Hellflower (v1.1) (24 page)

She’d also know that Errol-the-Peril’d been alive and well when I left. Which was probably not what she wanted.

"Damage?" I said out loud.

"Firecat
took no direct hits. The hull is intact, there should be no difficulty in reaching RoaqMheri. And after that,
Firecat’s
condition will no longer be of concern."

"Until I get back." Whenever that’d be. The next three days, though, would be pretty much silk sailing.

"Kore-alarthme!"
came muffled yowl from back of
Firecat.
Mostly.

###

Eventually I went back and untangled Tiggy from his sleepsling. Tiggy said Tiggy wanted all kinds of answers, but what Tiggy wanted really was to give me some-all about how I honorlessly let Errol Light foot go on breathing, with a side-order of how Tiggy’s soul cried out for slaking on account of Alaric Dragonflame had stood on his shadow, and also how he had now decided I wasn’t right about letting Alaric go just because I was cowardish. He went on and on and it didn’t seem to have a beginning or end, just lots of middle.

"Hellflower, is too bad same Ghadri didn’t let any little reality into your skull when they damn near opened it. Masterblaster Dragonflame is law and justice on Kiffit even if he is twisted. Who you think would of won any head-to-head if we took him on? You don’t even got ID!"

"And what of the thief and reiver Errol Lightfoot? Is he, too, sacrosanct because he has the appearance of virtue and I do not? Or will you tell me some other filthy
chaudatu
reason that it is expedient that he live?"

We’d finally got to the thing Tiggy couldn’t stand. And it’d kill him, sure as drinking poison, unless he could spew it up-or live with it. "Faunch me no taradiddles about Errol-Peril, Tiggy-bai. Life ain’t talkingbooks; ain’t going to blow him wayaways over something happened before you was born."

Which it had. I’d worked it out. Tiggy’d been born six years after I left Granola. Hellflower kinchin-bai was young enough to be mine-if I’d never met Errol and stayed home where I’d belonged. They sterilize you first thing at Market Garden.

"But it is wrong, San’Cyr-it is wrong! Do you not see that the passing of time can make no difference? If it was wrong once it is wrong forever-the thousandth generation must avenge the wrong done to the first! You are-"

"Damn tired of listening to you creeb about honor. Honor’s rich hellflower luxury. Stardancers can’t afford it."

He couldn’t keep his hellflower honor and his life both, and I wasn’t going to let him choose. I was going to make him live if I had to call black white and turn the stars in their courses.

"Honor is-"

"Je, better than candied chobosh with burntwine chaser. But it ain’t better than being alive, and you know it. Had your chance for death-with-honor back on Kiffit-and you decided you’d rather snuggle up to a honorless
chaudatu
and live."

Tiggy squalled like a stepped-on cat and threw his
arthame
at nothing in particular. Then he tried to slug me, but it wasn’t nothing personal. I grabbed hold of him so’s he didn’t mash the cargo and hung on while he went off into helltongue. Paladin translated some of it. I never heard so much nonsense about walls and shadows in my life. Mostly it was about how Tiggy-bai’s life was over and he was unworthy of the name of fillintheblank. He’d trusted me with his honor, but I was just a tongueless doorstop. He hated me and everybody else and wished that
all chaudatu
had been eaten by the Machine.

It would of been funny if Tiggy wasn’t hurting so bad, and mainly over me not icing Errol.

I’d wanted Errol dead, I guessed. But not enough. Or maybe I just wanted to not do what Silver Dagger wanted more. She wanted Errol dead, I hoped, because if she didn’t, it was another great theory shot to hell.

Eventually Tiggy ran out of words and breath. We was both down on the deck with me intending to fax a complaint to the editor of Thrilling Wonder Talkingbooks to explain to him just how much fun it really is to be around the crazed battle rage of the hellflower warrior. Only it wasn’t crazed battle rage, and Tiggy was wayaway from being a hellflower warrior.

My bruises hurt anyway. "Che-bai? Tiggy-bai, listen to me-"

" ’
Tiggibai’
is not my name! It was never my name! You have taken my name-" He thrashed and this time I let him go.

"All right. Val’jon. Val’jon Something-Something Starbringer. Oke? Look, will you just shut up?"

