It was a two-week trip to Qasama; two weeks that went by very quickly. It was, for one thing, the first time the new Cobras had had a chance to interact with each other on anything approaching a social level. With each other, and also with the two men who would actually be leading the mission.
They were, to her mind, a study in contrasts. Both were top experts at Aventine's Qasama Monitor Center, but at that point all similarity ended. Pash Barynson was middle-aged and thin and short, a few centimeters shorter even than Jin, with sparse black hair and an excruciatingly academic manner that was so stiff that it bordered on caricature. His associate, Como Raines, was almost exactly the opposite, in both manner and appearance. Tall and chubby, aged somewhere in his mid-thirties, he had red-blond hair, a perpetual smile, and an outgoing manner that enabled him to become friends with everyone on board almost before the Southern Cross had cleared Aventine's atmosphere.
It was an unlikely pairing, and it took Jin nearly a week to realize that the mission's planners hadn't simply pulled their names out of the grab-bag. Raines, with his easy friendliness, would presumably be the main contact man with the Qasamans, while Barynson's job would be to stay in the background and analyze the data as Raines and the others pulled it in.
From the briefings, too, it was quickly clear that Barynson was the man in charge.
"We'll be making our approach along here—from the uninhabited west—making our landing about here," Barynson said, leaning over the photomap and jabbing a finger at a section of forest. "Timing the touchdown for about an hour before dawn, local time. The nearest of the villages bordering the Fertile Crescent area are about fifteen kilometers to the east and southeast—" he touched each in turn "—with what looks to be lumbering operations to the northeast here on the river at about the same distance. You'll note that the site is—theoretically, at least—a fair compromise between distance and seclusion. Whether it'll turn out that way in practice, of course, we won't know until we get there."
"Any idea what kind of undergrowth we'll have to go through?" Todor asked.
"Unfortunately, no," Barynson admitted. "Most of the data we've got on Qasaman forests comes from far to the east of this site, and infrared studies indicate that the canopy here, at any rate, is different in composition from that area."
"Of course," Raines put in, "if travel turns out to be impractical, we can always take the shuttle up to tree-top height and move it closer to the villages."
"Only if things are pretty damn difficult," Layn muttered. "We have only the Trofts' word for it that the Qasaman observation systems won't be able to track our approach. The more we move the shuttle around, the higher the risk we'll be spotted."
"Agreed," Barynson nodded. "Though the more immediate danger will probably be the Qasaman fauna. I hope you Cobras will be up to the challenge."
"We're ready," Layn told him. "My men—people—know what they're doing."
Barynson's eyes flicked to Jin, turned quickly away. "Yes, I'm sure they do," he said, almost as if he believed it. "Well, anyway... we'll all be equipped with the best simulations of Qasaman clothing that the Center's analysis of telephotos could provide. The landing is timed so that we can get through the forest in daylight and reach one of these villages by nightfall. That'll give us the chance to make a close check of our clothing and get a first approximation of the culture before we have to tackle Azras and the main Fertile Crescent civilization. So; questions?"
Jin glanced across the table, caught Sun's eye. The other shrugged fractionally, echoing Jin's own thoughts: there wasn't a lot of point in asking questions to which there were as yet no answers.
"Very well, then." Barynson threw a look around the table. "We have three days left before planetfall, and for those three days I want all of you to do your best to become Qasamans. You'll wear our ersatz Qasaman clothing, eat our nearest approximations to the food the Qasamans were eating thirty years ago, and—most important of all—speak only Qasaman among yourselves. That rule is absolute—you aren't to speak Anglic to anyone, not even to one of the Southern Cross's crew. If any of them talks to you, you aren't to understand them. Is that clear?"
"Isn't that carrying things just a little far?" Hariman asked with a frown.
"The Qasmans had ample opportunity to study Anglic the last time we were here," Jin put in quietly. "Some of them were even able to force-learn it well enough to speak it. If they suspect us, they might throw one of those people at us."
"Right," Barynson nodded, looking impressed despite himself. "The old trick of getting a spy to speak in his native language. I'd just as soon none of us falls for it."
"We understand," Sun said in Qasaman. "We demon warriors, at least, won't fall for it."
"I hope not." Barynson looked him straight in the eye. "Because if you ever do, you'll probably wind up earning your pay the hard way."
Qasama was a dark mass against the stars, a fuzzy new-moon sliver of light at one edge showing the dawn line, as the shuttle fell free of the Southern Cross and began its leisurely drift toward the world below. Gazing down through the tiny porthole to her left, Jin licked dry lips and tried to quiet her thudding heart. Almost there, she told herself. Almost there. Her first mission as a Cobra—a goal she'd dreamed about and fantasized about for probably half her life. And now, with it almost close enough to taste, she could feel nothing but quiet terror.
So much, she thought half bitterly, for the heroic Cobra warrior.
"You ever fly before this trip?" Sun, sitting on the aisle seat next to her, asked quietly.
"Aircraft, sure, but never any spacecraft," Jin told him, thankfully turning her attention away from the porthole. "Hardly ever into enemy territory, either."
He chuckled, a sound that almost masked the nervousness she could see around his eyes. "We'll do fine," he assured her. "Parades and canonization, remember?"
A smile broke of its own accord through her tension. "Sure." Reaching across the armrest, she took his hand. It was almost as cold as her own.
"Hitting atmosphere," she heard the pilot say from the red-lit cockpit at the front of the passenger compartment. "Injection angle... right on the mark."
Jin gritted her teeth. She understood all the reasons behind coming in as far as they could on an unpowered glide approach—the light from a ship's gravity lifts was extremely visible, especially against a night sky—but the eerie silence from the engines wasn't helping her nervousness a bit. Looking back out the porthole, she tried not to imagine the planet rushing up to hit them—
"Uh-oh," the pilot muttered.
"What?" Barynson snapped from the seat beside him.
"A radar scan just went over us."
Jin's mouth went a little drier, and Sun's grip on her hand tightened. "But they can't pick us up, can they?" Barynson asked. "The Trofts told us—"
"No, no, we're okay," the pilot assured him. "I was just surprised they're scanning this far from the Fertile Crescent, that's all."
"They're paranoid," Layn muttered from the seat across the narrow aisle from Sun. "So what else is new?"
But they aren't supposed to be that way any more, Jin thought morosely. They were supposed to lose that when we got the mojos off their shoulders. That had been the whole point of seeding the planet with Aventinian spine leopards thirty years ago, after all. If it hadn't worked—
She shook her head to clear it. If it hadn't worked, they would find out soon enough. There wasn't any point in worrying about it until then.
"Parades and canonization," Sun murmured, misreading her thoughts. It helped, anyway, and she threw him a grateful smile.
The minutes dragged on. An oddly distant scream of air against the shuttle's hull increased and then faded, and slowly all but the brightest of the stars overhead began to be swallowed up by the thickening atmosphere around them. Straining upward against her restraints, Jin could make out the gross details of the ground beneath them now, and in the distance the horizon had lost all of its curve. Five minutes, she estimated—ten at the most—and they would be down. Setting her nanocomputer's clock circuit, she leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, took a deep breath—
And through the closed lids she still saw the right-hand side of the passenger compartment abruptly blaze up like a fireball, and a smashing wall of thunder slammed her against her seat and into total blackness.
The pain came first. Not localized pain, not even particularly bad at first; more like a vague and unpleasant realization that somewhere in the darkness something was hurting. Hurting a lot...
A large part of her didn't care. The blackness was quiet and uncomplicated, and it would have been pleasant to stay hidden there forever. But the pain was a continual nagging at the roots of the nothingness, and even as she was forced to accept and notice its existence she found herself being forced slowly up out of the blackness. Grudgingly, resentfully, she passed through the black, to a dark gray, to a lighter gray—
And with a gasp as the pain suddenly sharpened and focused itself into arms, chest, and knee, she came fully awake.
She was in an awkward and thoroughly uncomfortable position, half-sitting and half-lying on her left side, the safety harness digging painfully into her chest and upper thighs. Blinking the wetness—blood? she wondered vaguely—from her eyes, she looked around the tilted and darkened interior of the shuttle. Nothing could be seen clearly; only after several seconds of straining her eyes did it occur to her befuddled mind to key in her optical enhancers.
The sight made her gasp.
The shuttle was a disaster area. Across the aisle the far hull had been literally blown in, leaving a ragged-edged hole a meter or more across. Strands of twisted and blackened metal curled inward from the gap like frozen ribbons; bits and pieces of plastic, cloth, and glass littered everything she could see. The twin seats that had been by the hole had been ripped from their bracings and were nowhere to be seen.
The twin seats that Layn and Raines had been sitting in.
Oh, God. For a moment Jin gazed in horror at the ruined struts where the seats had been. They were gone, gone totally from the shuttle... from thirty or forty kilometers up.
Somewhere, someone groaned. "Peter?" she croaked. Todor and Hariman had been in the seats just behind the missing men... "Peter?" she tried again. "Rafe?"
There was no answer. Reaching up with a hand that was streaked with blood, she groped for her safety harness release. It was jammed; gritting her teeth, she put servo-motor strength into her squeeze and got it free. Shakily, she climbed to her feet, stumbling off-balance on the canted floor. She grabbed onto what was left of her seat's emergency crashbag to steady herself, jamming her left knee against the bulkhead in the process. A dazzling burst of pain stabbed through the joint, jolting her further out of her fogginess. Shaking her head—sparking more pain—she raised her eyes to look over the seat back to where Todor and Hariman should be.
It was only then that she saw what had happened to Sun.
She gasped, her stomach suddenly wanting to be sick. The explosion had apparently sent shrapnel into his crashbag, tearing through the tough plastic and leaving him defenseless against the impact of the shuttle's final crash. Still strapped to his seat, blood staining his landing coveralls where the harness had dug into his skin, his head lolled against his chest at an impossible angle.
He was very clearly dead.
Jin stared at him for a long minute. This isn't real, she told herself wildly, striving to believe it. If she believed it hard enough, maybe it wouldn't have happened... This isn't real. This is our first mission—just our first mission. This can't happen. Not now. Oh, God, please not now.
The scene began to swim before her eyes, and as it did so a red border appeared superimposed across her optically enhanced vision. The sensors built into her Cobra gear, warning her of approaching unconsciousness. Who cares? she thought savagely at the red border. He's dead—so are Layn and Raines and who knows who else. What do I need to be conscious for?
And as if in answer, the groan came again.
The sound tore her eyes away from Sun's broken body. Clawing her way past him, she stumbled out into the littered aisle, eyes focusing with an effort on the seats where Hariman and Todor dangled limply in their harnesses. One look at Hariman was all she could handle—it was clear he'd died in the explosion, even more violently and terribly than Sun. But Todor, beside him in the aisle seat, was still alive, twitching like a child in a nightmare.
Jin was there in seconds, pausing only to grab the emergency medical kit from the passenger compartment's front bulkhead. Kneeling down beside him, ignoring the pain from her injured knee, she got to work.
But it was quickly clear that both the kit's equipment and her own first-aid training were hopelessly inadequate. Surface-wound treatment would be of no use against the massive internal bleeding the sensors registered from Todor's chest; anti-shock drugs would do nothing against the severe concussion that was already squeezing Todor's brain against the ceramic-reinforced bones of his skull.
But Jin wouldn't—couldn't—give up. Sweating, swearing, she worked over him, trying everything she could think of.
"Jin."
The husky whisper startled her so badly she dropped the hypospray she'd been loading. "Peter?" she asked, looking up at his face. "Can you hear me?"
"Don't waste... time..." He coughed, a wracking sound that brought blood to his lips.
"Don't try to talk," Jin told him, fighting hard to keep the horror out of her voice. "Just try and relax. Please."
"No... use..." he whispered. "Go... get out... of here... someone... coming. Has to... be some... one..."
"Peter, please stop talking," she begged him. The others—Mandy and Rafe—they're all dead. I've got to keep you alive—"
"No... chance. Hurt too... badly. The mish... mission, Jin... you got... got to..." He coughed again, weaker this time. "Get out... get to... some... where hid... hidden."
His voice faded into silence, and for a moment she continued to kneel beside him, torn between conflicting commitments. He was right, of course, and the more her brain unfroze itself from the shock the more she realized how tight the deadline facing her really was. The shuttle had been deliberately shot down... and whoever had done the job would eventually come by to examine his handiwork.
But to run now would be to leave Todor here. Alone. To die.
"I can't go, Peter," she said, the last word turning midway into a sob. "I can't."
There was no answer... and even as she watched helplessly, the twitching in his limbs ceased. She waited another moment, then reached over and touched fingertips to his neck.
He was dead.
Carefully, Jin withdrew her hand and took a long, shuddering breath, blinking back tears. A soft glow from Todor's fingertip lasers caught her eye: the new self-destruct system incorporated into their gear had activated itself, shunting current from the arcthrower capacitors inward onto the nanocomputer and servo systems. Automatically destroying his electronics and weaponry beyond any hope of reconstruction should the Qasamans find and examine his body.
No. Not if the Qasamans found him; when they found him. Closing her eyes and mind to the carnage around her, Jin tried to think. It had been—how long since the crash? She checked her clock circuit, set just before the initial explosion.
Nearly seventy minutes had passed since then.
Jin gritted her teeth. Seventy minutes? God—it was worse than she'd realized. The aircraft the Qasamans would have scrambled to check out their target practice could be overhead at any minute, and the last thing she was ready for was a fight. Clutching at Todor's seat, she pulled herself to her feet and made her way forward.
The cockpit was in worse shape even than the passenger compartment, having apparently survived the explosion only to take the full brunt of what must have been a hellish crash landing. One look dashed any hope she might have had of calling the Southern Cross for advice or help—the shuttle's radio and laser communicator would have been mangled beyond repair.
Which meant that unless and until the Southern Cross figured out on its own that something was wrong, she was going to be on her own. Totally.
Barynson and the pilot—she realized with a distant twinge of guilt that she'd never even known that latter's full name—were both dead, of course, crushed beyond the protective capabilities of harness and crashbag. She barely gave them a second look, her mind increasingly frantic with the need to get out as quickly as possible. Behind Barynson's chair—thrown from its rack by the impact—was what was left of the team's "contact pack," containing aerial maps, close-range scanning equipment, trade goods, and base communicator. Scooping it up, Jin headed aft to the rear of the passenger compartment where the rest of the gear was stored. Her survival pack seemed to be as intact as any of the others; grabbing Sun's pack as well for insurance, she stepped to the exit hatch and yanked on the emergency release handle.
Nothing happened.
"Damn," she snarled, tension coming out in a snap of fury. Swiveling on her right foot, she swung her left leg around and sent a searing burst of antiarmor laser fire into the buckled metal.
The action gained her purple afterimage blobs in front of her eyes and a hundred tiny sizzleburns from molten metal droplets, but not much more. All right, she grimaced to herself as she blinked away the sudden tears. Enough of the hysterics, girl. Calm down and try thinking for a change. Studying the warped door, she located the most likely sticking points and sent antiarmor shots into them. Then, wincing as she took her full weight onto her weak left knee, she gave the center of the panel a kick. It popped open about a centimeter. More kicks and a handful of additional shots from the antiarmor laser forced it open enough for her to finally squeeze outside.
They'd been scheduled to land an hour before local sunrise, and with the extra delay the forest had grown bright enough for her to shut off her light-amps. Leaning on the hatch, she managed to close it more or less shut again. Then, taking a deep breath of surprisingly aromatic air, she looked around her.
The shuttle looked even worse on the outside than it had on the inside. Every hullplate seemed to be warped in some way, with the nose of the ship so crumpled as to be almost unrecognizable. All the protruding sensors and most of the radar-absorbing overlay were gone, too, torn away in a criss-cross pattern that looked as if a thousand spine leopards had tried to claw it to death. The reason for the pattern wasn't hard to find: for a hundred meters back along the shuttle's approach the trees had been torn and shattered by the doomed craft's mad rush to the ground.
