“I can’t blame Darla for choosing a normal family life with a man who, as you said, adores her, after what she had to go through, when it turned out our safeguards on her and Zeke amounted to nothing,” Chrysalia sighed.
Lank gave her a sideways glance.
“And that means that the Team, Kati’s Team, has another job on top of the handful of big ones we’re already looking at.”
“That’s so. Although, if I’m not badly mistaken, it will slot itself in with the rest, quite nicely. My hunch is that Gorsh, his Dark Creature, and the human who tends the Dark Creature are at the very bottom of a nasty-smelling kettle of fish.”
*****
The two in the flit had no trouble finding the cottage in the river valley.
It would not have been visible from the river, had they been making their way upriver in a boat. But they weren’t doing that; they were up in the air, just above the trees which bordered the water, and over the expanses of tall grasses that seemed to be the dominant ecosystem of the valley. They considered zig-zagging from one side of the broad water flow to the other, so as to not miss the cottage, but then Lank remembered Llon’s tale about the girl escapees who had found their way to the Wise Woman’s doorstep.
“The so-called Citadel is in the north part of the city,” he said to Chrysalia. “Those girls didn’t cross the river, I don’t think, though, of course they could have. But they were trying to be inconspicuous, and two people on a bridge spanning a broad river would be easy to spot from the air, even in the night. So, it’s a pretty good bet that the Wise Woman’s cottage is on the north bank of the river. The valley, on both sides of the river, does look like it’s an eco-system of its own, separate from the city.”
“I wouldn’t argue with logic,” Chrysalia agreed. “So let’s concentrate on the north bank first. There’s nothing stopping us from doing the other side, afterward, if logic fails us.”
They came upon the swimming hole where Shyla and Jaqui had first come down to the river. From there they covered in minutes the ground which the girls had taken hours to cross, and landed the flit neatly into the open space surrounding the Wise Woman’s cottage.
She was waiting for them.
“Can I offer you some refreshment?” she asked after the introductions had been taken care of, and she was leading them into the shaded sitting area in her garden.
“A drink of something would be nice,” Lank answered. “Max’s cook packed us a lunch which we ate while flying, but our juice and water are long gone. If you have water, that would be good.”
“No restoratives needed,” Chrysalia said with a grin. “We’re doing just fine, except for a bit of thirst. Anxious to do what we came to do.”
“Oh, you’ll be busy, all right, is my guess,” Seleni said. “The off-world man I’ve been communicating with, through the Nature Spirits, says that you are here in Salamanka to gather information about what it’ll take to remove this Judd Gorsh from his powerful position and into an off-world prison. It’ll take quite a bit, I’m afraid. He has entrenched himself into the city, and a portion of the countryside around it. He has done it partly by being less horrible to the people there than some others on this continent are to those they have authority over. My impression is that he has restricted his worst practises to his off-world enterprises—which is why it is you people who are after him, but not so much the population of this area.”
“The people we got to know in the government of the Continent Nord seemed to be of the opinion that he’s dangerous,” Lank objected.
“And they’d be right,” Seleni agreed. “The fact that he has been, and is, careful not to antagonize the local population too much, does not negate the threat which he presents to the continent as a whole, especially now that there have been changes for the better in how we are governed. But it does make it harder to deal with the danger that he poses, because the locals are not going to be anxious to cross him.
“It is that sort of a mixture, where a person who is out to ruthlessly increase his own power and property, has the good sense to make himself appear reasonably benign to the people he has settled in amongst, that is in many ways the hardest to deal with. Thoughtful human beings can see the wreck that is heading their way, but those who have to live from day to day, without either the leisure or the interest to study the omens, consider the strong man among them a benefit, if they think of him at all. They are not going to help remove him.”
“What about the slaves?” Chrysalia asked. “Surely the people in this region must object to his practise of owning and selling people he has unceremoniously snatched from their home worlds!”
The Wise Woman smiled humourlessly.