"I am the Honorable
Puer
Walks-by-Night Kennor’s-son Starbringer Amrath Valijon of Chernbereth-Molkath. I am the Third Person of House Starborn. House Starborn is a GreatHouse, first among the GreatHouses of alMayne," Tiggy said, like someone’d said it wasn’t. He shut up then, for a wonder.

"Look," I said again. "I could of killed him. I wanted to, oke? But it wouldn’t change anything. He didn’t remember me, Val’jon; he wouldn’t be sorry."

"He would be sorry he was dead!"

It sounded so stupid, and I’d used to think the same thing. But they aren’t sorry. They’re just dead.

"Maybe. But-listen, try to understand, willya?-Silver Dagger wanted me to go to Manticore so I would see Errol and kill him."

"Then . . . Silver Dagger is your friend?" said Tiggy, doubtfully.

"Silver Dagger is my enemy. She wanted me to do it for her. And I don’t do things that people want."

Tiggy looked pure misery at me. That wasn’t true and even he knew it.

He’d looked better when I shot that Ghadri off him. Now he looked like someone dying.

"Look. I’ll give you a present. You can have Errol Lightfoot’s life. Next time you see him
-bang!
Oke?"

"Lies, it is all lies, you are lying to me again," whimpered Tiggy Stardust.

I had to find the right words somewhere. "When I lie to you, Tiggy Val’jon-che-bai, I’ll tell you first. Errol’s life is yours. We got a deal?" Talk to me, damn you, argue, but don’t give up and die.

"I do not understand you," Tiggy said. "My course was plain. I should have killed you rather than swear
comites
, and died before accepting your aid, and killed Dragonflame though I died for it! I am unworthy of my Name and my Knife. I hide behind a
chaudatu
woman and lose myself-" Tiggy wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.

"I would be lots more impressed, Tiggy Stardust, if I didn’t know you was half dead before you promised to mind me. You didn’t have a choice! What you done did on Kiffit was, uh, sort of nobly not get yourself killed for no reason where nobody could see, oke? Because that way, the evildoers wouldn’t get punished, see? If nobody knew." Nothing. I went over and put my arms around him and he turned his head away. Stupid. Stupid all of this.

"San’Cyr," Tiggy said finally, "even you do not believe the truth of your words."

It was the nicest way of being called a liar I’d heard lately.

"So what does that matter if I’m right? I don’t know your da, babby, and hellflowers is all crazy anyway, but he is your da. You think he wants you to go missing and him never know what happened? Daddy Starbringer is high-heat in Coalition, true-tell. He’s got enemies at least -enemies going after you because of what he is, k’en savvy? Don’t you think he’s wondering if you bought vendetta somewheres? Kinder for to tell him, kinchin-bai, and I don’t think he’ll believe me."

"Then why do you do this to me? Why do you promise and lie in the same breath? I cannot. I cannot.
Chaudatu, al-tic-alarthme-"
Tiggy was starting to work himself up to the pitch as lets a body walk over hot coals-or slice out own chitlins real confident-like. I shook him. Hard. "Look. We be into the Roaq and out again, and this time-I
swear
-we go to the
Pledge
and you lay the whole honor thing out for your da. Hyperspace both ways-and it’s a known fact you can’t have any honor-trouble in angeltown. Pax Imperador doesn’t run there. Hellflower honor doesn’t run there. Then you tell him everything and let him say if you done wrong. Something this important, you don’t want to make a mistake, je? And— And— It’s for something more than just you. You got to stay alive so your da can find out what people’s trying to do to him. Jain dormeer, oke?"

I held him in my arms and thought about being so crazy to save somebody that you’d do them a world of hurt, but I didn’t make the connection. Not then.

"Alarthme,
your accent is abominable and you don’t know what the words mean." Tiggy leaned more weight against me. I guessed he was so desperate to hear he’d done the right thing by his hellflower rules that he’d take it even from me. He thought the matter over until I was sure he was asleep.

"You are only
chaudatu,
and you know nothing of the Gentle People, yet your ignorant words are wise and I will heed them. I will not fear the shadow until I see my father again, but—
Kore
San’Cyr? It will be soon?"

He was trying to be brave and it damn near broke my heart. Maybe he had done wrong enough for his da to ice him when he got him back. Maybe hellflowers love their kids enough to make excuses for them. I didn’t know. But I did know that now he wouldn’t be tearing himself apart every minute between now and then.

