by John Daulton
“You heard me right. Her Majesty gave your boy Roberto absolute and total exclusivity on all trade of Goblin Tea from Prosperion to Earth. All of it. Period. They get it from him, or they don’t get it at all.”
Altin took a moment to think on it, then began to laugh. “Huzzah for him! That’s outstanding.”
Orli, however, did not laugh. “You can’t be serious?” she said. “Roberto? My God. Do you have any idea how obnoxious he will become?” She knew full well the qualities of Goblin Tea. There were no varieties of coffee on Earth as potent as Goblin Tea. Not even the synthetics or the genetically modified stuff. While Goblin Tea itself wasn’t magical, there was some magic in the growing of it. Or at least that’s what people said.
Both men were laughing heartily as they considered what she said, and they even more wholeheartedly agreed. “He will be impossible,” Altin said between chortles. “I couldn’t be happier for him.”
“And well deserved,” the general added. “It couldn’t have happened to a better man.”
Orli looked exasperated by the very idea of that much money and influence being handed to Roberto so quickly—sweet, loving, and courageous man that he was, her dearest friend in all the world, entirely aside. It was obvious by her frown that she still felt he was entirely too debauched to be given that kind of wealth. “Well, I hope it doesn’t ruin him,” she said. “I can only imagine how much he will abuse the power once he has it.” She tried to be stern about that, but the two men she loved so much both seemed so happy for Roberto that the infectious nature of their happiness finally pulled her in. All the same, as she sat grinning with them, she added, “He will be impossible now, you know?”
“Indeed,” said Altin, and at least on that they all agreed.
When they were done speculating on the nature of depravity possible in a man with uncountable wealth, a new spaceship, and powerful friends on two worlds, they finally got to the point of calling the man himself. It took the general some time to find Roberto, but soon enough his cheerful face lit up the large monitor on the wall behind the desk, and, as always, his brown cheeks rounded with effervescent natural humor.
“You’re damn right she bought me a ship,” he said to their question on that regard. “Brand new. Only the fifth one of its kind too. I got to jump the line on the waiting list. You have to see it. It’s epic. Fast and tough. They say Hostile shafts will bounce off this thing even without the shields. In fact, the plant manager told me I can park this thing at the bottom of the ocean, can sit down there for a year, and it won’t so much as creak. Not that I’m dumb enough to try. I’m going to get the codes tomorrow, and then that baby will be mine. I’m thinking of naming her the Sweaty Boobs because she’s all shiny curves in polished titanium. Makes me drool just looking at her.”
“Don’t you dare,” Orli said. “If you call it that, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“If I had half an NTA credit for every time you’ve threatened me with that, I could have paid for this ship without the Queen’s gold,” he said. “Plus my life would be so much quieter.”
“Well, just don’t think you’re actually going to name that ship the … the Sweaty Boobs. I swear, Roberto. I’ll be so mad. Nobody will respect you. Just don’t.”
He grinned back a big, wide show of teeth as raw mischief ran amok behind those glittering brown eyes.
“Well, whatever you name it,” Altin said, “we need to know if you might spare your ship for a time to help us bring back Blue Fire’s husband. I know Orli has mentioned it to you before, but we’ve got a, well, a quasi-working arrangement with Her Majesty to investigate whether it’s possible. We’ve found Yellow Fire, and we’ve also discovered that his heart seems to still be alive. Orli thinks the transplantation is going to require some fairly complicated machinery that only your people can provide.”
Roberto’s face got serious for a moment as he thought about it. One round cheek rose as he crinkled up his nose. “Why can’t you just, you know, teleport it into place?” He made his signature wriggling-fingers gesture as he said it, his standard simplification of all magic, as if some form of digital spasm was all it took.
Altin only laughed. “I wish it were so easy.”
