She touched her tongue to her lips, and took a breath.
“Daav is on the Low Port,” she said, and he could hear the strain in her voice, even under the kindly mode. “He left two nights ago and he has not come back.”
Which explained a lot of things and confused a few more.
“His brother wishes to go after him. I—The delm—has disallowed this.” Her lips quirked.
“So the delm wants to go in, instead?” Clarence shook his head. “I'm not such a fool as to risk both of you—your pardon—the three of you.”
Aelliana raised her chin. “If you are not the delm of Low Port, can you prevent me?”
Clarence grinned at her. “Yes. Remember where you are.”
Her lips tightened, and it gave him a pang, but dammit, she couldn't just come waltzing onto dangerous ground, like—
“He is alive,” Aelliana said. “I can go directly to the place. I think.”
“Might be he'll just walk out himself, after whatever business he's doing is done. If you surprise him in the midst, it might . . . disturb the balance, and place all in peril.”
Aelliana shook her head. “I—he is not . . . well, Clarence. I think that he would walk out, if he could.”
Ah, hell.
“If you would grant an escort, someone who is wise in the streets,” Aelliana was saying. “Daav said that two draw the eye in Low Port, but I think that the risk—”
“You are not going to Low Port,” Clarence interrupted. “I forbid it and I have the ability to enforce my will in this.” He held up a hand, as her lips parted.
“Allow me a moment,” he said. “If you are likewise lost or taken, to whom does the Ring fall?”
“To Er Thom,” she said promptly.
“Correct. As much as I honor him, I do not want Er Thom yos'Galan to wear Korval's Ring. He measures with a far heavier hand than his brother, and I fear the consequences—for Korval, for the Juntavas, and for Low Port itself—if he is required to Balance the loss of three of the Line Direct.”
She sat quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands folded on her lap. He gave her time, and at last she looked up.
“I withdraw my original boon,” she said. “But I ask another.”
Clarence inclined his head. “I hear.”
She stared into his face as if, Clarence thought, she was trying to read his mind. Almost, he felt as if she could.
“I ask that you yourself and your most trusted crew fetch Daav home.”
That was a favor more to his liking, and in fact he had already decided on it.
“You said you know where he is. Tell me and I'll go in now and pull him out.”
Aelliana laughed. “I know where he is in the sense that I can go there. Street designations, shop names—those, I cannot tell you.”
He thought about that. “Map?” he asked, reaching to turn the screen around.
She rose and came to the desk.
“It's worth a try,” she said in Terran.
* * *
The guard was Terran, and she knew his name—at least, a Terranized form of what might be his name. When he was aware, which he was only briefly from time to time, she had a tendency to chatter.
She was chattering now.
“Word's come down that the boss is on the way, David. You'll be glad of that, won't you? Get you in the 'doc, patch that leg up, give you a touch of detox. This time tomorrow, you'll be feeling as spry and as sassy as you were when you broke Jady's neck for him. Providing you're polite. The boss likes everything nice. You take some advice and be nice.”
He was hazy on which of the four who had beset him had been the late and apparently unlamented Jady. He thought he had accounted for two, but the quarters had been close and the lighting confused. Nor had whoever struck him across the back of the head employed any unnecessary gentleness.
Not to mention whatever was in the hypo his guard—he thought her name was Kitten—used on him whenever he had been awake too long.
“Boss said to hold you awake,” Kitten confided. She patted his broken leg, firmly.
He ground his teeth and failed to scream.
“Tough guy,” she said, apparently approving. “Bounty's been out on you for a long time—dead or alive. Lucky thing the high price was for alive, or Jady'd just drilled you from the roof 'cross the way and not had us all down to dance.”
She leaned over, making sure of his bonds. Satisfied, she patted him again, more intimately, laughing when he glared.
“You liked it good enough when you was under,” she said. “All you got to do now is take it easy. Boss'll be here inside the hour. In the meantime, if you want anything, just whistle.”
She left him alone in the tiny alcove that was his prison. In happier times, he thought it had been a closet. It was big enough for the cot to which he was bound, his broken leg strapped to a board in rough first aid. A small mercy, that, and one for which he was grateful.
Daav closed his eyes. “The Boss” argued for Clarence, though what he could possibly hope to gain by maintaining Daav alive—he took a painful breath.
If Daav was a prisoner, he was a guarantee of Aelliana's compliance. And if Clarence had decided to expand his operations, as this harvesting of pilots seemed to indicate, then he would very much need Korval compliant.
If—
Fire ran his nervous system, and he spasmed against his bonds, gasping—then collapsed, boneless, panting, and soaked in sweat.
Kitten appeared briefly in the doorway.
“Yeah,” she said. “That'll be the withdrawal from the drug. You can expect more of the same until you get another jolt of the good stuff, or that detox like the boss might have for you.”
She vanished, then, closing the door behind her.
Fire arced through him . . .
* * *
They swept in carefully, and this time it paid off. The second-story crew took the gun on the roof across from the place Aelliana had showed him on the map without even raising dust. There were two on the door; one bolted, and fell to a trank gun; the other ran into Rof Tin's fist.
Upstairs, a burly woman in a faded orange mechanic's coverall drew a gun—and dropped it, jerking her head at a sealed closet.
“Put her to sleep,” Clarence snapped, remembering the first time, when he and Daav had lost the reaper to a poison tooth . . .
Standing to one side, gun ready, he triggered the door to the closet. What was inside—
For a moment, he thought he'd come too late; the form on the cot lay so still. Then he saw the chest move, heard the harsh sound of panting, and yelled for the kit.
They hit him with a general detox, full-spectrum antibiotic, and got a balloon brace on the leg. It was only then that they turned their attention to the cuffs, Clarence picking one and Sara on the other.
“Boss.” The word was raw, barely above a whisper. Clarence looked down into half-crazed black eyes.
“Daav.”
“It was you, harvesting pilots. She said you were coming . . . ”
“You,” Clarence said in Terran, “have just spent the last day or two in hell; there's drugs I don't care to think too close on soaking up your blood and your good sense, and you've no business thinking anything at all.”
“She said—”
“You'll tell me what she said later,” Clarence said firmly. “I'm here to fetch you home to your wife, laddie, just like she asked me to do. You've been gone too long, and she's having the devil's own time keeping your brother to the High Port.”
Daav drew a sharp breath.
“That was my thought, too,” Clarence said comfortably. “Now, listen to me, Daav. You're a fair mess and I don't want to distress Aelliana any more than she already is. We'll make a stop at my office and get you half-patched, then we'll all have a nice chat at Ongit's. Does that suit you?”
It probably scared the heart out of him, Clarence thought, but Daav yos'Phelium wasn't one to let mortal terror stop him.
“It suits me,” he said in a raw, rasping voice. He shifted on the bed, newly freed hand groping along his belt.
“What's missing?” Clarence asked, though he thought he knew.