Laldasa (54 page)

“So. You were not alone at the dalali, Rohina. One of your friends was with you. The old Vadin failed to mention that.”

His voice held no anger; indeed, he seemed amused.

“He saw us, you know. Just for an instant, but that was enough. Now he sends us away, you and I. You cannot be found here. It would ruin my friends.”

Reaching behind Ana's back, he loosed her tether from the bed frame and looped it around her neck, fashioning a crude collar. He pulled it tight with supreme gentleness, holding the free end in his other hand.

“You, Rohina,” he said, his voice equally gentle, “will give me what I desire. Because it will become your desire as well. You will share with me the power of the Jadu. Do this, and I will see that my so powerful friend harms no one.”

Ji, forgive me my lies, Ana prayed. “Yes,” she whispered aloud. “Yes, I'll give you the Jadu.”

“You are a brave woman, Anala Nadim. A selfless woman, to sacrifice all for those you love.” He gazed at her for a moment more, then said, “Do this for me, and I promise I shall use my new power on behalf of your father and his associates. You see, not only do I have certain things my friend needs, but I also possess knowledge of his dealings that would be damaging were it to be known to the Circle or the Vrinda Varma.”

“But your friend ... is part of the Consortium. If you helped my father ... ”

“It would mean ruin for my friend, yes. All part of the dance. Empires rise and fall and rise again.” He released his hold on her tether. “Jitah, please attend us.”

At the sound of his voice, the dasa appeared so quickly, Ana was certain she'd been listening.

“Jitah, please get her ready to move.”

He left them.

Please, he had said. To a dasa. What sort of man was this who could be so cruel and yet so gentle?

When Jitah had made certain he had gone, she spoke in hushed, hurried tones. “He will take you to his safe place. To a place no one can find you. A place you will not be able to escape.”

She moved quickly, pulling the loosened loop from Ana's neck and closing the clasps of the wedding gown. Then, she freed Ana's hands and pulled them to the front where she manacled them tightly together.

“Now,” she said. “These only seem tight. If you twist your wrists so-“ She demonstrated with an inward, then outward roll. “-they will part. Try it—quickly.”

Stunned, heart thumping with sudden hope, Ana repeated the movements. A carefully arranged loop of the composite cord slipped free, allowing her wrists about a half-meter of play.

Jitah quickly rewound the loop, then withdrew a small, ivory lozenge from her sash. It looked like a woman's lip brush. She held it before Ana's face and pressed a tiny red-jeweled button in the left eye of the creature likeness—the paruta again. From its mouth sprung, not a brush, but a thin finger-length blade. Jitah pressed the dragon's opposite eye—a golden one—and the blade retracted.

“Red for blood. Remember,” she said, and tucked the knife carefully behind the broad clasp at the waist of Ana's gown.

“Why are you doing this? He's sending me away. It's what you wanted.“

“You heard him—he would cause my master's ruin, and that would cause mine. Now,” she said, “one more thing. Master told me to drug you, but I won't.”

She took a small vial from the ornate rack on the bedside table and opened it. Then she poured its contents into the little censer where it was quickly absorbed by the ash. She set the vial down again in a conspicuous place.

“You must make to sleep,” she told Ana.

“How soon?”

“Soon. A minute only.”

Ana took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, calming her pulse, soothing her heart. “Thank you, Jitah.”

“I do this for me and mine. You have no need to thank me. I'd as soon see you dead.” She started to return to her packing, then paused. “If they kill you trying to escape, will you haunt me?”

Ana could not quite smile at that. “No, Jitah. I won't haunt you.”

The dasa nodded her satisfaction and went about her duties. Ana closed her eyes and prayed. It was a simple prayer: Give me the strength to take what I am given, and if I fail to escape, let me die in the attempt.

