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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Selene and I were waiting at the temple grounds’ low border wall when the first of the invited guests arrived.

And they were not at all happy to see me.

“Hello, Roarke,” Floyd said coldly as he, Cole, Mottola, and Fulbright climbed out of the first of the three dark-windowed vans that pulled up to the side of the street. “You get lost?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I apologized as they strode across the narrow strip of textured grass and stepped over the wall. “But we were getting shot at, and all we could do was run.”

“All the way to Popanilla,” Floyd said, his eyes flicking around the grounds behind us. “Never occurred to you to leave me a message?”

“I didn’t have your number,” I reminded him. “Or anyone else’s,” I added, nodding in turn to the other three. “And once we had to ditch the Ruth, getting to a StarrComm center got a little tricky.”

“You managed it okay a few days ago with this little invite.”

“That’s because as of a few days ago Dent stopped being in position to keep a gun pointed at my back,” I said. “Anyway, what are you complaining about? You found Popanilla pretty quickly on your own. Mind telling me how you managed that?”

“Ask him,” Floyd said, jerking a thumb at Fulbright. “He’s the one who pointed us to Shiroyama Island.”

“I’m impressed,” I said, shifting my attention to Fulbright. “You’re better connected than I would have guessed.”

“Or I’m just smarter than you are,” Fulbright said, glowering at me. “You said Dent would be here.”

“He is,” I assured him. “Well, he’s close. We’ll be heading out to meet him soon enough.”

“How about we head out to meet him now?” Floyd countered.

“Patience, Floyd, patience,” I soothed. “We have some things to discuss first. I’ve got a nice little place all ready for us out of the public eye.”

I gestured toward the other vans that had arrived in Floyd’s convoy. “So if Mr. Draelon would be kind enough to join us we can get things moving.”

For a moment Floyd just gazed at me. Then, he gave a small hand signal. Behind him, the first and third vans’ side doors opened and fourteen guards climbed out briskly, their hands resting on holstered guns. They formed a semicircle around the middle van and paused as if in anticipation. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Selene’s head tilt slightly—

“Hello, Roarke,” Draelon’s voice came from behind me.

I turned around. Draelon was striding toward us, a self-satisfied smile on his face. Marching alongside him was Jordan McKell, still in his Algernon Niles bounty hunter disguise, with another two large thugs rounding out the foursome. “Hello, Mr. Draelon,” I greeted him. “I trust you enjoyed your stroll across the Erymant Temple grounds.”

“I’m enjoying finally catching up with you,” Draelon said coolly. “You’ve wasted a great deal of Mr. Floyd’s time with your shenanigans. The results had better be worth it.”

“I think you’ll find everything you were hoping for, and more,” I assured him, glancing back over my shoulder at the array of thugs still waiting by the vans. “I’m afraid the venue for our conversation was chosen for privacy instead—”

“What conversation?” Draelon cut me off. “You said you were going to take us to Dent and the object.”

“There are a few subjects we need to discuss first,” I said. “Compensation, guarantees—that sort of thing. It shouldn’t take long, and then we’ll be on our way. As I was saying, the venue was chosen for privacy, not size, but it should be able to accommodate your entourage.”

“Yeah,” Draelon said suspiciously. “So we should all just leave the vans here, hey?”

“Well, your men would have trouble getting them over this wall,” I pointed out. “But I doubt we’ll be gone long enough for anyone to steal them, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He gave me a thin smile. “You know, Roarke, I learned a long time ago that when someone goes out of their way to point you in some direction, you’d better keep an eye on all the others. You’re worried about local car thieves, are you?”

“It was just a thought,” I said mildly.

“Right. Just a thought.” Draelon gestured to one of the men by the vans. “Stay here and watch the vans,” he ordered. “Keep a special eye out for any of Roarke’s friends who might try to make trouble. Floyd, you and your group will come with us. That’s eight of us and two of you, Roarke, and I can see from here that you’re not armed. Do I need to make it clearer?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I assure you, Selene and I are just here to talk.”

“Good,” Draelon said. “Let’s get on with it.”

I nodded and set off across the temple grounds, suppressing a smile. Draelon’s cynical comment about diversionary tactics was exactly like something my father would have said.

The lecture hall was a two-minute walk from the vans. I’d left the door propped open a few centimeters, and we were about twenty steps away when Selene casually reached over and gave my hand a small squeeze. I acknowledged with a microscopic nod, wondering whether our other guests would be waiting for us inside or stay skulking around outside a little longer. I reached the door, pulled it the rest of the way open, and peered inside.

