Liaden Universe 18: Dragon in Exile Page 39

She didn’t have either of those things, and she fell back down the street, scarf pulled up around nose and mouth, eyes streaming. Mr. Neuhaus hadn’t told her she could leave, and it’d be just her luck that he’d call her for something five seconds after she turned the corner and started down the hill to the city.

  Even so, the smoke kept getting thicker, and Rista retreated, one slow step at a time, in search of something to breathe—until somebody grabbed her shoulder, hard.

  She jumped, and opened her mouth to yell, but what she got instead was a lungful of smoke, which set her off coughing.

  Strong arms went around her, and her face was pressed into something soft that smelled like vinegar. The coughing subsided, and she felt someone pat her back.

  “That is well,” a woman’s voice said softly. “That is better. Now, child, you will stand here, eh? You will stand, and you will watch, but you will say nothing, call no warning. What is your name?”

  “Rista,” she said, as the hands settled her back against the wall, and her scarf was again pulled up to protect her mouth and nose. Her scarf smelled like vinegar now. She took a deep breath without coming out with a coughing fit, though she was kind of sleepy, with her back and her head resting against the wall.

  Must be the smoke, she thought, and felt the bag slipped off her shoulder. The bag with the device in it.

  “Wait . . .”

  “Hush, Rista,” the voice directed, and she stopped speaking.

  “Well and good. Watch now, so that you may tell the others what happened here.”

  The smoke continued to fill up the street, and Seldin Neuhaus began to be nervous.

  He was not normally a nervous man, but the stakes here were high. He had guaranteed delivery of the little city beneath the city—guaranteed delivery to Mr. Vaxter himself. Mr. Vaxter had a certain way of dealing with failure, and the higher up you were in the Syndicate’s structure, the harder that dealing came to be. Neuhaus was one of the three who stood just below Mr. Vaxter, and he’d just seen, up close and personal, how Mr. Vaxter dealt with failure. The guy in charge of the zample-makin’—well it didn’t bear thinkin’ on now. Done was done.

  An’ in the case of Tyer Jells, dead and done.

  None of that, though, was happenin’ to Neuhaus, that was sure. He said he’d deliver, and he’d deliver. No doubt.

  He threw a worried look at the door. Somebody down below shoulda noticed that by now, and started an evacuation.

  ’Course, he thought, could be they were gone already, the street rats who lived under the sidewalk. Might’ve packed up and left for safer streets way back after the recon team had gotten beaten up. Might be, they could just open the gate when the fire burnt itself out, and—

  Indistinct inside the smoke, with the shiver of metal on plastics, the gate began to open, a sliver of light playing into the smoke.

  His crew raised their guns. He raised his.

  And from behind them came the roar of a turboplow, the scream of a dragon, as a wall hit him from behind, pushed and kept on pushing, the whine of electrics overpowering other sounds.

  He yelled; tried to get turned around, but the wall kept pushing and the roaring bounced off the metal walls of the warehouse, and all around him, his crew was being pushed, pushed hard, into the thickest smoke, toward the gate.

  Someone shot at the oncoming wall without his order, and someone else, but the ricochets went everywhere, winging off what must be—

  “Stop shooting; stop, fools!”

  The guy on his right went down, blood all over him, but the wall kept on pushing, shoving him along the street, his screams added to the general din, and there was the gate, the smoke so thick it was hard to see anything. He planted his feet, grabbed the edge of the gate—and snatched his hand away, burned. He jumped forward, thinking he saw someone in the opening door and that relentless wall had stopped. He started to turn, and the wall was back, with more force than ever, knocking ’em all over each other like spillkins and they were inside the gate, and one of the crew got her feet in the right place, and threw herself for the opening to the street, just as the bars slammed down.

  A roar echoed and enveloped the warehouse district, bouncing off of the walls, coming from everywhere at once.

