“Where am I going?”
“Where you usually go on these occasions: to visit our friends in the Resistance,” said Meia. “Oh, and there’s some more bad news.”
“Which is?” said Althea, her tone making it clear that there was already quite enough bad news to be getting along with. Nevertheless, Meia asked the one thing certain to make the situation even worse.
She smiled grimly.
“You’re taking Ani with you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
T
he morning dawned bleak and dark, and the rain followed soon after, driven by a cold wind from the north. To those in the castle who loved Syl, it seemed that the world was already in mourning for her.
Syl had somehow managed to sleep a little, but when awakened there was no difference from sleeping, and the blackness pressed in upon her so that she felt she could not breathe. She panicked, and had to force herself to calm down. She tried not to think of her father, or Ani, or Althea. The thought of those who loved her brought no consolation. Instead, she only grew more conscious of the fact that she was to be taken from them, and might never see them again. But even in the midst of her own fear, she worried too about the human brothers. She hoped desperately that they had made it to safety, that this had not all been in vain.
Eventually the door to her cell was opened, but her eyes had grown so accustomed to the dark that she had to cover her face with her arm until the light from the corridor, dim though it was, stopped hurting her. The Securitat who entered was only a few years older than she. He carried a tray in his hands. On it was a plastic mug of coffee, a plastic plate with buttered toast, and a small plastic cup filled with slices of apple that were already turning brown. The guard wrinkled his nose as he entered the cell. The smell from the chemical toilet—which was little more than a bucket of blue water—was strong.
The Securitat put the tray on a little table built into the wall, then stepped back. Two other guards stood at the door in case Syl decided to make a break for freedom.
“I can’t eat in the dark,” said Syl.
The guard looked to his colleagues for advice. One of them nodded.
“We’ll turn your light back on,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“Just after six.”
She tried to think of something else to ask him. After her night in the dark, she wanted someone to talk to. She did not want to be alone again yet. The guard seemed to sense this, because his face softened and he said, “Is there anything you need?”
Syl was grateful for this small gesture of kindness, this little act of generosity that cost so little but meant so much.
“A book,” she said. “And perhaps some water with which to wash myself.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the guard.
He stepped out of the cell and the door closed behind him, but, as promised, the light came on. Syl ate her breakfast, and after a while the guard returned with a volume of poetry and prose that was given to every Illyri soldier, a basin of hot water, a towel, and a small bar of soap. Syl thanked him, and he acknowledged her gratitude with a tightening of his mouth that might have passed for a smile.
When the door closed again, Syl removed her clothing and washed herself. The cameras in the cells had been restored to power after Meia’s sabotage, so Syl knew they would be watching her, but she did not care. She wanted to be clean. If there was any shame, it was on their part for spying on her. She felt better for bathing, and when the guard came to retrieve the basin and towel, he also removed the chemical toilet and replaced it with a new one.
She did not see the guard again. Later she discovered that his name was Feryn, and that when Vena learned of his kindness to her, she had him relieved of his duties and sent offworld to fight and die alongside one of the Punishment Battalions. Another, she thought, her heart leaden in her chest; there is yet another whom I have destroyed by my actions.
She tried to read, and the hours seemed to pass both slowly and yet far too quickly. When the cell door eventually opened again, it revealed Vena standing with a phalanx of Securitats. In her right hand she held a pair of heavy magnetized cuffs, and in her left a printed document from which she began to read.
“By order of Grand Consul Gradus, representative on Earth of the Council of Government of Illyr, the juvenile Syl Hellais is to be taken to the Diplomatic vessel Aurion, and thence to a location yet to be decided, there to await trial on charges of treason.”
She rolled up the paper, and handed it to the nearest guard.
“The prisoner will stand,” she said.
Syl stood. She stretched out her hands, her head held high, and Vena slotted the cuffs onto her wrists. As soon as they were in place, she activated them, and Syl’s hands were pulled together by the powerful magnets. The control panel for the restraints was hooked to Vena’s belt. She tapped a red button, and Syl’s body jerked as a jolt of electricity shot through her system.
“Just making sure that they’re working,” said Vena.
The charge hadn’t been strong, but it was certainly unpleasant. Syl knew that the cuffs were capable of delivering a series of far greater shocks in the event of a prisoner attempting to escape. They could even be fatal.
Syl was led from her cell, her gray prisoner’s suit standing out against the dark uniforms of the guards like the lighter stamen of a black-petaled flower. As they reached the courtyard, she saw a small gathering of figures to her right. Her father was among them, flanked by Balen on one side and by Danis and his wife on the other. Even the old tutor, Toris, had come to witness her departure, but there was no sign of Althea, or Meia.
Across from her father stood Syrene, her face obscured once again by her veil, and Grand Consul Gradus. Gradus was not dressed in his usual robes, but was wearing instead a wine-red suit over a crisp white shirt, and a leather overcoat to protect him from the rain, even though a pair of sub-consuls stood behind him and his wife, holding umbrellas over their heads. Behind them, a shuttle waited, its engines already humming in anticipation.
