Gallen frowned. “How can that be? I’ve been in a dronon hive city; the stench of their stomach acids fills the air. And the acids dry into a fine powder that blankets everything. A closed ship would be—impossible to bear.”
Laranac nodded. “Their kind and ours were not meant to live together. Karthenor knew that. Yet he will suffer for his choice, constantly burning from the acids on the dronon hive ships. The nanodocs in his blood will keep him alive, but at what price? I suspect his exile is a great torment to him.”
“A fit ending for the man, as far as I’m concerned,” Orick said. “Death would have been too nice.”
“No, this is not his end,” Gallen whispered, “only a reprieve in torment. Such a painful exile will only madden him, make him want to return that much more quickly.”
“And so I keep watch on this place,” Laranac said, “hoping for his return. I found a cache of weapons and credit chips hidden in a secret room behind that wall. If Karthenor returns, he will come searching for it, but all he will find is me. I will give him death, when next I see him.”
“What of the law?” Gallen asked. “Will you give the man no trial?”
“His memories were on file, along with his gene samples, so that the dronon could rebuild him if he died. Those memories were all the evidence we needed. Karthenor has already been convicted and sentenced to death. I wait now only to mete out his punishment.”
Orick considered this bit of news on how evil men were tried here on Tremonthin, and he thought it much better than what had happened with Gallen, back home.
Gallen smiled up at Laranac. “You’ll not mete out his punishment, if I get to him first.”
“That is unlikely,” Laranac said.
Gallen mused, “I am Lord of the Swarm. If I asked the dronon to turn him over, they would do it on a moment’s notice.”
Orick did not like the idea of having to deal with the dronon. He never wanted to see one of their black carapaces again.
Laranac smiled back at Gallen. “Then do it. Karthenor is a dangerous man, and the fact that he is on a dronon starship hardly hinders his work. He must be stopped.”
“Soon,” Gallen said. “I’ll make arrangements. But I’ve urgent business elsewhere for the moment. If it takes a week for him to be delivered, I’m afraid I can’t be here to meet Karthenor at the spaceport.”
“I can,” Laranac said. “Send for him.”
“I will, first thing tomorrow. Until then, keep watching this place,” Gallen said. “And I shall sleep better tonight.”
Gallen turned to leave, but Laranac caught his arm. “Be careful,” Laranac whispered fervently. “A new government is forming on this world, one that recognizes the Lady Everynne as Semarritte’s heir and as a rightful judge. They are eager to join once again in the Consortium of Worlds. But there are other voices crying to be heard on the councils. There are other Karthenors on the loose—brutal people who lost profit and prestige when the dronon evacuated. Such people would not bear you into the city upon their shoulders. They would rather trample you under their feet.”
“You think I am in danger?” Gallen asked.
“The mayor of Toohkansay is protecting you now, the best he knows how. But if you left soon, you would be doing him a favor—and perhaps you would save your own lives.”
Gallen nodded almost imperceptibly. Gallen and Orick returned to their chambers, and when Orick was alone, he offered up more than his usual nightly prayers.
The next day dawned bright and clear. Gallen sent a message to Everynne to be relayed to the dronon Vanquishers, asking that Karthenor and any other such humans carried away in Dronon ships be returned to their home worlds for judging and sentencing.
For a bit in the morning, Orick was edgy, watchful, but the mood soon vanished like the morning mists burning off the wide river. The celebrations continued all throughout the day, and Orick found it difficult under such circumstances to believe that anyone would wish Maggie and Gallen harm.
On the contrary, at every turn people sought Maggie and Gallen out to offer favors. The finest clothiers arrayed Gallen, Maggie, and Maggie’s honored uncle Thomas in their best wares, and perfumers brought their most exotic scents. Musicians and actors played before them, while chefs plied them with fine food and technologists brought tokens of knowledge for Gallen and Maggie to place in their mantles.
Those who were poor came and told tales of woe, describing the horrible tyranny they had suffered under the dronon. Those who were weak, or deformed, or belligerent, or brave had been annihilated under dronon rule. Their bodies were processed for fertilizer by unfeeling dronon overlords.
