"Is it back? Your ability?" She sounded worried, despite my reassurances.
"It is; I felt it go and return," I said. "It was to save two lives, and they're fine, now. I supervised everything he did."
"Here's food," Dena said, rising as a servant brought in a tray.
"Oh, good, noodles," I said, lifting a fork and dipping into the bowl.
BlackWing XIII
Randl
"You're sure they're all right?" Jett stood between the beds holding Nari and Tiri, as if he dared anyone to remove him from the ship's infirmary.
"Quin supervised their healing; they're fine," I assured him. "The med-bot's information confirms that."
"Oh, good," Jett visibly relaxed.
"You should have seen us—we were covered in dirt," Nari smiled at Jett. Tiri beamed at him from her bed, too.
"You released a preliminary spell, which could have been enough to do anyone else in," I told both women. "The dirt was meant to cover you up afterward. Thankfully, Vik was close enough that he nullified the brute force of it, and his High Demon lifted you out of that mess. He was the best person to be there for both of you at that moment; anyone else coming in would have tripped the primary spell, too, and that could have taken anyone else down."
Jett's frown was very deep by this time; I didn't want to downplay how much danger Nari and Tiri had been in. At least he wasn't terrified for them until after the fact.
Don't worry about Vik; Nari and Tiri are young enough to be his children, I told Jett in mindspeech. He'd have done the same for anyone. Besides, if you haven't noticed, you have two adoring women staring at you whenever you're not looking. You should come for meals now and then, I added.
"Might I join you for dinner tonight?" Jett turned to the twins.
"Please," Nari struggled to hide a huge smile.
Jett, delighted with her answer, lifted her hand and kissed it.
Queen's Palace, Le-Ath Veronis
Lissa
"I didn't want to keep hauling it around on XIII," Randl said. He and Trent had transported the bulk of the gold from Lee'Qee to my treasury. It took up an entire, unused room there. Kooper, Randl and I were the only ones to have access to it afterward; it was heavily warded by all three of us.
"Did you keep a sample?" Kooper's forehead creased as he asked the question.
"I did—Nari and Tiri helped select a good cross-section to examine. Some of it is stamped in designs and languages they've never seen or heard of, before."
"We need a higher power on this," I said. "I'll see whether Charles is willing to take a look."
"I was hoping for Nefrigar," Randl countered. "Who is Charles?"
"The Mighty Mind," Kooper snorted. "He shows up when he's interested, not until and certainly not before."
"Zaria is his daughter," I half-whispered. "She doesn't like to talk about that."
Randl blinked. If I were honest, I'd say he hadn't considered that Zaria had parents who weren't Larentii.
"It's a long story, and not one for me to tell," I waved a hand at Randl's confusion.
"Now I'm more confused than I was," Randl sighed.
"Most of us stay confused," I patted Randl's shoulder. "You'll find answers eventually—if you're meant to have them."
"The Prophet is my main goal as far as answers are concerned," he said. "After that, well, maybe my curiosity will be satisfied in other ways."
"What's your first move?" Kooper asked. "Now that you have a basket full of gold to examine?"
"I suppose I ought to get on that," Randl admitted, although he didn't sound enthusiastic about the task. Kooper lifted an eyebrow—that's exactly what he wanted Randl to do.
"You don't sound comfortable about it," I said.
"Because I'm not. I'm worried I'll be pulled into split-time to investigate, and I'll come back exhausted."
"Hmmmm," Kooper cleared his throat.
"Fine. I'll get on it," Randl waved a hand and folded space.
BlackWing XIII
Randl
"Some of it we recognize—those are the coins that drew us toward the cache," Nari said. She and Tiri sat in my office, discussing the gold we'd kept aboard ship. Two piles of it now lay on my desk.
"What about the others?"
"They vibrate differently," Tiri explained. "Not by much, but enough to be noticeable."
