“Ale,” Gryph said. His eyes were on Sariana’s worried face. “What happened to you? You look like you swam the river.”
“I did. I’ll tell you all about it later.”
An image of Lucky popped into her head but Gryph said nothing aloud. Sariana blinked, realizing he was projecting the question silently. Which meant he probably wanted a silent answer. She casually patted her cloak pocket. Lucky stayed silent.
“Targyn, take Lady Sariana’s cloak, will you?” Rakken asked as he opened a bottle of ale. “And then tell Miscroft we’re ready for dinner.”
“Tell him yourself. You can take care of the woman’s cloak, too. I don’t take orders from you.” Targyn strode across the room and snatched a bottle of ale from the cabinet in the wall. “I don’t take orders from anyone,” he added as he opened the bottle. “You have a bad habit of forgetting that, banker.”
“My apologies, Lord Targyn. I’ll tell Miscroft myself. Excuse me for a moment.”
Sariana saw the anger in Rakken’s eyes as he went past her, but he was careful to keep it under control. It was obvious Etion did not want to push Targyn too much.
Targyn tipped the bottle of ale and downed several large swallows. Then he lowered the bottle and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. He ignored Sariana but his eyes were feverishly alert as they scanned Gryph.
“I’m going to kill you,” Targyn said. “Before this is all over, I’m going to kill you. There’s a certain justice here, you know. I think you’re the one the Council would have sent after me. Nervous fools. I’ll use you for target practice. I’ve never killed another Shield. Should be interesting for both of us.” He took another swallow of ale and chuckled. “Rakken wants to keep you alive for a while. He thinks we may need you. He’s afraid I’ll lose control of the prisma and detonate it accidentally if I don’t have backup. But I’m a lot stronger than he thinks. When this is all over I’m going to get rid of you both. He’s been useful up until now, but I don’t need a banker for what I have in mind for the future.”
“What do you have in mind?” Gryph crossed the room with painful slowness and finally dropped down onto the oddly contoured bench. His last movement was a little too quick and the twist locked for a few seconds. Gryph set his teeth against the obvious pain and waited until the straps loosened slightly.
Sariana hurried over to the cabinet and picked up the ale bottle Rakken had opened earlier for his prisoner. She brought it over to the low table and set it down in front of Gryph. She sensed the way he was focusing on Targyn and wondered at it. Gryph was concentrating much too hard on the other Shield, even though he was trying to hide the tense surveillance.
Sariana didn’t pick up a sense of fear emanating from Gryph. It was more like a battle-ready tension. He clearly considered Targyn a dangerous opponent.
It came to Sariana in that moment that Targyn was somehow the source of that potentially lethal blast of light that had brought her awake in the early hours of the morning. And then she knew for certain that Gryph had been the target of that fireball. She shivered as she sat down near him. It didn’t require any great intuitive powers to know Gryph had nearly been killed; that he still might be killed.
“What do I have in mind?” Targyn repeated as he lounged against the wall. “I’ll tell you what I have in mind. I’m going to take control of the western provinces, Chassyn. I’m going to have access to all the potential Shieldmates I want and I’m going to produce sons who will someday run the eastern provinces as well as the west. I’m going to create a dynasty of Shields who will take their rightful place on this backwater world.”
“The First Generation Pact establishes our role on this planet,” Gryph pointed out calmly. He slowly and cautiously picked up the bottle of ale. “Nobody signed anything that puts us in charge.”
“The First Generation Pact is an abomination. The Pact was made by sniveling cowards who thought they had to make an alliance with a bunch of stupid colonists who should have died in a lightstorm in the first place.” Targyn moved away from the metal wall and waved his ale bottle in a gesture that took in the whole room. “Our brave forefathers were nothing but a herd of nervous keenshees, Chassyn. We got stranded on this planet with a bunch of fools who were involved in some sort of social experiment. We should have taken charge right from the beginning.”
“There wasn’t much point,” Gryph observed mildly. “Once they realized they were stranded here, the Shields assumed there wouldn’t be a second generation. It was a fluke that a handful of empathic females survived the crash and even more of a break that they were willing to mate with our ancestors.”
Targyn swung around, his scarred face a taut mask of fury. “Those first Shields were cowards. They never assumed their rightful role. They were the strong ones. They should have dominated this continent. All of its resources should have been theirs. They should have ruled. Where are we instead? Living in isolated frontier towns, practicing the old ways of working prisma just in case a stray crystal ship shows up. In the meantime we earn our keep rooting out bandits and doing odd jobs for people who don’t want to get their hands dirty. And each generation holds its breath hoping its sons will find a few usable females and that those females will be available under the terms of the damned Pact. Fools, idiots, cowards!” Targyn hurled his empty bottle against the wall. It shattered and fell onto the metal floor.
At that moment the door slid open. Etion Rakken walked in, ignoring the broken ale bottle as if nothing at all were out of the ordinary.
“Miscroft will bring us our meal in a few minutes. Another glass of wine, Sariana?” His gracious manner was intact.
“Yes,” Sariana managed to get out in what she hoped was a reasonably calm voice. “I think I could use it.”
