“No. I have to stay with him!” Sawyer insisted. “I’ll stay with him to the end. I have to.”
“Sawyer, shut up,” said Lee. “Finn wants to talk.”
Instantly, Sawyer ceased protesting. He sank to the floor and put his face close to Finn’s. “Go ahead, Finn,” he whispered.
With great difficulty, Finn Markham managed to shape the words and force them past his dry parched lips. “Sawyer—keep your promise. The promise that you made on Thoska-Roole. Don’t let them cocoon me, Sawyer!”
Sawyer couldn’t answer. He couldn’t let his mind take the next step and the next. He couldn’t allow himself to act as the instrument of his brother’s death. He couldn’t imagine what his life would become without his brother. But neither could he imagine his brother wrapped and hanging and waiting.
“Sawyer, please—” Finn grabbed his brother’s arm and held on tightly. For a dying man, he still had surprising strength. “You promised me!”
The tears poured down Sawyer’s cheeks. “I know, I know. Oh, God, Finn! I don’t want to do this!”
“You must—”
“I know—please forgive me.”
“I love you, Sawyer. Please give me peace.”
“I love you too, Finn. Listen to me—” He sniffed, gulped, caught his breath. And in that moment, something happened to him. He reached inside himself and found an inner resource of strength that he had never known before.
He got angry.
He held his brother’s hand and looked into his eyes and he said, “I promise you that this crime will not go unavenged!” And this time, when he said it, the words had the resonant and terrifying ring of true conviction—this time, the words sounded like the death knell of the Regency. “I will not rest until I have destroyed the Lady Zillabar, and if necessary, the entire goddamned Vampire aristocracy!”
The other men in the room stared at Sawyer, astonished. They stood around him in a respectful circle, their eyes bright with the shared glow of his vision. His declaration sounded like a hundred thousand other desperate declarations made against tyranny—but he spoke it with the kind of resolve that troubled the sleep of tyrants everywhere. He spoke it as a man with nothing left to lose.
He looked down at Finn again for some sign of acknowledgment, but his brother had lapsed back into unconsciousness.
William Three-Dollar came over and pulled Sawyer away. “He needs his rest, son. Leave him for now.”
Sawyer shook off the TimeBinder’s large bony hands and sank to his knees next to his brother. He buried his face in his hands and began to cry again, great heaving sobs that left him out of breath and gasping.
Burihatin
The tangled web of otherspace unfolded, shimmered, solidified, and begat a golden starflake of light.
The vessel sang as it spun gracefully toward the distant globe called Burihatin. The Golden Fury called to her sister ships across the emptiness and she listened for their echoing cries. Then, at last, satisfied, she turned on her axis and dove downward toward the huge ringed world below. The starship still had many long hours of deceleration ahead. First she had to match orbits with the giant planet, then she had to match the orbit of the fourteenth moon.
Burihatin had an ethereal beauty. Not quite large enough to have ignited and become a star in her own right, she still loomed bright and golden. She radiated more heat than light; she gave off a lustrous warmth. The great planet swam brightly through the dark sea of space with her large family of satellites, circling gracefully around her.
Forty satellites orbited Burihatin, some small enough to leap off of; others massing larger than some nearby worlds. More people lived on the moons of Burihatin, than on all the other planets and moons circling Burihatin’s primary. The giant ringed world reigned as a star system in her own right, coopting even the authority of her primary.
The starship began correcting her trajectory to bring her into a parallel orbit with the fourteenth moon. As she approached, she began spawning an escort of Marauders. Some stayed close with the mothership, others sailed out adventurously, scouting, patrolling, and covering against any ship that might venture within missile firing range.
Inside the big vessel, the Lady Zillabar and the Dragon Lord stood silently on the balcony above the command bay and watched as Burihatin loomed larger and larger ahead. The planet’s size presented a deceptive appearance of proximity, when in fact, they still had the better part of a day left before their scheduled disembarkation.
