Wrapt in Crystal

by Sharon Shinn

“Those who wish to learn from you, may,” she said at last. “I will not force anyone to take instruction.”

  He sat back, almost weak with relief. “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  “In the morning. Yes. We will look for you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It was a simple matter to line up Benito’s help. The police chief even spent a few minutes with Drake in the armory, searching out appropriate and very simple weapons for the ermanas and the amicas. Benito was almost jubilant.

  “Can’t believe you got la abada to agree,” he said more than once. “She’s as stubborn as they come.”

  “All the Fideles are,” Drake said. “All fanatics.”

  “Then how?”

  Drake grinned. “I appealed to her basic fanaticism. Not that, in the end, I’m positive we’ll be able to teach them anything that will help them. Hard for an untrained fighter—a woman—to defend herself against a crazed male attacker.”

  “Better than nothing,” Benito said, holding up one of the crystal maces they had stockpiled for the priestesses. Drake murmured his agreement.

  Although it was still early afternoon, Drake headed back to his hotel once he left the hombueno headquarters. He was looking for more records of violent crime, this time in Deloro’s new neighborhood during the six-month period that she had rented the postal box. He found a random assortment of assaults and robberies, but only one report of unnatural death, and the victim was male. Drake paused a moment to rest his head on his hands.

  Of course, it was possible she was still alive.

  He considered that carefully, for it was an entirely new thought to him. He had just assumed, partially because of Jovieve’s comments, that Deloro was dead, tracked down by ruthless druglords who had (with more luck than he had) discovered her hiding place and eliminated her. That was still probable. She could have been killed at any time, in any neighborhood, for he had hardly had time to examine every murder of the past five years. On the other hand . . .

  On the other hand, perhaps she had eluded scrutiny—disappeared somewhere into the slums of the city—or even, though it seemed unlikely, somewhere off of Semay itself. The druglord—convicted, perhaps, by her anonymous testimony—had been freed from prison and returned to Semay to wreak justice, on her or any priestess unlucky enough to stray in his path.

  But if that was so, why kill at three-week intervals?

  And if Diadeloro was still alive, where was she now?

  * * *

  * * *

  Lise showed up at his door promptly at seven, dressed in the exotic colors of a Moonchild on leave. She wore a red lace tunic over a sleeveless black silk blouse and a skirt consisting of so many layers of stiff black lace that it belled around her like a ballerina’s. She wore red leather boots, black lace gloves, a red silk flower in her hair, and enough eye makeup to weight her lashes into a perpetually dreamy expression. He smiled at her.

  “My, my,” he said. “Aren’t you ravishing.”

  She flirted a look at him with those heavy eyes. “If only you really thought so.”

  He was dressed more soberly, although—knowing what to expect from Lise—he had left off his Moonchild whites. He wore blue and black and silver, and he had seemed too tall to fit in his own mirror. “Better hope Raeburn doesn’t see you,” he said.

  “I don’t care if he does,” she said.

  But he didn’t. They left the hotel hand-in-hand, Lise laughing with excitement and Drake feeling that slow, powerful undercurrent at work in him as well. Nothing quite so dangerous as an off-duty Moonchild out looking for trouble.

  They took public transportation down to the spaceport to avoid exposing Jovieve’s car to risks. The spaceport was small by any civilized standard—only about twelve square blocks of high-rise buildings interlarded with squat shacks and unexpectedly bare city lots—but the intensity it radiated was as palpable as the low hum of a ship’s engine gearing up for interstel. At this relatively early hour of the evening, the streets were packed with pedestrians in bright colors—merchant-ship captains and crew members, seasoned mercenaries, outlaws, and the occasional restless Madrid youth who had drifted into this section of town for the same reasons the Moonchildren had.

