Hellflower (v1.1) (7 page)

And if I did take Tiggy to Kiffit, it’d be a real kidnapping for sure, and no way of talking myself out of the charge.

But if I didn’t either take the hellflower with me to Kiffit or put him back on the heavy side here at Wanderweb, that left only one thing to do with Tiggy Stardust-all of which made the evening’s fun not particularly funny, and never mind that if I hadn’t showed up he’d of been dead in a few hours anyway.

He’d been in the Last Gasp looking for me. And because he had been, I was alive now and he’d killed serious Guardsmen, for which Wanderweb wanted to chop him.

I sat there and thought about it, and punched up the numbers for the High Jump to Kiffit, and looked at my life-support inventories and counted on my fingers. Paladin knew what I was doing, but he didn’t say zip.

And when everything was done but making up my mind, I raised the cockpit back into the hull again and went back to talk to my passenger.

Firecat’s
internal compensators weren’t good enough that she could of moved without him noticing, and after our takeoff Tiggy Stardust knew it. He put his knife away and stood up. Different cultures have different body language. On alMayne I bet this didn’t mean respect.

"Ea, chaudatu?"

"You ain’t going to like this, che-bai. Your ship ain’t there." I still wasn’t ready for way he moved.

"You are lying!" Tiggy snarled in my ear. He’d wrapped himself around all my bruises hard enough to hurt, and had his alMayne
arthame
snugged up to several of my important veins. If I flinched in the wrong direction I’d be nonfiction, but if I didn’t know people I would of sold my bones a long time ago.

Tiggy was scared.

"Hellflower, I am for-sure sorry your folks ain’t there. But it ain’t nice to pull heat on people for true-tell." I talked real slow, trying to punch it across two languages. I didn’t flinch neither, and eventually he let me go.

"They could not leave! How could they have left? It is not possible that they should leave; they—" Tiggy went off into helltongue, ramifying his position, which was pretty to listen to and told me precisely nothing. Paladin didn’t know it either, at least not well enough to translate.

"The
Pledge Of Honor
was not listed at the Wanderweb ships-in-port directory, thus we may infer that its stop here was not an official one. The most reasonable construction to place upon the matter of the ship’s absence from the area now is that the
Pledge Of Honor
departed according to a predetermined schedule. If it were bound for Grand Central, a plausible hypothesis considering its nature as a consular vessel, the captain would have had no other option. Whether the legation was aware of Valijon Starbringer’s absence from its midst at the time of departure is a matter for conjecture at this time," said Paladin.

I rubbed my neck and counted my new bruises. Paladin still sounded just like a talkingbook, which meant he was still mad. I thought I’d share his facts with Tiggy.

"Was Da shopping cubic for Throne? He’d of had to kyte by mandated o’chrono no matter where you was," I said. Tiggy stared at me, glazed and blank like a well-scrubbed palimpsest.

"Try Interphon," suggested Paladin in my ear, which was fine for him but it’d been a long day and I was tired.

"Pledge
is gone, j’ai?" I said to Tiggy. "Scanners don’t lie, not mine, if gardenship was highbinding-orbiting-it isn’t there now." Tiggy nodded, looking sulky.

"When
Pledge
tik’d to Wanderweb, was on way to Throne-Grand Central-ImpCourt, j’ai?"

Another nod. Communication was reliably established with the mentally underprivileged.

"So TwiceBorn jump salty if you’re late, see? So
Pledge
topped angels on sked, and you pick up ship on next downfall." Wherever that was. I wasn’t paying for a long-distance call to Grand Central to find out, neither.

"But they do not know I’m gone! They cannot know-they would not have left if they had known! My father—"

Terrific. "Kyted downside on sly to rumble Gentryken?" I was beginning to wonder just how old Tiggy was.

"Maybe it would be better if you learned alMayne," said my everhelpful partner. "Or helltongue, if you prefer." I looked at Tiggy’s blank expression and tried again.

"You went to planetary surface n’habla—" damn, what was the Interphon? "without-your parent’s knowledge?" I said careful, counting off the words on my fingers. It was like being back in Market Garden Acculturation class, and I hadn’t liked it then, either.

"I am not obligated to discuss these matters with you,
chaudatu.
There was no reason I should not visit Wanderweb. I am the Third Person of House Starborn-and he who says I may not go where I wish lives without walls!" Tiggy put his knife back in his waistband and tossed his hair back out of his eyes.

