Treasure of Light (The Light Trilogy) (25 page)

She wet her lips nervously. “No.”

He embraced her affectionately. “I have to go. If Aktariel comes to talk to you again, defer to me. I’ll gladly bargain my soul for a dozen more battle cruisers. I’ll call you soon.”

She shuddered slightly. “If you have time. Things sound pretty desperate.”

Keeping his arm around her shoulders, he guided her with him to the door. “One last thing. I’ve been thinking about arranging a ceremony to publicly acknowledge your bravery on Horeb. When do you—”

“Don’t.
It would only complicate the situation with the refugees. And something like that would make my guilt over murdering Adom increase.”

He nodded understandingly. “Whatever you want.”

They reached the door and he hit the com. “Janowitz? You out there?”

“Aye, Jeremiel. Me and Uriah are standing right here.”

He waited for the door to slide open. When it did, his guards unslung their rifles, getting into position to escort him down the hall.

In a strained voice, Rachel said, “Jeremiel? One last thing?”

“What?”

She blurted, “I—I dreamed that the Magistrates are going to dispatch five cruisers to Tikkun and that your Underground bases are frantically trying to contact you, but can’t because the link is down. I don’t know what that is, but—”

“The link?”

“Yes, I guess it has something to do with communications, but I don’t—”

“The long-range link? Oh. my God.”
His gaze went rapidly over her. “Rudy could have been trying for days and I’d have never … I’ve got to get to Engineering.” He pulled his pistol from his holster, letting it melt into his hand before he started down the hall, one guard in front, one in back. “We’ll talk more about these
dreams
later, Rachel.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

She watched him until he ran around the far corner, then closed her door and gazed around her cabin. As the desolate silence returned, she sprinted to the control console, turning all the lights on full. The stark brilliance drove out some of her fears.

Jeremiel
had
known what that meant. Though she didn’t, still. She wandered insecurely around her cabin, feeling afraid and lonely.

CHAPTER 19

The 8th of Tishri, 5414.

“People are missing,” Jasper said ominously, glaring at Pavel. “Old Ruth hasn’t been coming to the benches on Thursdays. Sumino has vanished. Something’s happening.”

“They’re all from the village hinterlands,” Pavel pointed out. “Maybe the skirmishes with the Underground have cut them off and they can’t get to the city.”

“Sure, or maybe the Magistrates have hauled them off into the pit of darkness.”

“The government doesn’t kidnap people.”

Jasper leaned back against the couch into the splash of sunlight pouring through Pavel’s windows. He had a cold beer clutched in one hand and gestured roughly with it to make his points. “You’re a blockhead, you know that?”

A warm breeze blew around the room, fluttering the curtains, carrying the sweet scent of flowers and baking bread.

Pavel crossed his arms over his short-sleeved blue shirt. “Don’t be difficult, Jasper. I think if we all just do as they say, we’ll be all right. They’re not monsters. They’re human beings, just like us.”

“Bah!” Jasper waved a harsh hand, his wrinkled face falling into deeper lines. “They may be human beings, but they’re ruled by a bunch of blue bastards.”

Pavel pointed out the window to the yellow house across the street. “Just yesterday, that lieutenant the government moved in with the Richmond family brought Marjorie a sack of groceries. What do you think of that? He—”

“He’s the neighborhood spy! He’s covering his butt. He’s alone in the middle of hostile territory right now. Just wait until he finds something bad to report to his superiors. The groceries will vanish and the guns will come out. Then you’ll be sorry you didn’t kill him right off the bat.”

Pavel threw up his arms in exasperation. “Grandpa, troops have been marching through the streets of Derow day and night and nothing bad has happened. They’re keeping the peace, for God’s sake! Why is it you think the only solution to problems is to wipe out innocent people?”

Jasper leaned forward and squinted an eye malevolently. “For one thing, it’s a damn sight easier to kill people when they’re still innocent than after they’ve killed your entire family and grabbed a bunch of hoodlums to guard their guilty asses!”

“Diplomacy
works!
I’ve seen it.”

