The clink of stone hitting stone sounded inside the wall. Bracing her feet against the ground she leaned her weight into the wall. With a grating protest, as if wakened from a long sleep, a massive block slid inward and ponderously swung to one side. Beyond it, a passage stretched into darkness. She gathered up the scroll and squeezed into the tunnel, then pushed the door back into place. Lifting her oil lamp, she surveyed the latest addition to her collection of hidden passages.
An unassuming tunnel made of rough stone extended in front of her for a few paces and then turned to the left She followed it around several turns, until the passage terminated in a dead end. An examination of the wall uncovered three niches near the ceiling. It took her a while to figure out the sequence for flipping the switches, but her efforts were finally rewarded with the clink of releasing pins. She pushed in the wall, leaving a circular hole big enough for her to crawl through.
Ixpar recognized the passage beyond. She had explored it a few days ago. The light from her lamp made huge Ixpar shadows on the walls, giving the tunnel a barbaric aspect, as if an ancient warrior queen might step out of the shadows any moment and challenge the intruder in her domain. Ixpar imagined the queen; fierce and vital, gleaming in her bronze and leather armor. With a flourish. she whipped out an imaginary sword and dueled her opponent up and down the passage, thrusting at the air until she vanquished her invisible foe. Then she dropped to the ground, laughing and gasping for breath.
I should bring a real sword, she thought. It would make the game even better. Then again, how would she explain why she was walking around Dahl with a sword? Better to bring something she could hide under her shirt, perhaps a blunt-edged discus in a sling You couldn't fight a duel with it, but discuses were always good for knocking down enemies while you were skulking around in the shadows.
She wondered why the ancient queens made these passages. Secret escape routes, in case an enemy took the Estate? Maybe warriors prowled around down here engaging in Estate intrigues. Or perhaps a queen made this passage so she could sneak into the bedroom of her concubine. Ixpar smiled. No wonder her imaginary opponent had fought so hard. She was protecting her lover.
But I won, Ixpar thought. I get to claim the prize.
The tunnel took her to a dead end that she already knew was a secret door. Easing it open, she peered into the room beyond. Her prize lay fast asleep, unsuspecting of the warrior queen sneaking into his boudoir, his gold chest rising and falling in deep breaths.
Ixpar smirked, remembering how Kelric's guards had gaped when she walked out of his room yesterday. She had enjoyed it immensely. Still, it was best not to do it again. Hacha was probably trying to figure out how she managed it. She doubted the captain would solve the puzzle, but she intended to take no chances.
Leaving the door ajar, Ixpar slipped into the skyroom. She went over and sat on the edge of the bed, contemplating Kelric's sleeping form. Faced with the reality of him, she had no idea how to proceed with her courtship. In fact, she was so discreet about courting him, she suspected only she knew she was doing it. But how could she make her intentions known with guards hulking around her all the time? She couldn't pay suit to him with an audience.
Voices outside the door brought her Jumping to her feet. She ran into the tunnel, barely managing to close it up before the skyroom door scraped open. With her ear pressed against the wall, she could just hear Deha's voice as she talked to Kelric's guards.
Pah, Ixpar thought. If she didn't make her intentions known to Kelric soon, it would be too late. Deha was also courting him—and doing a much better job of it.
4
Orb Starburst
Morning sun filled the skyroom as Kelric's nurse pushed aside the curtains. An autumn breeze fluttered the boy's shirt and rippled through the pants he wore tucked into his sky-blue boots. The gentle picture he made only added more jolt to his words.
"Exploded?" Kelric pushed up on his elbow. "What do you mean exploded?"
"The fires after the crash," the boy said. "Like when fuel tanks on a windrider catch tire."
"Starships don't run on petrol. And if the antimatter on my ship hadn't properly deactivated, it would have taken half the mountain range when it blew."
"The mountain is still there," the boy said "But your ship did blow up. Captain Hacha said so herself."
The hell it did What his nurse described was impossible unless someone set the blast after the crash. What was Deha up to? He pulled away the quilt and swung his cast—covered legs off the bed.
