Liaden Universe [19] - Alliance of Equals - eARC (33 page)

Padi drew a careful breath.

“We, however, do not have abilities,” the second voice pointed out. “How if the heir has already flown out the window?”

“Flying is not so usual a thing, and the heir is young, after all. Perhaps we might think of a more common subterfuge, such as any halfling might employ. Hiding, for an instance.”

These people did not sound
at all
stupid, Padi thought, wrapping her arms around her knees. More the pity.

“Let us quarter the room,” the first voice said, “and see what we may find. The
dramliza
will not be pleased, if we do not bring the heir—or her body. You recall what she did to el’Fasyk.”

“You make an eloquent point. Let us, as you say, quarter the room.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Healspace

The fogs of Healspace boiled around them, tasting of molasses and rust. Shan grabbed handfuls of the stuff, shaping them into a thick circle: Tarona Rusk on the inside, himself on the outside.

He saw a flicker of flame and steel—the tip of the lash, so he thought. He saw the fog receive it and encompass it. The flame snuffed out.

“You cannot keep me here,” Tarona Rusk said, and now he could taste her anger.

“I cannot keep you here
long
,” he admitted, letting her feel the weight of the truth he told her. “But I believe I may keep you here
long enough
.”

She eyed him from inside the circle.

“Long enough for what, I wonder? The death of your body tied to the showroom chair?”

That was a problem, Shan admitted to himself. If the other members of her team arrived while they were thus engaged, they might well solve the problem of himself in their preferred manner.

Well.

He had told her true, after all: he could
not
hold her long. Speed had been at the heart of this plan since its formulation.

“I only need hold you long enough to Heal you,” he said, for a Healer was bound in honor to explain his intention to a client.

“I am not in need of Healing,” she said. He tasted her amusement—and the sudden, acrid bite of fear.

“Sadly, you are in error,” he answered, and brought his entire attention to the knot that enclosed her pattern.

—•—

The steps were measured, and careful. Padi’s palms were sweating, and the air was getting somewhat rank inside her bowl. Perhaps she should have made windows, after all, or thought to install a fan.

Moving as silently as she could, she got her feet properly in place, so that she was centered. She must assume that they would discover her with this patient method.

She knew too little about her hiding place, she thought, too late. It must, after all, have substance, even if it were invisible to the eye, as the man who had held Father’s gaming token had intimated. Father, after all, had not given up his substance, when he had become invisible on Andireeport. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was possible—or advisable—to become insubstantial.

The footsteps were moving closer to her position near the buffet. One more pass, she thought. No more than two…

And suddenly, the world rang around her.

—•—

The blackened threads tangled around her core were…links. Two dozen links—more—crushed together until they were all but indistinguishable from each other.

That was bad, but there was worse.

The links were live; input links, as a Healer might establish with a client who was very ill, or in crisis. The links would feed energy, calm, forgetfulness—whatever might be needed—to the client until a fuller intervention could be done.

Wrapped as they were around Tarona Rusk’s core, they at once protected her, and…sustained her. She might be a powerful
dramliza
, but no small part of her power was stolen from others.

“Many hands make the work light, Healer,” Tarona Rusk mocked him from inside the circle. The fog circle was thinning, he saw; he thickened it with a thought.

All those links…Shan considered them closely. Input links. He might break them, with…little danger. He thought.

If he would Heal Tarona Rusk, he needed to reach her core.

And he had…very little time.

—•—

“Captain Mendoza, this is Langlast Portmaster Joniton Elz. Also on comm is Captain Tario Soop, customs boats commander-in-chief.”

“Portmaster,” Priscilla said calmly…calmly, as if the glow of Shan’s essence against the universe wasn’t fading away into nothing. “Captain. Why has the
Dutiful Passage
been targeted in this manner? If we have unwittingly broken law or custom, we will make amends. Bombs are really…quite unnecessary.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the voice she assumed must belong to Captain Soop. “Bombs are usually unnecessary in my experience, and may I say, ma’am, that my office, and the Port of Langlast, appreciates your very great restraint in dealing with them. I’ve reviewed the logs of our previous inspections and I assure you, ma’am, we have found nothing—repeat:
nothing at all
—to warrant such an attack as has been made against your vessel. I offer you my personal apologies, ma’am, in addition to the apology of my office. This episode should never have happened.”

