The Bloodwing Voyages

by Diane Duane

  H’daen pushed her cup, refilled, across the desk and she drank eagerly, holding the cup in both hands but almost spilling it even so. “That was cruel, hru’hfe Arrhae. I ask pardon for it.” She heard his voice as though from a great distance, saying unlikely things that no hru’hfirh ever said to a servant, no matter how senior or how favored. He was blaming himself and asking forgiveness. Wrong words, impossible words, that made her feel uncomfortable and wish that he would stop. But she knew what had provoked them, and it hadn’t been the wine.

  “You were frightened of what you had said, lord,” she told him, coming straight out with it rather than trying to find some more acceptable substitute. He stared at her, unused to such plain speaking, and then shrugged. Arrhae took the shrug as approval, or at least as permission to continue. “And that made you say things that I know my own good lord would not have said. Yes, I disapprove of what you plan for Mak’khoi. Not only because Commander t’Radaik entrusted him to your keeping—but because you intend to sell him. I know what being sold is like, my lord, and I was sold only to work. He…would be going into the hands of those whose sole delight would be to prolong his death. Better to kill him now yourself. It would be a cleaner and more honorable thing to do.”

  “It seems that my hru’hfe is more than simply an efficient household manager,” said H’daen, speaking in a flat, neutral tone that gave Arrhae nothing but the words it carried. She waited, her stomach fluttering, to learn if she had overreacted and said too much. He watched her for what felt like a long time, his face unreadable, then nodded. “It seems she is my conscience. Very well, Arrhae, carry my guilt if you must. But whatever happens, know this: if I or my House can benefit from this unlooked-for gift, then whatever must be done will be done—and the moral scruples of a servant will not get in my way. Do you understand?”

  Arrhae pushed her winecup away with the tip of one index finger, knowing that the brief while when she and H’daen might drink together as equals was gone beyond recall. “Yes, lord,” she said, standing up and making him an obeisance. “I understand perfectly. With my lord’s permission, I will be about my duties now.”

  “Go—it’s already late into the morning, and you have yet to attend Mak’khoi. By my word, treat him as a guest. How could he pass unnoticed if he tried to run, and where on ch’Rihan would he go?” H’daen shut down the whining viewscreen and folded it into his desk once more, remembering to play his role to its logical conclusion by slapping the monitor pettishly and muttering something about inadequate maintenance. But there was nothing pettish about the look he flicked at Arrhae; it was both a promise and a veiled threat.

  “Remember,” he said, and turned away.

  So he was locked up again. So what? Leonard McCoy’s only concern right now was about the woman he had seen. And about the way she moved. That first flinch when he came in had been all wrong, and he would stake—

  McCoy recognized the bland comment that had been forming inside his head in the way that he could sometimes spot tired old medical phrases like “finish the course” and “not to be taken internally.” Except that there was no longer anything bland about it. Staking his life on it was exactly what he was doing. If his briefing had been wrong, if planetfall had been wrong, if information had been wrong…

  Then he was a dead man.

  The door opened and his jailer came in. Think of the devil… McCoy suppressed a humorless smile and watched the young Romulan woman as she moved about his cramped quarters, straightening the recently vacated bed and unlocking the heavy window shutters. His intradermal had translated her title of hru’hfe as “servants’-manager,” and it struck him that if she was doing the work that she would more normally have overseen, then she was probably the most trusted member of staff in the whole household. Which might be a bad thing—or a very good one.

  “You’re Arrhae,” he said in Federation Standard.

  She moved his pillow, a cylinder of stuffed leather as concession to Terran weakness instead of the smooth stone that a Rihanha used, and punched it to shape with unnecessary vigor before looking at him disdainfully down her hawk nose, rather as Spock might do. McCoy was half-expecting an eyebrow to go up. “Ie,” she replied. “Arrhae. Hru’hfe i daise hfai s’Khellian. Hwiiy na th’ann Mak’khoi.”

  “Is that my title: ‘the prisoner McCoy’? I’d prefer something else. Try ‘Doctor’—though my friends call me ‘Bones.’”

