Ghost Ship (16 page)

“There’s no need for you to trouble yourselves,” a woman’s soft, accented voice spoke from the left and rear. The sound of a safety being released was sharp against the quiet air.

- - - - -

It was quite clement this afternoon, Daav thought. He’d been told that it was local spring, and had independently observed that the wan sunlight was growing slightly more robust. Indeed, here in the center of the garden, in the Tree’s very court, it was nearly warm, though not so nearly that he was tempted to unseal his jacket.

He did take his hands out of his pockets and place them, palm-flat, against the rough bark, where they were instantly warmed.

“I thank you,” he murmured. “As does the gardener, who asked me particularly to extend her regards. She had not considered that you might influence the immediate environment to the benefit of the small plants. For myself, I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, but I feel it necessary to ask that you have a care not to plunge our near neighbor into an ice age.”

There was a faint rustle among the lower branches as a few leaves floated groundward—the Tree’s equivalent of a chuckle.

“It heartens me to learn that I am yet amusing.” Daav closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the warm bark.

His relationship with Korval’s Tree had not always been easy, though certainly they had shared an understanding. He might have thought that he would find its mode of discourse . . . difficult, or even mad, having been so long unaccustomed, but he had fallen into the way of it again quite easily. What Jen Sar Kiladi might have made of such whimsy . . .

But, there; that route promised no profit for anyone.

Daav took a deep breath, catching the scent of cinnamon rising from the pleasantly warm bark. Kiladi . . . There was an oddity, this continued melancholy; the sharp sense of losing a man who had never lived—no, he corrected himself, drowsily. Certainly, Kiladi had lived—there was the considerable body of his work, his legions of students, graduated and themselves working the fields he had shown to them, not to mention the astonishing and occasionally alarming fact of Theo.

So say instead, he instructed himself, that Kiladi had lacked a regular birth, and a childhood, and that now he was spared the slow decline into old age. He had been a busy man, and influential. He had loved and been loved—and was sorely missed by his creator.

If Daav yos’Phelium achieved so much, he might put aside the ties of clan and kin lightly, when the time was upon him.

A rattle in the leaves above broke his drowse. He opened his eyes and stepped back, hand rising in time to catch a seed pod.

“My thanks,” he murmured, suddenly craving nothing so much as the treat promised him. He opened it immediately, noting that his assistance was scarcely required; it seemed the pod was so eager to be eaten that it fell open of itself.

Mint and cinnamon danced on his tongue—and something else that might have been an echo of Kamele’s most favored coffee.

He devoured the gift with unseemly haste, ravenous—and sated, the instant that the last piece was eaten.

Sighing, he looked up into the high branches.

“My thanks,” he said again, and meant it from the heart. Whatever the pod’s purpose—from the expression of a comrade’s sympathy, to a subtle poisoning—he was glad to have received it, and felt the better for having eaten it.

Unexpectedly, there came another rattling, this from the very highest branches, followed by the apparently forceful ejection of two pods, which hit the ground precisely before his boots.

“This is bounty, indeed,” he murmured, bending to retrieve the gifts.

Immediately he touched the first, he knew that it was intended for him—those of Jela’s Line were born with that sense. So—his, but for . . . some time in the future. The understanding that came to him was that the pod was not . . . quite ripe.

The second . . . very nearly he dropped it. Very nearly, he threw it back into the high boughs. It was only the recollection that the Tree’s gifts of seed pods had always been truly meant, if not always beneficent, that stayed his hand.

The second pod . . . was for Aelliana.

And also . . . not . . . quite ripe.

“Just so.” He bowed his head and opened his jacket, stowing the pods into a small, sealed pocket where they would be secure, but easy to access, when and if the time of their ripeness arrived.

SIXTEEN

Tokeoport

Arin’s Toss
sat ready on her go-pad. That was the good news.

A woman with gun drawn stood, legs braced, squarely in front of the hatch, which couldn’t, Theo thought, taking momentary cover behind a parked jitney, be anything but bad news.

