Ties of Power (Trade Pact Universe) (26 page)

“Welcome,” the Skeptic answered contentedly, standing straighter, his yellow plumes ruffling. “Welcome to all, and especially to the Contestants.”

I can do this, I told myself, and surprised my escort by stepping onto the rampway first, leaning slightly forward involuntarily as if to compensate for the angle, although the dimpling of the strange surface underfoot actually made me feel as if I stood on level ground. I couldn’t help Morgan any faster by resisting what the Drapsk had planned, I thought.

Having finally convinced myself, I found I was curious about what that might be.

Hunting in a space station like Plexis had a great deal in common with the same pursuit in a jungle, Morgan thought idly, half-sitting on the edge of a planter filled with ornamental shrubs and the inevitable litter. His icy blue eyes swept the passing streams of customers, never lingering on any one face.

You couldn’t wander aimlessly about in hopes of surprising your prey. No, you had to know where your prey was likely to go and wait, as he was doing now.

From where he sat, in the shadow of a shrub more alive than most, Morgan could see the entrance to the Claws & Jaws as well as the fronts of three restaurants spinward and the multiple doorways of the much larger, if untrustworthy, Skenkran cafeteria on this side of Huido’s establishment. Later in the stationday, the number and relative wealth of those lined up to enter each of these eating places would provide ample evidence in support of Huido’s boast of providing the best food in the quadrant.

At the moment, however, there was only the steady, unending flood of customers on their way to other levels and activities, making it occasionally difficult to see right to the entrance.

Morgan was patient. His follower would want to find him again. Anyone who knew him would know his affiliation with the Carasian. The Human had toyed with the idea of waiting near the Fox, then decided against it. The parking levels were simply too easy a place for the hunter to become the hunted.

Something captured the corner of his eye. Casually, as if by coincidence, Morgan turned his head to the right. There. A head of red-gold hair appeared and then disappeared in the throng. Heart in his throat, he lunged to his feet, pretense forgotten. Sira? he caught himself in time to stop the sending, knowing that was the single most dangerous thing he could do.

As he stood, the crowd opened to completely reveal a woman burdened with packages, her hair close in color to the heavy, strangely alive locks he remembered warm and soft against his cheek, this hair bound tightly to frame a face nothing like the one in his dreams. Or nightmares.

Morgan subsided, turning his attention back to the restaurant entrance. As he waited, he felt his mind slipping from whom he waited for or why he was being followed. Instead he found himself savagely examining and reexamining every minute of that endless night, playing what if scenarios over and over again until what really happened almost began to blur. Then one thought solidified, cold and hard, just as his eyes fixed on a tall figure standing right outside Huido’s front door.

What if he hadn’t found Sira? What if they’d succeeded in leaving her to die?

He took a slow deep breath, outwardly calm, inwardly fighting to control the impulse to free the knife from his sleeve.

And test the color of his target’s blood.

Chapter 24

“NO. No. No!”

“It’s all right, Maka,” I soothed the outraged Drapsk, finding I had to keep a firm grip on his concave shoulder to hold him safely at my side.

“But, Mystic One—”

“I can wait,” I said firmly, tipping my head to try and see through the forest of purple-pink plumes in front. My—supporters, I supposed—had created a wall with their own bodies around me. It wasn’t helping me figure out what was happening on the floor of the amphitheater. “I really don’t want to be first.”

The journey to the top of the towering building had been truly awe-inspiring, affording a panoramic and potentially terrifying view of the Drapsk city. Distant mountains lost all perspective, appearing similar in size to the gleaming tips of starships marking the shipcity and port, edged by the setting sun. There were no transports or ships in the air—further indication of the importance of the Drapsk Festival.

Fortunately for my peace of mind, the surface of this moving rampway had been markedly more adhesive than I’d experienced before. It had taken all of my strength to pry up one foot and replace it, suggesting we wouldn’t be blown away into the distance if the Drapskii weather decided to become creative.

As if it wasn’t enough to build to such heights, and to enter from the outside, another shock awaited me when the ramp had reached its final destination. The building was hollow.