Finally, finding the continued silence intolerable, the Dragon Lord offered a solicitous courtesy. “I hope you have had a pleasant voyage, my Lady.”
“Pleasant enough. And not without its tasty diversions.”
The Dragon Lord nodded impartially. He did not appreciate the reference. He did not approve of dishonor, although he sometimes recognized it as a distasteful necessity; but if he could justify in his mind the occasional dishonorable act on behalf of the Regency, he still could not easily accept the casual discussions of same. He didn’t want to have the precedent established that even small dishonors had attained the respectability of polite conversation.
The Captain of the starship came up to the observation deck then and bowed to the Lady and the Lord. He waited for their acknowledgments, and then reported crisply. “We have announced our presence. We have experienced no resistance from the Burihatin patrols, and we expect none. However, with your permission, I would like to modify our approach and keep the vessel orbiting at a safe distance until our Marauders have gone ahead and secured the area. I see no sense in putting you at even the slightest risk, Madame Zillabar.”
The Lady nodded her agreement. “The resistance here will have heard about the death of Prince Drydel. They will have to have realized that the situation has accelerated gravely, and they might have just enough ambition to create a serious nuisance. Let us not grow overconfident on the eve of our triumphs. I concur with your decision, Captain. Besides, the extra delay means that I will have time for one more exquisite little dinner before disembarking.” She waved the Captain away.
“I’ll see to the arrangements,” he said. He bowed and exited.
The Lady turned back to the Dragon Lord. “Would you care to join me?”
“I fear, Madame, that I must regretfully decline. If I do not spend more time with my own warriors, they might begin to believe that I no longer appreciate their company. As much as I would enjoy the delights of your company, my responsibility to your safety must take precedence.” He bowed.
Zillabar smiled sideways at him. “You don’t fool me, you ravenous old lizard. I know that my eating habits disgust you—as your habits disgust me. But we need each other, and we tolerate each other, and we support each other . . . because without each other, we each have nothing.”
“My Lady,” the Lord replied, towering over her even as he bowed his head. “I have far too much respect for your wisdom to ever dream of arguing with you. I shall look forward to seeing you again after your meal.” He turned and lumbered away, leaving the Lady Zillabar studying his last words in her mind and wondering just how far she could depend on the loyalty of the Dragon Lord.
Plan B
Sawyer sat forlornly on the mattress that served as cot, his brother’s head cradled in his lap. The others had withdrawn quietly to the opposite side of the room, from where they watched and waited in silence.
Sawyer carefully wiped the sweat from his brother’s forehead with a damp cloth. His movements grew gentle and tender—and for a moment, the two brothers appeared to have attained a small measure of peace. The yellow light of the cabin gave them a soft golden glow.
At last, Finn opened his eyes and looked up at his brother. “I think the time has finally come, Soy.”
Sawyer nodded. He began pulling at the piping on the hem of his jacket, working at it with trembling hands. Finally, he broke away a piece of the trim, unrolling it to reveal a tiny capsule. Without saying a word, he laid the capsule aside, where he could eas
ily reach it.
“Before you go, Finn, let me say goodbye. Let me say thank you. Let me remind you of all the times you protected me, and—well, you know—took care of me. We always used to talk about how we wanted things different. I just want you to know that the way it worked out—well, I don’t have any regrets. We did good. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, okay?”
“Bullshit,” grunted Finn, his voice barely audible. “You always wanted more. Even now, you want more time.”
Sawyer choked up. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he merely said, “Thank you, Finn. I love you.” Then he bent his face down to his brother’s and kissed him gently on the lips.
“Sawyer—” Lee called softly from across the room, from his place where he waited and listened with one ear pressed to the door. “I hear them coming! The Vampires.”
Sawyer picked up the pill and placed it gently in Finn’s mouth. Then he held the waterbag to Finn’s dry lips and let him drink his fill.
