"Hah." The stiff golden face relaxed into what passed for her smile. "But you see, I, too, entertain some . . . astonishment . . . at this lifemating. My brother Val Con, you understand, is not—biddable. It would require but a word in his ear that he must marry to Erob and we should find him looking in all directions, save that one."
Liz laughed. "Him and Redhead are well-matched, then. And you and the rest of the family better stand back!"
"Well," Nova's smile deepened, actually touching the depths of her eyes before she turned her attention back to the screen. "Our search is made easy," she murmured, plying the buttons and shutting the search program down. "We to Lytaxin, Angela Lizardi, there to put our various questions to my brother and to Miri Robertson." She rose, shaking her golden head at the blank screen before glancing down to Liz, pale lips still curved in her slight smile.
"And to Delm Erob, most naturally."
"Sounds like a plan," Liz said and climbed to her feet, stretching tall. "You know how to get us to Lytaxin, I take it."
Nova bowed slightly. "Simplicity itself."
"This guy is a soldier?" Miri's voice held palpable unbelief.
Val Con looked up from his frowning inspection of the captive's pack.
"All Yxtrang are soldiers," he said, only half-attending what he said. "This one had been something more, once." He gestured with a mouse-nibbled ration bar. "He seems to have fallen on evil times."
Abruptly, he pitched the bar back into the pack and stood frowning into its depths. "Something's amiss."
Miri laughed. "Screwier than a hive of hurricanes," she agreed. "Take a look at this rifle."
He laid the pack down and went to where she had the bulky long-arm arranged across two packing crates. He knelt opposite and looked at her quizzically, but she only grinned and waved a hand. "All yours."
The rifle was clean and well oiled; to first and second glances a proper, soldierly weapon, though something about that nagged Val Con as he bent closer to inspect the firing mechanism and auto-circuitry. He checked, glanced up at Miri.
She nodded. "Looks like maybe him and the weapons-master wasn't on terms."
"So it does." He rocked back on his heels, brows pulled sharply together. "And no need for him to be carrying such a thing at all."
"Why not? Makes sense to take a rifle with you, if you're going for a stroll in enemy territory."
"It does indeed, for a soldier," Val Con said softly. "But not for a scout."
Miri blinked. "Scout?"
"Explorer, it would be rendered from Yxtrang. But—scout, yes."
She shifted carefully, drawing his eyes. "You said you know this guy?"
"Ah, no." His smile flickered, banishing all but a shadow of the frown. "Merely, we had spoken once, many years ago. I held captain's rank then—very young and very certain of immortality." He grinned. "Shan all but ordered me out of the scouts, when I told him the tale. I've rarely seen him so angry."
Miri looked at him carefully. "Which tale was that?"
"The one in which I caught an Yxtrang scout studying the same world I was conducting studies upon, snared him, spoke with him, and then let him go."
"Thought you should've cut his throat for him, is that it?"
"Thought I should have rather cut and run at the first indication that there were Yxtrang of any sort on-world." He smiled again. "Shan has a great desire for those of us under his care to behave with what he considers to be proper caution. But he sets so bad an example, cha'trez. . ."
She laughed and shook her head, pointing at the rifle, the pack with its load of defective gear. "Hell of a way to outfit a scout."
"I agree." The frown was back. "Even if he were sent as a decoy—an explorer might conceive of such a plan. . ."
"Let himself be captured?" Miri stared. "Yxtrang don't let themselves get captured, boss. You know that."
"Yes, but this one has had experience of being captured," Val Con said, "and is a scout besides. Though it would be rational to equip a decoy well, to bolster the fiction that here was a soldier upon some other mission."
"Think he's an escapee—a deserter?"
Val Con shook his head. "In that case, one would be certain to appropriate working weapons, good food—the edge on that survival knife is so dull he could only use it as a crowbar or an ice-chop!"
Miri sighed and came to her feet. "Puzzle, ain't it?" She glanced at her watch. "We're at twenty-five minutes."
"So." Val Con rose. "I'd best have these things with me."
"I don't like you going in there by yourself to talk to him," Miri said, suddenly not his partner, but his lover and his lifemate. "Take a guard."
