The Summer Thieves

by Paul Di Filippo

  “Your will is now an extension of mine. You must do as I command! Dance a tarantella for us.”

  Drowne got up from his chair and performed a clumsy jig.

  “Enough! I think this small demonstration affirms my mystical powers. It is not necessary for me to make any other arbitrary demands, such as ‘Come to my room just before dawn.’ No indeed, ‘Come to my room, Honko Drowne, just before dawn’ is something I utter merely as a lark. And with this, our little game is finished! Honko Drowne, when I snap my fingers, you are again your own man!”

  Celestro made the clicking sound, and Honko Drowne emerged instantly from his abstracted state.

  “What did I tell you? Invincible, was I not?”

  No one contradicted the Red Lion.

  “Quite so.” Celestro confessed. “I am humbled.”

  The strained festivities ran their course for another few hours. Then Drowne signalled an end to the evening.

  “Sleep well, my guests, for tomorrow is a new day, with new demands and duties.”

  Trailing behind the rest of his party, Johrun climbed the staircase of ice with leaden feet and empty mind and heart.

  At the entrance to Celestro’s apartments, the conjuror halted. “Vir Corvivios, I find myself lonely tonight, even with my restavek for company. Would you and your splice care to fetch your packs and spend the next few hours until dawn with me?”

  “What foolish whim is this, Celestro?”

  Celestro showed his right palm. In it rested one of the injectables from his kit, drained.

  “Whim yes, foolish no, think you not?”

  Fully dressed for the planet’s frigid clime, their packs shouldered, having not slept a wink, the four visitors to Itaska waited by the exit to Celestro’s rooms, saying nothing. Johrun hardly dared to believe what might be about to transpire.

  As the faintest light begin to seep around the edges of the parchment shades, a dim sound of shuffling footsteps coming up the stairs reached them.

  Honko Drowne entered the apartment, a sleepwalker’s demeanor evident in every movement. He was wearing a thick flannel gown, tasselled nightcap, and fur slippers.

  Instantly Celestro slapped a second injectable against his neck. The Red Lion’s frame juddered.

  Celestro spoke sotto voce. “Honko Drowne, you hear my voice of command. Lead the way outside.”

  Johrun and the others slinked along behind the Red Lion.

  At ground level they were just about to file outside, past the thick curtain of hides that shielded the entrance to the tower, when a voice accosted them.

  “Halt! What goes on here!”

  Akna Drowne, clad in like manner to her husband, stood at the portal to their apartments. With a quickness of perception, she assessed all the meaning in the frozen guilty tableau. Anger flooded her face, and she opened her mouth wide to shout.

  But no words emerged, only a hearty freshet of bright indigo blood.

  Lutramella pulled her begored poignard out of Akna’s ribs before the woman could even fall.

  “So fat was the meaty bitch, I had to shove it in all the way to the guard!”

  “Swiftly!” Celestro urged. “Conceal her inside!”

  Taryn and Johrun hefted the weighty corpse and carried her into the apartments. They deposited her between bed and wall, then hastened to join the others, already outside.

  If Drowne were cognizant of his wife’s murder, he was unable to react, exhibiting a mute dispassion. Celestro gave him more orders.

  “Fetch the worm dancer to summon Tizheruk. Have your chariot brought here. Then rejoin us. Speedily now!”

  Drowne moved off at a brisk clip, as if fully in charge of himself.

  “Dare we trust him unsupervised?” Johrun said.

  “The manacles of the drug are unbreakable. Have no doubts.”

  Drowne soon returned with the sleep-fuddled worm dancer. Not far behind, four Itaskans pulled the monowheel by its traces.

  The next events happened almost faster than Johrun’s dizzied brain could comprehend. Within the space of a quarter hour, the titanic ice worm dubbed Tizheruk had arrived and been yoked to the monowheel. The opened door to the passenger sphere revealed a compartment with a circular cushioned couch just able to seat five people if they all coordinated their in and out breaths. There was no room for luggage.

  Johrun said, “Stuff your pockets with food bars. We’ll have to drink melted ice. It’s only two days back, if Drowne did not exaggerate the speed of this beast.”