Well, I temporized, looking up at what I could see of my surroundings, not quite hollow. But we’d poured over the lip of the building’s wall like flotsam passing over a dam. I’d had an instant to reach the sickening conclusion that the Drapsk had brought me to their world in order to join them in mass suicide before realizing we were drifting down in a field very similar to any anti-grav lift—albeit a larger one than I’d ever heard of being constructed. A unique way to enter what was, after all, an elegantly shaped amphitheater.

For such polite, quiet little beings, the Drapsk had an unsuspected knack for the dramatic.

“O Mystic One?” A delicate touch on my elbow drew my eyes back from the darkening sky overhead. There was no perceptible chill in the air, something I attributed more to the thousands of warm bodies surrounding me than to anything technological.

It was Captain Makairi, holding up a disk-shaped device about the size of my hand for my inspection. “Will this be of help?”

I took it, bemused to recognize the device as a remote vid. Before I could open my mouth to ask where the image collector was, Makairi tossed a second, similar object into the air. It hovered noiselessly over our heads, before disappearing beyond the wall of Drapsk plumes.

“Your thoughtfulness is—” overwhelming, was the thought that crossed my mind. I chose another word: “—appreciated, Captain.” I keyed on the vid, immediately dizzied by the perspective it displayed. There was something about soaring over a featureless panorama of moving purple plumes.

Then the image, or rather the plumes, cleared, showing a central oval of plain white stone that had to be at the focal point of this amphitheater. I sank without thinking onto the stool pressing against the back of my knees, then looked up, startled again.

Stools had appeared conveniently behind every Drapsk I could see, and not in straight rows. I eyed the floor beneath my feet suspiciously before looking back at my tiny window on what was happening.

A Drapsk identical to Copelup was standing in the opening beside what appeared to be a tall, white-haired, male Human. The Human was surrounded by several boxes, each of these decorated with an eye-confounding pattern of stars, spirals, and other astronomical symbols. Although there was no air moving that I could detect—the Drapsk themselves making excellent weather vanes—he wore a midnight blue cloak that floated up and around him, snapping to a nonexistent wind. An unannounced toss of his fingers upward freed a handful of starlike dust to soar above all our heads.

The Drapsk had found themselves a magician, all right. I grinned, recognizing the Great Bendini from Morgan’s entertainment tapes. A shame that what the Human practiced was as far from real magic as one could imagine.

Yes, this could be fun.

 

“How could he have won?!” I shouted at Copelup two hours later. “There hasn’t been any other Contestant up yet! I haven’t—” I closed my lips over what might sound like an eagerness to put my own reputation on the live in front of most of this city, substituting: “I didn’t expect your people to be this gullible, Copelup. They were tricks!”

Great tricks, even I had to admit. The magician had spared nothing from his repertoire: sawing Drapsk in half and reat taching the parts; making an entire row of Drapsk float in midair; producing ribbons, fruits, furniture, and wildlife that appeared and disappeared at his whim. While I couldn’t see how he’d done any of it, I knew there was nothing fantastic about the illusions. And the Drapsk were falling for this? I thought angrily, glaring at my so-called Skeptic.

Copelup pried the container of whatever he and most of the Drapsk were drinking from his face in order to answer me. It made a small popping noise as the suction was broken. “We know, O Mystic One.” He began hooting, a revoltingly cheerful sound several of the nearby Makii seemed to find in poor taste, at least that was how I interpreted the suddenly stern angle of their plumes and their deliberate leaning away.

“Then—” I went speechless, shaking the vid at him as if Copelup needed or could use the screen. He must know what was happening below us: the Great Bendini receiving a huge gem-encrusted trophy, and what looked to be an endless line of equally valuable offerings, each borne by a member of his supporting Tribe, the white-plumed Niakii. The Skeptic beside the Human bowed and accepted each gift into his own hands, showing it to the triumphantly beaming magician before passing it to a row of other Drapsk filling up a series of grav-sleds with his loot.

“What makes you believe this is how we treat a winner, O Mystic One?” Copelup said, recovering sufficiently to speak instead of hoot. “Do you not see how the gifting is one way only? That the poor Niakii must impoverish themselves—symbolically, of course—while having received nothing in return from their Contestant?”

