The City Who Fought (85 page)

They both shook their heads.

"The Kolnari can be beaten," she said positively. "I've seen it happen."

The helmet popped off in her hands.

"Well, hello there," Joat said sweetly to the gasping mercenary. "Welcome aboard."

* * *

Kraig looked frantically around him, surprisingly fine dark eyes filled with panic. He was about thirty, balding, with dark hair and a narrow face.

"I won't talk," he said.

"Really?" Alvec said, sounding pleased.

The mercenary laughed. "You're worse than the Kolnari? I don't think so. And if you aren't, I'm not going to risk getting on their bad side. You know what I mean?"

"You're already on their bad side," Joat purred from behind him. Leaning close she continued, "And they're in no position to hurt you right now." She grabbed his sparse hair and yanked his head back. "But we are," she said, smiling pleasantly.

He went white to the lips.

"My name's Kraig . . ."

"I don't care," she interrupted him cheerfully, shaking his head.

"There are laws, lady!"

"You're working for the Kolnari and you're talkin' about laws?" Alvec said with disgust.

"What's civilization coming to?" Joat coolly asked the room in general. "Seg," she said, glancing at the young Sondee. "Prepare Kraig here a shot of one of those wonder drugs you've been telling us about."

Seg's mouth was sphinctered tightly shut and his golden eyes were half-closed, his face gray with tension, the ear whorls nearly white. But he set down his bag and opened it, slowly.

"Joat," Rand said, "I'm receiving a distress call."

"You're joking," she said.

Instead of answering, Rand opened the com for all to hear.

"Mayday," an obviously distraught young woman was saying. "Mayday! Our pilot is ill, he's unconscious, if you can hear me please help us. We must get to Bethel, it's a matter of life or death! Mayday! Please, someone, answer me. Mayday." Her voice disintegrated into helpless sobbing.

* * *

Belazir steepled his hands beneath his chin and settled himself more comfortably on his thronelike chair, gazing placidly at Nomik Ciety.

I think this one has some trouble with his internal mapping of reality, the Kolnari warlord thought.

He lounged back, resting his chin on the fingers of one hand. Behind him a holographic night-scene showed a plutonium volcano on Kolnar. Down either wall stood Kolnari warriors, naked except for briefs and their weapons, armored in their leopard deadliness.

Nomik bristled. "How
dare
you kidnap me and my associate?" he shouted. He ignored the subtle stirrings of the warriors, their bronze eyes riveted on Belazir. "Do you have any idea the trouble you've just bought yourself? Do you realize that I'm under the protection of Yoered Family?'

The woman beside him had been glancing about. She looked at the collection of plants in their netted cages, and at the shape of the gnawed bones beneath them.

"Mik . . ." she whispered urgently. The man shook off her hand.

"Answer me, you mutant goon! What do you want?"

He paused, panting and glaring at Belazir's mildly interested face.

Fascinating,
Belazir thought, bemused,
the creature seems to think I should be frightened of him.

Apparently I am supposed to be intimidated.
If this was an example of intimidating behavior it was no wonder the scumvermin races were so easily conquered.

"
You
are dead meat!" Ciety snarled.

At Belazir's almost imperceptible gesture, two of the Kolnari picked Nomik up and flung him down on the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

The moment they'd moved Silken had flung herself at Belazir's throat, one hand stiffened into a blade. He watched her approach with astonishment and flicked her aside like a butterfly. She crashed to the floor and rolled to a stop not far from Ciety, and the two of them writhed, breathless at the Kolnari's feet.

"She is brave," Belazir said to Nomik. "I shall speak with her first as she is so eager to approach me."

He smiled into Ciety's furious and frightened face. "But I shall try not to keep you waiting long."

* * *

Well, that was disappointing,
Belazir thought as the guards dragged Silken's half conscious body from his quarters. He'd expected more fire from a woman who'd thrown herself at him unarmed. Ah well, some of them considered it properly stoic to affect total disinterest. Though he hadn't made that easy for her.

Who to speak to now? He sat down before his bank of screens, running a quick check on the day-to-day affairs of his people. Then he called up Bros Sperin and Nomik Ciety's cells.

