also be Caesarean in style — minimal.

  “Just how cold does it get here in winter?” Darame asked the aide, trying to remember the median temperatures for this part of Nuala.

  His gaze settled on the building, and he gave a rueful smile. “Not very practical for the North,” he agreed. “The windows are heavily insulated, and there’s a fireloft in every room. We have the best of both worlds.” An odd expression, one of unease, crossed his face, and he began walking faster. “The ambassador doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  How little he’s changed. Darame did not speak her observation aloud. Dozens of people could have been on this job, and Brant had to be Halsey’s choice. Granted, no one was better at winning confidences and squirming into places of trust, but right now she wished that they’d taken the slower route, with Halsey endearing himself to their contacts. If any of the marks still live, she amended with a shiver. Iver, and who else? Her gaze flicked down the curving stone street of Embassy Row. Not a single Nualan clan represented.… Interesting.

  Green uniform blurred before her eyes, and Darame slowed, waiting for the aide to open the door. The locks responded to his thumb imprint, and he ushered both Darame and her silent shadow into Caesarean domain.

  A few wood and metal benches, many green plants, high ceilings of stone — very Caesarean. It was the most convenient passport for a traveler to have, but Darame found native Caesareans rather sterile in both imagination and outlook. That was what made Brant such a successful manipulator: his Caesarean features were at odds with his powerful vision. Not imagination, precisely; more a feel for multiple possibilities, and the initiative to carry out his plans. But no imagination. Which was why Darame had no use for him. Brant had tried to wiggle into her confidence when they first met — had also tried to presume on their physical proximity. Making it plain she wasn’t interested had not particularly helped; Brant had some obscure list of traits he used to judge people, and once he’d placed someone into a slot, they rarely moved from it.

  Just as well. Safer for him to underestimate me.… He certainly doesn’t overestimate my abilities. Darame hid her irritation under a soft half-smile. Thinking of Brant always did this to her… and now she came basically as a supplicant. By Catherine’s wheel, what a nasty position she was in! How to land on her feet?…

  Brant was waiting for her. Not obviously, but Darame saw him jerk as the aide paused at the door and announced her name. A tilt of the head, the familiar arrogant stance —

  “Send her in. The guaard can wait in the lobby.” Brant dismissed the aide with a barely perceptible nod of his auburn head.

  Redheads always seemed to be very attractive or homely — seldom was there middle ground. Brant was attractive by almost any human measurement; tall, fair, thick-haired, with penetrating green eyes that had the trick of looking remotely at whatever he was currently contemplating. Do you have any idea why I took an immediate disliking to you? she caught herself wondering as she gracefully entered the room. Probably not; strangely enough, unless Brant was trying to con someone, he was insensitive to the minute clues of reaction that everyone had. Of course he was usually trying to con someone.

  He had
examined and dismissed her as unimportant, those many years ago when they first met. One of the crowd, that’s all she’d appeared to be; Darame doubted that Halsey had told him, before or since that meeting, what Darame truly meant in the scheme of Rover Consortium. I’m salaried, and I get a cut of the take before the split. That meant top flight, in the company she kept.

  As Brant turned to greet her — formally, in case anyone was listening — an odd thought crossed Darame’s mind. Was there a specific reason Halsey let Brant believe what he wanted about her? Not a test for me… a test for Brant?

  “Darame Daviddottir, what a pleasure to see you again. It’s been a long time,” Brant said in his rolling, mellow tenor, indicating that she should step to the back of the parlor. “I trust the guaard were as polite as possible in their choice of questions?”

  “Both efficient and gracious,” Darame responded, trying to let her half-smile reach her eyes. Now was not the time to pick a fight with Brant. She took a quick inventory: tanned; weight about the same; a new haircut feathered back from his face in short layers, much like Sheel’s.…

  He looked worried, very worried; there were new lines pulling his mouth into a downward curve. That meant he didn’t know what was going on, or at least not completely. And was hoping she knew something. Ah — a bargaining chip. Spend it well.

  Moving to an offered chair, Darame pretended not to notice when Brant reached to activate a small button. The faint blue light in the room told her all she needed to know.

  So Halsey gave you one to bring on ahead. Does it block Nualan probes as well as Caesarean? Just as well — she had no idea how this conversation would fall out. Glancing at her roman strapped to her wrist, she made a vague comment about how long they had questioned her while privately noting a pale grey sheen appearing on the luminous dial of the timepiece. Brant was recording their talk. Interesting…

  “Where were you last night?” he said, his undertone irritated.

  Darame raised her eyebrows slightly. “Vacationing. The first night is mine, unless otherwise specified. Good thing.… If I had spent it with any of your marks, I’d probably be dead.”

  “Ia’s rings, child, don’t remind me,” he muttered, taking a long draught of the fluid rolling around in his mug. Moving to a narrow table pushed against the wall, he offered her a drink by gesturing at the ice dispenser.

  It might offend to decline.… Darame nodded, indicating an unopened bottle of wine in his cooler located beneath the table. It was a fairly common vintage, but not one of her favorites, and it was unlikely it contained any chemicals to make her more ‘agreeable’ to his way of thinking.

  Conversation ceased until Brant handed her a chilled glass. Smiling faintly to indicate her approval of the wine, Darame waited for him to start. He was busy with his ale, however; a thread of relaxation seemed to enter his manner. I relax you, and you make me nervous. It took control not to snicker at the irony.

  “Well,” Darame finally said, considering and discarding a half-dozen phrases in the brief moment the word passed her lips. “Now what?” More neutral than you deserve. You must have known something about last night, you’re aware of everything that happens in a marked city. What is the alternate plan?