Jasper examined his fingernails as though something mighty interesting had sneaked beneath them. “You know what?”

“What?”

“I think maybe you were born without a brain. Hmm? Should we have a doctor check that out? They do great things with transplants these days.”

Pavel laughed, but his mirth came mostly from indignation. He shook a fist at Jasper. “Why would you say something like that when we were having a good discussion?”

His grandfather eyed Pavel hawkishly and lazily draped an arm across the back of the couch. Sunlight reflected like strewn glitter through the gray hair on his forearm. “Because you act like a brainless yog sometimes. The only time diplomacy has ever helped Gamants was when old Zadok rammed it down the Magistrates’ throat with an army of a million at his back.”

“You’re ignorant! You see only what you want to. And if you don’t get down to the registration center and put your name on that piece of paper, you’re going to go to prison, because I’m going to stop lying for you!”

“Don’t be a stooge.”

“Stooge nothing. I’m breaking the law just to keep you from obeying it. Did it ever occur to you that I’m a criminal now because of you? Just this morning I lied to another soldier who asked where you lived. I told him you were homeless!”

“I am,” Jasper agreed. He’d been afraid to go home, so he’d been snatching naps at friends’ homes or spending a few hours each day at the hundreds of derelicts’ camps that covered the outskirts of Derow. He had to keep moving—he knew that—just like the smart people had done during the last Revolt. Even coming to Pavel’s had been a risk—but Jasper had scouted the area thoroughly before chancing it and slipping in the back way. “Besides, if you’d had any smarts, Pavel, you’d have become a criminal long ago. If it weren’t for your hoity-toity job working in the government labs, we could all be far away now, living safe on some island.”

“Oh, Jasper,” Pavel huffed, scratching his black beard expressively. “You make me so mad sometimes I want to hang you.”

“Well, if you’re going into the kitchen to get a rope, bring me another beer while you’re at it.” He crumpled his petrolon can in his fist and smiled impudently.

“Sure. Anything to get away from you for a few seconds.”

Pavel virtually threw open the kitchen door and strode toward the frigerator. He jerked so violently on the handle that the appliance rocked as though animate. As he searched the contents, he thought he vaguely heard the front gate slam and Yael’s steps come hurriedly up the walk. A small glow touched him, cooling his ire. He pulled a can of Imperial Stout from the bottom rack and turned, just in time to hear Jasper yell:

“Pavel!
Get out here, now!”

Then Yael’s soft whimpering made its way to him and he dropped the can and ran, leaving the frigerator door wide open. He heard it crash against the counter, bottles jingling, as he burst back into the living room and stopped dead in his tracks.

Jasper knelt on the floor, holding Yael and patting her back. When she looked up at Pavel, her beautiful face ran with tears. A series of red welts and the faint blue underpinnings of bruises swelled around her eyes.

“Oh, Yael, what happened?”

“Daddy?” She cried, holding out her arms to him. Her shoulders shook with renewed tears.

“Baby.” He ran and gathered her into his arms, lifting her off the ground and hugging her tightly against him. “Did you get into a fight?”

She nodded against his shoulder, trying to suppress her tears.

“You didn’t hit first, did you?”

“No! Daddy, no.”

“All right, it’s okay. Hush, now.” He stroked her back tenderly, kissing her moist forehead. “Did you say something you didn’t mean and somebody—”

“No, I don’t know why Maren hit me, Dad! The teachers put us in different rooms today and I—”

“Us, who?” Jasper inquired.

“Us Gamants. I was just walking to coloring class with Jonas, and Maren jumped out from behind a bush and shouted at me. He shouted, ‘You dirty Gamant,’ then he hit me and hit me! Then Jonas picked up a rock and smashed Maren in the ear and he let me go.”

“Good for Jonas,” Grandpa muttered furiously. His ancient face had taken on the alert dangerous look of a wolf on the hunt.

Pavel glared at him. He’d been teaching Yael all her life that physical violence did no good, it only got a person into deeper trouble. “Yael,” he whispered lovingly, tipping up her chin to gaze into her glistening eyes. “Next time Maren does that, you just cover your head with your hands and tell him you’re sorry—even if you didn’t do anything. He’ll stop hitting you then.”

