“We consider her a saint,” Alejandro murmured.
“Of that I have no doubt.”
“The Xerikesh Amendments devote a chapter to her.” Alejandro clasped the religious pendant hanging from his neck, his face taking on a reverence that did not appear feigned.
“She carried the last of the twelve original Staffs of Lore, powerful tools from the early Starseer days,” Abelardus said. “Our legends imply that our people were much more powerful in the first centuries after the colonization of Kir, before we went out into space and began diluting our lines by mating with mundane humans.” His lips curled again.
Alisa kept from rolling her eyes. Barely.
“Your big mission is to look for some old stick?” she asked Alejandro, feeling disappointed. She had expected something more epic.
He stiffened, and she thought he might continue to ignore her questions about the artifact. But he must have realized that Abelardus had already let the bramisar out of its den.
“As Abelardus said, it’s a powerful tool that can be wielded by someone with Starseer blood,” he said.
“A tool that can be used as a weapon,” Abelardus said. “A weapon much more powerful than anything else in the system now. Legend says Alcyone was wielding it when she single-handedly destroyed Kir, leaving nothing except the Kir Asteroid Belt in its place.”
“Oh.” Alisa had never read the Xerikesh or the Amendments, so she was only vaguely familiar with the story. She knew that some of the history books reported that a concerted effort from the allied forces of all the other planets had destroyed the planet. Others said that seismic activity on the planet itself had been exploited by an invasion team. “Staff of Lore seems like an innocuous term for such a weapon.”
“The staffs weren’t built to be weapons,” Abelardus said. “They were tools for our leaders. They also act like computer databases containing vast repositories of knowledge, for those able to access them.” He touched his temple.
“Starseers,” Alisa said.
“Starseers,” he agreed.
“Then why,” she started to ask Alejandro, but halted mid-sentence as realization struck her like an iceberg. “You’re the one Commander Farrow should have been questioning,” she said slowly.
Alejandro’s eyebrows rose.
“Do you know where the emperor’s son is?” she asked.
“No.”
“But once you find this staff, if you can find it, you’d go looking for him? Or maybe it could even help you locate him?” Alisa glanced at Abelardus. Would he know if that was possible? If the staff could destroy a planet—she shuddered at the notion—finding people with Starseer blood did not seem like much of a stretch.
Alejandro clenched his jaw and said nothing. Belatedly, Alisa wondered if she should have kept her mouth shut or walked away from the conversation before revelations had been made. Was he even now considering if he should try harder to talk Leonidas into making her disappear? Or maybe he would consider hiring someone else to port him around the system. One couldn’t have pesky Alliance loyalists learning about plans to deposit the ultimate weapon into the hands of a ten-year-old.
She rubbed her face, wondering just how loyal she was to the Alliance after the last twenty-four hours. Or the last six months, even. She had been abandoned on Dustor instead of being given transport home for medical care in a modern facility, she had been captured by Alliance ships near Perun and accused of greed and harboring fugitives, she’d been visited by a former ally for the purpose of tagging her freighter, and here, Commander Farrow had been willing to kill her to stop Leonidas. Oh, that might have been a bluff, but she touched her neck, the memory of the muzzle pressed to it fresh in her mind. It also might not have been a bluff.
Even though she had reasons to resent the Alliance now, that did not mean she wanted to see the empire back in charge. She cringed to imagine some boy with access to the kind of power Abelardus had spoken about. She ought to do everything in her power to keep that from happening. A weapon like that should be hurled into the nearest sun, not brought out to be used by men.
“Why did you bring that out here?” Alejandro asked, waving to the box in Abelardus’s hand.
“Lady Naidoo thought that perhaps it would be a good time for the Staff to return to the universe, and as odd as it seems, you seem to have more of an idea of where to find it than we do.”
“The emperor had a team of historians researching it for years,” Alejandro murmured, “if not decades. His predecessors may have been the ones to start the hunt.”
Abelardus nodded once.
Alisa started to ask a question, but closed her mouth. She had already asked enough questions, questions that a lowly freighter captain should not know the answers to. Her involvement in this could only land her in trouble. More trouble. Yet, she could not help but wonder at Abelardus’s motives. She highly doubted that he or Lady Naidoo cared about the prince or who was on the imperial throne. They didn’t even seem to care that much about who governed in the system, so long as they were left alone. Of course, the Alliance had decided not to leave them alone. She grimaced, thinking of the crashed warships and the countless smaller craft scattered across the ice. A part of her wished she knew more about the politics—and now open conflict—between the two peoples. A part of her wanted to know nothing, to stay out of everything. This was all over her head.
“We will hunt for the Staff together,” Abelardus said, nodding to Alejandro, then surprising Alisa by nodding to her as well.
“Uh?” She looked at the two men. Abelardus’s expression was calm and knowing—and superior, as if he believed he was in charge here.
Alejandro scowled. He had planned to part ways with her here. He must dread the idea of continuing on with a mouthy former Alliance officer.
“You have a ship,” Abelardus said blandly.
She was about to point out that there were lots of ships on the planet and that Alejandro seemed to have plenty of money for hiring transport, but if Abelardus was going on this mission, didn’t she need to go too? He had the information she needed.
