The Lost King (14 page)

Know your enemy. . .
. Who is it that you fear?

Slowly, the leather
pouch slipped from Maigrey's hand and fell, unnoticed, to the floor.
Her gaze was focused on a metal trunk that stood—had stood for
seventeen years—at the foot of her cot.

Seventeen years ago,
she had hauled it from her damaged plane. She had never, until now,
opened it.

Kneeling down, she
fumbled at the crude lock. The combination was easy to remember—the
anniversary of her birth, the anniversary of her mother's death. The
hinges had rusted in the damp tropical climate; they screeched
shrilly as she prized the lid open. Only two objects were inside the
trunk. One was a worn, green, canvas flight bag. The other, a
shapeless bundle of stained cloth. Her hand went to the cloth bundle,
her fingers gently touching the reddish brown splotches. She started
to draw back the cloth, uncover the object wrapped in the
blood-splattered shroud.

Maigrey hesitated, then
dropped the bundle and picked up the flight bag. She held it in her
lap, running her hand over the rough fabric, her fingers toying with
the rusted buckles. Undoing the straps with a trembling hand, Maigrey
lifted the flap and dumped the contents of the bag onto the dirt
floor.

There wasn't much—just
what she had been able to lay hold of in the darkness the night she'd
escaped. She hadn't been thinking clearly. They'd given her drugs,
but that hadn't eased the pain. Nothing short of death itself could
have eased that pain!

A bar of hospital soap,
still in its wrapper. A small bottle of shampoo, a washrag, and a
towel. Odd, how the mind will run on little things, the small wheels
keeping the larger turning. She had packed as if going on weekend
leave. A hairbrush, strands of pale hair caught in it. A small
rosewood box. Maigrey's hand lingered on this box; the smooth wood
always seemed alive to her touch.

But, like the
bloodstained bundle, she did not pick up the box either. Her hand
went instead to another object. She raised it up and, for the first
time in seventeen years, Maigrey looked at herself in a mirror.

The face was older,
more solemn than the face of the twenty-four-year-old young woman
who—in a half-drugged, wholly despairing state—had thrown
these random articles into a flight bag. Long, pale hair fell from a
center part down around her face, cascaded over her shoulders. The
pain returned, burning, throbbing.

Raising her hand,
Maigrey touched the terrible, disfiguring scar—a jagged slash
of white that ran from her right temple down her cheek, brushed past
the corner of her lip, and ended at the chin.

A voice came to her,
repeating the phrase. This time, it wasn't her brother's. It was her
commander's.

Know your enemy.

"I do, Sagan,"
Maigrey said, her hand tracing the scar, flinching with pain as
though the fingers were the blade of the sword that inflicted it.

She lay down wearily on
the floor of the hut, her head pillowed on the flight bag. Reaching
out, she touched the face in the mirror.

"I know my enemy.
And I fear her more than death!"

History—a
distillation of rumor.

Thomas Carlyle,
The
French Revolution

Tusk awoke with a
start. Rolling out of his chair, he cracked his shin on something and
groped about in the darkness, cursing fluently beneath his breath.

"Lights!" he
hissed, massaging his bruised leg.

The lights on the
bridge flashed on with a brightness and suddenness that caused Tusk
to move his hand from his leg to his eyes. "Damn!" he
swore. "Turn 'em down!"

The lights dimmed. "Too
much jump-juice," XJ commented.

"Shut up. I did
not. Now be quiet. Listen—"

The computer was
silent.

Blinking his eyes, Tusk
leaned forward, waiting for the sound that had awakened him from his
nap.

"I don't—"

"Shhhh!" Tusk
gave the computer a thump that caused it to whir in irritation.
"There it is!" he said, cocking his head. His brow
furrowed. "What the deuce is it? I've heard this ship make a lot
of weird noises before, but I can't place that. Maybe it's the
coupling on the—"

A sound vaguely
reminiscent of an asthmatic, laughing monkey came from the computer.

"What's so funny?"
Tusk growled. "If it
is
the coupling you won't be
laughing long because—"

"You're juiced.
It's a syntharp."

"Sinwhat?"

