"My son knew from the beginning that you were different," Kruin Sammon said, staring unblinkingly at Jin as he fingered an emergency ration stick from her pack, spread open on the low table beside him. "I see he erred only in degree."
Jin forced herself to meet the elder Sammon's gaze. There was no point now in continuing to pretend she was a good little submissive Qasaman woman. Her only chance was to persuade them that she was an equal, one with whom bargains could be struck.
Persuading them to make any such bargains, of course, would be something else entirely.
"I'm sorry it was necessary to lie to you," she told him. "You have to realize that at the time I was helpless and feared for my life."
"A demon warrior, helpless?" Kruin snorted. "The history of your attacks on Qasama don't mention such failings."
"I've explained our side of all that—"
"Yes—your side," Kruin cut her off harshly. "You hear from these—these—"
"Trofts," Daulo supplied quietly from his place beside his father's cushions.
"Thank you. You hear from these Troft monsters—who also visited us professing peace, I'll point out—you hear from them that we're dangerous, and without even considering the possibility that they may be wrong you prepare to make war on us. And don't claim it was the fault of others—if my son hasn't yet recognized your name, I do."
"Her name?" Daulo frowned.
Jin licked her lips. "My father's name is Justin Moreau," she said evenly. "His brother's name is Joshua."
Daulo's face went a little pale. "The demon warrior and his shadow," he whispered.
So the ghost stories about her father and uncle hadn't faded with time. Jin fought back a grimace. "You have to understand, Kruin Sammon, that in our judgment the mojos were as much a threat to your people as they were to ours. We were considering your welfare, too, when we made our decision."
"Your kindness has clearly gone unrewarded," Kruin growled, heavily sarcastic. "Perhaps the Shahni will offer you some honor for your actions."
"The option was full warfare," Jin told him quietly. "And don't scoff—there were those who thought that would be necessary. Many among us were terrified of what a planet of people under mojo control could do to us when they escaped the confines of this one world. Do your histories record that it was your people who threatened to come out someday and destroy us?"
"And this is your justification for such a devastating preemptive strike?" Kruin demanded. "A threat made in the heat of self-defense?"
"I'm justifying nothing," Jin said. "I'm trying to show that we didn't act out of hatred or animosity."
"Perhaps we'd have preferred a more heated emotion to such icy calculation," Kruin retorted. "To send animal predators to fight us instead of doing the job yourselves—"
"But don't you see?" Jin pleaded. "The whole razorarm approach was the only one that would get the mojos away from you without causing any truly permanent damage to your safety and well-being."
"Permanent damage?" Daulo cut in. "What do you think the extra mesh above the wall is for—?"
Kruin stopped him with a gesture. "Explain."
Jin took a deep breath. "Once the majority of razorarms are accompanied by mojos, most of their attacks on people should stop."
"Why?" Kruin snorted. "Because the mojos have fond memories of us?"
"No," Jin shook her head. "Because you can kill the razorarms."
A frown creased Kruin's forehead. "That makes no sense. We can't possibly destroy enough of them to make a difference."
"We don't have to," Daulo said, his voice abruptly thoughtful. "If Jasmine Moreau is right about the mojos, simply having the capability to kill them will be enough."
Kruin cocked an eyebrow at his son. "Explain, Daulo Sammon."
Daulo's eyes were on Jin. "The mojos are intelligent enough to understand the power of our weapons; is that correct?" She nodded, and he turned to face his father. "So then the mojos have a strong interest in making sure there's as little fighting as possible between us and their razorarms."
"And what of the one in the forest this morning?" Kruin scoffed. "It had a mojo, and yet attacked you."
Daulo shook his head. "I've been thinking about that, my father. It didn't attack until I first fired on it."
"Speculation," Kruin shook his head. But the frown remained on his face.
"Remember your history," Jin urged him. "Your own people told us that the krisjaws, too, were once relatively harmless to the Qasaman people. It was only after the mojos began deserting them for you that they became so dangerous."
Kruin's gaze drifted to the offworld supplies and equipment spread out on his table. "You said the Shahni were aware of the mojos' effect on us. Why then would they have risked their internal harmony by purging the cities of their mojos?"
Jin shook her head. "I don't know. Perhaps the mojos simply deserted the cities more quickly once an alternative came along."
"Or perhaps the cities realized that the main conflict would be not with their own citizens but with those of us in the villages," Daulo muttered.
"Perhaps." Kruin looked hard at Jin. "But whatever the reasons or motivations, what ultimately matters is that the people of Aventine interfered with our society. And in doing so brought hardship and death upon us."
Jin looked him straight in the eye, trying to shake off the feeling that she personally was on trial here. "What matters," she corrected quietly, "is that you were slaves. Would you rather we have left you as you were, less than truly human?"
"It's always possible to claim love as a motive for one's actions," Kruin said, a bitter smile on his face. "Tell me, Jasmine Moreau: if our positions were reversed, would you honestly thank us for doing to you what you have done to us?"
Jin bit at her lip. It would be so easy to lie... and so pointless. "At the place in your history where you now live... no. I can only hope that future generations will recognize that what we did truly had to be done. And will accept that our motives were honorable even if they can't honestly thank us."
Kruin sighed and fell silent, his eyes drifting away from her and to his table. Jin glanced at Daulo, then turned to look out the window. The afternoon shadows were starting to stretch across Milika, and in a short while it would be time for the evening meal.
A perfect time to drug or poison her if they decided she was too dangerous to bargain with...
"What is it you want from us?" Kruin cut abruptly into her thoughts.
Jin turned her attention back to him, bracing herself. The question was an inevitable one, and she'd put a great deal of thought into considering just how much she should tell them. But each time she'd turned the problem over in her mind she'd come to the same conclusion: complete honesty was the only way. Whatever trust they had in her now—and she didn't flatter herself that it was much—would evaporate instantly if they ever caught her in another lie. And without their trust she had no chance at all of completing her mission. Or even of staying alive. "First of all," she said, "I have to tell you that for the past thirty years we've been keeping tabs on you through spy satellites orbiting your world."
She braced herself for an explosion, but Kruin merely nodded. "That's hardly a secret. Everyone on Qasama has seen them—dim specks moving across the night sky. It's said that a favorite topic of conversation when the Shahni meet is how we might go about destroying them."
"I can't blame them," Jin admitted. "Well, anyway, it seems that someone's finally come up with a way to do it."
Kruin cocked an eyebrow. "Interesting. I take it you came here to stop that person?"
Jin shook her had. "Actually, no. Our group came to gather information, and that alone. It's not quite as simple as it sounds, you see: the satellites aren't being physically destroyed, just temporarily disabled... and we're so far unable to figure out how it's being done."
She described as best she could the gaps that had been made in the satellites' records. "What eventually tipped them off was the discovery that there was a definite pattern in the blank regions. Most of them fell over that roofed complex northeast of Azras."
"You must mean Mangus?" Daulo said.
"Is that what it's called?" Jin frowned. The word sounded vaguely familiar... "Is Mangus someone's name?"
Daulo shook his head. "It's the ancient root of the word mongoose. I don't know why they call the place that."
Jin felt her mouth go dry. Mongoose. A legendary Old Earth animal... whose fame lay in their ability to kill cobras. I could probably tell you, she thought morosely, why they named it that. "Any idea what exactly they're doing in there?"
Kruin's eyes were hard on her face; but, surprisingly, he didn't ask about whatever it was he saw there. "Electronics research and manufacture," he said. "Quite a lot of it, apparently, judging by the quantities of refined metals they buy from us."
"Quantities that seem excessive for that kind of electronics manufacture?" Jin asked.
"How much metal would be excessive?" Kruin countered. "I'd need to know their output before making any comparison."
"Well, what exactly do they make? Do you have any examples here?"
Kruin shook his head. "Their goods go mainly to the cities."
Or at least that's what they tell the villages, anyway, Jin thought. "Any way to check on what their output actually is?"
Kruin and Daulo eyed each other. "We could probably get the appropriate figures for Azras," Kruin told her. "For the other cities... unlikely. It might help if we knew what it is you're looking for."
Jin took a deep breath. "The analysis group on Aventine seemed to think Mangus might be a site for missile testing."
Kruin's face went suddenly hard. "Missile testing? What kind of missiles?"
Jin held out her hands, palm upward. "That's one of the things I have to find out. But I can only think of two uses for missiles: as vehicles for space travel... or as weapons."
For a long moment Kruin stared at her in silence. "So if it's the first, you'll report that we're again a threat to you?" he said abruptly, his voice harsh. "And the demon warriors will come here again and destroy Mangus as a warning? Whereas if it's merely the cities planning blackmail or open warfare on the villages, you'll all smile and leave us alone?"
Jin met his gaze without flinching. "If all we wanted was to destroy you, we could do it in a hundred different ways. That's not a threat, that's simple reality. You came originally from the Dominion of Man—you must have some memories of the horrible weapons a technological world can create."
Kruin grimaced. "We do," he admitted. "It was one of the reasons our ancestors left."
"All right, then. We aren't going to try and destroy you—whether you believe that or not, it's true. It's also true that we have absolutely no interest in fighting an unnecessary war with you. We don't have the time or money or lives to waste on one, for starters. If Qasama is developing space flight... well, we ought to be able to live with that. If, that is, we can be reasonably certain that the whole planet isn't going to rise, en masse, and attack us."
Daulo hissed derisively. "Who on Qasama would be foolish enough to lead such a suicidal attack? And who would be foolish enough to follow them?"
Jin shook her head. "I don't know. That's another of the things I have to find out."
"And if Mangus is building missiles for internecine war?" Kruin persisted. "Will your people, having revived in us this ability to destroy, simply turn their backs on us?"
Jin clenched her teeth. Again there was no point in lying. "It's possible. I hope not, but our leaders could decide that way. Bear in mind, though, that with my companions dead I am this mission. If my report states that you're not a threat, and that we stand more to gain by establishing political and trade relations with your culture than by letting that culture destroy itself..." She shrugged. "Who knows what they'll do? And with my uncle on the Directorate, my voice will at least have a chance to be heard."
"This is your uncle who barely escaped from Qasama with his life?" Kruin reminded her pointedly.
She shook her head. "Different uncle. His brother, Corwin Moreau, is a governor on Aventine."
Kruin frowned. "Your family has such status and power in your world?"
A shiver ran up Jin's back. Her father under house arrest; Uncle Corwin's political power balanced precariously across her own shoulders... "For the moment, at least, it does," she sighed. "There are forces trying to change that."
"With the decision dependent on the report you bring back?" Kruin asked.
"More on how I personally do on the mission." Jin shook her head. "But never mind that. I've told you why I'm here, answered all your questions as well as I could. I need to know—now—whether you're going to allow me to complete my mission."
Kruin pursed his lips. "Keeping your identity within our family would be highly dangerous—I'm sure you realize that. If you were discovered by some other means the repercussions would be disastrous. What do you offer in exchange for this risk on our part?"
"What do you suggest?" Jin asked, trying to keep her voice steady. I did it, she thought, not quite sure she believed it. He's actually bargaining with me.
Now if only he wanted something she could deliver.
"As you're now well aware," Kruin said, "your plan to split our society into conflicting factions has succeeded only too well. Whatever Mangus turns out to be, you also know that there's already a certain amount of trouble between the cities as a group and the villages as a group. Besides the mojo question, the tension is fueled by the fact that heavy industry is concentrated in the cities, while control of resources lies mainly with the villages."
Jin nodded. It was a classical enough situation, probably played out hundreds of times throughout mankind's early days. Fleetingly, she wished she knew how those various Old Earth cultures had handled it. "I hope you don't want me to try and defuse the situation—"
"Grant me more intelligence than that," Kruin cut her off coldly. "This is our world—our politics, our culture, our people—and any advice you as an outlander could give would be less than useless."
Jin swallowed. "Excuse me. Please continue."
Kruin glared at her a moment before continuing. "We're already preparing to stand together against attempts to dominate us—the village leaders in this part of Qasama meet periodically to discuss the situation and coordinate any activities that seem called for. But there are some who see turmoil as a chance for advancement... and if there is indeed turmoil in Qasama's immediate future, I want the Sammon family able to face it without such dangerous distractions at our backs."
Jin grimaced. "Distractions such as the Yithtra family across the Inner Green?"
"I see Daulo has told you of them," Kruin growled. "Then you'll understand that their obsession with dragging us down is something that must be dealt with. Now would seem to be a good time to do so."
"Are you asking me to murder one or more of them?" Jin asked quietly. "Because if you are, I'll tell you right now that I can't do that."
"You're a warrior, aren't you?" Daulo put in.
"Killing in warfare isn't the same as murder," she countered.
"I don't ask you to murder," Kruin shook his head. "I ask merely that you find a way to diminish the Yithtra family's influence in this village. That's the bargain I offer you, Jasmine Moreau: destruction of the Yithtra family's power in exchange for sanctuary in our household."
Jin licked her lips. It ought to be possible, surely, though at the moment she didn't have the vaguest idea how she would pull off such a trick. But then what happens? she wondered. What would that kind of power loss mean in this culture?—loss of homes, maybe, the whole family even turned out of the village? Could it even lead directly to wholesale death, either suicide or murder?
The moral implications were bad enough... but the possible political ramifications were even worse. It would set a clear precedent of Cobra-World meddling in Qasaman affairs, with all that that would mean from both sides' perspectives. The Directorate would probably welcome the idea of rewarding cooperative Qasamans; but from the Qasaman side, Kruin's bargain smacked of high treason. Could she ethically allow herself to be a part of such a thing?
Or did she really have any choice? "I offer you a counter proposal," she said at last. "I won't destroy the Yithtra family's power directly; but I will so enhance your own prestige and standing that they won't dare oppose you."
Kruin gazed at her, his eyes measuring. "And how do you propose to do that?" he asked.
"I don't know," she confessed. "But I'll find a way."
For a long minute the room was silent. Then, taking a deep breath, Kruin nodded gravely. "The bargain is sealed. You, Jasmine Moreau, are now under the protection of my family. Our household is yours; we shield you with our lives."
Jin swallowed. "Thank you, Kruin Sammon. I will betray neither your hospitality nor our bargain."
Kruin nodded again and rose from his cushions, Daulo following suit. "Tomorrow representatives from Mangus will be arriving at Milika to receive a shipment of our metals. You may wish to begin your investigation by observing them."
"I will do so," Jin said.
"And now—" Kruin leaned back down to his desk and touched a button "—it's time for the evening meal. Come, let us join the others."
Jin kept her expression neutral. Drugs or poison at the evening meal... "Yes," she agreed. "Let us."
The insistent warble of his bedside phone snapped Corwin wide awake. Must be some trouble, was his first thought, focusing with an effort on his clock. But it wasn't the middle of the night, after all; it was only a little after six and almost time to get up anyway. Probably just Thena with some latebreaking appointment change or something, he decided, reaching to the phone and jabbing the instrument on. "Hello?"
But it wasn't Thena's face that appeared on the screen. It was Governor-General Chandler's... and it was as grim as Corwin had ever seen the man. "You'd better get over to the starfield right away," he said without preamble. "The Southern Cross'll be landing in about fifteen minutes, and you'll want to see what they've got."
"The Southern Cross?" Corwin frowned, a knot starting to form in his stomach. "What's gone wrong?"
"Everything," Chandler snarled. "Just get down here."
Corwin gritted his teeth. "Yes, sir."
The phone screen went black. "Damn," Corwin muttered under his breath. Swinging his legs out of bed, he grabbed his clothes and started pulling them on. There was only one conceivable reason why the Southern Cross would be back so soon: the Qasaman mission had met with some kind of disaster.
He paused, half dressed, heart pounding in his throat. A disaster. An emergency, perhaps, requiring swift action... and long experience had showed him that committees and councils weren't built for speed.
Most jobs are done, the old couplet came back to him, by committees of one.
Gritting his teeth, he reached back to the phone and punched a number.
He arrived at the starfield twenty minutes later to find that Chandler had sealed off one of the conference rooms in the entrypoint building. Two other Directorate members—Telek and Priesly—had arrived before him... and one look at their faces told him that the situation was even worse than he'd feared.
He was right.
Captain Koja's report was short, partly because there wasn't much to say and partly because the enhanced telephoto on the wall display behind him said it all anyway. "We elected not to wait and see if he found the survival pod," the captain concluded, "under the assumption that we could serve him better by getting back and sounding the alarm." He looked at Chandler. "That's really all I have, sir. Do you have any questions?"
Chandler asked something and was answered, but Corwin didn't really hear any of it. A horrible shimmer of unreality seemed to have fallen between him and the rest of the room. Between him and the rest of the universe. That last image of Jin as she'd waved to them from the Southern Cross's entryway hovered ghost-like in front of his face... in front of the computer-enhanced image of the shuttle's death still displayed on the conference-room wall. I sent her there, the thought swirled like a bitterly cold tornado through his mind. I pushed it through. I forced them to make her a Cobra. And then I sent her off to Qasama... all in the name of thwarting political enemies. In the name of politics.
Someone was calling his name. He looked over to see Chandler eyeing him. "Yes?"
"I asked if you had any comments or suggestions," the governor-general repeated evenly.
For a moment Corwin locked eyes with him. Chandler returned the gaze steadily, without so much as flinching. It was the statesman look that Corwin had seen on him so often... and always hated. It inevitably appeared at those times when Chandler wanted to appear above politics, or to disclaim all responsibility for something he'd had a hand in. So that's how it's going to be here, too, is it? Corwin thought silently toward that look. Not going to accept any more responsibility than you absolutely have to? Well, we'll just see about that.
But first there was a question he had to ask. Shifting his eyes to Koja, he took a deep breath. "Captain, is there...?" He licked his lips and tried again. "Is there any indication as to... which of the Cobras might have survived?"
A muscle in Koja's cheek twitched. "I'm sorry, Governor, but there isn't," he said, almost gently. "We've gone over the data a hundred times in the past eight days. There just isn't any way to tell."
Corwin nodded, feeling the others' eyes on him. "Then it could be Jin who's still alive down there, couldn't it?"
Koja shrugged fractionally. "It could be her, yes. Could be all the Cobras, for all we can tell."
No false hope, Corwin warned himself. But the admonition wasn't serious, and he knew it. Without hope, he could already feel his mind turning inward again, away from the wave of guilt threatening to overwhelm him. But with hope... that same wave could be turned outward. Turned outward to claim vengeance for what had happened to his niece. Alive or dead, he owed her that much. "For the moment," he said, looking back at Chandler, "we can skip over any recriminations as to why the Southern Cross wasn't carrying any emergency equipment for just such a disaster as this. Right now our first priority is to get a rescue team together and out to Qasama as quickly as possible. What steps have you taken toward that end?"
