The Crown Jewels (10 page)

The Khosalikh was carrying Pietro Quijano over one broad shoulder. Maijstral told the house to ask Gregor to join them. This was going to be serious.

Roman’s nostrils flickered as he saw Maijstral in his robe. He didn’t approve of people who spent their mornings lounging in bed. Maijstral had probably been watching low entertainments, to boot. Hardly suitable in the light of the present affront to his honor.

Roman really knew Maijstral very well.

Maijstral helped Roman put Pietro gently on a plush couch— the Khosali difficulty in unbending is not due to temperament, but anatomy— and then stood while Roman explained what had just happened. Gregor entered in the middle of the story, and Roman had to begin again.

Pietro looked up at Maijstral. Rotating holograms— the day art— reflected in his eyes. He seemed desperate to say something. Maijstral leaned close. “Flig,” Quijano said through thick lips. “Gleep.”

Maijstral nodded as if he understood. “You pose a definite problem, Mr. Quijano.”

“Neegle. Thrib.”

“I’ll have the robot bring you some champagne. It might make you feel better.”

“Gri. Thagyou.”

Maijstral sighed as he moved off on his errand. “You’re welcome, Mr. Quijano,” he said.

*

No fun at all. Sergeant Tvi lay on her bed in Countess Anastasia’s house, held a semilife patch to the bruise on her head, and closed her eyes. The indomitable chimes in her skull refused to stop clanging.

The Fate of the Empire. Romance, Excitement, Danger. She repeated the phrases to herself as she pressed another patch to her head. The point was, the danger wasn’t supposed to come from your own side.

She’d reported Khotvinn’s behavior to the Baron. Not that this had done any good— the Baron had just read her a lecture about how she had to explain things to subordinates in order for them to know their jobs property, and how this was all a part of being prepared and anticipating difficulty.

Tvi concluded that the Baron had never actually worked with Khotvinn. Or tried to explain anything to him. Officers, in her estimation, always had the perfect command of things they had never experienced.

The communicator in her room beeped. Echoes flooded her skull like a lunatic carillon. She touched the ideograph for “answer” and snarled.

The Baron’s voice cut the air. “Time to relieve Khotvinn and bring Miss Jensen her second breakfast.”

“Yes, my lord.” Tvi covered her head with a pillow and whimpered to herself silently, a martyr of the Empire. Then obeyed.

She picked up Jensen’s tray from the kitchen— the robot staff couldn’t be involved in this, since their memories could be impounded as evidence if things went wrong— and men trudged up the stone stair to the attic room where Jensen was being held. The tray smelted of roast arnette. Tvi’s mouth began to water.

A very popular children’s puppet, a little over seven feet tall, waited at the top of the stair. It was human, with red hair and freckles and a perpetual grin. Its name was Ronnie Romper.

“Relieving you,” Tvi said.

“About time,” snarled Ronnie Romper. It snapped off the holographic device and became Khotvinn. Purple bruises showed through his dark fur, which was also mottled with semilife patches. He took off the holo projector and another gadget from his belt and handed them to Tvi.

“Your disguise,” he said. “The restraint control.”

“Thank you,” Tvi snarled in answer. “So much.” She clipped the projector to her belt, snapped it on, and put the manacle control on her tray. Khotvinn stomped down the stairs.

The door was secured by a heavy bolt that had been installed the previous night. Its alloy screws had chipped the dark wood of the door. Tvi shot the bolt back and entered.

The guest bedroom had been hastily filled with miscellaneous furniture brought from storage in the attic: a canopied bed with plump pillows and blue ruffles, a pair of chairs covered in peach brocade, a deep carpet of violet dewkin fur, a crystal lamp in the shape of a Khosali ballet dancer with a stained-glass shade on his head. The clash of colors and cultures gave an extra throb to Tvi’s headache.

Amalia Jensen produced another contrast with the frilly furniture. Her face was covered by semilife patches that were feeding her painkillers and sapping her bruises. She was lying on the ruffled bed in the black pajamas in which she’d been taken, her ankles locked together by restraints, and she glared at Tvi while sneering through a split lip. “Another Ronnie Romper,” she said. She was speaking Khosali. “Why do you bother trying to look human? I can identify you both.”

“Go ahead,” Tvi said, answering in the same language. “What’s my name, then?”