"Harp. Syntharp.
Definition: 'An electronic musical instrument with beams of light
spanning an open, triangular frame. When the light beams are broken
by the passage of the fingers across them—'"

"I know
what
it is," Tusk snapped, rubbing his injured leg again. "Just
why
the hell is it?"

"Kid's got it. Go
take a look. I was going to wake you, anyway. We're coming to the end
of the Lane in twenty-nine minutes and fifteen seconds. I need to
know what course to set."

"Harp," Tusk
repeated gloomily. Limping across the deck, he caught hold of the
ladder and cautiously and quietly pulled himself up far enough so
that he could see through the hatch to the living quarters above.

It was dark, and Tusk
could barely make out the kid, lying propped up in his hammock, the
glowing instrument in his hands. Dion's blue eyes, glinting in light
reflected from the syntharp's "strings," stared out into a
pain-filled landscape with a fierce, rapt intensity that made the boy
appear spellbound. His music ached with the pain of his vision, and
made Tusk feel suddenly very much alone. Bitter memories came to
mind: his father's hand grasping his in agony, refusing the easeful
drugs until Danha had heard his son swear to fulfill his dying
request . . . the last, shuddering gasps for breath.

Mad at the boy and mad
at himself for being mad, Tusk swung back down the ladder, landing on
the deck with a thud.

"Hush," XJ
said. "You'll disturb the kid."

"Hell!" Tusk
snorted, returning to his seat. "I could blow the rivets out of
this mother and the kid'd never miss a note. He's off in some other
universe, which is where he's going as soon as we can find someplace
to unload him."

Muttering to himself,
Tusk glanced at the half-full bottle sitting snugly in its
compartment within arm's reach of his chair. XJ saw the look. The
lights on the bridge flickered.

"All right, lay
off. I'm going to work," Tusk fluttered, adding a few other
colorful phrases beneath his breath. "Course change."
Sitting forward, he began punching up star charts on the computer
screen and stared at them, bleary-eyed. "God, I'm half-asleep!
Must be that blasted music. Give me our location. How close are we to
Dagot?" Tusk rubbed his eyes and studied the coordinates.
"That's good. Real good. Look up the name of that city on Dagot
where old Sykes has his military academy, will you? We'll deposit the
kid there. Sykes owes me his life. He'll take good care of him."

Tusk leaned back
comfortably in his seat and reached for the bottle. The harp music
had changed. Still sad, it was peaceful now. Death was riot the end.
There was a greater good. Tusk heard the prayer spoken over his
father's body during the funeral—a funeral that had been held
in secret in the middle of the night by a priest who had himself been
in fear of his life.

The clamp that held the
bottle in place during flight refused to unlock.

"Hey, let go!"
Tusk commanded the computer. He glared at XJ. "Say, didn't I
give you a course change? Let's see those lights flash. Let's hear
that disk whir—"

"I like the kid,"
XJ said.

"Son of the
Creator!" Tusk swore in profound astonishment. "That's
impossible. You're not programmed to like anyone."

"Liking is an
emotional state, therefore it is supposedly an attribute of so-called
intelligent life-forms. But you underestimate me. I like the boy for
logical, unemotional reasons based solely on his future worth."

"Hah! A kid who
doesn't even know his own name, and you're talking future worth?
Besides, from what I've seen, people who hang around him don't
have
a future!"

Tusk gave the bottle
another, surreptitious tug, just to see if the computer had
forgotten. It hadn't.

"I've been
thinking about this," he continued, hoping to distract XJ, "and
there's a lot about this kid that doesn't add up. At first, I figured
he was the son of some Guardian, trying to escape the Warlord. But
I'm
the son of a Guardian. They tortured and murdered my
father and you don't see Lord Sagan taking any wild personal interest
in me, do you?"

"Not up until
now," returned the computer in ominous tones.

Tusk grunted, scowling,
and propped his feet up on the control panel.

"Then I decided
the kid must be Sagan's son. I discarded that, though. I've seen
custody fights over kids before and they get pretty messy sometimes,
but we're talking swords and fancy armor here, not to mention the
disruption of an entire planet."

"Not to mention
the rumors floating around the service to the effect that Lord Sagan
doesn't like women."