She dropped to one knee behind the jitney, shivering, and her breath coming hard, though she’d hardly run any distance at all. Her right hand, the one she’d broken the woman’s wrist with—her hand hurt. She shook it, carefully, and winced.

Gonna need to get some ice on that,
she thought, which brought her neatly back around to the fact that there was an armed . . . person between her and her ship, a deadline getting shorter with each breath she took—and she
didn’t have time
for this!

Think, Theo.

As far as she understood from the
Guild Quick Guide
, Tokeoport didn’t exactly have a law force, proctors or security; it was the portmaster who was the final judge of right and wrong.

Theo sighed, weighing her choices: confront the woman guarding her ship, or take the problem to the portmaster, who might or might not have time to hear her, and who might or might not think the situation merited penalties all around?

“I
don’t
have time for this,” she muttered.

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. The shivering had eased off; her joints felt like they had too much give in them and her hand ached. Her primary hand, of course.

Carefully, she peered around the jitney and studied the woman blocking her entry to the
Toss
.

A middle-tall Terran wearing clean, but well-scarred working leathers that hung too loose off her broad shoulders. As far as Theo could tell, the gun was clean and cared-for, but her boots weren’t by any means new. The belt holding the woman’s pouch and holster was notched too far back; the tongue was double-tucked under the front loop to keep it out of the way.

Theo sat back on her heels.

Chances were what she had here was an opportunist, somebody who made what money she could by charging pilots a “toll” for letting them onto their own ships. The
Quick Guide
had described just such a scam, as an illustration of why it was advisable to leave at least one crew member aboard.

She touched the inner pocket where she’d kept her Terran money, not really surprised to find it flat. The second money pocket appeared to be untouched, and the most private pocket, with its precious two cantra pieces, was secure.

The chronometer hanging on
her
belt showed a time elapsed on Tokeoport that didn’t make her happy at all.

It might, she thought, touching the second pocket again to feel the comforting hardness of coin beneath her fingers, be most efficient to pay the woman off, get aboard and
leave
this chaos-driven, antisocial world.

Whatever she had picked up here had
better
be worth it, she thought darkly, and stood up, carefully, from behind the jitney.

* * *

The woman watched her approach with every appearance of interest, neither holstering her weapon nor bringing it forward.

Theo stopped six long paces out and raised her hands to belt height, fingers spread.

“Good day to you,” she said politely.

The courtesy seemed to amuse the woman; she half-smiled and gave an easy nod.

“Evenin’.”

“You’re between me and my ship,” Theo told her. “I need to board.”

“It’ll cost ya.”

Cost her, to board her own ship? Theo swallowed against a jolt of pure anger.

Expediency,
she reminded herself, and, with the anger still on way too warm,
inner calm
.

“How
much
will it cost me?” she asked, as evenly as she could manage.

“More’n you’re likely to think fair,” the woman said, and brought the gun up, finger tightening.

Theo dropped back, her body finding the proper dance move—twist and kick. The gun spun out of the woman’s hand. Theo lunged, her opponent dodged, there was a whine in Theo’s ear and a ping against the hull.

“Not at me, you fool!” the woman shouted, half turning.

She gasped, a look of surprise on her face, and crumpled even as Theo jumped for the hatch, key in hand.

There was another whine, another ping. Theo raised the key—

It shattered, spitting energy, stinging her fingers.

She spun, intuiting the shooter, rather than seeing her, dove forward in a somersault, snapped to her feet and ran. Something slapped her on the right shoulder; she ignored it and kept running, slamming through the gate and into the alleyway, running without thinking, and there was something in the middle of the way—piles of rags or—

Sobbing, she collapsed to her knees, staring at the ruined faces of the man and the woman who had tried to rob her. A neat hole, like the sort made by a pellet, was in the middle of each forehead.

Behind her, she heard the gate to the hotyard clang.

