Part 25 (1/2)
The warehouseman shrugged his wide Terran shoulders. ”You didn't show, the client got worried, asked somebody else to take the stuff along. s.h.i.+pped out yesterday.”
”By what right-who! What s.h.i.+p took my cargo? Because I say it is nothing less than theft!”
Again the man shrugged. 'That's between you and your client, Mac. Tree and Dragon took the stuff.
Now, about the-”
”Tree and Dragon,” Sav Rid repeated blankly. Then he shouted, the Trade words nearly unintelligible.
”yos'Galan! Thieves, wh.o.r.es, and idiots! My cargo! Mine! And you release it to yos'Galan? Fool!” He shredded the bill, flung the pieces into the man's startled face, and stormed away, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Chelsa yo'Vaade hesitated, tempted-strongly tempted-to let him go. Then she spun back to the warehouseman, tugging the nireline ring from her finger and stripping the heavy chased bracelet from her arm. ”They are old,” she said quickly, pressing them into his hands. ”It will be enough, if you sell to a collector of antiquities.” She left him then, running.
Sav Rid was striding across the shuttle field, Second Mate Collier hulking at his shoulder. He had not been unguarded, then. Chelsa was aware of a certain relief as she laid a hand on his sleeve. ”Sav Rid?
Cousin, I beg you-let it go. It is-you have let it prey upon your mind. End now. Cry balance.”
”Balance?” He shook her off, lips tight, eyes glittering. ”Balance? In favor of that frog-faced, half-Terran lackwit? yos'Galan is the reason we lose in every endeavor we undertake! yos'Galan steals our cargo, slurs our name, hounds us from port to port-there can be no balance!” He held out his hand, fingers clenched tight. ”I will crush them-both of them! The idiot and his wh.o.r.e sister!” He paused. ”And the Terran b.i.t.c.h who puts her cheek to his!”
Chelsa's stomach clenched with fear-of him? for him?-as she cupped his shaking fist in her hands.
”Sav Rid, it is Korval! Let be. Let it all be,” she pleaded suddenly, her eyes tear-filled. ”Let us go home, cousin.”
”Bah!” He jerked away, his rings tearing her palms. ”Korval! A pack of half-grown brats, born to wealth and ease-no more! But you are like the rest-say Korval, and they tremble lest they offend.” He spat into the dust and marched off, the second mate keeping pace. ”Coward!”
The tears spilled over. She struggled for a moment, then achieved control and started slowly after him.
CROWN CITY, THEOPHOLIS.
HOUR OF KNAVES.
Dagmar fingered the knife and gave her quarry a little lead time-but not too much. She had almost lost them, right at the beginning, when she had still figured that there was some kind of sense to their explorations, before she had understood that they were simply following the boy's whim.
She eased out of the doorway and sauntered after them, picking up speed as they turned a corner. Theboy was tugging on the woman's hand-they were heading toward the port. Slowly, doubling back on their own tracks now and then, they were completing a rough circle. Dagmar lengthened her stride.
Soon. Soon Prissy would pay for setting the white-haired half-breed on Daxflan, eating their profits-eating Dagmar's profit, Dagmar's share. Yes, her share. Without her, the Trader would not have thought of s.h.i.+pping the stuff. She had been the one who had showed him how profitable it would be for the s.h.i.+p, and for his precious Clan. She had been the one with the contacts at first, the one who had shown him how to play the game. So she got a piece of the action. A sweetheart bargain. What a Liaden would call balance.
They had stopped again. Dagmar slid into an alley mouth, then edged out to watch. Prissy was laughing and pointing to something in the window of a shop six doors distant. The boy had his nose pressed against the gla.s.s.
It would be the boy. She had decided that. Satisfying as it would be to hurt Prissy, to purple that white skin, to snap fragile bones... Dagmar wiped wet palms down the sides of her trousers, savoring the thrust of desire that the image imparted. Maybe...
No. She would take the boy. That would cause the deepest hurt-both to Prissy and to her half-breed lover.
They were moving again. Dagmar fingered the knife and let them get a little ahead.
DILLJBEE's DIGITAL DELIGHTS, the sign read. Gordy checked and drifted closer to the gla.s.sed-in display, joy flowing out of him in a purr so strong that it was a marvel the outer ears did not hear it as well. Priscilla smiled and rested her hands lightly on his shoulders. He wriggled comfortably, his attention on the gaudy goings-on beyond the gla.s.s.
