Korval's Game (84 page)

Their visitor bowed as they entered the room, entirely in the Terran mode, then straightened and stated, in the staccato accents of Standard Terran, “Greenshaw Porter, Juntavas courier. Miri Robertson and Val Con yos’Phelium?”

“That’s right,” Miri said easily.

“Yes.” Val Con assured him, noting the position of at least two guns and a blade distributed about the courier’s person.

The man nodded, apparently unsurprised. “The Juntavas has been looking for you. The offer is aid and comfort. We cooperate with Clutch turtles Edger and Sheather. I have verification.”

“Ah, do you?” Val Con murmured.

The Juntava cocked a sapient eye. “Turtles thought you’d want it.” He raised his hands, fingers spread wide. “I saw the rock in orbit. I heard there are turtles on planet. Order from Headquarters is proceed according to plan. Verification in my right outside pocket. You can take it, or I can give it.”

Inside his head, Val Con heard Miri’s song, alert and watchful. Deliberately, not really certain that it would work, he looked at the places where the Juntava carried his concealed weapons—one, two, three—and heard her song shift. Almost, he thought he heard her murmur “gotcha”.

He raised his hands, fingers spread, returning the offered gesture of peace.

“Please,” he murmured, “feel free to display your verification.”

“Right.” Slowly, fingers still held wide, he slipped his right hand into the outside pocket of his long jacket, and withdrew something so sharply luminous it seemed that he held a star between his thumb and first finger.

Still moving deliberately, he extended the brilliant token. Val Con held his hand out, fingers cupped. The crystal hit his palm, unexpectedly heavy, warm, its edges sharp, but not sharpened. He glanced down, eyes narrowed against the whiteness of it, saw without surprise that it was luminous at its core.

“Flashlight?” Miri asked from beside him.

“Exactly,” he murmured, and handed it to her, returning his attention to Greenshaw Porter.

“We have received verification,” he said, carefully. “More, we have only lately seen Clutch turtles Edger and Sheather, who know us to be well and at liberty. Please inform Headquarters that the Juntavas is quit in this matter.”

“Not exactly,” the Juntava said, and Val Con raised an eyebrow, feeling Miri come to full alert beside him.

“Explain.”

“The Juntavas is missing a Sector Judge.”

“Ah. I commiserate with the Juntavas upon its loss.”

Greenshaw Porter grimaced. “Supplemental data. I’m attached to the Justice Department. High Judge himself petitions Korval for info. The missing Judge put herself on detached duty. Last known to be in company with Pat Rin yos’Phelium.” His forehead wrinkled slightly. “Your brother, maybe?”

“Cousin,” Val Con said absently, trying to reconcile Pat Rin with a Juntavas Sector Judge. And, yet, how
could
he predict what Pat Rin might do? He and his cousin were scarcely intimate. Indeed, Val Con had gathered that Pat Rin had few intimates. His foster-father, perhaps. And surely Luken bel’Tarda had taught his fosterling to give the Juntavas wide clearance.

“Cousin,” the Juntava repeated and nodded. “Questions from the High Judge: Does Korval know the location of Sector Judge Natesa? If yes, as a personal favor to the High Judge, who values his judges as a delm values his kin, will Korval divulge her location? Follow-up: If something happened to her, the High Judge asks for that info, too. No rage, no Balance. But he would like to recover the body.” He hesitated before adding: “Myself, I know that Judge. She’d be hard to kill.”

“I am desolate to disappoint the High Judge,” Val Con murmured, “but his inquiry marks the first time I have heard of Sector Judge Natesa.”

“You said she’s on detached duty,” Miri broke in. “Maybe she decided to quit the judging business?”

Greenshaw Porter shook his head. “No’m. Judges put themselves on detached duty at will. They have discretion. Only Judges tell another Judge what to do. Or how to do it.”

She threw a glance at Val Con. “Sounds a lot like being a scout.”

“Perhaps,” he returned, and looked to the Juntava. “Has my cousin been seen since Judge Natesa exercised her discretion?”

“Nossir. Both were in a dust-up—gunplay, unidentified deaders—then went off-grid simultaneous. Neither one resurfaced.”

Gods, if it didn’t scan like a Departmental “dust up”
, Val Con thought.
And never think that an Agent was less than the match of a Sector Judge, no matter how hard she was to kill.

