The Sac'a'rith (36 page)

“He went to ground,” said Agent Byron.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He appeared in a bar almost two weeks ago, but didn’t order anything to drink. Shortly after that, he left the bar and hasn’t been seen since. We are watching all his known IDs and regular haunts,” said Agent Byron.

“He must have suspected something,” said Crivreen.

“More than likely, he figured out that using his ID would alert us to his location and decided to make a clean break,” said Agent Byron.

“He won’t be back,” said Crivreen. “He never really wanted to be part of this team and was only tagging along because he felt he owed it to me.”

“Let him go, then,” I said.

“He could have information on Narcion,” started Agent Byron.

“No, he won’t. Narcion did not trust Felix completely, so it is unlikely Felix knows anything of value,” I said.

“Are you sure you want me to call off the search?” asked Agent Byron.

“Yes. If he doesn’t want to be part of this team, then I don’t want him,” I said.

“Very well, but I will have to cancel that ID, then,” said Agent Byron.

I knew that could put Felix in an awkward spot at some point. “Is there any way to make it look like he was retired, or something like that? I would hate him to try to use it and get arrested without any warning.”

“I will see what I can do,” he said.

It took three days before the magus regained consciousness, but when she did I was by her side. We were all taking turns at watch and my turn had just started when she weakly asked, “Where am I?”

“You are on board the Night Wisp in our medical bay,” I said. She tried to sit up, but could not quite manage it. “Easy, you’ve been through a lot.”

“What happened?” she asked. Her eyes did not seem to be focusing, and it was obviously a struggle for her to talk.

“Easy,” I said again. “There will be time for questions later, but right now you need to regain your strength. Let me call Crivreen to check on you.”

“Crivreen?” she murmured.

“Yes, he has been your nurse all this time,” I said.

“Then you’re Zah’rak, which means I have been captured,” she said.

“Captured? No. Rescued, yes,” I said.

She slowly reached up to her head where the bandages were. “It’s gone?” she asked.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

She then fell back asleep. After I’d called Crivreen over the intercom and reported what had happened, he came down and checked her over. “Her vital signs are getting better. She will probably wake up and drift off a few more times; the doctor said this might happen. You might have this same conversation with her again, depending on how well her memory is working.”

I stayed by her side as much as I could. She was so tiny, even for a human; it was hard to picture her being much of a threat. She was at most one-and-a-half meters tall, and probably weighed less than some of my meals. She had dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. Her body had many scars on it that told of a hard life as a slave. I was sure each mark had some story behind it: some perhaps pointless shows of superiority by her master, but some would have tales of rebellion behind them. I felt a strange connection to her, probably because of our shared background; whatever it was, I saw her as the baby sister I never had.

We went through three more days of her waking up, asking questions, and going back to sleep. I was not sure if she remembered any of it until she woke and said, “Zah’rak?”

“I am here,” I said.

“So it was not a dream,” she said. “What is to happen to me?”

“For the moment, you are going to get better,” I said.

“I have done horrible things. You should have killed me,” she said.

“You were an implant-controlled slave. As such you are considered innocent under the law, and this once, I agree with the law,” I said.

Ragnar was in the room with us and asked, “What should we call you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “My master always just called me ‘Wormling’.”

“Well, that won’t do one bit,” said Ragnar. “What would you prefer to be called?”

“How does one choose a name?” she asked.

“Where I come from, names carry meaning. For example, my name is Ragnar Runecaster. I have that name because I am next in line, or rather was, to be Runecaster for my tribe. My older brother currently fills that role, so I am known as Ragnar,” he said. “He currently goes by the name of Runecaster, and will do so until he steps down; then whoever takes his place will have that name.”

“But as a slave, my life never had meaning. Maybe I should just be ‘Wormling’,” she said.

“Nonsense! A baby gets a name when it’s born, and all the meaning of its life is in the future. The same is true for you. The chapter of your life as a slave is closed and a new door is opened,” he said.

