“You’ve killed Faitlen di Parth!” Barac exclaimed as the head rolled sideways with Morgan’s movement and he could recognize the slack features.
Morgan frowned at him. “If I’d killed him, why would I be bothering to take him with us?” Then his frown grew. “Why would you think I’d kill him in the first place?”
“You killed the others,” Barac blurted, “Larimar on Plexis; Malacan Ser here on Ret 7.”
The strobe lights stopped flashing, returning the illumination to normal. The change was ominous.
Morgan’s expression changed from impatient disapproval to merely thoughtful. He shook his head. “Much as I’d like to know what you’re talking about, Clansman, I suggest we get out of here before the owners reach this level.”
Barac nodded, accepting Morgan’s strength as he accepted the hand on his shoulder. He pushed . . .
There was resistance. Just as he hesitated, startled by feeling a rebounding, almost yielding surface, he felt Morgan’s power grow exponentially, as if the Human could tap into something more here. It was enough to force their own opening.
As he sent them toward it, a new force struggled against them. Faitlen! The Clansman had regained consciousness and fought to stay in place. His will, so much more than a sud’s, became an anchor drawing them all back. Regretfully, and knowing Morgan would not be pleased, Barac set the other Clansman adrift.
. . . And found himself on the bridge of the Silver Fox for the first time in over a year.
Chapter 47
I’D found Baltir without any effort at all.
All it had required was a guide with local experience, such as that amply provided by the helpful being stalking beside me down the clean, white hallway. The Scats, it seemed, were very well connected indeed.
“Yes-ss, Fem Morgan, the Nokraud has-ss done cons-ssider able bus-siness-s over the years-ss with the es-steemed res-ssearcher-ss of the Baltir,” Grackik was telling me, waving her nub of an arm in emphasis, her other hand being occupied with maintaining a too-tight grip on me. “As--ss you can s-ssee, it is-ss a place as-ss well as-ss a name. The head of this-ss fac-ss-ility calls-ss hims-sself Baltir. A conc-ss-eit, I’m told. The toads-ss permit it.”
I’d walked right into my pursuers, of course. I could have ported away—and into the formless jaws within the M’hir. It seemed the better part of discretion to allow them to take me where I’d been trying to go in the first place.
“Many of their findings-ss have proven us-sseful—” I heard the preening, hissing voice as though it were a vidplay in the background, preoccupied with something far more important to me than the Scats’ weapons’ testing: Morgan.
I understood—on some level, I could rationalize his failure to recognize me or to respond with clinical precision. To see me, to feel me in his thoughts, Morgan would have had to think past the layers of emotion, to push aside the clouding effect of the rage I’d both instilled and released in him. I understood this.
If he’d died in my arms, I thought, fighting back tears, it would feel like this, as hurtful as this absence of me in his mind, this uncaring.
And there was worse to face. When—not if, when—I removed my rage from his mind and restored his own inner balance again, I knew I had no guarantee Morgan would ever feel the same way about me, that all would be as it was.
All for my revenge. All for this place.
Suddenly cold and calm again, I started paying attention to my surroundings, plain and uninformative as they were, as well as Grackik’s boasting. This dreadful night might have some value if there was a chance I could do something about what lay inside these walls.
“Sira di Sarc,” the name was spoken with deep respect; the hand gestures and underlay of power were impeccably courteous, as befitted a Clansman whose power was less than my own.
Somehow, the presence of the well-armed and suspicious Scat at my shoulder took most of the shine from Faitlen di Parth’s polite greeting.
“You have something of mine,” I said smoothly, adding displeasure to my own power signature so that Faitlen’s eyes winced ever-so-slightly in response. “I’d like it back.” There was a bruise darkening under the skin of his jaw which, now that I paid attention, appeared to be oddly asymmetrical as if one side was swelling.
Someone, and I’d take any bet on who, had recently punched the Clansman in the face. It might even have dropped the slightly-built being to the floor. I found myself entranced by the image.
