The Lost King (55 page)

"Strict dietary
rules?" Dixter muttered to her as they walked slowly along.

"He prefers not to
be poisoned," Maigrey said, smiling.

Dixter smiled in turn,
and Maigrey saw that though the smile smoothed some of the lines in
the rugged face she knew so well, it didn't erase them all. Some were
too deep. The two walked on in silence.

"Where's the
dining room?" she thought to ask, after a moment.

"Back there,"
he said. "Are you hungry?"

"No. Not at all."

"Neither am I."

An archway at the end
of the hall led them into what had apparently been a pitiful attempt
at a garden, built out on the top of the cliff. High stone walls
protected it from the savage winds. Sunlight poured down from the
sky, but the life-giving fire had obviously been too concentrated,
too bright. The soil was baked nearly as hard as the rock walls. The
blazing sun must have withered anything those early settlers had
tried to grow.

But now it was late
afternoon, nearly twilight, and the garden was cool, the shadow of
the walls stealing softly across the barren soil.

Dixter drew Maigrey
into a far corner. Keeping hold of her hand, he turned to face her.
"He didn't leave a guard on you."

Maigrey lowered her
head; her hair fell forward. But John Dixter was accustomed to this
trick of hers. Reaching out, he caught hold of the pale hair and drew
it back from her face, causing her to look up at him.

"He knows I won't
leave. He knows I can't."

"Dion?"

"Yes," she
answered, and wished with all her heart that her answer was the
truth.

Then she saw that it
didn't matter. It had never mattered. John knew, he understood,
better than she did. He clasped his arms around her and held her
close. Maigrey laid her head on his breast and felt, for the first
time in her years of exile, that she had come home.

Parting is all we know
of heaven, And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson, "My
life closed twice before its close"

"All these years,
Maigrey, I thought you were dead!"

"I'm sorry, so
sorry for the grief I caused! But I had to disappear, vanish
completely. You were my closest friend, John. Sagan was bound to
watch you!"

Dixter moved his hands
to her forearms, gently smoothing the blue velvet fabric. "I
remember this gown ... or one like it. Torn, blackened, stained with
fire and with blood." Pausing, he drew a deep, shivering breath.
"You might have trusted me, Maigrey."

"Trust you!"
Reaching up her hand to his face, Maigrey slowly traced the lines
upon the weathered skin. "Don't you know yet, my dear friend,
the person I was trying to escape? The person I trusted least? The
person who, to this day, I dare not trust?" Her hand moved from
John's face to her own, her fingers tracing the scar upon her cheek.
"I took that person and I buried her in a place where I thought
no one would ever find her again!"

"Maigrey, don't!"

"But it didn't
work, you see! I cried out to him and he found me because I wanted to
be found. I betrayed everything Stavros and Tusca and Platus died to
keep from betraying. I brought him the boy and here I am, still with
him, still dancing up and down the hall, hand in hand, in time to
some infernal music!"

"Hush, my dearest,
hush! We won't talk about it anymore. For seventeen years, Maigrey,
there hasn't been a day gone by that I didn't love you."

She blinked her eyes,
sniffed, and glanced around as if she thought someone might have left
a box of tissues in the garden. John fumbled in his pocket, brought
out a handkerchief, and handed it to her.

"Here, I brought
an extra."

Maigrey smiled, wiped
her eyes, and, glancing up at him through lowered lashes, said
teasingly, though her voice was muffled and half-choked, "So
there isn't a wife and ten children somewhere?"

"A wife? What kind
of life is this"—Dixter waved his hand back toward the
fortress—"for a woman?"

"For a woman who
loved you? Come now, John. Like Mrs. Bagnet, she would have put on
her gray cloak and shouldered her umbrella and followed you across
the sundering seas. I wish you would have married." Maigrey
stepped back, moved away from him. "You make me feel guilty.
I've left your life like this garden—barren, empty. I never
meant to do that—"

Dixter, following her,
caught her and drew her near. "I knew what I was doing. I wasn't
some kid, having my heart stolen. I was a man and I gave my love to
you freely and willingly. I knew precisely what I would get back in
return. You were always honest with me, and your friendship was
enough, Maigrey. More than enough. I knew my rivals, you see—"

"Rivals? Plural?
There were never that many!"