He smiled and came close, touching her cheek with gentle fingers. "It will be well, Miri." He bent and kissed her forehead. "Besides, he's tied up."
Dream and memory danced for the pleasure of the Gods of Irony.
In the dream, he was caught, trussed like a rabbit and swinging from a tree, blade and pistol riding, remote as the Home Troop, in his belt.
In the dream, he roared abuse at his captor, who sat cross-legged on the moss below, absorbed in sharpening his knife. Memory provided an odor beside alien air, which was the scent of the oil the other applied now and then to the surface of the whetstone. The slide of blade along stone was comforting, a commonplace in a situation for which there was no analog.
The smell and the sound persisted, though the dream began to fray. The smell and the sound and the ropes, crossing snug over his chest, pinning his arms to his side, binding his ankles tight.
He opened his eyes.
Light stabbed, igniting a rocketing pain in his head, throwing reality momentarily awry, so that he snarled out of memory:
"Isn't that knife sharp yet?"
"The knife," answered the soft voice that had haunted his sleep these long, weary Cycles, "is sharp again, Ckrakec Yxtrang."
The sharpener lifted his head then, wild brown hair tumbling half into eyes like sharp green stones, and his face—the face—the face of his ruin, smooth and unchanged through the Cycles—though not quite. The right cheek now carried a mark very like a
nchaka
, or maturity scar.
"
You
!" He had meant to roar; instead a harsh whisper emerged as he tensed against the ropes.
The Liaden scout bowed from his cross-legged perch atop what seemed to be a packing crate. "I am honored that you recall me."
"Recall you!" The trade language failed him in that instant. Almost, breath failed him. Abruptly, he relaxed against the bonds and lay his head back, exposing his throat.
"If the knife is sharp," he growled in the Troop's own tongue, "use it."
The scout selected a strand of rope and tested the quality of the edge. Shaking his head, he took up the whetstone once more and resumed his sharpening.
"It would be more pleasant," he said, so softly it was a strain to hear him above the burr of stone stroking steel, "were we to talk."
"Talk." He twisted his head to stare, mouth curling into a sneer. "Still no taste for a soldier's work, Liaden?"
The unkempt head rose, bright eyes gleaming. "I see I have not made myself plain." He lay the whetstone by, and held the knife carelessly in one hand.
"The last time we spoke I was graceless," he said eventually in High Liaden. "I neglected to give you my name and rank. Nor did I request yours." He slid from the crate to the floor, blade still negligent in a frail hand.
"Shall we play the game out?" the Yxtrang demanded in Trade. "Though if you imagine that puny knife is enough to—" He hesitated because the little Liaden had moved silently out of his line of sight.
"Play the game out?" That soft, womanish voice, so compelling, unforgettable, once heard . . . The scout came back into sight. He brought the knife up, as if considering its ultimate merit, and brought it flashing down, suddenly held very business-like, indeed.
The Yxtrang stiffened, anticipating the pain as the blade sliced between his left arm and side, neatly parting the ropes.
"I am currently attached to the local defense force," the scout said in conversational Trade, as he moved south relative to the position of the Yxtrang's head. "A military necessity, as I am sure you understand. My name is Val Con yos'Phelium, Clan Korval, and I hold the rank of Scout Commander."
The knife flashed again, parting the ankle ropes. The scout nodded and jumped back to the top of his crate, folding his legs neatly under him.
"You are?" he asked in quiet Terran.
The Yxtrang lay unmoving, considering the knife, the scout's smallness, his own reach and the distance that lay between them.
"Your name and rank, sir?" The Liaden persisted, this time in Trade.
Cautiously he moved his legs, flexed arm and chest muscles against the loose bindings.
The scout sighed. "Conversation consists of dialog," he remarked in High Liaden and tipped his head to the left. "The request in your own language seems unnecessarily abrupt, though perhaps I judge it wrongly." He straightened.
"Name, rank, and troop!"
The Yxtrang snorted and sat up, putting his eyes on a level with the Liaden's. "Your accent stinks like a charnel-house."
"As well it might," the scout said calmly. "I meet very few people native to the tongue who are willing to converse with me. Your name and rank? No?" He reached behind and hauled a battered pack onto his lap.