Skulking around outside, apparently. The domed room was just as I’d left it: its chairs unoccupied, its floor empty, showing no signs of life at all.

As my father used to say, The best way to handle unexpected company is to not open the door for them in the first place. Unfortunately, today that wasn’t going to be an option. “Mr. Draelon; gentlemen,” I said briskly, stepping out of the way and gesturing them inside. “Please; make yourselves comfortable.”

Silently, they filed in and headed down toward the floor and the podium. Fulbright and McKell gave me speculative looks as they passed, the others ignored me completely. The two bodyguards Draelon had brought took up flanking positions just inside the door. I ushered Selene in, again leaving the door ajar.

One of the bodyguards reached back to close it. I put a warning hand out to stop him. “They’ve been doing work in here,” I murmured, nodding toward the draped scaffolding and the damaged wall. “Whatever they’re using is pretty stinky.”

He sniffed, made a face, and gave a reluctant nod, leaving the door open. I nodded silent thanks, then headed down to join the others.

Draelon had taken the seat directly in front of the podium, with Floyd on one side, McKell on the other, and Cole, Mottola, and Fulbright in the row behind them. Selene took the seat at the far end of the front row as I stepped to the podium.

“This won’t take long,” I assured them, noting to my mild surprise that my voice filled the room better than I’d expected. I hadn’t realized the podium had a built-in sound system the last time we were here, let alone that it was functional. Still, a bit of amplification certainly couldn’t hurt. “But there are some things we have to clear up before we visit the object that you’ve all come so far to see and put in so much effort to possess.”

“Your share of the prize, I assume?” Floyd said.

“Actually, there’s another topic we need to deal with first,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “A small matter of betrayal.”

For a moment I held his gaze. Then, deliberately, I turned to Fulbright. “So, Fulbright,” I said. “You want to tell them about it? Or should I?”

A deathly silence filled the hall. Fulbright glared at me, but remained silent. “I guess it’s me, then,” I said after a few seconds. “First, I have three questions for Selene.”

The surprised, angry, or speculative looks everyone had been giving me turned magically to Selene, sitting quietly in her chair. “Selene: question one.”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Question two.”

“No.”

“Question three.”

“Yes.”

I nodded. “Thank you. Well. The story starts a few months ago—”

“Wait a minute,” Draelon cut in. “What the hell was that about?”

“I had three questions for Selene,” I told him. “She answered them. The story begins—”

“What the hell were the questions?” Draelon demanded.

“We’ll get to that, Mr. Draelon,” I said. “The story—”

“Like hell we will.” Draelon lifted a hand and gestured—

And suddenly the two bodyguards at the door were pointing their Skripka 4mms at me. “You’ve got ten seconds to take us to the object,” Draelon said, his voice almost calm. “Then you start losing body parts.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said mildly. “I assumed you’d first want the details of how Fulbright betrayed you.”

Draelon’s eyes narrowed. His eyes flicked over his shoulder to Fulbright, then back to me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Fulbright. Betrayal,” I said. “Do you still want to go see Dent, or shall I continue?”

Again, Draelon looked back at Fulbright. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure. Continue.”

“Thank you,” I said. “The story starts about six months ago. Mr. Varsi had recently been in Havershem City, supervising an operation. He left Pinnkus and—I assume—returned to Xathru.

“Unfortunately, the operation had left behind some fallout. Specifically, the Patth very much wanted to talk to him and sent an Expediter to deliver a message. Mr. Varsi was therefore forced to go into hiding.”

“Mr. Varsi is never forced to do anything,” Draelon growled.

“Went into hiding of his own free will, then,” I said. “Meanwhile, an entirely different Patth was very interested in talking to me. Unfortunately for him, my job as a Trailblazer routinely takes me off the edge of the map—often quite literally—and he was unable to find me. The reports from Pinnkus had mentioned our friend Fulbright here, so the Patth in question got in touch with him and hired him to track me down.

“There was just one slight problem. This particular Patth didn’t have a mandate for anything concerning me, which meant he had no funds or resources to draw on. That left Fulbright with a job but essentially no budget.”

I looked at Fulbright. His face was rigid, trying not to give anything away and not really succeeding. “Mind you, at first he didn’t mind that,” I went on. “He had personal reasons for wanting me to take a fall, and getting any funding at all beat the hell out of chasing me on his own. But once he started thinking about it he realized he could search the Spiral for months and still come up dry.

