Alien Hostage (39 page)

Falinset looked at Tasha grimly. “It’s our best chance. But I’m making it an either-or scenario. If Sitrel returns here without Narpok and we can grab him instead, we will. We’ll do whatever it takes to force him to take us to Kalquor with you and the princess.”

Tasha wanted to argue the point. Narpok would make a much more desirable hostage. But the stiffness in Falinset’s posture made her realize she’d be wasting her breath. It was repugnant to him and the other two that they might have to use Narpok badly. If she pushed them on the matter, they might decide against keeping it as an option at all. They were that honorable.

“All right. Whoever we can get, whether it be Sitrel or Narpok, we’ll take it,” she conceded. “As long as we can get Noelle off Lobam and out of the Basma’s clutches.”

She’d expected to feel settled on the matter, but a new thought occurred to her, one that made sickness slam in her gut. Her expression must have reflected the sudden horror she felt, because Wekniz asked, “What is it, Tasha?”

“The other women. If Ket hasn’t already killed them, our escape will probably drive him to do so. Particularly if Maf is still trying to keep his activities here a secret.”

The Nobek’s only concession to anger was his fists again clenching at his sides. “I think he’s on the verge of showing his hand, but you’re right. I doubt keeping those Earthers alive has value to him any longer.”

“So how—”

Wekniz shaking his head stopped her question in its tracks. There was an awful finality that killed her voice. “I hate to say it, but there is nothing we can do for them. As you have pointed out, we have to concentrate on getting Noelle home. You as well.”

That she’d have to leave the abductees behind to their terrible fate swamped Tasha with guilt. She was nothing special. Why should she get to live when Sonia, Amy, and the rest had no chance? It wasn’t fair.

She told Wekniz, “Concentrate on Noelle. I’m secondary to her.”

“You’re secondary to no one.” He looked furious again, and his anger was reflected in Falinset and Nur’s faces.

“My Nobek is right,” Falinset growled. “Getting you to safety is as important as taking care of Princess Noelle. Don’t you dare think otherwise.”

Tasha felt a glow deep inside, one that grew to fill her.
They care about me,
she thought. It had nothing to do with getting Maf back for all the injustices he’d heaped on them. They were invested in her for her own sake. She knew she could trust that … that she could trust them.

Feelings she didn’t want to acknowledge were digging their claws into her, trying to get a permanent hold. There wasn’t time for any of that. They were reaching the end game, the moment when they must act and probably die in the process.

I’ll think about it later, if later comes
.

Trying not to acknowledge the continued warmth inside her heart, the implications of the faith she had in their intentions, Tasha spoke with only a slight waver in her voice. “We have to assume Sitrel and Narpok won’t come without heavy guard, like they did this time.”

Falinset ran his fingers through his hair, rumpling it. “I tried to warn Ket off, but it may have had no effect. If it comes down to it, we’ll have to overcome Ket and the rest to take Sitrel or Narpok prisoner.”

Nur sighed, “And here I thought the odds would be impossible.”

Wekniz gave him a wry smile. “You could always spray them with your cologne. They’ll be too busy choking to fight.”

Nur managed a chuckle, but Falinset looked at Wekniz with a hint of excitement. “That’s actually not a bad idea, my Nobek.” He abruptly grinned as the rest looked at him in surprise. “Wekniz, I want to see the firefighting equipment you have here at home. Let’s see what we can come up with as far as an offense and go from there.”

He hurried out of the common room, his face alight. Looking confused, Wekniz and Nur followed. After telling Noelle to call if she needed anything, Tasha rushed after them, wondering what Falinset had in mind. She hoped it was something good.

* * * *

Narpok sat on the edge of the sleeping mat in the master sleeping room of Maf’s vacation home. The suite included a dressing room, a lavatory, and a sitting lounge. It was precisely what she’d had in mind as a proper place to stay – at least that was what she’d told Sitrel.

