Ghost Ship (7 page)

“Think they’re gonna come in shooting?” she asked interestedly.

“It is a possibility,” he admitted, turning his head to smile down at her, “though the odds are not particularly high.”

“Which is why you’re between me and the door.”

His smile softened.

“It harms no one to be prudent.”

“Now, the way I heard it . . .” she began, then stopped at the sound of voices outside the door.

One was the security guy—Jeremy—explaining to a lower, sterner voice how they hadn’t given him no trouble, which they hadn’t. Would’ve put a strain on the kin-bond to go breaking up Pat Rin’s gaming house and, besides, security’d only been doing their job.

The lower voice said something short and definitive and the door came open, sharp, just in case they were crowding it. Jeremy, the security guy, took point, followed by a man who was surely a pro, the gun showing on his belt more of a neighborly warning than a threat. The third man was—familiar. Yellow hair so light it just missed white, steel-rimmed spectacles, and a tough, wiry build. She
knew
this guy, she was sure of it, but she couldn’t quite bring to mind—

“See, Boss?” Jeremy said, jerking his head in their general direction. “No trouble, no chatter. Nothing. Sleet, he’s even naked.”

Inside her head, she saw the ripple of Val Con’s amusement. His head was turned away, but she knew as sure as if she’d seen it that the eyebrow had gone up.

The blond man’s smile was tight, but his voice was calm and even friendly.

“It’s what we say here, when somebody’s not carrying.”

“I thank you,” Val Con answered, “I was unaware of the usage.”

“Welcome. Now, we got some questions for the pair of you—”

The pattern clicked. Miri came to her feet, moving around to get a better look, registering Val Con falling in by her off-arm, but not paying much attention, because she had it now. By
damn
if it wasn’t—

“Penn Kalhoon—is that really you?”

He looked over to her, light sliding off his glasses, wary puzzlement in the set of his shoulders. His bodyguard shifted, a friendly reminder that he was on the job, that was all—and no worries; she wasn’t going to make a lunge for his boss.
Penn Kalhoon
. Now she had it, she could see the kid he’d been, back when she’d worked pickup at his father’s garage. He’d been her friend.

He wasn’t sharing her moment of clarity, though.

“C’mon, Penn, I changed so much since? I can still fit in the little places.”

His face cleared, stance going from baffled to disbelief.

“
Miri Robertson
? What the sleet’re you doing, coming back here?”

She laughed. “Asked myself the same thing more times than you wanna know. You’re looking good—prosperous.”

“You’re looking the same,” he said cordially, but keeping one eye on Val Con, who hadn’t been explained yet. “Soldierin’ agreed with you.”

“It did. Mustered out with a captain’s chop on my sleeve.” She extended a hand, slow and easy out of consideration for the nerves of the man with the gun. “Penn, this is my partner, Val Con yos’Phelium. Val Con, here’s Penn Kalhoon. We was kids together, over on Hamilton Street—Latimer’s turf it was then.”

“Boss Kalhoon’s turf now,” the pro added.

Val Con nodded gravely. “Penn Kalhoon, I am pleased to meet you.”

“Pleasure,” Penn answered, which was maybe a little brief. He moved a hand, showing them the bodyguard. “This my ’hand, Joey Valish. You met Jeremy.”

“Indeed. Gun-sworn Valish, I am pleased to see you.”

The ’hand grinned, showing a sizable gap in the top row of his teeth. “Got that right.”

Penn frowned, like maybe he was getting a headache, which was possible, Miri thought. They seemed to have that effect on people.

“Interesting ring you got there.”

“It is a family heirloom,” Val Con said, raising his hand so Penn could see it better. “My kinsman wears one very like it.”

“You wanna expand on that?”

Miri heard rapid steps in the hall, saw a shadow at the open door and, that quick, Val Con had shifted, putting himself between her and a fast-moving, dark-haired woman, his empty hands held out, and her whole attention focusing instantly on his face.

She stopped, brows pulling together.

“The resemblance is not—”

“Some consider it marked,” Val Con interrupted. “But it was not the face that distressed the child, it was the Ring.”

“Which—”

“The sticks dealer.”

Her shoulders moved slightly. “Villy. Yes, he . . . has an attachment.”

Penn cleared his throat.

“Excuse me,” he said, when the newcomer turned her head to look at him. “You know each other?”

