Vin of Venus (3 page)

A battle rages.

Atop the waters floats the flotilla of the Sea Clans, Vin's adopted people. Radium cannons crack and boom from the wooden decks, spitting streamers of white radiance that shatter against Lorci's fortifications. But these attacks do not go unanswered. Counter-siege machines hurl globes of green fire high into the air, arcing downward and bursting against the ships in brilliant flashes. Roughly half the fleet has already been set aflame.

"We're losing, my chieftain!"

The voice comes roaring across the wind. Vin turns and sees the black-furred snout of his loyal companion's mount, scant yards away. Amazing to think that those thin, membranous wings can keep such creatures aloft. He bares a fierce smile at Jaryk Coln of the Crimson Men. "Losing now, perhaps," he shouts, "but the Warlord has yet to feel the edge of our blades!"

Jaryk's scarred face splits in an lustful grin as he yells exultation. His cry is echoed by the throats of a hundred-odd Crimson Men, floating and flapping in the air-currents behind them.

"Dive!" commands Vin, and nudges the Xhat into a steep spiral down ...

"I'd lost you for a moment back there. What psychiatrists call 'disassociation.' It's common to trauma survivors."

Marta took a sip of her cider. She'd come back from the bar with a lager for Vin and a pack of crisps. They were the only customers in the pub, save for an early-afternoon drunk playing the fruit slot machine. His curses alternated with payoff
dings
.

"Does that mean I hallucinated?"

"Sort of. More like a memory came bubbling back to the surface." She pushed the beer toward him. "Want to tell me about it?"

"You wouldn't believe me."

"Oh. Venus, again."

Vin drained half his lager in one go.

"Easy with that. Look, I've been meaning to talk to you about these ... fantasies." She reached into her purse, took out two paperbacks, and laid them on the scarred table. Both looked old, with deeply-creased covers and cracking yellow spines. The first was entitled Blades of the
Evening Star
, and depicted a bald, overly-muscled man riding a giant bat.

"Where'd you find that?"

"Used bookstore in Croydon. There's hundreds like these. Vin, whoever you were before your accident, you must've read a lot of fiction. Absorbed the stories, somehow. Now you think they're actual memories."

The second book was called
Scion of the Evening Star
. Same bald man again, this time hacking the legs off a giant spider.

"Vin?"

He squinted at the cover. Something flashed a lurid red from the bald man's right wrist.

"Vin, are you listening to me?"

"Sorry."

She tore open the crisps. "Do you realize Venus is probably the most inhospitable planet for life in our solar system? Sulfuric acid rains. Pressure so great it crushes any probe we send to the surface."

"But was it always like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I read somewhere Venus may have been like Earth, billions of years ago. With giant oceans. And then something happened, set off a chain-reaction of greenhouse gases."

"Right.
Billions
of years ago." Marta popped a crisp in her mouth and glanced sidelong out the plate glass window. The sun had burned away all the morning clouds. Now the air just above the pavement was starting to shimmer. "Greenhouse gases, huh? Might be something to that."

Arms and legs dangled from the ceiling of Dr. Muroc's waiting room. Prosthetic limbs dating back to both World Wars, but still, the initial effect was unsettling. Sonorous electronic music played ("Joy Division," Marta explained, making a face). Vin sat across from a framed collection of glass eyes. There were no magazines available, so he leafed through a vintage comic book he'd found on his chair. Every time he looked up, a dozen colored orbs stared back at him.

"I don't want to alarm you," he told Marta, "but I think I might've seen your stalker again, on the ride over here."

She jolted up. "Where?"

"A couple cars back. On his bike. Trying to stay out of sight."

"Oh." Marta hugged her purse against her lap. "Don't worry about him."

"I'm not the one who seems worried."

The door to Dr. Muroc's office opened and a fit young man in fatigues stepped out. His right foreleg had been replaced with a curved piece of metal, bowing slightly as he walked. The soldier glanced at Vin and did a double-take. Smiling, almost shy, he came over and shook his hand.

"Thanks for your service, mate. Where were you stationed?"

"Excuse me?"

"Where'd they send you? Iraq, was it?"

