Maggie Hogarth                          mcah@stardancer.org

136,000 words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A BEAD OF EUCALYPTUS

M. C. A. Hogarth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     "Captain--"

     Reese's head came into abrupt, unpleasant contact with the bottom of the console. "Ow!"

     "Rrrph, I'm sorry!"

     Reese pushed back from beneath the environmental controls, leaving the tools beneath the console. Irine was standing behind her, wringing her hands, her ears sagging. The felinoid Harat-Shar's breath came in soft visible puffs, and she was wearing socks on both feet and tail.

     The Earthrise was always in need of repairs, but Reese fled to the engineering deck when she most particularly wanted to be alone. The cold usually deterred the rest of her crew from following. Not that she left it that cold just to convince them to leave her alone; it was honestly good for the electronics.

     "I didn't mean to startle you," Irine said as Reese sat up and rubbed her head.

     "You didn't startle me," Reese said, then amended, "Much." She scowled. "Well, don't just stand there, Irine . . . what is it?"

     "I'm afraid there's a call for you," Irine said, chafing her arms.

     "I thought I told you not to both--"

     "Bother you, yes, I know, but this thing's lighting up so many security alarms on my panel I think it's going to blow up."

     Reese eyed her. "Security alarms."

     The Harat-Shar girl sniffed, her socked tail curling behind her. "Even the handshake is encrypted. Talk about an obscene amount of money . . . "

     Reese stood, the beads braided into her black hair clicking against her shoulder-blades as she shook them back. She ignored the clenching in the pit of her stomach with difficulty. "I'll take it. Go see how the loading is going."

     "Okay," Irine said, and stepped silently on her socked feet toward the lift.

     Reese watched her go, then stalked to the fore of the ship. Built by Terrans, the TMS Earthrise's bridge spoke little of the amenities, the luxurious waste of space so common to Alliance-built vessels; the human had to wedge herself between a few crates to the forward-facing windows with their communication consoles. As Irine had testified, a real-time comm request flashed on the screen inset on the side wall, the lagged blink of secure traffic.

     Not even her curiosity could untie the growing knot in her stomach. Reese could think of few reasons a small-time trader captain might receive such a high priority, highly private signal. She didn't like any of them.

     "This is Theresa Eddings of the TMS Earthrise. Accept the incoming signal."

     The computer chirped its response; Reese rested one brown hand against the console and leaned back to watch the slow blink transform to a handshake screen. The header information stunned her, and then tied the knot in her stomach much, much tighter. Ulcer material. Definitely.

TO:  Theresa Eddings

     TMS Earthrise

     Docked: Starbase Fos

FROM:     [ Scrambled ]

     Not only a message, but one from someone who refused to identify himself. The last time she'd seen a scrambled source, six years ago, she'd had reason to rejoice. She'd also ended up promising to pay up for the miracle at some future date. At the time, she'd been sure that she'd refit the Earthrise and rise above the small freight contracts she'd been able to afford . . . the idea of paying her mysterious benefactor back hadn't worried her.

     Somehow, though, her imagined pay-offs never materialized. Bad luck stalked the Earthrise, and for every score Reese managed, something needed repair, someone needed repayment early, or somewhere interest compounded faster than she could handle it. Six years, and she had just enough for the crates her crew was hauling right now. She could hear the faint chunk-thunk of the mechanisms engaging beneath her feet. She had enough for the cargo and for food to keep them from starving, and that was it. Certainly not enough to pay back someone who'd bought the Earthrise back from Reese's creditors, with enough left over to fill her holds with new hope.

     Reese's misgivings doubled as the handshake completed and a line of gibberish ran across the bottom of the screen; once the parade reached the other side, it gave the appearance of being completely still save for the twitch of the characters changing. Beneath this line, two numbers popped up in either corner. She knew them, of course -- the right one indicated how many Well satellites this missive was jumping to get to her real-time, and the other, at zero, the amount of identified attacks on the encrypted stream.

     A fine sweat popped up on Reese's dark forehead. Every second of a Riggins-encrypted Well transmission cost one thousand fin -- far more than she could earn back with the Earthrise in months. This was also the exact same way her benefactor had last used to contact her. Her time had run out.

     On the flat black above the stream, a sentence in amber appeared.

     You will remember us, we presume.

     "If you are who I think you are, then I could hardly forget," Reese said. Her words appeared one by one in response. There was a long pause. Then:

     We told you, long ago, that when we returned we would tell you that we requested your aid in the name of the High Priestess of the Amacrucian Church.

     And that took away all Reese's doubts--and hopes--that this was some new obscenely rich person who wanted something from her. With a sigh, she said, "How may I be of service?"

     We would that our errand could have waited, for it was not our intention to call in your favor so quickly. Still, Fate does not always allow for wishes. Theresa, you owe our seat a favor. It would please us greatly to call now this favor.

     There it was. Reese sighed softly, then said, "I have no money--"

     It is not money we need, but aid of a different kind.

     The stomach acid that had been busy on her esophagus relented, just a little. "How can I help?"

     We sent one of our beloved people to investigate the disappearance of some our own. In the course of his investigations, he ran afoul of the local law, and is thusly imprisoned. This does not disturb us unduly. What disturbs us is that in the course of his investigations, he may have aroused the ire of powerful foes who may not have had recourse to vengeance had he remained mobile.

     "You want us to liberate him," Reese finished. Her nervousness returned full force, and she spared a brief, longing thought for the bottle of chalk tablets in her cabin, wards against the stomach upset that plagued her so often.

     Just so. You may return him to us once he is freed, or keep him, or advise him on how best to hide. Naturally, you may want to take his opinions into account, but given his inconveniencing of your goodly ship you may consider his opinions as seriously as you feel the situation warrants.

     Reese cleared her throat. "Lady, I feel it necessary to point out that my 'goodly ship' isn't exactly a warcruiser."

     We trust your ingenuity will provide the way where simple brute force would not.

     Reese stared at the amber words, so innocuously presented. She couldn't imagine this going well, but: "I owe you a favor. If this is how you want to call it in . . . "

     It is.

     "Then I will do my best."

     The next words didn't immediately appear. In the small space it gave Reese for breathing, she re-scanned the conversation and managed a breathy chuckle. The whole exchange sounded like something out of one of her romance novels, and while her misgivings still had a grip on her stomach she couldn't help the smallest feeling that she was being cast in some great adventure. Backwards, of course. She was apparently the knight in shining armor.

     It is well, and we are pleased. Given the rescue of our unfortunate wayward investigator, you may consider yourself quit of your obligation to us. I will send the relevant information on termination of our contact.

     "Thank you."

     The real-time stream cut off with the attack counter at seventeen. Reese hadn't been watching the numbers, but the sight of them now made her clench her fists. Encrypted streams usually accumulated a few attacks as a matter of course. People liked to poke at them, just because there were there. But this--what the bleeding soil had this person been investigating to warrant such a concerted effort?

NAME:          Hirianthial Sarel Jisiensire

CURRENT LOCATION:

          Nurera, Bath-Etu

          Allied Colony Inu-case

          Sector Andeka

NATURE OF MISSION:

          Investigation of cause of missing persons.

          Suspected cause: lost to the slave trade.

     Reese stabbed the pads on the console, setting it to trap the information before she squeezed out of the front and ran to the nearest cabinet. A few chalk tablets later, she stared at the ceiling with eyes as vibrant a blue as the seas of Terra at Earthrise. The man had been prying into the slave trade, and their mutual benefactor was sending her to fish him out of jail before the slavers decided to pluck him up and sell him. Paying her benefactor back would have been easier, even if she'd had to take out a thousand loans. She ground on the last of the chalk and warily wound back to the fore to stare again at the screen. The last chunk had loaded in her absence. There was now a picture of her charge on the screen.

     He was an Eldritch.