“Yes, I do,” Alisa said. “And it’s an extremely fine ship.”
Alejandro made a nasal noise that could have either been a protest or a sign of a sinus infection.
“I’m prepared to offer you free passage to wherever that orange rock thinks you should go, providing you can tell me about Durant. I understand the name is familiar to you?”
“I haven’t seen my brother in almost a year, so I don’t know what he’s up to,” Abelardus said, “but yes, Lady Naidoo instructed me to help you get in touch with him.”
“She did? Huh.” Alisa was surprised the woman had remembered their deal and planned to keep her word.
“I will send a message from your ship and try to get in contact with him. He’s fallen off the grid, at least as far as we know, so it may take time to answer. When last I heard from him, several months ago, he was visiting Cleon Moon.”
“What’s on Cleon Moon?”
“That would interest our people? I can’t presume to know what Durant was up to there, but… there is a Starseer school in the mushroom forests there. They often take orphans.”
“Jelena isn’t an orphan,” Alisa snapped.
Abelardus spread a hand. “Nevertheless, it would be the logical place to drop an unattached Starseer child. And it’s also… off the grid.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s been a while since anyone has been able to communicate with them.”
“Cleon Moon,” Alisa said with a nod. It wasn’t exactly a solid lead, but at least it was a direction to fly, a starting point. “We better go inside, get out of the cold and off the ice.”
Neither man objected when she led the way up the ramp, though Abelardus did gaze into the mist before following her. She wondered if he was looking toward where the temple had been or perhaps where it was moving to. She also wondered how much truth he had told her. Lady Naidoo had lied t
o her once. And Abelardus had been willing to use her and Leonidas, if not sacrifice them, to buy time for his people to escape. Dare she hope that what he said would actually help?
“We’ll find out,” she murmured. “We’ll find out.”
Epilogue
Alisa walked into her cabin, propped her fists on her hips, and scowled around at the interior.
As soon as they had flown out of Arkadius’s orbit and she had been able to leave the Nomad in the hands of the autopilot, she had finagled her crew into helping her check all the areas that Captain Khazan had walked through on her way in to chat. Chat and plant a homing device, apparently. Beck and Yumi and Mica were still searching the cargo hold. Alisa had checked the handful of niches and crevices in the corridor leading to her cabin, peeking behind all the hatches along the way.
She headed for the desk. That had been where they had spoken, though Khazan could have stuck something tiny and innocent-looking on any wall. She might have simply flicked it into the bed sheets. She had been sitting right next to the bunk, and it wasn’t as if Alisa had found a lot of time to do laundry lately.
Grumbling, she grabbed the soft minkling blanket and shook it, listening for the clink of something falling out.
A knock sounded at the hatch behind her.
“Come in,” Alisa said, tossing the blanket into a heap on the floor as Leonidas walked in.
He looked down at it and raised his eyebrows.
Alisa, rummaging through her sheets, only glanced at him.
“If you’re not too busy eviscerating your bedding, the doctor and I have come up with a promising set of coordinates to check.” Leonidas held up his small netdisc.
“We’re going to Cleon Moon before we check anything.” Alisa shook out the top sheet, managing to avoid snapping the corners at him.
“This is nearly on the way.”
“As nearly on the way as the Trajean Asteroid Belt was to Perun?” Alisa tossed the sheet onto the pile with the blanket and patted down the bottom sheet.
“That was more of a scenic detour.”
“I’m not sure that’s what I’d call a mining ship overrun by pirates wearing scalps like jewelry.”
“I was thinking of the asteroids. Some of them had aesthetic interest.”
“If you say so.” Alisa stopped searching for long enough to stick her hand on her hip and look at him. She had taken Abelardus on as a passenger, since he had given her more information on finding Jelena than anyone else had, but she was not enthused about using her ship to hunt for an artifact capable of destroying planets.
Leonidas was wrinkling his nose. “I believe you have dust mites in here.”
“Are your cybernetically enhanced nostrils telling you that?”
“I can see them floating in the light from your lamp.”
“Those are motes, not mites.” Or so Alisa hoped. The ship did need new mattresses, especially in the crew cabins. But the ship needed new everything, and other systems were far more critical than beds.
“Hm,” Leonidas said noncommittally.
“Does this mean you’re going to refuse to have your massage done in my cabin?”
She expected him to dismiss the comment without answering. After all, he hadn’t seemed any more enthusiastic over the idea of a massage than he had been about the ear rub she had offered him a few weeks earlier.
“I hadn’t considered appropriate locations for such things,” he said. “Have you collected suitable rocks?” He peered toward the foot of the bed, as if a nice collection of river stones would be piled there.
“Not yet, but I exfoliated my elbows in the sanibox this morning.” She pushed up her sleeve and displayed one for his perusal.
“I’m certain they would make interesting tools.”
“Careful, Leonidas. You keep calling my body parts interesting, and I’ll be so overcome with ardor that I’ll throw myself at you.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Well, banter wasn’t his strong suit. She should be tickled he had played along for a while. Further, it had been many days since he called her humor inappropriate. Maybe it was growing on him.