The soldier's green eyes were friendly, but distant, somehow. "I'm sorry," Vin said, "I'm not—"

"Oh, you're military, all right. No mistaking that." He bumped a fist against Vin's shoulder. "Sometimes you don't want to remember. I can understand. Ta, then."

The artificial leg flexed and un-flexed, propelling him away.

He's right
, Vin thought.
I don't know how, but he's right
.

"There's enough nerve conduction in your left shoulder, I can give you an arm with some capabilities. The leg's going to be more difficult. But attainable, I think. You'll need a cane, mind."

Vin blinked at Dr. Muroc's impassive face. He had a ruff of white hair, sticking out like wings on either side of his bald crown. "You're saying I can walk?"

"With practice, yes."

"Do people cry when you tell them that?"

"Some do. You don't strike me as the overly-affective type, though."

Vin looked down at both his stumps, exposed to the sterile lamp-light of the examining room. He didn't know what to say.

The doctor cleared his throat. "I trust Marta has been of some assistance?"

"She's trying to help me remember, I guess. Make some sense of things. I don't like being analyzed all the time, but she means well."

Muroc pursed his lips. "Her father doesn't approve of her work. Thinks it's too dangerous. None of my business, really." He gestured toward the ruby bracelet on Vin's wrist. "Speaking of Dr. Krol, he'd asked if I could track down someone to identify that jewelry. I'm no slouch in antiquities myself, but I've never seen gemstones cut that way. Or that particular spiral motif. It suggests Celtic origins, but—"

Yells echoed from the lobby.

"That sounds like Marta," Muroc said.

Vin pushed himself off the examination table and managed to land squarely on his power chair. Muroc was already through the door. Vin sent the chair racing after him, out into the lobby. He nearly collided with the doctor as Muroc came staggering backward, blood streaming from his nose.

"Don't you touch him!" Marta screamed.

The motorbike rider's fists were still raised. He flicked red from his knuckles, mouth contorting in a sneer. "You've been diddling him, haven't you? Screwing the boss, is it?" His eyes, wild, settled on Vin. "And what's this? Your new conquest from just this morning? Half a man?"

"Derek, please—"

"
Whore
." He pushed her against a couch, so hard the back of her head struck the wall.

Vin jammed the chair's controls forward. He had only a few feet to accelerate, so the collision with Derek was little more than a nudge. Still, it brought him close. The ruby bracelet burned against his wrist.

"You would appear to be overmatched, sir."

Prince Tarqual's rapier slips through Vin's guard a third time, drawing a furrow across his chest. Even all the adrenalin coursing through him can't stop the pain. He gasps, swinging the Sword of the Sea Clans in a desperate counter-stroke. Tarqual dances out of the way.

"That old blade's too heavy," he says, grinning.

Despite his deceptively slender physique, his mincing, effeminate appearance, the young prince is as dangerous as an eight-limbed jungle cat. Years of courtly training in swordplay, no doubt. Vin has underestimated him.

Tarqual launches a lightning-quick thrust. Vin moves to parry, but at the last moment the rapier whips aside and slashes his wrist. A feint! The Sword of the Sea Clans goes flying from his grasp, to crash against the flagstones in the courtyard below.

"You're finished," Tarqual says, raising his blade for a final strike. "The rebellion's over and your woman mine. She'll make a fine mistress."

The grin freezes on his face. He stiffens.

As if by magic, a dagger's metal tip protrudes from his chest. He looks down, unbelieving. One slender hand tries to cover the hole in his heart. Blood gushes out around his fingers.

He falls.

Rhadma hurls the jeweled poniard next to his body. "Never turn your back on a Princess of the Sea Clans," she says, and spits.

Vin's mind had crawled down a scarlet tunnel, into someplace else.

When conscious thought returned he found himself hanging from Derek's neck, his one arm encircled around him, driving the sharp facets of the bracelet up into his cheek. A solid
thud
sounded. Derek's head jolted forward as if struck from behind. He started to turn, dragging Vin with him. Another
thud
.

Derek's legs collapsed under him. Vin broke most of the larger man's fall.

"I told you to
stop
," said Marta, swaying over them. She brandished a prosthetic leg made of polished wood and metal.