  The Watch was on its way, but Mike Golden had promised Silver—for the return promise that Silver would stay home with his mother until Mike got back with a report—that he would, himself, go right now and find out what was doin’ with the Bedel, and most especially, his sister Kezzi and Kezzi’s dog, and, just by the way, Kezzi’s grandmother.

  The roaring continued, and now there were other shouts and screams mixed in. Mike got himself into a run, cleared the corner, and stopped, back against the wall.

  The street ahead was full of smoke, hidin’ the details. The broad outlines seemed to be that one group of people, armed with what looked like thin metal doors were pushing another group of people toward the warehouse walls.

  The group that was being pushed was yelling. The group doing the pushing was roaring.

  He moved closer, cautiously, keeping his back to the wall, which was how he found the girl leaning there, watching the action ahead with a kind of sleepy approval.

  “What’s up?” he asked her, she turned half-closed eyes on him.

  “She told me to stay and watch,” she said, her voice slightly slurred, “so I could tell everybody what I’d seen.”

  Not, thought, Mike, that anybody’d believe her, doped up like she was.

  “I’ll just go on up closer and take a better look,” he told her, and slipped past.

  Up ahead, the herders had angled the herdees into a narrow opening. The shouting increased; the herders swung away, and the smoke did a pirouette, clearing the air so that Mike could see a crew of people inside what looked to be an old service elevator.

  If service elevators had bars across the front.

  He moved forward, until he felt his arm grabbed, and turned to look up at one of Kezzi’s numerous brothers.

  “Evenin’, Nathan.”

  “Mike Golden. Why are you here?”

  “The boy had a bad dream. Said it smelled like firestarter up here, and he wouldn’t be easy ’til I said I’d come up and check on you.” He made a show of looking around the street. “Looks like you got everything under control.”

  Nathan might have answered that, but for the intrusion of another voice.

  “Mike Golden,” said Silain Bedel. “You say that Kezzi’s brother dreamed this?”

  “Well, ma’am, his mother says it wasn’t a dream at all, but that he saw what was happening. Either way, I promised to make sure you were all right.” He paused, weighing it, then decided he had to tell all of it.

  “Boss Nova, she had me call the Watch. They’ll be here before the next blizzard, I guess.”

  Silain tipped her head to one side, as if considering that, then put her hand on his shoulder.

  “You are a good man. Come and see the rest of it, then, so that you may tell everything.”

  That didn’t sound good. On the other hand, he couldn’t think of a way not to go with her toward the elevator and the half-dozen bad acts standing quiet now, behind bars.

  Alosha the headman consulted with Pulka, who assured him that the field would hold, a little time yet. This was the weakness in the plan to capture the gadje who wished to take the kompani’s common area. Disarming them before capture was plainly impossible.

  They had therefore rigged a field, Pulka and Rafin working together, that energized the ship panels they had found long ago—portions of ship wings they were, with the embedded antimeteor shielding willing to believe the field’s urging—accepting low speed touches but energetically flinging away anything dangerous.

  They also wore protection, in case someone should carry an uncommon handgun—say a laser—but if one did, they had not yet brought it into play.

  So, the field held, and the luthia approached.

  Alosha had not wanted the luthia in t
his, but she had pointed out rightly that this thing must happen: a demonstration that they were not helpless. That knife could cut both ways, as Alosha well knew, but the capture of these gadje, that had not been the only plan.

  Here came the luthia, the man Mike Golden in her hand. She came abreast, and paused.

  “Headman, this event has opened the eyes of my granddaughter’s brother, as he lay sleeping in the City Above. Mike Golden has come in order that he may assure the boy of the safety of his sister and his sister’s kin.”

  Alosha nodded to Mike Golden, and said, “Stand here with me.”

  Mike Golden stood; the luthia went on alone to the very bars, and called in to the gadje.

  “Where is the one named Seldin Neuhaus?”

  “Here.”

  He stepped forward, a burly man a little taller than most ’bleakers, a frown on his big face.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am the luthia, the heart and soul of the kompani. I am here to collect on your wager.”

  “My—what?”

