The Secret City Read online

  “I love you,” I whispered, and her only reply was her racking sobs and a grip so tight I felt it would leave bruises—and I didn’t care.

  How long we remained that way I could not say, except that when we finally parted, the warmth of our first kiss on our lips, we were alone. Even the entertainment suite had been shut down.

  “If anyone ever takes you away from me again, I will hunt him down and kill him,” she promised. “And then I’ll kill you for letting it happen.”

  “You have my permission,” I replied. “For the first part, not the second.” She laughed and embraced me again.

  Eventually, we found ourselves on a sofa, still unwilling to be apart. Maire had as many questions about my life since I’d disappeared as there were years between our eras, and loath as I was too monopolize the conversation, I answered each at length. These were the easy topics, the questions whose answers held no consequences. When it came time for me to ask her the same, the answers would not come so easily, nor be so welcome, and their consequences could be enormous.

  Yet so skillful were her interrogations, and so much was there to say, that the night was well advanced before all subjects were exhausted, and by then so were we. We fell asleep together on the sofa.

  We were still alone come daybreak; although Sanja and Timash had originally shared the suite with me, whither they had vanished they left no trace. Truthfully, I was glad. It was time for Maire’s story, and after that we would have things to discuss that demanded privacy.

  “We looked for you everywhere, of course, but I knew we wouldn’t find you. For all that I can’t feel your thoughts, there was always something there that told me when you were around. It wasn’t a mental connection; it had nothing to do with telepathy.” She smiled. “It was a feeling in my heart. I should have known what it meant, but I’d never felt it before. I didn’t really recognize it until it was gone, and that was how I knew what had happened to you, and that we’d never find you.” She lowered her eyes. “But we looked anyway. I couldn’t explain to Farren why I knew you weren’t coming back. I think he looked for you even harder than I did. And as far as the Council was concerned, he hadn’t done anything wrong, so they gave him everything he wanted—the power to search the whole planet, really. I, on the other hand, I had practically lead a Thoran revolt. And the breen—!” Maire turned her face up to look at me again. “Keryl, you have no idea what you did.”

  I grimaced. “Actually, I do. Timash told me. I apologize. You know that I never meant to cause you problems.”

  Maire gave me a wry smile. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I had to prevent a city-wide panic, persuade the Council not to declare war on the breen, convince my ailing father to pardon all the rebels, and defend myself against charges of treason, but what’s a girl to do when her boyfriend is out of town? Granted, if Timash hadn’t arranged to get the breen back on The Dark Lady while I was still unconscious, things might not have gone so smoothly.”

  “Timash did that? He never mentioned it.”

  Maire was absorbed in an invisible piece of lint on my shirt. “There’s a lot more to him than meets the eye. He was a great help early on, when I was dealing with Farren. I owe him.”

  “He said it had been a long time you had seen each other.”

  “He—didn’t like some of the decisions I made. There were things I had to do—compromises I had to make. They weren’t easy. But like I said, you left us with a real mess. I know you did what you had to do, and I don’t blame you, but it wasn’t easy to clean up.”

  Saying I was sorry again would change nothing, and it had certainly not been my choice to go in the first place, but I said it anyway.

  “I managed to get some of the news,” I continued. “I know about your arrangement with Farren.” She started to speak but I put a finger on her lips. “Timash explained to me about the Council and why you had to do what you did. But I want you to know I don’t care. I don’t care if you had to marry Farren, you’re mine now and if he wants you he can come here and get you.”

  Maire bolted upright and stared at me. “Marry him? Are you crazy? Where did you get that idea?”

  “I—I—”

  She put her hand over my mouth, mirroring my earlier gesture.

  “Never mind. It’s probably one of those strange prehistoric concepts you have about how men and women should get along. Farren and I are consorts. In the political sense only.” Her expression became one of bewildered revulsion. “How could you even think I would join him? Not even for Dure. Not even for my father.”

  Maire used the term “join” as I used “marriage,” but in telepathic communication, where so much depended on the language and comprehension of the recipient, they were the same. According to the Librarian, even though it waxed and waned in popularity and importance, marriage in some form had existed throughout almost all of recorded history. I had never conceived of Maire and Farren’s union as being anything but political, but I had failed to understand that it was solely political. No wonder she thought I had lost my mind!

  I could not control my grin, which probably cemented her evaluation of my mental state, but I did not care. Such a weight had been lifted from my shoulders! Twenty years of waiting only to find that my love had taken another man—and now to find out it was not true? It might have been Paleolithic of me, but I was seized by the urge to grab her and drag her away and make her my mate.

  Which I might well have done had the door not crashed open and a half-dozen burly armed men swarmed through, holding us fast with their weapons. A few moments later, another haughty figure sauntered in, one whom I knew all too well and hated as much as I loved Maire.

  It was Lord Farren. The Nuum had found me.

