Gateway To Xanadu (40 page)

The weapon could have been the cheapest sticker made and would still have served its purpose as trim for a costume, but that was Xanadu, and on Xanadu things weren’t done the cheap way. The shape of the sheath had led me to hope that it wasn’t lying about its contents, and sure enough I got what I’d hoped for: a beautifully made bowie knife, and even more than that, one that seemed balanced properly for throwing. Greg and Val were exchanging ageless wisdom when I hefted the knife to get the feel of it, but their-discussion ended too damned soon. When Greg raised his weapon and leveled it it was too late to worry any more about feel, so I took the knife by its tip, sent one last frantic appeal to the Lord of Luck, and threw with every bit of skill I could call up.

The Lord of Luck definitely had to be on Val’s side. The knife wobbled sickeningly when it left my hand, convincing me that I’d also thrown away our last shot at getting out of that mess unairconditioned, but the wobble somehow equalized itself in the seconds of the knife’s flight, and suddenly the hilt was standing out of Greg’s chest, right where I’d wanted it to be. Greg grunted and looked down in faint surprise, raised his eyes to me with even more surprise, then tried to say something. Instead of the words coming out the blaster fell from his hand, and then he began crumpling down after it, the final glaze already in his eyes. I ignored the way he was falling and just plumped down on a bunch of stones without feeling them, then put my face in my hands and rubbed at my eyes.

“That was a nice throw,” Val’s voice came after a minute, sounding matter of fact. “Are you all right?”

“No, I am not all right!” I snarled in the Absari trade language, shaking off the gently concerned hand that had come to my shoulder. “And if I’d been stupid enough to leave things to you, I sure as hell wouldn’t have been all right! Are you really that determined to get us killed, Val? Why the hell didn’t you do what he asked and give me more than ten seconds to come up with something that counted?”

“I thought you said you understood the concept of standing on principle,” he came back from his crouch beside me, ignoring the way I was glaring at him. “There are certain things I just won’t do, and begging for my life is one of them. And besides that, it wasn’t necessary. You didn’t need more than ten seconds.”

I stared at his authentically calm and easy grin for a bit longer than ten seconds, then began describing him in terms of personal habits, probable ancestry, and anatomical variations from norm, all of the one syllable variety. His face took on a pained expression as he straightened out of his crouch, and then he bent down to “help” me to my feet, using the gesture to cut into my tirade.

“You’d better turn that off and fast,” he muttered to keep his voice from traveling to the slaves, those eyes looking straight down at me. “it would be rude and ungrateful of me to take the woman who just saved my life and wash her mouth out with soap, but that’s what will happen if you don’t cut it out. Now, what are we going to do about these slaves?”

“You can make pickled pigs feet out of them for all I care,” I growled, yanking my arm out of his hand.

“There’s no way in hell anyone observing that throw will consider it beginner’s luck, and as soon as the questions start, the game is over. And it’s too bad I didn’t let you go through that entire sequence last night after all. It might have taught you a little prudence when it comes to dealing with me; next time I’ll see to it that you don’t lose even a minute’s worth. Remember that if you’re ever again in a mood for handing me infantile threats.”

My big-mouthed partner was suddenly all out of what to say, so I turned away from him again and began walking among the rocks and stones, trying to regain self-control. I didn’t know why I was so upset and I didn’t know why I’d been so bottom-line with Val, and I didn’t know what would happen next. It would be fantasizing to believe that our little set-to with Greg hadn’t been observed, and I wasn’t looking forward to the questioning the Management would use to find out what was going on. Even if I told them about the death warrant in the first five minutes they would still use questioning to verify what had been said, and then I’d be able to find out how they’d decided to take it. They were legally bound to honor the warrant, but what they did to Val and me for landing with false papers before they did the honoring was the part that would bring interest to our lives. We’d be free to serve the warrant after they finished with us, if we were able to do anything as complicated as walking . . . .