     Reese dropped into the console seat and gaped. She'd never expected to see a real Eldritch in her lifetime. The race's isolationism and xenophobia were so extreme they'd become a stock offering in her yearly romance subscription--Eldritch women learning to love despite their social conditioning! Eldritch men reluctantly learning to touch their alien lovers! Paintings of pale Eldritch in unfathomably silly costumes, drooping artistically in the arms of humans . . . that and the occasional flat photo in the u-banks were Reese's only exposure to the people. The Eldritch didn't leave their planet.

     And yet here she was, about to fly off in search of one.

     A real picture. Of a real Eldritch! Reese leaned closer.

     The long-boned grace Reese had assumed to be artistic license was real. Who would have known? And just like on the book covers, it was unsettling; the Eldritch looked human, so to have them be ever-so-slightly different in proportion was disturbing. Apparently the milk-white skin was real too, and the straight hair that looked like a heavy, silk sheet. He had a sharp-boned face, a nose a little too straight, and framed in white lashes his eyes were a truly unlikely shade of wine-dark red. He looked fragile, like the distressed damsel. Like too much trouble.

     A real Eldritch. In the hands of slavers! Reese sat back, and even in the gear she'd donned to work in the frigid engineering bay she got goosebumps. There were so many rumors about the Eldritch and their powers and their culture it was hard to sort out which might be true . . . but all of them suggested that a slaver would pay a small mint to get his hands on one. And this was her assignment?

     Reese pressed a hand against her forehead, fighting anger and worry. Once she had her breath back, she rose and squirmed past the crates, growling an imprecation at them that might have wilted their corners had they had ears. She strode to the lift, down to the lower deck and out the ramp to the starbase's floor.

     Three figures labored at the back of the Earthrise. The vessel's systems had been engineered to Alliance specs, something that not only included her computers but also her cargo holds. The Earthrise had five cat-12 spindles: long cylindrical strength members twelve inches in diameter that could support Type-A and Type-B sized cargo bins. Each spindle could hold twelve, for a total of sixty bins, though the Earthrise rarely ran to capacity.

     Irine, Sascha and Kis’eh’t were tossing bins onto the conveyer belt leading to the loading collars, where the bins would be aligned and shot down the spindles. They had taken on twenty bins of Harat-Shariin rooderberries. While Reese preferred not to cart around anything as sensitive as foodstuffs, they invariably fetched high prices in foreign markets, and her coffers were, as always, low.

     "Hey!"

     The two bipedals, Irine and Sascha, stopped working. Kis’eh’t, her stocky centauroid shape barely visible over the slope of the belt, continued pushing the bins.

     "What's up, Boss?" Sascha asked, grinning. Unlike his twin sister, he did not wear socks on his tail or his feet.

     Reese grabbed a bin and tossed it on the belt. "We have to pack it up and shove off immediately. We've been given a task."

     "Ooh!" Irine said, yellow eyes widening. "A contract? Finally?"

     "Did I say a contract?" Reese said gruffly. "I said 'a task'."

     "She means we're not getting paid for it," Sascha said.

     Kis’eh’t snorted from the other side of the conveyer belt. "Someone must have held a palmer to her head, then," the Glaseahn said in her clipped accent.

     "Yeah, what's the deal, Reese?" Irine asked, folding her striped arms over her chest.

     "Work now," the Reese said. She grunted as she pushed another bin onto the belt. "We don't have much time to get this done, especially if we don't want these things to rot before we can get them to a useful port."

     "Like anything'll rot with the temperatures you keep the ship at," Irine said, rolling her eyes and padding, feline-silent, to the next bin.

     "Oh, hush!" Reese said, torn between exasperation and a hint of amusement. The twins were irrepressible, particularly together. The Harat-Shar felinoids raised on colony worlds usually conformed better to the rest of the Alliance's moral norms . . . but a matched set from Harat-Sharii, like Irine and Sascha, were bound to violate every accepted precept of societal behavior. She was fortunate to have Kis’eh’t and Bryer to balance their outrageousness, or she would probably have beat them by now. And they would have liked it.

     The last of the rooderberry bins rolled up to the collar, spun into position, and sped down the spindle to the retaining clamp. Another clamp followed it, and Reese pressed the pad that levered the belt back into the cargo bay. Twenty bins hung neatly off the spindles in the echoing emptiness. Had Reese had more time, she would have seen the other forty spaces filled with exotic spices and fabrics and novelty items that would have returned her poor enterprise to some semblance of profitability . . . but because she'd managed to become indebted (almost literally) to stranger whose name she didn't even know, she was honor-bound to go chasing a wayward alien across two sectors. And then post his bail!

     Reese sighed, rubbed her stomach, decided not to ponder her ulcers. "Meeting in fifteen. Get moving, people."

#

     "We're doing what?" Irine exclaimed, striped hands twitching on the mess hall table.

     Reese leaned back against her chair, letting her silence speak for her. As she expected, Bryer, the Phoenix, had nothing to say; the giant birdlike creature rested against the front of the chair, straddling it so as to give the full length of his metallic plumage unrestricted space.

     Kis’eh’t, while obviously perturbed, did nothing beyond wrinkle her dark, furry brow and lay back her feathered ears. She had more limbs than all of them: two black arms, four black and white legs, and two stunted leathery wings protruding from the shoulder-blades of her second back. And a tail, black with two white strips running down it, which currently flicked against the cool floor.

     The round ball of fluff on the table between the Phoenix and the Glaseahn only ruffled part of its neural fur, turning from ivory to rosy peach in places.

     Irine, in her socks and little else, was pouting. "So what . . . we have to ride in like champions and rescue some random spy? For nothing?"

     "Not for nothing," Reese said. "In return for the money that this person gave me to save me from bankruptcy before you people came aboard."

     "Who is this person, anyway?" Sascha asked.

     "Which one?" Reese asked. "The spy or the one with the money?"

     "Both," Sascha said.

     Reese smothered a small grin. "The spy's an Eldritch."

     "A what!"

     That came from so many places at once she couldn't tell which of them said it first. Kis'eh't got the first words after: "I hear they can start fires with their minds."

     "And read your thoughts," Irine said.

     Kis'eh't said, "And sense your feelings. They always know when you're lying."

     "That's the last thing we need," Irine said.

     "I hear they bathe in honey," Sascha said.

     Reese stared at him. So did everyone else with eyes--even Bryer. The tigraine shrugged and said, "Something to do with keeping their skin white and supple."

     "Honey isn't that acidic," Kis'eh't said.

     "What do I know about Eldritch honey?" Sascha said. "They're supposedly all rich, too. And they're all princes or princesses. And they all require servants, because none of them know how to take care of themselves."

     "Is this guy in for a slap from the universe!" Irine said, shaking her head.

     "He's in jail," Reese said dryly. "I think the slap's already been delivered."

     "This is troublesome," Kis'eh't said. "An Eldritch . . . this being may have specialized needs, Reese. No one knows what they eat, what their normal medical profile is like, how to treat one that's sick . . . no one even knows how properly to address them or what social or cultural mores they hold to. How are we supposed to save one of these creatures and make him comfortable?"

     "I'm not sure," Reese admitted. "And since the packet I received wasn't exactly forthcoming with any of that kind of material, I'm not sure we'll be expected to do this perfect." She pushed her data tablet to the center of the table with its gleaming pale picture of their charge. "That's him. Hirianthial Sarel Jisiensire."

     "Say again?" Sascha said.

     Reese repeated it.

     Kis'eh't shook her head. "We'll let you address him," she said ruefully.

     "At least he's handsome for a human," Irine said.

     "He's not human," Reese said. "He's Eldritch. And don't forget it, if you don't want him snooping around the inside of your brain. Anyway, there's only one thing I think we can take for certainty . . . you're not supposed to touch an Eldritch. So if all possible, let's try to keep bodily contact to a minimum."

     "Awww," Irine said.

     Sascha, studying the picture, said, "Angels, boss, I have to agree with her."

     "Yeah, well, if you want to come on to him, be my guest," Reese said. "Just don't expect me to put your furry behinds back together if it turns out he can blow things up by looking at them funny. And if we break him, I think our benefactor's going to be very grumpy."