  Catering to this edgy and volatile clientele were vendors of every conceivable description, from furtive dealers in the street to bar owners and whorekeepers and hotel managers. Light poured out of the street-level windows of almost every building they passed, while the upper stories were quiet, curtained over, mysterious. Music changed completely from block to block as they passed first one open door and then another. Everywhere they were followed by jabs of sound—bursts of laughter, rounds of argument, the sharp clatter of weapons.

  Lise minced along beside Drake in her high-heeled red boots, clinging to his arm as if for support. He was not deceived. She could run a fifty-yard dash in those boots and probably gain the finish line ahead of him. He glanced down at her, to see the heavy eyelids barely concealing the bright excitement of her eyes.

  “Having fun?” he inquired.

  “Haven’t done much yet,” she drawled.

  He allowed her to choose the establishments that deserved their patronage. For their first stop, she drew him inside a bar with a distant ceiling arching over a psychedelic light show that played up through the glass floor and made the footing tricky. Couples danced frenetically to the heavily syncopated music. Almost every table was full. As if by instinct, she led him to one unoccupied table at the far end of the club. It was a round metal surface supported by tall, spindly legs, and she had to hop up to perch upon the high, wrought-iron chair.

  “This is great,” she said, surveying the gyrating room with a small smile of infinite satisfaction.

  “Am I supposed to ask you to dance, or go get drinks?” Drake inquired.

  “Drinks, then dancing.”

  He made his way slowly to the center bar, fending off inadvertent hands and feet from couples standing or sitting in his way. One woman boldly stopped him as he tried to detour around her, sliding both her hands down his buttocks and pressing her body suggestively against his.

  “Got a minute?” she purred.

  “Got a date,” he said, and put her aside firmly. He made it to the bar without further distractions, and ordered two glasses of the house special. He had no idea what this was, but then, he had neglected to ask Lise what she wanted to drink, and clearly she was game for anything.

  The house special was a swirled mixture of what looked like lemon and blueberry ice; hard to tell, really, in the constantly shifting light. He carried the frosty glasses back to their table. A tall, heavyset man was leaning over the table, conversing with the Moonchild. Her head was tilted back to watch him, and her throat looked white and fragile. She was smiling.

  Drake set Lise’s drink down before her and took the seat next to her, nodding at the newcomer. Spacer, clearly; by his dress and the sapphire gemstone in his left ear, he was an unaligned mercenary looking to hawk some wares.

  “You the one with the purse?” the stranger asked.

  Drake took a cautious sip of his drink, which tasted exactly like grape juice. “If she says so,” he replied. “But I can tell you right now, I’m not buying.”

  The stranger did not so much sit on a stool as lean his long body against it. “You haven’t even heard what I’m selling yet,” he said.

  “That’s true. We’re not buying.”

  “It’s legit,” the spacer assured him. “Not drugs, not guns. None of that stuff.”

  Drake glanced over at Lise, who had more incautiously swallowed the first quarter of her drink. “Like it?”

  “Love it. What’s in it?”

  “I didn’t ask.” He looked back at the spacer. “Must be jewels, then.”

  The mercenary smiled broadly. “Ah, you’ve done some trading before this.”

  “I just know the market.”


  “Then you probably know just how much these are worth.” And, unbidden, he unrolled a silk cloth on the table before them.

  It may have been the pulsing lights, but the assortment of gems on the white piece of silk seemed to glitter with a life of their own. They were all caught in finely detailed settings of gold or the even more precious gildore—rings, and bracelets, and earrings, and necklaces. Altogether, they were, conservatively, worth a respectable fortune.

  “Pretty,” Drake said. “Undoubtedly stolen.”

  The man straightened from his slouching posture, wholly indignant. “I bought’em honest off an honest man.”

  “I’m sure you did.” Drake chose the smallest piece in the array, an earring shaped like a tropical flower with a ruby at its heart. Its gildore setting flickered in the passionate light, appearing first golden, then platinum, then dead black. “How much?”

  “Hundred credits,” the man said.

  Drake laughed incredulously. “It’s worth five times that.”

