Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3 Page 9

  Kelta swallowed. She sank to one knee. The joint instantly complained. The sharp stones of the footpath dug into her flesh even through her skirts. “I come to ask you to forgive my master, Asher Corsair, for his violation of the guildsworn oath to Ironvale. Please hear out this foolish old woman.”

  Hirano’s eyebrows flexed. The lines around his mouth deepened. “Kelta, you are brave. But foolish? I doubt it.” He helped her to stand and guided her to be seated on a nearby stone bench.

  “Now.” He settled beside her with a suppressed grunt. “I do not imagine your master has sent you to me on his behalf. Nor does he know of this visit, I wager. The Asher Corsair that I’ve heard of would never send you to plead his case. What has changed, Kelta?”

  “He did not send me,” she admitted. “In fact, he has come to accept the fate that awaits him upon his return.”

  “His return?” Hirano asked. He settled back, placing his hands on his knees. “I wager surrender is not his sole intent.”

  “No, my lord. There is a young woman, Erelah Veradin. Asher sent me to Nirro to find a place of safe refuge for her that would have the splicers that she needs to affect a cure. She possesses a brilliant mind. She created something incredible.”

  She took out the small black pouch of fabric. The jdrive seemed such an unimportant trinket as she placed it in Hirano’s creased and calloused hand. He held it up, adopting some of the reverence with which she’d handled it. His gray eyebrows knitted together.

  “This device, in the right hands, can be a blessing. In the wrong ones: a weapon. When used on a vessel’s velo drive, it makes the reliance on flex point travel obsolete.”

  Hirano frowned, turning his examination to the jdrive. Certainly, he must feel it too, that nearly sentient presence she felt whenever she handled the odd thing. It nearly thrummed with purpose and strange need.

  Finally, he regarded her. “If what you say is true, this would end the stranglehold that Poisoncry has had on the Guilds for so many years. It would change a great many things in the Reaches.”

  A servant approached, clad in a gold-colored smock. Kelta recognized him as one of the household pages that had ushered her into the garden. Hirano gave the scrawny-looking young man a single withering look. The page did a neat about-face and strode back to the house.

  Did he doubt her? Surely he would have sent her away by now. His silence was maddening.

  “Have your technicians examine the device,” she offered, nearly wincing at how anguished she must sound. “They will tell you that it is truly a marvel.”

  He regarded her. “What is it you ask of me in return, Kelta?”

  “Pardon Asher. In exchange, this technology can belong to Ironvale.”

  He released a heavy sigh. His voice was rich with the weariness of a stern father. “I cannot do this. It is our way, Kelta—for centuries. One man cannot be above the law or change it to his will. Not even me. Corsair must be punished.”

  Kelta felt her heart crumble. She breathed the words out, finally saying the fact that they’d been stepping around. “But he is your grandson. He’s your own daughter’s child.”

  Hirano leaned back, propping his hands on his knees. When he spoke, he trained his gaze to a place that was likely nowhere inside this serene garden. “Ravinia made her choice quite plain when she chose her husband—a Binait, of all things—over the house she was born to. It was her choice to flee to Narasmina and sever her ties with me. Any of my obligations to her or her child ended then. As Guild Master, I could not be seen to waiver.”

  Only because of what you did to Asher’s father, the shame you levied on her. She died with a broken heart. Kelta bit the words back, feeling the sudden rush of bitterness.

  He straightened, tugging at the folds of his vest as if to tug himself out of ugly reverie. Kelta saw a new weariness in the corners of his eyes. “At least that is what I told myself. And I have lived every day since in guilt of my arrogance.”

  Something lightened the slightest bit against her ribs.

  “Ironvale will exile him instead. He will be sent to Hardwell.” He sighed. “It is up to Lord Corsair to agree to it.”

  A battle of sorrow and relief filled her. Hardwell was a penal colony well beyond the Fray and nearly impossible to survive. Those who were sent there were the worst of offenders.

