T’kal turned to his king, bowing low. “I beg your pardon, Majesty. Rigel’s presence was such a surprise, I forgot myself.”
“Understandable,” Ryal returned with a smile before waving them to chairs around a low table. As Jagan assumed the role of host, pouring and handing out snifters of ullali, T’kal offered him a stiff nod. They might have worked shoulder to shoulder during the Occupation, but they would never be friends.
The feeling was mutual. Going beyond the discomfort of T’kal being married to Jagan’s long-time lover, the two men approached the world from opposite ends of the spectrum.
“Well, Rigel,” the king declared after they had each sampled Psyclid’s own brandy, “tell us what brings you here.”
“Allegedly”—Tal drew out each syllable of the word—“Rand Kamal’s children have been spirited away from Titan and are being held in the mountains, most likely at the Royal Retreat. The demand for their safe return, their father’s repatriation to Regula Prime.”
“Good riddance.” A typical Mondragon response, and for once T’kal was inclined to agree with him.
“Why now?” Ryal asked. “Not so much as a rumble from Darroch in three years and now this?”
“It makes no sense,” T’kal agreed. “Everyone knows Montiene Kamal—or whatever her name is now—is one of the emperor’s favorites. Any threat against the children is hollow.”
“A tall tale from beginning to end,” Jagan jeered.
“With apologies to my king if he finds my remarks bloodthirsty,” T’kal said, “but you must face reality, Tal. Rand Kamal is Darroch’s nephew, once favored as his successor. Which makes him your most serious rival for the time when all this is over and someone must fill the vacuum of power. If you send him back to near certain execution . . .?” T’kal shrugged.
“And I thought I was ruthless,” Jagan murmured. Ryal, the pacifist, bowed his head, looking troubled.
“And what if, despite all that’s happened,” Tal said, “Darroch believes he is saving Rand from himself?”
Silence.
“In short,” Tal continued, “no matter which reason we believe to be true, Admiral Kamal cannot return to Reg Prime. Though he is so determined to do so that I’ve had to put guards on him, twenty-four-seven. Born to be a hero is Rand Kamal.”
“Which brings us back to why you’re here.” Jagan’s tone was resigned, sensing he wasn’t going to like what came next.
“Not all our communications with the Regs have been official,” Tal said. “Yuliya Kamal called my brother Kelan, asking for help.”
“A trap,” T’kal interjected. “You know that’s a trap.”
“Very likely.” Tal related the conversation as close to word-for word as Kelan had been able to reproduce it.
“The kids are bait,” Jagan declared. “Trolled out to see what the Regs can catch.”
Tal shook his head. “Kelan agrees with you. With reservations. He’s known Yuliya since she was born. He swears she sounded truly frightened.”
“More likely, the kids are having a wilderness vacation—hiking, fishing, singing songs around a campfire, while we swallow the bait—”
Tal’s voice rose over Jagan’s, cutting him off. “Kelan thinks Rogan Kamal could be behind it all.”
The sudden silence was broken by King Ryal’s shocked “Their grandfather?”
“Head of Regulon National Security,” Tal intoned. “Married to Darroch’s favorite sister and loyalist to end all loyalists. He’s like a robot, programmed to do whatever must be done to protect the Empire. Rand’s defection must have been a cruel blow. Or perhaps Rogan thinks his son’s been brainwashed, that the damage can be undone. And he’s willing to use the children as pawns.”
“And perhaps the Kamals are all in it together,” T’kal said, “and the admiral is playing a long game that makes us all look like fools.”
Jagan snorted. “Just when we were all getting so fizzeting complacent.”
“Did you ask K’kadi about this?” Ryal asked, his words heavy with frustration.
“He knows what’s happened,” Tal said, “and, believe me, he would have told me if he sensed any treachery on Blue Moon. He lives in the same house with Kamal—he could not have missed it.”
Even T’kal, ever the skeptic when it came to K’kadi Amund, was inclined to agree.
“Same question,” Jagan snapped. “Why are you here?”
“We’ve decided to rescue Kamal’s children, bring them to Blue Moon.”
