Lee, Sharon & Miller, Steve - Liaden Books 1-9

by Liaden 1-9 (lit)

  Val Con dove and rolled in the narrow confines of the booth; he jackknifed and kicked the other's legs out from under him. The man used his fall to advantage, coming up on his knees, gun steady. As Val Con braced himself to leap, the Loop calculated the angle that would permit the greatest chance of nonfatal injury.

  "Val Con?" The voice was in his very ear, instantly recognized, dearly loved, and absolutely impossible. Before him, the agent held his fire.

  "Surrender and accompany me of your own will," he said. In his ear Shan's voice was worried, insistent: "Val Con!"

  He lunged.

  The agent fell badly, gun spinning out of his hand, head striking solidly into the thick wooden wall. The man was moving again, instantly, throwing himself over the weapon - but Val Con was already out the door and running.

  Beyond the depot, half a mile closer to Gylles, Miri shuddered, stopped, and stiffened, head up, questing inside herself: Val Con's pattern was - wrong.

  Even as she watched, the colors dimmed, and several major interlockings shuddered as if under insupportable strain. Directional sense wavered, failed for an instant - then the whole structure was back as it should be: bright and strong and sane.

  She relaxed, then stiffened as the cycle began once more; watching the colors dim, she spun back, terror for him overcoming dread for herself and loathing of the plastic envelope in her pocket.

  "Dammit, Val Con!"

  He slammed around the side of a food hall, glued his back to the wooden support, and whispered, "Shan?"

  "Where the devil are you?" demanded the voice in his ear - in his head - bringing with it a static crackle of concern/annoyance/determination/love.

  "The Winterfair," he whispered, craning to catch sight of the enemy among the thronging midway. "Where are you?"

  "The Passage. Give your coords, approximate local fix - "

  "No!" Val Con cried. He shrank back, biting his lip. "Shan, you must not come here! There's appalling danger - "

  "Plan B!" Shan's thought-voice overrode him. "Speak to me of danger, do!" Frustration, full anger, and not a little fear were added to the static pummeling him, and Val Con pushed hard against the wall, closing his eyes in an agony of emotion.

  "Don't..." he whispered, though the snow wind tore the word from his lips. "Brother - beloved - I cannot go mad just today."

  Abruptly the punishment ceased and was replaced before his knees began to buckle with a steadfast bone-warming glow. Val Con drew a hard breath against his brother's love and began to murmur again to the wind. "There is a man with a gun who will have me dead, and my lifemate is not with me. I've no time to argue points of melant'i with you! Stay clear - stay safe..."

  "We need you." There was a wealth of emotion attending that, mercifully damped to shadow.

  "The gunman has a ship," Val Con murmured. "Must have a ship! If the luck is willing, it is ours."

  Warmth faded to coldness; the inner ear perceived an echoing vastness...

  "Shan!"

  Warmth solidified. "Here. Running close to the time - uses too much energy. Assume the ship - what then?"

  "I'll take Miri to her people. Meet us - " In the midway crowd he glimpsed a familiar leather jacket on a man much shorter than average. The man checked, turned his head to the left, then to the right, and came confidently toward the corner of the food hall.

  "Go!" Val Con cried to his brother, and - pushed - with his mind. Vastness roared, emptily; then Val Con was slipping silently down the wall, toward the dim back of the building.

  Shan rolled and snapped to his feet, hand outstretched toward that last horrific vision: a man stalking purposefully toward him/Val Con, the outline of the gun clearly visible beneath his coat.

  "He was right there, Priscilla! I saw him! Gods - " He spun back toward the bed, confounded by his familiar room aboard the Passage - and then hurled himself forward, horror filling him completely.

  Priscilla was not breathing.

  What by all the gods could have made the man bolt like that?