"He's not
discriminatory. He doesn't like men either. He doesn't like anyone,
in fact. And quit interrupting me. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I tell you,
XJ, this kid is special to someone or maybe a whole bunch of
someones. And I don't even like to think who they might be. The
sooner we get rid of him, the better. For all of us. The kid
included."

"I find that very
interesting," XJ mused. "It never ceases to amaze me how
you humans come up with intelligent ideas following the most chaotic
thought processes. Kid special to someone. We know who at least one
someone is. I'll search my files and see if there's anything that
ties together the boy and the Warlord. Despite what you say, Sagan's
human, after all. Although much superior to most, I might add. Still,
in a moment of weakness, he might have made a tiny little mistake.
How old is the boy? Seventeen? Born the year of the revolution.
That's interesting."

"Is it? Check on
the couple of hundred million other kids born that year while you're
at it," Tusk commented, yawning.

XJ ignored him, its
lights flashing in a subdued, studious manner.

"Hey! What about
the course change?" Tusk asked, thumping the computer's
terminal.

"The boy could be
worth his weight in golden eagles," XJ snapped. "And you
want to hand him over to that pompous ass Sykes? I suggest we make no
decisions without having more data. I'll bring us out of the Jump.
Why don't you find us a nice little war where we can pick up some
quick cash and relax while we decide what to do next?"

"Military
academy!" Tusk reiterated, glaring at the computer. Realizing
that XJ was ignoring him—and that the computer wouldn't release
the bottle—Tusk flopped himself back into his chair, activated
the vid screen, and inserted a new
Mercenary Mag
disk he'd
picked up on Syrac Seven.

"Classified,"
he ordered.

"Personals?
Spaceplanes? Weapons?" the mag inquired.

"Conflicts,"
Tusk said. He noticed that the harp music had stopped. Dion must have
fallen asleep. Tusk hoped the kid had made peace with the demons who
hounded a man after the death of someone he loved . . . and hated.

"Blood feuds,
corporate wars, interplanetary wars, intraplanet wars, interstellar
wars—"

"No blood feuds,
mag. Those guys get carried away, never know when to quit. Closest I
ever got to being blown to cosmic dust was in a blood feud. And no
religious wars. Those bastards are sore losers, sacrifice you on the
spot if you retreat. Fortunately"—Tusk adjusted himself
more comfortably in his chair—"there're enough planetary
wars to go around. Give us that list, will you?"

The mag complied. Tusk
scanned the list, frowning. That one was too risky, he decided. Like
siblings who have learned to argue quietly lest it bring down the
wrath of their parents, conflicting groups were constantly mindful of
the watchful eye of the Warlords. There had been following the
revolution, an increase in the demand for mercenaries.

The revolution had been
well planned. The night the king met his death in the Glitter Palace,
certain hand-picked rebel officers in the Royal Armed Forces had
stepped in to take command, either killing or imprisoning those
superiors loyal to the king. The takeover occurred simultaneously in
every major system, on every planet, in every unit. But an operation
that big can't go unnoticed. Many commanders had known something was
up and—so it was rumored—had tried desperately to
convince their king of the danger. Amodius Starfire had refused to
heed their warnings. A devoutly religious man, he believed that he
ruled by divine right, that the Creator would never allow the
monarchy to fall.

Many soldiers in the
Royal Armed Forces died in the coup that night, but it was discovered
the next day—the day that became known among the
revolutionaries as Coffin Run because of the huge numbers of orders
for coffins—that many more royalists had escaped. At first the
Revolutionary Congress had ordered these soldiers hunted down and
destroyed. This grisly quest took up time, money, and manpower, and
eventually the Congress—concerned with holding elections,
placing their candidates in office, and a myriad other
functions—ordered that the search for those still misguidedly
loyal to a dead king be called off.

For many of these men
and women, soldiering was the only trade they knew, and they began to
sell their services to the highest bidder. And there were always
plenty of bidders. Although the Commonwealth preached peace and
brotherhood among the nations (and maintained, every election cycle,
that this goal was near fulfillment), the truth was that there were
just as many or possibly more conflicts under the new regime as there
had been under the old one.