There was a small, charged silence.

“Indeed, no, we do not.” She turned back and bowed, sweet and solemn. Not a Liaden bow exactly, but it got the point across. “I ask that you forgive my lapse of manners, sir and lady. The report I received was . . . troubling in the extreme, and I fear that, in my haste, I overlooked proper behavior.” She bowed again. “Please allow me to welcome you to Surebleak.”

“Nothing to forgive,” Miri said. “And thanks for the welcome.” She stepped up to Val Con’s side and gave the woman a cordial nod. “Happens Penn and me go way back, and we’re introduced to Joey and Jeremy. Who’re you, exactly?”

She bowed again.

“I,” she said with a calm that sounded forced to Miri’s ear, “am called Natesa.”

Oh,
she thought,
Natesa. Also known as Inas Bhar. Also known as Juntavas Judge Natesa, gun-name Natesa the Assassin.

Pat Rin’s lifemate.

She inclined her head, catching Val Con’s intent half-breath before he spoke.

“I See you.”

Her coloring was a rich brown. It could’ve been that she paled. She did absolutely freeze, then swayed into a bow so smooth and deep a body might have doubted the moment of hesitation.

“Korval,” she said, and straightened.

“Boss Conrad was delayed at the far point of the road. I have instructions from him that the car is to proceed from the port with Boss Kalhoon representing the Surebleak Bosses. Boss Conrad will join the procession at Hamilton Street.” She paused. “Departure time approaches; the car awaits you at Portmaster Liu’s office.”

“We are, I believe, ready to leave very soon.” Val Con said, and looked to Miri. “
Cha’trez
?”

“I’m ready when you are,” she said. “We oughta make it right, first, since the kid’s so attached.”

“So we ought,” he agreed. “If Penn Kalhoon will grant us a moment’s grace before we assay the car?”

Penn glanced to Natesa, and got a nod.

“Take what you need,” he said.

“We will not be long. Natesa, of your kindness.”

“This way, please,” she said.

Miri slipped her hand into Val Con’s, gave Penn a grin and a nod, and the two of them followed Natesa out of the waiting room.

- - - - -

Villy sat in the chair Leeza had put him in, back in the office, staring at nothing in particular. Nobody had come to tell him what’d happened—why that man had the Boss’s ring. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Until he heard it, until somebody told him
for sure
—he could pretend that Boss Conrad wasn’t—that everything was all right, nobody’d gotten retired, or—

There was a step in the hall outside; the door opened.

“Villy.”

Ms. Natesa. Villy ground his teeth together. Ms. Natesa’d tell him the truth, and suddenly he was very sure that the truth was the last thing he wanted to hear.

“Villy, here are some people you must meet. But first, I will tell you—the Boss has taken no injury.”

The world went kind of ragged at the edges, and Villy heard a roaring in his ears.

“I—” he began, then stopped, the words replaying in his head. He blinked, raised his head and looked into Ms. Natesa’s face. “He’s alive?”

She smiled and nodded. “I have only moments ago spoken to him myself.”

“But, the ring—”

“The ring,” said the soft voice of the man who had been with the red-haired woman—and there he was, just behind Ms. Natesa’s shoulder, and his partner, too. “The ring that Boss Conrad wears is a copy of this one, which is much older. You must, please, forgive me for having put you in such distress. I am Boss Conrad’s kinsman. My name is Val Con yos’Phelium.”

He put his hand out and pulled the red-haired woman forward. “This is my . . . you would say my wife, Miri Robertson, who grew up on what is now Boss Kalhoon’s territory. We—ourselves and our family—have signed a contract with the Bosses of Surebleak, to assist in holding open the Port Road.”

Villy blinked up at him, trying to understand it all, but only one thing seemed really important.

“There are two rings?”

“Precisely,” the man said gravely.

“And the Boss really ain’t been—Boss Conrad’s all right? Not hurt?”

Okay, two things.

“Boss Conrad is perfectly well, if a trifle annoyed at the moment,” Natesa said, touching his arm lightly.

A hundred years subtracted themselves from Villy’s age, and he took the first free breath he’d had in a hour.

“Thank you,” he said. He remembered then what the man had said, first off, and gave him a vigorous nod. “I forgive you,” he said.

Val Con yos’Phelium smiled gravely and inclined his head.

“Thank you, Villy. You do your boss great honor.”

