Catch the Lightning (40 page)

“They must be from Saint Parval,” Althor said. “The port city.”

The riders came on, several hundred, all in black, with flashes of silver beneath their cloaks. They slowed at the city limits, letting the ruziks pick their way through the ruins.

“What?” Althor said.

I looked up at him. “I didn’t say anything.”

“No. I mean, I know.” He whirled around and strode to the edge of the platform. As he disappeared down the steps, I heard our bodyguards protest; when I reached the stairs, I saw them trying to hold him back. He gave a command and they reluctandy dropped his arms. He sped down the stairs, jumping the last three to the ground, and ran toward the riders.

I stepped down between the Abaj and we watched Althor run through the city. Other Abaj tried to stop him, with no more success than the ones with me. He passed the first of the approaching riders without even a nod. As they wheeled around their mounts, staring after him, a rider in the middle of the horde halted. He wasn’t Abaj; although well built, he was nowhere near as tall as the warriors, and he wore plainer clothes, dark pants and a white pullover. For a mind-warping moment, as the man dismounted, I thought I was seeing double: Althor was both running toward the ruzik and getting down from it, the same person in two different places.

The man ran toward Althor. They met and embraced with so much force they almost knocked each other over. Together, their differences were obvious; the man was a few inches shorter, with longer hair that brushed his shoulders. As he and Althor separated, one of the Abaj next to me spoke. I looked at him, and he motioned toward the stairs. A question. I nodded.

We descended to the ground and walked through Izu Yaxlan. When we drew near to Althor and the other man, I saw tears on the man’s face. He was laughing and crying at the same time. He pulled Althor into another embrace and they hung there for a moment before releasing each other.

When we came up behind Althor, one of my bodyguards spoke. Althor spun around, then grinned and grabbed me by the waist. He pulled me so hard against his side that I went “oomf” as my nose hit his chest.

“Hey,” I said.

Althor laughed. “You all right?”

“Fine.” I rubbed my nose.

The unfamiliar man watched me with a gentle look, his violet eyes and sun-streaked purple hair so familiar that my breath caught. He didn’t have metal-tinted skin, though. Althor spoke to him in another language, one that took beautiful advantage of his musical voice. The man answered in the same, his voice even more musical, a work of art itself. Althor spoke a phrase that finished with “ ’Akushtina Santis Pulivok kya Skolia.”

To me, he said, “Tina, this is my father. Eldrin Jarac Valdoria kya Skolia.”

The man took my hands, pressing them between his as he spoke. I feared he would find me lacking, given what Althor had told me about Abaj women. At the time I had no idea how much I resembled Althor’s mother. Not all the Kyle genes code for tallness, but among pure Raylicans they do all code for dark hair and skin.

Althor said, “My father asks that you call him Eldrin. It is his personal name, as I am called Althor and you are Tina.” He smiled. “He says he is pleased to meet his new daughter.”

I smiled tentatively. “Tell him I’m honored to meet him.” It felt strange to say the words. And wonderful.

Finally I had a father.

We rode to Saint Parval accompanied by both Eldrin and Althor’s escorts. Althor offered to ride with me, but by then I had realized his love of racing the ruzik. If he took me, I knew he would worry about my falling off. So in the end, I rode with his father. I think we both hoped it would offer a chance to become acquainted. Given that we had no common language, though, and were sitting in tandem, we had little chance. Eldrin was also as tense as a board; he shares none of his son’s enthusiasm for tearing across the desert on an iridescent dinosaur.

Sitting so close to Eldrin, though, I picked up a lot from his mind, especially his relief at Althor’s escape and his contentment at seeing his son happily married. Beneath that, his mood was complex, layered with concerns of political intrigue, as well as anger over the Allieds’ apparent role in our kidnapping. His mind felt disconcertingly similar to Althor’s, yet different, too, more refined.

I didn’t realize then the honor he did me. Trained as a Kyle operator since childhood, he guards his emotions with firm control, more so even than Althor, who by nature tends to be moody and volatile. Yet that day Eldrin relaxed his barriers, letting me absorb a great deal about himself and his family.

His appearance is classic for a native of the minor but well-protected planet known as Lyshriol. It was founded as an agricultural colony during the Ruby Empire. To help the colonists adapt to low levels of ultraviolet light, the Ruby geneticists engineered a lower melanin content in their skin, making them white, a color as unusual to them as Althor’s metallic skin is to me. Their eye and hair color was an unexpected but harmless side effect.