The words might be helltalk, but the tune was real familiar. "How t’hell old are you anyway, Tiggy-che-bai?"

Tiggy goggled at me like he couldn’t figure where the question was coming from, but all of a sudden I thought it was real important. "You will address me with respect as Honored One, she-captain." "J’ai; about the time you stop calling me she-captain, forbye. Now true-tell Mother Sincere facts."

"What has this to do with the
Pledge Of Honor?
If they have gone on to Royal you must follow them at once."

"Why?" If
Pledge’d
gone on to Royal in the Tortuga Sector
Firecat
wasn’t following it for any credit. There was a rebellion going on in Tortuga against the Brightlaw Corporation, the family that ran the Tortuga Directorate, which meant Governor General his Nobly-Bornness Mallorum Archangel and his joy-boys’d be all over it, arguing Directorate jurisdiction against sector jurisdiction and making Tortuga cubic real unhealthy for my favorite dicty and other living things.

I sat down on a crate of rokeach and took off my jacket. I’d forgot about the burn on my arm; I scraped it and hissed. Tiggy tried to explain how I had to go chasing off into this free-fire zone full of Azarine mercs while I tried to get a biopak out of the medkit and over one helluva painful nuisance. Finally we both gave up.

"Hold still," he said firmly. "You cannot do that yourself. I will bandage you, and you will explain why you are detaining a servant of the Gentle People."

"That’s you, I suppose." My baseline Interphon was finally coming back to me, but it still felt funny to the taste. "And what makes you think, glitterborn, you got any idea what to do with battle-dressings?"

"A warrior of the Gentle People must always be able to see to his
comites
,
chaudatu.
You are my responsibility, even if you are not very much of one. You have shed blood for me."

"Like hell." Bent out of shape or not, Tiggy had a glitterborn way of doing the pretty. Nasty.

"I do not see any painkillers here," he said like it was my fault. "You drank it. You may of noticed by now, o’noblyborn, that this is a freighter, not a high-ticket outhostel. And I want to keep it in one piece, not do a conversion to plasma on the Royal ecliptic."

"House Starbringer will pay for my return, since ransom is what concerns you,
chaudatu, "
said Tiggy, once the dressing was in place. He took an eloquent look around my Best Girl’s hold and went over and sat on a crate.

I reminded myself that he was a homicidal lunatic. "Butterfly, let me—" Paladin began.

"Ransom," I said, flat. Tiggy looked up. "Tiggy Stardust, is time you got lesson in big-bad galaxy-which you should of got before you went off to play with the big kids in the never-never. You chaffer on about ransom like it meant something and people was going to play kiss-my-hand and wait around to collect it with glitterborn rules and all. Well, K’Jarn was going to kill you for what you was standing up in back on Wanderweb and probably sell you to a bodysnatcher before you got cold. That’s ransom in the never-never."

Tiggy’s face was unreadable as a plaster saint’s. "What will you do, if you will not return me to my people?"

"If I put you back on the heavy side here, Justiciary’s going to chop you. If I chase into Royal, I’ll get blown up. So I’m taking you to Kiffit. Got cargo for there, people’re waiting."

"No," said Paladin. I ignored him.

Tiggy pulled out his knife again, which was a argument but not a good one. "I do not wish to go to this Kiffit. The
Pledge Of Honor is
going to Royal, and—"

"Put that coke-gutter of yours away before I ram it down your glitterborn throat. Lesson Number One in the Real World: You can kill me but you can’t make me fly you anywhere."

"Butterfly, will you please—"

"I can fly," said Tiggy uneasily.

“Not this ship, che-bai. When I die, it blows up. I’m going to Kiffit, and so are you. Think
Firecat’s
maybe got enough air to get us both there, if we’re lucky. Better chance than you got otherways. I’ll take that risk.

"Butterfly, you saw the figures. There is only a seventy percent chance you will both survive to reach Kiffit. It is not worth the risk."

"I have thirty-four years," Tiggy said.

"Por-ke?" I said. He didn’t savvy patwa, but he answered.

"You asked me how old I was, ch-Captain. I have thirty-four years."