  “Five hundred credits,” the spacer said, grinning.

  The Moonchild held the bauble up to catch the patterned light; nothing changed the concentrated clarity of the jewel. “Where from?” he wanted to know. “Corliss?”

  “I got them from a man on Dalten.”

  It was a notorious rendezvous planet for outlaws and pirates. “I’m sure,” Drake said. “But where was it originally—picked up?”

  “He may have said Corliss,” the mercenary said cautiously. “Or he may not have said.”

  Drake tossed the ruby carelessly back into the pile and nodded at Lise. “Remember? Four, five months ago, somebody walked off with a handful of the dega’s jewels. She thought it was one of the political guests, so she didn’t make a public outcry.”

  “Sure, she thought it was one of the Evenil emissaries,” Lise replied. “I remember.”

  The mercenary was beginning to get a little nervous at their talk. “Well, if you don’t want anything,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Lise interrupted, putting out a languid hand. “I like the idea of owning a jewel that belonged to the dega of Corliss.”

  Drake laughed at her. “And where would you wear it?”

  “Anywhere. I’m not likely to run into her in my travels, now am I?”

  The mercenary had paused hopefully in the act of re-rolling his silk. “You like that little ruby?” he said. “I could give it to you for fifty credits.”

  Lise picked through the pile of royal jewels, fingering first a necklace and then a ring. Drake sensed that she was toying with the idea of palming one of the items, and sincerely hoped that she did not. He would not like to be forced into a fight with a mercenary over stolen goods here in the spaceport on Semay.

  She held up another earring, this one a sapphire so dark it looked black. It was set in a three-petaled flower of highly polished gildore, and a spray of gildore chains hung from the back of the post. “How much?” she asked.

  “One hundred and twenty credits.”

  She shook her head. “Forty.”

  “Forty! It’s worth twenty times that.”

  “It’s stolen,” she said.

  “I paid good money for it!”

  “You were robbed, as was whoever owned these jewels before.”

  “One hundred credits.”

  She shook her head again and dropped the earring negligently back into the pile. “Let me see . . .” She fingered another earring, and then a bracelet, and then seemed to lose interest completely. “Oh, take them away. I couldn’t wear any of them anyway.”

  “Seventy-five credits,” the mercenary said. “Seventy.”

  “I said, I don’t want anything.”

  “All right, forty-five.”

  “Done,” she said, and reached into her pocket.

  Drake already had his money ready, and handed over a folded wad of bills. Lise looked at him in surprise while the mercenary did a quick count, then a recount, because there were fifty credits in the roll. Drake grinned at him and picked the sapphire back out of the pile. The mercenary hastily rewrapped the rest of the gems and melted away from their table.

  Drake offered the earring to Lise, holding it in the palm of his hand. “Never call me a miserly man,” he said.

  “I’m speechless with shock.” She reached up to unfasten the plain gold stud she wore in her right ear and slipped it into her pocket before taking the sapphire from Drake’s hand. He felt the lace of her glove brush against his palm. “You must hope you’ll be able to convince me to go to bed with you later.”

  “I thought that system of barter for women’s favors went out thousands of years ago,” he said. His eyes were roving over the whole bar, but their visitor did not appear to be making any more pitches to other patrons.

  “Which is probably the last time you had to pay for it,” she said.

  His attention swung back to her; he smiled benevolently. “As if you ever had to buy attention,” he said.

  She threw her head back; the tiny silver chains on the earring swung against her white throat, making a small tinkling sound. He thought she was going to say something, but she didn’t. She just studied him by the flickering, multicolored light.

  “I thought you wanted to dance,” he said at last.

  She came to her feet almost before he had finished his sentence. “I always want to dance,” she said, and held out her hand to him.