The Ruby Empire relied on barely understood technology, so it’s not surprising many of its fledgling colonies lost that technology during their millennia of isolation. The Lyshriol settlement regressed to a pre-steam-power stage. It almost disappeared, its people leached of fertility like their Raylican ancestors. Over the millennia, as the number of women dropped, the laws that made men property gradually fell by the wayside. The population rebounded when its gene pool lost the Kyle traits and settled into a more balanced state.

The Kyle alleles didn’t completely vanish: Eldrin’s father had been a Rhon telepath. But he was a rare exception. That was why Eldrin’s mother, an offworld member of the Rhon, married him. She chose to live on Lyshriol because she loved its untouched beauty. Eldrin grew up in a rural community. Uninterested in the subjects taught by his tutors—physics, math, political science, literature, and so on—he spent his youth learning hunting, swordplay, and archery instead. His frustrated parents finally sent him offworld, at the age of sixteen, to attend a private Imperial school. He reacted strongly against the overreaching culture of the Imperialate, baffled and angered that it placed more importance on his undeniable physical beauty and spectacular singing voice than his prowess as a warrior.

In contrast, Althor’s mother grew up steeped in the heritage of the Ruby Empire. Imperial culture is generally well balanced now, though it is true what Althor says, that it retains vestiges of its matriarchal past. He notices it more because his mother descends from its most conservative lineage, one that traces its roots directly to the Ruby queens. Although she is a woman of the modern age, that inheritance runs strong in her veins. The differences between Althor’s parents explain a lot about him, why he is such a complex mix of machismo and a son of the Ruby Dynasty.

Eldrin already knew how Althor and I met. The Jag, rather than risking the gauntlet of intrigue surrounding Imperial Space Command, went to Lyshriol and landed on a farm belonging to. one of Eldrin’s brothers. The, brother contacted Althor’s parents, using a secured web channel designed for exactly such a crisis. It was Eldrin who gathered the military force to come to Raylicon, putting it together with his most trusted people, officers he knew were loyal to Althor, including, of course—

Damn.

I twisted around on the ruzik to face Eldrin. “We have to stop!”

He gave me a reassuring smile, apparendy believing I too felt uneasy on the animal.

“I’m not scared!” I said. “We have to stop!” I turned back and pounded the ruzik’s neck ridge. The animal didn’t even slow. I might as well have been a bug flying around its head. A few Abaj glanced over, surprise flickering around them that I panicked now after riding so well the previous night. I felt pressure on my mind, as if they were knocking at the door, too respectful to enter without permission I had no idea how to give. I felt Eldrin, too, but had no idea how to “invite” him in either.

I searched the horde; Althor was far ahead, riding like a maniac. I concentrated, but his mental doors were closed, part of the courtesy and protection trained Kyles automatically assumed among a race of Kyles. He was far enough away, too, that I »■ couldn’t gain the immediacy of contact we shared when we were closer together.

One of the riders called out. A moment later I saw it: a city of chrome spires rising out of the desert. These were no ruins. A modern metropolis grew before us, metal, ceramic, and glassplex, gleaming in the bronzed sun. We had reached Saint Parval, and the starport.

“No!” I shouted.

Eldrin leaned his forehead against the back of my head and the sense of mental pressure increased. I made a picture in my mind, showing him the marble room where the mercenaries had first taken us, Althor sitting with his hands bound behind his back, Ragnar Bloodmark standing over him, his face contorted with anger as he told Althor he would never again bow to his family.

Eldrin made a choked noise. Then he shouted in Iotic.

Every ruzik in his escort stopped. In a delayed reaction, Althor and his escort halted a few seconds later, wheeling around to look at us. Eldrin played his fingers across our mount’s neck ridge like a pianist. The animal took off again—headed back into the desert, away from Saint Parval.

The Abaj stood by their mounts like narrow statues. The red-gold sun hung above the horizon, hugely bloated, and dunes stretched out around us in giant ripples of sand. I sat with Althor and his father on a crumbling bench by a fountain where no water had flowed for centuries. A few yards away, a pyramid graced the desert, its steep sides stained red in the slanting light.

