A vicious kick from a mercenary prompted a response.
"Yessir," Sung grunted.
A flurry of kicks caused Sung to roll into a ball, covering his head, drawing his feet up to protect his privates. The kicks concentrated on his kidneys until he sobbed.
"Beg," the Kolnari said.
"Please!"
Belazir raised one finger. The mercenary stepped back, grinning. He had a particolored beard and a brass hoop in one ear.
"You must tell the Captain the rules, Benisur. We would not want a repeat of this lesson, not at his age."
"We must address the Divine Seed of Kolnar as 'Great Lord,' " Amos said, his voice flat and distant, his eyes fixed on the space below the Kolnari's feet, "and when the Lord Captain Belazir addresses us we must respond with 'Master and God.' "
"And what are you, Simeon-Amos?" Belazir asked with delicate sarcasm.
"Scumvermin," Amos ground out. Belazir laughed with delight.
"Ah, there are times-like this one, Benisur-when a despised enemy can be more welcome than a beautiful bride." He smiled benignly at Amos, then indicated the cowering girl at his side. "Is this your bride?"
"No! Lord and God," Amos said with such obvious sincerity that Belazir raised an eyebrow.
"Do not tell me you are still saving your seed for the delectable Channahap?"
Amos tried to school his features to immobility. He knew the slight shifts in his expression conveyed his outrage to the Kolnari like a shout.
Belazir smiled a cream-eating smile.
"A most… satisfying woman, truly. I can understand your obsession." He indicated Soamosa again. "Then no doubt this little one is a virgin; your people have an inexplicable admiration for such. Do not fear, girl, I can cure you of it."
Soamosa's body jerked as though she'd been struck. She muffled a cry with the sleeve of her robe.
"She is only a child, Master and God," Amos pleaded "Her family will pay a ransom for her safe return."
Belazir shrugged, "I had eight children by her age, and all of my wives were the same age as I. If I return her to her family in… almost one piece, I doubt they will complain. Much." He grinned. "And certainly not to me."
He flicked a hand at the guards, "Take them away." To Amos: "We will talk again later, scumvermin. I shall look forward to it."
Chapter Two
Joseph ben Said paced restlessly through his office. It was on the top, the third story of a building well up on the slopes overlooking New Keriss. He stopped and looked down from the open window; mild salt air caressed his face, smelling of the gardens outside and faintly of the city of low, scattered buildings that stretched down to the waters edge.
How different, he thought-as always.
How different from the days before the Kolnari came. Old Keriss had occupied the same site; the airburst hadn't dug much of a crater when the city died in a moment of thermonuclear fire. But the old city had been bigger, more densely built, narrow streets as well as fine avenues. Thickest of all along the old docks, with their shrilling tenements and slums. The New Kerris was cleaner, more modern now that Bethel was in touch with the rest of the galaxy once more. Cleaner, safer, more prosperous… although perhaps less happy than the old city had been.
Or perhaps I was happier then. His lips quirked as he remembered a lord's son down slumming, and how he'd saved that young noble from the knives of a rival gang. Then turned and found a hand extended; taken it in his own, astonished. Met Amos ben Sierra Nueva's eyes, and been lost to his old life.
That brought him back to the present; his face clenched like a fist, eyes narrowing. He sat behind the desk and keyed the screen.
"Home," he said.
It cleared, and his wife Rachel looked up in surprise from her own keyboard as his image replaced whatever she'd been working on. In the background he could hear children playing. His children… No. They are safe, and my duty is clear.
"Joseph!" she said, concern in her dark eyes. "Is there any news of the Prophet?"
He shook his head. "Nothing from SSS-900-C," he said. "Simeon reports no word. No trace of the Benisur's ship has been found; it is as if they had vanished from space-time."
He took a deep breath, and saw her face change. Rachel had come to know him too well, in the years of their marriage. Joseph held up a hand.
"Please," he said softly. "My heart, do not tear at me; this is hard enough to do. But Amos is more than my Prophet; he is the friend of my soul, my brother."
"There are younger men to do this work!"
Joseph smiled ruefully. "Are there any better trained to seek him offplanet?" he asked.
Rachel met his eyes for a moment, then glanced aside. Hers shone with unshed tears.
"Where will you go?"
"I cannot say," he said. Must not, they both knew. There was a leak in Planetary Security. "But it must be soon." He willed strength into his voice. "Do not fear, my love. We have friends beyond Bethel, as well as enemies."
"Why the fardling void can't they just say give me a bribe?" Joat Simeon-Hap demanded.
New Destinies hung in space four thousand kilometers away; much closer in the main bridge screen, of course. It wasn't very large as independent stations went, merely a cylinder ten kilometers long by one in diameter, spinning contentedly-smugly, her mind prompted-in orbit around an undistinguished orange-brown gas giant, which orbited a run-of-the-mill F-class star. That was a pinprick of violent light in the distance; closer in were a few barren rocks, none of them larger than Mars, and some asteroids.
Junk system. Junk station. Barely worth visiting because it intersected a few transit routes. There weren't many fabricators in space nearby, either. One long latticework, a graving dock that looked capable of repairing fair-sized ships or building small ones. A couple of zero-g algae farms, huge soft-looking bubbles. Some in-system traffic, miners and passenger craft and wide-mouthed scoopships to skim and harvest the gas giant's outer atmosphere. Probably they didn't pick up the litter on the station, and charged you extra for the gravity.
Joat chuckled sourly at the thought; it appealed to her sense of the ridiculous. It didn't make her less impatient. New Destinies had a reputation as one of those places that looked the other way. A fair number of the ships who docked here were in the smuggling trade, which, frankly, was what kept the station going. But a couple of generations of not noticing had an effect. Here, bribery and graft were just the way things were done. So Joat couldn't understand why none of her hints had been picked up on, or no overtures had been made in that direction.
She loved the Wyal, and not just because the ship was hers. But there were times when you had to get off the ship or run starkers, raving and frothing.
The jerk's on a power trip. She combed a hand through shoulder-length blond hair and spoke, altering her tone slightly:
"Find out who this fardling bureaucratic nightmare is, wouldja Rand?"
"You mean Dilton Tolof in Health and Immigration?"
"Yeah."
There was a confused pause.
"Joat, he's Dilton Tolof in Health and Immigration."
She rolled her eyes. "Do you have to be so literal?"
"That's the way I'm made, Joat."
"I mean find out about him."
"Why?"
"Just do it!"
"You're upset," Rand sounded surprised. "Is it me, have I caused offense?"