Dragon in Exile - eARC (35 page)

“The ring is yours.”

“What’d I
do
?”

“You defended my life, insofar as you knew, and the peace of your house. The Balance you intended to exact was both precise and apt. In fact, it was art—and high art. Nor is that ring paste, though others our guest displayed this evening, were. I fear that his clan may be growing tired of paying his bills. One supposes that he is rather expensive.”

“What’s with that?” Villy asked.

“He apparently attracts scandal,” Quin said, “and his clan is very proper. So they have arranged between them that he live—and travel—elsewhere than to the homeworld.”

“Is your clan proper?”

Quin looked to Luken, who smiled.

“Korval was High House. By definition, then, we were proper.”

“Even after blowing a hole in the planet?” asked Audrey.

“Ah, but that was ordered by the delm! Very proper, indeed.”

Audrey laughed, and nodded at the ring.

“Keep that for me, Luken, all right?”

“No, my dear, you have not entered fully into the game! Here…”

He took Audrey’s right hand in his and studied each ring in turn.

“This one, I think,” he murmured, and withdrew from the second finger, the ring set with white stones, which was the ornament she wore most often.

“Hey, there, that was the first gift a client ever give me,” Audrey protested, but softly.

“Then it becomes even more perfect,” Luken said. “If you permit.”

He slid the blue ring onto her finger, and bent his head to kiss the knuckle before releasing her.

“There,” he said, with satisfaction. “It will be seen—and recognized—by those who care about such things. They will speculate, and speculation will become legend. It is well.”

Audrey looked at the ring, large even on her hand, and back to Grandfather.

“So I have
melant’i
now?”

Grandfather put his cup down so firmly it clicked against the table. He extended his hands and caught Ms. Audrey’s. He bent his head and kissed her fingers.

“My dear Audrey, you are a woman of the highest
melant’i
, whose every action is subtle and appropriate.
Melant’i
is not acquired; it is
built
. This…” He put his thumb over jo’Bern’s ring.

“This…is a tribute, if you will allow it, to your
melant’i
, given by someone who has had the training to understand what it is that he had been privileged to see.”

“So?” She picked up her cup and sipped tea—and put the cup down.

“Luken,” she said.

“Yes.”

“May I give you a gift?”

Grandfather inclined his head.

“I would treasure a gift given by my dear friend.”

“Good.”

She picked up the whitestone ring from the center of the table. Luken extended his hand, and she placed it on the second finger of his right hand.

“The man who gave me this—he was a good man, too. We was going to get married, only what happened was that he got retired. Left enough money for me to open my own house.”

Luken bowed his head.

“I am honored.”

A bell rang, discreetly.

Audrey sighed, and slipped her hands away from Grandfather.

“This’ll be the troublemakers, coming in,” she said.

“Indeed, and punctual,” Luken agreed. He looked across the table to Quin and Villy.

“You must allow me to complement your pairing,” he said; “for being both pleasing to the eye, and soothing to the sensibilities. Will you go on as you have been?”

Quin looked to Villy.

“Glad to have you, unless you have to be elsewhere.”

“I am required at a meeting in my father’s place, but that is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Certainly, I am able to bear you company for another hour or two.”

Villy smiled, and the bell rang again.

“Sounds like we’re on, then.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Warehouse District

Surebleak

Rista hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. She said so, pointing out to Mr. Neuhaus that she wasn’t no good in a fight, and she’d only be in the way. She’d offered to teach Kern or Valis how to read the instrument, and since they was only lookin’ for the door…

Mr. Neuhaus put his hand on her shoulder right about then, and squeezed a little more than was really comfortable. Rista figured she’d have bruises in the morning, and maybe no morning at all, if she didn’t stop talking right then.

So, she stopped talking and Mr. Neuhaus told her that all she had to do was verify it was the door they wanted; that there was space beneath their feet, and a lot of it. Once she’d done that, she could drop back and wait while the rest of them did what they’d come for.

“So, you’ll be coming along with us, won’t you, Rista?”