"Will be soon, Tiggy-bai. Promise. And just think, next time you sec Errol you can fry him to component atoms. Won’t that be fun?" But Tiggy wasn’t listening. Tiggy was asleep.

The Roaq System, unlike my usual downfalls, is a major crossroads for Outlands shipping, which was one reason the Nobly-Born Governor General His TwiceBorn Nobilityness Mallorum Archangel was favoring it with the gift of his presence. Fortunately, he’d be here long after me and Tiggy was gone and Paladin and
Firecat
was somewhere else. I owe my long and glorious career to never having been audited by ImpSec; it’s guaranteed Unhealthy for my favorite darktrader and other living things.

The Roaq System contains three in-use planets: RoaqMhone, RoaqMheri, and RoaqTaq. In Silver Dagger’s blissful theory
Firecat
was going to RoaqMhone, the outmost and new-opened planet, where Parxifal was waiting with open appendages for his chobosh. In actual fact, she was going to RoaqMheri and getting lost in all that lovely traffic. I hoped Paladin could find something fast, well-armed, and inconspicuous to steal.

Fast. Before Rimini realized how far I wasn’t keeping our bargain. Tiggy’d settled down in a quiet happy sort of way and didn’t get under my feet more than six times a day. He asked enough questions about darktrading to make me think he intended to go into the business himself and I told him a bunch of mostly true stories about narrow escapes and the nobility of the freemasonry of deep space. I told him some about growing up in technophobe culture too, because it wouldn’t matter what he knew about me as long as he didn’t know about Paladin. Tiggy-Val’jon-told me about growing up in the House of Walls at FirstLeader Amrath Starbringer’s Court of Honor. It probably made at least as much sense to me as turnip-farming did to him.

I slid into the mercy seat and pulled the angelstick for the Drop. Realspace was black all around. I opened negotiations with RoaqApproach for a landing corridor to RoaqMheri, and told RoaqApproach my life story and answered all of their questions, and swore I’d never been anywhere near Manticore in the last one hundred days, so it couldn’t be me what had racked up all those penalty points on my First ticket for the takeoff there. When they tapped my flight recorder it agreed with me, thanks to Paladin, and after about an hour of sparkling chat, they gave me a window to drop through.

I’d have to sit here seventy minutes before it was open, so I kept the channel live after acknowledging RoaqApproach.

"Kore-alarthme,
will you teach me how to reprogram a flight recorder so that it tells
chaudatu
truths?" Tiggy asked.

One more thing I found out in the last three days was that hellflowers don’t much like the Phoenix Empire of which they’re members in such good standing. Paladin said it was understandable, considering things, but that was the last I understood of his explanation.

Terrific. A psychopathic proto-traitor of my very own. I wondered if Kennor, member of the Court of the TwiceBorn in good standing, knew he was opposed to the fillintheblank policies of the evil Empire.

And I wasn’t stupid enough to think this lazy-fair of Tiggy’s extended to Chapter 5 of the Revised Inappropriate Technology Act, neither. Tiggy had a particular down on High Book in all its forms and he wasn’t any more helpful on the subject of why than anybody else I ever met. Libraries had to be destroyed because they had to be destroyed. That was all he knew and it was good enough for him.

I was making comfortable plans for living till dinnertime when Paladin sang out and RoaqApproach started hollering at a unidentified freighter behind me to get out of my lane. I spun
Firecat
on her axis, but I had a feeling already I knew what I’d see.

Light Lady.
Errol.

I didn’t waste any time wondering silly girlish things like how he’d tracked me, and the fact that I didn’t want his damned cargo in the first place was now one of life’s little ironies. I jumped my approach lane and tried to get sunup, but this time Errol wasn’t worried about the integrity of his precious cargo. His shots was on the money. And
Firecat
was short a set of front deflectors. I decided to forget all about RoaqMheri, somehow.

"It is Errol Lightfoot-truly the gods favor us, San’Cyr! Now I may avenge you!"

"If you don’t strap in, Tiggy-bai, you won’t have nothing to avenge with!"

I slewed
Firecat
around again and cut the para-gravity. I’d need all the power the internal systems could spare. I split what I freed up between the rear bumpers and the plasma cannon and missed
Light Lady
a couple of times.

Tiggy leaned over the cockpit, in defiance of my lagging inertial compensators and what I’d told him. "Do not kill him here, San’Cyr-you have promised me his death-I wish to see his face."