Blaedergil's Host

by C. M. Simpson

  Treivani ignored us, and then fixed her gaze on her husband as she crossed to his side, “and Sandoval is everything I could have ever dreamed of in a partner.”

  I refrained from pointing out that Sandoval was the reason she’d been tortured and killed every night until she’d conceived with Blaedergil. I even managed to keep that thought off my face. Not quite out of my implant, though, because Tens and Mack looked momentarily horrified, and Sandoval shot me a look of distaste.

  “That was necessary,” he said, and I arched an eyebrow.

  Mack cleared his throat, and I bit back the challenge that half rose to my lips. Mack was right; we had more important things to focus on... and Treivani’s choices were not mine to judge.

  “Nor are mine,” Sandoval added, and I wondered when I’d ever get the privacy of my implant—and my own thoughts—back, but the Skymander lord was already changing his focus. “The contract with Corovan is over.”

  Mack frowned, but didn’t say anything.

  “It was not his to make, and for you to complete it means you are taking my bride against her will.” A touch of desperation tinged his next words. “Corovan had no right to hire you to do what he’s asked—and he knew it. You live because you accepted his contract in good faith, and honor requires you be given a chance to correct your mistake.”

  The view screens came up as he stopped speaking, and played the recording of a conversation had long ago.

  “Give her back,” Corovan snarled, and we all heard Sandoval’s reply.

  “She has chosen another betrothal.”

  “It doesn’t matter. My bargain is with the parents, not the child.”

  “She is not a child, and her parents did not have the right to make the bargain. My contract was already signed and witnessed.”

  “It is void; it was not agreed to by the clan elders.”

  “They cannot gainsay the heir.”

  “She is only one of the heirs, and this will make her claim void.”

  Sandoval’s voice, when he replied, was very self-assured—and tauntingly smug.

  “Then you have plenty of other brides to choose from, don’t you?” Sandoval had replied, and he’d ended the call.

  “I take it Corovan didn’t agree,” Mack said, and Sandoval gestured to the screen, once more.

  “The Hazerna elders ratified the contract between us, and have approved the wedding, something Andreus Corovan would have been aware of, when he hired you.”

  Documents supporting his claim, flashed up on the screen and Mack rested his forehead in his hand. Sandoval watched as Mack wiped his hand down over his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose, keeping his eyes closed as he took a breath. He stayed silent as Mack lifted his head.

  “Can I have a copy of those?” he asked. “I’ll need them to confront Corovan, and to keep Odyssey on side.”

  “Done,” Sandoval said, and the room relaxed.

  Treivani settled herself on a chair beside her lord, and curled her hand through his arm.

  “Now that that’s settled,” Sandoval continued, with a fond glance at his bride, “I’d like you to retrieve Melari from Andreus Corovan’s possession—and the cure for whatever disease she is currently carrying. That particular contract was not sanctioned by the Hazerna elders, nor agreed to by the girl.”

  Mack frowned.

  “Then how...”

  It was Treivani who answered.

  “There are rivalries inside every house. Andreus made some rather rash promises to Melari’s main rival, and was, unfortunately, believed.” She raised a hand as Mack opened his mouth to protest, continuing as he subsided. “We don’t need you to deal with the girl who put my sister in jeopardy; we just need you to get my sister out of Corovan’s hands, before he can marry her and consummate the wedding. My people will deal with the other side of the problem.”

  She smiled, and it was not a very nice smile.

  “Let’s just say that another alliance is about to be made, and that the bride might not be so pleased with her future partner—and that, my dear Mack, is none of your concern.”

  The look on her face made my stomach do an uneasy flip, and I was glad such vengeful glee was not aimed at me. I took note to stay out of the future Lady Skymander’s bad books. The Lord Skymander, in the meantime, smiled softly as he stroked a gentle hand over his lady’s hair.

  “My lady adores her little sister,” he said, when he caught me staring. “Melari will join us, if she survives Blaedergil’s successor.”