EIGHT

The Grand Progress

Surebleak

The fifth tollbooth was Hamilton Street, surrounded by what was now the familiar gaggle of well-wishers and thrill-seekers. There was also a car parked next to the ’booth, muddy and dinged up. At the front of the crowd, in the Boss’s place of honor, stood a slender figure in a blue jacket, brown hair rumpled by the wind, his back got by a man considerably larger, a stocky woman in a good warm coat at his right hand.

In the seat across from Miri, Penn Kalhoon visibly relaxed.

“My experience with the Boss is that he’s timely,” she commented. “Said he’d meet us, and here he is.”

Penn shot her a look, lenses flashing, and maybe a little extra color in his cheeks.

“Good to be back on my own turf,” he said, matching her tone for dryness. “Old habits.”

“It is always a relief,” Val Con murmured from beside her, “to raise a friendly port.”

Which was overstating the case, at least in the opinion of Miri’s own set of old habits. Every single one of her nerves was on end, and had been, since they got in the car, and drove two blocks to where the tollbooth for Boss Vine’s territory used to be.

Vine’d been sleek and welcoming, with just the one ’hand at his back, and the thrill-seekers held a little ways off by a strip of orange perimeter tape. He’d made a neighborly little speech about how the Port Road was good for everybody’s business and how he, with Boss Conrad, and Boss Korval and every Boss between, was eager to see business grow.

Nice as it was, it hadn’t done much to ease the itch between Miri’s shoulders, and she’d heaved an undiplomatic sigh of relief when they’d gotten themselves all three safe back in the car and it started moving toward the next territory in line. Surebleak taught you caution and carefulness, else you didn’t live long enough to pull damnfool stunts like coming back and setting up as a target.

“Boss Conrad looks as if he has had a difficult day,” Val Con observed.

Penn glanced over his shoulder, then back to Val Con with a nod.

“The freeholder up next to your turf’s more skittish than most, so I’ve heard from Boss Sherton. Your house coming down to settle like it did might’ve taken him wrong.”

“And thus the Boss would have had to exert his charm and his patience.”

Miri laughed. “There’s enough to tire him out right there.”

Penn grinned. “He prolly had to climb a tree on top of it all.” He shook his head. “I’m leaving you here,” he said. “When you get settled, the two of you come to the house for dinner. Thera—that’s her, next to Boss Conrad—she’s been wanting to meet Boss Korval since we had word you’d be coming.”

“We will be happy to visit,” Val Con said. “Indeed, we’re planning a small entertainment of our own, and hope that you and your lady will be able to attend.”

Oh, were they
? Miri threw him a look.

“Once we’re settled,” she said, firmly.

He smiled. “Of course.”

Penn cleared his throat and tried to look like he wasn’t grinning. The driver set the brake, and Penn popped the door, getting out first and letting himself be seen, just like he had four times before.

“Only five more,” Miri said, sliding out after Penn. The place between her shoulders was starting to itch, again. Worse, her back was starting to hurt.

“Five more,” Val Con agreed behind her. “And then we will be home.”

Right.

Miri came out of the car, remembering to smile, and to wave at the crowd when she got to Penn’s side. A second later, she felt Val Con’s fingers slip through hers.

The black-haired woman in the warm coat came forward to take Penn’s hand, and the crowd applauded, amid some whistles and catcalling.

“Listen up!” Penn called over the uproar. He waved at them to stand forward, which they did.

“These here’re the Bosses Korval, Val Con yos’Phelium and Miri Robertson. They signed the Road Protection Agreement you read about in the newspaper, and they’ll be settling into the new house just in behind Boss Sherton’s turf. Take a good look at ’em, ’cause they tell me they don’t mean to be strangers here on Hamilton Street.

“There’s an extra reason for that, too. I don’t know how many of you remember, but Miri Robertson, she grew up on this turf, back when Boss Latimer held it. She worked pickup in my dad’s machine shop, before she went off-world for merc. I’m proud to welcome her back, with her partner. These folks’re gonna be good for business, people!”

There was more racket after that, while the four of them smiled and waved.

After the noise died down some, Penn brought his wife around, and introduced her with a smile in which pride was plain.

“I am so happy to meet both of you,” she said, reaching out to touch their sleeves. “Penn remembered to invite you to dinner, didn’t he?”