There had never been any love lost between myself and Faitlen, scion of a House always less powerful, yet always ambitious to be more than heredity granted them. We stood, outwardly polite and obeying the forms of courtesy, brought together by beings who were much more honest in their hates and treacheries.
Faitlen had chosen to meet me in a room remarkable for its lack of any features, a box with irregular walls as if here the Retian architect had tried desperately for some species’ expression. There were three of us, then a second door opened and we were joined by someone I’d hoped never to see again.
“We are ready for the subject,” the Retian I knew as Baltir announced to Faitlen without a glance at me. His wide, thin mouth was almost pink—a sign of agitation or excitement. That this being literally identified himself as his work was a characteristic I found intensely frightening, given he belonged to a species whose social structure relied on the details of relat edness recorded over thousands of years—a feat I found frankly unbelievable given what I’d seen of their reproduction, but they claimed to know.
I found myself pressing my hands against the scars on my abdomen, as if I could protect myself that way. “I thought you’d already stolen what you wanted, Faitlen. You were after the Sarc bloodline, weren’t you? Are you acting for the Council or for your House alone?”
His fury leaked past his shields—a deliberate release, since Faitlen was too adept to willingly give me an opening into his mind. Mine was the greater power, I reminded him with a touch of threat he couldn’t ignore. But any more overt attack against the Clansman was likely to be met by a more physical resistance, knowing the nature of his accomplices.
Grackik, for one, had concerns along those lines. As Faitlen winced again, glaring at me with very little of the urbane host left in his face, she drove her claws into my arm in warning, her heavy head swinging over and dipping down so her slit-pupiled eyes could regard me at close range. “No mindcrawler tricks-sss, Fem.”
“I have no intention of touching his thoughts, Captain Grackik,” I said grimly. “There’s nothing in there I’d want to know.”
“Really, First Chosen?” The title, given with a sneer, still had an impact on me. It belonged to the most powerful Joined female of a House. If I were the First Chosen for the House of di Sarc, it gave me considerable prestige and political power among the Clan—present company excepted, I knew full well. Of course, if my Power-of-Choice continued to accumulate, my status would eventually return to that of a lowly Chooser.
Instead of debating this or any other issue, I merely nodded regally, as though Faitlen only accorded me my due.
“Must you waste my time with this meaningless conversation?” Baltir interjected. “Everything is ready.”
“For what?” I asked, keeping my eyes on Faitlen.
Baltir answered, Faitlen having turned an interesting dull red shade: “To see if the implant has taken hold, Clanswoman.”
The blood drained from my head and shoulders, making me grateful for the uncomfortable support of the Scat’s grip. The flesh beneath my hands suddenly felt foreign. “What implant?”
The Retian’s lips turned a pleased yellow. “The one I put into your body on Pocular, of course. The chances were slim you would survive, naturally, but I never waste an opportunity to enhance the Baltir’s knowledge of humanoid physiology.”
“What implant?” I repeated, my voice threatening enough so the Scat gave me a shake. Without conscious intention, my power began to surge outward, as if already seeking a target in the room. Faitlen turned a ghastly color.
“Now!” he shouted, catching my attention so I missed the instrument in the Retian’s webbed hand until it was too late to dodge the fine spray.
One breath, and it was also too late to do anything more than send out one desperate message.
Morgan!
INTERLUDE
Sira!
The name burst into Barac’s nightmare with the force of an explosion, rescuing him from a damp cell filled with sharp-toothed fungi. He sat up before knowing he was awake, grabbing the sides of the hammock as it responded to his movements by obligingly offering to dump him onto the floor of the cubbyhole Morgan had euphemistically called his passenger cabin.
He swung his legs out and down, ordering on the portlight as he staggered to the door. The sending had come from Morgan, and its undertone of horror promised nothing good.
Morgan held his head between his hands, rocking back and forth in a futile effort to try and ease the pain there. Her sending had been so faint, so desperate. He’d almost not recognized it. When he had, and fought to reply, there had been only the emptiness of loss.