     "Speaking of, who's the person with the money?" Sascha asked.

     "I don't know," Reese said. "I've never seen her face."

     "Her face?" That was Irine.

     Reese shrugged. "Just a guess."

     "A trap?" Bryer said into the following silence.

     "I don't know why she'd bother," Reese said. "Obviously the woman is bleeding rich. If she'd really wanted to sell me, you and the rest of us into slavery, she could have just hired someone to do it long before now."

     "I wonder who she is," Kis'eh't murmured. "Who would know an Eldritch? One who left his world? It's most peculiar."

     "For all I know she's the Queen of Eldritches and he's a prince," Reese said with exasperation. "Wondering about the assignment is pointless. I owe this person a debt and I'm going to pay it. Since I own this ship and I hired you, you're all coming along. If you don't like it, I can give you your severance pay in rooderberries."

     The silence was refreshing.

     "Now," Reese continued, "If you twins would be kind enough to set a course for Inu-Case, I would be much obliged."

     The two Harat-Shar, still grumbling, rose and left the mess hall.

     "The rooderberries will probably go bad if we keep them longer than it takes to get to Inu-case," Kis’eh’t said, her voice quiet.

     "We'll have to hope we can sell them to whatever poor sots live there, then," Reese said with a sigh. She stood. "I know it's crazy."

     "Honor is the best form of craziness." Bryer said.

     Reese eyed him. "This is not about honor. This is just good sense. If someone loans you money, you pay them back."

     Bryer canted his head. Of all her crew, he struck her as the most alien. Even Allacazam, with its lack of eyes, mouth or even any obvious personality, seemed less threatening than Bryer's whiteless eyes and narrow pupils. They made the Phoenix look wild, even though he rarely made a sudden move. "About more than money."

     "You're right," Reese said. "Now it's about flying all over the galaxy posting people's bail."

     Again, that steady stare. This time Reese ignored it and picked up Allacazam, watching its colors flow to a muted lilac. "You'll want to man your respective stations. We'll be casting off in ten minutes."

     Kis'eh't rose, stretching her hind legs and wings, then padded past her. Bryer followed. Reese watched them go, then dropped back into her chair with a sigh and cuddled the Flitzbe. She pet the soft neural fibers.

     "I wish I was as sure about this as I have to seem to be," she said.

     She heard a rising chime, felt a wash of muted lilac, Allacazam's way of asking a question. She'd never questioned how they managed to communicate; few people in the Alliance truly understood the Flitzbe, and those who did weren't exactly writing How-To communication guides for people like Reese. All she knew was that from the moment Allacazam had rolled into her life, things had gotten easier.

     "Of course I have to seem confident," she said to the fluffball. "But still . . . an Eldritch? Slavers? I'm just a trader, not a hero. I don't want anythiing to do with something this dangerous."

     The Flitzbe assembled an image of her dressed in plate mail with a shining sword. Reese laughed shakily. "Right. That's not my cup of tea. Speaking of which . . . I could certainly use something for my stomach. And then to go check on the fuzzies to make sure they haven't secretly diverted someplace more pleasant."

     The smell of sour yogurt tickled her nostrils and she hugged the Flitzbe. "No, I don't honestly think that badly of them. It's just that this is hard enough without having to explain it to them, too." She sighed, ruffling the top of his fur. "Hopefully it'll be quick and simple and we can drop him off somewhere and that will be the end of that."

     She knew better. From the flash of maroon that washed over Allacazam's body, so did he.

#

     Their least time path carried them through Sector Epta and most of Andeka. The engines that their mysterious benefactor had paid to refit six years ago cut the journey from sixteen days to eleven, and Reese spent all of them fretting. Kis'eh't caught her in the cargo hold on the fifth day.

     "Testing them for freshness isn't going to stop them from going bad," the Glaseahn said.

     "I know," Reese said, then sighed and capped the sample. "I don't suppose there's anyone who could use twenty bins worth of overripe rooderberries."

     "Maybe a maker of rooderberry wine?" Kis'eh't suggested.

     "We should be so lucky," Reese said.

     "You're worried," Kis'eh't said.

     Reese stared down at the centauroid from her perch on the spindle. She loved the cargo hold for its reduced gravity. The height of the cargo spindles reminded her of the few trees that grew within the controlled atmosphere bubbles of Mars.

     "Now why would I be worried?" Reese asked. "We're only about to tangle with slavers."

     "Not necessarily," Kis'eh't said. "You borrow too much trouble, if I may, Reese. If you stopped, maybe you could use your money to buy yourself a nice dinner on the town one day, instead of dropping it on multipacks of antacids."

     "Dinner out sounds like just the thing," Reese says. "Maybe if we get back in one piece from this debacle."

     "When we get back," Kis'eh't said. "I'm not planning to die on this mission."

     "Right," Reese said. "Neither am I. I'm a survivor."

     Kis'eh't only shook her head and left the cargo hold, which suited Reese just fine. She'd hired Kis'eh't three months after the twins, and Bryer a month after . . . that was about three years ago now. At first, she'd resented their intrusion into her solitude; while she'd had Allacazam for a good seven years, the Flitzbe hardly seemed like a normal person. He didn't require conversation, food, a salary, maintenance. He never complained. He was like a pet, but smarter. Sometimes Reese thought he was smarter than she was.

     But she'd learned to love the banter, the silliness, even the nosiness of her crew, and their help had made it possible to keep bread on the table. It was just that lately, they were all more nosy than usual. She wondered what was bothering them.

     Reese resisted the urge to sniff the rooderberries one more time before leaving. Rooderberry wine. She wondered what that would taste like.

#

     The insistent chirp of the intercom roused Reese from a deep sleep several days later. She twisted in her hammock and said, "Yes?"

     "We're here, ma'am. Over your stinking colony world. Bet they have nothing to trade us but sheep. How are we going to fit sheep in the cargo--"

     "Irine! Enough! Find out where the city of Nurera is and get dressed to go down. Be quick about it, eh? The rooderberries are rotting."

     The com cut off the end of Irine's snort. Reese sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose. The gentle rock of the hammock calmed her, reminded her of home, but her stomach still whined. Some part of her had hoped they'd never arrive at this Freedom-cursed world, but here they were. All she had to do now was find the Eldritch and pry him out of jail before anyone noticed her doing it. Then she could deposit him at some Alliance starbase and be done with the whole mess.

     Reese rolled out of the hammock, the cocoon of felt blankets unraveling from her body as she raided her bathroom cabinet for chalk tablets, peppermint this time. She rifled through her closet for something unremarkable to wear while grinding up her breakfast. That she didn't have any unremarkable clothes didn't improve her mood. She pulled on a black bodysuit, long-sleeved and high-necked, a pair of soft black boots with flexible, quiet soles, and jerked on her utility vest with its bright blue ribs and orange piping.

     She also tapped the intercom. "Irine?"

     "Huh, yes?" From the sensual purr, Reese decided it best not to ask what Irine was up to. The cats chose the oddest moments to get amorous, and as long as it wasn't in Reese's face she didn't care.

     "Is it cold down there?"

     A pause. Then, "Moderately. Colder than the cargo bay but not as cold as engineering."

     Reese dragged a cloak off its hanger and slung it over her shoulders. With that, a belt with a sling for her data tablet, a handful of coins, and a knife, and she was ready. "Put us down outside Nurera, kitties."

     "Aye, captain."

     "Gentle as a cushion stuffed with feathers, captain," from Sascha.

     "I'll be up there in a minute," Reese said. She made one last check of her cabin, then left for the bridge. Sascha sat at the pilot's chair wearing the fur that his gods gave him and nothing else. Irine was leaning over his shoulder, eyes fixed on the view through the tiny windows.

     "Oh for the love of earth," Reese said, exasperated. "What have I said about piloting naked, Sascha?"

     "Don't break my concentration, ma'am," Sascha said, his relaxed drawl at complete odds with his intent stare. "Driving this old crate in and out of a planet's skies takes too much willpower."

