Vin of Venus (4 page)

Jaryk loosens a knife in its sheath. The ruby bracelet encircling Vin's wrist sends out a warning throb, as the cloaked man steps alongside them. He fumbles with his breeches, eyes fixed on the black and roiling sea. Some three hundred yards away looms the dark strip of mainland jungle.

An arc of urine streams out and hits the water with a warm hiss.

Jaryk pads around behind the man, his bare feet betraying no sound. A spray of blood joins the piss fouling the water. Jaryk tears his knife free and eases the body to the deck, avoiding a loud splash.

"Get his cloak," Vin says, alert for approaching footsteps.

"There's some blood on it." Jaryk hands him the oily garment of seabird feathers, before rolling the hapless owner into the water.

Vin secures the clasp around his neck. "Think I could pass as Rogue Clan?"

"You don't smell bad enough. And you've got all your teeth. But if you kept to the shadows ..."

"That's my plan."

They steal across the deck. The barge is one of many, tethered together to form a small 'island.' Traditional Sea Clans build their settlements around reefs, but the Rogue Tribes are nomads, mooring their craft or drifting as the mood strikes them.

Ahead carries the rumble of many voices, the flicker of oil-lamps. Vin hears the drunken chorus of an old chantey.

"It sounds like the wedding ceremony has begun," Jaryk says, helping Vin step from one barge to the next.

"We must hurry, then."

But caution makes them pause. This next barge sports a group of revelers; men and women lounging on the deck, drinking, tossing dice. A few are engaged in more intimate pursuits. Jaryk draws back into the shadows.

"Stay here, friend," Vin whispers. "You've no disguise, and the color of your skin screams 'interloper.'"

Jaryk frowns. "One against an entire clan? That doesn't make for good odds."

"Better than you think."

Hugging the cloak around his shoulders, Vin steps out into the circle of guttering lamp-light. A couple bearded faces look up. Vin prays that alcohol and darkness will play their part in shielding him. All the same, he is mindful of the heavy throwing-blade strapped to his thigh. He walks with purpose, stepping over a dice game in progress. Someone calls out. A woman makes a playful grab at his ankle. Still, he walks on.

The next barge has been carved from porous stone. Larger than the surrounding craft, it resembles a two-storied mansion, with crude bas-reliefs depicting giant lampreys, curled tentacles, and grinning maws stuffed with teeth. Vin catches the odor of rotten kelp. Close, now. He grabs a rope connecting the stone barge to its lesser cousin and scrabbles across, his back to the dark water.

"He's having a seizure."

"Get his tongue! His tongue!"

"That's a myth."

Vin's eyes snapped open to a ring of faces hovering over him. He recognized the woman in the plum vest.

"Can you understand me?" she said, leaning so close he smelled the menthol of her last cigarette-break.

He was lying on his back. The aluminum cane lay a couple inches from his outstretched right arm. His left—the prosthetic—twitched and jerked, servo-motors whining as nerve impulses from his shoulder gave conflicting orders.

He started to sit up. His eyes caught the glass display case and the sword hanging there.

"He's going under again."

The sword ...

The kelp-odor is so strong Vin almost gags.

He's snuck his way through the stone barge's chambers to this place; a courtyard, open against the black sky and the echo of rolling surf.

Not far from the pillar he crouches behind, a bizarre ceremony is reaching its climax. On one side of the courtyard stands Trinculo, hetman of the Rogue Clans. He wears a black feathered cape and a helm fashioned from a giant conch shell. Sprawled at his feet, bound and thrashing, is a jet-haired girl of no more than fourteen seasons. Vin surmises she is the bride-to-be. Her pale skin has been tattooed with spirals of cephalopod ink.

On the other side squats the groom's party: two of the Deep Folk, their features hidden by cloaks of fine fish-scale. A human attendant ladels water from a brass bowl over their stooped and spiny forms. Near them lay piles of pale gold jewelry, worked with an intricacy beyond any Rogue Clansmen's skill.

Vin understands this 'wedding' is more than a formalized exchange of girl for gold. The Rogue Clans are vying to expand their power through an alliance with the Deep Folk, ancient enemies of the Sea Clans and Mainlanders alike. But where is the dowry? The bridal-gift Trinculo stole from the Sea Clans, and Vin pledged to return?

