Ruler of Naught (14 page)

“Relax, nullwit.” Lokri shook his head. “That old
blunge-eater in the dispensary probably wouldn’t talk to her. Come, finish the
game—or,” he added in challenge, flicking his fingers across his keypads, “are
you afraid to lose?”

Marim plopped back down on the other side of the big console,
scanning the screen. Passing behind her, Montrose glanced down, saw a promising
setup for Phalanx, Level Three. He glanced appraisingly at Lokri, whose
attention was on his screen.

“Captain discuss her plans with you, my friend?” Montrose
asked.

Lokri’s mouth twisted. “Saw her going down to the dispensary,
saw her come back. Heard her come back,” he corrected, nodding at Marim.
“Stalking. Unless young Firehead suddenly got a death wish, it was either you
or Jaim or the old man. Jaim licks up her spit, and I’ve never seen you pick a
fight with any of our crew.”

The impression Montrose had gotten earlier in the journey
solidified to conviction:
Lokri is on the hunt again
.

Montrose considered the amount of regret leavening his
amusement as he made a slow circuit around the room.
I’d hoped never to see
that again
.

But he was seeing it. So now he needed to decide what, if
anything, to do about it. He settled at last on one of the big padded seats
along the back of the room. He set his caf down. “Old man it was.”

“About?” Marim prompted, curling her legs under her.

“The Heart of Kronos,” Lokri said. “What else?”

“That little silver ball she took from Schoolboy? It worth
anything?” Marim asked, chin on her hand. “I know her little skull-boilers
think it is, even though they never pay any attention to tech.”

Lokri snorted. “If you’d bothered to look it up after Vi’ya
showed it to us you’d know it’s probably more valuable than all the loot we
took from the Palace, and damn well impossible to convert to cash.”

“Even more impossible now,” Montrose said. “Eusabian wants
it.”

Neither Lokri’s nor Marim’s reaction to that news made any reference
to the tacit admission that Montrose had listened to the conversation inside
Omilov’s cubicle. They knew he had the equipment to do so if he wished, and
they also knew that the captain would have been aware she was being overheard.
But Montrose had an entirely different question in mind. He meant to test his
hypothesis; the last time Lokri had gone on one of his hunts there had been far
too much collateral damage.

The only way he’d get a truthful answer was by indirection.
He waited, and his reward was the sweet chiming of tiny bells that heralded
Jaim’s approach. The tall engineer ambled in, his long face tired.

“Be good to get home.” He sank into a seat near Montrose. He
didn’t appear to see the scornful twist to Lokri’s mouth at the word “home.”

“Suggestion,” Montrose said. “Since most of us are here.”

“Huh?” Marim asked, her eyes on the game.

Lokri swung around in his chair, brows aslant.

“That loot you took from Arthelion. Some of it might well be
worth more than the ship we are sitting in.”

“We’ve been through all that.” Marim slapped an impatient
hand on the side of her console. “Since you’re all here, who nabbed Firehead’s
coin? It was the only thing Greywing took, and he wants it to remember her by.”

Lokri’s eyes narrowed. “He had it when we got him out of the
palace—had it in his hand, along with that damn Panarchist flight ribbon that
Markham gave him, that he’s been hiding ever since. Quite a death-grip. I put
them in this pocket just before we came on board,” Lokri said, hitting his
chest. “Then you took him.” He tipped his head toward Montrose.

“There was nothing in that pocket but dried blood when I
stripped him down,” Montrose said. “The rest of his suit was stuffed with
things, but none of them a coin. Or a ribbon.”

His gaze shifted to Marim. She nodded judiciously. “We went
through it all together, my last visit to him. No coin, no ribbon.”

Montrose said, “We can assume that the Eya’a did not take
them. I don’t think they have any interest in such stuff.”

“Vi’ya would have asked whose it was,” Jaim murmured.

Lokri crossed his arms, his lip curled sardonically.
“Brandon was helping me get Ivard to the ship. I suppose he’d consider it
reclaiming something of his own.”

“But the Schoolboy was there, too.” Jaim put in. “Remember?”
he said to Marim.

“If either of them has the coin or ribbon, I’ll find out,”
Marim said. “Heyo! Why don’t I go tell Firehead now? Sure to give him a good—”

“I’d prefer him not to be disturbed right now,” Montrose
said.
Lokri isn’t the only one on the hunt.
Well, Ivard had to learn
someday.