"Standard?" Hell, I have thirty-four years Standard; if Tiggy was my age I’d eat all five of
Firecat’s
goforths.

"No. Real years."

"What’s the conversion?" I said, and after a long time it was Paladin that answered me.

"Thirty-four years alMayne is equal to fourteen Imperial Standard Years. Butterfly, there is one chance in four that you will die."

I still ignored him. I already knew the numbers. I looked at Tiggy. He didn’t look fourteen, but different human races age differently. I was already halfway through my expectancy, assuming I lived long enough to die in bed.

Which didn’t look too likely just now. And it didn’t at this moment matter what the Hellflower Years of Discretion were, either.

"You’re fourteen. Terrific." Under the Codex Imperador Tiggy had to be twenty to be a grown-up, and he wasn’t. So the rap for him was child-kidnap; worse than before, if that was possible.

"I am adult. I have my
arthame.
I am a legal Person of House Starborn—" He stopped. "And honor demands that I die now with honor; for allowing me that you have the gratitude of my House." He looked around.

"And where t’hell you think you’re going, kinchin-bai?"

"I will go out your air lock, Captain-even a ship like this must have one. I cannot put you at risk in your journey. You have saved my life and served me well. I will not imperil you further."

I’d been fourteen once. Fortunately it hadn’t been permanent. "It is very nearly a reasonable solution," said Paladin, helpfully. Real reasonable; I wouldn’t even have to cold-cock the stupid brat and shove him out my lock; he’d do it himself.

Except it wasn’t his fault that his daddy’d kyted, or that nobody’d told Tiggy the galaxy had teeth big enough to chew hellflowers.

"Oh, give it a rest, willya? You and me is going to Kiffit and I’ll turn you in to the Azarine Guildhouse there. They send you home, I get shut of you, everything’s copacetic."

Tiggy looked around in panic. "But you cannot do that." He looked like he preferred microwave death to spending another hour on
Firecat.

"Is my ship and I’ll freight what I want. Ain’t done rescuing you yet, so remember honor, Tiggy-bai."

"Honor is better than bread," agreed Tiggy darkly, which just showed how many meals he’d missed.

He slanted a interested glance at me, like he was thinking of unfinished honor-bashing session. But he’d back down for now, which was all I cared about. And maybe the kidnap charge wouldn’t stick.

Yeah, and maybe I wouldn’t run into Dominich Fenrir on Kiffit.

###

I went back up to the mercy seat. The good numbers for Kiffit was right where I left them.

"He is dangerous. Do not do this, Butterfly," said Paladin, quiet as if anyone could hear.

"What else can I do, babby? Fourteen-year-old kinchin-bai." I pulled the stick for the Drop and my Best Girl wrenched herself out of the here-and-now like a homesick angel.

What began as an extremely dangerous amusement became an extremely costly one when the jailbreak of the alMayne Valijon Starbringer escalated to the point that Wanderweb Port Security became involved. When Valijon Starbringer became, in effect, stranded aboard
Firecat
the affair ceased to resemble anything amusing at all.

Firecat
is not a passenger ship, for one very good reason. Any passenger aboard
Firecat
is in a position to discover my existence and Butterfly’s cooperation with me, and that discovery would inevitably result in our destruction. And of all the potential passengers to take aboard
Firecat
, Valijon Starbringer might very well be the most dangerous.

It is Butterfly’s opinion that politics interferes with "bidness," that there is business to be done under any government, and under all governments what she does is illegal. These things are all true, but do not in and of themselves constitute an excuse for ignorance. If Butterfly were more aware of "current events," she would understand why Valijon Starbringer-the only son of the alMayne delegate to the Court of the TwiceBorn, Kennor Starbringer, who is the deciding vote on the Azarine Coalition Council-was such an extremely dangerous commodity to have inboard.

There are 144 Directorates in the Phoenix Empire-144 astropolitical divisions of the Phoenix Empire, each of which is governed by the Corporation families. From these families are drawn the members of the Imperial Court-the TwiceBorn. The TwiceBorn are the social and economic elite of the Empire and rule all the rest, civil and military alike. Below the TwiceBorn come citizens, and below them client-members, and below them slaves. Then resident aliens (what Butterfly calls, with a fine disregard for species distinction, "wigglies"), and then, at last, the nightworld rabble of which Butterfly is a part.