  Uncertain of her voice, she nodded and shut her eyes. What have I done?

  She felt Hirano watching her and turned to him. “And Lady Erelah? She will be safe here?”

  He presented his open hand to her. On an arm that felt disconnected from her body, Kelta settled a hand over his. His voice deepened. There was no hint of the Hirano that had joked about Yasu earlier. “I give my word as Master of the Ironvale Guild. If she agrees to my terms, Erelah Veradin shall know shelter and protection in my house to the end of her days.”

  Twenty-One

  Klavid Yasu moved with officious little steps in this section of the Guild Master’s offices. Here there were more guildsworn guards than servants. Yasu always found that with both, it was best to move about with a sense of purpose, as if you had every reason to be where you were. Except, in this case, he did not.

  With one more glance down the hallway, he slipped into Hirano’s private salon. The door, to all outward appearances, seemed a delicate thing, an artful construct of paper panels and reeds trained into a nature pattern to match the rest of the man’s nearly monastic house. But he knew that, like the rest of the room, it was designed to be blast-proof as well as surveillance-proof. It was impossible to trace transmissions to or from Hirano’s private salon.

  Yasu needed that security now.

  He released the long-held breath. His gut dropped against the wide sash of his jacket. Small drops of sweat peppered his forehead. This was a delicate thing.

  Poisoncry must know of this. This was valuable knowledge, indeed. But he must not tell all. Just a hint. A mere morsel of information. It was all in the packaging, the presentation. There was a way to share this with them and still consider himself true to his Guild, to his role as chancellor.

  They would have to be pleased by this.

  Undoubtedly, this would be enough to release him from the debts he owed. He’d always been a man of expensive tastes. It was expected of his station to wear fine clothes and dwell in a luxurious home. After all, he was chancellor to Guild Master Hirano. Who would respect a man who dressed as a vagrant and called a hovel his home?

  The Poisoncry guildsworn had already threatened him twice. Under no uncertain terms, they had reminded him of their arrangements. It was suggested that it would be unseemly for Hirano’s chancellor to be dishonored publicly once all of his unsavory debts were revealed. Unseemly, indeed.

  Yasu caught his faded reflection in the smoky glass of the cabinet door: a doughy oval face under a blur of yellow-orange hair.

  He turned his back to the cabinet. Finally, he drew the personal vox-coms from the embroidered folds of his robe and opened the channel.

  Part Five

  Twenty-Two

  Tristic forced herself to walk slowly as she entered the lab. The space was filled with equipment that was quaintly primitive. There was a large space beyond this—one they laughably called the clean room, suggesting they could actually master control of the elements in the space. Given their xenophobia, it made sense that they’d placed Erelah’s stasis chamber in there.

  For a moment, she stood at the threshold unannounced and watched them. Their so-called scientists. The brightest of their puny species. None of them possessed the intellect to match hers. Tristic had expected to walk in on a frenzy of activity—after all, they’d been given a live specimen to examine.

  They moved with strange bearing, different from the soldiers on the base. There was a subtle difference if you knew where to look. Soldiers had a purposefulness that governed their strides. Give them an order, a reason, and off they went. But the civilians were harder to anticipate, control. They moved with an inner aimlessness
, despite any pretense as to their roles.

  Hoffs demeanor had been different. She was alert, watchful. The rudderless tendency absent. That made her a threat. Never mind.

  The girl is here. My precious girl. Erelah.

  “Where is the prisoner? Why are you not reviving her?” Tristic had been specific as to the orders. Wren’s face would be the first the Veradin woman saw upon waking.

  Gerhart, a compact male, lab coat stretching to cover his wide stomach, jostled up from the cowed huddle. He seemed nervous. His hands were stuffed into his pockets as if they were about to float away. “There’s a problem with the locking mechanism on the…chamber. We are having difficulty understanding the system.”

