Ruiz hoped their hearts were strong. He had no wish to cause any further casualties among the properties of Corean.
“May we speak?” he asked.
She regarded him with little apparent interest, then spoke in a slow detached voice. “Why not? You’ve frightened away the couts. Besides, you can do as you please; you’ve demonstrated that, have you not?”
Ruiz stepped closer. Nisa still held her arms out rigidly, as if she had forgotten that they belonged to her. Ruiz saw that her pupils were pinpoints; she must be almost blind in the dimness of the bathhouse. He felt a surge of anger. “Has the philterer been busy already?”
“Yes. It’s better this way.” A spark of faraway amusement lit her face for a moment. “But I think they’ll not be as happy with my performance this time.”
Ruiz looked into her face, saw nothing more of Nisa there. In her present state, there was no point to explaining his actions outside the paddock. Better to wait for a time when she could understand, if she would. Besides, Ayam was Corean’s creature, sure to report, with an unflattering twist, anything he might say to Nisa. He turned and left.
A dozen Pung guards came for them in the morning. They were herded into the center of the plaza: Ruiz, Nisa and the Dilvermooner, the two assistant mages, and Dolmaero.
Kroel, the mage who had taken the part of Menk, god of slavery, struggled briefly with the Pung who had collected him. The Pung touched him lightly with the nerve lash, and Kroel fell to the ground howling and writhing. Kroel was a short broad-chested man with heavy features and tattoos in an antique, mannered style.
The other mage, Molnekh, a cheerfully cadaverous man, helped Kroel to his feet and dusted him off. “Now, now,” said Molnekh, “is this dignified?”
“Dignified!” Kroel was still whimpering. “Dignified, you say? What is dignified about this abuse? I believed when we were reunited with the troupe that our torments were ending.”
“I, too, was hopeful,” Molnekh said, facing the Pung and baring his long yellow teeth in a fawning smile. The Pung gestured with its lash, and the two joined the others without farther incident.
Shortly, Banessa came through the portal. Behind her a Pung dragged a truly wretched creature, a humanoid of indeterminate age and gender, in the last stages of starvation or some wasting disease, hairless, clad in nondescript rags. The giantess carried a handful of coded monomol detention collars, and Ruiz’s heart fell.
“Attention,” said Banessa. “You’ll be going on a short journey. You must all wear these security devices — no exceptions.”
“Excuse me, large person,” said Dolmaero. “Can you tell us where we’re going?”
“That’s irrelevant,” the giantess said. “The name would mean nothing to you.”
But Ayam giggled and said, “I can tell you a little. You’ll be going deep into the ground. You’ll meet some fascinating people, and when you come back up, you’ll be so nice, so cooperative. The Gench—”
Banessa swung her huge fist at the herman and knocked it down. “Shut up,” she said.
Ruiz barely noticed. His knees had gone weak, and he could feel the wrenching movement of the death net in the depths of his mind. A terrible tension filled him, as though the net had been set to trigger at the first mention of the Gencha. He remembered, dimly, what Nacker had said: “…a silver bullet, aimed at some monster…”
He was dizzy with the effort of resisting the net. Dolmaero noticed his distress and took his arm. “Are you unwell?” Dolmaero asked.
No! he shouted at the net. Wait! Just a while longer. I’m going there, I’m going, and I’ll be able to learn where they are.
As though the net had heard him, it stopped its slide toward oblivion, so abruptly that for a long moment Ruiz seemed to hang over an abyss, looking down into endless blackness. His vision dimmed, and he could hear nothing.
Then it was over and he was standing in the square again.
“I’m fine,” he said, shaking off Dolmaero’s hand. “Nothing wrong.”
But things had gone terribly wrong. He knew now why he had been sent to Pharaoh. The League was interested in the curtailment of poachers, true enough. But the League was far more interested in catching rogue Gencha, who were vastly more valuable than any human stock. The League had known that he would end up on Sook. And once he had reached Sook, they had hoped he would be sent to the rogue Gencha practitioners, who specialized in the making of organic machines from living beings.
He would die before that happened to him, for which he was thankful, but the others would come back from the enclave without souls, without that inner direction that marks all sapient beings. For the rest of their lives, they would exist only to please their owners.
He couldn’t bear to look at his fellow prisoners.
One after the other, the entire group was collared, except for Ayam. The herman stood apart from the rest, smiling.
Ruiz touched the slick monomol that circled his neck snugly. It was not a highly sophisticated tech; for that he could be grateful. It carried a locator beacon, a sedative ject, and a decap explosive. With a little time and the right tools, he might be able to get it off. He fed himself hope, as though he were a small fragile fire. He gradually regained a bit of his mental equilibrium.
Banessa carried the control console hung on a ribbon of lavender velvet between her enormous breasts. Ruiz wondered how her thick fingers could accurately work the delicate controls of the unit. He discovered the answer when she activated the collars. She flexed her hand and slender claws of bright metal slid from the ends of her fingers. With these, the giantess tapped away, and Ruiz felt a thrumming vibration as his collar activated.
Banessa’s tiny dead eyes rested on each of them in turn. “A demonstration,” she said. “You must learn this lesson.” She tipped back the head of the starveling with the butt of her nerve lash. Around its neck was a collar like theirs. Its eyes rolled back in its head, and it slumped, almost falling when Banessa took away her lash.
“First,” she said, “the collar will tell us where you are, so no matter how far you flee, we’ll catch you. Second, if we don’t want to take the trouble to catch you, we’ll do this.” She gestured to the Pung, who pushed the wretch away. The slave stumbled and staggered a half-dozen paces away; then Banessa clicked a claw against her console.
They heard a small report, like an ax hitting a log of some hard ringing wood. The slave’s head popped off. The body fell, the head rolled away, and a small flow of blood sank into the sand.
“Remember this,” Banessa said, dropping the console back between her breasts. She retracted her claws, then gestured to the Pung guards. “We’ll go to the airboat.”
Everyone stepped lively.
Chapter 25
The boat was a standard low-level, low-speed model, suited to the laws that governed movement over the surface of Sook. Heavy monomol armor covered its squat frame, and a ruptor turret capped the control blister.
They filed aboard, Ayam leading the way, Banessa following behind. The giantess oversaw the securing of the prisoners to low metal benches on either side of the cramped portless hold. The herman did the work with relish. Ayam seemed to take particular pleasure in cinching Ruiz’s straps tight. Its strong arms bulged, hauling at the straps, and it smiled its unpleasant Dilvermooner smile. Banessa inspected Ruiz’s bonds and made the herman loosen them slightly.
“Your owner values this one,” the giantess said in her odd buzzing voice. “Damage him and she’ll take it out of your own precious hide.”
Ayam was sulky. “One will never understand the Lady’s preferences, though, of course, one is ill-equipped to advise the exalted Corean.”