“Does it go well with fish?”
“I’m not sure. I fled before they tried it. Did you warn them?”
“Not exactly. I said you were being suspicious and that I was going to investigate.”
“Ah.” Alisa was not sure what else to say. This was not going as badly as she had feared, but she doubted she could trust Young-hee.
“What were you going to ask my mother?”
“If, as the temple archivist, she was familiar with a Starseer named Durant.”
“Durant Shepherd?”
“I didn’t catch the last name in the security vid,” Alisa said, letting herself feel a tiny tendril of hope that this unexpected resource would give her useful information.
“Well, it might not be the same person then, but Durant Shepherd was one of the men who left in a huff last summer. They were all friendly to the empire and distant relatives of the emperor himself. You could ask Abelardus about it. He would know a lot more.”
“Abelardus? The big warrior brute with all the braids?”
“Brute? Please. He’s gorgeous.” Young-hee sighed and rested a palm against her heart.
“Er, yes. Why would he know about Durant?”
“Because they’re brothers.”
The tiny tendril of hope in Alisa’s heart swelled to a thick vine. Abelardus had gone to the library with Leonidas and Alejandro. Finding him would be easy. Would he answer her questions? If not, maybe she could convince Leonidas to put his grenade launcher to use on her behalf. No, that would only get him in trouble. Alisa still had about a third of the brown powder left. Maybe she could spike a Galaxy Arkadia and offer him a drink.
Young-hee laughed again, the sound echoing from the walls of the small lavatory.
“Are you reading my mind?” Alisa asked.
“Of course. Would you trust anything that comes out of your mouth?”
“Perhaps not in this case, no.”
“Shall we go see if my mother and sister have tried the fish?” Young-hee smirked. “You may want to trial your drug on them before going after Abelardus. He’ll hurt you if he figures out what you’re up to.”
“Uhm, sure,” Alisa said, though she was more interested in running straight to the library. Unfortunately, that guard was still out there, and she doubted Young-hee was going to send him away so Alisa could have free run of the temple.
“I was dreading this meal when my mother brought it up,” Young-hee said as they stepped back into the hall, “but it’s turned out to be more interesting than expected.” The guard was, indeed, still out there, and he looked curiously at her, but she merely led the way up the stairs to the outdoor patio.
Yumi, Ji-yoon, and Soon-hee were at the table again, all leaning back in their chairs, all gesturing expansively with their arms and laughing as Yumi told a story that involved chickens and engines. Yumi should not have been drugged, but she was certainly acting it up, displaying as much cheer and enthusiasm as the other two women. Soon-hee waved her fork in the air, a piece of her half-eaten fish on the tines, and tried to pop it into her mouth. She missed, the fish fell on the table, and she giggled so hard that tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.
Young-hee stopped outside the door, her mouth dropping open as her mother nearly fell out of her chair laughing before catching herself on the table and righting herself. Young-hee gave Alisa an incredulous look.
“Yumi did this to pirates, too,” Alisa said. “She helped us escape that way.”
“She drugged pirates?”
“She did.”
“Huh, I always assumed from her profession that she could be stodgy. Maybe we’ll have to become pen pals.”
“I’m glad I could facilitate that,” Alisa said, “but is there any chance you could—”
Alisa’s comm beeped, and she jumped.
“Yes?” she answered, expecting it to be Mica reporting on her progress with the docking clamps.
“Captain?” a male voice asked.
“Doctor?”
“Yes. I need some help.”
Alisa felt her lips press together. Alejandro was the last person on her ship she cared about helping.
“Technically, Leonidas needs some help,” he said.
“What happened?” she asked, much more interested now. She barely noticed Soon-hee’s ongoing fork problems.
“There’s been a murder. He’s the suspect, and he’s resisting arrest. I don’t blame him, but they’re going to—”
A thunderous boom sounded.
Alisa heard it over the comm unit and from the other side of the temple. A mushroom cloud of smoke billowed up from a tower across the courtyard from their patio.