  Celestro said, “Wait! We need a worm rider.”

  Johrun said, “Let’s get Cupuni. She knows the way, and was somewhat sympathetic to us.”

  Taryn said, “That’s a new description for the services she rendered.”

  Celestro whispered in Drowne’s ear, Drowne repeated his words to his minions, and in short form Cupuni showed up. She received her orders directly from Drowne with no evidence of suspicion.

  The five riders bundled into the sphere. Johrun leaned out the open door and said to Cupuni, “Take off!”

  He barely got the door latched before the monowheel jumped into motion. Outside the windows, the Spires rapidly shrank to a cluster of nubbins on the horizon.

  The next two days passed in a quasi-hallucinatory fugue of boredom, anxiety, awkwardness, discomfort, and anticipation. Conversation soon lost its charms. (But before talk petered out, Johrun did manage to express his gratitude to Lutramella for her decisive act of savagery. She only smiled and said, “Better I assume the burden than you, Joh. Splices have no consciences for blood to stain. Or so humans always say.”) They never stopped save for sanitary reasons or to collect ice to melt by body heat alone, lacking as they did all other heat sources. They were never cold in the cabin, thanks to that same body heat, but sleep was difficult, not only due to elbows-rubbing proximity but also to the swaying, sometimes bouncing, sometimes convulsive motion of the monowheel.

  After the first twenty-four hours of incessant motion had passed, Johrun thought, during a stop, to ask Cupuni how she was faring under the demands for speed.

  “I drink Tizheruk’s juices while I ride, and sleep atop him as well. It is not a routine I would endure forever, but two days is easy.”

  Drowne gave no trouble and undertook no independent actions. But he did begin to seem twitchy after a day and a half, and Celestro administered another injectable of compulsion drug.

  “My last dose. We could of course simply tie him up at this juncture, but it’s easier to have him docile.”Finally, after a seeming eternity of stagnant, chafing travel, their braneship came into sight. Johrun thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

  Cupuni received orders from Drowne to halt the worm a little distance from the ship. Johrun feared that Tizheruk might inadvertently harm their craft, and strand them.

  Everyone emerged from the capsule. Johrun’s legs felt stiff as wood. The wrist he had injured throbbed. Onboard the ship there would be high-tech solace.

  Johrun turned to Cupuni. “All my thanks for your unstinting service, Cupuni.”

  The Itaskan smile, seldom seen, revealed its kinship to all human benevolence elsewhere.

  “You take some of me to the stars. Don’t forget.”

  They began to march awkwardly forward. Lutramella kept checking her vambrace for signs they had left the Supressor zone behind.

  The signature barrage of sounds made by a subterranean worm burst upon them. One of the behemoths erupted into the air. It shed a dozen Itaskans who had been clamped to its torso. They began to run toward Johrun and company.

  “Our plot is revealed,” Celestro said. “A force closer than the Spires must have been dispatched to stop us! Run!”

  Lutramella was already in the lead. She suddenly stopped.

  “My vambrace lives. Here is civilization! Johrun, take this!”

  Johrun came abreast of Lutramella and snatched his Kingslake glial jammer from her hand. He turned and fanned the Itaskans with its invisible beam. Down they
tumbled, like skittles, not permanently hurt. Outside the gun’s range, the two worms, without human guidance, dropped peacefully to the ice.

  The modest interior of the ship resembled heaven. It took but a few words to the artilect to initiate its climb to orbit.

  Johrun and Taryn and Lutramella fell upon each other, laughing, crying, and exclaiming. Without orders, Honko Drowne, still in his soiled sleepwear, remained standing like a moribund puppet.

  When their spontaneous relief had ceased to flow, Johrun said, “At last we bring Honko Drowne to Bodenshire and justice.”

  Celestro’s voice was firm yet placid. “I think not.”

  Johrun turned to see Celestro pointing a large pistol at him and the others.

  “My plans,” the man said, “take precedence.”