Sperin was on his feet again, his body bearing yet more burns on his legs and sides. He swayed precariously, his jaw slack, eyes bruised-looking and swollen from lack of sleep.

Nomik was pacing energetically. He turned suddenly as the hatch opened. Two guards thrust Silken into the cell, where she collapsed in a boneless heap before Ciety could reach her.

Nomik knelt beside her and gathered her slender form into his arms, rocking her tenderly and whispering her name over and over as he stroked her matted black hair.

Bleh, Belazir thought. That is enough of that; Karak was bad enough. It is time I interviewed Sperin, anyway.

And the houseplants were hungry. It was time to cultivate a new crop, in any case. What the spores did to living flesh was
very
amusing.

* * *

Bros Sperin wavered. When he closed his eyes it felt as though his body was moving in a circle around the anchor of his feet. He tried not to close his eyes for too long; that meant he kept falling asleep and then over. The crisp white sheets of the bunk mocked him with taunting cruelty. Soft music was playing through the com system, soft soothing music—

He screamed as his knees struck the flooring and current arched through them. Still screaming he touched his hands to the floor to push himself up, then nearly staggered into the wall. Blisters burst on his kneecaps and palms, drooling liquid.

He was very thirsty. He'd promised himself that if he counted to a thousand one more time he could go to the sink and get some water. But he seemed to be stuck on eight hundred sixty-seven. For the life of him he couldn't remember what came next. Or before, for that matter. Eight hundred sixty-seven kept intruding itself into his efforts, offering itself every time he sought the next number.

The bottoms of his feet were numb, but his ankles ached and his calves burned. Inside as well as out.

The thought struck him as funny and he began to laugh.
Wonderful,
some distant, still sane part of him thought,
I'm getting hysterical. That should move things along nicely.

That same part of him was waiting for Belazir to make an appearance. It unnerved him that the Kolnari hadn't come to gloat. It signaled unexpected new depths of self-discipline in the volatile pirate.

"Wake up, scumvermin," a gentle voice urged.

Painfully, Bros opened his eyes. Slowly, they focused on the face before him, and the wide yellow eyes blazing into his. He gasped and staggered back, almost losing his balance on his numbed and clumsy feet.

Bros pinwheeled his arms and regained his balance barely in time to prevent himself from crashing into the wall.

Then he stood there panting, head down, heart beating rapidly, glaring at Belazir from under his brows.

* * *

Belazir chuckled delightedly and crossed his arms over his chest. He was pleased that he'd taken the time to dress for this interview in a long, open-necked robe of watered green silk accented by fretted silver jewelry glittering with fire-opals. It nicely emphasized the difference in their status. A refinement Sperin was definitely intelligent enough to recognize, on some level, semiconscious as he was.

"Are your accommodations to your liking?" he asked politely.

"I was more comfortable on the
Wyal.
" Bros straightened slowly and found himself equal to Belazir's imposing height. Which pleased him a great deal more than it did the Kolnari, he was sure. "You look older than I'd expected," he said conversationally.

A tiny seed of fury burst into existence in Belazir's heart. His mortality gazed back at him from his mirror with every new wrinkle and hair gone from silver-golden to white. Leaving him ever more aware of the hot breath of ambitious underlings on his neck, well-honed blades clutched in their sweaty young hands.

To be so casually insulted by a man he was torturing was intolerable. Lightning flickered at the edges of his vision. If they were truly in the same room he would teach the scumvermin how little his age mattered.

But wait!
Profound surprise flickered across his mind.
Could Sperin be attempting to provoke me? To
manipulate me?
He raised one white-blond brow.
Clever, foolish spy.
How interesting that he was so eager to die. It promised useful information as well as excellent entertainment.

"Do you think," he asked casually, "that it is wise to make me hate you, Bros Sperin?"

"I don't particularly care how you feel about me," Bros said.

Belazir smiled serenely.

"Ah, but you will," he said with utter confidence. "And in a very short time, too."

He decided to begin with the drug that caused pain. As yet he'd had no one to experiment on and Sperin should make a fine test case.