His nurse tensed. "What are you doing?"
"Getting up."
"You can't get up."
Kelric leaned on a chair and stood up on his plaster-encased feet. Then he grinned. "Care to bet on that?"
"You have to stay in bed."
"Why? Every time I get up you people tell me to lie down. Every time I talk about my ship the subject gets changed. No one will tell me a thing. So I'm going to find out for myself."
"You can't," the boy said. "Not with plaster on your legs."
"Good point." Kelric sat down and banged his legs against the metal rim that bordered the bottom of the bed. Plaster sprayed but over the floor.
"Stop it!" The nurse grabbed his leg in midswing. "You'll break the bones again."
"Not bones." He tugged away his leg and unpeeled strips of plaster in powdery chunks. "Just casts."
A grating noise came from the wall.
Kelric stopped. "What was that?"
His nurse turned to the wall. "I don't know."
The noise came again. Then a panel in the wall opened and Ixpar stepped into the room.
"Hey," the boy said.
Ixpar pushed the panel closed, leaving a smooth blank wall. She spoke to the nurse. "Get the guards. Now." .
As the youth strode to the door, Kelric went back to work, peeling the last chunk of plaster off his legs.
"Kelric, stop," Ixpar said.
"Not a chance." He stood up and tried an exploratory Step. His legs held up, so he limped across the room to a long mirror with Quis designs etched around its edges. A man in blue sleep clothes looked back at him, a thinner man than he remembered.
When the increased flow of blood tingled in his legs, at first it puzzled him. Then he almost laughed in relief. His nanomeds weren't dead; they were responding to his weakened condition, trying to help him.
"What are you doing?" a voice said.
Kelric turned to see Captain Hacha in the door arch. "Standing," he said.
She used what was apparently meant as a placating voice. "We don't want you to hurt yourself. Why don't you get back into bed? I'll send for the doctor."
Kelric limped toward the door. "I don't need a doctor."
"I'm sorry." She blocked his way. "You can't leave."
"Why not?" He looked around as Rev, Llaach, and Balv stepped into the room. "Why are you keeping me locked up?"
"You need to recuperate," Hacha said.
"No I don't."
The last semblance of placation disappeared from her voice. "Get back into bed."
Combat mode toggled, Bolt thought.
Kelric caught sight of Ixpar inching toward the door. Moving with enhanced speed, he grabbed her arm When all four guards whipped out their guns, he didn't have time to wonder at the vehemence of their response. Bolt's reflex libraries took over and bypassed his brain, sending commands straight to the hydraulics that Controlled his body.
As the guards fired, he dove to one side, swinging Ixpar into the nurse so both she and the boy stumbled back into the room. Although he avoided most of the shots, one caught him in the shoulder. When the tiny needles punctured his skin, Bolt thought: Alert: injection of chemicals into bloodstream Synthesizing possible antidotes.
As Kelric staggered, Rev wrenched his arms behind his back while Llaach leveled a stunner at his chest. The armlock was one, Kelric had learned to break in basic training. He twisted free, went for Llaach—
—and his legs collapsed.
r /> Kelric fell, taking Llaach with him. She shoved her gun right up against his chest and fired. Then she went limp in his arms, passing out as he choked her. numbness spread through Kelric's torso.
Switching to full hydraulics, Bolt thought.
Kelric's legs jerked as the hydraulics took control of his body. They kept him moving, like a machine, despite the drugs coursing through his veins. Even as he jumped to his feet, Balv was lunging at him. He grappled with the younger man, rolling him over his shoulder and slamming him to the ground. At full strength, the throw would have killed Balv. As it was, Bolt calculated only the force necessary for a knockout and sent that data to Kelric's hydraulics, all within a fraction of a second.
Then he was wrestling with Rev and Hacha, crashing back and forth across the doorway. He twisted the stunner away from Rev and emptied the last of its charge into the gigantic guard. As Hacha knocked the gun out of his hand, he kicked up his leg and caught her in the stomach, hurling her into the wall. Again Bolt calculated for a knockout rather than kill.
