Chapter Seventeen
“I want you to explain to me one more time,” Lord Soren Foln seethed, “exactly why you thought it was a good idea to deactivate her suppression collar.”
Markus closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “For the same reason I already told you: Firth wasn’t responding to calls, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to reach Vale in time. I needed to be able to communicate with her, and she isn’t carrying a holopad. Telepathy was the only way.”
Foln spun around and glared at the younger man. “And it never once occurred to you that she might have been the one who killed him? That giving her even a fraction of a second to use her powers could prove disastrous?”
“Frankly, no. I knew she hadn’t harmed him, and I knew she wasn’t trying to escape. That meant she was in trouble, and I needed to know exactly what was going on.”
“And now two aliens are dead and two others are seriously injured,” Foln hissed. “Do you even understand what you’ve done? Do you understand what your little pet project has cost us? All I asked of you was to link with the data crystals and recover the cure, and instead you’ve rallied the city against us and threatened everything we’ve worked to build!”
Markus glared unflinchingly back at him. “Yell at me all you want if it makes you feel better, but we both know Revask or one of his people set this whole thing up. Personally I’d rather spend our time figuring out how to prove it to the others.”
“You arrogant little shit,” Grier snarled. “This is all your fault—”
Foln raised a hand and silenced her. Few in the Mire dared to stand up to their leader, especially when he was in such a foul mood, but Markus had never held any such reservations. Usually Foln considered that particular trait a virtue; every leader needed at least a few advisors who were willing to stare him in the eye and tell him he was wrong, after all. Right now, however, he was too furious to think clearly, and all he really wanted was a supplicant to scream at.
“There is no ‘next move,’” he said through clenched teeth. “The Council will lock Vale away and throw away the key, and I will have no choice but to support them.”
“You can’t be serious,” Markus breathed. “She was defending herself—they were going to kill her! We just have to prove that Revask is behind it all and—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Foln cut him off. “The damage is done. Vale has validated the fears of every alien in this city, and they will quickly move against us. Frankly, you’ll be lucky if I can convince them to keep you out of a cell for what you’ve done.”
“Selaris will never let that happen.”
“Selaris might not have a choice in the matter,” Foln said pointedly. “Her vote may not be enough.”
Markus shook his head and walked over to the office window. “It’s not that bad. Once people’s passions die down and they hear the truth, it will all blow over.”
“Aren’t you listening?” Grier snapped. “Two aliens are dead. This isn’t going to blow over.”
Foln rubbed at his pounding temples. Their enemies really couldn’t have played this more perfectly. Word of the assault had quickly spread across the city, and mobs were already gathering in front of the Ecclesia. Some would call for Vale’s execution, while others wouldn’t be happy until the Mire was driven out of the city completely. And all the while, Revask and his faction would continue to grow in power.
Foln had to give the Rakashi credit; he had chosen his sacrificial goons wisely. Revask knew that in order to get a majority vote on the Council he would eventually need Urekal to switch to his side, and so he’d sacrificed a Krosian in order to do it. He wouldn’t be able to manipulate Zalix so easily, nor could he replace Selaris given the city’s continued reliance on humans for power, but three votes would still allow him to enact whatever policies he wanted so long as they abided by the city’s charter—including, potentially, the termination of the Mire alliance. He could conceivably throw Foln and the others into prison to ensure that Nowhere’s existence never leaked beyond astral space.
It was truly a master stroke executed with all the cunning of the best Keledonian Lord. And Markus had walked them right into it.
“I realize politics isn’t your strong suit,” Foln said into the silence, “but you must understand the position you’ve put me in. I agreed to keep Vale alive because I believed she might eventually be an asset, but I should have known better. Bringing her here was a mistake. The situation was volatile enough without adding her to the mix.”
“We can’t just abandon her,” Markus insisted. “She didn’t even do anything wrong!”
“We don’t need her,” Grier insisted. “We already have the crystals, and if you’d have been studying them instead of worrying about coddling this worthless bitch, we’d have the fucking cure by now!”
“There’s nothing on the crystals—I already told you that. And I still can’t figure out how to link with the violet one. Selaris tried and it nearly knocked her back into a coma. Jen may be the only person here with a chance of getting through.”
Grier folded her arms across her chest. “Really? You’re not just making up a convenient excuse for us to rely on your lost girlfriend? You’re pathetic, Coveri. You’re willing to put all of us in danger just to save some Convectorate whore.”