  Anger building, Tristic shoved him aside. The handful of medical techs in their various blues and whites were a faceless huddle, all intent on other things as if by unspoken agreement. The ones that did sneak a glance turned away quickly. Interesting.

  Tristic paused, watching them, once again missing her natural eyes that would let her measure their heart rates, sense the focus of their distress.

  Her suspicion warred with her eagerness.

  “This way, sir,” Gerhart prodded. He held out a hand, directing her to the entrance of the clean room, a place Tristic had known so well from her first captivity here. A fitting place, she decided, to end her quest.

  Tristic stepped across the threshold. The familiar, featureless white walls and bright metal floor greeted her.

  And nothing else.

  The unmistakable clatter of the door rolling shut.

  Tristic whirled.

  They’d locked her in!

  Hot fury flooded her, thudding against her temples.

  I’ve underestimated them. They were not the ignorant creatures huddled in cold metal boxes against the breathless death of the void. I’ve been careless, so careless.

  Now she was trapped, with her final salvation so tantalizingly close.

  She forced her mind to be still, made her body relax as she drew in a deep breath. Panic would not do. The Humans might suspect that something was wrong with Miles Wren, but they could never know the true nature of that wrongness. There was time. There was room to move in this trap they’d concocted.

  This is why I have contingencies.

  Twenty-Three

  “Smells…funny in here.”

  Maeve spared a glance away from the interface, a product of her own design to make the most efficient use of the inputs. Sceeloid vision used a fuller spectrum than the inferior faulty Eugenes vision that she possessed.

  Infra-red. UV. Thermal. There was so much the Eugenes missed in the invisible world around them. Mother used to tease her about this on the days that she was feeling generous—if the Sceeloid had such a word. Those were rare times.

  “Ferric acid,” she muttered at the pretty Human pretender that called himself by a crester name: Veradin.

  He had spent the first few hours of their journey in some sort of self-absorbed mire as he obsessed over the ansible to the breeder woman, Tyron. He’d moped like an orphaned calf when he wasn’t bickering with Corsair. All of it reaffirmed one of her core philosophies: personal entanglements were nothing but trouble.

  He tilted in the null grav, a questioning look on his face as he waited for her to say more. She could tell by his moves that he was unused to the environment. His pushes were too strong. He’d already launched himself into a wall hard enough to hurt. He’d thought no one had seen, but Wedge had. Therefore, so had Maeve.

  She grunted and resumed her inspection of the navigation, twisting the axis that would have created unease in her two passengers. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d ever allowed others on Wedge. It was her space, her domain. Wedge was part of her, an extension. The two men made her feel crowded, vulnerable. But she owed Tove. For her, Maeve would do anything. Tove’s people had found her during the raid of the Sceeloid colony on Pelm. In the rush and chaos, Mother had left her with the dead and the dying. Maeve had hidden in terror with the other Eugenes slaves as the thunderous Splitdawn men and women in their mech armor stormed the shelter. They’d found her, half-mad and starved, knowing more of the Sceeloid tongue than her own birthright Eugenes.

  “It’s the ferric acid,” Corsair repeated. Perhaps he was growing as tired as she with the crester’s constant questions. He drifted back to the hold, most likely to recheck the weapons for the fifth time. “Sceeloid tech uses it.”

  Veradin asked, “Like a fuel?”

  “Like blood,” Maeve answered. She made a shooing gesture as Veradin drifted too close to the overseer’s console, and she flipped her visor up to peer at him. It was the visor that made the items outside of Eugenes visual range stand out. Without it, the console was a flat panel of lifeless glass. “No touch.”

  He held his hands up. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  She flipped the visor back down and made a course correction. The mines had not drifted much from their original moorings, but the errant collision of floating rock sometimes jostled the thicker groupings out of position.

  She felt Veradin watching and turned to glare, lifting the visor. “Want somethin’, meat?”

  “How do you even know how to do any of this?” he asked.

  Somewhere, back in the hold, Corsair murmured, “Leave it alone.”

