“Are we ready?” The First Consort stood at the open hatch. A shadow of concern darkened his strong features. The man was every bit the king Peryl was, and for the hundredth time Jadyek envied the Shrouded ruler his pairing. The Heart had served Peryl, and in doing so had opened up hope for so many Shrouded who had feared it in secret.
“Yes.” Jadyek dipped his head and turned his back on the view. He scurried from the ladder across the platform, but Rieordan had already boarded, waited in the pilot’s seat while he climbed aboard and triggered the hatch to shut before Jadyek’s feet were firmly under him again. “My apologies, sir.”
“It’s a good idea.” The Consort signaled the control booth and the mag cushion beneath them fired, sending the craft up into a wobbly hover. He worked the panel with steady hands, and the ship whined and steadied, then rocketed forward hard enough to push them back against their seats.
Jadyek grabbed the armrest for support and wiggled into his harness just as they reached the crater wall and tilted back for the ascent into the Shroud. He was grateful, then, that the crater was shallow, that the angle was not so steep as to tumble him to the grating instead.
“I have another inspection to make,” Rieordan said. There was enough amusement tinting his voice to make Jadyek suspect their rough launch had been intentional—his punishment for dawdling, perhaps. “It’s close by. If you don’t mind, I’d rather not make a second trip.”
“Sure.” He swallowed dryly, attempted to sound less like a schoolgirl. “Of course. Whatever is easiest.”
What was easier meant a longer trip. It meant more time trying not to look the fool in front of the Consort. He was bungling everything and he knew it. Somehow, despite his wishes, he just couldn’t fit into the mold of Shrouded Prince, Council member. He was still Jadyek, and Jadyek always fell just a hair short of success. He would find a way to fail, to mess this up as he always had.
Rieordan had come from off world, had originally led the mercenaries the Eclipsans sent to attack Shroud. He'd bonded with Peryl and made the man king. Now he slipped into the role of Consort easily, long used to leading men and possessing exactly the strategic mind that they'd needed. He had taught the Shrouded to defend themselves, and he stood beside their king as his bonded. An outsider, Jain Rieordan fit in on Jadyek's homeworld better than he did.
They dove into the Shroud, leveled out, and entered the cloud of dust and gases in the wake of a pair of blinking beacons. The lack of visibility soothed him. Inside the Shroud Jadyek could hide, or at least pretend to. He could remain anonymous, outside the spotlight where no one might judge his next stumble.
“Have you been to the prison crater?” Rieordan engaged him, startled him with conversation. They’d been silent on the flight in, and now, Jadyek would have to perform again.
“I’m afraid I haven’t.” Stupid. The wording made it sound as if he wished he had. Why would anyone desire to visit the prison? The transport cabin warmed, and outside the Shroud swirled with the same pink as his cheeks.
“You haven’t missed much.” Rieordan missed his error, continued as if he hadn’t said something foolish. “Just a deep hole with a few losers locked in it.”
Jadyek kept his tongue then. He feared a hidden implication there. The Council had taken his idea about Bride training. They had acted on the plan even more quickly than he could have hoped, but he still felt the word loser as if it were meant for him. Jadyek, uncomfortable in his own skin, the Council member that never should have been.
They flew the rest of the way quietly, as he preferred. The prison crater had a circumference of less than a mile, and only one stout platform to accept transports. Rieordan set their craft down gently, killed the engines and opened the hatch before unlatching his harness. Jadyek climbed out. The flags here read caution, and he slipped his breather in quickly and stood aside for the Consort to join him.
They were met by six guards armed with heavy rail guns and wearing security uniforms. They saluted the First Consort, gave Jadyek a round of suspicious stares and then parted to allow them passage. Two followed like deadly bookends while they descended the ramp to a single, fortified door.
The royal complex had minimal security, as did most of Shroud. The presence of the guards, of the rifles and the sour looks, made his skin crawl. It added a serious edge to the already severe appearance of everything in the crater.
