Prince of Passion (13 page)

Her quarters were dark and silent as she led Icere through an interior hall to a second set of rooms. She pushed open the door to reveal a suite larger than the rooms in the guest corridor but seemingly smaller with Kylara’s frantic pacing.

Her daughter spun on her heel. “Maméh! Where have you—?” Her gaze arrowed to Icere entering the room, and her jaw snapped closed. “We have a problem.”

Rynn glanced over her shoulder where Icere took up position near but not too near; he had the instincts of a lover and a warrior. The old tunic she had given him was nearly transparent from wear and water, revealing the broad expanse of his chest, although he’d managed to keep his modesty with the towel slung low around his hips. No problem there.

With a regretful unvoiced sigh, she faced her daughter. “How is Luac?”

“Fine,” Ky snapped. “But we—”

“Tell me about your brother first.”

Ky let out a very loud sigh. “Really, Mother, he is fine. He regained consciousness almost immediately, and his lungs are clear. The dive reflex prevented any hypoxic damage.” She grimaced. “Besides whatever brain damage he comes by naturally.”

Rynn did not scold her. Such a comment might undermine a future leader, but from a worried sister in private, the accusation was fair enough. “He’s sleeping now?”

Ky’s grimace deepened. “Like he hasn’t a care in the world. Which isn’t true for the rest of us.”

Rynn inclined her head. “So what is this problem?”

Ky bit her lip. “The malac sachet was taken.”

“What?” Icere jolted straight. “When? By whom?”

Rynn held up one hand. “You did as I asked after I gave you the sachet, Ky?”

Her daughter nodded, her head ducked miserably between her shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Saya. I knew you were preoccupied with…” Her gaze shuttled to Icere. “I should have followed our established practices and immediately secured the essence in the vault until it could be processed. But everything was in an uproar because of the accident. Luac was with the medics, along with the other divers, and there’s the one in lockdown. And then you disappeared.” She shot another accusing glance toward Icere. “And the sachet disappeared too.”

“Good.” Rynn crossed the room to the tablet that Ky had left.

“Good?” Icere hurried after her, his wet feet squelching on the floor. “This is a disaster.”

“A disaster for the thieves, I hope.” Rynn activated the tablet and linked to the barge’s security systems.

Icere loomed at her shoulder. “What did you do?” His voice rumbled through her with a warning like distant thunder.

“Gave someone the opportunity to steal the liqueur. I thought they might be tempted. Since I was so distracted.” She glanced at her daughter. “The sachet I gave you was a decoy, an empty sachet refilled with a chemical cocktail to hopefully keep the thieves baffled. Unless they’ve tried the Purple Passion Pacifier, in which case they might recognize the flavor.”

Ky sagged. “I didn’t lose the liqueur?”

Rynn kept her expression bland, though her heart pounded painfully. “Did you mean to?”

“No! Of course not. Maméh… Saya, no. I did as you asked.”

As Ky stood straight, unblinking, Rynn held her daughter’s gaze. Surely she had sacrificed enough for her world; she didn’t want to think her children could be working with the raiders. But Luac had been involved in the large shipment of the ni-malac balm, and Kylara had numerous offworld contacts as well as access to all Saya-Terce’s biological secrets. Their father had merely jeopardized the sanctuary of their oceans while the raiders threatened much, much worse.

Icere touched Rynn’s elbow. “She’s telling the truth.”

With her arms wrapped around herself, Ky slumped into the nearest chair. “I am. But why would she believe you?”

Though Rynn didn’t look at him, the warmth of his hand dispelled her chills. A l’auralyo, trained in all the machinations of love and war and endowed with the exquisite sensitivities of the qva’avaq, was convinced of her daughter’s innocence. That was enough for her.

“Ky, I’ll explain what I can, but I need you to wake your brother and bring him here.” She waited until Ky hauled herself to her feet, looking a little wobbly, and left the room. Then she returned her attention to the tablet. “Normally we lock up the sachets as they are harvested. We’ve had attempted thefts before, just rambunctious tourists, but we like to keep the raw essence out of inexperienced hands since the undiluted liqueur can be intense. As you’ve discovered.”

Icere snorted softly. “And what can experienced hands do with it?”