I stopped still and my thoughts ground to a halt, my stare going down to what my wandering had led me to. Greg’s body lay at my feet, the knife hilt still sticking out of his chest, his face too composed for the way he’d died. I crouched beside him and put my fingers to that face, that battered, bloody face that I had loved so much in the situational. He had wanted to protect me, had held me in his arms and had made love to me any number of times, and I had killed him without hesitation and without thought, buried a knife in his chest and then thanked the Lord of Luck for the accuracy of the throw. She doesn’t regret what she does, Val had told Ringer, and I hadn’t realized then how damning that truth was. What sort of a woman could kill a man she loved and not regret it’? Wouldn’t I do the same thing to anyone stupid enough to love me? Damned right I would, so it was a good thing nobody could or did love me. I wasn’t a woman I was a Special Agent, and I couldn’t afford to let anyone around me forget that.

“Come away from that,” Val said, appearing next to me to lift me to my feet and walk me away, his arm around my shoulders holding me tight against him. “I thought you would be smarter than to waste concern on scum like that, Diana. If he’d had his way, you’d be entertaining those slaves right now, and most likely screaming out your pain for him to laugh at. It was something you had to do, so you did it. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been me, just remember that. ”

He was speaking very softly and soothingly, holding me against him with one arm around me and one hand to my hair, trying to comfort what he thought he understood. The hell of it was I didn’t need comforting, and perversely, that was what seemed to be upsetting me. I’d had the choice of what to be a long time ago, and I’d made my choice without regret. To start regretting it now would be as ludicrous as it would be futile.

“At least I have some good news for you,” Val went on, still patting my hair. “No one saw any part of what went on between Rich and ourselves because this is a dead area, a spot never kept under observation. It was the reason Rich picked it, the slaves told me, to keep him and themselves out of trouble. They’re in a panic now, believing the Management is about to find out what they were up to, and none of them can face the thought of what will happen to them then. I told them that I’ll condescend to protect them if they’ll swear to the story I’m going to tell, a version which won’t be too far from the truth.”

“And what story is that?” I asked, not bothering to move from the comfort of my position against him. I was feeling a bone-weary tiredness that would pass after a little while, but right then the strength and determination just weren’t there.

“We’re going to say that Rich had them ride along with him without telling them why, which puts them in the clear,” Val said. “After that we’re going to alter the fight a little, saying that Rich reached for his blaster while we were struggling, and I was able to put my knife into him before he could get me in his sights. I told the slaves I didn’t want anyone knowing my fifteen-year-old niece had to save my life, and they bought it. They don’t seem to know that a throw like the one you made isn’t something every teenage female is able to do.”

“It’ll come to them after the shock wears off, but by then we’ll hopefully be long gone,” I said with a sigh, then forced myself to move off him. “I don’t think we can count on having luck like this again, so you damned well better be crazy about everyone we meet from now on. Save that mild dislike of yours for our target.”

“Yes, ma’am, anything you say,” he drawled, grinning faintly as he let me go. “Do you want my vest before we head out for the lunch spot?”

I looked down at the tattered rags of the top of my dress, noticing that Val’s eyes were in the same place, and made a sour face at him.

‘ “You were the one who was supposed to do that, but since you didn’t I can get away with covering up,”

I said, holding one hand out for the vest. “As a matter of fact it might be the best idea after all. We don’t want those slaves getting the idea of asking for me as part of their price for going along with your story.

Your role character would have no choice but to agree. ”

“Since it’s my role character, I’m the one who decides what gets agreed to,” he said, slipping off the leather vest and handing it to me. “As soon as you’ve got this on, get mounted.”

He walked away from me to go back to where the slaves were standing huddled together, giving me no chance to tell him what I thought of him. He was still disobeying orders, and hadn’t learned a damned thing from what we’d gone through; he would continue doing things his way, even if he got us killed. I slipped into the vest-which was a wraparound for me-and resisted the urge to do a little rock throwing on the way to my mount.