She’d swallowed and nodded.

“Yes, Mr. Neuhaus.”

Which is how she happened to be standing on the walk up in the haunted warehouses on a balmy summer night, taking the readings for a third time, so as not to make a mistake. Mr. Neuhaus didn’t like mistakes.

“Here,” she said. Her voice wavered, so she cleared her throat and said it again, taking care not to talk too loud.

“It’s right here, beneath us.”

“All right,” said Mr. Neuhaus, and Jice walked up and made an X in shiny paint on the wall.

Mr. Neuhaus hadn’t been happy with the way the bidness at the farm’d turned out. ’Specially he didn’t like that Derik, Rosy and Mort’d all got took up by the Watch. The farm was cold, now. If the Syndicate was gonna have a hidden base of operations, like the Syndicate Bosses said they needed, this place right here under the warehouses was going to have to be it.

“All right,” Mr. Neuhaus said again. “According to the old plans, there’s a lift beyond the door, and a back-up stair to the right. Once we’re in, first two go down the stairs, the rest of us will do the lift. Take position and target the lift door. Wait until the door opens! When I say shoot, you’re gonna shoot to kill.”

He paused, like he was looking at each and every one of them standing there in the dark.

“I bet my life that this job will be a success and the Syndicate will have its new headquarters in hand by midnight tonight.”

He stepped back, a big shadow against the rest of the shadows.

“Let’s get ’em outta there.”

* * *

Mike Golden was on his feet, gun in hand before he understood that he was awake.

He grabbed his pants and pulled them on, while he tried to remember what had—

A scream. Somebody in the house has screamed.

He dragged a sweater on, stamped into his boots and ran for the security station in the central hall. The lights came on as he ran, and a frantic voice yelling, “Mike! Mike!”

Silver.

Mike turned right at the hall, toward the stairs, instead of the station, and the boy flying down them, pants and sweater on, barefoot, face wild and wet.

“Mike!”

“Silver.” He caught the kid as he threw himself off the stairs, still six steps up. Caught him and dropped to his knees, keeping him in the circle of his arms.

“Silver. Easy. Tell me, quick and calm, right?”

The kid was strong, he twisted in Mike’s grasp, and almost broke free; Mike had to use more force than he liked to, wincing that he’d probably left bruises.

“We have to go,
right now
!” Silver shouted, like Mike was down the block, instead of trying to hold him.

“Go where, Silver? Why?”

“To the
kompani
, to Kezzi, to Kezzi and Malda! They’re out there and it smells like firestarter!”

Mike’s stomach flipped. Firestarter? Up in the old warehouses?

“Mr. Golden? Syl Vor?”

Nova yos’Galan had arrived, a fluffy robe enveloping her, gold hair done in a loose braid.

“He says somebody’s playing with firestarter up in the warehouses,” Mike said rapidly. “I’m thinking a nightmare.”

“Are you?”

She knelt beside him and snatched Silver to her, holding him firmly by his shoulders.

“Syl Vor! Wake up!”

But the kid was looking right at her, Mike saw, and his eyes were wide and dark.

“They have firestarter! We have to go, to go! Kezzi, Malda, Grandmother Silain. We have to
go
!”

“Indeed, my child, we shall send aid. Calm yourself.”

Nova extended a hand and cupped her son’s cheek.

“Call the Watch, Mr. Golden,” she said. “Someone is trying to smoke the Bedel out.”

He hesitated, and she raised her eyes to his.

“He is young for the onset, but it is not unknown.”

“He
knows
this?” Mike asked.

Nova nodded.

“He has
seen
it. Yes. Call the Watch. Now.”

* * *

The fire burned with a bright, hard edge. Smoke roiled out of it in thick, acrid ribbons that filled the street, limiting visibility, as well as the ability to breathe.

The regular crew, they had breathers, and dark-glasses, though Rista didn’t think the glasses were gonna do any good in the smoke.

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 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 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 place. 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 anti-meteor 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 this, 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.”