Ana kept her eyes closed. She had no choice, really. Her head rested upon her guard's muscular shoulder, her face was turned up into his. If she dared so much as flicker her lashes, he'd see it. So she hung limp in his arms and prayed for a chance to glimpse even a tiny tell-tale view of her prison. They went down long corridors, they descended in lift baskets, they emerged into the echoing vastness of a carpark.

The guard carefully lowered Ana into a vehicle. She smelled Jitah's perfume.

“No, no. Put her here, next to me,” said the voice of the Mystic.

The guard grunted and moved her to the rear-facing seat. She dared crack an eyelid.

Jitah, her face inscrutable, slipped sideways so she was facing Ana across the carpeted interior. The large man sat next to her. Were they coming along, after all? The guard glanced at her, then got in and sat next to his master.

“Close the door, Jitah.”

Jitah obeyed, activating the door control near her elbow with a bland gaze at Ana. The door was an inset slider that closed swiftly, creating an airtight seal.

Ana's heart turned a somersault in her chest. She thanked Ram-ji for the fortune and begged for the presence of mind to be able to signal Jitah when to open the door.

She dared open her right eye a bit wider. She couldn't see well outside the car, lying as the guard had put her. Her head was tilted forward, chin to chest, and canted very slightly toward the door. Instead of straining to see and taking a chance on giving herself away, she waited, impatiently, for an opportunity to change her position.

It came as the aircar navigated the passageway leading up from the carpark. There was a fairly sharp turn at the top and the car rocked slightly in taking it. Ana moaned a little and rolled toward the door, letting her forehead strike it solidly. She moaned again.

“Jitah, please see to her.”

At the sound of the Mystic's low but urgent voice, Jitah moved to steady Ana, lifting her head and bracing it against the window so that she could see her surroundings. And she could see quite well, despite the dark tinting of the car's windows.

They were pulling away from the artfully sculpted rear face of a grand building. It was shimmering, glass-like, and familiar. Ana had seen it in travel brochures; the “Asra of Industry,” they called it—Headquarters of the Kasi-Nawahr Consortium. It was what she'd expected, but somehow the certain knowledge that there was corruption and inhumanity high up in such a socially powerful and respected organization as the Consortium shocked her as if she'd only just discovered it.

They were gliding down a broad avenue bordered by trees and tall shrubs when the master of the situation chuckled. “Look, Jitah. Look at all the Sarngin and Balin scurrying about their business. I wonder if they're searching for our beautiful guest.”

Jitah twisted in her seat, straining to look, then turned back to Ana, her eyes wide. She moved her hand to cover the door control switch plate beneath her right elbow. Ana tensed, making a tiny gesture with one thumb.

“Oh! So many of them!” exclaimed the dasa, twisting around again. Her hand punched the control.

The door slid back into the wall of the car and Ana threw herself out into the street, twisting her wrists free as she fell. She landed painfully across the curbing of a grassy island and scrambled to her feet. She screamed and, screaming, raced out into the middle of the avenue.

All was chaos. The aircar in which she'd been imprisoned came to a gliding halt and pivoted. Other vehicles swerved to avoid it. The guard shot out of the back seat and pursued her, cutting between her and the approaching group of Sarngin and Balin aircars. He was armed.

Ana had no time to think. She pulled out the little knife, then threw herself into the shrubbery. The guard fired the stunfuzzy as she dove into the bushes. The near hit tingled across her back. Struggling upward, she ducked behind a tree, clawed her way past a tall bush. Behind that, she swung about, straining to peer down the street behind her. The tether between her wrists pulled suddenly tight, bringing her to the chilling realization that the cord of her manacles was tangled in the stemmy growth.

She fumbled the knife, pressed the paruta's eye button—red for blood—and was rewarded by the appearance of the short blade. She turned it on the manacle cord, hacking at it fiercely, frantically, the bush shaking with every move. It was futile; the cord would not be cut. Like an animal caught in a hunter's snare, she could only cower when her pursuer towered before her.
 