Gritting her teeth, she took a quick look upward. The blue-tinged sky was still clear, but that wouldn't last long... and when they came, that torn-up path through the trees would be a guidepost they couldn't miss. Keying her auditory enhancers, she stood still and listened for the sound of approaching engines.
And heard instead a faint and all-too-familiar purring growl.
Slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves, she eased her packs to the ground and turned around. It was a spine leopard, all right, under cover of a bush barely ten meters away.
Stalking her.
For a moment Jin locked gazes with the creature, feeling eerily as if she were meeting the species for the first time. Physically, it looked exactly like those she'd trained against on Aventine... and yet, there was something in its face, especially about the eyes, that was unlike anything she'd ever seen in a spine leopard before. A strange, almost preternatural alertness and intelligence, perhaps? Licking dry lips, she broke her eyes away from the gaze, raising them to focus on the silver-blue bird perched on the spine leopard's back.
A mojo, without a doubt. It matched all the descriptions, fitted all the stories she'd heard from her father and his fellow Cobras... and it was clear that none of them had done the birds proper credit. Hawklike, with oversized feet and wickedly curved talons, the mojo was as perfect a hunting bird as she'd ever seen. And in its eyes...
In the eyes was the same alertness she'd already seen in its companion spine leopard.
Again Jin licked her lips. Standing before her was living proof that the plan her father had worked out all those years ago had actually worked, at least to some degree, and under other circumstances she should probably have taken some time to observe the interaction. But time was in short supply just now, and academic curiosity low on her priorities list. Two twitches of her eyes put targeting locks on both creatures' heads. Easing onto her right foot, she swung her left leg up—
And as the mojo shrieked and shot into the sky, the spine leopard sprang.
The first blast from her antiarmor laser caught the predator square in the face, vaporizing most of its head. But even as Jin turned her attention toward the sky the mojo struck.
Her computerized reflexes took over as the optical sensors implanted in the skin around her eyes registered the airborne threat, throwing her sideways in a flat dive. But the action came a fraction of a second too late. The hooked talons caught her left cheek and shoulder as the bird shot past, burning lines of fire across the skin. Jin gasped in pain and anger as she fought against the entangling undergrowth, her eyes searching frantically to locate her attacker. There it was—coming around for a second diving pass. Praying that her targeting lock hadn't been disengaged by that roll, she triggered her fingertip lasers.
Her arms moved of their own accord, the implanted servos swinging them up at the nanocomputer's direction, and the bird's shimmering plumage lit up as the lasers struck it. The mojo gave one final shriek, and its blackened remains fell past Jin's head and slammed harmlessly to the ground.
For a moment she just knelt there among the vines and dead leaves, gasping for breath, her whole body trembling with reaction and adrenaline shock. The scratches across her face burned like fire, adding to the aches and throbs of her other injuries. Up until now she'd been too preoccupied with other things to pay much attention to herself; now, it was clearly time to take inventory.
It wasn't encouraging. Her back and neck ached, and a little experimentation showed both were beginning to stiffen up. Her chest was bruised where the safety harness had dug into the skin during the crash, and her left elbow had the tenderness of a joint that had been partially dislocated and then popped back into place. Her left knee was the worst; she didn't know what exactly had happened to it, but it hurt fiercely. "At least," she said aloud, "I don't have to worry about broken bones. I suppose that's something."
The sound of her voice seemed to help her morale. "Okay, then," she continued, getting to her feet. "First step is to get out of here and find civilization. Fine. So..." She glanced up at the sky, keying her auditory enhancers again as she did so. No sounds of aircraft; no sounds of predators. The sun was... there. "Okay, so that's east. If we crashed anywhere near our landing site, that's the direction we want to go."
And if the shuttle had instead overshot the Fertile Crescent...? Firmly, she put that thought out of her mind. If she was going the wrong direction, the next village would be roughly a thousand kilometers of forest away. Collecting her three packs, she settled them as comfortably as she could around her shoulders and, taking a deep breath, fixed her direction and headed off into the forest.
It started easily enough, as forest travel went. Within a few meters of the crash site she ran into a patch of mutually interlocking fern-like plants that lasted most of the first kilometer, giving her the feeling of wading through knee-deep water; and she'd barely left the ferns behind when she found herself having to use fingertip lasers to cut through a maze of tree-clinging vines that reminded her of Aventinian gluevines with five-centimeter thorns. But physical obstacles were the least of her worries, and even as she used lasers and servo strength to good advantage against the forest's best efforts, she tried to keep as much of her attention as possible on the subtle sounds filtering in through her audio enhancers.
The first attack came, in retrospect, right where she should have expected it: at the spot where the forest undergrowth abruptly vanished into a wide path of trampled earth bearing northwest. The path of a bololin herd... and where there were bololins, there were bound to be krisjaws, too.
She didn't identify the attacker as a krisjaw at first, of course. It wasn't until after the brief battle was over, and she was able to turn over the laser-blackened corpse and get a clear look at the wavy, flame-shaped canines that she could positively identify the beast. Vicious, cunning, and dangerous was how krisjaws has been described to her; and even with only this one interaction to go on she could well understand why the first generation of humans to reach Qasama had done their damnedest to try and wipe the things out. Wrapping a field bandage from her kit around the gash the predator's claws had torn in her left forearm, she continued on her way. Krisjaws were as nasty as Layn had warned, but now that she knew what to listen for she should be able to avoid being sneaked up on. If the forest didn't get any worse, she decided, she should be able to get through all right.
The forest, unfortunately, got worse.
The line of trampled undergrowth marking the bololins' route turned out to be nearly three kilometers wide, and within that cleared area an astonishing number of ground animals and their ecological hangers-on had set up shop. Insects buzzed around her in large numbers, attracted perhaps by the blood from her injuries. Most of them were merely annoying, but at least one large type was equipped with stingers and showed little compunction about using them. It was as she was swatting at a group of those that she found out that krisjaws weren't Qasama's only predator species.
This kind—vaguely monkey-like except for their six clawed limbs—hunted in packs, and it cost her another clawing before she found the best way to deal with them. Her omnidirectional sonic, designed originally to foul up nearby electronic gear, turned out to be equally effective in disrupting the monkeys' intergroup communication, and the arcthrower with its thundering flash of current scattered them yipping back into the cover of the surrounding trees.
Unfortunately, the sonic had an unexpected side effect, that of attracting a species of gliding lizard that, like the monkeys, launched their attacks in groups from the trees above her. Smaller and less dangerous than the larger predators, they were also too stupid to be frightened by the arcthrower's flash. She wound up having to kill all of them, collecting several small needle-toothed bites in the process.
It seemed like forever before she finally reached the road cutting across her path.
Captain Rivero Koja gazed down at the high-resolution photo on his viewing screen, a cold hand clenched around his heart. The line of destruction through the Qasaman forest could mean only one thing. "Hell," he said softly.
For a long moment the Southern Cross's bridge was silent, save for the quiet clicking of keys from the scanner chiefs station. "What happened?" Koja asked at last.
First Officer LuCass shrugged helplessly. "Impossible to tell, sir," he said. "Some malfunction, perhaps, that knocked them too far off their glide path—"
"Or else maybe someone shot them down?" Koja snapped, his simmering frustration and helplessness boiling out as anger.
"The Trofts claimed that wouldn't happen," LuCass reminded him.
"Yeah. Right." Koja took a deep breath, fought the rage back down to a cold anger. If only the Southern Cross had been overhead when the shuttle went down, instead of in their own orbit half a world away. If only they'd been there; had seen the crash as it happened, instead of finding out about it an hour afterward...
And if they had, it wouldn't have made any difference. None at all. Even if the Southern Cross had the capability of landing down there—which it didn't—they would still have been too late to save anyone. A crash like that would have killed everyone on board on impact. Koja closed his eyes briefly. At least, he thought, it would have been quick. It wasn't much consolation.
"I'll be damned," the scanner chief muttered abruptly into his thoughts. "Captain, you'd better take a look at this."
Koja turned back to his display. A closer view of the crash site had replaced the first photo on his display. "Lovely," he growled.
"Maybe it is," the chief said, picking up his lightpen. A circle appeared briefly in the photo's lower right-hand corner. "Take a look and tell me if I'm seeing what I think I am."
It was an animal—that much was obvious even to Koja's relatively untrained eye. A quadruped, with the build of a hunting feline, lying prone on the leafy ground cover in the clearing the shuttle's passage had torn through the tree canopy. "A spine leopard?" he hazarded.
"That's what I thought, too," the other nodded. "Notice anything unusual about its head?"
Frowning, Koja leaned closer. The head...
Was gone. "Must have gotten caught in the crash," he said, feeling suddenly queasy. If something outside the shuttle had been torn up that badly...
"Maybe, maybe not," the chief muttered, an odd note in his voice. "Let me see if I can get us in a little closer—"
A new, tighter photo replaced the one on the display, the normal atmospheric blurring fading away as the computer worked to clean up the image. The spine leopard's head...
"Oh, my God," LuCass whispered from his side. "Captain—that's not crash damage."
Koja nodded, the cold hand on his heart tightening its grip. Not crash damage; laser damage. Cobra laser damage.
Someone had survived the crash.
"Complete scan," Koja ordered the scanner chief through dry lips. "We've got to find him."
"I've already done a check of the area we can penetrate—"
"Then do it again," Koja snapped.
"Yes, sir." The chief got busy.
LuCass took a step closer to Koja's chair. "What are we going to do if we do locate him?" he asked softly. "There isn't any place down there we could possibly set this monster down."
"Even if there was, I doubt the Qasamans would sit back and let us do it." Koja clenched his teeth until they ached. He'd asked the Directorate—begged the Directorate—to rent a second shuttle from the Trofts as an emergency backup. But no; the damned governor-general had deemed it an expensive and unnecessary luxury and vetoed the request. "Any chance we could get some food and medical supplies down to him? It would at least give him a fighting chance."
LuCass was already typing on Koja's computer keyboard. "Let's see what we've got on board... well, we could foam some ablator onto a mini cargo pod. A parachute... yes, we could rig a chute. Pressure sensor to tell it when to pop...? Hmm. Nothing... wait a second, we could put it on a simple timer and have it pop at a prefigured time. Looks feasible, Captain."
"At which point the question arises of where to send it so that he can actually find it." Koja looked over at the scanner chief. "Anything?"
The other shook his head. "No, sir. The canopy's just too thick for short-wave or infrared penetration. His only shot at civilization is to the east, though—we could try dropping the supplies where the road ahead of him intersects an eastward path." He hesitated. "Of course, there's no guarantee he's lucid," he added. "He could be going in any direction, in that case, or even walking around in circles. Or his brain could be functioning fine but his body too badly injured to get all the way to the road."
"In either case he's dead," Koja said tightly. "He may be dead even if he does get to a village—the Qasaman leaders are hardly going to keep the shuttle crash an official secret." He looked at LuCass. "Get a crew busy on that pod," he ordered. "Include a tight-beam split-freq radio with the other supplies. We'll have a spot picked out to aim for by the time you're ready."
"Yes, sir." LuCass turned back to his own board, keyed the intercom, and began issuing orders.
Exhaling in a silent sigh, Koja looked back at the dead spine leopard still on his display. And it's all just so much wasted effort, he thought blackly. Because as long as the Cobra was alone in enemy territory the time clock would be ticking down toward zero. Eventually, the Qasamans would identify him; or else a wandering krisjaw or spine leopard would find him; or else something completely unknown would get him.
Qasama was a deathtrap... and the only people who had any chance at all of pulling him out of it were back on Aventine. Eight days and forty-five light-years away.
Eight days. Koja cringed, trying desperately to find a closer alternative. The New Worlds, perhaps—Esquiline and the other fledgling colonies—or even the nearby Troft demesne of Baliu'ckha'spmi. But Esquiline would have no spacecraft capable of making groundfall, either; and with neither an official credit authorization nor a supply of trade goods on board, trying to deal through an unfamiliar Troft bureaucracy for the rent of another shuttle could take literally months.
Eight days, A minimum of fourteen days for the round trip, even if the faster Dewdrop was available. Add the time needed to choose and equip a search and rescue team, and it could easily be twenty days before they could even begin to look for him.
And with or without a supply pod, twenty days alone on Qasama was a death sentence. Pure and simple.
But that didn't mean they had to give up without a fight... and if the fight in this case consisted of hoping for a miracle, then so be it. The fact that one of the Cobras had survived the crash was a miracle in and of itself; perhaps the angel in charge of this area would be feeling generous.
Eventually, they would find out. In the meantime...
Reaching to his keyboard, Koja began plotting out the route and fueling stops for a least-time course back to Aventine. It had been his experience that miracles, when they happened, tended to favor those who had laid the proper groundwork for them.
Jin stood at the road for a long time, trying to figure out what to do next.
It was, at any rate, confirmation that the shuttle had indeed crashed to the west of the Fertile Crescent. Roads always led to civilization; all she had to do was follow it.
The question was, which way?
For a moment the landscape seemed to swim before her eyes, and the red warning border appeared superimposed on the scenery. She twisted her head, sending a jolt of pain through the stiffness in her neck. There had been no fewer than five such warnings in the past half hour, a sure sign that she was losing it. Combat fatigue, shock from her injuries, some slow poison in the animal bites and scratches she'd suffered—it didn't much matter the cause. What mattered now was finding somewhere safe to collapse before she did so on her feet.
So... which way?
Blinking hard against a sudden moisture in her eyes, she studied the road. Two lanes wide, probably, paved with some kind of black rocktop—hardly a major thoroughfare. Running almost due north-south, at least at this point, it was probably one of the connecting roads between the small forest villages west and northwest of the major Fertile Crescent city of Azras. The maps in her pack showed those villages to be anywhere from ten to fifteen kilometers apart. A trivial distance for a Cobra in good condition, but her present condition was anything but good.
The red circle appeared around her vision again. Biting hard on her lower lip, she again managed to force it away.
Thoughts of the maps had reminded her of something. Something important... Concentrating hard, she tried to force her brain awake enough to think of what it might be. Her packs—that was it. Her packs, with their Aventinian maps and packaged survival food and Qasaman clothing—
Qasaman clothing.
With an effort, Jin keyed her auditory enhancers. Nothing but insect and bird twitterings. Stepping off the road, she walked back to the line of trees and dropped her packs to the ground behind a bush that seemed to be half leaves and half thorns. Locating her personal pack among the three, she fumbled the catches open and pulled out a set of Qasaman clothing.
Changing clothes was an ordeal. Between the oozing cuts on her arms and face and the ache and throbbing of her crash injuries, every movement seemed to have its own distinctive pain. But with the pain came a slight clearing of her mind, and when she was done she even had the presence of mind to stuff her torn Aventinian garb away and to push all three packs into at least marginal concealment under the thorn bush. A minute later she was trudging along the road, heading north for no particular reason.
She never heard the car's approach. The voices, when they called to her, seemed to come from a great distance, echoing out of a wavering mist that filled her ears as much as it did her eyes.
"—matter with you? Huh?"
Bringing her feet to a halt, she tried to turn around, but she'd made it only halfway when a pair of hands suddenly were gripping her shoulders. "—God in heaven, Master Sammon! Look at her face—!"
"Get her into the car," a second, calmer voice cut the first off. "Ende—give him a hand."
And in a dizzying flurry Jin was picked up by shoulders and thighs and carried bouncing to a dimly seen red box shape....
The air sensor strapped to his right wrist beeped twice, and Daulo Sammon raised it close to his face, rubbing some of the dust off his goggles for a better view. The readout confirmed what his lungs and the beep had already told him: that the air in this part of the mine was beginning to get stale. Raising his other wrist, Daulo consulted his watch. Officially, the workers had fifteen minutes to go before their shift was over. If he had the air exchangers started now, running them for perhaps three minutes...
