Rules of Conflict

by Kristine Smith

  Augie likes that kind of pain. She could sense him in the back of her mind, telling her exactly where she needed to strike. He didn’t fight for the beauty of the process. He didn’t fight to make declaration, or honor any god. He fought to hurt. He fought to kill.

  The status of humanish-idomeni relations again depended on what she feared, and how she felt, and where she aimed.

  Please God, don’t let me kill her. Any God. Whichever one cared enough to listen.

  As if on cue, hushed conversations silenced. All eyes shifted to the two females standing in the middle of the room.

  “We will begin now,” Hantìa said in informal High Vynshàrau, her voice level and without gesture. She circled Jani, arms opened wide, slightly bent at the waist. Hain. The Stance of Welcome. A great position if you wanted to be gutted.

  Get it over with. That was augie talking. Jani blocked him out. “Yes,” she answered, forcing herself into the same stance as Hantìa. “We will begin now.” The soles of her trainers squeaked against the bare floor as she maneuvered. That and the pound of the blood in her ears were the only sounds she heard.

  She played it safe at first, blocking Hantìa’s tentative initial thrusts, restraining the urge to come in behind the blocks and do damage of her own. She knew Hantìa, a skilled fighter, would try to draw her in. She wants a quick shot. A chance to cut near an elbow or a wrist, to nick a tendon and impede Jani’s ability to wield her weapon.

  Hantìa struck repeatedly. Jani parried attack after attack, each more confident than the last. Her incised arm ached. The impacts Hantìa threw behind the blows forced her back, left her off-balance. Open.

  I am not weak. Yes, she was. I’m—not tired. Yes, she was.

  Sweat flowed. Her knees trembled.

  Her hands dropped.

  Hantìa struck. Blade in. Blade out.

  The gash tore Jani’s left arm from elbow to wrist. The wireweave worked its magic, making vessel-grown nerves sing as though real. One note. High and long. Rose-pink carrier welled and dripped, squelching beneath her shoes as she dodged Hantìa’s follow-up.

  “Bring your hands up! Cover—!” Ischi’s shout, silenced mid-warning.

  No coaching allowed. Jani raised her hands just in time to avert another blow. Carrier flowed down her arm and coated her hand. It didn’t clot as quickly as blood. It would remain liquid for the balance of the fight. She’d drop her knife if she tried to switch hands.

  Her heart pounded. Skipped a beat. A side stitch stabbed like an internal knife. Hantìa’s face wavered. The room darkened.

  Jani’s heart skipped again, then slowed. Like new life, the pain ebbed. She knew why.

  Hantìa again closed in, arms spread wide, torso exposed.

  You owe me! augie shouted. Hit her now!

  Jani ignored the fatal opening. She blocked another thrust with her injured left arm. Found her chance. Slipped her blade through.

  Hantìa jumped back, blood streaming from the hack across her right bicep. Her dominant arm. Jani saw her wince as she tried to grip her blade. Heard the mutters from the Vynshàrau side of the room, the muffled “yes” from hers. She could hear the rasp of Hantìa’s pained-tinged breathing. See every bead of sweat on her face. Smell the syrup sweetness of the carrier mingled with the metal tang of blood.

  Time slowed. Motion. Jani saw Hantìa’s answering blow coming as if she’d announced it. She swept aside the blade edge with her right arm, driving the Vynshàrau back toward the wall, taking the cut as she knocked the knife from her hand. Follow it in. She did. Grab her around the neck. She did, the slickness of her left hand forcing her to grip Hantìa’s throat so tightly she could feel the pulse.

  Either side of the neck. Just under the jaw. Do it. Do it!

  Jani pressed Hantìa against the wall. Pushed tip of blade against hollow of throat. Saw, for one fleeting moment, the alarm in the Vynshàrau’s cracked marble eyes.

  Then she stepped back. “Declaration is made.” She switched the blade to her left hand. No matter if it slipped now. Edge to right forearm, taking care to avoid the bandage. Back. Forth.

  Somebody screamed. It wasn’t her.

  “Finished!” Nema bounded to his feet. “A marvelous fight, and truly. Full of hate—a glorious thing!” He swept toward them, eyes alight. “My Eyes and Ears’ first declaration. When she turns my age, her arms will look as mine, I predict!”

