He lunged for the stunner, still on the ground beside him. He swung it up and around in both hands, and fired. Ariele cried out in shock and rage and despair. She sprawled, helpless, onto the red earth, as the hovercraft’s door rose over her like a birdwing.
Reede turned his head slowly, seeing her legs, her back; unable to see her face where she lay, unable to see him now. He heard his own voice keening mindlessly, helpless to stop it as aftershocks of pain from his sudden motion rolled through him, wave upon wave. Drowning … the sea … the mers … drowning in pain … death … Help me, help me, please help me…. Someone was screaming inside his head, someone else, he didn’t know who, the prisoner, screaming…. Vanamoinen—
He shook his head, trying to clear it. By the time the stunshock wore off, he would be unable to stop Ariele from calling anyone. She still didn’t believe him—that no one could protect her from the Source. Damn her to hell, making everything worse for him, everything harder— Why hadn’t she listened to him? He’d wanted to end it cleanly. He’d never wanted anyone to see him like this; and it had to be her, watching him puke and rot and die … because she loved him. He dropped the stunner, lifted a hand to his throbbing head; brought it down again with a fistful of his own hair trapped between his swollen, necrotic fingers. He stared at it for a long time.
He should disable the radio. He had to do that. If he could only find the strength to do that, then he could rest, then he could let it finish. Everything would end, his suffering… the mers… everything would be lost, futile, pointless….
He dragged himself around and up somehow, ignoring the sounds he made as the fires of hell consumed his flesh. He crawled into the cabin, lay across the pilot’s seat, sobbing, coughing up blood, unable to see, to think, but only to feel pain. At last he reached out, fumbling toward the comm link on the instrument panel beside him. His hand crossed the range of his vision; he saw the bones of a finger protruding through the half-dead flesh.
His hand jerked back, without his willing it, as if he were suddenly controlled by a puppeteer. And somewhere inside his shattered brain, the prisoner exulted, holding the keys. You are my vessel. You have no choice, the Other said. I have to live. I have to live.
His cry of fury and betrayal died stillborn. His broken voice called the panel to life, as the Other squeezed words from his throat, and spat them out of his mouth, dripping red. He had to repeat himself twice before the instruments understood him and responded.
“Jaakola …”he whispered into the open comm, weeping tears of blood. “I have her. I’ll do anything you want. Help me. …”
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
“Ho, Dawntreader—”
Sparks looked up from his blank-eyed scrutiny of the empty tabletop, to see Kirard Set Wayaways picking a path toward him across the crowded dance floor of Starhiker’s.
“I was hoping I’d find you here.” Kirard Set smiled, stopping in front of the table with the knowing look that Sparks had begun to grow tired of.
“What is it?” Sparks asked, leaning back in his seat.
Wayaways slid into the booth across from him. “I have a message to deliver … and so do you.”
Sparks raised his eyebrows, more than a little surprised. “Is this a Brotherhood matter?”
“Of course.” Kirard Set rubbed his chin, glancing idly into the crowd. “The Source has been called away; business back on Ondinee. He expects to return to Tiamat soon—”
“The heady joys of hyperlight transit,” Sparks muttered, feeling envy stir the sediment of his long-ago dreams.
“We should drink a toast to progress,” Kirard Set said wryly, “but we have no drinks.” He gestured at the empty table surface, his face inviting explanation, or invitation.
Sparks shrugged, without making either. “What’s the Source’s leaving got to do with me?”
Kirard Set’s congeniality faded, replaced by an equally unsettling directness.
“We are 10 continue our present activities with the processing laboratories, and diverting of supplies…. The Newhavener, TerFauw, is in charge at Persephonë’s until Jaakola returns.”
“You said there was a message to deliver.”
Kirard Set hesitated, in a way that only made Sparks’s unease intensify. “It’s a message for your wife. About Anele, and the Source’s man Kullervo.”
“What about them?” he said, too sharply.
Kirard Set leaned back, as if he were getting out of range. “You already know they’ve been seeing each other… . What you may not know is that Kullervo is an addict—addicted to a drug he created himself, a kind of bastard form of the water of life. He calls it the ‘water of death.’ It’s fatal. And he’s given it to Ariele.”
Sparks jerked upright, gripping the table edge with his hands. “What?” he whispered.
Wayaways suddenly had trouble looking at him. “The Source wants something from the Queen, or Gundhalinu,” he muttered. “He wants them to understand that unless they provide it, he will cut off Ariele’s supply of the drug.” He reached into his overshirt. “Here. This is a tape of what happens to the … addict. I wouldn’t watch it if I were you.” He tossed the tape button onto the tabletop.
Sparks picked it up, held it between nerveless fingers. He looked at Wayaways again. “Where are they?” he said. His hand fisted over the tape. “Where’s he got her? By all the gods—”
“It’s not your problem, for gods’ sakes!” Kirard Set hissed. “You belong to the Brotherhood now! Your wife is cuckolding you with the father of her bastard children—Ariele isn’t even your child, you said it yourself. Get a grip on things, man. Everything’s that’s happening is to your gain—your gain, if you play your part in this well. All you have to do is give the Queen the message. Claim you were accosted by faceless strangers, act as distraught as you need to; but always remember that it’s got to be an act—”
Remember. Sparks sat rigidly, forcing himself to remember the hard, useful lessons that time and the Brotherhood had taught him. He inhaled deeply, concentrating on control. “Only an act,” he repeated, without expression. He looked down at his hand, lying loose and open now on the table surface. He put the tape bead into his belt pouch, before he looked up again at Kirard Set. “What does the Source think they have, that no one else does? Besides each other, I mean?” His mouth twisted sardonically.
A faint, relieved smile pulled at the corners of Kirard Set’s lips. “It’s something about the mers.”
Sparks frowned. “They don’t know anything about the mers that I don’t know.”
“Maybe Survey has given them new information.”
He shook his head. “Jaakola has Survey connections all over the Hegemony. He could find out something like that without having to--” to kill my daughter— “resort to blackmail, for gods’ sakes.”
“Then maybe they really do know something that no one else knows.” Kirard Set shrugged. “That’s not our problem. Be glad.”
“What proof is there that he actually has Ariele? That there’s really such a drug?” Sparks said, not quite casually. “They’ll want more proof than this tape.”
“Have you seen Ariele around the city lately? Or Kullervo?”
“No,” he said, his mouth tightening.
“No one has. Jaakola’s taken them with him back to Ondinee, to give the concerned parties here sufficient time to realize that they have no alternatives. That there’s no way to save her except to do what he wants. When the time is right, he’ll bring her back.”