Prince of Passion (9 page)

He pulled his gloved hand away. “I’m not interested.” He hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but she had startled him.

Too late, he realized the droplet had already slicked across his skin. He caught the faintest whiff of salty brine. And then he tasted it, just a hint of musky sweetness. Very much like sex.

“It’s begun,” Kylara said. “Did you know the malac are sequentially hermaphroditic? They are both genders, but not both at the same time. They start out smaller and male. Those are the ones that fight. But as they grow, they become female. When they are large enough, they brood the larvae and secrete the liqueur we are harvesting tonight.”

“The liqueur makes them aggressive?” How would that affect whatever formulation was intended to replace the qva’avaq?

Kylara licked her fingertip. “The malac fight regardless. They are vicious monsters. The liqueur is the only thing that finally distracts them enough to mate. Our biologists have found that malac liqueur triggers mating behaviors in a wide swath of the surrounding hydrosphere.” She looked at him through her lashes.

He stared past her with a flat, uninterested gaze. He did not want the attentions of the Saya’s daughter. As he watched the divers approach the malac field, he catalogued his own internal reactions to the droplet he’d tasted.

Other than a certain amount of nervousness at the sight of the small divers—looking ever smaller as they swam surreptitiously between the rampaging malac toward the recumbent females—he sensed nothing off about his sensitivities: pulse within norms, no untoward galvanic skin response, qva’avaq dormant, penis at repose.

He was a bit disappointed. Though he’d had only a faint touch of the liqueur, well diluted by sea water, he would have thought the raiders would target a more powerful component to replace the crystal they’d lost.

Apparently nothing would replace the qva’avaq. He and his sisters were truly the last of an era.

The image came to him of the Saya as he had left her in her office, framed against the stormy window with the faint indigo of the neurotoxic rings blushing on her skin. Was this how Rynn felt, with her unique heritage? Was she this lonely?

Out in the depths, the first divers had passed between the fighting malac and neared the giant shells of the females. Within the observatory, the guests crowded at the transparent walls, as if they wanted to be just a little closer. On the walls above their heads, vid showed the harvest close up, and Icere realized one of the divers must have a camera. Luac’s long, dark hair floated in the center of the picture as he positioned the pulser near the stony-looking shell.

“Luac has to be careful here,” Kylara murmured. “The rhythm and pressure of the pulser has to trick the female into thinking a worthy male has won his way to her side and is politely knocking. Then she’ll open her shell to take in his fertilizing spray. But one wrong move and she’ll slam shut. Then only a bomb would get her open again, which would destroy the malac and the liqueur. And the diver, of course.”

“I’m surprised your mother lets the Ni-Saya take part in such a dangerous tradition.”

Kylara shrugged. “She realizes she has given him quite a legendary legacy to uphold. This is as close as he can come to proving himself a true child of these waters.” She pointed at the overhead screen. “There, that’s good. See the little puff of glittery fluid coming from the malac? That’s the liqueur. The malac likes his knocking and wants to lure him closer. He’ll be unable to resist.” She gave Icere a sideways smile.

He glanced around at the other guests, but all seemed equally enthralled. If any were thinking about how that irresistible liqueur might be converted to something more oppressive, the terrible plan did not show on their faces.

Whatever they might be hiding, the malac was acting like an open book. The fluted lips of the shell gaped by a hand’s width now, showing the smooth inner lining with its pearly sheen.

“She’s a big one,” Kylara said. “The liqueur is secreted from a soft sachet inside the arch of the shell. Luac will have to get her to open wide so he can get all the way inside.”

Icere shook his head. “And she’ll just let him do that?”

“No. That’s what the staves and dive knives are for. The other divers will prop the shell apart while Luac darts in and cuts the sachet loose.”

He just kept shaking his head.

Kylara grinned again. “Don’t be squeamish. The malac aren’t harmed by the harvest. But she’ll definitely be annoyed. And the males are infuriated at the pulser when they think another male has sneaked past them. Luac and the other divers have to move carefully but fast.”

