Traitor's Sun (52 page)

A wave of fatigue struck Domenic, and his knees trembled. He sucked in a deep gust of air, and started down the hall. As he reached the head of the stairs, he overheard the thoughts of the man tied up in the room.
Who is that boy, and why is he here? I saw him talking to that bitch Illona earlier. Where did she get to? He is probably a spy for the Hasturs. I hope I will see them in Zandru’s coldest hell before the week is out! I must find a way to reach the Sons and warn them. But how? Maybe when they feed me—if they don’t starve me to death—I can signal. Surely someone in the inn must belong to the Sons.

Anger flooded through Nico. It took all of his will not to use the Alton Gift in a way he had never done before, to plunder Mathias’ mind of everything it knew. He felt Herm’s mental flinch as his emotions reached the other man, and was ashamed at the loss of control.
Yes, it does. It means we have to suspect everyone—I hate that, Herm.

Domenic stood at the head of the stairs for a minute, feeling too dizzy to start down. Overhead, he could hear the rain falling on the roof tiles, a pleasant sound that seemed to clear his mind. He was sweating again, and knew he was close to the edge of his own endurance. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt wearily. There was still a great deal to do before he could rest.

As he came down the stairs, he heard the sound of boots coming from the lower floor of the inn, up the stairs. For no conscious reason, he halted in his own descent and waited to see who it was. He knew the Renunciates had taken two rooms at one end of the corridor, the one next to his, but there were other guests at the Crowing Cock that night.

Briefly he chided himself for being so jumpy. Then he saw the shoulders and head of a man appear, and then the rest of the body, illuminated by the lampions along the hall. He had never seen the face before, but as soon as the stranger turned and walked down the corridor, he knew it must be Granfell. The shape of his skull from the rear, and the way he strode were unmistakable. He was wearing Darkovan clothing now, like the dead man had, but they looked wrong. Granfell tugged at the edge of his tunic, as if he found it uncomfortable. His light-colored hair was wet, and it was clear that he had just arrived. He knocked at a door at the far end of the corridor, and Nico wondered how he knew which room to pick. When there was no answer, he quickly opened the door and entered.

So, that’s how he knew. I was wondering about it. Are we going to grab him and use your thumb screws?
Domenic was startled by the sudden change in himself, although he knew perfectly well that Herm was not going to torture anyone. His fear and grief seemed to have vanished, and in their place he found a peculiar desire to hurt someone or something. It was gone almost before he could understand it, but it revealed to him a part of his character he had never suspected he possessed.

Yes, I will.
Nico felt shamed for a moment. Herm should not have to tell him not to be bloodthirsty. Then he realized that his uncle had been teasing him gently, that it had not been meant to be the rebuke he took it for. He just was not used to being spoken to as Herm spoke to him, and he took it too seriously.

Someone—was it Danilo Ardais?—had said in his hearing “Violence begets more violence,” so perhaps his momentary lapse was something normal. But between that and his earlier thoughts about Illona’s scantily clad body, he felt as if he did not know himself any longer. Domenic hoped he was not becoming some sort of monster, as unnatural as Javanne had frequently intimated he might be.

After he had reached Lew, telling him everything that had happened since their earlier contact, he collapsed back onto the bed. His belly growled. Domenic was ravenous, despite a large supper only a few hours before. It seemed like he hadn’t eaten in at least a day! Then he knew that he had not been using his
laran
correctly, in the manner which his mother had been teaching him, which required less energy than the method still taught at Arilinn and the other Towers. He wasn’t grounding himself right.

The air in the room seemed stifling, and he knew he had to get away from everything for a time. In spite of the temptation of the pillow, he dragged himself off the bed. His mind was filled with images of the dead stranger, and he wanted to banish these. He hadn’t even known the man, but his murder seemed to have affected his thoughts to a degree he could not seem to control.

He went down the stairs and out of the inn. The courtyard was empty of people now, except for a groom sweeping a pile of ash off the stones. He looked up at the sound of Nico’s footsteps and shook his head at the young man. “A sorry business, this.”

“Yes, it is.” One of the Guardsmen appeared from the shadows and gave Domenic a nod. Then he moved to accompany the boy, and halted at a gesture. “I’m just going to get a breath of air.”

The smell of burning was dissipating with the rain, and the sodden heaps of debris were barely visible in the gloom. Domenic walked across the scene of destruction, out through the walls around the inn, and away until he found a little stand of trees a hundred paces from the inn. He could sense that the Guardsman was dogging him at a distance, keeping an eye on him without intruding.

Domenic stood, ignoring the rain and his lack of a cloak, as well as the cold that was seeping into him, and closed his eyes. He breathed slowly and deeply and thought of nothing except the earth beneath his feet. After several minutes, a sense of restoration began to flow up his limbs and into his body. He could hear, faintly, the distant murmur of the heart of the world, burning and burning, and for once he did not doubt it.

Lost in the sounds and sense of the world beneath his boots, Domenic emptied his thoughts of everything that had happened that night. It was difficult at first, even with the calming rhythm of the planet running along his veins, but after a while he felt balanced once again—neither monster nor spy, but just himself, Domenic Gabriel-Lewis Alton-Hastur.