“So he came up with a rather audacious plan to make life a little easier. He knew I’d been working for Mr. Varsi on Pinnkus, and he’d heard that Mr. Varsi had disappeared. So he went to Mr. Draelon, hinted broadly that I had something to do with Mr. Varsi’s troubles, and suggested Mr. Draelon hire him to track me down.”

I raised my eyebrows at Draelon. “That is how Fulbright pitched it, isn’t it?”

“Mostly,” Draelon said. His eyes were steady on me, his face far more unreadable than Fulbright’s.

“Mr. Draelon, of course, already knew where Mr. Varsi was, so that approach gained Fulbright exactly nothing,” I continued. “Fortunately for him, there was something else Mr. Draelon wanted that I might be able to help him with. Mr. Varsi had taken one of the sporetes Selene and I had brought back from one of our crockett trips and developed it into a drug. Curiously enough, the drug had two wildly divergent capabilities: medicinal for the Najiki, but more of a street-level drug for Narchners. The drug was already on Huihuang and about to be tested on a Najik subject under the auspices of the local boss, Mr. Gaheen.”

I looked at Floyd. “That was the test we inadvertently walked in on in Mr. Gaheen’s house.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Floyd said, his face as stone-carved as his boss’s.

“Anyway, at that point, everything was roses,” I said. “At least from Fulbright’s point of view. Mr. Draelon assigned him three of his top enforcers, gave him a ship and presumably a bunch of intel resources to draw on, and sent him off on an expedition to find me so that he could hopefully get his hands on the drug. And not, I presume, for its medicinal value.”

“We were also to grab anything else that you came up with,” Floyd added.

“Hence, following the Ruth and snatching our bioprobe,” I said. “I imagine Fulbright wasn’t happy with you on that one.”

“He said we were wasting time,” Floyd said, eyeing Fulbright. “Said we should just grab you and be done with it.”

“Yes, I’m sure he did,” I said, nodding. “Though snatching a Trailblazer ship from mid-atmosphere would be a pretty iffy maneuver. But I digress.

“Because while you were searching, the Patth who’d originally hired Fulbright stumbled on something else. A thief and smuggler named Easton Dent had been doing his own search for me. Our mystery Patth jumped on this new possibility, and eventually was able to track Dent to New Kyiv, where he’d arranged to meet up with me.

“What neither the Patth nor Fulbright realized was that they’d both ended up in the same place: Floyd and Fulbright tracking me, the Patth tracking Dent. Once they figured that out, Fulbright sent Floyd and the others out into the city to look for me while he and the Patth held a private meeting aboard Fulbright’s ship.”

I paused, waiting for someone to disagree. But the room remained silent. “And then the Patth did something stupid,” I continued. “His Iykams had a line on Dent, even hired a pickpocket to lift his wallet for confirmation. The Patth or one of the Iykams must have spotted the two of us talking, so they had my wallet lifted as well. Armed with all this proof, the Iykams charged into the crowd . . . and managed to grab the wrong man.”

“And then, what, just killed him?” Floyd asked, frowning.

“He had reasons,” I told him. “We’ll get to that. Anyway, the Patth decided he could still pull something useful out of the fiasco. He left the body and my wallet in plain sight, figuring he could let the badgemen find me and haul me in and that he could break in and grab me back later. Unfortunately for him, someone else got to me first. That left Fulbright and Floyd free to track the Ruth to Marjolaine and finally reel us in.

“But somewhere on our way back to Brandywine, something changed. By the time you brought us to Mr. Draelon, Floyd, he no longer cared if I was alive. In fact, from the way he was talking, he was halfway to buying into Fulbright’s accusation that I’d betrayed Mr. Varsi.”

“Because you had,” Draelon said, a fresh edge to his voice.

I shook my head. “No, but kudos on the attempt at diversion. No, actually, there were two things that had changed. The first was that you’d been able to suborn the Najiki doctor on the Huihuang drug test, Physician Livicby, into stealing a sample of the drug for you. The second—”

“Wait a minute,” Floyd put in. “That doesn’t make any sense. We already had the drug. Why would Mr. Draelon need to steal a sample?”

“Actually, the only thing that makes sense is if it was for Mr. Draelon,” I said. “The sample couldn’t be for Mr. Gaheen or the Najiki—they already had the drug. More telling, Livicby was willing to stick his neck out for me after he found out I’d come from Brandywine. Who else would he be willing to do that for except Mr. Draelon?”

“How about Mr. Varsi?” Draelon countered. “Livicby would stick his neck out for him.”

“Except that Mr. Varsi was the one who developed it,” Floyd said, his voice gone quiet. “What are you suggesting, Roarke?”