  “Good question,” Brant replied, standing and moving toward the wall of windows. “Things will be a mess for some time, what with Iver injured. His sister will keep the government running — until Cort’s rule, Atare basically had a shared throne. You know,” he continued, turning back to face her, “we may actually do better this way. Iver was one of my major objectives, anyway; he’s insecure, and I think I can get a trade agreement out of him with little or no trouble. But things will be confused until they find the assassins.”

  “Originally we were going to work through… Caleb?” she asked, watching him in the mirrors over the drink table.

  “Caleb would have been his brother Baldwin’s prime minister. It’s not always a sibling, but usually. He could have gotten us the contract — Caleb had expensive habits, and his allowance from the family went through his hands like water.” Brant shrugged. “Now we concentrate on Iver. Leah will share the rule, and I have considerable influence with Leah. Eventually you’ll work on Iver, but he needs to recover fully first. With luck, you’ll have him in your pocket before his wife is back out of childbed.”

  “Is the minister still important for our purposes?” Darame said idly, agitating the goblet gently to release the bouquet of the wine.

  “The importance of the prime minister varies, depending on the strength of the Atare and the strength of the Ragäree,” Brant answered, frowning at something in his mug.

  “Does Iver’s sister have more influence with him than his younger brother?” Taking another sip of the wine, Darame waited almost a minute before looking up. She recognized the remote look on Brant’s face as he seemed to look over her right shoulder.

  “So you were with Sheel. You were quite lucky, my dear — I hear Rob reb^Dorian of Drake was unrecognizable, as was the woman with him.”

  “Yes.… Apparently they thought it was Sheel until his guaard called in,” Darame agreed. “But where does he fit in this game? If Iver is so nervous about ruling, won’t he want Sheel as his minister? They seemed congenial enough at the party.”

  Brant waved his mug vaguely and turned back to the windows. “Sheel is a hot healer — little is allowed to interfere with that talent, it’s too valuable.”

  “Yes.…”

  That word was not as controlled as she’d have liked; Brant actually chuckled, although Darame was not certain whether amusement prompted his reaction. “Does the idea bother you, my sweet Gavrielian? All that religion before Halsey picked you up, I suspect — surely you’ve seen stranger things in the Seven Systems.” He moved back toward the chairs, his expression sardonic. “But not masquerading as human, eh?”

  “Considering their laws about Atare marriages, the royal family must be mostly off-world,” Darame said gently, slowly lifting her glass to her lips.

  “True. But the Nualan traits are strong — look at their eyes, for example, and the healing gene keeps popping up in their clan. Of course Nualans pray for the healing strain.… Apparently it means the heat is gone from the line. No more sinis for a healer’s descendants.”

  “Unless the other parent is sini?” she asked, intrigued despite her unease.

  “You’d have to ask a geneticist, I have no idea. Just be very careful: on Nuala, terminating a pregnancy is considered premeditated murder. Don’t get careless.”

  “Unlikely,” Darame said, her smile thin. “What shall I do until Iver is out of the medical facility?”

  Leaning back against his desk, Brant tapped his fingernails against the polished wood. A remote expression was once again on his face. Even as he opened his mouth to speak, a tiny bell chimed.

  “Ambassador, she’s coming in,” said a disembodied voice. Darame recognized the particular note of strain — the aide who had guided her to the embassy. An unannounced guest?

  “Brant, where’s Halsey?” Darame asked suddenly, suspecting their conversation was about to be cut short.

  “Probably back at the hostel by now, they questioned him first — ”

  A whisper of sound, and the door to the front office slid open. Darame barely had time to react as the woman swept in, a guaard in tow. Leaning onto the balls of her feet, Darame rose gracefully and waited for Brant to speak.

  Sheel’s older sister. There had not been much time to study her last night; although gracious to the women visiting Atare, Leah preferred to converse with the men. Tall; her head rose above Brant’s shoulder. Her features were strong for Darame’s tastes, but many would find her quite attractive: pale, dark-haired, the right eye a warm, deep brown, the other emerald green. Not as full-figured as her younger sister, but ample; Leah had a great deal of style and flash.

  She walks as if she owns the ground she touches.… Darame controlled a smile. If the stories about the Atare mines were tr
ue, Leah’s wealth was such that she might as well have owned the very soil beneath their feet.

  No youth was watching the mother of the heir — the man following Leah looked at least thirty Terran. Where had he been last night?… Surely she couldn’t have missed him. His dark, forbidding good looks would have caught her eye immediately. The guaard’s impersonal gaze flickered over her and settled on the windows, but Darame thought he recognized her. Why would you know me? Where have you seen me, that I missed you?

  Turning slightly, Darame let Brant come into her line of vision, waiting for his cue. The momentary anger in his face startled her; what?… Then she realized Leah was speaking.

  “Brant, you must speak with Iver, he is raving on about last night and demanding an inquiry — “ Noticing Darame, Leah stopped abruptly.

  Does she know we work together? That was one of those things they had not yet discussed. The expression on Leah’s face was not exactly hostile — more displeased.

  “Have you already met?” Brant said smoothly, his anger vanishing at his words.

  “I am Darame Daviddottir, Serae, from Caesarea Station,” Darame continued for him, nodding deeply. “I was among the multitude at the party for your son. My condolences for the great loss your family has suffered.”

  Leah’s face was vague at first, studying her without recognition. Then: “My brother spilled a drink on your dress.”

  “Yes, Serae.”

  “I hope the cleaners will be able to save it,” Leah said cordially. “Grocha is a potent brew.”

  “The Seri Sheel found a neutralizer; please do not concern yourself,” Darame said quickly, waiting for Brant to take control of the conversation.

  “You should have sent for me, Serae,” Brant said, extending his hands to take Leah’s fingertips. “There was no need for you to come to the embassy. Please, you are distressed, sit down.” He turned his head toward Darame. “Could you wait outside a moment?”