“We who?” Jagan challenged.
“Kass, Rand, K’kadi, Alek, Dagg, and I.”
No one could argue with that array of Blue Moon power, T’kal had to admit, but he suspected he wasn’t going to like what came next.
“Jagan,” Tal said, “we need invisibility, and with K’kadi about to become a father . . .” Beneath his breath he muttered something none of them caught.
“What was that?” King Ryal asked his son-in-law.
“Um—twice over,” Tal mumbled.
“He’s having twins?” T’kal exclaimed.
“Uh—no.”
They waited, expectantly. Tal shut his eyes, propped a hand to his forehead, and said, “His—ah—women are reproducing within six weeks of each other.”
Jagan snorted. King Ryal groaned. T’kal’s lips twitched. Ryal could scarcely complain as his own conduct had set a precedent he could not fault his son for following. And, after all, it was not that long since the royal house of Orlondami indulged in the tradition of harims and zenanas brought by their ancestors from Old Earth.
“Therefore”—Tal steered them back to the crisis at hand—“we need Jagan for invisibility and we need the best tracker available, which”—he turned to T’kal—“we all know is you.”
“When did you ever see me track anything?”
“You tracked B’aela all the way to Oban.”
“Come on, Tal, we knew where she was.”
“Very well, we need a hero, and we all know that’s you. I was merely assuming that you are also an expert tracker.”
T’kal stared. “I have never set foot out of the Psyclid system.”
“An excellent opportunity to broaden your horizons,” Tal returned smoothly.
Jagan focused the full weight of his skepticism on his brother-in-law. “Would you mind repeating just why you think sending two Psyclids to Regula Prime is a good idea when your father has the entire Reg underground at his disposal?”
“I don’t have any Regs who are sorcerers or werewolves?” Tal purred.
T’kal and Jagan eyed each other warily. They were expected to work together again? To rescue two spoiled Reg darlings who probably didn’t want to be rescued?
“You do know our wives are going to kill us?” Jagan inquired with more genuine apprehension than his customary mix of sarcasm and cynicism.
“We’d better leave from here,” T’kal said. “We don’t dare go home.”
Jagan groaned. “I am home.” And you’re right. M’lani’s more likely to disintegrate me than let me go to Reg Prime.”
“I am not such an ogre I won’t allow time for you to say goodbye to your wives,” Tal said with a perfectly straight face. “Ninety minutes?”
“If I still exist,” Jagan muttered as he stood, offered a curt nod in his father-in-law’s general direction, and walked out.
T’kal watched his nemesis slouch toward the door, as if on his way to his execution. It would have been amusing—the great Sorcerer Prime in fear of his wife’s Gift of Destruction, but the thought of what B’aela was going to say spoiled the moment.
He was being assigned to work with Jagan Mondragon more closely than they ever had before. Always, there had been M’lani, B’aela, or L’rissa acting as buffers. But now, on a dangerous mission on a planet neither had set foot on . . .
Fizzet! Did Mondragon speak Reg because he certainly didn’t! Having lived on Psyclid his entire life, T’kal was barely skilled enough to get by in the inter-system language t
hat allowed space travelers to communicate with each other. If a Reg attempted to question him . . . Pok, dimi, and fyd, he was dead.
That was the trouble with being a hero. People expected you to do it again, and again. And again.
Just keep thinking thoughts like that so you don’t have to think about B’aela.
Shut up, Wolf. We won’t need you ’til the mountains.
Good thing no one expects a wolf to talk Reg.
Take a fydding leap!
Where? When? I can hardly wait!
T’kal bowed to his king. Waved “so long” to Tal, and marched out of Ryal’s study, past multiple palace guards in colorful uniforms, and into the waiting limm.
“Killirin,” he ordered, and sat back, wondering if he was on his way to a final farewell to the woman he had loved for so long but who had been his for such a short time.
Chapter 3
Pegasus, en route to Regula Prime
T’kal settled into an armchair almost as comfortable as his chair at home, took a long swallow of ripka from the bottle in his hand, and wondered for the thousandth time in seven ship days how he had gotten himself into this mess.