For a moment, Foln thought his lieutenant might have fatally underestimated the former Spider. Markus turned to glare at her, his eyes glimmering with a hundred different ways a powerful psychic could tear someone apart—and probably a dozen more a trained, psychogenetically enhanced assassin could do the same. But to his credit he didn’t budge, and Foln stepped between them.
“The cure is there,” he said pointedly. “My grandfather would not have failed in his mission.”
Eventually Markus glanced up to him. “And what makes you so sure of that? The crew was dead, and we have no reason to believe they ever started their research.”
“The cure is there,” Foln repeated. “And I expect you to do whatever it takes to find it—and quickly. I will attempt to quell the Council as best I can, but we are running out of time. If Revask and his allies get their way, we’ll never be allowed to leave the city again.”
“This whole thing is such an obvious setup there has to be some way you can spin it to our advantage. Maybe you can convince Urekal that Revask threw one of his people to the wolves to try and manipulate him. He’s not a fool.”
“How about this: you stick to studying the crystals, and I’ll handle the politics,” Foln replied tartly. “Now go. I’ll contact you once the meeting is over.”
Markus’s eyes flicked between the two of them. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m telling you right now that I’m not just going to abandon her, not for something like this. And you shouldn’t, either.”
With that, he turned and stormed out of the room. Grier glared at the door as it slid shut behind him.
“He’s becoming a problem,” she bit out. “I’m not sure he even cares about the cure.”
“I’m not worried about his motives,” Foln said. “I’m worried about his judgment and his priorities.”
“Do you think he’s being honest about that last crystal?”
“He believes what he says. Whether it’s true or not is another story. I’m not sure why Selaris was able to link with it but he wasn’t, and we have no tangible reason to believe that Vale would be any more successful.”
He stared silently at the door for a few seconds before his holopad beeped. Frowning, he pulled it out of his pocket and glanced down at the screen.
“Is something wrong, my lord?” Grier asked.
“I’m not sure. I’m receiving a transmission from our relay buoy.”
“The buoy? There must be an emergency.”
Foln nodded distantly as the phone decrypted the message. The buoy was their ad hoc solution to being completely cut off from the rest of the Mire while they were here. The idea was simple: they’d placed the device in th
e astral mists outside the walls of the city, and if the Golem ever shifted into astral space, it could fire off a quick, wide-range signal which the buoy would eventually capture and then relay here to Foln. It was the same system he’d used to send an early warning message to Selaris before they’d arrived a few days ago. The Council had hated the entire idea, naturally, since it increased the risk of exposing their location to the Convectorate, but Foln had implemented it anyway. Still, he’d advised his people to only use the buoy in absolute emergencies.
And when the decrypted text finally scrolled across the screen, he knew that this was one of them.
“Our base on Telonius has been destroyed,” Foln whispered.
“What?” Grier gasped. “When? How?”
“Yesterday, apparently. By a Spider.”
She swore under her breath. “How many people did we have stationed there? Fifty? How many survived?”
“One,” he said. “She was told to relay a message: either we return their lost agent, or more of our people will suffer.”
Grier’s face twisted. “I knew it. This is Coveri’s fault. The Convectorate must know we captured Vale alive. If he’d just left her on that ship instead of—”
“They’re getting desperate,” Foln interrupted. “They know we have Vale, and they must suspect we salvaged the Damadus. They’ll do everything they can to flush us out before we locate the cure.”
“Then we need to go back. We need to tell the others to start moving again. Our network must be compromised.”
“No,” he said firmly. “Right now all that matters is accessing those crystals, and if Markus can’t handle it, then we need to find someone who can.”
“I hope you’re not suggesting Vale.”
“We don’t need Vale. We don’t need Selaris or any of the other Flies here, either. Henri is on the verge of synthesizing a new version of his serum. Once he does, I should be able to link with the crystals myself. Perhaps that’s what I should have done all along.”
He could feel her eyes boring into the side of his head even without looking at her. “Are you sure that’s wise, my lord? The last dose left you drained for days, and the doctor said—”
“I know what he said,” Foln growled, more harshly than he intended. He sighed and placed a comforting arm on her shoulder. “I appreciate your concern, Tayla, but if Markus can’t get the answers for us, then I am going to have to. The cure is all that matters, now more than ever. The Convectorate knows it…and so do I.”
Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded. “Yes, my lord.”
He forced a tight smile. “Now come. We have a roomful of aliens to appease.”
The Spider and the Fly Page 30