  Miri leaned against a rack of skis, breathing hard and trying to track him. His pattern was steady at the moment and seemed rooted in one spot, a real relief after the crazy zigzagging and dodging he had been doing for the past ten minutes. She squared her shoulders and set out again, keeping her pace down to jog now that she was back among other pedestrians. All the hell clear across the fair. If that just wasn't like his wrong-headedness! Why hadn't he run toward her, if he was running from trouble? No sense to have -

  She swallowed hard, remembering the envelope of Cloud in her pocket; remembering the Liaden who had given it to her. Gut feeling said that Val Con was running from the Liaden - except that didn't make sense at all. Nothing about the whole setup made sense, but it suddenly looked like a good idea to get to Val Con and face whatever was after him, back to back. After that - she squashed the thought. Ain't any "after that," Robertson, she told herself harshly. Get used to it.

  Grief threatened to strangle her; instead, she put her attention back onto his pattern - and slammed to a halt, a cry caught in the knot of grief in her throat.

  Someone pushed into her, cursing; she moved until she came up against a wall and put her hands against it, fingers digging into the wood, eyes staring straight ahead, seeing only within.

  His pattern flickered, danced, expanded, distorted, all seen through a shroud of swirling flame and color. The flames drew in upon themselves briefly, then expanded and remained constant for a moment. The pattern seemed as if it were going to fade altogether - did fade...There was a touch, like a cold kiss upon her cheek...

  And Val Con was gone.

  "No..." It was a whimper, short nails scoring hardened wood. "No!" she cried again in a burst of anguish as she slammed her head against the wall and thrust her whole self into the void where his pattern had been a heartbeat before; she went through that space and out, so it seemed, to a place of flailing wind and burning ice-falls and a woman's voice crying out despairingly, as Miri reeled and went to her knees on the frozen ground.

  Swallowing against nausea, steeled for silence and emptiness, she probed the place. And swallowed suddenly against joy.

  He was back: whole, scintillant, sane. Alive.

  "Alive," Miri whispered, she climbed to her feet, rubbing her forehead where she had hit it against the wall.

  Shakily she got her bearings and, walking steadily, she set out to find him.

  DUTIFUL PASSAGE

  "Priscilla!"

  Empty. A void where her mindsong should be - and the failing glow of the autonomic system.

  Healer training took over, forcing the horror he felt out of consciousness, forcing his attention to the details that made up life. No breath; no heartbeat; autonomics fading to nothing even as he scanned...He needed a medic! But there was no time to call: Priscilla's body would be dead before Vilt could hope to get there from sickbay.

  Terror lashed him, but was shunted aside as he lay his hand on her cooling breast; he grabbed and molded that terror in a way he had never been taught - and released it in a bolt of mind-searing energy.

  He went to his knees with the shock of it; feeling the heart flutter beneath his hand, he began the sequence: press, release, press, release. The body caught the rhythm, lost it, caught weakly - and steadied. Breath began raggedly; the autonomic system glowed to full capacity. Shan withdrew his assistance, watching breathlessly as the body lived on without it.

  He dragged himself to his feet, casting with Healer's senses for the thread that had anchored Priscilla to her body.

  There was nothing - no strand, no echo of emotion. Priscilla was gone, as if she had never been.

  Horror rose again, and he welcomed it, using the energy to cast his Seeking wider, touching over the patterns of all who remained within the Passage, searching for a hint, for a memory, for a chord that was Priscilla.

  Lina's pattern held him longest, and then Gordy's - but Priscilla had not fled to her friend or to her foster son, and Shan soug
ht further, opening himself as he had never done, reading as he knew he could not...

  There! An echo, a glow of recall, a familiar, warm touch of comfort.

  Following the hint, Shan encountered a scattering of human patterns, the random buzz that was the pattern of lower animals, the near-cogent hum of the norbears - the Pet Library, Priscilla's first refuge aboard the Passage, nearly eight Standards earlier. He narrowed his scan, searching minutely, and found her at last, hugged tight within the devoted, comforting pattern of Master Frodo, king of the norbears.

  Recklessly Shan expended energy and found himself for a disorienting heartbeat not nearer the norbear and his beloved, but back in his body, slumped over Priscilla's, head pillowed on a breast that gently rose and fell, as if in sleep.

  "No!" He wrenched himself away, and fled back toward the Pet Library, homing in on Master Frodo's pattern.

