Mourner

by Irene Radford

  “Any sign of Sam?”

  “No. But if he was ahead of the lordling, he had to keep going into the Dragon lair. Can’t see if the hatch has been tampered with.”

  Damn, damn, damn!

  “The tube is above the residence of the Dragons. Keep going and meet me in the core. Sending you the lock codes for the final hatches.”

  “What about the body?”

  “Leave if for Jake to deal with. We’re leaving the area now.” She gestured for her spies to exit up the lift. Then she swung closed the hatch and scrambled the lock. When Jake’s crew arrived, they’d need time to get the thing open again. Time Josh needed to escape the other way.

  Friggin tubes, too small to manoeuver in.

  “And find Sam,” she spoke into her link. “Find him quick and get him back to civilization. Leave no trace of either of you in that wing.”

  “Will do.”

  Pamela hastened to the lift and headed down, away from the maintenance crew. She judged them two levels up.

  “Hey, Mikey, An undertaker, a priest, and a zombie walk into a bar . . .”

  Pamela did not want to hear the rest of the morbid joke. She continued down until she either had to get off the lift or go back up.

  She stayed her ground, knowing the upward rotation would face the opposite direction of the maintenance tube hatch. Still she turned her back to the opening and shifted as far against the wall as possible, trusting shadows and her own stillness to hide her.

  Up two more levels, then she shifted to the downward course again. She stepped off the lift with authority. “Show me what you’ve found,” she demanded, as if she didn’t already know.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ianus spasmed in pain.

  Martha felt an echo of it in her joints and in her gut. For three horrible heart beats she breathed shallowly, trying to ride it out. Ianus nearly crushed her hand in his grip.

  Stay, please! His mind speech came hesitantly, as if thinking the words cost him strength and endurance. Easier with you, my troubled angel.

  Shared pain is less pain, she sent back to him, one of her earliest lessons in preparing a Grief Blessing.

  Her breathing returned to normal before his.

  “Are you all right?” Sissy asked, wrapping her arms around Martha’s shoulders.

  “Yes. Now.” Switching back to vocals took a bit of concentration.

  “The . . . the Dragons . . .” Ianus tried to speak.

  “What about the Dragons?” Jake asked. He moved to the other side of the hospital bed and checked one of the screens filled with fluctuating graphs and numbers. “If you are in severe pain I can up the meds a bit. More than a tiny bit takes a doctor’s override.” Jake looked as if he needed some of those pain meds as well.

  Martha fumbled on the stand behind her and found a stack of foil packets with a label she remembered from the last time Sissy was hospitalized to change the filter in her lungs. “Here, these will help the pain.” She handed one of the packets to Jake.

  Quickly he tore it open, letting the foil wrapping flutter to the floor. He slapped the little white square to Ianus’ right temple and almost instantly the tight muscles around his eyes relaxed.

  “Pain easier now,” Ianus panted. His grip on Martha’s hand tightened.

  Tell me what is happening with the Dragons. I will relay your words to Jake, Martha sent back to him, trying to hide the pain of her crushed fingers in his grip.

  He must have sensed it anyway, for his hand relaxed. Sorry.

  “Tell me about the Dragons,” she whispered.

  A flood of images crowded into her mind. She had to pause to sort it out. Telepathy wasn’t so much about words as images and impressions.

  Finally she found the language to convey his message. “Bok, the amethyst and crystal female, decided Mag needed to share the tempting luxury of carrion.” Martha had to swallow hot bile at that thought. “So she stole it from him. Mag got mad and slashed her tail with his claws. She retaliated by drawing blood across his chest. Now she’s gloating that she has hidden it where Mag will never find it.” She blushed as Ianus told her what that kind of battle usually led to. They’d be occupied for a while. A day or more of pain and pleasure, triumph and submission.

  “Did she hide the body in the maintenance tube?” Jake asked.

  Both Martha and Ianus shrugged, not looking each other in the eye lest they succumb to the same emotions that drove the Dragons right now. Humans are more gentle, Ianus said. We let the female take control. He flashed her a cheeky grin then looked away again, taking some of the embarrassment out of the situation.

