“Ah,” said Gunderd. “For a slayer you have a good heart.”
Then he died.
Ruiz felt the transition from life to death, a sudden weight, an unmistakable laxity. He stopped swimming, turned Gunderd to face him, saw the emptiness in the scholar’s face.
“Well,” he said aimlessly, and released the body. It floated facedown, leaking blood at a much slower pace.
Ruiz swam toward shore, as fast as he could.
When he reached the waist-deep shallows and stood up to wade ashore, he heard a thrashing flurry. He looked around to see something scaly take the body down. The sight stimulated him to a mild panic, and he splashed the last few meters, knees pumping high.
Once on dry land, he kept running until he had reached the cover of the boulders at the high water line.
Chapter 14
Nisa watched Corean as she would a poisonous reptile. A few minutes before, the sounds of weapons and engines had ceased. Now the slaver walked up and down the narrow corridor between the cages that held Nisa and Dolmaero. The cyborg Marmo floated beside the forward bulkhead, attending his mistress.
Several hours had crept by since she and the Guildmaster had been herded into separate cages by the old man-machine. Nisa had passed the time by imagining that Ruiz Aw was still alive, that he would come after her, would rescue her from the woman who now held her.
As if she could read Nisa’s mind, Corean stopped and glared in at her. “He’s surely dead, bitch. He surely is.” The slaver’s face had undergone some destructive metamorphosis, so that she was no longer beautiful, in any human sense. The planes of her face hadn’t changed, but whatever veneer of sanity she had possessed seemed now to have evaporated, and the madness writhing beneath the skin had become too insistently visible.
Nisa shook her head slowly. The slaver was probably right — but she wouldn’t believe it, not yet.
Corean seemed to swell with rage, her face almost puffy with emotion. “You doubt it? Really? If he didn’t drown, then the Roderigans have him. Better for him to be dead, if so.”
Nisa looked away, as if terribly interested in the rusty steel in the corner of her cage.
The slaver sighed, and it was so incongruous a sound that it regained Nisa’s attention. Corean had grown abruptly pensive, and Nisa had great difficulty in reading the expression on that perfect face. Corean looked at her so strangely that Nisa felt a greater degree of uneasiness than she had when the slaver had seemed full of violent anger.
Corean finally spoke in a voice softer than she had ever before used in Nisa’s presence. “No, dirtworlder, I think you’re right. He’s still alive. His luck is uncanny — why shouldn’t he survive the margars and the hetmen? Minor perils for him, eh? Foolish of me to think that the story is ended.”
Suddenly it occurred to Nisa that Corean, in some dreadful way, loved Ruiz as much as she hated him. How very odd, she thought. I never realized monsters could love. But then she thought, Why not? Isn’t Ruiz a monster, in many ways? And doesn’t he love me? That train of ideas made her very uneasy, and she shut it off, though not before she thought, As monsters go, Ruiz Aw is a kindly one.
The cyborg made an uneasy throat-clearing noise. “Corean? What are your orders?” For once Marmo used a very ordinary voice. He sounded to Nisa like a tired old man, an old man who wanted nothing but his bed and an end to turmoil. “Shall I set the course to Port Ember? We can get a good price for the sub there, and safe passage offworld.”
Corean whirled. “What? No, no. What are you talking about?”
The cyborg made a shrugging gesture. “Corean. We were lucky to get away with our lives. You wouldn’t be thinking of returning to SeaStack, surely. We might not get away a second time. Neither can we go back to the Blacktear Pens; Roderigo will be waiting for us there. We’ve lost all that, now.”
Corean sidled a few steps toward Marmo. “Yes, of course — but you can’t believe I would give up now. After everything Ruiz Aw has cost me? Are you crazy?”
Marmo drew back slightly and didn’t answer. Corean stepped closer, her hands clenched. For some reason, Nisa remembered something she had once seen on Pharaoh, just before her eighth birthday. A caravan of charlatans had come to her father’s palace, and though their sleights had been unimpressive, they owned two great arroyo lizards, which they displayed in gilt cages. To her eventual regret, she had gone to watch them being fed their monthly meal of stonemole puppies. The deliberate movements of the arroyo lizards as they approached their prey, the frozen fascination of the puppies — there was something in the present situation that resonated with that long-ago memory.
“Corean,” Marmo said. “Please. What do you intend?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We return to SeaStack. Ruiz will come for his woman, or to take the Gencha… and we’ll get him. This time.” Corean spoke a bit breathlessly.
“Oh, no. Corean,” said the cyborg, “you must be mad. SeaStack is a charnel house. Ruiz Aw has to be dead, or otherwise beyond your revenge. But at least we’re still alive. Don’t let his ghost drag us to our deaths. My life isn’t much, I admit. But it’s all I have and I want to keep it.”
Nisa watched in horrified fascination. The slaver stood very close to her henchman, looking into his metal eyes. “Marmo. You’ve been with me so long. I never thought you would desert me.” She spoke in a voice of cool bemusement.
Marmo shook his head. “I haven’t deserted you, Corean.”
Corean put her hand to his cheek, where the metal met the flesh.
It ended so quickly that Nisa wasn’t completely sure what she had seen. The slaver’s hand dropped to the cyborg’s throat. Nisa heard a buzzing whine. Marmo jerked and then became still.
A small amount of blood trickled down the front of his battered chassis.
When Corean turned around, Nisa saw tears shine briefly in her blue eyes.
Ruiz crouched among the boulders, listening, trying to filter any alien sound from the slap of waves, the cries of seabirds, the whisper of the offshore breeze in the beach grass. Nothing.
He still had the wireblade; doubtless Gejas, were he alive, was more formidably armed. Maybe the tongue was dead or too badly hurt to oppose him. Ruiz felt a slight degree of cheer at the thought.
As if that small encouragement had unlocked his heart’s armor, he thought of Nisa, whom he would never see again. Corean would surely flee to the farthest corner of Sook, or at least as far as her sub’s energy reserves could carry her. She might sell Nisa — or perhaps Corean would ease her frustration in torment.
The latter seemed most likely, when he remembered the lunatic sound of the slaver’s voice. He supposed he should hope that Molnekh’s burst had caught Nisa as well as Gunderd… but he couldn’t do it.
You’re wasting time, he told himself, and began to slither as silently as he could through the boulders.
When he reached the path he became even more cautious, alert for sensors and trip wires. Gejas was probably equipped with such devices; what good Roderigan soldier wouldn’t be?
But he found nothing and after a while he decided that Gejas must still be hiding in the rocks. He started to run up the path toward the campsite.
By the time he reached the clearing, his damaged ribs were hurting him badly. Einduix was gone, and as Ruiz sat on a rock to catch his breath, he felt a certain relief. If he’d had to nursemaid the little man, his minute chance of survival would shrink to nothing.