"I've spoken to Coordinator Maung Kha," Chandler replied. "The Academy directors are gong to assemble a list for us."
"Which will be ready when?" Corwin asked.
Priesly shifted in his seat. "You want it fast or you want it good?" he asked Corwin.
"We want it both," Telek snapped before Corwin could respond.
"I'm sure you do, Governor—" Priesly began.
"Mr. Chandler," Telek cut him off, "do I assume I've been included in this council of war because of my first-hand expertise on Qasaman matters? Fine. Then kindly pay attention to that expertise when I tell you that Moreau's right. If you want your Cobra back alive, minutes could literally count. The Qasamans are fast and smart, and once they make their move they don't leave a whole hell of a lot of room to maneuver in."
"I understand," Chandler said with clearly forced patience. "But as Governor Priesly points out, to do the job properly takes a certain amount of time."
"That depends on how far into complicated channels you insist on dragging the process," Corwin told him.
"Channels exist for a reason," Priesly growled. "The Academy has the computers and lists you'd need to find the best people for the job. Unless you'd rather just toss some ragtag collection of Cobras together on your own?"
"I won't have to," Corwin said calmly. "It's already being done."
All eyes turned to him. "What's that supposed to mean?" Chandler asked cautiously.
"It means that before I left home this morning I called Justin and told him something had gone wrong with the mission."
"You what?" Priesly snarled. "Moreau—"
"Shut up," Chandler cut him off. "And...?"
"And I told him to organize a rescue mission," Corwin said calmly. "He should have a list ready in an hour or so."
For a long moment the room was filled with a brittle silence. "You've overstepped your bounds rather badly," Chandler said at last. "I could have you removed from office for that."
"I realize that," Corwin nodded. "One other thing: Justin will also be leading the team."
Priesly's mouth fell open. "Justin Moreau is under house arrest," he bit out. "In case you've forgotten, there are charges of assault pending against him."
"Then those charges will have to be summarily dropped, won't they?"
"Oh, of course," Priesly snarled. "What, you expect us to just roll over—?"
"Justin's been to Qasama," Corwin said, his gaze on Chandler. "He's seen the Qasamans up close, both in combat and non-combat situations. There's no one else anywhere in the Worlds who has those same qualifications."
"There were forty-eight Cobras who participated in the second Qasaman mission," Chandler pointed out. His face was a mask, but Corwin could sense the anger behind it... and perhaps a growing resignation, as well. "One of them could lead the mission."
"Except that none of them have anything near Justin's experience with Qasaman society," Telek shook her head. "He's right, Mr. Chandler. The best choice for team leader is someone from our first spy mission. And there's only one other person young enough even to be considered."
"Well, let's get him, then," Priesly demanded.
Telek turned glacial eyes on him. "Help yourself. His name's Joshua Moreau."
A second silence fell over the room. "I don't have to let you get away with this, you know," Chandler told Corwin at last, very softly. "I can ignore your brother's unauthorized recommendations and take those of the Academy directors instead. And Mr. Priesly's correct—we can get someone else to lead the mission."
"And can you also hear what the people of Aventine will say," Corwin returned, just as softly, "when they learn that their leaders wasted time wrangling over fine details. And then settled for second best."
"That's blackmail," Priesly snapped.
Corwin looked him straight in the eye. "That's politics," he corrected. Getting to his feet, he looked back at Chandler. "If we're done here, sir, I'll be going to my office—Justin'll be contacting me there when he's finished. I'm sure he'll want to personally organize the team as the members arrive in the Capitalia; can I assume you'll have his release papers filed by noon or so?"
Chandler gritted his teeth. "It can be managed. I suppose you'll want a full pardon?"
"That or a formal dropping of the charges. Whichever you and Mr. Priesly decide to work out."
He started for the door, but Chandler stopped him. "You realize, of course," the governor-general said darkly, "that as of right now you've taken this entire rescue mission onto your own head. If it fails—for any reason—it'll be you who bears the brunt of that failure."
"I understand," Corwin said between tight lips. "I also understand that if it succeeds Mr. Priesly and his associates will do their best to make sure I get as little of the credit as possible."
"You understand politics very well," Telek murmured. "I'm almost sorry for you."
Corwin looked at her. "Fortunately, I understand family loyalty, too. And know which one's more important."
He nodded to Chandler and left.
Corwin had seen Justin's organizational skills many times in the past; but even so he was astonished by the speed with which his brother got the rescue team assembled in Capitalia. By eight that evening—barely fifteen hours after the Southern Cross had reentered Aventine's system—the Dewdrop was loaded and ready to lift.
"You sure you've got everything you'll need?" Corwin asked as he and Justin stood together a little way from the Dewdrop, watching the last load of equipment disappear into the cargo hatch.
"We'll make do," Justin replied, his voice glacially calm.
Corwin threw him a sideways glance. For a man who'd just lost a daughter—either dead or captive—Justin was far too calm, and it was making Corwin more than a little nervous. Whatever the other was feeling about his daughter's fate, it wasn't healthy to keep it bottled up forever. Somehow, it was going to have to come out... and if Justin was saving up the anger to dump on the Qasamans, it would be a very bloody purging indeed.
"Something?" Justin asked, his eyes still on the loading.
Corwin pursed his lips. "Just wondering about your people," he improvised. "You put the list together pretty quickly—you still sure they're the ones you want?"
"You've seen the profiles," Justin said. "Four vets of the last Qasaman mission, eight young but experienced Cobras with impressive spine leopard hunting records."
"But without any military training," Corwin pointed out.
"We've got six days to change that," his brother reminded him.
"Yeah." Corwin took a deep breath; but Justin got in the next word.
"I don't think I thanked you yet for getting Chandler to let me off those trumped-up charges," he said calmly.
"No problem," Corwin shrugged. "They didn't have a lot of choice, actually."
Justin nodded, agreement or simple acknowledgment. "I also appreciate what you've done in putting your neck on this fresh block for me. If I'd had to sit around for the next two weeks... it would've been pretty hard. At least this way there's something I can do."
"Yeah. Well... I expect you know that if Jin's—if she didn't make it, I mean... that extracting vengeance from the Qasamans isn't going to help any."
"That depends on what happened to her, doesn't it?" Justin countered. "If she died in the crash... well, I'll hold the Trofts partly to blame for that. They're the ones who claimed their shuttle would get through the Qasamans' detectors. But if Jin was captured—" His face hardened. "Teaching the Qasamans a lesson won't bring Jin back, no. But it might prevent someone else's child from dying at their hands."
Corwin bit at his lip. "Just remember that you have two other daughters," he reminded Justin quietly. "Make sure you come back to them, all right?"
Justin nodded solemnly, and his lip twitched in a faint smile. "Don't worry, Corwin; the Qasamans won't even know what hit them." Across the way, the Dewdrop's cargo hatch swung shut with a muffled thud. "Well, that's it—time to go. Hold the fort here, okay?"
He gave Corwin a brief, almost perfunctory hug, and a moment later had vanished up the ramp into the Dewdrop's main entryway.
They won't even know what hit them. Justin's statement echoed through his mind... and standing there alone, Corwin shivered at the lie in those words. Justin would make sure the Qasamans knew what had hit them, all right. What had hit them, and why.
And he wondered if he'd now sent his brother to die on Qasama. Just as he'd done his niece.
Jin had never been one to make snap judgments of people. But in the case of Radig Nardin she was severely tempted to make an exception.
"Overbearing sort, isn't he?" she murmured to Daulo as they stood a short distance from where Nardin was loudly supervising the loading of his metals.
"Yes," Daulo said tightly. His eyes and most of his attention, she saw, were on Nardin; his arms, at his sides, were rigid.
Jin licked her lips. The tension in the air around them seemed almost thick enough to cast a shadow, and her stomach was beginning to tighten in sympathetic reaction. Whatever it was that was happening here, things seemed to be rapidly building up to a head, and she found herself easing away from Daulo just in case she suddenly needed room to maneuver. Nardin's two drivers and aides were somewhere off to the side... there. Nowhere near cover, should Nardin decide to pick a fight—
"Stop!" Daulo snapped.
Jin whipped her eyes back to Nardin. Almost leisurely, he turned around to face them, his hand raised in striking pose above one of the sweating Sammon workers. His gaze flicked measuringly across Daulo's clothing, returned to his face. "You tolerate insubordinate attitudes in your workers, Master Sammon?" he called.
"If and when such insubordination is seen," Daulo said evenly, "it will be punished. And I will do the punishing."
For a moment the two young men locked eyes. Then, breathing something inaudible, Nardin lowered his arm. Turning his back on Daulo, he stalked a few meters away from the loading area.
Jurisdictional dispute? Jin wondered. Apparently. Or else Nardin just liked going out of his way to irritate people. "You all right?" Jin asked Daulo quietly.
The other took a deep breath, seemed to relax a bit. "Yes," he said, exhaling in a hiss. "Some people just can't handle power this young."
Jin glanced at him, wondering if he noticed the irony of those words coming from a nineteen-year-old heir. "Radig Nardin is high in the Mangus hierarchy?" he asked.
"His father, Obolo Nardin, runs the place."
"Ah. Then Mangus is a family-run operation like yours?"
"Of course." Daulo seemed puzzled that she'd even have to ask such a question.
Across the way, the last few crates were being loaded onto the trunk. "How often does Mangus need these shipments?" she asked Daulo.
He considered. "About every three weeks. Why?"
She nodded at the truck. "Riding inside a crate might be the simplest way for me to get inside Mangus."
Daulo hissed thoughtfully between his teeth. "Only if you had time to get out before they locked all the crates away somewhere."
"Do they do that?"
"I don't know—I've never been there. Mangus always sends someone to pick up their shipments."
"Is that normal?"
"It is for Mangus. Though if you're right about what they're doing in there, it makes sense for them not to let villagers in."
The qualifier caught Jin's attention. "Only villagers? Can city people get in?"
"Regularly," Daulo nodded. "Mangus brings in work parties from Azras every two to three weeks for one-week periods. Simple assembly work, I gather."
"I don't understand," Jin frowned. "You mean they import their entire labor force?"
"Not the entire force, no. They have some permanent workers, most of them probably Nardin family members. I assume their assembly work comes in spurts and they'd rather not keep people there when they're not needed."
"Seems inefficient. What if some of those workers take other jobs in the meantime and aren't available when they need them?"
"I don't know. But as I said, it's simple assembly work. Training newcomers wouldn't be hard."
Jin nodded. "Do you know anyone personally who's been in one of the work parties?"
Daulo shook his head. "For city people only, remember? We only know about it through my father's relationship with Mayor Capparis of Azras."
"Right—you've mentioned him before. He keeps you informed on what Azras and the other cities are doing?"
"Somewhat. For a price, of course."
That price being preferential access to the Sammon family mine, no doubt. "Do the rest of Azras's political leaders share in this tradeoff?"
"Some." Daulo shrugged, a bit uncomfortably. "Like everyone else, Mayor Capparis has enemies."
"Um." Jin focused on Nardin's arrogant expression again; and, unbidden, an image popped into her mind. Peter Todor, early in their Cobra training, visibly and eagerly awaiting the moment when Jin would finally give up and quit. The moment when he'd be able to gloat over her defeat. "Is there any reason," she asked carefully, "why Mangus or Mayor Capparis's enemies should resent Milika in particular?"
Daulo frowned at her, "Why would they?"
She braced herself. "Could you be charging more for your goods than they consider fair?"
Daulo's eyes hardened. "We don't overcharge for what we sell," he said coldly. "Our mine produces rare and valuable metals, which we purify to a high degree. They'd be costly no matter who sold them."
"What about the Yithtra family, then?" Jin asked.
"What about them?"
"They sell lumber products, right? Do they overcharge the cities?"
Daulo's lip twisted. "No, not really," he admitted. "Actually, most of the lumber business out there bypasses Milika entirely. The Somilarai River, which cuts through the main logging area to the north, passes directly by Azras, so much of the lumber is simply floated downriver to processing areas there. What the Yithtra family has done has been to specialize in exotic types of wood products like rhella paper—things the more wholesale lumbering places can't do properly. You probably saw a few rhella trees on your way in from your ship: short, black-trunked things with diamond-shaped leaves?"
Jin shook her head. "Afraid I was looking more at what might be crouching up there than I was at the trees themselves. These rhellas are rare?"
"Not all that much, but the paper made from the inner pulp is the preferred medium for legal contracts, and that creates a high demand. Writing or printing on fresh rhella paper indents the surface, you see," he added, "and that indentation is permanent. So if the writing is altered in any way, it can be detected instantly."
"Handy," Jin agreed. "Expensive, too, I take it?"
"It's worth the cost. Why are you asking all this?"
Jin nodded toward Nardin. "He has the air about him of someone who's getting all ready to gloat," she said. "I was wondering if he's looking forward to gloating over the villages in general or Milika in particular."
"Well..." Daulo hesitated. "I'd have to say that even among Qasama's villages, we're considered somewhat... not renegades, exactly, but not quite part of the whole community, either."
"Because you're not tied into the central underground communications network?"
He looked at her in surprise. "How—? Oh, that's right; you learned all about that when you took over that Eastern Arm village your last time through. Yes, that's a large part of it. And even though other villages are now starting to sprout up outside the Great Arc, we were one of the first." He eyed her. "This is all part of your research on us?"
Jin felt her face warming. "Some," she admitted. "It's also related to the problem of Mangus, though."
He was silent for a long moment. Shifting her eyes from the loading dock, Jin looked around her. It was a beautiful day, with gentle breezes coming from the southwest adding contrast to the warmth of the sunlight. The sounds of village activity all around her melded into a pleasant hum; the occasional clinking of chains and cables from the mine entrance nearby added to the voices of the workers.
It was almost a shock to shift her eyes westward and see the wall. The wall, and the metal mesh addition the village had had to erect against the high-jumping spine leopards... the spine leopards her people had sent to them.
On the recommendation of her own grandfather.
A sudden shiver of guilt ran up her back. What would Daulo and Kruin think, she wondered bleakly, if they knew her family's role in bringing this burden onto them? Maybe that's why I was marooned here in the first place, the thought occurred to her. Maybe it's part of a divine retribution on my family.
"You all right?" Daulo asked.
She shook off the train of thought. "Sure. Just... thinking about home."
He nodded. "My father and I were wondering last night about what plans your people might be making to get you back."
She shrugged uncomfortably. "They're not likely to be planning anything except my memorial service. The way the crash destroyed the shuttle's transmitters, there wasn't any way I could signal our mother ship; and between that and what they would have seen from orbit they'd have assumed that everyone was dead. So they'll go on back, and everyone will mourn us for awhile, and then the Directorate will start debating what to do next. Maybe in a few months they'll try this again. Maybe it won't be for a couple of years."
"You sound bitter."
Jin blinked away tears. "No, not bitter. Just... afraid of how my father's gong to take this. He wanted so much for me to be a Cobra—"
"A what?"
"A Cobra. It's the proper name for what you call a demon warrior. He wanted so much for me to follow in the family tradition... and now he'll wonder if he pushed me where I didn't want to go."
"Did he?" Daulo asked quietly.
Oddly enough, Jin felt no resentment at the question. "No. I love him a lot, Daulo, and I might have been willing to become a Cobra just from that love. But, no—I wanted this as much as he did."
Daulo snorted gently. "A warrior woman. Seems almost a contradiction in terms."
"Only by your history. And on our own worlds Cobras are more like civilian peacekeepers than fighters."
"Almost like what the mojos were to us," Daulo pointed out.
Jin considered. "Interesting analogy," she admitted.
He gave a sound that was half snort, half chuckle. "Just think of the sort of peacekeeper force we could have if we combined the two."
"Cobras and mojos?" She shook her head. "No chance. In fact, it's occurred to me more than once that that may be exactly the thought that scared our leaders the most: the idea that your mojos might spread to Aventine, that we might wind up having our Cobras controlled by alien minds."
"But if it would make them less dangerous—"
"The mojos have their own priorities and purposes," Jin reminded him. "I'd just as soon not find out what one might do with a Cobra."
Daulo sighed. "You're probably right," he conceded. "Still—"
"Master Sammon?" a voice called from behind them. They turned, and Jin saw Daulo's chauffeur waving to them from the doorway of the mine's business center. "A call for you. Important, he says."
Daulo nodded and set off at a brisk trot. Jin watched him take the chauffeur's place at the phone, then turned back to watch Nardin. Mangus. Mongoose. The name alone gave the lie to all her talk about city versus village warfare. A compound called Mongoose could have only one possible focus, and that was outward from Qasama. In the back of her mind, her conscience twinged: should she continue to let Daulo and his father believe that Mangus was a plot against the villages? Especially since they might withdraw their support from her if they knew the truth?
"Jasmine Alventin!"
She started and twisted around. Daulo was beckoning urgently to her as he opened the car's left-hand rear door; the chauffeur was already in the front seat. Heart thudding in her throat, Jin jogged over to join them. "What is it?" she asked, pulling open the right-hand door and sliding in the back beside Daulo.
"One of our people noticed a Yithtra family truck coming in by the south gate," Daulo said, his voice tight. "It had something like a tree trunk sticking from the back, covered with some kind of cloth so that it couldn't be seen.
Jin frowned. "An unusual tree they don't want anyone to see?"
"That's what our spotter thought. It occurred to me that there's something else of that shape that they might be even more anxious to hide from sight."
Jin's mouth went dry. A missile? "That's... crazy," she managed. "Where would they have gotten something like that?"
Daulo's eyes flicked to the chauffeur. "Whatever it is, I want to try and get a look at it."
The chauffer sped them down the spoke road to the Small Ring, turning counterclockwise onto it. "The simplest route would be to take the spoke road directly from the south gate to the Small Ring," Daulo muttered. "But in this case... I'm going to guess they'll turn instead onto the Great Ring and take it to the Yithtra section, then come down that spoke road to the house. What do you think, Walare?"
"Sounds reasonable, Master Daulo," the chauffeur nodded. "Shall I run that in reverse and see if we can catch them?"
"Right."
Guiding the vehicle expertly through the pedestrian crowds, Walare curved around the Inner Green, passed the spoke road from the south gate, and continued on toward the grand house Daulo had identified some days earlier as that of the Yithtra family. Another spoke road angled off just before it, and Walare turned down it. Jin looked back at the house as they headed away, noting the liveried guards at all the visible entrances—
"There," Daulo snapped, pointing at a small truck far ahead down the spoke road. Jin keyed in her optical enhancers for a look at the truck's three occupants. All three looked oddly tense, but none seemed especially suspicious of the car approaching them. A minute later the two vehicles passed each other, and Daulo and Jin both spun around in their places.
There was indeed something cylindrical poking awkwardly out from between the truck's rear doors; and it was indeed swathed heavily in some kind of silky white cloth. "Follow it," Daulo ordered Walare. "Well, Jasmine Alventin?" he added as the car swung into a tight U-turn.
