Ah, hell.
“If you would grant an escort, someone who is wise in the streets,” Aelliana was saying. “Daav said that two draw the eye in Low Port, but I think that the risk—”
“You are not going to Low Port,” Clarence interrupted. “I forbid it and I have the ability to enforce my will in this.” He held up a hand, as her lips parted.
“Allow me a moment,” he said. “If you are likewise lost or taken, to whom does the Ring fall?”
“To Er Thom,” she said promptly.
“Correct. As much as I honor him, I do not want Er Thom yos'Galan to wear Korval's Ring. He measures with a far heavier hand than his brother, and I fear the consequences—for Korval, for the Juntavas, and for Low Port itself—if he is required to Balance the loss of three of the Line Direct.”
She sat quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands folded on her lap. He gave her time, and at last she looked up.
“I withdraw my original boon,” she said. “But I ask another.”
Clarence inclined his head. “I hear.”
She stared into his face as if, Clarence thought, she was trying to read his mind. Almost, he felt as if she could.
“I ask that you yourself and your most trusted crew fetch Daav home.”
That was a favor more to his liking, and in fact he had already decided on it.
“You said you know where he is. Tell me and I'll go in now and pull him out.”
Aelliana laughed. “I know where he is in the sense that I can go there. Street designations, shop names— those, I cannot tell you.”
He thought about that. “Map?” he asked, reaching to turn the screen around.
She rose and came to the desk.
“It's worth a try,” she said in Terran.
* * *
The guard was Terran, and she knew his name—at least, a Terranized form of what might be his name. When he was aware, which he was only briefly from time to time, she had a tendency to chatter.
She was chattering now.
“Word's come down that the boss is on the way, David. You'll be glad of that, won't you? Get you in the 'doc, patch that leg up, give you a touch of detox. This time tomorrow, you'll be feeling as spry and as sassy as you were when you broke Jady's neck for him. Providing you're polite. The boss likes everything nice. You take some advice and be nice.”
He was hazy on which of the four who had beset him had been the late and apparently unlamented Jady. He thought he had accounted for two, but the quarters had been close and the lighting confused. Nor had whoever struck him across the back of the head employed any unnecessary gentleness.
Not to mention whatever was in the hypo his guard—he thought her name was Kitten—used on him whenever he had been awake too long.
“Boss said to hold you awake,” Kitten confided. She patted his broken leg, firmly.
He ground his teeth and failed to scream.
“Tough guy,” she said, apparently approving. “Bounty's been out on you for a long time—dead or alive. Lucky thing the high price was for alive, or Jady'd just drilled you from the roof 'cross the way and not had us all down to dance.”
She leaned over, making sure of his bonds. Satisfied, she patted him again, more intimately, laughing when he glared.
“You liked it good enough when you was under,” she said. “All you got to do now is take it easy. Boss'll be here inside the hour. In the meantime, if you want anything, just whistle.”
She left him alone in the tiny alcove that was his prison. In happier times, he thought it had been a closet. It was big enough for the cot to which he was bound, his broken leg strapped to a board in rough first aid. A small mercy, that, and one for which he was grateful.
Daav closed his eyes. “The Boss” argued for Clarence, though what he could possibly hope to gain by maintaining Daav alive—he took a painful breath.
If Daav was a prisoner, he was a guarantee of Aelliana's compliance. And if Clarence had decided to expand his operations, as this harvesting of pilots seemed to indicate, then he would very much need Korval compliant.
If—
Fire ran his nervous system, and he spasmed against his bonds, gasping—then collapsed, boneless, panting, and soaked in sweat.
Kitten appeared briefly in the doorway.
“Yeah,” she said. “That'll be the withdrawal from the drug. You can expect more of the same until you get another jolt of the good stuff, or that detox like the boss might have for you.”
She vanished, then, closing the door behind her.
Fire arced through him . . .