Yet she did not relax in the sitting room with the luxurious lounger to relax upon, vid entertainment system, and full bar complete with several bottles of leshella. Nor was she attracted to the bath facilities with the sunken pool, massage bed, and sauna. Even the sleeping room, where she sat silently, received none of her attention. The finely carved tables and chairs and draperies were ignored, as were the many closets for her clothes. She’d heaped her gowns on those elegant chairs and scattered her shoes all about, placing them carefully though it looked as though she’d flung her belongings about with no care.

She sat looking at none of these things. She stared down into her cupped hand, musing over what it held.

A silvery-steel gray hair lay across her palm. A single hair, seen on the lounger in the common room of Clan Falinset’s home. Narpok’s heart had thudded fit to burst from her chest when she’d spied it. She’d fussed for a ridiculously long time over her skirts to hide it in her pocket.

No member of Clan Falinset had any gray in their hair. They had no serving staff. Though it wasn’t impossible to imagine someone had visited their home, an elder perhaps, Sitrel had told her they weren’t much for social interaction.

Was she foolish for thinking she knew where the hair came from? That it could have come from a member of a family known for a particular mutation that made its members gray-haired from birth?

Several generations back a princess had been born, the first of the royal line to carry the mutation. Her children had also been steel-haired, as were their children. And so on down the line until three living members of the Imperial Family demonstrated that particular trait: Imperial Father Yuder, Emperor Clajak, and Princess Noelle.

Yuder and Clajak were on Kalquor searching for Noelle, who had been supposedly stolen away by the Basma. Narpok knew them all. Even the princess … though no one realized she’d been aware of the child as she drifted in her safe non-feeling world of catatonia.

Noelle had been the first person Narpok had become aware of as her traumatized spirit began to return to the real world. In fact, it had been the piping laughter, the sweet trill of a child’s innocent joy that drew the young woman from the mists of mindless escape. As time went on and Narpok had become more and more cognizant of her surroundings, she watched the little girl play on the floor of her room. She’d watched her grow from an infant just beginning to crawl to a little girl always ready to love and be loved.

In those moments of clarity, held like a sweet secret for Narpok to replay over and over in her head, she’d observed the child. She’d thought how Noelle could have been hers as part of Clan Clajak had she been fertile and Jessica McInness not usurped her claim. And then one day Jessica had come to her room all alone, had broken down over the loss of that child to the Basma. The empress had come to know the emptiness that had made the Kalquorian woman’s enjoyment of Noelle so very bittersweet.

The Basma had struck a crippling blow. Narpok knew Jessica carried on despite her devastation, but her spirit was on the verge of being broken. The rebellion had not fired a blaster on her, had not put a blade into her heart, but it was on the verge of killing the Earther empress just the same.

When Sitrel had appeared out of nowhere to approach Narpok in the hospital’s garden, when he’d uttered the words, ‘Kalquor needs its rightful empress’, she’d known the time had come for her to rise. The rebellion was calling to her, to make her mark despite what others had done to take her destiny away. Meeting with Maf had assured her he could bring her closer to that goal.

Now she held something in her hand that she hoped was proof that she’d stumbled upon her dearest wish. But discovering a strand of Noelle’s hair in Clan Falinset’s home made little sense. Unless Maf did not know his son was closer to the Basma than he’d been led to believe?

Maf had said he’d met the would-be savior of Kalquor, so Falinset himself could not be the Basma, which had been Narpok’s initial suspicion. Neither he nor his clanmates had seemed brutal enough to hold a child prisoner.