Not worth it. "Foreman?" he called into his headset microphone. "This is Daulo Sammon. The shift is hereby declared over; you may begin moving the men back to the shaft now."
"Yes, Master Sammon," the other's voice came back, hissing with static from the ore veins' metallic interference. Daulo strained his ears, but if the foreman was pleased or surprised by such uncommon leniency, his voice didn't show it. "All workers, begin moving back to the central core."
Daulo clicked his headset off the general frequency and turned back himself, his light throwing sharp shadows across the crisscrossing of shoring that half covered the rough tunnel walls. His grandfather had expected the mine to play out in his own lifetime, and had neglected its safety accordingly, and it had taken Daulo's father nearly ten years to reverse the deterioration that had ensued. Will it all be gone before it becomes mine? Daulo wondered, sweeping his light across the star-sparkling rock peeking out between the bracings. A small part of his mind rather hoped it would; the thought of being responsible for all the lives that toiled daily down here had always made him a little uneasy. He'd seen his grandfather neglect that responsibility, and had seen what the burden had done to his father. To have that weight on his own shoulders...
But if the mine went, then so did the Sammon family's wealth and prestige... and very likely its place in the village, as well. Without the mine, only lumber processing would remain as a major industry, and it was for certain the Sammon family wouldn't be involved in that.
And as for the dangers of the mine, outside Milika's wall the miners would have to risk the krisjaws and razorarms and all the rest of Qasama's deadly animal life. Behind his filter mask, Daulo's lip twisted as the old proverb came to mind: on Qasama there were no safe places, only choices between dangerous ones.
He reached the central shaft a few minutes later to find a growing line of men waiting for their turns at the mine's three elevators. Bypassing them, he stepped to the car that was currently loading and motioned the men already in it to get off. They did so, making the sign of respect as they passed him. Stepping into the elevator, Daulo slid the gate closed and punched for the top.
The ride up was a long one—though not as long as the trip the opposite direction always seemed—and as the car shook around him he pulled off headset, goggles, and mask and gingerly rubbed the bridge of his nose. A hot shower was what was needed now—a shower, followed by a good meal. No; the meal would be third—after the shower he would presumably be summoned by his father for a report on his trip down the mine. That was all right; he would have time to organize his observations and conclusions while he scrubbed the mine's grit and chill from his body.
The sudden stream of light as the car reached ground level made Daulo blink. Shifting the equipment around in his hands, he surreptitiously wiped away the sudden tears as the operators outside opened the gates and stepped back, making the sign of respect as they did so. Daulo stepped out, nodding at the mine chief as the latter also made the sign of respect. "I trust, Master Sammon," the chief said, "that your inspection found nothing wanting?"
"Your service to my father seems adequate," Daulo told him, keeping his face and voice neutral. He had, in fact, found things down there to be excellent, but he had no intention of saying so on the spur of the moment. Aside from the danger of swelling the mine chief's ego with unnecessary public praise, Daulo's father had always warned him against rendering hasty judgments. "I shall report to my father what I have seen."
The other bowed. Passing him, Daulo walked out from under the elevator canopy and headed past the storage and preparation buildings toward the access road where Walare was waiting with his car.
"Master Sammon," Walare said, making the sign of respect as Daulo came up to him. Daulo climbed in, and a moment later Walare was guiding the car off the mine grounds and onto Milika's public streets.
"What news is there?" Daulo asked as they turned toward the center of town and the Sammon family house.
"Public news or private?" Walare asked.
"Private, of course," Daulo said. "Though you can skip past the backlife gossip."
In the car's mirror, Walare's eyes were briefly surrounded by smile lines. "Ah, how times have changed," he said with mock sadness. "I remember a time—no more than three years ago—when the backlife news was the first thing you would ask for—"
"The news, Walare; the news?" Daulo interrupted with equally mock exasperation. He'd known Walare ever since the two were boys; and while the public relationship between driver and Sammon family heir were rigidly defined, in the privacy of Daulo's car things could be considerably freer. "You can reminisce about the lost golden age later."
Walare chuckled. "Actually, it's been a very quiet day. The Yithtra family trucks are mobilizing—someone there must have found a rich section of forest. Perhaps because of that, the mayor's trying again to talk your father into supporting his efforts to have the top of the wall rebuilt."
"Waste of money and effort," Daulo snorted, glancing behind him. Part of the village wall was visible past the village's buildings, the forest-like paintings on the lower part in sharp contrast with the stark metal mesh extension atop it. "The razorarms can't get over what we've got now."
Walare shrugged. "Mayors exist largely to make noise. What else is there for him to make noise about these days?"
Daulo grinned tightly. "Besides our trouble with the Yithtra family, you mean?"
"What can he say about that that he hasn't already said?"
"Not much," Daulo admitted. There were times he wished the competition between his family and the Yithtra family didn't exist; but it was a fact of life, and disliking it didn't change that. "Anything else?"
"Your brother Perto brought in that shipment of spare motor parts from Azras," Walare said, his voice abruptly taking on a grim tone. "Along with a passenger: an injured woman they found on the road."
Daulo sat up a bit straighter. "A woman? Who?"
"No one at the house recognized her."
"Identification?"
"None." Walare hesitated. "Perhaps it was lost in... the trouble she had."
Daulo frowned. "What sort of trouble?"
Walare took a deep breath. "According to the driver who helped bring her in, she'd been clawed at least once by a krisjaw... as well as clawed by a baelcra and bitten by one or more monota."
Daulo felt his stomach tighten. "God above," he muttered. "And she was still alive?"
"She was when they brought her to the house," Walare said. "Though who knows how long she'll stay that way?"
"God alone," Daulo sighed.
They reached the house a few minutes later, Walare guiding the car expertly through the filigreed doors and over to the wide garage nestled behind a pair of fruit trees in one corner of the large central courtyard. Stomach tightening against what he knew would be a horrible sight, Daulo headed for the women's section of the house.
Only to discover that his worst fears had been for nothing.
"Is that the worst of it?" he asked, frowning across the room at the woman on the bed. Surrounded by three other women and a doctor, with a blanket pulled up to her neck, it was nevertheless clear that the injured woman wasn't the horribly mauled victim he'd expected to find. There was a bad set of scratches on her cheek, visible beneath the healing salve that had been applied, and a rather worse set on her arm that was still being treated. But aside from that...
From her seat across the bed Daulo's mother glanced up at him. "Please stay back," Ivria Sammon said softly. "The dust on your clothing—"
"I understand," Daulo nodded. His eyes searched the visible wounds again, then settled for the first time on her face. About his age, he judged, with the soft-looking skin of someone who had spent little time out in the sun and wind. His eyes drifted down her left arm, past the wounds, to her hand.
No ring of marriage.
He frowned, looking at her face again. No mistake—she was at least as old as he was. And still unmarried—?
"She must have come from a far way," Ivria said quietly, almost as if to herself. "See her face, the way her features are formed."
Daulo glanced at his mother, then back at the mysterious woman again. Yes; now that he was looking for it he could see it, too. There was a strangeness in the face, a trace of the exotic that he'd never seen before. "Perhaps she's from one of the cities to the north," he suggested. "Or even from somewhere in the Eastern Arm."
"Perhaps," the doctor grunted. "She certainly hasn't built up much resistance to monote bites."
"Is that what the problem is?" Daulo asked.
The doctor nodded. "On the arms and hands—here, and here," he added, pointing them out. "It looks like she had to fend them off with her bare hands."
"After her ammunition ran out?" Daulo suggested. She surely hadn't fended off that krisjaw with her bare hands, after all.
"Perhaps," the doctor said. "Though if she had a gun it was gone by the time she was found. As was the holster."
Daulo gnawed at his inner cheek, glancing around the room. A pile of clothing had been tossed into the corner; keeping well back from the bed, he stepped over to it. The injured woman's clothes, of course—the bloodstains alone would have attested to that, even without the odd feel of the cloth that branded it as from someplace far away. And the doctor was right: there was no holster with the ensemble. Nor any markings on the belt where one might once have hung.
"Maybe she had some companions," he suggested, dropping the clothing back on the floor. That would certainly make more sense than a single woman wandering alone out in the forest. "Was any effort made to see if there were others in the area where she was found?"
It was Ivria who answered. "Not at the time, but I believe Perto has now gone back to continue the search."
Stepping to the room's intercom, Daulo keyed the private family circuit. "This is Daulo Sammon," he identified himself to the servant who answered. "Has Perto returned from the forest?"
"One moment, Master Sammon," the voice answered. "...He is not answering."
Daulo nodded. Out of the house, away from all the Sammon family holdings in Milika, Perto would be out of touch with the buried fiber-optic communications network which was the only safe way to send messages in Milika. "Leave a message for him to contact me as soon as possible," he instructed the other.
"Yes, Master Sammon."
Daulo keyed the intercom off and turned back for one last look at the woman. Where could she be from? he wondered. And why is she here? There were no answers as yet... but that lack would eventually be corrected. For the moment the important fact was that the Sammon family had matters under control. Whether this mysterious woman represented a totally neutral happenstance, or a chance opportunity granted them by God, or part of some strange plot by one of their rivals, the Sammons were now in position to use her presence to their own advantage.
Which reminded him, he still had to clean up before his meeting with his father. Opening the door quietly, he slipped out of the room.
"Come in," the familiar grating voice came from the opposite side of the carved door; and, steeling himself, Daulo opened the door and went in.
He could still remember a time, not all that long ago, when he'd been absolutely terrified of his father. Terrified not so much by Kruin Sammon's strength and stature, nor even by the man's cold voice and piercing black eyes; but by the fact that Kruin Sammon was, to all intents and purposes, the Sammon family. His was the power that ran this immense house and the mine and nearly a third of the village; his the influence that stretched beyond Milika to touch the nearby villages and logging camps and even the city of Azras, whose people normally treated villagers like themselves with barely concealed contempt. Kruin Sammon was power... and even after the fear of that power had abated somewhat, Daulo had never forgotten the emotions it had aroused in him.
It was only much later that he had realized it was probably a lesson his father had deliberately set for him to learn.
"Ah; Daulo," the older man nodded from his cushion-like throne in solemn greeting to his eldest son. "I trust your trip down the mine went well?"
"Yes, my father," Daulo said, making the sign of respect as he stepped to the cushion before Kruin's low work table and seated himself before it. "The necessity for extra shoring is keeping progress slow in the new tunnel, but not as slow as we feared it would."
"And the job is being done properly?"
"It appeared to be, yes, at least to the best of my knowledge."
"The job is being done properly?" Kruin repeated.
Daulo fought to keep his emotions from his face and voice. That had been a thoughtless qualification—if there was one thing his father hated, it was equivocation. "Yes, my father. The shoring was being done properly."
"Good," Kruin nodded, picking up a stylus from the table and making note on a pad. "And the workers?"
"Content. In my presence, at any rate."
"The mine chief?"
Daulo thought back to the other's face as he'd left the elevator. "Impressed by his own importance," he said. "Eager that others know of it, as well."
That brought a faint smile to Kruin's lips. "He is all of that," he agreed. "But he's also capable and conscientious, and the combination is one that can be put up with." Tossing the stylus back on the table, he leaned back against the cushions and gazed at his son. "And now: what is your impression of our visitor?"
"Our—? Oh. The woman." Daulo frowned. "There are things about her I don't understand. For one thing, she's well within marriageable age and yet is unmarried—"
"Or is widowed," Kruin put in.
"Oh. True, she could be a widow. She's also not from anywhere around here—her clothing is made of a cloth I'm unfamiliar with, and the doctor said she had a low tolerance to monote bites."
"And what of her rather dramatic entrance to Milika? —found alone on the road after some unspecified accident or such?"
Daulo shrugged. "I've heard of people getting stranded on roads before, my father. And even of surviving krisjaw attacks."
The elder Sammon smiled. "Very good—you anticipated my next question. But have you ever heard of someone who was close enough to a krisjaw to be clawed and still survived the experience?"
"There are cases," Daulo said, a small part of his mind wondering why he was being so stubborn. He certainly had no reason to take the mysterious woman's part in this debate. "If she had one or more armed companions during the attack one could have shot the creature off of her, even at that late moment."
Kruin nodded, lips tightening together. "Yes, there's that possibility. Unfortunately, it leads immediately to another question: these alleged defenders of hers seem to have vanished, djinn-like, into thin air. Why?"
Daulo thought about it for a long minute, painfully aware that his father must have already thought all this through and was merely testing him to see if he came up with similar answers. "There are only three possibilities," he said at last. "They are dead, incapacitated, or in hiding."
"I agree," Kruin said. "If they are dead or incapacitated, Perto will find them—I've sent him to search the road now for just that purpose. If they are hiding... again, why?"
"Afraid, or part of a plot," Daulo said promptly. "If afraid, they will reveal themselves once their companion is proved to have come to no harm. If part of a plot—" he hesitated "—then the woman is here either to infiltrate and spy on our house or else to distract our attention from her companions' task."
Kruin took a deep breath, his eyes focused somewhere beyond Daulo's face. "Yes. Unfortunately, that is my reasoning, as well. Have you any thoughts as to who would plot against us?"
The snort escaped Daulo's lips before he could stop it. "Need we look farther than the Yithtra family?"
"It could be that obvious," Kruin shrugged. "And yet, I generally credit Yithtra with more subtlety than that. And more intelligence, too—with a new shipment of lumber due in, he'll have more than enough legitimate work to keep him occupied. Why launch a plot to discredit us at the same time?"
"Perhaps that's how he expects us to think," Daulo suggested.
"Perhaps. Still, it would be good to remember that there are others on Qasama who might find profit in stirring up mischief in Western Arm villages."
Daulo nodded thoughtfully. Yes; and foremost among them were the enemies of Mayor Capparis of Azras. Capparis's unlikely friendship with the Sammon family—and the easy access that relationship gave the mayor to the mine's output—had been a thorn in the side of Capparis's enemies for a long time. Perhaps one of them was finally going to try and break the Sammon family's power, to replace them with someone more malleable.
Especially with that strange self-contained Mangus operation east of Azras gobbling up so much of the mine's output lately. Azras and the other cities in the Western Arm were enough of a headache to Milika and its fellow villages; Mangus and its slimy purchasing agents were as bad in their way as all the cities combined. If someone in Azras thought Mangus's mineral needs would go still higher—and thought that someone other than the Sammon family should profit by those needs... "What shall we do, then, my father?" he asked. "Send this woman out of our house, perhaps allow her to recuperate in the mayor's house?"
Kruin was silent a moment before answering. "No," he said at last. "If our enemies believe we consider her harmless, it gives us a slight advantage in this game. No, we will keep her here, at least for now. If Perto fails to find any companions for her—well, by then we may be able to question her directly about how she survived her journey."
And if that story was patently false...? "I understand. Shall I assign a guard to her recovery room?"
"No, we don't want to be that obvious. As long as she's ill and confined to the women's section the normal contingent of guards there will be adequate. You will alert them to be prepared for possible trouble from her, of course."
"Yes, my lather. And once she's recovered?"
Kruin smiled. "Why, then, as a proper and dutiful host, it will be your responsibility to act as escort to her."
And to learn just what she's up to. "Yes, my father," Daulo nodded. The elder Sammon's posture indicated the audience was at an end; getting to his feet, Daulo made the sign of respect and bowed. "I will attend to the guards, and then await Perto's return."
"Goodbye, my eldest son," Kruin said with an acknowledging nod. "Make me proud of you."
"I will." As long as breath is in me, Daulo added silently.
Pulling open the heavy door, he slipped quietly out of the chamber.
The first thing Jin noticed as she drifted back to consciousness was that something furry was tickling the underside of her chin. The second thing she noticed was that she didn't seem to hurt anywhere.
She opened her eyes to slits, squinting against the light streaming in from somewhere to her right and trying to orient herself. If her memory was correct—and there might be some doubt about that—it had been past noon when she finally made it through the forest and found the road. Could it still be afternoon on that same day? No, she felt far too rested for that. Besides which... Gently, she tried turning her neck. Still a little stiff, but not nearly as bad as it had been. At least a day had passed, then, probably more.
