“You’re right about that,” came Bubbles’s voice from behind the prince. “Not that killing us will do any good in the long run. He’ll find out, and then he’ll find you.”
Lepescu lifted the canister in a mock salute. “To your courage, my dear. You may stop that shuffling you’re doing; you cannot screen your friend as she reloads; I can shoot the prince, and you, before you shoot me . . . and I’m wearing protection.” With a change in tone, he addressed the prince again. “As for your friend Ronnie, a young man who cannot keep from boasting about his amatorial conquests is hardly likely to hold his tongue about this, the next time he gets drunk. The dark girl—well, it’s a pity, but many have died already, and so it goes. You choose: kill them, and I know you will not talk. It would not be in your own best interests. I have a flitter; we can escape somehow. I always do. But if you cannot kill them . . . then I’m afraid you, too, must die.” After a moment he went on. “Go ahead—it won’t be easier for waiting.”
Heris followed the bootprints up the narrowing cleft. Suddenly one pair stopped; whoever it was had shifted around, trampling his own prints, and then completely new prints—larger, with a different tread—set off again. She frowned at them, trying to remember where she’d seen that tread pattern, then shrugged. It really didn’t matter.
“He put on overshoes,” Cecelia murmured, from behind her. “Why?” Heris waved a hand to hush her. They had to be close; she could tell the slope was closing in ahead of them.
If she hadn’t been following the tracks, she might have missed the angle to the cave entrance . . . but the tracks led directly to it. A mat of wilting ferns and moss, a gaping hole into darkness, and a voice—no, more than one voice. She was sure one of the voices was Lepescu’s.
She pulled Cecelia close and murmured into her ear. “He’s there—ahead of us—and I think it’s the youngsters. Stay back; be ready to shoot if I go down. And watch for anyone behind us.” Cecelia nodded, eyes hard again. Heris crept nearer to the cave entrance, fighting down a surge of excitement that threatened to send her charging straight at Lepescu, no matter what.
Now she could hear his voice clearly. She knelt in the mud, and peered around the edge of the hole into the dimness. Nothing but water, a pool almost lapping the entrance. She would have to go in. Voices came from her left, around an angle of stone. She gave Cecelia a last look and ducked inside.
Her eyes adjusted quickly; more light came in the entrance than she’d have thought from outside. She flattened herself against the damp stone to her left and edged around it. There. A big, bulky shape in a protective suit, its back to her, and four faces beyond, pale against the black behind them. The suit had to be Lepescu. Could she get him without hitting them? Was he wearing armor under the suit? And why the suit, in this weather? What contamination did he fear? Then she saw the clenched left hand, and caught her breath. If that was a gas grenade—
She edged nearer, hoping none of the youngsters would notice her, although she knew she must be a very visible dark blot against the bright entrance. Lepescu was still talking. . . .
“Go ahead,” he was saying. “It won’t be easier for waiting.”
What did he mean? And why four people? Heris stared, just able to make out Ronnie, Bubbles, and Raffa . . . but who was that fourth young man with the extravagant moustache and a gleam of earring? A friend of Lepescu’s? She bit her lip; she could not possibly get both of them before someone else got shot. She wondered if Lepescu was wearing armor under the suit; she reset her weapon for the alternate clip of ammunition. This should penetrate personal armor. More danger to bystanders, but not as much danger as a live Lepescu.
But as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw the mysterious young man shift his weight, his expression changing from bewilderment and disbelief to mulish stubborness. “I won’t do it,” he said, and dropped his weapon. “And I think you’ll find it impossible to explain my disappearance.” Heris aligned her sights, and shifted a little to clear Ronnie. It was at best a tricky shot. . . . The ricochets would be wicked. . . .
“Not really,” Lepescu said. “An inconvenience, yes—but not nearly an impossibility. It’s a pity, and I’m sorry—this is not a sporting proposition, but—” He rocked forward, blood spraying out the front of his protective suit. Echoes of the shot and the impacts on him and on stone roared through the cave, deafening, confusing. Lepescu dropped his rifle; the canister dropped from his left hand, bounced, and rolled along the stone toward the water. Heris flinched; she was too far away to do anything more. If its seal broke, they were all dead. Ronnie and the prince leaped together and landed on it like two eager players trying to recover a fumbled ball.
“Run!” Ronnie yelled to Raffa and Bubbles; Heris knew it would have been useless. The girls didn’t run; after their first startled jerk, both of them seemed to be calmly reloading their weapons. Heris stared at them. They must have known they were in danger; why hadn’t they had a round in the chamber? Then the echoes died away . . . and the canister had not fired. . . . It lay under the young men, inert and deadly only in anticipation. They were alive; they were going to stay alive.
Heris rose from her careful crouch, and walked light-footed across the cave to Lepescu’s body . . . not body yet, for he was alive though mortally wounded. She looked down at him warily. He might have other weapons.
“You . . .” he began, but pain caught at him, and he could not go on. His breathing sounded loud, now that the echoes of the shot had faded; she could hear the ominous snoring rattle that meant his lungs were filling.
She could not think what to say. All the clever retorts she remembered from history crumbled and blew away in the wind of her anger. “Yes,” she said, and it came to her that she did not need to say much, under the circumstances. “Commander Serrano, with all due respect.”
Even dying, even in pain, he had a courage she could not deny. Scorn dragged his face into a mask of contempt. “Wait—” he breathed. “Haven’t won—yet—”
She wanted to throttle him, finish it with her fingers on his throat, but she could not do that. Instead, she removed, with such control that she felt herself almost a machine, his other weapons; she paid no attention to the bubbling breaths that faded to nothing.
Cecelia could not have stayed out of the cave after the gunshot if someone had chained her to the rock. She scrambled into the darkness, stumbled into the pool and back out, and came up, panting, against the stone buttress that had blocked Heris’s vision. Now, shocked and fascinated by her captain’s behavior, she had let her attention wander from the cave entrance. When she thought to look around, there was another stranger, this one dirty and ragged, as well as armed. Another stood behind him. He glared at her, his weapon aimed where it could menace all of them.
“What . . . are you doing here?” The pause, Cecelia was sure, held a dozen suppressed curses. The man looked dangerous and probably was. He must be one of those the hunters had chased.
“I’m Lady Cecelia—” she began. Then she realized he wasn’t even looking at her. He was looking past her, at Heris.
“Petris . . .” Heris said. Her voice wavered.
“Captain Serrano. Heris.” His didn’t, nor did the muzzle of his weapon.
“You’re with Admiral Lepescu?” Quiet though it was, that question held a vast pain; it got through to Cecelia, who stared at her captain.
“You know this man? Who is he?”
Heris shook her head; for that instant she could not speak. Petris with Lepescu? Had he always been Lepescu’s agent? Was this what Lepescu’s dying words had meant?