by Scott Baron
The guard softened a bit.
“Very well, Binsala. Please, come in,” he said, moving aside and granting the assassin entry. “But I should clarify for you,” he said as the door clicked shut. “The man of the house is not a man, but rather, Emmik Yanna Sok.”
“Oh?” Bawb replied. “I do not know this emmik. Does she trade?” he asked with an innocent smile.
The truth of the matter was he knew of Yanna Sok––everyone knew her story––but the Wampeh had never come across her personally. She was a Tslavar, and a particularly brutal one, by all tales. The tall, green, elfin woman commanded a fleet of vessels spanning dozens of systems, including Captain Tür’s slave trade ship, which Charlie had once called home.
Decades of hard work had put her atop the bloody heap vying for control of the system, and it was with a notable proclivity for violence that she maintained control.
The heavily armed guard laughed warmly. “Does she trade? Oh yes, friend, she most certainly trades. Come, I shall make introductions.”
Chapter Forty-Three
For such a brutal woman, Bawb had to admit, the emmik had exquisite taste. Carvings of the great masters from a dozen systems adorned pedestals in her great meeting room. The furniture, likewise, had been crafted by artisans of incredible skill. A few of the pieces he recognized, their bloody origins known to but the few who had been present during the conflicts in which they had gone missing.
Yanna Sok was no visla, but her powers placed her at the top tier of emmiks. With her natural abilities, combined with her wealth and access to magically-charged weapons, it was surprising she hadn’t made a play for one of the visla-controlled realms. But Bawb respected her decision to lie low––in her own way.
She had tested the bounds of her cage, and rattled the bars fiercely, and now knew with certainty how far she could push before the Council of Twenty would pull on her leash.
The well-dressed Wampeh was shown to a low couch, upon which he was comfortably seated while the emmik was informed of his visit.
“May I offer you a beverage while you wait?”
“I wouldn’t turn down a drink,” Bawb said, playing the part of a freewheeling trader.
“Preference?” the guard asked, opening a locked liquor cabinet behind the other bottles on display.
“Surprise me.”
The heavily armed man chuckled and poured a tall glass of a light blue liquid with a light effervescence. Bawb reached up, accepting the glass graciously. His sleeves slid back slightly, and the guard eyed his ornate armlets with curiosity.
“Ooh, is this real Aslaak? I haven’t seen a bottle in years. Wherever did the emmik find it?” the assassin asked, gently swirling the contents of the glass and giving it a deep sniff, silently murmuring a detection spell before sipping its unenchanted, undrugged contents.
“The emmik has her ways,” the guard said. “Now, if you’re settled in, I’ll return with the emmik shortly.”
“Thank you, I’m quite comfortable. You’ve been a most excellent host.”
“We do as the emmik wishes, and treating her guests well is a top priority. If you’ll excuse me.” With a little bow, the guard left their guest to his own devices and went to fetch his employer.
Bawb had not noticed any obvious signs of covert surveillance, and his quiet incantations had triggered no reaction, giving him a measure of confidence there were no spells actively monitoring him, though with one as powerful as Yanna Sok, it was always possible she had masked them too thoroughly for his hasty efforts to uncover.
He sipped his beverage, enjoying the rare treat. That it had been offered to a simple trader, even one as well-attired as he, was an indication of the emmik’s true wealth. That, or her desire to give the impression of it. In her case, however, he was quite sure she had the resources to back it up.
A few minutes later a tall woman, elegantly dressed in form-fitting trousers and a loose top breezed into the room, followed by a half dozen guards-in-waiting. She had a near-pirate swagger to her stride, and both her confidence and power could be felt as soon as she entered the room.
For a naturally magical being such as she, the use of slaaps, konuses, and other devices, was something she only lowered herself to when outside the walls of her home, where she would need to conserve energy if possible. Within her abode, however, the lithe woman was free of such accoutrements, and radiated power regardless.
“I hear you are interested in trade,” she said, taking a seat across from him and comfortably crossing her legs, sturdy leather boots pointed at him as her leg bobbed atop the other.
“Yes. I am Binsala. I have come to seek out new trade in this system, and I was told Emmik Sok was the person to speak to.”
“You were told correctly.”
“Marvelous!” Bawb said. “Then we have much to discuss.”
“Indeed, we do,” she replied with a cool smile.
Several pair of hands grabbed the Wampeh and hauled him to his feet, roughly forcing his arms back and stripping his armlets from him.
“What are you doing? What is the meaning of this?”
“What I am doing is disarming a spy in my home,” Emmik Sok replied. “You think my men are not trained to recognize disguised weapons? And in my own home, no less,” she said, picking up his armlets, lazily tracing the runes with her finger. “An exquisite design, I must admit. I would wager the disguise would fool nearly all. And the way your konuses are so expertly hidden within the decorations. Masterful, truly.”
“Thank you,” he said. “But I am a mere trader. These were acquired some time ago as a means to protect myself on hostile worlds. I’m not one for carrying weapons, you see, but these afforded me some modicum of security without making me appear, brutish.”
