“Baron Bharaputra,” Rowan said in a thin voice. She lifted her chin in a quick defiant jerk of greeting.
“Dr. Durona,” said Vasa Luigi in return, polite and amused. “Your patient, is he? Then you won’t refuse my invitation to join us. Please be our guest. You’ll make it quite the little family reunion.”
“What do you want from him? He has no memory.”
“The question is not what I want from him. The question is … what someone else may want from him. And what I may want from them. Ha! Even better!” He motioned to his men, and turned away. They chivvied their captives into the closed lift van.
One of the men split off to pilot the blue lightflyer. “Where should I leave this, sir?”
“Take it back to the city and park it on a side street. Anywhere. See you home.”
“Yes, sir.”
The van doors closed. The van lifted.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mark groaned. Bright prickles of pain shot through a dark nausea.
“You gonna give him a dose of synergine?” said a voice, surprised. “I didn’t get the idea the Baron wanted this one handled gently.”
“You want to clean up the flyer if he vomits his breakfast?” rumbled another voice.
“Ah.”
“The Baron will do his own handling. He just specified he wanted him alive. Which he is.”
A hypospray hissed.
“Poor sod,” said the first voice reflectively.
Thanks to the synergine, Mark began to recover from the stunner hit. He didn’t know how much time and space lay between him and the Durona Clinic; they’d changed vehicles at least three times after he’d regained consciousness, once to something bigger and faster than an aircar. They stopped at some location, and he and the troopers all went through a decontamination chamber. The anonymously-dressed troopers went their way, and he was given over to two other guards, big flat-faced men in black trousers and red tunics.
House Ryoval’s colors. Oh.
They laid him facedown, hands and feet bound, in the back of a lightflyer. The gray clouds, darkening toward evening, gave no clue as to the direction they were heading.
Miles is alive. The relief of that fact was so intense, he smiled in elation even with his face squashed into the sticky plastic seat. What a joyful sight the skinny little bugger had been! Upright and breathing. He’d almost wept. What he’d done, was undone. He could really be Lord Mark, now. All my sins are taken from me.
Almost. He prayed that Durona doctor had spoken straight about Miles still recovering. Miles’s eyes had been frighteningly bewildered. And he hadn’t recognized Quinn, which must have nearly slain her. You’ll get better. We’ll get you home, and you’ll get better. He’d haul Miles home and everything would be all right again, better than all right. It would be wonderful.
As soon as that idiot Ryoval had his delusions straightened around. Mark was ready to gut the man outright for screwing up his family reunion. Imp Sec will handle him.
They entered an underground parking garage without his getting a glimpse of the exterior of their destination. The two guards hauled him roughly to his feet, and released his legs, which twitched and tingled. They passed through an electronic security chamber, after which his clothing was taken from him. They marched him through the … facility. It wasn’t a prison. It wasn’t one of House Ryoval’s famous bordellos. The air bore a faint, unsettling medical tang. The place was far too utilitarian to be where surgical body-sculpture was done on patrons. It was too secret and secure to be where slaves were done to order, where humans were made into things not humanly possible. It wasn’t very large. There were no windows. Underground? Where the hell am I?
He would not panic. He entertained himself with a brief vision of what Ryoval might do to his own troopers, once he discovered they’d snatched the wrong twin. If Ryoval did not realize the mistake at the very first sight of him, he toyed with the idea of concealing his identity for a while. Let Miles and the Dendarii get a bigger head-start. They had not been taken; they were free. 7 found him! They must come for him. And if not them, ImpSec. ImpSec could not be more than a week behind him, and closing fast. I’ve won, godammit, I’ve won!
His head was still spinning with a bizarre mixture of elation and terror when the guards delivered him to Ryoval’s presence. It was a luxurious office, or study; the Baron evidently kept private quarters here, for he glimpsed a living room beyond an archway. Mark had no trouble recognizing Ryoval. He’d seen him in the vid recording from the Ariel’s first mission here. The conversation where he’d threatened to have Admiral Naismith’s severed head encased in plastic for a wall-hanging. In another man, this might be dismissed as hyperbole, but Mark had the uneasy feeling Ryoval had meant it literally. Ryoval was leaning half-seated on his comconsole desk. He had shining dark hair arranged in elaborate bands, a high-bridged nose, and smooth skin. Strong and youthful, for a centenarian.
He’s wearing a clone. Mark’s smile became vulpine. He hoped Ryoval would not mistake his post-stun tremula for fear.
The guards sat him in a chair and fastened him down with metal bands to his wrists. “Wait outside,” the Baron instructed them. “It won’t be long.” They exited.
Ryoval’s hands were trembling slightly. The skin of his bronzed face was faintly moist. When he looked up and smiled back at Mark, his eyes seemed alight with some internal glow, the look of a man so filled with the visions inside his head, he scarcely saw the present reality. Mark was almost too enraged to care. Clone-consumer!
“Admiral,” Ryoval breathed happily. “I promised you we would meet again. As inevitably as fate.” He looked Mark up and down; his dark brows rose. “You’ve put weight on, the last four years.”
“Good living,” Mark snarled, uncomfortably reminded of his nakedness. For all he’d loathed the Dendarii uniform, it had actually made him look rather good. Quinn had personally re-tailored it for this masquerade, and he wished for it back. Presumably it had been what had fooled Ryoval’s troopers, though, in that moment of heroic temporary insanity.
“I’m so glad you are alive. At first I’d hoped for your unpleasant death in one of your little combats, but upon reflection I actually began to pray for your survival. I’ve had four years to plan this meeting. Revising and refining. I’d have hated for you to miss your appointment.”
Ryoval did not recognize him as not-Naismith. Ryoval was barely seeing him at all. He seemed to be looking through him. The Baron began to stride up and down in front of him, pouring out his plans like a nervous lover, elaborate plans for vengeance that ranged from the obscene to the insane to the impossible.
It could be worse. Ryoval could be making these threats right now to that thin little, vague-eyed, bewildered cryo-amnesic, who would not know even who he was, let alone why these things should be happening to him. The thought sickened Mark. Yeah. Better me than him, right now. No shit.
He means to terrorize you. It’s only words. What was it the Count had said? Don’t sell yourself to your enemy in advance, in your mind… .
Hell, Ryoval wasn’t even his enemy. All these gaudy scenarios had been tailored for Miles. No, not even for Miles. For Admiral Naismith, a man who didn’t exist. Ryoval chased a ghost, a chimera.
Ryoval stopped beside him, interrupting his whispered tirade. Curiously, he ran a moist hand down Mark’s body, fingers curving in precise anatomical tracing of the muscles hidden beneath the layer of fat. “Do you know,” he breathed, “I’d planned to have you starved.