“He has been smart enough to keep the locals out of it, mostly. The majority of his chattels have been here on Wayward only until he has been able to sell them elsewhere, and up until very recently, that was not very long at all. His off-world problems have forced him to rely on this, his home world, a little more than he has been in the habit of doing, and that has made him more visible. His wife, Milla, has been using the chattels as unpaid labour on her Estate for quite some time now, but Gorsh never sold or rented any of the chattels on planet until the last few months. It seems that he had a ship-load of them intended for a market which no longer exists, and the date for the more-or-less regular, off-world slave-auction is still a fair distance in the future. Feeding idle people can be an expensive proposition, so he has been reduced to trying to find ways for these people to earn their keep here, until he can unload them for cash.”
She left the off-worlders to stare at one another while she went inside to fetch drinks.
“If I’m hearing her correctly, she’s telling us that we better be careful as to who we take into our confidence,” said Chrysalia.
“Yeah. Which puts a crimp into the way the Team operates—or at least, operated on Vultaire,” Lank added. “There, pretty well everyone who wasn’t of the Exalted class was on our side—well, with the odd exception. Sounds like we can’t expect anything like that here in Salamanka; I guess we better assume that people are not with us unless we have evidence otherwise.”
“How would Kati deal with that?”
“Kati?” Lank grinned. “She’d say that we’ll have to figure out a way to work with the situation as it is, not as we might wish it to be. I think that she’d still want to cooperate with the locals, but only the locals who can see Gorsh for what he is.”
Seleni returned with a tray that held three glasses and a large pitcher of water. She set it on a table and proceeded to fill glasses which her guests were quick to accept.
“Chrysalia,” she said as soon as she had her own glass in hand, and had sat down, “may I ask to look at those lace crystal claws of yours?”
Chrysalia raised her eyebrows, but set her water glass aside, and obediently raised her hands, nails outwards. She extracted the second set of fingernails all the way, and once again, Lank shuddered slightly to see the pointed, natural weapons, eight of them (her thumbs had none), displayed. He knew how sharp and hard lace crystal was, and the thought of having those things rake flesh was intimidating.
Seleni looked at the talons curiously.
“Can you extrude and detract them individually?” she asked.
Chrysalia demonstrated. First the pinky of one hand, then the ring finger, and on through the other six, one at a time.
“I can also control how far they come out,” she added. “They don’t have to come out all the way, all the time. I can even vary the length among the fingers at the same time.”
She showed how it was while her audience watched, rapt, and at least in Lank’s case, slightly appalled.
“You can dig into flesh very precisely, if you want to, right?” Seleni asked.
“Oh yes. Lace crystal is not inanimate matter the way humans assume that it is. I would make a very good surgeon for certain types of fairly shallow problems. Of course, no Crystolorian would need such surgery; our way of deal
ing with illness is more akin to the way our Captain Katerina heals, and how her mentor, the Shelonian Master Healer Vorlund, works.”
“It so happens that there are people here on Wayward who do need your surgical skills,” Seleni said. “Not for any illness, but Judd Gorsh has been marking the off-world acquisitions of his, the ones he has spending time here on Wayward, with markers that are buried inside their flesh, usually in the shoulder muscle. The things are minuscule, and there seems to be no way to turn them off, at least not until we have rendered Gorsh himself harmless.
“One of the two girls who were trying to escape, and got as far as here, is being sent on loan to a man known to be very abusive. He likes virgins for his sport, and that’s why Shyla is going; she is one. She is also a very frightened, sensitive young woman, and I have been trying to work out a way to help her. But that little thing in her shoulder which gives away her location to Gorsh and his men, has stymied me so far. But if you could remove it with your remarkable claws, it would be possible to hide her.”
Chrysalia looked thoughtful.
“I could try,” she said after a moment. “Without knowing what exactly we’re dealing with, I cannot make any promises. For all I know, the thing is booby-trapped somehow, and will blow up the moment it’s removed. In which case she’s dead and I’m dead, too.”
