She did not mind his attentions. Few men could best a vanquisher in single battle, and she did not forget that the bear had already saved her life once. More than that, she found his presence somehow morally calming. Everynne was acutely conscious of the fact that she had been born to lead, that every facet of her appearance, even the chemical combination of her pheromones, had been designed to make her appealing to other humans.
From childhood she had been keenly aware of how easily she could manipulate people through a thousand seemingly insignificant things-by sitting when making a request of a man, she could appear more helpless and in greater need. By standing with head erect and back straight, she could more easily seem in control of any situation. By holding eye contact and softly making requests when someone hesitated to give allegiance, she could force the person to make a choice. By taking great care of her clothing and her appearance, she could make herself more desirable to men. By emphasizing the things she held in common with other women, she could convince a woman that they were sisters rather than competitors. The list was endless, and Everynne knew that her very ability to learn the art of manipulation was bred into her. Billions of people had none of her talent and as a result were born destined to become socially inept.
Orick, by not being human, should have been immune to her charms. Yet he stayed at her side, seemingly for his own purposes. Everynne wondered at his motives. Perhaps it was only the crowd. In the past two days, each of the Lords of Fale had come to her, detailing some startling atrocity committed by the dronon. A merchant told of vast assets the dronon had seized for war efforts, so that now he was poor. A mother told of a son who had disappeared. A builder told of a mass grave he’d discovered, filled with the corpses of handicapped children, or “defectives,” as the dronon called them. The tales of horror were far-reaching and personal, and Orick listened in startled silence, then would listen even more keenly as the lords told of their fondness for Everynne’s mother, told how they dreamed of her return. And though Everynne knew that her mother had never been a perfect governor, she had truly sought to be a Servant of All. There had been peace in the land, honest strivings for justice. But the dronon did not value peace or justice. Their biological imperative told them to vanquish all, then reap the spoils. To them, human lives were simply merchandise for the taking.
And if the tales that Orick heard were his motive for staying by her side, then she worried what he would think when he discovered her inadequacies.
On their first day in Guianne, Everynne collected her confidantes, and together they had devised a plan to escape from Fale. The dronon had been systematically sealing off the planet. Guards were at every gate to the Maze of Worlds, and warships were being diverted to block the skies above.
Right now, the beleaguered vanquishers were spread too thin. They could hinder Everynne from escaping, but they lacked the manpower to effectively search for her. But once their warships arrived, they would form a picket, reinforce the troops, and begin searching Fale in earnest. Everynne had to leave now.
In order to escape, Veriasse had designed a system of thrusts and parries that included three attacks: first, they would feint at another gate, forcing the dronon to send for reinforcements. Everynne’s forces would then attempt to hijack a starship. If the starship made it to hyperspace, the dronon would think she had escaped the planet. If it was destroyed, the dronon would believe she had died in the attack. In either case, they would be off their guard.
While the dronon had their support drawn off and were reeling from the belief that Everynne was on a spaceship, her forces would begin an aerial assault against the gate that led to Cyannesse. If that attack succeeded as it should, Everynne could leave.
Now, the morning of the assault, Veriasse drove up the highway in an ancient hoverbus. It was an old model-a long aluminum cab suitable for ten people, with flaring wings where the exhaust vented.
Beneath them, the highway rolled flat and smooth. For the moment, they simply looked like tourists, floating along the highway. Everynne glanced at her chronometer. It was nine in the morning, and three hundred kilometers to the south, the Lords of Fale had mobilized their workers in a ground assault at the gate to Bilung. The gate served well as a diversion, being close both to the city of Guianne and to the gate to Cyannesse.
Everynne closed her eyes and let her mantle connect to Lord Shunn’s personal intelligence via telelink. She watched his attack progress-silver fliers swept through the sky in a wedge, shooting low over the forest toward the gate, dropping a barrage of explosives along with canisters of chlorine gas, which was particularly toxic to dronon. As soon as the fireballs began erupting over the treetops, Lord Shunn’s attack force moved in.
Under cover of the trees, long-range laser weapons were nearly useless, so Shunn’s forces all wielded only incendiary rifles. No human could bear the weight of the armor needed to ward off an incendiary blast, so Shunn’s men were protected only by gas masks and lightweight heat-resistant combat fatigues. The men ran forward in loose formation, moving cautiously. Since the battle was meant only as a diversion, they were not in a hurry to engage the vanquishers.
Lord Shunn himself flew in behind on his hovercar, with its hood down, observing the battle. He glided through the trees, and only the distant smell of smoke signified that a battle had been launched. For fifteen minutes, Everynne watched the battle progress, until Lord Shunn’s troops met several dozen vanquishers. Suddenly the woods filled with fire as incendiary rifles began discharging. Flaming balls of sulfurous white whipped through the air with incredible speed.
She watched a civilian try to dodge behind a tree in hopes of eluding a ball that flamed toward him, growing in size. The chemical charge from the rifle splattered across the tree and across the man’s arm, erupted into flames hotter than the sun. He screamed and held out his arm, spinning once, kicking up detritus from the forest floor. In less than a second, he succumbed to the heat and lay burning.
The sight horrified Everynne to the core of her being. As a Tharrin, she was bred to be empathic. She detested violence. Somehow, knowing that Lord Shunn and his workers had volunteered to die in the woods this day made Everynne feel ashamed, weak. She only wanted the killing to stop, everywhere, but she was forced into a deadly contest and could not escape.
Suddenly on the highway ahead of Everynne, sirens began blaring as army hovertrucks approached. Veriasse pulled his own old bus off the highway to let them pass. Everynne disengaged the telepresence link and looked up. Three truckloads of vanquishers were heading south at full speed, perhaps sixty green-skinned giants. Ahead of her, Veriasse relaxed in his seat for a moment, breathed easier. The soldiers could only have come from the Cyannesse gate. Their ruse was working.
Veriasse let the soldiers pass, gunned the throttle. Everynne engaged her telepresence again, saw how the battle was progressing.
For four more minutes, the battle continued. Suddenly, far to the south, a spaceship lifted over the horizon, a distant white sphere that floated higher and higher into the morning sky. Lady Frebane began broadcasting urgent messages to Shunn and his troops. “My lord,” she called, “the lady’s ship is away! Repeat, the mission has succeeded. The lady’s ship is away. Break off your attack!”
Lady Frebane continued broadcasting for two minutes. The dronon vanquishers sent low-altitude fliers to intercept the ship, but they did not make it in time. Lady Frebane jumped into hyperspace before the fliers got into range, and Everynne was filled with a deep sense of regret. If she’d been on that ship, she would have made her escape already. But Veriasse had insisted that the ship was too dangerous, too large a target. He had opted for the double feint. The real battle lay ahead.