Derek pushed Vin free and wobbled to his feet, before she could swing again. But in the next moment Dr. Muroc rushed him, grasping a scalpel in a fencer's grip. Derek threw himself backward as the tiny blade slit his leather jacket from neck to pockets.

"Get out of my office!" Muroc warned, taking another step toward him.

Derek had time for one frenzied look. Then he whirled, pushed open the front doors, and bolted down the street.

Muroc locked the doors behind him. "I'll phone the police."

Marta helped Vin up onto the couch. Her face was tear-streaked, but her voice firm as she spoke. "I—I had a brief affair with him. Back when he was a client with Drug Rehabilitation. That was before I came to work for Dr. Muroc." She grimaced. "Not very professional, I suppose."

"Everyone makes mistakes," Vin said. He could hear Muroc in the other room, giving directions to the Metropolitan Police.

"Don't tell anyone, will you? I could lose my license. That's why I didn't—I never—"

"It's alright." Vin folded his hand over hers. He'd struck the floor for the second time that day, but the pain felt distant. Secondary.

Not so helpless after all.

Sway.
Clack
. Sway.
Clack
. Sway.

You could call it 'walking,' he supposed.

If I'd lost limbs on different sides of my body this would be easier.

Hordes of French schoolchildren had invaded the British Museum. They hooted and called to each other, running between the glass cases of Grecian pottery and endless clay slabs scratched with Linear B. Their sole teacher, a frazzled-looking man in a black sweater, gave apologetic shrugs but made no attempt to corral his charges.

Vin came clacking onto the scene.

The children went quiet. All eyes slid towards Vin as he hobbled like a fiddler-crab, kicking out with his left prosthetic leg, swaying forward, then thrusting down the cane in his right hand. A German couple five feet away stared. Vin felt the woman's gaze from under her long blonde bangs.

"I'm not an exhibit," he told them, teeth clenched. The couple took a sudden interest in Early Etruscan Glazing Techniques.

He worked his way over to a museum official wearing a plum vest. The middle-aged woman gave him a polite nod as he approached, but otherwise pretended not to notice his struggles.

"Good morning," Vin said. "I have an appointment with Dr. Dorian in antiquities, but I can't seem to find his office."

"Take the lift in the next exhibit hall. The antiquities department is on basement level one." She glanced at his cane. "Do you, ah—"

"I'll manage fine, thank you."

He'd felt less conspicuous when he was gliding around in the power-chair. Almost invisible, at times. But after Dr. Muroc had fitted him with prosthetic limbs—and he'd spent a grueling month, learning how to use them—every trip out in public seemed like a spectacle.
Oi, lookit the human tripod 'ere.

He stumped past an ancient weaponry display. There were rows of bronze spear-heads, winnowed by time. Corinthian helmets. Daggers. A little farther down the armaments progressed to the Iron Age, and swords of all makes and lengths hung behind the glass.

He stopped shuffling.

One sword in particular seized his attention.

The blade was pitted, but still serviceable. Three feet long, the crossguard had been shaped into a wave motif, and the pommel ridged like a seashell. His fingers clenched, tingling. A familiar ache shot through him. He pressed his hand up against the glass, longing to feel the worn grip again.

Again?

Impossible, but he'd known this weapon. Fought and killed with it. The Sword of the Sea Clans. Winning the blade had nearly cost him his life ...

Vin grabs the side of the barge and hauls himself from the warm filth. Jaryk Coln emerges beside him, sputtering. The Crimson Man is unused to swimming, let alone having to paddle through water thick with garbage and human waste in the middle of the night.

"What I wouldn't give for a lungful of clean mountain air," Jaryk says, brushing at his wet clothes. "These Rogue Clans live like barbarians ..."

"Quiet," Vin warns. The two crouch behind a large coil of rope as footsteps echo close.

The moonless Venusian night falls short of total darkness; a few stars manage to peek through the heavy clouds, and oil-lamps set on poles sputter along the barge's length. By this feeble light, Vin makes out the silhouette of a Rogue Sea Clansmen, clad in a long feathered cape. A sentry? But the man carries no lantern.