Refugee: Force Heretic II (27 page)

The penitent’s face showed none of this, but that was because the face was as false as Nom Anor’s own. She, too, was wearing an ooglith masquer designed to give the appearance of a Shamed One. All was illusion, deception …

Could this be the one?
Nom Anor wondered.
Could this be the link to Shimrra I’ve been waiting for?
He wasn’t so naive as to hope for a high-ranking warrior or intendant. They were all thoroughly brainwashed. A simple servant would be enough—someone who had access to the private places he could no longer see; someone who could overhear the meetings at which policies were decided. With a spy right in the heart of the Supreme Overlord’s inner circle, he could indeed eat away at his enemy from within, just as the penitent had said, using the knowledge gained from such a source to direct his campaign—and all the while recruiting others to reduce his reliance on that one person.

But how could he trust someone without knowing her name? What if the penitent had been deliberately planted by Shimrra to spread false information about his intentions? Did the Supreme Overlord have the capacity for such subtlety?

Doubt flowered in his gut.

“Come closer,” he said, motioning the penitent forward. He could feel the weight of the entire audience’s stare upon him. They were present during a significant moment, and they knew it. How he handled the next few minutes was vital.

The penitent approached within arm’s reach—close enough to kill honorably, Nom Anor thought. He waved her closer still, until their mouths were at each other’s ears.

“How do I know I can believe you?” Nom Anor whispered.

“You can believe me.” The penitent’s voice was little more than an expelled breath. “The gods have brought me this far, have they not?”

Nom Anor pulled back slightly to stab his steely gaze into the penitent’s eyes. “We screen for infiltrators, not for piety.”

Those eyes smiled back at Nom Anor. “I pass on both counts, then.”

“Perhaps,” Nom Anor said. “But we are not so foolish as to believe that we will catch every spy that comes our way. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they present many different faces.”

“You would know more about that than I, Nom Anor,” the penitent whispered. “That was your specialty, after all.”

Nom Anor went cold, pushing the penitent away from him. “How—?”

“I recognized you as soon as I saw you—even behind your ooglith masquer.” The eyes of the penitent didn’t leave his; they were filled with something approximating triumph, as though Nom Anor’s reaction had confirmed what had until that moment been only a guess. “It didn’t seem possible, at first; we’d been told you were dead. But the more I listened to you speak, the more sure I became that it was you. Audacity and surprise were always your hallmarks, Nom Anor. When Shimrra cast you out—”

“Enough!” Nom Anor pushed her farther away, as he would repel something unclean. “I have heard enough!” He looked around desperately for Kunra and Shoon-mi. They had planned for such an eventuality; there were contingencies. They should have been sealing off the room and preparing for slaughter; there was no way he could allow anyone to leave this room now that his true name had been spoken.

But they weren’t moving. They stood at the back by the door, looking puzzled. They hadn’t heard the penitent’s whisper! They didn’t know what was going on!

The penitent was determined. “Wait,” she said, pushing forward, one gnarled hand reaching under her robes. “I have something for you.”

Nom Anor reacted instinctively. There wasn’t time to think. Someone who recognized him was threat enough; the slightest suggestion that a weapon might be drawn on him was enough to make him act.

Blood rushed to the muscles around his left eye socket. Pressure peaked where the eyeball had once been. He felt a short, sharp pain as his plaeryin bol exploded, spitting poisoned darts into the face of the penitent.

With a harsh cry, his attacker fell backward onto the ground.

The audience erupted. Nom Anor fell back against his throne, his muscles turned to jelly. He heard screaming, confusion, cries for order. Inside he felt only emptiness. He had come
so close
to death. The plaeryin bol where his left eye had once been had saved him, as he had always known it would, one day. But he also knew that the respite was only temporary. An assassin had been sent to destroy him, and he had come
so close
. Others would follow; he would never be safe again!

He forced himself up, to think, to act. Kunra and Shoon-mi were getting the crowd in order, looking to
him for instructions. At his feet, the penitent writhed as the paralyzing poison seared through her system. Nom Anor knelt beside her and pressed his claws on either side of the penitent’s nose, looking for the pressure point that would cause the ooglith masquer to release itself. He didn’t care if the creature took off half the spy’s face. He had to know who it was that Shimrra had sent; he had to look at the face of his would-be assassin.