  “I’d be dead by then.” Jani opened her left hand and let the blade fall. Metal clacked softly against coated flooring.

  “No, no, no. You will be most gloriously alive.” Nema picked up the blade, turned to his side of the room, and lifted it above his head. His eyes focused in Cèel’s direction, he lowered it slowly and wiped the edges on his sleeves, leaving behind ragged smears to complement the neat red trim.

  Hantìa approached her. “You are cut more than me.” She sounded disappointed. “I should demand rematch.” She grasped Jani’s left wrist and turned it, examining the wounded animandroid flesh. “Does that hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Hantìa nodded, her tone as clinical as John’s at his most detached. “Mine, also.” She studied the cuts on Jani’s other arm, touching the self-inflicted one that signaled the end of the bout. “The wound you gave yourself is worse than the one I gave you.”

  “No surprise there.”

  Jani turned, catching herself just before it devolved to a wobble. “Good morning, Doctor.”

  Pimentel scowled. “Good morning, Captain. It’s been hours.” He wore medwhites instead of summerweights. A woman stood behind him. She wore medwhites, too, and a stunned expression. She also toted a sling bag. Without being asked, she reached into the bag, pulled out a stylus, and handed it to Pimentel.

  “Let’s see how far gone you are.” He frowned as he stepped around the carrier drying on the floor. Then he activated the stylus and flicked the light in Jani’s eyes.

  Red light. Pulsing. This time, she wobbled.

  “We have to get you out of here now.” Pimentel pocketed the stylus and gripped Jani by the elbow.

  “No!” Nema’s hand locked around Pimentel’s wrist. “She cannot go. There are ceremonies. There are—”

  “NìRau ti nìRau.” Jani slipped her fingers around Pimentel’s wrist and pried Nema’s fingers away. “I’m wearing a security chip on a time release. I have to go back.”

  “But your first àlérine!”

  “NìRau.” Pimentel massaged his abused wrist. “She should never have left the base in the first place.” His voice shook. “She is sick, weak, in the first stages of augie overdrive, and if I don’t get her back to Sheridan within thirty minutes, there isn’t a pin block in existence that will stop her from going into shock.”

  “À lérine must be properly closed.” Cèel swept through the Vynshàrau gathering. On closer examination, his face looked familiar. If Val Parini could be jaundiced and stretched, he could pass for the Oligarch’s twin. “You forced this, Tsecha. Now we are to be cheated of what small order we could have salvaged.” His English held only the barest born-sect throatiness. His clipped disapproval was more easily detected.

  Nema rounded his shoulders. “My nìa won.”

  “No finesse. No beauty. She beat back nìaRauta Hantìa like Haárin. Like humanish. The fight ended before it began.” Cèel’s chin jutted. Since he had typical Vynshàrau bones, he had a lot to jut. “I could declare it no fight at all.”

  In other words, your girl lost, so you’re kicking the gameboard over. Jani fingered the bout-ending wound on her right arm. “If that was no fight, why am I bleeding?” She held up her arm in front of Cèel’s face. He didn’t look at her, of course, but he knew she was there. “I found opening. I disarmed. I won.” She slipped easily into the stylized posture of High Vynshàrau, despite the growing agitation caused by augie’s dressing up and finding nowhere to go. “I should challenge you for questioning me.” She raised her left hand, palm facing down, and turned her head to the right in in
jured pride. “I do challenge you for questioning me.”

  Vynshàrau and humanish fell silent.

  Cèel looked at her in his periphery. His eyes were unusual for a Vynshàrau, neither brown nor gold but a pale sea green that contrasted sharply with the tarnished gilt of his skin. “You have no right or cause to challenge me,” he said in English. “You do not understand hierarchy.”

  “But lousy sportsmanship, nìRau, I understand perfectly.” She turned her back on Cèel’s puzzled glower. “Ask my teacher to explain it to you. He has the handheld.” She headed for the exit. Pimentel hurried after her, followed by his colleague.

  Nema cut past, around, and through to catch Jani up. Desjarlais at his best never moved better. “Your first declaration.” He sounded giddy.

