Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire

by Melinda Snodgrass

  But she drew him like filings to a magnet. What did that mean? Probably nothing except that he had a passionate desire to kill her. Ideal, it was cold. Murder was a warming action.

  At last the shujukis sensed her warmth Folding its wings, it dropped into a killer’s dive. The rending beak, the claws at the wingtips … Zabb considered them all, and the murderous thoughts crumbled. The shujukis sensed his wavering intent, reluctantly released the bloodlust.

  The l’lails couldn’t know that. They had heard the single wing clap like warning thunder, the only warning the prey received. Tis clung like a burr to the long, arched neck of her l’lail as it bucked and fished. Mark Meadows was thrown. He struggled in the deep snow trying to regain his feet.

  The flight of shujukis dropped into the snow. The beat of their massive wings shook snow from the branches of the blue needles. Grounded, they were absurd beasts, lumbering and graceless, supporting their wings on tiny clawed hands at the extreme end of each pinion.

  Zabb struggled through the snow. Meadows had a vial almost to his mouth. Zabb struck it from his hands. Orange powder stained the snow like blood. The human froze, realizing that resistance in the face of so many mentats was hopeless.

  Tis was still struggling with her terrified mount. Zabb gripped the l’lail by the ear. The animal froze. Tisianne had at least dressed for a mountain journey, with pants, high boots, parka. The pack strapped to the l’lail’s haunches contained a glowtent. But her teeth were rattling in her head—either from cold or fear of him. Zabb hoped it was the latter. The thought both pleased and depressed him. Contradictory emotions were beginning to feel normal. Relief to have found her. A profound desire to throttle her.

  “Why are you driving me crazy? Why can’t I just let you go?” Not what he’d intended to say, but a truer question was never asked.

  “Please…” She folded her lips together, shook her head. Perhaps she realized it was hopeless.

  Zabb turned on Meadows. “She had guards and friends precisely so she won’t do this kind of idiotic stunt.”

  “Friends love each other. Friends help each other. I’d do it again in a second,” Mark said, and the little catch in his voice somehow added to his dignity.

  “What did you hope to accomplish? Vayawand is half a world away. There are a world’s complement of armies between you. What the hell are you doing on l’lail back in the middle of a blizzard?”

  Tis answered. “I knew M.I.S. would be watching the stations. All we had to do was cross the Theanis, and we’d be in Maz’tariq. From there a train.”

  “And you didn’t think Blaise would have his M.I.S. alerted? That traveling with a giant would cause no small amount of comment?”

  Tisianne merely shrugged. Zabb had lost all feeling in his toes.

  “Heri, take my shujukis, and the groundling. Princess Tisianne and I will ride back at first light on the l’lails.”

  “My lord, for both of you to remain on this mountain … the House—”

  “Would probably be better off if we both froze solid,” Zabb replied. “You have your orders. Now go.”

  Zabb was grateful for one thing: unlike the noisy human, Meadows knew when further argument was pointless. After a final glance to Tisianne, and a nod from the girl, Mark cautiously threw a leg over the shujukis. The line of beasts waddled up onto an outcropping like a convention of fat and geriatric hang gliders, and one by one jumped off. That brief rush of air beneath their wings was enough to get them airborne.

  Zabb pulled down the glowtent and keyed it. It unfolded, sent down anchors, and began to radiate heat. Tis watched as he hobbled the l’lails and tossed the pack over his shoulder.

  “I hope there’s food in this. I didn’t have time for dinner.” He drew a hand down the tent flap, and it peeled back. Stooped to enter. She didn’t follow.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Zabb sighed, straightened. “I can’t think of a more private place to talk than on a mountain in a blizzard.”

  “What could you possibly have to say that requires such privacy?”

  He gestured. “Come in and find out. I, for one, am not going to stand in the snow until my testicles freeze solid.”

  “It’s not a disadvantage I currently suffer.”

  “Come in out of the goddamn snow!”

  He cooked for them, which was good because Tisianne was a poor kitchen chef, and a hopeless camp cook. She busied herself unrolling the bedroll, then sat nursing her knees, watching him as he stirred the sinau soup.

