Unbound (22 page)

Asrial rubbed her forehead, trying to erase the throb of weariness cycling up between her brows. “It doesn’t make sense. Why the abduction? Why go to elaborate lengths to get me?” She hadn’t told Amin that she’d been the specific target, but he probably suspected it hadn’t been some random snatch by slavers. It chilled her to think that she could lose her freedom just because someone was willing to pay hard creds for her.

“Could it have been related to the auction? This Volsung was a buyer, was he not?” Romir ran his fingers through her hair, restlessly playing with the short strands. The ruffling sensation was oddly soothing.

“We received no demand for ransom. All we knew was that you were not in the hall during the inspection of the relics and had been missing for some time.”

Amin’s words startled Asrial into opening her eyes. She’d forgotten about the auction scheduled for later, her abduction and subsequent rescue thrusting it to the back of her mind. “Then the only thing I can think of is my knowledge of Majian ruins. Volsung was acting as the agent for a new collector, after all. Perhaps they suspect I found a new site and there are more relics to be gotten?” That was the only reason that made sense to her. After all, the Cyrian had lured her into his trap with the possibility of a contract for Majian artifacts.

Amin shook his head, his mouth working wordlessly, rage mottling his features. His hands worried the floater’s controls to no purpose, and it worried her.

Guilt twinged again. She’d rarely seen her mother’s cousin get mad; even when the Paxis credit crunchers had reduced him to that miserly disability pay he hadn’t gotten mad. But on this visit he’d lost his temper twice—and both times on her behalf. If he didn’t calm down, the stress could take a toll on his already weakened body. She didn’t want that.

“Without questioning Volsung, we’ll probably never know. Never mind about him. At least he’s gone. Just focus on the auction.” Asrial took her leave amid Amin’s protests for her to wait for her cousins. Staying would only keep him worked up when he ought to relax. Besides which, she wasn’t feeling too steady herself and needed to get away before Amin realized she wasn’t as recovered as she pretended to be.

Romir was quiet on the way back to the
Castel
, not an unusual state of affairs with him, but the downward tilt to the corner of his mouth said it was more than his customary reserve.

“Something else bothering you?” she asked to distract herself from the effort of walking, not really expecting him to answer. Her body felt three times heavier with much of the extra weight in her head.

“I failed you. I should have dealt with your abductors so they could not have escaped. Time and again, this failure.”

Surprise gave her pause. The dark expression on his face was familiar; she’d seen similar ones on hers after Jamyl’s and Nasri’s deaths.
Time and again?
He wasn’t thinking only of her abduction; this self-recrimination went deeper than that.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You saved me—that isn’t failure.” Ignoring the people around them, she pulled out his weaver’s badge, rubbed her thumb across the engraved
Promise
. “This is proof you didn’t fail. The people who escaped the Mughelis—the people you saved—survived. My father’s people, the Lomidari, have you to thank for their existence.”

The blink she got conveyed his doubt. There was no point arguing with him. Mere words wouldn’t have worked with her, either, back then; even now she struggled with her own guilt.

Asrial tucked the badge back under her T-top and continued the long trek to the
Castel
, leaving Romir to his thoughts. Speaking of her abduction sent her own thoughts circling back to Volsung.

If the Cyrian had succeeded, Romir would remain as a djinn, since he couldn’t just take his prison and run. With her gone, his prison would have eventually recaptured him, trapped him once more, perhaps never to regain even partial freedom. That made it more imperative that they find a way to free him.

Her head throbbed, every beat driving home how very nearly her fears could come to pass. She couldn’t afford to wait while the
Castel
was refurbished; the work would take at least half a year and leave her coffers low.

If the promise meant a technique for freeing djinn, then the logical place to search for the promise’s fulfillment was Salima. Then, too, if Romir saw for himself that the Lomidari, the descendants of his people, were thriving, that would be good. Anything to ease his unjustified sense of failure.

They had to go to Lomida.