“Shi’rak,” I said.

“What?” asked Ragnar.

“Shi’rak. It means ‘daughter of light’,” I said.

“And ‘Zah’rak’?” he asked.

“Roughly it means ‘swordbearer of light’,” I said. “The ‘rak’ part of my name is my tribal family name.”

“Daughter of light?” she asked. “I hardly feel that my life reflects that, so far.”

“Think of it as a goal, then,” said Ragnar. “You decide what you want to be, and work towards it.”

“Shira, then,” she said. “You honor me with your tribal name, but I would make an inadequate Zalionian.”

“Shira it is, then. Welcome aboard the Night Wisp, Shira,” I said. I was a bit amazed at how compliant she was, but I reminded myself that she was still weak. She could barely sit up, and even talking sapped her strength.

Crivreen spent several days helping her to build up her strength again. She ate like it had been years since she had seen a meal. She could not cast any spells, but Ragnar said that ability would return to her last of all. Once she was strong enough, she started walking down to the mess hall to eat, instead of eating in sick bay. She wanted to get up and do things herself much sooner than Crivreen was willing to let her.

Emotionally, she was completely cold. She was compliant and caused no problems, but she never became happy, or angry either. I suspected inside she must be an emotional wreck trying to deal with what had happened to her, but she was probably afraid to lower her guard just yet; years as a slave would have taught her to be extremely cautious.

On one occasion I entered the mess hall to find her there, waiting for me. “Zah’rak, may I ask a question?”

“Sure,” I said.

“What is to become of me?” she asked.

“As I said, you are to get better,” I said.

“Then what?” she asked.

“Well, then you will have a choice. Join my crew and help us, or I will give you money and supplies and drop you off at the station of your choice to seek your own path,” I said.

She sat there thinking about that, just looking at her food, which was mostly uneaten and looked like she had just been swirling it around for a while. This would be the first meal she had left uneaten since she had joined us. Something must have been bothering her deeply. “Why?” she finally asked.

“‘Why’ to what?” I asked.

“Why are you helping me? I can’t help you find Narcion, you know,” she said.

“I guessed as much, since you did not open the gate that trapped him. It doesn’t matter; I am sure he is fine right now,” I said. The fact that Felix was free and traveling alone meant that Narcion was probably also free. Felix had probably wanted no further part of the mission, so Narcion must have dumped Felix off somewhere and gone after Shira’s former master alone.

“If you knew that, then why rescue me?” she said.

“I was a slave all my life until Narcion stepped in and freed me several years ago. I wanted the chance to pass on the same gift I was given,” I said.

“Narcion made Master so very angry,” she said.

“Oh?” I asked.

“Yes. I do not know what happened, but when Master sprang his trap, both Narcion and Felix were gone. Thankfully, I was still on the station or it would have gone poorly for me.”

My stomach turned at that comment. I knew what it was like to be the slave of an evil man. Most likely her master would have taken his anger out on her. My joy at Narcion’s escape would have been overshadowed by the fact that she would have acquired a fresh set of scars. Life was just not fair, at least not for slaves.

Ragnar and Agent Byron had both told me that Narcion would be fine and not so easily trapped. I had wanted to believe them, but doubt had always lingered in my mind. Shira’s comment confirmed that Narcion was still in control as always, which made me wonder why he had not come back or at least sent a message.

“Why am I not in a hospital?” Shira asked, breaking my train of thought.

“You are a magus, and we did not know how you would react to being in our custody; so we took you to a hospital, got you the proper treatment and instructions for your care, then flew out here where it would be safer to wake you,” I said.

“That is a bit like kidnapping,” she said.

I chuckled and said, “No, it is a lot like stealing someone’s property; but as long as you had that implant in your head, there was no other way to rescue you.”

“How do you know I won’t turn on you and run back to my master?” she asked.

“I don’t. In fact, it is a very real risk, but one I am willing to take in order to offer you your freedom.”