“The Human thinks he’s won,” I objected, not sure I accepted Copelup’s explanation at face value.

“The Niakii know better, O Mystic One,” Captain Makairi said somberly, one finger resting on the vid screen in my hands. “Observe for yourself.”

At first, I didn’t see what he meant, assuming the Drapsk overestimated my ability to read their state from visual information alone. Then I saw how the white plumes of each Niakii Drapsk drooped down over their shoulders as they turned and left the central oval. They formed two slow lines, one leaving the amphitheater through a floor level exit I hadn’t seen before, the other returning to their seats. “What’s going to happen to them?”

Copelup’s voice was still amused; I supposed because his Tribe wasn’t at risk during this Festival. “Half go to the Niakii holdings. They own a great deal of property within the City and operate several essential services. Most of this will go to the Tribe whose Contestant succeeds today, so they prepare for lar-gripstsa, the transfer of place.”

I looked around at my innumerable chorus of Makii Drapsk. If my hold on the vid became more of a clench than a grip, I thought they might not notice—though I couldn’t do anything about their ability to read my organics, given they understood such information. Personal embarrassment in front of thousands of aliens? What was that compared to the loss I saw taking place before me? And the Makii thought I could prevent that? The consequences of failure here were beyond anything I’d expected.

“How could the Niakii have chosen so badly?” I said, pleased my voice was steady anyway. “I thought you Skeptics judged each Contestant.”

Copelup sucked all his tentacles at once, refusing to answer.

Maka spoke up from in front of me, his chubby fingers waving skyward in emphasis. “The Human arrived on his own, seeking a sponsor. This happens. The Niakii were greedy.”

Out popped Copelup’s tentacles. “They didn’t listen to the wisdom of their Skeptic. It was evident from the onset the creature had no true magic to offer.”

“They listened,” Captain Makairi disagreed. “They knew. The Niakii took the chance of no true Mystic One entering. That has happened all too often during our Festival, Contestant Morgan,” he went on to explain in a most un-Drapsk moment of revelation. “In such a case, there is no winner. The Tribe the Skeptics judge to have the most successful Candidate is still permitted to move into ascendancy over the others. But today, the Niakii already know they will lose. You are with us.”

“And are not the only one. While I discount their Contestant’s ability to match our own, the Heerii have found a Mystic One—” Copelup spoke up.

“Having neglected their trade routes and spent resources belonging to others.” This interruption from Maka was as close to a snarl as I’d ever heard from a Drapsk. I raised my eyebrows.

“In order to do what?” I asked, trying to will the Drapsk to continue talking. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the tiny vid screen. Events in the center were wrapping up, literally, as Bendini collected the last of his loot and began moving from the stage.

Copelup answered, Maka apparently too distraught to continue. “The Heerii have long believed there were Mystic Ones beyond the boundaries of the Trade Pact and its member systems, Contestant Morgan. They have explored farther than many would dare—at, as Maka rightly notes, considerable expense. But they did find a worthy Contestant.”

I drew in a slow breath, as if, like the Drapsk, I could decipher knowledge from molecules floating in front of my face. So a Tribe of Drapsk had gone voyaging and found another Contestant. The Skeptic believed in this being’s abilities, meaning quite clearly it possessed some Talent within the M’hir.

Was it possible? I thought with a dizzying sense of foreboding. Had the Drapsk found the Clan Homeworld?

My ancestors, the M’hiray, had been exiled from the Homeworld during the Stratification, a genetic cleansing to rid the species of a new mutation in the Talent—the troublesome and dangerous Power-of-Choice that on one hand allowed Joined pairs to link through the M’hir and on the other acted to destroy any weaker male. Whether the exile had been willing or not, or indeed whether it had been effective in ridding the Homeworld of the threat, had never been revealed to us. After taking up discreet residence among the similar-appearing Humans, even the location of our original home was blocked from Clan thoughts, accessible—so rumors went—only by certain members of the Council. I was reminded of the vision I’d had in the M’hir when I’d left Pocular for the Makmora: the image of a gigantic pathway etched in power. It could have been a clue to the location of the Homeworld. It could have been my imagination.