“Tell me that wasn’t Leonidas,” Alisa said.
“You shouldn’t have told him to blow up a tower for you.”
“Damn it, Doctor,” she said, turning toward the door, hardly caring if the guard tried to stop her. “What’s going on? Are you still in the library?”
“I have—” Alejandro broke off with a startled gasp.
“Doctor?” Alisa demanded. “Doctor, are you there?”
The comm line sounded like it was still open, with angry shouts sounding in the distance, but nobody responded.
• • • • •
Alisa implored Young-hee to take her to the library—she would have tried to break free of the guard and find the place on her own if the girl hadn’t agreed. To her surprise, she did, though they had to leave Yumi and the other women behind, since none of them seemed to grasp the need for urgency. From the way Yumi was being as silly as the others, Alisa suspected she had been tasting the spotted fish.
Trusting she would be fine there with her mother, Alisa strode after Young-hee. She wanted to run, but her guide did not feel her sense of urgency, either. Alisa clenched her fist and might have tried pushing her along, but her guard was also following along, watching suspiciously.
“Brenner?” a voice said over his comm. “Report to the library. We have an incident and need backup.”
The guard passed Young-hee and took off at a run. Alisa sprinted after him, not caring if Young-hee kept up or not. An incident? That could only be Leonidas. How in all three hells had he ended up accused of murder? Had someone else tried a mental attack on him, causing him to defend himself with force? Enough force to kill?
The guard charged up a wide set of stairs with ice pillars on either side, animals and mythological creatures carved into them. Another time, Alisa would have admired the artwork. Now, she was too busy chasing after the big man. They burst through the double doors at the top together.
At first, she did not see the trouble. A cavernous, carpeted room spread out before her, more carved pillars reaching to a high ceiling and rows and rows of bookcases stretching toward a distant, window-filled wall. But shouts came from the side, from a round room that looked to be the base of one of the ubiquitous towers. Someone roared in pain, and hair rose on the back of Alisa’s neck. She had never heard such an anguished cry come from Leonidas’s throat, but that sounded like him.
She sprinted toward the tower, running so fast that she passed the guard. Her Etcher found its way into her hand, even though the logical part of her brain informed her that it would be idiotic to shoot anyone here. She ran through the door and turned toward the noise, almost crashing into someone’s back. Several robed figures were lined up, and one of the robes was gray instead of black.
“Doctor,” Alisa blurted as the guard caught up with her, gripping her arm from behind.
Barely noticing, she was about to demand an explanation from Alejandro, but saw that two men were gripping his arms too. These were the young Starseer warriors, some of whom she had seen waiting outside of the Nomad. Alejandro was not wearing his satchel. Had they taken the artifact from him?
Two of the Starseers turned to look back at her, opening up the view of the room in front of them. Leonidas was on his hands and knees on the floor, his helmet off and blood dripping from his nostrils and ears.
The entire wall behind him had been blown away, and an alarmingly huge puddle of blood saturated the rubble-littered carpet in front of him. Wounded men groaned from the floor off to the side, one rolling and gasping, grabbing his ribs through his robe.
“Leonidas,” Alisa blurted, trying to pull away from the guard so she could go to him.
The Starseer did not let go of her arm, and her Etcher was clenched in that hand so she couldn’t bring it to bear. Instead, she whirled and slammed her boot into his kneecap. He clearly hadn’t expected her to attack, and the blow made him gasp, releasing her. She pushed between the two men who had turned to look back, thinking she might squeeze past them and throwing a few elbows to put them off guard, but they recovered and caught her.
Then some unfamiliar force restrained her further, a pressure on the inside of her skull that took control of her body away from her. She couldn’t continue forward. Her limbs simply would not work. She couldn’t even feel them. It was as if they had been frozen in ice.