  Blaedergil’s what? I looked towards Mack, but he studiously avoided my gaze, as did Tens.

  “Do not judge what you do not understand!” Skymander snapped. “It is essential if our world is to survive.”

  I swallowed a retort that would have suggested it might be better if a world that required such practices did not survive. Keeping my mouth firmly shut, I listened as Mack brought the discussion back to what Skymander needed.

  “Last we saw, Melari was still inside a stasis pod,” he said. “We don’t know if she’s infectious, or what she might have.”

  “Trust me,” Treivani told him. “She’s infectious. You’ll need to take precautions.”

  “I’ll also have the Corovan compound quarantined,” Mack said.

  “Not until you’re out of there with my sister,” Treivani ordered, “or you won’t be leaving, otherwise. This is not the first dealing the clans have had with a plague master from Magnus 19. Quarantine is very...” She exchanged a look with Sandoval. “... thorough.”

  What disturbed me most about that, was that she’d said a plague master, as in one of many, as in there were more. I’d been happy thinking Blaedergil had been the only one. I listened to Sandoval, Mack and Treivani dicker some more about price, conditions, bonuses and penalties, and was surprised when Skymander told Mack the ship’s repairs were almost done.

  “I didn’t order any,” Mack said.

  “But you would have, if you hadn’t been shot,” Skymander told him, “so I had your engineers tell me what they needed, and then worked within your usual budget.”

  “My usual...” Mack shot Tens a frustrated glare, but Skymander was quick to offer an explanation.

  “Your people did a good job of locking your ship’s systems down,” he said, “but they had limited time, and weren’t on hand to counter any incursions—and my people are just as good.”

  Tens glared at him, as though questioning that last statement, but Mack gave him a look that said he’d better keep his mouth shut, so Tens said nothing. Sandoval looked amused, but returned to the matter of repairs.

  “You needed to fix the drives, and repair the hull, after the damage they took from whatever you did to get here by the route you did, and then from the damage you took from the fighters.”

  We’d taken damage from the fighters? Well, that was news to me. I guess Tens had meant it when he’d said Case couldn’t keep dodging forever. I think I’d been in the tank for that. Funny how he’d avoided mentioning the damage we’d taken from the battleship. That I knew about. I’d been awake for that.

  “Send me the repair bill and the docking fees,” Mack said, and, again, he sounded tired. “I’ll cover them.”

  But Sandoval shook his head.

  “No. I’ll be taking them out of your fees for retrieving Melari.”

  “I’d prefer...” Mack began, but the look on Sandoval’s face said it would be pointless for him to continue.

  Mack sighed.

  “Fine. Send me a copy of the final bill.”

  There was a moment’s stillness, and then Mack spoke.

  “Thank you.”

  I heard undertones in those two simple words that I didn’t understand, and I wondered what Skymander had done to earn them. The best news was that Mack didn’t seem angry, either about what had been done, or about the cost, so I figured that everything met with his approval, however grudging that might be.

  “If that is all...” Mack said, but Skymander shook his head
.

  “You will be contacted by the clans—both Hazerna and Corovan,” he said. “I want you to supervise the negotiations between us.”

  “You want me to represent your interests?”

  Sandoval shook his head.

  “No, I want you to guide the discussions, ensure we all have our say, clarify the points we are trying to make, when one or the other of us chooses not to understand, and to keep us on track. I notice you have no fee for that in your schedules, so I will pay you the price Odyssey asks for such services, since you are aligned most closely with them. Here.”

  And Mack grew still, in that way all people did when they opened files in their heads. I saw his throat move as he swallowed, watched him blink as he processed what he was reading—and, like Tens, I waited.

  “Done,” Mack said, and the Skymander stood and crossed to a cabinet set into the cruiser’s wall.

  From one shelf, he took a bottle and five glasses, and set them on a tray. From a second shelf, he took a tablet-sized computer and two black-and-gold-colored pens, and, from the printer, a thick sheaf of paper. He set these beside the glasses and bottle, and brought the tray over to where we sat.

