Clan and Crown (14 page)

As they hunkered down in the concealing
brush, feeling the far off rumble of a sheclir deep in the jungle,
Clajak grimaced. “The little gray bastard must have put one hell of
a bounty on our heads. No doubt my quarters are just as
unreachable.”

Egilka’s fatigue returned with
interest. “Now what do we do? Our transport has gone and we don’t
have money or means to buy passage on another. The fucking
ambassador for Kalquor is in another city, requiring a shuttle
flight we can’t afford. Even calling from public access coms costs
a bundle.”

“You’re right. We’ll have to improvise.
Let’s get over to the space port.”

Egilka couldn’t imagine what Clajak
meant by improvising. He had the urge to curl into a ball and give
up. Yet once the Dramok had determined it was safe to do so, he
somehow found the grudging will to get up and move.

They chanced upon a small stream as
they threaded their way through the jungle. The two men gulped
water until their bellies were tight. Somewhat restored, they made
it to the port by nightfall with no further incidents.

“What if Ru’imbu set up spies here
too?” Egilka worried as they approached one of the many accesses to
the brightly lit building. The space port sprawled for a couple of
miles. The air thundered with the sound of departing and arriving
vessels. Egilka would have given anything to be on any of those
ships. He couldn’t wait to be quit of Dantovon ... if that was even
possible now.

“I’m sure he did,” Clajak said. He
showed no sign of hesitation as he strode with confidence into the
port. “But this is a busy place with people coming and going
nonstop. Most are too busy wheeling and dealing to pay much
attention to anything beyond their immediate interests. Keep up,
Imdiko. And keep your eyes open for that stupid gray shit and his
muscle.”

After a few moments in the maelstrom of
activity, Egilka began to hope Clajak was right. The river of
aliens surging around him were intent on where they were heading.
No one gave him and the crown prince a second glance ... rarely
even a first glance, for that matter. As far as crowding went, the
space port was worse than Below had been with its seething tide of
hopping Dantovonians. Egilka lost count of how many times he was
nearly run down by hover carts rushing cargo from export bays to
ships and from ships to import bays. The ships, docked in
open-roofed alcoves, were from all over the known worlds, along
with a few the Imdiko couldn’t identify. Sleek pleasure cruise
liners, battered decommissioned warships, bulky cargo carriers,
some crafts that defied description ... if it could be made to fly
in space, the vessel was represented.

Smells assaulted him as well. The body
odors of alien, washed and unwashed, melded with the stink of
greasy machinery, oiled gears, and the ozone of electrical power.
Foodstuffs, fresh and spoiled, were by turns enticing and
nauseating.

Egilka was deafened by buzzing,
yelling, chirping, and even shrieking conversations in too many
languages to be deciphered. The roaring, humming, and growling
engines rose and fell, regularly eclipsing the nonstop
conversations. The port was bedlam – the perfect place for two
hunted Kalquorians to disappear into.

Egilka’s vision wavered. Clajak’s broad
back before him dimmed, blurred, and swam back into focus. The
Imdiko’s aching feet sent glass shards of pain through his legs
with every step. His spine was a column of misery. He wouldn’t be
able to go any farther before long.

He put his hand on Clajak’s shoulder.
The Dramok kept walking because to stop would get them trampled. He
slowed however and turned a questioning gaze over his
shoulder.

Egilka shouted in the prince’s ear to
be heard over the scream of a Isetacian trade ship taking off.
“Where are we going? What are we doing here? We can’t even pay to
get off this damned planet!”

Clajak’s exhausted countenance told the
Imdiko that he was as close to done in as Egilka was. Yet the
Dramok surprised him with a sly grin and a wink. “We’ll rely on the
generosity of others.”

Egilka stared at him dumbfounded.
“Generosity? On Dantovon?” Apparently, Clajak’s brain had melted in
the jungle heat. Yet he looked so damned confident. Almost cocky,
the smug bastard.

Trying to figure out where his
companion’s assurance came from ... heat-induced madness or inside
information ... Egilka ventured, “Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll run
into a vacationing Kalquorian or clan. We can’t bet on it,
though.”

