WARP world (17 page)

Manatu had passed out almost as soon as he had hit his bunk, arms and legs dangling over the edge, obviously the aftereffect of all the exertion and exposure. Seg couldn’t focus on much, but knowing the stupid oaf was deep into sleep stirred pleasing notions of drowning him.

“SEG!” he heard Ama shout, the sound muffled.

“What?” he muttered into the pillow, as if she were in the room. It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t. Was she having some feverish dream about him?

He shook his head. Manatu, with the preternatural awareness of a veteran, was already awake, and at the hatchway to his quarters. “Trouble,” Manatu mouthed and Seg suddenly realized that, yes, a screaming woman in the middle of the night often did herald some sort of disturbance, and pulled himself upright. Since he hadn’t bothered undressing, the stunner was still strapped into his sleeve. He lurched up, adrenaline coursing through his system, and staggered out of his quarters. Manatu followed in his wake and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I should go,” he whispered, the first words Seg had heard him speak in two days.

“Shut up, idiot,” Seg whispered back and shook him off. When he had climbed high enough, he could see figures silhouetted by moonlight where Ama slept. He signaled behind him to Manatu, in the field code in which he had been trained.
Four. Armed. Kill when I signal.

Before going further, he took a moment to force the shakes down, then climbed above deck. The adrenalin had cleared his head but he still couldn’t steady his hands, so he clasped them behind his back.

“EXCUSE ME,” he bellowed, in his most imperious voice. The men froze, looking back at him in surprise and, in at least one case, fear.

“I am Lord Eraranat,
Kinston
of the South Duchy and Inheritor of the Clay Mount, and that is my vassal you are disturbing without making proper recompense.”

“What?” asked the man who had a knife pressed against a most vulnerable spot on Ama’s body. The man was obviously a Damiar and, by their dress and size, Seg guessed the other three were his Welf thugs.

“That Kenda,” Seg said, pointing helpfully in case Uval did not grasp to whom he was referring, “is contracted to me. Where I come from, that means she belongs to me. And if you wish to use her, you need to make arrangements beforehand. Thirty coin a night,
per person
. I would charge more but she’s rather unenthusiastic, has two strange birthmarks and, despite repeated washings, she bears a peculiar odor in the nether region. In any event, if you wish to mark her, the price rises to seventy per person, and I must insist that you leave her in a functional state as I will need her navigational skills in the morning.”

“This is none of your business, Lord Eraranat.”

“I’m sorry, Lord…?” Seg began, “I didn’t catch your name. Did you wish to negotiate a lower price on by-the-hour usage?”

“This is ridiculous,” Uval said. “Kill him.”

One of the thugs lunged toward Seg, who lurched toward him at the same time, stunner ready beneath his sleeve. Behind him, Manatu groaned.

The two men met, there was a crackling sound and both went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Seg was still moving with control, his opponent was not.

Pinned beneath his unconscious attacker, he saw Manatu toss a
stun grenade
to a point just ahead of where the other thugs stood, timing his move so that the loud flashbang effect preceded him by a second. The other two released Ama, drew their knives, and turned directly into the face of the grenade.

Manatu moved more swiftly and efficiently than seemed possible for a man of his size, his knife glinting in the moonlight as he charged toward his blinded and deafened foes. The blade was barely out of one man, leaving him to fall to the deck, gushing blood and steaming entrails, as Manatu slashed it across the throat of the other.

Arterial blood
sprayed across Ama as the body dropped onto her legs.

Uval had gathered his wits enough to try to escape, but as he moved to step across Seg, a shaky hand grasped his ankle and the stunner discharged once more, dropping his ungainly bulk right across Seg’s upper body.

Manatu grabbed the limp Outer, lifted him away from the precious Theorist, slammed him against the hatch and prepared to thoroughly eviscerate him.

“Wait,” Seg said, “let me get up.” His voice was thick and slow, but the rush of excitement had cleared any remaining fog from his mind. Killing some thugs was one matter, he wasn’t so sure killing local nobility wouldn’t cause them some serious problems. As he struggled to his feet, he noticed Ama pushing the Welf body off her.