  “Why are we up here?” she finally asked. “Sans guard, sans kith, sans House?”

  Zabb tasted the soup. Hissed as it burned his tongue. Resumed stirring. “I wanted a chance to talk with you away from prying minds.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  Zabb spooned soup into a bowl and handed it to her. She sipped it. “Mmm, that’s good, thank you. Something else you do well.”

  “I do a number of things well—”

  “Fight and plot are the only other two that leap to mind,” Tis said dryly.

  “You have quite a tongue on you. It could double as a ghost lance.”

  “Why is it that men always react so much more strongly to an insult from a woman?”

  Zabb set aside his bowl and advanced on hands and knees toward her. “Perhaps because every exchange is a poor substitute for sex.” He kissed her.

  “Don’t.”

  “Why not? I do this pretty well too. Are you afraid you’ll start to like it?”

  “You’re dreaming.”

  His hand rubbed across the front of her shirt, and her nipples hardened. “Upset you, and you can’t hide anything,” he murmured, his lips against her hair.

  She pushed him away. “Zabb, get a toy.”

  “I have a better suggestion. Marry me.”

  “Winter mad … I should have seen it. What did you say?”

  “It makes perfect sense. Our two bloodlines have fought for three generations. I hold the House, you want the House. Marry me, we share it. The fighting ends.”

  “First, you make a basic error. I don’t want the House. Second, I’m not even Takisian any longer. I’m a mudcrawler, a groundling, a mongrel. You’re going to breed with this?”

  “You’ve said yourself, the times they are a’changing. We’ll be the first in our House to do it.”

  “Then marry a Tarhiji, but don’t marry an alien. I have no pedigree. What kind of a heritage is this for our children? For the House Ilkazam? I’m barely a telepath … all of our babies would be tested, found wanting, and neutered.”

  “What about Blaise? He’s the result of an outcross with human blood, and look at his powers. We could get lucky.”

  “Produce another Blaise, lovely thought.”

  “There’s one thing in all of this you’ve never said,” Zabb said.

  “What?” Tis demanded.

  “You’ve never said no.”

  “Everything I’ve said has been a no.”

  “No, everything you’ve said has been good reason why I shouldn’t marry you. Well, I don’t give a damn about any of them.” He stood up abruptly, bumped his head on the top of the tent. Sat abruptly down again. “I love you.”

  He thrust himself into her, emotions raw against her mind. It was all true. And it terrified her. She slammed up her shields. Tis remembered Blythe and thought of Cody. Felt herself whipsawed between a man’s mind and a woman’s body. Went down, sucked away in confusion, a maelstrom of conflicting drives and emotions.

  He/she had loved. He/she had been loved. But not by a telepath. Not body to body and mind to mind. Their souls rubbed sandpaper raw against each other. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was a closeness no human or Tarhiji could ever experience.

  She gave way to tears. “If you loved me,” she said, “you would help me recover my body. You wouldn’t condemn me.…” Her voice failed, strangled in her throat.

  “No, if you are restored, I lose everything.” She looked away. His ne
ed beat at her. Her confusion tore at her guts. She wavered. He read it. Gripped her shoulders, and moved in for the final blow. “Don’t you see, it’s right somehow. A string of seven girls. No son. No one expected it. I thought I was safe. Then you were born. As a child you charmed me, but your sex condemned you. Now you’re safe. I can have you. Care for you.”

  “That’s not love, that’s possession.” She threw back her hair. “Do you know the best definition of love?” Softly she quoted, “It’s when that other person’s happiness is essential to your own. I can’t be happy with you, Zabb. Ultimately I don’t think you could be happy with me. We would both know it was a cheat.”

  For a long moment he just looked at her, then he stood and pulled on his heavy parka. “For prudence’ sake I’m taking both l’lails. I’ll send an escort for you.” He touched the tent, and it peeled back. Snow and wind rushed in. “And I very much fear my guard of honor has become a guard in truth.”

  Tis hung her head. “I won’t try to run again.”

  “You said that before.” Zabb hesitated, then added, “This could have gone so … differently.”

