Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) (46 page)

“Our wand doesn’t pick up all kinds of weapons. We’d like to search.”

“Go ahead,” Bryer said suddenly.

The guards patted him down, awkward around the wings and tail as if not sure how to check the feathers without breaking them. Their search found nothing, so they turned to Hirianthial.

“No,” Hirianthial said. “You will not touch me.”

Reese almost said, “What a fine way to make them want to,” but to her surprise one of the guards stepped back and the other hesitated, then said, “He looks clean.”

“He could be hiding something,” the other said.

The first guard looked at Hirianthial, then shrugged. “What’s he going to have... a rifle? I don’t want to touch him. I don’t want him rummaging in my mind.”

The second guard snorted and moved away. When the woman returned, he said, “They’re clear to go.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Come with me, please.”

Past the foyer the carpet switched to black and the walls to dark gray paint with steel ribs, giving Reese the uncomfortable impression of walking through a poorly lit ship’s corridor. The elevator trip was even worse, since only half of them could squeeze in at a time: Irine and Sascha went first with their guide and Reese went up last with her “bodyguards.” They exited at the top of the building, so Reese was not at all surprised to be led to a corner suite. It was twice the size of her mess hall; two of its walls were clear glass panels, and a minimum of clutter in the room gave onlookers an unparalleled view of the landscape. If only there had been something worth looking at.

The man behind the desk was human, tan with bleached hair. He didn’t look old enough to be running a multi-planet crime ring until Reese met his eyes and felt the force of their appraisal.

“Captain Eddings,” he said. “I’m Marlane Surapinet. Do step all the way inside so my men can close the door.” He smiled. “For privacy.”

“Of course,” Reese said, glancing at the guards. These two made the ones downstairs look like guard-impersonators.

“I’m glad to have the pleasure of meeting you in person,” Surapinet said. “I admit I’m not sure why you insisted. The money will be in your account as soon as we verify the integrity of the goods you’ve delivered.”

“I insisted because you irritated me,” Reese said. “And I like to clear up irritations with people I work with.”

He cocked his head. “An irritation.”

“You sent people to check up on me,” Reese said. “People I had to subsequently deal with.” She folded her arms. “I don’t like being tailed and I don’t like having to waste time and energy dealing with tails.”

His brows lifted. “You didn’t expect me to leave you unwatched, Captain Eddings? I’d never hired you before.”

“You bought my ship, my sweat and my silence,” Reese said. “You asked for a lot, but you paid good money for it. And then you disrespected my integrity. I don’t like that in an employer, Mr. Surapinet.”

“I see,” he replied. “So you put paid to the tail, is that your story?”

“Have they come round since they waylaid me?” Reese asked.

Surapinet said nothing. Then he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “You sound as if you’d like me to continue to be your employer.”

“I might,” Reese said. “It depends on how fair you’re going to play.”

He smiled. “I always play fair with my associates. My word is my bond, Captain Eddings.”

“And that’s why you set two vessels on me,” Reese said. If she concentrated on her anger it made it easier to ignore her terror.

“I set those vessels on you precisely because I am a man of my word... living in a universe where few people keep theirs,” he said. “Surely you’ve been burned yourself. We honest people are so few.”

“I still feel disrespected,” Reese said. “And the damage I sustained squashing your over-zealous heavies is going to bite into my profit margin.”

He studied her. “And what would settle this between us?”

“You could give me a cut of the sales,” Reese said. “Let’s stop playing pretend, Mr. Surapinet. Even one of those crystals is going to net you more in wet sales than the lump sum you’re paying me. I hardly think that’s fair since I’m the one Fleet will be chasing if they hear even the faintest rumor that those crystals might be classified by a bleeding heart researcher as thinking beings.”

“And now we’re a chemist as well as a merchant?” Surapinet said.

“I have good people working for me,” Reese said.

“Ah yes,” Surapinet said, eyes flicking past her shoulder. “Good people.” He leaned forward. “How’s this deal, Captain. You get half my profits from the wet sales—”

Her brows lifted.

“—and I get the Eldritch.”

“No.” She said it before she could think about it.

“No?” the man said, and she didn’t like his tone at all.

“He’s my Eldritch, no matter how scrawny,” Reese said. “He’s not for sale.”

“That’s too bad,” Surapinet said. “He’s a wanted man in our organization.” A thin smile. “I’ll pass you some of the profit from his sale, if you like.”

“It’s not about the money,” Reese said testily. Surapinet’s sharpened gaze made her aware of just how close she was to breaking cover. She made herself relax, sigh, run a hand through her hair. “Look, I don’t want to give him up... yet. I’m having too much fun with him, if you know what I mean.”

Both his eyebrows arched. “Why, Captain, are you saying you and he are lovers?”

Reese didn’t need to fake her derision. “Hardly. He’s a toy, not a lover. But he’s a very, very good toy. I guess being psychic means he always knows exactly what I want.” She tried mimicking one of the lazy smiles she’d caught on the twins’ faces. “I’ll sell him when I get bored, but I’m not bored yet. If you want exclusive rights when I do decide to give him up, I’m amenable to that.”

“It’s so nice to talk with a fellow professional,” Surapinet said. “Although you understand that I simply can’t give you as much if I don’t get the Eldritch immediately.”

“That’s fine,” Reese said. “I’ll settle for a quarter of the wet profits and a half-stake in the final sale if you exercise the option to buy him later.”

“You want me to pay for him twice?” Surapinet asked.

Reese smiled. “He’s that good.”

Her smugness must have passed muster, because Surapinet leaned over and pressed a button next to his desk. “Ms. Deigle, please have someone from Legal meet us downstairs.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll draw up the contract before you leave,” Surapinet said.

