Price of Ransom Read online

  Fred watched with his usual keen interest in anything physical. “Can’t bend my knees like that,” he said; he always said it. His voice was pitched so low it sounded as much like a growl as words, but he was easy enough to understand once you got used to it, Lily reflected as she began to do kata, adapted to her current state. Stanford, of course, spoke in a deep but clear voice. “Nice kicks.” Stanford, of course, usually offered criticism of her form. To be fair, some of it was useful.

  “Oops.” Fred’s eye ridges lifted, a sign she now recognized as his receipt of an order from some unseen communication hidden on his person. “Siddown. Boss is coming.”

  Lily sat. Fred tied up her ankles. The door opened and Windsor slouched in. He looked tired and unkempt. Lily suspected that he was the one who did not wash often enough. In the corridor, Stanford sat at ease on his haunches. One long arm balanced his body weight over the floor, the other held one of the tiny, thin ubiquitous slates that were the League’s more advanced equivalent of the Reft’s com-screens.

  “Siddown,” said Windsor, rubbing a hand over his eyes as if the light hurt them. He blinked several times, making a sour face, and looked at her, squinting. “Can you turn that damned lighting down?”

  “Maybe you should drink less,” suggested Lily, having seen the same signs in her Ridani crewmen.

  “I didn’t ask your opinion. We got a little problem, Heredes.”

  “Ransome.”

  “Ransome. Heredes. What the hell do I care? We still got the problem.”

  “My heart goes out to you.”

  “She always this smart?” Windsor asked.

  “Nope,” said Fred.

  “Yes,” said Stanford. “Although I must agree with the esteemed captain that your consumption of alcohol and other illegal and mind-altering substances is currently out of proportion to your body’s ability to efficiently metabolize—”

  “Stanford, I didn’t ask your opinion either.”

  Fred nodded sagely at Lily. “Boss ain’t feeling good.”

  “Fred. Shut up. Now listen, ‘Captain.’” He said it with the barest sneer. “We’re coming in to Akan Center. They had some kind of disaster on the wheel a couple days back, and they just requisitioned the owner of this tub for the relief effort. So we’re stuck here until she’s done and freed up by whatever officious high-level Concord official decided to interfere with legal commercial traffic like a damned—” He halted in a fit of coughing and reached into his shirt pocket. Pulling out a small flask, he took a sip of its contents. “Anyway. We’re stuck here until we can get off. It might be two or three days. I’m not sure what happened, some kind of explosion, or a breach. But one of the boys is going to be on you all of the time, armed. Both when they’re both awake, and they don’t need much sleep. So do me a favor—”

  “—and just be nice,” said Lily sweetly.

  The contents of the flask had obviously fortified him because he ignored the comment. “Save it for Concord. I don’t know what they want you for. You can argue it out with them.” He turned to go.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  He turned back. “You don’t believe what?”

  “That you don’t know what they want me for. Even if you don’t know, say, specific charges, you must know generally.”

  He shrugged, but his lips quirked, up and down, and she wondered if some memory was making him uncomfortable.

  Strike for the weak spots, Heredes had taught her. “I still can’t believe they even know that I exist,” she continued. “I’ve never been in League space before. They can’t have any record of me here, and if I had done anything criminal in the Reft—which I hadn’t—how could it apply here to a bounty? I’d have a hearing first. Except it just isn’t possible. No one in League space”—she stopped abruptly, seeing some emotion flicker and fade in his face—“Why did you ask me about Gwyn? How do you know him? Why did you help Hawk get off Diomede?”

  He turned and left the room. The door sighed shut with finality behind him.

  And the door, closing, somehow triggered her memory again: Nevermore Station. She had met other people besides Heredes and Wingtuck and Hawk, from League space. She had met the people Hawk had crossed to Reft space with.

  “What were their names?” she whispered to herself, into her fist. The tall, fair-skinned man who kept flushing and the dark woman with the strange dress—a swathe of gorgeous fabric, wrapping her from chest to feet—and the small red circle painted on her forehead. “An … An …”

  “Bless you,” said Fred.