Targyn glared at all of them: “I have no interest in this pretense of proper social behavior you all feel obliged to engage in. I’ve got more important things to do.” He strode toward the door, indicating Gryph with his chin as he went out. “Watch him, Rakken. If he gets out of control it’ll be your problem, not mine. If I find him running loose around here, I’ll just kill him now and be done with it.”
The door slid shut behind him.
Silence reigned for a short moment in the room. Then Gryph took a long swallow of his ale.
“He’s insane, you know. Crazier than a keenshee in heat.”
“I know,” Rakken said calmly. “That’s why I need you.”
Sariana put her hands flat on the table. “Do you know what Targyn’s planning to do?”
Rakken smiled grimly. “The man has delusions of grandeur.”
“What about your delusions?” Gryph asked.
“Mine,” Etion explained calmly, “are a lot more realistic.. The biggest single find of prisma that has ever been made is sitting in a metal room not far from here. My plan was to use Targyn to neutralize it and then cut it up into marketable pieces. All of it. You see, unlike Targyn, I know what real power is and how it’s achieved. One does not own a continent with weapons, although they may be useful as a threat from time to time.” He smiled at Sariana. “I am an easterner at heart. I know that there is only one true source of power.”
“Great wealth,” Sariana concluded for him. She was awed in spite of herself at what he was proposing.
“Precisely, my dear.” Rakken raised his glass of wine. “To a future filled with prisma.”
Chapter
17
“SUPPOSE you give this to us in a straight line from the beginning, Rakken.” Gryph examined the food being set in front of him as he spoke and decided his host probably wasn’t going to poison him or Sariana. Not yet at any rate. He automatically reached for one of the eating implements left behind by the silent Miscroft and got his wrist jerked by the twist strap. It took a lot of effort to move with the slow deliberation required by the device. It was like having one’s reflexes chained.
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It wasn’t the pain of the twist that was worrying him the most right now, although he detested being treated like a border bandit. His chief concern was Sariana.
He should have known she would follow him instead of heading back to Last Chance as ordered. Mentally he calculated the distance she had come. He didn’t know for certain when she had left the cove, but he was willing to lay odds on the time having been shortly before dawn. About the instant Targyn had sent that paralyzing blast of energy into his head.
She must have found him by the same means he had traced her at the Little Chance fair, using the strange link that shimmered erratically between them.
Gryph glanced at Sariana who was eating her food with all the fine manners she would use during a formal meal in the Avylyn household. From her calm, politely regal attitude a man would think she dined out in strange chambers lined with alien metal several times a month. She constantly amazed him.
He knew from the fact that she had obviously been drenched earlier in the day that the loss of the sled had been a harrowing ordeal. He could only speculate on what had happened to the blade bow. It had undoubtedly been lost when the sled capsized.
Ah, well, he chided himself. If it hadn’t disappeared into the river, Targyn would have taken it from her when he had discovered her climbing the canyon wall. There was no point tormenting himself with thoughts of how useful the weapon would have been in their present situation. A man had to work with what he had.
Unfortunately, what he had at the moment was a very limited assortment of tools.
“From the beginning?” Rakken mused as he served himself from one of the platters Miscroft had left. He poured another glass of wine for himself while he was at it. “Well, that would take us back to a little over five years ago when I first accepted the reality of my circumstances. It was clear to me that I was going to have to live in exile for the rest of my days. An unfortunate scandal back home ensured my sentence. I determined then that my exile would be as comfortable as possible, however.” He looked at Sariana with a faint smile. “For the past year I have urged you to accept the reality of your own exile, Sariana. But you insisted on clinging to your dreams of going home. If you had shown a realistic attitude, I would have taken you into my confidence much sooner. I have felt all along that you and I would make a good team. But you needed time to adjust to the notion of being stranded in the western provinces.”
“She’s not stranded,” Gryph pointed out coolly. “Nor is she in exile. Not any longer. In case you’ve forgotten, she has recently married into a new social class. That class has a policy of looking after its own. That’s something you would do well to keep in mind.”
Rakken’s mouth twisted slightly. “So you have become Shield business, Sariana. If you had shown some sense when I suggested a marriage alliance between the two of us you would not be in the situation you presently find yourself.”
“What situation is that, Etion?” Sariana faced him with politely challenging inquiry. “Tell me exactly what is going on around here.”
“Very well.” Etion sat forward, his expression becoming more intense. He sipped wine, ignoring his food. “Five years ago I set out to make my fortune here in the west. The bank I established has proved quite profitable. The locals are shrewd in some ways but quite unsophisticated in others.”
“Spoken like a typical easterner,” Gryph muttered as he slowly put a wedge of bread into his mouth and chewed.
“I’m afraid it’s true,” Etion said mildly. “Westerners proved fairly easy to manipulate in business, although I’ll admit they’re learning. In any event, given the foreseeable future, I tried to make the best of matters. I learned as much as I could about western history, including the legend of the Shield class. It was, I soon found out, all bound up with the legend of the origin of prisma. I quickly discovered just how extremely valuable and rare prisma is. I decided that my goal would be to corner the market. But other than that which already exists as jewelry or weapon kit locks, the stuff is impossible to find. And then I learned that the only way to get more of it was to uncover something called a prisma crystal ship.”
