Killashandra (41 page)

“If we could get anyone out,” Corish said gloomily. “They’re all in jeopardy now.”

“Which is why we want you to contact Olav and get him and …”

A change in air pressure against her back gave Killashandra only a second’s warning but she had turned just enough to deflect the long knife descending to her back. Then a second knife caught her shoulder and she tried to roll away from her assailants, hearing Corish’s hoarse cry.

“Lars!” she shouted as she fell, trying to roll away from her attackers. “
Lars
!” She had become too used to his presence. And where was he when she really needed him? The thought flitted even as she tried to protect herself from the boots kicking her. She tried to curl up, but hard rough hands grabbed at arms and legs. Someone was really attempting to kidnap her, even with Corish beside her. He was no bloody use! She heard him yelling above the unintelligible and malevolent growls of the people beating her. There were so many, men and women, and she knew none of them, their faces disguised by their hatred and the insanity of violence. She saw someone haul back a man with a knife raised to plunge into her, saw a face she knew—that woman from the street. She heard Corish howling with fury and then a boot connected with her temple and she heard nothing else.

O
f the next few days, Killashandra had only disconnected memories. She heard Corish arguing fiercely, then Lars, and under both voices, the rumble of Trag who was, she thought even in her confusion and welter of physical pain, laying down laws. She was aware of someone’s holding her hand tight it hurt, as if she didn’t have enough wounds, but the grasp was obscurely comforting and she resisted its attempt to release hers. Pain came in waves, her chest hurt viciously with every shallow breath. Her back echoed the discomfort, her head seemed to be vibrating like a drum, having swollen under the skull.

Pain was something not even her symbiont could immediately suppress but she kept urging it to help her. She chanted at it, calling it up from the recesses of her body to restore the cells with its healing miracle, especially the pain. Why didn’t they think about the pain? There wasn’t a spot on her body that didn’t ache, pound,
throb, protest the abuse that she had suffered. Who had attacked her and why?

She cried out in her extremity, called out for Lars, for Trag who would know what to do, wouldn’t he? He’d helped Lanzecki with crystal thrall. Surely he knew what to do now? And where had Lars been when she really needed him? Fine bodyguard he was! Who had it been? Who was the woman who hated her enough to recruit an army to kill her? Why? What had she done to any Optherians?

Someone touched her temples and she cried out—the right one was immeasurably sore. The pain flowed away, like water from a broken vessel, flowed out and down and away, and Killashandra sank into the gorgeous oblivion which swiftly followed painlessness.

“If she had been anyone else, Trag, I wouldn’t permit her to be moved for several weeks, and then only in a protective cocoon,” said a vaguely familiar voice. “In all my years as a physician, I have never seen such healing.”

“Where am I going? I’d prefer the islands,” Killashandra said, rousing enough to have a say in her disposition. She opened her eyes, half-expecting to be in the wretched Conservatory Infirmary and very well satisfied to find that she was in the spacious bed of her quarters.

“Lars!” Hauness called jubilantly. His had been the familiar voice.

The door burst inward as an anxious Lars Dahl rushed to her bedside, followed by his father.

“Killa, if … you knew …” Tears welling from his eyes, Lars could find no more words and buried his face against the hand she raised to greet him. She stroked his crisp hair with her other hand, soothing his release from uncertainty.

“Lousy bodyguard, you are …” She was unable to say what crowded her throat, hoping that her loving hand conveyed something of her deep feeling for him. “Corish was no use, after all.” Then she frowned. “Was he hurt?”

“Security says,” Hauness replied with a chuckle, “he lifted half a dozen of your assailants and broke three arms, a leg, and two skulls.”

“Who was it? A woman …”

Trag moved into her vision, registering with a stolid blink that her hands were busy comforting Lars Dahl. “The search and seize stirred up a great deal of hatred and resentment, Killashandra Ree, and as you were the object of that search, your likeness was well circulated. Your appearance on the streets made you an obvious target for revenge.”