The wisp of Sira, the contact with a mind he knew as well as his own, was gone.
He heard pounding footsteps as Barac ran into the Fox’s control room, unsurprised the Clansman had overheard. His own head rang with the power he’d driven outward. It was as if all his longing for Sira, the need for her buried all these days, had been released in one second’s plea.
A plea that he knew would go unanswered unless he could find her. It had been a call for help such as she’d never sent to him before—perhaps as she’d never sent. Whatever was happening, he had to stop it.
This time, Morgan welcomed the uproaring of his rage.
Chapter 48
SIRA!
A call remembered from darkness, yet more than a dream.
Morgan lived.
I suspected I did as well.
Reason enough to open my eyes, no matter what they had done to me while I lay unconscious and at their mercy.
There was a ceiling overhead, white and sterile, broken by lighting panels set to produce a dim illumination.
I moved only my eyes at first, accumulating information at a rate that wouldn’t upset the fragile control I had over my imagination. There were tablelike beds to either side of me, both empty, with their sheeting rumpled as though whomever had lain there had simply disappeared.
Beyond the beds—at some distance, making me realize I was at the center of a long room or even a hallway—were banks of busy machines. They hummed and chattered to themselves, some with what appeared to be windows to their insides as though what might occur within them mattered as much as what occurred without. I stared at them in fear, knowing too much to believe them harmless and too little to understand.
I raised my head so my chin pressed against my chest, the move sending a flash of agony through my head I ignored. My body was covered by a sheet. I ignored it for the moment also, more concerned with finding out if I was alone or observed.
Alone. Though there were probably vids set up to monitor me, I felt an instant relief knowing I didn’t have to immediately deal face-to-face with any of my enemies.
My arms were free, if impossibly heavy to lift. I worked my hands into fists repeatedly until the prickly pain of returning circulation ran from wrist to shoulder. Then, I carefully brought my hands up, running my fingers lightly and cautiously where I’d been opened before. The new, wider medplas strips were easy to feel through the sheet.
At this rate, I told myself bitterly, they should just install a zip.
The bleak humor helped. There was nothing I could do now to undo or even discover what they’d done this time. What I must do was prevent anything further.
I looked around the room. To me or mine, I vowed.
Perhaps they hadn’t expected me to awaken so soon. More likely, I decided, grimly reeling from step to step, they’d underestimated my willingness to climb off the table and walk. Since both movements were accompanied by the total conviction my insides would imminently spill out around my feet, I thought it just as reasonable they’d overestimated my intelligence.
But move I did, albeit unsteadily and, at times, almost unconsciously. So far, no alarms or investigations, despite it taking me what seemed a week to lurch from my table to the next, and then to the nearest wall. Firm objects were such comforting things.
What was less comforting was any thought of what moved with me, under those tidy strips of medplas. Or had Baltir merely removed something temporary, some experiment he’d housed in me and was pleased to be able to retrieve intact?
The door opened into an even dimmer hallway. I eased my way into it, the door closing behind me and, when I checked, locking as well. So much for the temptation of climbing back into bed, I told myself, feet already moving forward as if they knew the urgency even if my thoughts were prone to be sluggish.
Another door. This one would have been locked, except for the assault on its paneling, currently covered with a temporary patch. I pushed my way in, certain any room worth breaking into was worth my time.
It was. I caught my breath in short little gasps, counting the little incubators, guessing what they had to contain. This close to me; this close to Faitlen? It had to be what was stolen from me.
There was a way to confirm it. I leaned on the nearest, peering in at the tiny glob of tissue growing inside, opening my awareness of the M’hir.
Power flowed between us, almost imperceptible, but real. So did the link between mother and offspring begin and grow within the womb, the link the child, once-born, instinctively maintained up to several years after birth, allowing the separation of mother and child to build a pathway of power in the M’hir others could use at will.