Hidden in Sight (32 page)

“To you, it was necessary, wasn't it?” The interruption came from Paul, who dared lean forward to stare at Skalet. He looked curious, nothing more, to someone who didn't know him better, who didn't know the cost of such control. I wrinkled my snout in clear warning to Skalet.

She merely dipped her head graciously at my Human, as if conceding him a victory. “Of course. Secrecy is essential. I could protect my movements from scrutiny, but yours? You exhibit a contempt for safety, Youngest, such that I'm amazed you've survived this long. That business with the Iftsen?” She pretended to shudder. “As well, you remain woefully predictable. It wasn't difficult to arrange events that would encourage you to act in your own best interest for once.” I must have growled, drawing her eyes to me. “Surely you see the efficiency. In one stroke, you were freed from all ties you possessed outside this room and, as a consequence, you traveled secretly, here, to hide. A place where I could follow. As your Human wisely notes, everything was necessary for the safety of us all.” She regarded her wine. “Ah, but I forget, you have ambition. What do you care for my old notions of following rules and keeping safe?”

Ambition?
There was danger in the word, even if I had no idea what Skalet was talking about.
Games—she'd always played them.
“What ambition do you think I have?”

The velvet voice could become as sharp as any knife. “Do you deny you've tried to turn yourself into one of them?” A wave toward Paul.

I blinked.

“Living among them I could understand,” Skalet continued more evenly. “This—bond—with a single Human I was willing to tolerate. He has proved useful and discreet; the species doesn't live long anyway.” My growling became a snarl and she waited for me to subside, as if patience had been added to her character over the past years. “I admit, Youngest, I thought you were doing fairly well under the circumstances. You've even handled that fool Kearn without having to explain his corpse.” Her eyebrows, arched and artificial, came together in a frown. I could sense the “but” coming. Skalet had never been one to compliment without criticism.

Sure enough.
“But you have shocked me, Youngest.”

“I shocked you?” This seemed a bit unreasonable, considering I wasn't the one who'd decided to come back to life. “How?”

“By breeding your Human,” she replied matter-of-factly. I did my utmost not to laugh—something Skalet had never taken well—as I wondered what Char Largas would have to say about this interpretation of her whirlwind courtship.
She had,
I recalled,
found innumerable ways to keep a certain Lishcyn busy at the office.

The impulse died as I lifted my ears and heard that Paul was barely breathing. A quick glance showed me his face had gone chalk white. Easy, I wished at him.
Never show Skalet a way to your heart.
“At first,” she was saying, “I couldn't imagine what possessed you to complicate an already vulnerable identity by acquiring his offspring. Then, I understood.”

“You did,” I said numbly.

“Of course. You have never been subtle, no matter how I tried to educate you.”
Paul should have laughed at this.
Skalet fixed me with her cold, green eyes. “You've arranged that when this one dies, you'll have more Humans of his genotype and your training. At the same time, you've set up a network of machines to gather information throughout this quadrant. Your ambition is as pathetic as it is obvious.”

I felt time slipping back, as if I was trapped in Ersh's kitchen by one of Skalet's lessons on strategy.
Figure it out for yourself, 'tween.
There was no doubt in my mind: Skalet was still a lousy teacher. “I have no ambition, pathetic or otherwise,” I assured her, somehow finding the self-control not to shout.
Beyond trying to repair what I could of our lives.
“I don't know what you're talking about—”

“Do you think me senile, Youngest? It's clear you have been attempting to create some obscene ephemeral Web, Esen-alit-Quar. I can only assume you're trying to replace what you lost.” Skalet actually managed to look sympathetic. “A doomed, foolish ambition. I saw how this Human's offspring abandoned you as soon as they were old enough. I watched you become so desperate you attempted alliances with any species that came near you, from Ganthor to those ridiculous Feneden. I realized I could no longer leave you to fend for yourself.”

I hoped my relief didn't show. If this wasn't some trick—
which was all too likely
—then Skalet hadn't found out about my alliance with Paul's Group, or Rudy. She had, however, been closer to my every move than was even remotely comfortable. I spared an instant to worry about Luara and Tomas.

