Deathstalker Rebellion (31 page)

During the epic clash in which the Wolfes had gone head-to-head with the Campbells and ground them underfoot, the then head of the Wolfes, Valentine’s father, Jacob, had been killed. Everyone assumed a Campbell had got a lucky blow in, but actually the hand on the weapon had been Valentine’s. No one had seen. No one knew. But shortly after the battle was over and all the Campbells were either dead or had fled, Jacob’s body could not be found. Valentine had ordered an immediate search and offered all kinds of rewards for the body’s return, but nothing was ever seen or heard of it again.

Which meant Jacob was still out there, somewhere. Not alive. He couldn’t be alive. Even if Jacob’s mysterious friends had got him to a regeneration machine straight away, it would still have been too late. He’d been brain-dead too long. Valentine was quite sure of that. He could still remember the moment when he’d killed his father. One of his drugs gave him perfect recall, and he played the moment over and over in his mind, savoring it. He’d moved in behind his father, unnoticed in the heat of battle, and slipped his dagger expertly in and out of Jacob’s ribs, so fast no one saw or suspected anything. Jacob was dead. Valentine never doubted it for a moment. But who had his body?

Finlay and Adrienne had been the only Campbells to escape the slaughter, running for their lives on a stolen gravity sled, but Jacob’s body hadn’t gone with them. The tower’s external security cameras had a good view of the departing sled, and there were only two people on it. Unfortunately, Valentine couldn’t study the records from the interior cam
eras, because he’d arranged for them all to be turned off the moment the fighting started. He couldn’t afford for them to show him killing his father, after all. So anyone inside the room could have taken him.

But what use was the body to anyone? They could clone another Jacob from his cells, but if he turned up again, a simple genetest would be enough to reveal it wasn’t the real Jacob. And the Family wouldn’t pay ransom for a clone. Not even the grieving widow Constance … Though they might have paid a ransom for the safe return of Jacob’s body so that it could be laid to rest with honor.

But no ransom demand ever materialized. A thought forced itself into Valentine’s mind, much against his will. What if … no one had taken it? What if the dead body had just got up and walked away, unnoticed in the general chaos? Valentine shuddered involuntarily as the image played itself out relentlessly before his mind’s eye. Jacob’s body, its death wound still bloody in its side, rising unsteadily to its feet, and pausing only briefly to glare at its murderer before slipping unnoticed out the door. Jacob’s body, stumbling unseen down some dark alleyway, animated no longer by life, but by pure hatred for its killer. Out there, somewhere, waiting for its chance for bloody vengeance against its murderous son. Valentine had always had a superstitious side. Mostly he encouraged it for the extra thrills it provided, but now the thought of his dead father haunted him and would not let him alone. Sometimes, in the night, when he was alone in his bedchamber, he thought he heard his father talking to him from the shadows. The words terrified him, but he could never remember them in the morning.

Of course, that could always be the drugs.

Valentine brought his thoughts firmly under control. No one could hurt him now. He was the Wolfe, acknowledged and unchallenged, and nothing could undo that, no matter what had happened to his father’s body. He had destroyed his rivals the Campbells and held the single most important and lucrative contract in the Empire: the mass production of the new stardrive. Everyone bowed their head to him and gave him plenty of room.

He had the Empress’s ear, when many did not. She saw him as her fool and jester, wisdom and madness in one entertaining package, but she listened when he spoke. She tolerated much from him that she would not from anyone else,
because he amused her. And not least because she enjoyed seeing other people’s reactions when she favored him over them or put him in positions of power over them.

At heart, Lionstone was a creature of simple pleasures. Both the military and the Church had made it clear they disapproved of him. There weren’t many things the Church and the military agreed on, but Valentine Wolfe was definitely one of them. Since they both needed the stardrive to get about (neither could afford to be left behind by the other), they remained polite in company. Mostly. None of the Families liked him being so powerful—on the ground it upset the delicate balance of power among them that usually kept them from each other’s throats—but their occasional intrigues against him came to nothing.

