Alien Chronicles 3 - The Crystal Eye (21 page)

“How then?”

The lit said nothing.

Ampris glanced around swiftly, aware of the need to be cautious. No patrollers seemed to be in sight. No scanners were hovering. A sort of quiet had fallen over the area, broken only by the sound of sweeping and a distant quarrel deeper in the slum.

“How do I get in?” Ampris repeated.

The lit glanced at her unwillingly. “Catch you on a cargo hauler or a transport, they shoot you on sight. I seen it happen.”

“Tell me another way,” Ampris said, beginning to feel a little desperate. She’d come so far, and she was going to get inside, no matter what it took.

The lit giggled. “Ain’t no other way,” she said. Whirling around, she trotted out of sight.

“Wait!” Ampris called after her, forgetting caution. “When’s the next transport due?”

But the lit was gone, and the platform stood deserted. Ampris swore to herself, then trudged away, heading for the edge of the slum. It was a filthy-looking place, with crooked dark streets and the unmistakable look of being dangerous. In the distance she saw a light flashing, and heard the mechanized patter of a huckster trying to lure the unwary into a gambling den. As Ampris walked closer, the stink grew into a terrible effluvia of unwashed bodies, rotting garbage, and open sewage. It mingled with the dead-fish stench of the river. The smell seemed to pervade her fur and skin, clinging to her like the dreary despair of this place. Every breath she unwillingly inhaled coated her tongue with a sour, vile taste. Yet threaded through the fetid odors came the smells of food and cooking. Her mouth watered, and she panted with thirst.

Ahead of her, a gang of Reject males stood clustered together, chattering loudly.

She skirted them warily, keeping plenty of distance between herself and them.

Behind her, she heard the echoing thump of the city gates sliding open. She spun around, wincing as she moved too fast, and saw a battered, decrepit transport rumbling out of the city. It stopped as soon as it was through the gates, and disgorged a load of Rejects, all of them coated with plaster dust and looking weary from a hard day’s work.

The gang scattered to meet the new arrivals, calling out a mixture of greetings and insults. “You get paid?” someone called.

“You get fed?”

“You bring any food?”

One of the workers powdered in white slapped at his ragged clothing and raised his rill. “None that I’m going to share with the likes of you.”

The two of them went at it in a fight, while the others circled them and shouted encouragement.

Ampris slipped down a narrow street and saw an Aaroun female standing in the doorway of a shack constructed of crate and packing materials held together with pieces of rusting wire. It looked like it might fall down at any moment.

“Excuse me,” Ampris said politely to her. “Will any more transports be going into the city soon?”

The Aaroun looked at her blankly for a long while. One of her eyes was blue with blindness. The other eye, brown and vacant, held only bleak despair. But she finally seemed to rouse herself.

“Ain’t no more for th’ night,” she said. “Shift over. Din’t you see?”

Ampris probed at her aching jaw. “No, I guess I didn’t notice. When will they—”

But the Aaroun turned and stepped inside her shack, leaving Ampris in mid-sentence.

Backing her ears, Ampris glanced around and tried to figure out what to do next. She hurt. She was desperately hungry, and every scent of food made her stomach rumble painfully. The sun was going down, and she needed to find a place to spend the night.

She had the feeling of being watched, although she saw very few Rejects or abiru stirring. Behind her. she could still hear the sounds of the fight going on, louder even than the mechanized come-ons of the gambling den. A female Reject with hostile, cynical eyes brushed past her, and Ampris felt the quick fingerings of a pickpocket.

Growling, she slapped the thieving hand away, and the Reject hurried on without a backward glance. Ahead of Ampris, a yellow light glowed dimly in the gathering shadows, marking a brothel.

Ampris veered away from it too, wanting to avoid all trouble. She realized she was lost, and her poor physical condition was keeping her from thinking clearly. She shouldn’t have ventured into Reject Town, she thought. She should have stayed near the city gates. Now it would be dark soon, and if she stayed here she would be easy prey for whatever hunted in these squalid streets.