Lomida grew on
the primary screen. The sparkle of the wide ice ring that encircled the planet paled in comparison with the insystem traffic surrounding its constellation and the shuttles connecting the stations with the planet. Ships arrived and departed with soothing regularity—bulk carriers, cruise ships, one-man fast couriers, and all sizes in between, plying the space lanes in an orderly procession.

Or so it seemed from a distance.

Asrial knew better. Beneath that placid surface lurked sinister backroom deals, all so profitable and dominated by Dareh conglomerate interests.

She tried to steer clear of Lomida as much as possible. While Jamyl and Nasri were alive, they’d avoided this sector of the Inner Worlds entirely. She hadn’t set foot on the planet until after their deaths, and she’d done so then only because a buyer refused to take delivery elsewhere, and even then, she’d gone in stealth and had stayed only long enough to complete the sale.

This was another time she couldn’t avoid it.

With grave misgivings, she piloted the
Castel
through local space traffic and into the atmosphere, heading directly for the main starport. This visit posed the best chance of discovering how to free Romir, but Lomida was the planet House Dilaryn had ruled for generations. Although Jamyl Kharym Rashad had been forced to abdicate, the Dareh’s victory was an uneasy one. Her father had been forbidden from entering Lomidar space because they feared he would attempt to reclaim the scepter of the
reis
.

Who knew how the Dareh would respond to her sudden appearance and prolonged stay on planet? To this day, decades after the abdication, she steered clear of the Dareh conglomerate, its subsidiaries, and its allies. She could only hope they’d forgotten about her, but how realistic that hope was, she had no way of telling. However, they couldn’t avoid Lomida if they were to solve the riddle of the
Promise
, not when their best lead lay in Salima.

In the middle of a vast plain, a lone mountain pierced the horizon, its crown wreathed by clouds—Babbahar. As they neared, the broad shadow at its base resolved into sprawling urbanization: Yasra, their destination.

Asrial had seen vids of the Lomidar capital city, but they’d failed to convey the reality. The local starport was a hub of activity, though not as packed as a major constellation like Eskarion. But accustomed as she was to the lighter traffic of the Rim, the Inner World facility felt too crowded. Ships were parked too close for her comfort. There was just too much.

The smell of the air alone made her shoulders tight, the heavy metallic fumes from so many ships so different from the filtered air of the stations or the wildness of a Rim World planet. Lomida might be her parents’ home world, but to her, it would always be the planet that had rejected them, the planet to which they had been forbidden to return, the planet that had threatened to kill them.

It didn’t take much to imagine security bods lurking behind the many ship struts, just waiting to pounce. Her father’s vehemence whenever conversation touched on Lomida and Dareh interests had left a strong impression, even several years later.

Perhaps she was being unreasonable since she no longer had any relics on board, but with her paranoia waxing high, she activated every last one of her security circuits—primary, secondary, and the multiplicity of backups—until nothing short of a major bomb would get through. Despite those measures, she still couldn’t relax, not while on Lomida.

Romir was scrutinizing the other ships as he waited by the grav sled. He looked so different now from when she’d first seen him. The changes weren’t limited to his clothes. His stance and demeanor had changed as well. The slight defensive hunch of his shoulders was gone, his back now straight and sure. His expression was more open, letting an occasional smile slip through.

Just the sight of him eased the humming tension in her shoulders. With him by her side, she could believe things would be fine. They could handle whatever life threw at them.

Spirit of space grant that the
Promise
was what she hoped it was.

She studied the map of the city, then programmed their destination into the grav sled’s navputer. Compared to star charts, Yasra was far simpler to navigate. The city still bore the evidence of the last time it was reconceived, fanning out from the walls of Salima in an orderly grid. It curved along the western flank of Babbahar in a crescent of towering spires. Much of the industrial sector lay to the south, nearest the starport. The west claimed most of the spires, the buildings mixing businesses and residences for the extremely wealthy. Walkways connected the spires at the upper levels, spiderwebs of glassteel.