And so the poor people of Fale told unending tales of woe, then thanked Gallen and Maggie. From all across the planet, the grateful people of Fale came to give honor.
The whole affair was dizzying and extravagant beyond anything that Orick had ever dreamed, and all through the day he watched Gallen, gauging the look upon his face. He seemed worn, worried, and not until that evening when the brewers of F ale convinced him to try their dearest vintages of wine did those lines of worry begin to ease.
That night, as they returned to their rooms, the mayor of Toohkansay walked with them once again, and he was laughing, smiling. Thomas had his lute out, and he sang softly as he walked.
Outside the door to Maggie’s apartment, a large, intricately carved crystal vase held a perfect white rose with petals so lustrous they shone like pearl. A note beneath the flower said, “A Token of Our Esteem.”
“Ah,” the mayor said, “it looks as if the hotel has left you a special gift.” Thomas cooed in appreciation, and reached down for the vase, but the mayor said, “Let me get that for you!”
As he touched the vase, the rose petals suddenly whirred and spun like a pinwheel, blurring into the air, striking him in the face. Blood and flesh spattered across the hallway, and there was cracking as the rose cut through his skull, then rose petals exploded outward.
The mayor’s head seemed to implode, the broken skull sagging in on itself, and he fell face first to the floor.
Maggie screamed and backed away, and Orick looked up. Thomas stood in shock, holding his wrist. A delicate-looking petal of rose had lodged in his wrist, like a knife blade.
Gallen spun, looking down the hallway, as if expecting attackers to come, and in seconds, four men rushed down from both ends of the corridor, all of them with weapons drawn. They looked at the mayor, watched down both sides of the corridor.
One of them was shouting into a tiny microphone at his lapel, “Security breach, code one! Man down!” The men took defensive postures on either side of the corridor, placing themselves between Maggie and any would-be attackers.
In another minute, a dozen more soldiers arrived, including several of the green giants like the “demon” that Thomas had displayed at the inn. The sight of those creatures dismayed Thomas more than anything, so the soldiers were forced to rush Thomas and the others into their own room, where they waited for a medic, who used clamps and nanoware to begin healing the cut ligaments in Thomas’s wrist.
Thomas just sat on his bed during the whole procedure, cursing the folks who had done this.
“It was nanoware,” Maggie said to herself once in the room. “They were after me and Gallen.”
“Aye,” Thomas said, “it looks as if you’ve made some enemies here, while collecting worshipers.”
“But I don’t understand,” Maggie whispered. “They could have found so many easier ways to kill me—a bomb, a poisoned scent in the flower. Even if they’d wanted to use nanoware, there were so many things they could have done. They could have stripped every atom of copper from my body … torn away my ability to remember—any one of a thousand things. So why the rose?”
“They weren’t just trying to kill you,” Thomas suggested. “Perhaps the saboteur wanted to do more than kill you. He wanted to send a message.”
“Of course,” Gallen said. “Whoever put the flower there believed that ki
lling Maggie would be pointless. Her memories could just be downloaded into a clone. So the flower was a message from her enemies.”
“But what does it mean?” Orick asked.
The medic who was attending Thomas’s wound looked up. “Beware of beautiful appearances,” he said, with almost too much certainty. “Things are not as they seem.”
“Are they warning us away from the Tharrin?” Gallen asked. “Lady Everynne?”
“That may be. Not all people trust the Tharrin. Though they are beautiful, they are not truly human. On the other hand, perhaps the rose was not meant as a message to you,” the medic said. “Perhaps it was a message to the rest of the world. This weapon was intended to kill Maggie, and she too is beautiful. Perhaps the killers were trying to warn the people of Fale away from her.”
“You’re talking gibberish, man,” Orick said, certain the medic was on the wrong track. Maggie was not a leader on Fale. No, the rose had to signify the Tharrin, but Orick knew the Lady Everynne well. The Tharrin were good folks, and only a person with a warped mind would fear otherwise.
The medic shrugged. “I’m only making wild guesses. The only person who really knows what the message meant is out there somewhere.” He waved toward the city.