The ooglith masquer came away with a grotesque noise, like that of fabric tearing. Underneath was a face more familiar than Nom Anor had expected. It didn’t belong to a guard or a nameless servitor. Far from it.

The penitent was Ngaaluh, a priestess of the deception sect. He knew of her from the sect’s attempts to infiltrate the infidels in the past. He had seen her in the company of Harrar, another priest rising in Shimrra’s court.

“You?” Nom Anor frowned deeply. “Why
you
?”

“I—” Ngaaluh’s eyes were wide and frightened, the bluish sacks beneath them almost invisible. The poison was sending fire through her nervous system, making breathing difficult. Soon her heart would stop, and it would all be over. Through the pain, she was trying to say something. She reached up, but Nom Anor flinched away.

Then he looked again as something spilled out of the priestess’s failing three-fingered grasp. It wasn’t a weapon, as Nom Anor had suspected. It was a living unrik—a chunk of tissue excised from Ngaaluh’s body as a votive offering to her gods. Kept alive by biotechnology, the unrik served as a symbol of Ngaaluh’s servitude—and she had been offering it to Nom Anor!

“You fool!” He knelt over Ngaaluh as the priestess’s body began to shake. There was an antidote to the plaeryin bol poison, but he had never expected to use it. The neural pathways were rusty, and he had to concentrate to stir the buried bioconstruct to life. The knuckle of his
right thumb snapped straight with a click. He bit down on a gasp as a searing pain burned in the joint. A hair-thin needle extruded from under the claw. He slid it into Ngaaluh’s neck where the vein still throbbed. There was more pain as the antivenin shot into the priestess’s bloodstream, but it was nothing compared to that suffered by the female before him. Nom Anor held Ngaaluh down as every muscle went into spasm, burning energy in one final paroxysm of agony. A keening, hissing sound escaped the priestess’s clenched jaw, growing louder with each spasm.

Then, suddenly, the priestess went limp. Fearing the worst, Nom Anor bent over her.

“Yu’shaa …”

The word was little more than a sigh, and with that, Ngaaluh’s eyes closed. Nom Anor pressed his hand to the spot on the priestess’s throat where he’d injected the antidote. Despite appearances to the contrary, the faint, lingering pulse was testimony to the priestess’s continuing existence in the world.

He looked up. The members of the audience were staring at him in alarm and amazement. How much they understood of what had just taken place he didn’t know, but he doubted that any of them would come close to grasping its true import. The gods had provided the answer to Nom Anor’s prayers, in the form of the priestess—and he’d almost killed her!

The unrik rested beside Ngaaluh’s unconscious form. Nom Anor picked it up. It was warm and pulsed gently in his grasp. Ngaaluh must have stolen it from the high priest’s sanctum sanctorum before coming to offer it to the new gods. How and why she had come to believe in them, Nom Anor couldn’t imagine. Nevertheless, he knew an opportunity when he saw one, and he did not intend to pass this one up.

He indicated for Shoon-mi to come to him. His servant did so immediately, pushing his way through the agitated crowd. “Master, is everything well?”

“This acolyte is to be given the best care we can offer.” Which wasn’t much, given their meager resources, but it was better than nothing at all. “She is important, Shoon-mi. Do you understand?
Nothing
is to happen to her.”

Shoon-mi bowed. “It shall be so, Master.” The Shamed One scurried away to organize a stretcher.

Nom Anor gestured for Kunra next. The ex-warrior came and knelt down beside him so he could whisper.

“What has happened?” he asked. “Who is this female?”

“She is a priestess, and close to Shimrra. I knew her before my fall. She named me, Kunra.” The ex-warrior’s eyes widened, and Nom Anor knew that he understood the significance of that fact. “But I think we can trust her. She has given me … assurances.” The slow throbbing of the unrik matched the pulse visible in the great vein in Ngaaluh’s neck.

“She could be just what we need,” Kunra said.

“Exactly. But first we have to make sure that no one overheard.” The members of the audience were growing more restless by the second, shuffling aimlessly and muttering among themselves.

“I should take precautions, perhaps?”

