Contact Imminent (28 page)

Feyó smiled, but the expression faded quickly. “Others followed me, Kièrshia. Representatives of the dominants from Amsun and Hortensia.” She raised a hand and pointed.

Jani followed the line of her hand, and saw a trio of Haárin, two males and a female, dressed in traditional garb, now dirt-smeared and rain-soaked, standing near the other battered skimmer.

“They came to provide support for me.” Feyó's voice came faster. “The time had come to confront Gisa—I brought them to Thalassa to see you—”

“That's it—conversation's over.” Eamon emerged through the rain and set about dismantling the sheeting. “Go wreak havoc somewhere else,” he said to Jani as he helped one of his aides raise Feyó onto a skimgurney.

Jani waited as first Feyó, then her two suborns were loaded into the vehicle. Then she turned to the three visitors, gauging their postures as she approached.
The female's
shoulders are rounding—oh, good
. Then one of the males deflected the female's attention and gestured roughly toward Jani, his voice a harsh tumble of Pathen Haárin. The female gave Jani another, more studied look, and slowly straightened.

Make that very slowly
. Jani brushed off the knees of her old brown coverall, and wished she'd had the presence of mind to don her overrobe. Unfortunately, it had needed cleaning, and currently hung in drip-dry mode above her bathroom sink. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked in Sìah Haárin, cutting straight to the chase. Somehow, a more traditional “glories of the evening” greeting didn't seem appropriate, given the circumstances.

“Tripbeam, most likely, and truly.” The female raised her arm in gesture, the sleeve of her overrobe sliding back to reveal a hash of
à lérine
scars. “The pale humanish—his skimmer led us. It passed unimpeded. Then followed Feyó. Then came the explosion.”

“Tripbeam.” Jani looked over the first damaged skimmer. “Keyed to the com frequencies of Feyó's vehicles?” She fell silent—speculations coursed through her brain like comet trails, and she didn't want the Haárin to hear any of them. “Are any of you hurt?” She gestured to the Pathen male, who was attempting to cradle his right arm without seeming to. “You should be seen to, as is seemly.”

The appeal to the formalities reawakened something in the two males—taken aback as they seemed by the red flashing lights of the ambulance, they headed for it, their steps quickening as one of the hybrid Haárin walked out to meet them.

The female, however, hung back. She looked Jani in the eye, her brown-gold face a study in emotion barely contained.

“You are the Kièrshia.” Her shoulders curved as Jani nodded. “You ask us to enter the place that struck at us? You ask us to take treatment from those who sought to injure us by surprise?” She possessed what the idomeni called “demon
eyes,” dark brown irises and sclera that in the gloom looked like empty sockets.

“I know who arranged this.” Jani shoved her hands in her pockets to keep from gesturing—she didn't know Pathen Haárin very well, and the last thing she needed now was a miscommunication. “I will see to them.”

“Hah! Indeed? What remedy?” The female leaned closer.
“Priest. What remedy?”
She glared at Jani as though she expected an answer at that moment. When she didn't receive one, she gestured in angry dismay and resumed her trudge to the ambulance.

Jani watched the female shake off the Haárin aide's offered arm and enter the ambulance on her own. Watched Eamon and one of his assistants secure the vehicle gullwings, then climb inside. Watched the ambulance float away, red light still pulsing through the growing dark. Felt movement behind her, and turned to find John standing there.

“I'm afraid to ask what that was about.” He held out his hand—when Jani took it, he reeled her in.

Jani wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed until she felt him tense under the pressure. “When word came to the house of an accident, all I could think of was you.”

“I'm not your problem, from the look of things. Hearing's a little wonky from the shockwave, but beyond that I'm fine.” John brushed away raindrops that had beaded on the front of Jani's coverall. “Feel free to hang onto me as long as you wish, though. I'm sure I'm more badly hurt than I can imagine.”

Jani leaned back so she could look John in the face. “I think you're right.” The rain had washed the blood from his cheek, exposing the raw edges of a jagged gash. “That's deep—it will scar if you don't get it treated quickly.”

“I'm not the most important thing going on right now.” John gripped her hand and held it away from his face. “I don't think Gisa tried to kill Feyó. The blast wasn't strong enough.”

“A warning shot across her bow? I'm afraid I'm not concerned about degree at the moment.”

“What are you going to do?”

