Royal Rebellion

by Blair Bancroft

  “Isn’t that a bit obvious?” Jagan, the eternal skeptic.

  “Not if it’s a trap,” T’kal drawled. “Look, look, here I am, come get me. With all the security for an emperor already in place, just waiting for anyone stupid enough to try to breach it.”

  “And if they decided to be clever and go somewhere else?” Jagan asked.

  “If it’s a trap to draw us out, they have to be obvious. If it isn’t?” T’kal shrugged. “If it’s the children’s safety in return for Kamal, then they still need a secure place to hold them.”

  “I cannot believe Rogan Kamal would harm his own grandchildren,” Dayna Rigel interjected. “Omnovah grant that he still has some shred of decency.”

  T’kal turned a fatherly gaze toward the shadowed corner of the van. “Thank your god, Lady Dayna, that you have been sheltered from the worst of this war. What we have seen on Psyclid makes it easy to believe the worst of anyone.”

  Jagan, displaying more sensitivity than he usually possessed, offered a diversion. “You wouldn’t have any ripka, would you, Lady Dayna? Or perhaps something stronger?”

  “That depends on how much you can drink before you lose your power to make us invisible,” came in dulcet tones out of the shadow.

  “A lot,” Jagan returned baldly.

  A liter bottle of karst appeared, gleaming amber in spite of the greenish cast of the glowglobe. “My lady, you have my undying gratitude.” Jagan accepted the bottle, caught the cap as it flew off, and took a long and satisfying drink of the Reg equivalent of ancient Earth’s single malt scotch. With an appreciative grin, he passed the bottle to T’kal. “Do wolves get drunk?” he inquired with a remarkable show of innocent curiosity.

  “Not so you’d notice it.” T’kal made a point of drinking twice as much as the sorcerer before passing the bottle to Kelan.

  Dayna pulled up the blanket she had wrapped around herself and settled down for what was likely going to be a very long trip. This is what Tal sent us? Omnovah, give me strength!

  Actually . . . she remembered the Sorcerer Prime from long ago. She’d been what . . . ? Perhaps five or six when her father was Ambassador to Psyclid, but Jagan Mondragon had been memorable. The wildest boy she’d ever seen, dark and dangerous even at fifteen or sixteen. She had worshipped him. He was like a star shooting across the heavens, except this one would never crash or burn, only grow brighter and hotter until he consumed everything in his path.

  Or so she’d thought until she heard he’d escaped the invasion, running all the way to the rim planet known as Hell Nine. A grave disappointment, the Sorcerer Prime, even after Kass dragged him back and forced him to be a hero. Oh, how Dayna would love to have been a fly on the wall when that happened! And now? It appeared he’d been tamed by a wife with even more power than his. A wife who could destroy him just as easily as she destroyed Reg armaments. Just because the Princess M’lani had been occupied in recent years by producing children didn’t mean she had lost her power. As for the present-day Jagan Mondragon, Dayna reserved her opinion.

  She was less troubled by the other one. T’kal Killiri was the strong, silent type. The pillar on which nations were built. His wife, a king’s bastard and a witch. Dayna had heard rumors Killiri was also a wolf, but that was hard to swallow. Everyone knew Psyclids were strange—but not that strange. That had to be a tall tale. Yet she suspected Killiri was the hero the mission needed. After all, Kelan had never done anything more adventurous than take that one trip to Blue Moon, while her biggest challenges had been coping with problems in Rigel Industries’ Human Services, where she was currently in training, when she wasn’t fending off overeager suitors.

  And pretending her older brother died in battle long ago and she had absolutely no interest in the rebellion. S’sorrokan and his rebels were, in fact, mere fantasy created by storytellers to amuse the ennui-riddled members of Emperor Darroch’s court.

  Which was fine with Dayna. Let them think exactly that.

  All the more power of surprise to the rebellion.

  Chapter 4

  In the soft gray of pre-dawn, T’kal stood at the side of a narrow dirt road, watching the van turn a corner and disappear behind an impenetrable stand of evergreens. The damp chill of autumn in the mountains nipped at his nose and ears. He allowed himself a fleeting wish for the milder Psyclid climate, before eyeing the heavy pack at his feet and resigning himself to the absurdity of whatever had brought him to this moment. Invisibility cloaks or no, prying two enemy children out of the Emperor’s Royal Retreat was suicidal.