Jin pursed her lips, trying to estimate the object's length and circumference. "It's not very big, if it's what we think it is," she told him. "Rather obvious, too."
"Point," Daulo admitted. "Especially since they've got regular log carriers they could have used to bring something like that in without it being seen at all. You think perhaps it is nothing but a tree trunk brought in to stir us up?"
Jin chewed at her lip. It might be possible to glean something even through all that cloth. "Let me try something," she said. Leaning her head out the side window, she keyed in her optical enhancers' infrared capability.
The reflection/radiation profile was strong and dramatic; and even with the background clutter from the truck and pavement around it, there was no room for doubt. "It's metal," she told Daulo.
He nodded grimly. "I'm sure you realize what this means. The Yithtra family's made a deal with Mangus."
"Or else they stole it. Which could get the whole village in trouble."
Daulo hissed between his teeth. "Trouble from agents seeking to retrieve it?"
Or straightforward retaliation, Jin thought. But there was no point in worrying Daulo with that one. "Basically," she told him. "On the other hand, we've now got a chance to pick up some information without having to go all the way to Mangus for it."
He stared at her. "Are you serious? We can't break into the Yithtra family house."
"I didn't think we could," Jin told him tightly. "That's why I'm going to have to do this here and now."
He said something incredulous sounding, but she was too busy thinking to pay attention. There were a dozen ways to take out a vehicle, but all of them would instantly brand her as a demon warrior. To their right, another of Milika's marketplaces stretched alongside the street, teeming with potential witnesses to anything she tried.
Potential witnesses... but also potential diversions. "Pull up closer to the truck," she ordered the chauffeur. "In a minute I'll want you to pass it."
"Master Daulo...?" the other asked.
"Do it," Daulo confirmed. "Jin—?"
"I'm going to jump out as you start to pass and get into the truck," she told him, eyes searching across the marketplace booths ahead as she lowered the window. Somewhere out there had to be what she was looking for...
There—right beside the street fifty meters ahead: a group of six customers holding an animated discussion beside a vendor of food and drink... and four of the six carried mojos on their shoulders. "Pull up," she ordered Walare. "Daulo Sammon, I'll meet you back at the house." From the corner of her eye she saw them closing on the truck ahead; activating her target system, she locked onto the bellies of three of the mojos. Even in the glare of full daylight, she knew, it was going to be a calculated risk to fire even low-power shots from her fingertip lasers. But there wasn't anything she could do about that except cross her fingers and pray that no one noticed them. Walare had them directly behind the truck now, and was starting to pull around; and as the food booth shot past, Jin fired three shots in rapid succession.
It was all she could have hoped for. The birds' screams pierced the air like a triple siren, followed immediately by an equal number of human bellows. Jin got a quick glimpse of the scorched mojos tearing furiously around through the air as everyone nearby scrambled for safety from the birds' unexpected behavior; and as the sudden ruckus audibly spread behind her she wrenched the car door open and flipped her legs out onto the pavement. For a second she held onto the door for balance as her feet caught the stride; then, shoving the door shut, she surged forward. Her timing was perfect: with Walare halfway into his passing maneuver, her side of the car had been directly behind the truck, out of view of any rear-facing mirror. A two-second quick-sprint put her beside the cylinder's bouncing nose; grabbing the edge of one of the open doors, she pulled herself up and through the gap and into the welcome shadows inside the truck.
She took a shuddering breath, acutely aware of the time limit now counting down. In five minutes or less the truck would reach the Yithtra house, and if she didn't get out before then, she might very well have to shoot her way out. Crouching down beside the cylinder, she tore away its silky covering... and froze.
The cloth wasn't just cloth. It was light and tight-woven, with cords tied between it and the cylinder.
A parachute.
And the cylinder beneath it was smooth and white, with black scorch marks liberally splattered over its surface. Marks that nevertheless didn't obscure the lettering on the loosely fastened access panel:
TYPE 6-KX TRANSFER CONTAINER: FOR GOVERNMENTAL SHIPPING USE ONLY.
God above, she thought numbly. The Yithtra family hadn't bought or stolen a missile, after all. They'd found something far worse: a goodbye present from the Southern Cross.
A present for her.
For a long second her mind seemed to be on ice, skidding along without control. The pod's existence was bad enough; but its existence in the hands of Qasamans was even worse. The minute the Yithtra family realized what it was they'd found and turned it over to the authorities—
And she had maybe three minutes to figure out a way to stop that. Gritting her teeth, she dug her fingers under the access panel's edge and pried it open.
The contents were no surprise: packaged emergency rations, lightweight blankets, medical packs, a backpack and water carrier—all the things a castaway in hostile territory might need to survive. All of them clearly labeled with Anglic words.
Which meant obscuring the writing on the outside of the pod wouldn't gain her anything. Unless she could also completely destroy the pod's contents...
A trickle of sweat ran down her cheek. She jabbed and probed her fingers through the packages, trying desperately to think of something. Her lasers weren't designed for starting this kind of fire, but if they'd sent her some cooking fuel—
Her roving fingers struck something that rustled: a tightly folded piece of paper. Frowning, she dug it out and opened it. The message was short:
Can't get down to you. If you can hang on, we'll be back with help as quickly as we can. We'll listen for your call at local sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight—if you can't signal, we'll come down and find you.
Courage!
Captain Rivero Koja
Jin bit down hard on her lip. We'll come down and find you. In her mind's eye she saw a full Cobra assault force descend on Milika, shooting indiscriminately as they tried to find her... Swearing under her breath, she dug into the packages with renewed energy, searching now for the transmitter Koja's note implied had been packed in with the supplies. But either it was buried too deeply among the groceries...
Or else the Yithtra workers who'd found and opened the pod had already taken it out.
Damn. It was right there, a few meters away from her in the cab of the truck... and yet it might as well be in orbit. For one wild second she had the image of herself blasting through to the cab with her antiarmor laser, using her sonic to stun the cab's occupants and retrieve the transmitter—
And then taking what refuge she could in deep forest. While the Sammon family went up on treason charges.
Angrily, she shook the train of thought from her mind. The transmitter was gone, period. Crumpling Koja's note into her pocket, she jammed the access panel back in place and stepped to the rear doors, grabbing for balance as the truck made a sharp righthand turn. Between the doors, the Small Ring Road appeared.
Which meant the truck had left the spoke road and would be reaching the gate of the Yithtra house any moment now. Licking her lips, Jin peered through the gap, trying to find something she could use to create a diversion. But nothing obvious presented itself. There were as many pedestrians out there as usual, and once out of the truck she ought to have enough cover to blend into. But there was nothing she could do to cover the jump itself. Clenching her teeth, she got ready; and as the truck abruptly decelerated, she swung down out the rear and dropped to the pavement below. A couple of braking steps brought her to a halt; turning quickly, she started walking down the road away from the Yithtra house.
No shouts of discovery followed her. Behind her, she heard the truck come to a brief halt and then start up again, vanishing behind the background hum of closing gateway doors. Fighting a trembling in her hands, she kept walking.
Eventually, after a wandering route, she reached the Sammon house.
Kruin Sammon laid the crumpled paper down on his desk and looked up at her. "So," he said. "It seems your anonymity is about to come to an end."
Jin nodded. "So it seems," she agreed tightly.
"I don't see why," Daulo objected from his usual place beside his father. "The Yithtra family can't really make trouble for you unless they can offer the Shahni some physical proof. Why can't you simply break into the Yithtra household tonight and destroy or steal the pod?"
Jin shook her head. "It wouldn't work. First of all, there's a fair chance they'll have odds and ends from the pod scattered around throughout the house by then, and there's no guarantee I'd be able to retrieve all of it. More importantly, the very fact that I got in and out of a guarded house without being caught will be pretty strong evidence that I'm not just an offworlder, but an offworld demon warrior. I don't think we want to cause that kind of panic just yet."
"So the Yithtra family informs the Shahni that an offworlder has landed secretly among us." Kruin's eyes were steady on Jin's face. "And for their patriotism and alertness the Yithtra family gains new prestige. Is this how you help us bring them down?"
A wisp of anger curled like smoke in Jin's throat. "I realize you have your own priorities, Kruin Sammon," she said as calmly as she could, "but it seems to me you'd do better to forget about the Yithtra family earning a pat on the head and concentrate instead on the problems this might cause Milika as a whole."
"The problems it might cause you, you mean," Kruin countered. "We of Milika are blameless, Jasmine Moreau, if we are duped by a cunning offworlder into extending our hospitality."
Jin looked hard at him. "Are you abrogating our bargain, then?" she asked softly.
He shook his head. "Not if it can be helped. But if it should become clear that your capture is certain, I will not allow my household to be destroyed in the process." He hesitated. "If that happens... I'll at least give you warning."
So that any major firefights will take place away from Sammon territory? Still, it was as much as she could expect under the circumstances... and probably more than she would have gotten elsewhere. "I thank you for being honest with me," she said.
"Which is more than you have been with us," the elder Sammon said.
Jin's stomach began to tighten into a knot. "What do you mean?"
"I mean your true name," he said evenly. "And the connection of that name to Mangus."
Jin's eyes flicked to Daulo, feeling a sudden chill in the room. The younger man looked back at her steadily, his face as masked as Kruin's. "I never lied to you," she said, eyes still on Daulo. "To either of you."
"Is the withholding of truth not a lie?" Daulo asked quietly. "You understood the significance of the name mongoose, yet didn't share that knowledge."
"If I'd wanted to keep it to myself, why did I tell you at all that we were called Cobras?" she countered. "The fact is that I didn't think it was all that important."
"Not important?" Kruin spat. "Mongoose is hardly a name of a place seeking only to dominate Qasaman villages. And if Mangus is truly an attempt to fight back at our common enemies, how can the Sammon family help you destroy it?"
"I don't seek to destroy it—"
"More half-truths," Kruin shot back. "Perhaps you don't but others will surely follow you."
Jin took a deep breath. Steady, girl, she warned herself. Concentrate, and be rational. "I've already told you I don't know what my people will do with my report—and pointed out that a non-threatening Qasama is perfectly welcome to advance back into space. But if the Shahni are truly bent on attacking us, do you really think they'll do so without the full weight of Qasama behind them? Or to put it another way, won't they demand that both cities and villages supply their full shares of the resources and manpower—" her eyes flicked to Daulo "—that a full-scale war requires? Whether you want to or not?"
For a moment Kruin sat in silence, gazing at Jin. She forced herself to return the gaze; and after a moment he shifted on his cushions. "You again try to prove that Mangus threatens us directly. Yet without any proof."
"Whatever proof exists will only be found inside Mangus itself," Jin pointed out, feeling the knots in her stomach starting to unravel again. Whatever his apprehensions, it was clear that Kruin was smart enough to see that the scenario Jin painted made too much sense to ignore. "The only way to find out for sure will be to get inside and take a look for ourselves."
"Ourselves?" A faint and slightly bitter smile touched Kruin's lips. "How quickly you change between offworlder and Qasaman, Jasmine Moreau. Or don't you think we know that once inside Mangus it will be your priorities, not ours, that you will address?"
Jin's hands curled into fists. "You insult me, Kruin Sammon," she bit out. "I don't play games with people's lives—not those of my own people, not those of yours. If Mangus threatens anyone—Aventinian or Qasaman—I want to know about it. That's my priority."
For a moment Kruin didn't answer. Then, to her astonishment, he inclined his head toward her. "I had assumed you were a warrior, Jasmine Moreau," he said. "I see I was mistaken."
She blinked. "I don't understand."
"Warriors," he said softly, "don't care about the people they are told to kill."
Jin licked her lips, a cold shiver replacing the fading indignation in her muscles. She hadn't meant to blast Kruin that strongly—certainly hadn't meant to imply that Milika's welfare was truly any of her concern. She was here for only one purpose, she reminded herself firmly: to find out if the Cobra Worlds were being threatened. If it was merely one group of Qasamans preparing to slaughter another, that was none of her business.
Except that it was.
And for the first time her conscious mind was forced to acknowledge that fact. She'd lived with these people; lived with them, eaten their food, accepted their help and hospitality... and there was no way she could simply turn her back on them and walk away. Kruin was right; she was no warrior.
Which was to say, no Cobra.
A sudden moisture obscured her vision; furiously, she blinked it away. It didn't really matter—she'd already fouled things up so badly that one more failure wouldn't make much of a difference. "Never mind what I am or am not," she growled. "The only issue here is whether you're still going to help me get into Mangus, or whether I'm going to have to do it all myself."
"I've given you my pledge once," Kruin said coldly. "You insult me to ask again."
"Yes, well, it seems to be a day for insults," Jin said tiredly. All the fight was draining away, leaving nothing but emotional fatigue behind. "Daulo spoke of work parties hired from Azras. Can you ask your friend the mayor to get me into one of them?"
Kruin glanced at his son. "It may be possible," he said. "It could take a week to make the arrangements, though."
"We can't afford that much time," Jin sighed. "I've got to be in and out of Mangus within the next six days."
"Why?" Kruin frowned.
Jin nodded toward Koja's letter on the low desk. "Because that note changes everything. There won't be any six-month debate now as to whether or not another mission should be sent here. Koja will have burned space getting back, and there'll be a rescue team on its way just as soon as it can be scrambled together."
Kruin's lips compressed slightly. "Arriving when?"
"I don't know exactly. I'd guess no more than a week."
Daulo hissed between his teeth. "A week?"
"Bad," Kruin agreed calmly. "But not as bad as it might be. With a new supply of metals on its way to Mangus, they should be needing to call in extra workers soon."
"How soon?" Jin asked.
"Within your six-day limit, I'd guess," Kruin said. "I'll send a message to Mayor Capparis this afternoon and ask if a member of my household can be worked into one of the parties."
"Please ask if he can make it two members," Daulo said quietly.
Kruin cocked an eyebrow at his son. "A noble offer, my son, but not well thought out. For what reason—besides curiosity—should I allow you to accompany Jasmine Moreau on this trip?"
"For the reason that she still knows so very little about Qasama," Daulo said. "She could betray herself as an offworlder in a thousand different ways. Or worse, she could fail to understand or even to notice something of vital importance once inside."
Kruin cocked an eye at Jin. "Have you a response?"
"I'll be fine," Jin said stiffly. "I thank you for your offer, Daulo, but I don't need an escort."
"Are his arguments invalid?" Kruin persisted.
"Not necessarily," she admitted. "But the risks outbalance the benefits. Your family is well known here, and probably at least slightly known in Azras. Even with the disguise kit I've got in my pack, there's a good chance he'll be recognized by someone in the work party, or even by Radig Nardin or someone in Mangus itself. At least as much chance, I'd guess, as that I'll be caught in an error." She hesitated; no, better not say it.
But Kruin saw through the hesitation. "And...?" he prompted.
Jin clenched her teeth. "And if there is trouble... I stand a much better chance of getting out alone than if Daulo is with me."
An instant later she wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Daulo sat up stiffly on his cushion, face darkening. "I don't need the protection of a woman," he bit out. "And I will go with you into Mangus."
And there was no longer any room for argument, Jin realized with a sinking heart. Logic was fine in its place; but when set against the emotions of threatened manhood, there was only one possible outcome. "In that case," she sighed, "I would be honored to have your company and protection."
It was only much later that it occurred to her that perhaps she'd been guilty of the same kind of nonrational thinking... that perhaps the very fact she'd forgotten something as basic to Qasama as the expanded male ego meant that she really did know too little about Qasama to tackle Mangus alone.
It wasn't a particularly encouraging thought.
"I looked up what records we had this afternoon," Daulo's silhouette said from beside Jin, "and it looks like my father's guess was a little pessimistic. It should be only two to three days before Mangus asks Azras to organize a work party."
Jin nodded silently as they passed through the darkened courtyard toward the steady splash of the fountain. It was odd, she thought, how easily a place could start to feel familiar and comfortable. Too comfortable, maybe? she wondered with a twinge of uneasiness. Layn had warned them against losing the undercurrent of mild paranoia that every warrior in enemy territory ought to maintain, and she could remember thinking it incredible that anyone in such a position could possibly relax that much. Now, it seemed, she was doing just that.
Which made it all the more urgent she move on to Azras and Mangus as soon as possible.
"You're very quiet," Daulo said.
She pursed her lips. "Just thinking how peaceful it is here," she told. him. "Milika in general; your house in particular. I almost wish I could stay."
He snorted gently. "Don't worry too much about it. If you lived here for a few months you'd quickly find out it's not the Eden you seem to think." He paused. "So... what are your people likely to do if it turns out you were right? That Mangus is a base for striking back at you?"
Jin shrugged. "It probably depends partly on what you do in that case."
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Come on, Daulo Sammon, don't play innocent. If Mangus isn't a threat to Milika, you and your father have no reason to help me further. In fact, you have every reason to betray me."
His eyes grew hard. The Sammon family is a family of honor, Jasmine Moreau," he bit out. "We've sworn protection to you, and we'll stand by that bargain. No matter what."
She sighed. "I know. But we were... warned not to get overconfident."
"I understand," Daulo said quietly. "I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word for it."
"I know. But I don't have to like it."
In the darkness, his hand tentatively sought hers. It brought back memories of Mander Sun... blinking back tears, she accepted the touch. "We didn't ask to be your enemies, Jin Moreau," Daulo said quietly. "We have enough to fight against right here on Qasama. And we've been fighting against them for long time. Haven't we earned the right to some rest?"
She sighed. Thoughts of Caelian flashed through her mind... and thoughts of her father and uncle. "Yes. So has everyone else I know."
For a few minutes they continued to wander around the courtyard in silence, listening to the nighttime sounds of Milika beyond the house. "Is there a meaning to the name Jin?" Daulo asked suddenly. "Jasmine, I know, is an Old Earth flower, but the only use of Jin I've ever heard is for the mythological spirit."
She felt a touch of heat in her cheeks. "It was a nickname my father gave me when I was young. He said—at least to me—that it was just a shortened version of Jasmine." She licked her lips. "Maybe that's really all he meant it to be... but when I was about eight I found an old Dominion of Man magcard in the city library that listed several thousand common names and their meanings. Jin was given as an Old Japanese name that meant 'superexcellent.' "
"Indeed?" Daulo murmured. "A great compliment for your father to give you such a name."
"Maybe too great," Jin admitted. "The listing noted that it was rarely given, precisely because its meaning placed so great a demand on a child."
"And you've been trying to live up to it ever since?"
It was a thought that had often occurred to her. "I don't know. It's possible, I suppose. I remember that for weeks afterward I felt like everyone was looking expectantly at me, waiting for me to do something superexcellent."
"And so here you are on Qasama. Still trying."