Jani worked out of John's embrace as the first red flares of idomeni temper stained the outer edges of her vision. “I told them.” She paced, her boot soles clogging with the claylike mud. “
I told them
. No violence against any of Feyó's, or against Feyó herself. To do so against her or one of hers is to do so against me, and I do not take kindly.” She could have been standing under glass for all she felt the rain. The Pathen female's words echoed inside her head.
Priest, what remedy?

“Jan…?” John walked to her side and placed a tentative hand on her shoulder.

Jani felt his touch like a growing weight—she shook off his hold, then set off toward his skimmer. “Wait.” She stopped. In the distance a low rumble of thunder sounded. “You better drive.”

The ground floor was quiet enough that Jani could hear her boots echo on the tile. The demirooms were darkened—no one sat on the chairs and couches and listened to music or watched programs on the 'Vee. No one spoke.

Yet they were there, all the Thalassans. Jani could see them through the interior gloom, standing around the courtyard. Silent. Waiting. They turned at the click of the closing entry, and what sounded like a sigh emerged from them. A collective release.

Jani took a step forward, then paused when she detected movement off to one side, and watched the two familiar forms approach. Torin, her self-appointed historian, gripping his handheld, eyes wide, jaw tight. And Brondt, her self-appointed chamberlain, as outwardly calm as his nature and position demanded.

“Torin and I had just returned from the outbuildings when the ambulance arrived.” Only a tightening around his jaw betrayed his unease. “They'd already begun gathering.” He looked from Jani to the crowd, then back to her. “What are you going to do?”

“I know what I want to do.” Jani held out her hands, then turned them over—they were steady, the palms dry, the fin
gers curved as though readying to grip the hilt of a blade.

“Jani? What's going on?”

Jani turned to find John standing in the entry, his face shiny with rain but for the dull, dark gash in his cheek. “Have Eamon bring Feyó and the Pathen Haárin up here.”

John hesitated, then shook his head. “Feyó is in no condition—”

“She needs to be here.” Jani sensed John's uncertainty, his fear. For her. For what he knew she wanted to do. “Tell Eamon. Bring them here yourself if he refuses to help.” She waited, her nerves stretching in impatience as he looked her up and down. A doctor's examination, an evaluation of all the things about her that he no longer understood. “John,
please
.”

John pushed a hand through his wet hair, then fixed on Brondt until the other man shuffled his feet and looked away. “I'll do…what I can.” He stepped around Jani, reached for her as he drew near, and brushed his fingers against hers. “Take care, in every way, for all the good my saying it will do,” he said as he skirted the edge of the courtyard and vanished into the shadow.

Jani's shoulders rounded as she headed toward the crowd, the back row parting for her, then closing in behind her as the row in front of them parted. She passed through the innermost circle of the hybrids to find the courtyard stripped of tables and chairs, the planters pushed to the side. Someone had inscribed a circle on the tile with red chalk—Gisa stalked its center, scarred arms bared in her sleeveless shirt, which had been bleached palest dull white to allow the greatest contrast with the blood.

When she saw Jani, she stilled. “This is not your challenge, Kièrshia,” she said in English, the beat of the rain against the skylight a backdrop for her words. “I fight Feyó for the protection of this place.”

“Feyó cannot fight now.” Jani walked the outer edge of the circle as she fingered the shoulder of her coverall, probing the seam for any gaps in the seal. “Your perimeter defenses saw to that.”

“She knew she was not welcome here. Yet she came, so whose fault?” Gisa cut the air with an invisible blade. “I told her that if she came here, she would face challenge. She treats us as hers, and we are not. She acts as dominant, and she is not.” Her voice rang out. “She has no place here. No right. This is Thalassa! The place of the hybrid! We live in the new way here!”

Before Jani could reply, a rising murmur drew her attention. She turned to the sound and saw John's white head move through the crowd, the darker braided fringe of the Pathen Haárin representatives following close behind.

Then John emerged and the voices ramped, for he pushed a skimchair in which sat a hunched figure. Feyó, one eye swelled shut, dressed in medwhites. Her shoulders rounded further when she caught sight of Gisa, tensing as though she would push to her feet and enter the circle despite her injuries.

Jani waited until John stilled the chair. Then she walked to it and stood before Feyó. “I am most sorry to ask you to expose yourself in your weakness. But all must see that you cannot fight.” She bent low, so that only Feyó could hear. “Gisa told you that you would not be allowed into Thalassa, and that you would face sanction if you sought entry. Yet you came.”