  “Time to sign,” he said.

  21—The Drunk Tank

  The crew was out of stasis when we arrived, and the ship was alive with activity as provisions were brought aboard, refueling undertaken, and last-minute tests and checks completed. To be honest, whatever was in the ivanox had started to take effect by the time Sandoval’s ship had docked beside Mack’s.

  “I’ll have my team escort you back,” Sandoval told Mack, when the captain stood, and swayed on his feet. “You’re still recovering from your injuries.”

  Well, that was kind of him, but I caught the look on Treivani’s face, and wondered what kind of message they were sending by having us escorted back to our ship by an armed combat team.

  “The kind that says you are under my protection,” Sandoval’s voice whispered in my head, and I wondered why it sounded like a threat.

  Whatever it was, Mack, Tens, and I needed the escort, because not a single one of us could walk a straight line by the time we hit the concourse, and the distance between our ships stretched impossibly far in our addled brains. The security team’s closest members, each took a firm grip on our arms to keep us upright and moving, and got us into the ship before we were even close to falling down.

  “Damn!” Doc said, when the team led us into the medical center. “You three are soaked.”

  And we’d all looked down at ourselves to see where we’d gotten wet. Doc shook his head. He didn’t bother explaining, just grabbed Mack by the arm, and signaled for the security team to bring us through to a small med bay.

  “What have they had?” he asked, and swore when the team leader told him.

  “Do you know what to do?” the man asked, and Doc nodded.

  “I know what to do,” he said. “Thank you for getting them here safely.”

  The man cast a grim eye over the three of us, and then signaled his team out of the doc’s domain. Doc watched him go, his lips compressed into a tight line that said he wasn’t happy. He saved the real swears for when the security monitors showed that Sandoval’s team had cleared the ship, and were on their way back to the cruiser.

  “Of all the stupid sons of well-furrowed, in-heat, man-eating bitches I’ve ever had the misfortune to keep on their feet,” he said, “you needle-dicked, mind-fucked, ass-ridden, puke-bucketed, shit piles are the stupidest there have ever been.”

  “Hey,” Mack mumbled, and I agreed with the sentiment; there was no need for Doc to be so mean.

  I didn’t see why he was so upset, not even when Tens walked up to the nearest bed and collapsed over it.

  “Well, fuck me,” Doc said, and started bellowing. “Halloran I need your useless ass in here. We got ourselves a high-level drunk tank that needs detoxifying A.S.A. P.”

  Detoxifying, huh? I decided I didn’t care for that, and turned myself about and headed for the door. No one was going to detoxify me... whatever that meant. I was just fine.

  I ran into Halloran as he came into the room, and Doc caught me on the rebound, which would have been fine, if the jolt hadn’t made my stomach decide that ivanox was something better out than in.

  “What in all the fucking stars is ivanox?” Halloran wanted to know as I turned the clean, light blue of his nursing scrubs into a multi-colored canvas of red, green and yellow blotches, with chunky bits in between.

  “Local fortified,” Doc told him. “Get cleaned up, and send me a team.”

  “You got an antidote?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  Doc was steering me to the nearest empty bunk as he was speaking, and I didn’t have the strength to resist. The fact I found Halloran’s scrubs fascinating in their new color scheme didn’t bother me a bit, but Doc laid me down, and I didn’t have the strength or coordination to get myself upright again.

  For some reason, the ship was pitching like a rollercoaster, and I didn’t know how I was staying on the bed, let alone how Doc was keeping his feet. The side spins were particularly spectacular.

  I lay very, very still, not daring to move. Doc just stood and looked at me.

  “Bad storm, huh?” he asked, and I gripped the sides of the bed tight, and grunted an affirmative. Nodding seemed like a really bad idea, right now.

  “Don’t worry,” he told me. “We’ll strap you in, and you’ll be fine.”

  Okay, I thought. I wanted to say that out loud, but my voice had run away. I was still trying to work out how, when there came an almighty crash from behind him, and he spun away from me.