“I tried to explain to the Saya there are perfectly acceptable synthetic replacements for most dopamine agonists.”

“How’d that go over?”

“Like a rock.”

Kylara laughed, but the sound was lost in the gasp of the crowded observatory as the malac gaped, exposing the shining interior of the shell and the writhing nest of internal tentacles. A bubble of trapped air floated up like a silvered balloon, followed by a scintillating cloud of the liqueur.

The divers sped forward. The two on either side of Luac shoved their blunted staves into the open shell, propping it almost as wide as the Ni-Saya was tall. He swam in as nonchalantly as he would enter a room, unsheathing the knife at his thigh.

Kylara leaned forward in her seat. “Let’s go, brother,” she said softly. “The scrubber removes most of the malac essence from the oxygen mix the divers are breathing, but if they absorb too much of it through their skin, they could get…distracted.”

Distracted? That would be an excellent time for the raiders to steal the liqueur. Icere frowned. Even if the divers were sidetracked, the rapt audience in the observatory would notice anything untoward.

Two of the sparring male malac nearby rotated on their thick tentacles, smaller feelers emerging from between the lips of their shells to sample the released liqueur. A third male charged them both, cracking shells and knocking all three closer to the female. They scuffled, tentacles writhing as they struggled to toss each other away from the wide-open female.

One of the divers shone a strong light into the malac. In his black wetsuit, Luac stood out in bold contrast against the female’s fleshy inner feelers. The observatory’s overhead vid showed his knife, aimed at a soft-looking sphere. The liqueur sachet was wider than his spread fingers and encrusted in the roof of the malac’s shell. At the edges of the vid frame, the malac’s feelers snaked around the wedged staves, exploring the intrusion. Although the inner tentacles were short and slender compared to the ambulating appendages on the outside of the shell, they worried at the staves determinedly.

Behind the divers, the battle between the male malac had intensified. With a power jet of water that raised a scrim of floating sand, the third male malac vaulted over the first two, aiming at the female. It snapped at the diver with the camera, throwing him aside. The vid projected in the observatory spun wildly, and the diver floated, one leg askew.

One of the other divers raced toward their injured comrade.

Without a sound, the first stave buckled.

Kylara jolted upright, screaming a warning that none of the suddenly endangered divers could hear. “Luac!”

The malac’s shell was closing, with the Ni-Saya inside.

Icere was on his feet a split second after Kylara.

Ah. Here then was the distraction.

In the sudden shadow without the diver’s light, Luac’s position was impossible to see except for a flash of the orange piping on his wetsuit. The other diver struggled to hold the second stave, but against the brutal pressure of the bivalve shell, the stave snapped. The jagged end slammed into the diver’s belly, spinning him away.

The slowly rotating vid caught a glimpse of a smashed scrubber, flagged in orange trim.

Kylara raced for the portal in the observatory floor, stripping out of her dress as she ran. The brief body suit underneath revealed her strong musculature, and she didn’t hesitate as she grabbed a stave and strapped a scrubber over her nose and mouth.

The observatory crowd was babbling in fear, and the docent was on the comm to the barge, calling out the emergency.

Icere followed Kylara, trying to grab a quick look at every face he passed, but most were pressed to the windows, their hands flattened against the plasteel. He grabbed the docent’s arm. “Do not ascend,” he said harshly. “Make sure you speak to the Saya directly. Tell her our friends may have struck.”

The docent shook his head. “I don’t understand—”

“Just tell her.” Icere stripped out of his clothing, wishing for once he hadn’t worn the fitted knee-length tunic and matching trousers. There was no way he could swim in the constricting material. He smashed a scrubber to his face and dove.

Chapter Eight

And sank.

He flailed a moment, feeling like a less graceful version of the malac as his limbs seemed too long and ungainly, finding no purchase in the open water. Kylara was already several lengths ahead of him and pulling away. She would be in the midst of the accident before he found his stride, or his stroke.

His only experience with deep water was a virtual waterfall environment where he’d seduced an imaginary empress. The scenario had been satisfying at the time, but now he realized he hadn’t been paying much attention to the part where they dove together behind the falls. It had seemed fairly easy, unlike his floundering now.