Clajak slowed to allow Egilka to walk
by his side. His arm slipped around the Imdiko’s waist and
squeezed. “Calm down, my worried friend. I still have a trick or
two up my sleeve.”

Not reassured in the least, Egilka
glowered at him. “I’m not terribly fond of your tricks,
Clajak.”

The jerk laughed. “No? You will be when
we’re back in Empire space.” Clajak’s eyes widened as he looked
past Egilka. His grin spread wider and he shoved against the
Imdiko, angling them from the middle of the traffic flow towards
the launch pads to their right. “Now there’s a
possibility.”

Egilka eyed the ship Clajak guided him
towards. He frowned at the large triangular vessel. It sat on
spindly metal legs that extended beyond the craft’s booster rockets
that would lift it into space. One figure strolled beneath the
vessel, made tiny by the craft’s impressive bulk.

Egilka gave Clajak a quizzical look.
“An Adraf freighter? They’ll insist we pay for passage. Up front,
no less.”

They reached the edge of the launch
bay, standing in the shadow of the towering, angular vessel.
Clajak’s face was sunny with pleasure as he looked it over. “We
don’t have to pay if they don’t know we’re aboard.”

“Stow away?”

Even in the din of the port, Egilka’s
voice rang loud in his disbelief. Clajak gave him a shake. “Will
you quiet down?”

The prince looked about, his gaze
lighting on row upon row of stacks of cargo set close to the wall.
With a jerk of his head, Clajak led Egilka to them. After a careful
look around, he grabbed the Imdiko’s hand and yanked him behind the
stacks. They were hidden from view.

Clajak patted Egilka’s shoulder, a host
of emotions flying across his face at breakneck speed: concern,
remorse, reassurance, certainty, delighted triumph. “Stay here.
Keep hidden until I come back for you.”

Egilka stiffened to hear the Dramok was
about to abandon him. “Where the hell are you going?”

“To book passage.”

“I thought you said we were going to
stow away—”

Clajak interrupted him by grabbing his
face between his hands and giving him a heart melting kiss. As the
prince’s soft but firm lips moved over his and his tongue swept
into Egilka’s mouth to taste, the Imdiko responded despite himself.
He wanted to dissolve into that sweet, delicious kiss, forgetting
all the trouble the man had gotten him into. Maybe even forgive the
prince. In that moment, there was nothing but Clajak, the strength
of his grasp, the joyful succumbing to that tender kiss that
promised so much more.

When Clajak released him, Egilka swayed
a little on his feet. Looking into that cocksure expression helped
him recover his head. He decided his unsteadiness was due to
fatigue and stress. It had nothing to do with the growing knowledge
that despite all Clajak had put him through, Egilka was falling
crazy in love. The Imdiko’s safe existence, the dull steady drone
of his life that he’d grown so accustomed to, felt like a coma from
which he’d newly emerged.

Who could have guessed that raw
emotion, even when it was sometimes loathing, could tie his heart
into such knots?

The breathless quality of his voice
revealed the outright lie he spoke. “Damn it, I hate
you.”

Clajak managed to wince and smirk at
the same time. “Sure you do. Don’t budge. I’ll be right
back.”

With that, Clajak blurred in motion and
disappeared. A stab of terror drove through Egilka’s gut, but
Clajak was already gone. All the Imdiko could do was hope his
clanmate-to-be didn’t find more trouble.

With nothing to do but wait, Egilka
sank to his butt on the hard floor. He leaned against the wall and
propped his sore feet on top of one of the cargo boxes shielding
him from view. The idea of sneaking onto a ship was insanity.
Stowaways were spaced more often than not. Adrafs in particular had
no patience with such shenanigans. As driven by profit as
Dantovonians, theirs was not a race to take lightly when it came to
fair payment.