Finn looked up at his brother and whispered, “Thank you, Soy.” He closed his eyes and appeared to fall asleep. The tears began rolling down Sawyer’s cheeks again, leaving streaks down his face. He held his brother close, cradling him gently against the night, and hummed a wordless lullaby.
The Vampires found them that way when they opened the door. Sawyer sat on the floor of the cell and held his brother close, while he sang softly to him and rocked him in his arms.
A Little History
Giant Burihatin loomed like a great curved wall. The planet seeped a soft yellow warmth; magnificent storms swept across its surface, patterning its atmosphere with glorious chaotic swirls of color. Not quite large enough to ignite itself to stardom, it simmered in its orbit, circling its larger partner at a wary distance. Beyond, the primary star spread a bright blue blanket of light across the realms of space. Everything glowed.
Inside the Lady Zillabar’s starship, inside her banquet room, the swollen globe of Burihatin provided a spectacular view. Its churning landscape stretched out before the grand windows of the chamber, like a vast pink and violet ocean; crimson swirls marked the passage of raging hurricanes, each one large enough to hold habitable worlds. The atmosphere of Burihatin seethed and glowed. Blue and white lightning flashed intermittently; the discharges sometimes spread visibly across the arc of the planet, rippling outward in a chain reaction of sparks and fury.
Viewed from the detached grandeur of space, however, the violence of the planet’s surface became only a distant gaudy panorama. The ferocious storms presented an ever-changing, ever-constant dance of shape and color—much like the Lady Zillabar, whose own storms played across her surface in displays of gaudy decoration. What displayed on her outer countenance, however, rarely reflected the contours of her inner face.
Today, the Lady wore an expression of absolute calm. She also wore an unrevealing shroud of ash gray, the color of nothingness, cut by a bright diagonal slash of scarlet—the recognition of her office.
A noise distracted the Lady. She turned away from the balcony view and her contemplations. Her outer face revealed nothing of the furies that danced across her inner face. At the opposite end of the chamber, her insect attendants quietly ushered in her guests: the last known-member of the Lee clone family, number 1169; the TimeBinder, William Three-Dollar; his towering aide, Tuan; and the two troublesome trackers, Sawyer and Finn Markham. Finn sagged unconscious in a wheelchair; the attendants rolled him to the center of the room, then retired discreetly to the side of the room. Zillabar noted with amusement how Sawyer stayed close by his brother’s side.
The others had also arrayed themselves protectively around Finn. She recognized the body language. The rebels had allied themselves with the trackers. Not that it mattered much. It would not affect the ultimate result of these affairs. But, still, she found their gallows-courage amusing. In the face of certain death, these pitiful creatures still behaved as if their actions might make a difference.
Zillabar moved languidly, unmindful of their hate-filled eyes. She crossed slowly over to Finn and touched his forearm, tracing a blue vein with delicate fingers. “Finn Markham, you have a delicious quality,” she acknowledged. “Rough, crude, direct—but not without flavor. Sometimes the hard tastes have their own attraction.” She smiled politely at the others. “I do not offer compliments like this casually. If nothing else, you make take some condolence in the fact that you have provided me not only with many pleasant hours of amusement, but also several very satisfying meals as well.”
Turning back to Finn, she touched his arm again. “I believe that we have finally come to the end. You cannot possibly know how much sorrow that gives me. I have very much enjoyed our time together, and I truly regret that we will not share any more meals after this one, but you don’t appear to have much strength left, and I really don’t care to watch you linger. Besides, the flavor changes badly when you get down to the sediment.
“But please, Finn—” she whispered, pretending to compassion. “Don’t concern yourself after my welfare. I’ll make do, somehow. I’ll content myself with other diversions. Who do you think I should sample next? Your brother perhaps? Or should I save him for last? That possibility does provide a certain tangy symmetry. Yes, the last to go shall see all the others die before him. I wonder what TimeBinder tastes like; I know what Lee tastes like. No matter. Your brother will die alone, and I promise you, I will do everything I can to make it an exquisite death.”