Still on his hands and knees, Leonidas lifted his head. He met her eyes briefly, his own eyes squinting with pain, but he turned his head slightly and focused on an older man a few feet from Alisa. The gray-haired, pale-skinned Starseer’s hand was out, fingers splayed as he pointed his palm at Leonidas. Utter concentration was stamped on his face as he looked from Leonidas to the hole in the wall, to the drop beyond it, a hundred feet to the sea of ice below.
Alisa was no mind reader, but she knew without a doubt what he was thinking. To use his mind to shove Leonidas out, to cause him to fall to his death. She doubted that even Leonidas could survive a drop that far.
She tried to cry for him to stop, to distract him somehow, but her voice box would not work. The pressure in her skull seemed to build, causing pain, making her want to crumple into a ball and wrap her arms around her head instead of fighting further. Yet she struggled, trying to find a way to move, to break the hold on her.
“Stop it,” Alejandro said. “He’s done nothing.”
“He killed Abelardus and wounded three of my warriors,” the old man snarled, not taking his gaze from Leonidas as he spoke.
Abelardus? The one who knew Durant? Her only lead?
As soon as she had the thought, Alisa felt despicably selfish. Leonidas was writhing on the floor, maybe being killed before her eyes, and she was worried about her own problems?
“No,” she rasped, barely able to get the syllable out. She wanted to say that Leonidas wouldn’t have done that, that he wouldn’t have killed any of the men here, but an invisible hand tightened around her throat, and she could not utter the words.
Her eyes, the only things she could move, darted from side to side in her head as she tried to identify the person who was using this power on her. She did not know what she could do to stop it, but she wanted to know who was tormenting her so.
“If you can see his thoughts, then you know that’s not true,” Alejandro said. “He’s an honorable man. He wouldn’t have thrown someone out the window to his death.”
“What window?” the old man asked. “He blew up the window and the wall.”
“To try to disrupt the concentration of the people attacking him!”
“Of course we’re attacking him. He’ll kill us if he gets the chance, just like he did Abelardus.” The old man’s fingers twitched, and some force shoved Leonidas, heavy armor and all, toward the gaping hole in the wall.
Other men in the line smiled, though their faces were full of concentration too. They were all ganging up on Leonidas, bullying him.
Leonidas glared at them through the pain contorting his face, but he could not resist the invisible force pushing him toward the hole.
“If he’d wanted to kill you, he would have aimed the grenade at you,” Alejandro said, arguing more forcefully than Alisa would have expected from him. Despite his impassioned words, the Starseers were not listening. The old man continued to push Leonidas across the carpet, inch by inch. Wind swept through the hole in the wall and plucked at Leonidas’s sweat-drenched hair.
Realizing that physically fighting whatever held her was not working, Alisa tried going limp, slumping against the Starseer closest to her. He seemed startled, and for a second, the force around her throat disappeared as he caught her with his arms, keeping her from hitting the ground. Before she could move, the force around her body reasserted itself.
She hissed in frustration. The toe of Leonidas’s boot slipped over the edge of the hole. A piece of rubble from the wall was pushed through and tumbled free, falling too far for her to hear it land.
“That’s my security officer,” she blurted, startling herself because she hadn’t realized she would be able to speak. She immediately wished she had come up with some more useful argument. How was that going to sway them to let him go? Several faces turned toward her, and she felt foolish, but she pressed on. “I need him to fly my ship, to protect us from pirates. He’s… he’s integral, damn it. You have no right to—”
The force reapplied itself to her throat, cutting off her ability to speak and half of her air as well.
“No,” the old man said, lowering his hand. Leonidas still looked to be flattened to the floor, but he wasn’t being pushed farther toward the hole. “Let her speak.” His cold, soulless eyes locked onto hers. “Are you saying that the cyborg works for you, Captain?”
She recognized the trap as soon as he asked the question and realized her mistake in making the claim. She’d been looking for an argument that might sway them to leave him alone, but this could get her into as much trouble as he was in.
Leonidas managed to lift his head up. His eyes were wide, full of concern. Not for himself but for her. He looked like he wanted to shake his head wildly, but all he could get out was a slight gesture of the negative. “Don’t,” he mouthed, blood spilling down his chin when he moved his lips.