  “Your wager. Did you not say that you bet your life that this job would be a success?”

  He stared at her. Mike shivered, just like somebody had slid an icicle down his back.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “You lost,” Silain the luthia said, and held out her hand.

  “Give me your hand.”

  He wasn’t going to do it, Mike saw that in his face, but it was like he was . . . forced somehow to put his hand through the bars and hold it waiting, palm turned up.

  Silain slid one of her hands beneath his, and bent, tracing something on his palm with her forefinger.

  “Yes, here,” she said. “Do you see? Your lifeline. It ends. Now.”

  Seldin Neuhaus snatched his hand back, eyes wide.

  And fell where he stood.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jelaza Kazone

  Surebleak

  Lalandia approached the Jump point with the stately care one expected from a cruise liner. If three more sprightly shadows took advantage of its bulk to reach the point and slip through unremarked, what mattered that to Surebleak?

  Val Con relaxed back into the pilot’s chair, and deliberately relaxed cramped muscles. They were away, the five champions the Luck had selected to bring an end to Korval’s . . . most recent . . . enemy, and his part—uncharacteristic for Korval—to sit in plain sight, and do nothing.

  He closed his eyes and ran the Scout’s Rainbow, and relaxed further into the pilot’s chair. Cantra yos’Phelium’s own piloting chair, it was, as he sat station on Quick Passage, the very ship that had brought those who were now Liadens into a new universe, escaping from yet another of Korval’s enemies . . .

  Truly, Korval had never dealt in small lots, when it came to enemies. Though to be perfectly just, the enemy of Cantra and her Jela had been the enemy of all life. Placed against such odds as they had faced, the current dispute with the Department of the Interior was a card game played by fractious children.

  Well.

  It was perhaps true that they were living in degenerate times, with the very ship of the Migration long ago made into a library and shelter of last resort, wing-clipped and buried beneath the house that Cantra began, but which had surely by now outgrown even her most sardonic fantasies.

  . . . not to mention Val Con, the least of Cantra’s children, seventh to bear the name; the first having been Jela’s own son. Val Con, who sat safe under Tree while others took up his battle, and who lay awake nights wondering if the clan might best be served by declaring itself kin-tied to criminals.

  In the screens, Lalandia entered the Jump zone—and was gone, leaving behind a brief corona of displaced energies.

  He reached to the board, his fingers dancing among the oddly placed sliders, keys, and toggles. An old board; indeed, an ancient board. It was in him, for one mad, exalted moment, to engage the engines; to find, after all this time sitting safe and idle—to find if she would lift.

  The moment passed. He shut the screens down, and the impulse engine, rose and bowed to the empty cabin, as one unworthy to the honored ancestors, before he crossed to the emergency hatch, and rolled out into one of Jelaza Kazone’s lesser used cellars.

  Miri stirred and half-waked when he slipped into bed beside her.

  “They got off all right?” she murmured.

  “They did,” he answered, tucking around her, and laying his cheek against her hair.

  “Good,” she said. “Now all we do is wait.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Boss Conrad’s House

  Blair Road

  “Mr. Kalhoon called while you were out, sir,” Mr. pel’Tolian murmured, as he received Pat Rin’s jacket. The days were growing cool again, enough so that one felt the lack of gloves when the wind blew.

  “I am sorry to have missed him,” he said to his henchman. “Did he leave a message?”

  “He chose to wait, sir. I placed him in the cloud parlor, with refreshments. Mr. Valish is speaking with Mr. McFarland.”

  Well, here was news, on several levels. Penn Kalhoon was no more nor less busy than any other Boss on the Council. To be prepared to cool his heels for an indeterminate amount of time while Boss Conrad was out on the turf either spoke to a man with grave business in hand, or one who was in need of what the local language styled “a breather.”

  That Mr. pel’Tolian, a shrewd judge of both character and circumstance, had placed him in the cloud parlor—which was “family space”—perhaps spoke to Penn’s necessity, as did the information that Joey Valish, his head ’hand, was speaking with Cheever McFarland, Boss Conrad’s head ’hand.