Thirst made up her mind for her. She headed deeper into the slum, intending to find the river. The water was probably unsafe to drink, but Ampris was past caring. She would sleep on the bank somewhere, in the freshest air possible, away from this fetid place. Come morning, she would try again to slip inside the city. She might even look for sewer tunnels, although Elrabin had warned her against trying to enter the city that way. He’d told her tunnels were guarded by ruffians and thieves who used them for hideouts and storage of stolen goods. They were well-guarded, no place for an amateur.

She would decide in the morning; that is, if she survived that long.

Following her nose, she blundered down dim, twisting little streets, trying to find the river, and coming to dead ends far too often. There was no kind of order here. Shacks had been built anywhere their owners wanted, facing in haphazard directions, and sometimes planted right in the middle of the street itself.

Of course, “street” was too generous a word for these trails through filth. Skeks sorting through garbage squeaked and fled from Ampris’s approach, only to follow at her heels. She tried several times to shoo the short, multilegged vermin away. They would scatter momentarily, waving their boneless hands stupidly over their heads, and come right back.

Then she heard the scrape of a footstep behind her. Instantly the fur bristled around Ampris’s neck. She glanced back and saw a Reject in a stained coat following her. She tensed, wary and alert now. When she looked forward, she saw another Reject blocking her path.

He had emerged from nowhere, melting into sight like a shadow. From her left came two more; from her right, at least three or four.

Ampris’s heart started pounding. She panted, her ears flicking back nervously. She was standing in one of the wider streets of the slum. On one side rose a section of the city wall, tall, smooth, and unassailable. On the other side, a pair of shacks that had fallen in some time ago had created a clearing of sorts. The rubble and debris, however, made the footing unstable. It would be easy to stumble and fall if she tried to run or fight.

As the Rejects closed in on her from all sides, they began to make a peculiar hissing, humming sound. Her lips skimmed back from her teeth instinctively, and she growled low in her throat as she turned slowly around to face as many of them as possible.

“I have nothing to steal,” she said, aware of the Eye of Clarity tucked inside her torn jerkin. She hoped it hadn’t slipped into sight to betray her. “The Toths already stole everything I had.”

“You don’t belong here,” one of the Rejects said, while the others hummed and hissed with increasing menace. “Abiru
filth,
taking our space. Eating our food.”

“I haven’t—”

“This our place,” the Reject said. As he came closer, she saw that he had red eyes. His square pupils were dilated and huge. Flicking out his tongue, he did something clever and quick with both hands, and two knives slid from inside his sleeves to appear, shiny and lethal, in the expert clutch of his fingers. “This our place!” he repeated. “Not for abiru. You get out!”

Ampris forgot that she was weak with hunger and thirst. She forgot that her crippled leg was aching and nearly useless. She forgot the blisters on her feet and the bruises on her body. She looked around to where the circle was the thinnest, and she ran for her life.

With less than three hours left before her scheduled departure, Israi was still seated in private audience with Lord Nalsk, head of the ominous Bureau of Security. He had brought her the latest dispatches of intelligence from the rim world rebellion.

Israi listened to the male in stony silence. She had not yet forgiven him for canceling her vacation to Mynchepop yesterday. For the past several years, she had made an annual summer visit to the exquisite pleasure planet to escape the heat of Vir. It was a trip that she looked forward to with great anticipation, but with war raging along the outermost edges of the empire, it had been deemed inadvisable for the Imperial Mother to leave the safety of Viisymel.

She was furious. She had never found disappointment easy to accept, and to be denied her wish was something rare and most difficult to swallow.

Now she sat on her red-cushioned throne in the audience hall, closed to all while she met with Lord Nalsk, and glared at him through half-slitted eyes. She had given Nalsk increasing power over the years, and his network of intelligence agents had proven invaluable to her, but she hated anyone who thought he could tell her no.

Had a passenger ship not been attacked in recent weeks, she would have ignored his order and departed for Mynchepop as planned. But Israi was no fool. She knew some risks were too costly. Therefore, as soon as her audience with Nalsk ended, she would close the court and go instead to her lodge in the mountains.

There was much optimism among her courtiers that the mountains would be cooler. They would not be as cool as Mynchepop, which had no adverse weather. But any respite was better than nothing.

She slumped lower in her chair, leaning her head on her hand, and flicked out her tongue.

Nalsk’s droning voice stopped. “Do I bore the Imperial Mother?”