Seeing him in such pain, seeing him being bullied, made Alisa want to cry. And to rage. She struggled again against the invisible bonds that held her, longing to lash out, to shoot these cruel idiots.
“Because if that’s the case, Captain,” the old man said, “you’re responsible for his actions and just as much to blame for this murder as he is.”
Alisa looked toward the huge bloodstain. She did not see a body anywhere in the room. Had someone gone out the hole in the wall? She didn’t understand fully what had happened or how Leonidas had ended up in a brawl with someone here. His grenade launcher and blazer pistols were on the floor near the stain, too far away for him to reach now, but nobody else’s weapons were there, no sign of torn robes or coins that might have fallen out in a scuffle. There was just the blood.
“It’s not a military ship, Osmond,” someone said dryly. “She can’t be held responsible for a civilian employee going crazy.”
“Of course she can,” the old man snapped.
“He doesn’t work for her,” Alejandro said, meeting her gaze across the intervening Starseers. “She’s lying. We’re just passengers.”
More of the Starseers were focused on her now, her and Alejandro and the old man. In her peripheral vision, Alisa saw Leonidas’s fingers inching toward his opposite arm, toward some small panel in his armor. She immediately tried to think of something else, afraid someone monitoring her thoughts would notice her noticing his slight actions.
“Passengers that paid their fare,” Alisa said, filling her mind with images of the Nomad and her passenger cabins. “I aim to get them to their destination.”
No need to mention that this technically was their destination and that nobody had made arrangements for further passage. She hadn’t even made plans as to where she intended to go after this.
“Then it’s a shame your passenger chose to murder one of our people,” the old man said, shifting his attention back to Leonidas.
“He didn’t,” Alisa cried, though she had no way of knowing that. She hoped to give Leonidas the few more seconds he needed to do whatever he was trying to do.
&n
bsp; The old man frowned at her, but lifted his hand and stepped toward Leonidas.
Leonidas flicked something toward the Starseers, a thimble-sized canister that started spewing bluish-gray smoke as soon as it rolled across the carpet. The powerful stuff had an immediate impact. Horrible smoke curled down Alisa’s throat and into her nostrils, feeling like acid burning away her cilia. Tears streamed from her eyes.
The Starseers stumbled back, and the man holding her let her go. The invisible force wrapped around her also disappeared. Coughs filled the air all around her as the smoke thickened.
Alisa tried to stumble toward Leonidas, even though she could no longer see him in the dense haze, but she was too busy choking on snot and heaving, feeling like her body was trying to cough her lungs out into a pile on the carpet.
A hard arm went around her, and she found herself flung across someone’s shoulder. Leonidas?
As she was swept away from the smoke, her mind filled with an image of those docking clamps under her ship. How would they get away if Mica hadn’t found a way to deal with them yet? How would they get away even if she had? Wouldn’t the Starseers cause them to crash in the mists again?
Leonidas charged for the doors of the library, pushing robed men to the side, men clutching their noses and mouths, snot all over their fingers. They were too distracted by their own discomfort to stop him. He raced through the doorway into air that was thankfully clear of smoke.
Alisa expected him to keep going, to run down the stairs and all the way back to the ship. But he halted before starting down. Being draped over his shoulder limited her view, and she twisted, trying to see around his broad torso. She saw just enough to make her stomach sink.
Lady Naidoo stood at the bottom of the stairs with Young-hee at her side and six Starseer warriors lined up behind her, some with their staffs raised, others with plain blazers pointed at Leonidas. Naidoo herself held the tip of her staff toward him, and energy seemed to crackle in the air around it as the runes carved into the side glowed fiercely.
From the very still way that Leonidas stood, not even seeming to breathe, Alisa feared that he was being restrained by their power again. She wished he had simply run out without stopping to grab her. Maybe he would have made it farther alone. Though where he could have gone from here, she did not know.