  Pat Rin ran his fingers through wind-ruffled hair in the vague hope that the action ordered the disorderly, and inclined his head.

  “Has any urgent business arisen while I was out?”

  “No, sir. Merely Mr. Kalhoon.”

  “Well enough, then, I will see Mr. Kalhoon.”

  Penn was seated in the double chair under the light, leafing through a folio of holograms of Solcintra Port.

  “The artist was fascinated with the High Houses, and their sport,” he said, as he closed the door. “There are more facets to the Jewel of Liad than High Port alone.”

  Penn looked up, light glinting off the surface of his eyeglasses.

  “The Jewel of Liad?”

  “So did the poet—you will, I beg, hold me excused, for I do not recall which poet—describe Solcintra Port.”

  “Sure don’t look anything like our port,” Penn said, closing the book and putting it on the table at his side.

  “You have placed your finger squarely on the artist’s failure. She concentrated only on the High Port, where the wealthy and those with pretensions dined and shopped. Had she spent equal time and care with the Mid Port, then you would have seen much to recall Surebleak Port.”

  “Good to know there’s regular folk on Liad. After them tourists got done with us, I was takin’ leave to doubt it.”

  “And the tourists, most of them, were not even from Liad, though their clans were seated there! Liaden Outworlds—but you did not choose to wait for me in order to discuss Liaden Outworlds, or the manners of tourists.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t.” Penn rose, not the tallest nor the broadest of the Surebleak Bosses, still he was taller, and broader, than Pat Rin.

  “This shooting match of Sherman’s. Joey’s been hearing some talk.”

  “Ah.” Pat Rin inclined his head. “I’m given to understand that Mr. Golden has likewise been hearing talk. In fact, we—by which I mean our family—only yesterday gathered together to discuss what we ought to do.”

  “Ain’t nothing to discuss, the way I see it,” Penn said bluntly. “Just don’t go to the damn thing. No sense being a target. Already sent my regrets to Sherman, along with a nice basket o’this’n that for whoever takes novice first.”

  “That is well thought,” Pat Rin said, seating himself in the chair across from
the one Penn has just vacated. “Penn, sit. I perceive that you are about to scold me, and I would prefer not to have a cricked neck, too.”

  “Scold, is it?”

  The other man snorted, but he resumed his seat, leaning forward with elbows on knees, which posture brought them more into balance, but was not likely to be very comfortable.

  Pat Rin sat back in his chair, and smiled slightly. “I am ready. Do your worst.”

  “You don’t hafta be in this thing—it’s Sherman’s bright idea; he’s got a lot o’shooters and wannabes all lined up. No need for you to put yourself, or anybody from your—your family up as a target.”

  Penn straightened and sat back, apparently having said what he had come to say.

  “That is a remarkably succinct scold,” Pat Rin commented.

  “I learned it from my kids. More’n two sentences and they lose track of what the old man’s on about. If you need more, I don’t mind repeating myself.”

  “Thank you, I believe I have the gist. Your concern does you honor. More, it warms me. However, the . . . family reasons thus:

  “There is legitimate concern among some of the citizens of Surebleak—in fact, we—allow me to amend—I invaded a populated, sovereign planet and subjugated it to my own purposes. That I did not accomplish this with ships and soldiers makes the invasion no less actual. My kinsman, the Road Boss, has done me the very great kindness of failing to enumerate the number and kind of regulations and laws that I have fractured, but I don’t doubt that there are many.”

  “Not like there’s a Galactic Watch out there keeping track, is there?”

  “Not as such, though there are various agencies that concern themselves in part with the stability of planetary governments. The trade guilds—Terran and Liaden—do. The Pilots Guild does. Entities such as the cruise line of which Lalandia is merely one ship.”

  “The way I unnerstand it, Surebleak’s ratings with all those entities has improved since you retired Moran and got the rest of us walking in the right direction.”