And she'd been unconscious through the whole thing. Naturally unconscious? Or had she been deliberately drugged?
Drugged and interrogated?
From her right came the squeak of wood on wood. Keeping her movements small, Jin turned her head. Seated in a heavy looking chair beside the window was a young girl, perhaps seven or eight years old, seated crosslegged with an open book across her lap. "Hello," Jin croaked.
The girl looked up, startled. "Hello," she said, closing her book and laying it on the floor beside her chair. "I didn't realize you were awake. How are you feeling?"
Jin forced some moisture into her mouth. "Pretty good," she said, the words coming out better this time. "Hungry, though. How long was I asleep?"
"Oh, a long time—almost five days—though you were awake and feverish for part of—"
"Five days?" Jin felt her mouth fall open in astonishment... and then the rest of the girl's comment caught up with her. "I was feverish, you said?" she asked carefully. "I hope I didn't say or do anything too outlandish."
"Oh, no, though my aunt said you're very strong."
Jin grimaced. "Yes, I've been told that." She just hoped her Cobra-enhanced strength hadn't hurt anyone... or given her away. "Did anyone—I'm sorry; what is your name?"
The girl looked stricken. "Oh—forgive me." She ducked her head, raising her right hand to touch bunched fingers to her forehead. "I am Gissella; second daughter of Namid Sammon, younger brother of Kruin Sammon."
Jin tried the hand gesture, watching Gissella's face closely as she did so. If she botched the maneuver the younger girl didn't seem to notice. "I am Jasmine," Jin introduced herself. "Third daughter of Justin Alventin."
"Honored," Gissella nodded, getting to her feet and walking around the foot of the bed. "Excuse me, but I was to let my Aunt Ivria know if you awakened in your right mind."
She stepped to the door and what looked like an intercom set into the wall next to it, and as she got her connection and delivered her news Jin took a quick inventory of her injuries.
It was astonishing. The deep gashes on arm and cheek were already covered with pink skin, and the deep bruises left across her chest by the shuttle safety harness were completely gone. Her left knee and elbow were still tender, but even they were in better shape than she would have expected from the way they'd felt right after the crash. Either the injuries had been more transient than she'd thought at the time, or else—
No. No or else about it. Qasaman medicine was as advanced as that of the Cobra Worlds, pure and simple. Possibly more so.
Gissella finished her conversation and stepped to a wardrobe cabinet on the opposite side of the door. "They'll be here shortly," she said, withdrawing a pale blue outfit and holding it out for Jin's approval. "Aunt Ivria suggested you might like to get dressed before they arrive."
"Yes, I would," Jin nodded, pulling back the furry blanket and swinging her legs out of bed.
The material, she quickly discovered, was markedly different from that of the best-guess Qasaman clothing the team had landed with, but the design was similar. Still, Jin took no chances, feigning trouble with her left arm in order to let Gissella do as much of the actual fastening and arranging as possible. Fortunately, there were no major surprises. Which means I ought to be able to dress myself adequately from now on, Jin thought as she straightened the hem of the short robe/tunic. At least until they switch styles on me. Trying to relax, she listened for the others to arrive.
She didn't have to wait very long. Within a few minutes her enhanced hearing picked up the sound of three sets of footsteps approaching. Taking a deep breath, she faced the door... and a moment later the panel swung open to reveal two women and a man.
The first woman was the one in charge of the party—that much was abundantly clear from both her rich clothing and her almost regal bearing. She was a woman, Jin recognized instinctively, who commanded the respect of those around her and would demand nothing less from a stranger in her household. The second woman was in sharp contrast: young and plainly dressed, with the air of one whose role was to go unnoticed about her duties. A servant, Jin thought to herself. Or a slave. And the man—
His eyes were captivating. Literally; it took Jin a long second to free her gaze from those dark traps and give the rest of him a quick once-over. He was young—her age, perhaps a year or two younger—but with the same regal air as the older woman. And some of the same features, as well. Related? she wondered. Very possibly.
The older woman stopped a meter away from Jin and ducked her head a few degrees in an abbreviated bow. "In the name of the Sammon family," she said in a cool, controlled voice, "I bid you greeting and welcome."
Something expectant in her face... on impulse, Jin repeated the fingertips-to-forehead gesture Gissella had already shown her. It seemed to work. "Thank you," she told the older woman. "I am honored by your hospitality." The verbal response wasn't the prescribed one—that much was quickly apparent from the others' faces. But they seemed surprised, rather than outraged, and Jin crossed her mental fingers that the story she'd concocted would cover these slips well enough. "I am Jasmine, daughter of Justin Alventin."
"I am Ivria Sammon," the older woman identified herself. "Wife of Kruin Sammon and mother of his heirs." She gestured to the youth, now standing beside her. "Daulo, first son and heir of Kruin Sammon."
"I am honored by your hospitality," Jin repeated, again touching fingers to forehead.
Daulo nodded in return. "Your customs and manners mark you as a stranger to this part of Qasama," Ivria continued, eyes holding unblinkingly on her. "Where is your home, Jasmine Alventin?"
"I have spent time in many different places," Jin said, working hard at controlling her face and voice. This was the stickiest part; no matter what she said now, the lie could be eventually run to ground if they were persistent enough. Given that, her best chance lay with one of the half-dozen cities dotting the western curve of the Crescent, where the higher population density should make any investigation at least a little harder. "My current home is in the city of Sollas."
For a single, awful moment she thought she'd made a mistake, that perhaps something unknown had happened to Sollas in the years following her father's first visit to Qasama. The hard look that flicked across Ivria's face—
"A city dweller," Daulo said sourly.
"City dweller or not, she is our guest now," Ivria replied, and Jin started breathing again. Whatever they had against cities, at least it wasn't something that immediately branded her as an offworlder. "Tell me, Jasmine Alventin, what has brought you to Milika?"
"Is that where I am, then?" Jin asked. "Milika? I didn't know where it was I was brought—the accident that wrecked our car..." She shivered involuntarily as images from the shuttle wreck rose unbidden before her eyes.
"Where did this accident happen?" Ivria asked. "On the road from Shaga?"
Jin waved her hands helplessly. "I don't really know where we were. My companions—my brother Mander and two others—were searching the forest for insects to take back to their laboratory."
"You were in the forest on foot?" Daulo put in.
"No," Jin told him. "Mander studies insects, trying to learn their secrets and put them to use. He has—or had; I suppose it's ruined now—a specially built car that can maneuver between trees and through a forest's undergrowth. I was just along for the trip—I wanted to see how he worked." She let a note of puzzlement creep into voice and face. "But I'm sure he knows much more about where the accident happened. Can't you just ask him about it when he awakens?"
Ivria and Daulo exchanged glances. "Your companions are not here, Jasmine Alventin," Daulo said. "You were alone when my brother found you on the road."
Jin stared at him a long moment, letting her mouth sag in what she hoped was a reasonable semblance of shock. "Not... but they were there. With me. We—we all walked to the road together—Mander killed a krisjaw that attacked me—no, they have to be here."
"I'm sorry," Ivria said gently. "Do you remember if they were still with you when you reached the road?"
"Of course they were," Jin said, letting her voice drift toward the frantic. "They were still with me when I was carried into the truck. Surely they saw—it was your brother, Daulo, who found us? Didn't he see them?"
Daulo's cheek twitched. "Jasmine Alventin... you were suffering the effects of several monote bites when Perto found you. Hallucinations are sometimes among these effects. My brother wouldn't have left your companions if they'd been anywhere nearby—you must believe that. And after you were safe here he took several men and went back to do an even more thorough search, covering both the road and the forest areas flanking them, all the way back to Shaga."
Thorough enough to find the packs I hid? Jin's stomach tightened; and immediately relaxed. No, of course the packs were still hidden. If anyone had found them she'd have awakened in a maximum-security prison... if she'd been allowed to awaken at all. "Oh, Mander," she whispered. "But then... where is he?"
"He may still be alive," Daulo said, his voice steady with forced optimism. "We can send more people to look for him."
Slowly, Jin shook her head, gazing past Daulo into space. "No, Five days... If he's not out by now... he's not coming out, is he?"
Daulo took a deep breath. "I'll send more searchers, anyway," he said quietly. "Look... you've had a bad time, and I doubt that you're fully recovered. Why don't you have a warm bath and something to eat and then rest for a few more hours."
Jin closed her eyes briefly. "Yes. Thank you. I'm... sorry. Sorry for everything."
"It's our honor and our pleasure to offer you our hospitality," Ivria said. "Is there someone elsewhere on Qasama to whom a message should be sent?"
Jin shook her head. "No. My family is... gone. My brother was all I had left."
"We grieve with you," Ivria said softly. For a moment she was silent; then, she made a gesture and the young Qasaman woman behind her stepped forward. "This is Asya; she will be your servant for as long as you are under our roof. Command her as you will."
"Thank you," Jin nodded. The thought of having a private servant grated against her sensibilities—especially a servant whose manner seemed more fitting to a slave—but it would undoubtedly be out of character to refuse.
"When you feel up to joining us, let Asya know, and she'll find me," Daulo added. "It will be my privilege to be your guide and escort while you are in Milika."
"I will be most honored," Jin said, trying to ignore the warning bells clanging in the back of her mind. First a live-in servant, then the owner's son to walk her around the place. Common hospitality... or the first indications of suspicion?
But for the next couple of days, at least, it hardly mattered. Until her elbow and knee were fully functional again, she had little choice but to stay in Milika and recuperate; and if the Sammons wanted to keep her under a microscope, she could handle that. "I look forward to seeing your house and village," she added.
And for a second the compassion seemed to leave Daulo's eyes. "Yes," he said, almost stiffly. "I'm sure you do."
It turned out to be surprisingly easy for Jin to get used to having a servant around.
The exception was the bath. Jin hadn't had company in the bathroom during baths since she was ten, and to have someone standing quietly ready with cloth, soap, and towel was both strange and not a little discomfiting. The hot water itself felt wonderfully good—and the bathroom more luxurious than any she'd ever seen, let alone been in—but she nevertheless cut the operation as short as she reasonably could.
Once past that, though, things improved considerably. Asya ordered her a large dinner, setting it out at a small window seat table overlooking a magnificently landscaped courtyard. Sort of like the way your family fusses over you when you're sick, Jin decided as Asya seated her and began serving. Or like having an obedient little sister available to boss around. That role she remembered all too well.
The food itself wasn't as strange-tasting as she'd feared it would be, and she astonished herself by eating everything Asya had had sent up. The trauma of the crash and trek through the forest, combined with five days of fasting, had given her more appetite than she'd realized.
And apparently more fatigue, too. She'd barely finished the meal when she began to feel sleep tugging again at her eyelids. Leaving Asya to clean up, she made her way back to her bed and got undressed. I wonder, the thought occurred to her as she slid under the furry blanket, if the food might have been drugged.
But if it had there was nothing she could do about it. As long as she was in Milika and the Sammon household, she was in their power. Best to look as innocent and guileless as possible... and concentrate on getting her strength back.
When she awoke again, the room was dark, with only a bare hint of light coming in around heavy curtains covering the room's window. "Asya?" she whispered, keying her optical enhancers to light-amplification. There was no response, and a quick visual survey of the room showed she was alone. Activating her auditory enhancers, she picked up the sounds of slow breathing from the doorway leading to the bathroom/dressing area, and Jin remembered now noticing that one of the couches there had seemed to be of a daybed design. Sliding out of bed, she padded to the doorway and looked in.
Asya was there, all right, snuggled under a blanket on the daybed, oblivious to the world. For a long moment Jin stood watching her, pondering what she should do... and as she stood there, it suddenly occurred to her that of the four members of the Sammon household she'd seen so far, none of them had been accompanied by a mojo. Or had worn clothing adapted to carrying one.
She frowned into the darkness. Had the plan, then, worked? Had they truly succeeded in splitting the Qasamans away from their bodyguard birds? If so, that might explain their reaction to my telling them I was from Sollas, she realized. General hostility between villages and cities may have begun.
Unfortunately, it could just as easily be that Ivria and Daulo had left their mojos behind when they came to see her, for whatever reason. She needed to find out for sure... and the sooner the better.
Gnawing thoughtfully at her lip, she looked back at the door where her visitors had entered that afternoon. Somehow, she doubted that Daulo's offer of hospitality had included midnight tours; but on the other hand, no one had suggested that she was a prisoner here, either. Stepping back over to the wardrobe, she located the clothing she'd worn earlier and quietly put it on. Then, senses fully alert, she opened the door and stepped out.
She was in the approximate center of a long hallway, its dim indirect lighting bright enough for her to see without the aid of her enhancers. Halfway to the end in either direction were archways that led off opposite to the courtyard, perhaps to larger suites than hers. The decor was elaborate, with delicate tracings and filigrees of gold and purple everywhere.
All this she noted only peripherally. Her primary attention was on the end of the hallway, and the pair of uniformed men standing there.
Each with the silver-blue plumage of a mojo glinting on his shoulder.
For a second Jin hesitated; but it was too late to back out now. The guards had seen her, and while she didn't yet seem to have provoked anything but mild interest in them, ducking back into her room could hardly fail to pique their interest. The other direction...? But a glance behind her showed another pair of men standing at that end of the hall, too. Gritting her teeth, she turned back and started down the corridor, walking as casually as she could manage.
The guards watched her approach, one of them taking a step away from the far wall as she neared them. "Greetings to you, Jasmine Alventin," he said, touching his fingers to his forehead. "We stand at your service. Where do you go at this time of the evening?"
"I woke up a short while ago," Jin told him, "and as I couldn't fall back asleep I thought a walk would help."
If that sounded odd to the guard it didn't show in his expression. "Few in the household are still awake," he said, glancing down the hall and making a quick series of hand signals. Jin looked around the corner, saw that the hallway bent around to that direction, probably following the perimeter of the courtyard she could see from her window. At the far end of that hallway were another pair of guards, one of them signaling to someone around the corner from him. These guards, too, came equipped with mojos. "I'll see if there is any of the Sammon family who can receive you," Jin's guard explained.
"That's really not necessary—" Jin started to say.
But it was too late. The guard in the distance was already gesturing back their way. "There is a light on in Kruin Sammon's private office," Jin's guard informed her. "The guard down there will escort you."
"That's really not necessary," Jin protested, heart loud in her ears. If this was the same Kruin Sammon who'd already been identified as patriarch of this family— "I don't want to cause unnecessary trouble."
"Kruin Sammon will wish to be informed that you need entertainment," the guard admonished gently; and Jin swallowed any further argument. The guards clearly had orders concerning her... and again, a sudden backing out at this stage would attract the wrong kind of attention.
"Thank you," she told him through stiff lips. Forcing herself to walk steadily, she started down the long hallway ahead toward the men and mojos waiting there...
Kruin Sammon leaned back into his cushions, a mixture of irritation and deep thought on his face. "How far did you go?"
"All the way down the road to Shaga, and then out to Tabris," Daulo told him. "We found absolutely nothing. No car, no bodies, no marks where a car might have bololined its way into the forest."
Kruin sighed and nodded. "So. Your conclusion?"
Daulo hesitated a second. "She's lying," he said reluctantly. "She faked the accident, perhaps deliberately inflicting her injuries on herself, in order to gain entrance to our house."
"I find no grounds to argue with you," Kruin agreed. "But it still seems so much effort for so little gain. Surely there are many simpler paths that would have gained her the same end."
Daulo pursed his lips. That was the same knot that had steadfastly refused to come apart for him, as well. "I know, my father. But who knows what convoluted scheme our enemies may have come up with? Perhaps they wish us to spend so much time trying to unravel her secrets that we fail to anticipate their main thrust."
"True. I take it, then, that you would counsel against my sending word to Azras and asking Mayor Capparis to contact the authorities in Sollas?"