He had an icy way of speaking and a disdainful way of looking between his nostrils. His rill was held up by a tall collar of engraved silver, and he wore a coat of plainly woven blue silk. Not for Lord Nalsk the outrageous, extravagant fashions of the court. But although he might sometimes prove boring, Israi knew he should never be underestimated. She could ill afford to make an enemy of him.

She flicked out her tongue again. “Not bored, my lord,” she replied smoothly. “Merely fatigued.”

He bowed, displaying streaks of pink along his rill spines. “My report is perhaps too long?”

“No longer than any of the other reports we have received this day,” she said. “Yours is the eighth or ninth. None bring us good news.”

“The war goes poorly,” he said.

She slammed her fist down on the arm of her throne. “Then when will it go well?”

Nalsk puffed out his air sacs. “Lord Belz has reached the area of greatest fighting. He reports the next battle will commence our time tomorrow. I will continue to send your majesty reports on that matter during your majesty’s absence.”

She barely concealed her grimace of disgust. “Thank you.” Oh, yes, she thought bitterly, he would flood her with reports, as would every other official on her council. Going to the lodge was hardly getting away. And she was tired, so tired her head buzzed all the time and she could barely concentrate. It seemed of late that never a day passed without several new crises. The desk of her study was heaped with problems, and she could not cope with them all. Even Temondahl looked weary and worried.

And yet, she had to try to get away from Vir, even if her rest was interrupted. She knew she must take care of herself first.

Nalsk was staring at her, as though he had said something she’d not heard and now expected an answer. Israi stared back at him, and he finally bowed.

“Very well, majesty,” he said. “I shall give as many reports as is possible to the chancellor of state. But he is not cleared to see everything. Nor should he be.”

“Do your best,” she replied.

He seemed to be turning to leave, and Israi straightened in her chair in hope, but Nalsk was only pulling another document from a pocket inside his wide sleeve.

“There is one last thing,” he said.

This time Israi could not conceal her sigh of impatience. “Yes?”

“It concerns your egg-brother Oviel.”

At once he had her complete interest. A surge of hatred washed over Israi. Her brother had been in exile for years now, living far from court as punishment for his attempt to steal her throne. Israi refused to have his name mentioned in her presence, and no courtier dared defy her.

Except Nalsk, who feared no one, not even her.

“What about the creature?” Israi asked coldly.

“He has served his term,” Nalsk said. “His exile officially ends tomorrow.”

“No!”

“I’m afraid so, yes.” Nalsk’s eyes were the green hue of the ocean. They regarded Israi steadily. “He cannot live in exile indefinitely. The law does not allow for that.”

“The law should have allowed for his neck to be broken,” she said, fuming.

Nalsk permitted himself a small smile. “Even so, Chancellor Temondahl has approached me on the matter and—”

“Temondahl!” Israi said in surprise. “He has discussed Oviel with you?”

“Asking advice,” Nalsk said. “Asking when the term would expire. Asking whether Oviel might return to Vir and the court in safety.” Nalsk flicked out his tongue. “The Bureau cannot offer him security without the Imperial Mother’s permission.”

“Never!” she said, outraged. “We find it difficult to believe that Temondahl is so interested in the welfare of our brother.”

“Chancellor Temondahl concerns himself with many details,” Nalsk said. “In many different areas.”

Israi wasn’t going to waste her time trying to figure out what he meant by that. “We do not want Oviel here,” she said. “He betrayed us, and we are not yet ready to forgive him.”

Nalsk bowed. “As the Imperial Mother commands. But I thought I would warn your majesty of the matter. Temondahl will bring it up, and in such delicate affairs it is best to be prepared.”

“Why is it a delicate matter?” she asked. “Oviel is a traitor.”

“Some,” Nalsk said with care, “do not think so.”

“Who?” she demanded with fresh anger. “We demand their names.”

“That would entail submitting half the names at court.”

Israi rocked back in her chair, too shocked to speak. For the first time in years, she felt disquiet. Had she no better hold on her subjects than this? It seemed inconceivable that a scrawny, overly ambitious upstart with no legal claim to the throne should be able to make so much trouble for her. Yet Oviel had always surprised her that way.