He sighed tiredly. He'd come a long way from the simple minor historian he'd been the last time he was here. But he'd lost everything when he was outlawed, and had no choice but to become the warrior his Clan had always wanted. Become what he despised most, or die. He'd achieved a great deal, righted wrongs and meted out justice high and low, but at the end of the day there was just so much blood on his hands… Most of it from people who deserved to die, but not all. For every clear villain who'd died at his hand, there'd been a hundred men who were just soldiers following orders, doing what they thought was right. Protecting a corrupt Empire because all the other alternatives seemed worse. Brave fighters who'd died because they were unfortunate enough to stand between Owen Deathstalker and his destiny. So many faceless dead. He dreamed of them sometimes.
There was a child he'd crippled and killed in the grimy back streets of Mistport. It had been an accident. And she had been trying to kill him at the time. But none of that mattered. He'd struck out blindly, in the rage of battle, and the result was a young girl lying in the blood-spattered snow. He'd never forgiven himself for that, and never would. If there was any purpose to the warrior he'd become, it was to put an end to a system that produced children like that. And perhaps to protect people like that from people like him.
That was what it meant to be a Deathstalker.
He glanced across at Hazel, striding determinedly beside him. Her long, ratty red hair fell down around a sharp and pointed face. Not conventionally pretty perhaps, but then Hazel d'Ark didn't believe in being conventional in anything if she could help it. Owen thought she was beautiful, but then, he was biased. He loved her, quietly, secretly. She wasn't at all the kind of woman he'd thought he'd fall in love with, and certainly not the kind of woman he was supposed to marry, to continue the centuries-old Deathstalker line, but he loved her nonetheless. Despite all the reasons, or maybe even because of them. Hazel was bright and funny, honest when it suited her, and the bravest woman he'd ever known. Not to mention hell on wheels with any weapon you could name. He admired her immensely, but was careful to keep it to himself. She'd only take advantage. She was confident when he was not, cautious when he forgot to be, and she never forgot what they were fighting for. And he knew that if he ever mentioned the word love, she'd leave him flat. Hazel had made it clear, on more than one occasion, that she didn't believe in things like love. They tied you down, made you vulnerable, and led to subjects like commitment and trust and openness, none of which had any place in Hazel's life. So he accepted what warmth and friendship she offered on her own terms, and hoped. They were together, and if that was all he could have, it was more than he'd ever had before.
'Why are we walking?' said Hazel suddenly. 'I made sure they loaded gravity sleds on board before we left.'
'Sleds would show up on the Standing's scanners,' Owen said patiently. 'We, on the other hand, have proved invisible to most scanners ever since we passed through the Maze. Just another useful side effect that no one understands. So we walk, and hopefully slip through Valentine's defenses unnoticed.'
'Hate walking,' said Hazel, scowling. 'Makes my back ache. If God had meant us to walk, he wouldn't have given us antigrav.'
'Admire the scenery,' suggested Owen.
'Ha bloody ha. Last time I walked through anything like this, all the field toilets had failed at once.'
'Walking is supposed to be very good for you.'
'So is eating sensibly and abstinence, and I hate them too. I'm warning you right now, Deathstalker: I'd better get to kill a hell of a lot of people at your Standing, or there's going to be trouble.'
'Oh, I think I can guarantee that,' said Owen. 'The one thing you can be sure of is that we have absolutely no friends at all at the Deathstalker Standing.'
The Deathstalker Standing was a great stone castle set on top of a hill, its pale gray stone marked here and there by damage and burns from energy weapons from when the Empire had laid seige to the castle to capture its then Lord, David Deathstalker. Now it suffered the occupation of Lord Valentine Wolfe and his cronies. The Wolfe had come to Virimonde for his own purposes, and the others had followed because they had no choice. He was their only hope of unseating the rebellion and putting them back in power again. Not for them the lesser glories of trade and influence. They wanted, needed, to be lords and masters.
They were also there because he held their lives in the palm of his hand, though they tried not to think about that unless they were forced to. But nothing else could have persuaded such aristocratic movers and shakers to ally themselves so closely with the notorious Valentine Wolfe. He was mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but he had something, a weapon of such potential power that they couldn't risk losing it. So they allied themselves with the despised Wolfe and bet their lives they could outmaneuver him at some future point. Which was a sign of how desperate they were.