- - - - -

BOSS CONRAD SUGGESTS PUBLIC WAY CONCEPTS

TO COMMITTEE OF BOSSES

Following last week’s fatal shootout at the borders of Plaski and Glenbiny, Committee of Bosses spokesman Boss Kalhoon tells Blair Road Booster that the committee is under serious advisement by Boss Conrad to rapidly adopt a joint Public Way policy for Surebleak Port and contiguous trails, alleys, walks, routes, and roadways.

While some of the policy would merely codify the way things have always been done, others would change the way hucksters, vendors, indie-walkers, beggars, scrappers, and trade folk operate while in areas administered by and for the public by recognized Bosses.

Last week’s tangle left three dead and more than a dozen injured when a former Plaski underboss, Craig Edwards, demanded spot rent of cloth huckster Lin Thicum, of Plaski. Thicum refused and moved her wagon into the road across the line into Glenbiny, at which point Edwards and several backers pulled and fired without warning, wounding Thicum but catching immediate fatal return fire from a car blocked by Thicum’s rag wagon.

“Manners are important these days,” Kalhoon said, “especially with so many new people using the road. Not only will we need to settle what parts of the road are Public Way and which parts can be vend spots, we’ll all need to be careful about pulling in a Public Way. While Thicum might have had problems for blocking a car from the Road Boss’s house, the driver, cook and gardener in that car work for the Road Boss and needed to keep the Road open, which Edwards was impeding.”

The Committee of Bosses is expected to have a policy in place tonight, so watch the morning edition of Blair Road Booster for details.

- - - - -

Theo knelt in the dark, nearly doubled over from the stitch in her side. She’d brought her breathing under control, but she couldn’t stop the shivering. There was something wrong with her eyes—nearby objects had an alarming tendency to slide in and out of focus—and she felt . . . feverish; hot and sticky in a way that had nothing to do with physical exertion.

At least she wasn’t alone, here in the dark. There was . . . someone standing just out of sight, behind her left shoulder. Backup. Someone familiar—Win Ton, she’d thought at first, but no! It was Father. No, how could she have been so—Kara, of course! Or—well . . . well, what did it matter who, as long as she knew that someone had her back?

She took a breath, deep as the ache in her side would allow, and shivered again.

The wayroom had opened to her Guild card, just like the
Quick Guide
had promised. She’d dialed the lights off and locked the door behind her, and now—now, she was waiting.

She had enough credit on her card to keep the wayroom locked for days. If they’d been ordinary thieves, she might’ve had some hope of waiting her pursuers out—whoever they were, and whatever they wanted.

It could, she thought, be the
Toss
they were after. Uncle had . . . enemies—Val Con among them, by policy, if not by inclination. The trader on Gondola—Mildred Bilinoda—she’d been worried—worried that Uncle was taking chances that would endanger his contacts—

And his pilot?

Was it a
plan
? she wondered. Had he intended her as a decoy? Why? And would he risk the
Toss
—no ordinary ship, but old, and lovingly maintained . . .

There was a movement, out
there
.

Theo huddled closer inside the disposal unit’s inlet door, and strained her eyes.

The dusk was smeary with colors, like she was trying to sight through a faded and unsteady rainbow. She could see enough, though. She could see three figures, two with guns ready, standing slightly aside, guarding the back of the woman who stepped forward and touched the wayroom’s intercom button.

“Pilot of Korval, I greet you.” The words were in Trade; the woman’s voice solemn and sweet. “It is Osa pel’Naria at your service, Pilot. I stand here with two of my team, to escort you to your ship.”

Escort her to her ship—how likely was that? Theo thought. And then thought that maybe it
was
, if they thought she still had the key.

Cutting through the hull was bound to attract unwanted attention, even on such a port as this. They might also worry about booby traps and failsafes, those being standard ship security among grey traders, according to Rig Tranza. For a man who’d been a respectable pilot for a respectable shipping conglomerate for slightly more years than Theo’d been alive, Rig Tranza had known a lot about the practices of grey traders.

“Pilot of Korval,” the woman was at the intercom again. “Perhaps you doubt our intentions. Allow me to show you a token of our goodwill.”

She raised her hand, showing the spy-eye a small object that shot sparks of silvered flame in Theo’s blurry vision.