  Chapter 12

  Peril and Rescue

  At first, Farren ignored me, his eyes fixed on Maire, his head shaking slightly as though he had found a pupil with the answers to the test on his sleeve, but smiling as though it were simply the confirmation of some long-suspected vice. Then he turned his gaze to me, and his face froze, personifying by its very impassivity all the loathing and hostility he had harbored for so long. At no time did he speak, and his henchmen’s pistols made it plain that we were not to break the silence.

  I took the time to examine his vassals closely, for I was unfamiliar with their type. In their almond coloring, he resembled Thorans, but in their size they equaled any Nuum nobleman; at least two were larger than I, and I towered over Farren. Their arms and shoulders were malformed with muscle, while their low foreheads spoke little of intelligence. Something in the education that the Library had granted me so long ago on my first sojourn here suggested to me that these were genetic hybrids, products of the same kind of experimentation that had lead to the creation of the breen centuries ago. I had no doubt that my notion was largely correct, although it brought me no comfort.

  While we sat, waiting under the muzzles of three pistols, the other three men burst through each door of the suite in succession, never bothering to see if they were unlocked. Sanja and Timash, who had apparently had had the good sense to stay closeted when they heard the front door being breached, were hustled from their rooms without ceremony and placed near us, where the field of fire could be concentrated. I had to wonder when that would be—Farren seemed in no hurry. Surely someone would come to investigate the noise?

  When he finally spoke, it was as if he could, in fact, read my mind, impossible as I knew that to be.

  “You needn’t worry that anyone will interrupt us. The other guests on this floor were persuaded to leave, and the management understands how business is conducted. Some things are universal.”

  He was more correct than he could dream. Apparently bribes worked as well in this era as in my own.

  “Aren’t you taking a chance, being here?” Maire asked. “With neither of us in the capital, anything could happen. And you haven’t any authority here; if the Civil Guard find you destroying property and threatening people with a horde of zomon, they
could imprison you.”

  Farren shrugged, and if the zomon had any facial expressions, they were not wasting them on us.

  “No one is going to come looking for you; you were careful not to let anyone know where you were going. As for me, I’m haven’t left Dure. You should really keep up with science; dataspheric holography is a much easier way to travel.” He waved his arm through one of the zomon to prove his point. “And speaking of science, my men are carrying telepathic inhibitors which will keep you from seeking help through the datasphere—but you probably already know that. I, of course, possess a filter that allows me access, else I couldn’t be here to enjoy this. But lest you develop any dangerous notions, rest assured that these are very real zomon and very real guns. And they are very professional. They will have you halfway home before the Crystellen even know they were here.

  “And even then, there will have more than enough bodies to keep the Civil Guard occupied.” He pointed to Sanja and Timash. “ After I’m gone, kill those two. Then stun the others and return them to me.” He paused, savoring the moment. “This one is going to resist. Make sure to beat that out of him before I see him again.”

  And then he vanished.

  “You’re going to have kill us all!” I warned the zomon. My body was already tensed to make a suicidal charge, and I knew each of my companions was poised for the same. I expected them simply to shoot, but they must have seen something in our eyes and recognized kindred souls, the kind of people who would die on their feet rather than be stunned and carted away. They were professional killers, and we were seasoned warriors. If the fight went badly and Maire or I was killed, their employer would be angry—and an angry Nuum would execute one of the lower orders without a second thought.

  As if on cue, five holstered their pistols while the sixth retreated to the doorway. A heartbeat later they attacked.

  I instinctively moved to protect Maire, but she ducked around me and chose her foe. I was not surprised that I drew two while the others had to contend with one each; in fact, I was glad of it. Timash and I had fought together in the slave hold of Maire’s airship The Dark Lady against five times our number, and won. I would wager him against any zomon on Earth. Sanja was a child of the most unforgiving environment I had ever experienced; even if she could not win, I had no fear that she could hold her own. And Maire… I looked to my own opponents. I had fought a breen in the arena, and these two creatures thought they could stand between me and the woman I loved?

  There was no room to maneuver, and those bulging arms promised a quick end if they found their way around me, so I did what I always had in the face of overwhelming odds. They expected me to retreat, so I advanced, fast and hard, and I used every dirty trick learned by every child on the playgrounds of a million years ago—tricks that had not survived into this mentally-advanced age. The zomon were physically enhanced, but they had the same weaknesses as any man, and I played the back-alley brawler to the hilt. The first went down with a broken nose and his hands thrust pitifully between his legs.

  I was suddenly grabbed from behind by another and I felt his grasp constrict, but surprisingly it was no worse than my own, and I withstood it long enough to stomp on his toes and snap my head backward. He let go and I took my first quick look around.

  Timash had his man tied in knots and was trying to force him to act as a shield against the one in the doorway, who was still armed but could not decide whether he should risk shooting Maire by mistake. Sanja was using every piece of furniture she could lay hands on to batter her assailant and as I watched she kicked him in the knee. He staggered but did not fall. And Maire…?

  Maire’s opponent was bleeding from both eyes and at least one ear. Her hands were flashing almost faster than I could follow, flattened like blades that cut his cheek, pummeled his neck, and boxed his ears. With each blow she huffed out a breath, and with each blow the zomon rocked back and forth as if she were the only thing holding him up.