  Maeve set the trim line, satisfied that the mines were well out of range. Wedge’s propulsion wouldn’t trigger them, but some still had functional proximity rigs. “I know this because I know Sc’loid. Mother liked clever pets. I was clever girl. She teach’d me Sc’loid words and ways.”

  “Mother? But you’re Eugenes.” The crester’s face filled with what she’d come to associate with pity. “One of them kept you as a…pet?”

  She jabbed a finger into her sternum. “Mother said I was special, clever. I knew the Eugenes words and showed her tech.”

  “I’m sorry.” He pushed further back into the hold as if discovering the new and grotesque in a surprising place.

  “Don’t be.” She flipped the visor back down. The console sprung back to a glow only she could see. “I’m not.”

  Twenty-Four

  Waiting.

  Sela hated the useless limbo of it, now more than ever before. Being underway as a passenger on Tove’s heavy rigger gave her little to do in the meanwhile. She told herself that she was used to having something to do before a mission: gear prep, training, briefings. Those were the things that ate up the time. Here there was none of that. Sela was on her own. She tried to ignore the oppressiveness of that thought as she stretched out on the bunk.

  She checked the device secured to her wrist: a sub-s closed channel—something of Corsair’s design from his now-defunct days as an operative with Ironvale. Their contingency for communications. It gave simple binary codes, nothing as substantive as hearing another voice, but comforting all the same.

  Eight hours, six minutes. That was when the next check-in was due from Jon as he journeyed farther away on Maeve’s hideous vessel. Plenty of time for things to go wrong.

  Jon would be fine, she told herself. Corsair was with him. Depending on how one looked at it, that was either an advantage or a curse.

  Was this what Jon went through, each time he had sent her team out? No wonder he’d been so eager to disregard protocol. She forgave him for each pointless argument, every time she’d angrily pointed out protocol only to have him ignore it the next time, then the next.

  The jdrive would have hastened this. All of it. As complicated as her feelings were for the device’s inventor, she could have used it to flit in and out of Maxim’s location and be done. But Corsair had made a good point. It was not very clever to walk into a hostile environment carrying such a valuable bargaining chip.

  For the time being, the jdrive was “some place safe,” or so Corsair said.

  Sela was the collateral now, namely her role to come in Maxim’s demise. She recalled Jon explaining some ancient custom the Kindred had once,
taking on the First Son or Daughter of a defeated enemy house as a type of honorary hostage to raise with their own family. That way the lord of the enemy house would be reluctant to take up arms, lest their First be harmed. As a system, it made sense, though elaborate and highly romanticized. They called it warding—a fancy way to say, hostage.

  Because she had free rein of Tove’s ship, one of the newest vessels Sela had seen in the Reaches, it did not feel like imprisonment. She’d been afforded a large bunkroom of her own. Having lived in the cramped confines of squad bays and the Cassandra’s bunkroom, it felt like wasted space.

  Part of being a soldier was the ability to sleep anywhere. However, she found herself unable to do so. She lay in the bed and compulsively checked the sub-s band, despite knowing her own internal countdown of the time. She was not one to remain in her rack if she were not going to sleep.

  Jon derived enjoyment from “sleeping in,” as he called it. It seemed decadent, the refusal to adhere to some sort of schedule. Even after they settled in the Reaches, she had tried to impose one: physical training, weapons detail. He joined her with an air of half-seriousness. It was simply to please her. Just as she agonized over learning the needless complexity of High Eugenes for him.

  Seven hours, fourteen minutes.

  Time still to study the schematics of Maxim’s palace and his private chambers, although she did not need to. The images were affixed in her perfect memory: every door, every angle of approach. But it was something to do.

  She considered donning the power armor and further honing her skills with it. There’d be no more time to practice before she disembarked from Tove’s ship in the unmarked cargo skiff. From there on, Sela would travel separately. No link must ever be made between Maxim’s assassination and Tove. It must seem that a rogue agent had entered his compound to end him.