She swallowed through a throat that suddenly ached. "I guess so. Or at least trying to make my father proud of me."
It was a long moment before Daulo spoke again. "I understand, perhaps more than you realize. Our families are not so different, Jin Moreau."
A flicker of movement from one of the windows overhead caught Jin's eye, saving her from the need to find a good response to that. "Someone's in your father's office," she said, pointing.
Daulo stiffened, then relaxed. "One of our people—a messenger. Probably bringing Mayor Capparis's reply to my father's message this morning."
"Let's go find out," Jin said, changing direction back toward the door. Beside her, Daulo seemed to draw back. "If that would be all right with you," she added quickly.
The extra tension vanished as male pride was apparently assuaged. "Certainly. Come with me."
Alone with Jin, Daulo had lost track of time a bit, and it was with mixed embarrassment and guilt that he led her down the empty corridors toward his father's office. Most of the household had retired to their chambers by now, and the corridors echoed oddly to their footsteps as they walked. I should have returned her to her rooms half an hour ago, he thought, hoping the heat rising to his cheeks wasn't visible. Father will probably be angry with me. For a moment he searched for an excuse to give Jin for changing his mind and getting her upstairs instead, but nothing occurred to him that didn't sound limp or contrived.
The guard at Kruin Sammon's door made the sign of respect as they approached. "Master Sammon," he said. "How may I serve you?"
"The messenger who came to my father—is he still within?" Daulo asked.
"No, he left a moment ago. Do you wish to speak to him?"
Daulo shook his head. "No, I seek to speak to my father."
The guard nodded again and turned to the intercom box. "Master Sammon: Daulo Sammon and Jasmine Alventin are here to see you." An inaudible reply and the other nodded. "You may enter," he said as the door's lock clicked open.
Kruin Sammon was seated at his desk, a stylus in his hand and an oddly intense look on his face. "What is it, my son?" he asked as Daulo closed the door.
"We saw from the courtyard that a messenger had arrived, my father," Daulo said, making the sign of respect. "I thought it might be news from Azras."
Kruin's face seemed to harden a bit more. "Yes, it was. Mayor Capparis has arranged housing for two people, and promises to facilitate your entrance into the work party whenever Mangus announces its formation."
"Good," Daulo said, feeling his eyebrows come together in a frown. His father's expression... "Is anything wrong, my father?"
Kruin licked his lips and seemed to take a deep breath. "Come here, Daulo," he sighed.
A hollow feeling settled into Daulo's stomach. Squeezing Jin's hand briefly, he left her side and stepped to his father's desk. "Read this," the elder Sammon said, handing him a piece of paper. His eyes slid away from Daulo's gaze. "I'd intended that it be delivered to you tomorrow morning, an hour before dawn. But now..."
Gingerly, Daulo accepted the paper, heart thudding in his ears. To have discomfited his father so...
DAULO.
IN MY MESSAGE TO MAYOR CAPPARIS THIS AFTERNOON I ALSO INFORMED HIM THAT THE YITHTRA FAMILY HAS DISCOVERED AN ARTIFACT FROM OFFWORLD. HE HAS INFORMED ME IN TURN THAT MY MESSAGE HAS BEEN FORWARDED TO THE SHAHNI, WHO WILL BE SENDING A FORCE TO QUESTION THE YITHTRA FAMILY AS TO THEIR REASONS FOR NOT INFORMING THEM ABOUT THIS ARTIFACT THEMSELVES.
YOU AND JASMINE MOREAU WILL NEED TO LEAVE AS SOON AS IS PRACTICAL—TOO MANY PEOPLE OUTSIDE OUR HOUSEHOLD HAVE SEEN HER FOR HER TO REMAIN HIDDEN HERE. A CAR HAS BEEN PREPARED FOR YOU, CONTAINING ALL THE SUPPLIES YOU SHOULD NEED FOR A WEEK IN AZRAS. MAYOR CAPPARIS HAS OFFERED YOU THE USE OF HIS GUEST HOME WHILE YOU WAIT FOR MANGUS TO BEGIN ITS HIRING.
BE CAREFUL, MY SON, AND DO NOT TRUST JASMINE MOREAU MORE THAN YOU MUST.
KRUIN SAMMON
Daulo looked from the paper to his father. "Why?" he asked, dimly aware that his heart was thudding in his ears.
"Because it was necessary," Kruin said simply. But the look in his eyes belied the confidence of the words.
"You had no right, my father." Daulo could hear a tremor in his voice; could feel his face growing hot with shame. The Sammon family is a family of honor—he'd said those words to Jin not half an hour ago. We've sworn protection to you... "We had a bargain with Jasmine Moreau. One which she has not broken."
"And which I've not broken, either, Daulo Sammon. You've known you'll need to go to Azras eventually. Now it'll simply be sooner than we'd expected."
"You swore not to betray her—"
"And I have not!" Kruin snapped. "I could have told Mayor Capparis everything about her; but I didn't. I could have kept from you both the knowledge that the Shahni were sending investigators; but I didn't."
"Fancy words do not hide truth," Daulo bit out. "And the truth is that you swore to her the protection of our house. Now you drive her from both our house and our protection."
"Take care, Daulo Sammon," his father warned. "Your words are dangerously lacking in respect."
"My words echo my thoughts," Daulo shot back. "I'm ashamed for my family, my father."
For a long moment the two men stared at each other in silence; and it was almost a shock for Daulo to hear Jin's voice come from close beside him. "May I see the paper?" she asked calmly.
Wordlessly, he handed it to her. And now the world ends, the thought came distantly to him. The vengeance of a demon warrior betrayed. The memory of the headless corpse of the razorarm she'd killed brought bile into his throat...
It seemed a long time before she lowered the note and looked Kruin in the face. "Tell me," she said quietly, "would the Yithtra family have kept the pod secret for long?"
"I doubt it," the elder Sammon said. His voice was even... but Daulo could see a trace of his own fears in his father's eyes. "As soon as they've gained all the secrets they can from the pod, they'll alert the Shahni themselves."
"Within the week, you think?"
"Probably sooner," Kruin said.
She looked at Daulo. "You agree?"
He worked moisture back into his mouth. "Yes. Doing that would still gain them favor in the eyes of the Shahni and yet let them have first look at anything of value."
She turned back to Kruin. "I understand," she said. "In other words, as you said, it was inevitable that I would eventually be chased out of Milika anyway."
Daulo suddenly realized he was holding his breath. "You... I don't understand. You're not angry?"
She turned back to him... and he shrank within himself from the smoldering fire in her eyes. "I said it was inevitable," she ground out, "and that I understood. I didn't say I wasn't angry. Your father had no right to do such a thing without consulting me first. We could have left this afternoon and been safely hidden away in Azras by now. As it is, if we wait until dawn we stand a fair chance of being trapped in Milika. By then they'll not only be swarming around Milika, but they'll also have aircraft flying around looking for the wrecked shuttle. And they'll have roadblocks set up." She looked at Daulo. "Which means we leave tonight. Now." She seemed to study him. "Or at least I have to leave. You can stay if you want to."
Daulo gritted his teeth. Under normal conditions, a supreme insult to suggest he would go back on his word. Under these conditions, it was no more than he deserved. "I said I would go with you, Jasmine Moreau, and I will." He looked at his father. "Have the supplies you mentioned been assembled yet?"
"They're already in the car." Kruin pursed his lips. "Daulo—"
"I'll try and send word when the work party is formed," Daulo interrupted him, not especially in the mood to be polite. "I hope you'll at least be able to stall any investigations into Jasmine Moreau's identity until then."
The elder Sammon sighed. "I will," he promised.
Daulo nodded, feeling a bitterness in his soul. His father's promise... a word that had always seemed to him as immutable as the laws of nature. To see that word deliberately broken was to lose a part of himself.
And all of it because of the woman at his side. A woman who was not only not a Sammon, but was in fact an enemy of his world. It made him want to cry... or to hate.
Clenching his teeth, he took a deep breath. We've sworn protection to you, they'd said to her, and we'll stand by that bargain. No matter what. "Come, Jin," he said aloud. "Let's get out of here."
In the daytime, Jin knew, it took about an hour to drive from Milika to Azras. At night, with Daulo taking it a little easier, it took half again that long, with the result that it was just about midnight when they crossed the Somilarai River and drove on into the city.
"So now what?" Jin asked, peering with some nervousness down the largely deserted streets. The last thing she wanted was for them to be conspicuous.
"We go to the apartment Mayor Capparis is lending us, of course," Daulo said.
"Did he send you the key, or are we going to have to wake up someone?"
"He sent the combination," Daulo told her. "Most temporary homes in Azras use keypad locks. That way all you have to do is change the combination when the occupants leave."
Which was basically the same system the Cobra Worlds used. "Oh," Jin said, feeling a little silly.
They passed the center of town and continued into the eastern part of the city, pulling up at last in front of a large building very reminiscent of the Sammon family house in Milika. Unlike that structure, though, this one had been carved up into apartments which—judging from the size of theirs—weren't appreciably bigger than the two-room suite the Sammon family had given her. In that space were squeezed a tiny foodprep area, a living room, and a bedroom.
A single bedroom.
"Small wonder the city people resent us," Daulo commented, dropping his cases in a corner of the living room and taking a few steps to peer around the corners into each of the rooms. "The average worker in my family's service has a larger home than this."
"Must be lower-class housing," Jin murmured. A hundred ways to approach the issue occurred to her; but there was no point in cat-footing around it. "I see there's just one bed here."
For a long moment he just looked at her—not at her body, she noted, but into her face. "Yes," he said at last. "I really shouldn't have to ask."
"Qasaman women are that pliant?" Jin asked bluntly.
He pursed his lips. "Sometimes I forget how different you are.... No, Qasaman women aren't overly pliant; just realistic. They know that women don't function well without men... and as the heir to a powerful family, I'm not exactly someone they want to refuse."
A shiver of disgust ran up Jin's back. For just a second the polite veneer around Daulo had cracked, giving her a glimpse of something far less attractive beneath it. Rich, powerful, probably pampered, as well—he'd likely had life pretty much his own way since the day he was born. On Aventine that type almost always grew up into selfish, immature adults. On Qasama, with the pervasive male contempt for women, it would be far worse.
She shook the train of thought away. It's a different culture, she reminded herself firmly. Assumptions and extrapolations may not be valid. She'd seen his discipline in regards to the family business, after all; some of that must have seeped into his personal life, as well.
But whether it had or not, she had to lay down the ground rules right here and now. "So," she said coolly. "Does that mean you've taken advantage of your family's power to prey on young women who haven't got any choice in the matter?—and, worse, with the underlying hint that you might marry them someday? At least the razorarms are honest with their victims."
Daulo's eyes flashed with anger. "You know nothing about us," he spat. "Nothing about us, and even less about me. I don't use women as playthings; nor do I make promises I don't intend to keep. You of all people should know that—else why am I here?"
"Then there should be no problem," she said quietly. "Should there."
Slowly, the fire faded from Daulo's eyes. "So now it's you who toy with me," he said at last. "I risk my honor and position for you, and in return you stir up anger in me to drive away all other feelings."
"Was that the reason you agreed to come with me?" she countered. "And as long as you've brought it up, tell me: if I accepted your advances, wouldn't you some day wonder whether I had manipulated you that way?"
Daulo glared at her in silence for a moment. Then he sighed. "Perhaps I would have. But is it any better this way? Perhaps now you're manipulating me through the aura of mystery about you, an aura that might disappear if you showed an ordinary woman's behavior with a man."
Jin shook her head. "I'm not manipulating you, Daulo Sammon. You're helping me for the reasons of rational self-interest that we've already discussed. You're too intelligent to make decisions based on your hormones."
He smiled bitterly. "And so now you make it a point of honor for me to stay away from you. You play your games well, Jasmine Moreau."
"It's not a game—"
"It doesn't matter. The end result is the same." Turning his back on her, he stomped to the bags they'd brought in and began rummaging through them. "You'd best get some sleep; we'll need to rise early for worship." Pulling out a blanket, he strode to the living room couch and began tucking it in.
Worship? she wondered. They never did that in Milika. Do the proper places only exist in the cities? She opened her mouth to ask... but it didn't seem like a good idea to prolong the conversation. "I understand," she said instead. "Goodnight, Daulo."
He grunted in return. Pursing her lips, Jin turned and went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
For a long minute she sat on the bed, wondering if perhaps she'd played the whole thing wrong. Would it really have been so bad to go ahead and accept his advances?
Yes, of course it would have... because she'd have been doing it for the wrong reasons. Perhaps to avoid having to argue the point with him, or to pay back his family for their hospitality, or even to cynically ensure his continued cooperation by bonding him emotionally to her.
Her Cobra gear provided her an arsenal of awesome weapons. She had no intention of adding her body to that list.
Daulo would understand someday, too. She hoped.
Daulo woke her shortly after sunrise, and after taking turns to clean up in the cramped bathroom they left the apartment and set off on foot down the street.
Azras by day was a strikingly different place than it had seemed the night before. Like the cities Jin's Uncle Joshua had seen on his visit to Qasama, the lower parts of Azras's buildings were painted with wild forest-pattern colors that seemed sometimes to throb with movement. Above the colors, the buildings were glistening white, demonstrating the kind of careful maintenance that bespoke either a healthy city budget, a strong civic pride, or both.
It was the people, though, that attracted most of her attention.
They were out in force—perhaps three hundred within sight—all walking the same direction she and Daulo were going. All of them going to worship? she wondered. "Where exactly are we going?" she asked Daulo quietly.
"One of the sajadas in the city," he told her. "Everyone—even visitors—are expected to go to worship on Friday."
Sajada. The word was familiar; and after a moment it clicked. Daulo had pointed out Milika's sajada to her on that first tour of the village, but at the time she'd still been posing as a Qasaman and had been afraid to ask what the place was. But then why had they never gone there...? Ah—of course. Presumably this type of worship was a weekly event, and her only other Friday on Qasama had been spent flat on her back recovering from her crash injuries.
Which immediately brought up another problem: she hadn't the foggiest idea of what she was heading into, or how she'd be expected to behave once they got there. "Daulo, I don't know anything about how you worship here," she muttered.
He frowned at her. "What do you mean? Worship is worship."
There were several possible responses to that; she chose what she hoped was the safest one. "True, but form varies widely from place to place."
"I thought you learned everything about us from your father's trip here."
Jin felt sweat breaking out on her forehead. Walking through a crowd of Qasamans was hardly the time to be making even veiled references of this sort. "His hosts didn't show him everything," she murmured tightly. "Would you mind keeping your voice down?"
He threw her a brief glare and fell silent. No, she thought morosely, he hasn't forgiven me yet for last night. She just hoped his bruised ego would heal before he did something dangerous.
They reached the sajada a few minutes later, an impressive white-and-gold building that looked to be a scaled-up version of the one she'd seen in Milika—and now that she thought about it, almost identical with similar structures she'd sported in the tapes from the previous mission. A conformity which, taken with Daulo's comment about worship being worship, implied a strong religious uniformity all across Qasama. A state-controlled religion, then? Or merely one that was independently pervasive? She made a mental note to bring up the subject if and when Daulo ever calmed down.
Joining the flow of people, they climbed the steps and headed Inside.
"Well?" Daulo asked an hour later as they left the sajada. "What did you think?"
"It was like nothing I've ever experienced before," Jin told him honestly. "It was... very moving."
"Or primitive, in other words?"
His voice was heavy with challenge. "Not at all," she assured him. "Perhaps more emotional than I'm used to, but a worship service that doesn't touch the emotions is pretty much a waste of time."
A little of the stiffness seemed to go out of his back. "Agreed," he nodded.
The crowds heading home seemed to be thinner than they had been on the way into the sajada, Jin noticed, and she asked Daulo about it. "Most of them will have stayed at the sajada with their heyats," he told her.
"Heyats?"
"Groups of friends and neighbors who meet for further worship," he explained, throwing her an odd look. "Don't you have anything like that on—at home?" he amended, glancing around at the scattering of other pedestrians within earshot.
"Well... they're not called heyats, anyway," she said, thinking hard. It was evident the Qasamans took their religious expression very seriously. If she was going to win Daulo back as a more or less willing ally again, she had better find an answer that emphasized the similarities between Qasaman and Aventinian worship and minimized the differences. "But as you said earlier, worship is worship," she continued. "Only our style is different. The intent is certainly the same."
"I understand that. It's the style I'm trying to find out about."
"But style isn't really what counts..." She trailed off as something ahead caught her attention. "Daulo... how obvious is it that we're not city people?"
They took another three steps before he answered, "Those ghaalas up there, are they what you're worried about?"
"I don't know that word," she murmured, "but if you mean those teens leaning against the building, yes, that's who I mean. Can they tell from our clothing that we're from a village?"
"Probably," Daulo said calmly. "But don't let it worry you. They won't bother us." He paused. "And if they do, let me handle it. Understand?"
"Sure," Jin said. Her heart, already pounding in her ears, picked up its pace a bit. The scruffy-looking youths—seven of them, she counted—definitely had their eyes on her and Daulo.
And were definitely drifting away from the wall onto the walkway. Moving to block their path.
A drop of sweat ran down between Jin's shoulderblades. Cross the street, she wanted to urge... but she knew full well what Daulo's reaction would be. She might as well suggest they turn and run back to the sajada for sanctuary.
At least none of the youths blocking the walkway appeared to be armed. That was something, anyway.
"But if you have to fight," she murmured suddenly, "stay as far back from them as you can. Understand?"
He glanced at her; but before he could comment one of the youths swaggered a step forward.
"Hello there, baelcra-keeper," he said conversationally as she and Daulo stopped. "Your own sajada burn down last night or something?"
"No," Daulo replied with a touch of ice in his voice. "Though if we're going to mention the sajada, you don't seem to be dressed for a visit there."
"Maybe we went earlier," another youth said with a sly grin. "Maybe you and your woman were too busy pharpesing to go then, huh?"
Another word the Troft translation tapes hadn't covered; but Daulo jerked as if he'd been stung. "And who'd know all about pharpesing better than ghaalas like you?" he snapped.
Insult traded for insult, clearly; but none of the toughs seemed especially disturbed. In fact, to Jin's eye they almost looked pleased by Daulo's reaction. As if they'd been deliberately trying to get him mad.
Which may have been exactly what they'd planned. At seven-to-one odds, picking a fight would be little more than a game to them. And a game with potentially rich rewards, too, if Daulo's clothing also identified his social and financial positions. It might not even take an overt robbery, in fact—depending on how Qasaman law was written, it was possible that if they could get Daulo to throw the first punch, they could claim damages from him. It could explain why the youths hadn't moved to encircle them: they might have to be able to claim afterwards that Daulo hadn't been threatened.
And in that case... there might just be something Jin could do to throw salt water on their little scheme.