“And yet,” Priscilla said, “it did happen. I wonder why. And I also wonder if it will happen again.”

“Again?” Captain Soop’s horror was plain. “Captain Mendoza, it should have never happened once! To suppose that it could happen again—well, there, you have your ship to care for…I’ll tell you, ma’am, it was politics. Politics in my own office, and it has been dealt with, ma’am. My second came to be of the opinion that
Dutiful Passage
was liable to become aggressive, and he acted—on his own recognizance—to ensure the safety of the port. As he saw it, ma’am.”

“I will add, Captain Mendoza,” Portmaster Elz broke in, “that this is
not
an official Langlastport position; the officer in question was acting quite on his own, without having spoken of his concerns, or cleared his operation, with either his own commander, or with my office. As Captain Soop has said, this episode should never have happened. As portmaster, I assure you, it will not happen again. The port stands ready to make reparations, should your ship have taken any damage from this unauthorized action on the part of one of our agents.”

“Thank you,” Priscilla said. “I am very pleased to hear that steps have been taken to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again, either to the
Passage
or to another innocent ship. In the meantime, sirs, there is the matter of the mines rejected by our shields, which are now loose, and seeking hulls to which they may attach.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve got work-boats rising, and we’ve diverted those customs boats already in orbit to the task of picking those little devils up,” Captain Soop assured her.

“Portmaster’s office will be issuing a general alert regarding the bombs, and our response plan,” Portmaster Elz added. “Captain Soop and I wanted to speak with you and assure you of your safety and your continued welcome at Langlast. If you have any other concerns, please don’t hesitate to call this office.”

“Thank you,” Priscilla said, watching Shan’s pattern flicker and fade. “In fact, there is something else…”

—•—

“Well, now, what have we here?” the first voice said, very close at hand.

Footsteps approached.

“I see nothing,” the second voice said.

“Nor do I, but observe.”

The bowl rang again, and Padi’s head with it.

She drew a deep breath, and waited. She had decided that waiting was the best thing she could do. Let them make the first move. She would be centered and ready for it. And if she had to kill them…

She pushed the thought, and the feeling of queasiness, away from her, and concentrated on
now
. She was a pilot of Korval. She would do whatever was necessary to survive.

—•—

There was no time for finesse, and if Healer heads rang with their unexpected and hasty liberation, it was not, Shan suspected, the worst that had come to them in the service of Tarona Rusk.

Now, however, came the challenge, for her pattern was an abused and misshapen thing, showing the marks of fire and such ruthless hacking as he had seen before, in his brother Val Con’s pattern. He had the assistance of a Clutch Turtle, when he had undertaken to Heal Val Con. And even then, flinging his whole heart and all his skill into the task, he had not…returned Val Con to himself. He had repaired; he had patched; he had given surcease, restored balance, and strengthened the capacity for joy.

What he had not been able to do, was to restore his brother to the state he had occupied before he had been tortured, and broken. The memory of those things could not be eradicated—
ought not be
eradicated, for knowing that there was such evil afoot helped keep him vigilant, for himself, and for Korval. The weight of those memories meant that, though his brother assuredly was
a
Val Con yos’Phelium, he was not
the
Val Con yos’Phelium who would have been, had there been no such memories upon him.

He had not known Tarona Rusk before the tragedy of her training had come to her, but his inner eyes traced the familiar path of destruction. For Val Con, coming to the work fresh and unwounded, he had managed a nearly complete Healing.

To this Healing, he came diminished: the
dramliz
-killer’s kiss had drained a portion of his energy; the wounds to his body weakened his will.

Yet, this woman needed him, no less than Val Con had needed him.

For this woman, for this Healing, he would do all—he would do everything—that he could.

—•—

They were very clever. They slipped the blades of their knives between the rim of the bowl and the floor, and levered it until they had gained enough space for one to grip what he could not see. Padi heard the other drop back, and had no doubt what she would find when the bowl was flipped over and she became visible: one man, spinning out of striking distance even as she came to her feet; the other well back, with gun aimed.