  “Hwiij th’ann-a—haei’n neth ‘Mak’khoi,’ neth ‘D’okht’r,’ neth ‘Bohw’nns’ nah’lai?”

  “No, it doesn’t matter what you call me. But I’d prefer something other than a label, thank you very much. And try speaking Anglish!” He pitched her that one out of left field, watching for a reaction. Actually hearing one came as a surprise.

  “If it would content you,” she said. The Romulan accent was very thick and her intonation was heavy and oddly placed, making it hard for him to understand, but the words were Federation Standard. McCoy’s eyebrows lifted and he was momentarily at a loss for anything to say, having considered every response that she might make—except this one. “But there is small need,” the woman continued, and unless his ears deceived him, her accent was improving with every word. “You have a translit—translator and so understand Rihannsu. I am not a prisoner and have not need to understand you, Dr. Bones.”

  “Either Doctor or Bones, not both.”

  “Which? Choose.”

  “All right, Bones then. At least it’ll sound as if there’s a friend in the room.” And that, Dr. McCoy, was excessively waspish even for you.

  “So. Bones. Have you eaten firstmeal today, Bones?”

  He shook his head. “Nor lastmeal yesterday. I haven’t seen a hum—er, a soul since I was locked in here last night. Your Subcommander tr’Annhwi wasn’t too keen on granting me any home comforts, and t’Radaik assumed and didn’t think to ask.”

  Arrhae scowled and sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. “Tr’Annhwi is not ‘my’ subcommander, and never will be. No matter what he thinks. Doctor, you are already found guilty before your trial is convened, but for all that, do not judge all Rihannsu by that one’s measure. This house is honorable, at least. You are a prisoner of the Imperium, but a guest under the roof of Khellian. Take comfort from that, at least.”

  “Your Anglish improves with practice, hru’hfe,” said McCoy carefully. “Yet you didn’t tell Commander t’Radaik that you spoke it….”

  Arrhae gave him what amounted to the Romulan version of an “old-fashioned look.” “So that you have no cause to puzzle the matter, Bones, I shall explain. Privately, for your ears alone. My first master taught me the art, for his amusement, as one might teach fvaiin tricks.” She turned away from him and busied herself with other things, talking all the while. “But he was a spy and a foul traitor, and met the fate that he deserved two farsuns past, and since that time I have had no cause to use the speech of my people’s enemies. Nor would I—to learn one thing from a traitor might be to learn others, or so my present master might believe.” Arrhae swung on him, doing nothing now but stare. “I advise you to forget. I shall not speak this speech to you otherwise, nor will I speak it either out of this room or in the company of any other person. Do you understand me?”

  “Quite clearly.” McCoy understood more clearly even than that; he knew the sound of something that had been carefully composed and then learned by heart. He stood up and glanced at the door that Arrhae had locked behind her. “Do you bring my food in here, or do you slide it under the door?”

  “I have told you—you are a guest in House Khellian. My master H’daen has said it. Thus at night you will be here, and the door locked. By day you may walk freely in the house, and in the gardens around the house.” She glanced out of the window, then back at McCoy. “Betray this trust and you spend all your time here. Try to run and you will go to a military detention cell—if someone with kin lost to the Federation Starfleet does not take out your entrails first. On ch’Rihan, you
are not difficult to identify.”

  “And who was—”

  Arrhae, on her way to the door, stopped and looked at him with a mixture of amusement and impatience. “Doctor, do you wish to eat, or to talk? If talk, then stay here and do it yourself. I am hungry.”

  Nothing was said during their brief meal, eaten under the curious gaze of many eyes. Arrhae conducted herself with the same faultless manners and distant courtesy that she had seen H’daen employ when he disapproved of one person or another, making it plain to those watching eyes—any pair of which could be reporting directly back to Intelligence—that she resented being made to feel like the keeper of some performing animal. From the look of him, McCoy knew what she was thinking. And didn’t like it.

  “You wear a translator, Mak’khoi?” Arrhae said as the dishes were being cleared away, using Rihannsu and speaking for the benefit of whatever ears went with spying eyes. The man nodded, still far from pleased with her if his face was anything to go by. “So know this, Lord H’daen tr’Khellian grants you guestright to walk as you please….”