  CHAPTER 15

  First, many decades ago, Xul Corvivios and Brayall Soldevere had stolen Verano, the summer world, from Honko Drowne. Then, just weeks ago, the enigmatic Redhook Combine had managed to steal the planet—temporarily, if not yet decisively—from those two families. And now the Omnipotent Celestro appeared to have succeeded in stealing the arcadian world once more. For in assuming control over Drowne, the one man who could settle all disputations regarding the legal title to Verano, and declaring that he had no intention of allowing Drowne to testify on Bodenshire, Celestro had ripped from Johrun’s hands the brief certainty of nailing down his beloved planet’s ownership.

  For Johrun’s whole life, Verano had been something he could carry in his hip pocket like a lucky pebble, secure in his favored possession. Now it seemed a slippery illusion, a fungible commodity jumping from hand to hand. But his love for his home planet remained inviolable and non-transferable.

  Staring into the barrel of Celestro’s gun—Johrun recognized it as an Isher Brothers protein liquescer, an antipersonnel weapon much like his glial jammer, very safe to employ infragile environments such as a braneship—Johrun had to force himself to instantly recalibrate all his earlier assumptions about Celestro’s motives, nature, and actions. But the mental flipflop was surprisingly easy to make. Many of Celestro’s past behaviors and deeds fell easily into the new alignment.

  “This is something you’ve intended from the very first, isn’t it? It’s not a spontaneous thing at all.”

  “Quite correct. I am happy—indeed eager—to discuss all the finer points of my scheme with you, just as soon as you discard your gun and dagger. The same goes for you, Mir Furball. I have been impressed by your skill with that blade.”

  Lutramella and Johrun both complied, tossing their weapons onto the divan.

  “Taryn, please take up those dangerous things and sequester them in the forelocker.”

  The mention of Taryn’s name shocked Johrun. Faced with this betrayal by Celestro, he had for a moment utterly forgotten the very existence of the woman he had just been hugging and celebrating with. Now he turned to regard her with an imploring look. Surely she must resist these heinous acts, so alien to her easygoing and loving nature. Could she not deploy whatever sway she had over Celestro to stop him?

  Taryn’s face registered utter dismay and a deep sorrow. She returned Johrun’s look in equal measure before asking Celestro, “Must I really? Is this the wisest course? Can’t we all reach some kind of compromise, where everyone comes out okay?”

  “No, dear, I am afraid not. Now, do as you are told. Or must I remind you of your bonds?”

  Taryn picked up the three weapons, and, plainly heartsick, tried to explain to Johrun and Lu.

  “When my parents sold me to that first family, the contract was witnessed by the bonzes of Apma Tagaro, and endorsed in the god’s name. And when that family sold me to Celestro, the same bonds were transmitted unbroken. Such is our way on Anilda. If I break the strictures placed upon me, the ghosts of my parents would tumble into the lowest realms, where all is wailing and stones in the belly. This is the life of a restavek. As a child of Apma Tagaro, I am compelled to do whatever my owner commands. Even if he were to ask me to kill myself, I would.”

  “That won’t be necessary, dear—at least for the moment. But please stash those weapons safely out of reach, so I may revel in my wonted peace of mind. Now, if you two will sit down, we can discuss your role in my plans, which actually requires nothing from you but devout inaction and obedience. Oh, yes, Drowne, you sit too.”

  Johrun sat between Drowne and Lutramella. His leg against the splice’s, he could sense the tension in Lutramella’s sinews, as if she were prepared to jump at Celestro, to take the deadly brunt of the first blast from his gun to allow Johrun a chance to subdue the man. He laid one hand on her thigh and squeezed in a way he hoped she would interpret as denial of her sacrifice. He sensed her muscles relax with reluctant compliance.

  Celestro rested one hip on a table, but kept his gun nicely centered on his listeners, as if he too saw the splice’s intentions. Again Johrun wondered if the man really could read minds.

  Taryn returned from stowing their weapons and took a seat beside her master at the table. Content that all the actors were in their places, Celestro began his peroration.

  “When I first saw your solicitation for transport to Itaska, and your promise that you could obtain an audience with its most infamous inhabitant, a rogue who would accept no strangers into his presence, I could not believe my luck. The person of Honko Drowne, a wanted fugitive on many worlds and in the eyes of the Quinary, had long attracted my interests. Capturing him and remanding him to a select authority could be very profitable indeed.”

