Wine of the Gods 05: Spy Wars (20 page)

1 March 3480 /
Late Winter 1363

Karista, Kingdom of the West, Comet Fall

"Man, that hurt."

Damien shot a look at Vani. She looked upset, but so far hadn't questioned that Max had just hit his head when the horses bolted. The autodoc had taken care of Max's laser burns, and Damien had emerged nearly unscathed. With no dead bodies around, the City Guards had apparently written off the attack as loud noises that had spooked someone's horses . . . alarmed the neighbors . . .

Far be it for me to correct that idea.
Or give them cause to look for that drover with the spooked horses—and a good thing I knew a regular customer who had left a nice empty house for me to lead the Oners to.

Max was stretched out on the couch. The autodoc could only do so much, the body still had to
finish healing itself.

Damien looked at the people
who depended on him, as he depended on them.
My family, my hostages to fate.
And not just his team mates. Code had practically adopted them two years ago, and Vani had been so much help all winter, with Code out at the farm, it was hard to remember she'd only been here for three months.

And I think I need to get rid of two horses. It might be a coincidence that they spotted us nearly the first time I drove the same pair that they'd seen before. But not something to bet on.

I ought to have sold them. Except, during the summer I'm swapping teams in the afternoon and working until late at night. I could use four teams, if I had them.

I could buy a white horse to pair with Sombrero, and a dark one to pair with Blue . . .

***

Ajha hefted the foot end of the stretcher.
Idre and Egto maneuvered the heavy end across the gap between fishing boat and dock, then Ajha stepped across. Almost home. The trip to Fascia had been harrowing. But necessary. Dockboxes could only do so much, and Wink needed more, and then he'd need recuperation, physical therapy.

My manhandling him may have saved his life . . . I did
n't realize he had spinal injuries . . . couldn't have done anything else, really, but I should have been gentler.

A taxi with actual leaf springs answered their hail, and took them to the Embassy compound. The main building was still under construction, but it was a relief to reach a safe haven.

As an anti-grav platform was slipped under him, Wink's death grip on the stretcher poles relaxed. "One! I will be so glad when this trip is over. No offense, guys but . . . "

"Yeah, yeah. Snub us, just because you want a surgeon and pretty nurses fluttering a
round."

"Especially the nurses." Wink clutched again as the platform moved. "I deserve some TLC, and what do I get? Your ugly faces."

The medgician snorted. "Don't hold your breath. Pretty and young are not job requirements. Now, you say you have some feeling down the right leg?"

Wink sounded hopeful. "The dockbox said it was just pressure on the nerves."

Ajha sighed in relief as the medical staff took over.

One of the
embassy staff slipped around the medical personnel. "We've got rooms for you three. Wnco is scheduled for the next gate—tomorrow morning, very early. Perhaps you can go as well, and report to the Directorate." His nose wrinkled a bit. "Fortunately they installed all the plumbing last week. The laundries and baths are in working order. The Ambassador wishes to see you. I suggest you clean up first."

Ajha gave him a jaundiced look. City boy. Well, the fishing boat
had
been a bit aromatic. And going home, relaxing, and getting centered, sounded really good. But he was willing to bet the Ambassador had other plans for them.

Indeed. A scouting trip to Verona, to check the disposition of their military, take a look at their government and get a general impression of their society. They left an hour after seeing Wink off through the gate.

30 May 3480 /Spring 1363

Cadent, Verona, Comet Fall

"My head hurts."

No one seemed to care, and lifting his head carefully, Ajha surveyed the state of the Info Team. T
wo limp bodies. He was pretty sure they were both breathing. He fumbled a simple pain reducing spell, tried again. Better. The water pitcher was empty. One damn it. He staggered out of their tiny hotel room, and down the stairs. There was a faucet in the Inn's kitchen. Cadent, the capital of the Empire of Verona was a small step ahead of Fascia, in public works, but with the city wide insanity of last night, no one was fetching or carrying for the guests.

Ajha
drank deeply, filled the pitcher and labored up three flights of stairs to the tiny room. They'd been in Verona for almost a month, quietly noting military placement and collecting gene samples, when this extraordinary celebration sprang up. They'd all drunk the wine that was circulating before they realized the mind boggling complexity of the spells layered into what amounted to a potion to cure anything and everything and get you laid, too. They'd all drunk too much, fucked too much, been swamped by the thoughts of a whole city drunk and amorous, and tried too hard to shield those thoughts. He felt drained.
Ought to be drinking electrolytes, not water.