“We never thought of that, did we?” she said ruefully.

The movement to her right caused her to flinch away and then offer profuse apologies, for Nahia was moving to comfort the distraught Lars.

“So you took the pain away, Nahia? My profound thanks,” Killashandra said. “Even crystal singer’s nerve ends don’t heal as quickly as flesh.”

“So Trag told us. And that crystal singers cannot assimilate many of the pain-relieving drugs. Are you in any pain now?” Nahia’s hands gently rested on Lars’s head in a brief benison, but her beautiful eyes searched Killashandra’s face.

“Not in the flesh,” Killashandra said, dropping her gaze to Lars’s shuddering body.

“It is relief,” Nahia said, “and best expressed.”

Then Killashandra began to chuckle, “Well, we achieved what I set out to do in meeting Corish. Got you all here!”

“Far more than that,” Trag said as the others smiled.
“A third attack on you gave me the excuse to call a scout ship to get us off this planet. The Guild contract has been fulfilled and, as I informed the Elder’s Council, we have no wish to cause domestic unrest if the public objects so strongly to the presence of crystal singers.”

“How very tactful of you.” Belatedly remembering caution, Killashandra looked up at the nearest monitor, relieved to find it was a black hole. “Did the jammer survive?”

“No,” Trag said, “but white crystal, in dissonance, distorts sufficiently. They’ve stopped wasting expensive units.”

“And …” Killashandra prompted, encouraging Trag since he was being uncharacteristically informative.

He nodded, Olav’s grin broadened, and even Hauness looked pleased. “Those shards provide enough white crystal to get the most vulnerable people past the security curtain. Nahia and Hauness will organize a controlled exodus until the Federated Council can move. Lars and Olav come with us on the scout ship. Brassner, Theach, and Erutown are to be picked up by Tanny in the
Pearl Fisher
and leave with Corish on the liner—”

“Corish?” Killashandra looked about expectantly.

“He’s searching most thoroughly for his uncle,” Hauness said, “and attending the public concerts which have been hastily inaugurated, to soothe a disturbed public.”

“What’s the diet?”

“Security, pride, reassurance,
no
sex,” Hauness replied.

“Then you didn’t get to the other organs, Trag?”

“Corish suggested that some should be left in, shall we say, normal operating condition as evidence, to be seen by the Federal Investigators.”

“What Trag doesn’t say, Killashandra,” replied Nahia, a luminous smile gently rebuking the other crystal singer, “is that he refused to leave you.”

“As the only way to prevent the Infirmary from interfering with the symbiont,” Trag said, bluntly, disclaiming any hint of sentiment. “Lars thought to send for Nahia to relieve pain.”

“For which I am truly grateful. I’ve only a tolerable ache left. How long have I been out?”

“Five days,” Hauness replied, scrutinizing her professionally. He placed the end of a hand-diagnostic unit lightly against her neck, nodding in a brief approval of its readings. “Much better. Incredible in fact. Anyone else would have died of any one of several of the wounds you received. Or that cracked skull.”

“Am I dead or alive?”

“To Optheria?” Trag asked. “No official acknowledgment of the attack has been broadcast. The whole episode has been extremely embarrassing for the government.”

“I should bloody hope so! Wait till I see Ampris!”

“Not in that frame of mind, you won’t,” Trag assured her, repressively stern.

“No more of us for the time being,” Hauness said, nodding significantly to the others. “Unless Nahia …”

Killashandra closed her eyes for a moment, since moving her head seemed inadvisable. But she opened them to warn Hauness from disturbing Lars, who was still kneeling by the bed. He no longer wept but pressed her hand against his cheek as if he would never release it. The door closed quietly behind the others.

“So you and Olav can just walk into the scout ship?” she asked softly, trying to lighten his penitence.