     Having done it often enough herself, Reese couldn't disagree. And Sascha was good--it was the reason she'd hired him. She'd grown tired of flying the Earthrise around herself. Still, she wondered what it was Irine whispered into his ear in their exotic language.

     True to his word, their landing sent a bare quiver through Reese's body.

     "Good enough?" he asked her with a grin.

     "Yeah," Reese said. "Now get dressed."

     "Awww!"

     Reese poked him in the shoulder. "I don't want us to be noticable. You nude is noticable."

     "She's got a point there," Irine said, grinning.

     Reese rolled her eyes. "Meet me at the airlock." She leaned over and pressed the all-call. "Everyone to the airlock. We have a job to do."

#

     Fresh, warm air, redolent with spices and the scent of fecund soil and sun-warmed incense -- Reese shuddered at the first whiff of Inu-case. She'd been born to recirculated air on Mars; from there she'd gone to the Earthrise. The freedom of the evening breeze struck her as unnatural and the varied smells alarming.

     "And there's where we're headed," Sascha said, pointing out the first of the buildings as they crested the hill.

     "How far are we from the jail?" Reese said, choosing the moment to stop for breath. Inu-Case's heavier gravity had sapped much of her energy on the twenty-minute walk from the Earthrise's position. They hadn't wanted to land too close to town, just in case. Still, she envied Kis'eh't, whom she'd left to guard the ship.

     "Once we hit the buildings, we'll be two blocks south of it," Sascha said, studying his data tablet. The tip of his tiger-striped tail peeked from beneath his brown overcoat. "They didn't want it too close to the center of town, I imagine."

     Irine squinted. "Looks pretty quiet down there. I guess we picked a good time to come by."

     "Let's just hope someone's there to take our credit and let him out," Reese said. "Come on."

     Rising above the streets in the orange glow of the street lamps, the wooden houses had an ominous cast. What few glimpses of the surrounding land Reese could catch between the houses revealed only a crimped plain drowned in violet shadows and the black smudges of distant mountains. The few trees dotting the lawns proved the source of the odor: their round, waxy leaves reeked so badly that the two felines took to skirting them, and even Bryer seemed discomfited by them.

     In sunlight, perhaps the rustic building materials and open streets would have seemed inviting. Reese couldn't shake the sense of unease that seeing them in the dark aroused. It didn't help that there was no one outside. No children playing. No people walking home. No one talking, wandering the streets. Reese had never been to a slaver's retreat, but she could only imagine them all being this silent, as if everyone was afraid to call attention to herself.

     "Doesn't anyone live here?" Irine asked in a whisper.

     Bryer glanced into one of the buildings. "Deserted."

     "Really well-maintained for someplace deserted," Sascha said, tail lashing.

     "I don't like this at all," Irine said. "It looks like a pirate hide-out."

     "Try not to look rushed, people," Reese said. "If anyone's watching, we have business here and we're not worried about it."

     "Let's just hope they can't hear us talking," Sascha muttered.

     At the corner they stopped to allow a single sparrow zip past . . . a peculiar conveyance in a town, overpowered for mere hops across blocks and underpowered for any serious spaceflight. Reese watched it streak past and pressed a hand to her stomach.

     "Angels! I can't decide whether to be glad there are actually people living here or not," Irine muttered.

     "Nevermind the people," Sascha said, pointing at an unprepossessing one-story building. "That's our stop."

     "Let's get this over with," Reese said, and marched to the door.

     "How come there's no gate? You know, with electrified wire or stunner fields or something?" Irine asked.

     "I don't know," Reese said. She tried one of the doors--it was locked. "I guess all their guards are on the inside." She scanned for a bell and found none. "Are you sure this is the front?"

     "I can check around the sides," Sascha said.

     "Do that," Reese said. "Take Bryer with you."

     "Yes ma'am."  

     "And in the mean time we just stand here," Irine said. "While security cameras stare at us."

     "We're not doing anything wrong," Reese said.

     "Right," Irine said, tail whipping nervously. When it smacked Reese one too many times on the calf, Reese hissed, "Stop that."

     "Sorry."

     They waited. And waited.

     "It can't be that big a place, can it?" Irine said.

     "No," Reese said, feeling a headache beginning to knot her brows. "Something's happened."

     "Should we go look?" Irine asked.

     She wanted to say 'no,' so of course she said, "Yes." And, "Keep close." Then she set off around the perimeter of the jail. The nearest buildings were still set far enough away that they could see anyone coming. No gates or traps startled them.

     "I can still smell him," Irine said. She tapped on the wall. "But it stops right here."

     Reese glanced at the grass surrounding the featureless wall, then bent and examined it. Irine joined her a moment later. They stared together.

     "See anything?"

     "No," Reese said.

     Irine's ears flipped back. "Would you know it if you saw something?"

     "I haven't exactly done much investigative policework in my life," Reese said. She sighed and straightened. "Let's go back around front."

     There were no other doors. No lights. Nothing. By the time they wound back up around to the forbidding doors, Reese was beginning to get angry. She pointed at the door. "Do something about that."

     For once, Irine did not protest innocence, but began scrutinizing the doors and feeling along their edges. Reese watched her with growing impatience, but forced herself to remain still until the mysterious actions of the Harat-Shar bore fruit.

     "Not bad. But not up to specs," Irine commented as she pocketed her electronic picks and pushed the doors. They complained with a faint creak, then inched open. The girl peeked in through the crack. "Doesn't seem to be manned," she whispered.

     Reese glanced behind her shoulder -- still nothing. Not a person walking up the dusky streets, no sound of music or laughter or life, just the constant slough of the perfumed breeze. In front of her, a sealed door with no guards and not a breath of a living person, despite Sascha and Bryer having vanished without a clue. There were people here, people far more dangerous than she was.

     "Maybe we should go," Reese said.

     "But my brother!" Irine whispered. "And Bryer!"

     "We need reinforcements," Reese said.

     "What, Kis'eh't and Allacazam? They'll help," Irine said, scowling.

     "I was thinking more like Fleet," Reese said. "We're not up to this, Irine."

     "Think what you want," Irine said. "I'm not leaving Sascha in there."

     "Irine--!"

     But the girl had already slipped inside. Reese lunged after her, trying to catch her tail, but Irine was already ghosting past the empty front desk to the row of cells. No halo shield arced across the wall leading to them; no guards stood rigidly before them. Reese fought a renewed foreboding as she hurried after the Harat-Shar. The warmth of the stone floor communicated to her toes through the soft material of her boots.

     "No sign of Sascha or Bryer," Irine called back, "but at least here's our expensive Eldritch!"

     Reese sprinted after the girl, a cold sweat erupting on her brow. As she pushed Irine aside, her throat closed for a precious second at the sight of the sleeping human. Then, strangled, "That's not him!" She flung herself around, preparing to flee--

     And met the business end of a metal pipe. She didn't even remember going down.

#

     "Stand away from the door."

     Hirianthial judged that a joke, since he was currently wedged into a corner of the cell.

     "You have guests," the ruddy guard said. He stood aside while his tow-haired fellow dropped two bodies onto the straw. Hirianthial watched them without lifting his face, and the fall of his pale hair masked his alarm at the boneless flop of the first and the feathered lifelessness of the second. Were they even alive?

     "Don't worry. They'll be awake soon enough, and then you can spend the rest of your visit trying to avoid them," the ruddy guard said with a grin.

     The second guard withdrew and re-armed the halo field. They paused at the bars, waiting for some reaction for him as they had the first few times they'd surprised him with some ploy. By now they should have grown used to his stoic withdrawal. Hirianthial closed his eyes and waited for them to leave.

