Recycled (26 page)

He hurt everywhere, making it very hard to concentrate, and he desperately needed to concentrate. He had horribly miscalculated the situation. He had withheld treatment from the queen and had allied himself to Atario, a man who was destined to go down in the history books as the country's greatest traitor. When the commoners had come across Atario's body, they had literally ripped it to shreds.

The fact that Sortas had killed Atario and patched up a few of her crew wasn't likely to appease the queen's wrath. Drewcila, he now realized, was no fluke. She hadn't gotten where she was by birth and good breeding, or even by luck. Drewcila had gotten where she was because the little tart was sharp as a box of tacks. She understood people, and she understood business, and worst of all—since he was on the wrong side of her—she understood how best to deal with her enemies.

You killed them.

Dead people couldn't cause any trouble. He had caused her trouble. He had sided with the enemy against her and tried to take over her kingdom. She wasn't likely to believe the same story he had told the reporters that had won them over so entirely.

For one thing, she was painfully—at least for him—aware of the truth that he hadn't treated her poisoning. That he had left her to suffer, and suffer she had. It wasn't something she was likely to forget. Still, if he could somehow prove that he could be useful, even necessary, she might just let him live.

If he had it to do over again, he would have done everything differently. Treated her, done the autopsy on the king, and pointed the finger at Atario. He wasn't stupid enough to think that after this loss the nobles could ever again regain their place in this country. Drewcila had won. She was now in total control without even Zarco to buffer her, and the last time that had happened, she had changed the whole world, and his life.

Still, now that he reflected on it in this new light, he'd had a good life. It just wasn't up to par with what he had before, true. But he wanted to live, and in order to do that he had to find some way to convince Drewcila that he was not only truly sorry for what he had done, and would never do it again, but that it was also in her best interest to keep him alive.

Therein was the real problem. Repentance wasn't going to be enough to buy him a stay of execution. He had to somehow prove that she would be better off with him alive than she was with him dead.

He heard the guards addressing someone just outside the cell block, and then the Valtarian lizard woman strolled in the jail. He could see the blood lust in her eyes. He moved quickly to a corner of the cell and tried to make himself invisible.

She moved around the cell block looking into the cells, and the whole time he was very careful to keep his head down.

She laughed in a maniacal way, and said in that hissing voice of hers that made his flesh crawl, "I feel like a kid in a candy store. There is just so much to choose from, and . . ." She stopped suddenly in front of his cell, and said, "You!"

Sortas swallowed hard and looked up slowly, wondering what horrible death she had in store for him.

"Not you! You!" she hollered, pointing at another man in the cell.

"Me?" the man asked as the front of his pants darkened.

"Yeah, you, Come here."

The man walked over to the bars where she seemed to check him out the way a client in a restaurant might check out a piece of meat before having the cook sling it on the grill. After a few seconds she either smiled or snarled, Sortas couldn't be sure which, and then she grabbed the guy by his collar and jerked him into the bars. She let him drop to the floor, then opened the door. No one thought it was a good idea to rush her, which seemed to disappoint her. She dragged the still dazed man out of the cell, stood him up and shut the cell door. She looked him up and down, then plunged a claw into the flesh of the man's shoulder. The man cried out and started to fall, but she held him up with that one claw caught up in his flesh.

That's nice of her
, Sortas thought.

"You know what you did, don't you?"

"No," the man gulped.

"Yes, you do. You're the shit that pulled the trigger that fired the blast that killed my little blue friend . . ."

"I . . . I was just following orders," he cried, then screamed as she twisted the claw in his shoulder again.

"Wrong answer. So . . . I'm going to let you go and give you a head start. If you get away . . . Well, you get away, if not . . ." she shrugged.

"Oh, gods, no! Please," he begged. She pulled the claw out of his shoulder, and he took off running. She gave him a three stride head start, then jumped over his head, landed in front of him, spun quickly and flipped her tail out so that a spike split the guy's head. He fell to the floor with a scream, and she put a foot on the man's head and pulled her tail free.

Sortas cringed. The lizard woman turned to look at them, and him in particular. She put the bloody claw to her mouth and slowly sucked the blood off."Now you . . . I know who you are, too, and what you did. Or rather what you didn't do." She just smiled—or snarled—he still couldn't be sure which."Just a little food for thought. Chew on it awhile. See how treason tastes. I won't make you wait long." She started to go, but stopped in the doorway and turned to look at them all."And if I ever find out which one of you bastards pissed on my clothes . . . Well, let's just say I'm thinking of interesting ways to kill you."

She left. They heard her talking to the guard again, and since no one showed up to remove the body, Sortas guessed that she had asked him to leave it there.

Sortas refused to look towards the body. He had to think. He had to think fast, and he couldn't afford to waste time thinking about all the horrible ways she might kill him.

Of course, it was almost impossible to think about anything else.

Arcadia didn't feel like going back to her decimated room alone to brood, and since Drewcila had put a bar in the castle, there was no need to. She made a beeline for the bar, hoping against hope that it hadn't been trashed as badly as her own quarters had been.

Arcadia didn't know what the room had been before Drewcila had it turned into a bar, but it was big enough to harbor a full sized, fully stocked long bar, a small stage, a jukebox, and a dance floor besides a dozen tables.

She didn't know how it had happened. Maybe Drewcila's god, the deity of Party Hearty, had laid a protective hand over it. Whatever the cause, the bar had been untouched. The regular bartender was on duty, and there was at least one customer hugging the bar. Arcadia breathed in a deep breath of normalcy, walked up to the bar and sat down on her usual stool.

