Wagers of Sin: Time Scout II (41 page)

Skeeter finished the motion he'd started with the remote and turned off the television with a deep sigh. He was almost sorry Lupus had suffered such a fate. He knew in his bones the shock of dissonance caused by plunging accidentally through an unstable gate, with no way home again. But in his inner soul, he was even gladder that he was still alive. Still selfish, aren't we, Skeeter? He realized sadly he probably always would be. But the painkillers had already begun to hit his system, so that he couldn't quite raise enough anxiety to worry about it now. Within moments, he drowsed into blissful oblivion.

"Marcus?"

Her voice came drowsily in the darkness. He'd been lying quietly, wrapped up in the miracle of holding her again and wondering if the gods would bless them with a son this time.

"Yes, beloved?"

Ianira's tiny movement told her how the endearment, new to his lips, had startled and pleased her. "Oh, Marcus," she breathed huskily into his ear, "what would I have done if-"

He placed gentle fingertips across her lips. "Let us not tempt the Fates, beloved. It did not happen. Let us not speak of it again."

Her arms tightened around his ribcage and for a moment she buried her face in his shoulder. A marvel of sensation, of need ... but she wanted to discuss something, so he willed it back, ran his fingers through her silken black hair and murmured, "You had something to say?"

She turned just enough to kiss his wrist, then sighed and said, "Yes. That telephone call you were so angry about earlier?"

Marcus felt the chuckle build deep inside. "Not angry, love. Impatient."

His reward was another brush of her lips across his. Then she settled back into his arms, wrapped around him as warmly and contentedly as any cat. He'd had a kitten, as a child, tamed from the wild as the only survivor of its litter. Perhaps they should ask permission to get a kitten for their children? It would be a delightful surprise

"Marcus, you haven't heard a word I've said!"

"I'm sorry, beloved. I was just thinking of asking the Station Manager for permission to get a kitten. For the girls."

It was Ianira's turn to chuckle. "Always my romantic dreamer. I would never have you be otherwise.

"What were you saying, beloved?" Strange, how the endearment he'd never been able to say before now came so easily to his lips.

"The phone call. It was Council business. They were taking votes over the phone, to move as quickly as possible."

Marcus turned his head slightly. "What could possibly be so urgent?"

She said very softly, "Skeeter."

Ahh...

"He is no longer Lost. He must therefore be given the chance to become Found."

Marcus nodded. "And your answer?"

"Yes, of course. Who do you think started the round of calls in the first place?"

Marcus laughed, softly enough not to waken their sleeping children, then turned until Ianira was beneath him, both arms still wrapped around him. This time, he could not hold back the love in him. Ianira cried out softly, moaned his name and sought his mouth. Marcus moved slowly, dreamily, thinking of kittens and sons and the miracle of this moment in whatever time Fate gave them together.

EPILOGUE

Skeeter was dreaming again. He'd dreamed often, these last few weeks, all of them terrible and strange, so at first he felt no great alarm, only a frisson of fear and a great deal of resignation as to what horrors his unconscious mind would put him through this time.

The dream began with dark figures, faces masked in black, bodies sheathed in black, hair covered with black, sinister figures which touched and lifted him, began to wind strips of black around his feet and lower legs so tightly he couldn't move even his toes. Then he realized he wasn't sleeping anymore. He began to fight was subdued thoroughly and expertly. Sweat started along his back and chest and face as the black strips rose higher, covering thighs, hips, lower belly, like some monstrous black mummy casing. But they wouldn't get his arms. He had to have his aims free, to struggle, to plant a fist in someone's face before his strength ran out.

He fought savagely. He thought he heard a faint curse from one of the figures holding him and fought even harder. But his other fights, never mind that final run from Lupus, had taken nearly everything left in him. Eventually, his strength began to wane. And then, before he could react, an unknown person grabbed his shaved head and bent his head back until the pain was so deep all he could do was blink tears down an open mouth and fight for air through the strain on his windpipe.

When they let him go, black wrappings swathed arms, chest, and neck. He could not move.