Lord Andrus, his head bare, stepped forward. Vena glanced at Gradus, who gave a small nod of consent.
Andrus embraced his daughter. Syl wanted to hug him back, but the cuffs would not permit it. In fact they seemed to grow heavier, dragging her hands down with them. She did not know if it was purely psychological, or if Vena had somehow adjusted them as another small humiliation.
“Syl,” said Andrus. “Oh, Syl.”
She wept against his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
And her father surprised her by whispering, “You were, Syl. It was the right thing.”
He kissed her cheek, and held her face in his hands.
“Do you remember what I told you about shuttle trips?” he said.
“What?” said Syl, genuinely puzzled. They might never see each other again, and now her father was talking about shuttle trips.
“You always belt up,” he continued. “Always.”
“Right,” said Syl. “I will.”
“Make sure you do,” said Andrus. “One never knows what might happen.”
He kissed her again, and then Vena stepped in and pulled her away. Syl tried to look back to see her father as she was led to the ship, but the guards had closed ranks once again. She caught one final glimpse of him as she walked up the gangway to the shuttle doors. He raised a hand in farewell, but she could only try to smile as her heart broke.
The shuttle was comfortable but basic inside. Syl’s wrists remained cuffed. Her hands were pulled to the left as soon as she sat, lodging against a strip of metal in the bulkhead. It was clear that this seat had not been chosen casually for her; it was a prisoner’s seat. The guard made a cursory check of the cuffs before taking a chair across from her.
?
??My belt,” said Syl. “Can you strap me in? Please?”
The guard did as she asked, although he allowed his hands to brush heavily against her breasts as he secured the clips. It was an indication of how much had changed for her. Twenty-four hours earlier, even Gradus himself would not have dared to touch her that way. Now she was a traitor; the entire Diplomatic Corps could have taken turns to abuse her and few would have objected. The guard’s insidious contact brought home her vulnerability with terrifying force. He returned to his own seat, a self-satisfied little smile on his face. The two pilots were already in their cabin, but Syl could only see the backs of their heads. She heard soft footsteps behind her, and a final passenger entered. To her surprise, it was Grand Consul Gradus. He gave a small mocking bow before seating himself.
“I have business on board the Aurion,” he said, “and I want to see you safely on board the linkship.”
Linkships were often used for transporting small numbers of people or essential equipment and supplies through wormholes. Shuttles, like the one on which Syl now found herself, were unsuited to the purpose, as they were too easily affected by the action of the negative matter used to keep the mouths of the wormholes open. In the early days of the Illyri conquest, a number of heavy cruisers had brushed against the sides of wormholes, causing the destruction of the vessels in two cases, and the collapse of the wormhole itself in a third—not to mention the loss of thousands of lives. Even now, after all that had been learned, wormhole pilots still needed to be the most skilled of their kind, and most of the senior Illyri preferred not to travel through wormholes more often than was absolutely necessary.
“And where do I go from there?” asked Syl.
“The battleship Vracon will be waiting on the other side of the wormhole,” said Gradus. “It will transport you to Eriba 256, where you’ll enter another wormhole, and then another. The whole universe is ours in which to hide you from those who would rescue you.”
“And my trial?”
“I didn’t realize you were in such a hurry to be found guilty,” said Gradus. He made himself more comfortable in his seat as the pitch of the engines rose.
Syl instinctively looked down as the shuttle ascended. She tried to pick out her father, but the angle was wrong, and now Edinburgh was spread out beneath them. She wondered if Paul was way down there, wondered if he saw her ship, if he thought about her at all, if he felt a little of the tug she felt deep within, like a string being pulled tauter and tauter as she moved farther and farther away from the only world she’d ever called home.
Somehow she found the courage to ask her next question.
“Are you going to have me killed?”
“Not yet, and perhaps not ever,” he replied. “If I kill you, I no longer have any control over your father. As long as I have you, and you’re alive, your father and those loyal to him will be more easily controlled. Now keep quiet, child, and leave me to my thoughts.”
Gradus looked away. Syl made a face at him, then sat back and stared at the sky, thinking about Ani and all the pieces of the puzzle that seemed to be missing. Where had her friend escaped to? Perhaps Meia would have known, but Meia hadn’t been there to ask. And what of Althea, her governess, her mother-substitute? Was Althea so ashamed that she’d turned her back on Syl? Why had she not been there to say farewell? Oh, it was too much. Syl’s eyes were wet again, and she couldn’t even wipe them because of her cuffs.
The guard was watching her, clearly amused by her tears. Syl glared back at him angrily until he looked away, and she couldn’t help but notice that he had not bothered to secure his own belt. Clearly he didn’t have a father like hers. Shuttle cabins were gyroscopically mounted to maintain stability even in the most violent of storms, and most passengers rarely used belts until they were approaching the edge of a planet’s atmosphere. Syl’s own straps dug into her shoulders. Stupid thing, but her father had been so insistent. . . .