“It’s not,” Orli jumped in. “We need a geological team. A good one. And we’re going to need room for them and their equipment once they figure out what to do. I have some ideas, but I’m not going to speculate. We’re only going to get one chance at this, and I’m not risking Yellow Fire’s life and Blue Fire’s happiness on a guess. And that’s why we need your ship.”
“When do you need me?” There wasn’t the least hesitation in his voice.
“How long until you have your crew?”
“I’ve already got them,” he said. He grin was a narrow-eyed thing, which caused Orli to shake her head, unwilling to ask about something she saw glimmering there.
“Well, since you are already there, can you see about finding us a science team?”
“I’m not exactly on tongue-kissing terms with the NTA,” Roberto said. “They gave me my bonus and my honorable discharge—which is better than I can say for Captain Asad—but they aren’t too happy about that little incident with me trying to break you out of the Fort Minot detention facilities that day.”
“So don’t get a military team. Go private. Check out some universities. That’s where most of the good ones will be anyway.”
“All right. I’ll see what I can do. How soon do you need them?”
“As soon as possible. Every day we wait is another day of agony for Blue Fire.”
“Gotcha. I’ll tell you what; I’ll meet you guys outside of Murdoc Bay in seven days. My first mate is finishing up her contract on the freighter I pilfered her from.” He grinned again, mischief openly galloping across his face. “Then I’ll see you there.”
“Murdoc Bay? Why Murdoc Bay?”
“I did mention I’ve got a business to run for the Queen, didn’t I?”
Orli looked suddenly very uncomfortable. Her last experience in Murdoc Bay had nearly led to her last experience … ever. She glanced nervously to Altin and then her father, then seemed to swallow the apprehension back, realizing Altin would be with her. “I don’t even want to know. But seven days is fine. We’ll see you then.”
“All right. See you then. See ya, Altin. Ta-ta, General.” He laughed at that. “God, I love saying ta-ta to a general. I’m so damned glad to be fleet-free.” He winked at the general, who smiled and nodded back, then the monitor went black.
“Well, there’s your ship,” said the general, turning back to face the two of them. “It looks like your mission is getting under way.”
“Yes. I’m glad of that,” Orli said, though some of the energy in her voice was gone.
They looked to Altin for confirmation of the propitious nature of Roberto and his ship, but his expression was rather grim. He knew what had happened to Orli last time she was in Murdoc Bay too. He’d seen the look on her face when Roberto mentioned it. The course of events in recent months had caused him to postpone dealing with those responsible, but he had certainly not forgotten. It seemed perhaps the time had finally come for meting out the rest of his revenge.
Chapter 9
Pernie made her way carefully through the jungle, tracing the path she’d taken on her first day running—or trying to run—with the hunt. She walked this time, however, and she gathered a few strands of young lianas and carefully braided the vines into two lengths of cord, each of which were just a bit shorter than the length of her arm. She worked as she walked, her fingers practiced at it, having learned to plait both from Kettle, on her own hair, and from Gimmel, Calico Castle’s groundskeeper, to braid her pony’s mane.
There wasn’t quite a path to follow the way she went, but the direction she took was directed by those places where light shone through the underbrush, stripes and spots of illuminated space beyond and between the drooping limbs and vines and roots and stems that snarled and twisted
and fought to block her way. She’d come this way thrice since that first day, though at different points, she’d darted off in one direction or another, and never quite entirely retraced her tracks. Still, her long practice with wandering in Great Forest back home did not leave her entirely unprepared to find her way through this wilderness, and with a little patience, she stayed fairly straight on course.
Soon enough, she spotted the twisting roots of the giant rosewood, rising up out of the forest floor and diving back again, looking like half-exposed links in some great wooden chain. She recognized the embankment near it right away and stopped. She looked up at the crest, scanning the foliage all around. Narrow beams of sunlight made their way through the canopy and dappled the leaves and the snaking patterns of bark and vine, all of which twisted together in a chaotic sort of symmetry, peaceful and seemingly unoccupied. But Pernie knew better. Somewhere in there was an enormous yellow mantis, hiding and waiting for her to come near. She squinted and saw the wet sap that had run from the gouges the creature’s spiked forelimb had caused, a red-orange ooze of tar, tacky on the top like the surface of creamed soup that’s begun to cool.