Predictably enough we made the lunch spot before anyone else, and Val lost no time reporting the trouble he’d had to the proper authorities. He’d left Greg’s body back among the rocks, and his indignation over the question of why he’d done so was nearly comical. We’d decided to leave the body there so the Management could investigate and satisfy themselves that there .was no messing around involved, but Val demanded to know if he was expected to worry about the body of a man who had tried to kill him. The Management reps took his misinterpretation as an indication of innocence, and hurried to smooth down his ruffled feathers. We were served a sumptuous lunch by female slaves who crawled all over him, and Greg Rich was never mentioned to either one of us again.

After lunch it was costume-changing time, and this time Val got desert gear complete with burnoose and curved sword, and I got a too-thin layer of yellow veils and silver jewelry. I was sent out first in a wheeled and curtained litter with male slaves acting the part of guards, supposedly the bride of a sultan on her way to the wedding festivities. Val followed with his own group of slaves, a khan who was the bitter enemy of the sultan, who would prevent his having the woman of his choice. They rolled up to us in pursuit, his group and my “guards” swinging their curved swords in carefully choreographed movements, and in no more than two minutes, all of my guards were disarmed and captured. The khan himself rolled up to my halted litter, dismounted slowly, then came close to raise one of the curtains.

“Well, well, what have we here?” he drawled, using the point of his sword to brush aside one of my body veils, an action that was totally unnecessary considering the transparency of those veils. “A little something to distract a man on a quiet afternoon, perhaps?”

“Don’t you even think about touching me,” I hissed, all too well aware of the attention of all those slaves. The bastard had me trapped into my role with all those witnesses around, and the amusement in his eyes said he meant to take advantage of that.

“I’ve already thought about it,” he said with a grin, sheathing his sword before turning his head to the slave standing next to him. “Let’s continue on to the place we’ll be having dinner, but not at too fast a pace.”

“As you say, master,” the slave acknowledged with an amused chuckle, watching as Val climbed into the litter with me and carefully closed the curtain behind him. Through the thin yellow curtains I could see the slaves getting ready to move out, and then Val had his swordbelt off and was lying down next to me.

I spent the entire ride in Val’s arms, the warmth of his lips on mine an almost constant thing, and when we reached the pavilions where we would spend the night I was in a strangely contented mood-until I left the litter and saw the curtains from the outside. They’d all been rolled up when I’d first gotten into the litter, so I hadn’t known that they were transparent only from the inside. None of the slaves riding around the litter would have known it even if we’d spent the afternoon playing cards, only Val hadn’t seen fit to mention that fact. What he had mentioned was that after that afternoon, little Jennifer should no longer be trying to keep her uncle Val’s hands off her. I hadn’t wanted to agree with him, but it was fairly obvious that any young, impressionable girl would have acted as I had with Val only if she were horribly in love with him. She couldn’t be expected, to be simply enjoying a little casual sex the way I had’ been doing, so I’d left the litter holding tight to his arm and looking up at him adoringly. By the time I. learned the truth I was already trapped, and I was so furious it wasn’t safe for Val to come near me for the rest of the evening. Another man would have worried at least a little, but all he did was grin with that stupid laughter in his black eyes.

The next three days were more of the same, with only the costumes and scenarios changing. I had to spend the time clinging to Val’s arm whenever we walked together, constantly looking up at him with loving eyes, and eagerly agreeing to everything he told me to do, no matter what it was. I took one opportunity of our being alone together to tell him that I was going to kill him as soon as we were off Xanadu, but all he did was laugh and tell me he’d worry about it then.

The evening of the third day found us in a camp as large as our original camp, showing that everyone had been gathered in from the various zones. A general party was arranged in one very large pavilion, and everyone was costumed beautifully for the elegant surroundings. The crowd was in a good mood and really enjoyed the refreshments, and halfway through the evening John Little showed up at the couch Val and I were sharing, a really beautiful male slave walking along behind him.

“Well, Val, have you been enjoying yourself?” Little asked as he pulled a chair nearer our couch, leaving the slave to stand quietly behind him. “I know I have.”