Shields Lady (37 page)

            Targyn strode into the lamplight, scowling. "I don't think you should let Chassyn out of that chamber. He's dangerous."

            "You assured me he was harmless enough as long as he was kept in the twist." "That's true, but I still don't like having him out in the open."

            "You'll be there to protect me if he somehow escapes the twist." Etion spoke soothingly, as if to a fractious child. "There is no doubt that you are the stronger Shield, is there?"

            "None." Targyn lifted his head proudly and strode past Sariana and Rakken. "I'll get Chassyn." Rakken sighed as the other man strode off. "Thickheaded bastard," he murmured under his breath. Sariana drew a silent breath of relief. At least Gryph was alive and apparently unharmed if he conid

take a meal. She would take this one step at a time, feeling her way through the quagmire of events the same way she had felt her way through the House of Reflections.

            The first task was to handle Etion Rakken. She couldn't begin to imagine what he was doing here, but if he had taken Gryph prisoner, it was clear he was on the wrong side in this mess.

            "It would appear your journey upriver has been a little rough," Etion remarked as he graciously extended his arm and led Sariana down a corridor of gray metal. Once inside the corridor there were no vapor lamps. The illumination seemed to come from within the metal walls. Sariana gazed around in wonder as she spoke to Rakken.

            "I lost the sled and had to swim to shore. I tell you, Etion, things like this never happened to me when I lived in Rendezvous."

            Etion smiled faintly. "I'm well aware of how unexpected life can be in the west." He paused in front of an opening carved in the corridor. "My humble chambers await." He bowed her into the room with a mocking flourish.

            Sariana stepped inside and glanced around the odd room. It was a strange shape to her eyes, as if it were all just slightly out of proportion. The ceiling was a little too low for psychological comfort. It was lined with more of the metal she had noticed in the corridor. The glow of the illumination imbedded in the metal seemed vaguely wrong to her eyes. Instead of the soft, warm glow of vapor, it was a harsh light that jangled the senses.

            "You get used to it," Etion said wryly. "The light? Where does it come from?"

            "I don't know." He shrugged. "I tried to take the ceiling apart a coupleof months ago to find out, but I couldn't cut through that gray metal. The prisma cutter might do it, however. I'll give it a try one of these days. Sit down."

            Sariana stepped slowly toward a round table that seemed a little too close to the floor. A bench of the same metal ringed the table. It was contoured in a slightly sloping fashion. When she sat down she felt uncomfortable.

"Etion, what is this place?"

            "I wish I knew," Rakken said quietly as he went to the wall and pushed against it. A panel slid open revealing an assortment of familiar looking wines and ales. "A glass of wine, Sariana?"

            "I could use it." She tried to speak calmly, as if everything that were happening was perfectly routine. Rakken handed her the wine. "Where's Gryph?"

There was a movement in the open doorway behind her.

            "Right behind you," Gryph announced in a rough voice as he walked slowly and awkwardly into the room. Targyn followed. "I don't suppose there's any point asking you why you disobeyed my orders, is there, Sariana?"

            "Of course not." Sariana jumped to her feet and went flying toward him. She stopped when she realized there was something wrong with the way he was standing. His hands were behind his back and he seemed to be having trouble staying on his feet.

            "By the Lightstonn, what's wrong? What have they done to you?" she snapped, circling him to assess the damage.

            Rakken chuckled. "Nothing yet. He's in a twist. Another witty little western invention designed by Shields to use on the bandits they take prisoner."

            Sariana stared at the strange mechanism strapped to Gryph's waist at the back. Leather straps that appeared to be under extreme tension came from openings in a metal case. The straps were attached to Gryph's wrists and ankles.

            "There's some give in the straps as long as he moves very slowly and cautiously," Rakken explained easily. "But if he makes any sudden moves - such as grabbing for my throat - the straps tighten and lock. He'll wind up flat on his back, possibly breaking an arm in the process. Here's your wine, my dear. Chassyn? What can I get for you?"