Seeing her caught there in the torn wedding dress, he grinned. Then he holstered his stun-fuzzy, reached for her with his big, sinewy hands, grasped her shoulders and pulled her toward him.

Ana drove the little knife into his stomach. Warm blood covered her hands and made darker blotches on the crimson fabric of the ruined gown.

With a bellow of pain and rage, the guard released her and wrenched away, his eyes wide with disbelief. He looked from Ana to his bloodied stomach and back, his eyes finally fixing on the tiny dagger she still held in trembling fingers. He drew another weapon from inside his jacket. No stun-fuzzy, this, but a lightning gun.

Terrified, Ana wrenched at her bonds. “He'll kill you!” she whispered hoarsely. “If I die, you die!”

He hesitated, then raised the gun, aiming it at her left hip.

“Then I won't kill you,” he said reasonably.

He put his thumb over the firing button, then made a funny shrugging gesture, his eyes going from wide to completely blank. He buckled at the knees, falling forward in slow motion. The lightning gun scraped down Ana's side as he fell against her and dropped to the ground. His head came to rest between her feet.

She stared at him, feeling a faint static tingle down her torso and legs. A sound made her cringe and glance up. Where the guard had stood was Mall Gar, a stun-fuzzy in his hand. He graced Ana with a startled appraisal, then turned his head and shouted toward the street. “Here, Nathu Rai! She is here!”

Ana closed her eyes and gave up control of her body to whatever spirit was willing to grasp it. Upright, but quaking, she listened for his footsteps. She would not open her eyes. She would not see his face when he came through the hedge and found her torn and bound and bloody, with Jitah's little dagger in her hands. She would not.

She did. And because she did, she saw the mingling of relief and horror, of joy and rage, of love and hatred. She felt it, too, in the quick current that flowed through the narrowing gap between them. Then, she saw another thing; she saw him weep.

Somewhere between the time he took her in a painful embrace and the time they emerged onto the street, someone had removed the manacles from Ana's wrists, checked her carefully for wounds, and put a cloak around her. Stepping down into the street, she took the clutter of Sarngin and Balin vehicles in a feverish glance. There were at least seven of them—the blue of the Sarngin, the white of the Balin—pulled into a haphazard pattern that blocked the avenue. But among them, one vehicle was conspicuously absent.

Ana stopped at the curbing. “Where is it?”

“Memsa?” Gar was at her side instantly.

“The big car. The blue one. The one I escaped from.”

“I regret, memsa, that it eluded us.”

Jaya swore.

“Two units gave chase,” Gar continued, “but without success. Do you have any idea where they were taking you?”

Ana stared up and down the road with something like despair knotting her stomach. Jaya took her shoulders and turned her to face him.

“Who was it, Ana? Do you know who it was?”

He spoke as if to a child, so gently, but with rage boiling just beneath concern. Ana felt it there, and thought of the hotsprings at home ... and then just of home. She swallowed, dropping her eyes away from his.

“There were two of them. They wore hoods. I never saw their faces. I only know that one of them was connected to the Consortium. He could have been anyone high up in the company. He had a serving girl named Jitah. The other, they called the Mystic. I didn't know him at all.”

Caught by the fluttering of her gauzy skirts, her eyes lowered further, taking in the dirt and blood and nakedness beneath the sheer wisps of torn cloth. A group of Sarngin stood nearby, staring at her. She started to shake again.

“Please, Nathu Rai,” she said. “Please, take me home.”

Jaya's touch seemed suddenly distant. He nodded silently and glanced at Gar.

“We can use my vehicle.” The Commander gestured at a plain blue aircar in the center of the broad way.

“No, Commander. I think you have a search to conduct. Anala and the Nathu Rai will come with me.” The voice was Sri Radha's.

Ana grasped it as a lame man grasps a walking stick. Lifting her head a little, she started to step off the curbing, but her shoeless feet and suddenly weak legs refused to obey her. She fell into the Deva's arms.