A Prison Unsought (63 page)

Live birth was rare enough; every line craved new blood at
least as much as iron. Perhaps more.

The legates finished their perorations. Pivoting smartly
about, they marched back to their House positions, established by custom and
power. Londri’s eyes narrowed as she tracked the Comori noble. Stepan peered
after to see what she observed, but saw nothing untoward.

Silence fell.

Slowly Londri lowered the point of the Sword of Maintenance
to the floor before her and stood up, her hands on the hilt.

“Comori,” she said loudly. “Stand
forth.”

Stepan started. This was not what he had expected. Nor had
Aztlan. Anger contorted his face, while triumph filled that of Comori. Would
she give the twins to Comori, after all?

“Draw your sword,” Londri
commanded.

A hiss of surprise swept through the Skyfall Chamber. This
was not according to form. The Aztlan legate’s face puckered in confusion,
while Comori hesitated, fear wrinkling his brow.

“Draw your sword,” the Ironqueen
repeated.

Slowly, with visible reluctance, the legate did so. This
time the gasp from the assembly was nearly unanimous, and Stepan understood. A
glow of pride filled his chest; truly, she was Steel’s Mistress.

The sword was stone-wood, not steel: Londri must have seen
its lighter swing against the legate’s side when he swiveled about. The Aztlan
noble knelt before the Lodestone Siege, unsheathed his sword, and laid it on
the floor before Londri.

“It seems,” said the Ironqueen
slowly, “that Comori has no faith in their plea, nor in the justice of House
Ferric.”

Comori lowered his sword, sweat springing forth on his
forehead. His lord had been unwilling to risk precious steel in the presence of
one he had evidently decided to defy if judgment went against him.

A growl of anger arose from the other legates, and from the
soldiers ranked along each wall. A tide of movement swelled toward the legate
standing alone in the middle of the floor.

“No!” Londri held up one hand, the
sleeve of her white robe falling back from her sinewy arm. “This is a court of
justice, not vengeance.”

She bent her gaze upon Comori. “So be it, then. You yourself
have rendered judgment; your plea is void. Surrender the second child to Aztlan
or face the wrath of the Crater.”

The legate sheathed his sword with a nervous thrust. “Comori
maintains its right to the divided soul,” he stated flatly.

A long silence held
the hall suspended. Londri crowed for breath, her face contorted with pain. The
Sword of Maintenance slipped from her grasp and clanged as it fell to the dais.
The Ironqueen twisted on the Lodestone Siege, clutching at her stomach. Anya Steelhand
ran to her.

Again.
Sickened with
despair, Stepan joined them, Lazoro at his side, hesitating helplessly beside
the throne as Anya supported Londri, whose teeth sank deeply into her lower
lip. She made no sound, but all within the hall saw the stain of red spreading
across her robes, and knew that Gehenna had claimed another life before it even
began.

Terror blanched the Comori legate a heartbeat before the
shouts began.

“The Hook!”

“He bore wood, give him steel!”

“Give him to the Hook!”

Trembling, Londri raised herself partway up, and tried to
speak. Tears blurred Stepan’s vision as Londri surrendered to pain, rage, and
despair.

She screamed, all the rage of Exile in that sound.

The Skyfall Chamber erupted, and the Comori legate’s scream
echoed the Ironqueen’s as the others fell upon him and dragged him out, to be
hung by the jaw from the steel hook above the gate of House Ferric. He would be
days in the dying; the armies of the Crater would march out to war beneath his
twitching body.

But Stepan had eyes only for his daughter, eighteen standard
years of age, bleeding out the life of her fifth child: another victim of the
polity that had rejected him and all upon this world.

Emmet Fasthand
snarled a curse and shut down his console.

Nothing.

He got up, stamped to the dispenser, and punched tabs to get
something hot and intoxicating. Gulping down the scalding liquid, he retreated
to his console again.

No real data whatever on Gehenna above M-class—rumor and
conjecture—and he knew he had everything available.

He’d always been a data addict. Taught when young that
information was power, he had always made certain he had the latest, most
extensive info. It was this habit to which he attributed forty years of success
in the Rift Sodality, a career not known for fostering longevity. Only once, in
careless haste, had he slacked his habit, and the memory of the failed Abilard
raid in ’58 still rankled, despite the destruction he’d wrought there recently
for the Lord of Vengeance.

