Dragon in Exile - eARC (30 page)

…until Tollance Berik-Jones, whose back she’d covered even after he’d officially resigned as her partner.

“Do the experts think that Hazenthull will impede their mission?” she asked.

Nelirikk didn’t answer, but Jeeves did, his voice emanating from the ceiling.

“Mr. Berik-Jones gives it as his opinion that
Haz is a good one to have on your side in a fight
. Tocohl gives it as her opinion that, since they are bound for regions where fights seem more, rather than less, likely, Hazenthull could be a welcome addition to the mission.”

Right.

Miri nodded.

“Let her go, then. Keep me updated regarding her condition. I wanna hear real soon that’s she outta the ’doc and healed. If there are complications, then the mission will allow itself to be diverted to a hospital.”

“Yes, Miri,” Jeeves said. “Transmitting now…Tocohl agrees to these terms.”

“Great. Anything else?”

“No, Miri.”

“No, Captain.”

“Then, if you please, gentlemen; I’m going upstairs to visit my daughter.”

Chapter Thirty

Shaper’s Freehold

Surebleak

They went to ground as one being, diving for cover beneath the tree.

Another shot came, some distance away, followed by a string of Surebleakean curses.

Rys shifted beside him, as if he were preparing to move in that direction. Val Con put a hand on his arm and shook his head slightly.

It had not been Yulie Shaper’s voice, cursing; and, thinking back on it, he was fairly certain that it had not been Yulie Shaper’s gun.

He squeezed Rys’ arm and tipped his head to the right, toward the house. Rys nodded, and Val Con moved off, not on the path, but near it; Rys, soundless now, followed.

He paused before they came within sight of the house. Crouching among the shadows and the green things, he listened closely, but all he heard was the wind in the leaves and among the grasses, and a rough whisper in his ear.

“C’mon back from there, the both of you.”

His arm shot out to grab Rys—not an instant too soon. His brother did not know Yulie Shaper’s voice, and he had begun to turn, metal arm rising.

“Come,” he breathed. “This is Mr. Shaper.”

He eased back, deeper into the leaves, until his foot struck a wooden curb, which he climbed over, and dropped a little distance into a dirt pit. An instant later Rys had joined him on the ground, facing Yulie Shaper, who was sitting with his back against a large rock, a rifle across his knees.

“You
with
them?” he hissed. “Sleet, no; you
can’t
be with them. You’re with the new boss. You
are
a new boss…”

Yulie’s eyes were wide, and his whisper ragged, but he was steady; no shaking, no hiding his face or his eyes. If anything, Val Con thought, he was a little too firm in making eye contact.

“I am not with them, whoever they are,” he said softly. “I had brought my brother Rys over to meet you. We heard gunfire, and curses, and feared for your safety.”

“That’s neighborly.” Yulie gave Rys a hard stare and a short nod. Rys gave him the nod back, and said nothing.

“What has happened here?” Val Con asked.

“Well, I come back from taking them grapes up to Mrs. ana’Tak, an’ there was cars in front the house, an’ a crew in my dooryard. Was on my way to tell ’em to get the sleet offa my land, an’ one of ’em kicks in the door, and starts yelling m’name and tellin’ me to come on out, so I ducked back and got my spare from where I keep it, an’ settled here to see what else they’d do. Ain’t nothing much t’steal, an’ I was willin’ to let ’em have what they took, s’long’s they didn’t hurt the cats…”

He shook his head, sharp, as if recalling himself to the topic.

“Anyways, I hear ’em talk, and they’re here deliberate, looking for the growin’ rooms, down under. They got a machine tells ’em what’s down under in general ways. I don’t think they know about the rooms. If they did, they’d’ve used the control board, ’steada just followin’ the beeps on their machine, round to main door.”

He grinned suddenly, and unnervingly.

“Same door they busted before. Won’t be so easy this time; that Tan Ort, he fixed ’er up good.”

“Still, we would not wish Tan Ort’s work to go to waste,” Val Con said. “Perhaps we can stop them, now.”

Yulie Shaper shook his head.

“There’s six, eight of ’em. I can shoot that many, but then I’d hafta bury ’em. ’S’why I was thinkin’ to get to the controls, inside, an’ throw on the defenses. Left somebody in the house, though, an’ they’re sure to hear, if I shoot.”

He tipped his head as another round of gunfire and cursing reached them.

“The defenses,” Rys said, speaking for the first time. “They will harm the grapes?”

“Liked them, did you? No, what’ll hurt the grapes, an’ the coffee, an’ the whole rest of it is if that crew busts through the outside locks and upset the micro-climes.”