  And then it finally hit him. Something B’aela would have recognized immediately, if they hadn’t been so absorbed in each other during those final minutes on Psyclid. Until three years ago, the Emperor had made it clear he considered his nephew the most likely choice for successor. A choice that might still be in play. Which meant they were rescuing the children of a possible emperor of the Regulon Empire, making the boy—Erik—the future Heir Apparent.

  No wonder Tal wanted Kamal’s children on Blue Moon instead of Psyclid. Far better the kids were held hostage by the rebels than by the Regs. Not that anyone would call it that, of course. A wry smile twitched at T’kal’s lips as he hoisted his pack. It would appear the so-called “rescue” just might be worth risking the Sorcerer Prime and a werewolf Alpha.

  Trust Tal Rigel to see all the angles.

  Which, T’kal had to admit, S’sorrokan usually did. Shrewd intelligence ran strong in the Rigel family. Though keeping two younger Rigels in one piece while extracting the children of Tal’s greatest rival for the throne of the Empire might be a bit of a challenge.

  They set up camp when their locators indicated they were about two kilometers from the outer fence surrounding the Emperor’s rustic compound. As dusk descended, T’kal and Jagan set off on a scouting expedition—T’kal, long accustomed to negotiating a forest by night, leading the way.

  The emperor’s mountain retreat was surrounded by a tall barbed fence, punctuated by guard towers, that was remarkably like the fence around the former Reg armaments depot outside Crystal City. Jagan blinked as memories rushed back of soaring over the fence before M’lani tried out her brand new Gift of Destruction, moving rapidly from tentative to gleeful to out of control as she disintegrated an array of Regula Prime’s latest weapons. Many of them made by Rigel Industries—an irony that brought a smile to Jagan’s face. The more armaments destroyed, the more orders for Rigel Industries. The more orders, the more money funneled back to the rebel cause.

  T’kal touched Jagan on the shoulder, and they melted back into the forest. When they were a good thirty meters back from the fence, he said, “We’ll recce tonight. See if the kids are there.”

  “The Reg underground confirms a royal transport landed at the airport.”

  “Which could mean Darroch himself, his women, some high-ranking admiral—”

  “And I thought I was a skeptic,” Jagan muttered.

  “Drop the cloak,” T’kal said. “I want to test their security.”

  Now fully exposed, they walked cautiously back toward the compound, stopping every few minutes, listening . . .

  Not a sound. With every step, they expected sirens to wail, spotlights to flash into life. But they made it all the way to the edge of the dense stand of evergreens apparently undetected. Jagan snorted. “Overconfident bastards, aren’t they?”

  “Or they have orders to let us in.” T’kal fixed his gaze on the closest guard tower. “Can you see through walls, Sorcerer? Do the guards look bored or alert?”

  Jagan shut his eyes, reached out . . . and was forced to admit, deep down, that they could have used K’kadi about now. “Can’t see,” he muttered, “but I’ll feel around a bit . . .”

  Nothing. But sensing other people’s emotions was far down on his list of skills. “As far as I can tell, all’s peaceful.”

  T’kal huffed a breath. “Which could mean it’s not a trap.”

  “Huh?” Jagan shifted his focus from the
guard tower to T’kal.

  “If the kidnapping is real—if they’re actually expecting Kamal to return and save his kids in person—all he’d have to do is arrange his turnover, maybe catch the next merchant ship willing to take him to Reg Prime. There’d be no need to rescue the kids. No need to expect an attack.”

  “Not very clever thinking on their part, not what’s expected from Rogan Kamal.”

  “Rand’s his son,” T’kal pointed out. “Rogan thinks he knows what he’ll do.”

  “But why wouldn’t he expect someone to try to rescue the kids?”

  “Because there’s no one as arrogant as a Reg,” T’kal offered. “Besides, who could possibility have any idea where the kids are? Who would dare try to grab them, if they did?”

  “Or maybe all’s quiet because the kids aren’t here at all, and this whole thing’s one huge mistake.”