She knew the mantis wouldn’t move, that it was more patient than she was, so she looked about and found a large flowering lily with broad, flat leaves. She went to it and bent one of the leaves between her fingertips. It was as thick and supple as it had appeared to be, a sturdy jungle variety. She folded the leaf, bent it back and forth, even tried to poke her finger through. It tore, but not without a good deal of force.
She glanced around for signs of movement nearby. Nothing. She tore off a quarter of the leaf, a span of it a little wider than the palm of her hand and twice as long. She folded it over once, then hunted around for a stick or pointy rock. She found one right away, and soon had poked holes in two places through her leaf at the longer ends. She threaded her homemade cords through the holes, one at each end, and secured them with simple square knots. When she was done, she held up what she had made: a sling, not much different than the one she’d used so many times at home. The one the elves had taken from her the moment she’d arrived.
She spent a few more moments looking for suitably sized rocks, gathering a dozen of them into a pile. With a last check on the security of the knots, she gave her new weapon a try.
Dust, splinters, and bits of bark flew out from the tree where the rock struck, barely a hand’s width above the oozing flow of sap. A second, right after, blasted away more wood and nicked the top of the sap, cutting a wedge across the rubbery flow. The third stone knocked the little bulb of goo right off the tree, stone and sap both rolling off into the dirt.
Smiling and feeling like herself for the first time since arriving on this island, Pernie loaded another stone into her sling. This shot, like the last, was perfectly on target, and with it, she concluded she had the feel of her new weapon.
She loaded another stone, and then gathered up the rest, tucking them into her waistband, her boot tops, and anywhere else she could find, given that the elves seemed opposed to stitching pockets in their hunting clothes.
Tipping her head back, she looked up into the tree, looking for signs of something yellow, something that would give away the location of the mantis hiding up there somewhere. She found it straightaway. Three spans up, in a cluster of leaves. The play of dappled sunlight made it blend in perfectly.
Pernie saw it watching her, saw the angled lines of its massive piercing spikes, the edges of each serrated like crocodile teeth, another thing she was all too familiar with these days.
She spun her sling in ever-faster loops; round and round and round it went, the air whistling as the weight of the stone passed. With a hiss, the stone flew away, followed by a dull thunk. There came a rustling, then the snapping of twigs, and down came the mantis in a rain of leaves.
It hit the ground with a heavy thud, and for a time, its legs still moved, opening and closing the angles at its knees. It looked as if it were trying to run in slow motion through the air and back up into the tree. But the eyes didn’t move. Not this time. There was a hole punched through one of them, and green fluid seeped out into the dirt. And not long after, even that stopped.
Pernie thought about taking one of its spiked forelimbs for a weapon, but she had no knife to cut one off, so she had to satisfy herself with the sling. But her recent success suggested perhaps it would be enough for what she needed to do next. It was time to go back to the fern meadow and face the giant centipede-like things.
Once more she made her way carefully through the trees, again braiding a length of cord, though much longer than before and this time stripped from the fibrous insides of bark pulled from a variety of long, ropy vines. She pressed on for quite some time, hopping several streams and recalling which way she had to go with her practiced woodsman’s sense. It was the work of an hour’s walk to find it, but finally, as the sunlight piercing the canopy came through in nearly vertical lines, Pernie climbed a narrow rise and found herself once again looking across the thigh-high fluff of what seemed a fog of ferns.
She got down on her hands and knees and peered underneath the level of the fern leaves, as if looking for something beneath a low table. The light, filtered once more through the screen of ferns, was dim enough that Pernie couldn’t see beneath it very well.