Coming slightly out of shock, Skeeter thought to use the other major skill he possessed: language. "Hey," Skeeter began, "look, whoever you are-not that I care, really, that's your business-but what're you doing? With me, I mean? Kidnapping's illegal on TT-86." At least, he thought it was. He hadn't ever gotten around to actually reading the rulebook they'd given him at Primary. "Look, have a heart. You can see I'm helpless, here. What could it possibly hurt to just tell me?"

Then, terrified as a new set of wrappings dug into his brow, covered his head and brow, wound around his eyes in one gauze-thin layer after another, Skeeter fought a whimper that had been building since childhood. "Please," he said while his mouth, at least, was still free, "what harm have I done to you? Just tell me, please, and I'll make it up to you, I swear it --"

His eyesight disappeared completely, both eyes covered in layer after layer of thin black cloth until there was no light. He struggled again, far too late. He could not move anything beneath the wrappings more than a quarter inch. Genuinely terrified now, a onetime Mongol battling claustrophobia, his breath came in ragged gasps. They left his nose clear-small comfort, then forcibly closed his jaw over a thick gag and tightly wrapped his mouth closed until the loudest sound he could utter was a faint, muffled, "Mmmmf" which even he had difficulty hearing. Getting enough air through his nose to fuel the mindless terror ripping through him proved futile. As he was lifted and carried toward his shattered apartment door, Skeeter blacked out.

He came to in ragged bits and pieces, aware of movement, of jostling as those carrying him grew tired and rearranged his weight in their grasp. He saw no light whatsoever and could catch no scent that might tell him where he was. He drifted out of consciousness again, then faded back into it, pondering this time who had him? ATF? Benson's men, intent on wresting whatever "unofficial" confessions they could beat and starve out of him? Or maybe Goldie Morran's henchmen, hired to do only the gods knew what kill him, cripple him, send him uptime as luggage through Primary ... Despite her capitulation on the bet, she must still hate him with all her greedy, cold little heart. Or perhaps it was simply a tourist with a taste for revenge, who'd hired enough men to do this, maybe dump him down the garbage incinerator ... .

A chill shook him inside the wrappings. Burned alive, like so many captives over the centuries. He'd heard the crazy stories about Kit's grandkid and that crazy Welsh bowman, both of whom had nearly been burned alive. His skin crawled already, anticipating the suffocating heat and the flames searing him while he writhed inside his black bindings and screamed himself to death.

He finally was set down on a cold, hard surface, unable to move. Someone unfastened the wrappings from his eyes, allowing him sight. At first, he thought he must've gone blind during that semiconscious trip, for whatever room he'd been brought to was black-dark. Then he noticed specks of light as his eyes adjusted. Candles. Candles? He blinked a few times, clearing his eyes of dried tears and grit, and noticed shimmering golden draperies which formed a quiet, snug little room filled with candles-hundreds of 'em-and with warmth beyond any possible heat those candles could've given off and ... he felt a fool for saying it even to himself... welcome.

Some welcome, Skeeter, wrapped up tight so's you can't move, in black mummy bandages.

He noticed a dais, then, low and right in front of him. It was wide enough to hold seven people comfortably. Currently six stood on it, with a gap in the center for someone unknown. The six were men of various builds and heights, robed in black, faces masked in black, but unmistakably male. The ones who brought me here, then. A shuffling of many feet and the sound of dozens of lungs in the utter silence told Skeeter that a crowd had gathered to witness ... what?

He shivered inside his imprisoning layers of cloth and looked up. He'd never gone lower in the terminal than the basement where the gym and weapons ranges were, having a Mongol's fear of tightly closed-in places. This must be the level beneath the basement, nothing but steam pipes, sewage drains, electrical conduits, and computer cables strung everywhere, festooning the girdered ceiling like the web of a very large and completely insane spider.

Skeeter shuddered again.

He didn't much like spiders.

Being caught in one's web was even worse.

At just that moment, the golden draperies stirred behind the dais, admitting darkness in the guise of a slim figure also robed and masked in black. Looks like it's showtime. Skeeter swallowed hard around the thick wad of cloth in his mouth. The gag forced every sound he tried to make shrivel and die in a parched throat. He gazed up at the seven robed figures, aware of dozens of figures still crowding into the already claustrophobic little space.