"We've seen plenty of gold in our lives," Nari picked up the narrative. "Nothing vibrated like this stack." She pointed to the pile in question.
They'd separated the pieces with the vibrational differences from the others. Those separated coins were also the ones with unrecognizable markings.
"Then you take the pile you recognize," I said. "I'll take the others."
"Dori says that could be dangerous," Nari and Tiri said together.
"Orders from Kooper, so there's nothing I can do about it," I replied.
"Oh." Both, again.
"Take your pile and start working with it," I pointed to the proper pile of coins. "Send Vik to me—we have work to do."
"We'll find him," Nari said.
I could have sent mindspeech, but I wanted to put off this task as long as I could. Nari and Tiri scooped up their gold and headed for my door. I hoped they'd take their time passing my message to Vik.
Miz'Sandar
"Always make sure your weapon is fully charged and ready," Markus instructed Jincus, while I watched. I'd already had this lesson, so Jincus had to catch up.
"Don't want to run out of juice, I take it," Jincus grinned.
"Exactly. Every time the weapon is used, it must be inspected before it is charged again. If you've been in a firefight, a weapon can sustain damage in a number of ways. It's best to repair that damage before it's needed again. Most times, a weapon will only be fired a few times. It's built to fire continuously for more than an hour, before the charge runs out. If you're in that situation, you'll need another pistol or rifle to replace the empty."
Jincus handled the laser pistol as if it were a raw egg with a slight crack in it. "First time holding one?" I asked him.
"Yes. Never thought I would, you know."
"I thought the same thing, until Markus started teaching me. Civilians generally don't need weapons in the Alliances," I added.
"They were everywhere on Vic'Law, but they belonged to the bosses, who handed them to trusted employees," Jincus said. "My father said to never pick one up unless you intended to use it, and to prepare yourself to die that way, too. Vic'Law wasn't a friendly place, if you know what I mean."
"Did your father carry a weapon?" Markus asked.
"He did. He didn't like it, but he worked for one of the bosses. That's the way things were, and he was right—that's how he died. The boss killed him, because he thought he'd betrayed him. Found out later that wasn't the case, but he was already dead. Good luck on getting an apology or a sentence leveled against one of the bosses who ran the planet."
"Then handle that weapon like you mean it, Jincus," Markus advised. "I'll teach you how to defend yourself against criminals."
"Good. Thank you."
Randl
"You rang?"
"I did."
Vik slid onto a guest chair, frowning at me. He'd seen the pile of gold on my desk; he understood what was about to happen.
"Kooper's orders," I explained with a shrug.
"Fine."
"Pick one," I told him.
"Me?"
"Yeah. I don't want to."
"All right." Vik reached out to scramble the pile of coins, before lifting one up and offering it to me. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward to take it. Perhaps it was because we were touching it together for a small moment, that we were both flung into split-time.
BlackWing X
Travis
"Dori is frantic. Says they both disappeared—she checked the camera recording from Randl's office," Trent reported.
"How long?" I asked.
"For nearly an hour."
; "Fuck. I hate this," I growled, rising from the captain's chair on the bridge. "There's no way to tell which coin he touched?"
"Nari and Tiri are going through their inventory to find out," Trent said as we walked toward the captain's cubby. "Even if they find out, those markings aren't readable to us—we need somebody who might know what they are."
"Send a message to Reah. We need to speak with Nefrigar," I said. Nefrigar was Reah's Larentii mate. He was also Chief Archivist for the Larentii, and the best resource on unusual languages and artifacts that I knew.
"I am here," Nefrigar arrived himself, only moments after Trent contacted Reah. He'd shortened his height, to fit more comfortably in the captain's cubby aboard ship.
"Trent, do you have the information from Nari and Tiri, yet?" I asked.
"Here are the images," he handed the comp-vid to Nefrigar.
Nefrigar's brows drew into a frown as he studied both sides of the coin depicted, before blinking. I'd never seen a perplexed Larentii, before. Nefrigar was certainly perplexed.