“Fine with me,” Reese said. “But about the current contract. I’d like the money.”

“And I’d like the locks opened,” Surapinet said.

“Fair enough,” Reese said. “Shall we go?”

“I’d be delighted, Captain Eddings. Or should I say Theresa?”

“Depends,” Reese said. “Is this the beginning of a beautiful relationship, or are you just positioning me for disappointment?”

He laughed and walked around the desk. “I think it’s a little early to make predictions. But I am intrigued.”

As Surapinet reached for the door it swung open for the angry woman. Behind her the guards Reese had dismissed had multiplied from two people into fourteen, maybe fifteen.

“Mr. Surapinet,” she said. “There’s a transmission originating from this room.”

“There is?” he asked, and the look on his face boded very badly. He turned slowly to her. “Would you know anything about this transmission, Captain Eddings?”

A moment to decide, and she chose to brazen it out. “That would be me,” she said without any visible unease... or she hoped without any visible unease. “Or did you really expect me not to take out some insurance for myself? Having a record of the meeting is good business sense.”

“Without informing me?”

Reese smiled. “You were the one telling me about how people of their word get burned, Mr. Surapinet. You sent pirates. I brought a camera.”

He began to relax.

“And you regularly store your records in the middle of empty space?” the woman interrupted. “Because that’s where the transmission’s leading.”

Surapinet’s gaze hardened. “Not to the
Earthrise
?”

“No,” she said. She sneered at Reese. “Of course, she’s not going to tell us how many Dusted Fleet ships are waiting for her little recording, is she?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Reese said, but it was too late. Surapinet pinned her with a glare so intense her knees wobbled.

“Take care of them,” he said brusquely. “Except the Eldritch. Him I want alive.”

The guards lunged into the room, more than enough of them to kill them all. Reese leaped behind the desk as one of the Harat-Shar yowled and she heard curses and the thick smacks of fists against flesh. A hand grabbed for her ankle and she kicked back until it let go, but someone had followed her behind the desk. Reese dropped beneath it.

They were going to kill her. She had no idea why they hadn’t fired on her yet. A single shot with a palmer and she’d be dead. Instead they were trying to drag her out from beneath the desk. She bit the hand that grabbed her shoulder and writhed as several more tore at her arms and legs. Two people hauled her into the open... and then flew up over the desk. Dark gold talons gripped the edge just above Reese and then Bryer looked down at her.

“Hurry,” he said.

Reese scrabbled out from her hiding hole and stared at the bodies on the ground.

“Come on, boss, they’ve got Hirianthial!” Sascha said as he strapped on one of the guard’s weapons.

“What about Surapinet?” Reese said. “Which way did he go?”

“Who cares?” Irine said.

“I care!” Reese exclaimed. “If he goes free we’ll be dead in a week! We have to go after him!”

“Fleet will take care of him,” Sascha said, pointing out the windows. “See, they’re already here.”

Reese glanced behind her shoulder and saw smoke rising from one of the warehouses and a swiftly passing shadow on the ground, shaped like a fighter. A dozen smaller fighters were already in the air, but they didn’t look like Fleet’s. “Where did those come from?”

“Keep your eye on the prize, boss,” Sascha said. “If they get off the ground with Hirianthial we might never see him again.”

“Same goes for Surapinet,” Reese said, then waved her hands. “Oh for the love of freedom! We don’t all have to go after them both! Bryer, go take care of Surapinet!”

The Phoenix huffed, then leaped off the table, leaving scratches on the metal. He whisked through the door.

Irine handed Reese a palmer. “Here. You might need it.”

“Why didn’t they fire on us?” Reese asked.

“Too close quarters, probably,” Sascha said. “Doesn’t matter. They went this way.”

“I’d appreciate not having to rescue the man at least once,” Reese said.

“Yeah, well, it took four people to drag him away and that was after he took care of five of them.”

“And you saw that with your own eyes in the middle of a fist-fight,” Reese said.

Sascha’s ears flattened, but he turned to the nearest body. “I don’t need to have looked during the fight,” he said. With a grunt, he pulled at one of the bodies and then held up a gory dagger. “He didn’t make the same kind of kills as Bryer did.”

Reese stared at the dagger in shock.

“Come on,” Irine said, grabbing Reese by the vest. “This way!”

The downstairs guards hadn’t searched him, which meant when the first of his attackers lunged for him Hirianthial drew his dagger from the back of his boot and put it neatly through the man’s carotid artery. The second man managed to get a hand on him and the talent Hirianthial had assumed would be a liability proved instead an unexpected asset, for that violent grasp conveyed flashes of all the man’s previous crimes.

The very last time Hirianthial had been called upon to execute a criminal, he’d stayed his hand, out of sentiment, and from an exhaustion with killing. In retrospect, that mercy had been misplaced; some nagging feeling insisted that act would return to plague him, if he lived so long. This time, he let no such reservations fog his mind. He’d spent decades practicing in the profession of mercy, but before he’d taken up a doctor’s caduceus he’d carried swords sworn to just service, and the sensibilities of both worlds mingled in his mind as he fought. Every man who attacked him forced on him knowledge of his perfidy, his cruelty, and like a doctor faced with the worst malignant tumor, Hirianthial destroyed them.

He was out of practice but the advantage they gave him by attempting only to disarm him rather than kill him would have evened the odds... had his body not suddenly stopped working. He barely had time to notice the fatigue before it overwhelmed him and he staggered. As his attackers rushed him en masse he reflected that engaging in combat was probably not Doctor SorrowsEase’s idea of bed-rest, food and judicious exercise.

Hirianthial managed to wedge the knife into one more man before they overpowered him and dragged him into the hall.

“Where do we put him?” one of them asked.

“We need to get real restraints on him,” the other said. “I don’t trust him.”