An additional guard waited at the door. He saluted them and marched to the door controls to key them inside. The heavy panel screeched aside, and the sound echoed away into the tunnel behind it. This had thin strips of light embedded at the roof. Their movement activated these, illuminating their passage and not much more in any direction.
A man waited inside the tunnel, backed by a gush of cool and stale-smelling air. He had a stiff back and a permanent curl to his lip that could probably be explained by the odor.
“Director,” Rieordan said. He nodded once and then waved an arm toward Jadyek. “This is Prince Jadyek Ree. He’ll be joining us.”
“Whatever you like.” The director had a whistle to his voice that reminded Jadyek of a dog whimpering. “It’s not as if we’re overcrowded down here.”
He turned and marched off, lighting their way farther into the tunnel. It only went a short distance before a simple lift blocked their way. This had a stout metal frame, but with open sides that exposed the base rock. Jadyek could see the glimmer of translucent veins wiring through the darker material. He followed the Consort into the car and had to restrain himself from reaching outside to stroke the gem-like material.
“What is this stone?” He meant the question for their host, but Rieordan answered.
“Heartstone.”
“I thought so.” He hadn’t, but it rang true. The matrix from which the Heart grew threaded through the Shrouded Core like a living net of stone. It protruded at the bonding points, the big crystals like smaller versions of the Heart, and it tied his people to their home as surely as the weight of the Shroud overhead.
The prison director fiddled with the controls, and the elevator jerked once and then began to descend. It crawled down, sinking at a snail’s pace into the Core while the Heart matrix flashed and wound through the shaft’s walls. Jadyek could not tear his gaze from the vein, and the movement of the lift churned his stomach until the nausea forced his eyes closed.
He opened them again when the lift had come to a stop. Another tunnel led away, and the lights beckoned. The Consort followed the prison director out of the car and onward, and Jadyek moved after them, a bit slower, lingering at the edge of the lighting and eyeing the pale vein of clear stone that criss-crossed the tunnel wall. It glowed in the low light, and he could no longer resist placing a hand against it, letting his fingers stroke the silky gemstone.
It burned him. The stone flared so hot he meant to tear his hand away, and yet his skin stuck to it as if glued there. His hand merged with the heartstone and for a second Jadyek heard it singing. He felt it in his knees, and he knew what it wanted. Follow, it hissed. Down and down and down.
The others continued down the hallway and he could see the vein glowing, rippling in that direction. The dark squares of the cells broke it in places, but that direction was not of any import. The stone called him elsewhere, begged him to turn back to the elevator, to take the lift down, deeper into the prison. It wanted him to follow the song.
“Jadyek?” The Shrouded Consort stood in a dim hall of stone. He turned, haloed with the strip lights and waiting for Jadyek the faulty to catch up. The look on his face gave Jadyek enough strength to tear his hand from the wall. It gave him the courage to tread forward instead of back, but even as he walked he wished to obey.
Even as he followed the two men past the first line of cells, Jadyek knew he had to listen to the stone. The inspection would include the lower levels, perhaps. If it didn’t, he’d still have to go. The heartstone sang to him, continued to sing him down, down into the Core.
Chapter Eleven
The ship had a small crew, as it turned out, and they were not required to survive on rations. This kept the Shevran’s rumbling to a minimum, though he still managed to spoil most meals by complaining about his accommodations. The Bride cots were narrow and short. Shayd had to give him that. His own heels fell over the end of the bed, and even the rough pallets he’d experienced as an acolyte had more give than the mattresses on this transport, but none of the Shrouded were complaining.
“I’m afraid we were not prepared for guests, you see.” Haftan had grown outright gregarious on the trip. He’d blossomed, even, as if the distance from Shroud had lifted his burden, and each system they put between him and the planet took its measure off the man’s guilt. “If we’d planned on taking on passengers of your status, S’urrvin, I’m sure we’d have made accommodations.”
