The Tattooed Tribes (23 page)

“
How do you know all this?” Vlic
asked.

“
I know because
my
bloody father is in it up to his neck,” she
replied. “He thinks he’s found a legitimate way to help break down
unwelcome trade barriers. The trouble is, he has no idea what he’s
signed up for and I’m pretty certain he’d be scared witless if he
knew the truth. That’s why I need to find him and get him out of
this mess, before he’s ruined at best or killed at
worst.”

“
Out of what mess?” Lucien
demanded.

“
This business with the bride, of course,”
Stacey replied.

“
But you said he was tied up with my
father,” Lucien protested.

“
Give me strength! Who the bloody hell do
you think is behind all this?”

His jaw
dropped, but she either did not believe his astonishment, or chose
not to believe it.

“
If I’d got the TLO apprenticeship, which I
should’ve done, I might’ve been able to stop all this before it
began, with Harabin’s help, but you came along and fucking ruined
it.”

“
I didn’t know!” he protested.

“
Yes, you did,” she accused. “You and your
father. He made sure you’d get it. I don’t know where he put the
pressure, but I’ll find out.”

“
Dad never wanted me to be a TLO,” Lucien
protested. “I begged him when I was younger, but he always said it
was a waste of time and not a career with prospects. No-one was
more surprised than me when Jon said he’d agreed.”

“
I don’t believe you,” she replied. “He saw
a chance to get you on the inside and he took it.”

“
Maybe,” Lucien agreed after some thought.
“If he’s what you say he is. But it wasn’t planned and it was my
idea to apply when I did, not his. Hell! I lived rough for three
months after I went to that board. We had a row and I walked out
and I sure as hell wasn’t going to crawl back. I’ve not seen him in
months and months.”

She did not
want to believe him, but there was a note of such sincerity in his
voice, she was reluctantly beginning to have doubts.

“
How do you know all these things,
gwerl
?” Vlic
asked.

She shrugged.
“My father is useless when it comes to keeping his mouth shut,
especially after he’s had a couple of drinks.” She flushed a deep
crimson and looked very uncomfortable. “I suspect he may have told
someone about tribal marriage custom.”

The full
implications of this were not lost on the tribal boy.

“
You told him?” Vlic said in horror, “You
told an outsider?”

She gave a
gasp and put her head down onto her knees, her shoulders shaking
with sobs.

“
I was very young,” she gulped. “I didn’t
realise telling my father every wonderful thing that happened was
wrong.”

The boys
watched uncomfortably until she had control of her emotions, both
thought they should say or do something to comfort her, but neither
could think of anything.

Both were
relieved when her head came up and her face was once again set into
a stiff, controlled mask.

“
I didn’t know he was using me,” she said.
“I need to put things right.”

Vlic nodded.
“That is a right and proper thing,” he said.

All three were
silent for a while; then a thought struck Vlic.

“
It was a long and dangerous road to come
alone,
gwerl,
” he said,
a hint of admiration in his voice. “How did you know where to
come?”

“
Yeah,” Lucien said, suddenly suspicious
“How?”

“
I broke into my father’s files,” she
replied. “And there have been some rumours running up and down the
river about a place where dubious trading is going on. I put two
and two together.”

“
So you’ve not been further,” Lucien said,
“You don’t know if your father is there.”

“
No, but …”

“
So you’ve no proof!” he said,
triumphantly, “of anything you’ve said.”

For a second
it seemed as if she would fly at him or scream in rage, but instead
she drew a deep breath and said, “No, I’ve no proof, but I’ll bet
my life my father is at some sort of camp site further up this
stream.”

Unable to stop
themselves, Lucien and Vlic exchanged a glance.

“
You’ve been there!” she gasped.

“
May have,” Lucien replied. “But we didn’t
see your father or mine, hot stuff, so you can bet your fucking
life on what you like.”

He was angry
with her and not for all the obvious reasons. Lucien did not like
his father and he was ambivalent about whether he felt any love for
him. He did not much like his mother either at times, but he did
have a mild affection for her, possibly, if he was honest, deep
affection.

He had always
felt an uneasy sense of guilt over this, bother by his lack of
feelings for his father, wondering if it was wrong and something he
should try and correct when he had the time and the tools.

Had Marcus
ever treated him as Jon did? Talked to him, cared for him, wanted
him to be better than he was and tried to help him to be so?

He remembered
the rows that began when he was old enough to answer back,
arguments that invariably started over his love for nature and the
outdoors.

When he was
small every little treasure he brought home from his exploring had
been jeered at, held up to ridicule and destroyed. And he had been
mocked and held up to ridicule as well.

Once it made
him cry, but in time he found his best defence was to throw himself
more and more into everything Marcus despised and fight back by
provocations such as skipping school to go camping, ignoring every
punishment and laughing in the face of disdain.

Stacey was
making him remember odd visitors late at night, and some of his
mother’s jewellery, the pearl and gold pieces she had shown him
once when he was little, but never worn.

For the first
time in his life he thought of the things decorating their house,
things he saw so often they had no meaning to him. It had been
nearly a year since he had been home, but the picture of the lynx
in the hall came into his mind; he knew now it was a totem hide and
should not have left the men’s house where it had once hung.

It had never
previously occurred to him that the Devlin's lived a lavish life
style without obvious means of support. At least his parents lived
it, he had been off in the woods as much as he could, but there
were servants and good clothes and dinner parties; the house had
every luxury the colony could provide, far more than any of his
school friends had and they were not poor.

He had never
once seen his father do anything he would class as work; he did not
even lock himself away in his study for hours at a time.

