“We will return,” Skymander said, “and you can settle the rest of your contract then.”
The rest? Oh. And then I remembered the files and serum we’d been supposed to pass over to him.
“Steady, Cutter,” Mack said.
The transmission cut out as the big ship passed back through the warp point, heading for Magnus 19, and whatever plague-master had been chosen to complete Melari’s selection. My stomach wound itself into knots, as I thought about it.
“Don’t,” Mack said. “You can’t save them all.”
I just wished I could save this one.
“They have to want to be saved,” Tens replied, and I had to admit he had a point.
Melari not only didn’t seem concerned by her fate, but she appeared to be looking forward to it. I figured that that took a special kind of special, and Tens snickered.
“You should know,” he said, and I decided to ignore him—which came a lot more easily than expected, as a call came through from the other side of the warp point.
“Skymander,” Mack said, allowing it to connect—and the main viewing screen lit up.
Skymander was, again, seated beside Treivani. Her hands were wound around one of his, and she leant against his side, gazing adoringly at his face. If ever a scene was staged, I thought, it had to be this one. Skymander looked out at us, surveying the control room. When he spoke, he was looking directly at Mack.
“I apologize for the high-handedness of our arrival,” he said. “I understand that was not your custom, but I have guests on board that needed to be impressed. There will be compensation in your contract for that. It was necessary.”
“Understood,” Mack said, but his jaw was tight, and I wondered what was going on.
“Now that I have secured our communications line, would you care to tell my why there was a need to deliver the Lady Melari early?”
“As I said, Odyssey do not agree with your selection process; they tried to teleport her off the ship.”
“Several times,” Tens added, “so I had to have port shields in place.”
“Ah,” and the look on Skymander’s face said that Tens had just explained something that had had him confounded. It was all too quickly gone, however, and he continued, “Be that as it may, your crew was impressive. It has been a very long time since my people have been challenged. I may seek your assistance in training, at a later date.”
“Please do,” Mack told him, before either Tens or I had a chance to respond.
“Tell me, why was it important for you to be able to drop your port shields?”
“Odyssey Agent Delight had to port out. We received a call from Clan Corovan, during which we refuted their claims for compensation for failing to fulfil the Corovan contract. As we were informing the clan leader of the presence of the arach, he suffered an attack and appealed for help.”
“He did?” Treivani sat forward on the couch, not letting go of her husband’s hand.
As if remembering he was beside her, she glanced up at him, and I saw when he gave her a brief nod, and the briefest of smiles. The pure delight on her face lightened his expression, but I didn’t have time to wonder how he could love her so much, and still have put her through Blaedergil’s treatment. Treivani was in full High-Clan mode, and it was clear we were speaking with a Hazerna, and not just Skymander’s bride.
“The Corovani are in trouble?” she asked, rising to her feet and stepping towards the camera.
“Yes.” Mack’s voice was wary, but I could feel his curiosity through the implant.
Treivani smiled at his reply, but it was a smile as full of mischief and secrets, as any Delight might have delivered. I wondered what she was up to. Whatever it was, though, she wasn’t telling.
“Can I ask you to stand-by in readiness?”
“How long?”
“No more than a standard hour.”
“We will stand by.”
“Thank you,” and Treivani stepped back, as though to resume her seat beside her husband.
Instead of waiting, he rose to meet her.
“We will call inside the hour,” he told Mack. “Hazerna and Skymander must consult.”
The screen went to black as his lordship cut the call, leaving me to ponder the shift in terms of address.
“They’re delineating roles,” Mack said. “All the High Clans do it.”
I wanted to ask him how he knew these things, but found a wall of silence. Mack, for once had left my head, and I wondered why. What was it about his past that he did not want me to know?
“If I wanted you to know it, Cutter, I’d have let you see,” came into the implant in a voice as tightly restricted as I’d ever heard him use.
I doubted even Tens was privy to that comment.
“Tens knows better than to pry.”
Pfft. Whatever.
I went over the control boards in front of me, checking to see if Case needed me to lay in a course, and realizing Mack hadn’t given us a destination. Great! Now, we were just hanging about in space, dangling like some kind of live bait right next to a jump point. Because that couldn’t look at all suspicious, could it.
“Shut it, Cutter.”
Yeah, thanks, Mack.
“She has a point.”
And, thank you, Tens.
The ping of an incoming call interrupted before Mack could respond to any of us, and he glanced across at Tens.
“Delight.”
“Put her on screen.”
Well, this was going to be interesting. I hoped she wasn’t going to want an immediate intervention, because I figured she’d be shit out of luck until Skymander called, Odyssey client, or not. It never rained but it poured.
The second she was live, we could see she was in strife. It wasn’t hard; the fact she was backed into the corner of what had been a well-appointed office was a dead give-away. She must have spliced us into the security footage of the building, because we were
