“I volunteer,” said Rainbow quietly.
“Lily—” began Finch.
“Finch, remember, Swann’s there somewhere.”
He frowned and looked down.
“But I wouldn’t suggest,” added Yehoshua to Callioux, “that you let the man who assaulted comrade Caenna go.”
“But you must,” interrupted Lily. “I need him. You have no idea how much I need him in an operation of this kind. And it won’t happen again.” The large room, illuminated by a vague ceiling glow, dwarfed her figure, but even in such space, sterile and contained, her resolve showed clearly in the lines of her body. “You must let me speak to him. I doubt if any of your people can reason with him.”
“And you can?” Yehoshua’s voice was softly mocking, but he raised his dark eyes to Callioux, questioning.
“Time constrains us, comrade,” answered Callioux to Yehoshua’s unspoken question. “Jehane is already preparing to evacuate the planet and system, and he means to leave behind the prisoners in the thirties if he has to.”
“But that’s five thousand people,” cried Finch. “You can’t just abandon them.”
“Ten thousand,” murmured Yehoshua.
“I hardly think,” replied Callioux drily, “that the government will kill them for the unfortunate accident of having been left behind. They need their work force, after all, and these mines are valuable to them, and justifiably unpopular with free workers. In any case, if a small force, at little risk to us, can break through, then it will be to our credit. And if it fails”—Callioux’s shrug was eloquent—“we have lost a few noble comrades, martyrs to the cause of freedom, and this woman and her associates, who are of doubtful loyalty in any case. Therefore, I am minded to let comrade Heredes have her way. After all, how many of the prisoners whom we have liberated are convicted murderers? At least her companion did not succeed”—a glance here for Finch, who paled—“and was stopped, need I add, by another one of her people. Have you already formulated a plan, Heredes?”
“Is this right?” Lily looked at Rainbow. “We have one central elevator shaft, that runs to just beneath the main control center in the surface dome, and four auxiliary shafts in each of the four spokes. And the power plant is here, beside the control center.”
“Sure,” agreed Rainbow, mystified.
Lily turned to Callioux. “When the main power goes the first time, bring your assault unit in close to the dome. When it goes the second time—”
“Hold on.” Callioux touched the tabletop, tracing a thin thread out from the 30s dig. “They’ve cut all links—we can’t control their power plant from Main Block anymore.”
“That’s good,” said Lily. “That will confuse them even more. When the power goes the second time, you assault the dome.”
“Perhaps you’ll be good enough to explain,” replied Callioux facetiously, “where you’ll be at that point.”
Lily pointed to the circle that marked the 30s main control center in the surface dome. “Here.”
Callioux chuckled. “I see. You don’t lack nerve, I’ll give you that. Very well. I’ll give you one rev, Heredes. Comrade Yehoshua. A strike force and attendant troop ships will wait that long, in case you can break through to the surface. Otherwise we’ll leave you.”
Lily smiled. “Generous, in its own way.”
“Quite generous.” Callioux did not return the smile.
“But Lily—” Finch stood up, distressed.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Finch. I’ve got to go. Just don’t worry.”
“Then I’ll come with you—”
“Finch.” This gently. “You’d be a liability. I’m sorry.”
He sank back into his chair, letting his hands cover the thick strands of his black hair. “I’m going to lose everyone,” he murmured.
Lily knelt beside him and reached forward to kiss him. Thought better of it, suddenly, seeing Kyosti’s dead, set expression as he had tried to throttle him, and patted him on the arm instead. The gesture seemed remarkably weak. “Finch, think about it this way. With people like Kyosti on our side, how can we lose?”
Finch did not look up, merely shuddered. The bruising that mottled his throat had begun to purple.
“This seems to me,” said Callioux, switching the view table off completely, “like a great deal of fuss over what is frankly a rather small incident within the scope of what we have seen during the course of our revolution.”
“You didn’t see the attack.” Yehoshua motioned to his soldiers to converge on the door. “It was—eerie. That’s the only word I can think of. His expression was—not quite human.”