She looked at his ornate attire. Indeed, he was dressed like a carefree trader, but his story didn’t sway her initial impression.
“No, I think not,” she said. “You are a spy, and a fairly good one at that. Had you not slipped and shown your konuses, my men might have even been fooled. In any case, you are unarmed and unpowered.”
“I told you, I’m not a powered man.”
“And even if you were, that drink just muted your skills.”
“Didn’t notice any spell,” he said, truthfully.
“Oh, the Aslaak isn’t enchanted. No, that’s a rather lovely vintage, in fact. But no. What is enchanted is the glass itself. Not the rim, where a simple detection spell might notice it, but lower. Where you grabbed it. The spell is temporary, but it effectively blocks a person’s magic, for a time.”
“That’s horrendous! And it’s illegal,” he protested.
“You forget whom you’re dealing with,” Emmik Sok cooed in reply.
She was rather enjoying the process. Slowly breaking the man, watching the reality of his situation dawn on him bit by bit. It had been so long since she’d last interrogated anyone worthwhile. And for a spy to be sent all the way into her domicile? Well, that warranted extra attention.
Yanna Sok walked close to her captive, looking him over head to toe. “You have all of his weapons?”
“He only had the two konuses on his forearms, Emmik.”
“So brave,” she said with a mocking laugh. “And so foolish. I think I’m going to enjoy taking you apart piece by piece until you tell me who sent you.”
“Nobody sent me! I’m telling the truth!”
“We’ll soon know, won’t we?” she said with an evil grin. “Bring him to my play room.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Yanna Sok’s victims typically panicked at the very notion of being in the emmik’s clutches, but Bawb didn’t have much of a chance to contemplate just what the ‘play room’ designation entailed as he was forcefully hauled down the corridor and up a flight of stairs. A room sat waiting for him, its door open, walls so thick they would silence her victims’ screams.
Two of the guards stood outside the doors, one on either side. They were inside the house, so rea
lly, it was all just for show. Designed to terrorize her plaything a bit more. Bawb cried out as he was pulled into the chamber, the heavy door closing behind them.
“You may release him,” Emmik Sok instructed her men.
The four remaining guards stepped clear, leaving the trembling Wampeh standing in the center of the room. There were shackles on the far wall, and several low tables containing a wide variety of torture devices, but most were for show. Yanna Sok far preferred using her hands and the power they contained.
“You really shouldn’t have taken the job,” she said, circling the Wampeh. “Whoever your employer is, must not have told you whom you were dealing with.”
“I told you, I do not have an employer,” Bawb said, his voice shaking.
“Yet here you are. A spy in my home. And a foolish one at that.”
She picked up the armlets her men had placed on the nearest table.
“These are quite powerful konuses, I must admit. You might have even given me a good fight using them. But that is your weakness. You rely on the magic of others, whereas I possess magic of my own.”
“Is that why you don’t wear a konus or slaap?” he asked. “Are you so confident in your strength that you leave yourself unprotected?”
Something about his tone, despite the halting voice, made her slightly uneasy.
“You searched him everywhere, correct?” she asked her guard.
“Yes, Emmik. He has nothing but the clothes on his back.”
A smile blossomed on the pale Wampeh’s lips, the points of his teeth shining merrily in the light.
“What do you find so amusing?” Sok demanded. “Kika rahm!”
The spell should have sent the man flying, but he muttered a counter-spell casually and stood his ground.
“Impossible. You have no power. And you have no konus.”
“Only the clothes on my back,” he said with a wicked grin.
Yanna Sok realized her mistake a moment later, but that was far too late for her to stop his attack, let alone launch a counter-spell.
“Idiots!” was all she managed to say before being hit with a flurry of spells, the complexity and fury of which overwhelmed her instinctive defense barriers, battering her to unconsciousness in an instant.
The guards leapt at the Wampeh, whose intricately woven shirt was now glowing with power. A konus’s power, but greater. That of immensely powerful Ootaki hair, carefully stored in every shimmering thread of the seemingly harmless material, the natural dyes hiding its true properties.
They had assumed him disarmed, but his weapons were merely a misdirection. The true weapon was on his body.
Bawb spun and whirled between the four attackers, each of whom was heavily armed, and skilled with their weapons. What they were not prepared for was an opponent so eager to fight all of them at once. The men were accustomed to wielding power from a position of strength, with ample time to select and cast their spells.
The assassin in their midst allowed them no such time, combining magical and physical attacks in a flurry, shifting from one target to another, leaving no man even an instant to gather his wits. It was four-on-one, and the fight was by no means a fair one.
The Geist lay the men out with ease. None were powered beings, however, so he left them as they lay, unconscious and battered, but alive. He then turned his attention to the fallen Emmik.
“Pah nameni,” he said, rousing her from the murky depths of unconsciousness.
“You…?” she managed, in a whisper.
“I told you. I was not sent by another.” He smiled a fanged grin. “I selected you myself.”
Emmik Sok finally realized what was happening. He was one of them. The rarest of Wampeh. She’d heard tales, but never actually seen one. At any other time, she’d have been fascinated by the man, perhaps even tried to recruit him. But not now, because at this moment, she suddenly knew that she wasn’t being spied on. She was his meal.
