Either way works.
Corah stopped fiddling, tossed on her jacket, and folded the collar of that up as well. Then she gathered her data tablet and initiated a communications program. Gervis wanted her early this morning, if his string of messages were correctly stamped. She checked the device calibration and frowned at the text files flickering past. Detainment unit, stage three, and he wanted her specifically. Something had come through the routes that had Gervis Dern all fired up.
Powerful, skillful, Gervis.
The jackass probably saw some kind of omen again. He imagined them everywhere, and his team of psychics had the sense to confirm the favorable ones and creatively interpret anything less than positive in his future. Like Kovath’s daughter showing up in Wraith. Corah pushed that thought back, into a pocket where Gervis’s spies were not allowed.
Their people had been watching developments in the capital as closely as possible. So far, Kovath’s child had done her best to remove anyone remotely loyal to her father. Reports claimed she’d cleaned up the streets as well, stopped the slavers from landing, and initiated sanctions on illegal imports and exports that had the lesser governors howling for her head. Most of those had been replaced, forcibly if the woman was anything like her father. The people wanted to believe she wasn’t, but Niels had seen his share of leadership changes. He knew better than to trust a Kovath.
Corah knew better, too.
The first step of a new regime always looked good. It rarely remained that way. Once Kovath’s brat had put her own people in place, then Eclipsis would see her real colors. Corah had little doubt they’d resemble her father’s. Fruit of the same vine rarely tasted any different. She agreed with Niels on that much.
She messaged Gervis a response and tucked her pad into the leather bag with his insignia impressed into the sides. Time would out all, even herself. She checked her collar in the reflective surface of her room’s control panel. High as she could drag it, but that wouldn’t stop Gervis. Once the man settled on an idea, be it Corah’s neck or taking Eclipsis for himself, he would not be deterred.
Already, the lesser governor rallied his evicted allies and even wooed some of the new governors, testing their loyalty to Kovath’s child. Gervis Dern schemed, and watched for omens, and paid too much attention to the way Corah’s clothing fit. If Niels didn’t send the order to kill him soon, she’d have to think fast.
Maybe go it alone for a while again.
She checked the pin in her hair, slid it free, and twisted the knot tighter before stabbing it through again. Alone would be okay. She’d done it enough and managed to survive, but she’d also grown used to being part of something larger. Resistance, secrecy, living two lives and not caring too much about either.
Caring is weakness.
She’d done her share of that as a child. Now, she had an omen to interpret, or a slave to interrogate, a new psychic to test. It didn’t matter which. She’d do Gervis’s bidding and she’d keep him happy with her, thrilled with her, elegant neck or no.
Long live Gervis Dern.
Corah gave her thoughts to the spies and gathered the bag full of papers, orders, and secrets her boss trusted only to his top aide. She pulled her collar higher and marched to the door with her thoughts full of his praises and her heart overflowing with his murder.
Dielel woke to the shift in Jadyek’s breathing, to the soft snort and deepening that signaled the man was about to start snoring again. He braced himself, and when the first rumbling inhale began, leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his heartmate’s forehead. Jadyek’s breath turned into a sigh. The snore failed to manifest, and Dielel chuckled as quietly as possible.
Didn’t want to wake the devil in the other room, after all.
The cabin air held a chill that Dielel suspected was intentional. Jarn screwed with the environmental controls just to torment them. He was almost certain of it. Not that he’d confront the evil bastard, not when they were stuck with the man for the time being. Still, he’d have bet his freedom on the fact that Jarn enjoyed whatever little, sideways tortures he could inflict upon them.
They’d have to be free of him soon. Had to find some way to part company, but Jarn had skills that they didn’t. Since the three of them had escaped the Shrouded prison, it had been Jarn’s tricks that kept them out of harm’s way. Even though it was he and Jadyek, and possibly the planet Shroud herself, who’d coordinated the jailbreak.