They’d have put burs in the pillows, no doubt. Shayd heard it in Haftan’s tone, but only just. The reptilian missed the sarcasm completely. Haftan’s smile and courtly manner had him subdued for the moment. Thank the Shroud for that. Haftan, of all people, had turned into the most useful of them all.
He’d make a fair diplomat.
“This food is very salty.” The trader shifted to a new complaint.
They sat all together at one end of the long table, and though Shayd wished he’d sat at the opposite end more than once during the meal, he felt mostly sorry for Haftan, who’d taken the brunt of their passenger’s complaints and left Shayd to mull on his own thoughts as usual.
“Perhaps our cultures have different palates?” Haftan took an overlarge bite of his salad and smiled affably. “What sort of cuisine do your people favor?”
Well deflected again. If things had gone differently, maybe Haftan would have been a good king after all. Though if things had gone differently, the Shrouded king would not have been dealing with outsiders at all and Haftan’s skill would have been wasted.
The Heart at work again. Of course. All things fit where they should, and now Haftan would have a chance to shine as well as Peryl. The Heart took care of all the Shrouded and Shayd couldn’t help the smile at that. He should never have doubted. It would take care of him as well, sooner than he could ever have imagined. They’d reached Choma orbit in the middle of the night. He’d woken to a view of the planet, lushly vegetated and sparkling like an emerald from space.
They would accept their new passengers today.
Shayd stared at his breakfast until the fruit blurred into a whirl. Yellow, orange, pink. A sun setting on something? Life on Shroud? Why did he see it as an ending and not a sunrise? His breath slipped through his lips in thin, barely oxygenated whispers. His chest tightened and he felt the patter of his pulse rising. Panic? But the Heart had shown her to him. She was definitely his.
How could he falter now?
The mess door slid open and Mofitan stomped inside. He dragged a chair away from the table, three down from Shayd where he could slip out again just as easily. He’d left most meals early when their trader guest was present. Mof devoured his food faster than anyone Shayd had known, but he still could barely finish before the Shevran’s nattering drove him too close to violence to remain.
He snatched a full plate from the center of the table and went to work today with only a brief nod to each of them. Between bites, however, he still managed to apprise them of the situation.
“Transmission from the port first thing this morning.” He chewed twice in between, and swallowed hard, then reached for a tankard of water. “The shuttle’s ready and they’re just waiting for the transport arrival to send them up.”
Send them up. Shayd set down his fork and closed his eyes. His food spun if he looked at it, trying to tell him something. He could hear only the Heart’s promise today, would only hear that. Somewhere on the surface his bonded would be getting closer and closer to the port. She’d bring the Bride to them and then…He opened his eyes.
“Will the escort continue with us to the rendezvous point as well?” His breath held. His lungs tightened.
“Yeah.” Mof snorted. “They’re only sending the two, which seems careless to me. Who sends their leader off world when a representative would do just fine?”
“Ha!” S’urrvin slapped a clawed hand down on the table. “They probably saw it in a vision. Choma mystics do whatever their superstitions tell them to.”
Shayd gasped for a breath, tried to find his voice for the questions piling on his tongue—his tongue, that rarely found a word to speak. Haftan beat him to it, however. He leaned forward, blocked the trader from view.
“I wasn’t aware that the cultural practices of the Choma-uraru were widely known.”
“Sure, sure they are.” The trader’s head bobbed. His cheeks greened up a shade. “They don’t like to come out, you see. But the Tolfarians know. The Tolfarians drift around. They talk.”
“Please.” Haftan sat back and waved one hand in an airborne, rolling maneuver. “Enlighten us, then. If we’re to travel with them aboard, it might help.”
It might help their negotiations too, though anything the trader said would be suspect. The trader’s “facts” came from the Tolfarians, and so were also suspect. Knowing them wouldn’t hurt, however. Knowing them would give a solid view of how they might need to approach the Tolfarian side of the equation too.
