Wrapt in Crystal

by Sharon Shinn

  He found three other likely places before he called it a day. At the hotel, he found Raeburn back but Lise gone again. He could not help grinning at the captain’s look of irritation when he realized his Moonchild was fraternizing with a local. But there was nothing in the regulations against it, except on super-secret missions, so there was nothing Raeburn could do about it. It cheered Drake to think that at least Lise had found a way of amusing herself.

  He tried for another early night, and after a couple of restless hours in bed willing himself to sleep, he finally slept. But he was awakened at some point, disoriented and alarmed, by a shrill repetitive noise that he belatedly realized was the comline. No one had called him since he’d been in Madrid. He kicked his way free of the covers and followed the noise to the small mike on the desk, fumbling with the buttons until he figured out how to open the line.

  “Yes?” he said sharply into the receiver.

  “Drake. It’s Benito. I’m on my way to the Triumphante temple. There’s been another attack.”

  Drake’s breath caught. “Who? How bad?”

  “Two of the younger priestesses. No one dead, by the mercy of the goddess. They’re pretty shook up, though. I thought you’d want to hear the story.”

  “Be there soon as I can.”

  He barely paused to throw on some clothes before running out to the car and breaking all speed records to get to the temple. The main door was wide open, so he just went inside, and hurried down hallways until he caught the sound of voices.

  Benito, half a dozen Triumphantes, Jovieve and—well, well—Lise were all gathered in la senya grande’s office. Two young women sat on a small sofa, sobbing softly and clinging to each other. Jovieve stood behind the couch, bent over them, one arm around each girl’s shoulder. Her dark hair was loose and her attire very casual; she had been roused from slumber as well. Three older Triumphantes lined the walls. Benito knelt before the girls, and Lise stood back near the door, watching everything but keeping out of the way. She was the first to see Drake, and she greeted him with a faint smile and a thumbs-up. Everything was relatively all right.

  “What’s happened so far?” Drake asked as he came in, and everyone glanced quickly over at him. Perhaps he imagined the look of relief that crossed Jovieve’s face. Benito looked pleased as well. The two girls cried even harder and did not look up. As he got closer, Drake recognized both of them from his various visits to the temple: the sweet-faced Nochestrella and the merry Lusalma.

  “Cowen,” said Jovieve. “They were out walking and they were attacked. That’s all we’ve been able to learn so far.”

  He nodded at her and knelt beside Benito, who edged over to make room for him. Interrogation of sobbing teenage girls had never been his strong suit. “It’s important that we know what happened,” he said, pitching his voice as gently as he could. “I know you’re afraid, but you’re alive. That means you can tell us more than anybody else in all of Semay. You have to talk to us.”

  Noches appeared incapable of speaking, but Lusalma bravely took a deep breath. “We were—we were walking,” she said shakily.

  “Where?”

  “Down by the Sabala Park—Quinella Street.”

  “All right. Did you see anybody—hear anything?”

  She shook her head. “No, nothing—well, far down the street, there is a bar, we could hear music from there, but no one else was walking along. And then he was there! Suddenly! From nowhere, and he grabbed my arm—”

  “Slowly, calmly,” Jovieve interjected, for Lusalma’s voice had gone suddenly shrill and rapid.

  “He grabbed you even though you and Noches were walking along together?”

  “She was a few steps ahead of me,” Lusalma said, a little more collectedly. “Just a few! I had stopped to tie my shoe—I kept tripping, and so I knelt down . . . And then I stood and I was going to run and catch up with her but he grabbed me—”

  “Yes, it was terrible,” Drake said. “He grabbed your arm. Did he also grab your rosario?”

  She stared at him, pale face gone paler, and even Noches looked up with drowned eyes to stare at him. “How did you know that?” Lusalma whispered.

  “Because the killer has taken the rosarios of all the ermanas and amicas,” Drake said. “He would not be the man we want if he did not try for yours.”