Feyó tilted her head to look up at Jani, a posture dictated more by her position than any regard. “To discuss—”

“To discuss what?” Jani backed off a step, so she could look Feyó in the eye, a move that drew some grumbling from the Pathen female. “No, I don't sense an attempt at dialogue gone awry here. What I sense is an attempt at sandbagging that didn't quite work the way you hoped.”

“Gisa is chaotic!”

“Gisa is half humanish, and you insist upon treating her as Haárin. She is not fully suborn to you, and you cannot expect her to be so, yet you insist.”

“We must have order here.”

“Your order, as you see it.” Jani glanced around, gauging
distances and modulating her voice accordingly. She spoke Síah Haárin, clipped and rapid and devoid of gesture, because the hybrid humanish stood the closest, and with any luck they wouldn't be able to follow what she said. “Gisa insists upon the new ways, you insist upon the old, and neither of you will give a millimeter.”

Feyó tried to shake her head. But the motion must have dizzied her—her hands tightened on her chair arms and she sagged forward as though she might go under. “The Elyan Haárin must show unity.”

“Your unity, as you see it—Gisa capitulating, and the Elyan enclave swallowing Thalassa.” Jani glanced around at hybrid faces suddenly bent on avoiding her eye. “Look around you. How would you expect such as these to blend with your Haárin? I don't agree with Gisa's methods, Feyó, but damn it, you asked for it.”
And I'm stuck dealing with it
.

“Are you finding remedy, priest?” The Pathen female leaned close, demon eyes glittering, and jabbed a finger at Jani. “Will you make order from the chaos of this damned odd place?”

“This damned odd place,”
Jani bit out. “This is
my
place.” She pushed the female's finger aside with the flat of her hand. “You forced Feyó to come here, did you not? You make demands as to how things must be, and you do not even know what is here!”

“Ná Wola is a godly Haárin,” Feyó said.

“Ná Wola is of Hortensia, and her concerns are not at issue here and now.” Jani held Wola's glare until the Haárin gestured impatience and turned away. Then she slowly straightened, her mind a muddle.

And beneath it all, the overriding concern that Tsecha's future depended upon what happened here in the next few minutes.

Damn it
. Human nerves warred with idomeni rage in Jani's heart and mind and soul, neither holding the upper hand for long. The wrong move would fracture the Outer Circle Haárin, alienate the Thalassans forever.

She looked at John, who leaned on Feyó's skimchair as though he needed the support. He still hadn't bandaged his cut cheek—at first glance he reminded her of a battered angel shepherding the survivors of some divine battle to safety.

“I remember a priest in an overrobe striding down the corridor of my ship.” John's voice came so low it seemed to rumble up through the ground. “She was all I could see—I couldn't look away.” His look grew pointed and a little stunned. “They can't look away either.” His voice grew softer, until it barely emerged. “Just do, and it will be right.”

Jani shook her head. “No—”

“Yes.”
He looked away for a beat, then back again, shaking his head. “Trust me—the Pied Piper lives.” He jerked his chin toward the circle, where Gisa waited. “Play your tune.”

Jani glanced at the nearby faces, and saw expressions ranging from confusion to trepidation, depending, she guessed, on the degree of familiarity with the story John alluded to.

Then she turned back to Gisa. “You claim to honor me because I am the first.” She took one step, then another, until she broke the invisible barrier and entered the circle itself. “This you call honor,” she said as the mutter of voices around her ramped to a babble, “attacking one esteemed by ní Tsecha, throwing this place into discord?”

Gisa stood her ground. Her chin came up in the humanish manner, her hands clenching as though she already held her blades. “I have said already—my fight is not with you.”

“So you have said. Many times.” Jani heard Dathim's cadences in her voice, and wondered what he'd say if he saw her now. “Even as you brought me here by force and threat, set a network of five planets on its ear, jeopardized the life of ní Tsecha, whom you claim to esteem above all others, you have yet said repeatedly that your fight is not with me.” She felt idomeni anger warm her, and imagined the strength of Thalassa rising up through her from the stones. Sensed John's dark gaze drill her back, and took strength from that
as well. “You call me ‘the first,' but you do not realize what that means.” She caught the reflective flicker on faces as lightning shone through the skylight, saw the fear, and savored it. “I have been a hybrid longer than any of you. As such, I was alone a long time.” She flexed her shoulders as the weight of twenty years' wandering bore down upon her. “It is no way to live.” She closed her eyes, and saw the colored domes of Karistos, the palms pushing up in between, the slope of the city to the bay. Felt the sun warm her bones, even though it had set hours ago. “I am home now, and it is my home that I defend.” She opened her eyes and looked across the circle to Gisa. “I fight for Thalassa. Give me a weapon.”