"...ought to slink back to your little drip-water village now and tend your pharpesing little women, okay?"
Beside her, Jin could feel Daulo trembling. Whatever the incomprehensible slang was they'd been tossing back and forth, he was tottering on the brink of losing control. Gritting her teeth, Jin took a deep breath. This was it—
"All right," she snapped, suddenly stepping forward. "That's just about enough of that. Get out of our way."
The toughs' jaws sagged with astonishment, instant proof that she had indeed just kicked the supports out from under their game plan. Picking a seven-to-one fight with a man was one thing; picking the same fight with a woman was something else entirely. Not even a financial settlement would make up for what a fiasco like that would do to their reputations.
"Shut your mouth, woman," the first youth snarled at her, his cheek twitching with obvious uncertainty. "Unless this fhach-faced friend of yours prefers hiding behind—"
"I said get out of our way!" Jin yelled. Raising her arms, she charged.
The move caught him totally flatfooted, and she'd slammed her shoulder into his ribs before he could even get his hands up to stop her.
It didn't hurt him, of course—she was taking enough of a chance here without exhibiting Cobra strength in the bargain. But the damage to his pride was all she could have hoped for. Snarling something incomprehensible under his breath, he grabbed her arms and thrust her into the grip of two of his companions—
And stepped past her just in time to catch Daulo's fist in his face.
The blow staggered him back. Daulo followed it with a punch to his solar plexus, knocking him to the ground. "Leave him alone!" Jin wailed as the two holding her arms pulled her back out of the way and the other four belatedly moved in to circle Daulo. The hands on her upper arms tightened their grip; crossing her arms across her chest, she reached up with opposite hands to press theirs against her arms.
Pinning them solidly in place.
One down, two out of the fight, she ticked off mentally. Daulo and his opponents were crouched in what seemed to be variants of the same fighting stance, the toughs continuing to circle as if unsure of whether or not they really wanted to take on the man who'd just decked their leader. And then, almost in unison, they moved in.
Daulo knew enough about street fighting not to let all four reach him at the same time. He took a long stride to his left, flailing a wild punch at the youth on that side to force him back.
He seemed as surprised as anyone when the punch actually connected. Even more so when the youth went down and stayed there.
A second tough got within range and snapped a kick in Daulo's direction. Daulo leaped belatedly out of its way; but his move turned out to be unnecessary. The kick missed by at least twenty centimeters, and even as Daulo stepped forward to throw a countering punch, the youth lost his balance totally and toppled to the walkway.
It was enough for the other two. Backing away, they glanced at each other and at their two companions still holding—and being held against—Jin's arms. Then, turning, they took off down the walkway.
Daulo swung around to face Jin and her warders. "Well?" he demanded.
Jin recognized a cue when she heard it. She released her pressure grip on their hands, senses alert in case they tried something last-ditch foolish.
They didn't. Letting go of her, they sidled past Daulo and ran.
Daulo watched them go. Then, turning back to Jin, he looked her up and down. "You all right?" he asked at last.
She nodded. "You?"
There was a peculiar expression on his face. "Uh-huh. We'd better get out of here, before there are any awkward questions asked."
Jin glanced around. No one was approaching them, but several of the passersby were eyeing them from a healthy distance. "Right."
They'd covered another block before he finally asked the inevitable question. "What did you do to them?"
She shrugged uncomfortably. This could be extremely ticklish... "Well, for starters, I was hanging onto the ones who were holding my arms, keeping them out of the fight. The others... I gave them each a blast of focused ultrasonic in the head before you hit them."
"Which is why you wanted me to keep back, I suppose. And that knocked them out?"
"No, I didn't want to hit them that hard. I just gave them enough of a jolt to rattle their brains and throw their balance off track."
Walking closely beside him, she could feel his arm begin to tremble. Uh-oh, she thought tensely. Too much for his Qasaman ego to take? "Daulo? You okay?"
"Oh, sure," he said, a noticeable quaver in his voice. "I was just wondering what their friends are going to say when they hear about this. Seven of them, beaten right into the ground by a villager and a woman."
She frowned up at him... and only then realized that the trembling she heard and felt wasn't rage or shame.
It was suppressed laughter.
She fell silent after that... which gave Daulo the rest of the way back to their temporary home to try and figure out just why the whole thing was so funny.
On one level, it shouldn't have been—that much he was acutely aware of. For him to have been defended by a woman was something that should have him red-faced with shame, not shaking with laughter. Even if she was a demon-warrior woman, and even if the alternative had been to get himself beaten to blood-pulp.
No, he told himself firmly. That's not the way to think of it. It's more like a couple of villagers putting one over on a bunch of jerkfaced city ghaalas. Or a villager and a villager-by-adoption, anyway.
The thought startled him. Villager-by-adoption. Was he really starting to think of Jin Moreau in such friendly terms? No—impossible, he assured himself. She was a temporary ally, temporarily under his protection as a point of honor. Nothing more. In a few days her rescuers would come, and she'd go, and he'd never see her again.
And he wondered—though not very hard—why that thought finally stilled the laughter within him.
"Are all the formalities over for the day?" she asked as they reached the apartment. "I'd like to change clothes."
"They're over at least until sundown," Daulo told her, keying the lock and opening the door. "And that service is optional."
"Good," she said, stepping inside. "I think it must be a basic human failing not to be able to come up with formal clothing as comfortable as day-to-daywear—what's that light?"
"Phone message," Daulo explained, frowning. Who might have known to call them here? Walking over to the instrument, he keyed for the message.
The phone beeped, and a thin strip of paper slid out from the message slot. "What?" Jin asked.
"It's from Mayor Capparis," Daulo told her, reading it quickly. "He says Mangus has called for a work party to be assembled at the city center this Sunday morning."
"How do they pick the workers?"
Daulo skimmed the paper. "Looks like it's on the basis of need. Unemployed and poor first, based on city records—"
"Wait a second," she interrupted him. "Aren't they even going to try and contact any of the workers they've had out there before? Ones they've already trained?"
"Maybe they already have."
"Oh. Right."
"Um. Mayor Capparis recommends we stick to the marketplaces' second-booths when we pick up city-style clothing."
Jin nodded. "Good idea. What about those city records, though? How are we going to fake that?"
Daulo shrugged. "Presumably Mayor Capparis will take care of that."
"Um." Jin stepped toward him. "May I see the message?"
He handed the paper over. She gazed at it for what seemed to be an unnecessarily long time. "You having trouble reading it?" he asked at last.
"No," she said slowly. "I was just wondering... It's addressed to you. By name."
"Of course it is. So?"
"So doesn't it strike you as odd that those toughs just happened to be hanging around directly between the sajada and here?"
He frowned. "I don't see the problem. You're the one who pointed out we were dressed in villagers' clothing. They were just after some fun."
"Maybe." She chewed at her lip, an annoying habit of hers. "But suppose for a moment that there was more to it than that. Suppose that whoever it is who doesn't want villagers snooping around inside Mangus found out we were going to try for one of their work parties."
"That's ridiculous," Daulo snorted. "How would they find out..." He trailed off, eyes dropping to the paper still in her hand. "Mayor Capparis wouldn't tell them," he said flatly.
"I'm not suggesting he did," Jin shook her head. "But this message presumably came from his office. Couldn't someone there have found out about it, either before or after it was sent?"
Daulo gritted his teeth. It wasn't all that farfetched, unfortunately. If one of the mayor's enemies had gotten wind of the scheme, putting them into the hospital would be a safe and simple way for him to thwart it. "It's possible, I suppose," he admitted aloud to Jin, "But if you're suggesting we pick up and run, forget it."
"We don't have to run," she said. "Just move. Find somewhere else, where no one—including Mayor Capparis—knows where to find us."
"We still have to show up at the city center," he pointed out.
"True. But there's nothing much we can do about that."
"Then what's the point of hiding now?" he countered. "All it does is buy us a couple of days."
"A couple of days can mean a lot. Among other things, it gives us more time to prepare."
She was right; and down deep he recognized that. But on the surface, his honor had surged once again to the fore. "No," he shook his head. "I'm not running. Not without better proof than that."
She took a deep breath, and he braced himself for an argument. "Then the deal's off," she said bluntly.
He blinked with surprise. "What?"
"I said the deal's off. You might as well head back to Milika right now, because I'm going into Mangus alone."
"That's ridiculous. I'm not letting you do something that—that—" He shut up, realizing with annoyance he was starting to sputter. "Besides, what do we have to worry about? With your powers—"
"My powers are designed to protect me," she cut him off. "Not friends or people around me; just me. And if you're not going to cooperate, I can't take the risk of something happening to you."
"Why?" he snarled. "Because my father would call the Shahni down on your head?"
"Because you're my friend," she said quietly.
For a moment he just glared at her, feeling his arguments melt and drain away. "All right," he gritted at last. "I'll offer you a compromise. If you can prove we're under direct attack, I'll agree to anything you say."
She hesitated, then nodded. "Fair enough. Well... let's see. I suppose the best way to start would be for you to call up Mayor Capparis's office and leave a message telling him that we're moving to a new place. We won't really be going anywhere," she hastened to add, "but if there's an informant there, he'll get the word out to his fighters. Then we can find a place on the sidelines and watch what happens. If anything."
He clenched his teeth, trying without success to find some grounds on which to object. Then, silently, he stepped to the phone.
Mayor Capparis wasn't in, of course, probably still meeting with one of the heyats at his own sajada. Leaving the message, he hung up and turned back to Jin. "Okay. Now what?"
"Now we load everything back in the car and drive off as if we're leaving," she told him. "We need to go out and buy some city-style clothes, anyway. First, though, we'll want to find some place near here that would be a plausible hiding place."
"Easy enough," Daulo grunted, stepping over to where he'd laid out his clothing the night before. "We just look for an apartment whose door has no protector."
"Protector?"
"Yes," he said. "The traditional carved medallions every household places near their doors to protect them from the evil eye. Didn't you notice the ones in Milika?"
He had the minor satisfaction of seeing her blush with chagrin. "No, I'm afraid I completely missed them," she admitted. "Well... good. That'll make the hunt easier, anyway."
"So what happens once we've found this empty apartment?"
She smiled lopsidedly. "With any luck, sometime tonight it'll be attacked."
And with that she disappeared into the bedroom. No, Daulo told himself firmly, you don't want to know. Swallowing, he returned to his packing.
"You're actually going out in public like that?" Daulo asked.
Standing before the apartment's largest mirror, Jin took one last look at herself in her gray night-fighter garb and turned to face him. Seated on the couch, his hand rubbing restless patterns on the end table beside him, Daulo glared back with barely controlled distaste. "If it's the outfit that offends you," she said coolly, "you'd better get used to it. From what you've told me it sounds like Mangus will be hiring mainly men for their work party, and if I'm going to get in it'll have to be disguised as a man."
He growled something under his breath. "This whole thing is ridiculous. Even if someone was out to get us, what makes you think they fell for that little game of yours? Suppose, for starters, they haven't noticed that that's our car parked outside the other apartment?"
"I told you one of those toughs was watching when we drove off this morning," she reminded him, pulling her full-face mask from the back of a chair and fitting it on. "You have to make it a little hard for them, Daulo—everyone gets suspicious of prizes handed over on silver platters."
"It'll serve you right if they're too stupid to catch your subtleties," he snorted. "Then while you're out there watching an empty apartment, they'll break in here instead."
"That's why you're going to have this," she told him, pulling a small cylinder from her belt and handing it over. "Short-range signaller—flip the top cap back and push the button if you're in trouble. I'm only going to be two blocks away; I can be here before you've stopped insulting each other."
Sighing, he took the device. "I just hope all this is nothing but a fever-trick of your imagination."
"I hope so, too," she admitted, scooping up the pack she'd prepared and settling it onto her shoulders. "But if it isn't, then tonight is the obvious time for them to strike."
"I suppose so. Well, at least we'll know one way or another by morning."
Probably a lot sooner than that, Jin thought. "Right. Well, I'm off. Lock the door behind me, and don't be afraid to signal if you hear anything suspicious. Promise?"
He managed a smile. "Sure. You watch yourself, Jin Moreau."
"I will." Activating her optical enhancers, she cracked open the door and looked outside. No one was in sight. Slipping out, she closed the door behind her and headed off down the street.
She'd been ensconced in her chosen place of concealment, halfway under an outside stairwell, for barely an hour when they showed up: the same seven toughs who'd accosted her and Daulo on the street that morning.
And it was quickly clear they weren't total amateurs at this. Moving silently down the deserted street, taking advantage of shadows and cover, they approached the vacant apartment from both directions. Two stopped at the car, presumably making sure no one was watching from there, before joining the rest at the apartment door. One crouched over the lock, and after a few seconds swung it open. Moving quickly, the group filed inside the darkened apartment.
They probably hadn't even realized yet that the place was deserted when she caught up with them; and it was for certain that none of them had a chance to shout before her disrupter's ultrasound washed over them from close range, hammering them into instant unconsciousness. They dropped into seven heaps on the floor and lay still.
Jin nearly wound up joining them. For a long minute she staggered against the wall, gripping her stomach and fighting to keep her balance. Layn had warned them about the dangers of using sonics in such enclosed spaces; but there had been no other way to silently disable the toughs without killing them. And questions of ethics apart, with the Shahni now aware that there was an outworlder on Qasama, leaving laser-ridden corpses lying around would be about as clever as standing up at the sajada and identifying herself as a demon warrior.
Eventually, the throbbing in her head and gut faded away, and she set about tying up the would-be assailants with rope from her pack. That accomplished, she stepped to the door again and scanned the street. Still no one in sight, and she gave silent thanks that Azras's night life shut down so early in the evening. With a little luck, she might get back to the apartment in time to get at least a few hours' sleep.
Thoughts of the apartment reminded her of Daulo; Daulo, who still didn't believe they were under deliberate attack. Pulling her signaller from her belt, she flipped back the lid... and paused. True, she could show him evidence that the toughs had indeed tried it again, but given the Qasaman sense of personal honor, they might conceivably have launched this second attack entirely on their own. What she needed was some kind of admission from one of them as to who had put them up to this job.
And until she had such a confession, there was no point in dragging Daulo out here. Putting the signaller back, she returned to the unconscious youths. Assuming the one who'd thrown the first challenge this morning was the leader... locating him, she hoisted him to her shoulder and carried him across the street to the car. It would have been nice to have a supply of those sophisticated interrogation drugs they were always using in the telvide fictions, but in their absence she would just have to fell back on one of the more traditional methods. And for that, she was going to need a little more privacy.
Starting the car, she headed off through Azras's deserted streets.
The knock on the door jolted Daulo awake, and for a disoriented heartbeat he stared in confusion at the darkened ceiling. Then it clicked. "Coming," he growled, getting stiffly out of the chair where he'd fallen asleep. Jasmine Moreau, returning from her little hide-seek game—and the stupid woman had managed to forget the door's combination. If this is the kind of people who become Cobras, he thought sourly as he straightened his tunic and stomped to the door, we haven't got much to worry about. The knock came a third time; "I'm coming," he snarled and threw open the door.
Three men stood there: one middle-aged, the other two much younger. Their city-style clothing was all similar; their grim faces were almost identical. "Are you Daulo Sammon of the village Milika?" the middle-aged man asked.
Daulo got his tongue working. "I am," he nodded. "And you?"
"May we come in?"
It wasn't really a question. Daulo stepped aside and the three filed into the room, the last flicking on the light as he passed the switch. "And you are...?" Daulo asked again, squinting as his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden light.
The door was closed with a thud, and when Daulo could see clearly again he found the middle-aged man standing in front of him, holding out a gold-rimmed pendant from around his neck. "I am Moffren Omnathi; representing the Shahni of Qasama."
Daulo felt an icy shiver run up his back. "I am honored," he managed through stiff lips, making the sign of respect. "How may I serve you?"
Omnathi's eyes flicked around the room. "Your father, Kruin Sammon, sent the Shahni a message through Mayor Capparis of the city Azras yesterday. Do you know the content of this message?"
"Ah... in a general way, yes," Daulo said, wishing he knew what, if anything, his father had told this man. "He said he was going to inform the Shahni that the Yithtra family had discovered an offworld artifact."
"Essentially correct," Omnathi nodded casually. "Do members of the Yithtra family find such artifacts regularly?"
Daulo frowned. "No, of course not, sir."
"Oh? An unusual event, then?"
"Most certainly."
"An event most people would think worth staying to see?"
Daulo fought to keep his expression neutral as he finally saw the net the other was weaving. "I suppose most people would, yes."
"Yet you chose to come to Azras instead. Why?"
A drop of sweat trickled between Daulo's shoulder-blades. "I had an errand to perform here."
"One that couldn't wait a few days?"
One of Omnathi's companions emerged from the bedroom and stepped to the older man's side. "Yes?" Omnathi asked without taking his eyes off Daulo.
"Nothing but some of his own clothing," the other reported. "Certainly nothing a woman would wear or use."
Omnathi nodded, and Daulo thought he saw a brief flicker of annoyance cross his face. "Thank you," Omnathi told the other. "You see now, Daulo Sammon, that we're aware you didn't come to Azras alone. Where is the woman you brought here?"
Two blocks over, the thought flashed through Daulo's mind, and his stomach tightened with the realization that she could wander back at any time. "I really don't know where she is—"
"Why not?" the older man snapped. "According to Mayor Capparis, your father asked him to get you and an unnamed companion into some sort of work party. Was this woman to be your companion?"
"Of course not," Daulo said, trying for a combination of amusement and insult at the very idea. "I had planned to ask my brother to go to Mangus with me, but decided against it when this other matter came up."
He watched Omnathi, holding his breath, but the mention of Mangus didn't spark any reaction he could see. "You didn't tell Mayor Capparis about your change in plans. For that matter, we were rather surprised to find you here, since you'd told him you were moving elsewhere."
Daulo shrugged. "I thought that Mangus might have a listening ear in Mayor Capparis's office," he said, adopting Jin's theory for lack of anything better to say. "I thought if they were watching for two people instead of one, I might have a better chance of getting in."
Omnathi's forehead creased slightly. "You sound like you're preparing to assault an armed camp. What do you want with Mangus, anyway?"
Daulo hesitated. "I don't believe the place is what it seems," he said.
Omnathi flicked a glance to one of his aides. "Tarri?"
"Mangus is a private manufacturing center about fifty kilometers east of here," the other said promptly. "High-quality electronics, both research and manufacture. Run by the Obolo Nardin family; I believe the last full check by the Shahni was carried out approximately two years ago. No hints then of any unusual activity."
Omnathi nodded and turned back to Daulo. "You have recent evidence to dispute that last?"
Daulo drew himself up a bit. "They refuse to allow villagers in," he said stiffly. "For me, that's adequate reason to be suspicious."