And what about
the long absences? Times when even his mother did not know where
Marcus had gone and there were no explanations or stories when he
came back.

When his
father did speak about the planet, it was a constant monologue of
complaint about the lack of opportunities and the amount of money
to be made from exploiting something.

Finally there
was the tribal figure he had once seen walking away from the house.
Looking back, he knew they had been dressed in tribal costume, but
they had not been the real thing.

The real
possibility that his father might be involved began to eat at
him.

“
If you tell me your father had nothing to
do with this, Lucien, I will believe you,” Vlic said, who had been
watching his friend for a while and had seen the thoughtful
expression.

“
I wouldn’t,” Stacey murmured under her
breath.

“
No,” Lucien said. “Neither would
I.”

Vlic and
Stacey stared at him.

“
I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “Maybe he
is in it, maybe he isn’t. But I guess it wouldn’t surprise me if he
was.”

Stacey’s jaw
dropped and Vlic’s eye brows shot up.

“
But,” Lucien continued, “I know nothing
about it. And I wouldn’t have supported him if I had. In fact
...”

He paused,
considering how to put it.

“
I’ll testify against him if it turns out
to be true and I’ll do everything I can to help Jon and the Guild
put him away.”

Stacey opened
her mouth to repudiate this, but Vlic caught her arm.

“
He tells the truth,
gwerl.
”

“
How do you know?” she snapped. “And for
god’s sake stop calling me
gwerl,
my name is Stacey.”

“
I know, Stacey, because I am of The People
and we know when the truth is misused. He speaks the truth and what
is more, you
know
he
is.”

She considered
Lucien for a moment. “Maybe,” she said at last. “What now?”

“
We go back,” Vlic replied. “And report all
of this. What you’ve said and what we’ve found. But not until
tomorrow. It will be dusk soon. And I don’t fancy trying to walk
this ridge by night.”

None of them
realised how long they had talked and after a brief debate, they
decided to camp for the night.

They were all
short on food and there was not light enough to hunt, but between
them they had enough for a few mouthfuls each. Vlic got a fire
going and found some leaves to make a tea.

Stacey offered
to collect more wood while she went to answer a call of nature and
Lucien made his way down the slope to fetch more water.

Chapter
16

It was peaceful
by the stream and Lucien eventually found a relatively dry spot
where he could kneel.

He needed time
to think and to calm his troubled mind by re-establishing his bonds
with everything wild and wonderful. An iridescent dragonfly
hovering over the still water in the fading sunlight caught his
eye. He watched it as it dipped its tail into the water, laying egg
after egg.

Absorbed in
the study of things he loved, he forgot all time and he never heard
any sound. The first warning he had of danger was a hand in the
small of his back.

He tipped
forward completely unbalanced; lost his grip on the canteens and
tumbled head first into the stream.

He struggled
to get up and face his attacker, but an iron hand gripped the hair
on the top of his head and forced his face under the water.

Fighting for
his life, Lucien desperately tried to rip his head away, but could
not feel the bottom of the stream to give him purchase, so his arms
just flailed in the water uselessly. The need to breathe was
becoming stronger and more desperate and he began to panic as he
realised soon he was involuntarily going to suck in a lung full of
water and death would follow swiftly.

Suddenly his
head was hauled up and he was hurled backwards onto the bank.
Gasping for air he wheezed and wept, frantically trying to escape
from whoever had done this before they could change their mind and
do it again.

His assailant
grabbed him and he was dragged to his feet by one shoulder and
pushed in the direction of the slope.

“
Up there!” Jon ordered. “Now!”

“
I … I …” Lucien gasped, still trying to
fill his lungs properly.

“
Move!” Jon barked.

Lucien
moved.

At the camp
site Vlic sat by the fire; gagged and bound hand and foot, his eyes
wild with fear. When he saw Jon the fear went and he seemed to
collapse in upon himself, his jaw wobbling and his breathing
ragged.

There was no
sign of Stacey.

Lucien was
pushed to a place by the fire, Vlic’s bounds were cut and it was
indicated he should join his friend.

“
Wait there and don’t either of you say a
word or move a muscle.”

Jon stalked
off into the nearly pitch black woods and returned a few minutes
later with Stacey, she was white-faced and shaking. He pushed her
down to join the boys.

“
If I’d been the enemy,” Jon began. “All
three of you would be dead. I trust this lesson in keeping a proper
watch has scared you all shitless.”

There was
little point in replying; he knew and they knew he had
succeeded.

They watched
silently as he finished making the tea and set some smoked venison
to cook. He handed each of them a cup of hot tea and spooned in a
generous measure of maple sugar.

“
Drink!” he ordered.

They obeyed
him, Lucien’s hands trembling, Vlic’s teeth chattering on the edge
of the cup and Stacey weeping silently into the brew.

Jon smiled
grimly when he saw this. He opened his pack and drew out a small
bottle.

“
Open!” he instructed and held their noses
until each one had reluctantly opened their mouth and had a dose of
an evil smelling viscous liquid poured in. It was unbelievably
vile, so vile Lucien’s stomach thought about getting rid of it the
second it got down there, but one look at Jon’s face made it stay
put.

A glance at
Stacey and Vlic showed they were having a similar problem; they all
reached eagerly for more tea, but even that could not get rid of
the taste. Within a few minutes they all felt a lot calmer,
though.

“
By rights I should’ve made you suffer a
lot longer,” Jon said, observing the relaxing of faces and easing
of trembling hands.

None of them
felt much like eating, but were not given the option- they were
told to get it down their throats or else. Finally hot sweet tea
and food had a reviving effect and, feeling better, Lucien opened
his mouth to tell what they had discovered, only to be told to keep
silent.