  And then I was struck from behind by a freight train and sent flying onto the floor across the room. Though the world was spinning, I managed turn myself about to look up and see my second foeman, snarling through his bloody face, coming at me with murder in his eyes. He no longer cared about his job, or Farren. He meant to kill me with his bare hands. He lunged—

  —and fell on me like a dead tree. But like a dead tree, he moved no more. I pushed at him, but someone above me was pulling the body aside, and I stared into a stranger’s face.

  “Can you move? Are you hurt?”

  It seemed odd to be receiving such solicitude from a Nuum, but he showed every indication of sincerity, and the body of the zomon—whom I saw now was indeed dead, with a large hole between his shoulder blades—spoke on his behalf. I nodded that I was unhurt and allowed him to assist me to my feet.

  He was one of four, identically dressed as far as I could tell, in orange and silver. Five of the zomon were dead; the sixth, my first opponent, lay quiescent, but I could see he was alive by the occasional twitch. Our rescuers, I presumed, were the Crystellen Civil Guard. They were all Nuum, of course, since possession by a Thoran of any but the most controlled technology, let alone weapons, is a capital offense.

  “Lady Maire, now that we’re sure that neither you nor any of your party is hurt,” one said, “perhaps you would care to accompany me to another room? My team will secure this one. I’m sure the hotel management will allow us the use of an office.” His tone left no doubt that such would be the case, nor that the hotel management would be offering up far more to his investigators before the day was out.

  Chapter 13

  Decisions

  “I’ve been speaking to Lottric,” Maire reported, referring to her cousin, the duke who had assisted us in the attack on the Council Chamber in Dure, and whom she trusted implicitly. “I had left him as my agent after Timash came to me, and he got wind that Farren was up to something—which made him particularly suspicious since I had just left without telling him where I was going. He tried to reach me through the datasphere, and when he couldn’t, he found a way to track Farren’s holographic data transmission. He called the Civil Guard, just in time.”

  After a short, polite, interrogation by the Guard, the four of us had decamped to another hotel, and for safety, obtained rooms on several different floors, one of which we now occupied. Had Maire not been a visiting head of state, the matter of a half-dozen non-Nuum citizens armed with deadly weapons would certainly have earned us more serious scrutiny, but at that moment I was not in a mood to decry the deficiencies of the class system.

  “He tracked Farren down?” I asked. “How?”

  She gave me a pitying smile. “Spies, my love. Farren has them, I have them, Lottric has them.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s probably how Farren tracked me down. He has somebody in my household. Not surprising, I suppose.” She shrugged. “Ah, well, it’s Lottric’s problem now.”

  “Why is it Lottric’s problem?” Across the room, Timash was whispering in Sanja’s ear, probably filling her in on the players and their relationships, as she was nodding at intervals.

  “Because I’ve ceded my authority to him permanently. He can’t stand Farren, and Farren can’t stand him, but they can both play the game, and the Council will be happy to deal with him instead of me.”

  Timash and Sanja’s attention had come back to us.

  “You’ve given up power?” Timash asked.

  “Permanently. I am no longer Dure’s co-administrator. Better, I am no longer Farren’s consort in any sense. And happy to be rid of him.”

  “But why?” I implored. “He just tried to kill you. If you abdicate, how will you stop him from coming after you more directly?”

  She considered this. “I can’t, I suppose. But I don’t know why he’d want to. And Lottric will keep him busy. Besides, the Council would have stripped me of my position soon enough. “

  I was getting tired of asking, but, “Why?”

  “Bec
ause once I joined you, they would have branded me a traitor, or insane, and either one would do.”

  It wasn’t the most romantic proposal a man could ask for, but I accepted anyway.

  Bowing to my “prehistoric” sensibilities, Maire agreed that we locate the proper minor civic functionary who could perform a what I insisted on calling a “marriage ceremony,” she continued to call a “joining,” and Timash appeared to want to call “a waste of time,” but was too polite to say so out loud. Since the entire concept was currently out of style among Nuum, our officiant turned out to be a grey-haired Thoran, one of the few individuals I had ever seen who actually showed signs of advanced age. I insisted Timash and Sanja serve as our witnesses, although I am not entirely sure that anyone but me understood the significance.

  Notwithstanding that Maire claimed little interest in the ceremonies and rituals surrounding what I considered a proper wedding, her enthusiasm for the entire process increased measurably when I explained the custom of “the honeymoon.”

  Unfortunately, as is often the case in classic stories where the hero and his lady finally find themselves in the same place long enough to exchange their vows, our honeymoon was shortened by the spectre of Farren’s finding us again. In other words, when we finally separated ourselves the next day, our troubles were still present in full force. Had we been alone, I would have dared Farren to bring an army against us and fought it with a smile on my face and my wife at my side, but we had our friends to consider, and given how much they had sacrificed much to help bring us together, we had not the right to ask them to risk their safety any longer on our behalf. It was time for us to vanish, leaving Farren with no trail to follow and no motive to molest Timash or Sanja. Naturally, when I explained to them our reasoning, they were completely in accord.