And above it all was a dark, whirling cloud of yfreet, scavengers drawn to the wildlife preserve that Salima had devolved to and the refuse piles beyond the industrial zone.

They left the starport, diving into the stream of air traffic headed into Yasra. The navputer threaded the elegant maze of the city, past lavish corporate complexes, finally sweeping into a boulevard that paralleled a high stone wall—the wall that separated Yasra from Salima.

If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought the navputer in error. The granite blocks were clean, their lines sharp and fresh. One might be forgiven for believing the wall a recent construct, instead of thousands of years old. That unchanging appearance was part of its mystique.

The last of the Dilaryn domain, Salima was the old capital of Lomida, founded between the arms of Babbahar. Over the centuries, it had come to encompass the mountain, only to be abandoned as the population grew and spread and old knowledge was lost. Now, only wildlife was found there, a supposedly impenetrable preserve along one side of Yasra, the new capital that had sprung up in the plains beyond its wall.

The starport lay on the other side of Salima from most of Yasra, the authorities using the preserve to buffer the city from the noise and danger of the ships landing and launching.

Salima was the only holding that hadn’t been stripped from her family when the Dareh forced her father to step down as
reis
. The Lomidari might have accepted the abdication of Jamyl Kharym Rashad, House Dilaryn, for the sake of peace, but they had resisted the violation of tradition, and Salima remained House Dilaryn’s.

“No one leaves or enters?” Romir asked after she explained their destination.

“No one lives in Salima. It’s been abandoned since before Lomida reached the stars. There are stories that it’s haunted.” She’d delighted in her mother’s tales of the supposed hauntings, little suspecting she would someday walk the land of her ancestors.

“Haunted?”

“Mysterious lights, apparitions, and so on.”

“And we are to enter?” Romir turned wide, wondering eyes to her—so wide they should have fallen out. Teasing her.

“Nothing less.”

His laugh was rusty, barely two puffs of air, but all the more precious for it. She glanced aside to hide her smile, inordinately pleased by his reaction.

Air and foot traffic kept to the far side of the boulevard, despite a lack of signs and dividers, maintaining an explicit distance from the wall. Even the sled’s navputer observed the invisible boundary.

“According to the maps, there should be a private gate along this section, one large enough to permit the entry of a grav sled.” She couldn’t see any breaks, however.

“There.” Romir pointed at yet another featureless stretch of granite.

Taking back control from the navputer, she set the grav sled on hover, sidling it out of the traffic stream and toward the wall. “Here? I don’t see a gate.”

“It is private.”

Asrial slid him a chiding look. What a time for him to discover a sense of humor. They were drawing attention from pedestrians. “How can you tell?”

“The energies part there.”

 

 

The energies did
indeed flow around a square section on the wall, but unlike the sparkles Romir saw on the walls of the
Castel
and the stations they had visited, this pattern was tantalizingly familiar. “It will open when you are nearer.”

“Nearer, eh?” Without hesitation, Asrial caressed the controls, floating their craft where he indicated.

The pattern lit as he expected, a thread of energy reaching out to them. There was no response to him, but when it touched Asrial, another portion of the pattern brightened.

A gate appeared in the wall.

Asrial took them through on a burst of speed, skewing about to face the gate—that was gone. She swore in an undertone, shaking her head in disbelief as her hands danced. “It’s like that complex. All the scanners say the wall’s solid.”

“That complex?”

“On Maj, where I found your prison.”

The land around them was silent, as if the wall blocked more than sight and access. Trees lined the wide, grass-choked road Asrial followed, towering high above and letting through only a sprinkling of sunlight into an intimate green world. The road’s enormous slabs lay awry, mossy and buckled over trunklike roots. Quite unlike anything he imagined. The garden—if garden it had been—was overgrown, wild, and untamed.

This place was the haven his people had fled to?