Ruiz described Corean as dispassionately as he could — her mannerisms, her slender body, her priceless face. He thought he had kept the hatred from his voice, but Diamond Bob watched him with knowing eyes and a slight smile. When he was finished, she shook her head. “No. She must employ another pen, if she does business in SeaStack — or perhaps she uses a private facility. Or, it may be that she has always dealt with me through underlings. The Pharaohan Flomel was delivered to us by a felinoform who called himself Lensh — and here is another possible connection to Remint. One of the raiders was a catperson. We had almost captured him, when the raider we believe to be Remint took off the cat’s head with a graser. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough left to compare the ID with the one who left Flomel here, but I would think they might be the same person.
“Now. Tell me why you think Corean might have something to do with the raid. Why would she want these Pharaohans?”
Ruiz debated whether he should mention the Gencha, but decided that volunteering such volatile information might be foolish, even if Diamond Bob proved trustworthy beyond reasonable expectation.
“They once belonged to her, before I stole them.”
“Ah.”
“What happened to Flomel?”
She smiled. “He was also taken. We didn’t find his body.”
Ruiz thought. Corean began to seem the likely motivator behind the raid. If so, she now had regained her phoenix troupe, except for the dead Kroel. But was that financial consideration large enough for her to risk the wrath of the pirate lords? The rational answer was no. Was she rational?
He needed more information. “Tell me what you know of Remint?”
Diamond Bob shrugged. “A few years ago he was the most feared slayer of SeaStack, which is saying quite a lot. He’s intelligent, physically gifted, merciless. All manner of myths grew up around his prowess as a killer. Then he seemed to drop from sight. No one with any credibility claimed to have taken his head, so I assumed he had simply grown tired of the profession and retired. It happens. There were reports he’d been seen on Dilvermoon, and on other faraway worlds, but I discount these. Famous people often seem to be everywhere, don’t they? I was astonished to hear of his first visit here, when he interviewed Flomel — as far as I know, that was the first verified sighting of Remint in over four years.”
“Was he freelance?”
“No, not then. He worked for his brother, a man named Alonzo Yubere. Perhaps you’ve heard of him; he keeps a stable of Gencha and does personality modifications, mostly for the lords. But it was rumored that the two of them had a falling out, just before Remint disappeared. I think this must be true — Alonzo is an extraordinarily careful man — he’d never attack me unless his survival was threatened, and I can’t imagine how those properties could have affected him. Either Remint is operating on his own, or he’s working for someone else — such is my guess, for what it’s worth.”
Ruiz felt a dizzy sense of disorientation. Alonzo Yubere. He had been assembling a theory that involved Corean’s thirst for revenge; now that seemed far too simple. There were suddenly too many coincidences.
“Are you well?” asked Diamond Bob. “Do you know Yubere?”
“I… met him. Briefly.” He was remembering the dark-haired woman who had fallen into the depths of the pit. Gencha food. “Tell me, please: Exactly when did the raid occur?”
“Night before last, oh-three-hundred hours. They were in and out in fifteen minutes — very professional work, in most respects.”
Ruiz sat back against the couch, his heart pounding. The woman might have been Nisa; there had been plenty of time for Remint to have delivered the Pharaohans to Yubere before Ruiz had penetrated the stronghold.
Diamond Bob watched him, her shrewd eyes burning with curiosity. “Obviously I have distressed you. Why so?”
Ruiz felt as if he were about to collapse under the pressure of her revelations. He was abruptly a great deal worse than exhausted; his thoughts seemed to run much too slowly for coherence, the beginnings of each thought seemed to fade to formless mist before he could finish it. “Corean was shipping the Pharaohans to Yubere when I stole them from her, or so I believe.”
“If she has completed this shipment, would this be fatal to your purposes?”
“Possibly.” He tried not to think of Nisa dead, rotting in the corrupt soup at the bottom of the pit. Even if her body was still alive, had she already been processed into a less-than-human creature? What could he do, now? He needed time to think, to analyze his options. And he couldn’t be entirely sure that Remint was acting on Corean’s behalf. It was at least possible that Publius was behind the snatch; he also had connections with Yubere, and reason to want some additional leverage over Ruiz. Remint might not have made the delivery to Yubere, in any case. He tried to remember the moments he had spent with Yubere, before he’d killed him. Wasn’t there something there, something he should take into consideration? Then he recalled the flash of recognition he’d detected in Yubere’s face — and at the time discounted. How could Yubere have known anything about him, unless he had been told by either Publius or Corean?
He needed time to think, but was there any time? If Nisa had been taken below to be deconstructed, the process might have already begun. He took a deep breath and tried to clear his head. If she had been taken below, it was too late. But if she was still in Yubere’s dungeon, then it was likely she would remain there for a while, since the false Yubere was in no condition to order her taken to the Gencha. He would have to act on the assumption that the latter was the case; it followed that he ought to first pursue Remint, in the hope that Nisa had not yet been delivered to Yubere. He would very much like to avoid entering Yubere’s stronghold again, since to do so he would probably be forced to release the false Yubere and thus would lose his strongest leverage over Publius.
He rubbed his hands over his face, wishing he were not so terribly tired. “All right,” he said. “You need to know who hit you and why — and I need to recover my property. Can you give me a data-excerpt covering Remint: his history, his habits, his customary places, his associates?”
“I can, and I can include the report the lords’ forensic people gave me — you may find something useful there, though it was a very clean operation,” said Diamond Bob. “But I’ll give it to you only if you’ll agree to share what you learn with me. I’ll pay a fair price for any new data you can add to the file, plus market value for the slaves you lost — and a very good bounty for Remint’s head.”
“It’s a deal,” said Ruiz in a ragged voice.
“Good,” she said. She rose and took a datawafer from her writing desk and dropped it into his hand. “But I have a caution for you, don’t be greedy. Find out what you can, deliver your information to me, get paid, and survive. What you’ve told me leads me to suspect that Remint is still somehow connected with his brother. Don’t make the mistake of dancing with Alonzo Yubere — he plays in a much bigger league than we mere mortals do. Don’t attempt to take Remint’s head, unless the odds favor you very heavily. He’s a legend, as I’ve said — a man-shaped demon.”
“Probably good advice.”
She grinned, an incongruously predatory expression in that neutral gray face. “It is — unless, maybe, you actually are Ruiz Aw.”
A brace of killmechs escorted Ruiz to the entrance.
Back aboard the sub, he was gratified to see that Albany still held his graser aimed at Publius. He had half expected the situation to have deteriorated even more thoroughly than it already had.