Unbound (26 page)

Stone Face waved them into a small chamber with transparent walls that looked out on the neighboring complex. His men crowded in after, forcing her deep into Romir’s embrace if she didn’t want contact with them.

Only when the room began to move did Asrial realize they stood in a lift tube. It carried them to the very top, the speed of its ascent blurring the lines of the complex’s spires, so fast it reminded her of takeoff in the
Castel
, yet the acceleration felt negligible.

What she would give to be back on her ship, preparing to shake off the dust of this planet forever. So far, nothing good had come of this visit. She didn’t expect that to change any time soon.

They came to a smooth stop that belied the rapid ascent. The lack of extreme decel effects pointed to the cunning use of vari-grav plates . . . in a lift tube. Only for the elite.

At the top, the doors opened onto opulence designed to awe: wood-paneled walls shone a golden brown, pale carpeting thick enough to sleep on that probably showed every dirty footprint, rarefied air spiced with some vaguely tangy green scent. Expensive vases with deceptively simple floral arrangements filled nooks in the empty, silent corridor—real flowers, no two alike. The extravagance worked, driving home the message of overwhelming power. The muscle spoke in cowed tones that didn’t carry far as they spilled out of the lift tube and arrayed themselves around her and Romir.

Walking with the arrogant swagger of a big winner, Stone Face took the lead down the curving corridor, taking them past several unmarked doors to the very end and an imposing door covered by two pairs of guards. The entrance to the yfreet’s lair, no doubt.

Still no chance of escape. She and Romir remained surrounded, and making a break for it at this point didn’t seem to offer a reasonable chance of success. She ground her teeth in frustration.
Frigging corporate bods and their frigging sense of entitlement!
This was why she’d much rather gad about the Rim instead of settling on one of the Inner Worlds.

“Wait. Before you enter, please hand over your stunner.” Despite the polite words, the hand Stone Face extended was clearly a demand.

Asrial stiffened. Disarm herself voluntarily? No way. She couldn’t leave herself deliberately helpless, especially among such unquestionably dangerous individuals.

The hand remained extended. “My apologies,
Sraya
, but I cannot allow you to approach my principals armed.”

So Stone Face was willing to flout standard procedures only so far? She swore silently. Worse and worse luck.

“They’re the ones who asked for this meeting.” Her protest drew only subvocal grunts.

One of the guards by the door flexed his shoulders, impatience narrowing his eyes. Though he said nothing, he held himself ready to force the issue.

Romir stepped forward, placing his left hand on top of her right and against her side, circumventing any attempt on her part to draw her stunner. “Defiance will only make them use force.”

Cold prickled her arms, dismay curdling her stomach at his betrayal. Why was he doing this? Why was he helping them disarm her? Surely he had to have a good reason—she had to believe he had a good reason—but she didn’t like it.

Stone Face gave Romir a brusque nod of approval, the corners of his thin mouth curving slightly. “You understand the situation. Now give me the stunner. Slowly. Use only two fingers. Don’t try anything.” Though the harsh tone grated on Asrial’s patience, at least he didn’t seem to consider Romir a threat.

With his thumb and first finger, Romir extracted the stunner, then surrendered it to Stone Face. Ice filled her veins at the transfer, her heart numb at the turn of events.

She watched helplessly as Stone Face handed her stunner to one of his men, a sinking sensation in her stomach. She wrenched her eyes away to stare at her shaking fist. Her empty holster taunted her. At least it looked empty—it didn’t feel that way though. The weight on her hip remained the same, as if it still bore a stunner. What had he done?

One of the door’s guards flashed a wrist comp, then nodded his satisfaction at what it displayed. “They’re clear now.”

At that statement, his partner went through an elaborate show of disengaging the door’s security.

It was a struggle to keep the disbelief off her face. The scanners didn’t detect anything? What had Romir done? Despite the evidence before her eyes, she didn’t believe that he had really disarmed her.

The four guards stood aside with an unctuous air of virtue that made her want to grind their heads into the nearest wall. Once more, Stone Face took the lead as the door to the yfreet’s lair split in the middle, parting with unnecessary slowness.