“Could you tell if that’s the case?”
“I expect so. Things like that announce themselves to someone like me.”
It was a matter-of-fact statement, with not even a hint of a boast about it. Seleni nodded.
“I’ll have to work with the Valley Spirit to create another jini to locate her,” she said. “Gorsh had her in the Citadel cellar with the aliens who, in spite of their mind-travel capabilities, are penned in there by the Cellar Creature. However, recently he pulled both girls out, and I imagine that he intends to send Shyla to the man he promised her to, very soon. I don’t know when he has another flyer heading to Strone, but it certainly will be within days.”
*****
Chrysalia suggested that she join Seleni in her work with the Valley Spirit.
“I’m psychic, as are all of my people, and can help with what you do. Plus it’ll be an opportunity for me to develop a relationship with the Spirit, and make it possible for me to communicate with the jini.”
Seleni agreed, although even Lank could tell from her manner that she had some reservations about the Crystolorian.
“With your strength added to mine, perhaps we can make it possible for the jini to influence Shyla, maybe get her to go somewhere where you can meet her,” she added.
“Will this jini-business take long?” Lank asked. “Maybe, instead of cooling my heels here, I could go into the city and find lodgings for us. I don’t think that we should bunk here, even if Seleni happens to have space for us.”
“An excellent idea, Lank,” Chrysalia said. “We’ll be—what?—couple of hours would be my guess.”
She looked questioningly at Seleni who nodded.
“Two hours is a good estimate since there are two of us. For me, alone, it would likely take at least four.”
Thus they parted, with Lank heading to the flit, while the women slipped in among the trees that grew behind the Wise Woman’s back garden. There was a place there which Seleni found excellent for contacting the River Valley Nature Spirit.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Downtown Salamanka was not a city centre to delight someone like Lank. By now he had visited a few cities on various planets, some of them passing strange. Chrysalia’s home town, built completely from lace crystal with its resonant properties, had been at the top of his list of the odd ones, (although he had not actually entered it, only seen it from the outside),but, now, it looked like Salamanka was in the running, although not in a good way. Salamanka’s strangeness had a smell of decay in it.
He flitted close to the tops of the buildings, none of which were more than two or three stories tall, until he saw a vehicle parkade in a reasonably good shape. There were other parking garages, and enough flits and flyers in the air, and wheeled conveyances on the ground, that a fair amount of parking space was necessary. Many of the garages, however, looked to be in some state of disrepair, which was not a good sign. The one he chose had a burly, armed guard at the entrance, another reason for preferring it. He was not surprised to be confronted by a ticket booth, and asked the youth behind the counter if he could buy a permit to use the lot off and on for a few days, since he and his “aunt” were planning to stay in town for a little while.
“Sure you can do that, how many days would you like?” the boy said immediately.
On hearing the charge per day, Lank decided to live well, and paid for a six-day tag: a decal to be affixed to the front of the flit, and a written permit to be kept inside the vehicle itself. The cost did not seem very high, considering that they had fresh funds from the sale of some crystal shards, and that there was a guard at the parkade entry.
He suspected that safety would cost in Salamanka, and that there would be no way to avoid the fact. He would have to find reasonably safe lodgings, too. How tricky that was going to be he did not know; he did not even know which of the weirdly ornate but often poorly maintained buildings around the parkade were inns. He decided to follow Kati’s usual practise of asking questions of the locals, and approached the security guard on his way out. Fortunately, business seemed quiet at the moment, and the burly man, shorter than Lank but a lot heavier, was lounging around idly, looking bored. He wouldn’t mind the entertainment of a silly tourist asking questions.
“You look like a man aware of security issues,” Lank began. “I have my aunt travelling with me; she’s kind of delicate, and I’m supposed to keep her safe. I left her with an acquaintance while I look after the details of our stay in town, but I would like to get rooms for us in an inn where I don’t have to worry about her too much. Someplace where a small woman won’t be harassed; as a traveller among worlds, I am aware that that sort of unpleasantness can happen in big cities. Would there be lodgings like that within walking distance of this parkade?”