  Noches began sobbing with renewed vigor at the news her attacker had indeed been the killer, but Lusalma seemed to take strength from the words. “He grabbed my rosario,” she confirmed. “And he tried to jerk it from my neck—like this—” She demonstrated, tugging sharply at the gold chain that held the glittering crystal eye. “But the chain was too strong.” She let the pendant fall.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He said, ‘Is it you? Is it yours?’ ”

  Drake glanced over at Benito, who had looked at the Moonchild with a frown. “Is it you, is it yours?” the capitan repeated.

  Lusalma nodded. Drake said, “Did he say anything else?”

  “He said, ‘Let me have it. Let me see.’ And then he said some words I didn’t know.”

  Drake exchanged another quick look with Benito. “Words you didn’t know,” the Moonchild said. “Did he have an accent? Did he sound like a native Semayan or not?”

  She looked worried and uncertain. “I—I don’t know. I understood everything he said until those last few words. I—he was shouting, I was afraid, I—”

  “It’s all right,” Drake said. “I was just wondering. What happened next? Where was Nochestrella?”

  “Where was your alarm?” Benito asked.

  “He had my wrist,” she explained. “My alarm was on that hand . . . I—it was just a minute, you know, that he grabbed me and asked if this was it—and then I remembered to scream. And Noches heard me and came running back—”

  Drake glanced at Noches, who was valiantly trying to control her weeping. “Yes?”

  “And I hit him in the head with the eye-crusher and then he grabbed me!” Noches managed to choke out before succumbing to tears again.

  “Did he try to take your rosario?” he asked her, and she nodded emphatically through her sobs.

  “But then I turned on the alarm, and it scared him,” Lusalma finished up with a trace of satisfaction.

  Drake grinned. “He ran?” She nodded. “Well done, then. Noches, did he say anything to you before the alarm sounded?” She shook her head furiously. Drake regarded her a moment, but decided that any information she might have to offer would not be extracted tonight. “What did you do after the alarm went off?”

  “We took each other’s hands,” Lusalma said, “and started to run for the temple. We could see people looking out their windows at us, and one woman even opened her door and told us to come inside and hide.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “Car was there in three minutes,” Benito said briefly. “Had men almost on the scene.”

  “They see anyone running?”

  The capitan shook his head. “Did a search of the area, but—there are too many places to hide. Be more surprising if we did find him.”

  Drake nodded and turned back to Lusalma. “This man,” he said. “I know it happened very fast. Did you see anything—his face—the color of his hair—a piece of jewelry—something he was wearing?”

  “His hair was white,” Nochestrella said unexpectedly. Of course; she had hit him in the head.

  “White?”

  “Or very yellow,” she amended. “It looked white in the moonlight.”

  “Very good. Was he tall? Short? Thin? Fat?”

  “Short,” Lusalma said, and Noches concurred. “Thin. His hands were very strong.”

  “Let me see your wrist,” Drake said. Mystified, Lusalma held out her hand. Already, deep blue finger marks made circles around the frail bones. Drake carefully fitted his fingers to the bruises, but his big hand covered them completely.
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  “Small man, small hands,” the Moonchild commented. “Remember anything about his clothes?”

  “They were dark,” Lusalma said.

  “And his face? Anything?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “He had a big star on his cheek,” Noches said. They all looked at her in surprise. She put a hand to her own face. “This one.”

  “Left cheek,” Drake said over his shoulder to Lise. He knew without checking that she had been taking notes on the entire conversation. Looking back at Noches, he questioned: “A star? Or a scar?”

  “A star,” she said positively. “It looked blue. Like ink. Or a tattoo.”

  Drake raised his eyebrows at Benito. Some local gang marking? The capitan shrugged and shook his head. “Any jewelry?” Drake asked. “An earring, maybe—big gold hoop in his left ear?”

  “I didn’t see any,” she said.