What we need to do is find a
long-range communications portal and contact
Kalquor
, Egilka thought. That made the most
sense. Yet he knew the public-use com portals were just as likely
to be watched by Ru’imbu’s spies as his quarters had been. And
money was needed to make the call, damn it. Their escape kept
coming down to money. He and Clajak had plenty of that in their
accounts but none on hand. They might as well be paupers. At the
rate things were going, they’d have to sign on to a brothel to
secure any funds.

Even if they did have money in their
pouches – their long-gone pouches – there was the problem of
transportation being days away. By now the vessel Egilka had booked
passage on was out of range. It wouldn’t turn around to pick them
up.

Egilka’s thoughts drifted together and
came apart as he drowsed, struggling with the impossibility of the
situation. Stowing away on a ship came with too many hazards ...
staying on Dantovon and waiting for rescue just as dangerous ... no
money for food or lodging ... damned Bi’isil searching for Clajak
... probably looking to capture Egilka now as well ... death better
than enslavement ... sneaking on board a ship might be the only
recourse ... but that would mean Clajak was right ... and being
shoved out of an airlock in space was not a good way to go ... he
was fucked, fucked, fucked—

A rough hand shook Egilka out of his
restless doze. “Wake up, Imdiko. Come on, quick. We don’t have much
time.”

Egilka blinked up at Clajak. The Dramok
thrummed with excitement, a far cry from Egilka’s leaden state. For
some reason it made him resist getting up. “Listen you, I don’t
think—”

Clajak grabbed him and heaved him to
his feet. Before Egilka could get over the surprise at being
muscled around so easily by the prince, Clajak showed him fangs.
“Move your ass right now or I’ll bite and force you to
obey.”

Egilka’s temper spiked. He did not like
being bullied one bit, especially when Clajak kept getting them
into trouble. However, Clajak’s glare told the Imdiko he had no
choice in the matter. Resistance was going to get him bitten, and
Clajak’s venom would make him Egilka’s undeniable
master.

He settled for an insult. “You are such
an asshole!”

Clajak didn’t respond. Instead, he
turned and yanked Egilka along with him. They wove through the
containers, heading in a direction that Egilka believed would take
them to the back of the Adraf ship. Then they moved to the front of
the cargo, and the vessel stretched high above them.

Clajak poked his head out from behind
their shelter and glanced around. He hissed, “We’re clear to go.
Run!”

He took off, pulling Egilka along.
Their surroundings blurred past and the Imdiko did his best to
ignore the pain that pounded through his legs and back with every
step.

Ahead, an open hatch in the lower body
of the ship yawned black. They raced up the ramp that led up to it.
The agony in Egilka’s body doubled as it protested the sharp
incline. It lasted only a second before they gained the dark
confines of the cargo hold.

It was half full of containers much
like the ones Egilka had been hiding behind. Clajak shoved him
towards the cargo. “Quick, hide behind the bins. We have a couple
of minutes. Let’s get out of sight before the crew comes back from
their break to finish loading.”

Egilka thought of the figure he’d
spotted walking beneath the freighter when they’d first arrived.
“How did you get rid of the guard?”

Clajak poked around behind the
containers, looking for a likely spot to hunker down. “I grabbed
one of the smaller containers and took off with it. I kept far
enough ahead that he couldn’t catch me, then dropped the thing and
doubled back here.”

They reached the corner of the hold,
barely able to slip between the tightly packed shipment. With a
relieved sigh, Clajak propped himself against the wall and let his
body slide down until he sat grinning up at Egilka. “Relax. Get
comfortable. We’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

As much as Egilka wanted to get off his
hurting feet, he eyed the metallic containers around him with
worry. “Is this thing going to Kalquor?”

Clajak shrugged and motioned to the
writing on the crates. “You don’t read Adraf? It doesn’t matter for
the moment, but no. The next stop for this bucket is
Joshada.”

It was Egilka’s turn to sigh with
relief. “That’s not so bad. Joshadans won’t mind giving us help.
They’ll even loan us the funds to pay the Adrafs for our passage.
We can hop a transport home from there.”

Clajak nodded. “The biggest thing is to
get away from that little shit Ru’imbu. Damn those stupid Bi’isils
and their sense of insult.”