  Lily laughed. “That’s it. Anjahar and Maria. The only other people who could possibly know who I am. Besides La Belle Dame and Yi.”

  “What would La Belle Dame and Yi want with you?” Fred asked, surprised.

  “Nothing, I expect. What do you know about them?”

  “Nothing, ’cept they want nothing to do with me, neither, which is the best way to have it with pirates. No interest, either side. You think us bounty boys got a bad repu—reputable …”

  “Reputation?”

  “That’s it. Repu—tation.”

  “Do you know why Concord wants me?”

  Fred grinned. “I’m not that stupid.”

  Lily grinned back. “Just thought I’d ask. May I use the washroom now?”

  By the time she finished, Stanford had replaced Fred on duty.

  “We will be berthing in an hour,” he informed her, and immediately returned to his examination of his slate. “Fascinating,” he mumbled. “The capillary shafts burst, causing the Wazhezhe converter to overload at five parts per—”

  “Excuse me—” said Lily.

  “I’m just surveying the information I received off of Akan transmission concerning the disaster. Would you be interested in the electrical and mechanical specifications?” He sounded doubtful.

  Doubtful enough that she decided to be quite interested in them, and she had the pleasure of his peevish explanations for the rest of the hour.

  They berthed, and Fred arrived to join the escort. Windsor met them at the link bubble. An embarrassed-looking woman hurried away past them, back into the ship, at their approach.

  After the civilized harmony of Diomede Center, Akan was chaos. As they emerged from the berth tunnel the reek of burning chemicals hit them. Fred and Stanford staggered under the stench. Stanford even let go of Lily’s arm, but because she was still manacled, tight at her wrists and loosely at her ankles, she did not attempt to flee.

  It would have been impossible in any case. To lose herself in the chaos, perhaps, but not to run: they had to press back against the closed berth hatch as two large motorized carts drove past at high speed, carrying—

  Lily thought they might be bodies, covered by tarpaulins.

  People swarmed the concourse, loading and unloading at berths, a hive of activity frantic but, beneath it, ordered. A man, face streaked with sweat and grease, rushed up to them.

  “You the owner of this sloop?” he asked Windsor, then took in Stanford and Fred, and Lily’s bound wrists. “Oh,” he said, dismissing them with reflexive disgust. “You’re the bounty hunter.” He turned away and, tapping into the berth com, began a fast-paced discussion with the captain about a food shipment from Zeya Depot that she was being requisitioned to go pick up.

  “Come on,” said Windsor. “Let’s find a hostel and put up for now. Damn. I didn’t need this.”

  They wended their way through carts and larger flat vans and people so engrossed in their salvage that they took no notice of this strange party at all. Two spin locks brought them into the commercial concourse. Unlike Diomede, whose decorations had been almost colorless but busy with human activity, Akan’s walls and ceilings had no depiction of people at all. A thick grass hatched door, the lintels and window frames, and a wild motif of diamonds and woven stripes in red and black and gold and ivory patterned the walls like a reflection of the chaos roiling around them. Windsor quickly identified a hostel, and he led them ins
ide.

  Refugees crowded the lobby. A man sat weeping in a chair, clutching a small child to his chest. Others sat silent, stunned or still in shock, on the rest of the chairs and on the grass mats that covered the floor. A screen above showed a man talking, pointing to a chart, but the sound was turned down and all Lily could hear, even above the quiet grief that permeated the room, was the incomprehensible murmur of his words. His hair was as tightly braided as Paisley’s, but his face, at least, bore no tattoos.

  Windsor got to the desk and waited. A woman appeared, looking harried. Her hands were wet. Wiping them on her dirty apron, she blinked and examined the party without much interest.

  “What do you need?” she asked, not hostile, just preoccupied.

  “A room,” said Windsor. “We got bumped off the sloop we were on when they requisitioned it for relief.”

  She shrugged. “Sorry. All my beds are taken. In case you didn’t know, a residential concourse got breached. Every hostel here is full with those that got out.” Her gaze moved past them to encompass the people in her lobby. “I’ve got ’em sleeping in chairs. The other residential concourses are doubled or tripled up with the survivors. Worst disaster—” She paused to wipe at one eye. “Sorry.”