Five minutes went by without a sign that his rapture would soon pa.s.s off. Priscilla squeezed his shoulders.
”Let's go, Gordy.”
”Urn.”
She laughed softly and ruffled his hair. ”Urn, yourself. The shuttle leaves in exactly one s.h.i.+p's hour. Your credit with the captain may be up to missing it, but mine isn't. Let's go.”
”Okay,” he said, still gazing at the display.
Priscilla sighed and walked away by a step or two. ”Gordy?”
”Yeah, okay.”
Shaking her head, she went farther down the block, adjusting her awareness so that the matrix of his emotions remained clear.
A bolt of terror impaled her as his voice wrenched her about.
”Priscilla!”
Pilot-fast, she was moving back toward the woman and the struggling child. A scant two steps away, the woman twisted, her shoulder against a garland-pole, the boy held across her thigh with one hand as the other snaked to the front over his shoulder and held something that gleamed beneath the uptilted chin.
”Freeze, Prissy.”The gleam was a vibroknife, not yet alive.
Priscilla froze.
”Good. That's real good, Prissy. You stay right there.” Dagmar grinned. ”Where's the white-haired boyfriend? Not gonna bail you out today?”
Fury and terror poured from Gordy. Priscilla shut him out. She opened a thin hallway: her heart to Dagmar's. Then she heard, tasted and saw kill-l.u.s.t, fear, rage, and desire, a fragmented cacophony that held no pattern but s.h.i.+fted, froze, and broke apart again and again.
Dementia.
Gordy twitched in Dagmar's grip, then gasped as it tightened brutally.
”You be a good boy,” she snarled, ”and I'll let you live.” She made a sound like a laugh. ”Yeah, I'll let you live-a minute. Maybe two.”
Seeking a tool, Priscilla groped within and found a rhythm; she picked it up even as she felt another stirring and saw a flicker of light and darkness, outlining the Dragon's broad head. The vast wings unfurled as she pa.s.sed the spell-rhythm to her body; she swayed to the right, not quite a step.
”Stay there! You want this kid to have as many seconds as are coming to him, Prissy, you freeze and stay froze!” Dagmar grinned and moved the knife but did not thumb it on. ”An' don't you look away, honey. I want you to tell the boyfriend exactly what it looked like.”
”All right,” Priscilla agreed, her voice pitched for magic, the words like strands of sticky silk. ”I'll watch, Dagmar. Of course I will. But should I tell him everything? That might not be wise. If I tell everything, then they'll have you, Dagmar. They'll know who you are. They'll know where to find you.” The faraway wings filled, then hesitated. She dared another half step, her eyes watching Dagmar's eyes as her heart watched Dagmar's heart.
”Best to let him go. Let him go, and they'll let you go. Let him go and be free. Let him go and rest. Rest and be peaceful. Free and at peace. Let him go. Walk away. No hunters. No hunted. Let him go...”
Dagmar's pattern was smoothing, coming together into something reminiscent of sanity. Far off, the Dragon hesitated, wings poised for flight.
A heavy-hauler slammed by in the street beyond, shattering the circle she had woven. The knife straightened in Dagmar's hand.
”Freeze!” she hissed.
Priscilla stood calm, her eyes on her enemy, not allowing her to look away. ”Dagmar,” she began again, taking up the thread of the weaving.
”Boyfriend buy your stuff back, Prissy?” Dagmar rasped across her words. ”He did, didn't he? Except not the earrings. Not the earrings. n.o.body'll see them again. Bugged, were they? Not now. Took a hammer, pounded 'em to dust. s.p.a.ced the dust.” She gave a jagged bark of laughter. ”Let him try and trace that! Tryin' to follow where we're goin'. Tryin' to catch us sellin' the stuff-but he didn't! Not so smart, after all, is he?”
”It was a trick,” Priscilla murmured against the sudden whirlwind of a Dragon in flight. She was cold. She was hot. She resisted, trusting yet to the power of voice and words. ”Only a trick, Dagmar. He wantedto scare you, that's all. Like you've scared me. I'll tell him how it was. I'll tell him you mean business. That you wanted balance. That you have balance. The score's settled now, Dagmar. You can let the boy go.