  The brief lecture and its veiled warning done, she pushed back from the table and stood up, turning in time to see three heads peering in from the kitchen. They jerked back out of sight, but Arrhae compressed her lips into a thin line and stalked toward the door, working out something suitably irritable to say. McCoy was still in his chair, watching her. The man wasn’t smiling—they both knew he was in too dangerous a position for that—but her renewed acquaintance with Terran facial expressions told Arrhae that the glint in his eye had something to do with sardonic humor. He understood exactly what she was about, and approved of it.

  “I’m for taking a stroll in the gardens, Arrhae,” he said.

  She looked back at the sound of his voice. “Ridiculous,” she said, annoyed. Then to him, more loudly, “Don’t waste time making noises that I can’t understand, Mak’khoi. Can you show me by signs?” He snorted at that, then gestured at the open window, tapped his chest, and made walking movements with two fingers on the table. “Oh. I see. Yes, go. But this could so easily become an embarrassment. I shall ask the lord for some kind of translating unit, Mak’khoi. Until then, keep your needs simple. Go on, I said. I have my work to do….”

  That work was much as it had always been, despite the secret upheaval in Arrhae’s life. Making her disapproval of eavesdroppers quite plain to the kitchen staff was a break in the routine, but the rest of it was mostly another attempt to get the accounts sorted out when documents and receipts said one thing but the expenditure tally in the household computer said something else entirely.

  Once in a while she wondered what McCoy was doing with his time. There was no point in trying to escape on foot from the Khellian estate, because it was quite simply too big. For all H’daen’s straitened circumstances, that was only where money was concerned; his true wealth was in land, and if he would only sell some of it to the developer-contractors in i’Ramnau…. Arrhae had once, very diffidently, made the suggestion, and had sparked a tirade of startling intensity for daring to presume that “a few dirty chains of cash” could buy the property that his ancestors had enriched with their blood. It had been the only time that Arrhae had ever seen her lord lose his composure and shout at her. Strange that pride and honor would keep him poor in the midst of potential plenty and that same honor-created poverty would make him contemplate something so dishonorable—and so dangerous—as betraying Commander t’Radaik’s trust. Imperial Fleet Intelligence was not likely to forgive what he had in mind for McCoy if he went through with it. Whatever H’daen was paid, he wouldn’t have much time to enjoy being rich before he became dead….

  Arrhae tapped another string of figures into the computer and stared at the screen without really seeing it, her brain so dulled by the boredom of the repetitious task and the confusion of the past day that it was several seconds before the meaning of the readout sank in. And she began to laugh.

  Chief Cook tr’Aimne, heading for the coolroom with a basket of prepared meatrolls, paused in her office doorway to look at her as if she had lost her mind. “I got it right,” Arrhae told him, fighting to get coherence through her giggles. “Five days at this damned-to-Ariennye keyboard, and I got it right at last!”

  Tr’Aimne stared, and Arrhae guessed that this frantic laughter had little to do with her successful computing and a great deal to do with what she had been going through. Concealing this, pretending not to know that, being controlled and calm at all times…

  “Well done, hru’hfe,” said tr’Aimne in a deadly monotone. He plainly still hadn’t forgiven her for that flitter ride into i’Ramnau, and he wasn’t getting excited over any of her successes, no indeed. At least his undisguised dislike helped Arrhae get some sort of leash on what was too near hysteria for her liking.

  “Thank you, Chief Cook,” she said, equally flat. “I’m so very glad you’re pleased. Now—get those to the coolroom and stop wasting time.” He glared at her as the status quo restored itself with a thud, then whisked disdainfully away with his nose in the air.

  “‘Find a man who’s a good cook, learn what he knows—then lose him,’” Arrhae quoted softly to herself. She glanced sidelong at the computer-screen and grinned a bit, hit SAVE and PRINT with a finger-fork in one quick motion, and caught the sheets as they emerged, then stood up, flexing her shoulders luxuriously. “Time off for good behavior,” she said. Time off spent doing your extra duties. Take a walk and find out what he’s up to.