“Look. I suppose I can understand the need for disguises. But why did you have to pick a disguise that
smiles
all the time?”

Tvi put the tray on an antique inlaid Troxan table and moved the table to the brocade-covered chair. She strolled to the comer of the room and sat on the other chair. “I’m going to close your wrists and release your ankles,” she said, and picked up the control to Jensen’s restraints. “Then you can move to the chair, sit in it, then I’ll close your ankles and release your hands. Right?”

Jensen’s eyes flickered over the room, taking in the bed, the chairs, the table. Measuring things. “Very well,” she said.

Tvi knew someone preparing a desperate move when she saw one, and her diaphragm spasmed in resignation. She took her stunner out of its holster. “Right,” she said. “Here we go.”

She pressed the restraint controls. The snug bracelets on Jensen’s wrists moved toward one another, as of their own volition, until they touched. Jensen swung her legs off the bed and walked stiffly toward the table. Her bruises were bothering her. She kept her eyes on Tvi’s stunner. Standing by the table, she seemed to hesitate, then looked at the stunner again and sat down where she’d been told.

Tvi touched another button. Jensen’s ankles came inevitably together. Her hands were freed, Jensen removed the food tray’s lid and began to eat.

Tvi’s upper stomach rumbled. No one had said anything about feeding
her
.

Jensen took a mouthful of roast arnette, winced, and concentrated instead on the softer vegetables. Tvi settled back in her chair.

“You must have got the wrong person, you know,” Jensen said. “I’m not worth much ransom.”

“You’re not being held for ransom,” Tvi said.

Jensen didn’t seem terribly surprised. The human took another shaky forkful.

“Why then?” she asked.

“I daresay you would know best, ma’am,” Tvi said. On the vid, Allowed Burglars were always polite. Style counted a full ten points, after all.

“Why am I still alive?” Jensen asked.

This wasn’t bad, really, Tvi thought. A civilized conversation between a kidnapper and her victim. An occasion for her to play the suave mastermind. “No need for anything so extreme as murder, ma’am. You’ll just be our guest for a few days.”

“Until what?”

Tvi decided to feign a knowing silence. Much as she might enjoy playing the part of a cultured kidnapper, she hadn’t actually been told the reasons for Jensen’s abduction. She knew Maijstral was involved in it somehow, and that the Fate of the Empire was at stake, but other than that she’d been kept in the dark.

Amalia Jensen just shrugged. She swallowed her coffee. “Well,” she said, “they probably haven’t told you.”

Tvi ground her teeth. This human was sharp. She decided to take another tack, another brand of sophistication. Elegant mercenaries were at least as much fun as elegant masterminds.

“That hardly matters,” Tvi said. “I was paid well.”

Jensen looked at her and put her forkful of pureed manna back down on her plate. “I could arrange that you be paid more.”

“Miss Jensen. I seem to recall, not a moment ago, you said you weren’t worth much ransom.” Tvi’s upper stomach rumbled. The roast arnette, she observed, was under a white sauce.

Jensen smiled thinly, then winced and dabbed her split lip with a napkin. “Things can be arranged. What would you say to forty novae?”

Tvi’s ears pricked forward. That wasn’t bad money, not really, assuming that Jensen could actually deliver and Tvi collect. But against the Fate of the Empire, she concluded, it was nothing. She waved a languid hand. “You do me a disservice. Miss Jensen, if you believe that a mercenary of my standing will change sides after already embarking on an adventure. I take pride in seeing my contracts through, you see.”

“I apologize,” Jensen said, smiling again. “I did not mean to impugn your professionalism.”

“Apology accepted. After meeting Kho— my colleague, I can understand that you might mistake me. He is none of mine, I assure you. A creature of my employers.”

“I understand.” Tvi’s lower stomach had joined her upper in a distressed chorus. She snarled beneath her human holographic smile.

Amalia Jensen seemed to perceive Tvi’s rumblings. She held up the plate of arnette. “Would you like the roast?” she asked. “I’m afraid my mouth’s a little . . . tender, this morning.”

“I
am
peckish. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not at all.” Jensen tottered to her feet, holding out the roast. Tvi rose to a half crouch, one arm extended. Jensen flung her plate at Ronnie Romper’s grinning head and sprang, her hands clawed, her ankles still tethered together.