He frowned over at the genetic analyzer. According to it, the
Veronians averaged around three insertions, roughly a quarter of the genes of the prophets, local version. Before the insanity hit, they'd collected a couple of hundred samples. Two of them, a couple of children in the "Temple of Love" who were supposed to be the children of the god, had all of them. Not complete, though. Like the boy in Karista, they had dropped genes on . . . he looked up the boy's results. How interesting. They were all three missing a lot of the same genes. He pulled up Pax's results. Again. None of them had any copies, at all, of three specific genes, and digging deeper he found those missing in every sample. Individuals lacked other genes, but which ones varied from person to person.

Only those three seemed to be completely missing from this world.

"Good. We can always tell these natives from the One, even with ordinary analyzers."

A muffled moan answered his speech. Idre opened a bleary eye. "As soon as we recover, we are getting out of this scary damned c
ity."

Ajha opened his mouth to agree, then shut it and poured the man a glass of water.

They'd taken a circuitous route and made note of Verona's state of military readiness—high. And their army's location—west, against the border with the Kingdom of the West—or in the northeast against the border of Scoone. And the level of its weaponry—typical medieval.

The government? It ran around a dried up little mummy of an Emperor, with a boy prince
to wave to the populous and a grown princess and her husband doing the day-to-day business of running the bureaucracy.

And they had these incredible parties, once a year.

The God of Love apparently showed up once or twice a decade. If he didn't show, the "Virgins of Love" chose a stand in.

Idre had had a
very
busy night.

Not much else to study, here.

Unfortunately they were ordered to stay out of Scoone. Apparently the Scooners were in the habit of burning witches and wizards at the stake, and the Commander had decided, from the long history of violence across their mutual border, that Scoone was unlikely to interfere with an Auralian attack on Verona.

So, they'd just move up to the border and get a rough idea of the number of troops on each side kept on the border. Then they'd head south, and report to all appropriate parties.

After they—well, technically, Auralia—had conquered Verona, perhaps they'd be allowed to infiltrate Scoone.

Ajha looked out the tiny window at a few kids laughing and running down the street. He winced at the thought of a war fought through these streets, and what would happen to the kids.

Then he told himself the pain was just the hangover.
I'm a Oner. The natives are nothing.

Summer 1363

Ash, Kingdom of the West

"Here it is!" Rustle called out, and pushed the rest of the way through the brush. They'd been able to smell the sulfur from downwind, but finding the fumarole had taken a bit of work. There was a small hot pond, up against a cliff, hidden by brush and a couple of big trees. She stuck a finger in cautiously, and decided it was about right.

"Yippee!" Primo kicked his boots off and stuck his feet in. "Our very own hot spring."

The rest of the dragons had sort of wound up hanging out with Tromp's group, or at least around the fringes.

But Primo was just a natural fit with the Goat Boys.

Havi rode up on Blackberry, Cor behind him. Kett and Amo were riding Inky and Joffe and Zip were on the old Dun who was following the other two horses and had no tack on what-so-ever. Havi dismounted and tied two of the three horses up. They'd spent so much time trading around riding the horses that they probably could have gotten almost anywhere faster with no horses at all.

"We could clear this out, just a bit, so we have more room. Just leave enough that no one will ever find it." Ech pulled out a knife and attacked a bush that filled up too much of the edge of the pond.

They all set to, destruction coming naturally to them, and soon there was room for all fourteen of them under the remaining foliage.

"That man is back." Ask said. "The trader that watches us."

"He talked to me," Rustle said. "He wanted to know where the witches got the diamonds."

"What did you tell him?" Ask looked at her, wide eyed.

"I told him about the jeweler in Wallenton where Dad bought Mom that ring." She grinned. "He was all irritated and told me to not tell my Mom I'd talked to him. I figured Dad would just be steamed if I told him, so I didn't."

Havi snickered. "I'll bet the Goat would have gotten him."

"That's what I figured, and there's a bunch of other people here too, so it might have been awkward."

Havi sighed. "You're ten
, you don't have to be so, so . . . "

"Grown up." Kett pulled her feet out of the hot water. "Pruney. So, what's more fun, sword fighting or magic?"

"Sword fighting." Rustle wrinkled her nose. "The Sisters won't let me do any of the really fun stuff yet. You guys are doing really good sword fighting, though. The Auld Wulf is impressed."

The Goats
looked at each other. "Maaaah! She's acting like a grownup. Baaaaad!" Their group cry.

She stuck her tongue out at them. "Ha! Just you wait. I'll bet I can figure out Dad's goat spell, then you'll be sorry."

"No we won't. Then we can be real Goat Boys." Cor said.

"You should figure out my dragon spell." Primo looked hopeful.

"I think you're a dragon with a human spell." Rustle said. "Turning it off ought to be fairly easy. But Nil wouldn't like that. And Mayor Accure."

Primo deflated. "Rats. I need to fly away before the girls grow up."