Three Kolnari entered the cell, one of them smaller and pudgier than the other two and tremblingly subservient; a half-caste castrato slave, the usual type assigned the low-status occupation of medicine.

He bowed to Belazir's image over the small satchel he carried.

The two guards took hold of Bros, one on either arm and he slumped between them, making them stagger as he let them take his full weight. It felt almost good, not having to hold himself up anymore.

"The drug that causes pain," Belazir said to the cowering medical technician. He turned to Bros. "An invention from the Phelobites, some of Central Worlds most clever allies. It ignites the nervous system, I am told, causing exquisite suffering."

Bros looked up at him, tired, but contemptuous.

"You make it sound almost sexy, Belazir. Is this how you people have fun when you get old?"

Again the creature taunted him, and he didn't care to have the issue of his age mentioned before his crew. Rage snapped through him like a power whip and was quickly suppressed. He coiled it in, to be used later. Rage always had a use if turned to the right purpose.

"We are a disciplined people," Belazir observed with a calm smile. "We seldom allow ourselves to have

'fun.' However," the smile became wolfish, "I anticipate that you will provide us with some occasion for merriment in the near future." He gestured for the medtech to administer the dose of pain-inducer and watched Sperin's eyes as it was done.

Bros looked back at him as calmly as though they sat across a table in The Anvil.

The dose went in with no more sensation than the touch of the injector to his skin. But inside, almost instantly, a vile sensation—like worms writhing beneath his skin—began to spread through his body.

Belazir watched eagerly as Sperin stood upright, taking his weight on his own feet and his face wrinkled into a mask of profound . . . distaste.

"Eeyaaahh, that's disgusting!" Bros said, shaking his hands and rotating his shoulders. All the while praising Seg !T'sel within his heart.
What would this have been like without the antidote?
he wondered.

Belazir showed no sign of his shock or disappointment beyond a tightening of his jaw. It wasn't working.

Perhaps the drug was unstable and had begun to lose its power.

"Try the drug for fear," he ordered harshly.

The med-tech licked his lips and his dark flesh turned pale gray with terror.

"Great Lord," he said in a voice that shook, "there is a possibility that combining the two drugs could poison the prisoner."

"Do it," Belazir snapped.
Or I will have you gutted where you stand,
he thought viciously, but did not say. It would show too much of what he was feeling.

"Yes, Great Lord."

The second injection acted as quickly as the first, complicating the unpleasant sensation below Bros's skin with a sense of anxiety. His heart speeded up and sweat broke out on his brow. He found himself panting slightly and licked dry lips with a dry tongue. It was very unpleasant.

Almost as much of a strain as the effort not to laugh. The combined effect was about as bad as going three days without a bath or shave; and it was making him less sleepy, too.

Seg, you are a genius. Whatever they're paying you at Clenst it's not enough.
If the little Sondee had been before him, Bros would have kissed him passionately.

Fortunately he was still too tired to smile.

Belazir's apparent calm hid a rage that almost frightened the Kolnari. He stood with his back stubbornly turned to his fury; a ravening beast that would overwhelm and devour him if he gave it one moment's attention.

"Leave him," he said coldly to his men, and watched them march impassively from the cell. Then he studied Bros for a moment longer, hating his victim's lack of reaction, hating his men for witnessing this humiliating incident.

"I see we shall have to think of some other means of helping you pass the time," he said to Sperin. "I shall return quite soon."

"Get some rest," Bros said, "at your age this land of excitement isn't good for you."

"I am going to take you to pieces," Belazir promised him, "One millimeter at a time."

* * *

Belazir flung himself into his chair before the bank of screens. Breathing heavily . . . he forced himself to be still, his fury as hot as the core of a sun within him. He held up a hand before his face, and the fingers trembled. There was a time when they had been rock-steady, however hard the pulse of rage drummed in his ears.

He would personally kill that medtech.
How dare the creature care for the drugs entrusted to him so
poorly they have gone off!
He would tear the little eunuch apart! Belazir's mind filled with images of blood that soothed him somewhat.