Tvi had been half expecting this— the Baron’s lecture about preparedness hadn’t fallen entirely on deaf ears, and Miss Jensen had turned far too pleasant all of a sudden. Tvi fired her stunner in the middle of Jensen’s arc, and the captive’s leap ended in a soft muddle on the plush dewkin carpet. Tvi’s diaphragm pulsed with regret. White sauce ran down her neck.

Blast, she thought. Just when she was beginning to enjoy herself.

*

Pietro Quijano had spilled most of his first glass of champagne on his shirt, but managed to get down the second. His color and bearing had improved considerably. He was now able to sit up without danger of toppling over.

Gregor watched him from a straight-backed chair in the corner, his fingers tapping little rhythms on his knees. Roman stood silently in a corner, looming. Maijstral could tell he was seriously upset.

Maijstral walked into his room, and there tied his hair in a knot and pinned it on the back of his head. He changed into soft suede pants, pumps, a loose grey silk shirt, and an earring. If he was to have guests, he might as well look presentable.

He entered the parlor room and offered Pietro a piece of fleth from his plate. Pietro accepted. Maijstral chose a soft chair opposite Pietro’s sofa and settled into it. Above him, a holographic representation of the Bartlett Head rotated slowly in its niche. Maijstral drew taut the drawstrings on his sleeves.

“Well, Mr. Quijano,” he said carefully, “perhaps you can enlighten us as to recent events.”

Pietro Quijano looked nervously toward Roman, then glanced at Gregor. “No idea,” he mumbled, and held out his glass for more champagne. The robot purred from the comer and began to pour.

Maijstral began itemizing on his fingers. “Amalia Jensen appears to have been kidnapped,” he said. “This kidnapping occurred less than two days after she commissioned me and my associates to acquire an artifact. My researches have noted the fact that Miss Jensen was quite visibly involved in politics here on Peleng, a ranking member of an organization that has branches throughout the Constellation. You are the treasurer for that organization.”

Pietro was beginning to look uncomfortable. He bit a piece of fleth and chewed nervously. Maijstral rose from his chair, turned, and reached into the Bartlett Head. He drew out the silver artifact and, with the device in his hands, settled into his chair. Pietro’s look turned to one of burning, undisguised eagerness.

“You recognize it, I see,” Maijstral said. “Miss Jensen was kidnapped within hours of my acquiring this object. Since the object itself is not valuable, I assume it has some political or symbolic significance of which I am unaware.”

He frowned down at the heavy silver container. He had examined it carefully after appropriating it, and knew that besides the Imperial seal, the container featured an engraving of Qwelm I, the first Pendjalli Emperor, receiving the submission of the first ambassador-delegate from Zynzlyp. It hadn’t been much of a conquest— the sea-slug shaped Drawmii were so incomprehensible and unpredictable that it had never quite been determined whether they actually understood they had been “conquered,” and therefore become members of a “Khosali Protectorate.” But it had been the first Pendjalli conquest and the mythographers had, perforce, to make the most of it.

The other side of the saddle-shaped container showed the retiring Nnis CVI among his College, a group of renowned scholars he had gathered in the City of Seven Bright Rings to assist him in the abstract inquiries for which he was rather more famed than for his skill at governing the Empire. Maijstral looked closely. He recognized the face of Professor Gantemur, a human philologist who had passed plans of the Imperial Residence to agents of the Rebellion and subsequently been awarded the holdings of a number of prominent human Imperialists, Maijstral’s grandfather among them.

Maijstral looked at Pietro. The young man’s eagerness was almost palpable.

“Mr. Quijano, I must know what has occurred,” he said. “My client has been abducted. It is possible that I— that we— are in danger from the same source. Within a matter of hours, this container will be legally mine, and I may dispose of it. Naturally, I would prefer to give it to Miss Jensen— that is my contract. But—” He held up a hand, and Pietro’s face darkened. “If this object will bring me unwanted attention, I may have to get rid of it quickly,”

“But,” Pietro said, “you can’t.” He looked for support to Gregor. “He can’t,” Pietro asked. “Can he?” Gregor only grinned.

“On the contrary, sir.” Maijstral was firm. “If Miss Jensen is not available, she cannot fulfill her part in the contract. I assume that whoever abducted her knows that, and will keep her incommunicado until such time as I have either left Peleng or disposed of the object in some other way. It is likely, if they find me, they will make an offer of their own. I may be compelled by circumstances to accept.”