Then wished I hadn't, as the thought made me look again at Paul. His eyes flinched from mine, like something desperate.

Had he lied to me?
If Skalet hadn't been there, if she hadn't begun pushing me back into her way of thinking, I might never have felt that jolt of dread. Now I couldn't help remembering. Paul had said he wouldn't see his children again in order to protect them from his past.
Had it been to protect them from my future instead?
Could he have believed I'd seen the twins as another set of Ragems to befriend, to risk with my secret after he was—after—

“Stop this,” I ordered both Skalet and my imagination. “Unlike you, I took responsibility for the web-being who killed our sisters, and for any others who might come to this space. I made a life for myself. What would you have preferred I do? Hide in a hole for a hundred years, hoping for the occasional hiker to talk to himself so I could retain at least some familiarity with the local dialect? If Paul hadn't left his own family, his own Web, for me, that's very likely all I could have done.”

“Laudable.”

I snapped my teeth together over what I might have said, knowing I was the one with the vulnerable throat.
Because of Paul.
“Your approval means nothing to me,” I said evenly. “I presume you don't seek mine.” I didn't bother to reproach Skalet for abandoning me for fifty years, as Paul's cousin Rudy had reproached him.
Would Paul understand why?
He'd always had less difficulty comprehending the ways of my species than I, his. Still, would he realize that for a web-being who'd lived millennia, as Skalet had, fifty years was the equivalent of a week apart?

It was still enough time to accomplish very many things, especially if you were in a position of unassailable power such as Skalet enjoyed as S'kal-ru. I followed that thought, believing it was important. “How did you explain your failure to the Kraal? You'd cost them ships—lives.”

“And how did you survive?” This from Paul, who'd been there when Skalet had asked for—and taken—most of my mass in order to fight our enemy.

“How?” Skalet steepled her fingers, choosing to answer the Human—a choice implying she had reason to know it was safe to tell him secrets.
It wouldn't be trust.
The hair over my spine, never flat since my arrival, stood straight up. “I left the excess mass as a decoy, deep inside a weapons' room vault I knew would be difficult even for a web-being to penetrate quickly. Then I took a shuttle to rejoin Admiral Mocktap.”

I stared at her in disbelief, remembering, perfectly, every slice of her teeth through my flesh. “You fed it my mass?”

She pretended to be surprised by my outrage. “Surely you didn't expect me to risk mine against a superior force. My decoy bought you and your precious Human time to escape, did it not?”

“Decoy—” I couldn't speak for an instant. Then, somehow, I found my voice. “You know what it learned from your—decoy.”

Hesitation.
I watched her fingers tighten around one another.

“You know,” I told her, lowering my tone in pure threat, remembering how Paul and I had arrived too late, how we'd found Ersh's home, my home, destroyed; everything Ersh had been, the source of our Web, entombed in her mountain.
The darkest day of my long life.

Because Death had assimilated Skalet-memory from her
decoy
, and knew where to go.

“Yes.” Oddly subdued for Skalet.

“ ‘Yes.'” I put both paws on the table and leaned into the face of my Elder, hoping my breath was unpleasant. “Have you dared return to Picco's Moon since?”

Skalet's head dropped forward, as if she studied the painful-looking knot her hands had become. The braids on either side of her face slipped past her shoulders, puddling on the stone table like drying blood. But the voice emanating from that shelter was as calm and cold as ever. “I was reminded of it, lately. And how the past shows us the needs of the present. I maneuvered you here because I need the ability Ersh gave you, Youngest. Give it to me.”

I didn't pretend to misunderstand. Skalet must have been on that Kraal ship, must have seen how I'd killed our enemy. She had to know I'd assimilated the secret of traveling through space, a secret only Ersh could have kept hidden in her flesh from the rest of our Web. “No.” My sensitive ears caught the echo from Paul's lips, though almost silent.
Don't.