            "Ale," Gryph said. His eyes were on Sariana's worried face. "What happened to you? You look like you swam the river."

"I did. I'll tell you all about it later."

            An image of Lucky popped into her head but Gryph said nothing aloud. Sariana blinked, realizing he was projecting the question silently. Which meant he probably wanted a silent answer. She casually patted her cloak pocket. Lucky stayed silent.

            "Targyn, take Lady Sariana's cloak, will you?" Rakken asked as he opened a bottle of ale. "And then tell Miscroft we're ready for dinner."

            "Tell him yourself. You can take care of the woman's cloak, too. I don't take orders from you." Targyn strode across the room and snatched a bottle of ale from the cabinet in the wall. "I don't take orders from anyone," he added as he opened the bottle. "You have a bad habit of forgetting that, banker."

            "My apologies, Lord Targyn. I'll tell Miscroft myself. Excuse me for a moment." Sariana saw the anger in Rakken's eyes as he went past her, but he was careful to keep it under

control. It was obvious Etion did not want to push Targyn too much.

            Targyn tipped the bottle of ale and downed several large swallows. Then he lowered the bottle and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. He ignored Sariana but his eyes were feverishly alert as they scanned Gryph.

            "I'm going to kill you," Targyn said. "Before this is all over, I'm going to kill you. There's a certain justice here, you know. I think you're the one the Council would have sent after me. Nervous fools. I'll use you for target practice. I've never killed another Shield. Should be interesting for both of us." He took another swallow of ale and chuckled. "Rakken wants to keep you alive for a while. He thinks we may need you. He's afraid I'll lose control of the prisma and detonate it accidentally if I don't have backup.

But I'm a lot stronger than he thinks. When this is all over I'm going to get rid of you both. He's been useful up until now, but I don't need a banker for what I have in mind for the future."

            "What do you have in mind?" Gryph crossed the room with painful slowness and finally dropped down onto the oddly contoured bench. His last movement was a little too quick and the twist locked for a few seconds. Gryph set his teeth against the obvious pain and waited until the straps loosened slightly.

            Sariana hurried over to the cabinet and picked up the ale bottle Rakken had opened earlier for his prisoner. She brought it over to the low table and set it down in front of Gryph. She sensed the way he was focusing on Targyn and wondered at it. Gryph was concentrating much too hard on the other Shield, even though he was trying to hide the tense surveillance.

            Sariana didn't pick up a sense of fear emanating from Gryph. It was more like a battle-ready tension. He clearly considered Targyn a dangerous opponent.

            It came to Sariana in that moment that Targyn was somehow the source of that potentially lethal blast of light that had brought her awake in the early hours of the morning. And then she knew for certain that Gryph had been the target of that fireball. She shivered as she sat down near him. It didn't require any great intuitive powers to know Gryph had nearly been killed; that he still might be killed.

            "What do I have in mind?" Targyn repeated as he lounged against the wall. "I'll tell you what I have in mind. I'm going to take control of the western provinces, Chas-syn. I'm going to have access to all the potential Shield-mates I want and I'm going to produce sons who will someday run the eastern provinces as well as the west. I'm going to create a dynasty of Shields who will take their rightful place on this backwater world."

            "The First Generation Pact establishes our role on this planet," Gryph pointed out calmly. He slowly and cautiously picked up the bottle of ale. "Nobody signed anything that puts us in charge."

            "The First Generation Pact is an abomination. The Pact was made by sniveling cowards who thought they had to make an alliance with a bunch of stupid colonists who should have died in a lightstonn in the first place." Targyn moved away from the metal wall and waved his ale bottle in a gesture that took in the whole room. "Our brave forefathers were nothing but a herd of nervous keenshees, Chassyn. We got stranded on this planet with a bunch of fools who were involved in some sort of social experiment. We should have taken charge right from the beginning."

            "There wasn't much point," Gryph observed mildly. "Once they realized they were stranded here, the Shields assumed there wouldn't be a second generation. It was a fluke that a handful of empathic females survived the crash and even more of a break that they were willing to mate with our ancestors."

