Silent Blade (2 page)

Celino Carvanna.

 

 

 

Two hours later Meli sat in the garden. Around her, dahlias bloomed in a dazzling display of a hundred shades. The delicate pink of
Adelaide Fontane
, the white frilly
Aspen
, the gaudy riot of orange that was
Bodacious
and her favorite, the
Arabian Night
, its sharpened petals a deep intense red of a Burgundy wine.

Beyond the small plot lay a narrow street, typical to Old Town, where streets were narrow, houses old, property values low, and residents still kept an occasional garden. Beyond the street lay a throughway. If she rose and approached the fence, she would see the steady current of aerials gliding through the air. A left turn on the throughway would bring her to the heart of New Delphi's financial district. A right would take her to the Terraces, where tourist shops and cafes catered to the upscale clientele eager for a touch of the “old planet” and the memories of provinces that lay beyond the city.

The city was the center of the South, the technological and economical hub of the subcontinent. Divided into territories between kinsmen, it served as their battleground. But those who had grown up in the provinces surrounding New Delphi never forgot their true home.

Meli had bought the house for the garden and filled it with dahlias, permitting only a few brugmansias and two pink silk trees for fragrance. It was her bright, cheerful haven, her little celebration of life and color, and affirmation of her own humanity. Her proof that she could nurture life as well as take it.

The file lay on her lap, downloaded into her notebook. She had read it, committing every word to memory. She had printed Celino's photograph. His face was a glossy smoothness underneath her fingertips.

She moved her hand and looked down on the god of her adolescence. He hadn't changed as much as she expected. The years had sharpened his face, honing his features with a lethal precision. A perfectly carved square jaw. A crisply defined nose with a small bump. His cheekbones protruded, the cheeks beneath them hollowed, making the contours of his face more pronounced. His eyebrows, two thick black lines, combined with the stubborn set of his wide, narrow-lipped mouth, gave his face a grim, menacing air. But it was the eyes that elevated his appearance from merely harsh to dangerous.

Dark grey, they matched the fabled bluish steel of Ravager firearms. Perceptive, powerful, they betrayed an intellect sharp enough to draw blood but revealed no emotion. Not even a minute glimpse of his inner self. She vividly remembered staring into their depths, trying to gauge what he felt for her, if anything, and finding only a hard opaque wall.

Every time she looked into those eyes, a jolt of adrenaline tore through her.

Meli forced herself to look at him again, trying to separate herself from the adolescent flutter of her pulse. That flutter, the slight pain in her chest, the rapid chill, all that was but a bitter memory of a little foolish girl, hardly more than a child. Her little foolish hopes and dreams had long turned to dust.

She had to evaluate him for what he was—a target.

In her mind a younger Celino sprang from her memories: handsome, tall, with a lazy, self-indulgent smile, standing on a verandah with a short blade in his hand, inviting the party guests to throw polymer drink cans at him. He was barely seventeen then. He looked incredible poised against the backdrop of the flower beds that gave the province of Dahlia its name. As a barrage of the multicolored containers hit him, he sliced at them in a blur, severing them with his blade. When he was done, the tile around him was drenched. Celino, on the other hand, remained perfectly dry.

Carvannas had a reputation for their knife skills, superb even among the
kinsmen
.

The man who looked at her from the photograph now wouldn't show off. Tempered by a decade and a half in the
kinsmen
family feuds
,
he would watch, calculating the odds, until the right moment came, and then he would seize it without hesitation and squeeze out every advantage. He had survived four known assassination attempts and likely a dozen or more that remained secret. She tapped the notebook screen, calling up the only recorded attempt. She had viewed it twice already.

The premiere of
Gigolo
. A brightly lit street. Red carpet stretching into the mouth of Miranda Theater. Adoring crowds shouting their worship at the stars and their escorts.

A sleek, bullet-shaped aerial slid up to the ropes. The door swung up. A metal step unfurled from the underside of the vehicle, permitting the passengers to exit in comfort. Celino stepped out. Tall, lean, and overwhelmingly masculine in the traditional Carvanna black doublet stretched by his broad shoulders. He had matured well. Too well, Meli reflected.