  Windsor sighed. “Can you suggest an alternative?”

  She began to shake her head, and lifted a finger to tap her lips instead. “If you give time at Hospital they’ll give you a mat to sleep on in the hall. They’re evacuating the worst injured to Turfan Link as fast as they can, but with all the machinery cobbled out to the repair effort, they need folks just to scrub the floors, if nothing else.”

  “Thanks,” said Windsor. His tone was so gentle that he seemed to Lily almost a different person. “We’ll try that. May as well help out while we’re here.”

  This time the woman met his eye with the first real interest she’d shown. “Bless you,” she said, and turned and went back to whatever she’d been doing.

  “When did it happen? The explosion?” Lily asked as they left the hostel.

  Stanford, checked his slate. “Local or Standard time? The initial malfunction occurred two Standard days ago, leading within six Standard hours to the main explosion. I can convert that to Local if you wish.”

  Windsor interrupted Lily’s reply brusquely. “How do we get to Hospital, Stan?”

  “We really going there?” Fred asked.

  “Why not? It won’t hurt us to help them out. And anyway, our best chance to get out of here is probably to get a space on one of the ships taking casualties to Turfan Link. They’ll need hands to watch the wounded, if nothing else.”

  “Really, Korrigan,” replied Stanford, “do you actually expect Frederick and myself to endure such close company with humans in their worst state of—”

  “Don’t smell any worse sick than they do well,” Fred pointed out. “You just don’t want to scrub floors.” He grinned.

  Stanford did not deign to reply. Lily supposed the expression on his face, muscled rather differently than a human face, to be disgust. She smiled.

  But whatever hopeful prognosis for travel Windsor hoped to find at Hospital, he was doomed to disappointment. The activity in the concourses they passed through could not and did not prepare them for the sheer numbers of casualties that had overwhelmed Akan Hospital’s space and resources. Injured people waited patiently in hallways. Some of the children cried. The wards they looked into were wall-to-wall beds with just enough pathways for the uniformed and unofficial caretakers.

  The stoic fortitude with which the injured awaited treatment reminded Lily painfully of the riot in Roanoak District on Arcadia, when she had waded through the mob of wounded Ridanis who had descended on the clinic where Kyosti worked, escaping the wrath of the Immortals.

  Like a dream, she saw a swatch of blue hair down one corridor. She jerked to a halt, took a step—was jerked back herself by Fred’s strong pull. And the person with blue hair, clothed in white, turned—

  Alien. Even at twenty meters the pattern of his—her—face was foreign. So close, in height and build, even to some extent in the planes of the face, to Kyosti, but utterly alien: je’jiri. Lily shuddered, and then realized that it was looking at her. She let Fred draw her back and followed almost meekly as Windsor led them on through the labyrinth of calamity.

  Eventually he found a medical tech, who directed them to another medical tech who directed them to an adolescent in stained overalls who led them to a tiny cubbyhole of a room where a petite woman seemed to be talking on three terminals at once.

  She glanced up, waved at them to wait while she finished.

  “—yes, thank the Mother for that physician. So they got out past vector all right? Good. There’s a passenger liner due in tonight that we’ll requisition for another casualty ferry. I’ll need a list by oh-seven-eight of eight hundred injured to put on it. Thanks. Torqua, are you still there? Yes, we need more penicillin. We’ve already had twelve reactions in people of Ridani ancestry to the Lifracin. No, she was killed, but that Concord official traveling through toward The Pale has agreed to stay at least another week, and he has not only done the bulk of the requisitioning work, but he’s put a fast yacht out to ask for code-one disaster aid from Concord. So it’s just a matter of time. He’s coming to see me within the hour so I’ll have more information then. Good. Now, who are—No, min. Your spouse is not injured badly enough to be put on the next ship to Turfan. No, absolutely not. I don’t care how much credit you have, and frankly, you’re wasting my time.” She flipped the terminal off completely, exasperated, and switched channels on one of the others. “Bishea, how many times do I have to tell you to screen those calls out? Yes, yes, I know.” She sighed and cut the connection. Looked up. “You can go, Rio.” The adolescent left. Turned tired eyes on Windsor, taking in the two Ardakians and Lily’s bound hands and feet. “Now. I’m Iasi, the administrator here. What can I do for you?”