"Since it seems clear enough already that she's a plant," Daulo said, "I don't see that it would gain us very much. It would merely confirm that she lied about her home, and in the meantime might alert her friends that we suspect her."
"Yes." For a moment Kruin was silent. Then, with a sigh, he shook his head. "I feel my age tugging at me, my son. In days gone by I would have relished the challenge of such a battle of wits as this. Now, all I can see before me is the danger this woman represents to my family and house."
Daulo licked his lips. Seldom in his life had he been given this kind of unobstructed view into his father's soul, and it was both embarrassing and a little unnerving. "It's the duty of a family leader to consider the well-being of his household," he said, a little stiffly.
Kruin smiled. "And as such you see your own future. Does the thought of so much responsibility frighten you?"
Daulo was saved from the need to answer such an awkward question by a soft ping from Kruin's low desk. "Enter," the elder Sammon said into the inlaid speaker.
Daulo turned to look as the door behind him opened. Two of the guards from the women's wing entered; and sandwiched in between them—
"Jasmine Alventin," Kruin said calmly, as if her presence was no surprise at all. "You are awake late."
"Forgive me if I've overstepped the bounds of your hospitality," the woman said, matching Kruin's tone as she made the sign of respect in that odd way of hers. "I awoke and thought I would walk about until I felt ready to sleep again."
"There are few entertainments available in Milika at night, I'm afraid," Kruin told her. "Unlike, I presume, the larger cities you're accustomed to. Shall I call for food or drink for you?"
"No, thank you," she shook her head. If the reference to her claimed home city startled her, Daulo couldn't see any sign of it in her face. "I'm embarrassed enough already for disrupting your work—please don't let me be any further trouble."
Daulo finally got his tongue unstuck. "Perhaps you'd like to continue your walk out in the courtyard," he suggested. "My father and I are finished here, and I'd be honored to accompany you."
He watched her face closely, saw the brief surprise flicker across her eyes. "Why—I would also be honored," she said. "But only if it's truly no trouble for you."
"None at all," he said, getting to his feet. He'd rather expected her to make some excuse to turn him down—if she was prowling around on some nefarious errand, she'd hardly want to have the Sammon family heir along to watch. But now that he'd made the offer, he couldn't back out. "It will have to be a short tour, though," he added.
"That would be fine," she agreed. "I'm not especially sleepy, but I realize I'm not fully recovered yet."
Daulo turned back to his father. "With your permission...?"
"Certainly," Kruin nodded. "Don't be too late; I want you to be at the mine with the first diggers in the morning."
"Yes, my father," Daulo bowed, making the sign of respect. Turning back, he caught the guards' eyes. "You may return to your posts," he told them. "Come," he added to Jasmine, gesturing toward the door. "I'll show you our courtyard. And as we walk you can tell me how our home differs from yours."
Great, Jin groused at herself as they left Kruin's chambers and headed down the hall toward an ornate stairway. Just great. A moonlight walk with the local top man's son, discussing a home town you've never been to. Terrific way to start a mission, girl.
Though as the initial panic began to fade she realized it wasn't quite as bad as it sounded. She'd studied hundreds of satellite photos of Qasaman cities; more importantly, she'd seen all the tapes that had been made at ground level through her Uncle Joshua's extra "eyes" when he and her father were in Sollas thirty years ago. Whatever had changed since then, she at least wouldn't have to build her story up from ground level.
Though it would certainly be safer to steer the conversation away from Sollas entirely... and perhaps, in the process, get started on her own research.
Twisting her head as they walked, she looked back at the departing guards and forced a small shiver. "Is something wrong?" Daulo asked.
"Oh, no," she assured him, taking a deep breath. "Just... the mojos. They scare me a little."
Daulo glanced back himself. "Mojos are available," he said tartly. "Or would you prefer we not protect our household as best we can?"
"No, I didn't mean that," she shook her head. "I understand why you need them, this deep in the forest and all. I'm just not used to having dangerous animals that close to me."
Daulo snorted. "Those bololin herds you let trample through Sollas don't qualify as dangerous?"
"The more intelligent among us stay as far back from them as possible," she retorted.
"Which makes Mayor Capparis and his people doubly stupid, I suppose?"
Jin's mouth went a little dry. Who in blazes was Mayor Capparis? Someone she should be expected to know? "How do you mean?" she asked cautiously.
"I mean because he has a mojo and also participates with his people in the bololin shootings when they come through," Daulo ground out. "Or doesn't Azras even count as a city, being down here at the end of the Eastern Arm with us provincials?"
Jin began to breathe again. Azras was a name she knew: the Fertile Crescent city just southeast of here, fifty kilometers or so southwest of the mysterious roofed compound she was here to take a look at.
And with that useful tidbit of information in hand it would be wise to back off a little. "Forgive me," she said to Daulo. "I didn't mean to sound overbearing or prejudiced."
"It's all right," he muttered, sounding a bit embarrassed. They reached the bottom of the staircase and he steered her toward a large double door. "I shouldn't have reacted so strongly, either. I just get tired of the cities and their infernal harping on the mojo question. Maybe in Sollas they're more trouble and danger than they're worth, but you don't have to worry about razorarms and krisjaws there, either."
"Of course," Jin murmured. So in at least some of the cities the mojo presence had gone from practically universal to practically nonexistent over the past thirty years. How much had that trend affected the villages? "Do you mostly just take them along when you go outside, then?" she asked.
The double door leading outside, she noted, wasn't guarded like the hallways upstairs had been. Daulo pulled it open himself, giving her a somewhat odd look as he did so. "People who choose to own mojos carry them however and wherever they choose," he said. "Some only outside the walls, others at all times. Do all the people of Sollas have this same fascination for birds?"
Jin stepped out into the darkness of the courtyard, thankful that the gloom hid her blush. "Sorry—I didn't mean to bore you. I was merely curious. As I said, I haven't had much experience with them."
Daulo said nothing for a moment, and Jin took advantage of the silence to look around her. The courtyard, impressive enough when seen from an upper window, was even more so at ground level. Fruit trees, bushes, and small sculptures were visible in the dim light of small glowing globes set into a second-floor overhang. Off to the right, she could hear what sounded like the steady splashing of water from a small fountain, and the light breeze carried with it the scents of several different kinds of flowers. "It's beautiful," she murmured, almost unconsciously.
"My great-grandfather created it when he built the house," Daulo said, and there was no mistaking the pride in his voice. "My grandfather and father have changed it somewhat, but there's still much of the ancient Qasama in it. Does your house have anything like this?"
"Our house is but one of several facing onto a common courtyard," Jin said, remembering the tapes she'd studied. "It's not as large as this one, though. Certainly not as lovely."
The words were hardly out of her mouth when a faint scream abruptly wafted through the night air.
Jin jerked, thoughts snapping back to Aventine and the forest where her team had fought against spine leopards—
"It's all right," Daulo said into her ear, and she suddenly realized he'd moved close to her. "Just a rogue razorarm trying to get over the wall, that's all."
"That's all?" Jin asked, fighting to calm her stomach. The thought of a spine leopard running loose in the sleeping village... "Shouldn't we do something?"
"It's all right, Jasmine Alventin," Daulo repeated. "The mesh is high enough to keep it out. It'll either eventually give up or else get its paws or quills stuck, in which case the night guardians will kill it."
The scream came again, sounding angrier this time. "Shouldn't we at least go and make sure things are under control?" she persisted. "I've seen what—razorarms—can do when they get crazy."
Daulo hissed between his teeth. "Oh, all right. From the sound it is in our section of town. You can wait here; I'll be back in a few minutes." Stepping away from her, he headed across the courtyard toward a long outbuilding nestled in one corner.
"Wait a minute," Jin called after him. "I want to go with you."
He threw an odd look over his shoulder. "Don't be absurd," he snorted, disappearing into the outbuilding through a side door. A few seconds passed; and then, with a gentle hum, a large door in the building's front swung up. A low-slung vehicle emerged, gliding across the drive with the utter silence only a very advanced electrical motor could provide. A second door, richly filigreed, opened to provide exit from the courtyard.
And a second later Jin was alone.
Well, that's just terrific, she fumed, glaring at the courtyard door as it swung closed again. What does he think I am, some useless bit of—?
Of course he does, she reminded herself with a grimace. Severely paternalistic society, remember? You knew that coming in. So relax, girl, and try and take it easy, okay?
Easier advice to give than to take. The whole idea of being a secondary citizen, even temporarily, rankled more than she ever would have imagined it could. But if she was going to maintain her cover, she had no choice but to stay within that character.
Or at least to not get caught stepping outside of it....
The sounds of activity were growing louder, now, centering somewhere toward the west. Keying in her optical enhancers, Jin made a careful sweep of both the courtyard and the windows and doors looking out onto it. No one was visible. Trotting to the western edge of the courtyard, she did a second sweep, this time adding in her infrared sensors as well. Same result: she was alone and unobserved. Gritting her teeth, she looked at the three-story wall towering above her, made a quick estimate of its height, and jumped.
She was, if anything, a bit long on her guess, and a second later she found herself gazing down from midair at the roof of the Sammon house. Fortunately, Daulo's great-grandfather had gone in heavily for ornamental stonework when he'd built the place, and it was no effort to find hand and foot grips as her upward momentum peaked and she started the downward trip. Taking care not to make noise, she clambered up and across the slightly slanted roof to its peak. From that vantage point she could see across much of the village; and there, perhaps a kilometer away to the west, was the wall.
It looked about as she would have expected it, given the pictures brought back from Qasaman villages further north and east. The main part was a three-meter height of tough ceramic, hard and thick enough to withstand a charging bololin, with its inner surface painted to blend in with the forest just beyond it. Unlike the others she'd seen, however, this one had a bonus: an extension of some kind of metal mesh that added another two meters to its original height.
Midway up that fence, holding on with all four feet, was the spine leopard she'd heard.
Jin chewed at her lip. Below the animal, moving around in a purposeful manner, were a handful of figures armed with large handguns. She strained, but even with optical enhancers at full magnification, she couldn't tell if Daulo was among them. Probably not, she assured herself. He couldn't have gotten there that fast.
And even as she watched, a car pulled up beside the wall and Daulo got out.
For a few seconds he and the men already there conversed. Then, two of the men set up ladders and climbed to the top of the main wall, staying well to either side of the spine leopard. Below them, Daulo and one other raised their guns in two-handed marksman's grips. Apparently they were hoping to kill the predator and grab the carcass before it fell to the ground outside.
Idiots, Jin thought, heart pounding in her ears. If stray bullets or ricochets didn't get the men up there, there was a good chance the spine leopard's death throes would. With their decentralized nervous systems spine leopards weren't easy to kill, certainly not quickly.
The multiple flashes from the guns were like sunglints off rippling water in her enhanced vision. She bit at her lip... and by the time the quickfire stutter of the shots reached her it was all over. Before the spine leopard had even sagged completely against the mesh the men on the wall were in front of it, hands poked through to grip the animal's forelegs. Two more men—Jin hadn't even noticed them get up on the wall—grabbed the top of the mesh and pulled themselves up and over to the spine leopard's side. Another second and they'd each taken a hind leg in one hand; hanging onto the mesh with the other hand, they heaved the carcass over the top to flop onto the ground inside the wall.
Carefully, Jin let her breath out, an odd shiver running up her back as the two men climbed the mesh again to safety. Of course these people knew what they were doing—they'd had a whole generation, after all, to figure out how to deal with the spine leopard legacy the Cobra Worlds had given them. There was little need for her to worry about the Qasamans on that account.
Which meant she could concentrate all of her worrying on herself.
Daulo was getting back into his car now. Carefully, Jin retraced her steps to the edge of the roof. With her leg servos and ceramic-coated bones there to take the impact, the fastest way down would be to simply drop straight back into the courtyard. But the noise of the impact might be loud enough for someone to hear, and after seeing that display of firepower she wasn't in the mood to risk drawing unwelcome attention. Licking her lips, she hooked her fingers into servo-strength talons and started the long climb down the stonework.
She'd decreased the distance by nearly a full story by the time her auditory enhancers picked up the hum of the outer door opening. Clenching her teeth, she let go and dropped the rest of the way to the ground. By the time Daulo came looking for her she was seated on a low bench beneath a fragrant tree, waiting for him.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Oh, sure," he nodded. "It was just a razorarm stuck in the wall. We got it without any trouble."
"Good," Jin told him, standing up. "Well, then, I suppose—"
She broke off abruptly as the courtyard did a mild tilt around her. "Are you all right?" Daulo asked sharply, stepping to her side and taking her arm.
"Sudden flash of dizziness," Jin said, swallowing hard. Even with her servos doing most of the work, her rooftop sightseeing trip had apparently taken more out of her than she'd realized. "I guess I'm not as recovered as I thought I was."
"Shall I call for a litter?"
"No, no, I'll be all right," she assured him. "Thank you very much for bringing me out here—I hope I didn't take up too much of your time."
"It was my pleasure, Jasmine Alventin. Come on, now..."
He insisted on walking her all the way back to her suite, despite her protestations that she really was all right. Once there, he also wanted to awaken Asya, and it took the best part of Jin's verbal skills and several minutes of whispered debate out in the hall before she convinced him that she would make it from doorway to bed without further assistance.
For a long time after his footsteps had faded down the hall she stared at the ceiling above her bed, listening to the pounding of her heart and thinking about those quickfire weapons. For a while there she'd actually started to relax in the comfort and luxury of the Sammon house... but that warm feeling was gone now. The entire planet of Qasama is one big fat enemy camp, Layn had told them again and again.
Now, for the first time, she really believed it.
She awoke to the delicate aroma of hot food, and opened her eyes to find a truly massive breakfast set out by the window seat. "Asya?" she called, climbing out of bed and padding over to the table.
"I am here, mistress," Asya said, appearing from the other room and touching her fingertips to her forehead. "How may I serve you?"
"Are we expecting company for breakfast?" Jin asked her, indicating the size of the meal.
"It was sent up on the order of Master Daulo Sammon," Asya told her. "Perhaps he felt you were in need of extra nourishment, after your illness. May I remind you that your meal yesterday was as large as this?"
"My meal yesterday followed a five-day fast," Jin growled, staring in dismay at the spread. "How am I supposed to eat all this?"
"I am sorry if you are displeased," Asya said, moving toward the intercom. "If you'd like, I can have it removed and a smaller portion brought up."
"No, that's okay," Jin sighed. She'd been taught since childhood not to waste food, and the sinking feeling that she was about to do exactly that was sending reflexive guilt feelings rippling through her stomach. But there was nothing that could be done about it now. Sitting down, she took a deep breath and dug in.
She managed to make a considerable dent in the meal before finally calling it quits. Along the way she noticed something that hadn't registered the day before: each variety of food, whether served cold or hot, remained at its original temperature throughout the course of the meal. A classy trick; and her eventual conclusion that there were miniature heat pumps or microwave systems built into each of the serving dishes didn't detract a bit from its charm.
Charming or not, though, it was also a sobering reminder of something she still had a dangerous tendency to forget: that for all their colorful customs and cultural differences, the Qasamans were emphatically not a primitive society.
"What would you do next, mistress?" Asya asked when Jin finally pushed herself away from the table.
"I'd like you to choose an outfit for me," Jin told her, still uncertain as to how all the clothing in her closet went together. "Then I'd like to walk around Milika for awhile, if that would be all right."
"Of course, mistress. Master Daulo Sammon suggested that you might want to do that; he left instructions that I was to call him when you were ready to go out."
Jin swallowed. The busy heir again taking valuable time out of his schedule to play escort for a simple accident victim... "I would be honored," she said between stiff lips.
It turned out that Daulo was still out on some unspecified family business when Asya called for him. Jin tried suggesting that Asya escort her instead, but whoever was on the other end of the intercom politely informed her she would wait for Daulo.