  Johrun interrupted. “Then bring him back to Bodenshire! Take your reward from the Brickers!”

  Celestro laughed. “The Brickers offer a handshake, a certificate of merit, and some coupons redeemable for their services. Not my preferred reward, especially weighed against what I am about to reveal. But in any case, let me continue. The timing of your naive appeal was exquisite. I was beginning to get very concerned about my tenure as a gadabout mountebank. Many planets, formerly lush picking grounds, were now terra prohibitos, so to speak—for unfair reasons we shall not delve into. So this opportunity to set myself up for a golden retirement was very much appreciated. I resolved not to lose it.

  “Immediately I began contacting various parties whom Drowne had wronged, seeking to establish if their offers for his capture were still in force. I settled finally on the bounty offered by the Eternalists of Aevum Seven. Perhaps you recall that particular little escapade perpetrated by your bad uncle?”

  Under the strain of being quizzed at gunpoint, Johrun had to ransack the memories of his researches into Drowne before he could come up with the reference.

  “Not the Ravishment of the Ten Thousand Virgins!”

  “Yes, the very same. Onto the sacred soil of Aevum Seven, just outside the nunnery of Saint Chriselma, your friend descended with a fleet of fifty cargo carriers helmed by various reliable ruffians of his circle. Onto each of the ships they herded two hundred nuns, offering them very undignified and insalubrious accommodations. Then, away to the fleshpots of New Thelema! True, the Eternalists later generously ransomed most of the captives—except for those who had become enamored of their new occupations. But their utility as nuns was at an end.

  “All of this left the Eternalists with an understandable grudge against Vir Drowne. They believe that his borxha, his karma, is entangled with theirs, a permanent stain that must be removed. And they value my help with the removal of this stain at exactly ten million chains. A mere thousand chains per sisterly hymen, which I think is rather meager. But who am I to perform such numinous accounting?”

  Johrun said, “So we’re on our way to Aevum Seven, to turn Drowne over to the Eternalists.”

  “In an admirably compact nutshell.”

  Snatching at a straw, Johrun said, “Perhaps they would let the Brickers put him to the inquestorial meshes once they imprison him.”

  Celestro laughed uproariously. “Imprison! They have the most extreme and convoluted program of bodil
y and mental retribution laid out for Drowne that you could ever imagine! Since the Eternalist theology maintains that the greater the suffering, the higher into the Perfumed Plenum one is reborn, even if you are a sinner, they have no compunctions about conferring such a blessing on Drowne. It’s all rather paradoxical, but I have never made any pretense at comprehending the religious mind. No, quite soon after I hand him over, Drowne will barely be able to recite the alphabet, never mind display his shattered âmago for your benefit.”

  Johrun slumped down. Here was the inescapable end of all his efforts.

  Lutramella spoke with the practical outlook of her kind. “What do you intend to do with us?”

  “Now you pierce straight to the heart of your fate, Mir Fishercat, with the poignard of your intellect, just as you tickled the heart of Queen Akna. Of course, I could have marooned you on Itaska, had I a mind to, or slain you anytime in the past half hour. The fact that I have not done so should convey the extent of my mercy and charity. I have always refrained from murder whenever possible. Who after all can affirm that god-botherers like the Eternalists and their ilk are incorrect? I might indeed face dire afterlife consequences for what the censorious worlds and their wives choose to regard as sins. So for the nonce, after I conclude my business I think I shall just strand you two someplace where you can’t report my actions to anyone until I am safely settled out of general reach of busybodies. That is, I will extend this favor if you do not cause me any trouble in the meantime. Which I do not think you can accomplish if you remain locked in your cabin until we reach Aevum Seven. So please stand, and move to that very room. But first, Mir Mink, hand over your vambrace.”

  Lutramella unseamed her vambrace and passed it over. The swatch of her pelt formerly beneath the device showed as glossy as elsewhere, thanks to the quasi-living caretaker interface of the vambrace.

  Inside their cabin, Johrun turned to face Celestro through the open door for one final plea.

  “You know I own Verano. The planet is rich beyond my needs. Just one month’s sale of herple meat brings in five million chains. I can pay you ten times what the Eternalists will pay for Drowne.”