Queen of the Pirates (19 page)

Daneel skipped back two steps to catch his breath. He was always amazed at how much energy was burned in a few complex passes.

Hellhound
smiled at him now, a predator playing with a mouse. One who had already drawn blood twice without losing any.

Daneel smiled back. He gestured at the man, a silent conversation between just the two of them, encompassing the little tricks and cheats Rory was counting on to win.

“And that,” Daneel said quietly, “is why Matilda preferred me.”

A bull will get that look in the eyes, when goaded sufficiently. A shark as well. Powerful, dangerous, mean.

But mindless.

For a moment,
Hellhound
went white, before all the blood surged back into his face like a tide of rage.
Warlock
thought the man’s eyes had even turned red. He heard a growl, but wasn’t sure which of them it came from.

Hellhound
rushed forward, blade forward like a stinger. There was no feint, no subtlety. Just a wild stabbing.

Warlock
shifted to his right, instead of the left as
Hellhound
expected, and punched upward with the hilt and crossguard of his borrowed blade.

He met
Hellhound
’s blade and thrust it upwards, not quite clear, as he felt the tip enter his shoulder, ripping flesh.

His own blade tip spun around and caught the man high in the belly. Daneel put all the anger of the last three weeks behind the blow.

Losing his base. Watching it be obliterated by
that woman
. Coming home in disgrace. Being subject to an assassination attempt.

He was angry.

And he held an exceptional blade.

Hellhound
’s own inertia drove him forward onto the point, even as Daneel drove it forward and up. It caught on something inside there, maybe a rib, maybe the back of the armor.

Daneel grabbed the man by his throat and pulled him further onto his death, crunching bone with a sawing motion.

He looked into the other man’s eyes as death approached. “See you in hell, Rory,” he whispered as the light slowly faded.

Two down.

Warlock
held
Hellhound
’s corpse weight with one hand. He looked around the room with an angry scowl before tilting the weapon down and letting Rory Agano’s body slide backwards and fall to the floor.

The room was silent for a moment.

Daneel kneeled down and ripped open
Hellhound
’s jacket. Sure enough, the man was wearing something like a girdle around his middle, heavy chain links sewn into the cloth. Good enough for most fights.

“What are you doing?” someone called.

Daneel ripped the armor loose and stood up, displaying it to the room. His left hand suddenly wouldn’t work.

The mob got ugly at the realization. Duels were duels. Cheating was a death sentence, one way or the other.

Daneel stumbled a bit.

She
was there suddenly, holding his weight up with an arm around his waist.
How strong was this woman?

“Poison?” she whispered.

“Maybe,” he replied. It was suddenly hard to concentrate.

He saw her point at Arnulf’s herald with her other hand.

“You,” she commanded, “I need a doctor. Now.”

It was not a voice to be brooked. She sounded almost as angry as he had been.

Had been? Had?

He let the darkness overwhelm him.

Chapter XXV

Date of the Republic October 31, 393 City of Corynthe, Petron

Jessica looked up with a silent snarl when someone approached her. She softened it when she realized that it was Marcelle intruding.

Warlock
was stretched out in a hospital bed before her, machines beeping quietly as the man slept. According to the court surgeon, he was only still alive because all of
Auberon’s
marines were cross–trained as medics to some degree, and carried all sorts of interesting surprises in their packs. As did, apparently, Marcelle.

Good to know.

It had been a day of surprises. Obviously,
Warlock
hadn’t expected an assassination attempt right after he landed. At least not one so public. From the anger of King Arnulf, she deduced he had been willing to accept an honest fight. That, or he was a much better actor than she would have given him credit for.

The room where she waited was a private clinic reserved for members of the Court, and the
King’s Own
were guarding at the door, along with two of her marines who had refused to stand down.

Not that she blamed them. They were chewing–nails angry. Nobody liked assassins. Especially not after the effort her people had been through getting all these people home safely. They took that sort of insult personally.