     They didn't. Instead they talked in low mutters. Blond smothered a chortle. No doubt Red was telling Blond the point of crowding one cell with all their prisoners when the cells lining the corridor remained empty. Red knew far too much about what made Eldritch uncomfortable, and after a few months of investigation Hirianthial had a good idea why. The Queen would not be pleased to have her theory proven. One needed only two hands to count the members of his race who'd ventured beyond their world . . . and only a few fingers to count those who'd returned. Liolesa had traced some of the missing to legitimate enterprises -- there was one Eldritch studying psychology on one of the Alliance's core worlds, for instance -- but a good part of them had simply vanished without trace.

     Hirianthial himself had been one of those sojourners when Liolesa enlisted his aid. He hadn't wanted to help, but one did not refuse Liolesa, and not just because she was Queen. He'd been drifting for several months anyway; the hospital on Tam-Ley had lost the funding for its xeno-critical care and been forced to contract those duties to a nearby emergency center, which hadn't been hiring doctors who'd taken the Kelienne oath. He'd had a choice to take a different ethical oath every year since completing his schooling, but even if he'd been able to bring himself to do so nothing he'd seen in the wards had convinced him to change his mind. Jobless, he'd left Tam-Ley and taken up travel for its own sake, unwilling to return home, uncertain what to do next.

     It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to help the Queen. He was a passable spy. He was just a better doctor.

     When Hirianthial could detect no more talk at the cell bars, he extended a feather of intent outward, searching for the mental presence of his guards: nothing.

     Opening his eyes, he approached the two bodies. Both auras rested flat against their skins, gray and heavy as mercury. Hirianthial didn't have to look hard to find the bruises and the discoloration of the palmer burn near their heads. He unlaced his sleeves and pushed them up his pale forearms before rolling the first body, the Harat-Shar, onto his side to look for any extended burns or swelling. Some people had adverse reactions to being struck with a palmer, and these two were too deeply unconscious for him to measure that without a visual inspection.

     The first frissons of the Harat-Shar's mind traveled up Hirianthial's fingers, rising through the thin layer of clothing and fur. The Eldritch sensed the dull stupor of the subconscious struggling against the body, the quick red flashes of dreams and disconnected thoughts. He ignored them, seeking any other signs of damage, and found none.

     "You'll be fine," he murmured to the Harat-Shar before turning to the Phoenix. A similar inspection brought him the sussurus of the Phoenix's alien thoughts but no cause for worry. As he examined the second being, Hirianthial reluctantly admired the precision of the palmer shot. Something about the metallic iridescence of Phoenix feathers diffused palmer fire--to take down a Phoenix required a shot at the head, hands or feet where feathers thinned to down or skin. Since Phoenixae had fearsome taloned fingers and toes, felling one at a distance was a wise idea.

     Aside from the palmer burns, neither patient showed any signs of his guards' attentions; Red had a particularly hard backhand, difficult to miss. He set them both on their backs with enough straw to keep them from sore heads and spines. Sitting back on his heels, Hirianthial managed a wry smile. If Red had planned these two to discomfit him, he should have used a lower setting on the palmer.

     Still, he couldn't resist wondering: who were they? And what were they doing here? Hirianthial frowned at the newcomers while unrolling his sleeves and tightening the laces again. Perhaps when they woke they'd be amenable to conversation. He wouldn't be surprised if they'd been caught unawares and had no idea what this place was or why they'd been imprisoned. So it went with pirates and slavers.

     Hirianthial retreated to his corner and resumed his silent vigil. He extended a thread of attention toward his two charges before allowing the rest of his mind to drift into trance. His ability to sense others without having to touch them was rare among Eldritch and had always been both boon and bane. Against the unpleasant over-sensitivity it gave him to touching a waking person, he could favorably weigh this ability to monitor patients without machinery. It lacked specificity, but he'd used it countless times while working to track the general health of his patients. It had also proven useful in this ancillary mission for Liolesa. Not useful enough to keep him out of his present situation, but one could not fault the talent for the mistakes of its user.

     Neither of his patients woke before Red and Blond returned with another two bodies. Hirianthial didn't open his eyes, watching their auras instead: hot yellow violence with spurts of green for Red, Blond with similar yellows but with flashes of sizzling brown resentment, and in their arms another pair of dull grey auras.

     "More guests for you," Red said. "Getting fairly crowded in here, isn't it?"

     Hirianthial didn't reply.

     "Set them there."

     "There" was near enough to him that their physical presence crimped his own aura. Hirianthial sucked it in until he felt well and truly trapped in his corner. He was not a claustrophobic man but even he had his moments of Eldritch xenophobia. Had they been awake and mobile, he would have been forced to sink into meditation to combat the urge to flee.

     They were not awake. They were not well. They were patients, not threats.

     Hirianthial held himself still until the guards lost their patience and left, taking their spurts of sick green humor with them. Then he unfolded first one leg and than the next and opened his eyes.

     The nearest body belonged to another Harat-Shar, female this time, and similar enough to the first that Hirianthial wondered at their relation. He gently turned her face, reading her body's louder complaints over her mind's unconscious murmurs through his fingers. He found the burn on her jaw that had put her down and verified the lack of any secondary effect before pulling her over to rest against the male. Lying beside one another their similarities were so marked Hirianthial judged them closer than mere kin. Twins, perhaps. Even the stripe patterns on their brows mimicked one another.

     That left one more person. Hirianthial returned to the other end of the cell, retying one of the laces that had come undone while dragging the tigraine. The glimpse he caught through his fingers made the laces slip back down, forgotten. The Eldritch went to one knee next to the woman on the floor.

     He wasn't sure what arrested his attention first--her body or her health. He'd seen countless humans in his studies and rotations, enough to recognize her light-boned limbs as an indication of a low gravity origin . . . space-born, or one of the Moon or Mars colonies. Probably the latter, given her short stature. Nor would he have called her beautiful, though he found the chocolate honey hue of her skin exotic, and her braided and beaded hair reminded him of a noblewoman's coif. It was her mien despite unconsciousness that fascinated him. Her limbs were clenched. Her fingers still had a hint of a curl, as if they were trying to remain fisted. Even her brow was furrowed.

     Her state was so grievous a collection of pre-existing conditions that he warred over touching her. Just running his hands over her aura scored him with lances of pain, irritation and swelling. The area over her stomach made him want to check his palm for blood. The spikes that pierced her aura despite its weighted unconsciousness matched her tense posture for stubbornness. If she was so obstinate in her sleep, it beggared the imagination to picture her awake.

     Hirianthial craned his head over hers, seeking the burn that had put her down and finding a lump instead. Unlike the others, this woman had been struck, and it behooved him to ensure the blow had done no lasting damage. He didn't look forward to touching her to check. He tried without grazing her skin first, trailing his fingertips along her aura near the lump. Thankfully, he could sense no danger.

     Why he felt compelled to touch her, just to double-check, he didn't know. Hirianthial stretched his fingers, steeled himself and trailed them along her cheek. The storm of emotions that clashed beneath their tips warned him that her struggle toward consciousness had almost been won, and still she surprised him when her lashes fluttered, revealing a crack of blue and white.

     Nevertheless courtesy required that he remove his hands and help her orient herself.

#

     "Ah, good morning. Early morning, that would be."

     Reese didn't recognize the voice, male and baritone with an indescribable, open-throated accent, one that didn't linger long on consonants. She forced her eyelids apart and found herself staring straight into hair like poured milk and eyes the color of an expensive merlot.

     She groaned, though whether from the throbbing at her temple or the situation was debatable. Both, probably. "You!" she croaked.

     "Hush. You'll wake the others." Hirianthial glanced to the side, giving her an excellent view of his profile. There was a purple bruise marring the hard line of his cheekbone. "They are roughly in your condition or better, but they are all still unconscious."

     "The others? Sascha? Bryer? Irine?"

     "I count two Harat-Shar and one Phoenix. Is that sufficient?"

     Reese scowled, then closed her eyes when the bump on her head sent another lance of pain through her temple. "Curse it all. I knew something was going on with this place. Where are the guards?" She tried to look to the side but one of her pupils was vying for independence. She closed that one and tried to focus.

     The Eldritch held a finger up over her lips, not touching. "Hush. They'll hear you, lady. We're underground, where they keep prisoners."