“No.” Nom Anor knew that Kunra would happily kill all the penitents to ensure their safety, but that wasn’t an optimal solution. Ngaaluh would wonder what had happened to them, and so would Shoon-mi. “We can’t afford to waste resources, or to provide fuel for rumors. If they all disappear, some will be missed. Better to find out if my secret is safe and let them go. Who knows? Maybe it will work in our favor.”

“Feeding the legend,” Kunra mused, then nodded once. “It shall be done.”

Nom Anor stood to address the crowd. “This is an auspicious day!” he said dramatically, knowing that the truth was too dangerous to reveal. “I have survived an attack and am stronger for it. Go, now, and tell everyone! It will take more than this to keep us from the respect we deserve!”

The crowd accepted this pronouncement with some uncertainty, but accept it they did. He had delivered the bulk of his message before Ngaaluh’s interrogation had thrown him off. They had heard everything they needed to hear. Once Kunra had satisfied himself that they hadn’t heard anything else, they would be allowed to leave to begin their missionary work.

“Our time draws ever nearer,” he said to them as they began to file out. “And with the events of this day, it might come sooner than even I expected …”

“I’m going to melt if it gets any hotter in here,” Tahiri said, wiping her brow with the back of her hand.

“Adjust the ventilation controls,” Goure said, his muffled voice coming from within his own hostile environment suit. A super-strong exoskeleton a meter taller than he was, the HE-suit hid his face behind a collection of droid sensors and allowed him to use its superior strength for any manner of distasteful chores. Tahiri’s own suit was identical to his—painted a dull, metallic brown with scuffed ident markings on back and chest—and she watched the world through a bewildering array of views and senses. She felt as though she were wearing an ancient suit of armor. “Turn the thermostat down and you should start to feel better.”

“It’s already down as far as it’ll go,” she said. They could have communicated by comlink, but Goure had said he didn’t want to take the risk of being overheard. The suits had external speakers and microphones and they did the job well enough—unlike her air-conditioning unit.

She jabbed at the controls with her chin, trying to blink away the salty sweat stinging her eyes. Having grown up among the Sand People, she was used to being enclosed in hot environments—but this was ridiculous.

Something thumped her from behind, followed by a distinct
click
. A flow of icy air instantly rushed through the suit, offering a relief that was so intense that Tahiri could only sigh her thanks.

“Your coolant line was clogged,” said Arrizza, the Kurtzen sanitation worker who accompanied them on their long turbolift ride. Goure had described him as a part-time conspirator, but not part of the Ryn network. He had explored the inner workings of the Bakuran Senate Complex with no interest in taking it further. Having no political agenda, he was quite happy to help Goure get Tahiri in and out of the complex without being noticed.

“I think you just saved my life,” Tahiri said only half jokingly, wriggling in her suit to help the cool air reach every centimeter of her sweat-soaked body. Her HE-suit—designed to take minuscule movements of her limbs and magnify them, giving her increased strength and flexibility—made odd half-stepping motions as she did so.

“I once knew someone who died from overheating on the job,” was the Kurtzen’s reply. “You got to look out for each other down here.”

She didn’t quite know what to say in the face of his gruff pragmatism. “Thanks,” she said after a moment. “I’ll try to remember that.”

The turbolift clanked to a halt and the wide steel cage opened before them. Arrizza went first, his suit scruffier than Goure’s, if that was possible. The only real difference between them was a belt of leather pouches tied around its waist. Tools, Tahiri presumed—although she
doubted the suit’s stubby fingers could handle anything so small with any precision.

They walked in single file along the sub-basement access corridor. It was easily high and wide enough for the HE-suits, designed to accommodate all sorts of maintenance machines. None of them droids, of course, she reminded herself—not with Bakura’s distaste for automated machinery. If droids couldn’t do the dirty work, people had to. Hence the suits they were wearing.

Arrizza was taking them to another turbolift that led directly under the main Senate chambers. There they could enter the complex itself, avoiding the tight security employed by the normal entrances. As part of a waste cleanup crew performing the usual morning rounds, they would be able to move unobserved—or at least unhindered—through the lower levels of the complex. They might not get into the Senate chamber itself, but they should be able to access the internal data networks with relative ease.