You would be a hero. Organizing the resistance. Saving B’aela. Ripping out Grigorev’s throat. Building the biggest force field in the Nebulon Sector, almost getting yourself killed—
Shut up! Nothing like having an uppity wolf inside.
Truth was, the key to this nightmare was Rand Kamal. Rand Kamal, the Reg admiral who had been made acting Governor-General of Psyclid after Grigorev’s bloody end. The Rand Kamal the Blue Moon rebels fought against at the battle of Hercula. Fought and beaten, sending his battlecruiser Andromeda plunging into the sea. And then, somehow—due to B’aela’s influence or an attack of conscience?—Kamal had ended up firing on his own people at the second Battle of Psyclid. Some said it was only to save his crew, prisoners on Psyclid, who would have died along with everyone else if Darroch managed to complete his threat to turn the planet to dust. But if that were true, Kamal would be imprisoned as a hostage, not living in luxury on Blue Moon and married to K’kadi’s mother. Nor would Tal Rigel have sent two of his most important assets onto Reg soil to retrieve his children.
Retrieve, not rescue. T’kal couldn’t swallow the kids-in-danger package, no matter how well Tal presented it. But he and the sorcerer weren’t the only ones at risk. Kelan Rigel, Tal’s younger brother, was to be their guide on Reg soil. And the more T’kal thought about it, the more he figured the risk wasn’t worth it. Waving two leaders vital to the final push against the Empire and the boss’s kid brother under the Regs’ noses? Tal Rigel had lost his mind.
“I doubt I’d recognize you if you weren’t glowering.” Jagan Mondragon lowered himself into a chair next to T’kal’s in Pegasus’s lounge. “I suspect that, for once, our minds are running in the same direction.”
“What makes two Reg court-kids important enough to risk our necks.” Not a question.
“Psychological warfare?” Jagan ventured. “As long as they remain in Reg hands, Kamal’s not much of an asset.”
“I take it no one cares about the wife?”
“Fizzet, no. Her place in court is all that ever mattered to her. Or so I’ve heard through the Rigel grapevine. Vander Rigel’s wife has known Montiene Kamal since she was born.”
“Ah yes,” T’kal murmured after another pull on his ale, “sometimes I forget Tal’s your brother-in-law.”
“You don’t forget anything. It would be better if you did.” A slight pause while a number of uncomfortable, and sometimes overtly hostile, memories ran through their heads.
T’kal broke the awkward silence with a taunt delivered in his usual deadpan style. “You want me to forget my creatively forged new identity?”
“If all goes well, you won’t need it,” Jagan shot back. “We’ll be in and out without anyone seeing us.”
“If all goes well. The futile hope of every dangerous mission.”
“You could always play the hero again and tear any threat to bits,” Jagan offered, his voice taking on the venom that said he’d been stung by the implied insult to his powers.
“Like ten Reg guards with a P-ll in one hand and a Steg-9 in the other?” Sarcasm dripped from every syllable. “Perhaps you are not aware that my wolf is flesh and blood, not an illusion like your fydding great dragon.”
“My dragon’s more scary. Ow!”
T’kal sucked in a breath, his face contorting in pain. Silent seconds ticked by as the two Psyclid leaders exchanged rueful looks. “Did our wives just knock our heads together?” T’kal asked.
“I doubt even B’aela could reach this far.”
“K’kadi.” They breathed the word in unison.
“Get out of our heads and mind your own business,” Jagan growled.
My business. Kamal now my step-father.
T’kal, wincing, dropped his head into his hands. The romantic convolutions of Psyclid’s royal family never ceased to amaze him. And that included his marriage to B’aela.
“Then pray we are successful,” Jagan ground out, “and keep out of our heads. No distractions needed.”
Then do not act like spoiled children.
This from K’kadi Amund, who could be distracted by a flitterfly! Both men opened their mouths to protest, realized the truth of the allegation, and that K’kadi’s presence had vanished from their heads.
“One of these days . . .,” Jagan growled.
“A man with two wives makes his own punishment,” T’kal intoned.