Skalet's head rose within a flood of red and black. “Why? Is it so dangerous? So painful? Or so valuable only you may own it? I should be the judge, as your Elder. It's too important to risk in your flesh alone.” Her voice deepened. “Esen-alit-Quar. Will you share it?”

Share.
Every part of me ached at the word, knew its grip as a hunger. I panted to dump heat and stay in a form that considered biting a social skill, not a way to rip mass from another and
learn.

If Skalet felt the longing, she controlled it better than I.
Or did she?

I realized, as abruptly as the wink of light from crystal, that we were no longer Eldest and Youngest—and had never been equals. “I am Senior Assimilator of the Web of Esen,” I told her, reminding myself and Paul that things were not as they had been. “I share only what I choose to share, as Ersh did before me.”

But Skalet had waited for my awareness, calculated its arrival precisely; I knew by the satisfied way she relaxed into her chair.
And I'd seen that smile before.
“While I am helpless to conceal anything within my flesh,” Skalet admitted, much too calmly. “How unfair, 'tween. Ersh and I had so many—uncomfortable—disagreements which could have been avoided had I your ability; while I truly don't care if you know everything I know.”

Never underestimate a Kraal.
Skalet, a devoted student of that twisted culture, had taught me that. I saw my danger just in time. I dared not seem a threat to her, not here, not with Paul so close. “I wouldn't—”

“Oh, I couldn't stop you, Senior Assimilator. Or could I?” The smile became a sneer. “What if I ate all of you? I could, you know.”

Paul turned an interesting color. I tried to ignore his presence; I hoped Skalet continued to do the same. With an effort, I unwrinkled my snout and finally sat down at her table.
Two could play Kraal games.
“Then you wouldn't get what you want,” I stated. “I excised my memories of how to move through space from my mass—which would be another of those things, Eldest, I can do that you can't.”

Her eyes flashed to Paul's pendant.
Ersh, she was quick.
“Take it, if you wish,” I told her, keeping my voice even. “Assimilate the iota of my web-mass within. It's a message—an introduction—to any of our kind Paul might encounter in the future. You might benefit from the concepts of friendship and trust.”

“Irrelevant,” Skalet concluded, looking back at me. “So this is how you gained information from Ersh after her death. She left such—messages—behind.” She tapped the tabletop lightly. “Which means you are quite right to chide me for neglecting our ancestor, Youngest. I should have returned to her pile of rock well before now. Imagine the opportunity I've wasted following your juvenile exploits, when I could have simply gone to the source.”

“Then it isn't you?” I blurted.

A lifted brow. “You really should try to speak more clearly, Esen. ‘Isn't me'what?”

I closed my jaw, prepared to be stubborn. Skalet merely turned to Paul. “Well, Human? What more would she like to accuse me of?”

Paul gave me that inscrutable look meaning he either saw an advantage to Skalet knowing, or somehow believed he had no choice but to answer. “Mining Ersh's mountain,” he told her.

“So that's how the past found its way home,” she said under her breath. I doubted Paul could hear. “But she must have known—why no report?” Skalet's face contorted with rage as I saw my web-kin lose control for the first time in my life, or in Ersh-memory, for that matter. She leaped to her feet, shouting: “How dare she betray me! I'll flay her tattoos from her face! I'll have her misbegotten family annihilated! I'll—”

When she stopped to take a breath, I couldn't help myself—too angry at my own betrayer to be careful. “Don't tell me you trusted an ephemeral.”

I should have remembered more about Skalet before daring to taunt her. I felt bone shatter within my snout as the force of her blow drove me from chair to the floor, to land in a mass of broken crystal and serpitay-soaked hides.

Through the confusion of pain and noise, I knew Paul tried to come to my aid.
He mustn't.
Blinking red from the eye that could see, I fumbled for the fallen chair, using it to pull myself up until I could grip the edge of the table with a paw.
A Kraal child knew how to snap a neck.

A long thin hand under my arm yanked me the rest of the way, shoved me into another chair. “Here.” A cold lump of ice was pressed into one of my paws. “Put this on the side before it swells.” I tried to throw it back at her, tried to find Paul.