     "Underground! Then the jail upstairs--"

     "--is a falsehood."

     "They did a rotten job of hiding their tracks then," Reese said. "We knew something was wrong the moment we couldn't find a real door."

     "You misunderstand, my lady," the Eldritch said. "The jail is not intended as a cover. It is meant to intimidate. On that count it is quite the success . . . the pirates have driven everyone who isn't part of their operation completely out of this part of town."

     "Great," Reese said, losing what little energy she had. She imagined it bleeding into the ground beneath her tailbone and shoulders. "You were supposed to be in a jail cell we could get you out of for money, not underground in a place pirates hide people they want to make disappear."

     The Eldritch canted his head, hair hissing against one shoulder. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

     "Yeah, well, I'll send you a bill," Reese said, trying to get a hand under herself so she could sit up.

     A hand appeared over her chest, not touching but not moving either. "Ah! Don't. You're still gray."

     "Gray?" Reese asked.

     He frowned. His expressions seemed formed only by the faintest of tugs at his lips or eyes; Reese wondered if all Eldritch were so subtle. "The color of your aura, you might say. Gray's not a lovely color to be."

     His accent was so distractingly pretty that she didn't actually hear what he said until a few moments later. Or maybe that was her headache, making it too hard to hear past the pounding in her ears. "What the bleeding soil do you know about auras?"

     "I'm Eldritch," he said, as if that alone explained it. As an afterthought, he added, "I'm also a doctor."

     "Someone decided a doctor would make a good spy?" Her stomach tightened beneath a tremendous assault of acid. Reese fought the desire to laugh, suspecting she would sound hysterical. "Oh, that's a good one. Whoever sent me on this job . . . this was not worth the money they gave me six years ago. A doctor!"

     "If you must have your moment of derisive laughter, at very least keep it quieter," Hirianthial said. "As to my being her choice . . . I have . . . talents that made me suitable for the job. But that matter begs me to ask: what are you doing here, looking for me? Who sent you?"

     "As if I know," Reese said. "Some woman with more money than sense who never gives me her name when she calls and speaks like some fairy princess. I owed her a favor. She said you'd been jailed here and sent me to go get you. I was hoping to just post your bail."

     Hirianthial laughed, a sound both quiet and despairing. It sent goosebumps down Reese's arms. "Ah, lady. That is funny. The pirates found me two weeks ago, and for two weeks I have been here in this cell while they wait for the slavers to pick me up. I was as good as sold the moment I was put in irons. They even wash me periodically so I'll look my best for my future masters. I had to try to earn the few bruises they dealt me . . . God forfend I look less than beauteous for my debut."

     Reese groaned and closed her eyes, letting her head loll back. "I didn't sign up for this."

     "Again, I'm sorry, my lady."

     "Stop calling me that!" Reese exclaimed. "I'm no lady, and I'm certainly not yours. And as for sorry . . . sorry! My cargo's fermenting while we lie here, and it might be vinegar by the time we get out of this. I'm no match for slavers! We have to get out of here before they come for you, or we're all going to end up some Chatcaavan's sex-toys in a month. Bending my neck to a dragon wasn't in my life plan."

     "I can't say the thought appeals to me either," Hirianthial said.

     "You don't say." Reese would have rolled her eyes, but the attendant nausea made that a bad idea. "You're a doctor?"

     "I did say so."

     "Well then see if the rest are ready to wake up. If we're lucky we can make it out of here with our bleeding cargo still fresh. If, that is, you'll let me sit up?"

     The Eldritch's eyes lost their focus, drifting over her forehead and temples. "Yes," he said after a moment, then held up a finger. His wine-colored eyes refocused on her face. "But as I tell you."

     "Fine," Reese said. "Make it quick."

     He talked her through it, but it wasn't quick; just rolling onto her side made her want to vomit up what little there was in her stomach. Still, she made it upright, noticing the hand he'd had hovering behind her back only when he withdrew it. If she'd started to waver, would he have caught her, or would his Eldritch instincts have let her fall? She wanted to spit at the look on his face when they were done, and had no idea what made her angrier . . . that he looked concerned when he had no right to be concerned as the person responsible for this mess, or that his concern wasn't obvious enough, since she was the one who was going to drag his sugar-pale backside out of his mess. Blood and Freedom, but she hated doctors.

     "Good?" he asked after a moment, eyes resting too directly on her for her comfort.

     "Fine," Reese said. "Check the others."

     He studied her for a moment longer, then backed away, leaving her to take stock. Aside from a few scrapes and bruises to complement the mother blooming near her temple, she'd taken no additional harm. Her suit had been slashed across her midriff and upper arms. Her knife was missing as well as her belt; she felt the loss of both coins and chalk tablets. She could have used a chalk tablet right now, in fact . . . but she could have fared worse.

     Reese watched Hirianthial as he bent over Irine. He drew closer to her than she was accustomed to doctors coming, but he never touched her. After a few moments, he spread his hands above her ribs, as if setting them on a barrier that hovered a few inches above her skin. Though she couldn't tell whether the Harat-Shar was conscious, the Eldritch was talking, and his soft words were so gently spoken they felt like blankets. It made her want to trust him--no doubt one of his Eldritch mind tricks.

     Reese gritted her teeth and directed her attention to their jail. The ground was packed earth strewn with yellow straw; there were no windows, and the a wall of thick metal lattice faced the corridor. In addition to the lattice, she spotted red lights lining their door, indicating an operating halo field . . . not something she wanted to touch, but something Irine could possibly disarm since it didn't encompass the entire wall. The air was stale and warm, tinted here and there with earthier scents. Their cell formed the end of the hall; all the other cells were empty. She thought of the cell she'd seen upstairs and the figure lying in the back.

     "Hirianthial," she said -- slowly. The consonants in the name seemed to exist only to add a lilt to the vowels.

     The sound of his hair against his back announced him. She wondered how he could walk without making any other noise. She didn't like it. "There was a man upstairs."

     "Dead," he replied. For once the accent, the blanket-soft baritone fell flat. "Bait for me."

     "They knew you were rooting for information."

     "Of course. It was foolish to think otherwise."

     Reese frowned at him. "And you stuck around?"

     "I had a duty." A wry smile ran to the corner of his lips. "Granted, I should have remembered that part of that duty included returning to the Queen with the information she sought, but even Eldritch make mistakes."

     "Mistakes," Reese repeated, eyeing him. "With so much at stake."

     He shrugged, a tiny motion involving the ends of his shoulders. Had she not been watching him, she would have missed it. "I became angry."

     "Angry?"

     He was staring out through the bars, but even in profile she could see his face change. Harden. The red of his eyes seemed less like wine and more like blood, like the color Reese saw on the inside of her eyelids when she wanted to explode. The doctor, the alien, the inconvenient object of an unwanted mission, those faces became masks, and something darker trembled underneath. "I found a man whose tastes were repellant, even for a slaver."

     For some reason Reese didn't want to ask what those tastes were. She didn't even want to ask, "What did you do to him?" but by the time she realized that she didn't want to hear the answer the question had already escaped her.

     "I set his house on fire. With him in it." He didn't look at her, but even in profile his lack of expression terrified her.

     "REESE!"

     Irine's wail dragged her attention away, and she crawled to the Harat-Shar. The tigraine had Sascha's head cradled in her arms and she was rocking, her ears flat and eyes wide. "Reese, what's wrong with him? Why won't he wake up?"

     "He's not ready to wake," said a steady voice behind Reese's shoulder.

     Reese jumped. "Stop doing that!"

     "Doing what?" the Eldritch asked absently as he slid past her to Sascha's other side, running a hand above the tigraine's face.

     "Sneaking up on me," Reese said. "At least have the grace to make a little more noise."

     "Grace and noise aren't usually associated with one another," Hirianthial murmured.

     "What's wrong with him?" Irine asked the Eldritch. Reese could hear none of her typical skepticism in her quivering voice and she wondered at this instant trust. Was he influencing her mind?

