Mirror Dance

Then lost it again. They descended in stutters. “What’s wrong with it, damn it!” Rowan cried.

He looked upward. Nothing but icy fog—they dropped below cloud level. Then above them, a dark shape loomed. Big lift van, heavy… .

“It’s not a systems failure. We’re being intermittently field-drained,” he said dreamily. “We’re being forced down.”

Rowan gulped, concentrated, trying to keep the flyer level in the brief bursts of control. “My God, is it them again?”

“No. I don’t know … maybe they had some back-up.” With adrenalin and determination, he forced his wits to function through the sedative-haze. “Make a noise!” he said. “Make a splash!”

“What?”

She didn’t understand. She didn’t catch it. She should have— somebody should have—”Crash this sucker!” She didn’t obey.

“Are you crazy?” They lurched to ground right-side-up and intact in a barren valley, all snow and crackling scrub.

“Somebody wants to make a snatch. We’ve got to leave a mark, or we’ll just disappear off the map without a trace. No comm link,” he nodded toward the dead panel. “We have to make footprints, set fire to something, something!” He fought his seat straps for escape.

Too late. Four or five big men surrounded them in the gloom, stunners at ready. One reached up and unlatched his door, and dragged him out. “Be careful, don’t hurt him!” Rowan cried fearfully, and scrambled after. “He’s my patient!”

“We won’t, ma’am,” one of the big parka-clad men nodded politely, “but you mustn’t struggle.” Rowan stood still.

He stared around wildly. If he made a sprint for their van, could he—? His few steps forward were interrupted when one of the goons grabbed him by his shirt and hoisted him into the air. Pain shot through his scarred torso as the man twisted his hands behind his back. Something coldly metallic clicked around his wrists. They were not the same men who’d broken into the Durona Clinic, no resemblance in features, uniforms, or equipment.

Another big man crunched through the snow. He pushed back his hood, and shone a hand light upon the captives. He appeared about forty-standard, with a craggy face, olive brown skin, and dark hair stripped back in a simple knot. His eyes were bright and very alert. His black brows bent in puzzlement, as he stared at his prey.

“Open his shirt,” he told one of the guards.

The guard did so; the craggy man shone the hand-light on the spray of scars. His lips drew back in a white grin. Suddenly, he threw back his head and laughed out loud. The echoes of his voice lost themselves in the empty winter twilight. “Ry, you fool! I wonder how long it will take you to figure it out?”

“Baron Bharaputra,” Rowan said in a thin voice. She lifted her chin in a quick defiant jerk of greeting.

“Dr. Durona,” said Vasa Luigi in return, polite and amused. “Your patient, is he? Then you won’t refuse my invitation to join us. Please be our guest. You’ll make it quite the little family reunion.”

“What do you want from him? He has no memory.”

“The question is not what I want from him. The question is … what someone else may want from him. And what I may want from them. Ha! Even better!” He motioned to his men, and turned away. They chivvied their captives into the closed lift van.

One of the men split off to pilot the blue lightflyer. “Where should I leave this, sir?”

“Take it back to the city and park it on a side street. Anywhere. See you home.”

“Yes, sir.”

The van doors closed. The van lifted.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mark groaned. Bright prickles of pain shot through a dark nausea.

“You gonna give him a dose of synergine?” said a voice, surprised. “I didn’t get the idea the Baron wanted this one handled gently.”

“You want to clean up the flyer if he vomits his breakfast?” rumbled another voice.

“Ah.”

“The Baron will do his own handling. He just specified he wanted him alive. Which he is.”

A hypospray hissed.

“Poor sod,” said the first voice reflectively.

Thanks to the synergine, Mark began to recover from the stunner hit. He didn’t know how much time and space lay between him and the Durona Clinic; they’d changed vehicles at least three times after he’d regained consciousness, once to something bigger and faster than an aircar. They stopped at some location, and he and the troopers all went through a decontamination chamber. The anonymously-dressed troopers went their way, and he was given over to two other guards, big flat-faced men in black trousers and red tunics.

House Ryoval’s colors. Oh.

They laid him facedown, hands and feet bound, in the back of a lightflyer. The gray clouds, darkening toward evening, gave no clue as to the direction they were heading.

Miles is alive. The relief of that fact was so intense, he smiled in elation even with his face squashed into the sticky plastic seat. What a joyful sight the skinny little bugger had been! Upright and breathing. He’d almost wept. What he’d done, was undone. He could really be Lord Mark, now. All my sins are taken from me.

Almost. He prayed that Durona doctor had spoken straight about Miles still recovering. Miles’s eyes had been frighteningly bewildered. And he hadn’t recognized Quinn, which must have nearly slain her. You’ll get better. We’ll get you home, and you’ll get better. He’d haul Miles home and everything would be all right again, better than all right. It would be wonderful.

As soon as that idiot Ryoval had his delusions straightened around. Mark was ready to gut the man outright for screwing up his family reunion. Imp Sec will handle him.

They entered an underground parking garage without his getting a glimpse of the exterior of their destination. The two guards hauled him roughly to his feet, and released his legs, which twitched and tingled. They passed through an electronic security chamber, after which his clothing was taken from him. They marched him through the … facility. It wasn’t a prison. It wasn’t one of House Ryoval’s famous bordellos. The air bore a faint, unsettling medical tang. The place was far too utilitarian to be where surgical body-sculpture was done on patrons. It was too secret and secure to be where slaves were done to order, where humans were made into things not humanly possible. It wasn’t very large. There were no windows. Underground? Where the hell am I?

He would not panic. He entertained himself with a brief vision of what Ryoval might do to his own troopers, once he discovered they’d snatched the wrong twin. If Ryoval did not realize the mistake at the very first sight of him, he toyed with the idea of concealing his identity for a while. Let Miles and the Dendarii get a bigger head-start. They had not been taken; they were free. 7 found him! They must come for him. And if not them, ImpSec. ImpSec could not be more than a week behind him, and closing fast. I’ve won, godammit, I’ve won!

His head was still spinning with a bizarre mixture of elation and terror when the guards delivered him to Ryoval’s presence. It was a luxurious office, or study; the Baron evidently kept private quarters here, for he glimpsed a living room beyond an archway. Mark had no trouble recognizing Ryoval. He’d seen him in the vid recording from the Ariel’s first mission here. The conversation where he’d threatened to have Admiral Naismith’s severed head encased in plastic for a wall-hanging. In another man, this might be dismissed as hyperbole, but Mark had the uneasy feeling Ryoval had meant it literally. Ryoval was leaning half- seated on his comconsole desk. He had shining dark hair arranged in elaborate bands, a high-bridged nose, and smooth skin. Strong and youthful, for a centenarian.