"There were two.
Him and one other."

Maigrey, leaning
against him, rested her head on his cheek. She followed his gaze;
both looked down upon the Warlord's shuttlecraft, sleek and
glistening in the fiery sunlight.

"Who was the
other?" she asked softly.

"The one I feared
most. The one I could never hope to displace."

Maigrey glanced up at
him, puzzled.

"Out there."
Dixter looked up, straight up, into the heavens.

The day was waning, the
sky was still light, but a nearby planet sparkled in the distance.

"Ill prove to you
how well I know you, Lady Maigrey. You're not here with me now.
You're up there, trying to figure out how you're going to get hold of
a spaceplane and fight the Cor—"

"John Dixter!
Quiet!" Maigrey clapped her hand over his mouth. She cast a
furtive glance back down at the shuttlecraft.

Dixter laughed,
suddenly, and Maigrey laughed, and the laughter—as it always
does between lovers—drew them closer. But the laughter died
quickly, too quickly, and it left them clinging together, but with an
empty feeling, like lost children who hold each other out of fear.

"Why did you ask
him that question, John?"

Maigrey's eyes were on
the shuttlecraft.

"About how he knew
the Corasians would strike this particular small section of the
galaxy?"

"Yes."

"A question,
first, for you, Maigrey. Did he tell me the truth when he answered
it?"

"About the
technology? Yes?"

"But not all the
truth."

Maigrey clasped her
hands over John's, held them tightly. "They're flinging him to
the starving wolf pack that's on their heels."

"Why? He's the
Republic's most skilled commander, a valued leader—"

"And one of the
wolves. According to Robes, the most dangerous wolf of all. "

John nodded, rubbing
his cheek against hers. Her pale, fine hair caught in the stubble of
his late-day growth of beard. "I guessed as much."

"What do you
mean?"

Dixter appeared
slightly embarrassed. "As usual, I seem to have walked into the
right place at the wrong time. Have you ever heard of an Adonian
named Snaga Ohme?"

"No, but don't
look so surprised. My social life has been somewhat restricted
lately. I don't get around like I used to."

"How can I
describe Snaga Ohme? Like most Adonian males, he's incredibly
handsome. He has three passions in his life—himself, rare
jewels, and weapons. His collection of black fire diamonds is said to
be the finest in the galaxy."

"The Royal
Family's collection was the finest," Maigrey protested.

"He bought the
Royal Family's collection."

"Bought!"
Maigrey stared. "But ... it was priceless!"

"Everything has
its price. The new President needed warships, guns, missiles—"

"Ohme?;

"Yes, he's a
genius when it comes to designing weapons. He demands and gets top
gilder. One—one, mind you—of his combination palatial
homes, warehouses, and firing ranges is located on the planet Laskar.
I've seen it. It's immense. There're major metropolitan areas that
are smaller in size than his estate.

"Now, let me tell
you, Maigrey, about this little altercation in which we've been
involved. You can't even call it a war. It barely made headlines on
the evening news on this planet. No one else in the galaxy's ever
heard of it. A bunch of miners are sick of being shoved around by a
bunch of goons. Marek is a good man; he's not ambitious. He wanted
his people treated fairly, wanted control of his mines back.

"The goons call
out the local militia, which is solidly mired in the twentieth
century—guns that fire bullets, some nuclear missiles that
they're all scared as hell to use, thank God, and bombers that drop
things that go boom in the night.

"And
. . .
one brand-new, never-been-used, ultramodern, fully equipped, and
very, very expensive prototype torpedo launcher. Comes completely
assembled with—as an added bonus—a highly professional
killer captain and a well-trained, highlv professional killer
crew—all off-world."

"My God!"

Maigrey leaned back
against the wall, rubbing her arms. The evening wind was chill, and
she had forgotten her cloak. Dixter, hands thrust into his pockets,
stared thoughtfully out at the shuttlecraft.