It was the same with the Members of Parliament. They couldn’t buy or control him, because in the end they had nothing he wanted. That made him dangerous, a wild card, unpredictable.

But every single one of them could see the advantage of having his friendship. Which made for some interesting conversations.

Valentine’s brother and sister, Daniel and Stephanie, watched him from a safe distance. They were there at Court with their respective spouses, because duty demanded it. But as usual they weren’t talking to Valentine. They despised and hated him, partly because he was a drug-soaked degenerate and a disgrace to the Family and partly because he so obviously didn’t give a damn. Both Daniel and Stephanie had been forced into arranged marriages, one of the last of Jacob’s orders, but neither match could be said to be successful. Not that Daniel or Stephanie had tried very hard. They had other, more important things to think about. As Wolfes, they’d prospered along with the rest of the Family, but they remained very much in Valentine’s shadow. With his sudden rise, they’d lost all power and influence in the Family and now subsisted on whatever crumbs he threw their way. They intrigued furiously against him, but they’d never been very good at it. And so, with only each other to rely on and cling to, they’d grown increasingly close. Some said unnaturally so.

Daniel was the youngest, only just into his twenties, and had the hulking frame of his father, but none of the wit or intelligence. He’d been clumsy as a child, till his father beat
it out of him. Even now, he tended to move with exaggerated care. He wore his hair long, in thick golden strands, the latest fashion, but couldn’t be bothered with the florescent face makeup that should have accompanied it. Mostly because he didn’t have the skill or the looks to bring it off successfully, and he hated the idea that people might be laughing at him. Daniel had no sense of humor and didn’t trust those who did.

Stephanie, the middle child, was tall and gangling, good-looking in a bland sort of way, and deadly as a coiled snake. If she’d had intelligence to equal her venom, no one would have been safe. As it was, she raged against Valentine’s restraints, but had no idea yet how to break them. It didn’t stop her doing her best to show Valentine up at every opportunity, on principle. Valentine just smiled at those around him and said
sisters
, and everybody laughed. She hated it when they laughed. She dominated Daniel, but that wasn’t exactly difficult. She’d always been the cold one in the Family. Daniel missed his father, but she didn’t. She had no time for emotions that got in the way.

And yet, almost in spite of himself, Valentine had recently been forced to give the two of them more and more to do on the business side of the Family. He had neither the time nor the aptitude for running the stardrive business, but it was too important a post to be trusted to anyone not a major Wolfe. And that meant Daniel and Stephanie, who between them had one pretty good brain. He trusted them not to screw things up out of spite. Mad at him though they were, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t do anything to harm the Family,

At first, they took their new post as an insult, aristocrats forced to dirty their hands with trade, but it didn’t take Stephanie long to realize that power in the business side of things could perhaps be used to undermine Valentine. So she studied hard and made Daniel study, too. Between them they ran the business and made it theirs. So far, Valentine hadn’t noticed. Daniel and Stephanie planned to change that.

They stood close together, shivering in the falling snow, watching Valentine think. Their gaze was not friendly. Daniel produced a flask of brandy and passed it to Stephanie. She accepted it gratefully and took a healthy swallow. The drink burned fiercely in her chest, sinking slowly lower, fighting off the chill of the driving wind. She passed the flask back to her brother, who drank deeply.

“Not too much, Daniel,” Stephanie said automatically. “This is a bad place to be caught without all your wits about you.”

“I can handle it,” he said, just as automatically. “I can handle it.” But he put the flask away anyway. “You worry too much, big sister.”

“And you don’t worry enough.”

“Not true. I only have to look at Valentine thinking like that, and I start worrying. Means he’s planning something again, to no one’s advantage but his. Or just possibly he’s found out how deeply we’re involved with this stardrive company. We were only supposed to run it, not take it over.”