"I do not recognize this as anything from any of the known universes," he handed the comp-vid back to Trent. "I have transferred these images to the Archives, so they can be further studied."
"I think you should take a look at the rest of the coins, then," I said.
"There are more?"
"All different from that one, and nothing we can find records on, anywhere."
"Lead me to them," Nefrigar sounded worried.
If the Chief Archivist of the Larentii sounded worried, then I figured everybody ought to be worried.
I know I was.
Randl
Where the hell are we? Vik asked. He and I stood on a rustic street corner of a rustic town on an unknown world. People, dressed in rough-spun shirts and trousers, walked past us, their hand-made leather boots and shoes making creaking sounds on the walkway made of wide, wooden boards.
The walkway was to protect shoes and clothing from the mud and filth of the adjacent, unpaved roadway, where horse and ox-drawn carts and carriages rolled past.
It looks like the old west on Earth, sort of, as Mom describes it, Vik added.
I—this isn't Old Earth, I said. I looked into faces—faces worn and drawn by fear. The language spoken had nothing to do with any language ever spoken on Old Earth. Two women passed by us, not even bothering to look up from their whispered conversation, bonneted heads held close together, as if that would ward away the curious listener.
They're terrified, I told Vik.
Maybe we should follow them. I don't think they see us, he added.
He was right. People walked around us as if we weren't there. Let's go, I nodded at Vik's suggestion.
The layout of the town was simple—a single main street, with a few roads crossing the main one, all dirt, of course. The whole place might have a population of three hundred.
Maybe.
When we turned a corner to follow the women, what lay before us didn't belong in this town, and probably not on this world, wherever it was.
A temple, made of marble, stood at the end of this side street, and roughly a quarter-mile in front of it, the street went from dirt to paved.
Which of these things doesn't match the rest? Vik quoted an old Alliance nursery rhyme.
Come on, I said. We need to find out what's going on, here.
It took a few minutes to get to the edge of the paving. Look at this, Vik pointed out the edge of it. It doesn't touch the ground.
It didn't—it hovered nearly four inches above the dirt and muck of the street beneath.
I don't think this was built here, I began, as we stepped upon the paving to follow the two women.
I don't think it stays here, either, Vik said.
You know, I think you're right, I agreed. Once we were close enough to the temple, I could see that it had set down atop a tree, the limbs of which were broken and splayed beneath the western edge of the temple grounds.
The whole thing, built on a platform and complete with a paved entrance, was ready to travel elsewhere at a moment's notice.
What do you think this means? Vik asked before he drew in a sharp breath. We'd almost come to the gates of the temple, where two men walked out to open the tall, iron frames for the women.
Ra'Ak, Vik growled mentally, while a plume of smoke blew from his nostrils.
Stay calm, I cautioned, worried that he'd go Full Thifilathi and destroy the two Ra'Ak standing at the gates. Come on, I grabbed his arm to pull him forward. They're going to close the gates again.
We barely made it through before the Ra'Ak, in humanoid form, closed the gates, just as I feared.
Another man appeared, then, from nothing. He'd folded in, there was no doubt. Both women dropped to their knees, weeping and terrified.
They had a right to be.
This one wasn't Ra'Ak. This one—rogue god whispered into my mind. I could see plainly what would happen to the women.
They were dinner for the rogue god's pet Ra'Ak.
We're moving, Vik's mental shout woke me up from a near-trance. We have to get out of here.
I think you're right, I agreed. But first.
Pulling the women away with power wasn't difficult. And, as it was a surprise to the rogue god and the Ra'Ak, who hadn't expected anything of the kind, we lurched back to BlackWing XIII. We fell in a heap at the feet of a surprised Larentii; Vik cursing, the women weeping.
Chapter 13
BlackWing X
Travis
"Thank goodness Nefrigar was here. We'd never have made sense of what those women were saying," Trent slouched onto a seat in the captain's cubby.