“Please,” she whimpered.
“Shhh, calm yourself,” he soothed. “I will not take your life, Yanna Sok. Believe it or not, I hold you in high regard. It is not an easy thing for a woman to achieve what you have in this backward, male-dominated system, even one as driven and skilled as you.”
Her body relaxed slightly at the words.
“But, I am going to drain you of your power. For a while, anyway. I suggest you wear your strongest konuses under your garments to keep up appearances until you regain your own strength.”
She tried to think of something to say, but oblivion wrapped her in darkness as the Wampeh’s lips closed over her neck, sucking deeply as he drained her of her blood and power.
He left her and her men sleeping, casting one of his favorite spells, muddying their thoughts for the next day or two. More than enough time for him and the others to make their escape from this world.
With the power of an emmik flowing in his veins, Bawb easily slipped past the household guards, drawing power from his konus armbands, conserving the recently stolen magic. He didn’t know when it would come in handy, but it always did, and Yanna Sok was even more powerful than he’d guessed.
He realized he had gotten lucky to take her so entirely by surprise. Had they engaged in a proper fight, even with his konuses, he might not have prevailed.
Bawb slipped into the emmik’s personal storeroom and gathered a few key items he and his comrades could likely use in coming days. A case of odd material caught his eye. Carefully, he opened it. Inside were a handful of odd, ugly devices obviously from Charlie’s galaxy. Yanna Sok must have added them to her collection when Captain Tür had taken him as a slave.
He had no idea what they were, or if they had any value or use, but thought perhaps his human associate might find them useful. He tucked them into a small sack, along with the rest of his booty. There was much more he’d have liked to take, but there was simply no time, and lacking a proper ship, he couldn’t very well expect the Zomoki to carry the extra cargo.
He did, however, have an idea.
Several trips to a local boarding house later, Bawb had stashed away a small fortune in goods from the emmik’s home. He’d paid for a full year’s rental up front, plus another year’s worth for the proprietor to forget he had ever seen him. Eventually, he would claim his booty.
For now, at least, other things took priority.
The assassin known as the Geist slung his haul over his shoulder and stepped out into the night, melting into the flow of the streets without a trace.
Chapter Forty-Five
“We really should be going,” Bawb said, strapping his handful of new weapons ‘liberated’ from Yanna Sok’s abode securely to his travel rig. “While the emmik and her immediate guards will remain befuddled by my spell, I am afraid the same cannot be said for the others in the household.”
“So, we’re screwed.”
“I did not say that, Charlie. Merely that there is still a possibility that one or more of her staff may piece together what occurred. If that happens, we may find ourselves in need of a hasty departure. Therefore, preparing for such an eventuality would be wise.”
Charlie scanned the distance. All remained quiet, and Ara was still off hunting for her dinner. But Bawb had made a good point.
“All right, I think if Bob feels we may have company it would be a good idea to prep for it,” he said, loading his firearms and laying them beside their gear. “I figure you didn’t live this long by having bad instincts, right? Now, what was this you said about finding some of my stuff?”
The Wampeh emptied the remaining contents of his sack from the emmik’s compound onto the ground. Charlie’s eyes lit up at the sight of gear from his home world. Then he realized what exactly it was they’d deemed worthy of taking with them.
“This is what they chose to keep?” Charlie muttered. “Seriously? Of all the stuff we had, they took this?”
He held up a portable electron microscope––the one item that actually was interesting, if not particularly us
eful at the moment––and shook it. The rattling of broken bits tumbling about within its housing made the device sound like a very expensive rain stick.
The rest of the booty was of no use whatsoever, though Leila did find a few components interesting.
“Have at it,” Charlie said. “Those things aren’t ever going to be working again.”
“You cannot restore them with a mending spell?”
“Not likely. Unfortunately, being from my non-magical galaxy, they don’t fix quite the same way as things here do.”
“Oh well,” she said as she shrugged and yanked a shiny energy regulator from its cracked circuit board, adding it to a length of braided wire she was using to make a sort of wrecked Earth tech charm necklace.
Leila had been increasingly morose as their flight from Visla Maktan stretched on. Though she was excelling in her training with the gladiator and assassin, and had proven herself a skilled huntress when need be, leaving her father and everything she’d ever known behind was taking its toll. She was often able to hide it well, but even so, her true feelings were starting to show through.
A wash of air kicked up a small cloud of dust as Ara came swooping in, landing as quietly as a massive dragon could. Leila, and even Bawb, to an extent, were taken rather by surprise. Charlie, of course, felt her approaching, their bond seeming to grow stronger the more time they spent together. She had fed, he could sense, and that was a good thing. She would need her energy. Trouble, it seemed, was heading their way.
“I saw a group of what appear to be Tslavar militiamen heading this way,” the Zomoki said. “Someone must have gotten wind of our camp.”
“We should have set up farther from town,” Charlie grumbled, picking up a short sword and a slaap. “Okay, Ara. How many are there?”
“Two dozen, I estimate.”