“We’ve all seen inhumanity. I daresay well see more.” Callioux’s gesture toward the monitor above the door seemed impatient with human foibles. “Now. I have a meeting. I leave you in charge, Yehoshua. Heredes has tactical command of her own people. I send you along as observer, and to offer support if necessary, and to watch our backs. You have—Rainbow? How much time?”
“Eighteen hours,” said Rainbow.
Lily met Jenny in a holding cell adjacent to, and looking into, the high security cell where Yehoshua’s soldiers had incarcerated Kyosti. From her stand by the door she could see, through a translucent window, Kyosti lying on his back on the hard plastine bench that was the room’s only obvious piece of furniture. He lay perfectly still, hands cupped under the disarray of his light hair, eyes shut. The only movement discernable was the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.
“He looks like he’s in a coma,” said Lily.
Evidently some apprehension sounded in her voice, because Jenny smiled and rested a comforting hand on Lily’s tense back. “I don’t think so. When he came to after the stun blast wore off, he shook—trembled, like he had a palsy—for at least fifteen minutes. No one went in. I wasn’t allowed to speak to him. Then he stopped, as if he had controlled it somehow, and he took one circuit around the room, hand on the wall as if”—she raised her eyebrows in surprise—“it just occurred to me now, as if he was using touch to gain information, and then he lay down. He’s been like that ever since.”
“Wonderful,” said Lily, running a pale hand through her straight, black hair in a gesture made nervous by the expression of worry that marked her gaze as she watched Kyosti’s prostrate form. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath.
“He must have an incredible memory,” Jenny said a little too casually, “to have linked you saying Finch’s name over comm with your former lover. How did he know he had the right person?”
“He can’t have known. He may have known I had two lovers before him—yes—” She considered, lowering her hand. He had known, but she had not told him; he had told her himself. She had never discovered how he had found out. “Well, he knew that much,” she went on, not ready to divulge this information to Jenny. “But I never told him their names or anything about them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. I never figured it was any of his business.” Jenny still regarded her skeptically. “Someday when we’re not under surveillance, I have a long story to tell you.”
“Sure, Lily-hae.” Jenny laughed, glancing at the tall man in the other cell. “I don’t doubt it.”
“But.” In the neutral glare of the cell’s lights, reflecting off the grey sheen of wall, Lily’s expression hardened. “Right now I’ve got a new assignment. I’m going to ask you to volunteer for a dangerous job, Jenny. You must refuse if you have too. I know you have dependents. I can use you, because of your experience, but not to their cost. Something can be arranged—”
“Lily.” Jenny let one hand indicate the empty loops on her tight-fitting mercenary’s suit that usually carried weapons—weapons now in the custody of Jehane’s troops. “What am I? A mercenary. No matter who I hire out to, Lia and Gregori risk losing me. I’ve made what provisions I can, left them with some collateral, a plan of action to follow. And Lia’s more canny than she seems—she just rarely lets it show.” She
touched the back of her left hand to her forehead, light palm against her dark skin. “Bolyai fired me. Now you’re hiring. I’m yours.”
“You could join Jehane. I can’t even pay you, Jenny.”
“But I trust you. I’m not working in big organizations anymore, not after—my previous experience. Bureaucracy loses you, and you lose yourself. I’m hiring on with you.”
Lily sighed, looking up at the short cap of tight curls that crowned Jenny’s head, at the handsome face, creased both by equanimity and by hard times, at the breadth of her shoulders and the muscled length of her arms. “Well, I’m not going to let you go as easily as Bolyai did. You’re too much of an asset.”
Jenny grinned and offered her a mock salute.
Lily sighed again, exasperated. “And I haven’t even told you what the job it. And it is dangerous.”
Jenny shrugged, almost insouciant. “Ensha-lat, as we used to say on Unity. ‘As it is willed.’ You can’t fight what is fated.”
For a moment Lily regarded her, not quite affronted—disbelieving, perhaps. “I can,” she said decisively.