“Not quite,” he said with a weak chuckle, but, still holding her hand, he straightened up, leaning forward, toward her, on his elbows. His face looked bleached of tan, lines of anxiety and fear aging him. “Trag and my father have combined their wits—and I’m to be arrested
by the warrant Trag has. Don’t worry,” and he patted her hands as she reacted apprehensively, remembering Trag’s remarks about using the warrant. “Carefully worded, the warrant will charge me with a lot of heinous crimes that weren’t actually committed by me, but which will keep Ampris and Torkes happy in anticipation of the dire punishment which the Federated Courts dispense for crimes of such magnitude.”

Killashandra grabbed tightly at his hands, ignoring the spasm of pain across her chest in her fear for him. “I don’t like the idea, Lars, not one little bit.”

“Neither my father nor Trag are likely to put me in jeopardy, Killa. We’ve managed a lot while you were sleeping it off. When we’re sure that the scout ship is about to arrive, Trag will confer with Ampris and Torkes, confronting them with his suspicions about me—in your delirium you inadvertently blew the gaff. Trag is not about to let such a desperate person as me escape unpunished. He has held his counsel to prevent my escaping justice.”

“There’s something about this plan that alarms me.”

“I’d be more alarmed if I had to stay behind,” Lars said with a droll grin. “Trag won’t give the Elders time to interfere, and they’ll be unable to protest a Federal Warrant when a Federation scout ship is collecting me and you and Trag. The beauty part is that the scout’s the wrong shape to use the shuttle port facility. Its security arrangements require open-space landing anyhow. That way my father has a chance of boarding her.”

“I see.” The scheme did sound well-planned, and yet some maggot of doubt niggled at Killashandra—but her unease could well arise from her poor state of health. “How did Olav get invited here?”

“He’d been called in by the Elders on an administrative detail. Why so few islanders attend concerts!” Lars had regained considerable equilibrium and he rose from
his knees, still holding her hand, to sit beside her on the bed.

“Who did attack me, Lars?”

“Some desperate people whose families and friends had been scooped up by that search and seize. If only I’d been free to get into the marketplace, Olver would have warned me of the climate of the City. We’d have known not to let you walk about.”

“As Corish and I left the Facility, a woman who gave me such a look of hatred—”

“You were spotted long before she saw you, Sunny, driving down from the Conservatory. If only I’d been with you …”

“Don’t fret about
ifs
, Lars Dahl! A few aches and pains achieved what the best laid plans might have failed to do.”

Lars’s face was a study in shocked indignation.

“Do you know how badly you were hurt? Hauness wasn’t kidding when he said you could have died from any one of those wounds, let alone
all
of them together.” He held her hand in a crushing grip. “I thought you were dead when Corish brought you back. I …” A sudden look of embarrassment rippled across his stern face. “The one time you really needed a bodyguard, I wasn’t there!”

“As you can see, it takes a lot to kill a crystal singer.”

“I noticed, and don’t wish to ever again.”

Unwittingly he had reminded them both of the inescapable fact that their idyll was nearly over. Killashandra couldn’t bear to think of it and quickly evaded further discussion of that.

“Lars,” she said plaintively, “at the risk of appearing depressingly basic, I’m hungry!”

Lars stared at her in consternation for a moment but he accepted her evasion and his understanding smile began to replace the sadness in his eyes.

“So am I.” Lars leaned forward to kiss her, gently at first and then with an urgency that showed Killashandra the depths of his apprehension for her. Then, with a spring in his step and a jaunty set to his shoulders, he went in search of food.

Killashandra did have to endure the official apologies and insincere protestations of the Elders, all nine of them. She made the obligatory responses, consoling herself with the thought that their days were numbered, and she would shorten that number as much as possible. She pretended to be far weaker than she actually was, for once the symbiont began its work, her recovery was markedly swift. But, for official visits, she managed to assume the appearance of debility so that her convalescence had to be supervised by Nahia and Hauness, skilled medical practitioners that they were. This gave the conspirators ample time to plan an orderly and discreet exodus of people in jeopardy from Elderly tyrannies.