Jarn had found the weapons, and Jarn had put them to use at the elevator platform. Jarn had secreted them all into packing crates and, when they’d been unloaded on Moon Base 14, Jarn had been the one to find a Shevran stupid enough to smuggle them into orbit.
Of course, then it had been Jarn who snapped the reptilian man’s neck and taken over his ship. Dielel and Jadyek had felt the threat in that gesture, one done fully in their sight and pointedly meant as a warning. With the trader’s murder, the power had shifted to Jarn. The stolen ship was his, and if he wanted to fiddle with their temperature controls, Dielel and Jadyek could do nothing but endure it.
Until the bastard decided he was tired of them.
Dielel slid out of the bunk, felt cold steel beneath his feet. They needed an opportunity to part ways, needed to land, and anywhere would do so long as he had Jadyek with him. They’d make it work wherever Jarn left them, so long as he left them alive. So long as he left them somewhere together.
He watched Jadyek sleep for a moment longer, waited until the man started to snore in earnest before leaving. His bonded had a young face, soft features, and an even softer heart. Jadyek had followed Dielel into hell. He’d given up his seat on the Council of Princes, given up everything. The old Dielel would have looked for someone to tell him what to do next, someone to follow. But now he had to live up to his heartmate’s sacrifice. He’d lead them through this. He’d lead, and by the Heart, they were going to make it out the other side.
They had to.
The ship they’d stolen only had one cabin. Jarn had suggested they take it, very doubtfully out of sincere kindness. He slept on the bridge if he slept at all, and so far, every time one of them entered the room they found him sitting at the controls, scowling, tweaking things that may or may not have been their air supply.
Tonight was no different. When Dielel slipped onto the bridge, Jarn bent over a console, flicking, looking for all he was worth like a vulture. Prison had worn him into an emaciated twig of a man, but they’d learned quickly that there was iron in that narrow frame and poison in the darting of Jarn’s eyes, the twisting of his lips.
“No ports in this sector we can use.” Jarn spoke without looking up, as if continuing a conversation they’d been having. Had he chilled their room intentionally to wake them? Maybe he’d wanted company more than just to torment his companions. The laugh suggested otherwise. It filled the space between them like dry leaves catching fire, crackling with malice. “No ports that will let a stolen vessel land. Nowhere for fugitives to find shelter.”
“How is our fuel?” Dielel found an empty couch and slid into it, stared at blinking screens as if he understood any of the data. His people had not studied spacefaring as a routine. Only a few specialists worried about anything above the Shroud, and the only ones Dielel knew personally most likely wanted him dead now. “Can we try another sector?”
“Possibly.” Jarn didn’t look up from his data. His sharp features seemed even more birdlike in shadow. The screen’s dim light cast him into a wash of blue and black. Hollows and secrets, bones and blood. He gave Dielel the willies. “But if we flit about too damn much we’ll be caught. Your king has already put out the call for our recapture. With your ex-friend in his new council seat, we can’t even touch my allies in Vade.”
Haftan, he meant. Dielel observed the place inside where he should have felt a twinge at the man’s name. Nothing. Once, Haftan had been his whole universe. Once, he’d sacrificed everything for the man. Stupid. Before Jadyek, of course, he hadn’t even understood what l
ove was. Haftan had never wanted him, hadn’t even been the friend he thought in the end. He’d used Dielel’s loyalty and ignored that it was motivated by affection.
Now Dielel only felt a cringing embarrassment at the memory. Haftan had escaped Shroud too, in his own way. According to Jarn, they’d made him the Shrouded delegate to the Galactic Summit. It would suit him. Maybe he’d find his own happiness off-planet. Dielel’s currently slept in the cabin he’d vacated to discuss the future with a man who was probably their enemy.
“You mentioned a contact on Eclipsis.” He probed sensitive waters there. Jarn had spoken of Eclipsis only once, and since then he’d shied away from any further questions about it. Still, it was something, and if the mood of their touchy ally was sincere, they’d run out of viable options out here. “Any chance we can find help there?”