“Particularly when one of them is a Herc warrior,” Jagan added.
After a short interval enjoying the satisfaction of scoring a point or two against King Ryal’s annoying youngest child, T’kal offered, “As much as I hate to say it, K’kadi was right to shut us down before we let our personal feelings mess up the mission. Let’s face it. We are about to embark on the most nonsensical mission we’ve ever been asked to undertake, on a planet where we do not speak the language, know our way about, or have any idea if our cause is righteous. It might be a good idea—”
“If we dropped the snark and finished the job.”
Into the tense silence of their unspoken agreement, Pieter Lassan, now a gangling mid-teen, entered the lounge, announcing, “Daman Mondragon, Daman Killiri, my father says to tell you we are approaching Titan. Please have your kits ready. You are to watch the unloading of cargo and exit when the moment seems right.”
To keep up the illusion of innocence so carefully cultivated through the years, Dagg Lassan, captain of the merchant ship Pegasus, made the journey to Regula Prime at least once every Reg year. He was always welcome, as in addition to general cargo, he carried specialty items no other merchant ship seemed able to provide: an effervescent wine made only on Chalyx and tatifali, the Emperor’s favorite sweet.
T’kal and Jagan lurked in the shadows of the cargo bay, watching stevedores use remote controls to guide fully loaded floating pallets down the ramp onto Reg soil. When the routine became clear, Jagan turned to T’kal, his eyes questioning. T’kal nodded. Ready.
Cloaked in invisibility, they moved out of the shadows, following the last stevedore down the ramp. Past stacks of plasticrates towering above their heads. Past warehouses. Over a fence, two fences, courtesy of Jagan’s magic. An experience T’kal would never enjoy—not that he’d let Mondragon know it.
One block to the right. To a windowless van waiting exactly where they were told it would be, its rear doors open. A hop up and they were in, the doors closed and barred. The van began to move. With a wave of his hand, Jagan set a pale green glowglobe on the ceiling, enough to cast a dim light. Kelan Rigel, his back against the side of the van, grinned at them. “Impressive, Mondragon. If you hadn’t told me to shut the doors, I wouldn’t have known you were inside. No problems, I take it?”
Fascinated, T’kal focused on their Reg guide. Fizzet, he was a Rigel to the core. Except for hair closer to brown than blond, he was a younger Tal, ru
ggedly good-looking, the blue eyes just as bright. And shrewd. Like father, like sons. Formidable all.
“And this is Dayna,” Kelan said, waving a hand toward a shadowed corner of the van. “She’ll be going with us.”
A delicate, perfectly manicured hand waved to them out of the darkness.
“No!”
Silently, T’kal echoed Jagan’s explosive objection.
“Unfortunately,” Kelan returned, “we have no choice. Firstly, she would follow us. And secondly, Dayna points out that Yuliya will undoubtedly be glad to have the support of another female. I assure you,” Kelan added, “this is an argument over and done. Dayna won, I lost.”
“Do your parents know about this?” Jagan demanded.
“We have been living on our own for some time now,” Kelan informed him. “We need no one’s permission.”
T’kal heard what sounded remarkably liked a choked-off laugh from the corner. On further reflection, Kelan had a point. A Rigel had begun the rebellion. It was hardly surprising Tal’s whole family had been swept into the fight. The girl would likely be an asset.
And she’s beautiful enough to stop a Reg guard in his tracks without lifting a finger.
T’kal stifled a smile. Evidently his inner wolf had not refrained from using his superior night vision to peer into the corner.
Blonde. Much prettier than her brothers—must look like her mother. T’kal shut down his wolf, focusing on what Kelan Rigel was saying.
“It’s a ten-hour drive to the mountains,” Kelan said, “so make yourself comfortable. There are blankets and Dayna’s packed a basket of food.”
“‘Mountains’ covers thousands of square kilometers,” Jagan grumbled as he accepted the blanket from Dayna’s pale hand, “so how do we narrow the search?”
“We have to depend on Yuliya’s sighting of Ropa Velicha and the fact that Darroch has an extensive retreat not far from there.”
Royal Rebellion Page 3