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
M
eia lay on her bed, tracking the shuttle’s progress on the ancient global positioning device concealed behind the book in her hands. Although she’d significantly modified it, the GPS was still an old piece of equipment, but it had its advantages. Use of the castle’s virtual screens could easily be detected, but the GPS was so outdated that Meia was almost positive that the technology no longer existed to monitor it.
In an ideal world she would already be on board a skimmer or interceptor, waiting for her chance to rescue Syl, but she was being watched. Only the cover of early-morning darkness and her tunnel network had granted her access to the shuttle in the courtyard, and even then she had been fortunate to avoid the attentions of the Securitats.
Vena and the Securitats knew that Syl and Ani could not have helped the humans escape without assistance, and Meia was the prime suspect. She had already discovered two new listening devices in her chambers since Ani’s departure, but she had left them in place. There was also a lurker spider currently hiding in a crack beside her closet, but that too she had allowed to remain undisturbed, if only for as long as it suited her to do so. As far as the Securitats were concerned, Meia was not currently a threat.
Gradus’s appearance on the shuttle had been a surprise, and not a particularly welcome one. Any downed Illyri ship would spark an alert, but one containing the Grand Consul himself would draw a serious, and fast, response. The Highlanders would now have even less time to find the craft and secure Syl. There was also the matter of Gradus: if he survived the crash, the Highlanders might well kill him—all things considered, that might be for the best. The second-best option would be to leave him alive for the Illyri rescuers to find, but that was unlikely to happen. The Highlanders would not let such a high-profile prisoner slip through their fingers. Even if they didn’t know just how important he was—which was unlikely given the Resistance’s spies in the castle—the rings on his fingers would identify him as a senior Diplomat. Such prizes were rare, and valuable.
But if Gradus survived and the Highlanders managed to resist the temptation to kill him instantly, they might choose to take him with them as a hostage. That would be bad for Syl. The nature of the pursuit would change. If it had just been Syl who was missing, Meia could have manipulated the search for her with the cooperation of Lord Andrus. But if the Highlanders took Gradus, then he, not Syl, would be the main object of the search, which meant that the Corps and its Securitats would be in charge.
Meia hoped that Gradus would die in the crash.
In the meantime, she could only hope that Ani and Althea had managed to play their part, and that Trask was, as he claimed, a man of his word. If he was not, Gradus would not be the only Illyri at risk of death from the Highlanders.
•••
Ani tried to make herself as comfortable as she could, but the truck’s suspension was poor, and she felt every pothole in the road as a jolt along her spine. The cabin had a false wall; the space behind was just wide enough for Ani to sit sideways with her legs stretched out in front of her, a mangy cushion at her back and a tattered blanket to keep her warm. There was a plastic container in which she could pee, and a bag containing juice, water, and some fruit and hard scones. She also had a small booklight and a terrible romance novel that one of the humans had given her to pass the time. There would be no stops until Inverness, where she was to be transferred to another vehicle. If all went according to plan, she would be reunited with Syl somewhere beyond Ullapool in the north of Scotland.
This was the second uncomfortable trip that Ani had endured in the back of a vehicle in recent hours. The first had been with Althea after she and Ani had slipped from the castle via another of Meia’s little portals, this one only yards from the Gate House, and virtually under the noses of the castle guards. But Althea was confidently familiar with every step of the way, and they had reached the waiting van unchallenged.
Ani had been fearful of placing herself in th
e hands of the Resistance. Some of that fear had turned to shock when she saw Althea greet the hunched man named Trask warmly, embracing him and—did she really see it?—even kissing him. It was a lingering kiss too. But Althea was ancient—wasn’t she? The whole scene made Ani look at Syl’s governess with new eyes. She supposed that in a certain light Althea might be attractive, but she had always been so stern, so sour. Now, with the human male’s arms around her, her face softened, Ani saw that there was a kind of beauty to it.
It was all still gross, of course. They weren’t even the same species.
And then Althea had introduced Ani, and explained who she was, and Trask had thanked her for what she had done. Moments later, she was once again in the company of the two boys whom she and Syl had helped. The younger of them, Steven, had recovered some of his fire, and Ani thought he might grow up to be quite handsome, in his way. The older one, Paul, had entered the room with a certain sense of expectation, presumably having been told that one of his rescuers was in the safe house; she had been only a little hurt by his disappointment when he saw that it was she, and not Syl, who had come. Oh well, thought Ani, he wasn’t my type anyway. She kind of hoped that he wasn’t Syl’s type either. Ani liked humans well enough, but she wasn’t sure she liked them in that way. She didn’t want Syl to end up like Althea, breaking not only the laws of Illyr but possibly some of the laws of nature as well.
“Hello,” said Paul.
“Hello,” said Ani.
“You came alone.”
“No,” said Ani, and she took a certain vindictive pleasure from seeing Paul briefly imagine that he might have been mistaken after all. “I came with her,” and she cocked a thumb at Althea.
“Oh,” said Paul.
“Yes. ‘Oh,’ ” said Ani.
“The other . . .”
“Syl.”
“Syl.” He repeated the word slowly, holding it experimentally in his mouth, smiling a little. “Is she okay?”