She was quiet again for a while. I let her sit in peace while I ate my meal. I did not want to leave her yet. This newfound willingness to talk was a good sign that she was healing, and it also meant that we would soon have to face a difficult decision. Agent Byron wanted to interrogate her, and I had refused to allow it. Sooner or later he might get tired of following my orders, and then she would be at grave risk. Crivreen and Ragnar would back any decision I made, but they had both already mentioned that it would be a good idea to ask her for information about the magus behind these attacks.

“If I join your crew, what will I do?” she asked.

“I am not sure yet. We would have to see what training you have had and find a suitable occupation for you. We are a fairly ragtag bunch as it is. Take Crivreen, for example: he is an excellent engineer, but right now he is your nurse. Me? I am the big, brutish warrior type, but lately all I have been doing is making clothes. We all pitch in and do whatever we can, whether we are good at it or not.” I knew that she would need a place to fit in. As a slave, she was used to having to prove her worth to assure her next meal.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about starships,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t be much good to you.”

“Nonsense. Have you noticed how out-of-place Ragnar is? Until a couple of weeks ago, he had never been off his own planet. You have seen more time in space in the last month than he has in his entire life. You can’t be any worse at it than he is.”

She actually smiled a little at that. “He does seem to be a bit clueless. He is a good and gentle man, I can see, just an inexperienced one.” She was pensive for a time, then gazed up at me with a hard look in her eyes. “Are you going after my master?”

“Yes,” I said.

There was a fire in her eyes that had not been there before. She was emotionally engaged for the first time since we had rescued her. “Then I want in. I want to see that monster burn, and burn slowly.”

“It may be some time before we can find him,” I started. I was taken aback by the sudden venom in her voice.

“I will take you right to his fortress. Just give me the chance to kill him myself,” she said.

“Take it easy. First you need to heal and regain your powers; then you can tell us what you know, and we can plan our next move.”

Felix, what are you doing here?
I wondered to myself. Ever since giving the government agents the slip, I had slowly been working my way back to the region of space where I had been working with Narcion. I was not sure yet what I was going to do. Narcion had paid me in advance for my year’s service, so I could easily vanish with the money. All I would need to do is travel to a new sector and start my life again under a new name. My skill in robotics could get me a nice job anywhere that I was not known.

Instead, I was trying to reunite with a group of misfits who were trying to save the galaxy from an army of the dead. It sounded foolish even to think about it; not that it mattered much, since I had no idea where to find them. At times like this there was only one thing to do, and that was to go drown the idea and hope it did not survive.

I had not had a drink since the incident that put me in jail years ago; that is, not until recently, when I woke up in a mass grave. Surely that was a justifiable time to get drunk; who wouldn’t want to drown that kind of memory? It didn’t work; all it did was leave me hungover, with nightmares. Perhaps it just needed another drowning.

I found a quiet bar off a side corridor and ordered a drink. I sat there staring at it, trying to convince myself that I could have just one, relax a little, and leave my worries for the morning. I knew better; one sip from that, and I would probably wake up in jail again.

Before I could drink it, a tall person walked up to my table and sat down. His clothes completely hid his race and gender; all I could make out were two piercing yellow eyes. After a moment, he said, “You don’t need that.” The voice was high-pitched, but tightly controlled. Whoever this was, he was used to commanding respect.

“I’ll be the judge of what I need, stranger,” I said.

“You know what will happen if you drink that,” he said.

“What’s it to you?” I asked.

“I need you to carry a message for me to Zah’rak, and if you’re back in jail you can’t do that,” he said.

“What makes you think I will carry this message for you, or that I even know where Zah’rak is?” I asked.

“You are currently Special Agent Felix. You can walk into any command post on this station, flash your ID, and get that information,” he said.

“Sure, and walk right back into the arms of the government I am hiding from. How do you know all this?”

“That does not matter. Go to a command post, get in touch with Special Agent Byron, and he will reunite you with Zah’rak. Then tell him to break off his search and stay away from Narcion,” he said.