“The Man—” their guide said, gesturing across the wide expanse of shining floor toward a sealed door. A small garden spilled out into the open space beneath the windows; he heard the sound of dripping water. Surrounding it was what looked like the waiting room of some successful merchant co-op, filled with incongruously normal seats and tables. “After you, Kullervo.”
Reede took a deep breath, and started across the room toward the featureless door. Kedalion followed, with Ananke close on his heels. Midway across the room the Newhavener cut effortlessly between Reede and his men, forcing Kedalion to stop. “Have a seat—” he suggested, looking down at Kedalion.
Kedalion stood where he was and looked toward Reede. Reede turned back, and Kedalion was glad that what showed in Reede’s eyes was not directed at him.
Reede looked up at the Newhavener, down at Kedalion and Ananke. “Wait here,” he said, his voice coolly arrogant, as if the other man had not even spoken. “This shouldn’t take long.”
Kedalion nodded, trying to match the confidence of Reede’s manner as he moved toward the seats, knowing he was not succeeding. He knew Reede was nervous, even afraid, but Reede was burning now with the murderous intensity that made anyone with a shred of sanity get out of his way. Reede Kullervo might be a madman, but for once Kedalion was glad to be working for him. Maybe they’d even Set out of this alive. He almost felt sorry for whoever was waiting beyond that door, planning to make Reede an offer he couldn’t refuse. He managed to pull himself onto the couch with something like dignity, managed an encouraging smile to answer the unspoken question in Ananke’s glance. Ananke looked away again, through the ring of guards toward Reede. They watched the door go transparent, watched Reede disappear through it. And then they waited.
Reede stepped through the doorway into a featureless box. The security door rematerialized behind him, sealing him in before he had time to realize that there were no other exits. He spun around, getting a mild shock through his hands as they hit the screen, making it spark. Inside of a heartbeat it was as solid and featureless as the other three walls, the ceiling, the floor.
A trap. Reede turned back, searching the room with his eyes. A perfect, featureless cube. He clenched his teeth over the sudden urge to cry out, to throw himself against the walls like a panic-stricken animal. But the part of his brain that always seemed to be under someone else’s control held him motionless, pointing out to him that there was light here, which meant that there was probably full life support and fresh air; there had been a way in, which meant that there was a way out. It could even be some kind of lift, although he couldn’t detect any motion. They didn’t want him dead, at least not yet, and probably not at all. They just wanted him softened up a little.
He leaned against the wall, fingering the jangling piece of jewelry hanging from his ear, and forced himself to relax, in case he was being monitored, which he probably was. He should be grateful: They were giving him time to think. He still had no idea who held him. All they’d said to him was, You’ve lost your patron, and that meant Humbaba. They’d talked like he was going to be working here, a simple survivor-claiming, a change of employers, but not careers. They hadn’t even asked him about the stardrive. Maybe they didn’t know….
Except whoever it was claimed that they’d dropped the lightning on Humbaba’s tower, right in front of his eyes, perfectly timed to his arrival. That meant they had somehow been able to shut down all its support systems first, leaving it without even communications, and utterly defenseless against the attack. And they had known exactly when he was arriving, how, from what direction. All of that screamed power, more power than any single cartel involved in a takeover struggle with Humbaba should have access to. It was only the existence of that higher power that let the cartels coexist here as successfully as they did. There were skirmishes, hijackings, ambushes. But when an entire citadel went out, it was something bigger. … It meant somebody had tried to cross the Brotherhood.
But he was the Brotherhood— He touched the solii pendant that Mundilfoere had given him. He knew its significance, knew why she had told him to wear it always. Mundilfoere … Not letting himself think about what he would do if she had been in the fortress when it went up, caught inside that blinding ball of light, incinerated … Gods, a man could go crazy trying to figure it out! Go crazy in here … He wasn’t going to work for whoever was doing this to him … he was going to kill the son of a bitch, with his bare hands. He was sweating; was it real warmer in here, was the air really getting thicker, heavier, harder to breathe, like being underwater— “Come on, motherfucker—” he muttered, beginning to twitch He forced himself to stop it, to curb the insane energy singing inside him. Save it. Save it, damn you….
The lights went out. No—! He almost screamed it, but the still-sane fragment of his mind that had kept him calm until now closed its hand around his throat, forced him to stand perfectly still in the middle of the utter blackness, his head up, his hands motionless at his sides. Wait. Wait.… He became aware of his own breathing, the way his heart was pounding, the blood rushing inside his ears. All his senses began to run wild, overreacting to the absence of stimuli. Did he really hear the sound of two people breathing? Gods, what was that smell in the air—not stateness, not his own sweat, it smelled like something rotting… . He was beginning to see things, to believe that he actually saw a glow like almost-dead embers on the wall ahead of him. He reached out, stretching his hand toward it—lurched forward as he discovered that the wall was no longer there.
Groping around him, he realized that there were no walls at all anymore; that the room he had been trapped in had disappeared. He was suddenly lost in a much larger room, a formless blackness like the space between the stars. But the glow he had seen was real. It had become barely bright enough to let him believe in it, even though it was too dim to give him any real information.
He started toward it, having no better guide … took three steps, and stumbled as his feet caught on something. He sprawled headlong onto a hard, slick surface that felt like ceramic tiles. He pushed himself up on his hands and knees, his body and the remains of his confidence bruised and shaken. Something was still caught under his feet—whatever he had fallen over. He reached around, fumbling blindly until he could touch it. Cloth. An odd-shaped, rumpled mound of it, like somebody had kicked aside a rug … Like somebody had left a corpse lying there. That smell. Gods, was this—? Shit—!
He jerked his hand away, scrambled to his feet, before any part of his body could accidentally discover too much about the mound. And froze, suddenly certain that he had heard faint laughter. “Who’s there—?” His voice shook, telling whoever it was too much about how well their plan was working. “Turn on the lights, damn you. Talk to me!” Echoes of his own voice came back at him, were all that he could hear, distorted by surfaces he could not imagine the forms of.
“I prefer the darkness,” a voice said, a voice which sounded like something that had been torn physically out of its owner’s throat, the words striking him like gobbets of flesh “It’s so much more revealing… . Everyone is naked, in the dark.”