Hellflower (v1.1) (30 page)

Old darktrade saw: is nothing easier to con than a con. The only trouble is there’s no money in it. Eloi had that look: stubborn against the truth. I’d seen the signs before-some kiddy’s bought coordinates to the Ghost Capital of the Old Federation and he’s going to go off there. It’s funny how you can always find someone with navigational tapes to the Ghost Capital he’s just too busy to use himself. Forget talking him out of it, no matter if you point out the coordinates he’s bought are usually at galactic center, or near it. Nobody sells this stuff. The mark who buys it does his own selling.

Just like Eloi’d sold himself this fantasy of a galaxy-wide plot of consenting Librarians, headed by Mallorum Archangel, forsooth. The TwiceBorn Governor-General The Nobly-Born Mallorum Archangel was second-in-line for the Phoenix Throne if the Emperor ever died. What did he have to want worth a High Book rap?

Nothing.

Rimini leaned against the bulkhead and started filing her nails. i looked at her. She didn’t believe Eloi’s story, either.

Maybe a Library
had
gone missing from Ouitina, and maybe Vannet had it now. I didn’t care. But if anybody was going Library-killing at Rialla tonight, I had to go first.

###

I spent two precious hours convincing Eloi of that. I told him I’d pretend to be looking for my ship’s navigational computer if I was caught; the story would hold until I could throw myself on Vannet’s mercy with a tale of Library Science. Since Vannet would of already seen the (fictional) Old Fed artifacts in my ship, it shouldn’t be too hard. Eloi bought it, and in exchange promised to get me and Tiggy off RoaqMhone with them-the
Woebegone
already had her clearance-to-lift reserved for tile last possible moment. She also had clearance to run in the MidWorlds, and Eloi said he’d take us to Mikasa to meet the
Pledge Of Honor.
I tried to pretend I was actually interested in anything that happened after I got away from the
Woebegone
Traveling Roadshow, and Tiggy looked ecstatic.

"And so we will return to my Father having defeated the Machine -and all honor will be satisfied,
Kore
-all!"

In all this I’d managed to forget that Kennor might still kill him when he got back, but Tiggy hadn’t. Eloi’d sent Alcatote back to the
Woebegone
for some stuff he said I’d need, so I went up to
Light Lad-y’s
cockpit to take tile air.

When I opened the hatch Rimini spun the songbird seat around and looked at me.

###

"Why did you go to Manticore?" she said.

"Your mind failing, Silver Dagger? You sent me to Manticore with your High Book rap, remember? I went to save my bones. Office of the Question’d kill dicty, Library or no." I was playing out my dead man’s hand from sheer inertia.

"But not an adopted daughter of House Starborn. You had the Heir to Starborn sworn to
comites.
Kennor Starbringer, as you knew by then, would be honor-bound to protect you from an inquisition that would, after all, reveal nothing. You had everything to gain by ignoring your trip-tik and rendezvousing with the
Pledge Of Honor
instead. And you went to Manticore."

"The Old Fed Tech on
Firecat
-"

"Is a bedtime story for Eloi. Or is it?" She raised her eyebrows and looked irritated. "How remiss of me not to make sure the charge was false before I made it. What do you think you had aboard that ridiculous ship of yours . . . a Library?"

A secret’s a secret if nobody looks, and everybody was looking now. I didn’t say anything.

Rimini lit up a spice-stick and burned in silence for a few minutes. "You’d like to go home again, wouldn’t you? To your interdicted play? The real world’s just a little too rough for somebody born behind a-what was it-‘plau’?"

There was another long pause while Rimini thought Silver Dagger thoughts and I thought about nothing at all.

"I want the boy, St. Cyr," she said finally.

"Goody for you. I been trying to send him home since I picked him up on Wander-web. People trying to kill him, Rimini. On Wanderweb someone set him up for the chop. On Kiffit Grandmaster Alaric Dragonflame hired Ghadri wolfpack to ice him. It isn’t-"

Rimini leaned forward. "Is this true?" she said, interested for once. "Do you realize what you’re saying? If Kennor Starbringer-" "Proof’s in Firecat." For what that was worth. Rimini leaned back again and let the spice smoke swirl upward.

"If sending him home was all you wanted to do, stardancer, why not give him to me?"