He had not confined himself to the RiftNet, good as it was.
Over the decades he had also accrued secret sources for high-code info culled
from other parts of the DataNet. But the war had changed everything. At
Rifthaven to fetch Eusabian’s Urian artifact, he’d spent recklessly, scooping
up as much of the data released into the RiftNet by war, from chthons formerly
far below his ability to dive. After he’d been given his orders for this
present run, on his way to rendezvous with the
Fist of Dol’jhar
, he’d made another stop, this time seeking any
data that might bear on the secret of Gehenna.

A lot of what he had was so new, so raw, it had not been
sorted and rated yet, but he ran his own searches, patient after years of
practice.

He’d always found some nugget of info that his enemies did
not have. But this time he could find absolutely nothing about Gehenna, despite
having spent himself and the ship into near poverty, not just for data, but for
the additional arrays needed to process it. Nothing. Nothing at all about the
planet. Even its location had remained hidden—that had been given him by that
ice-faced chatzer Anaris.

Worse—he got up again and ordered caf this time—the search
he’d run on any ships that had tried rescue runs showed a uniform result: every
one of them had disappeared, no messages, no traces. Every one, going back
almost seven hundred years.

Fasthand gulped at the spiked caf, trying to soothe his
seething guts. Fear and fury warred in him, and he cursed that logos-loving
Barrodagh, who had made this Gehenna run seem a sinecure.

“You are to be congratulated,” he’d
said in his oily voice. “You have been chosen to convey the Avatar’s prisoners
to their prison planet, and with you will be Eusabian’s heir. Upon your safe
return, your reward will be commensurate with the honor.”

Return! What return?
The Panarchists didn’t care—they knew they were dead, anyway. And as for Anaris . . .

He has no intention of
dying, that one.

Fasthand grimaced, remembering the Dol’jharian corvette
sitting in the port landing bay, the access guarded at all hours by a pair of
those hulking Tarkans.

It’s a matter of honor
,
that ugly little gargoyle Anaris had as secretary had said in his teeth-grating
whine.
His position requires that he
travel with it, as with his honor guard, though he does not expect to use
either
. And then that weird laugh, like the gollup of a frog.

Fasthand grimaced, reminded that the secretary was expecting
to see him—on a matter of importance.

Glancing at the chrono, Fasthand decided enough time had
passed. He would not dare to keep Anaris waiting, a fact that enraged him.
After all, this was his own ship. So he took his resentments out on the
secretary, as much as he dared.

He had no doubt what the chatzing trog was on about this
time. The Panarchists, of course. Fasthand had found out about Moob and
Sundiver’s escapade and its result from Tat Ombric. The captain grimaced again,
but not without humor; he was a little afraid of the vile-tempered Draco, and
seldom interfered with her private pursuits. She was a dangerously expert
scantech, and time and again had kept the
Samedi
safe from predators on both sides of Panarchist law, so he endured her. He
hoped that someone had recorded the incident—he’d enjoy watching it.
All right, you nasty crawler. Let’s hear what
your damned master wants now.

On the other side of the ship, Tat licked her lips, flexing
her trembling fingers. Aware of the blood rushing in her ears, she activated
her nark in the captain’s cabin and waited, with sickening expectancy, for some
kind of alarm to trigger.

Nothing happened.

She used this nark seldom: only when she felt that she or
her cousins were endangered—when it seemed worse not to use it. Lately she had felt
the urge to use it all the time.

She crouched on her pod, knees under her chin, as she
watched Morrighon enter Fasthand’s barbarically splendid cabin.

It was strange, and not at all pleasant, to watch someone
who was unmistakably a Bori move with the arrogance of a Dol’jharian. Though
Morrighon had none of the powerful physical grace of the heavy-worlders, he
still commanded—and expected—more than his share of personal space, just as his
overlords did.

Fasthand dropped back a step in his own cabin, then flushed
with annoyance. Fasthand did not like being intimidated.

“I’m planning the approach to
Gehenna,” he said. “Do you or your master have any special instructions?”