  He extended a tendril of affection toward the tiny empath and received the usual happy greeting; but the creature's joy was somewhat mixed with puzzlement, so that he fed out, too, a line of comfort to the norbear before seeking Priscilla herself.

  She was wrapped tightly behind an intense shield, reinforced at several points by the norbear's natural defenses.

  Shan came as close as he dared, trying to recall exactly how he had bespoken Val Con, then once again expended energy and thought of calling her name. Priscilla!

  The surface of her shield shimmered, a wisp of pattern escaping; then more slipped out, displaying recognition, quickly followed by dismay, fear, and love. He returned love, comfort, and security; he tried again to bespeak her, to urge her to leave Master Frodo's protections for his own, but she gave no sign that she heard.

  Gently, infinitely patient, he kept sending love, comfort, and security, paying out a Healer's line of rescue, and finally he felt her first tenuous grip on the line strengthen and grow certain.

  He ignored the strain and payed the line out, feeling her shed defenses, hesitate, and stand away from Master Frodo's shield, exposing the kernel of her being to the void.

  Shan reached in some indefinable way, encircled his beloved, and shook them both loose of Master Frodo's influence.

  He reentered his body with a suddenness that was agony, and Priscilla seemed to join him there for a moment before she fled, pouring across the physical link of their bodies until, with a shocking break, she left his awareness.

  Vilt had come and gone, after administering vitamin shots and a very sound scolding for whatever it was that they had done to make each of them shed so much weight, so quickly. While he was scolding Shan, Priscilla had called Lina and asked her to go to Master Frodo with an extra ration of corn; then she had ordered two complete dinners to be delivered immediately to the captain's office.

  The dinner itself was gone and Priscilla was sitting next to Shan on the couch, head resting on his shoulder as she thought about what he had told her. Finally she sighed and stirred, sitting up to look into his silver eyes.

  "Shan?"

  "Yes, Priscilla?"

  "Why didn't you go to the Wizard's College in Solcintra?"

  Surprise flickered. "Because I'm not a dramliza, Priscilla; I'm a Healer."

  "Yes, but you see," she said, very gently, "Healers can't do the things you've been telling me you've done - that I know you've done, as I sit here in body before you! And no wizard that I know of - or witch, either - can speak directly, mind to mind."

  He frowned. "Nonsense. You yourself left a dream with Val Con's lady - and she replied!"

  "Yes, of course. But neither of us spoke directly to the other. Think how much easier it would have been, if that was a common sort of ability. Anthora might have spoken to Val Con months ago, relaying Nova's order to come home!"

  He shifted uncomfortably, then finally grinned. "Well, what can my excuse be, except that neither Val Con nor I knew the thing was impossible, and so we had a very nice chat!" The grin faded. "More - he was receiving me as another Healer might: asked me to damp the emotional output. And I saw through his eyes!"

  He straightened and grabbed her hand, his own eyes near-hypnotic in their intensity. "I saw a man with a gun come out of the crowd; saw him turn toward Val Con..." He slumped back. "Then we were cut loose."

  "Where is he?" she asked, after the silence went beyond a dozen heartbeats.

  Shan laughed sharply. "Refused to tell me! Stay away and stay safe, he said! No time to play melant'i games with me - by which I assume he means he speaks to me not as my brother, but as my future Delm! Hah! There's a change of song, Priscilla! And finally, just before he pushes us away and all but loses me my lifemate, he tells me to meet him. The man with the gun also has a spaceship, you see, so that all Val Con need do is murder him to be free to leave the planet at his leisure and go to Miri's people. Wherever that may be."

  "Miri," Priscilla said. "It was Miri who cut us loose." She sighed and added, as the Goddess demanded truth to be told, "My fault."

  "Your fault?" Shan blinked. "Miri shoves us out into the void, and it's your fault? Priscilla..."

  "My fault," she repeated. "My pride. I was so sure I could keep you safe! And when you turned your attention to Val Con - you used energy at such a rate, I was frightened for you, for the link with the Passage. I gave you as much as I could, but it wasn't enough. You faded, and I nearly lost you, and I reached out, tapped the lifemate bridge between Val Con and Miri - there's so much energy there!" She paused, gripping his hand, the gem in his ring biting comfortably into her palm, and she gave thanks to the Goddess, who had tested her fully and allowed her to remain yet a time in the active universe.