Jenny grinned again. “That’s what I like about you, Lily-hae.”
“Go on.” Lily slapped her on the shoulder. “The one named Yehoshua will return your weapons to you, and you’ll have a few minutes at the shuttle to talk to Lia and Gregori. And bring Bach back with you. Now I need to see Hawk.” Behind, the door to the corridor whisked open as if at Lily’s command.
Jenny saluted, not mocking now, as she left the cell. “Luck to you,” she said, and was gone.
Lily frowned, tapped in a sequence on the keypad beside the window, and braced herself to step into the next room.
She stopped on the smooth-surfaced floor and the door sighed shut behind her. There was a moment’s dead silence. Kyosti did not move, did not even seem to register her presence in the room. His eyes remained shut.
“Hello, Lily,” he said.
She almost jumped, the comment came so quietly and suddenly out of the silence, without even a movement from him to presage it. She glanced around at the featureless, grey interior. “I was told this cell is sound and sight proof.”
Now he opened his eyes, to reveal their piercing blue, tempered with a hint of green in the depths; like spring foliage seen reflected in water. “It is.” He sat up, a lithe, relaxed movement, and lowered his hands to pat the bench beside him invitingly.
Lily did not move. “Then how did you know it was me who came in? You weren’t looking. I never took my eyes off you. And I didn’t say anything.”
For a long moment he did not reply, but she felt that he was measuring some aspect of her, closely, carefully, and with the greatest concentration, and that whatever conclusion he reached based on that measurement would determine the entire course of his behavior. For an instant she felt he trembled on the edge of his control, and then abruptly he relaxed, visibly—when she had not even known he was tense—and he leaned back against the wall and smiled, lazy and sensual.
“Come sit down beside me,” he said, inviting.
That she was tempted to go and take what he was offering her—even at a time like this—irritated her. “Kyosti, stop it.”
He sat watching her expectantly, as if she were the one who had to explain. He seemed utterly calm and reasonable, so she allowed herself to lean back against the wall, hands loose at her side, and just looked at him: the exotic handsomeness that had first attracted her to him was not, perhaps, so much the component parts of simple physical beauty but rather a combination of unusual yet graceful features underlaid with a blend of mystery and, she reflected with bitter irony now, danger.
“Even if he is dead,” said Kyosti suddenly, “what possible reason could he have had to be executed as Pero?”
The vision of Finch choking under Kyosti’s pale hands stood in Lily’s mind so strongly as Kyosti spoke that she could not at first decipher the content of his question. She felt momentarily as if she had wandered into the wrong conversation.
“Pero—you’re talking about Heredes!” She shoved herself away from the wall and strode over to stand directly in front of him. “I want to talk about Finch. Do you remember him—the man you just tried to murder?”
Her anger emanated like a force off of her, but his initial response was only to reach up and enclose her hands in his own, drawing them to his lips. He did not kiss them, merely held them there, as if he were trying to breathe her in.
He sank forward, off the bench, and, kneeling, embraced her. Just stayed there, head against her abdomen, face hidden by his hair. His seeming vulnerability drained out her anger.
“He’s not my lover anymore,” said Lily, grasping for outrage. “That’s long past. You’ve got nothing—nothing—to be jealous about.”
“I know,” he murmured, although he did not relax his grasp on her.
“Jehane’s people have accepted my explanation. They’ll let you go. But it won’t happen again. Will it?”
“As long as I’m never in the same room with him.”
“Kyosti!” She put her hands at either side of his face and tilted his head back so that she could see his expression. “I just promised you that he won’t be my lover again. Do you understand? All other things aside, I don’t desire him in that way anymore.” And she leaned down to kiss him.
It proved a more potent gesture than she intended. Somehow, with pressing and touching and the smooth flow of long practice, she found herself lying on the bench next to him in an intimate embrace. Inappropriate, surely, for such a time, and yet she thought it might be better to reassure him. And he was so close, and so nice to hold.