“I’d rather not.” Jarn surprised him. Instead of the usual snarl, the man sighed. His bony finger tapped at the console like it was squashing invisible bugs. “Rather not. Must be something else, anything else.”
“Then let’s try another sector,” Dielel offered. He liked brooding Jarn even less than furious Jarn. There was something creepy about the man’s mood tonight, as if he wanted company, or something to strike out at. “Until the fuel situation is desperate.”
“Won’t be long,” Jarn muttered. “Probably right. If it comes to it…but maybe it won’t.”
“What about the Shevrans?” Dielel asked. Anything to break Jarn out of the chant. “Will they come looking for the ship?”
“Eventually. Yes. Might have to call the relatives on Eclipsis in the end. Might not.” Jarn shook himself and his bones rattled and cracked. “Good thinking, little prince. We’ll dip a toe in the next sector first. If we’re lucky, we can avoid it.”
If they were lucky. If their fuel didn’t run out and the authorities or the Shevrans didn’t intercept them first. Dielel sighed and wished he’d stayed in bed. Even if they escaped jail again, they were alone in space with a man who’d snap both their necks in a second as soon as it served his goals. Maybe they should have stayed on Shroud, but then he’d be stuck with Jarn forever in that pit.
Somehow, they’d escape him out here. Dielel would make it happen. For Jadyek he’d slip the vulture’s grasp, and somehow, fugitives or not, they’d find a way to make a life.
“I’ll plot the course,” Jarn said. He sounded different, soothed somehow, calmer. Maybe they’d get lucky. Maybe they’d misjudged the man’s viciousness.
Dielel nodded and slipped back out of the bridge. Dancing with the devil, they were. But the Heart had helped them escape, and if they could keep her firmly on their side, maybe they still might get out of this alive.
Chapter Three
Mofitan spit blood onto the slick silver floors. He twisted his hands, but this time they’d shackled his wrists behind him tightly enough that he couldn’t do much aside from digging the cuts deeper. His arms bent painfully, stuffed between the ladder rungs of the chair back. He leaned to the side until only one of the chair legs touched the floor and shuffled his feet, spinning to face the guards who’d learned quickly to keep out of reach of his thrashing.
They’d learned to attack him from the back too, and while the one he glowered at cringed farther away, the two behind him closed in and cracked something flexible across the back of his head.
Mofitan’s face was already swelled from their initial blows. He’d allowed a few of those before trying the spinning chair trick, but much more abuse and his resemblance to Dolfan wouldn’t be obvious. His face would be spent before he managed to show it to Gervis Dern.
Trickles of blood smeared his forearms, painting the skin darker purple. He ground his teeth against the little pains, spun the chair, and favored each of Dern’s men with a lunatic grin. He’d had worse damage in training at the academy. He’d been in worse scrapes with just Dolfan. He hadn’t, however, been in a nastier place.
The compound they’d dragged his twitching, half-aware body to was part of the port itself. There hadn’t been a vehicle involved. Mofitan was fairly certain of that. There had been stairs. He did his best to believe that he’d imagined how many, that he wasn’t a good half mile below ground now. The dark walls argued that he embraced a delusion. Mofitan identified the smoother square to one side as a viewing window, a one-way barrier. He calculated how many steps would take him to the bottom of the stairway—the only other break in the circular walls—and just how much chance he’d have of tearing his way through the barred door there.
They could probably electrify that if necessary. Also, these cuffs were made of sturdier stuff than the slaver had used. He didn’t fancy his chances of escape at this point, which left him to his original mission, impress Gervis Dern, look like Dolfan. Easy enough. Keep Shayd’s shield up. Don’t let Dern’s psychics in. That last part would depend on his ability to control his head, something that faded with each whack the guards landed on the back of it.
“Look alive.” The guard nearest the bars snapped to attention. “Time to answer some questions.”
Mofitan growled and gave the man a look that earned him another whack to the head. It managed to clear his thoughts, to bring him into focus. He glared at the stairway beyond the door, but his attention shifted to the smooth, slate-black viewing wall. His head prickled, tingled in a wave over his scalp. He’d have missed it, the tentative invasion, if the guard hadn’t warned him.