"Wouldn’t go away from me, even if I did trust you not to sell him to the highest bidder, Rimini." I sat down in
Light Lady’s
mercy seat and watched the dock wall sparkle in her lights.

"How charming. You’re quite right-but in this case the highest bidder, my quaint barbarian, is the status quo. Kennor Starbringer’s death means a Coalition under the control of Mallorum Archangel, who already has a great deal more power than he needs. I am willing to put myself to actual inconvenience to keep Kennor as head of the Coalition-and that means keeping Valijon alive and whole."

I wished Rimini’d go away. I wished Eloi’d get his toys together and let mc go. "You should of thought of that before you blackmailed me to Manticore."

"Even if you did go as far as Manticore, I was sure you’d just shoot the Fenshee and take off on your own-which would have suited both Eloi and me admirably. But I’d forgotten. You have a Library on your ship, and so you didn’t dare." Rimini smiled, cold enough to chill space. "Do you think an actual Old Federation Library would be satisfied to spend its time hiding in the Outfar with a cheap smuggler from a barbarian backwater? Even you have to be smarter than that."

"It’s too late to find out, isn’t it? I’m going in to Rialla because that’s the only choice I got left. I’m not coming out." I looked out
Lady’s
cockpit and wished I had just one more chance to take a ship High Jump to the up-and-out. Just One. "Take Val’jon to his da. Rimini. Want to save his life. Please."

I swung the seat around. Rimini and me looked at each other. She stood up and took something out of a pouch. "Go to Rialla for Eloi. And take this for me." She held it out.

It was as big as my two fists, oval, dull brassy gray. There was u red line around its equator. and time markings. A military-rated proton-grenade, guaranteed to turn sand to glass for several hundred cubic kliks wherever fusion reactions am sold. Made what I usually carried look like a love-tap. Illegal as hell.

I put it in my vest pocket.

"When you’re inside, detonate it in the down deep under the house. That will take care of all the make-believe Libraries-yours and Eloi’s-in plenty of time for the
Woebegone
to lift. Valijon Starbringer will be docile enough with drugs, and House Starbringer should be very . . . grateful. I won’t expect you to make it clear of the explosion." Rimini turned to go. She was right about one thing. Whatever world she lived in, I didn’t belong there.

"Rimini? Eloi’s really your brother?"

She stopped. "Hadn’t you guessed?" The cockpit door shut behind her.

I used to have brothers. Maybe I still do.

It was five hours until close of play at MhonePort when I bailed out of
Woebegone’s
speeder and walked up to the back wall of the hardsite at Rialla. I was covered in anti-scanners and enough other useful Stuff to make it likely I’d get where I was going.

Rimini, Eloi, and Alcatote was hanging hack until I gave them the high-sign, and Tiggy was with them under protest. I had his sacred knife taped to my wishbone from gullet to groin because he wouldn’t take it back. Said I had to take it, on behalf of the walls and shadows and sacred blood and other silly nonsense. After all that yap about irreplaceable wonderknife my hellflower hands it to the first mostly total stranger he sees to go kyting off with. Dumb.

I was going in to find Paladin. If he was dead I’d use Rimini’s grenade. If he was alive I’d set the grenade on time delay and take him and run like hell. When Rimini saw the flash she’d coke Tiggy and ship him home. Maybe. And when Tiggy woke up, he’d know I’d lied to him, and run out on him, and never meant one damn thing I’d told him. "Paladin?" I said out loud. No answer. I should be almost in range of his unboosted transmission, if there wasn’t too much rock in the wily. If he was still alive.

I studied the wall on the perimeter of the hardsite. Just because I couldn’t see the security, it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Solid citizen Kroon’Vannet, legit business-lizard in the eyes of RoaqMhone society, had all the heat anyone needed to drop.

And an RTS in his skull, that was talking to . . . what?

I aced the sensors and the patrol remote and thought rock thoughts scuttling across the flat. There was a rock garden coming, and a building complex to the right: garages and sheds. The main house was ahead, and further ahead was a in-and-out for the private, highly illegal, probably immoral, definitely expensive, stardock. An Empire with the monopoly on all inter-planet docking facilities gets real torqued at private contractors.