  “A possibility,” T’kal conceded, “but now . . .” Every sense alert, he stared into the unrelieved darkness beyond the fence. “I have a bad feeling—can’t explain it, but I need to go now.”

  “Not what we planned!”

  “I don’t like it, but that’s it. I find the kids tonight.” He zipped open his leather jacket and hauled out a tattered piece of cloth—more accurately, a ragged hand-sized square cut from a sweater.

  “I’d love to know what Kelan Rigel was doing with Yuliya Kamal’s sweater,” Jagan drawled.

  “We were fortunate he had it.”

  “Real fortunate,” Jagan shot back. “I still want to know what Yuliya Kamal was doing in Kelan Rigel’s apartment.”

  “What do you think?” T’kal drawled. “They’ve evidently known each other forever, and he is the one the girl called when she was in trouble.”

  “But the girl’s a toxic court kid. Like mother, like daughter.”

  T’kal shrugged, dismissing the subject. “Wait an hour. If you don’t hear from me, go back to the campsite and wait for my signal.” And with that, preferring privacy, he moved behind one of the towering evergreens surrounding them.

  Jagan prided himself on his sophistication, on his ability to remain blasé when confronted by almost anything (except the night his wife was strafed by a Tau-15), but he had to work hard to stifle a gasp as a large silver gray wolf emerged from behind the tangle of branches. Fizzeting fizzet, he’d seen Killiri’s wolf more than once, but it didn’t keep him from being startled.

  Steadying his nerves, Jagan held out the ragged scrap of sweater. The wolf sniffed, growled low in his throat. Invisibility cloak in place, they rose up and over the fence, moved past the soft glow from the guard tower and into woods beyond. “This is it,” Jagan said. “You’re on your own.” But the wolf was already gone, off and running, disappearing almost immediately into the dense forest.

  Jagan, staring after him, shook his head. He’d never felt less of a sorcerer than he did at that moment. “Go get ’em, Wolfman,” he murmured as he settled on his haunches among the trees, so well hidden he dropped the invisibility cloak.

  The wait was shorter than expected. In less than fifteen minutes T’kal, stark naked, reappeared, crouching down beside him. “The kids were there—or at least Yuliya was,” T’kal told him. “I’m assuming Erik was with her. I tracked them down a path that leads out of the compound to the west. The scent is hours old, perhaps as much as a day.”

  Jagan frowned. “Why take them away?”

  T’kal shook his head. “It could be as simple as someone decided to take the kids on a hike, or . . .”

  “They know we’re here, and they’re playing games with us?”

  “Or something worse.”

  “What do you mean worse?”

  “I’m having a hard time with this,” T’kal admitted. “All my hard-headed realities blown to Hell Nine. I sensed something wrong, but the wolf smelled fear. Strong and pungent. It could be this kidnapping is genuine.”

  Jagan groaned. “So what now?”

  “The wolf follows. Believe me,” he said, holding up his hand to halt Jagan’s protest, “my wolf moves farther and faster alone. Go back to camp, and wait.”

  “You’ll be exposed,” Jagan protested. “No invisibility.”

  “And no choice.” T’kal turned toward the shelter of the largest evergreen, his last words drifting back over his shoulder. “And take my clothes with you. We won’t be coming back this way.”

  We. Well, if there’s one thing the wolfman had in abundance—it was confidence.

  Jagan, frowning, remained motionless until he was certain the wolf was well on his way. Then with a sigh he headed back to the fence, soared over it with ease, and found his way to the place where T’kal had left his clothes. As he picked up the bundle, neatly wrapped around the Alpha’s black boots, Jagan was struck by the irony of a Psyclid engineer seizing command of a group that should have been headed by the king’s son-in-law, the Sorcerer Prime.

  Truthfully . . . when it came to danger and violence, Jagan was happy to let him do it. He was a sorcerer, not a soldier. It had taken Kass and M’lani and Tal, as well as T’kal’s taunts, to make him a hero of the resistance. The wolf was welcome to go it alone.

  But he’d be there when needed. Although Jagan didn’t look forward to what Kelan and Dayna were going to say when they found out he’d let the wolf charge to the rescue all by himself.