She motioned to her attendants and they hurried over to tap the vein in Finn’s arm. The dark blood flowed steadily into the goblet.
“A toast,” said the Lady, raising the cup to her lips. Again, she smiled at them, mocking their fierce determination with her liquid laugh. They couldn’t take their eyes off her. Their expressions burned with intensity. “A toast—to those who serve the Regency. You should all feel honored. Just as the flavor of Finn Markham has brought pleasure to this sophisticated palate, so in turn will each of you provide that same service in turn. I give you my sincerest thanks for your selfless sacrifices.”
She drank deeply from the bowl, cradling it with both hands as she tilted the dark fluid across her lips, over her delicate forked tongue, and down her pulsing throat. The blood burned with a flavor she had never tasted before—peculiar, but tantalizing. It lingered in her mouth and left her with a haunting purple feeling. She licked her lips and wondered if she might allow herself another cup; this close to the bottom of the bottle, the flavor would almost certainly have overtones of death. She preferred her meals vigorous, not weak. And besides, a second cup, might seem like shameless indulgence. Regretfully, she decided against it and handed the goblet to a faceless insect attendant.
She gestured for a settee and sank down onto it as it glided over to her. As the warmth of Finn’s blood spread throughout her body, she cast a languorous, almost affectionate gaze across her guests. “You really don’t appreciate the honor that this represents, do you? If only you knew your history better. Even you, Three-Dollar, have no idea of the high regard that the Phaestor have for their food species. You have always thought of us as cruel and uncaring, haven’t you?”
Zillabar stretched herself luxuriously across the couch. “But we do care. More than you know. You become part of us. We cherish you. We want to see you healthy and happy in your lives, not just because it affects the flavor, but because you will serve us more efficiently.”
Three-Dollar inclined his head in a nod of polite deference. “I do know something of history. I would not presume to argue with your interpretation, but some of us have experienced the same events in a different light.”
The Lady waved away his comment with a dainty gesture of irrelevance. “I grant you that some abuses have occurred, especially among the young and the reckless members of my species. But for the most part, you will find that we have only the highest regard for your people. You have accepted a holy burden on your shoulders.” To the others’ puzzled looks, she explained. “The P
haestor do not exist in an ecological vacuum. When we began, those who created us also created several bioform species for us to feed upon. Those species did not have the sentience to experience fear. Indeed, they felt only awe and reverence for us, their protectors. They bent their necks to us proudly and willingly; they gave their lives with such pleasure that the flavor of their blood sparkled in our mouths and invigorated our spirits. Or so I have heard,” she added uncomfortably. It would not do to demonstrate too much familiarity with the flavors of bioform blood. Not even here.
“Unfortunately,” she continued, “the war against the predators lasted for many centuries, much longer than it should have. The logistics of interstellar war required many many Phaestor. The predators kept coming and coming, sometimes as many as two or three a decade. We had to stop them before they found and englobed the populated worlds, so we had to meet them in the deep between the Cluster and the great wheel of the Eye of God. We had to wait in the darkness and challenge the predators there.
Do you know what that required—the ships, the crews, the long, almost suicidal watches? Can you even conceive of the courage of our brave Phaestor children? The ships stayed on station for decades, the eggs thawed as needed; the children hatched in the most precarious conditions. They trained under the most rigorous of rules, no margins for error existed aboard the ships. But they served—without complaint. They served proudly. And we have all enjoyed the benefits of their sacrifices in the dark between the stars.
Lady Zillabar softened her tone. She brushed something away from her forehead, looked momentarily puzzled, then continued her discourse on the history of her species. “But for many years, the predators came almost faster than we could meet them. We had to breed many young Phaestor for the battle, and regretfully, the needs of our defense outgrew our ability to maintain ourselves. We reproduced faster than our bioform cattle, and although we worked as hard as we could to build up our feedstocks, we realized early on that we would have to find alternate food supplies to sustain our health and our ability to breed.
A Covenant of Justice Page 4
