Standing near the buffet tables, Itzpalicue's head rose, eyes narrowed in sudden interest. The old woman stared around warily, ignoring a coterie of Imperial merchants babbling away about rates of exchange and tonnage loads of used groundcars. They were all very pleased with the appetite of the Jehanan for their wares.
What was that? Something in the charged, drunken atmosphere had changed. A ripple. A wave counter to the current swirling around the hall. That was not what I was looking for…something else. That felt familiar.
Excusing herself, Itzpalicue made her way stiffly up a staircase curving onto the mezzanine. One wrinkled old hand on the railing, she stopped at the first turn in the stairs. Below her, the crowd was a dizzying array of brilliant colors, flashing metal, somber uniforms. The old woman licked her lips, eyes almost closed, leaning on her cane, tasting the air, feeling sound rushing around her in a palpable, physical wave.
Gone. Whatever had disturbed the familiar pattern of avarice, fear, lust, hope and despair charging the air had vanished from her frame of perception. Did someone leave?
"Lachlan?" She turned her head, hiding her lips from anyone in line of sight. "Ident trap everyone in the garden, minus five minutes. Someone leaving the party, perhaps in a hurry…felt human, but get me…"
Another change in the air – a spike of imminent violence shot with sharp, inhuman rage – snapped her head around. A ripple of reaction was spreading through the crowd, though the Mirror agent doubted most of the humans below were even aware of their instinctive movement away from unseen danger. The splashpoint was a salon on the far side of the hall and something there – an enraged Jehanan, she realized – was about to draw blood.
A sound like a steam pipe bursting caused Tezozуmoc to spring backwards, heart racing. The Jehanan female he'd been trying to converse with made an equally alarmed squeak in a fluting voice and scuttled sideways, pale rose skin turning a bruised orange color. As the prince whirled around, all he saw was a blur of black cotton as the taller of his two bodyguards hurled himself into harm's way. There was a clang! of steel on aluminum and the Skawtsman was driven back into Tezozуmoc's chest. The prince went down with an oof and his face flushed red as he gasped for breath. Then he started to wail in fear.
The bulky shape of a Jehanan loomed over the Skawtsman's shoulder, long triangular mouth agape, exposing multiple rows of triangular teeth. A cruel scar puckered under the creature's left eye-shield, twisting like an enraged snake. A fetid stench of rotten meat and spoiled grain alcohol rolled over the prince, making him gag. Colmuir struggled, shoulders grinding back into Tezozуmoc's breastbone and arm, to keep a stabbing sword locked against the hand-guard of his Nambu. The point of the gleaming blade jutted over his shoulder, aimed directly at the prince's forehead.
"Kkkkrrrr-ich! Khay-gu, izh-huma!" The Jehanan shook his massive head, ornamental eye-shields bouncing, a rippling shirt of copper rings stretched tight against scaled pectorals.
"What does he want?" Tezozуmoc squeaked in fear.
"Wants…to kill you…mi'lord," the Skawtsman bit out, both hands locked tight on the grip of the Nambu. "Shouldn't have touched the lass…urrgh!"
"I didn't do anything!" The prince's voice was squashed down to a frail whisper. "She was…urk…just singing for…me!"
"Hhuh-hen yehr," a careful voice intruded. Sergeant Dawd appeared behind the Jehanan, a short-barreled automatic rifle in his hands. The flash-suppressor of the weapon jammed into the side of the native's neck, just behind the jaw joint, where heavy plate-scales protecting the face, cranium and chest faded away into pebbly stretch-skin. "Ghawww-yeh."
"What is he saying?" Tezozуmoc wasn't trying to whisper, but his vision was blurring with black sparks as his lungs compressed under the weight of both the muscular Skawtsman and the bent knee of the Jehanan. "Oh, mother…I'm dying…"
Shocked silence was broken by a babble of voices. Vaguely, the prince made out the smooth, controlled voice of the Resident speaking rapidly in the same barbarous, guttural tongue. The pressure on his chest eased fractionally. Dawd withdrew, the assault rifle disappearing under his black coat. The sergeant seemed very tense. He should lie down, Tezozуmoc thought, his head spinning. Like me. Very comfortable. Heavy, heavy blankets they have here.
Colmuir eased back his pistol, wincing to see the hand-guard had been nearly cloven through, and spread his hands, eyes locked on the black, glittering pits which served the Jehanan for optics. The stabbing sword remained exactly poised, needlelike tip aimed directly at the prince.
Resident Petrel, elegant face sheened with sweat, leaned in, talking quietly to the Jehanan. Colmuir, catching the gist of the conversation – his command of the Parusian dialect did not match Dawd's easy mastery, but it served – rolled carefully over, shielding the prince with his body. At the same time, he plucked an ampoule from a stickypatch inside his armored jacket and jammed the drug dispenser against the side of Tezozуmoc's neck.
"Oh now, not fair…" wheezed the prince, eyelids rolling up. His body shuddered and fell limp on the floor. Sweat slithered down Colmuir's nose and spattered across the boy's gilded shirt.
"Oh, Saint Mary of the Angels," the Skawt muttered, waiting for the wickedly sharp sword blade to plunge in between his shoulder blades. He had a sinking feeling the ablative, armored mesh would not stop the ice-pick-like stroke for more than a heartbeat.
The guttural exchange between the Resident and the Jehanan general was now a three-way conversation as Bhrigu, kujen of Parus, had arrived, and the sound level was rising very, very quickly. The prince hopped nervously from one foot to the other, complaining loudly to Petrel in a mishmash of NГЎhuatl and Jehanan. The Skawt could feel more people – men in Army dress boots and trousers – crowding into the salon. All of the prince's 'new friends' had fled.
Dawd edged into Colmuir's field of vision, pudgy face lit with a kind of inner glow. "Nice party, Master Sergeant? The Governor's got kujen Bhrigu calming down his man. Apparently the bonny lass is regarded with protective affection by General Humara there. But we need to get his highness out of here immediately." Dawd peered at the boy's face. "Knocked him out, did you?"
"Aye." Colmuir rolled sideways, saw the massive shape of the Jehanan soldier had withdrawn. A solid wall of Mixtec officers – though none of them were armed with more than carving knives snatched up from the buffet tables – was between the limp, sweaty shape of the prince and a steadily growing crowd of hissing Jehanans. The rose-tinted female had disappeared. "Didn't take much. Don't see how the lad can drink, smoke and drop so much in one night…"
"Youth," Dawd grunted, slipping one arm under Tezozуmoc's. Colmuir took the other side and together they sidled off, heading for the servants' entrance at the back of the entertaining room. A tall, well-dressed woman with white-shot hair held the door open for them. She looked down at the prince with a pensive expression as the two Skawts hustled him into a brightly lit, tile-floored maintenance corridor.
Itzpalicue watched the bodyguards dragging the prince away in an eyecast v-pane transmitted by a spybug loitering near the roof of the kitchen corridor. She sniffed with longstanding amusement. Her opinion of the prince had not changed in years. "Well, he certainly livens up a party, doesn't he?"
Will he live? a female voice replied. The old woman nodded, marking the efficient way the two Skawtsmen were moving the body.
"Of course," Itzpalicue said quietly to the empty air. The mezzanine balcony had emptied with amazing speed once word of the altercation lit through the party. An excited buzz throbbed in the air as hundreds of people chattered madly about what they imagined they'd seen. "He's young and took no direct harm. Worse for his liver, to judge by the prodigious quantity of stimulants he downed this evening. But I suppose he'll get another fresh one."