  Not an outlaw, then. Not part of a local criminal organization. Spoke Semayse well enough to be understood in the heat of the moment, so was either a native or had been taught by one. Used unfamiliar words, also under stress, so had acquired a foreign vocabulary somewhere in his travels. And he had tried to strip the amicas of their goddess-eyes even before he had tried to kill them.

  “May I?” Drake said very gently, and reached for Lusalma’s ojodiosa. She shuddered but held still as he lifted it toward the light. It glittered like leaded crystal and seemed innocent of secrets.

  “Why?” the Moonchild asked aloud. “Why does he want the pendants? What makes one crystal different from any other?” He looked up at la senya grande, still bending forward over the girls, but watching him with close attention. “Jovieve, do you know?”

  “I know who might know,” she said. “The monks who mine the crystals.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It was a couple of hours before noon when Drake and Jovieve took off for the mountains west of Madrid, Drake behind the controls of a small planetary flier that belonged to the Triumphante temple. They had both been up way too late the night before to contemplate starting out any earlier than that. Jovieve had watched over her weeping priestesses until the early dawn hours, and Drake and the hombuenos had prowled through the deserted buildings of the barrios. The dust in the tall two-story house had been undisturbed; but in the place where Drake had found the bloodied rags, there were fresh traces of human occupation.

  “Could be his, could be anybody’s,” Benito had observed as they completed their search. “But it’s worth making a note of it.”

  Lise, who had accompanied them on their search, had found a length of coiled wire in a closet Drake had neglected to check. “Garrote somebody pretty good with that,” she commented.

  “Need a shorter piece,” Drake said.

  She looked around for wire cutters. But none of them found anything more. Drake had not been surprised when Lise told him she didn’t need a ride back to the hotel. She did manage to find a moment when Benito’s back was turned to give Drake the old smile of guileless delight; and at four in the morning, with no sleep and a bad night behind him, he had found himself smiling back at her.

  He wasn’t entirely rested even now, but a sense of urgency propelled him. If the killer’s pattern held, Drake had three more weeks to investigate before something else happened; but the killer had been unsuccessful this time, which could possibly alter his behavior. So Drake rolled out of bed a couple of hours before he wanted to and picked Jovieve up at the temple.

  “You can fly one of these, can’t you?” she had asked as he admired the sleek lines of the A-S22, straight from the Colt shipyards. Nothing but the best for the Triumphantes.

  “Oh yes,” he had replied. “Better than I can drive the car you lent me.”

  “Good. It’s nearly nine hundred miles to the mines.”

  On the flight up, she told him a little about the monks. They were part of the only male religious order on Semay, and not a large order at that. They guarded and worked the ancient mines, the only place on all of Semay where the quartz veins could be found, and they cut and polished each goddess-eye crystal by hand. In their spare time, they irrigated their land, worked their fields, tended their livestock, pursued arcane branches of theological scholarship, and made their orisons to Ava. They were called criados de la diosa, Jovieve informed him: servants of the goddess.

  Drake never would have found the monks’ settlement if Jovieve had not been with him. A few miles too far north or south of the direct line and he would have missed it completely, for it was very small. The few fields of greenery looked like so much haze from a high altitude, and the long, low buildings were the exact colors of the sand and the dusty white hillocks that rose above the dunes. The mine, presumably, was underground, but no heavy equipment marked its mouth or tunnels. Even as they dropped closer for landing, no one appeared to be moving around the settlement, and no one seemed to be waiting to greet them.

  “Excellent camouflage,” Drake commented, and sent the little flier down in a spiraling descent which spun sand up in a cloud around their windows.

  They had barely climbed from the small cockpit when at last they saw signs of life: a solitary man hurrying toward them from the nearest nondescript building. He was slim, tall and dark, with a full beard. His loose hair was long enough to whip behind him as he strode forward.

  “Jovieve,” he said breathlessly. “You made good time.”

  “I had a professional in the pilot’s seat,” she said. “How are you, Tomas? You look well.”