  “Hantìa had been training as a Temple archivist.” Jani touched the wall every so often just to make sure it was there. “Instead, she’s here as an examiner. You forced her to change her life’s work. Then you brought her here, because you knew she would challenge me. You knew if she did, it would force Cèel to acknowledge me because they share skein. Gotten devious in our old age, haven’t we, nìRau?”

  “You are angry, nìa?” Nema’s voice wavered in disbelief.

  “You set me up.”

  “You must assert yourself as my heir, nìa. You must fight for your acceptance.”

  “I am not your heir! I will never be your heir!” She darted out the doors and toward the first vehicle she saw, a Service grey triple-length with a caduceus and two silver stars etched on the rear door. She turned to Pimentel. “Carvalla’s staff car?”

  “It’s fast.” Pimentel closed in behind her. “Hals told me what happened. Somebody at the JA is going to get their ass handed to them on a plate.” He yanked up the door and pushed Jani inside. The other doctor followed close at his heels; Burkett, to her surprise, brought up the rear. He yanked the gullwing closed. The vehicle shuddered.

  “Let’s go!” Burkett thumped the privacy shield with his fist. The skimmer lumbered out of the courtyard, then picked up speed as it hit the skimway.

  Chapter 26

  “How are you feeling?” Pimentel again flicked the stylus in Jani’s eyes. Muttering darkly at whatever he saw, he dug into the sling bag and pulled out a larger scanner with an attached sphygmomanometer cuff.

  “Flicking red lights in a challenge room—you’re lucky Cèel didn’t ask you to choose your weapon.” Jani rested her head against the seat back. The smooth leather felt odd. Damp.

  “So is he.” Pimentel wrapped the cuff around Jani’s right arm, but as soon as he hit the contraction pad, the pressure caused blood to well in the gashes. “I need to close those wounds.”

  Jani sniffed. The upholstery smelled, too, like wet rodents. “You can’t close them. They have to heal naturally.”

  Pimentel punched at the scanner pad. The device squeaked in protest. “It looks like someone went after your arms with a piece of sheet metal.” He took the blood pressure reading, then stripped off the cuff. “Even with your augie, they’re going to scar.”

  “They’re supposed to.” The smell intensified. Her stomach churned. “The uglier the better. It means your hatred has been well and truly declared.”

  A ripple of dismay crossed Burkett’s face as he watched Pimentel scrabble with his equipment. “What did Tsecha mean when he called you his ‘heir’?”

  Jani found Burkett’s queasiness amusing, which told her how badly off she was. “You’re aware of my medical history?”

  A sharp nod, followed by hesitation. “You’re turning into one of them.”

  “No, not completely. I’m hybridizing. The ambassador thinks after I hybridize completely into a half-human, half-idomeni, I can begin training as his religious replacement.”

  “Chief propitiator of the Vynshàrau!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You won’t have to worry about that once Gene Therapeutics gets started on you,” Pimentel muttered as he and the trauma surgeon took turns attaching pin blocks leads.

  “My God.” Burkett rested his head against the seat back. “I hope I did the right thing letting you fight Hantìa.”

  “You would have insulted the Oligarch if you hadn’t.” Jani paused. The damp rat smell had ramped to an appalling stench, and she tried to breathe through her mouth and talk at the same time. “Then who knows, he might have challenged you.” She smiled. Cruelty could be fun, with the right target. “I’d brush up on my bladework if I were, sir. You may need it.”

  Burkett looked at her. Outside, the workday was just beginning for most inhabitants of Chicago, but his long face already showed the effects of a head-on collision between a rough morning and an afternoon that promised more of the same. “You held your augie in check during that fight. I could tell.”

  Jani’s smile faded. “Yes, sir.”

  “That takes . . . an extreme amount of willpower.”

  “I’ve learned how to control him. All it takes is practice.” A wave of shivering overtook her. She could hear her teeth chatter.

  Burkett swallowed hard, then twisted in his seat and thumped his fist once more against the privacy shield. “Damn it, hurry up!”

  “Yes, sir!” The young man’s voice sounded tight. “We’re almost topped out, though.” The skimmer’s insect hum increased in pitch. They had left the last of the city buildings behind. Forests and parks now whipped past in a series of green blurs.