Abear walked over to her."How . . ." she started.

"Drewcila had a force field installed over the door. When the shit hit the fan I closed the door, flipped on the force field, and hunkered down. It was rough. I had nothing to eat but pretzels and olives for two days."

"Oh . . . how horrible for you," Arcadia said sarcastically, thinking of how she'd spent the last few days.

Abear laughed."I wondered why you guys didn't run in here during all the hubbub. I mean . . . I would have let you guys in."

"And then we would have all been stuck in here with no outside link, and how long do you think those olives and pretzels would have lasted?"

"With Drewcila in here, I would have been more worried about running out of liquor."

Arcadia cleared her throat."Speaking of which, I'm sitting here, and I don't have my drink yet."

Abear laughed."Sorry . . . Hurling Monkey?"

"Yeah . . . and add a twist." Arcadia plopped her elbow on the bar and then resting her chin in her claw, she sighed.

"Bad day?" he asked.

"What do you think?" Arcadia answered with a laugh.

"I was sorry to hear about Pris."

"Yeah, I just mutilated the guy that shot him, and yet I still don't feel any better."

"Go figure," he set her drink in front of her and lowered his voice still more."I heard Van Gar's here."

"Yeah."

"I'm guessing that's cutting into your time with the boss."

"Yeah." Arcadia shrugged."You know . . . I had her first!"

Of course he knew that, he heard Arcadia's bitches on a regular basis. She told him things she had probably never told another living soul, but then he was the bartender. It was a sacred trust and one he took seriously. People told him their problems, he pretended to listen, pretended to half care. They felt better, they drank a lot, and he had job security.

"Some people have everybody, while other people have no one," a slightly slurred voice said. The creature who had been at the other end of the bar had moved, and she now sat down next to Arcadia without asking."Hardly seems fair," she added.

Arcadia looked up at the female Chitzsky and cringed. The poor thing had a face not even a mother would love on payday.

"Hello," Arcadia said in a voice dripping with implied 'go away and leave me alone.'

The interloper obviously didn't understand her, because she didn't move, and she just kept talking.

"My name's Shreta. I rode in with Van Gar." Shreta had obviously had more than a couple of drinks, and was well on her way to the worship of the porcelain god if she didn't slow down. Arcadia just wanted the ugly female to leave her the hell alone, and was about to say so when Shreta announced, "I . . . Van Gar . . . he was everything I ever dreamed of, and he wouldn't even look at me because he is so completely and totally in love with her."

Arcadia was thinking that he probably wasn't looking because he had a low puke level. However, now it was impossible for her to be rude to the woman. After all, here was someone who understood Arcadia's pain.

"When I was a baby, my parents took me to the supermarket and left me," Shreta slurred out. She was talking with her hands, apparently oblivious to the fact that the drink she was holding was spilling everywhere as she did so.

"They forgot you?" Arcadia asked.

"No, they left me there on purpose. But someone saw them and made them take me back."

Arcadia started laughing."That's either the saddest fucking story I ever heard, or the funniest."

Abear sighed. He wished they'd leave so he could close up, go home. and get some sleep. It had been two hours since Arcadia had walked through the door, and she was now every bit as drunk as the Chitzsky woman had been when Arcadia walked in. Arcadia's tail was flopping all over the place. She'd already punched a hole in one of the bar stools, and he was literally taking his life into his hands every time he served her a drink. He was well aware that being that close to her put him well within range of her ever-flipping tail, and the dried blood caked onto one of the spikes did nothing at all to put him at ease.

The Chitzsky woman was now completely blitzed. The fact that she hadn't hurled yet was a small miracle and a testament to the Chitzsky race's strong constitution. Still, he wished they would leave before she started making the technicolor yawn.

"I had to take myself to my coming of age dance," Shreta announced in a slur.

"Did you get fresh with yourself?" Arcadia asked with a laugh much better than her joke was.

"Well, hell, yes."

They both laughed hysterically. Arcadia fell off her bar stool, and one of her tail spikes got stuck in the floor. She couldn't pull it out, which only made them laugh harder. Shreta climbed off her barstool and almost fell as she went to help Arcadia. When the two of them succeeded in pulling her tail from the floor, they both went sprawling on their asses—which was apparently the funniest thing that had happened yet.

"All right!" Abear screamed. They were quiet as they turned to look at him. And then for no apparent reason at all started laughing again."Damn it, girls! It's two in the morning. You fought a dog fight today. Aren't either one of you tired? I would like to go home sometime this year."

"So go! No one's stopping you," Arcadia said with a flip of a claw.

Abear looked around the bar. Could he do that? He supposed he could; it wasn't like there was a till full of money that he was responsible for. The bar was complimentary to the castle staff and visitors.

"Great. I'm going home then," he said and started for the door."You two try not to get into too much trouble."

They watched him go, than Arcadia levered herself up out of the floor and walked around the bar. She started mixing herself a drink."What about you?"

"Nah. I drink one more I'm gonna spew."

Arcadia nodded. She sipped experimentally at the drink she'd just made herself. It tasted like shit. She decided to drink it anyway.

"You know," Shreta said, "I never thought about doing it with another female before. It might be fun. You, ah, want to . . ."

Arcadia made a face."Geez, girl! I'm drunk, not blind. I mean . . . nah, that's more or less what I meant. You're a lot of fun, but damn, girl, you're just butt-ass ugly."