“The grapes must not be harmed,” Rys said. “I will engage to disable the watcher in the house so that you may turn on the defenses. Val Con will go around the back and ensure that the locks do not take harm while we do our part.”

Yulie looked doubtful.

“You’re a likely lookin’ boy, but that’s a big fella they left. You sure you can take him?”

Rys glanced down at the ground, and picked up a rock by his knee. He held out his gleaming golden hand, the rock resting in the palm, closed his fingers, and opened them.

Dust sullied his palm. He wiped it clean on his trousers.

“That’ll do,” Yulie said, as another shot echoed. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

* * *

Derik had set Rista to guarding the perimeter, which meant he was getting her outta the way of the real bidness. That was all right by her; she was only on the team on account of she could read the machine. She could shoot, but she didn’t like to, so she wasn’t any kind of use at all when it come down to cases, which, when Derik was running the gig, it usually did.

So, Rista went out back, with her gun that she wouldn’t use, anyway, and watched while first Jorner, and then Rosy, and then Derik himself banged themselfs against the sealed door, then took to shooting at it.

That made her extra glad to be guarding everything from ’way
over there
, ’cause there was ricochets—Rosy got his hair parted for ’im, and Jorner got his arm grazed, none o’which put them in better humor, and there started to be talk about just goin’ back up the house and waitin’ ’til that old farmer showed up.

Rista had a little niggling worry about where the farmer was, herself. Farmers farmed, right? Stood to reason. So, where was he, exactly? Hard to tell, with all this
green
; you couldn’t see things clear. Not like down the city, where you could get a good long look at something four blocks away.

Point was, he—the farmer—could be standing anywhere, hidden by the leaves, and none of them, with their city-eyes, would ever even see ’im. Sleet, he could just stand there, hidden, and pick ’em all off one by one.

All right,
that
made her shiver.

“I say we use Rance’s toy,” Rosy said. “Ain’t no door built gonna stand up to that.”

“Might break whatever’s on the other side,” Derik said, which you might s’pose to be some pretty clear thinkin’ on Derik’s part ’less you knew that Mr. Neuhaus had told him specific not to break anything that was inside the underneath place. Derik paid close attention to Mr. Neuhaus.

“Ain’t nothing on t’other side,” Rosy said, which he couldn’t know, and Mort stuck in that if there weren’t nothin’ on the other side, what was it locked up so tight for?

It was right then that Rista saw something move in the green across the way. The tall leaves kinda shivered, and there was a man was there, when there hadn’t been one.

He was wearing a green and silver coat that shimmered, sort of, in the torchlight, and there was a big ring on his hand, which is how Rista knew who it was.

The Road Boss.

“I believe you would be best served,” he said, in a soft voice that didn’t have no problem carrying to all of them, judging by the way they spun and cussed.

“I believe you would be best served by standing away from the door, and putting your guns and…other equipment on the ground.”

“Best served, yeah?” Dirk raised his gun. “Open this door, you.”

“I am unable to do so,” the Road Boss said.

Dirk looked around. Rosy had his gun on the Road Boss, and Mort did, and Jorner, too.

“Looks to me like you’re outnumbered. Whyn’t you come right here and open this door? I’m askin’ nice, but I won’t ask again.”

The air crackled suddenly, and kinda fizzed. Tiny sparks swirled in the air like snowflakes.

“Run!” The Road Boss yelled, and Rista’s legs moved all by themselves and she was running away from the doors and the Road Boss and the rest of her crew, her back to all of it.

She heard a huge
snap
behind her; a blue flash dazzled her eyes. But she kept running, and she didn’t look back.

* * *

“Well, I don’t use it,” Yulie explained, very nearly sounding sheepish. “No reason to use it; nobody comes looking for the growin’ rooms. Nobody knows the growin’ rooms’re there.”

“Until now,” Val Con said.

The flash of the defense system coming live had roused Jeeves to action. It had barely faded when Nelirikk and Diglon arrived on the scene. They’d trussed up the unconscious prisoners and carefully emptied their pockets. Nelirikk called the Watch, and he and Diglon stood guard while Val Con trudged up to the house, running his hands through his hair to dislodge any stray twigs and grasses that might have lodged there while he was rolling away from the pressure door. The coat, he feared, was ruined. He hoped Miri hadn’t become very fond of it.

Yulie sighed.

“Guess I’m gonna have to keep it goin’, then. Generator’s good for a couple hunnert years, that’s what Grampa figured, and I do the service, just like it says in the binder.”

“Why keep it turned off, then?” Rys asked.

“Well, the cats. Cats don’t have good sense ’bout things, sometimes.”