He applied some nanodocs to the wound, then bandaged it, and left.
When they were alone, Gallen took an object from his robe—a white metal triangle with a lens set at each corner. “You’ve a message?” Maggie said, taking the contraption from his hand. “The mayor gave it to me earlier. It’s from Everynne.” Maggie set the thing on the floor, and asked the room to lower the lights. “Everynne,” she called softly, and suddenly the image of Everynne appeared in the room, her dark hair gleaming, resplendent in a pale blue gown. Thomas gasped at her beauty, and Orick studied the fine bones of her jaw, the keen intellect behind her eyes. In the brief weeks since Orick had last seen her, he found that time had blurred her image, so he tried to burn the Tharrin woman into his memory.
“I had suspected that you would call me, Gallen,” the holoimage said, “and I will give you what little help I can. I need you to go to Tremonthin, a world like yours where mankind has rejected most technologies, with one exception: in the City of Life the Lords of Tremonthin have dedicated themselves to developing life-extending technologies. There they download memories into clones of those worthy for immortality. There, they fight disease and suffering. And for twenty millennia the world has had but one export—children who are engineered to live on worlds that other humans cannot inhabit, or who are engineered to fulfill roles that other humans cannot. Many of these altered people live on Tremonthin still, for the Lords of that world do not force their creations into exile but give them their choice of staying or leaving.
“My ancestors, the Tharrin, were created on Tremonthin eighteen thousand years ago to be judges and rulers of mankind, and for this reason Tremonthin was one of the first worlds that the dronon sought to conquer. It appears that they murdered all of the Tharrin there, but one survived with the help of technicians from the City of Life. And she has been hunted by a thing called the Inhuman.
“I have no information on the Inhuman. It seems to be a secret society, formed by the descendants of genetically upgraded people. We lost ansible contact with Tremonthin years ago, but rebels working on a ship that visited the City of Life in the past three months were able to smuggle out the small recording that I sent you, along with a request that the rebellion send a Lord Protector. They must have known that Veriasse and I were traveling between the world gates, for the message says that someone will meet you at the gate.
“Gallen, this will be no easy task. Those who are genetically upgraded and who choose to remain on Tremonthin are often banished from human lands, and in those lands the fiercest variations of mankind thrive.
“I would come with you if I could, Gallen,” Everynne said, and her voice caught a little as she said it. “Since I don’t know the dimensions of this problem, I fear the worst. Certainly, the rebels on Tremonthin were desperate, for they sent their plea knowing that the dronon would almost certainly discover the recording. Still, they hoped that one Lord Protector, alone, could handle their problems—as I also hope.
“Be strong, but be wise,” Everynne said. “Come back to us alive.” The message ended, and Gallen stood looking at the holograph thoughtfully.
“Well, we’d better get going,” Orick offered after a moment of silence, hoping to prod the others into immediate action. It would feel good to be back in Everynne’s service, to be doing something important.
“The mayor spoke with me earlier,” Gallen said. “He’d readied a flier. We can leave in the morning.”
“But folks are waiting for us!” Orick said.
“They’ve been waiting for months,” Gallen countered. “We’ll need our rest. They can wait one night longer.”
Thomas had been sitting quietly, watching the holograph, and he cleared his throat. He was waxing the tips of his moustache, twirling them thoughtfully. “Gallen, Orick, Maggie—you may do as you please. But I’ll be staying.”
“No you won’t,” Gallen said. “There are only four people on this planet who know where Maggie and I are going—and all of them are in this room. And sometime in the next few weeks, at least one dronon hive queen will come hunting for Maggie, and I’ll have to be at her side to protect her. I’d rather they didn’t find us, so I can’t leave any witnesses behind. So, you see, sir, that I can’t let you stay!”
Gallen’s jaw was set, his eyes stony. Orick knew that look. It was the same look that hill robbers always saw just before Gallen pulled his knives and gutted them.
“I’ll not have you talking down to me in that tone,” Thomas said. “I’ve got my own dreams in life, my own path to take, and I don’t fancy that running off with you will get me where I want to go. It appears to me that you three are just targets for trouble: you bring it down on yourselves wherever you go, and I’m not a fighting man. If I stay long in your presence, I’m sure to get killed.”