Beyond a field of more thick carpet, the far wall was clear glassteel, the light streaming through making it difficult to see the faces of the three people seated behind a wide, leather-topped table. More muscle propped up the other walls, their corporate black suits conspicuous against the pale wood paneling. Except for that table, the room was mostly empty, a deplorable waste of space that reeked of power and pride. The heavy-handed setup clearly intended to overawe would have disinclined her to entertain an offer from these corporate types, if the peremptory summons hadn’t already done so.

Moreover, the vista the wall afforded was one of towering buildings and circling yfreet, reminding her of the complex hidden in the mountains of Maj and the Mughelis who had imprisoned Romir for so long. Despite the passage of thousands of years, there were still those who seemed to associate altitude with power.

Only Stone Face and four others entered the room with them; the rest of his men remained outside. Whether that was good or not was too soon to tell. Those professionals still lay between her and escape. Stone Face himself quickly crossed the carpet, taking one side of the table as his station.

When she reached the center of the room, about an aircar’s length from the table, the intensity of the light eased. The effect was likely deliberate—some treatment on the glassteel, rather than her eyes adjusting. It meant that if she wanted a clear view of Stone Face’s principals, she had to keep her distance—just right to stand on ceremony and too far for equality.

Asrial hid her shock at their identities.

They were the highest of the Dareh: Malek Bazhir, the president of the entire conglomerate; Nabila Bintanan, the matriarch of House Bintanan, sitting in the middle; and Sekkar Bintanan, her heir. The last people on this planet she wanted to see.

For a woman
in her ninth decade, the Bintanan was remarkably well-preserved. The hand of time touched her only lightly: faint lines at the corners of her eyes, the barest creases between her elegant brows, a certain fragility to her gold-washed skin. She looked much as she did in the vid records of Jamyl Kharym Rashad’s abdication—like a woman half her age. It must have cost a fortune to chop that many years off her body. Even the skin of her hands was taut and unmarked.

Though he wasn’t as old as the Bintanan, Bazhir’s features wore a similar pampered hauteur. His eyes held the cold disdain of one who saw lesser mortals as pawns in a game. Here was a man who assessed people by what they could do for him.

The heir looked to be Asrial’s age, though she knew better. He’d attained his majority before her birth. He’d stood beside the Bintanan and Bazhir on the stage when her father had announced his abdication.

Of the three, the woman appeared to be the leader—an intricate earring dangled from her left lobe, marking her as a sovreine. A recent ennoblement. Asrial might avoid grounder politics, but she kept track of the people responsible for her father’s downfall. Up to the time of Jamyl’s and Nasri’s deaths, the Bintanan hadn’t worn the trappings of a sovreine.

She shouldn’t have been surprised by their identities or elevation. What else could be expected from those who arrogated the authority of a
reis
? Who else would have been so interested in an otherwise no-account Rim rat like her in an Inner World?

All the attention at the starport made sense now. The Lomidari hadn’t been staring at an anonymous spacer but at the scion of House Dilaryn. If she didn’t claim a sovreine’s dignity, she’d surrender a potentially useful weapon in this confrontation, accepting a handicap to no purpose.

“The
sraya
, Asrial Dilaryn,” Stone Face announced—to Asrial’s shock, such politeness not what she’d expected from her enemies.

She continued forward, hoping they’d taken her hesitation for protocol, not weakness. If she was to have a chance at escape, she had to fly this course with utmost care.

Without prompting, Romir dragged a chair over to the table, playing retainer with aplomb. When she sat down, he took a station by her shoulder, lending his pride to her consequence. His support came as a relief after he’d helped disarm her.

She pretended to take it in stride, narrowing her eyes against the sunlight’s glare to focus on the Bintanan. “What is this about?”

The older woman kept her hands folded together on top of the table, her self-control absolute with not even a twitch of a finger to betray her age, space her. “You know who we are.”

To her misfortune. Asrial grimaced at their arrogance. Had the three of them sat like this when they’d confronted her father to force him to abdicate? She could easily imagine the scene.