Gasping as his hydraulics faltered, Kelric sank to his knees among the unconscious guards. The nurse also lay in a heap, caught in the cross fire of a stunner.
Motion flickered in his side vision. He jumped to his feet and grabbed Ixpar just before she darted out of the room. Shoving her back! inside, he closed the door.
"You'll never make it out of Dahl," she said. "There are guards all over the Estate."
"They won't shoot." Kelric sagged against the door, taking a labored breath. "Not if it means hitting you." Keeping his attention on Ixpar, he picked up Balv's stunner and took Llaach's knife out of her boot. "The charge needed to knock out someone my size could do you a lot of damage. And I have a hunch." He straightened up. "I think your safety is a lot more important around here than anyone lets on."
"That's ridiculous."
"I've spent my entire life among people with power, Ixpar. I know it when I see it." He tilted his head toward the wall. "Where does your secret door lead to?"
"I don't know how to open it from this side."
Kelric pulled her over to the panel. "Open it."
"No."
He didn't bother to argue, he just heaved his bulk into the wall. After being rammed a few times, it buckled in to reveal a stone passage. He pulled Ixpar inside and limped down the tunnel, bringing her with him.
As they walked, he brooded. He had finally figured out who Deha reminded him of. His first wife. An Imperialate admiral over twenty years his senior, Corey had died ten years ago, assassinated by Trader terrorists. One day she was a passionate, powerful woman; the next she was gone. Now he had the damn-fool idiocy to see her in Deha.
The tunnel exited into .a tower. A staircase spiraled up on the right and a door stood on the left. He motioned at the stairs. "What's up there?"
"One of the storage wings," Ixpar said.
With his gun poised, he stood to one side and opened the door, revealing an empty garden. Leaving the door open, as if they had gone out of it he pushed Ixpar toward the stairs. "Up. You first."
Doors appeared at each landing. The first three were locked, but the fourth opened into a room filled with graceful urns as tall as his waist. Dusty light filtered in a window midway up the opposite wall.
"This is crazy," Ixpar said as he pushed her inside. "It's like backing yourself into a box. Why didn't you go through the garden?"
"It's the first place they'll look." He shut the door. "l want some answers. You can start by telling me why Coba is Restricted. What is it you're all trying to hide?"
"Nothing. What Manager Dahl told you is true."
"That you don't like ISC? You'll have to do better than that."
She clenched her fists. "Did it ever occur to you that our freedom means more to us than your lmperialate? Or maybe conquerors prefer to forget that about the conquered."
"You people never intended to let me go, did you?"
"You were dying. We had to make a decision. We gave you your life." She met his gaze. "But we won't trade our freedom for yours."
Kelric knew ISC wouldn't Restrict Coba and then leave it untended. That his Jag's EI brain directed his ship to this region of the planet suggested lSC had made contact with the Twelve Estates. That meant the base or port would be somewhere nearby. Given the local mountainous terrain, it was probably in the desert. What he needed was transportation.
"Where is the airfield?" he asked.
"Across Dahl. On the other side of the Calanya."
"What's a Calanya?"
"Some parks and buildings Dice players live there."
Dice again He shook his head, then stiffened as pain shot through his muscles. The stun shots were wearing off.
She watched him. "You ought to be out as flat as a Quis disk right now. Four hits you took and that one time Llaach had her gun shoved right into your chest."
Kelric made no response. Instead he pulled her to a bench under the window and made her step up onto it. Looking out, he saw mountains towering over the city. He moved to one side, out of View, and motioned at the latch on the pane. "Open it."
When she pushed the latch, the window banged open and wind rushed into the room. As Kelric slid off his shirt, she flushed. "What are you doing, taking off your clothes?"
"Making a holster." He fastened the stunner and Llaach's knife into the shirt, then tied it around his waist. "We're going to climb down the tower."
She stared at him. "Those little cracks in its wall won't support me, let alone you." .