Seg hadn’t escaped the skirmish unscathed. A long line of crimson was etched across his forearm; the blade of the first attacker had neatly sliced through his sleeve and into the flesh below. The stunner harness and assembly was exposed. Flat black, with a pair of metal prongs connected to a slim battery pack, attached by three retaining straps to the forearm, the harness and assembly were made of stouter material than mere flesh. He slumped against the gunwale as he considered what to do with this Outer who had attempted to damage his captain.

Ama was at the opposite gunwale, throwing up. She wasn’t there long. She turned suddenly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she did, crouched down, scooped a stray knife off the deck and charged at Uval’s slack body. Her body shook. She was soaked in blood that looked black in the moonlight, as if rage had painted itself across her.

Manatu held her back, grasped her by the scruff of the neck and lifted her clear while he held Uval against the hatch with his other
hand
. Seg pushed himself off the starboard gunwale and staggered toward them.

“Go ahead,” he slurred. “Let her do it. She has my permission.”

Manatu looked dubious, but dropped Ama back to the ground and released his grip on the unconscious Damiar a moment later.

Seg shook his head. Storm take it, they were blown one way or another. Silencing the Damiar was a reasonable precaution. Worse come to worse, they could pin the murder on the girl and escape.

“Deaaahd.” The Damiar wheezed out the word as he came back to consciousness. “Kenda…whore,” he rasped, obviously not yet awake enough to comprehend his position. “I’ll see you sent to As’Cata for this. You’ll be hung and torn and—”

“My turn,” Ama said, then thrust the knife into the man’s stomach.

Seg glanced to the bow as Ama finished off her attacker; there were men gathering at the pier, carrying various heavy and edged objects from their boats. Kenda, he assumed, drawn by the noise and lights of Manatu’s micro-grenade.

Things were about to get even uglier. “Manatu,” he said quietly, “be ready.”

“I’m bleeding, Theorist.”

Seg’s head whipped around. When he spoke next, it was in his own language
.
“You idiot! How bad is it?”

Manatu’s hand came back from his side, covered in blood. He answered in the same language. “Bad.” With that, he slumped to the deck.

Seg eyed the crowd again. The situation had just gotten extremely untenable. The first Kenda hopped up to the deck and stalked forward warily with a boathook in hand. Seg checked the charge–one shot left on the stunner. It was an emergency weapon, small, not designed for prolonged conflict.

At least he had transmitted enough data to Kerbin for a good raid, if not as good a raid as he would have conducted.

Like gutting a fish
, that’s how Ama processed the moment she drove the blade into Uval’s stomach. No longer unconscious, he had let out a strangled cry the moment the blade pierced him. How many times she plunged the blade in, she would never remember, only that he had gurgled like a rukefish.

Eventually her arm dropped and she stared at the dead flesh on the deck.

Her mind drifted too slowly back to anchor. There was too much noise. Turning as if she were turning in water, she saw Manatu collapse. Seg’s back was to her. Was he bleeding or was that someone else’s blood? Someone else was on the deck, too. An armed figure, heading toward them, brandishing a weapon.

Calm washed over her. Knife in hand, dripping with Uval’s blood, she stepped around Manatu, past Seg, and walked out to meet the attacker. She was ready to kill again; her heart had slowed to a crawl. This man would not harm her or her passengers.

“Get off my boat.”

The man froze in place. “Captain Kalder?” Silence. “Ama, are you alright? It’s me Captain Jefir, of the
Lasathe
.”

“Jefir,” she said, numbly.

“You gave the signal and when…”

Jefir carried on but she had stopped listening. Signal? What signal had she given?

Connections began to snap into place. Back on the Banks, before pushing off, she had called out to Captain Tather,
Tell my family to keep their eyes on the horizon for my return
. A piece of code, one of many the mariners used to pass secret messages. Her ‘family’ was the Kenda, and her request was a signal that she had passengers she did not fully trust and wanted eyes to watch over her.
You will have their eyes
, he had replied, another piece of the code. As was tradition, Tather would have spread the word to every Kenda on the docks, including all outbound vessels, and word had made it to Alisir. “Jefir. Yes, I know now.” Her voice came to her from somewhere deep under water.