“Let’s see the netdisc,” Alisa said, waving him to the seat at the desk.
Leonidas nodded, a hint of relief entering his eyes. She tried not to find it depressing that he would rather talk about the doctor’s mission than her throwing herself at him.
He laid the flat disc on the desk, choosing to stand rather than sit, and waved a hand over it to call up the holodisplay. It opened to a star map and coordinates.
“How did you already find a location?” Alisa sat at the desk so she could call up her own netdisc and type in the digits.
“We scoured the Starseer database files that Dominguez copied while he was in the library. There were only six nursery rhymes and one old ballad that referred to the Staffs of Lore, with only two being nonsensical enough that we thought clues might be buried within the words.”
“Only one in three nursery rhymes were nonsensical? Those numbers seem low.”
“I’m certain a lot of the old nursery rhymes that came over from Old Earth are only nonsensical to us because we don’t know the context. These seem truly silly, with one mentioning old names for the constellations suitable for racing around on a dragon’s back. We immediately thought the lines might be directions.”
“We or you?” Alisa asked.
Leonidas hesitated. “I’m the one who analyzed the rhyme.”
“You’re not the brains behind this operation, are you?”
“Only when it comes to math. Dominguez’s pre-medical degree was in biology. Appropriate for a future surgeon, but he admitted he chose it because it involved less math than the other sciences.”
“Well, your math-loving brain came up with coordinates that are in the middle of nowhere.” She pointed at the holodisplay that now floated above the desk next to his, the image that had come up when she plugged in the coordinates.
“I know, but we can go take a look. The doctor suggested I apply force on you if you resist my suggestion.” He smiled faintly, and she had little fear that he would follow through with that.
“The doctor can sit on his balls and bounce on them,” she said. “Leonidas, there’s nothing to take a look at. Not even an asteroid. According to my computer, your coordinates are halfway between nothing and nothing.”
“Then it shouldn’t take long to look at them.”
“To detour to them on the way to Cleon Moon would add an extra four days to our flight plan.”
“I could tell Dominguez that you’re only willing to go if he buys you chocolate. And a new mattress.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my mattress.” She scowled at him while avoiding the temptation to ask how much chocolate they were talking about. “Besides, don’t you think I need combat armor before I shop for bedding and munchies?”
“You do need combat armor.” Leonidas leaned his hip against her desk and scratched his jaw. “It’s expensive, though, and I don’t know how much money the doctor has to spend on this mission. There’s nobody back home refilling our coffers. That’s a certainty.”
“What happened to your mission? The one that required you to drag my ship to the T-Belt before you ever met the doctor or his orb?”
Leonidas lowered his hand, his blue eyes growing wistful. “It is… not a priority.”
“Because it’s personal, and you think it’s more important to put a super weapon into the hands of a ten-year-old boy?”
His brow creased.
“After you stormed inside, I got some intel from Abelardus,” Alisa said.
“I did not storm. I strode.”
“Stormily. By the way, I’ve already had a talk with Beck, but you might want to have another one with him, preferably not the kind where you bend all of his weapons in half. I’d prefer not to have treachery going on among my crew and passengers. It’s bad enough that we now have a Starseer onboard.”
“I will spea
k with Beck.”
Alisa waited to see if he would discuss his plans for the orb, the staff, and the prince, but he merely gazed down at his feet. He was wearing faded running shoes. They did not look that fascinating to her.
“I would like a chance to resume my mission, as you call it, someday soon,” he said quietly.
“Does it involve ancient artifacts or super weapons?”
“No.”
“Then I’d much prefer to help you with it than I would to help the doctor or the Starseer. You know the odds are against Abelardus having the same goal as the two of you, right?”
“I’m aware. I don’t trust him. You may wish to be wary about the information he gives you as well.”
Oh, she would be. And if Abelardus got in contact with Durant through her ship’s comm system, she would not feel remotely bad about recording that message for her own perusal.
“I’m wary about everything these days,” she said. “Even, thanks to you, my mattress.”
“I apologize for that.” He smiled at her, the sadness of the expression making her think mattresses were not the primary thing on his mind. “In addition to bringing you the coordinates, I came to thank you.”
“You’re welcome. For what?”
“For facilitating my escape from the Alliance by attacking that doctor.”
“Somehow, I doubt you needed my help. And I don’t feel all that magnificent about knocking out an old man who’d forgotten all of his military combat training.”
“He wasn’t that old. And he was aiming more tyranoadhuc at me.”
Still holding her gaze, Leonidas lowered himself to one knee beside the desk. Since Alisa was seated, it put them closer to eye level. And not that far apart. What did he have in mind? Her heart rate sped up at the thought that it might involve lips. Both of their lips. She knew she shouldn’t be thinking of romance or even flirting with him, but her body sometimes overruled her brain when it came to propriety.
She leaned her elbow on the desk, stealing some of the inches between them. He also leaned forward. His fingers brushed her knee as he reached under the desk. A knee had to be the least erogenous zone on a human being, but the light touch made her body flare with heat. She would regret sleeping with him, and feel it a betrayal to her late husband, but she knew right then that she would do it if she got the chance.
The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker Page 75