  "Miri felt the interference in the bridge," she told Shan. "I must have obscured her vision of Val Con - she must have thought him in great danger...dead. Think of the shock, when you are used to being in harmony with someone, when that person goes behind a wall and shuts you out..." She shook her head. "She's not trained - didn't know how to see me; didn't know how to seek. All she could do was thrust out with all the power of her will and try to reestablish her link with her lifemate."

  "Casting us loose in the process," Shan finished, and sighed, "Formidable." He looked into her eyes. "But what you tell me indicates that you're not at fault - nor is Val Con, nor is Miri. The person who bears blame - for terrifying you; for all but killing you - is Shan yos'Galan, for his greed and the selfishness of his necessities."

  "No - "

  "Yes!" He touched her face and ran his fingers into her hair. "Priscilla, you must not allow me to endanger you! You see what I am - a man so lost to anything but his own desires that he may slay his lifemate!"

  "Shan!" She drew herself up, hearing the resonance in her own voice. "That is untrue."

  He started, stared at her face - Goddess alone knew what he saw there - then pushed forward, his arms going around her, his cheek against hers.

  She held him, and he held her, for an unmeasured time; then she asked the question he must have been asking himself, over and over, since his conversation with his brother.

  "Would Val Con kill a man for his ship?"

  Shan stirred, sighing like a weary child. "yos'Pheliums have a peculiar passion for ships, Priscilla; family history is full of chancy deeds done for the sake of the things. Val Con?" He sat up and shook his head. "My brother tells a story of the time he had captured an Yxtrang - to talk with him, so he informed me, and have an open and equal exchange of views. He says that when they had finished their chat, he let the creature go, because there was no sense in killing him, though that argument has never stopped Yxtrang from killing as many non-Yxtrang as they chose."

  He sighed again. "How do I know what he'll do, Priscilla? Would you let an Yxtrang go?"

  VANDAR

  Winterfair

  The agent came forward, confidence in every stride; Val Con slid toward the back of the food hall, slipped around the corner, and ran, nearly knocking over a young couple lost in each other against the back wall.

  Back on the midway, he be
came one more of a knot of fairgoers traveling in the general direction of the Winter Train. An agent might attempt a kill under such conditions; the Loop indicted that this particular agent had an overriding need for more discreet manners.

  His thoughts ran in layers: one relieved by the stabilization of Miri's song; another, an amalgam of the Scout and the agent, concerned with weighing the likelihood of an attack, with being sure he left as little trail as possible, and with watching for signs of pursuit.

  Another layer of thought wrestled with the puzzle of the agent's ship: was it on-world or in orbit? Was the agent alone, or did another wait with the vessel? How to find it? How to obtain the ship keys? It was unlikely that the man on his trail would voluntarily answer those questions, though coercion might be brought to bear. Val Con nearly sighed. It was possible to kill an agent, though difficult. But it was immeasurably more difficult to capture one.

  "Plan B," Shan had said. What could have gone wrong? Was the Department openly attacking Korval? The Juntavas...He closed off that particular layer of thought. It merely distracted and brought unresolved emotions to the fore, when he needed all of his energy to preserve his life and that of his lifemate - and to gain that ship!

  The crowd changed direction; he exchanged it for another, checking his song of her to make certain that Miri was still in the vicinity of the train.

  The agent was good and knew that he was good; he was perhaps just a shade overconfident. The general speed with which he moved argued enhanced reactions - stimulants - which meant he would tire more quickly, over an extended period of time. Neither factor was significant in the short run. That he wore body armor indicated that he had studied Val Con as Val Con had studied his own targets in the past. Had he studied enough to know of the other blade - the blade Edger had given him? The possession of a weapon that could slip through body armor as easily as through water significantly altered the situation in Val Con's favor - and was negated by the burning necessity to keep the man alive long enough to learn about the ship.