“You think I don’t want the revenge?”
“I think you want the revenge. I’m just not so sure you’ll like it.” Valdisa reached over the desk to press a contact on the wall. Her door opened. Beyond, the dark corridors of Underasgard were loud with kin.
“You’re angry with me,” Gyll said, but he could find no anger in her face.
“No,” she said. Her voice sounded only weary. “But please go now, Gyll. I don’t feel like arguing anymore, and I want to try to sleep.”
Gyll didn’t move. “I could stay . . .”
Valdisa rubbed her temple with a hand; she smiled. “Later, perhaps. Gyll, I don’t know how you feel right now, but I know I’m not in the mood.”
“I won’t go to Heritage. All you have to do is say it.”
She shook her head. “You say you want it. Just remember this, Gyll. I’m selfish, too. If you try to fight me again, try to go over my authority—”
“I wasn’t doing that now.”
“Maybe you don’t think so. But I’m still warning you, kin to kin, as a friend—I’ll fight back next time. Hard, and as nasty as I need to be. Hoorka’s been my life—I may not be its creator, like you, but to me, Hoorka is all. I’m Thane, and I intend to be Thane in more than words.”
Gyll could find nothing more to say. Valdisa leaned back once more, closing her eyes. Gyll walked into the corridor. The door closed behind him with a sinister finality.
• • •
The Regent d’Embry was relaxing in her office. A cup of tea steamed aromatically on her desk. The window was polarized black, the room lights were off but for a spotlight on the replica of d’Vellia’s soundsculpture. The office was twilight, silent. D’Embry reclined on her floater, eyes closed, trying to forget the tedious drudgery of her day.
A bell chimed in the room. D’Embry groaned, muttering a curse that would have ensured a session with the morality-whip on her long-ago home world. “Leave me alone, Karl,” she said to the room. “Handle it yourself. Show some initiative.” She kept her eyes firmly and defiantly closed.
Again: a shivering of bright sound.
“Huard’s cock—”
Her eyes opened. D’Embry groaned upright, took a sip of the cooling tea, and touched a contact that brought her corn-unit down from the ceiling niche. The flat screen stared at her.
Another chiming, louder now.
Lips pursed in a scowl, she activated the screen. A wash of greenish illumination flooded the room. “This had better be good, Karl.”
A whorling of light-motes resolved itself into a sallow and thin face. “I’m not so sure ‘good’ describes it, m’Dame, but it’s something you’ll want to see. Just a moment, and I’ll switch you.” His voice was high, excited. The screen dissolved into momentary chaos, then settled.
She saw.
Men and women in the uniform of Vingi’s guards were moving through Dasta Burrough, a lassari sector. The view was jerky, dim, as if the camera operator was trying to keep his hoverholos near the center of the action but out of sight. The scene horrified d’Embry. The guards were working with quick and brutal efficiency, dragging lassari from their houses and taking them to a waiting flitter bearing the insignia of the Magistrate’s Guild. Brutal: the guards used their crowd-prods liberally, without need, for the lassari were unarmed and sleep-confused. Screams punctuated the scenes. One guard (the camera zooming in) used his prod like a club. He swung, striking the head of the man he held by a twist of shirt-cloth. The lassari staggered from the blow, eyes rolling, hands up in futile defense. Blood streamed down the side of his face, soaking into the shirt.
The view suddenly shifted away.
“Karl, what in hell’s going on?” D’Embry’s voice was taut, her stomach coiled in a knot.
Karl’s voice came over the scenes of carnage. “Dasta Burrough, m’Dame. From what I’ve been able to learn, the Li-Gallant sent his guards in to arrest suspected dissident lassari. He heard that this Renard was living in Dasta. It all happened suddenly—one of the monitor probes just happened to pick it up.”
“Get me the Li-Gallant.”
“I’m already trying, m’Dame.”
A woman came stumbling from a darkened doorway into the street. There, a guardsman was using his crowd-prod on an unresisting man. The woman leapt on the back of the guardsman, beating with balled fists. The guard twisted, throwing the woman to the ground; she fell hard, and the sound of an activated vibroblade hissed in the speakers of the com-unit. The guardsman’s arm—luminous vibrotip gleaming in the dark—rose and fell. The woman screamed.
D’Embry, stonily, watched.
Shift. An alley. In a pile of debris, a naked lassari lay. A guardswoman kicked him in the ribs, and the lassari’s body shuddered from the impact. He did not otherwise move. A second guard watched, his crowd-prod bolstered. Another kick . . .