"Yes, I thought
that was rather peculiar. If it hadn't been for Tusca's son, that
launcher would have ended Marek's war before it began. We couldn't
have kept the uranium shipments going out, and you know how touchy
Sagan can be about keeping his ships powered. But that's only the
beginning. I began getting reports that my soldiers were finding the
most remarkable weapons lying around the battlefields—weapons
so modern that most of the local boys couldn't figure out how to use
them and so they just ditched them."

"Somebody on this
planet's scared."

"Of what? Of us?
Mercenaries with a price on our heads? I decided I better do a little
sleuthing, find out who was behind this and what he, she, or it was
up to before something really nasty happened. But about that time, it
became obvious to everyone that Marek was going to win. The oligarchy
was in a shambles—rioting in the streets, chaos, confusion—and
when I could clear away the rubble, it was too late. He'd packed up
and gone."

"Snaga Ohme?"

"Yes. The Adonian
weapons dealer. He was here on this pile of rock; he'd been here for
almost two years working on some sort of project that was so
top-secret not even the people who worked for him knew what was going
on. He used a uranium shipping company as a front—which put him
in contact with
Phoenix
."

Maigrey shook her head.
"That would be natural—"

"So you would
think. But contact was infrequent, transmitted in code, and as far as
my people were able to determine, not one ounce of uranium was ever
sent from this company to
Phoenix
or anywhere else that anyone
could ever discover."

"So you've
discovered the wolf's teeth," Maigrey murmured, glancing over
her shoulder at the shuttlecraft.

"Let's theorize:
Sagan's already got his own army and navy. He hires Snaga Ohme to
provide him with weapons. He wins the support of a few of the other
'marshals' by offering to restore the true heir to his throne—"

"Would they
support him?"

"Yes, I think so.
Your old friend Olefsky would, for one."

"Bear Olefsky!"
Maigrey grinned. "I didn't know he was still around. And I'm not
certain whether he'd join with Sagan or knife him."

"He might not
support Sagan, but what about Dion?" John Dixter suggested
mildly.

Maigrey grew serious,
thoughtful. "Yes, Bear would give his life for Dion if he were
convinced the boy was genuine. So the Warlord has weapons. ..."

"If Ohme hadn't
panicked, if he'd sat tight and not blown his cover, I would never
have discovered his operation. I'll bet Sagan could wring the
Adonisn's handsome neck. So now I know the Warlord's secret. The
question is, does he know I know?"

Maigrey nodded her
head. "He knows. You're a threat, John, a dire threat. He must
get rid of you. And I've led him right to you!"

"You? You didn't—"

"Yes, I did! It
was my idea! Coming to you, asking for your help. You've got to get
away! Escape him—"

John caught hold of her
wrists, held her fast. "Very well," he said quietly. "Ill
run. On one condition-that you come with me."

Maigrey stared at him.
The hope that had dawned in her eyes at his astonishing agreement
faded like the twilight ar night's approach. She smiled wanly, looked
down at her hands, twisting the handkerchief. "You always had
the most subtle ways of letting me know I was being a fool. Why
didn't you just slap me?"

"Because I'd much
rather do this." Dixter took her in his arms and kissed her. "I
thought you knew he was plotting something," he whispered when
he could breathe again. His lips brushed against her hair. "When
you sent me the message about the human impersonator."

"I
did
know," Maigrey said, her head drooping against his chest. "I
just didn't know what. John, you're walking right into a trap!"

"At least I'll
walk into it with my eyes open. We don't have any choice, Maigrey. We
all hang together or we hang separately. War makes strange
bedfellows—"

"What's this about
bedfellows? Good thing I came along!" A grinning Tusk peered
through the entryway in the wall. His face sobered. "Sorry, sir,
but you told me to let you know when it was near time."

"Yes, thank you,
Tusca."

"Please don't go!"
Maigrey said, reaching out her hand to Tusk, who was about to
discreetly remove himself.

"I'll leave you
two alone to . . . uh . . . say good-bye, my lady," the
mercenary said, looking and feeling awkward.

"We're not saying
good-bye." Maigrey clasped her hands around John's arm. "It's
too . . . final." She'd meant her words to be cheerful,
lighthearted, but the circumstances of their last parting came back
to her. Her voice faltered and she fell silent.