     "There's nothing wrong with him," Hirianthial said, his voice gentle. "He isn't ready to wake, that's all."

     "But this burn--"

     "Just a palmer, alet. He took no greater harm from it. He'll wake soon."

     Only then did Irine look at Reese, still holding onto her brother's body. "Captain?"

     "He's a doctor," Reese said. "He'd know better than me."

     "What about Bryer?" Irine asked after a moment. "Is he okay?"

     "Everyone's okay," Reese said. "We're just in a bit of a fix."

     Irine's gold eyes flicked to the bars. "Yeah, I see that." She looked back at the Eldritch. "This is him, isn't it? Our spy?"

     "At your service," Hirianthial said.

     "I guess you already have been," Irine said, stroking Sascha's mane.

     Reese sighed and turned back to the bars. She prodded the back of her molars with her tongue, searching in vain for any minuscule deposit of chalk that might have stubbornly clung to her gums. Her stomach was going to kill her. "So how many people are guarding us?"

     "I've counted six," Hirianthial said. "Two personal guards and four up the corridor."

     "Six," Reese repeated, musing.

     "There are five of us," Irine said from behind them.

     Reese said, "They have palmers. And the keys."

     Irine shrugged and didn't reply.

     "The ship's coming tomorrow to pick them up," Hirianthial said after a moment. "Presumably we'll be going with them."

     "So we have . . . what, twenty-four hours to break out of here, overwhelm six people, get to the Earthrise, and flee far enough to lose a slaver-ship?"

     "Twenty-two," Hirianthial said. "Days here are shorter than Alliance mean."

     "Wonderful," Reese muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

     Hirianthial's voice sounded quietly behind her. "You need only secure your escape from this cell, lady. You were captured and put here only to inconvenience me. If you disappear, they will not bother to track you. It's me they want."

     "I can't leave you behind," Reese said, irritated. "You're the debt I have to pay. If you rot here, I'll have to do something else and I bet it won't be any easier."

     "The Queen isn't expecting you to save me if the odds are overwhelming," Hirianthial said.

     "Well, six guards isn't overwhelming," Reese said, then stopped. "Did you say . . . the Queen?"

     His voice was quizzical. "Of course. I thought from our talk that you'd concluded she was your mysterious benefactor."

     Reese turned, setting her back against the bars. The Eldritch's face remained composed, but somehow she could still sense his confusion. A polite confusion. She couldn't quite mesh this courteous facade with the darkness that had flowed over him when talking about the slaver.

     "Are you trying to tell me that the Queen of the Eldritch saved me from bankruptcy?"

     Another one of those miniscule shrugs. "It seems that way."

     "Damn," Irine said in wonder.

     "That makes no sense!" Reese exclaimed. "What would a Queen want with me? How did she even find me? Why would she bother?"

     "Why did she bother with me?" the Eldritch said. "But she chose you and she cares what becomes of me and here we are. Why question it, lady?"

     "I'm not your--"

     "--lady, so you say," Hirianthial said. "But you are an instrument of a Queen, so what shall I call you instead?"

     "My name is Theresa Eddings," Reese said. "I am the captain of the TMS Earthrise. And you will call me 'Reese' because that's what people call me. Not 'lady' and not 'madam' and not 'princess' or whatever else you can come up with. Just "Reese." Or 'captain' if you insist."

     "As you say," he said.

     Such polite words, such courtesy, and yet she couldn't shake the feeling that he was going to call her whatever he wanted, and damned what she thought of it. Reese pursed her lips and eyed him skeptically, but his expression never changed. With a sigh, she steadied herself against the bars and rubbed her temple. "These guards. Do they ever check on us?"

     "They check about every hour. They don't always come within eyeshot, but I can sense them."

     She glanced at him, then back at her crew. Irine had curled up around Sascha, her striped tail wrapped around his so tightly she could barely tell which inserted into which spine. Bryer remained unconscious. This was what she had to work with. Reese sighed and looked back at the Eldritch. "Can you set the guard on fire when he comes? Then we can grab for the field key and make a run for it."

     The Eldritch stared at her, white brows lifting. "Lady--Captain--do I look like a magician to you?" he asked.

     "You did say you set someone's house on fire. How much harder is a person's clothes? If you were sent for your special talents. . . . "

     He laughed then, a breathy, quiet thing. Reese had never seen someone laugh without relaxing; it seemed unnatural. Did all Eldritch have this extreme control over their bodies?

"Good God! I can't break the laws of physics at a whim, I'm sorry to say. The Queen sent me because I'm one of the few non-touch telepaths, not because I can set things a-fire by staring at them, or teleport or anything equally preposterous."

     The hairs on the nape of Reese's neck bristled beneath the tangle of her beaded braids. "How was I supposed to know? Your world is so cloistered it makes a monastery look positively cosmopolitan! I didn't even know it was your Queen who sent me to come rescue you . . . how do you expect anyone to know anything about you under circumstances like those?"

     His cheeks colored a faint blue-tinged peach. "Your point is taken, lady. Pardon me."

     Reese snorted and looked away, clenching her hands on the bars. No knives, no data tablets, no pyrokinetic Eldritch, no peppermint chalk, and a hold full of rotting rooderberries. She stared at her dirty, broken fingernails. By the time she found another port she'd have to do some fast talking to get someone to buy the things--

     Reese's chin jerked up. She smiled, feral, and turned to face Hirianthial again. "But what if they thought you could set them on fire?"

     The Eldritch lifted a brow.

     "I mean, why don't we set things up so that it looks like you're doing some sort of magic with our help, and use that to scare the guard into letting us go?"

     "Do you truly believe we can talk our way out of this cell?"

     Oh, he sounded so certain. Reese folded her arms over her chest. "I've talked my way out of worse situations."

     His face was so maddeningly smooth. She wanted him to sneer or roll his eyes or something. "Have you?"

     "Look, Hirianthial," she said, "I'm sure I can do this. I know my people can. It's you I'm not sure of. Can you act? Because if you can't pull this one off, then it won't matter that I can do it and the twins and Bryer can do it."

     "What exactly would you have me pretend?"

     Was it her or was he actually uncomfortable with the idea of lying? Trust her to find the one Eldritch in all the worlds who actually believed in personal honor. In the books she'd read they'd never had a problem abandoning their beliefs to serve the story. "You'd have to pretend to be what everyone believes Eldritch to be. And don't tell me you don't know what that is. If you're out here, playing spy, mingling with pirates and slavers, you know very well what Eldritch are supposed to be like."

     "Supposed to be like," Hirianthial repeated, and for the first time she heard what she was expecting. Bitterness, maybe. Fatigue. Except he wasn't looking at her, but at something on the inside of his own eyes. "As if we are expected to fill some void in the universe."

     In the face of uncertainty, Reese did as she always did. "Look, are you up for this or not? Because unless you have some better idea how to get us out of this hole in the ground, we're going with my plan."

     "Had I had a better plan, we would not have met," the Eldritch said at last.

     "Then let's get Sascha up. This is how it's going to go."

#

 

     Hirianthial rested his hands on his knees, feeling the guards mill against the edges of his awareness. He could just--just--pick them out past the flares of the people sitting in a semi-circle around him. Where Reese had obtained her ideas about ritual magic he had no clue, but try as he might he couldn't complain about them. There was no real magic in the world, of course, and the mental talents he had couldn't be intensified by any outside aid, but the concept sounded good and he supposed that was all that counted.

     He'd been many things on Liolesa's little mission. He'd played instruments he barely remembered learning at a tutor's side for dinner. He'd washed dishes, scrubbed decks, even bandaged a wound or two. He had not yet played the charlatan. All of it galled. That he'd taken on this role to free himself made it only a hint less bitter. Always, his people wanted something of him he wasn't made to give. His attempts to be something other than he wanted to be usually ended in failure. While he wasn't expecting this to be any different, he hoped for the sake of the aliens grouped around him that it would be.

     The guard pierced his circle of awareness, heading for their cell. "He's on his way."