Omnathi's lip twisted. "Hard though it may be for you to understand, city-bred prejudices are often as ridiculous as those of villagers," he growled. "At any rate, you'd do better to save your pride for more important matters—the safety and protection of your world, for example. Tell us what you know about the woman."
"She told me her name was Jasmine Alventin," Daulo said, again wishing he knew what they'd learned from his father. "We found her on the road, injured, and brought her into our house."
"And..."
"And she told us she was from Sollas and that she'd been in an accident. That's all."
"Didn't you think it advisable to press for further details?" Omnathi persisted. "Or even to check up on her story?"
"Of course we did," Daulo said, trying to sound offended. "We sent men out to search the roads for her car and companions."
"Did you find them?"
"No." Daulo glanced at the other two men, looked back at Omnathi. "What is this all about, anyway? Is she an escaped criminal or something?"
"She's an offworld invader," Omnathi said bluntly.
Daulo had expected him to ignore or evade the question; the very unexpectedness of the reply startled him almost as much as if he were hearing it for the first time. "She's—what?" he breathed. "But... that's impossible."
"Why?" Omnathi snapped. "You said yourself the Yithtra family had found an offworld artifact. Didn't it ever occur to you that an offworld artifact might be accompanied by someone to use it?"
"Yes, but..." Daulo floundered, hunting desperately for something to say. Jin's words just before she'd left popped back into his mind: you have to make it a little hard for them, Daulo—everyone gets suspicious of prizes handed over on silver platters. "But it was Jasmine Alventin who told us it was an offworld artifact in the first place," he said. "Why would she do that if it were hers?"
Omnathi frowned. "What do you mean? Told you how?"
"Well, when I heard there was a truck bringing something unusual into Milika I drove off to take a look," Daulo explained, trying to keep his voice and face under control. "Jasmine Alventin was with me at the time, and at a slow section of the road she suddenly got out of the car and climbed in the back of the truck to see what it was."
Omnathi seemed taken aback. "Your father didn't mention that," he said.
Daulo took a deep breath. "Well, actually... I believe I told him it was I who looked into the truck."
Omnathi's eyes were steady on him. "You believe you told him?"
Daulo licked his lips. "I... suppose I wanted to... take the credit."
For a long moment the room was silent. Omnathi and the others just looked at him, contempt showing in varying degrees in their expressions. "You told us you didn't know where the woman was," Omnathi said at last. "Why not?"
"Because she left me just after sundown," Daulo said. "She said she was anxious to get back home and asked me where she could pick up a bus heading north. I took her to the waiting area at the city center and left her there."
"Did you, now." Slowly, Omnathi ran the tip of his tongue along his upper lip, gazing hard at Daulo. Daulo stared back, listening to his heart thudding in his chest. "Tell me," Omnathi said abruptly, "did you actually see her get on any of the buses?"
"Ah..." Daulo considered. "No, not really. She was walking toward the one for Sollas when I drove away, though."
One of the other men cleared his throat. "Shall I have the bus intercepted?" he asked.
"No," Omnathi said slowly. "No, I think that would be a waste of time. She didn't take that bus. Or any of the others."
Daulo blinked. "I don't understand—"
"Tell me, Daulo Sammon," Omnathi interrupted him. "Where is your car?"
"Uh... just outside the building, in the parking area."
Omnathi shook his head. "No. In fact, it's nowhere for six streets around you. We looked for it."
Daulo's heart skipped a beat. He and Jin had left the vehicle parked in plain sight only two blocks away... "That's impossible," he managed. "I left it right outsi—"
"Do you have the keys?" Omnathi asked.
No; he'd given them to Jin in case she had some need of the vehicle while she was out. "Of course," he said. "They're on the table over there."
One of the men moved over to look. "No, they're not," he reported, sifting through the personal items Daulo had piled there.
"Find them," Omnathi ordered. "Have you been gone from this apartment since she left, Daulo Sammon?"
"No." Daulo watched as the two men began searching the room, feeling the sweat begin to gather on his forehead again. It was all very well to ease them toward the conclusion that Jin had stolen his car, but they weren't going to believe it unless he came up with a plausible mechanism for that theft. "I was asleep when you arrived, though—"
"What's this," one of the searchers interrupted him, holding up a small black cylinder.
The signaller Jin had given him.
"I... don't know," he said through stiff lips. "It's not mine."
"Be careful with it," Omnathi said sharply, stepping over to the other's side and taking the signaller from him. He studied it for a moment, then carefully lifted the top cap. Push the button if you're in trouble, and I'll be there, Jin had said...
But Omnathi made no move to do that. "Interesting," he murmured. "Looks like a radio transceiver of some kind—here's the antenna." He looked back at Daulo. "Did you tell her how to work the lock combination on the apartment door?" he asked.
"Uh... not directly, no. Though she might have seen me key it."
Omnathi nodded grimly. "I'm sure she did." He hefted the signaller in the palm of his hand, "Do you snore when you sleep, Daulo Sammon?"
The question took Daulo by surprise. "Ah... I really don't know. Perhaps a bit."
Omnathi grunted. "Doesn't really matter, I suppose. The sound of a sleeper's breathing is fairly distinctive to someone who knows what to listen for."
"Sir... I—"
Omnathi impaled him with a glare. "She planted this on you," he grated. "All she had to do was pretend to get on that bus, then follow you back and wait for you to fall asleep. Then she slipped in, took your keys, and left. Any idea how long you were asleep?"
Daulo shrugged, feeling a little dazed. They were practically writing his alibi for him. "An hour, perhaps. Maybe longer."
Omnathi muttered something under his breath. "An hour. God in heaven."
Daulo licked his lips. "Sir... I don't understand any of this. What is Jasmine Alventin's interest in my family?"
"I don't think she has any interest in you whatsoever," the older man sighed. "She's simply been using you: first to help her recover from her spacecraft's crash, and after that to create a diversion."
"A diversion?"
"Yes." Omnathi waved toward the northwest. "Once she realized her discovery was inevitable, she simply took charge of the timetable, letting your father know about the supply pod in Yithtra family hands and perhaps encouraging him to notify the Shahni before they did. Then, while the focus of our attention was on her spacecraft and your village, she persuaded you to bring her here, distracted you further with a feint toward the bus, and proceeded to steal your car." He paused, eying Daulo thoughtfully... and when he spoke again his voice had taken on a hard edge. "But innocent victims or not, the Sammon family nevertheless has aided an enemy of Qasama. It's possible that you may yet be punished for that."
Daulo swallowed hard. "Yet we did inform the Shahni about the offworld artifact as soon as we knew about it," he reminded the other.
"That may weigh in your favor," Omnathi nodded. "Whether it does or not will depend on how quickly we capture this Jasmine Alventin. And what we learn from her."
He signaled his men, and they headed for the door. There, Omnathi paused and looked back. "Tell me, Daulo Sammon; your father said the woman asked many questions. Did she ask about anything specifically about our culture or technology?"
The question caught Daulo by surprise. "Uh... no, not that I can remember. Why?"
"It occurs to me that this penetration of Mangus might originally have been her idea."
"It wasn't," Daulo shook his head. "Getting into Mangus has been something I've wanted to do for a long time."
"Perhaps. Then again, perhaps the idea was yours and the timing hers." For a moment Omnathi gazed thoughtfully at him. "Very well, then. Satisfy your pride as you will, Daulo Sammon. But remember while you do so that your real enemies aren't in Mangus or anywhere else on Qasama."
Daulo bowed and made the sign of respect. "I will, Moffren Omnathi."
They left. Daulo stood where he was for a handful of heartbeats; then, moving carefully on weak knees, he wobbled to the window and peered out at the car's taillights pulling away down the street. An emissary of the Shahni themselves... and Daulo had lied through his teeth to him.
For an enemy of Qasama.
He spat an oath into the empty room. Curse you, Jasmine Moreau, he thought viciously. For God's sake, be careful. Please.
The tough gasped as the ammonia fumes rose into his nostrils and he returned abruptly to consciousness. "I'd suggest you keep quiet," Jin advised him, making her voice as deep and manly as she comfortably could.
He obeyed... but his eyes suddenly came wide open as he got his first clear look around him. Jin couldn't really blame him; sitting on the edge of a high roof, with nothing between him and a long fall but two thin ropes belaying his trussed wrists and ankles to a stubby chimney five meters away, he had a perfect right to be scared. In fact, she rather admired his self-control in not screaming his head off. "Let's start with your name, shall we?" she said, squatting down beside him.
"Hebros Sibbio," he managed, eyes focused on his lifelines.
"Look at me when I speak to you," Jin ordered. He did so, eyes almost unwillingly shifting up to her masked face. "That's better. Now tell me who told you to break into the apartment you hit tonight."
"I... no one," he said, his voice cracking slightly.
Jin sighed theatrically. "Perhaps you don't fully understand the situation here, Hebros Sibbio," she said coldly. "Your hairy butt is hanging well past the edge there. All I have to do is cut these two ropes and you'll be off to explain all this to God instead of to me. You think He'll be more lenient with you?" He shuddered and shook his head. "Neither do I," she agreed. "So tell me who put you up to this job."
"I don't know!" he gasped. "As God is my witness, I don't know. A man—he didn't give his name—called me up this morning and told me he wanted us to beat up a village man who would be at an apartment at Three-forty-six Kutzko Street."
"And kill him?"
"No! We don't kill—not even villagers. I wouldn't have agreed if that had been the bargain."
"Keep your voice down. What was the bargain, then? What payment did he promise you?"
Sibbio shivered again. "There was to be no payment. He promised only not to reveal some of our other... activities to the rulers of Azras."
"Illegal activities?"
"Yes. And he named some of them..." He trailed off, staring pleadingly at her. "It's the truth—I swear by God's presence it is."
Blackmail, then... which unfortunately eliminated the chance of backtracking a payment drop. "Did he tell you the villager's name, or say why he wanted him beaten up?"
"No."
For a moment the rooftop was silent as Jin considered. If Sibbio was telling the truth, it meant his mystery caller had at least a passing familiarity with Azras's underworld and its activities. At the same time, paradoxically, that knowledge must be fairly limited for him to have picked such an obviously small-time group as Sibbio's to handle his dirty work.
Unless this was as well organized as Azras's criminal underworld got. She made a mental note to check with Daulo on that one.
Either way, Sibbio was clearly a dead end. "There's a small knife by the chimney over there," she pointed, getting to her feet. "You can roll or otherwise work your way over to it and cut yourself free. Your friends are still at the apartment you broke into; collect them and all of you get out of Azras."
Sibbio's mouth fell open. "Get out... but this is our home."
"Too bad," Jin said, letting her voice harden. "Because for the next few days it'll be my home, too... and if I see you again while I'm here, Hebros Sibbio, you'll be taking that premature trip to see God that we discussed earlier. Understood?"
He nodded up at her, a single nervous motion of his head. Jin didn't especially like threatening the boy, but she liked the thought of him talking to Mangus even less. "Good. Let's both hope I never see you again."
Moving quietly across the roof, she reached the stairwell that she'd brought Sibbio up by and opened the door. He would make it to the knife, eventually, unless he lost his balance first and fell off the roof. As far as she was concerned, it didn't much matter what happened.
Nevertheless, she waited silently at the open door until he was safely away from the roof's edge.
She was two blocks from their apartment, visions of a soft bed hovering siren-like in front of her eyes, when she spotted the two cars parked at the building.
Instantly, she shut off the lights and pulled over to the curb, keying in her optical enhancers' telescopic and light-amp capabilities as she did so. Both cars were empty, but—she flipped briefly to infrared—the tires and drive shafts were still warm. And though her angle was bad, it looked very much like the lights in their apartment were on.
A cold chill ran up her spine. From what she'd seen of both village and city life, midnight visitors weren't exactly commonplace on Qasama. Could they be messengers from Milika, perhaps, bringing news from Daulo's father?
Or had Mangus hired a back-up set of muscle?
Jin cursed under her breath and started the car forward again. The direct route through the front door was out, of course—even if it was something as innocuous as a message from home, there was no plausible excuse she could think of as to why she, a woman, would be out alone at night. And if Daulo was in trouble, she had no intention of walking straight into his attackers' arms, anyway.
But there were always more indirect routes to be had...
She pulled around the next corner, parking the car a block away in a handy row of similar vehicles. Keeping to the shadows, enhanced senses alert for trouble, she made her way back to the apartment building, arriving at the side opposite to theirs within a couple of minutes. The building didn't offer much in the way of handholds, but she didn't have time for a long climb, anyway. Taking one last look around, she bent her knees and jumped.
She made it onto the roof without any sound louder than a slight scraping of shoes on roof tiles. Crossing it, she squatted down at the edge and scanned the courtyard below for signs of life. There weren't any that she could see. Not surprisingly; with no access to the courtyard from outside except through the individual apartments, there would be no reason for anyone to watch the place once they'd established she wasn't hiding there. Setting her jaw, she eased over the edge, scrabbled for handholds that weren't there, and dropped to the ground.
The downside landing wasn't nearly as quiet as the upside one had been, and for what seemed like a long time she crouched motionlessly, auditory enhancers at full power as she waited for some kind of reaction. But the inhabitants of Azras must have had the city dwellers' traditional ability to sleep through noise, and after a minute she rose and loped across the courtyard to the rear of their apartment.
Through the sliding glass door, she could see the diffuse glow of lights from either the foodprep area or living room. Unfortunately, that was all she could see—the arrangement of the rooms didn't allow a direct view into the front of the apartment. An ear pressed against the glass yielded nothing. Into the valley of death, and all that, she thought grimly; and, pointing her little finger at the door's lock, she fired a burst from her metalwork laser.
The crack and spitting of flash-vaporized metal seemed to thunder in her ears, but there was no reaction from inside. Sliding the door open a crack, Jin slipped inside, closing it behind her. From the living room ahead came the faint scraping of shoes on rug.
She held her breath and keyed her auditory enhancers to full power. The sound of breathing came to her... the sound of one person breathing.
So all the company's left? Apparently... but there was no point in taking chances. Curling her hands to rest her thumbs lightly against the triggers in her third-finger nails, she straightened her little fingers into laser firing position and stepped around the corner.
Daulo, standing at the window, spun around as if he'd been stung. "Jin!" he gasped, seeming to wilt. "God above, you startled me."
"Sorry," she apologized, glancing quickly around. Daulo was indeed alone "I thought you might be in trouble," she added, dropping her hands back to her sides.
"I am," he sighed, walking unsteadily to the couch and sinking into it. "But you're in more. They know who you are."
"They who?" Jin asked, her heartbeat picking up again. "Mangus?"
"Worse. The Shahni." He hissed between his teeth. "I just had a visit from one Moffren Omnathi and two of his men. They've identified you as the outworlder they're looking for. I managed—maybe—to persuade them that you'd stolen my car and headed north toward Sollas."
Jin took a moment to digest that. She'd known it would happen eventually. But she hadn't expected it quite so soon. "Did you tell them we'd been working together?"
"Do I look stupid?" he snorted. "Of course not. I played the total innocent, telling them you were a stranger who'd talked me into bringing you to Azras and then disappeared. Fortunately—I guess—they found that signaller you left, and decided you'd used it to listen for me to go to sleep so you could sneak in and take my car keys."
Jin bet at her lip. "As good a theory as any, I suppose. I just hope they didn't make it up just to make you think they believed you."
"Well, they left, didn't they?"
"Maybe. Did you actually see them go?"
"I saw the car pull away, yes."
"One car? Because there were two here when I drove up."
Daulo muttered something under his breath and started to get to his feet. "Should I—?"
"No, don't look out," Jin stopped him. "If they spotted me coming in, it's too late. If they didn't, you don't want to seem unusually suspicious."
Daulo exhaled a ragged breath. "I thought they seemed too willing to believe me. God above. I hoped they were accepting my words because of my family's position."
"More likely they just weren't sure enough to arrest you. Or else backed off in hopes that you'd lead them to me." Jin glanced at the curtained window, wondering what devices the Qasamans might have for looking through cloth and glass. But if they were doing so, again it was already too late. "They didn't have any photos of me, did they?" she asked.
"Not that they showed me," Daulo shook his head. "Though it hardly matters. As my father pointed out, there were plenty of people in Milika who saw you."
"Well enough to provide the investigators with a good description?"
He threw her an odd look. "Using hypnotics? Of course."
Jin gritted her teeth. She should have realized they'd have something like that available—her father's mission had noted the Qasamans' penchant for mind-enhancement drugs. "Yeah, I forgot about those. Well, maybe the disguise paraphernalia in my pack will be enough."
"You're not going to stay in Azras, are you?"
"Not with the alert already out for your car," Jin shook her head. "I'll head out of town, try to find a place off the road to hide the car in. With luck I'll be able to stay with it until the work party is formed on Sunday. Let me take a set of that cheap city clothing we bought—"
"Hold it a second," Daulo interrupted her, eyes narrowing. "You're not still going to try to get in there, are you?"
"Why not? Unless you told our friend Moffren Omnathi that was what we were planning. Oh, my God," she interrupted herself as the name suddenly clicked.
"What?" Daulo asked sharply.
"Moffren." The name tasted sour on her tongue. "Moff. The man who played guide to our first survey mission, thirty years ago. And very nearly nailed it." She shook her head. "Well, that's the end of the game for you, Daulo. First thing in the morning you find yourself a ride back to Milika and get out of here."
Daulo frowned at her. "Why? Just because the Shahni sent an old enemy of yours to ask me some questions?"
"No—because whatever pits there are in the story you told him, he'll find them," she retorted. "And when he does, he'll act. Fast."
"And you think running back to Milika will keep him from getting to me?"
Jin braced herself. "Of course not. But maybe it'll slow him down enough to let me get into Mangus."
For a long moment his eyes were steady on hers. "So that's what it comes down to, isn't it?" Daulo said at last. "Your mission."
Jin forced her jaw muscles to relax. "Would you have me run somewhere and hide?" she asked.
"Would you have me do so?" he countered quietly. "Would you have me go back to my father and tell him I gave up a chance to perhaps uncover a threat to our family because I was afraid?"
"But if they're watching you and you try to go into Mangus—"
"And if they're watching me and I try to run back to Milika?"
Again, they locked gazes. "Daulo, look," Jin sighed at last. "I know this isn't something a woman says to a man on Qasama... but I feel responsible for your safety. I talked you and your father into this scheme, after all, and if I can't be right at your side I may not be able to protect you."
"You didn't promise me any protection."
"Not to you, no. I did promise it to myself."
To her surprise, he smiled. "And I made a promise to myself, Jasmine Moreau: to protect you from your cultural ignorance while in Mangus. I can't do that from Milika."