  “Ah, the goddess has been good,” the criado replied, a smile making a curve of white through his dark beard. Drake realized that the monk was older than he had at first supposed, possibly in his late sixties, though he looked to be in excellent health and remarkably well-preserved. “The crops have been thick and rich, and the new livestock from Debenen has adapted exceptionally well to this climate. Last week, young Roberto took his vows, so we celebrated, and I believe we have a new novitiate coming out this fall.”

  “Ava is very kind,” Jovieve exclaimed. “Is he from Madrid?”

  “No, from Saville, from a very good family, in fact. His uncle was one of ours many years ago—do you remember Alonso?”

  “Of course. So now his nephew joins. Is his family pleased?”

  “They have three other sons, so, yes, they are pleased.” The criado laughed. “Otherwise, I fear they might not have expressed so much joy at all the honor done to one family in two generations.”

  Jovieve laughed as well. “But I am forgetting my manners,” she said. “Tomas, this is Lieutenant Cowen Drake, the Moonchild I told you about. He is looking into the deaths of the temple women.”

  Tomas was instantly serious. “A horrible business,” he said, reaching out to shake the Moonchild’s hand. “I am not a vengeful man, but I hope you are able to bring this terrible man to justice.”

  “I hope so, too, senyo Tomas,” Drake said.

  “No, no, just call me Tomas,” the servant of the goddess replied. “We have no formalities or titles here. Well, we are twenty men bunched in the middle of the desert, miles from any true civilization—we would look foolish calling each other ‘brother’ or ‘sir’ or some such nonsense. I hope you are not offended if I call you Cowen?”

  “Not at all.”

  “But now I am the one forgetting my manners,” the criado said, turning back toward the barracks. “Making you stand out here in this hot sun. Come in, come in, and tell me how I can help you.”

  But it was a few more minutes before they could obey that last injunction. They had to traverse the entire length of the long, plain building to get to Tomas’s offices; then he insisted on serving them lunch himself; and all the while, the priestess and the monk exchanged rapid observations about personnel both at the mine and in Madrid. For a hermit, Drake thought, Tomas seemed quite well-informed, and Jovieve seemed to tr
ust him absolutely.

  “But enough of this, we are boring Cowen,” Tomas said at length. “Come! Tell me how I can help you.”

  Jovieve glanced at him, so Drake told the story. “The killer in each case has taken the rosarios from the dead women,” Drake said. “Yesterday, he attacked two Triumphantes and tried to take their goddess-eyes. One of the girls said he spoke to them, saying something like ‘Is this it? Is this the one?’ What I want to know is this: Is there any way to differentiate one crystal from the other? Is there any way someone could be looking for a specific crystal? And is any one crystal more valuable than another?”

  Tomas was silent for a few moments, staring abstractedly before him. “As to value,” he said slowly, “I would say no. A larger crystal has more inherent value than a smaller one, perhaps, but all the priestesses’ crystals would be about the same size and weight. The smaller ones—the commercial ones—generally sell for one common price, even if there is a difference of a few carats between them. But if he is looking for a specific crystal . . .”

  “Is there a way to tell them apart?” Jovieve asked.

  “Is there any way to tell the crystal of one priestess from that of another?” Drake asked more specifically.

  “Oh yes,” Tomas said. “I am just surprised that anyone would know of it.”

  “Can you tell us?” Jovieve asked, seconds before Drake would have demanded the information a little less diplomatically.

  “Certainly,” Tomas said, coming to his feet. “It is not a secret, exactly. I just didn’t think anyone—but, here, let me show you.”

  He led them halfway back down the hallway and into a small, crowded chamber. It was a workroom, Drake saw instantly, filled with benches, tools, jeweler’s glasses and strange pieces of sharp-edged equipment that he could not guess how to use. It was well-lit by a grid of fluorescent lights when they entered, but Tomas instantly turned off the main switch, leaving only a small wall socket glowing. Drake and Jovieve stood by the center table, waiting.