  “Goddamnit, Mack! You were in the bed for a reason!”

  It was an interesting ride from there on out, and the Shady Marie had detached from the station and was returning to Costral, by the time I made it back onto my feet. Mack was gone, having thrown off the effects far quicker than any of us, and I figured he had the body mass to cope. Tens had fared about as well as I had, being the most lightly built of us all.

  I remembered downing the glass of ivanox at Sandoval’s insistence, the calculation I could see in Treivani’s eyes, the wariness in Mack’s, and the doubt that had drifted through the implant from Tens. That was funny given it was his fault we’d been expected to drink it.

  He’d been the one to point out that ivanox was one of the Skymander traditions for closing a deal. So, of course, it was only natural that Skymander had expected us to partake. Goodwill being what it was, and all that.

  And it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but now? Now I was pretty sure Tens had been set up—and had been used to set the rest of us up, right thing or not. Damn! Now, I knew why it was best to have experienced the local brew before trying it in a diplomatic situation. At least Skymander had known what to expect, and put contingencies in place.

  And we’d been fortunate that his interests aligned with our own, or we might not have made it back to the ship. I wondered if we’d signed anything else before we’d left... or after we’d arrived aboard. I figured we were pretty safe after getting here, given that Doc had taken over, and would have kept us from doing anything particularly stupid.

  And speaking of which... Movement outside the door caught my eye, and I tried to prop myself up, only to find a band of pressure across my chest and others over my hips and knees. What the...?

  “Storm finished, Cutter?” Doc asked, coming into view, and I stared at him.

  What storm?

  He read the puzzlement on my face, and his body lost some of its tension.

  “Well, well. Welcome back, Cutter. How do you feel?”

  Now that he mentioned it. He caught the shift in expression as my stomach rebelled, and had released the bands, and put a bowl in front of my face, before I started dry heaving the nothingness in my stomach. Halloran appeared behind him, and handed him a drink bottle.

  I eyed it uncertainly, given what the last bottle ha
d contained, but Doc was glaring, again, so I accepted it and took a cautious sip when he passed it to me. Sweet, green-tasting liquid passed over my tongue and sank into my stomach, easing the cramping, until I didn’t feel in imminent danger of losing what I hadn’t had for lunch. I kept sipping, wary of taking more than a tiny amount, each time I lifted the flask.

  Doc watched me, until we heard Tens groan.

  “Stay there,” he said, stepping past me, and moving out of sight.

  I heard Tens mutter something, and then start retching, but I didn’t shift an inch. I didn’t even turn my head to look. On top of the roiling nausea in my gut, my head felt like it wanted to break apart, and I didn’t want to move, in case it decided to do just that.

  “Easy,” Doc said. “You need to lie down for a bit longer.”

  From beyond me, Tens muttered a protest, and Halloran came through the door carrying a syringe. I yelped and recoiled, but stayed on the bed, tucking myself against the wall as he passed. I heard a flurry of movement, and then Tens sighed. Doc echoed him, and then he and Halloran came back into view.

  I eyed them warily, but there wasn’t a syringe in sight, so I slowly uncoiled.

  “Mack?” I managed, still not quite able to string a sentence together.

  “He’s better than he has any right to be,” Doc growled. “You need more rest.”

  I nodded, eyeing him carefully, while trying to keep a weather eye on Halloran. Doc managed a mirthless smile.

  “No needles,” he said. “You just need to lie down, and close your eyes, and you’ll be fine.”

  Whatever had been in that drink bottle had settled my stomach, so I nodded, and stretched out. Halloran moved out of sight, only to return with a light-weight blanket that he and Doc draped over me, as I closed my eyes. The sharp sting of a syringe going into my shoulder caught me by surprise, but the weight of a broad set of hands rested on my chest and side, and I couldn’t find the energy to move.

  “Lying bast...” I managed, as sleep took me under like a wave, and I wondered what Doc would have made of that kind of undertow being on board a perfectly dry starship.