He bent lightly, offering his hand, and immediately feminine fingers rested in his palm. A woman stepped out. She wore a glittering silvery sari that stopped a shade short of vulgar. In spiky heels, she stood only a couple of inches shorter than Celino, six two to his six four. A fountain of blonde hair spilled down her back all the way past her butt.

Celino led her down the carpet. They seemed perfectly matched—her glamorous light to his brooding darkness. A painful needle pierced Meli's chest. Old dreams, she reminded herself.

She sensed the attack a moment before it came. Celino's head jerked as the crowd on the right erupted and four men dashed at him. The magnetic disruptors installed by theater security made any metal projectiles unusable, and the attackers opted for dark red monomolecule blades.

Celino thrust his date behind him with a powerful shove and attacked so quickly, he blurred. He was preternaturally fast. Meli tapped the screen, slowing the recording by twenty-five percent. He held a simple metal knife. His swipe drew a bright red gash down the first attacker's throat—beautifully done. A vertical gash opened a bigger hole in the carotid without slowing down the strike. It was nearly impossible to hit the artery that way—like aiming at a piece of lubricated IV drip dancing around in the wind. Meli had factored in the enhanced strength and speed, but Celino seemed to have enhanced reflexes as well. Or perhaps a targeting implant. Or both.

The second cut grazed the second attacker's arm pit, severing another vein. The third assailant received a sideways swipe to the kidneys. That strike took a quarter of a second longer than Celino had planned. She saw him change his strategy in mid-move, hammering a kick to the fourth man's neck. She rewound half a second, slowed the feed to half speed, and watched Celino's black boot connect with the man's neck. She couldn't hear the telltale crunch, but she saw the man's neck line jerk sharply. Celino's kick had broken the vertebrae of his attacker.

She shut down the notebook. In a purely physical confrontation, Celino would kill her. She had absolutely no doubt of that. She was a small woman—he towered over her by a foot, outweighed her by at least eighty pounds of hard muscle, and he had enhancements she couldn't match. Judging from Celino's performance, very few people would be able to match him blow by blow. Add to it bodyguards, who always accompanied him. And Marcus. One couldn't forget Marcus. Only one generation removed from old planet, Marcus was ill suited to traditional enhancements. Instead he had done horrible things to his body in the name of service. A walking poison, he killed with a mere touch. Celino had saved him years ago and Marcus was devoted to Celino like a dog.

To kill Celino Carvanna, she would have to get close to him and separate him from his guards.

Father was right. None of the people at Galdes disposal could take out Celino Carvanna. In fact, of all the millions that inhabited New Delphi, she alone was uniquely qualified to take him on.

Father, in his wisdom, also reasoned that she would do it. If not for the sake of Galdes, then for the sake of sliding the tomb stone atop her broken heart. He believed she would hate Celino Carvanna. After all, Celino had humiliated the Galdes family. He ruined her life, obliterating her future. Of course, she had to hate him.

Meli recalled the file. Celino chose to oversee a number of projects for Carvannas, including Raban, Inc. and Sunlight Development. He was active and ruthless, and his leadership brought his family to its prominence. He made the Carvanna millions. For all practical purposes, he
was
the Carvanna family. His death would plunge his clan into chaos and destroy the value of their stock.

Angel had managed to obtain Celino's calendar for the next two weeks, at astronomical cost, no doubt. Celino scheduled an inspection of the new development to the south. That meant a flurry of meetings and formal dinner engagements, which, if the new Celino was anything like his younger self, he would loathe it with great passion. He was both too active and too smart. Time may have taught him patience with less agile minds, but it could hardly teach him how to escape boredom in their presence.

She had reviewed his recent development projects. Celino built beautiful places, full of sunlight and flowers, all of the modern technology seamlessly married with the provincial earthiness. Meli smiled. One could remove a man from the provinces, but one couldn't take the provinces out of the man. He would strive to escape tedium of formality, which meant he would likely stay in his villa on the Terraces and lunch below, among the cafes.

Revenge was sometimes best served hot.