"But—" Jin took a deep breath, sighed in defeat. She simply didn't have time to argue the point any further. The longer she lingered here, the more time Moff would have to weave a net around Azras, and she had to get Daulo's car out of town before that happened. "Will you at least think about it? Please?"
He rose from the couch and stepped forward. "I will," he said softly, reaching out to take her hand. "You be careful, all right?"
"I will." She hesitated, looking up at his eyes. Cultural differences, she reminded herself distantly. He might take this wrong, but for once, she didn't care; the need to hold someone tightly was almost overpowering in its intensity. Leaning toward him, she put her arms around him.
He didn't pull away, nor did he attempt to make the hug into anything else. Perhaps with potential danger all around them, a simple nonsexual contact from a friend was something he needed right now, too.
For a minute they held each other tightly. Then, almost unwillingly, Jin pulled back. "You take care of yourself, too, okay?" she said. "And if you decide to stay... don't look for me in the work party."
He nodded, reaching up to stroke her cheek. "I understand. You'd better go now."
Three minutes later, the city clothing Daulo had given her knotted into a bundle on her back, she was back at the car. No one lay in wait near the vehicle; no one jumped out of the shadows or shot at her as she climbed in and drove away. Either the Shahni's people hadn't gotten the Azras part of their operation fully organized yet, or else Moff was growing careless in his old age. Personally, she wouldn't bet much money on the latter.
But for the time being she appeared to have gained a little breathing space, and she was determined to use it to the fullest. A few kilometers south of Azras—an adequate gap between trees in the forest—and she would have a place to hide for the next day and a half. A little face-shaper gel from her pack, perhaps a wig and some skin darkening, and she'd be able to walk into Azras Sunday morning without being recognized. And after that...
But there was no point in trying to think too far ahead. With Qasama's official government actively in the game, she had to be ready to play every move by ear. And hope that her Moreau family heritage counted for something besides just a name.
"Like this?" Toral Abram asked, shifting his left foot in front of his right.
"Right," Justin nodded. "Now just uncurl your legs and drop onto your back onto the floor, pulling your knees to your chest as you do so."
The young Cobra obeyed, and a second later was spinning around, belly-up, in an awkward-looking fetal position. "And this is a military maneuver?" he asked wryly as he came to a halt.
"Trust me," Justin assured him. "You try that with your antiarmor laser firing and you'll look very military."
"If there's anyone left nearby to see you," one of the other Cobras lined up against the walls muttered.
"That is the basic idea," Justin nodded as a nervous chuckle swept the room. "Okay, Toral, off the floor. Dario, your turn."
One of the other Cobras took Abram's place in the center of the room and got into ready position. "Ceiling flip," Justin ordered; and a second later the Dewdrop shook as the Cobra jumped upward, bounced feet-first off the ceiling, and landed a handful of meters away from his starting point.
"One of these days," a voice at Justin's elbow muttered, "one of you is going to kick a hole in the deck doing that."
"Hello, Wilosha," Justin nodded to the middle-aged man who'd slipped unnoticed into the room. "Just can't get enough of the show, can you?"
"Watching the ship's structural integrity beaten into rubble always gives me a thrill," Second Officer Kal Wilosha retorted. "Haven't you practiced these more violent maneuvers enough?"
"No, but unfortunately we don't have the time to do it right." Justin raised his voice. "Okay, Dario, nice job. Don't forget to keep your hands up when you land so that you'll be able to fire if you need to. Now give the backspin a try."
"Yes, sir."
He did marginally better than Abram had. "Again," Justin ordered. "Remember that your nanocomputer will do a lot of the work on these basic maneuvers if you'll let it. Just get things started, relax, and let your body take it from there."
Dario nodded and set himself for another try. Beside Justin, Wilosha hissed through his teeth. "Problem?" Justin asked him.
"Just... wondering."
"What about?" This time Dario did better.
"Oh... Cobras." Wilosha waved his hand vaguely. "The nanocomputers, if you insist on specifics. Has it ever occurred to you that no one on the Cobra Worlds really knows anymore just exactly how the things are programmed?"
"I don't let it worry me," Justin told him. "The Academy supervises every step of the nanocomputer manufacture."
"Oh, right. So they supervise a bank of automated circuitry replicators—what does that prove? Does a list or printout exist anywhere showing exactly what the nanocomputers are or are not capable of?"
"What are you worried about, that the Dominion of Man may have planted a program bomb?" Justin asked quietly. The conversation, he noted, was beginning to attract his students' attention.
"No, of course not," Wilosha shook his head. "But there doesn't have to be deliberate malice involved to make something dangerous."
Justin looked at him for a long moment. It would serve the man right to expose him here and now, in front of a roomful of Cobras... but it would be a childish trick, and Justin was long past the age for childish tricks. "Cobras, take a break," he called. "Be back in fifteen minutes."
The others filed out without comment or question, and a minute later Justin and Wilosha were alone. "I hope it wasn't something I said," Wilosha commented, his voice almost light but his expression tight and wary.
"Just wanted a little peace and quiet," Justin told him, and threw a punch at the other's face.
Wilosha could never have evaded a serious attempt to hit him, not with Justin's Cobra servos driving the punch. But his reflexes tried their best, throwing his arm up in front of his face... and because Justin had his audio enhancers on and knew what to listen for, he caught the faint whine of servos from the other's arm.
"What the hell was that all about?" Wilosha snarled, taking a hasty step back toward the wall.
Justin made no move to follow. "Just showing you how easy it is for a Cobra to identify a Ject. Even with the restraints your nanocomputer puts on your servos, they still kick in to that limit when you react as quickly as you just did."
Wilosha's lip twisted. "A great technique, for sure. I can just see you walking down the streets of Capitalia throwing punches at everyone you pass. You could have just asked me, you know."
"Asked you what? I already knew what you were. This was just to prove to you that I knew."
"Of course. You probably had me spotted ever since we lifted, right?"
Justin snorted gently. "No. Only since you started showing up at every other practice with your mouth spitting venom and your eyes looking envious. What conclusion would you have come to?"
"I don't envy you," Wilosha snapped. Too quickly. "I come to your workouts to keep an eye on you—nothing more."
"Keep an eye on us for what? What is it about us that you're so afraid of?"
Wilosha took a deep breath. "I don't think this is the right time for a debate, Moreau. So you might as well get your team back in here and continue—"
He broke off as Justin took a long step toward the door, blocking the other's quiet move in that direction. "Actually, Wilosha, I think this is an excellent time for a debate," he told the other coldly. "Or at least for a little chat. There are some things I'd like to know, starting with why the hell you Jects are trying to make a lifelong career out of sour grapes."
For a moment Wilosha glared at him in silence. "You're not more than a couple of years younger than I am," he growled at last. "You must be feeling the first twinges of Cobra Syndrome arthritis. That's what the Lord High decision-makers of the Academy did to us: sentenced us to a premature death, and for nothing. Don't you think that's enough reason for us to be bitter?"
"No," Justin said flatly. "I'm sorry, but it's not. Nobody beat you over the head and forced you to apply to the Academy. You knew the risks going in; and if it didn't work out, then those are the breaks. Life requires certain sacrifices—on everyone's part. And as long as we're on the subject of premature deaths, you might recall all the Cobras who've died a hell of a lot younger than you are fighting spine leopards."
A muscle twitched in Wilosha's cheek. "I'm sorry. But it's not the ones who've died for Aventine that we object to."
"All of us have risked our lives," Justin reminded him. "You can't single out those who happen to have survived to vent your contempt at."
"It's not contempt," Wilosha insisted. "It's an honest and legitimate concern over the problems we see in the whole Cobra system."
Justin felt his stomach muscles tighten. "You sound like Priesly banging his fist over the net."
"So Governor Priesly's done the best job of putting it into words; so what?" Wilosha countered. "The point is still valid: that when you're on the outside looking in you get a different perspective on things. You Cobras see the prestige and physical power and political double vote; while we see the elitism and the arrogance that goes with absolute job security."
Justin favored him with a cold smile. "Absolute job security, hm? That's very interesting... especially given that that's exactly what Priesly's gotten out of you and the other Jects."
Wilosha blinked. "What are you talking about? The governorship isn't a permanent position."
"I wasn't talking about the governorship. I was referring to his status as head and chief speaker for a highly vocal political group. Think it through, Wilosha. Aventine can't simply get rid of the Cobras, for reasons you know as well as I do."
"We don't want to get rid of you, just alter your power structure to—"
"Just shut up and listen, will you? So all right; if the Cobras are always going to exist, why shouldn't an organization whose sole purpose in life is to oppose the Cobras do likewise?"
For a moment Wilosha stared at him. "Are you suggesting," he said at last, "that Governor Priesly started this whole movement solely to create a political base for himself?"
Justin shrugged. "You know more about the inner workings of your group than I do. Is that how he's using it? You might start by deciding whether or not you were this bitter about being rejected from the Cobra Academy before Priesly told you you ought to be."
"You're twisting the facts," Wilosha growled. But he didn't sound totally convinced. "Through Priesly we threaten your elite status, so of course you try to impugn his motives and activities."
"Perhaps," Justin said quietly. "But I didn't send someone charging into his office trying to make the Jects look like dangerous homicidal maniacs. Think about it, Wilosha. Do you really want to be on the side of a man who deliberately mangles truth in the name of political power?"
Wilosha snorted. "You're skating pretty close to slander," he said. "Unless you have some proof that that incident happened the way you claim it did. Some proof besides your brother's word, of course."
Justin felt disgust rising like bile in his throat. "Oh, for—" He took a breath, released it through clenched teeth. "Just get out of here, Wilosha. I haven't got time to waste arguing with someone who's already decided to let the party do his thinking for him."
Wilosha's face darkened. "Look, Moreau—"
"I said get out. We've got work to do."
The other opened his mouth, closed it again. Eyes on Justin, he sidled past the Cobra and out the door. The dull metal panel slid closed, and for a moment Justin stared at it, listening to his heartbeat slowly settle down and wondering if the talk had done any good at all. He could almost sympathize with Wilosha; the man was, after all, a would-be Cobra, and a strong sense of loyalty was high on the list of qualities the Academy screened its applicants for.
On the other hand, so were intelligence and integrity... and if he'd knocked even some of the stars out of Wilosha's eyes, the other might at least start watching Priesly's moves and words more closely. And if he found sufficient truth to the idea that Priesly was being corrupted by his own power...
It might help blunt Priesly's power. But it wouldn't help bring Jin back.
Clenching his teeth, Justin took a ragged breath. She's alive, he told himself firmly. Just as he had through the long and sleepless nights of the past four days. She's alive, and we're going to get her out of there.
Stepping up to the door, he slid it open and stepped out into the corridor. "Cobras!" he bellowed. "Break time's over. Get back here—we've got a lot of work ahead of us."
The crowd milling around the Azras city center was large and noisy, composed mainly of youths and seedy-looking older men. Some, the younger ones especially, seemed to be radiating a combination of impatience and desperation, but in general the mood of the crowd was that of slightly bored normality. At one end, seated at a table, city officials took names of each of the would-be workers, keying them into portable computer terminals where the names were—presumably—ranked according to previous work history, skills, and other pertinent information. Working his way slowly toward the table in what the city dwellers probably considered a neat line, Daulo fought against his own nervousness and tried to look inconspicuous.
"Ah—Master Sammon," a voice came from behind him; and Daulo's heart skipped a beat. As casually as he could, he turned around. "Greetings, Master Moffren Omnathi," he nodded gravely, making the sign of respect and then shifting his eyes to the young man standing at Omnathi's side. "I greet you as well, Master...?"
"I am Miron Akim," the other answered. "If you'd like, I'll be glad to hold your place in line while you and Master Omnathi confer."
Daulo swallowed hard; but before he could say anything, Omnathi had taken his arm and eased him out of line.
"You'll excuse this unorthodox approach, I hope," Omnathi commented quietly as he led Daulo away toward a relatively empty part of the center.
"What's this about?" Daulo demanded. Or rather, tried to demand; to his own ears his voice sounded more guilty than threatening. "I thought we'd settled everything two days ago."
"Yes, so it seemed," Omnathi nodded calmly. "But a couple of things have come up since then that I thought you could possibly help us with."
"Such as?" Daulo asked, stomach tightening.
Omnathi waved a hand at the assembled crowd. "This Mangus place, for instance. Your determination to gatecrash struck me as being rather a waste of time and energy, even given the stiffneck pride often associated with villagers." Daulo snorted; Omnathi ignored him. "So I had my men do a complete file check and confirmed that, as we told you, Mangus is indeed nothing more than a private electronics development center."
"And you'd like me therefore to leave and go home?" Daulo growled.
"Not at all. It occurred to me that perhaps you'd been mistaken about the timing of this gatecrash being your idea... and that Jasmine Alventin might still think this work party was the best way to get in."
Daulo's lungs seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. For a half dozen heartbeats the only sound was the dull buzz of the crowd around them, a buzz that seemed distant behind the roar of blood in Daulo's ears. "Understand, please," Omnathi said at last, "that at the moment I'm not accusing you of anything except unknowing cooperation with an enemy of Qasama. I'm even willing to believe that her prompting may have been so artfully buried that you honestly think all this was your idea. But from now on, that's over. You know now that she's an offworld spy... and you'll be expected to behave accordingly."
"All right," Daulo said. "Threat received and understood. So what exactly do you want from me now?"
Omnathi sent a leisurely glance around the crowd. "If the electronics information in Mangus is truly her goal, than a little thing like a planetary search isn't likely to slow her down much. She'll find a way in... and if she does, I want someone there who can identify her."
"Someone like me, I suppose?" Daulo asked.
"Exactly," Omnathi nodded. "Of course, spotting her is only the first step. You haven't had any training in methods of fugitive capture, and it's a little too late to teach you. Fortunately, I remember that you'd originally planned to have your brother along on this trip."
Daulo glanced at the line behind him. "Which is why Miron Akim is here, isn't it? To go in with me?"
"And to command you." Omnathi's face hadn't changed... but his voice was suddenly covered with ice. "From this moment on, Daulo Sammon, you're under the direct authority of the Shahni."
Daulo swallowed hard. So Jin had been right—the story he'd worked so hard to spin for Moffren Omnathi two nights ago had been that much wasted effort. The Shahni knew enough—or at least suspected enough—and Miron Akim was their countermove. Placing him under Shahni authority and Shahni surveillance... "And under their sword, too?" he asked.
Omnathi gave him a long look. "If you aid us in capturing the Aventinian spy, all other questions concerning your involvement in this will be forgotten. Otherwise... as you say, the sword will be waiting." He glanced over Daulo's shoulder. "You'd better get back into line. Miron Akim will give you any further information you may need."
"You realize this is probably a waste of time," Daulo pointed out, driven by something he didn't quite understand to make one final effort. "She probably won't even show up in Mangus."
"It's our time to waste," Omnathi said calmly. "Farewell, Daulo Sammon."
And with that he turned his back and disappeared into the crowd. Daulo looked after him for a long moment, wondering what to do now. If he simply turned the opposite way and left Azras right now...
But of course it wasn't just him under the Shahni's sword. Taking a deep breath, he tried to quiet the thunder of his heartbeat and headed back to the line.
Akim was waiting for him. "Ah—Daulo Sammon," he nodded. "You had a pleasant talk, I take it?"
"Oh, certainly," Daulo said irritably, stepping back into line beside him. The man behind them muttered something about the end of the line; Akim sent the man an icy look and he fell silent.
They reached the table about ten minutes later, and it was only then that Daulo realized that Mayor Capparis himself was overseeing the operation. "Ah!" the mayor beamed at Daulo as he and Akim stepped up to the table. "Daulo Matrolis and his brother Perto. I'm glad you heard about this opportunity."
"I also, Mayor Capparis," Daulo said politely, making the sign of respect. He'd never heard the name Matrolis before, but knew a cue when he heard it. So did the man at the computer; he was busy tapping keys before Daulo even had to repeat the name. "Thank you," he nodded when he'd finished. "You can find out over there whether or not you'll be accepted." He pointed to another table at the edge of the city center, near a half dozen parked buses.
"Thank you," Daulo said, making the sign of respect to both him and the mayor. Akim followed suit, and they headed off through the crowd.
"Daulo and Perto Matrolis, eh?" Akim murmured as they walked. "Do I assume that the files matching those names will show us highly suited for this work party?"
"This whole exercise would be a waste of time if it didn't, wouldn't it?" Daulo returned tartly.
"Agreed. Interesting, too, that you got Mayor Capparis himself to take a hand in this."
"Is it that hard to believe?"
Akim shrugged. "Perhaps not in this part of Qasama. For myself, I find it refreshing to see cooperation between city and village leaders. More often we see you at each other's throats."
"Um." Daulo looked around the buses, estimating their capacity. If they were to be filled completely, it looked like the work party would be something on the order of a hundred-fifty men. Odd that they'd elect to go through this routine every two weeks, he thought. Permanent workers would be a lot easier... though perhaps they don't have any long-term housing facilities out there. His eyes drifted to the area near the table... "Uh-oh."
"What is it?" Akim murmured.
"Over there—those men watching the proceedings?" Daulo said, turning his head partly away.
Akim glanced the indicated direction. "That's the group from Mangus," he identified them. "Drivers and a couple of higher officials."
"One of the officials is the director's son, Radig Nardin," Daulo growled. "He knows me."
Akim frowned. "How well?"
"Well enough to identify me," Daulo gritted.
"Is he likely to keep you out if he spots you?"
Daulo thought back to the attacks on him and Jin. "I think so, yes."
"Um." Akim considered. "I suppose I could identify myself to him... but that would probably start rumors floating around Mangus, and I'd just as soon avoid that. All right. Wait here; I'll go find one of our people and arrange for a distraction."
"Good." Daulo looked back over—
And felt a shock run straight through his core. In the center of the group from Mangus, talking earnestly to Nardin, was a smallish man. Or rather, a smallish figure wearing a man's clothing. Clothing he recognized...
It was Jin Moreau.
God above. The scene seemed to waver before Daulo's eyes. Right there, in the middle of Azras, with people all around. If Akim turned to look—if he identified her—they would both be dead.
But Akim was already gone.
Licking his lips, Daulo tried to still the shaking of his hands. Whatever Jin's purpose in doing something so insane, if she would just hurry it up and get out of here, she might still have a chance.
And as he watched, Jin did indeed turn away. Accompanied by Nardin and one of the other men, she walked to the end of the line of buses—
And got into a car parked there.
Daulo watched the vehicle pull away onto the street; watched it disappear behind the buildings surrounding the city center; and was still gazing after it when Akim returned. "All set," he reported. "Which one is Radig Nardin?"
"He's gone," Daulo said mechanically. "Drove off a couple of minutes ago."
"Oh? Well, that solves that problem."
Daulo took a deep breath. "I guess so."