"I find here that you are attached to the 14th Conquest Corps."
He said nothing and after a moment the scout worked the pack's fastening and rooted about inside, head and shoulders all but vanishing. He emerged eventually, held out the bulky Security-issue blade, and cocked an eyebrow.
"The 14th Conquest Corps equips troops shabbily, don't you think?" He waved it away, thinking of his own knife, that rode in his boot-top, that they had never taken from him, that had an edge to cut hullplate and—
"A knife is a knife, after all," the scout insisted. "I admit this one has seen ill days, but a few minutes' work will put it right. And it is surely of a size more fitting to yourself, Explorer, than to me." A moment passed . . . two.
"Take the damn thing!" the Liaden shouted in Troop tongue and thrust the knife forward.
Hounded, he took it, stared at it, and lay it down beside him. He should unsheathe it, he knew, and use the dull blade to skewer or to bludgeon the scout. It was his duty to report back to the Troop, to—
The scout was offering the whetstone.
"Your blade," he said, "needs care, Explorer."
"I am not an explorer!" That came out a proper roar, lancing his head with pain.
The little scout didn't flinch. "No? And yet I first found you behaving in a very scout-like manner, piloting a single-ship and making very curious studies. Surely you were an explorer then, at least?"
"No longer." The snarl startled stars across his back-eyes, and he winced, unsoldierly.
"You have been given medical attention," the scout murmured, "though it was predicted that your head would ache for a time after you woke."
"Medical attention? Why?" He leaned forward, shouting into the small, bland face. "Scout, are you mad? I am Yxtrang! You are Liaden! We are enemies, do you recall it? We are made to hunt and kill you!" He sat back, away from the face that neither flinched nor crumbled in terror.
"Occasionally," he continued, more quietly, "you kill us. But it is not done that you hit your enemy over the head with a rock and then call the medic to repair his wound."
"I did not hit you over the head with a rock, Explorer—"
"I am not an explorer!
Look
at me! Captured!
Captured like a cow for slaughter
! Twice to fall alive into Liaden hands! I am a failure, a weakness, and a shame! Rightly I am Nelirikk No-Troop!"
"Catch!" The command was Troop tongue. His hand flashed out—and he discovered he held the whetstone.
"What shall I do, Scout Commander?" he inquired with heavy sarcasm, "sharpen this blade so you may cut my throat? Or should I cut my own? That—"
"Would be a waste of talent," interrupted the scout. "I have contempt for the 14th Conquest Corps, who put their insignia on such equipment as they give you—explorer, no-troop or common soldier!" He hurled the pack off his lap. Nelirikk caught it as it struck his chest.
"A canteen with worn filters, a knife so dull it's more bludgeon than blade—yes, you still have the one in your boot, and I see you cared for it—out-of-date ration packs, half-nibbled by mice; a fire-starter in danger of burning out on next use—"
"Surely, Commander," Nelirikk said with sudden weariness, "you know how it is to equip the expendables?"
There was a small silence. "Are explorers expendable, then?" the scout asked softly. "Are they so little valued that they might be sent out all but weaponless to chase bears in our park, with never a thought to the waste, should the bear prove superior today?"
"Explorers are not. No-Troops are."
"Ah." The scout sat quiet for a moment, as did Nelirikk, who wished he might lay back down and go to sleep against the pounding misery in his head.
"Here," the scout said abruptly; "this is also yours."
He opened his eyes and stared at the rifle in dawning horror.
"You're not going to let me go!"
"Take the rifle," the scout commanded. "It's heavy!"
He grabbed and sat holding the thing in one hand while he stared at the Liaden.
"I would not advise attempting to fire it," the little man said conversationally. "I am not certain if the firing mechanism or the chamber will go first. If the pin goes, of course, you are simply disappointed when you pull the trigger. But if the chamber blows, Explorer, I suspect you will be either blind or dead."
"Scout," he said, very carefully, "you are aware that I can smash you to jelly with this rifle, whether it is in condition to fire or not?"
"Certainly. But, before you do, there is another defect I would like to point out." The scout came to his feet upon the packing crate, and there was a sudden crystal gleam in his left hand, a flash and a pressure on the rifle—which had abruptly lost four inches of barrel.