The security guard grinned at him.
“Sounds like you are a savvy traveller in spite of your young age,” he said. “I bet you chose this place to park in because you thought it looked safer than the competition. And you figured that there would probably be safe places to stay in the vicinity. And you’d be right! I’d recommend Mikki’s Bed and Breakfast. It’s pretty big in spite of the name, so you should have no trouble getting two rooms. It’s a couple of blocks down this street, towards the lake.” He pointed in the correct direction.
“Can you read our script?”
When Lank nodded, he added:
“There’s a sign above the door. The building is a blue slice of a cake, two stories tall, with white icing window sills, and solar panels on the roof. Mikki and her husband Yormo take really good care of the place, and they don’t let any lowlifes invade it. And there’s a restaurant, and a pub next door, and they’re very well run, too.”
“So all the necessities of life,” Lank laughed, and the guard’s grin widened.
“Just about,” he said. “And your flit is safe with us, whenever it’s in here. I noticed that it’s a rental from Strone; that’s a nice place, Strone. But if your aunt is really frail, I’d suggest that you let her off at Mikki’s before you park. She’ll be safer there than on the streets.”
Lank chuckled to himself as he walked towards the Bed and Breakfast. Chrysalia probably would not appreciate how he was describing her. But...he didn’t need her displaying those claws of hers, never mind using them. It was better to pretend that she was as delicate as she looked, and not let on that she was a tigress in disguise.
Finding Mikki’s was easy. It was on a corner, an ornate confection of a building, painted blue except for the white trim. The guard’s description of it as a slice of cake, was not far off, although Lank thought that the edifice was the whole cake, not just a piece
of it. And there were, indeed, expanses of objects on the roof which Lank took to be the solar panels that the guard had mentioned. They were not quite the streamlined, flat circles that the Lamanians used, but then, those were the super-efficient ones that the Shelonians had perfected over a long time; these had probably been manufactured on Wayward itself, or another Fringe planet. No matter, they spoke of the owners desire to be self-sufficient when it came to electricity; Lank guessed that such a desire was a positive quality in Salamanka, at least in terms of what he was looking for.
The inn seemed to be free of the smell of decay which had bothered the youth on his arrival downtown. He wondered about that. Was the central city on the demarcation line of what was under Gorsh’s influence? Did people here have the option of choosing sides, to either be with Gorsh, or insist on staying outside of his rotting circle? If that was so, he was pretty sure that Mikki and Yormo had chosen to not side with Gorsh, but had managed to snag themselves the protection of some Nature Spirit that was not intimidated by the blackness in the Citadel.
When he entered the premises, his sense that this was so, increased. There was an airiness inside the Lobby, which surprised him, because it was so clearly not like the oppressive heft of the air outside. There were well-tended, potted plants around the room, and seats for the patrons to lounge in. A short counter on one side was obviously where registrations were taken; while looking around him, he steered his steps in its direction, and a woman who had been chatting with another one on an ornate couch, got up to settle behind it, and to serve him. Mikki, perhaps?
He put on his most charming smile, as he faced her across the counter. She appeared to be in early middle age, an attractive woman; for a fleeting moment Lank wondered if she had any daughters, then he dismissed the thought as unworthy opportunism. Besides which, he was not going to be staying on Wayward, no matter how many pretty girls there were in Salamanka, or Strone, for that matter.
“I’m travelling with my aunt,” he said, “and have the task of engaging rooms for us. The security guard at the vehicle parkade recommended this place as a very safe establishment. My aunt is a bit delicate so I don’t want to take her just anywhere. Would you have two rooms that we could engage for a few days, preferably two next to one another, maybe even with a connecting door between. I do want to look after my aunt.”
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 36
