Laldasa (55 page)

Radha supported her in a motherly embrace to a Balin aircar while Jaya and Mall Gar followed in their wake. An officer moved smartly to open the door for them. The Deva helped Ana in, her embrace never faltering.

“We will catch these men, Nathu Rai,” said Gar. “We have that bodyguard—or so I assume him to be—we will track down his master.”

Jaya glanced down at Ana, curled like a child in the Deva's lap. “Better you find him than I do, Commander. Because I would kill him.”

oOo

“They were always hooded,” Ana said, looking at her knees.

She would not meet his eyes now, Jaya noticed, as if she had committed some transgression that would be discovered if she did. The examination by the Asvin Suhrdam, as kindly as he was, seemed to have caused her further strain. So, too, had been the tearful reunion with Jivinta, Hadas and her father.

“Neither wore any sign of rank.” She spoke in what Jaya could only describe as a careful monotone. “The Mystic wore a plain, gold ring. I didn't see any holo-pics or any other images in the room. The Mystic's eyes were dark hazel; the other's were like steel or the under-belly of a cloud.”

“There is this,” said Mall Gar, dangling the paruta flask by its chain.

Jaya shivered and thought Ana did the same.

“The paruta is a common clan totem,” said Jaya. He glanced at Ana, trying to pull her eyes to him. At last, he succeeded and watched memory flair in her eyes.

“Red and gold ... the wedding dress! The big man said his friend had noticed red and gold became me. So I ... I asked him—the Mystic—why he had dressed me in red and gold. He said it was the color of Indra, first of all—and therefore an irony.”

“An irony?” Jaya repeated.

She turned her eyes away from him. “An irony for a Genda Sita to wear the color of the Sacred. The red was also for our wedding, of course, and because he recalled that it became me. As if he'd seen me in red before.”

Jaya nodded. “The Mesha Fest. That doesn't narrow it down much. We had a house full of guests.” He hesitated, then decided to take a step toward the mystical. “What about the box? A box made of bhasvata crystal?”

Ana's eyes widened. “One of them showed me a box cut from a single huge crystal. He said it came from his family mine. How did you-?”

“His family mine?” The Deva stirred from her window seat.

“Yes.” Ana nodded. “He said the family mine was in the Lake District.”

“Ah!” Mall Gar was already on his way to the study's vicom. “That narrows things down a great deal.”

His fingers flew over the keypad, bringing up screen after screen. At length, he shook his head.

“Ansar. That is the family name of the mine upon which the Kasi-Nawahr Consortium's fortunes were built. But that is not the name of any family or business currently attached to the directorship. The mine is now closed and has been let to some minor religious sect as a shrine.”

Radha moved to stand at his shoulder. “Perhaps he was lying, then. Or perhaps it was the mother's family who owned the mine, or even the grandmother's. If that's the case ... ”

Gar made an explosive sound of frustration. “This must not be a dead end,” he said, as if he could threaten reality into obedience.

“Excuse me.”

The Rani Melantha stood in the doorway. When all eyes turned to her, she seemed to flicker like a candle flame at the point of guttering.

She cleared her throat delicately and said, “I'm afraid I must admit to eavesdropping. You're trying to locate a place in the Lake District. I was born and raised there. Perhaps I can help.”
 

“Do you know of the Ansar mine, Rani?” asked the Deva.

“Of course. Through that mine, Ansar became the first family of Vatapur.”

“Then how is it they are not the first family of the Consortium?” asked Mall Gar.

The Rani's perfect brows ascended. “They are, in a manner of speaking. Ansar was the family name until about sixty years ago. There was no male heir in that generation, so the property passed to the eldest daughter—oh, I can't remember her name.”

“And to a husband?” asked Jaya.

“Yes, to her husband. But he'd married into her family property so the Ansar name stayed with the mine. How does any of this bear on-“

“One of the men who kidnapped Ana claimed to be the Ansar heir.”

The Rani's eyes widened slightly. “Nigudha Bhrasta,” she said.

 
“Ah,” said Mall Gar. “Not merely one of the members of the Consortium, but its head.”

The others digested the news silently. Jaya could not claim surprise. He moved to pick up the paruta flask.

“But the serpent isn't the totem of either Ansar or Bhrasta families.”

Ana shook her head. “No, that belonged to the other. The Mystic. It was a family heirloom.”

The Rani's head jerked as if someone had slapped her. Her eyes, huge, dark and glittering, fastened on the flask.

“Namun.” She whispered the name, and for five seconds all sound was sucked from the room.

Jaya, too, stared at the flask and felt the world rock. “Namun Vedda? Uncle Namun? That's impossible. As I said, the serpent is such a common ... ”

The Rani lowered herself into the nearest chair. “Has it wings?”

Jaya looked at it again. “Yes, it has wings.”

“The wings of a butterfly?”

He did not answer. The world, which had made little sense just recently, now failed to make any sense at all.

“Excuse me, Nathu Rai,” said the Deva softly, “but I believe Commander Gar and I need to inform our forces that they have a new target.”

She nodded at the Sarngin and they removed themselves to the privacy of the small parlor next door.

Jaya could no longer stand. He lowered himself into a chair across from his mother, holding her gaze, linking them in a mutual agony of disbelief.

“That man,” murmured the Rani at length, “has been in this house countless times as your father's friend. Pretending. Pretending to be his friend. Eating at his table. I had thought of him as ... ”

“Family,” Jaya finished. “My ‘Uncle' Namun. God, I should have known. Somehow, I should have known.”

The Rani covered her face with her hands.

“Where might he go?”