 

 

 

Celino strode down the tiled curve of the Red Terrace. Built into the side of a towering cliff, now honeycombed with metal and plastic-sheathed tunnels, the Terraces consisted of seven platforms, layered one under another, each about a mile long and two hundred yards at their widest. The platforms jutted in gentle curves from the former cliff, housing small shops and eateries. The bottom terrace sat roughly three thousand feet above the plain, while the Red Terrace, where he stood, was situated three levels above it. He wasn't sure about the exact altitude, but the view was magnificent.

The residents of New Delphi were used to heights, but even Celino, as he stopped by the faux wooden rail, was momentarily overcome by the enormity of the landscape. Far below him a vast plain rolled into the distance and beyond it blue cliffs rose, made ethereal by the ocean of air.

Celino resumed his walk, aware of Marcus following like an unobtrusive shadow a few feet behind. Two of his men, Romuld and Ven, stalked behind Marcus.

The breeze brought a whiff of a shockingly familiar aroma. He stopped. He smelled crisp dough with a slight buttery taste and a tantalizing scent of roasted passion raspberry, the only variety of the old planet berry that grew in the southern provinces. The aroma swirled about him and instantly he was five years old, stealing the still warm cone of pastry from the dish and eating quietly under the table, thrilled at his own sneakiness.

“What is it?” Marcus asked softly.

“Passion cones.” Celino accelerated, heading toward the source of the scent, until he reached a small cafe with a red overhang. A sign proclaimed
A Taste of Dahlia
. He rarely entered unfamiliar places. Why risk an ambush?

Celino glanced past Marcus at Ven. “An order of passion cones.”

The bodyguard ducked into the shop.

Celino shrugged. Funny how the memory played tricks. He could practically taste the pastry from the scent alone.

Ven emerged from the cafe. Empty handed.

Celino stared.

“The owner says the cones aren't his to sell,” Ven said. “I told him to name the price, but he refused.”

Celino growled. He wanted the damn cones. He strode into the shop.

The cafe was small, barely more than a counter and six tables. The floor was faux wood, the furnishings vintage Dahlia: sturdy old furniture that would last another century. Only two of the tables were occupied. The patrons watched him like terrified rabbits.

Behind him Romuld activated the scanner that sat over his left eye. A sheet of green light swept over the tables and people sitting at them. Romuld said nothing. The place was clean.

An older man hurried to Celino's side, nervously wiping his hands with a towel. “Sir?”

“Passion cones,” Celino said.

The older man twisted the towel in his hands. “You see, the business is a bit slow. It's a weekday and off-season.”

Celino frowned.

The man stammered. “There is a woman. She rents one of my stoves once in a while, because I have the old iron ovens. The old province kind. She pays well. She was the one who made the passion cones. So I can't sell them. I've asked.”

The trip down the memory lane suddenly became a challenge. “Then I will ask her myself.”

The man nodded and pointed to the back. “Through that door, sir.”

Celino crossed the floor and ducked through the low doorway. A spacious kitchen stretched before him, filled with the tantalizing aroma of freshly baked dough.

A woman sat at a large table, in a pool of golden light streaming from the window. She wore a sun dress the color of burgundy. Her hair was gathered into a thick dark braid that glinted with copper in the sunlight. In her hands was an electronic reader.

She looked up at him, her dark eyes like two bottomless pools on a face tanned to golden perfection. Celino stared.

The woman blinked against the green sweep of Romuld's scanner and raised her eyebrows.

“I'm told you made the cones,” Celino said.

“Technically, I'm still making them.” Her voice was sensuous and confident, and completely unimpressed with his surliness. She checked her reader's clock. “Thirty seconds left.”

“I'd like to purchase them.”

“Are you a Dahlian?”

“I don't see how that can be of any consequence.”

She rose. She was shorter than he, maybe five four. The thin dress hugged her chest, outlining large, full breasts and a narrow waist. The wide cut of the skirt hid her hips, but judging by the rest of her, her butt was round and plump. She grasped a heat-resistant towel, forced open the stove door and pulled a tray of cones into the light. They looked perfect, golden crispy brown.