Thomas quit twirling his moustache and tentatively held his bandaged wrist, clenching and unclenching his fingers experimentally. “You’ll be under my protection,” Gallen said forcefully. “I’ve never lost someone who was under my protection.”
“Well, it’s mighty convenient that you weren’t hired by that fellow who is lying dead out in the hall, isn’t it?” Thomas grumbled. “We wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation.”
Gallen frowned at the haughty tone in Thomas’s voice.
Orick realized that this argument was beginning to escalate. As a bear studying for the priesthood, he felt it his duty to calm these folks.
He rose up on his hind feet, catching their attention. “I’m sure that Thomas is no coward, Gallen. After all, he’s smarted off to every mayor and usurer in Tihrglas for forty years. So, if he doesn’t want to come, he must have his reasons.”
“I know what he’s after—” Gallen said, “he’s after a comfortable retirement!”
“I’m sure you misjudge the man.…” Orick soothed, but Thomas began laughing, deep and hearty.
“Oh, Orick, Gallen has judged the man right! I’ve earned my rest. The food here is good, the people gracious.…”—he flexed his fingers experimentally—“for the most part. And, frankly, I’m a paying customer. I paid to come here—not to go to someplace worse off than Tihrglas!”
“Nevertheless, that’s where we’re going,” Gallen said, as if the discussion were final.
“Look,” Thomas said. “I’m an old man. You can’t be ordering me about!”
“You were quick to order me about when it suited your fancy!” Maggie countered.
Gallen was staring icily at Thomas, and he took the older man by the collar. “You’re coming with us,” Gallen said. “I’ll leave no witnesses behind—at least not live ones. This isn’t a game I’m playing, Thomas. If you stay here, you put us at risk, and I’ll not be looking over my shoulder because of you! Once this is al
l over, I’ll bring you back here, if you want, or send you to any other planet!”
Thomas fixed him with a gaze, and Thomas’s own face took on a closed look. Orick suddenly found that he didn’t trust the man. “So, the ferryman has taken my money, and now he plans to row the boat where he will! Well, it sounds to me as if you’re cheating me out of my life savings, Gallen. I commend you for that. I admire a man who is willing to take what he wants.” He sighed, and his gaze turned inward. “All right then, Gallen, I’ll come with you to your damned world—but it is a comfortable retirement I’m after. I’ll find me a nice inn and settle down for a bit, work on my music. When you’re done with your task, you can come back and bring me here, if I so desire. Agreed?”
Gallen nodded, and the two men shook hands. Thomas stood taller, stretched and yawned. “Very well, then. I suspect that tomorrow will be a long day. Wake me in the morning.” Orick sighed in relief, now that the matter was settled. Gallen, Maggie, and Thomas went to their rooms.
Sometime well before dawn, Maggie rushed back into Orick’s quarters, waking him. Orick had never seen her so mad; she had tears in her eyes.
“Orick, get up! We’ve got problems. We just got another message from Everynne. We’ve got to leave Tremonthin now! The dronon are here, and I just went to that lousy Thomas’s room. He left us a good-bye note, and ran sneaking off sometime in the night!”
“Oh, damn him!” Orick grumbled, realizing that Thomas had only made a pretense of being reasonable. She held a note in her hand, and Orick read it quickly.
Dear Maggie:
Now, don’t be cross at me, darling, but by the time you read this, I’ll be off on my own adventures. I’m afraid I’m getting old and plump, and if you don’t mind, I’d rather spend some time on a nice, safe world like this. You go ahead and tramp down the dark roads, if that’s what your heart is after, but for me, I want nothing more than a warm mug of whiskey by the fire, some soft music, and a woman who loves me just for warming her bed.
I know Gallen is worrying that I’ll tell someone about you folks going you-know-where, but I promise not to whisper a peep about it, even in my dreams. So don’t you fret. And don’ waste your time trying to hunt me down. I’ve eluded my share of assassins in my time, and I know how to disappear when I want to.
Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Page 12