“Yes?” Jessica asked, softening her voice, bringing her mind back to the present and forcing her anger at the situation back into a bottle.

Marcelle paused and licked her lips, mimicking the exact tone and intonation of the King’s herald, an octave higher. “His Excellency, King Arnulf Rodriguez, requests a private audience with his staff to discuss recent diplomatic and political developments. He would appreciate your attendance.”

Jessica drew a breath deep into her lungs. She glanced down at
Warlock
, heart rate beeping strong, unsure why she was reacting like this.

“He’ll be safe,” Marcelle said quietly. “
Necromancer
is sending over more marines, and I’m told Ishikura’s people have been notified, so they’ll be along.”

“Now?” Jessica asked, harsher–sounding than she intended. Marcelle wouldn’t take offence. Jessica could see the anger smoldering in the other woman’s eyes as well.

“Aye, sir,” Marcelle replied, coming to parade rest.

Jessica nodded.
Warlock
wasn’t going anywhere, and nobody was getting in here without trouble.

And there were questions. She was not feeling especially polite about asking them.

“Very well,” she said. “Let us go see what the King of the Pirates can do for us.”

Ξ

Jessica let herself be personally fawned over by Arnulf’s herald and ushered into a private conference room.

It was a small–ish space, comfortable for perhaps a dozen people, rather than the hundreds who had danced attendance this afternoon. A giant oval of a table, polished from some local speckled orange stone, dominated the space, surrounded by a bevy of comfortable chairs and cloth–covered walls.

King Arnulf was there, dominating the space in his own way.

Up close, the man was still impressive, even seated, but she could see the stress of aging beginning to sap him. This was not a place with rules and organization. And he could not rely on any divine right of kings to hold his palace. It would be a daily battle to remain king until he finally lost, or chose to step down.

Jessica could not see this man voluntarily relinquishing power. Especially not if he truly wanted to found a dynasty that would reign after him.

Next to the King sat a man who had been hovering close by on the dais, but not prominent. He was tall and skinny, bald but for a ring of short gray hair around his skull. Obviously not a man desperately concerned enough about his physical appearance to be vain about it. Unlike most of the men in the room.

Jessica noted the appraising look in the stranger’s eyes as she took her seat. It was not a man looking at an attractive woman, but a shark recognizing another one in a small area. She almost expected him to puff up like a cat, but he merely smiled.

“Jing Du,” he said quietly by way of introduction, “Chancellor to the king.”

Ah. Roughly the local equivalent of the Premier of the Republic Senate, back home. Probably almost as dangerous.

The other half dozen were largely faceless nobodies, flunkies here because they were important enough to be seen, but not particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. She memorized names and faces as they were introduced, but only because she wanted to be able to keep track of them later.

Only the last one stood out in her mind. He was a rangy man, with wiry muscles, but the sort of bulk an athletic man will attain after he gets into his forties and stops trying to out–run kids half his age. His red hair was medium length and he had what Jessica’s mother would have called Irish freckles.

“Captain Ian Zhao,” he said with a roguish smile. “We’ve actually met once, if only briefly.”

Jessica let one eyebrow ask the question.

“At
Sarmarsh IV
,” he continued.

“Ah,” she said, “yours was the Mothership we did not pursue.”

“Indeed,” Zhao replied. “If I may inquire, what happened to the Imperial corvette after we left?”

“We boarded her for a customs inspection,” Jessica danced lightly around the truth, almost vapidly. It had worked with Admiral Wachturm, to think her an over–rated airhead. Perhaps the pirates would make a similar mistake. They had even less to go on. “A few of the guests were detained for commercial irregularities, and the vessel was sent on its way.”

If she hadn’t been so closely studying the man as she spoke, she probably would have missed the look that passed between Zhao and the chancellor, seated across from him. She didn’t know what it meant, but it did confirm at least some of her suspicions about the layers of subtlety and misdirection at work.

Arnulf appeared to miss it.