Althor’s father spoke Iotic, pausing as Althor translated. “I told Ragnar everything,” Eldrin said. “He arranged for the ISC warships. They’re outside the system now, waiting for permission to enter. Ragnar ordered me to stay on the ship.” He touched Althor’s shoulder and said something Althor didn’t translate. But I understood. He had needed to see himself that his son was safe.

“Ragnar played his part well,” Eldrin continued. “He told your mother and me that he feared betrayals in both ISC and the Abaj. He counseled us to remain silent about his involvement, lest we warn the conspirators about his work against them. That’s why I didn’t tell the Abaj he was on the ship.” He shook his head..“We believed him, Althor.”

“How could you have known?” Althor spoke first in Iotic, then in English. “By the time we learned of his part, the mercenaries had shut down the Jag. During the trip here I was unconscious and Tina was only awake for a few moments.” He shook his head. “If Tina and I had boarded his ship, Ragnar would have isolated us and arranged for an attack by the Traders. He could have been rid of us before we had a chance to reveal him.” He regarded his father. “Now that you know, he has to get rid of you too.”

A vivid flux of emotion came from Eldrin, born of a fifty-year-old memory, one worn by time but still vivid: fear, anger, loathing. I remembered what Ming had told me, that Althor’s father had been captured by the Traders in the last war.

All Eldrin said was, “Ragnar can do nothing. Too many know we are here. Perhaps that one ship is crewed by his people, but certainly not the entire force we brought. Perhaps not even that one ship.”

“That’s all the more reason to fear him,” Althor said. “He’s desperate.”

“He can do nothing,” Eldrin said.

“No?” Although Althor spoke sharply, he translated his words as, “Father, you are a brilliant bard. Military strategy is my expertise.” Eldrin stiffened, though, and I caught the sense of what Althor really said:
Father, what does a folksinger know about modern military strategy? Absolutely nothing.

That was my first experience with the grating side of Althor’s attitude toward his father. I’ve since realized his lack of respect for Eldrin’s intelligence was a legacy planted and nourished by Ragnar Bloodmark. The wounds have gradually healed, as they’ve come to understand how Bloodmark used Althor, driving a wedge between parents and son. It is a testament to the strength of Althor’s family that their love survived even after so many years of manipulation by their close “friend.”

“A hundred ways exist for him to arrange our recapture by the Traders,” Althor said.

“That wouldn’t be enough,” Eldrin said. “The Abaj also know his guilt.”

Althor grimaced. “If the Traders break the system defenses and fire on the planet, no witnesses will survive to tell the story.”

“They can’t break through,” Eldrin said. “And they would be fools to destroy Raylicon. I can’t think of a more inflammatory act of war.”

“Without help, no, there’s probably no way they could do it. But they have help. An ISC admiral. And, Father, the act of war has been committed by Raylicon. It’s the Abaj who refuse to give us to ISC.”

Listening to them, I wondered what would have happened had we never escaped Iquar. Once he realized I was Rhon, he would have forced Althor to reveal how we met. He would have learned about my Earth, alone and vulnerable, like a succulent fruit ready to pluck. For the first time it hit me how severe the consequences could be for my universe if the Traders ever recaptured us.

Althor and Eldrin had fallen silent, both watching me. Belatedly I realized I was probably broadcasting my emotions.

Eldrin spoke gently, with Althor translating. “I’ve also been with the Traders, Tina. I understand your fear.”

I spoke. “But they let you go.”.

“They agreed to an exchange of prisoners,” Eldrin said. “Me for an Aristo youth. The boy was Jaibriol Qox III, now Emperor of Eube. I still don’t understand why he arranged the trade.” His comment surprised me. Why wouldn’t the Eubians want the trade? They had the better of it. Although Eldrin was a member of the Rhon, he wasn’t the same rank as an emperor. Of course, that was before they discovered one of their military units had captured a Lock.

Eldrin was watching me. “No one knew Jaibriol II had a son. He was hidden on Earth, going to high school, for gods’ sakes. After his father’s death, he went to Delos, an Allied planet with both Skolian and Eube embassies. He simply walked into the Eube embassy and offered himself for trade. They verified his identity with genetic tests and had me brought to Delos within a day.” He spread his hands. “Why a trade? He was a free man. Why not just claim his birthright?”