Footsteps rang on the stairs, but Mofitan’s interrogation had already begun. He shifted his fury around in his thoughts, made a wall out of it, and gave it Dolfan’s name. Damn the man anyway. Mofitan’s father had always favored the bastard, had looked beyond his own son to the brighter pupil. On this topic, he didn’t need to feign anything, and Shayd had assured him that was worth more protection than even the Seer’s psychic shielding could provide. Mofitan’s sincerity was his best weapon against Dern’s psychics. His long-running rivalry with Dolfan would serve as his armor now.
Dolfan had always been his enemy.
The tingle pressed itself into the first stirring of a headache. He probably wouldn’t have felt it at all, without Shayd’s little preparations. Mofitan had never had a psychic bone in his body, but now he felt the probing like cold fingers inside his brain. He growled aloud and snarled for the man opening the barred door.
Dolfan, who got everything while the Heart had given Mof only lies.
The fingers tightened and then relaxed. The bars parted and allowed a new figure to enter Mofitan’s prison. This one had some authority, and Mofitan recognized him as the official from the port. Not Dern, unfortunately. Maybe his reappearance meant the governor wasn’t going to pay attention. Maybe, they’d come to end him instead.
Dying in a hole alone while Dolfan rules happily with his heartmate at his side.
“Who are you?” The man stopped inside the door and crossed his arms over the front of his uniform.
“My name is Mofitan.” Mof the overshadowed, the underestimated and unwanted. He frowned at the man’s boots, tried to rein in the emotion, but the fingers in his mind had returned. They pried at him, urged him to let it out.
“You look a great deal like our new governor’s mate.”
“We are from the same hellhole.” He sat up straight and leaned his head back, gazed at the black ceiling and wondered how long he’d wanted to get off of Shroud, how long he’d felt this trapped by their home world and never realized it. “Or we were.”
“Why did he send you?”
“He didn’t.” Mofitan put some rumble into that, let the truth of it free. In fact, Dolfan had been dead against this little excursion. He shrugged and leaned forward against his restraints, spit blood toward the polished boots. “I’m on the run.”
“Are you?” The man gestured to the guards, waved one gloved hand toward Mofitan. “A fugitive from what, exactly?”
One of the guys behind him grabbed his braid and pulled his head way up. He’d have lost that hand, if Mofita
n hadn’t been shackled, and he made sure to get a look at the guy’s face, to log it in his memory for later. When he grinned, the grip on his hair slackened.
Mofitan jerked his head away, tilted the chair onto one leg, and spun to face the guy behind him. He kicked at him, missed on purpose, and allowed the weasel to backpedal out of reach. Then, once he’d cowed the three who huddled against the wall, Mofitan eased the chair back around and showed his teeth to the rest of them along the way. He inhaled, arched his back until it cracked, and then gave the new guy his full attention.
“Six weeks ago my buddy and I broke out of prison on Shroud. There was a corequake. Cracked the walls and left us an easy out and a fast route off-planet.”
He stared at the man, watched his story flash through the guy’s expression. The narrow eyes flicked to the wall and back, confirming what Mofitan suspected. He was only the mouthpiece. Whoever hid behind that screen would judge Mofitan’s story to be lie or truth.
As if on cue, the mental fingers flexed. Mofitan’s head exploded into a tingling chaos, sudden, probing. All he could do was throw Dolfan at it. Dolfan who always got what he wanted, who’d made Mof look foolish from day one. The gloved hands twisted together. The man’s eyes went to the wall again. Was he getting his orders through a hidden com?
“You say you broke out of prison. What were you in for?”
“Treason.” Mofitan grinned and leaned back in his chair. “For crimes against the crown.”
“And you came straight here?”
“That’s right.”
“Where one of your countrymen, one who looks surprisingly like you, is sitting in the governor’s mansion.”
Eclipsed (Heartstone Book 3) Page 2