The wait turned out to be nearly an hour. Jin chafed at the delay, but there was really nothing she could do about it if she was to stay in character. Finally, though, Daulo appeared, and the two of them headed out into the bustle of Milika.
The tour proved well worth the wait. Towns and villages on Aventine and the other Cobra Worlds, Jin had long ago learned, basically grew on their own, with no more attention given to design and structure than was absolutely necessary. Milika, clearly planned in detail from the ground up, was a striking contrast to that laissez-faire attitude. What was even more impressive was the fact that whoever had done the planning had actually put some intelligence into the job.
The village was basically a giant circle, some two and a half kilometers across, with five major roads radiating like spokes between an inner traffic circle and a much larger outer circular drive. Inside the Small Ring Road was a well-groomed public park called the Inner Green; circling the village between the Great Ring Road and the wall, Daulo informed her, was a larger belt of parkland called the Outer Green.
"The Greens were designed to be public lands, common meeting and recreational places for the five families who founded Milika," Daulo told her as they passed through the crowds of pedestrians on the Small Ring Road and crossed over onto the Inner Green. "Like your home in the city, most of the minor family members and workers live in group houses bordering on small common courtyards, and this allows them more space than they would otherwise have."
"A good idea," Jin nodded. "The children especially must like it."
Daulo smiled. "They do indeed. Specific play areas have been built for them—there, and over there. There are others on the Outer Green, as well." He waved around at the residential areas outside the park. "Originally, you see, each of the five wedge-shaped main sections of the village was to be the property of one family. Over the years, unfortunately, three of the founding families have become split or diluted; these three," he added, indicating the directions. "Only the Sammon family and the Yithtra family remain as sole possessors of their sections."
Jin nodded. Something bitter in his voice... "It sounds like you would prefer there to be only one such family," she commented without thinking.
"Would that be your choice, as well?" he countered.
She looked at him, startled by the question, to find his face had become a neutral mask. "The way your village chooses to live is hardly my business," she told him, choosing her words carefully. What kind of local politics had she stumbled into? "If it were all up to me, I would choose peace and harmony between all peoples."
He eyed her in silence another moment before turning away. "Peace isn't always possible," he said tightly. "There are always some whose primary goal is the destruction of others."
Jin licked her lips. Don't say it, girl, she warned herself. "Is that the Sammon family's goal?" she asked softly.
He sent her a razor-edged look. "If you believe such a thing—" He broke off, looking annoyed with himself. "No, that is not our goal," he ground out. "There's far too much petty conflict between us—and I, for one, am tired of wasting my energy that way. Our true enemy lies out there, Jasmine Alventin; not in the cities or across village greens." He pointed at the sky.
The true enemy: us. Me. Jin swallowed. "Yes," she murmured. "There are no real enemies here."
Daulo took a deep breath. "Come," he said, starting back across the Small Ring Road. "I'll take you to the main marketplace in our section of the village. After that, perhaps you'd like to see the Outer Green and our lake."
The marketplace was situated along one edge of the Sammon family's wedge, its placement clearly designed to get business from both its own section and the one across the spoke-road from it. It was also the most familiar thing Jin had yet found in Milika, an almost direct photocopy of the marketplaces her uncle had visited thirty years earlier. A maze of small booths where everything from food and animal pelts to building services and small electronic devices were available, the marketplace was crowded and noisy and just barely on the civilized side of pandemonium. Jin had never understood how anyone could actually shop in such a madhouse day after day without going insane; now that she was actually here, she understood it even less.
And as they made their way through the crowds she kept an eye out for mojos.
They were there, all right, silvery-blue hunting birds riding patiently on the special epaulet/perches she'd seen in the Qasaman films. Thirty years ago, virtually every adult had been accompanied by one of the birds; here and now, a quick estimate put the proportion with mojos no higher than twenty-five percent. So in the cities the mojos have largely disappeared, she decided, remembering her conversation with Daulo the previous night, while in the villages they're still a major force. Is that the "mojo question" Daulo mentioned?
And was the mojo question one of the driving forces behind the village-city hostility she kept hearing about? If Qasama's city-based leaders had finally decided that having mojos around was dangerous, it would make sense for them to press the whole planet to get rid of them.
Except that the villages couldn't do that. Whatever the long-term effects caused by mojos, it was an undeniable fact that they made uncommonly good bodyguards... and people out in the Qasaman forest definitely needed all the protection they could get. Jin could attest to that personally.
So what it seemed to boil down to was that the Moreau Proposal to seed Qasama with spine leopards had indeed undermined the universal cooperation the Cobra Worlds had found so frightening... at a price of making the world even more dangerous for its inhabitants.
There are always some whose primary goal is the destruction of all others, Daulo had said. Had the Cobra Worlds been guilty of that kind of arrogance? The thought made her stomach churn.
Someone nearby was calling for a Jasmine Alventin... Oof—that's me, she realized abruptly. "I'm sorry, Daulo Sammon—what did you say?" she asked, feeling her cheeks redden with embarrassed anger at the slip.
"I asked if there was anything you'd like to buy," Daulo repeated. "You lost everything in that car wreck, after all."
Another test? Jin wondered, feeling her pulse pick up its pace. She had no idea what a normal Qasaman woman might have been carrying into the forest on a bug-hunting expedition. No, he's probably just being polite, she reminded herself. Don't get paranoid, girl... but don't get sloppy, either. "No, thank you," she told him. "I had nothing of real importance except clothing; if I may take some of the clothing your family has lent me when I go, I will be sufficiently in your debt."
Daulo nodded. "Well, if something should occur to you, don't hesitate to let me know. Since you mention it, have you given any thought to when you might wish to leave?"
Jin shrugged. "I don't wish to impose on your hospitality any longer than necessary," she said. "I could leave today, if I'm becoming a burden."
Something flicked across his face. "If that's what you'd like, it can be arranged, of course," he said. "You're certainly no burden, though. And I'd counsel, moreover, that you stay until you're fully recovered from your ordeal."
"There's that," she admitted. "I'd hate to collapse somewhere between Azras and Sollas—to find assistance elsewhere as caring as the Sammon family has been would be too much to ask."
He snorted. "You've been taught the fine art of flattery, I see." Still, the statement seemed to please him.
"Not really—just the fine art of truth," she countered lightly. Except for the grand lie I'm currently feeding you about myself. The thought brought heat to her cheeks; quickly, she looked around for something to change the subject. Beyond the market to the northwest was an oddly shaped building. "What's that?" she asked, indicating it.
"Just the housing for the mine elevators," he told her. "It's not very attractive, I'm afraid, but my father decided it had to be replaced too often to justify proper ornamentation."
"Oh, that's right—your father mentioned a mine last night," Jin nodded. "What kind of mine is it?"
Daulo threw her a very odd look. "You don't know?"
Jin felt sweat breaking out on her forehead. "No. Should I?"
"I'd have thought that anyone planning a trip would at least have learned something about the area to be visited," he said, a bit huffily.
"My brother Mander did all the studying," she improvised. "He always took care of... the details." Unbidden, Mander Sun's face rose before her eyes. A face she'd never see again...
"You cared a great deal for your brother, didn't you?" he asked, his tone a little softer.
"Yes," she whispered, moisture blurring her vision. "I cared very much for Mander."
For a moment they stood there in silence as the bustling marketplace crowds broke like noisy surf around them. "What's past cannot be changed," Daulo said at last, reaching down to briefly squeeze her hand. "Come; let me show you our lake."
Given the overall size of Milika, Jin had envisioned the "lake" as a medium-sized duck pond sandwiched between road and houses; and it was a shock, therefore, to find a rippling body of water fully three-quarters of a kilometer long cutting across the Sammon section of Milika. "It's... big," she managed to say as they stood on the spoke-road bridge arching over the water.
Daulo chuckled. "It is that," he agreed. "You'll notice it goes under the Great Ring Road over there and extends a way into the Outer Green. It's the source of all the water used in Milika, not to mention the obvious recreational benefits."
"Where does the water come from?" Jin asked. "I haven't seen any rivers or creeks anywhere."
"No, it's fed by an underwater spring. Or possibly an underwater river, tributary perhaps of the Somilarai River that passes north of here. No one really knows for sure."
Jin nodded. "How important, if I may ask, is a nearby source of water to the operation of your mine?"
Looking at the lake, she could still feel his eyes on her. "Not particularly," he said. "The mining itself doesn't use any, and the refining process is purely catalytic. Why do you ask?"
She hesitated; but it was too late to back out now. "Earlier, you mentioned people who sought others' downfall," she said carefully. "Now I see that, along with the mine, your part of Milika also controls the village's water supply. Your family indeed has great power... and that sort of power often inspires others to envy."
She counted ten heartbeats before he spoke again. "Why are you interested in the Sammon family?" he asked. "Or in Milika, for that matter?"
It was a fair question. She'd already learned about all she really needed to about Qasama's village culture, and would at any rate be moving on within a day or two to scout out the cities. The political wranglings of a small village buried out in the forest ought to be low on her priority list. And yet... "I don't know," she said honestly. "Perhaps it's out of gratitude for your help; perhaps because I'm growing to feel a friendship for your family. For whatever reason, I care about you, and if there's any way I can help you I want to do so."
She wasn't sure just what reaction she was expecting—acceptance, gratitude, even suspicion. But the snort of derision that exploded behind her ear took her completely by surprise. "You help us?" he said scornfully. "Wonderful. A woman with no family?—just what help do you propose to give?"
Jin felt her cheeks burning. Count to ten, girl, she ordered herself, clamping down hard on her tongue. You're sliding way out of character. "I'm sorry," she said humbly through clenched teeth. "I didn't mean it that way. I just thought—well, even though my family's gone, I do have friends."
"City friends?" he asked pointedly.
"Well... yes."
"Uh-huh." Daulo snorted again, gently, then sighed. "Let's just forget it, Jasmine Alventin. I appreciate the gesture, but we both know that's all it is."
"I... suppose we do."
"All right. Come, I'll take you across to the Outer Green."
Gritting her teeth, she lowered her eyes like a good little Qasaman woman ought to and followed Daulo across the bridge.
The courtyard outside Daulo's suite was dark, his late supper over and the dishes cleared away; and with the stillness and privacy came thoughts of Jasmine Alventin.
He didn't want to think about her. In fact, he'd gone to great pains to immerse himself in work over the past few hours in order to avoid thinking about her. He'd ended their walking tour of Milika early in the afternoon, professing concern over her weakened condition, and gone directly back to the mine to watch the work on the shoring. After that, he'd come back to the house and spent a couple of hours poring over the stacks of paperwork that the mine seemed to generate in the same volume as its waste tailings. Now, having postponed eating so that he wouldn't have to face her over a common family meal, he'd hoped the fullness of his stomach would conspire with the pace of the day to bring sleep upon him.
But it hadn't worked that way. Even while his body slumped on its cushions, numbed with food and fatigue, his mind raced ahead like a crazed bololin. With, of course, only one topic at its forefront.
Jasmine Alventin.
As a young boy the fable of the Gordian Knot had always been one of his favorites; as a young man one of his chief delights was the solving of problems that, like the Knot, had driven other men to despair. Jasmine Alventin was truly such a problem, a Gordian Knot in human guise.
Unfortunately, it was a Knot that refused to unravel.
With a sigh, he rolled off his cushions and got to his feet. He'd been putting this off for almost a day now, hoping in his pride that he could get a grip on this phantom without artificial assistance. But it wasn't working that way... and if there were even a slight chance that Jasmine Alventin was a danger to the Sammon family, it was his duty to do whatever was necessary to protect his household.
His private drug cabinet was built into the wall as part of his bathroom vanity, a reinforced drawer with a lock strong enough to discourage even the most persistent of children. It had been barely a year now since his acceptance into this part of adult society, and he still felt a twinge of reflex nervousness every time he opened the drawer. It would pass with time, he'd been told.
For a long moment he gazed in at the contents, considering which would be the best one to use. The four red-labeled ones—the different types of mental stimulants—drew his eye temptingly, but he left them where they were. As a general rule, the stronger the drug, the stronger the reaction afterward would be, and he had no particular desire to suffer a night of hellish dreams or to spend the coming day flat on his back with vertigo. Instead, he selected a simple self-hypnotic which would help him organize the known facts into a rational order. With luck, his own mind would be able to take it from there. If not... well, he would still have the mental stimulants in reserve.
Returning to his cushions, he emptied the capsule into his incense burner and lit it. The smoke rose into the air, at first thin and fragrant, then increasingly heavy and oily smelling. And as it enveloped him, he took one more try at untying the Gordian Knot that was Jasmine Alventin.
Jasmine Alventin. A mysterious young woman, survivor of an "accident" which no one had witnessed and which therefore no one could confirm. A suspiciously timed arrival at Milika, coincident with a flurry of activity by the Yithtra family's lumber business and fresh metals orders from the Mangus operation. Her speech that of a city-educated business mediator, yet her manners more befitting some ignorant outcast from polite society. And the things she said in that cultured voice—
Even with the artificial calmness of the hypnotic wrapped like a smoky cocoon around him, Daulo still gave muttered vent to his feelings about this one. I want to go with you, she'd said—as if going out in the dead of night to take care of a razorarm was the sort of thing women did all the time. Let me help you—totally laughable coming from a lone woman with neither family nor estate. It was as if she lived in her own private world. A private world with its own private rules.
And yet she couldn't be dismissed simply as that sort of feeblebrained scatterhead. Every time he'd tried to do so she'd casually done or said something that painted an exact opposite side of her. A half-dozen examples came to mind, the most obvious being her casual understanding of the consequences of having Milika's lake on Sammon family territory. Even more disturbing, she had a distinct talent for deflecting questions that she didn't want to answer... and a talent like that required intelligence.
So what was she? Innocent victim as she claimed? Or agent sent in by someone to cause trouble? The facts fell almost visually into neat organization in front of Daulo's eyes... without doing any good at all. The Knot remained tightly tied; and the only fresh conclusion he could find at all was that, totally against both his will and his common sense, he was growing to like her.
Ridiculous. He snorted, the sudden change in his steady respiration pattern bringing on a short fit of coughing. It was ridiculous—totally, completely ridiculous. Without position, she was at the very least beneath his own social status; at the very worst, she might be coldly using him to try and destroy everything he held dear.
And yet, even as he gazed mentally at the list of points against her, he had to admit there was still something about her that he found irresistible.
Just what I needed, he groused silently. Something else about Jasmine Alventin that won't unknot. So what could it be? Not her features or body; they were pleasant enough, but he'd seen far better without this kind of threat to his emotional equilibrium. It certainly wasn't her upbringing; she couldn't even make a simple sign of respect properly.
"Good evening, Daulo."
Startled, Daulo twisted around on his cushions, blinking through the haze to see his father walk quietly between the hanging curtain dividers. "Oh—my father," he said, starting to get up.
Kruin stopped him with a gesture. "You weren't at your customary place at evening meal tonight," he said, pulling a cushion toward his son and sinking cross-legged onto it. "I came to see if there were some trouble." He sniffed at the air. "A hypnotic, my son? I'd have thought that after a full day a sleep-inducer would be more appropriate."
Daulo looked at his father sharply, the last remnants of the hypnotic's effects evaporating from his mind. He'd hoped he could rid himself of this obsession with Jasmine Alventin before anyone else noticed. "I've been rather... preoccupied today," he said cautiously. "I didn't feel up to a common meal with the rest of the family."
"You may feel worse tomorrow," Kruin warned, waving a finger through one last tendril of smoke and watching it curl around in the eddy breezes thus created. "Even these mild drugs usually have unpleasant side effects." His eyes shifted back from the smoke to Daulo's face. "Jasmine Alventin asked about you."
A grimace passed across Daulo's face before he could stifle it. "I trust her recovery is proceeding properly?"
"It seems to be. She's a very unusual woman, wouldn't you say?"
Daulo sighed, quietly admitting defeat. "I don't know what to think about her, my father," he confessed. "All I know is that I'm... in danger of losing my objectivity with her." He waved at the incense burner. "I've been trying to put my thoughts in order."