Which left him wondering how accurate the sex part had been.

He forced himself to relax. It would be impossible to face the Saya if he did nothing while her son drowned. And in the distraction of a dead Ni-Saya, any number of liqueur sachets might be stolen with no one the wiser.

He realized he’d been holding his breath and gasped. The scrubber whirred faintly, exchanging his carbon dioxide for oxygen drawn from the liquid around him. The water was warmer than he expected, wrapping around him like a welcome, the high salinity as supportive as the Saya had promised, although his eyes stung.

His knees touched the sandy bottom, and he launched himself toward Kylara. He tried to imagine himself a sheership, rocketing through the sheerways.

Mostly, he sank. But when his feet touched bottom, he blasted upward again. Two more leaps brought him past the male malac, which had moved on, seeking a more open female. One of the other divers and Kylara were at the clamped shell where Luac had disappeared. The diver with the broken leg held the third man who had been speared with the broken shaft of the stave. Blood made a red haze around them.

Icere tried not to think of what other monsters of the deep would be drawn to the taste of blood in the water. His heart pounded, though he struggled to keep his breathing steady in the scrubber.

How long could Luac hold his breath?

Kylara and the other diver were prying at the lip of the shell with the broken pieces of the staves. She must know it was futile. He’d only skimmed the biological studies of the malac, being more interested in the liqueur, but he had seen the pressures the bivalve muscles could produce to hold themselves closed. They didn’t have time to bring in the bomb she’d mentioned.

He touched her shoulder and she whirled around. He shook his head at her, but she only shook hers back more wildly.

She hefted the stave at him. At first, he thought she would beat him off if he tried to interfere. Then he realized she was showing him the broken end.

The center of the metal was splintered, testament to the malac’s crushing strength. But the outer edges were smooth.

As if they’d been ground down.

He stared hard into Kylara’s eyes and put one finger over his scrubber to silence her.

Then he tapped his ear and gestured at the other diver. Kylara claimed the man’s comm and put it in her ear.

Icere spoke into his scrubber, knowing she would hear, wishing he had paused long enough to grab a comm for himself. “Stop. You’re doing no good.” On several levels, he hoped she understood.

She glared at him, her eyes wide and frantic.

“We have to get the malac to open as it did before: gently.”

She pointed at the sand in the malac’s shadow. The pulser had been crushed.

“Then we do it the way your ancestors did.”

The other diver had pulled back when Kylara took his comm, so Icere slid into his place at the high arched center of the malac’s shell. He ran his fingers along the lip, dredging his memory for what he’d read when he’d been researching the liqueur.

The way the malac fought and courted was the same. The crash of shells was the same, only the ferocity was tempered.

Over his shoulder, he watched the malac still sparring farther away. He tapped the pattern around the rim of the shell, his knuckles splitting against the hard, sharp edges. He thought of the singer he’d been scheduled to meet with to complete his lackluster musical training. An opportunity lost. And now maybe a life lost. And then, maybe, a universe lost.

He tapped again, more gently yet. The salt burned.

His chest burned too, and he knew he was holding his breath again, but so was the Ni-Saya, trapped inside. By the cracked crystal, he’d known trouble had targeted this world, and he’s sworn he would stop it.

The burning of his split knuckles seemed to spread up his arms. His vision swam, which was hilarious because he proven he couldn’t swim. What was wrong? Was his scrubber malfunctioning? His pulse stuttered in his veins. No, not his pulse, the qva’avaq. His whole body felt aflame. He would burn underwater, lighting up this tightly bound monster under his hand. His crystal ashes would float across the waves, flying in the silvery-violet spume when the storms came.

His hand kept knocking, softer and softer, as his awareness drifted, his muscles quivering with the sensation of the fully roused qva’avaq, his vision narrowing to just the sharp and shining lip under his fingertips.

That opened at his touch.

His hand slipped inside and a scintillating cloud of the liqueur puffed out to meet him.

He might have screamed as his whole body convulsed in the power of the aphrodisiac.