     "All right, people, look calm," Reese said.

     Irine giggled. "This is too silly."

     "It'll work," Reese said. "Just remember your lines."

     The Harat-Shar giggled again. Hirianthial opened his eyes and found them all in position facing him. Reese and the two Harat-Shar had copied his stance, palms up on their knees with eyes closed. Bryer, who couldn't sit cross-legged, kneeled with his hands pressed together at his breast, the feathers splayed from his arms in a decorative splay. One could argue they had the hard part: to remain composed and to seem as if they were concentrating when they knew the farce they were engaged in. Still, Hirianthial hated lying. Obfuscation he could do. Lying wounded him.

     The heavy thump of boots on stone pulled him out of his reverie. Hirianthial set his face. As he'd hoped, Blond stood in front of their cage, staring at their group and playing with the key ring. Spikes of sweaty uncertainty jumped around his aura. He cleared his throat of thick phlegm and said, "What are you people doing?"

     "What does it look like?" Hirianthial asked with just a hint of contempt.

     The guard's aura flared red. "Don't you mess with me, pastehead. You'll be dancing a different set when they put you in real chains."

     "Oh, I don't think they'll be doing that. Not with my new . . . friends . . . to help me."

     The guard's left boot creaked, then the right. Nervousness gave his colors a green sheen. "Ummm . . . look, I don't know what they're doing, but they should stop it." He stared at Reese and the others. "What -are- they doing?"

     Now for the lies. The premise had sounded so ridiculous Hirianthial couldn't imagine anyone believing them, but Reese had convinced him. He thought of the last time he'd been angry to the pit of his soul and summoned up that voice, the deep soft one with the hard edges, the one that made such a lie out of his cultured accent. "Channeling power to me . . . so I can set this building on fire. Or don't you remember the last one?"

     On cue, Sascha began to hum.

     "What the--"

     "The power is flowing to me. I might spare you afterwards. Unlock the door."

     "I don't, I . . . "

     Irine added her mezzosoprano to her brother's tenor. They started out in harmony and then Sascha dropped his voice until they were only an octave and a quarter tone off. Hirianthial wondered if they realized what they were doing or if they were just tone-deaf. He focused on the man. "Unlock the door. If you do, I'll give you time to run before I start."

     Reese added her contralto, filling part of the lower register.

     Blond shifted from foot to foot, books creaking. His fingers played almost spasmodically with the keys. Hirianthial stared him in the eye, willing him to do it.

     "Unlock the door."

     "I--"

     "Unlock the door."

     "It's not--"

     "Unlock the door."

     Bryer broke in with a shrill ululation that skidded up the scale of comfortable human hearing. Blond's fear shot his aura with bright actinic sparkles, and the man lunged forward, keying first the field and then the door. The latter beeped its processing tone. A few seconds later, the door opened. Blond stood paralyzed before it, as if unable to believe his actions.

     Gently, Hirianthial said, "Run. Now."

     Blond stared wildly at him; his eyes flicked to Bryer's feathers. Then he turned tail and fled.

     "All right!" Reese said, jumping to her feet. "Quick, before it's too late!"

     The two Harat-Shar dashed out first, striped tails waggling. Bryer loped after. Reese pointed. "Out. I'll be behind you."

     Hirianthial rose, and she darted around him, closing the door behind him.

     "Which way!" Sascha yelled back.

     "Left!" Hirianthial called.

     The two tigraines vanished around the corner, and then Irine yowled. He could just see two more people in front of them. "Guards," he warned.

     "I think they already found them," Reese said dryly, running up the hall. They turned into the corridor to find Bryer leaping on one of the guards, his bronze claws muted by the red flash of blood. Disoriented, Hirianthial turned toward the smell--blood required two kinds of attention--but a hand grabbed the back of his tunic and yanked. He felt concern and pain and fear and adrenaline like a punch to the spine.

     "This way!" Reese said, pulling him past the two Pelted and the Phoenix, who were doing more than distracting the guards.

     "They'll die," Hirianthial said, transfixed by the deflation of the auras under Sascha and Bryer. Old instincts warred with new oaths.

     "Have your crisis of conscience later!" Reese said. "Or have you forgotten what these people have done? Do you want to live your life in chains?"

     He still couldn't force himself forward. It had been so long since he'd seen blood spilled in violence. It woke demons.

     "Blood on the dust, Hirianthial, MOVE!"

     He moved. He couldn't not move beneath the force of that command. He couldn't decide if they were wounded or enemies and in the face of that ambivalence he could turn his back on them and leave them to die.

     Even if he'd wanted to turn back, Reese was at his heels, riding him, herding him. He didn't want to have to push past her and her cut-glass aura.

     Sascha pushed past him, blood streaking his fur. "Are there more?"

     "Two more ahead," Hirianthial said. "They know we're coming."

     "Stop," Reese said. "They're going to have weapons--"

     "Yeah well, now so do we," Irine said, holding up three palmers.

     Reese crowed. "Excellent, fuzzy! Just be--"

     Sascha and Bryer had already taken one of the palmers and run ahead.

     "--careful," Reese finished to the sound of palmer fire. She winced.

     Irine shrugged, then ambled up the corridor. "It's clear, boss."

     And just like that, they'd taken care of everyone in the prison that had held him for so long. Dazed, Hirianthial followed Reese up the corridor, paused to stare at the bodies. These two, at least, weren't dead. Memories tangled with reality in his eyes, blurring the edges of the room.

     "Come on," Reese said. "No time to sight-see. The moment someone wakes up and realizes we're gone our lives are worthless. Or at least, to us. I love my old crate, but she's not going to outrun a pirate."

     "The tumbleweeds await!" Sascha said, pushing open the door. He threw a telegem to Reese. "Might as well use this. They're going to find out about us anyway."

     Reese tossed it. "I don't want to alert them any sooner. Let's just run and hope Kis'eh't can get the Earthrise ready fast enough without warning. You. Prince Charming. You go in the middle where we can--"

     "--guard me?" Hirianthial asked, a brief sense of amusement blowing away the numbness.

     "Just go."

     He went. Bryer ran alongside, wings and tail a flutter of bronze and muted crimson. Sascha took lead, with Irine at the side. Reese ran behind. They sprinted out into a purple twilight and onto the empty streets, avoiding the street lamps. There were no lights puddled in the windows, but the breeze that sloughed through his hair--Hirianthial had felt nothing finer.

     "I assume," he said once they reached the edge of town, "that we're going somewhere."
     "Yeah. To the Earthrise. She's parked a few minutes out of town," Reese said. She stopped to pant, propping her hands on her knees. "Our ride out."

     "And then?" Hirianthial asked.

     The beads on the end of her hair clicked as she whipped her head up to glare at him. "Providing we get out of here alive, I'm dropping you off at the nearest starbase. You're way too much trouble for me."

     Hirianthial laughed. "Alas, lady. I hope it's that simple."

     "Yeah, me too." She straightened. "On we go!"

     They ran. Leaving the town pleased Hirianthial greatly. He could almost forget they were fleeing and enjoy the run. He hadn't been able to stretch his legs for days, and the expanse of the world around him, rolling away to the horizon in every direction, restored some of his tattered equilibrium. Enough of it, in fact, that when he saw their ride off-world he didn't immediately fall into despair. The squat ovoid balanced on its landing stilts looked as much like the sleek Alliance ships Hirianthial had seen as an axe resembled a laser scalpel. He couldn't imagine it outrunning a barge, much less a slaver's ship.

     Reese hobbled the last few yards to one of the stilts and whacked a panel with the heel of her hand.

     "Kis'eh't! Get us out of this system, and now!"

     A ramp descended from the belly of the ship, too slowly for the twins who jumped onto it before it had fully extended. They scampered up it, followed by Bryer.

     "Up," Reese said.

     Hirianthial stared up into the dark and wondered just what kind of future the Queen had planned for him to tangle him up with this human and her strange people.

     But he went up the ramp. He was, he thought, short on choices.