Marim grinned, shameless. “He’s getting cabin-crazy in
there.”

“How is his burn healing?” asked Jaim with a slow glance at
Marim.

“He’s healing more slowly than I’d like,” said Montrose. “It’s
the Kelly ribbon. It has compromised his immune system.”

He sipped his caf. “Before we get to Dis, there’s something
else you need to consider.”

The other three waited, their expressions characteristic:
Lokri wary, Marim interested, Jaim sober.

“We had better think about our next step beyond Dis.”

Lokri lifted a shoulder lazily. “The way I see it, those
two—three, counting Schoolboy—are Vi’ya’s responsibility. She can’t lock them
up on Dis, we don’t have any defense. She either sells them to whoever offers
the most, or lets them go. Nothing involving the rest of us.”

Marim’s bright gaze flickered from one to the other, and she
laughed. “Or they join us. New names, IDs. I wouldn’t mind. Schoolboy’s coming
out of his shell—actually said two words in a row to me. And Brandon’s pretty.
Also not bad with the weaponry.”

Lokri smiled.

Montrose finished his caf and got up to dial some more.
“Join us?” He spoke to Marim, but watched Lokri. “With what Ivard got for you,
you can take off. Buy your own ship, change your name, too. Run your own crew.”

Marim shook her curly head, leaning back and cracking her
knuckles. “I’ll stay with Vi’ya. She’s as hot a pilot as Markham was. As long
as we’re successful, I’m here. If she loses, I’ll hop. But I don’t ever want to
captain—too much trouble.”

Montrose was about to frame a question to prod Lokri when
Brandon vlith-Arkad walked in.

Energy seemed to richochet around the room, manifesting in
Lokri’s tightened shoulders, Jaim’s unblinking gaze, and Marim’s blinding
smile.

Brandon nodded a general greeting, then moved to the
dispenser and chose something hot, a process that seemed to absorb his whole
attention.

Lokri and Marim resumed their game, Jaim lounging behind Lokri’s
shoulder. Brandon turned away with his cup in his hand, then Marim said, “Shall
we pull you in, Arkad? This is Level Three.”

Brandon gestured. “Next game?”

He sank down into the chair next to Montrose’s, his face
betraying marks of stress. The new heir to the conquered Panarchy had exerted
himself to be friendly and cooperative from the beginning, when Vi’ya had
agreed to take him to Arthelion.

Right after he showed up on Dis seeking his old friend
Markham—who was now dead.

Why had he come? Montrose was fairly certain they would
never find out now.

Osri was easier to understand. He considered himself a prisoner
and acted like one. Sebastian was weak, and his courtesy seemed to be bred
bone-deep. Whatever his feelings about the people who had rescued him from
Eusabian’s torturers, Montrose was certain that the professor was no threat.

Brandon was also pleasant and affable, but utterly
unforthcoming.

Montrose wondered why the captain ignored him as if he
didn’t exist. Maybe she expected Brandon to try something foolhardy when they
reached the base. In her mind, Brandon might already be dead.

She’ll have to make some kind of decision about the nicks
before we reach Dis. And Lokri seems to be waiting just for that.

Montrose set his cup down, intent on his original purpose.
“Marim.”

“Mmm?” She kept her eyes on her game.

“Ivard divvied up what he is saving and what he got for
you?”

Her eyes were wide and humorous. “Not yet,” she chirped.
“There’s lots of time for that.” Her eyes flickered once in Brandon’s
direction, then back to her game.

Jaim had relaxed again. A quiet man, yet with surprising
depths, he had never hid his wish to rejoin his lifemate Reth Silverknife. With
her and his share of the loot, they could buy their own ship; Montrose knew
that Reth would have taken Greywing on as crew. He hoped they would settle for
Ivard. The boy would need family, and those two would be excellent for him.

Second to the problem of Brandon (and his nick companions)
was Lokri. Montrose turned his attention that way, pretending an interest in
the game. In spite of Lokri’s lazy air, Montrose recognized tension in his
arms and hands, the angle of his head, not just competition in the game, but
another, primeval competition: Lokri valued nothing that did not carry risk,
seeming incapable of attraction to anyone who did not convey a sense of danger.
And angry as he was that Markham chose Vi’ya over him, he was angrier still at
Markham’s death. Had Lokri noticed how Vi’ya avoided the Arkad? Probably.

Life will be interesting when we reach Dis
.