They might, Padi thought, watching the intruding fingers work under the bowl, be willing to wound her, though she thought they would not wish to anger the person who had punished el’Fasyk so memorably by disobeying orders, and by killing her. Certainly, if they wished to use her as a stick to beat Father with, they would need her to be alive.

The fingers gripped the edge of the bowl. She tensed, heard a hard intake of breath, saw boots in the gap between the rim and the floor, then knees, belt, jacket—

She snapped to her feet as the bowl hit the floor behind her, ringing. The man who had thrown it was spinning away, the man holding the gun on her was shouting, “Stand and raise your hands!”

And two more people came running through the broken door.

The man who had thrown the bowl shouted at the newcomers to hold; the other man’s gun wavered, and Padi dove, down and forward, meaning to bring the gunman down, and take his weapon for her own.

She surprised him, and he was off-balance due to the arrival of his comrades, so he did fall—but only to his knees, her arm trapped beneath him, and his gun still in hand. He swung it downward; and pinned, she rolled desperately, and the blow landed on her shoulder instead of her head.

Pain exploded; the gun was rising again. Fear, fear rushed upon her with its wings of glass, and she
pushed
with every ounce of will she possessed.

Something shattered loudly; someone screamed, and the weight was gone from her arm. She
pushed
again, following the thrumming of fear; seeing stone before her, and welcome darkness beyond an open door.

—•—

Tarona Rusk was no willing client; she fought him, and even though Healspace gave him advantage, she hurt him.

Worse, she
delayed
him, and time was the coin he could least afford to spend.

Finally, knowing that he could not spend the energy, he snatched her close and held her quiescent within his will, and made those repairs and adjustments that he could, feeling his focus soften, and the connection to his bleeding, battered body grow dangerously thin.

She whimpered in his grasp; he had hurt her, and that was his shame, but…necessity. He was very near his goal now, and the most important part of this Healing. Staggering and unfit, he pressed on, drawing upon the virtue of Healspace to focus his wavering attention on a small, glowing pearl nestled in an area of densest scarring.

He slashed at the old wounds, no gentler than her previous tormentors, giving the pearl room to expand, to warm, to—at last!—take fire, cauterizing the new wounds he had inflicted, turning the old wounds to ash.

She screamed, then; joined as they were, he felt all of her anguish…

…and, an instant later, all of her joy.

—•—

“Captain,” Dil Nem murmured.

Priscilla looked to him.

“Third Mate?”

“Report from Maintenance, Captain. Automatics in Trader yos’Galan’s cabin reported an unusual amount of dust. Maintenance sent someone. There was a pile of glass dust on the table next to the bunk. No idea how it got there. The worker swept it, and changed the filters.”

Glass dust? On the table next to—the bowl. Priscilla remembered it: a fragile-looking thing with a design that evoked wind and water. It was supposed to have been unbreakable, that bowl.

Yet, sometimes, when a
dramliza
first felt the fullness of her power. Sometimes…things broke.

Priscilla took a careful breath, and reached out into the ether.

—•—

Healspace burned away around them. He opened his eyes to the reality of the chair, and his wounds, and Vanner lying dead on the floor. A cool hand pressed lightly over the dreadful wounds on his arm, leaching some of the fire.

“You are a fool, little Healer,” said Tarona Rusk.

He managed to raise his head, and meet her eyes. They were blue. That was strange; he had thought them black.

“Yes,” he answered her. “Very much so.”

She smiled, a twisted thing, half sweet and half savage.

“I believe you have accomplished what you set yourself to do. My question would be—why?”

“I am a Healer,” he whispered, and closed his eyes, the weight of the light being too much, now, to bear.

“No, what is this? You force me to bear the weight of life, while you steathily steal away? That will not do; I do not allow it.”

Energy flowed into him, sparkling dark, and glittering light; he opened his eyes, and lifted his head.

“Do not drain yourself,” he warned her. “You have nothing but your own resources to draw upon now.”

“For which I thank you, a thousand times. But, no—I will husband myself, never fear it. I have too much to do to spend myself unwisely.”

The flow of energy slowed to a trickle; he felt his bonds loosen and drop away.

He glanced down at his arm, saw the wounds had closed and the bleeding had stopped. A Healing for a Healing. Balance.