  “The Bluffs.” Jani grinned. “I know people who live here, but I don’t think they’d admit to the acquaintance.” She sniffed. Amid the wet rat, she detected the unforgettable rank of corpse. “Roger?”

  Pimentel looked up from the recorder display. “Yes?”

  “Does this cabin smell funny to you?”

  “Do you recall that smell, Jani?”

  Jani nodded carefully. “A cellar. On Guernsey. Spring floods—we found all these dead rats in the cellar. Drowned. And a body—”

  The trauma surgeon thrust the recorder at Pimentel and dived into the bag. “She’s accessing sense memory. We need to take her down now. If she flies off, we may not be able to control her.”

  “No!” Pimentel grabbed her wrist. “We only have a few minutes to set up the pin blocks. We take care of the pain first, then we worry about her augie!”

  A sharp tingle, like an electric shock, radiated through Jani’s right arm. “How much time do we have left?”

  Pimentel checked his timepiece. “We’re still supposed to have fifteen minutes!” He turned and pounded on the panel. “Speed up!”

  “I’m going as fast as I can, sir!” The driver’s knuckles showed white as he clamped down on the wheel. “I’m losing her on the curves as it is!”

  “You should have called for air transport, Colonel,” Burkett snapped.

  “I tried, sir.” Pimentel’s hands flew as he clamped the pin block array around Jani’s forearm. “I couldn’t get approval for an in-city trip.”

  “Then you should have lied!”

  “I’ll file that recommendation away for future use, sir, thank you!”

  Jani stiffened as the second wave broke like a studded club across shattered bone. She reached out her carrier-encrusted left hand. Pimentel grabbed it and squeezed. “I didn’t think it would give any warning.” She winked at him. “Write it up. Maybe you can get a journal communication out of it.”

  Pimentel thumped the block touchpad with his free hand. “I’ve just activated the blocks, Jani. Hang on for a few more seconds.”

  “That’s easy for you to s—!” Her back arched as the third wave hit. No mercy this time. No quarter. And, after a split second of white-hot pain that exploded from within like a swallowed shatterbox, no consciousness.

  She inhaled.

  No rats, this time.

  Metal.

  Antiseptic.

  Hospital.

  Jani eased open her eyes just as Morley’s familiar face poked into view.

  “Don’t move too much. Your arm
is going to be pretty sore for a couple of days.”

  Jani looked around as well as she could. It wasn’t worth the effort. This room mirrored her last room, which in turn mirrored the one before that. “Are you still on afternoons?”

  Morley checked the readouts on the monitors surrounding Jani’s bed. “In answer to your unspoken question, you’ve only been out four hours. It’s about what we expected. There are only two sedatives we could risk using on you, and neither is worth much. They pumped you full as soon as they skimmed you into Triage, but your augie fought off most of it.”

  “Oh.” Jani stifled a yawn, then ran a tongue over her dry teeth. Her head throbbed. She swallowed again, and detected the tell-tale odor of berries. “They took me down, didn’t they?”

  “They had no choice.” Morley held a straw to Jani’s lips and supported her head as she drew down a wonderful swallow of cold water. “You came to a few minutes after the chip stopped emitting, and you came up swinging. You wouldn’t let anybody touch your arm.” She pulled the straw away.

  Jani gazed longingly after the water. “What else happened?”

  Morley grinned. “First Pimentel stormed over to the JA’s and went critical all over Incarceration. Turns out their four-hour grace period really equaled three hours and forty-five minutes. The traditional warning shot, they said. Endangering the life of my patient, Pimentel said. I think it was the attempted murder threat that really made their day. Some of them are augmented, but they’re going to be reluctant to come here for their precautionaries for quite a while.” She dragged a chair between the monitors and sat down.

  “Watching what you went through with that chip shook the hell out of Burkett—he was green-faced when he shot out of your skimmer. Tore off to the JA Executive Offices right behind Pimentel, sweaty casuals and all, and threatened everyone within shouting distance with a charge of treason, saying that what happened to you endangered sensitive negotiations, thus imperiling Commonwealth security. Then, last but far from least, the idomeni ambassador called the A-G. Something about the Oligarch’s extreme displeasure and the disruption of sacred rituals. He also mentioned Lord Ganesha?”