  He drowned her mind in sensation. Sweat-slick limbs twining around each other. The delicate dance of tongues. He fed back to her the orgasm he’d elicited only a few days before. Then he was gone, and Tis sat in the midst of melting snow and cried.

  “Have I taught you nothing?” Blaise’s face had assumed that sulky boy expression that made Durg long to drive said face into the nearest wall. “Perhaps the whisperers are right. Perhaps you are mad.”

  The two women cavorting in the gold-and-tiled tub had sunk to the level of their chins. One was the plump little Tarhiji beauty, the other a stately Most Bred beauty. They were both wives. Just another custom shattered by Blaise’s precipitous social engineering. Doomsayers in the House had predicted that this mongrelization of the Zal’hma at’ Irg presaged the end of history. It now seemed a small vagary when compared to this latest whim.

  “Get out!” Blaise gritted.

  The women fled, leaving wet footprints on the mosaic floor. Durg watched the dimpled, rounded butt of the Tarhiji female. To watch the psi lady could only earn him a strong, and probably physical, reprimand from that lady’s father, brothers, and uncles.

  Blaise climbed out of the five-foot-long pool and flung his head, flipping water from his soaked hair across Durg’s uniform. He lifted his arms, and Durg wrapped him in a bath sheet. Blaise had reasserted control over his features, and his expression was now one of neutral interest. It gave Durg a bellyache—not precisely of fear, more of wary concern.

  Still silent, the young man padded back into his bedroom. It cost him face and weakened his position, but eventually the silence drove Durg to speak.

  “This has gone far beyond the little prince. Your personal vendetta against your grandfather was a pleasant enough diversion, and in its own way began this great process, but we have grown far beyond that narrow purpose. Only Ilkazam stands between us and planetary unification beneath the Vayawand colors.”

  Blaise fiddled among the drawers of the bedside table. He located an Illusion and with a snap of the wrist brought it to smoldering life. He took a long drag of the drug, held it, exhaled.

  “I told you to find me another navy. You haven’t done it.”

  “Patience. So it takes another year to conquer Ilkazam.”

  “No,” Blaise said harshly. “I want it now. And the Network’s going to give it to me. They’ll sell us ships, and the Kondikki to service them.”

  “And what have you given them?” Durg asked.

  “Ilkazam.”

  “Which you don’t possess, and if you give it to the Network, you will never possess! Haven’t the contradictions inherent in this plan struck you?”

  “I’m heir to Ilkazam, and the Network doesn’t give a shit about the validity of my claim, so I can give it away. The Network will try to take possession, and then Granddaddy will really have something to worry about. The Network and Ilkazam will fight, and then we’ll fight the winner.”

  Durg felt as if the world were tipping. He groped to collect the shattered threads of his thoughts. “If you take this action, it will shatter the alliance. Where once there were allies, you will find only enemies.” The Morakh’s intensity was all the greater for his so-soft tone.

  “Bat’tam started bleating about that when I married a Tarhiji. And right after that Zaghloul joined with us. Sekal said the alliance would collapse when I allowed Tarhiji to kill Most Bred. Didn’t happen. You all said we were fucked when I allowed the troops to hit civilian targets, and currently we control through conquest or treaty twenty-seven of the thirty-one Houses. I think you’re full of shit this time too.”

  “The Network is different. They have been our mortal enemies for eight thousand years. It is why we developed our ships, built the stations, rejected large-scale colonizing—so we could guard ourselves against the Network. I will not allow you to do this.”

  Blaise reached again into the drawer, and this time when his hand emerged he was holding the .44 Python he’d brought with him from Earth. It caught Durg flat-footed, still delivering his lecture. He gaped at the weapon, tried a dodge, and felt the bullet rip into his belly.

  It would have knocked a normal Takisian to the floor. Durg swayed, grunted, and, cupping his hands over the wound, watched the blood flowing sluggishly from between his fingers.

  “I don’t think you’ll die from it, and it certainly did shut you up, didn’t it?” Blaise smiled jauntily. “Now before you go and look for a doctor, would you oblige me by obeying my commands?”