Seg was injured. Manatu was…was he dead? She had killed a Damiar Lord. A crowd of Kenda were gathered around the
Naida
, her maritime brothers she had unwittingly summoned.

“You’re covered in blood, are you inj—”

“No,” she cut him off. Seg and Manatu were her first priority. “Jefir, I need you and the others to keep the authorities busy. I’m going to push off; I’ll need help with that, as well. If anyone asks, tell them my passengers had a family emergency to attend to.” She glanced back at Seg, and was immediately struck by the situation she had put them in.

“What’s happened?” Jefir asked.

“Bad trouble.”

Jefir nodded, understanding perfectly well what ‘bad trouble’ meant to the Kenda. “Go. I’ll my have crew help with the ropes and I think we can work up a brawl big enough to draw the attention of the constables away from you. Be careful out there in the black.”

She didn’t linger to thank him. That could be done at another time, in another port. She heard the Kenda men disperse.

The blade dropped from her hand, she hurried to Seg, tearing the blood soaked shirt off her body. “Give me your arm. We have to go. Now.” She gripped his wrist and pulled his arm toward her. “Is Mana—”

Her voice dropped away. She felt his arm, flesh and blood, but there was something else there too, something metallic. Her eyes found his and she opened her mouth to speak. Manatu emitted a low moan. There would be time for questions later. “Whatever that is, take it off so I can bandage your wound,” she ordered.

He was strangely tranquil and stared at the deep slice with an air of detached curiosity. “In my luggage, there are two metal boxes,” he told her, then went on to describe the featureless boxes she had puzzled over. “Bring those to me. Then get us out of here. I’ll take care of things from here.”

As he detached the mysterious object from his injured arm, Seg groaned. Ama watched as it fell and clattered to the deck. “Go,” he ordered. “We still have a schedule to meet.”

On his command, she sprinted below deck to the cargo locker. She was thankful now for her snooping, as she knew exactly where to look. When she reached to unlatch the locker, she was surprised to see her hand shaking violently. Odd, she felt so calm.

It took both hands to open the latch. Images flickered across her eyelids–noise and a bright light, Manatu sweeping through her attackers as if they were insects, like a trained soldier but beyond any soldier or guard she had ever seen, Manatu speaking, both he and Seg talking in gibberish, some kind of language she had never heard.

Never mind. Do your job
.

She fished the boxes from the trunk and hurried them up to Seg, without speaking and barely looking at him. They would speak later; right now they had to get out of port.

The blood was sticky on her body. As she cast off the lines, she thought of the water below and how much she would love to clean herself. No time. This would be tricky, navigating the river by moonlight. Even more dangerous would be their passage out into the Big Water. She didn’t relish the thought of tackling any standing waves, formed when the incoming tide met the outgoing river, in the dark.

Uval wouldn’t have been foolish enough to tell anyone where he was going, she was positive of that, but evidence of his visit was splattered all over the
Naida
. As soon as she could find a safe hole to hide in, she would drop anchor–she was in no shape to be at the helm but they needed to get off the river and away from Alisir and the authorities. Ama extended the main skin and guided the
Naida
back onto the river, praying that there were no deadheads in their path.

Bad trouble. Yes.

She had three dead Welf and a dead Damiar on her boat. Dead by her hand. She also had two passengers who were, she was beginning to understand, infinitely more dangerous than any Lord.

As she strained to see downriver, Ama wondered what Seg was doing and if he could save his friend. She wondered if he knew how grateful she was to him and why he had let her kill Uval, one of his kind.

She turned the wheel and focused on the job at hand. After all, that is what she was being been paid for.

Seg pressed his thumb to the smooth pad of the auto-med case and it opened silently. All extrans units were fitted with print scanners to prevent Outers from accessing them, should they fall into the wrong hands. As he fitted the auto-med sleeve on Manatu, he took stock of the situation. Manatu was alive, for the moment. Ama was in shock but unwounded. The Kenda were, if not allies of his, allies of hers. They could make their escape.

From the nature of the attack, it seemed Ama had some secrets of her own.