  Windsor placed his slate on the surface in front of her. “I’m a licensed bounty hunter. I got stranded here when some Concord official requisitioned the sloop that I’d hired for the relief effort. We’re happy to help out, so long as I can keep my prisoner secure, until we can get passage off.”

  “A generous offer, min”—she clicked the slate—“Windsor. Considering you’re stuck here in any case.” But she smiled. Lost the smile when she looked up at Lily. Lily felt as if she were being examined for some obvious flaw she was not aware of. “Do any of you have first-aid training?”

  “I’ve got a little,” Windsor admitted reluctantly. “Fred and Stanford here don’t care to be working so closely with humans.”

  “Ah.” Iasi’s measuring gaze took them in. “Ardakians. I understand. But certainly we have need for a pair of arms for cleaning and hauling.”

  “Really, Korrigan,” Stanford protested. “Madame, while my cousin Frederick might be well suited to such menial chores, you would certainly be wasting my talents on them. I have sufficient expertise in—”

  “Stanford,” cut in Windsor. “Let’s stick with the menial chores.”

  Surprisingly, Stanford took this rebuke docilely.

  “And you, min”—Iasi glanced at the slate again—“min Heredes?”

  “Under the circumstances, I’m happy doing anything,” Lily answered. “But you’ll have to ask my keeper.”

  “Limited menial,” Windsor offered. “As long as she stays with the Ardakians and keeps her manacles on.”

  Iasi eyed Lily with interest. Lily felt sure that she wanted to ask what Lily had done but was too polite to do so. “I’ll ask Yavari to detail you. Hold on.” After some tracing, she got Yavari on a terminal. “At loading? That’s fine.” She switched off, but two more incoming calls lit up the terminals, one face haggard with worry, another tight with impatient concentration. “You’ll have to make your own way down to loading,” she said, already distracted. “Ask for Yavari. He knows to keep you together.”

  “Thanks,” said Windsor, but she was already t
alking to the worried face. He retrieved his slate and led them out of the room.

  They almost collided with another party, this one consisting of the adolescent Rio, a white-haired man leaning heavily on a cane, and—

  “Adam!” Lily exclaimed.

  Adam stopped and frowned and looked closely at her, easily taking in her captors and the manacles. There could be no doubt that this was La Belle and Heredes’s son: she had only met him twice but was not likely to forget him. And in any case, he had Heredes’s dusky cast of skin and green eyes, as well as his mother’s blue-black hair.

  When he did not answer immediately, she went on. “Adam, you’ve got to help me. You know father would want you to. I’m being taken in on charges that they won’t even tell me what they are, and I’ve got a ship out there that I brought over from Reft space that I must get back to.”

  By this time Windsor had recovered from his surprise. “Excuse her, min. She’s unbalanced. Come on, Fred,” he growled. “Get her out of here.”

  “Hold on.” Adam raised his right hand and even Fred hesitated. “Father would want me to?”

  It was his voice. She understood instantly what her mistake had been. It was not Adam at all. “You’re his twin, the one who went bad,” she said. “You must be Deucalion.”

  He laughed. “That’s true enough. But who are you?”

  “My name is Ransome, Lily Ransome. Sometimes known as Heredes.”

  “And?” Obviously, neither name meant anything to him.

  “And I’m taking her to Concord for bounty,” broke in Windsor, impatient now. “It’s all legal.” He fished out his slate, beginning to sound bored with this procedure. “Signed by Yevgeny Basham, Concord Intelligence. Isn’t that an Intelligence crest on your jacket?”

  Deucalion studied the slate. “Signed by Yevgeny.” He looked up at Lily. “This is all quite legal, min Ransome. Aiding and abetting …” He trailed off. “There’s nothing I can do. This warrant has been issued by the head of my own bureau.”

  “You work for Concord Intelligence?” Despite everything, Lily could not help but chuckle, a little. “Now I understand why Adam said you were no longer received in polite society.”