I braced myself. This was where it was going to get dicey. “You know, Floyd, all the way to Huihuang I had the nagging feeling that something didn’t add up. Why send three high-level managers, even ones who’d once been ground-level enforcers, to deal with a supposed traitor like Mr. Gaheen?”

“There’s no supposed about it,” Draelon bit out.

“And then I saw Gaheen’s house and security setup, and I wondered if maybe Mr. Draelon was trying to kill four birds with one stone.” I looked at Draelon. “Literally.”

“You’re looking to get yourself shot right now, Roarke,” Draelon said in a low, vicious voice.

“Maybe,” I said. “What do you think, Floyd?”

“Wait a minute,” Cole put in, sounding bewildered. “This doesn’t make any sense. Mr. Draelon wanted us to find Dent and bring him back, remember?”

“Only we weren’t supposed to deal with Gaheen until after we delivered Dent,” Floyd said quietly. His eyes were focused on Draelon now. “You told me Gaheen was loyal, Roarke. How sure are you about that?”

“Very sure,” I said. “As sure as I am that you, Cole, and Mottola are, too. At least, to Mr. Varsi.”

Abruptly, Draelon lunged out of his seat, spinning to face Floyd, his hand darting beneath his jacket. The hand froze in place, Draelon’s back unnaturally stiff, his eyes on the plasmic that had magically appeared in McKell’s hand. “Floyd?” McKell prompted.

For a long moment, Floyd just sat there, staring up at his boss. “What are you saying, Roarke?”

“I’m saying,” I said quietly, “that Mr. Varsi is dead. And that Mr. Draelon figured his best way out of any responsibility for it was to dump all the blame on me.”

Floyd held his pose another couple of heartbeats. Then he stood up, reached past Draelon’s hand into his jacket, and relieved him of his Skripka. “How?” he asked in the same voice.

“It was the Patth,” Draelon said, spitting out the word. “They tracked him down, tore him up—”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Draelon spun to face me, fury and hatred steaming from his face. “Shut up!” he snarled. “What the hell do you know? Were you there?”

“No, I wasn’t there,” I agreed. “But I know a little about Patth procedure when they’re mad at someone. They deliver a warning”—I raised my eyebrows—“and then they demand restitution.”

“As in taking over part of the organization?” Floyd asked.

“That would be my guess,” I said. “We’d have to find the Expediter who delivered the message to be absolutely sure. The thing is, since the crime was Mr. Varsi’s the punishment would also be his. If he was no longer in charge of the organization . . . ?”

“So he killed him,” Floyd said flatly.

“No,” Draelon bit out. The fury was still there, but the steel was rapidly draining from it. “I hid him, protected him, tried to find a way out of the mess he’d put us in. But then he got sick, and the doctors couldn’t do anything, and he died.”

He spun around to face Floyd. “I didn’t kill him. He died.”

“Maybe,” Floyd said. The gun he’d taken from Draelon was now pointed at his boss’s stomach. “Doesn’t explain you trying to kill Cole and Mottola and me. And Mr. Gaheen.”

“Kill him!” Draelon snapped. “What are you waiting for? Kill him!

He jabbed a finger at Floyd as he looked up at the top of the lecture hall. The two guards he’d left flanking the door—

Were standing stiff and motionless, a pair of Iykams behind them, a pair of Iykam corona guns pressed into their sides.

Draelon froze, his finger still pointed. Floyd was looking up at the guards now, too, and Cole, Mottola, and Fulbright had swiveled in their seats to do likewise.

And the look on Fulbright’s face was one of pure gloating.

I cleared my throat. “I was wondering when you’d show yourself, Sub-Director,” I called. “Please; come join us.”

For a moment nothing happened. Then, at an unheard order, the two Iykams gave their prisoners a nudge toward the steps and the four of them started down toward us. Behind them, a Patth I’d never seen before stepped through the doorway and followed.

And behind him, ten more Iykams flowed silently into the room, fanning out to both sides along the upper level.

“It’s been a long road, Gregory Roarke,” the Patth called back as he descended the steps. He made a sharp gesture to Floyd; reluctantly, Floyd set his gun down on the floor. “I’m pleased to finally meet you.”

“Likewise,” I said. “Fulbright, would you care to make the introductions?”

“This is Sub-Director Surn,” Fulbright said. “Soon to be Director Surn.”

“Very soon,” Surn added. “Director Surn, who will personally deliver Dent’s alien portal to the Patthaaunuth.”


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