Morrighon said, “When my lord wishes special instructions
given, you may be sure that they will be given.” His head tipped sideways, as
if he couldn’t hold it upright on his scrawny neck.
The grav on Dol’jhar probably twisted him like this,
Tat thought,
shuddering.
What’s it like in his cabin?
For Morrighon’s quarters lay in the Dol’jharian portion of the ship, which had
been set to the wearing acceleration that was the Dol’jharian norm.

“My lord has given me instructions
to pass along to you concerning the well-being of his prisoners,” Morrighon
went on. “His father, the Avatar, requires them to be set down at their
destination in perfect health. This means they are to receive adequate
comestibles . . .” He went on, in his insinuating whine, to
outline in precise terms the proper care of the Panarchists, right down to how
much laundry they were to be allowed and when it must be renewed. From the
first reference to his prisoners, Fasthand’s face had lengthened with
annoyance.

Tat chewed her lip as the instructions unfolded. Their very
detail was an insult, the assumption being that Fasthand was too stupid to know
how to look after prisoners. Tat figured that Anaris had not known about the
dirty linen or scarce rations, not until Sundiver’s trick, even though he’d
seen the Panarch several times. So the Panarch didn’t complain, and Anaris
didn’t ask. Interesting.

“. . . any questions
I can convey to my lord?” Morrighon finished.

“No. Nothing. I hope,” Fasthand continued
with a sneer, “that your own accommodations are not lacking?”

The insult went wide; Morrighon shook his head. “They are
adequate for my purposes,” he said, and he moved toward the door. Then he
turned, and added in a softer voice, “But in the interests of mutual
cooperation, you might inform your crew that the
Karusch’na Rahali
are nearly at hand.” He went out.

Fasthand’s face darkened with fury and confusion.

Tat knew what was coming next; she did not want to be in her
cabin when the summons came. She closed her system down, erasing all traces of
the recording, then skipped out and wandered down a randomly chosen corridor.

Shock panged her in the heart when she nearly ran into
Morrighon at an intersection. He was not moving—he might have been waiting. For
her.

Blood sang warning in her ears, then subsided as Morrighon,
exactly her own height, motioned to her. His squinty eyes flickered up and down
the empty corridor around them, then he spoke. “You know what the
Karusch’na Rahali
are,” he whispered.

Nothing about narks or coms or anything. Mutely she nodded.

Morrighon’s face twisted in a weird smile. “It would do no
harm at all,” he said, “to let them think they will be the targets.” On ‘them’
he thrust a hand out, indicating the Rifters’ quarters. He paused, studying her
as if to gauge her understanding, and then he went on, his walk a peculiar
shuffle that made her think of joint disease and broken bones.

Her compad burred: summons, to the captain’s quarters.

She found Fasthand before his console, the
Starfarer’s Handbook
data on Dol’jhar on
the screen.

“That stone-chatzing worm-sucker
was in here,” he snarled. “What’s this Kay’roosh’nuhh . . . something?”
He tapped his screen impatiently. “It says something about these brain-bent
Dol’jharian logos-spawn duffing each other for sex. What’s that got to do with
Rifters?” His face changed radically. “Unless he means—they’ll go after . . .”

“Us,” Tat finished. And as Fasthand
began cursing, pouring out heartfelt invective on a rising note, she thought,
midway between laughter and despair,
It’s
going to be a very long trip.

o0o

Gelasaar hai-Arkad shuffled along the corridor behind Morrighon,
feeling the ache of high gee in every bone of his body. The long incarceration
on the
Fist of Dol’jhar
had taken its
toll on all of them; the standard gee in the quarters on the
Samedi
had been welcomed as a relief,
but old bones healed slowly. These forays into the Dol’jharian part of the
ship, and the resumption of heavy grav, as short as they were, did not help.

Morrighon tabbed the annunciator at Anaris’s cabin. The door
slid open and the Bori motioned Gelasaar through.

As the door hissed shut, Anaris stood up from his console,
wiping it clear with a quick motion of one strong hand. He tapped once more at
it and turned to face the Panarch; Gelasaar’s stomach lurched as the
acceleration in the cabin declined to a standard gee. He sighed involuntarily.