Stephanie smiled coldly. “By the time he works out what’s happening, it’ll be too late. Control over stardrive production will give us control over him. He depends on it for his station at Court. A sudden drop in numbers, just when the Empress had called for an increase, would humiliate him without harming the company in the least. There are lots of other things we can do, too, that will reflect on him, rather than us. It shouldn’t be too hard to throw all the blame on Valentine; after all, we’re the ones with access to the company books. And after a steady stream of embarrassments, we shouldn’t find it too difficult to convince Lionstone it would be in her and the Empire’s best interests to take the company away from Valentine and give it to us. We’ll bring him down, little brother. We’ll bring him all the way down.”

Daniel scowled unhappily. “I still can’t help worrying what it is he’s after, that he spends all his time pursuing it rather than running the company he depends on. Whatever it is, it must be something really important.”

Stephanie shrugged. “Who knows where Valentine’s thoughts are these days? I’m surprised they’re still on the same planet as the rest of us.”

“We’ll get him,” said Daniel, trying hard to sound as confident as she did. “We’ll drag him down. Father never intended a sick degenerate like Valentine to head the Family. And then we’ll run things. The both of us.”

“Yes,” said Stephanie. “Of course. The both of us.”

Daniel looked at her, and his voice dropped. “Are you all right? Cold getting to you? Come to little brother, and let him warm you up.”

He held open his cloak, and she snuggled up against him
as he wrapped the cloak around them both. And if they held each other a little more closely than brother and sister should, no one noticed it, hidden under cover of the cloak and the still respected Wolfe name.

Not too far away Lily Wolfe, wife of Daniel, and Michel Wolfe, who had to take Stephanie’s name when he married her, stood together watching their respective spouses staring at Valentine. An impartial observer might have noticed that they were standing more than companionably close together. This same observer might also have deduced, from their body language and occasional long melting glance, that they were seriously involved with each other. The impartial observer, assuming such a thing could be found in Lionstone’s Court, would have been absolutely right. Lily and Michel were lovers, and had been for some time. Everyone knew except Daniel and Stephanie, who were preoccupied with other things. Even Valentine knew. The only reason he hadn’t said anything was because he was still trying to decide whether it would be funnier to tell Daniel and Stephanie or to let it go on.

Lily was six foot six, willowy but still nicely curved, with a long silver wig that fell past her shoulders, framing a pale freckled face. She always wore wigs over a shaved skull on the grounds that wigs were so much easier to look after. She wore the latest fashions and wore them well, with a natural style that infuriated other women, for none could look that good on their best day. Lily was strikingly pretty, with prominent cheekbones and dark lustrous eyes. She had a smile that could stun a charming gigolo and a laugh that could start a party at fifty paces. Daniel didn’t appreciate her. She took that as a personal insult.

Michel was barely six feet in height, but his wide frame was covered with the best muscles the body shops could provide. They tended to go off after a while, because he could never be bothered to exercise enough. But a quick trip to the body shop was all it took to perk them up again. He was handsome in a dark and swarthy way, with a thick mane of long jet-black hair that was his pride and joy. He preferred loose clothing with plenty of open spaces to show off his manly physique. As a result, he was now shivering so hard he had to keep his jaw clenched to prevent his teeth from chattering, and his skin had turned a pale blue color that contrasted unappealingly with his dark hair. Snow had
begun to gather on top of his head. However, he also favored knee-length leather boots, so at least his feet were warm. The thought somehow failed to comfort him. He glared across at the Empress sitting serenely on her Throne and hugged himself tightly.

“If you squeeze yourself any harder, dear, your insides will pop out your ears,” said Lily calmly.

“I’m bored,” said Michel through gritted teeth. “I’m bored and I’m extremely cold. There are icicles hanging from my extremities. See if you can spot someone of lower status, so I can steal his cloak.”

“Behave yourself, my dearest. Try not to draw attention to yourself, just this once. The auguries in the sheep I sacrificed this morning were quite clear. Today is not a good day to be noticed.”

“Why couldn’t the auguries have warned you that the Court was going to be a bloody icebox this time? They’re all very well when it comes to sounding grand and mystical, but they’re no bloody use at all when it comes to predicting practical things, are they? I’d ask for your money back, if I were you. Or a new sheep.”

“Don’t scoff, darling. You know you don’t understand these things. And watch your language. You’re an aristocrat now.”