Ruiz looked into his enemy’s face, just for an instant. Remint wore a look of disinterest, his eyes dead and cold and far away.
Ruiz flung himself farther onto the floater, sprawling across Publius, who waved his arms and squeaked. Ruiz squirmed forward.
Remint had finally surrendered to gravity, was falling into the pit. His reaching fingertips had just missed the floater’s chassis, or else the blow to his hand had weakened his grip.
When he hit the end of the tether, his great weight overpowered the floater’s equilibrium compensators for a moment, and it dipped violently, almost dumping Ruiz off. Ruiz slashed at the tether with his knife, as Remint swung up his good arm and sonic knife.
The tether parted.
Pain seared across Ruiz’s bicep, and he looked to see if his arm was still attached to his shoulder.
The floater bucked and leveled. Ruiz flexed his arm in grateful amazement, ignoring the blood that sheeted down.
Ruiz looked down, to see Remint land on his feet among the little warriors. One of them, with a quickness the eye could not follow, turned and drove his long knife through the gap in Remint’s left shoulder armor.
Remint flicked his own knife and the small head spun away. The slayer flexed his knees, then sprang upward, gripping the knife handle in his teeth. His good hand caught the rim of the pit.
Ruiz’s heart slammed. The man was a monster; nothing human could have made such a leap. He rolled off the floater, his heel aimed at Remint’s fingers.
It was almost a fatal mistake. The slayer gave a heave and his hand jumped up off the rim and grabbed for Ruiz’s ankle. Only by a great gut-wrenching effort was Ruiz able to divert his kick, so that Remint’s fingers only brushed his foot.
“Ah…” gasped Ruiz, horrified.
Remint fell back into the pit again, and this time the little warriors were ready for him. Two of them stabbed at the opening in his thigh armor, and the slayer’s leg buckled.
Ruiz didn’t wait to see what would happen. He scrambled away from the edge, pulling the floater with him, then he began to run toward the exit shaft, shoving the floater as fast as it would go.
“Wait,” said Publius in an unfamiliar voice, weak and plaintive. “Who is it?”
Ruiz really looked at the monster-maker for the first time, and saw that Remint had cut away his eyelids, and put some caustic substance in his eyes. He noticed blood puddled under the monster-maker’s thighs; perhaps Remint had hamstrung his captive.
“Me,” said Ruiz, saving his breath for running.
Astonishingly, a smile spread over Publius’s face. “Ruiz Aw? You’ve defeated Yubere’s vengeance? My. God.” He coughed and spit up a little blood, prompting Ruiz to wonder what other injuries he had — and if he would live long enough to be useful.
“Maybe,” Ruiz said. The dark jagged opening to the shaft was close, and Ruiz slammed the floater inside, scraping the sides. He set the controls to lift and climbed aboard as the floater began to rise up the shaft. He held on tight, his hands clutching the straps that held Publius down, and his heart didn’t slow until they were well above the height that Remint had leaped.
“You killed him?” Publius still sounded terribly uncertain.
“Maybe.”
“You must have killed him; he’d never have let us get away if he were alive. If he’s dead, he can’t hurt us. Can he?”
“I’m not so sure,” said Ruiz, and found that he was shivering, though the air in the shaft was hot and damp.
“Um,” said Publius. “Where are you taking me?”
Ruiz laughed. “Do you really care, as long as it’s away from here?” He no longer felt the consuming anger toward the monster-maker that had driven him since he had found Albany. The encounter with Remint had somehow exhausted most of his capacity for emotion, and a dangerous numbness was invading him. He examined the cut on his upper arm, and found it relatively shallow; the bleeding had slowed to a slow seepage. “We still have a deal, don’t we, Publius?”
“Oh, yes,” said Publius fervently.
“A problem has occurred to me, Publius. How can I be sure Tildoreamors will do as you ask, now that your power is destroyed, and the pirates are in such a froth about anyone leaving the city?”
Publius laughed, a thin mad sound. “Because — oh, this is a ripe irony — Tildoreamors belongs to me wholly, a Genched double, just like my Yubere.”
“I see,” said Ruiz. “Then we will go to your Yubere and release him and you will instruct him to do my bidding in every respect.”
As Ruiz had hoped, the sampan was still moored to the quay. He moved a few of the crates, and made a place for Publius’s floater.
When he guided it aboard, the monster-maker reached out and patted at the produce with uncertain hands. “Vegetables? This is the best you could do, Ruiz?” His voice was still thin.
“Don’t complain,” said Ruiz, arranging the crates to hide the floater. “If I didn’t still need you to get out of SeaStack, I’d cut your throat and feed you to the margars.”
“Would you indeed? I don’t know… you’ve changed, gone soft, for all that you’ve bested Remint. You must have tricked him somehow….”
“How else?” said Ruiz sourly. “How badly are you hurt?”
“I’ll live, if you get me to a medunit. Would you moisten my eyes? They feel very strange.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. And we’ll see about the medunit after you’ve fulfilled our bargain. Meanwhile, I like to see you suffer.”
Publius giggled. “No matter. And even if I die, I have my clones, who’ll surely get even for all this destruction. I confess, I’d prefer to keep this old brain; I’m comfortable in it. But times change and we must adapt, eh?”
Ruiz looked down at the blood-smeared face, the dull eyes, the still-arrogant mouth. “Don’t be so cocky, Publius. I drained your clones.”
A stricken look clouded the monster-maker’s face. He clamped his lips shut and said no more.
Nisa lived in grayness. Her cell was gray: the door, the walls, the floor, the narrow bench where she sat, the cot where she lay. The light that seeped from the ceiling was gray, neither bright nor dim, except for those times when it grew very faint and she slept. Even the food was gray and tasted of nothing.
She had grown listless in the days since the terrible Remint had thrust her into the cell and locked the door. She had lost track of time, or rather had abandoned it. On several occasions, she had awakened without a memory of falling asleep, and assumed that she had been drugged. She had no way of knowing how long those periods of unconsciousness had lasted, so she stopped caring. She drifted into an almost-comfortable apathy, which was easier than wondering if her mind had been altered in the awful manner Ruiz had described.
She rarely thought of Ruiz and his inexplicable treachery, preferring instead to dwell on happier times on Pharaoh, when she had been the favored daughter of the King. She remembered her father’s garden, and the pleasure she had taken with her many lovers, and the various delightful sensations of her patrician station: fine food, the best wines, silks and jewels, the worshipful attentions of her slaves.
After a while Pharaoh seemed more real than her present dull circumstances. It was only when she slept and dreamed that she was unable to maintain her carefully cultivated detachment. In her dreams, Ruiz Aw came to her and pleaded for forgiveness, and she pretended to accept his apologies. In dreaming, she concealed her hatred and led him on skillfully, so that she might make him vulnerable and wreak a dreadful vengeance on him. But the dreams were frustrating because she always woke before she could shatter his heart as he had shattered hers.
The worst thing of all was that she sometimes woke crying weak tears, sad that the dream was over, that he had slipped away again, even though she hated him and hoped never to see him again.