"I've climbed down worse in training drills." He grasped her around the waist and lifted her onto the sill. "Turn around so you're sitting with your legs hanging outside."
Sweat beaded on her forehead. But she did as he said, with more composure than many adults he had seen in similar situations. Leaning out, he saw a courtyard four stories below them. Beyond it, the city spread out on all sides.
"Where is this Calanya?" he asked.
Ixpar indicated a distant wall across the city. "On the other side of that windbreak."
Kelric climbed over the sill and lowered himself into the wind, facing the tower. He probed the wall with his toes until he found a foothold. Then he tugged Ixpar off the sill, holding her as she maneuvered around to face the wall. They descended slowly, Ixpar about half a meter above him.
Suddenly an avalanche of pebbles cascaded over him, accompanied by a frantic scraping. Looking up, he saw a toe- hold under Ixpar's foot disintegrate. He worked his toes deeper into a crack and clenched the wall with a vise grip that, courtesy of his biomech, would take a powered wrench to release. Even so, when Ixpar slid into him, he had to strain to keep from being knocked off the wall.
She eased her weight away from him. "I'm all right."
Releasing his breath, Kelric resumed the climb. When he felt packed dirt under his feet, he let go of the wall, then, swayed, spots dancing in his vision. As Ixpar slid down next to him, he sagged against the tower. She tried to bolt, but he caught her around the waist.
"Kelric, listen to me," she said. "You'll never make it to the airfield. Give it up before you rebreak your legs." More gently she said, "We won't hurt you."
You have no idea, he thought. His fight with the guards had unmasked a portion of his hidden enhancements, but Deha and her people didn't know the extent of his abilities. It left him room to bluff. But he had to get help. The longer he went without repair, the more it aggravated the damage to his internal systems.
Holding Ixpar's arm, he drew her to the gate. A plaza lay outside the courtyard, bordered by pale blue houses. In the center of the plaza, opening to the sky like a flower, a white fountain glazed with accents of color brought to mind lakes, forests, and sun. Water arched up from it, whipped by the wind into a mist of rainbows.
He set off in a limping jog across the plaza, pulling Ixpar with him. On the other side they entered a maze of narrow cobbled lanes that wound among stone houses three and four stories high, with windows full of plants.
As they ran, the crisp mountain air cleared his head. Once the sound of laughter reached their ears, and an instant later a flock of children dashed into the lane, too intent on their game of chase to notice two people hiding in the shadows of a recessed doorway.
A lawn separated the city outskirts from the wall Ixpar called the Calanya windbreak. The barrier stood as high as three adults and was thick enough for two people to walk abreast on its top edge. It curved off in both directions for kilometers. Holes sculpted in the stone provided glimpses of landscaped parks beyond.
"It should be easy to climb this," Kelric said. "We can cut through the parks."
"No!" Ixpar said.
He blinked. That was the strongest emotion he had ever seen her show. "Why not?"
"It is a violation of the Calanya," she said. "You will contaminate the Quis."
Contaminate a dice game? He drew her over to the windbreak. "Climb."
Ixpar scowled. "May a giant hawk pluck you off the mountain and feed you to her babies."
He couldn't help but smile. "I hope not."
The wind grew stronger as they scaled the wall, tearing at their clothes and hair when they reached the top. It died away as they descended the inner side. At the bottom, a lush carpet of grass sloped down from the windbreak. Groves of trees heavy with gold fruit were scattered at the foot of the hill and far across the parks the windows in a cluster of buildings sparkled like liquid diamonds.
They set off across the lawn. He was limping more now, his still healing legs growing more fatigued. He glanced at Ixpar. "You said dice players live here?"
"The men in a Calanya are all expert Quis players," she said. "You could call them advisers. To Deha. Quis advisers."
"And Quis is power." When Ixpar nodded, Kelric smiled. "This park isn't a bad setup just for being good at dice."
They were crossing a carved wooden bridge that arched over a stream when they saw the man. He was sitting on a stone bench on the other side of the stream, relaxing in the sun.