One of the Folk straightens and starts to hobble over to the bound girl. A single claw emerges from under its fish-scale cloak, grasping and opening again with each lumbering step. A leer stretches across Trinculo's narrow face.

The bride screams.

"Hold," Trinculo says, stepping forward. He motions to a burly clansman beside him, who thrusts forth a long bundle. Trinculo pulls the wrappings away to reveal a gleaming blade.

"A gift, Dweller Beneath the Waves," he says, "to mark this union. An heirloom of your own king, returned to you."

The Deep Folk's clawed hand reaches for the hilt.

Vin yelps as the ruby bracelet burns branding-hot against his skin, filling him with murderous hate. He leaps from behind the pillar. Before he is even conscious of the action, the throwing-blade has left his outstretched hand, singing in flight, to sever the Deep Folk's claw at the wrist. Black blood spurts. The creature makes a croaking sound, its scaled hood falling away to reveal a face wrenched from watery nightmare. Eyes blaze like twin globes of yellow phosphorescence.

But now Trinculo himself is rushing forward, snatching the Sword of the Sea Clans and raising it high above his head. Weaponless, Vin thrusts out a bare foot and catches the man in the gut. Trinculo doubles. Vin wrenches the sword from his fingers, breaking the hetman's wrist in the process. A second kick sends him hurtling against his well-muscled attendant. Both men go down.

"Back!" Vin screams, lofting the blade. Most of the wedding-goers do just that. A faint current seems to course from the timeworn hilt, mingling with the emotional energies of the ruby bracelet.

But a half dozen of Trinculo's feathered bravos surge towards him.

He whirls the Sword of the Sea Clans in a great arc. The blade's edge whistles through an outstretched arm as if no more than smoke. Another man falls, clutching at the parted tendons in his neck. Vin scythes forward. He dodges the thrust of a wave-edged dagger aimed by one of the Deep Folk, and counters with a stroke that takes the creature in the gullet. If the sword was truly forged by such slimy brethren, it shows no compunction in killing its makers. The fish-man emits a croak so curdling it drowns the noise of battle and echoes out over the surrounding waters.

As the alien form crumples, Vin sees an open window beyond. Freedom! Even with such a magnificent weapon, he can't hope to fight off an entire clan. The ruby bracelet senses a change in tactics and floods his stomach with raw fear. The will to fight evaporates, replaced with a single prerogative: flee.

Holding the sword out before him, Vin leaps for the window.

Down. The sensation of dropping, of several bodies in a tightly-packed space.

"He mentioned an appointment with Dr. Dorian."

"Dorian will want to see him, alright. Look at that thing on his wrist."

A woman's voice. A man's voice.

"I think he should be checked out, first. He's not well."

A snort. "This is a museum, not a bloody free clinic."

Vin felt firm leather beneath him. He was sitting with his head lolled forward. A wheelchair?

But then came a noise, over the creak of what he realized were elevator cables. The sound drew him even further down, inside himself.

Splashing.

He plunges into frothing water, cold for only a moment. When he comes up again the barges of the Rogue Clan are behind him, alive with shouts and lamplight.

To his left: the faint glimmer of beach, and jungle foliage just beyond. Sword in one hand, he begins to paddle in that direction.

But the waters around him are frothing for a reason. A hundred pairs of glowing yellow orbs stare up from the murk below. The rest of the Deep Folk's wedding party.

Have they heard the death-croak of their brethren?

He thrusts the sword through a strap in his shoulder harness and begins swimming with broad strokes, knowing he can't hope to outdistance the creatures if they give chase. But trying to fight them, in their own element, is madness.

Something powerful parts the water beneath his legs. He feels the brush of coarse skin, and moments later a sleek head breaks the surface before him. A monstrous eel! Tiny, glimmering eyes set above a jaw of triple-rowed teeth, rearing up over the water like a serpent about to strike. But this serpent's body is as thick around as Vin's muscled thigh, and striped in vertical slashes of ochre and black.