“True,” Val Con said. “Perhaps a perimeter device may be constructed. Shall I send Tan Ort to you? He may have something to suggest.”

Yulie pursed his lips, and stared at the man trussed up in ropes like a piglet in the middle of his kitchen floor.

“When he’s got a minute or two to spare,” he said to Val Con. “Smart as he is, he just might be able to figure something out.”

“I will ask him to come to you, then.”

“The grapes,” Rys said, into the small silence that followed this, “have taken no harm?”

Yulie shook his head.

“Really like them grapes, do you? I can give you s’many as you want.”

“Do not say that to him,” Val Con warned. “He’s a vintner.”

“Is he?” Yulie looked at Rys with renewed interest. “Maybe you could make wine outta them grapes. Good way to store ’em.”

Rys smiled at him.

“Indeed; an excellent way to store them.”

“Reminds me…”

Yulie crossed the kitchen and pulled open a cabinet, taking down a rather hefty utility binder. He flipped it open and leafed through the pages, until he suddenly nodded and brought the binder to the table.

“That piece o’paper you brought down here? ’Member that?”

“Yes,” Val Con said.

“Well, I looked it up, right here, an’ it says that land your brother—” He looked up and nodded at Rys—“that brother?”

“I have several brothers, I fear. The brother who is interested is away from home at the moment, and asked me to handle this business for him. Shan, his name it.”

“Right, then. Well. ’Cordin’ to the binder, here, that land is where the Commissary Supply Whole Planet Foods was planned to go, when everything was set up and the company did its expansion. ’Cept the company left and didn’t expand, so there wasn’t no need for the second one. An’ why Grampa’s name’s on that lease is that him an’ Gramma was in the bidness together, evens.”

He closed the book and nodded.

“Your brother Shan, he wants that land, he can have it. Never did get the ’quipment down for the second Commissary. That was in expansion money. Might be they started on excavating for the growin’ rooms, but maybe not. No sense to it, ’til you got the ’quipment.”

“Mr. Shaper, I feel very strongly that my brother will wish to compensate you correctly for the land—your inheritance, after all!—and to write a contract listing out what each side gives and gains, so that there is no confusion.”

Yulie closed the binder and shrugged.

“He wants to do all that, fine. ’S’long as he takes care of the contract-writing. Makes him feel better to give me somethin’, he can give whatever he wants. I don’t need nothin’, and you been a good neighbor. Can’t buy that.”

Val Con took a deep breath and let it out as the sound of a car turning into the dooryard reached him.

“The Watch,” Rys said from the door.

“’Bout time,” said Yulie Shaper.

* * *

She had spent her day among the dreams of ancients, searching for a communication protocol. The old indexing systems were not necessarily accurate; consequently, her search had not been a quick one.

It was, however, and eventually, fruitful, which filled her with an unreasonable sense of pride. Pulka had praised her skill, which meant something, for Pulka was not nearly so generous with his praise as he was with his criticisms.

Not that she cared what Pulka thought.

The dreaming had left her exhausted; the older dreams were not always easy to understand, and when the thing that was wanted was specific, the search was made more taxing.

All that being so, her head hurt, and her back did, and her stomach was unsettled. She sat alone by her hearth, and thought of lying down to sleep, but she was far too tired to do so.

“Good evening, daughter,” the
luthia
spoke from near at hand. “May I share your hearth?”

A request from the
luthia
to share the hearth was no request at all. That the
luthia
had come, of herself, to Droi’s hearth, rather than calling Droi to her—that was…notable.

So.

She pulled her scattered wits to her and sat up straighter.

“Please sit with me, Grandmother. I will fetch tea.”

There was no tea made; she had been too tired even for that. But the
luthia
at her hearth…

“Peace, child. I brought tea, and something for us to share, if you will eat with me.”

Droi shivered, and patted the rug at her side.

“Please,” she said again. “I welcome your company.”

Silain came forward, and placed the basket she carried before folding stiffly onto the blanket.

“Ah,” she sighed, and used her chin to point.

“Serve us, daughter.”

Droi opened the basket, poured tea from the pot into two battered mugs from Silain’s own hearth. She untied the rag, and spread it between them, revealing soft, fresh rolls, and creamy squares of cheese, with some unfamiliar green berries that smelled salty and sharp.

“Kezzi’s mother in the City Above now and then sends a basket, to honor a grandmother.”

That was well-done. All that Droi had heard of Kezzi’s mother in the City Above spoke of a strong woman who was also courteous and modest. The changes, subtle, but powerful, in Kezzi’s dress and manner also spoke of the influence of a wise woman. Kezzi herself said that her brother Syl Vor’s mother was a
luthia
.