Azras was twenty kilometers north of the section of forest where Jin had hidden Daulo's car—a healthy run even for a Cobra, and one that allowed plenty of time for worrying about what lay ahead. Just one more reason to be thankful that the predawn jog itself was totally uneventful.
Her timing, for a change, was good, and she arrived at the city just as the sky to the east was growing light. Already some of the shopkeepers in the nearest marketplaces were beginning to prepare their booths for business, and she drifted through the streets pretending to be on various errands, feeling safer than she had since landing on Qasama. Disguised in lower-class male clothing, her hair covered by a carefully trimmed wig and her features altered slightly with face-shaper gel, she ought to be totally unrecognizable, especially to people who thought they had a good picture to go by.
That was the theory, at any rate... and as the morning progressed, it appeared to work in practice. She bought herself some breakfast—a nice treat after a day of emergency ration bars—and spent an hour wandering around the marketplace, observing the citizens of Azras as they began their new day.
She'd forgotten to ask Daulo when the work party selection would get underway, but when she made her first pass by the city center she saw that timing wasn't going to be critical. The park-like open area was teeming with men, most of them standing in a ragged and snaky line running up to a set of tables at one end. She watched for a few minutes, timing the procedure and estimating how long it would take to process the entire line, and then wandered off. Without Daulo it would be foolish to try and get into the work party in any straightforward way, and there would be little opportunity to try anything less obvious until the workers were ready to move out.
An hour later she returned, to find perhaps thirty minutes' worth of line left. Easing through the milling crowd of those who'd had their turns at the tables and were awaiting the results, she made her way across the center toward where a line of buses were parked along the street. Transport to Mangus, presumably. Also the simplest way for her to penetrate the place, assuming she could find some private hiding place atop, beneath, or inside one of them.
And with most of her attention on the buses, she suddenly found herself walking directly toward Daulo.
Fortunately, he was nearing the front of the line and seemed to have most of his own attention on the tables ahead. Bless the angel who watches over fools, Jin thought to herself, shifting her path to give him a wide berth. Beyond him, near the buses, another official-looking table had been set up; beyond that, a group of men were loitering near the vehicles. Together they effectively canceled any chance for approaching the buses from this side. If she swung around to the other side, made her approach from there—
Her thoughts froze in place. One of the men in that group, eyes ranging alertly over the crowd...
Was Radig Nardin. Watching, presumably, for Daulo.
For a half dozen heartbeats she just stood there, oblivious to the men milling around her. With Moffren Omnathi and the Shahni occupying her worries lately, she'd almost forgotten Mangus's own attempts to discourage her and Daulo. But Mangus obviously hadn't... and having seen Daulo in Milika less than four days ago, there was little chance Nardin would fail to recognize him.
At least, assuming he was able to continue looking...
She chewed at her lip, thinking hard. Step close and stun him with her sonic, hoping the others would assume he was ill and rush him away for treatment? But she would have to be practically up against him to deliver that kind of jolt without the others feeling some fringe effects. Use her lasers to set one of the buses on fire? No good; with his rank Nardin wouldn't be one of those fighting the fire. Besides which, any large-scale trouble she caused would more than likely just hold up the loading of the workers without guaranteeing that Nardin wouldn't still be around to watch it.
Unless...
She gritted her teeth. It was a borderline crazy idea... but if it worked, it would solve both her problems at one crack.
Across the city center, near the rearmost of the line of buses, was a small shedlike building, possibly a public toilet. Jin crossed to it and, positioning herself facing the wall away from the would-be workers, she worked her fingernails under the edges of the face-shaper gel and began tearing it away. It wasn't a pleasant task—the stuff wasn't supposed to be removed except with a special solvent—and her cheeks and chin felt raw by the time she'd finished. The wig and men's clothes she would have to leave as is; but if Nardin had been paying attention during his trip to the Sammon mine it ought to be enough.
In Milika she'd noted evidence of gaps between social classes, and as she walked up to Nardin's group it became quickly apparent that city dwellers worked under a similar set of rules. A lower-class man, wearing the clothing Jin was, would never have tried to barge right up to someone of Nardin's status, a fact that registered clearly in the startled expressions of those around Nardin as she passed between them. She was within arm's reach of the other, in fact, before two of the entourage broke their astonishment enough to step into her path. "Where do you think you're going?" one of them snarled at her.
"To speak to Master Radig Nardin," she said calmly. "I have a message for him."
Nardin turned to glare at her. "Since when do—?"
The words froze on his lips as recognition flashed onto his face, followed immediately by a whole series of startled emotions. "You—what—?"
"I bring a message for your father, Master Nardin," she said into his confusion, touching fingertips to her forehead. "May I approach?"
Nardin glanced at his companions, seemed to pull himself together. "You may. Let her pass," he ordered.
She sensed the shock pass through the others as she slipped between them—apparently they hadn't yet realized that she was in fact a woman. Dimly, she wondered if transvestism was a crime on Qasama, then dismissed the thought. "I bring a message for your father from Kruin Sammon of Milika," she told him. "Will you take me to him?"
Nardin's face had become an unreadable mask. "I remember you," he said. "You were in the village Milika in the company of Kruin Sammon's eldest son. Who are you that he trusts you with messages?"
"My name is Asya Elghani, Master Nardin."
"And your relation to the Sammon family?"
"That of a business professional," Jin said, choosing her words carefully. She had no idea if the service she was about to describe even existed on Qasama; but with the widespread Qasaman use of drugs, there was no reason why it shouldn't. "I'm a messenger, sent as I said to your father, Obolo Nardin."
Nardin cocked an eyebrow, his gaze flicking pointedly over her clothing. "And what is so special about you that you should be trusted with messages of any importance? Aside from the fact that few people would think you so trustworthy?"
Jin ignored the snickers from the others. "What makes me special," she told Nardin, "is that I carry an oral message... the contents of which I don't know."
Nardin's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
Jin let a look of barely controlled impatience drift across her face. "The message was given me while I was in a special drug-induced trance," she said. "Only in your father's presence will I be able to return to that trance and deliver the message."
He gazed at her for a long moment, and she mentally crossed her fingers. "How important is this message?" he asked. "Is the timing of its delivery crucial?"
"I have no way of knowing either," Jin told him.
One of the other men stepped close to Nardin. "With your permission, Master Nardin," he murmured, "may I suggest that the timing of this supposed message is extremely suspicious?"
Nardin's eyes stayed on Jin. "Perhaps," he muttered back. "However, if this is a ruse, it does little but buy him some time." Slowly, he nodded, "Very well, then. I'll take you to my father."
Jin bowed. "I'm at your disposal, Master Nardin," she said.
He turned and headed to the rear of the line of buses. Jin followed, sensing a second man join them. A car was parked behind the buses; the other man slid into the driver's seat as Nardin and Jin took the back, and almost before she had her door closed the vehicle swung out into the street and headed east.
Carefully, Jin took a breath, exhaled it with equal care. Once again, it seemed, the pervasive Qasaman disdain of women had worked in her favor. Nardin might have swallowed the same "private message" routine coming from another man, but he almost certainly wouldn't have let a male stranger into his car without some extra protection along. But as a woman, Jin was automatically no threat to him.
Settling back against the seat cushions, she watched the cityscape go past her window and tried to figure out just how best to turn that blind spot to her advantage.
It was a fifty-kilometer drive from Azras to Mangus, along a road that was clearly newer and in better shape than the highway Jin had jogged alongside earlier that morning. Neither Nardin nor the driver spoke to her throughout the trip, which gave her little to do but study the scenery outside and—more surreptitiously—the two of them.
Neither examination was all that impressive. Nardin rode impassively, eyes flicking to her occasionally but generally staying on the road ahead. The driver, too, seemed stiff and distant, even toward Nardin. Their few exchanges were short and perfunctory, and she could sense none of the easy camaraderie that she'd seen between Daulo and his own driver. A strict master/servant relationship, she decided eventually, without a scrap of friendship or even mutual respect to it. In retrospect, given her first impression of Nardin four days previously, it wasn't all that unexpected.
The landscape outside wasn't quite as unfriendly, but it more than made up for that in sheer dullness, consisting mainly of flat tree-dotted plains. Further to the east, she knew, the dense forest that surrounded Milika began again, extending across Qasama to the villages at the opposite end of the Fertile Crescent. But here, at least, the forest had failed to take.
Which meant that there would be far fewer deadly predators between them and Azras, should she and Daulo need to get out of Mangus in a hurry. Fewer beasts, and considerably less cover. All things considered, she would have preferred to take her chances with the predators.
Mangus was visible long before they reached it... and the satellite photos hadn't nearly done the place justice. From what she could see of the high black wall surrounding it, the compound appeared to be shaped roughly like a diamond, in sharp contrast to the circular shape of Milika and the villages her father had visited on Qasama. The diamond's long ends seemed to point southeast and northwest—along the direction of the planet's magnetic field, she decided, remembering the similarly angled streets in Azras and the other cities. Qasama's migrating bololin herds took their direction from magnetic field lines, and builders either had to deflect the huge beasts around human habitations or else give them as free a passage as possible.
Impressive as the wall was, though, it paled in comparison to the shimmering dome-shaped canopy arching over it.
The Cobra Worlds' satellites hadn't been able to make much of the canopy. It was metal or metal coated; it wasn't solid, but a tightly woven double mesh of some sort whose varying interference patterns actually blocked the probes more effectively than a solid structure would have; and it was almost entirely opaque to every electromagnetic wavelength the satellites were able to work with.
Now, seeing it at ground level, Jin found she couldn't add much more to that list. It was anchored, she could see, by tall black pylons set into the ground outside the wall, which were in turn held in place by pairs of guy cables. How the canopy was being held up in the center was still a mystery, especially since its slight but visible rippling in the wind showed it to be more akin to fabric than to rigid metal. She was peering toward it, trying to see through the slight gap between its lower edge and the upper part of the wall, when a movement past the wall to her left caught her eye. Keying her optical enhancers to telescopic, she focused on it.
It was a bus. Identical to the ones that had been waiting to bring Daulo and his fellow workers to Mangus... except that this one was heading northward on a different road. As was the bus that followed it. And the next. And the next.
"They're going to Purma," Radig Nardin said into her thoughts. Startled, she looked at him, to find him gazing hard at her.
"I see, Master Nardin," she said, remembering to show proper respect. "May I ask who they are?"
His forehead creased a fraction more. "Last week's workers. On their way home."
Jin hesitated. Another question might be out of Qasaman character... but, then, she'd already established herself as an anomaly, anyway. "Do you hire from Purma often?"
"Every other week or so," he said. "It alternates with the hiring from Azras."
"I see." Carefully, Jin settled back into her seat, returning her eyes to the wall and dome ahead. So Mangus did have enough work to keep what amounted to a full-time force busy. So why didn't they simply go ahead and hire permanent workers, instead of going through all this trouble every week?
They had passed the line of pylons now, and as they neared the end of the road a gateway swung open up in the wall ahead. The only gateway on this side of the compound, she noticed, and built furthermore along the lines of a minor bank vault. Bololin-proof, for certain.
There were half a dozen buildings visible as the car drove through the gateway and into Mangus proper: an office-looking one directly ahead, a residence-type building beyond it, a guard station and garage flanking the road to right and left. But Jin saw them only peripherally. Her full attention was grabbed by the totally unexpected black wall rising off to her right.
It ran, as near as she could tell, between two of the diamond-shape's corners, cutting Mangus into two roughly equilateral triangles. A single gate was set into it at its center, a gate that looked to be just as strong as the one they'd just passed through. The only way into that section? she wondered, remembering that there'd been just one gateway into Mangus on the western part of the outer wall.
If so, that implied that Mangus's dark secrets came in two distinct shades. Now if only Radig's father Obolo Nardin kept his office beyond that internal wall...
But it wasn't going to be quite that easy. "The administrative center, Master Nardin?" the driver called over his shoulder.
"Yes," Radig said, looking at Jin. "You'll be given—" his eyes flicked down "—more suitable clothing before being brought before my father."
"Thank you, Master Nardin," Jin nodded gravely. Leaning slightly toward the window, she saw that another of the black pylons rose from the top of the interior wall, reaching upward to the center of the overhead canopy. The shield's primary support, clearly, with perhaps medium-strength ribs extending from it to the outside pylons to maintain the dome shape. Simple but effective. "I trust you'll provide me with transportation back to Azras once I've delivered my message," she added to Nardin.
He cocked an eyebrow. "That may depend," he said coolly, "on just what the message is."
They kept her waiting a long time, far longer than it took her to change into the clothes they'd given her. Long enough, in fact, that she was beginning to wonder if they were secretly monitoring her; and if so, when she as a supposedly busy professional ought to start looking annoyed at having her time wasted. But eventually someone came, and she was taken down a series of corridors to Obolo Nardin's throne room.
There was no other way to think of the place. Larger and far more elaborate than Kruin Sammon's study—larger even than the big-city mayor's office she'd seen tapes of—it was clearly designed to intimidate all who came in. A light breeze continually played across her face as she was led through and around the maze of hanging curtains to the center. A quick mental picture flashed across her mind, a picture of a spider waiting in the center of his web...
"What is your name?" the man on the cushion throne growled at her.
With an effort, Jin forced the spider image from her mind. I'm a Cobra, she reminded herself. Spiders aren't supposed to scare me. "I am Asya Elghani, Master," she said, making the sign of respect and studying his unnaturally bright eyes. Excessive use of Qasama's mind drugs? "Are you Obolo Nardin?"
The man's face didn't change... but an abrupt shiver ran up her back. "I am," he said. "What have you to say to me?"
Jin took a deep breath. This was it. Now if only he bought her performance.... Letting her face go slightly slack as if entering a hypnotic state, she dropped her voice an octave. "This is Kruin Sammon," she intoned. "I know what you are doing here in Mangus, Obolo Nardin, and I know what you are risking. With that knowledge I can destroy you... but I can also aid you. You need the resources I possess, as well as the strength of the western villages whose loyalty I command. I propose therefore an alliance between us, with the rewards shared equally. I await your reply."
Carefully, Jin brought her eyes back into focus. "Did you receive the entire message, Master Nardin?" she asked in a normal voice again.
Obolo Nardin's eyes were steady on her face. "Indeed I did," he grunted.
"I've already been paid to bring Kruin Sammon a reply, should you wish to send one," she continued, struggling to keep her face and voice impassive. Deep in the back of her mind, alarm bells were beginning to go off. Something here wasn't quite right... "However, in that event, I would need time to prepare myself—"
And without warning the scene ahead of her was abruptly rimmed by red.
A jolt of adrenaline surged through her as, reflexively, she held her breath. Suddenly it all clicked: the long delay back at the changing room, the careful scrutiny Obolo Nardin was giving her, the breeze blowing in her face... a breeze undoubtedly laden with sleeping drug. They'd considered what to do with her, decided that the message cover was nonsense, and were taking the appropriate action.
At her sides, Jin's hands curled into fists, nails digging into the skin of her palms to ward off the drug's effect. She might be able to stun Obolo with her sonic and get out of here... but the hanging curtains could hide a hundred other men, and even now she couldn't afford to give herself away. On the other hand, she couldn't hold her breath forever, either, and she'd probably already inhaled enough of the stuff to put her under before she got too far, anyway. And Obolo was still staring at her. Still waiting...
Waiting for her to collapse? All right, she decided suddenly. "I—Master Nardin—" she began drunkenly, using the last of her reserve of air; and rolling her eyes up, she collapsed to the floor.
She'd made sure to let her head roll so as to face away from the direction of the sleep breeze, but the stars of her impact had barely cleared away before the air now playing at the back of her head was shut off anyway. Footsteps came slowly around one of the curtains... stopped at her side... "That was quick," Radig Nardin's voice said. "Even for a woman."
"She's a soft offworlder," Obolo replied contemptuously. "If this is the best our enemies can do, we have little to fear from them."
An iron spike seemed to drive itself up through Jin's stomach. God above—they know who I am! But how—?
"Perhaps." A hand pulled at Jin's shoulder, rolling her over on her back. Keeping her eyes closed, she activated her optical enhancers, keying for zero magnification and the lowest light-amp setting. Radig peered at her face a moment, then straightened up again to face his father. "I'll have her body searched for tiny instruments before we confine her."
"As you choose, my son, but I doubt there's any need."
"Her clothing yielded nothing—"
"You're forgetting the crash of her spacecraft," the elder Nardin cut his son off. "She carries no devices because none survived with her."
"Perhaps. Have you decided yet what to do about Daulo Sammon?"
"Why, nothing, of course—his father has offered us a deal," Obolo said, heavily sarcastic. "Didn't you hear his message?"
Radig glanced down at Jin again. "You'll forgive me, my father, if I fail to see any humor in the situation. Or do you consider it impossible that the Sammon family has in fact made an alliance with this spy?"
"Hardly impossible," Obolo grunted. "Unlikely, though."
"Then let me get rid of him," Radig urged. "As long as he's here, he presents a danger to us."
"True. Unfortunately, removing him at this point may be even more dangerous. Tell me, have you identified the man who came into Mangus with him?"
Radig's lip twitched. "Not yet. But he's probably just someone else from that bololin dropping of Milika."
" 'Probably' isn't good enough," Obolo said coldly. "The Shahni know the woman is on Qasama, and they know she stayed in the Sammon household while in Milika. This man could well be a Shahni agent assigned to Daulo Sammon, either as protector or as jailer."
"But in either case, why accompany Daulo Sammon here?"
"She is here, is she not? Whatever she and our enemies know or suspect, it's not impossible she might have shared that knowledge with Kruin Sammon."
"But then allowing an agent of the Shahni—"
"Radig Nardin." Obolo's voice was like the crack of a whip. "Control your fears and think. As far as the Shahni are concerned, Mangus is an electronics firm—nothing more. If we behave openly, they'll have no reason to doubt that. If, on the other hand, we make an inflated presentation of plucking Daulo Sammon from among the workers and throwing him outside our wall, will this agent's curiosity not be aroused?"
Radig took a deep breath. "It's still dangerous, my father."
"Of course it is. There's no profit without danger, my son. If your nerve threatens to foil you again, concentrate on that."
"Yes, my father." Radig glowered down at Jin. "And for what potential gain do we risk keeping this one alive?"
Obolo snorted. "You consider keeping a woman alive to be a risk?"
"She's not a normal woman, my father—she's an agent of the Cobra Worlds. That makes her dangerous."
Abruptly, Jin noticed that the red border was still around her vision... that it was, in fact, getting thicker... as the view itself seemed to be fading away...
No! she told herself furiously, trying to fight the sleep flowing over her mind. Come on, Jin—hang on. But it was too hard to muster the necessary emotion. And it was so comfortable here on the floor...
Her last memory was that of rough hands digging under her armpits and legs, lifting her up and floating her away...