Shift. A woman, lassari by the clothing, ran down a narrow lane. Her face was frightened, her disheveled hair hung in sweat-damp strands. Two guards ran after her. Then, around the corner ahead of her, three more guards appeared. The woman stopped, trapped, glancing about frantically. The guards laughed as they closed in around her.
Shift. The Li-Gallant. His thick face peered soberly out at d’Embry, a head-and-shoulder view. He wore a robe with metallic ribbons woven into it—they sparkled in the cloth. Behind him, an animo-painting swirled lazily. “Ahh, Regent d’Embry.” He nodded. “I was surprised to receive the call from your staff—you keep late hours, m’Dame.”
She had no patience for his amenities. “Li-Gallant”—her voice was trembling with reined anger, she strove to control it—“call off your guards.”
His lower lip stuck out, the eyes narrowed. “You’ve been snooping, m’Dame. But I credit you—your sources are quick.”
His uncaring banter drove her to fury. “
Damn
you, man!” she shouted. Her fist struck the desk. China rattled, tea sloshed. “What you’re doing is violent and unnecessary. Call them off.”
A slow shaking of his head. “What they’re doing is
entirely
necessary for the good of all Neweden, Regent. We have a different set of rules here, after all. It demands an approach that varies from the one—”
She wanted to pick up the cup and throw it at the screen. His smugness mocked her. “I’m not calling you to discuss differences between Alliance worlds, Li-Gallant. As representative of Niffleheim, I’m telling you to stop this brutality.”
“And I’m telling you”—the Li-Gallant seemed to lean back, as if reclining in a chair. The background focus shifted as the camera kept the face sharp—“that the Alliance has no authority in this. It’s purely internal. It affects only Neweden and her people. As Li-Gallant, they are under my authority. This action is condoned by vote of the Assembly. I warn
you,
Regent. If you interfere, I’ll lodge a very loud protest with Niffleheim Center. I’ll also call for the Neweden Assembly to revoke our agreement with the Alliance. You know I now control the Assembly. I wonder who Niffleheim would back, Regent? You—an old woman obviously exceeding her authority and interfering in the affairs of this little world? Or me—the governor of that little world, merely doing as his society dictates?”
Vingi grinned. “I’ve nothing more to say to you, Regent d’Embry. Good night. Enjoy your pictures.”
His face dissolved in a flurry of light.
With a cry of inarticulate frustration, d’Embry picked up her teacup. She held it in her hand, arm back, then paused. It took more control than she thought she had, but she brought the arm back down.
She drank.
The tea was cold.
Chapter 11
T
HE CRAFT SPREAD vaned fingers to the stars. Neweden wheeled below, then suddenly behind, a fading ghost.
The bio-pilot chortled, a dribbling of spittle flying from his lips, and craned his neck to glance at his passengers. “Shit,” he said, noticing the chain of globules floating about him. He closed his eyes a moment and an exhaust fan began to purr, pulling the droplets away. The BP leaned back in the skeletal chair, the umbilical cord of the ship’s nervous system trailing from his spinal sockets. He floated in free fall against the restraint of his harness, one leg twitching spasmodically.
“Away and gone,” he said. “We’re home again, Helgin.”
Gyll was impressed by the way Helgin interacted with the BP. The Hoorka found the jerky, ungainly mannerisms embarrassing; he did not like looking at the man, and yet he had to force himself to avoid staring. Before they’d left Oldin’s ship, the BP had turned to find Gyll regarding him with an expression of distaste; the man had merely smiled, as if used to that reaction. Now, without the comfort of gravity, Gyll found that
he
was the bumbler, the one with little coordination, and it bothered him that the BP seemed to be understanding of Gyll’s discomfiture. Helgin, at least, had not seemed to be distressed by the spastic motions of the BP. He was at ease, joking, acting much as normal. Now, with Neweden hidden behind the cowl of their engines, Helgin loosened his harness and shot across the cabin, evidently luxuriating in the feel of weightlessness.
“By damn, Illtun, that was a cute maneuver past the Alliance station. You’re sure we weren’t monitored? We could still do a feint toward Longago and give them some misdirection. Siljun’s there; he’d back up our story.”
“Shit. You friggin’ dwarves don’t trust nobody.” Illtun’s head jerked to one side, his left arm moved up, hand clenching, then down again. “I promise you we weren’t seen. Promise. I know this ship and I know the mass-blinder. We were absolutely transparent to their detectors.”