“I didn’t even believe such ships existed until recently,” Sariana put in.
Rakken nodded. “I know. The locals have a built-in tendency toward drama. They love a good story. For quite some time I was sure the tale of the ships and the Shields’ ability to work prisma was just the stuff of legend. But I needed to know as much as possible about my subject, so I pursued that legend. I ran into other problems when I tried to find out the Shields’ version of the story.”
“Let me guess,” Gryph said. “You couldn’t get one to talk.”
“You are an extremely closed-mouth lot as I found out when I finally made a journey to one of the frontier provinces. Strong, silent types. At least when it came to discussing your past. No cooperation at all. But I persevered.”
“How did you root out Targyn?” Gryph asked with genuine curiosity. “He was supposed to have died gloriously fighting off a pack of bandits.”
Sariana gave him a sidelong glance. “Apparently Shields like a good, rousing tale as much as everyone else around here does. You had no problem buying the legend of Targyn, I take it?”
Gryph shrugged and winced when the small action caused the twist’s straps to jerk. “To tell you the truth, everyone was greatly relieved that Targyn had disappeared in a noble battle. He was becoming a problem.”
Etion arched his eyebrows. “I can guess why. He’s a rather obsessive individual, isn’t he?”
“Nuttier than a rackle seed cake,” Gryph agreed.
Etion nodded. “He’s fanatically interested in Shield history.”
“And in his own future?” Sariana asked dryly.
“Quite correct,” Rakken said. “The man has apparently devoted a lifetime to exploring the possibilities of working prisma in unique ways. He obviously must have had some natural talent to begin with, but one must credit him with being willing to develop himself.” Rakken looked directly at Gryph. “He is very strong when it comes to working prisma, I take it? Stronger than most Shields?”
“Most Shields don’t attempt to turn prisma into a usable weapon,” Gryph said with seeming carelessness. “It’s dangerous enough as it is.”
“Could you do what he plans to do?” Rakken insisted.
“Detonate prisma in a controlled manner?” Gryph shrugged. “I doubt it. Not without killing myself and everything else within a radius of several hundred kilometers. If you want my opinion, I doubt that Targyn can do it, either.”
“He thinks he can.”
“The man’s insane,” Gryph reminded him.
Rakken drummed his hands on the table. “I see. To be truthful, you relieve my mind somewhat. The last thing I want to do is blow up half the continent. I was almost sure Targyn couldn’t manage to control the prisma he found, but one has to be cautious.”
Gryph said nothing, but he caught a quick, questioning glance from Sariana. She was remembering the theoretical possibilities Gryph had mentioned to her when he had told her why the missing prisma cutter had become Shield business. Just because a theory had never been tested didn’t mean it wasn’t valid. There was little comfort in telling oneself that the theory might possibly be wrong.
“I only need Targyn to neutralize the material of the crystal ship we’ve found,” Rakken was saying calmly. Once that’s done I understand the prisma will be in a usable state. Is that correct?”
“Essentially,” said Gryph. “Who found the ship? Targyn?”
Rakken nodded. “He spent two years prospecting for it in this gorge after he faked his own death at the hands of the bandits. But when he found it, he discovered what every other prospector discovers. He needed money to excavate his claim. The ship, you see, was buried inside this cliff.”
“So he went looking for a banker. Preferably one who could
keep his mouth shut,” Sariana said with an understanding nod. “He thought you fit the bill because you were an easterner and not likely to gossip about the find to the locals.”
Gryph shot her a sidelong glance. “He also knew there wasn’t much chance any western banker would help him. A westerner would know immediately that what he was doing was illegal and incredibly dangerous. Any local banker would have contacted a respectable Shield clan and told them what was happening.”
“But you saw the financial potential, right, Etion?” Sariana asked with what Gryph considered far too much professional admiration. The businesswoman in her was intrigued by what Rakken had done. Easterners had a definite problem when it came to putting financial matters into perspective.
Rakken was nodding genially over Sariana’s comment. “I saw the financial potential at once, my dear.”
“She’s not your dear,” Gryph said. “She’s my wife.”
Rakken raised his eyebrows at Sariana. “Not according to the laws of the eastern provinces, right Sariana?”
She carefully avoided looking at either man while she helped herself to more stew. “No, not according to the laws of the east. More stew, Gryph?” she asked brightly.
He paid no attention to the question which he sensed had been asked in order to sidetrack him. Sariana was trying to avoid violence at the dinner table. It was, no doubt, an ancient female custom.
“I have a few questions I’d like answered,” Gryph said.
“By all means.”
“Where did you get the hired help?”
“You mean Miscroft and the others? Oh, they’re acquaintances of Targyn’s,” Rakken explained casually.
“Bandits he recruited?”
Rakken poured himself a little more wine. “I believe so. According to him the frontier bandits have always had a bad deal here. They are descended from the noble crew of The Serendipity, it seems.”
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