Gaping up at those fangs, any normal man would lose all volition. But the ruby bracelet once again shudders to life and sucks the fear from Vin's body, leaving him with only crystalline logic. The will to survive. His hand blurs for the hilt behind his shoulder—

A familiar war-cry booms out.

Jaryk Koln's barrel-chested figure thrashes across the water, sputtering curses, to land on the eel's striped back. Faint starlight gleams off the metal in his fist. He sinks his blade once, twice, and the giant eel lets out a hiss like a cauldron venting steam. The great head swivels around to track Jaryk, and in that moment Vin reaches upwards, swinging the Sword of the Sea Clans with everything he has left.

A splash of cold water brought him around.

Vin's eyes focused first on the plastic cup, then the gnarled old man holding it. He wore a houndstooth jacket and gold-rimmed spectacles. The gray hair combed back from his forehead still had some black in it.

"Returned to the realm of consciousness, eh?" He smirked. "I'm sorry for the water, but it was better than slapping you."

Vin was sitting in a wheelchair, the same one he'd ridden down on the elevator. His cane was tucked into one of the side pockets. He'd been parked in a fusty-smelling office with just enough space for an oak desk, banker's lamp, and the old man.

"You must be Dr. Dorian."

"Indeed. Muroc said you'd be coming. He neglected to inform me about your, ah, episodes. Gave the attendant staff quite a fright."

Vin remembered the sword in the glass case.
His
sword. Just looking at the blade had triggered a surge of memories. How much more would come back if he could hold it again?
One puzzle-piece at a time
, he told himself. Find out about the bracelet, first.

"I was hoping you could identify—" He frowned. His right wrist felt too light as he lifted it.

The ruby bracelet was gone.

"This, you mean," Dorian said, pulling the band of gleaming red facets from his pocket.

Vin stared. He looked down again at his empty wrist. "Impossible. That was fused on. No one's been able to remove it."

"Easy enough, if you know how." Dorian's smile showed an expanse of porcelain. "As to the bracelet's origins, that's a rather lengthy story."

"I have time."

"Do you?" The doctor's other hand produced a small automatic, and leveled it with Vin's chest. "First, perhaps, you'll explain how you've come into the bracelet's possession. An artifact stolen from this very museum, four years ago."

PART I

When he opened his eyes there was always the same thing: a checkerboard of tiles. White squares alternating with Aegean blue. A tributary of fine cracks ran through the caulk between the tiles, and he could stare up at these for what seemed like hours, trying to follow where the tiny rivers started and where they ended up.

Sometimes a woman came into the room.

She wore a pale green smock and her dead eyes radiated the calm of a snake-charmer. She'd move his limbs and take his pulse. Snap on a pair of gloves. Then she'd insert a thick, latex-smelling finger into his mouth, pull down his jaw, and thrust a handful of pills inside. Close his jaw. Watch him until his throat moved and the whole mess went down.

Then blackness.

This
blackness was different from before. There were no dreams. No flashes of alien landscapes; of ochre-colored clouds or the heaving seas beneath them. No rainstorms lasting days. No moonless nights, or the calls of multi-limbed terrors crouched in steaming jungles.

No Venus.

"Why do just stare at the ceiling all the time?"

This from his new roommate.

They'd brought her in two days before. She'd been comatose at the time, but now she was alert. Bone-thin, with ragged hair and a junkie's filmed teeth. Her eyes shone bluer than the tiles over his bed.

He raised his shoulder in a one-armed shrug.

"They must be giving you something good," she said, frowning. "Not me. I'm on a fucking detox protocol. What happened to your arms and legs?"

He checked to make sure he still had the two. Still there. His expensive prosthetics, however, were gone. The discovery didn't shock him. Nothing shocked him in his medicated state. Not even seeing the strip of pale flesh where his ruby bracelet used to be.

"I lost them in an accident," he said. His first clear words for what seemed like weeks.

"How the fuck do you get around, then?"

"With difficulty."

"You still got your pecker?"

"Yes."

"I'm not asking because I want to see it or anything. So don't get your hopes up."

He looked over at her. She was sitting upright in the bed, a living corpse with an IV tube sticking out of her gray arm. "I won't," he said.

"What's your name?"

"Vin."

"I'm Charlotte."

"Where are we, Charlotte?"