“Okay, Dad,” she moaned and sniffed, burying her face in his blue shirt.

From the corner of his eye, he caught Jasper’s nearly ferocious glowering, but ignored it.

“I love you, baby. Are you better now?”

She sucked in a deep halting breath and looked up, giving him a frail little-girl smile. “A little.”

“Good. Why don’t you go and wash your face in cold water. And grab a cookie off the counter in the kitchen when you come back.”

“Aunt Sekan’s cookies?”

“Yes, she brought them this morning.”

“What kind are they?”

He winked at her excited expression and set her on the floor. “Go see for yourself.”

She smiled broadly and ran, casting over her shoulder, “I bet they’re nutbutter! She knows they’re my favorite!”

“I bet you’re right,” he said, laughing.

Once Yael had vanished and they could hear her steps retreating toward the bathroom, Jasper violently shoved Pavel’s shoulder, swinging him around to face him. The old man’s cheeks blazed as red as the roses in the front yard.

“You stupid imbecile!” Grandpa accused. “You want to get her killed?”

“No, I want to keep her safe! Fighting does no good, it only exacerbates—”

“You’re teaching her to be a
mouse,
for God’s sake! You think she should get used to being a victim, huh? That she should come to like it, maybe?”

Pavel’s heart beat as rapidly as a bird’s. He met Grandpa’s hot stare with one of his own. “Maybe being a victim isn’t as bad as being
dead,
huh?”

The anger drained from Jasper’s face and he straightened to his full rail-thin height—getting ready to bully Pavel. He clenched his jaw in preparation. They stared at each other in silence for what seemed an eternity.

“This Maren kid, he’s a Magisterial yog, right?”

Pavel grimaced at the word. Yog: non-Gamant. “What difference does it make?”

They heard Yael’s steps in the kitchen and the scritching of the cookie platter as she pulled it across the counter, with a gay giggle of delight.

Jasper moved closer to Pavel, breathing, “Teach her to fight, and you’ll teach her how to live. People who want to kill her aren’t going to stop just because she lies down and covers her head.”

“You’ve never tried to understand me or my ways! They’re different from yours!”

“You listen to me, boy!” Jasper poked a crooked finger hard into Pavel’s chest and he felt his anger swell even more. “All the ‘I’m sorrys’ in the world won’t make murderers put down their rifles.
Why do you think they separated Gamant children from Magisterial brats?
You’d damned well better think about it!”

Jasper turned and stamped across the room, flinging the door wide and slamming it closed with a loud bang. Wind caught in his white sleeves, flapping them into snapping folds as he hurried down the walk.

Pavel couldn’t help himself; he ran to the screen, shouting, “The Magistrates aren’t murderers! They’re not!”

“Bah!” Jasper shouted over his shoulder as he turned down the street.

Bright sunlight streamed down through his latticework porch, falling like irregularly placed golden steppingstones over Pavel’s porch. Across the street, Lieutenant Warick emerged from the Richmonds’ house, his purple uniform looking crisp and freshly ironed.

Pavel lifted a hand in greeting—and paled a little when the man gave him a malignant stare in return.

Jeremiel strode purposefully toward the transport tube, ten guards following. “Bridge,” he ordered tersely.

How many dattrans had the
Hoyer
received in the past four days and failed to respond to? Were a dozen cruisers even now on their way here to verify Tahn’s status?

Silently, he cursed himself. He’d been too caught up in the whirlwind to think of the minor things that could be done to sabotage his hastily laid plans. And the green Gamant crew he’d assigned to communications knew only rudimentary facts about com units. Of course, they hadn’t noticed the anomaly. Only he would have. It had been expertly done, shutting off the link and circumventing the com alert. Whoever had initiated it had been betting on his preoccupation with Horeb and the refugees—and she’d been right.
How had Rachel known?
Her words about the dream haunted him. As soon as he had time, he’d arrange a long, long talk with her.