She crawled right up to the edge of the fern meadow and peered deeper inside. Nothing moved. There was only the yellow powder everywhere, a soft, dusty bed of it that covered the entire expanse beneath the delicate fern leaves. She saw no sign of the many-legged monsters anywhere.
There were, in a few places, high spots in the powder, long lumps barely discernible at first, but, as she watched, distinctly dunelike in how they appeared. Modest dunes, to be sure, but they were conspicuous once she noticed them. She counted four of them within range of her sling.
Willing to take a chance at being wrong, and completely unwilling to go into the dust and risk her vision once again, she stood and crept away from the ferns. A quick scan of the surrounding jungle suggested she was still alone. She set herself to the task of setting up her trap.
She began by making a noose at one end of the sturdy cord she had made, this one nearly as thick around as her thumb. The other end she tied firmly around a nearby tree. She stretched the line of her handmade rope out toward the ferns as near as it would go and then spread the noose out on the ground near her feet. Satisfied, she hunted around for a nice big bashing rock, something big enough to mangle the many-legged monster if her plan should go awry. Once she had one of suitable size, not much bigger than a pinecone from back home and with a reasonably sharp point as well, she knelt down next to her spread noose and extracted three of her remaining sling stones.
She loaded her little weapon and squinted into the dim space beneath the ferns again. Locating one of the long lumps in the powder, she set her sling spinning furiously. The stone shot out and struck the lump with a puffy thump.
Just as she had supposed, up from the dusty yellow stuff came one of the long, squat creatures, its head end up and its eyestalks moving all around.
Pernie remained motionless as she watched it looking for the source of its recent injury. She couldn’t tell how much, if at all, she’d damaged it, but clearly it was alarmed.
It didn’t seem to see her standing there, but in a matter of moments, one of the other lumps in the powder shook itself and rose up from the dust as well. This one was bigger than the first, the flat gray length of its gently arcing shell a full four hand’s widths wide. The two of them chattered at one another, the little round Os of their mouths like dark spots in the dusk-light of their under-fern world.
Pernie feared they would wake up others, so she quickly sent another sling stone on its way. This one struck the first creature right below its eye, breaking the appendage halfway off. The creature flopped over on its back with the force of the impact, and all its legs began to tie invisible knots in the cloud of dust stirred up by its violence.
&
nbsp; The larger one let out a low, frightening hiss, and with it, up popped two more creatures from powdery dunes nearby. All three directed their waving eyes to right where Pernie was.
They chattered at one another for a moment more, and Pernie sent another stone at the smallest of the three just before they charged.
Her stone struck true, catching the creature like the last, right at the base of an eyestalk, and like the one before, this one hissed and flipped onto its back, though only for a moment before it rolled up tightly into a ball, a perfect sphere of itself, its grayish shell all wrapped around it to protect its soft parts from yet another attack.
The other two came on strong, and their astonishing speed cleared the distance between them and their assailant almost instantly. Pernie barely had time to grab up the noose lying there and hold it out before they were upon her, the larger one running straight up her thighs, belly, and chest in less time than it takes to sneeze. Its pointy feet all brushed and touched her, at least those that were upon her—half its length was still standing upon the ground, its body bent in an L shape, giving it enormous leverage. The power it had from that leverage drove her over onto her back. She fought and pushed at it, trying desperately not to let go of her rope as she fought. She punched with both hands at the soft underside it exposed to her, an endless trunk of shifting limbs, all those jointed legs moving at once all around her, tapping and prodding her body and her face.
The second creature, as eager as the first, also put itself into the mix, and between the three of them, insects and human, they were quite a tangled mess.
Between Pernie’s punching and the added use of her knees, combining as well with the activities of the second creature, which were sometimes at odds with its companion, she was able to shift enough that she could lift her arms above her head, raising with them a few of the creature’s legs as it reached for her face. Her assailant opened its little mouth and thrust out its hollow mouth spike. It made a flat slap with its head, aiming for her right eye.