She slanted a glance at him. “Maybe someday I’ll show you.”

He met her gaze with a smoldering intensity that almost steamed the moisture from her skin. If only they had another moment of privacy.

Instead, she angled the screen so he could see. “Meanwhile, here is our thief.”

The vid showed a dark-clad figure, far too heavily swathed for a tropical world, standing at an elaborately carved double door.

“That’s the festival museum room.” Rynn accelerated the playback. On the screen, the figure jiggled the door handle then jerked back. “The handle was rigged with a jagged edge. I’m hoping we caught some bio markers.” The door opened and the figure slipped inside. Rynn switched the view to the room interior, where the figure went to a central pedestal, opened the plasteel case, and removed the sachet displayed there.

As the figure tucked away the goods and hurried from the room, Rynn skipped the vid through several angles, tracking a path to one of the barge’s large halls packed with party-goers, dancers and drinkers. In the low lights and shifting bodies, the figure vanished.

Icere let out a low oath. “He—or she—must have lost that dark cloak. Is this the best your security system can do?”

Rynn sighed. “We’re a vacation world. We use the vids to keep an eye on drunkards so we can reunite them with their own beds when they stagger too far off course. We’ve never needed it to hunt intergalactic criminals before.”

Icere paced away from her, muttering. She couldn’t help but notice with the towel wrapped around his waist, the muscles of his chest straining the damp fabric of his tunic, he looked like some ancient island king. And the intense fury on his face would have made her great-grandfather proud.

He swung back to her. “You’ve already had the museum room swept for any additional evidence that could identify the thief.”

It wasn’t a question, but she inclined her head in assent. “While we were on the island. The skin sample from the door handle should be processed in a few hours.” She held up one hand when he took a breath. “Our labs may not be as sophisticated as some, but they’ll find any answers available to find. More importantly, there’s an isotope embedded in the sachet. The raiders won’t be able to detect it until they break into the sachet to collect the liqueur. If they open it anywhere near water vapor—which is inevitable on a water world like this—the isotope will become detectable to our trackers.”

Icere studied her a moment, his jaw working. He took two steps toward her and kissed her hard. When he lifted his head, his pupils were huge and dark. “Your ruthless expediency terrifies me.”

She quirked her lips. “Yes, I can tell.”

He stepped gracefully away just as Kylara returned with Luac shuffling behind her.

Luac groaned as he lowered himself into the same chair Ky had occupied. “You’re furious with me, aren’t you?”

Rynn held the tablet against her chest. “As your mother or your Saya?”

“Either. Both.” He tilted his head back on the chair. “I don’t blame you. I blame myself.”

“Don’t,” Rynn said.

“At least, not entirely,” Icere added. When Rynn gave him a look, he shrugged.

Luac lifted his head. “What do you mean?”

“You were tricked.” Icere explained the highlights of what they’d found: the suspicious deal for the ni-malac balm, the tampered-with staves that had cracked just as Luac retrieved the sachet, his own long, sheerways-spanning pursuit of the raiders.

He left out any reference to l’auraly or the qva’avaq, skipping to the results of his investigation into the raiders’ plans for the aphrodisiac. Rynn let him talk; perhaps the mortification at being deceived might sting less coming from someone besides a mother.

As her son braced his elbows on his knees, his dark eyes grim and focused, she felt another punch in her chest, right through the tablet she realized she was holding like a shield. Luac wasn’t a boy anymore, hadn’t been for some time.

When Icere finished his recap, Luac nodded curtly. “Let me see the vid.”

She passed over the tablet, and Ky perched on the chair behind Luac’s shoulder, her brow furrowed. “Look at the time stamp. That’s only a few minutes after I delivered the sachet. They were watching, waiting.”

Luac tapped at the screen a few times before passing the tablet back to Rynn. “That is my private account. I had more personal conversations with the rep on the balm deal. In retrospect, her interest in some details of the Malac Festival seems unusual.”

Icere lifted one brow. “She?”

Kylara made a rude noise. “Women can’t be mercenary killers? Judging by the height and body mass, the individual who took the sachet could as easily have been female as male.”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Rynn scanned the messages, trying not to focus on the more suggestive ones. “Did she send you visuals of herself?”