He was the one who pulled away. His expression bore no rage, no jealous fury, just simple resignation. “It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly. Deep in his voice she heard the echo of an old, wrenching sorrow. “I have to kill him. Now that you know that, you can keep me away from him.”
“Why?”
He broke away from her and pushed up off the bench to his feet, finding refuge in the corner opposite the bench. “Don’t ask me that. I thought I had finally escaped. Abai’is-ssa.” The alien word slipped out of him too naturally. “I should have known better. You should have left me on Arcadia.” He did not look at her as he spoke.
“Yes,” she replied sardonically as she, too, stood up. “You said something like that before. But Finch is one of my oldest friends. Do you expect me to let it go at that? Who are you going to attack next? Me?”
Now he turned. His face was set, a mask of sheer impersonal threat, like a red warning light signaling the entrance to a danger zone that is off-limits to all personnel who do not have the complete envelopment of a life suit.
“Never suggest that to me.” He looked so revolted by the thought that she felt suddenly embarrassed, as if she had set out to deliberately offend him. “There may be people who are that sick, to kill their own lovers. I’m not one of them.”
His anger completely deflated hers. It seemed impossible, facing him now, to force the issue. She took in a single, rather shaky breath to calm herself. Once they had left Harsh, there would be time.
“I’m not suggesting,” she began slowly, leaping back to his first question, as if the ensuing conversation had not taken place, “that Heredes meant to be executed as Pero, but if he was caught, and knew that they would kill him—and infiltrating their entire defense network was clearly treason—I think he would convince them that he was Pero if only to leave a trail of confusion as his final legacy. After all, Pero is free to work openly again, for a while.”
“I still don’t see,” replied Kyosti, taking up the thread of this conversation without any hesitation, “how Heredes could be caught.”
“‘You were caught …”
“By the League, a government far in advance of Central in such techniques, I assure you.”
“I thought the League and all its people had forsworn any contact with the kind of espionage you and Master Heredes used to be engaged in on
their behalf.”
Kyosti smiled bitterly. “Forsworn, yes. But not forgotten. That would be foolish indeed. ‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!’ We’re dangerous, unpredictable beasts.”
“Oh, what does it matter?” she cried, lifting a hand to pull at her hair in helpless anger. “How they caught him or how he came to be identified as Pero. He’s dead.”
Kyosti came across to her in three swift strides. “Lily,” he murmured, soothing, and he cradled her against him.
“We don’t have time for this,” she muttered into his shirt, although she did not pull away. “Do you remember someone I talked about named Paisley?”
He considered, nodded. “A Ridani girl. Indentured to—Harsh. I see. A victim of the terrible prejudice in this area.” He shook his head. “Only in such a backward pioneer culture—”
“What’s ‘pioneer’?” She pulled back from him. “And you needn’t use that patronizing tone of voice. I’ve never seen League space. I’ve got no proof you came from there, or that Master Heredes did, or sensei Jones. You might all be making it up.”
He laughed. “My dear Lily, haven’t I ever told you that you speak Anglais with the most delightful, primitive accent?”
She knew perfectly well that he, and Heredes, and sensei Jones, were incontrovertibly not citizens of Reft space, that they had indeed come from far away across the old lost paths to the home planets from which humans and pygmies had long ago migrated to Reft space. So she only removed herself from his grasp and walked to stand beside the thin seam of the cell door. “Sometimes I forget about your accent,” she said. “Although,” she added thoughtfully, “Master Heredes never had one.”
“That’s because he used to be an actor. Now what about Paisley?”
5 Blooded
THROUGH HER BREATHING HELMET, Lily could hear the slow hiss of liquid burning through plastine. A forgotten toy, perhaps, left to fall on the tunnel floor in the panic after the first explosions. They had seen the results of that panic: on leaving the central shaft at the deepest tunnel in the 20s dig, level 9, they had found on the other side of the lock a cluster of at least one hundred bodies. Most had decayed badly, eaten through by the poisoned atmosphere, though some were still recognizable as Ridanis.