As for Pat Rin . . . Let it be known that Pat Rin was not an idiot. Let it further be known that he was a wizard with his pistols, and that he had once killed a man. And against whatever the Department might wish to inflict upon him—from mere death to menticide—he would hold no defenses whatsoever.

He looked up at the Juntavas courier.

“I am hardly in a position to trade fairly with the High Judge,” he said carefully, feeling Miri drawing closer to his side. “However, I would be honored, were the Juntavas to allow me to know the time and the place where my cousin and Sector Judge Natesa were last seen.”

Greenshaw Porter nodded. “I’m cleared for that. I have the report from Housekeeping. I’m cleared to share that, too.”

“Thank you. That would be most helpful.”

“I’ll transfer it from my ship. Need a comm address.”

Val Con recited the code for the unit in their upstairs rooms.

The courier repeated the address, nodded and bowed once more in the Terran mode.

“I’ll asap that. I’m on-planet until tomorrow mid-day. Aid-and-comfort is in force until I lift.”

“Thank you,” Val Con said again. “I do not believe it will be needed.”

***

REN ZEL STIRRED,
stretched, smiled, opened his eyes—and stifled a curse. The clock across the room was adamant: three minutes until the start of his shift on the bridge. He rolled out of bed, realized abruptly that he was fully clothed and not a little rumpled; his boots showing smudges of what might have been grass stains. To appear on-shift so . . . He looked again at the clock.
Two
minutes until he was wanted on the bridge—and far worse to be late than untidy.

Ren Zel ran.

***

THEY READ
the reports from the Juntavas together, Miri sitting on the arm of the chair, her hip against his shoulder.

There was a short bio of Sector Judge Natesa, accompanied by an image of a slender lady of good countenance, dark-skinned and sloe-eyed, her hair a silky black cap ’round her neat head.

Miri gave a low whistle, and leaned forward to tap the screen over the bio. “This girl can cook, boss. No wonder they miss her.”

“She appears competent in the extreme,” he agreed, scrolling down through a surprising number of missions completed on behalf of the Juntavas, most at the upper echelons of power.

Sector Judges might well be able to declare themselves on detached duty at will, but it appeared that Judge Natesa had been happy in her work, and had only thrice previously removed herself from duty—twice on recuperative vacations and one comprehensive disappearance, from which she reappeared within a relumma.

“First class pilot,” he murmured, going through the remainder of her accomplishments, “master shooter; explosives expert. Yes—a lady of many competencies.”

Who had very competently disappeared, so the next, extremely brief report stated, on Day 289, Standard Year 1392, from a Juntavas maintained yard, after filing the appropriate intention with her office.

Gods, so long ago?
Val Con shivered and hit the key for the next file.

The report from Housekeeping, prepared by order of Sector Judge Natesa, was admirably detailed, listing descriptions of the dead, contents of pockets, wallets, pouches; types and numbers of weapons. A blue evening jacket, well-splattered with blood, but whole, was noted, and a square of cleansilk, its virtue destroyed by the blood.

“Note the guns,” he murmured. “Note the other items inventoried . . .”

“Picks, garrotes, pipettes of acid, poison.” She sighed. “You’re thinking the Department.”

“I am. The jacket is . . . distressing. Pat Rin often wears blue.”

“Yeah, but there’s no pellet holes in this one. Whoever was wearing it probably ditched it on account of it ain’t polite to wear bloodstains on the street.” Miri said sensibly. “Unless you got a match further up?”

He shook his head, unrelieved. Death was certainly preferable to the living agonies the Department was capable of inflicting. Kin might wish a clean death for kin, against so terrible an alternative.

“No,” he said, aloud. “No, he is not listed among the dead.”

“But that ain’t making you feel any better.” She frowned down at him. “In fact, it’s making you feel worse.”

He met her eyes. “I would not willingly remand my direst enemy to the Department’s care, much less kin.” He sighed. “Even kin scarcely known.”

She blinked, then turned back to the screen, leaning forward to manipulate the keys, scrolling back up through Natesa’s last filed contact with her office.

“She don’t say anything about him being with her,” she muttered. “Shit, she don’t even say why she was in it in the first place.”

“Aid and comfort,” Val Con said, staring over the screen, seeing Pat Rin as he had last seen him, years ago: a creature of grace and poise, assuredly, with a needling wit and a languorous manner which could be put on and dispensed with in the flicker of an eyelash.