Montrose laughed to himself and moved out, wondering how
long it would take Lokri to realize that he’d lost that game right from the
start.

o0o

The damaged-one-who-hears-music contemplates from distance
the eye-of-the-distant-sleeper, in fear. This one’s desire is to shield its
pattern from Eya’a, from Vi’ya.

Is there in his pattern an image for the distant-sleeper?

There is question, there is a fear-darkness, the damaged-
one-who-hears-music fears Eya’a and Vi’ya joining in his contemplation.

Is there in his pattern a connection between the
eye-of-the-distant-sleeper and the distant-sleeper, as one knows the arm
between fingers and body?

There is only question, and the desire to hear the
connection between the eye-of-the-distant-sleeper and the distant-sleeper. And
the damaged-one-who-hears-music contemplates the angry-one with the
thought-coloration Vi’ya teaches us means sorrow—

We will leave his pattern, and return our attention to
our contemplation of the eye-of-the-distant-sleeper before my need for sleep
must be heeded...

Hreem looked around the crowded null-gym. The cavernous
space echoed with the shouts and whoops of the gathered Rifters. Nearby, set
apart as much by their grim silence as by their more uniform attire, were
Hreem’s hostages, a mixture of Douloi and Polloi.

The gym was arranged as if for two-player nullball, with the
seating drawn in close around a fifty-meter sphere where the gravitors had been
balanced out, surrounded by a nearly invisible netting. A number of air
vortexers had been installed in ports in the netting. The Rifters were already
jostling for command of them. Near a larger opening two men held the trembling
Naigluf, who wore only a loincloth. His skin had a sickly greenish cast to it,
and he was drooling slightly.
Withdrawal right on schedule.

Norio had let Naigluf have some popper while the
entertainment was publicized, and then cut him off. The exertion of what was
coming would accelerate Naigluf’s metabolism and bring him down even faster.

But where was Norio now? The Rifter audience was showing
signs of impatience.

Not that Hreem cared. His mind was largely elsewhere. Not an
hour earlier Riolo had had come through with the promised data about the
L’Ranja gang: their base was on Dis, a moon of Warlock, the innermost gas giant
in this system. Now Hreem could execute the plan he had already worked out: to
use the two hyperwave-equipped ships remaining to him,
Flower of Lith
and
Hellrose
, newly arrived, to trap Vi’ya when she returned from
Arthelion—he no longer thought of it as “if.”

The crowd noise modulated away from restlessness back
towards anticipation as Norio appeared, holding a black cube about a
third-meter in size. One of his hands had a metal gauntlet on it. The tempath
glided to a stop next to Naigluf, and waited for the crowd noise to subside.

“Pilgrim Naigluf got greedy,” Norio began when silence had
fallen, “and he got caught. He tried to take more than his share, which would
leave less for you.” An ugly murmur drifted up from the Rifters.

Norio held up his hand and the murmur died. “We shall rejoice
in our pilgrim-brother’s journey along the path of enlightenment,” he continued.
“But Naigluf is a strange one among the Sodality. Oh, not in his greed.” Norio
smiled. “We’re all greedy. But have you ever heard of a Rifter who’s afraid of
falling?”

Raucous laughter swelled from Hreem’s crew. The Highdwellers
sat in stony silence.

“Afraid of falling, and afraid of spiders, too. That’s why
Naigluf’s agreement to expiate his sin against the Sodality today is so
special.”

Hreem grinned at the cadence of Norio’s voice. The tempath
was really enjoying himself.

“For your pleasure and delight, Pilgrim Naigluf’s going to
engage in null-gee battle against one of the deadliest denizens of the Thousand
Suns.”

Deadliest denizens?
Norio was really laying it on
thick. The giant spiders in the box were used for pest control in several of the
Charvann syncs; their bite was quite painful, but not deadly.
He’s dialing
up Naigy’s fear
to make the entertainment even tastier.
Hreem could
already see sweat on Norio’s brow, and the tempath’s hands were trembling
slightly. He had a feeling he’d be seeing a lot of this particular treasure in
the years to come.

Norio unlatched a black box and reached carefully into it
with his gauntleted hand, pulling out a dull black spheroid about the size of
his fist, holding it delicately with a peculiar grip. The Rifters nearby
backed away, two of them with fear-spurred haste. Shock cascaded through Hreem
when the spheroid sprouted jointed, hairy legs that waved wildly and sturdy,
iridescent wings that rattled against the tempath’s armored fingers as the
creature struggled to escape.