As the voices rose among the crowd, Gisa raised her hand and tilted her head to one side. The posture served as a signal to Bon, who drew to the edge of the circle, a large, flat box balanced in her bandaged hands. Bracing the box against her body, she lifted the lid, revealing two stark curves of Sìah metal. She moved along the circle's edge to Jani and held out the box for her inspection.

Jani lifted one of the blades from its inset, then balanced it on the edge of her hand at the place where the blade itself met the hilt. “Quite fine. Yes.” She lifted the blade and pressed the point to the left shoulder seam of her coverall. Her focus tunneled, blinding her to the bodies that pressed as close to the edge of the circle as protocol allowed, narrowing her awareness to the slow pound of her heart and the being who stood opposite her. “Remove this obstacle as you have all others, Lord Ganesh, I plead.” With that, she drove the blade through the cloth, slitting the seam. “Allow me the wisdom to understand what must be done.” She grabbed the sleeve and yanked down—the material gave with a harsh rip. “Allow me also the courage to do it.” She changed hands and drove the blade into the right shoulder seam, slitting it as she had the other, tearing that sleeve away as well, exposing her bare arms to the light.

“Ná Kièrshia?” Gisa paced her side of the circle, blade in hand, her voice lilting in puzzlement. “You have challenged me? You have not said the words.”

Jani tossed the sleeves outside the boundary of the circle. “Do you recall our conversation in the library?” Her humanish half took over now—her jaw and throat felt tight as she spoke, and her shoulder muscles ached from tension. “You spoke of your admiration for ní Tsecha. You spoke of the sacrifices he made, his outcast, his many challenges as he defended his teachings. ‘The blood of the priest that binds.' Those are your words, Gisa.”

The humanish part of Gisa must have sensed the undercurrent that ran through Jani's speech. She backed as far to the edge of the circle as she could, until she teetered so close to breaking the plane that Bon moved in behind her and pushed her back in.

And there Jani waited. She closed in, her blade at the ready, grabbed Gisa by the hair and yanked her face to within a handsbreadth of hers.

“Well, I speak for Tsecha, and I tell you this!” She shook Gisa until she heard her teeth clatter. “You brought me to this warm place, and you showed me these people,
my
people, and then you expected me to stand aside while you and Feyó screwed it up!” She pushed the female away. “It ends here. It ends now. With the blood of the priest.” With that, she pressed the point of her blade to her own right wrist and slit her arm to the elbow. The strange warmth came, beginning as heat just under the skin and pouring down. Like water, so thin. The flow, so fast.

“You gave the wanderer a home, Gisa. Then you risked it, and thought she'd stand back and let you do as you would. You need to learn my history better.” Jani switched her blade to her right hand, held her left hand to the welling gash until her blood coated it. Then she pressed her bloody hand to Gisa's forehead and swept down, painting half her face.

Gisa raised a hand and touched her blooded cheek, then looked at Jani, eyes wide and glistening. She opened her
mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, Jani gripped her by the wrist and dragged her. Across the circle, then outside, toward Feyó and the other Haárin.

Shouts rose in protest, but Jani silenced them with a sweep of her blade. She came to a stop before an alarmed Feyó, Gisa fighting her grasp like a youngish—the strain clenched her arm muscles, forcing even more blood to flow.

“The blood of the priest that binds!” Jani shouted loud enough for the words to echo throughout the courtyard. Then she tossed her blade aside. Still holding Gisa fast, she wiped her left hand over her self-inflicted injury again, then pressed it to the side of Feyó's face.

“You work together, through me.” She paused to breathe—her chest felt strangely hollow, her knees as weak. “That which is of Thalassa—” She squeezed Gisa's wrist hard enough for the female to flinch. “—will remain
here
, and that which is of Elyas will remain
here
.” She grabbed Feyó's hand and squeezed until the Haárin gasped. “Thalassa will be with Elyas—not
of
Elyas, but
with
. Note the difference.” She released both females and stood back. The room rocked as she raised her head; she saw John release Feyó's chair and beckon to one of Eamon's Haárin techs. “There are details, of course. There are always details. The main points are these—Thalassa governs itself regarding internal matters, and defers to Elyas regarding Board matters. Everything else is negotiable.”