            Targyn swung around, his scarred face a taut mask of fury. "Those first Shields were cowards. They never assumed their rightful role. They were the strong ones. They should have dominated this continent. All of its resources should have been theirs. They should have ruled. Where are we instead? Living in isolated frontier towns, practicing the old ways of working prisma just in case a stray crystal ship shows up. In the meantime we earn our keep rooting out bandits and doing odd jobs for people who don't want to get their hands dirty. And each generation holds its breath hoping its sons will find a few usable females and that those females will be available under the terms of the damned Pact. Fools, idiots, cowards!" Targyn hurled his empty bottle against the wall. It shattered and fell onto the metal floor.

            At that moment the door slid open. Etion Rakken walked in, ignoring the broken ale bottle as if nothing at all were out of the ordinary.

            "Miscroft will bring us our meal in a few minutes. Another glass of wine, Sariana?" His gracious manner was intact.

            "Yes," Sariana managed to get out in what she hoped was a reasonably calm voice. "I think I could use it."

            Targyn glared at all of them. "I have no interest in this pretense of proper social behavior you all feel obliged to engage in. I've got more important things to do." He strode toward the door, indicating Gryph with his chin as he went out. "Watch him, Rakken. If he gets out of control it'll be your problem, not mine. If I find him running loose around here, I'll just kill him now and be done with it."

            The door slid shut behind him.

Silence reigned for a short moment in the room. Then Gryph took a long swallow of his ale.

            "He's insane, you know. Crazier than a keenshee in heat." "I know," Rakken said calmly. "That's why I need you."

            Sariana put her hands flat on the table. "Do you know what Targyn's planning to do?" Rakken smiled grimly. "The man has delusions of grandeur."

"What about your delusions?" Gryph asked.

            "Mine," Etion explained calmly, "are a lot more realistic. The biggest single find of prisma that has ever been made is sitting in a metal room not far from here. My plan was to use Targyn to neutralize it and then cut it up into marketable pieces. All of it. You see, unlike Targyn, I know what real power is and how it's achieved. One does not own a continent with weapons, although they may be useful as a threat from time to time." He smiled at Sariana. "I am an easterner at heart. I know that there is only one true source of power."

            "Great wealth," Sariana concluded for him. She was awed in spite of herself at what he was proposing. "Precisely, my dear." Rakken raised his glass of wine. "To a future filled with prisma."

Chapter 17

            SUPPOSE you give this to us in a straight line from the beginning, Rakken." Gryph examined the food being set in front of him as he spoke and decided his host probably wasn't going to poison him or Sariana. Not yet at any rate. He automatically reached for one of the eating implements left behind by the silent Miscroft and got his wrist jerked by the twist strap. It took a lot of effort to move with the slow deliberation required by the device. It was like having one's reflexes chained.

            It wasn't the pain of the twist that was worrying him the most right now, although he detested being treated like a border bandit. His chief concern was Sariana.

            He should have known she would follow him instead of heading back to Last Chance as ordered. Mentally he calculated the distance she had come. He didn't know for certain when she had left the cove, but he was willing to lay odds on the time having been shortly before dawn. About the instant Targyn had sent that paralyzing blast of energy into his head.

            She must have found him by the same means he had traced her at the Little Chance fair, using the strange link that shimmered erratically between them.

            Gryph glanced at Sariana who was eating her food with all the fine manners she would use during a formal meal in the Avylyn household. From her calm, politely regal attitude a man would think she dined out in strange chambers lined with alien metal several times a month. She constantly amazed him.

            He knew from the fact that she had obviously been drenched earlier in the day that the loss of the sled had been a harrowing ordeal. He could only speculate on what had happened to the blade bow. It had undoubtedly been lost when the sled capsized.

            Ah, well, he chided himself. If it hadn't disappeared into the river, Targyn would have taken it from her when he had discovered her climbing the canyon wall. There was no point tormenting himself with thoughts of how useful the weapon would have been in their present situation. A man had to work with what he had.