"Do girl dragons really eat boy dragons when they mate?" Zip looked nervous. "I heard they practice on people."

"Mother says that a male dragon needs to be about three times the size of the female to be certain of surviving mating." Primo said. "So, I figure I need to go far away, and never, ever mate."

Nods all around at the obvious common sense.

"That sounds like the best idea." Rustle said. "Sec and Trip are pretty big, and they act silly an awful lot."

"And they are bad fencers." Ask looked smug. After almost two years, her sword work was good and getting better.

"All the girl dragons are acting silly." Brad said. "I heard Momma say they were reaching puberty."

"They've got boobies like Tromp." Rustle sniffed superciliously. "Mom said the Elder Sisters are starting to worry about some of us and all the travelers and soldiers we get in Ash. What does she think we'd do to them?"

Vala snickered. "Have sex with them. It's all Momma talks to me about, how I Must Not Have Sex Until I'm Older . . . ick! Who wants to?"

That got a chorus of agreement all around.

"We ought to be able to work something out before they try to eat you, Primo.
The Elders are starting to teach me genetics. And I'll get some more books from the Sheep Man, about shape changing. Genetic transformations have to do something to the control genes, but I suspect you have to know both what you're starting with and what you want it to end up like. And that's just changing the essence. If you want to change the body after it's born and grown up, that's really hard."

They all looked at her blankly. The old dun looked more interested than them, ears pricked and listening. She looked around, and ripped out the big clump of grass he was probably actually eyeing and handed it to him.

"Anyway, I expect your Mother will change her mind about keeping you guys human for ten whole years," she said.

Primo looked hopeful.

***

"And that is how witches get real power?" Tromp gazed up at the Elder Sisters in speculation.

"But, you have to wait until you have completed your training. It is very important that you control your power even the first time. For the next ten years we will be teaching you all about that control." Elegant sounded quite firm.

"Ten years! That's forever." Tromp protested. "Can't you hurry up?"

Rustle tuned her out, concentrating on looking really small at the speck on the glass slide. Much better than with the school microscope. Cell Membrane, Nucleus, Mitochondria. Check. Now inside the nucleus, the chromosomes. Fuzzy masses of chemicals.

:: Ignore the fuzz and look for the central structure, Rustle. :: Answer's voice sounded in her meditation trance.

She sank into the fuzz and saw the winding ladder at the center.

:: There are just four compounds that make up the double helix. A code that creates every living thing. ::

:: It's very long. ::

:: Living things are complex. ::

:: Lady Gisele said everything is nearly the same. ::

:: Nearly. However, with something as big as this is, 'nearly' is actually a very large number of differences in these coding chemicals.
::

:: In
physical transformations, none of this changes, right? ::

:: Right. The interference is on a bone-by-bone basis, changing the shapes of each one to form the framework of the new animal from the old, and then a few of the organs as well. So that, for instance, Dydit can eat grass and digest it when he is a goat, but not when he is a human. ::

Rustle dismissed that. :: But if you change this, you change the essence. The babies will be born in the new shape, even if the parent, person or animal still looks like the original animal. ::

:: Exactly. ::

:: And that's how the Mayor had the baby dragons. ::

:: Yes, but
that
change of essence was easy, because dragons used to be humans. Mages who changed themselves into dragons. They lost the power genes, and now they need help from someone like Nil to change back and forth. ::

Rustle looked at the strand of DNA. To her small vision it stretched out of sight.

:: Most genes code for proteins, and other mundane things. Single nucleotide changes make very little difference. A few are Control Genes. A few changes in those can make very large changes in the creature. You will not practice this on living animals without my express permission and oversight. :: Answer's presence drew away.

:: Yes, Sister. :: She withdrew gradually from the cell, and her meditation. Her head ached faintly. Tromp was still complaining, when she ought to be meditating.

Rustle looked down the hill, and back to Answer, who nodded permission for her to leave. She stood up and headed back to Ash. Since she'd grasped power last year, she'd been getting science classes up here at the hot springs from the witches. Tromp had grasped power three months ago at the solstice rites.

"Hey! Why does she get to leave?"

"Because she has finished her lesson for today. You have barely begun."

Rustle grinned, but didn't turn around as she skipped out of sight. Harry's old gelding was lounging in the shade. "Good lesson today, horse?"

He bobbed his head and she snickered, as she dropped to a walk and started thinking. So. Regular genes and Control genes. Maybe she ought to compare dragon and human chromosomes? If she could figure out where they were different, she'd know where those control genes were. She wouldn't
change
any thing, just
look
.

Over the next few weeks she learned charms to locate specific genes, to analyze what a gene might do to the animal possessing it, and
then more complex spells that would make changes in their targeted genes.

Then she spent six months studying under Lady Gisele, who was
the
expert with genes.