  Jake’s link beeped. He touched it, frowning impatiently. “Yes, Mara?”

  “The bio mass in the tube is Garrin pa Lukan pu Lukan First Contact Café. They are bringing him out now,” she said flatly. No emotion came through the device.

  Martha couldn’t sense anything through the gadget. Apparently Ianus couldn’t either. So their telepathy was limited. He had extensive training and an inbred talent attuned to the Dragons so he could understand them even at a great distance. She could only “hear” clearly when face to face. More than a few yards distance and she only got echoes of emotions and fractured images.

  “Oh!” Sissy covered her mouth with her flat palm. “Oh, I must go to Lady Jancee. I must be the one to tell her. Gently. She is so near to term this may send her into labor early.” She turned to flee.

  “If Garrin is the mass in the tube, then what have the Dragons done with Gregor?” Jake asked. He looked over his shoulder toward the farthest point in the circular room. He blanched and looked away quickly.

  Martha followed his glance and saw odd shifts in the light around arcane equipment. The High Priest’s ghost hovered there, much more substantial than what she’d seen coming out of hyperspace.

  Martha and Ianus exchanged a long look. And information?

  “Bok isn’t talking until she and Mag . . . finish their battle, and her telepath can’t wiggle the information out of her until then,” Martha replied for both of them. “But I think you should ask Admiral Marella what she knows.”

  Jake shot her a strange look.

  “I encountered her earlier. She knows more than she says she does,” Martha said.

  “I’ll deal with Lady Jancee. Jake, I’d appreciate it if you would inform Lord Lukan on Harmony of the death of his son. He will need to return here as soon as possible,” Sissy said as she stepped hesitantly toward the exit.

  “Martha, come with me while I interview Pammy,” Jake ordered.

  “But . . .” Martha placed both of her hands around Ianus’, offering comfort where the meds fell short.

  “I will not allow you to use one of my girls . . .” Sissy spluttered.

  Martha relaxed. Sissy would make it all right. Sissy always made things right. Eventually. But not always without pain.

  Ianus tightened his grip on her hand. Comfort. A person she could share all her thoughts with. Especially secret thoughts.

  And jokes, Ianus added. Without jokes, the universe will not properly spin.

  Jake pressed his hands tightly against his temples. His eyes looked glassy when he opened them. “My office, both of you. Twenty minutes. Make that an hour. Lady Jancee will need more than just a quick announcement.” Jake placed one hand against Sissy’s back and pushed her toward the exit. “One hour,” he ordered. “Damn, I need another pain patch.”

  Martha handed him two.

  “My lady, I am so sorry for your loss,” Sissy said, reaching out her hand to offer whatever comfort Lady Jancee needed after a bare bones description of where her eldest son had been found dead.

  “No, you’re not!” Lady Jancee’s voice rose an octave and a half as she slapped Sissy’s hand away, hard enough to hurt. “You’re not sorry because you killed him!”

  Sissy recoiled from the insult and the violence. She wanted to suck at her stinging knuckles, but dared not without the lady’s permission. Instantly she lost all
her hard-won self-confidence. A Noble had accused her of a heinous crime. A Noble outranked her Worker Caste upbringing. Her insides turned to jelly, and she instinctively lowered her eyes.

  You outrank her. Face her with the same determination you used against Laud Andrew and Laudae Maigress.

  Sissy didn’t know where that thought came from, herself, memories of Jake’s advice, or . . . or Martha. It served its purpose. She stiffened her spine and fixed a stern glare on the lady. “Your accusation does not make it so, Lady Jancee. I’d offer you a Grief Blessing, but you do not appear to be grieving.”

  “Of course I’m grieving. I’ve just lost my oldest son!” She clutched at her engorged belly, fingers flexing convulsively.

  Sissy didn’t know if the lady had any volume control on her voice at all. But when faced with authoritative opposition, she became defensive.

  “My Lady, what would prompt your son to be in the maintenance tube at all? It’s dangerous, especially since he didn’t turn off the electricity to the rail.”