“We summoned you here to offer you a proposition,” the Bintanan continued without any change in her expression. Her manner exuded confidence; she fully expected Asrial to accept.

“You were seen entering Salima.” Bazhir took over control of the audience, tapping the leather top with a stylus. At the peremptory motion, an image appeared in the air above the table, a vid of the granite wall transforming into a gate through which her grav sled disappeared. “And even more publicly, leaving.”

Leaning back in her seat, Asrial said nothing, unwilling to give them even that much. She felt her face settle into stiff, formal lines.
Sraya
, the professional muscle had addressed her, the proper address for a sovreine. In this instance, she could not escape her upbringing.

The vid continued, showing men trying to find the gate and encountering only solid granite. Attempts to go over the wall were met with an energy barrier that appeared out of nowhere—no projectors, no generators, no obvious explanation. Like a force wall, except actively hostile. The barrier didn’t wait to be hit to attack. Clearly not just anyone could enter Salima. No wonder it remained in Dilaryn hands. Quite possibly the Dareh couldn’t have taken it by force.

Only now, knowing about djinn and weaves of power, did she realize that there was more to her mother’s stories than simply ancient family history. Those supposed hauntings weren’t anything so supernatural. Salima somehow utilized a similar technology—for want of a better term—to the strange force walls in that complex on Maj, so similar that Romir could locate the gate. She shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, the working Romir’s people had done to travel from Maj to Lomida was essentially a planet-based jump ring. She didn’t understand how Salima’s defenses worked, yet the wall had responded to her presence, and that was all that mattered.

Bazhir’s eyes narrowed, his mouth crinkling with displeasure as she said nothing. And what was there to say? Clearly there was no way she could convince them they were in error, and she refused to volunteer information. When she persisted in her blank stare, the Dareh president finally broke the silence. “You do not deny it.”

Asrial shrugged. “What is there to deny?”

The Bintanan snorted, a sudden puff that nonetheless managed to sound elegant. “So troublesome. Enough with this pretense of ignorance. The Lomidari are restless. Your appearance encouraged a small minority of malcontents.” The statement didn’t carry any emotion—flat, uncaring, a data point.

Pretense of ignorance?
They expected her to be as manipulative as they, to act with only her own best interests at heart. That sort of sinister thinking was alien to her, but could she use it against them? She doubted they’d believe she hadn’t factored in the political ramifications of her appearance on Lomida when she decided to go to Salima. But she had thought that was in the distant past and forgotten; she’d never considered the possibility that anyone would think she would want to take up the scepter of the
reis
—much less give it great credence. No matter what Nasri might have wished, she had grown up a spacer. She knew nothing about ruling multiple planets and colonies spread across however many galactic sectors, and she didn’t care to learn!

“Did it?” Needing a reprieve from those cold faces, Asrial turned her head and her gaze to the line of spires beyond the glassteel. Unlike the blank expression Romir maintained, theirs were rooted in ego, in selfishness, in raising themselves above all others. She could only be glad she hadn’t grown up among such people. For the first time, she found herself grateful for her father’s abdication.

“You know it did, you ca—”

The Bintanan waved her heir to silence, cutting him off in mid-sentence. “That is beside the point. Your actions have unnecessarily stirred the Lomidari. You are therefore obliged to correct the situation by showing your visible support for our administration.”

Disbelief locked Asrial in her seat.

“Of course, you will be well compensated, sufficient for a life of comfort anywhere in the Inner Worlds.” The Bintanan named a figure that would have covered the
Castel
’s upgrade with funds left over, with a prim smile that said she fully expected Asrial to pounce on the offer. Clearly she saw nothing untoward about requesting the support of the daughter of the
reis
she helped depose.

None of the Dareh evinced even the slightest shred of guilt, only the willingness to use their creds to buy their will—to the detriment of the people they wished to rule. Nasri had been right to describe them as yfreet. They may lack the long, snaky necks, the sharp fangs, the tearing claws, the broad, leathery wings, but they were just as vicious as those Lomidar scavengers.