  They stayed at this club another half-hour, then drifted out and down the street. Lise chose three more establishments in the next two hours, selecting them, as far as Drake could tell, entirely by the high volume of their music and the vibrancy of their lights. They were propositioned singly and together at each of these places, by both buyers and sellers, for goods and services ranging from the physical to the hallucinogenic. Lise regretfully turned down an offer to join a pleasure ship leaving at dawn as one of the resident courtesans.

  “I’ll take your card, though, if I may,” she said as the small, courteous old man sorrowfully prepared to leave them. “I may change my mind if my present situation doesn’t work out.”

  “Yes, yes, any time,” he said, brightening perceptibly. “Always room for new girls. Pretty new girls.”

  He bowed twice and left them. Lise looked over at Drake. She was laughing.

  “It’s the earring,” he said. “It gives you fresh allure.”

  “I always had allure, Lieutenant,” she said demurely. “You just never saw it until a stranger pointed it out.”

  “I saw it,” he said, signaling the waiter to bring them two more drinks. “I was just not prepared to act upon it.”

  “Changed your mind any?”

  He smiled back. “I,” he said, “am much more successful admiring from a distance.”

  Perhaps it was this exchange that turned Lise even more willful. She had, in all the other bars, agreed to dance with strangers who invited her, if she liked their looks; but here she danced with anyone who asked her, and some of those who asked her looked like pretty dubious characters. Drake neither protested nor remonstrated. She knew what she was doing and she could take care of herself.

  Late in the evening she returned from one of these forays onto the dance floor with three men in tow, none of whom had been with her when she left the table. One was small, pockmarked and greasy-looking. Two were taller, better built and besotted. Lise sat down and her stiff lace skirt plumped around her. The two studs crowded to either side of her, begging her to dance with them, leave with them, choose one of them over the other.

  The slimy one looked over at Drake with a knowing wink. “They wanna buy, but the lady ain’t interested in sellin’,” he confided to Drake.

  “They don’t look bright enough to carry cash,” the Moonchild replied.

  The smaller man laughed out loud and slapped his thigh in delight. “You got that right, brother,” he chortled
. “They don’t got a penny in the world but what I give ’em.” All three of the newcomers wore big golden hoops in their left ears, the chosen emblem of the career outlaw. This unprepossessing man was undoubtedly the (scant) brains of the outfit.

  “Well, she comes high,” Drake said.

  “Maybe they’ll wear her down.”

  Drake was trying not to listen, but he couldn’t help overhearing snatches of the threeway conversation: Honey, baby, I’m the one who needs you . . . Just one night, sugar, you’ll see how good it is . . . and Lise’s cool, amused replies: I told you, I’ve had better offers tonight. Though you are pretty cute . . .

  Drake came to his feet. “Why don’t I get everyone a drink?” he said.

  He wandered to the bar and took his time about going back. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Lise would want to find a bedmate for the night somewhere here in the spaceport, though neither of these looked to Drake to be likely candidates. But then, what did he know about what women found attractive? Maybe for a one-night encounter, a set of wide shoulders and a reasonably likable face were all that were required.

  By the time he got back to the table, the argument had gotten a little heated. As Drake arrived, one of the young men stalked off in anger.

  “I guess he doesn’t like wine,” Drake said, setting down his tray. The little outlaw grinned at him, snatched up one of the glasses, and went after his employee. Lise and the other boy were still arguing. The importunities seemed to have intensified, and so had the refusals.

  Drake sipped at his wine and studiously looked the other way, but the sound of a sudden sharp slap jerked his head around. Lise had jumped to her red-booted feet and stood before the young outlaw with her hands raised. Drake could not tell who had struck whom. Behind him, he heard the older, smaller man come running back, whether to stop the fight or join it he didn’t know. Drake stood also, but held back, watching.

  The young man said something to Lise, and she replied in quick, contemptuous tones. Drake missed his words, but Lise’s were clear: “You don’t have the balls for it.” The boy swung at her, open-handed; she dived forward and slammed her head into his belly, and the tussle was on.