  “Lord Garrin made his own decisions. I am not responsible for his actions.”

  The sight of Martha rolling her eyes upward spoke as loudly as words. Or telepathy.

  That word still sounded strange to Sissy. Dangerous. Weird. Maybe a lie.

  No, Martha didn’t lie, but Lady Jancee did. Even Sissy could see that in the lady’s posture, her rising color, and the way she avoided eye contact with Sissy. But that could be just prejudice against Sissy with the mutant caste marks.

  “What was he doing in the tube?” Sissy demanded, borrowing some aggressive attitude from Jake.

  “I know only that you, you asylum escapee, have no right to question me.” Lady Jancee’s fingers clenched into a fist and her neck grew rigid as her lips pinched into paleness.

  Martha’s eyes went wide, then she nodded abruptly. She’d gleaned something from the lady’s mind.

  Sissy hated feigning meekness. In this case she needed to. “My Lady, a message has gone to Harmony requesting Lord Lukan’s return.”

  “And what excuse did you manufacture to keep him away when I . . . I am so close . . . to . . . to delivery?” Lady Jancee paled more as her hands grabbed her belly and held tight.

  “Martha, call Medbay. She’s in labor!” Sissy had seen her own M’ma go through this too often to mistake the symptoms. M’ma often tried to hide the early contractions while she finished whatever she was baking.

  She wondered if Lady Jancee had hidden her own contractions for more than the few minutes Sissy had been in the room. Or had the stressful news of Garrin’s death brought it on?

  “Not Medbay,” Lady Jancee gasped. “I will not have a barefaced troll touch me.”

  Sissy tried to ease the lady with pillows behind her back.

  “Nor will I be touched by you, you mutant!”

  “I have called a female physician from our own Professional Caste. She’s only one wing away and will be here as fast as the lifts allow,” Martha said in a neutral tone, facing the comms unit on the wall beside the door.

  A Physician with a proper green triangle caste mark, lauded with a purple circle and a blue Noble diamond, wearing dark green scrubs, appeared at the door to the Noble private parlor. She carried a black box similar to the one Sissy used for her crystals and wands for Grief Blessings and Healing Hymns. As soon as the female physician bowed to Laudae Sissy and to Lady Jancee, Sissy grabbed Martha and fled toward Jake’s office.

  “Tell me!” she demanded once the lift had taken them to the hub and no one could overhear.

  “Can it wait until we see Jake?” Martha asked with a trace of a whine in her voice. “I don’t think I can say it more than once.”

  Sissy grimaced at her acolyte’s painful expression. “Very well. If it is that bad, I want Jake there to help me understand. And maybe Pammy. She knows more of what’s going on than Jake thinks.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “This procedure is just out of clinical trials and only authorized for extreme cases,” Doc Halliday said, holding up a huge syringe.

  Jake cringed. He’d seen those needles before. Pammy used them to inject nanobots by the tens of thousands when she needed one of her spies to change hair and skin color. She’d added a second syringe to give Jake a broader, more muscular physique before he entered Harmony space undercover. Then a third to engineer his caste mark. Who knew what the additional two had been for.

  If he didn’t move a single muscle, he almost didn’t hurt. Doc Halliday’s miracle patches only worked to a degree. He was not ready to be out of bed, but he was losing control over his station.

  “What will it do?” Jake asked. He closed his eyes, not wanting to think about that needle penetrating his body, possibly through skin and muscle all the way to the bone.

  “Targeted anti-inflammatory. It will take down the swelling in your brain to the point you will feel a lot better, as long as you don’t assault Marils and injure yourself again.” Doc Halliday pressed her fingers against Jake’s neck, massaging some blood vessel toward the surface.

  “If this concussion isn’t extreme, then what is?”

  “Oh, you only have an ordinary concussion that should clear up in a week or so with only a few lingering after-affects, like sensitivity to light and sound and the odd headache that the pain patches should take care of. I’ll leave a box of them for you.”

  “Make it a large box. If this is ordinary, I hate to think what an extreme condition is like.”

  “That’s the kind where they used to drill a hole in your skull to give the bruised brain room to swell.”