Rokh Nadim's voice jarred Jaya and brought him back to the reality that Nigudha Bhrasta and Namun Vedda were still free. He opened his mouth to say nothing.

It was Ana who spoke: “A safe place. Jitah—Bhrasta's dasa—said the Mystic would go to his safe place.”

“Which could be anywhere on Mehtar,” observed her father.

“Or anywhere on Avasa,” noted Mall Gar as he re-entered the room. “He has a private starcoach and there is also a corporate one at his disposal.” He raised his hand as Jaya would have spoken. “The Vadin Bithal has already sent men to the Spaceport. He has also requested that no private KNC vessels be allowed to depart.”

The Rani lifted her head. “Just outside of Vatapur on the Lake of Jewels, very near the mine, Namun had a residence. He spent holidays there. Sometimes we would go with him. Jaya, you remember. I was there over the Mesha festival the year your father ... ” She uttered a sharp laugh at the self-inflicted pain. “He said it would restore me.”

“You know where this residence is?” asked Gar. “You could show me on a holo map?”

She nodded, rising. “I would be happy to, Commander.”

“The Bogar!” murmured Ana.

Nadim-sama turned to look at his daughter with incredulity etching his weathered face. “What possesses my daughter to utter such an obscenity?”

Ana shook her head. “He—Vedda—said he'd studied with the Bogar, lived with them in the secret caverns. Bhrasta talked about letting some minor religious sect let the mine.”

The Rani was nodding vigorously. “Yes! He joked about it. Don't you remember, Jaya? He used to tease you about them sacrificing children to their dragon god. You were terrified, but it kept you away from the mine. He told me he was afraid you might fall“

“That's our best possibility then,” said Gar, bending back to his business. “I will inform the Vadin Bithal.”

Jaya rose and offered Ana his hand. “Come outside with me?”

She glanced at him, warily he thought, and then at her father, whose expression was neutral, if interested.

“There's nothing we can do here, right now,” Jaya told her. “This is in Gar's hands, and the Deva's.”

She nodded, rose, took the offered hand, and let him lead her out through the ornately leaded glass panels, onto the long ledge of tiled patio that ran behind the wing. Outside, the afternoon sun played warmly on the pale tiles, picking out sparkling bits of mica and crystal.

They stopped in unison at the balustrade and gazed over the formal garden and the fountain with its jeweled fish. He thought he might have found his voice, and turned to her to speak, but the look on her face stopped him. There was anguish there, the lost look of someone who had—he dragged in a deep breath—someone who had just been through a de-humanizing and terrifying ordeal.

He raised a hand and stroked her bruised neck. It looked horrible—a dark ring of purple and black with a contrasting scarlet collar from the tether's chafe. He knew from the husky whisper of her voice that her throat must still ache when she spoke. His own throat ached as if in empathy. Tears welled and refused to be dammed.

Ana's face showed her amazement. “For me, Nathu Rai?”

Before he could formulate words, she lifted his hand from her neck and kissed the raicree in the palm. A flash fire of pure desire struck him. He showered it with shame. Desire was inappropriate just now. It would be the last thing she wanted from him. The last thing.

“Do you know what I thought,” she said, holding his hand against her swollen throat, “when I believed I wouldn't escape that place?” She laughed. It was a tight, painful sound. “Well, I thought a great many things—that I might grow wings and fly away; that I might stop my heart from beating-“

“No,” he murmured.

“That I might be able to call out to you.”

“You did.”

“So it seems. What I thought, Jaya Rai, while I lay in that room, was that I wished Govi had not timed his visit to you so poorly, a certain evening. That Ravi had not come looking for you because of it.” Her eyes met his, direct and fearless. “I wanted you to know that. I thought: better to lose one's self to kindness than to cruelty.”

Jaya was surprised to hear himself say (and mean), “I will be forever grateful for both Govi's poor timing and Ravi's interruption. I wasn't ready for that. You weren't ready for it. I didn't understand you then.”

She studied his face, a glint of something impish deep in the pale eyes. “And you do now, you think?”

“I don't know. But I do know that I didn't then—that's something, isn't it?”

He smiled—or, rather, tried to. He realized vaguely that she was waiting for something from him. Perhaps it was the same thing he was waiting for.

“The Deva Radha has told me that she would like you to study for the Cloud Order,” he said.

She nodded. “She said the same to me.”

“You'd like that?”

Again, she nodded. “It's one of my deepest longings.”

“Could a Deva also be a Rani of the House Sarojin? Could she be a wife, a member of a family as well as a bhakta?”
 

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you serious?” she asked, peering up at him. “How can I be a Rani and still have my mice and my mountaintop? You have some very peculiar ideas about religion, Nathu Rai.”

She was teasing him. He was unsure whether it was meant to acknowledge their bond or put distance between them. Afraid of distance, he tried to bridge it physically. She still held his hand; now he took hers and performed the same simple ritual she had performed, turning the palm to his lips and kissing the doctored dascree.

“Pardon, Nathu Rai.”

Once again, Jaya found himself holding a broken moment. He turned and met Ravi's inquiring gaze. At least this time there was not so much obvious disapproval in it.

“Pardon, but the Commander has sent me to tell you that an accident has occurred at the Spaceport. It appears that Bhrastasama has been killed attempting to leave Mehtar.”

An accident had indeed happened at the Spaceport. As the order to stop all KNC related flights came into the Flight Console Administrator, two vessels—one, a KNC starcoach, the other a private skycoach owned by Namun Vedda—were preparing to lift from the field. The skycoach had already demagnetized its docking cradle and was waiting on anchors for the go-ahead. ConAdministrator Pangel ordered it to hold. It did, but the pilot of the starcoach continued with lift-prep, ignoring him completely.