  Durg made no effort to move carefully and ease the pain. It was no more than he deserved. He had betrayed his mistress and loosed a monster upon Takis. Now all that remained was to live … and die with the consequences.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  “BAZ REPORTING, THE NETWORK has requested burnback from the station,” Taj was saying as the shuntlift doors opened and deposited Mark and Tis in House Defensive Operations.

  The old man had a hand pressed against his mastoid as if to shut out the din in the command post. Totally unnecessary of course, the receiver-transmitter was buried deep in the bone, but Tis could appreciate the motivation. The spherical room was a morass of shouted orders, queries, answers. Zabb raced past, his combat armor hanging about his waist, his batman in close pursuit trying to complete the task of dressing his master.

  “Read that!” he said, and shoved a sheaf of foil in Tisianne’s hands. “Abortion!” This directed to Taj. “Tell them to stall!” he bellowed over the noise.

  Tis skimmed the sheets. She looked up at Mark, who had been reading over her shoulder. “You understand?”

  “Enough. Blaise has bought ships from the Network and paid with this House. The Network is coming to take possession.”

  “They have raised every objection. They’ve run out of stalls!” Taj sang out.

  “Congratulations, Tis.” Zabb came raging back. “You brought them here, you—”

  “And I doubt they would be quite so assiduous in their efforts to take possession if they didn’t have a little unfinished business to settle with you. So let’s not be quite so self-righteous, shall we, Zabb?” Tisianne paused, sifted the chaotic thoughts tumbling through her head. But out of chaos sometimes comes inspiration, and it came now. “He’s overstepped himself this time,” she said almost to herself.

  Zabb ignored her. “Taj, you command the honor against the ships going to Vayawand. I’ll handle the ones headed for Ilkazam.”

  Tis intercepted Zabb as he darted back across DefOp. “Take me with you!”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Please, it’s my home, my world. Let me defend her.”

  “Tisianne was an exemplary pilot … better even than you,” Taj said in unexpected support.

  “Prince Tisianne was an extraordinary pilot because he was an extraordinary telepath. She’s almost mind blind. I’m not turning her loose i
n a half-wild fighting ship.” Zabb grabbed Tis’s shoulders, spun her around, and shoved her back into the center of DefOp. “Stay here. Be safe.”

  She whirled on him. “There is no safe place. If you fail, the Network comes here. We will fight, and we will die. At least let me die with you.”

  They hadn’t talked since that night on the mountain. Now the spoken and the unspoken were evident for everyone to read. “What do you think you can do?” Zabb asked.

  “Talk. We’re going to need help.”

  “And whom do you suggest calling, cousin? We haven’t an ally left on Takis.”

  “An hour ago that was true. Now … I expect we’ll find many friends in many places. We’ll ship link to the Raiyises of Houses Ss’ang, Alaa, Tandeh, and any others who aren’t held by the Vayawand by conquest.”

  “What’s your thinking?” Taj asked.

  “Blaise has just fissured his precious alliance. Now all that remains is for us to drive the wedge. It was one thing to forge an alliance against Ilkazam. It’s another to invite in Takis’s bitterest enemy.”

  “It might work,” came Taj’s cautious support.

  “It will work,” Mark said.

  Zabb stared down at her, smiled, and said, “I love you.” Tis went red. “Now come along.”

  “I’m coming too.” Everyone stared at Trips. He wiggled uncomfortably like a puppy in a holiday crowd. “Starshine will really dig fighting uncontrolled capitalism.”

  In the center of the bridge of Zabb’s flagship StarRacer, a hologram of Takis was lazily spinning. Each satellite, station, or weapons platform was carefully detailed. The Network starship was an obsidian ball. As they watched, the ball calved, producing forty tiny replicas of itself. Tisianne bent over the scanner.

  “Warships, roughly analogous to our destroyer class.”

  Zabb, using both a telepathic ship link to his other captains, and a conventional tight-beam, laser-pulse communication system, issued his orders. Ilkazam’s ships, indicated as tiny white stars, broke off by twos.