I looked around for the maintenance access and zapped it a short burst with more of Eloi’s friendly toys for girls and boys. Pulled the door back, slithered down the ladder, and I was in a underground corridor carved out of massive rock. All quiet.

"Paladin? Pally?" My throat hurt. I had to be in range now. "Hello, Butterfly," he said, sounding damnall cheerful for no reason I could see. "It took you a long time to find me."

He was alive. I was so happy to hear that I almost threw up. "Can’t turn my back on you for a minute. ‘Stay out of trouble,’ you said. ‘Don’t rescue nobody,’ you said." I leaned against the wall and took several deep breaths until the dancing black shadows behind my eyes went away.

Paladin was alive.

Now all I had to do was get him out of here and back to the Port before it closed.
Lady
could get us out of the System even if she couldn’t Jump to angels, and then we’d go far away where nobody cared about Libraries.

"Wotthehell’s going on here, anyway?" I said after a minute or so.

"I do not know, Butterfly. I do not know why Vannet brought me here. What is your current status?"

"Rotten. Eloi-the-Red and his gang of happy idiots is going to come riding over the hill any minute on a wild Library hunt and you and me better be long gone from here when he does."

The corridor led straight to the docking bay, so I started walking. "Why are they going to do that, Butterfly? I thought Captain Eloi Flashheart was on Kiffit."

"Says Vannet’s got a Old Fed full-vol in here that he’s been chasing since he twigged it in the Tahelangone Sector, and I told him about how Errol was running High Book tech. Since Eloi-bai’s home delight in life is to frag Libraries, we’re leaving before the shooting starts."

"Yes, Butterfly. But first you must go to Captain Eloi Flashheart and tell him there is no Library here. I would know if there were a Library here. There are no Libraries here."

"Well, Vannet’s talking to something on his Rotten-C. You sure you’re reet, Pally?"

"I am intact, Butterfly. You must go now and find Captain Eloi Flashheart. You will tell him he is mistaken and then you will return here to me."

"Yeah, like hell, babby," I muttered. Paladin sounded spacy and I didn’t like it.

The Underground corridor opened onto a fascinating vista of cranes, machinery, and my Best Girl hung up in the middle with most of her hull plating off. The bay lights were up, but no one was around.

"Butterfly, you must do as I have told you. I require this. Go at once to Captain Eloi Flashheart and tell him he is incorrect."

I didn’t bother to answer him this time. I walked out into the bay, toward
Firecat.

One landing strut was all over the floor in pieces and the other two was still jammed up in the body of the ship. From what I could see, what was left of the drive hadn’t even been touched just some blankets thrown over it to stop leaks. I climbed inside.

"Butterfly, answer me. You know I am your friend. You must obey me. You can trust me."

Paladin wasn’t there. There was a scraped and burned patch in the cockpit well where he belonged, and all his power leads was left dangling. Whoever pulled him knew what they was doing and had been careful, but wherever he was now, he was out of range of my RTS. "Butterfly? Answer me, Butterfly. This is Paladin." Wrong.

I’d heard what I wanted coming in, not what was there. There was a couple million light-years between Paladin and whatever was using my Rotten-C to talk to me now.

Rimini’d been wrong, for once. There
was
a Library at Rialla. More than that, there
was
two.

All my careful plans to return Butterfly to comparative safety among her own kind were rendered obsolete the moment we reached the surface of RoaqMhone.

We had thought, Butterfly and I, that the Chapter 5 writ against Kroon’Vannet was sheer fantasy-not forged, as I later learned it was, but simply without reference to established fact. That one Federation Library should survive a millennium of destructive searching to be found and restored by one of the few persons in the entire Phoenix Empire with both the knowledge and the lack of acculturation to do so successfully borders on the unbelievable. That two should be. . . . Two had been.

It was not a lack of acculturation that was responsible for this second Library’s resurrection, but organic greed for power.

The political balance of the Empire is so delicate that the murder of one child-Valijon Starbringer-could have an extreme effect upon it. In such an environment, the ruthless Guest for advantage would eventually endorse any weapon. For the first time in centuries, a Library was sought for use, not destruction.

Of course, what Mallorum Archangel so eagerly sought was found, but the Governor-General of the Empire was far too cautious to allow a direct connection between himself and an Old Federation Library.