Despite the lightness of the rain, he was drenched by the time he turned back toward the inn, as serene as he could hope to be. The Guardsman was standing with the hood of his cloak pulled up, watching him. He smiled and nodded to him, and wondered what the man thought about his going out in the rain. Nothing, very likely.

In spite of the refreshment of his energies, Domenic was still hungry for another meal. He walked into the taproom, and found it occupied by three or four of the retired Guards from Thendara and one of the village constables, all drinking quietly together. The older girl, Hannah, was there too, and she grinned at him, shook her head at his wet clothing, and handed him a small towel. He asked for some food, and in a few minutes she brought him a bowl of stew with some bread and cheese, and a half mug of brown ale.

Just as Domenic was finishing his food, he saw Vancof passing into the inn, coming from the back and making his way to the stairs. He quickly bent his head over his bowl, but the Terran agent did not spare a look toward the taproom. He appeared preoccupied from the brief glimpse Nico had of him through the strands of his dark hair.

He scooped up a mouthful of stew with his spoon and listened to the mental static around him for a moment. Then he separated Vancof’s particular mind from those around him to try to discover new information. Unfortunately, all Vancof was thinking about was his aching feet, the fact that his belly was sour with tension, and his general displeasure with everything. If he had killed the other man, he was not thinking about it at all. And to learn more, Domenic would have had to force rapport with the man, the idea of which revolted him so much that the remnants of his appetite left him abruptly.

Domenic listened to the footfalls as they continued up the stair, then heard them move overhead, toward the end of the corridor where he had seen Granfell go. After a second there was a slight noise of a door opening and closing, then nothing more. He looked down at his bowl, saw there were only a few mouthfuls of stew left in it, and forced himself to finish eating. Then he headed for his own room.

Herm was sitting on the only chair in the room, looking weary and disgruntled. “Where were you? And why are you wet?” he growled.

“I went out to clear my head, and then I was hungry and went to get something to eat. Vancof just came back. He went down the hall. I wonder what he will do when he finds Granfell there,” Nico announced, feeling suddenly very certain of himself.

Herm gave him a hard stare, reassessing him in some fashion. Then his face twisted in something like a smile, although it was more like a hound baring its teeth. “With any luck, he will kill him, and then we will have one less enemy to worry about. Did you get to Lew about alerting the Towers.”

“Who’s being bloodthirsty now?”

Herm just shrugged. “You reached Lew?”

“Yes, Uncle, and it gave me an appetite.”

Herm gave a barking laugh, which only increased his resemblance to a snarling cur. “You should not have gone out alone. If anything happened to you . . . I forget that you are a growing boy, not a man, and need your vittles.” Then he gave a little sigh, ran his stubby fingers through his thinning hair, and grunted softly.

“I was not alone precisely, because one of the Guardsmen followed me on my walk and kept an eye on me from a discreet distance.”

“That’s better. This situation is becoming more and more dangerous, and I don’t think I can take on worrying about your safety at the moment. I don’t know which way to turn, and I realize I have gotten altogether too dependent on technology during my years in the Federation. I keep wanting to have a communicator, not to mention a blaster or two.”

“You wouldn’t use a blaster, would you?” Nico was rather startled, both at the admission of frustration, and at the ruthlessness that seemed to have emerged without any warning. The cheerful companion of the road seemed to have vanished, and he was at a loss. All the tales about the Aldarans that the servants told danced in his head for a moment, and then he came to his senses. Herm was a man, no matter what his family name might be, and he was probably no more ruthless than any other—than Grandfather Lew, for instance, or even Mikhail. It was only that Domenic had never seen them in dangerous circumstances.

“Probably not. But you can bet your life that Granfell is hiding one somewhere on his person, and will have no hesitation in using it. I suspect that the only reason that Vancof was able to knife the other fellow was that he never suspected he was in any danger.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to grab him when I told you he was down the hall?”

“That’s one reason, Nico. The Guardsmen are brave fellows, but I did not want to have them trying to use swords on people armed with blasters. And I want to see what they are up to.”

“But if we stop them here, then they won’t be able to attack the funeral train.”

“That is true in theory, but we have no idea what has been planned by now. There are too many players on the board—Belfontaine and perhaps others in Thendara, as well as whomever is involved up in the Aldaran Domain. Capturing Vancof and Granfell would not stop things if there are troops up in the Hellers preparing to descend on this little town.”

“They couldn’t get here unnoticed, could they? I mean, someone would see the flyers.” Domenic knew about the vehicle which
Dom
Damon owned and used to come to Thendara, although he had never actually seen it.

Herm shook his head. “They would not come in little flyers, but in machines that are much larger, capable of transporting fifty men, armed with weapons that could lay waste to this town in about three seconds. I don’t know exactly what they have here, but for decades now there have been transports that are virtually invisible to the naked eye. I have no idea if any of those are on Darkover. But, if there are such here, you can wager that those are what they will use to carry the ambush party.”

“Invisible? You mean like those cloaks that legend says we once had, only bigger?”

“Pretty much.”

Domenic chewed this idea over for a moment. “So, basically, what you are saying is that swords are no match for Federation machines, and we might as well try to throw rocks! What are we going to do?” He had a terrifying vision of great bolts of lightning blasting his father and mother to cinders as they rode toward the
rhu fead
with Regis’ body. It seemed very real, and the helplessness he had experienced earlier returned with a vengeance.