It's a court, Skeeter realized with a tremor. It's a court and they're the judges and prob'ly the jury, too.

Probability that he'd be sentenced without defense was decidedly high-but for what crime? And what would that sentence be? Skeeter had come through so much over the past few days, he couldn't credit the evidence of his eyes: robed, silent judges, a rack of what looked like knives and instruments of torture just visible at the edge of his restricted gaze, a neat, terrifying coil of rope, just the right diameter and heft for hanging a man.

Skeeter, claustrophobic twice over, struggled in vain while the back of his brain whispered that any one of those ducts, pipes, and concrete supports overhead would make a great platform for a hangman's rope. And even if he hadn't been gagged, who would've heard him screaming, anyway, down in the bowels of the terminal where concrete met native Himalayan rock and merged with it?

Well, Skeeter'd survived a bloodbath, giving the spectators their money's worth; he'd won the damned laurel crown and the money prize fair and square. He'd even managed to rescue Marcus, alive and uninjured, except for the desperation in his dark eyes that spoke eloquently of how much his one-time friend wanted simply to go home and forget everything that had happened.

Skeeter hadn't expected elaborate thanks from the former slave and he certainly couldn't blame Marcus for wanting to forget those few weeks when circumstance and his stubborn, Gallic pride had forced him to pick up the burden of slavery again. True to his expectations, Marcus had not offered an elaborate, embarrassing demonstration of gratitude. A couple of beers; but no elaborate show of gratitude. Yes, Skeeter had predicted that and it had come true.

A little bitterly, Skeeter wished he possessed a quarter of his former friend's character.

But in of all his long musings over Marcus' eventual reaction, Skeeter had not predicted this. Not in his wildest, most terrifying nightmares.

Before he was ready, a deep, male voice began speaking in a language so archaic Skeeter didn't understand a single syllable. When the robed judge had made his statement and retired to his place, another stepped forward. At least he spoke English. Sort of, anyway.

"I will speak the words of our most learned colleague, Chenzira Umi, a scribe of pharaohnic Egypt, in English to you, for that is our common language now, necessary for survival; then will I add my own thoughts for your consideration."

Skeeter didn't recognize either of those voices; his tummy did inverted spins like a dying aircraft.

"Chenzira Umi speaks against this man, who is nothing more than a common thief and cutpurse. He should have both hands cut off to end his career of thievery and blasphemous conduct such as we might expect of a worshiper of Set himself, the dark one who murders even our very Lord, wise and all-knowing Osiris. These are the words of Chenzira Umi."

Beneath his wrappings, Skeeter had turned whiter than his bindings were black. Cut off his hands? Who were these people? And what gave them the bloody, arrogant gall to pass such judgment on him? He was far from perfect, a scoundrel since earliest childhood, but that did not justify such torture! Did it? Well, the guy is from Egypt and people from the Middle East have funny ideas about crime and punishment. And there are six more to go. Surely reason would prevail?

He wasn't so sure when the man who'd done the translating said in a scathing, late-Elizabethan-sounding voice, "If it were my choice, I'd say hang him, then draw and quarter the whoreson on yon wall, for the children to see as an example before he bled out and died."

Skeeter closed his eyes, queasy to his soul and losing hope fast.

One by one, the five male members spoke. Another one for violent retribution. One for mercy, because he'd never stolen from them, whoever the hell they were, although Skeeter was beginning to form a pretty good guess. Then, surprisingly, another vote for mercy for the sake of the children Skeeter had saved over the years with his large donations. Skeeter narrowed his eyes. How's he know I've been donating, never mind why? Dimly, Marcus' voice came back to him, explaining how The Found Ones had known about his gifts of money for a long time. Based on that alone, Skeeter knew he ought to know the man, but the voice was completely strange to him. Maybe they wore voice synthesizers under those masks? The sixth vote was also, astonishingly, for mercy, leaving the vote at a tie.

Then the seventh, small-statured person stepped forward.

Skeeter knew her voice in an instant. He stared, aghast that she could be a part of such a bloodthirsty organization, but there she stood, her voice as clear as ancient temple bells.