"And did you?"
"I'm... not sure."
For a long moment Kruin was silent. "Do you know why you're living in this house, my son? Amid this luxury and prestige?"
Here it comes, Daulo thought, stomach tightening within him. A stern reminder of where the family's wealth comes from—and the reminder that it's my duty to defend it. "It's because you, your father, and his father before him have toiled and sweated in the mine," he said.
To his surprise, the elder Sammon shook his head. "No. The mine has made things easier, certainly, but that's not where our true power lies. It lies here—" he indicated his eyes "—and here—" he touched his forehead. "Material wealth is all very good, but no man keeps such wealth unless he can learn how to read the people around him. To know which are his friends and which his enemies... and to sense the moment when some of those loyalties change. Do you understand?"
Daulo swallowed. "I think so."
"Good. So, then: tell me what form this lack of objectivity takes."
Daulo waved his hands helplessly. "I don't know. She's just so... different. Somehow. There's a... perhaps it's some kind of mental strength to her, something I've never before seen in a woman."
Kruin nodded thoughtfully. "Almost a if she were a man instead of a woman?"
"Yes. That's—" Daulo broke off abruptly as a horrible thought occurred to him. "You aren't suggesting—?"
"No, no, of course not," Kruin hastened to assure him. "The doctor examined her when she was brought in, remember? No, she's a woman, all right. But perhaps not one from a normal Qasaman culture."
Daulo thought that over. It would go a long ways toward explaining some of the oddities he'd observed in her. "But I thought everyone on Qasama lived in the Great Arc. And besides, she claimed to be from Sollas."
"We don't live strictly inside the Great Arc," Kruin shrugged. "Only a short ways outside it, true, but outside nonetheless. Who's to say that others don't live even further? As to her claimed city, it's possible that she was afraid to tell us her true home. For reasons I can't guess at," he added as Daulo opened his mouth to ask.
"An interesting theory," Daulo admitted. "I'm not sure how it would stand up to Occam's Razor, however."
"Perhaps an additional bit of new information would save it from that blade," Kruin said. "I've been thinking about the accident Jasmine Alventin claimed to have been in, and it occurred to me that if it happened near Tabris someone there might have either heard the crash or found one of her companions."
"She couldn't possibly have come that far," Daulo objected. "Besides, we checked all the way along that road."
"I know," Kruin nodded. "And I trust your findings. But in such a case as this I thought extra confirmation might be a good idea, so I sent a message there this morning. Someone did hear a sound like a large and violent crash... but not near the road or village. It was far to the north, several kilometers away at the least. In deep forest."
Daulo felt his mouth go dry. Several kilometers due north of Tabris would put the accident anywhere from five to ten kilometers from the place where Perto had found her on the road. The suggestion that she might have made it from Tabris proper—a full twenty kilometers of forest road—had been ludicrous enough, but this—"She couldn't have survived such a trek," he said flatly. "I don't care how many companions she started out with, she couldn't have made it."
"I'm afraid that would be my assessment, as well," Kruin nodded reluctantly. "Especially through the heightened activity the bololin migration a few days ago probably stirred up. But even if we allow God one miracle to get her out alive, there's an even worse impossibility staring at us: that of getting a car so far into the forest in the first place."
Daulo licked his lips. This one, unfortunately, was obvious. "So it wasn't a car that crashed. It was an aircraft."
"It's beginning to look that way," Kruin agreed heavily.
Which meant she'd lied to them. Pure and simple; no conceivable misinterpretation about it. Anger and shame welled up within Daulo's stomach, the emotions fighting each other for supremacy. The Sammon family had saved her life and taken her in, and she'd repaid their hospitality by lying to them... and by playing him for a fool.
Kruin's voice cut into his private turmoil. "There are many reasons why she might lie about that," he said gently. "Not all of them having anything to do with you or our family. So my question for you, my son, is this: is she, in your judgment, an enemy of ours?"
"My judgment doesn't seem to be worth a great deal at this point," Daulo retorted, tasting bitterness.
"Do you question my judgment in asking for yours?" Kruin asked, his tone suddenly cold. "You will answer my question, Daulo Sammon."
Daulo swallowed hard. "Forgive me, my father—I didn't mean impertinence. It was just that—"
"Don't make excuses, Daulo Sammon. I wish an answer to my question."
"Yes, my father." Daulo took a deep breath, trying desperately to sort it all out. Facts, emotions, impressions... "No," he said at last. "No, I don't believe she came here for the purpose of harming us. I don't know why I think that, but I do."
"It's as I said," Kruin said, his cold manner giving way again to a gentler tone. "The Sammon family survives because we have the ability to read others' purposes. I've tried since childhood to nurture that talent in you; the future will show whether I've succeeded." Moving with grace, he got to his feet. "At the meal tonight Jasmine Alventin announced that it was her belief she'd recovered sufficiently from her injuries to return to her home. She'll be leaving tomorrow morning."
Daulo stared up at him. "She's leaving tomorrow? Then why all this fuss about whether or not we can trust her?"
Kruin gazed down at him. "The fuss," he said coolly, "was over whether or not it would be wise to let her out of our sight and control."
Daulo clenched his teeth. "Yes, of course. I'm sorry."
A faint smile touched Kruin's lips. "I told her we would give her transportation as far as Azras. If you'd like, you may accompany her there."
"Thank you, my father," Daulo said steadily. "It would also give me the opportunity to discuss future purchases with some of our buyers there."
"Of course," Kruin nodded, and Daulo thought he saw approval on the elder Sammon's face. "I'll leave you to your sleep, then. Goodnight, my son."
"Goodnight, my father."
And that's that, Daulo thought when he was once again alone. Tomorrow she'll be gone, and that'll be the end of it. She'll return to whatever mysterious village she really comes from, and I'll never see her again. There was some hurt in that; perhaps even a little bit of anger. But he had to admit his primary reaction was relief.
If a Gordian Knot couldn't be unraveled, after all, the next best thing was to send it out of sight.
An hour, Daulo had thought as he and Jasmine drove off down the winding forest road toward Azras. We'll have one more hour together, and then I'll never see her again.
But he was wrong. They were on the road together considerably less than an hour.
"This is insane," he fumed as the gatekeepers swung the heavy north gate of Shaga village closed behind them and he let the car coast to a halt at the side of the road. "There's nothing here you can possibly want."
"How do you know?" she countered, fumbling for a moment before she was able to get the door open. "I thank you for the ride, Daulo Sammon—"
"Would you for one minute listen to me?" he snarled, getting out on his side to glare at her across the car roof. "You're a stranger in this part of Qasama, Jasmine Alventin—you've admitted that yourself. I assure you that Shaga is no closer to your home than Milika was."
"Sure it is—ten kilometers closer," she retorted.
It was a long time since anyone had talked to Daulo like that, and for a moment he was speechless. Jasmine took advantage of the pause to retrieve from the back seat the small shoulder bag Daulo's mother had given her. "All right, fine," Daulo managed at last as she closed the door and slipped the bag's strap over her shoulder. "So you're ten kilometers closer to Azras. What does that gain you?—especially since no one here is likely to offer you a free ride even as far as Azras? So enough of this nonsense. Get back in the car."
She gazed across the roof at him... and again, it wasn't the kind of look he was accustomed to receiving from a woman. "Look, Daulo Sammon," she said in a quiet voice. "There's something I have to do—by myself—and I have to do it here. Please don't ask me any more. Just believe me when I tell you that the less you have to do with me, the better."
Daulo gritted his teeth. "All right, then," he bit out. "If that's how you want it. Goodbye." Feeling his face burning, he got back in the car and started off, continuing on toward the center of the village.
But only for a short way. Unlike Milika, Shaga had been haphazardly constructed, its roads curving and twisting all over the place, and Daulo hadn't gone more than a hundred meters before the woman's image in his mirror disappeared behind a turn in the road. Another hundred meters brought him to a cross road, which he took; and less than two minutes later he'd circled his way back to where he'd dropped her off.
There was no reason why she should suddenly decide to stay in Shaga; which could only mean that it was what she'd intended all along. Either she was planning to double back to Milika by unknown means—and for equally unknown purposes—or else she was meeting someone here. Whichever it turned out to be, he had every intention of keeping track of her while she did it.
But whatever her purpose, it didn't seem to involve the center of town. Even as he drove cautiously to within sight of the north gate he spotted her walking briskly away from him, paralleling the wall. He eased the car forward a bit, taking care to stay well back of her. There were few buildings in this part of Shaga, and while that meant he could keep watch on her from a reasonable distance away, it also meant he would be easier for her to spot.
But she apparently had no inkling that anyone might be watching. She never once looked over her shoulder... and as she continued on, Daulo noticed she was angling toward the wall.
Was she going to try and climb out? Ridiculous. It would get her out of Shaga without being seen, perhaps, but then where would she be? Out on a forest road, that's where, he thought sourly, with razorarms and krisjaws all around her. And ten solid kilometers to anywhere safe.
And yet she clearly was headed for the wall. Daulo gnawed at his lip, wondering if perhaps his original assessment had been right, after all. Perhaps she was simply a feeblebrained scatterhead.
Right by the wall, now, she paused and glanced around her. Looking for a ladder, probably. Daulo tensed, wondering if she would notice him sitting in this parked car—
And an instant later she was standing on top of the wall.
Daulo gasped. God above! No climbing, no running start, no leaping up to grab hold of the top with fingers—she'd simply bent her knees and jumped.
To the top of a wall over a meter taller than she was.
She took the anti-razorarm mesh just as casually, grabbing the top with one hand as she jumped to deflect her body into a tight-moving arc that dropped her onto her feet on the other side. An instant later she was gone.
For another five heartbeats Daulo just sat there, dumbfounded. She was insane, all right... insane, but with an athletic ability that was totally unheard of.
And she's getting away.
With a jerk, Daulo broke his paralysis and swung the car back toward the gate.
She was already out of sight by the time he was back on the road, but with forest hemming them in on both sides there were only two directions she could have gone. And since she'd already turned down a free ride on to Azras... Trying to keep an eye on both sides of the road at once, Daulo started back toward Milika.
For several painful minutes he wondered if he'd guessed wrong. With no more than a three-minute head start, there was simply no way she could have gotten this far ahead of him, even at the deliberately slow speed he was making. He was just wondering if he should turn around when he caught a glimpse of someone just around a curve ahead.
It took another few minutes of experimentation to find the speed that would let him get a glimpse of her every couple of minutes but yet not get him too close. It turned out she was every bit as phenomenal a runner as she was a high jumper.
Hang with her, he told himself grimly, teeth clenched with tension at this unaccustomed trick driving. She can't keep up this kind of pace for very long. Just hang with her.
She did hold the pace, though, and for considerably longer than he would have guessed possible. It was only as they passed the halfway point back to Milika that she began to slow down; and it was pure luck on his part that he happened to get a glimpse of her heading off toward the tree line paralleling the road a dozen meters to the west.
He pulled over quickly, wincing at the sounds of crunching vegetation beneath his wheels as he eased off the road and stopped. But presumably she was making at least as much noise wading through the undergrowth of the forest. At any rate, she didn't turn around, but merely dropped her shoulder bag behind a large thaurnni bush and kept going.
Straight into the forest.
No, was his immediate thought. She's not really going into the forest. She's cutting through a bit to throw me off her track. Or—
But even as a part of his brain tried to think up safer alternatives he was digging under the seat for the quickfire pistol holstered there and climbing quietly out of the car. There was only one thing out there that could possibly be worth risking the razorarms and krisjaws for.
Her wrecked aircraft. The aircraft whose existence she'd taken great pains to conceal... and which therefore was very probably worth seeing.
Besides which—he was honest enough to admit—his pride wouldn't let him lose track of her now. Taking a deep breath, he cradled the barrel of his gun with his left hand and stepped in under the tree canopy.
Daulo had been out in the raw Qasaman forest before, of course, but never under conditions like this; and it only gradually dawned on him just how different this was. Always before he'd been part of a squad of village hunters, shielded from danger by their guns and experience. Now, however, he was alone. Worse, he was trying to follow another person without being spotted in turn, a chore that took far more concentration than he liked.
And no one knew he was here. Or would even miss him for several hours.
If he was killed, would they ever even find his body?
He fought the growing fear for nearly fifteen minutes... and then, all at once, something seemed to snap within him. The sounds of animals and insects buzzing and scurrying all around him mingled with the rapid thud of his heartbeat in his ears, and suddenly it didn't seem quite so important anymore that he, personally, find out what Jasmine Alventin was up to. This is crazy, he told himself, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of a trembling hand. She wants something from her aircraft?—fine. She can have it. Whatever it was, it was no longer worth risking his life over—especially when he could have a squad of armed men waiting for her by the time she came back to retrieve her bag. Checking one last time to make sure she wasn't looking back, he turned around—
The purring growl came from off to his left, and his heart skipped a beat as he nearly tripped over his feet spinning around to face it. A razorarm stood there, crouched ready to spring.
It was one thing to face a razorarm caught in a village wall's upper mesh; it was something else entirely to encounter one on its own home ground. Daulo didn't even realize he'd pulled the trigger until the gun abruptly jerked in his hand and a stutter of thunderclaps shattered the quiet of the forest. Dimly, through the gun's roar, he heard the razorarm's purr become a scream—saw the clawed front paws coming at him like twin missiles—
And with a flash like a lightning bolt from God, the razorarm blazed with light and flame.
It slammed into him, flooding his nostrils with the nauseating stench of seared meat and fur. He staggered back, gagging, trying to shove the dead weight off his shoulders and chest—
"Daulo—duck!"
The warning did no good. Daulo's horror-numbed muscles had no chance to react before a flash of silver-blue exploded in his face—
And to the stench was added pain.
Pain like nothing he'd ever felt before—a dozen nails jabbing and twisting and ripping through his flesh. He was aware in a distant way that he was screaming; aware that his efforts to tear his tormentor away merely made the pain worse. One eye was closed against something slapping at it; with the other he saw Jasmine running toward him, the look of an avenging angel on her face. Her hands reached out—no, he tried to scream, don't try to tear it off—
And then her hands seemed to flicker with light... and the claws digging into his face were suddenly stilled.
"Daulo!" Jasmine said tautly, her hands gently yet firmly pulling the tormentor off him. "Oh, my God—are you all right?"
"I'm—yes, I think so," he managed, struggling to regain his dignity in front of this woman. "It—what happened?"
"You tried to shoot a razorarm," she said grimly, holding his hands firmly away from the throbbing in his cheek as she examined the wounds with eyes and fingertips. "It wasn't a complete success."
"It—?" Turning away from her probing fingers, he looked down at the carcass lying limply beside him.
Its head was gone. Burned away.
"God be praised," he sighed. "That lightning bolt was..." He paused, an eerie feeling crawling up his back. The second attacker... his eyes found where Jasmine had tossed it. The razorarm's mojo, of course. Also burned.
Slowly, he looked back at Jasmine Alventin. Jasmine Alventin, the uncultured woman who'd appeared from nowhere... and who'd made it through raw forest alone... and whose hands had spat fire deadly enough to kill.
And it all finally fell together.
"God above," he groaned.
And to his everlasting shame, he fainted.
Daulo wasn't unconscious for more than about ten minutes. It was still plenty of time for Jin to dress his injuries as best she could, move the spine leopard and mojo carcasses away before they could attract scavengers, and call herself every synonym for idiot that she could think of.
The worst part was the knowledge that her detractors had been right. Totally. She simply didn't have what it took to be a Cobra; not the emotional toughness, not even the ability to keep her focus on her mission. Certainly not the basic intelligence.
She looked down at Daulo for a moment, gritting her teeth hard enough to hurt. That was it, then—the mission was scrubbed. An hour after he got home half the planet would be out here looking for her. Nothing left to do now but to strike out into deep forest and wait in the vain hope that she might somehow connect up with the next team the Cobra Worlds sent. Whenever in the distant future that might be.