“They see things.” The trader leaned back and placed his hands behind his head. His voice rumbled. “Have visions and they do whatever the vision says. You see? Any crazy thought that comes to them in a dream and off they go. It’s the animal side. The part the Tolfarians don’t share.”
“The Tolfarians do not dream?” Shayd spoke, and Haftan turned a raised brow toward him. Mofitan grunted and stuffed down another plate of fruit. He took the opportunity to fill his belly while they discussed the Chomans. Shayd approved. They’d all need to be as versed as possible in both cultures if they meant to do their job.
More so, he wanted to know everything, every possible thing about the culture of the Choma-uraru. He wanted to know as much as he could about the woman he sensed approaching even now.
“Dream maybe.” The trader shrugged. “But they don’t take orders from their imaginations.”
He tapped his leathery skull and grinned.
“Many cultures, including our own, put stock in spiritual matters,” Haftan purred, but Shayd heard the admonishment underneath. The Shrouded took their visioning seriously as well. The Shrouded Seer was second only to the king.
“The church runs the government,” the trader stated with a rosy flush. “That’s just a bad idea all around.”
“Perhaps,” Shayd answered, and earned a shocked look from Haftan. The last Seer had employed his power to nearly destroy Shroud. How would that have gone if the bastard had been king? Even he used the Heart as guidance, but understood that a vision was a snapshot, not the entire picture. Visions could be subject to interpretation. He could see the danger of relying solely on them. It was the very reason the Shrouded king and Seer worked in partnership.
“Perhaps you just can’t find the right trade route to a spiritual culture,” Mofitan spoke around a mouthful. He swallowed, gulped down more water, and then placed the cup on the table hard enough to rattle Shayd’s glass. “I don’t imagine the Choma-uraru are big consumers of imported goods.”
“No, they’re not.”
“And they have a long-standing disagreement with the Tolfarians?”
The reptilian snort echoed in the room. He cut it short and flushed deep purple, but it said plenty. The Tolfarians and the Uraru did not get along. So why, now, the sudden interest in a peaceful resolution? Shayd stared at the colors on his plate again, watched them spin like flames, like danger.
“I’m certain they’ll sort it all out.” The trader stood and struggled to get his chair back into position, leaving it in the end askance and not fully pushed in. “Time for peace and a time for violence.”
“Violence?” Haftan didn’t look up, and so he missed the brief yel
lowing of the man’s cheeks. Shayd saw it. He saw it and it matched the images in his mind. Flames and fire.
“Peace,” the Shevran asserted. “Now would be the time to make peace.”
They waited for him to leave. When he’d shuffled into the hallway, Mofitan stood and watched from the doorway until the trader reached his room. Then, he triggered the locking mechanism and ordered the computer to monitor the hallway and report any activity. When he sat back down, the three Shrouded Princes held silent for a moment longer.
Shayd pushed his fruit back into the center of the table and drank from his own water. The trader had slipped, certainly, but he couldn’t be certain exactly how. Did the man know something, or was he only thinking of his own situation?
“What was that?” Mofitan growled.
“Our current passenger has a lot of information of use to our negotiation,” Haftan answered. He folded his hands on the table and considered them. “I’m still trying to sort out how he got it, and what it means for us.”
“He’s up to something.”
“Perhaps.” Haftan’s head tilted to one side. His fingers flexed. “And perhaps he’s looking out for his own interests. Shevrans are nefariously opportunistic traders. He could be hoping to sabotage our efforts, or just hoping they don’t bear fruit.”
“Incite a war just for the trade opportunity?” Mof’s hands gripped the edge of the table, and Shayd’s water rippled inside the tankard. “What kind of people…”
“The kind that do business at the fringes of any war.” Haftan sighed. “I believe the galaxy is full of them, and our friend’s people top that list.”
Seen (Heartstone Book 2) Page 8