She would have put Denis Jež and
Auberon
on a higher level of alert, but there wasn’t one. Anyone attempting to ambush Jež and his crew right now was in for a very rude surprise, for a very short, very terminal, period of time.

“I see,” Chancellor Du said after a beat. “And will your guests be available to entertain? It would be remiss of us to ignore anyone important while you are here.”

Jessica smiled back at him with just the same hint of cruelty. “Unfortunately, no. They are technically prisoners of
Lincolnshire
for the time being, until such time as the authorities at
Ramsey
can provide us better guidance as to their status.”

The sour look on his face was reward enough to Jessica for playing the obnoxious little political power games being thrust upon her. She still preferred the clean movements of battle squadrons.

“How is
Warlock
?”

King Arnulf apparently had decided that the small talk had gone on long enough.

Jessica looked both ways down the table before responding, noting interest, hope, and disdain in equal parts, as one would expect from rivals and comrades.

“He will survive,” she announced. Leave it at that. Nothing about luck and timing, plots and assassination attempts. Just a simple fake smile from an ignorant foreigner.

“Very good. Thank you, Keller,” he said simply. “And thank your medical crew for being so fast. It would have been a great embarrassment to me, to have one of my own captains die of poison, having just survived a duel.”

Jessica noted the way he seemed to speak out of the side of his mouth, glancing sidelong at the chancellor seated on his immediate right. Perhaps there was something there she could explore.

“Oh,” she replied lightly, “those were just my line marines, not field medics. The actual medic is currently en route from the DropShip that delivered us to the surface.”

It was rewarding to see that bit of information register. The blinks. The pupils cycling. That little hint of whiteness as the surprise drained blood from faces. The reminder that they were dealing with professionals now. Even if their commander was just a harmless, little girl surrounded by all these big, bad pirates. She still had marines.

She could have told them that her dragoon was a stickler for that sort of cross–training, and famous across the fleet for the quality of marine non–coms he promoted out to other vessels on a regular basis. But really, letting the other guy think your people were all three meters tall was useful. Never know when that sort of thing would be the edge you needed on the battlefield.

“I see,” the man replied gravely. He did play the part of regality well. “There will be an investigation as to why Captain Agano was prepared as he was, with a poisoned spike on his ring and body armor hidden under his jacket.”

Arnulf took a deep breath to lend gravity to his words. He was very, very good at that aspect of rule. “If he hadn’t died, Rory Agano would have been exiled from the Court and stripped of his name for his behavior. As it is, I declare the feud with Daneel Ishikura over.”

He turned to the chancellor with a deeply serious mien. “See to it that Garth Agano and the rest of the family are made aware that they have reached the limits of my patience.”

Rather than speak, the man bowed his head. For a moment, Jessica saw the ghost of a smile pluck at his lips.

Arnulf turned to Jessica and studied her face for a moment before he continued. On one hand, it was a politician sizing up a potential rival. Commanders did it in bars and classrooms the galaxy over. There were also hints of a man studying a woman, although it felt as if he intended conquest rather than seduction for his part.

Because some men never learn.

“So, Keller,” he began, “why are you here?”

Interesting.

Blunt, pointed, a–political. Not quite the opposite of what she had expected, but close enough. Beside him, the chancellor nearly cringed before he caught himself.

Jessica took a deep breath and held it. This was exactly what both Premier Horvat and First Lord Kasum had wanted her to learn, the intricacies and subtleties of good diplomacy with dangerous men.

And, instead, she was dancing with a bull in a china shop.

However, she thought that way normally. If she could have something of an honest conversation with this man, this King of the Pirates, maybe she could sort out this mess without having to get the Republic involved.

More involved.

She was here now, wasn’t she?

And maybe pigs would fly.

“
Lincolnshire
had a problem with criminal elements,” she said.
Past tense. Leave it at that.
Not quite as blunt. Not quite as direct. The man was a big–shot pirate, treat him like one. Play to his ego.