Not that it mattered. At this point it would be better for everyone concerned if she died here, anyway.
Daulo groaned, and his hands twitched against his chest. Another minute and he'd be fully conscious, and for a moment Jin debated whether or not it would be safe for her to leave him here alone. The road wasn't more than fifteen minutes away, and his injuries wouldn't slow him down all that much. And he did have a gun.
Sighing, Jin stayed where she was, giving the area a quick visual sweep. There wasn't much point, after all, in shooting spine leopards and mojos off a man and then turning him loose for the forest to take another crack at. When she looked down again, his eyes were open. Staring up at her.
For several heartbeats neither spoke. Then Daulo took a shuddering breath. "You're a demon warrior," he croaked. There was no question in his voice.
Nor anything that required a verbal answer. Jin merely nodded once and waited. Daulo's hand went to his cheek, gingerly touched the handkerchief Jin had tied there with a strip of cloth. "How... badly am I hurt?" He was clearly fighting to sound and act natural.
"It's not too bad," Jin assured him. "Deep gouges in places, but I don't think there's any major muscle or nerve damage. Probably hurts like blazes, though."
A ghost of a smile touched his lips for a second. "That's for sure," he admitted. "I don't suppose you'd happen to have any painkillers with you."
She shook her head. "There are some near here, though. If you feel up to a little travel we could go get them."
"Where are they?—at your wrecked spacecraft?"
Jin hissed between her teeth. So they had found the shuttle, after all. "You're a good actor," she said bitterly. "I would have sworn that none of you knew about the crash. No, the painkiller's in my pack, hidden near the road. Unless your people have grabbed that by now, of course."
She took his arm, preparing to lift him upright, but he stopped her. "Why?" he asked.
"Why what?" she growled. "Why am I here?"
"Why did you save my life?"
"That's a stupid question. Come on—I've got to retrieve those packs before the rest of your army starts beating the bushes for me. You at least owe me a little head start."
Again she started to lift him; again he stopped her. "You don't need a head start," he said, his voice trembling slightly. "No one else knows about you. I followed you in alone."
She stared at him. Truth? Or some kind of test?
Or a ploy to keep her in one place while they encircled her?
It doesn't really matter, she realized wearily. As long as Daulo was alive, the clock was already ticking down. "Well..." she said at last. "We still need to go and get you that painkiller. Come on."
She'd expected to have to support him most of the way back, and was mildly surprised that he made it the whole way under his own power. Either the physical shock to his system wasn't as bad as she'd feared or else the boneheaded male arrogance she'd already seen too much of on Qasama did have its useful side. They made it back to the road in just over fifteen minutes... and there was indeed no army waiting for them.
"So," Daulo said with elaborate casualness after she'd treated his cuts with a disinfectant/analgesic spray and replaced the handkerchief with a proper heal-quick bandage. "I suppose the next question is where we go from here."
"I don't see much of a question," Jin growled. "I'd guess you're going back to Milika to sound the alarm, and I'm going to start running."
He stared silently at her... and, oddly enough, behind the tight mask she could see there was a genuine battle of emotions underway. "I see you don't know very much about Qasama, Demon Warrior," he said after a moment.
It was a second before she realized he expected a response. "No, not really," she told him. "Not much more than I learned from you over the past couple of days. That's one of the reasons we came, to find out more."
He licked his lips. "We put a high premium on honor here, Demon Warrior. Honor and the repayment of debts."
And she'd just saved his life... Slowly, it dawned on Jin that it might not yet be over. "I see your dilemma," she nodded. "Would it help to tell you I'm not here to make war on Qasama?"
"It might—if I could believe you." He took a deep breath. "Is your spacecraft really wrecked?"
Jin shivered at the memory. "Totally."
"Why were you going back there, then?"
And there was no longer any way out of it. She was going to have to admit, in public, just what an emotional idiot she was being. "I had to leave the wreck in a hurry," she said, the words tearing at her gut. "I thought it would be found right away, and that there would be a manhunt started—" She broke off, blinking angrily at a tear that had appeared in one eye. "Anyway, I left... but it seemed to me that if you'd found it the authorities would certainly have checked all nearby villages for strangers. Wouldn't they?"
Daulo nodded silently.
"Well, don't you see?" she snapped suddenly. "You haven't found it... and I ran off and left my friends there. I can't just... I have to—"
"I understand," Daulo said softly, getting to his feet. "Come. We'll go together to bury them."
It took them only a few minutes to get the car off the road and into concealment behind a pair of trees. Then, together, they headed back into the forest.
"How far will we need to go, Demon Warrior?" Daulo asked, peering up at the leafy canopy overhead and trying not to feel like he'd just made a bad mistake.
"Five or six kilometers, I think," the woman told him. "We should be able to get through it a lot faster than I did the first time. Thanks to your people's medical skill."
"It's the kind of skill that comes from living on a hostile world," he ground out. "Of course, it's been considerably more hostile lately—say, in the past twenty or thirty years?"
She didn't answer. "Did you hear me, Demon Warrior?" he demanded. "I said—"
"Stop calling me that," she snapped. "You know my name—use it."
"Do I?" he countered. "Know your name, I mean?"
She sighed. "No, not really. My name is Jasmine Moreau, of the world Aventine. You can also call me Jin."
"Djinn?" he said, startled. All the childhood scare-stories of djinns came flooding back in a rush... "Given to you when you became a demon warrior, I assume?"
She glanced a frown over at him. "No. Why?—oh, I see. Huh. You know, I never noticed that before. No, it has nothing to do with the djinns of folklore—it's just pronounced the same. It's a name my father gave me when I was very young."
"Um. Well, then, Jin Moreau, I'd still like an answer to my question—"
"Freeze!"
For a single, awful second he thought he'd pushed her too far and that she'd decided to kill him after all. She dropped onto her side, left leg hooking up beneath her skirt—
There was a brilliant thunderbolt flash, and a smoking krisjaw slammed into the dead leaves.
"You okay?" she asked, rolling to her feet and peering around them.
Daulo found his tongue. "Yes. That's... quite a weapon," he managed, blinking at the purple afterimage.
"It comes in handy sometimes. Let's get moving—and if I yell, you hit the ground fast, understand? If there are as many animals out here today as there were my first time through it could be a busy trip."
"There shouldn't be," he shook his head. "You came in right after a major bololin herd went through, and that always stirs up lots of animal activity."
It pleased him to see that that knowledge was completely new to her. "Well, that's relief. In that case it should only take us a couple of hours to get to the shuttle."
"Good," he nodded. "And maybe to pass the time you could explain to me just why your world declared war on ours."
Watching her out of the corner of his eye, he saw her grimace. "We didn't declare war on you," she said quietly. "We were told by others that Qasama was a potential threat. We came to see if that was true."
"What threat?" he scoffed. "A world without even primitive spaceflight capability? How could we possibly be a threat to a world light-years away?—especially one protected by demon warriors?"
She was silent for a moment. "You won't remember it, Daulo, but for much of Qasama's history all of you lived together in a state of extreme noncompetition."
"I know that," he growled. "We aren't ignorant savages who don't keep records, you know."
She actually blushed. "I know. Sorry. Anyway, it seemed odd to us that a human society could be so—well, so cooperative. We tried to find a reason—"
"And while you were looking you became jealous?" Daulo bit out. "Is that it? You envied us the society we'd created, and so you sent these razorarm killing machines in to kill and destroy—"
"Did you know that mojos can control the actions of their owners?"
He stopped in mid-sentence. "What?"
She sighed. "They effect the way their owners think. Cause them to make decisions that benefit the mojo first and the owner only second."
Daulo opened his mouth, closed it again. "That's absurd," he said at last. "They're bodyguards, that's all."
"Really? Does your father have a mojo? I never saw him with one."
"No—"
"How about the head of the Yithtra family? Or any of the major leaders of Milika or Azras."
"Cities like Azras have hardly any mojos at all," he said mechanically, brain spinning. No; it had to be a lie. A lie spun by Aventine's rulers to justify what they'd done to Qasama.
And yet... he had to admit that he had always sensed a difference in the few mojo owners he knew well. A sort of... placidity, perhaps. "It doesn't make sense, though," he said at last.
"Sure it does," she said. "Out in the wild mojos pair up with krisjaws for hunting purposes—hunting and, for the mojos, access to embryo hosts."
"Yes, I know about the native reproduction cycle," Daulo said hastily, obscurely embarrassed at discussing such things with a woman. "That's why cities were designed to let bololin herds charge on through, so that the mojos there could get to the tarbines riding the bololins."
"Right," she nodded. "You could have walled the cities like you did the villages, you know, and kept the bololins out completely. It would have saved a lot of grief all around... except that it was in the mojo's best interest to keep the bololins nearby, so that's how you built them. And because they didn't want to risk their own feathers with any more bodyguarding than they could get away with, they made sure you cooperated with each other in every facet of life."
"And so we had no warfare, and no village-city rivalry," Daulo growled. He understood, now... and the cold-bloodedness of Aventine's scheme turned his stomach. "So you decided to interfere... and with krisjaws all but gone from the Great Arc, you had to give the mojos somewhere else to go. So you gave them razorarms."
"Daulo—"
"Have you seen enough of what Qasama has become since then?" he cut her off harshly. "Okay, fine—so perhaps we used to bend our own lives a little to accommodate other creatures. Was that too high a price to pay for peace?"
"Was it?" she countered softly.
The obvious answer came to his lips... and faded away unsaid. If what she said was the truth, had it really been worth the price? "I don't know," he said at last.
"Neither do I," she whispered.
They made the trip in just under two hours... and for Jin, the whole thing was in sharp contrast with the ordeal a week earlier.
There was no way to tell, of course, how much of the difference was due to the abatement of the bololin coattail effect Daulo had described and how much was due to her own recovery. Certainly there was less fighting; only one other predator besides the krisjaw tried its luck with them, compared with the half-dozen single and multiple attacks she'd had to fight off on her last trip through. On the other hand, with her alertness and concentration again at full capability, it could have been simply that she was spotting potential trouble early enough for evasive methods to be effective.
Ultimately, though, the real reason didn't matter. She'd brought both herself and an untrained civilian safely through some of the most dangerous territory Qasama had to offer... and it brought a welcome measure of self-confidence back to her bruised ego.
"Here we are," she said, gesturing to the battered hulk of the shuttle as they finally cleared the edge of the interweaving-fern patch and stepped out from the trees into view of the crash site.
Daulo muttered something under his breath, gazing first at the shuttle and then at the long death-scar it had torn into the landscape. "I was never truly sure..." His voice trailed off into silence, and he shook his head. "And you survived this?"
"I was lucky," she said quietly.
"God was with you," he corrected. He took a deep breath. "Forgive me for doubting your story. Your companions...?"
Jin gritted her teeth. "Inside. This way."
The hatch door was as she'd left it, stuck a couple of centimeters open, and she had to put one foot against the hull to get the necessary leverage to pull it open. At least, she thought grimly, that means none of the larger scavengers have gotten to them. Grateful for small favors, I suppose. Taking one last clean breath, she braced herself and stepped inside.
The smell wasn't quite as bad as she'd feared it would be. The bodies themselves looked perhaps a bit worse.
"The door wouldn't have kept out insects," Daulo commented from right behind her. His voice sounded only slightly less strained than she felt, and it was clear he was breathing through his mouth. "Are there any shovels on board?"
"There's supposed to be at least one. Let's try back here."
They found it almost at once, in with the emergency shelter equipment. It was sturdy but small, clearly designed for only minor entrenchment work. But Jin had had no intention of digging very deeply anyway, and the extra strength her Cobra servos provided more than made up for the awkwardness of the short handle. Half an hour later, the five graves near the edge of the crash site were ready.
Daulo was waiting for her near the shuttle, and she found that while she'd been digging he'd improvised a stretcher from some piping and seat cushions and had hacked loose five of the expended crashbags to use as body bags. They might as well be useful for something, she thought bitterly at the thick plastic as she and Daulo worked the bodies into them. They sure didn't do much good while we were all alive.
And a few minutes later she and Daulo stood side by side in front of the graves. "I... don't really know a proper burial service," Jin confessed, partly to Daulo, partly to the bodies in their graves before her. "But if its purpose is to remember and mourn... that much I can do."
She didn't remember afterward just what she said or how long she spoke; only that her cheeks were wet when she was finished. A quiet goodbye to each in turn; and she was picking up the shovel when Daulo touched her arm. "They were your friends, not mine," he said in a quiet voice. "But if you will permit me...?"
She nodded, and he took a step forward. "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful..."
He spoke only a few minutes; and yet, in that short time Jin found herself touched deeply. Though the phrasing of the words showed them to be a standard recitation, there was at the same time something in Daulo's delivery that struck her as being intensely personal. Whatever his feelings toward Jin or the Cobra Worlds generally, he clearly felt no animosity toward her dead teammates.
"...We belong to God, and to Him we return. May your souls find peace."
The litany came to an end, and for a moment they stood together in silence. "Thank you," Jin said softly.
"The dead are enemies of no one," he replied. "Only God can approve or condemn their actions now." He took a deep breath, threw Jin a hesitant glance. "One of them—you called him Mander?"
"Mander Sun, yes," she nodded. "One of my fellow... demon warriors."
"Was he truly your brother, as you named him in the story you told my family?"
Jin licked her lips. "In all except blood he was truly my brother. Perhaps the only one I will ever have."
"I understand." Daulo looked back at the graves, then glanced up at the sun. "We'd best be leaving soon. I'll be missed eventually, and if a search finds my car it'll probably find your packs, too."
Jin nodded and again picked up the shovel.
Filling in the graves took only a few more minutes, and when she was done she took the shovel back to the shuttle. "No point in letting it lie around out here and rust," she commented.
"No."
Something in his voice made her turn and look at him. "Something?"
He was frowning at the blast damage in the shuttle's side. "You're certain it couldn't have been an internal malfunction that made this?"
"Reasonably certain," she nodded. "Why?"
"When you expressed your surprise earlier that it hadn't been discovered, I assumed the crash had somehow concealed it. But this—" he waved at the shattered trees "—couldn't possibly be missed by any aircraft looking for it."
"I agree. It's your world—any ideas why no one's shown up yet?"
He shook his head slowly. "This area is well off normal air routes, which would explain why it hasn't been found by accident. But I don't understand why our defense forces wouldn't follow up on a successful hit."
Jin took a deep breath. She'd wondered long and hard about that same question... and had come up with only one reasonable answer. "Unless it wasn't your defense forces that did it in the first place."
Daulo frowned at her. "Who else could it have been?"
"I don't know. But there've been some odd things happening here, Daulo. That's why we came, looking for some answers."
"And to change any of them you didn't like?" he said pointedly.
She felt her face warming. "I don't know. I hope not."
He stared at her for several seconds more. "I think," he said at last, "that the rest of this conversation ought to wait until my father can be included."
Jin's mouth went dry. "Wait a minute, Daulo—"
"You have a choice of three paths before you now, Jasmine Moreau." Daulo's face had again become an emotionless mask, his voice hard and almost cold. "You can come with me and accept the decision of my family as to what we should do with you. Or you can refuse to confess your true identity and purpose before my father and leave right now, in which case the alarm will be out all over Qasama by nightfall."
"Assuming you can make it back through the forest alone," Jin pointed out softly.
"Assuming that, yes." A muscle in Daulo's cheek twitched, but otherwise his face didn't change. "Which is of course your third choice: to allow the forest to kill me. Or even to do that job yourself."
Jin let her breath out in a hiss of defeat. "If your father elects to turn me over to the authorities, I won't go passively," she told him. "And if I'm forced to fight, many people will be hurt or killed. Given that, do you still want me to come back to your household?"
"Yes," he said promptly.
And at that, Jin realized, the choice was indeed clear. She could take it or leave it. "All right," she sighed. "Let's get going."