Vulnerable; so very vulnerable, did he fall into the hands of the Department. Which would, almost certainly, remake him into a bomb.

“
What
?” Miri turned to stare at him, her eyes wide with alarm. “What’s wrong?”

He took a breath, trying to think it through, to get past the horror, to put himself in the place of the Commander, sworn to bring the Department’s Plan to fruition. Which Plan included Korval’s annihilation.

“Miri . . .”

“Don’t say it—I think I just got the download.” She closed her eyes, and in his mind’s eye Val Con saw a blurring spin of color—redyelloworangegreenblueviolet—followed by a warming sense of calm.

“OK. So the Department might’ve got Pat Rin, either at this massacre, here, or sometime real soon after, and the Judge might be on the lam to save her skin, she being no dummy in a big way. And if the Department’s got Pat Rin, they’re gonna rework him.” She bit her lip.

“How long’s it take?”

He moved his shoulders, snapped to his feet and stalked down the room. “Eternity.” He came to the window and stopped, staring out over Erob’s nighttime gardens. The silence at his back was tangible. He sighed.

“Forgive me, cha’trez. The length of the process depends in large part upon the reserves of the candidate. Certainly, if the Department has had Pat Rin in their care for nearly two relumma, they will have completed their work long since. Especially as they will not be constructing an Agent of Change, but something far simpler.”

“Q-ship. Got it. But we’re forewarned.”

“Not all of us,” he said, turning from the window. “Pat Rin’s foster-father and true-mother have the duty of protecting the clan’s children. I do not believe either would deny him entrance to their safeplace.” He reached up and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Jelaza Kazone would admit him. Anthora would perhaps understand that there was something amiss—but she might not understand it in time to prevent him killing her.”

“OK.” Miri stood up, showing him palms in the gesture of peace. “OK. This is all might-have. We don’t know where Pat Rin is. He might be holed up cozy on an outworld, waiting for the all-clear.”

“True. Though that might-have does not tell us why the Sector Judge has run away.”

“Might’ve taken a lover. Might’ve needed time out. Might’ve got drunk, fell down and broke her neck. We don’t know she’s hiding because of the business in the warehouse. We don’t even
know
that she’s hiding.”

“And we do not know that she isn’t.”

Silence.

“Another might-have,” Val Con said, slowly, hating it, and gods, if it were true . . .

“Go.”

“The Department has acquired
both
Korval’s child Pat Rin and Juntavas Sector Judge Natesa.”

She blinked at him. “She’s Agent material.”

“Indeed she is. More, she has access to the highest levels within the Juntavas. The Commander might put such a tool to very good use.”

“I bet he could.” She shook her head. “We still got no proof.”

“We have no proof,” he repeated, looking not at her, so much as through her. “We do, however, owe the High Judge some
info
.”

He came back to himself with a visible start and moved across the room to the comm unit. Miri sighed and went over to pour them each a glass of wine.

DAY 52
Standard Year 1393
Department of Interior Headquarters Liad

COMMANDER OF AGENTS
was not one to allow the natural losses of warfare to overly dismay him. It was understood that there would be casualties—even, many casualties—as the Plan unfolded and the Department met with the resistance of small minds and imbedded interests. Thus, while he did not view his losses lightly, the Commander was able to maintain the dispassion necessary to ultimate success in those instances when the Department was momentarily thwarted.

The loss of a ship of the Department and four full Agents of Change on the planet Lytaxin—that was a different matter entirely. Very nearly, in fact, could the Commander be said to be—angry.

The ship had reported Val Con yos’Phelium on-board some time after the fourth Agent’s implanted monitor went off-line. The ship itself had exploded some few minutes after lift-off. Commander of Agents was not so naive as to believe that Val Con yos’Phelium had died with the vessel.

So: Four Agents, lost on Lytaxin. One Agent, lost on Interdicted World I-2796-893-44, his ship captured and then destroyed. Three more Agents lost to the bitch half-breed . . .

Lost thus far: eight Agents and two ships. And what profit did the Department show from so great and widespread an expenditure?

Sand and ashes. Val Con yos’Phelium remained at liberty; Anthora yos’Galan slept secure behind the formidable walls of Jelaza Kazone.