  Jake stiffened as something cold and damp swabbed his neck. “I think maybe the drill would be less painful than that syringe.” He gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles turned white. His jaw hurt from clenching his teeth so hard. “Have I told you how much I hate needles?”

  “You didn’t have to. You have small scars from where Pammy slammed one of these into your thigh.”

  “Five of them.” Jake started to shake all over.

  “Well, you have a cooperative carotid artery that should be pumping my medical magic into your brain in five . . . four . . . three . . .

  Jake’s muscles went limp. The fierce stabbing pain receded in small waves and washed out his ears.

  “See? Needles aren’t so bad when wielded by someone who knows what they are doing. Your Pammy is a sadist and enjoys watching her boys squirm.” Doc made noises akin to packing up her godsawful needle.

  “You’ve got Pammy’s number on that one,” Jake muttered, almost ready to open his eyes and face the world again. Almost. There was still a pang of something wrong behind his eyes. “Bless your magical medicine, Doc. That procedure should be offered to anyone with a concussion, even an ordinary one.”

  No reply.

  He opened his eyes to find himself alone in his office. Alone except for Gregor’s ghost scowling at him. He looked at the chrono on his desktop. Half an hour had passed. Half an hour of untroubled, pain-free sleep.

  He watched through partially open eyes as Sissy and Martha tiptoed in and took seats to the side of his desk facing him. Sissy placed a finger to her lips, ordering Martha to keep quiet. Sissy’s gentle kiss to his brow almost sent him back to sleep.

  Bliss. He didn’t hurt, and he had Sissy at his side.

  “I’m awake. Sort of,” he whispered to her.

  “I know. We’ll wait until you are ready before we talk. Martha has news.”

  Should he raise the light level from super dim to just dim? No not yet. His eyes still weren’t fully focusing, and the memory of light made him wince.

  “Jake, I will not be summoned peremptorily!” Pammy snarled as she stalked into the office before he could decide what to do with the light. Maybe he should endure brightness just because Pammy liked to hide in dimness.

  Jake rested his head against the back of his chair, eyes closed, slightly reclined. Let her think he was still weak with limited mobility.

&nb
sp; “And yet you came. I’m happy to see you too, Pammy.”

  “My name and title . . .”

  “Are irrelevant since I have it on good authority that you tried to steal Laud Gregor from his coffin, but someone beat you to it. That’s a crime. Something about misuse of a corpse—common to all CSS and many non-aligned worlds.” He opened his eyes a slit to watch her reaction.

  Laud Gregor’s shade approached, less translucent than usual. He pursed his lips in firm disapproval and his hands came up, as if ready to strangle Pammy. That was the most reaction Jake had seen from the ghost in many weeks.

  Martha cringed away from Gregor. Ah, so she saw the ghost too. But Sissy didn’t.

  One of these days I’ll figure out why you haunt me.

  No reaction from either the ghost or Martha.

  “Talk to the Dragons about death rituals and protocols! They don’t respect anyone, not even each other!” Pammy said with practiced oily manipulation.

  The chair directly opposite his desk swished as it conformed to her height and weight.

  “Crime of intent, my dear. As far as I am concerned, you and your agents did steal the body and stashed it in a cold maintenance tube. But when we warmed the habitat to Dragon specs, the tube was no longer cold and the body started to decay. So the Dragons snatched it as a prize meal.”

  Was that Pammy coughing? It sounded like gagging. He hoped she was as sick at the thought as he was.

  “Th . . . that’s not what happened.”

  “Isn’t it?” Jake risked opening his eyes fully. “Tell me, how does Lord Garrin figure in this?”

  Pammy choked. She knew how to school her reactions to reveal nothing. But Jake knew her too well. That faint blush on her brow along her hair line revealed more than she wanted him to know.

  He wished he had direct access to Martha’s mind like he did with Ianus, when Ianus wanted to communicate privately.

  Having telepaths around could present a distinct advantage.

  “You’ve got a mole in my operation, Jake!” Pammy stood and leaned both hands flat on his desk. As always, she was careful not to touch any of his screens.