“In the beginning, yes.”

Rynn found the earliest message and sent a few frames to the image recognition subroutine in the barge security system. She queried on a match for the message signals too. “If she’s here, we’ll find her.”

Luac rubbed his forehead. “I am so sorry I started this.”

Rynn stopped herself from going to him, but she couldn’t keep silent. “You didn’t start anything. There have always been people who want more power.”

“Power isn’t the problem,” Icere said. “Oppression, terror, greed. Those are the problems.” When Rynn and her children merely stared at him, he lifted one shoulder in a smooth shrug. “Fortunately, we don’t have to solve those tonight. Just find this thief.”

As if responding to his command, the tablet in Rynn’s hand chimed. “System found a match on the signal. It connects the ni-malac balm rep’s messages to one of the suspicious trails Icere discovered before he came here. And the origination is the same as one of the sheerships in orbit.”

Icere went predator-still. “Did the ship send a shuttle?”

She swept through the data. “Yes. One shuttle. Reporting four souls aboard; three men, one woman. Names and ident photos.” The tablet chimed again. “Facial recognition match. The woman is Luac’s contact. Name: Marsil Omel.”

Luac shook his head. “That’s not what she called herself to me.”

“Probably not her real name now, either.” Icere paced restlessly. “Why haven’t they opened the sachet? If they take the liqueur offworld, your tracking isotope won’t help us.”

“They aren’t going anywhere,” Ky said. “The storms make a mess of the troposphere. No shuttle would risk a launch.”

“And if they bring their sheership down instead?”

Rynn drummed her fingers on the screen. “We don’t grant planetfall to the larger ships for environmental and aesthetic reasons.”

“That won’t stop the raiders,” Icere pointed out.

“No, but it limits their landing options. Since we don’t maintain a port of sufficient size, they’d have to make do with the nearest large landmass.”

Icere looked up. “Your island.” Shadows lurked in his sea-violet eyes, and she knew he was remembering the devastation to his own world.

But she’d learned long ago to just hold her breath and dive past the deepest shadows. “Let’s force their hand.” She programmed her plan into the tablet as she spoke. “I’m posting Omel’s image on every screen on the barge with an emergency announcement. We’ll put everyone’s eyes to use. Luac, I want you to go door to door with a security detail.”

He nodded briskly. “I’ll bring an army.”

She held up one hand. “No, I don’t want you to find her. She needs to run, far away from our festival. I want no hostages, no injuries or deaths, not a single spilled cocktail.” She turned to her daughter. “Ky, put your engineering degree to work. Make sure all submersible vehicles are locked down, in use, or otherwise out of commission. Except one. That one must be too tempting not to steal. And I want it under our control at all times.”

Ky echoed her brother’s nod. “When I have the sub prepared, I’ll tell Lu so he can start his door to door.”

Rynn glanced toward the windows where the sky had brightened even though the water still held the dark secrets of night. “We have a few hours until full light and then the storms will be rising again. I want them on the run when they are at their most vulnerable. Also, we need time to bring in reinforcements.”

Icere shook his head. “There’s no one we can trust.”

“Your friends. Bring their ship.”

His brows furrowed. “The
Asphodel
had to destroy half a mountain to stop them last time. It can’t come to a firefight here.”

Her delicate world would be indelibly stained this time, its pure waters poisoned with fuel and fire, its vicious but precious malac endangered. And who would she execute for
this
affront?

Her gaze slid away from Icere, who hadn’t caused the trouble, only brought it to her attention. For the supposed good of her world, she had been made into a lethal, lonely creature. Could she be less than that with the freedom of the sheerways at stake?

Tetrodotoxin seemed to course through her veins, numbing her from the inside. “No choice. Call them. When the
Asphodel
comes, we strike.”

She was glad for the iceberg in her chest making her voice cold and steady, the euphoria of malac essence and qva’avaq finally dissipating to leave her head clear. But like the festival season storms breaking apart, that only made clearer to her the inevitable end of their aphrodisiac adventure.

Icere had been destined for greatness. Though that future had been stolen from him, this fight was his chance to shine. Not merely from the crystal that infused his skin, but to end the raiders’ threat to the universe and reclaim his dreams.