“You’re the pilot.” Helgin bounced from a wall (Gyll wondered how the circuits fixed there managed to continue working after the abuse) and twisted in mid-cabin to face Gyll. “You like this, Ulthane?”
Gyll vacillated between politeness and honesty, decided on compromise. “I’m not sure,” he said. He was fighting nausea that had swept over him when an evasive move had put an unusual amount of g-stress on the ship and its occupants. Gyll didn’t care for the grin on the dwarf’s face—the Motsognir must know what he felt like.
“I don’t think Ulthane Gyll likes me, Helgin,” Illtun said. Gyll, startled, began a quick denial, but Illtun continued over his protest. “It doesn’t really matter, Ulthane. We BPs get fairly thick skins from all the eye tracks. The ones I
do
mind are the ones that decide to reshape your face because of their displeasure.”
Illtun’s face spasmed, a quick blinking of eyes. Gyll decided that it was another symptom of the restructured nervous system. He could not understand it any other way.
Helgin, now upside down to Gyll’s orientation, frowned a denial. “Neh, Illtun. The Hoorka isn’t scowling at you—he’s just trying to control his stomach. Gods, Gyll, if you can stand killing, you should be able to take this.”
The banter bothered Gyll. He could feel his face redden in response. Neweden reflexes: his hand strayed closer to the hilt of his vibro, lost in the folds of his freely floating nightcloak and further encumbered by the seat harness. “You joke too much, Helgin,” he said darkly, but the dwarf only burst into sudden laughter.
“Gyll,” Helgin said, his voice booming in the small cabin, “you’re a mudballer, a dirt-eater. Your training’s been very good, but it needs altering out here. The nightcloak—it’s more hindrance than help now, isn’t it? I could take your weapon from you, disable you with ease, if you wanted to fight. You have to learn to quit responding with that damned Neweden pride, at least in situations where you’re at a disadvantage. It’s only because I like you and think you’re intelligent enough to change that I say anything. Most world-bound asses aren’t worth the effort. Up here, even Illtun—who looks so slow and ungainly under gravity—could do things beyond your abilities.”
Illtun smiled, almost shyly, at Gyll. “It’s not that tragic, sirrah. I’m quite used to the first-time stares, and I’m used to mudballers. If a BP goes out of the port on most worlds, he risks getting the shit beat out of him. Or worse. There’s a lot of prejudice in the Alliance, a lot of blank adherence to their social structure. If you’re on the bottom of that structure, it can be difficult.”
“The Hoorka were once on the bottom. I changed that.”
Illtun shrugged. His foot tapped the deck in erratic rhythm. “It’s nice to be able to change things. Me, I work for the Oldins.” He reached behind him to touch the umbilical of the ship. “I
am
the ship, out here. I can close my eyes and
be
the ship. No mudballer can match me with that. I kick, and the engines boot us along; flex my fingers, and the vanes swivel to catch the solars. I can be graceful with that metal body, if not my own. Watch,” he said.
He closed his eyes—suddenly the port opposite Gyll was dizzy with star-trails, then all settled back again. “The Alliance made me from a nonfunctional being, a neurotic precatatonic, into something that works offworld. I’m grateful to ’em for that. But when they changed the brain stem and flipped the neural responses and fidgeted with my spine, they didn’t make us acceptable to the mudballers. We’re
still
mental defectives to them; cripples, half-humans. We ain’t liked. You get used to it, but you never like it.” Then he smiled again and seemed to laugh inwardly. “And I’m sorry for the lecture—it surfaces every once in a while, and you just have to suffer through it. Helgin knows.”
Gyll didn’t know how to respond. “Hoorka get stares, too. Every time we walk in Sterka.”
“Still, your stares are at least veiled in respect,” Illtun answered.
“Only because I strove to make it so.”
Illtun smiled again. “So you tell me that the BPs need to do something to gain respect, to force it? No, Ulthane, sometimes there is no way to find a niche for yourself, and you have to go search for another place. You were lucky on Neweden. That might not happen anywhere else.”
Illtun’s good humor took the sting from his words. Gyll could not find it in himself to be angry with the man. As he tried to find a reply, Helgin spoke. The dwarf had one hand around an exposed pipe, his legs dangling in air. He seemed to recline on an invisible cushion. “The Hoorka didn’t do well on Heritage.”