Valentine sat at his ease in the Lord's chair in the great dining hall of what had been the Deathstalker's Standing, and watched tolerantly as his cronies wrecked the place. They were partly drunk, from too many bottles of wine with a good dinner, and now they were laughing as they threw food around and overturned the furniture. The Lord Silvestri was throwing his knives at the Family portraits hanging on the walls, showing Deathstalkers down the ages. He was aiming for the eyes, and hitting them more often than not. The Lord Romanov had pulled down a precious tapestry and was wearing it like a shawl as he drank brandy straight from the bottle. The Lord Kartakis was stamping back and forth on top of the table, fondly believing he was dancing to the ribald song he was singing defiantly off key. Valentine smiled on them as errant children and allowed them their fun. There wasn't much for them to do, and they had been cooped up in the castle for a long time. And Valentine did so like to see the Deathstalker's precious things being violated, as he would someday destroy the man himself.
Valentine Wolfe sat in a chair far too large for him, one long leg slung over an arm of the chair, his other foot up on the table. Dressed as always all in black, his pale white face surrounded by long dark ringlets of oiled and scented hair, his mouth a scarlet slash, and his eyes heavy with mascara, he looked the very picture of the utter villain he strove to be. And the drugs, the glorious drugs, ran riot in his system as they always had. It had been truly said of Valentine that he'd never met a chemical he didn't like, and if you could smoke it, swallow it, inject it, or stick it where the sun doesn't shine, Valentine was right there at the front of the line, ready to give it a try. He saw his chemically enhanced mind as an ongoing work of art, and was constantly striving to perfect it. The ultimate high was still out there somewhere, and Valentine pursued it tirelessly.
To that end he'd taken the rare and immediately addictive esper drug, even though he knew it killed a small but significant percentage of those who took it. Valentine had survived, of course. Probably because you couldn't affect his radically transmuted body chemistry with anything less than fuming nitric acid. The drug had given him minor telepathic powers, along with complete control of his autonomic nervous system, and his thoughts moved along strange and unfamiliar tracks. He threw one drug on top of another, maintaining a complex balance through sheer effort of will. Valentine thought of himself as the first in a new breed of Humanity, like the Hadenmen—an alchemical step forward, or perhaps sideways, on the evolutionary ladder.
He watched Carlos Silvestri throw his knives again and again, tearing the eyes out of great men just because he could, to prove to everyone that he wasn't afraid of the mighty Owen Deathstalker. Silvestri was a tall, thin man, all long limbs and sudden angles. He dressed in shades of red, the traditional color of his Clan. It didn't suit him. His face was round and puffy, as though it hadn't yet decided what it wanted to be when it grew up, though the man had to be at least forty. He shaved his head bald and plucked his other hairs. He was good with a knife and better with a sword. He would have made a great swordsman and duelist if only he'd had the courage of his convictions. But the Silvestri had always been a very cautious man who preferred to watch from the sidelines and work through underlings, and never, ever, get his hands dirty himself. He'd never forgiven Finlay Campbell for the assassination of his good friend William St. John, and had spent much time and money on plans to have the Campbell killed, but none of them had succeeded. Now with Finlay a man of power and substance once again, and the Silvestri's powers drastically reduced by Random's deal and the emergence of Blue Block, Carlos Silvestri had been forced to turn to Valentine as his only possible savior. And if that had turned out very differently from what he'd intended, it just put a little more emphasis into the throw of his knives.
Valentine smiled and turned his attention to Pieter Romanov, that fat and ruddy man wrapped in a torn masterpiece. Pieter believed a man should be recognized by the breadth and achievement of his appetites, and indulged each sense till they groaned under the weight of his will. There was in him a hunger that would not be satisfied, no matter how he tried. His people obeyed his every whim, or he had them killed and replaced with those who would. Pieter was an aristocrat's aristocrat, and he had taken Random's deal hard. Not for him the lesser power and rewards of mere business. So he went looking for an ally, a great man of power and influence, who would put things back the way they once were, the way they should be. A man of vision and destiny. Unfortunately,