"He had to give them Alliance Common, or he wouldn't have understood them, either," I pointed out.
"They're with Mom, now—she may have to lay compulsion to keep them from hyperventilating," Trent sighed.
It was true—Randl, Vik and Nefrigar had transported the women to Mom's palace, so they could be questioned. I had no idea what would be done with them afterward, but it wasn't as if they'd have survived where they came from—that much was verified by both women—they'd been chosen by a town lottery, which only took women's names.
Because Ra'Ak preferred female meat over that of a male.
Randl said a rogue god held the Ra'Ak's leash, in a temple that could be moved from place to place.
Likely, there were lotteries taking place in many towns similar to the one he and Vik had been flung to.
We'd looked more closely at the coin, too, which Randl set on his desk with a thump once he was on his feet again.
Made of soft gold and roughly minted, the coin now bore the imprint of Randl's thumb, he'd held it so tightly.
"At least Vik came back without a white streak in his hair," Trent observed.
"True. But he's High Demon, bro. They're immune to a lot of things. Maybe split-time is one of those."
"Did you see him? He was still breathing smoke. He wanted to tear into those Ra'Ak."
"It's probably a good thing he didn't. Randl may have made a mistake, taking those women away."
"You mean the timeline and all that?"
"And all that."
Queen's Palace, Le-Ath Veronis
Lissa
It's possible, Nefrigar informed me in mindspeech, that somehow, the coins were taken from worlds that never existed in our timeline.
Randl and Vik stood nearby in my palace library, waiting, while Nefrigar and I finished our silent conversation.
They'd given us their story; the two women were currently in the palace kitchen, guarded by two vampires and eating as if they hadn't seen a decent meal in a decade.
You mean in one of those eras, I said, for lack of a better term, before the God Wars in their timeline destroyed everything?
It's possible, I suppose, but how did those coins survive that total destruction, and make their way to this one, unharmed and locked away?
Nefrigar had trouble with that theory, just as I did. Total destru
ction was total destruction, no matter how you looked at it.
Someone would have to deliberately do it. Someone who survived from one period to the next, I suggested.
I agree. Which leaves us with a conundrum. I doubt any of the Three would do this. There is no purpose in it.
Yeah. But there has to be a purpose—doesn't there?
One would tend to believe that, yes.
Do you think Randl would be willing to examine those other coins? This worries me in ways I can't define. Not yet, anyway.
Has anyone else attempted to do what Randl has done, to go where the coin originated?
Nef, whenever I hold one of those coins, nothing happens. Nothing. Randl is the only one who has any sort of reaction to them. I get the idea that if Alliance coins hadn't been included in the cache, Nari and Tiri wouldn't have been drawn to it, either.
Disturbing, Nefrigar sighed aloud.
Oh, it's that, all right. I've sent a message to Charles, but he hasn't responded.
The Mighty Mind is the only source of information that may unravel this conundrum, Nefrigar agreed. Will you keep me updated, if you learn anything new?
I will. What should we tell Randl?
Perhaps he should examine other coins. He and your son say they passed through that world invisibly—nobody saw them. I hope he'll find something to lead him to the Prophet, or whomever hid those coins on Pyrik.
I suppose it couldn't hurt, but I'll warn them to be careful and try not to bring anyone else back.
Good idea. There's something else, too, Nefrigar went on.
What's that?
This cache, in its bunker, was buried far beneath Lee'Qee. It was only uncovered well enough after Randl and the Prophet created the explosion and the resulting pit.
You've looked into this, haven't you?
While we were discussing it, yes. The explosion muddled many things, but I found no evidence of a passageway or steps leading downward to the cache.
It was buried and covered over?
I believe that to be so. It may be that the Prophet was the only one with that knowledge, else why would his minions be instructed to steal food and supplies, with so much gold at their disposal?
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