Or were they? The area where Narpok had sat reeked of a woman’s scent. The kind of scent that suggested intimacies. Was the empress’ kidnapped cousin also somewhere in the home, being held prisoner and raped by the men keeping her? Sitrel had spoken of an exchange of some sort. Was he to pick up the princess and her cousin? But if Sitrel knew Tasha and Noelle were there, then Maf knew, and that blew apart the theory that Clan Falinset were in the Basma’s secret employ…

None of the scenarios Narpok could concoct made any sense. It was most likely that the hair in her hand belonged to some past elderly visitor to Falinset’s home. Still, something big was going on here. Too many odd things were going on in this isolated patch of Lobam. The soldier Ket and all his guards, wearing uniforms of Kalquor’s ground troops but no insignia … Sitrel’s allusion of her being part of an exchange … the smell of a woman so strong it was as if she’d just stepped out of the room, and yet there was no sign of her.

“Is it you?” Narpok whispered to the hair. “Are you little Princess Noelle?”

She needed to know more before continuing to play along with everyone’s expectations of her. She had to discover the right person to speak to, the one who would lead her to the Basma. Otherwise, this was a complete waste of valuable time. She may as well still be senseless in her hospital room.

She considered her options. For the moment, her best connections to the Basma were Maf and Sitrel. Her secretive cousin would never give up anything, at least not willingly. She’d have loved to search his things, but he was in the house with her. He was probably relaxing in the guest suite with all his belongings that might contain some clue for Narpok.

Maybe he was asleep. If she was careful, she could snoop around the house. Maf came here regularly, or so he’d said. Hadn’t Sitrel mentioned he’d visited a week or two ago?

Narpok stood up. Her skirt swished, and she frowned. She gathered it in folds in her fists and took a few experimental steps, going to the door. Her movements were silent, and she grinned to know she hadn’t lost that ability. As a daughter of the cunning and ultimately criminally underhanded Councilman Pwaldur, she’d learned a thing or two about spying on others.

She turned her lights all the way down, plunging the room into darkness.  She whispered to the door to open only a little, and it obliged by slipping sideways to the width of a couple of inches. Dim light filtered in, along with Sitrel’s distant voice.

Narpok’s eyes narrowed. Nobek Ket and his pet brutes had left after accompanying her and her cousin to the house. There was supposedly no one else there. Who was Sitrel talking to?

There was only one way to find out. Narpok ordered the door to open wider.

She made sure her skirts were gathered securely and stepped out into the wide marbled hall. To her left, light beamed from a doorway that she thought led into a large study. Sitrel’s voice came in fits and starts, as if holding a one-sided conversation.

He’s on the com
, Narpok told herself. Breathing as quietly as she could, she padded silently in bare feet down the grand hall towards the light and her cousin’s voice. When she was a foot away from the doorway, she stopped to listen.

A soft thud-thud-thud told her Sitrel paced the thickly carpeted floor in the study. His voice was pitched high, a note of apology in his easily heard dialogue. “My leader, I am sorry but she refused to stay with them. However, Falinset indicated he was willing to make the trade.” He paused. “No, not immediately. He hinted very strongly. No, he didn’t say he would clan her, but—”

He had the volume low or was listening through an earpiece, because Narpok didn’t hear the response that cut him off. There was only the sound of a few more footsteps. They stopped and a moment later she heard the clinking of glass against glass and the sound of liquid pouring. Sitrel was making himself a drink, she surmised.

His voice came again, the tone slightly peevish. “I warned you she’s hopelessly spoiled. I don’t think she made a very good impression with her snide comments about their house. She might go as far as demand they build her a new home before she’ll consent to clanning with them.”

Narpok smirked. Demanding a custom-built house that fit her status as a rare Kalquorian woman sounded like a good idea to her. She should have thought of that before.

“No, I doubt revealing to her that you’re the Basma will change her attitude in the least. She could care less about rebellion and a pure Kalquor so long as she gets what she wants.”

Narpok went still. Sitrel was talking to the Basma right now? The rebellion’s leader knew about her, Narpok? Excitement made her heart pound. But why did he have an interest in whether or not she joined Clan Falinset?

If only Sitrel would call the man by his real name! If she knew who he was, she could go to him herself with playing all these stupid games with underlings.

“I suppose she would speak to you if she hasn’t retired for the night. Let me check.”