  Chapter 5

  The trail was easy to follow—a narrow hiking path that tunneled through the forest, wound past a modest-sized lake, rose higher and higher until rugged cliffs towered on the left and a sheer drop of five hundred meters or more loomed to the right. Scattered among the cliffs, a series of caves . . .

  The wolf stopped, sniffed the ground, circled, scrambled up to the floor of one of the larger openings. Yes, the party, which he had now identified as Yuliya, her brother. and four guards, had spent the night here. Very likely last night—the scent was fresh. Clearly Kamal’s children were city kids, unused to hiking in the wilderness. The smell of fear was also more distinct.

  The sleek, silver-gray wolf picked up his pace.

  It was evening before he caught up—drifting smoke from a campfire warning him that he was close. Just as the wolf dropped to his belly and began to crawl the final few meters to the edge of the clearing, a scream—female—shattered the silence of the forest. A shout of “No!” A teenage voice. Male. Shouts and jeers from grown males. A laugh. Another scream—full of outrage as well as terror.

  The wolf pushed his muzzle through low-lying branches . . .

  Yuliya Kamal was flat on the ground, a guard on top of her, ripping at her clothes. Two other guards held her younger brother tight, while cheering their comrade on. A fourth guard stood over Yuliya and her attacker, snapping photos with his handheld.

  The wolf launched himself at the man taking pictures, had him down in seconds. Yuliya’s attacker was next in a flurry of movement so fast, none of the men saw more than a gray blur. One of the guards holding Erik got off a shot before his throat was torn out. The other ran and was hamstrung before he’d gone four meters. Sharp teeth bit into his throat finishing him off.

  Erik rushed to his sister, who was slowly sitting up, eyes growing wide as she saw the carnage. “Did you see the wolf?” he whispered. “It killed them, Yul. Every one of them.”

  “They’re really dead?”

  “Throats ripped out,” Erik added with a ghoulish satisfaction common to teenage boys. “Oh!” Warily, he stared at the figure that had just emerged from the woods. A well-built, dark-haired stranger, only a little younger than his father and, absurdly, stark naked except for an evergreen branch he was holding in front of his groin. Blood welled from a wound in his shoulder, contrasting sharply with his pale torso.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” Erik breathed, awe in every syllable. “You killed them all.”

  “I apologize for my state of undress, so if you’d be good enough to find a guard about my size and relieve him of his clothes . . .”

  Erik blinked but
rushed to do as he was told. What a story he would have to tell when he got home. Though no one would ever believe it.

  Yuliya scrambled to find the jacket the guard had torn off her, removing the remains of her shirt before putting the jacket back on. “You’re hurt,” she exclaimed, as she turned toward their savior.

  Fizzet, but she wasn’t a child! No wonder Kelan—

  T’kal stepped back, managed an incongruous bow. “My lady, I apologize. I am the father of four and would not care to have them encounter a strange, naked man in the woods.”

  “Naked and strange, I grant,” said Rand Kamal’s daughter briskly, “but you just saved me from being raped and both of us from Omnovah knows what, so find some place to sit while I stop the bleeding. After all, spoiled darlings that we are, how are we to get home without you?”

  T’kal winced as a chuckle shook his chest. Meekly, he did as he was told, while carefully keeping the thick evergreen screen over his lap.

  Yuliya tore strips from her shirt, stanched the flow of blood, and bound the wound tight. She then turned her back while Erik helped the stranger into a guard’s uniform. He had even found a pair of boots that were a decent fit.

  “Let’s walk down to the stream,” T’kal said when he was dressed, and led the Kamals away from the bloody slaughter around them. At his nod, the Kamal children sat on a boulder, looking up at him expectantly.

  “I won’t attempt to explain what you just saw, at least not right now, but—”

  “You’re Psyclid,” Erik interrupted. “That’s explanation enough.”

  Not really, but T’kal wasn’t about to argue with him.

  “Psyclids are pacifists,” Yuliya interjected. “Everyone knows that, so how . . . ?” She waved a graceful hand back toward the campsite.

  “In a pacifist society, there must always be someone who does the dirty work.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Yuliya returned. “Please continue.”

  “I am here to take you to your father.”