  She had walked almost around the mansion before she saw McCoy. He was sitting on top of one of the ornamental rock arrangements in the greater garden, and Arrhae was pleased to see that he had taken care not to disturb the mosses that surrounded and enhanced the pattern of the rocks. His back was toward her and he was hunched forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. She hesitated; every line of his body indicated gloom and depression and—by the sound of it—he was muttering to himself. Hardly surprising, Arrhae thought, wondering if she should leave him to be miserable in peace.

  Then, even though she had made no noise, he straightened and snapped around at the waist, suddenly enough to make Arrhae jump. “Yes?” he said, staring at her.

  “I wondered where you were.”

  “Not far away. Where could I go? You said that much yourself.” He sounded bitter, and that wasn’t surprising either. “And should we be talking anyway, since you ‘don’t understand me’? Or have you suddenly remembered again?”

  Stubborn, prideful…! “Doctor, what I said inside—about a translator—I meant it. Then we can talk, without needing one eye in our backs for every word.” Arrhae saw his brows go up. “For my back, anyway. If they thought I was a spy…”

  “I understand,” said McCoy, and all the anger had left his voice. “At least, I begin to understand.”

  Arrhae turned away, studying the mosses with apparent interest while she tried to decide what that might mean. Nothing much, most likely. It was merely proof of what she had thought at the very beginning; McCoy would sooner be amiable than angry, and his gruffness was no more than a mannerism, like H’daen’s preference for gestures over words. “Thank you for making the attempt anyway,” she said in an effort to be graceful over the business and restore something of her own crumpled honor. “Your translator: could you read a Rihanha book, perhaps?”

  Small talk, Arrhae, small talk. Do you want to hear a Terran voice so much that you’ll indulge in pointless chatter with a Fleet prisoner? The answer to that, despite the danger, was an unequivocal yes.

  McCoy looked at her strangely, and shook his head. “It only operates on received speech. But thanks for asking, anyway.” He tapped the heel of one boot thoughtfully against the surface of the rocks and glanced first toward the house and then back to her. “I was wondering—which is my room? That one?”

  “No, that.” She pointed Romulan-fashion with a jerk of her chin. “At the corner. You can see the storage-access doors; inside, they’re behind an embroid—�
� Arrhae broke off short. “You’re not a fool, Dr. Bones McCoy. Neither am I. You knew which room it was all the time. Why ask me?”

  “Curiosity, nothing more. I wasn’t sure. And I don’t have an escape planned, if that’s what’s wrong. Everyone keeps telling me what a waste of time it is.”

  “You should come in.”

  “I’d as soon stay here for—”

  “Doctor, I was not asking you, I was telling you.”

  McCoy got to his feet and brushed a little dust off the seat of his pants, then shrugged ostentatiously at her and sauntered back to the house.

  Chapter Eight

  FORCE AND POWER

  The ch’Rihan of the four morning and evening stars, the ch’Rihan of song, is a fair place. Wetter than Vulcan ever was, rich with seasons whose change could be perceived, full of game and food, full of noble land on which noble houses were built, green under a green-golden sky, wide-horizoned, soft-breezed, altogether a paradise. Looking back at those songs, it is sobering to consider that of the eighteen thousand surviving travelers, perhaps six thousand died in the first ten years of their settlement.

  Relatively few of these died from privation, lack of supplies, or any of the other problems common to pioneer planets far from their colonizing worlds. Most of them died from war: civil wars, international, intertribal, and interclan wars. They died in small skirmishes, epic battles, ritual murders, massacres, ambushes, pogroms, purges, and dynastic feuds. So many people died that the gene pool was almost unable to sufficiently establish itself. When the mutated lunglock virus spread around the planet and to ch’Havran fifty years after the settlement, the population dropped to a nearly unviable nine thousand. Only through the vigorous, almost obsessive increase of the population over the following several hundred years—through multiple-birth “forcing,” creche techniques, and some cloning—did the Rihannsu manage to survive at all.