01
To my surprise, she said, 'To understand me and what I must do, Litang, you need to understand my family. Family lines are very important within the Order of St Bleyth. There are families that trace their roots back to the earliest followers of St Bleyth. The Cins don't go back that far, but we go back at least 200 generations. And we have always been known to produce many of the most skillful and successful stealths of the Order. Cin has been synonymous with stealths for more than 10,000 years. We have always been justly proud and perhaps unfortunately, arrogant, and over the ages we've become disliked by many for it. However, in the last dozen generations or so, the family has grown even more arrogant, corrupt, distrusted, and hated.
'Being the finest stealths - spies and thieves for the most part - meant that the Cins have always operated within the Unity, since only the best can be thieves and spies within the Unity. It is no harder to commit a crime in the Unity than it is in the drifts. The difference is that it's much harder to get away with it. Once a crime is discovered, the Guards of the Unity consult their extensive surveillance system - working forward and backwards from the scene of the crime - to identify all the possible perpetrators. And then using their powerful mind probes, quickly identify the actual perpetrator and administer justice. So to be a successful thief, the theft must be carried out without the victim ever knowing something was taken, be it information, credits or objects. At least not until the surveillance data has been purged from the system, or the thief long gone. And to steal something without the victim ever knowing it takes great skill and for most of those commissions, it takes a Cin.
'This tradition has continued up to this day. We have never lost the talent. My father was a brilliant stealth, and I was, too - before we crossed orbits on Calissant. But my father and I were the last of the Cins with any standing within the Order. And obviously, even so, we had enemies. Our family name insured that. I have aunts and uncles, who I've no doubt still have the talent, but they have all abandoned the Order. It is hard to say exactly what corrupted the family, but we increasingly grew greedy, lazy, irresponsible, cruel, and dishonorable. One can argue that thieves are not, in the ordinary course of events, all that honorable to begin with, but the latter day Cins seemed to have lost any thread of honor. Many became unreliable libertines, while others became ruthless criminals and/or businessmen and women on the planets they were assigned to operate by the Order. So instead of returning to Tienterra at the end of their field assignment days to take up administrative positions within the Operations Directorate or simply to retire, they - the newly independent and very wealthy Cins - stayed outside, choosing to stay within the Unity and live the life they'd built with their talents. Even in the Unity you don't find titles to vast estates in cereal boxes, so there's little mystery as to how they became so wealthy, since if they had been true to their vows and the Order, they would have only undertaken assignments from the Operations Directorate and any proceeds would've gone to the clients and the Order, not to them. For a while they sent their sons and daughters back to Tienterra and the Academy to be trained as stealths, but eventually this practice died out as the families abandoned the Order altogether.
'This, of course, did not sit well with either the Masters of the Monastery or the other families of the Order, but little could be done. And if the Order ever did try to do something about it, they were still Cins, so that any efforts would've failed in the end. These days, great houses of the Cins are scattered across the Nine Star Nebula, tied together by a web of allied businesses. Though, of course, you'll not find the family name in any of these ventures.'
'Ah, but even if they couldn't do anything directly, couldn't the Masters have tipped off the Unity authorities about their renegade brothers and sisters?'
'They could've. But the Cins know too much about the Order and how we operate. We all have secrets to keep. The Cins keep the Order's secrets, so the Order has had to simply write them out of the Order. And really, by now, most of my relatives are no longer criminals, just ruthless businessmen, so that there would likely be little that the authorities could do. You cannot be punished for the crimes of your parents.'
'And your father? Did he come from one of these families?'
'My father was from the last Tienterra branch of the Cins still within the Order. He had the full Cin talent, and he set out to restore the Cins' reputation within the Order. He was determined to be the finest stealth, the finest Cin, and the most loyal Cin in memory. He was assigned to operate within the Amdia system with the cover occupation of a dealer in old First World art and collectables.
'In time he met my mother, a fashion designer of all things! She is a scion of a famous fashion house on Barvene. A thousand-year concern. I don't know if he was selling a stolen treasure or stealing one, since these old, rich, provincial families often have a treasure or two stocked away somewhere. In any event, they seem to have truly fallen in love, became partners, and I am their crowning achievement.
'Perhaps my father thought bringing in new, outside blood into the family line might reset its downward trajectory. In any case, as it had apparently been agreed between them, I was sent off to the Academy to become a stealth when I was ten. My mother tells me that she wasn't as sorry to see me go as she should've been. I was a willful, cruel and ill-tempered child. A very unpleasant one, in fact. At the Academy I was both a Cin and a half breed outsider, so I had little chance of being popular, even if I had the ability of being popular. But I was strong-willed and independent enough to survive being disliked. And, as D'Lay told you, I was exceptional at being sneaky, the old Cin hallmark. In my first years I'm sure it was simply tolerated by the authorities to encourage my talents as a potential stealth. But I assure you, by the time I left the Academy, I could go anywhere and do anything within the Academy or surrounding countryside without the authorities ever having a clue. I know a great deal about the Academy, and certain people, things that they would not want known. I thought it useful at the time, being a Cin, but alas, they proved too adept, herding me off to the drifts and finishing me off on Despar with such dispatch that all my collected guarantees proved useless against...' she paused in a black study.
'But you proved to be an exceptional stealth, in any event.'
'Willful, as well as exceptional. They wanted to assigned me to Azminn, but I insisted on spending my first two years in the Unity in the Amdia system so that I would have the chance to become reacquainted with my mother. While my father lived, we had kept in touch during my years at the Academy - exchanging vid messages - so she had continued to be part of my life growing up. Then, when I was 20 years old, my Father, for unknown reasons, was transferred to the drifts and sent on a deeply secret mission. From what I could discover later, I believe it likely involved Despar's growing ambitions - though he may have been sent to foil them, since we served both sides in that long brewing conflict. But in any case, it was not the type of mission he should've been assigned to. We Cins operate in the Unity - any stealth could have been assigned to a mission in the drifts. I don't know what happened, but he was reported killed. Once he was reported dead my communications channel to my mother was closed and hers to me as well. There was no one to speak up for me in the order, and as a student still, I had no status in the Order. I suppose the only reason they didn't send me off on some hopeless mission was that they recognized my talents, and had uses for them. At least for a while.'
'There seems to be more corruption within the Order than just the Cins. D'Lay was certain that ship was ambushed because someone within the Order tipping Despar off. There seemed to be a lot of rotten things about the Despar affair, including that berserker.'
'Oh, the Cins are not the only family that have decayed in Tienterra,' she admitted. 'Power corrupts, even in an order like St Bleyth.
'And meeting your mother, how did that go?'
'Exceptionally well. We got along very comfortably. Perhaps being loved by just one person is enough for me. In any event,
perhaps because she loved my father, she could love me, though I'm sure she saw the Cin in me. But whereas as a 10-year-old, I was almost ungovernable, at 25 I had learned self-control - as you may've noticed, these last several weeks - and so I could keep the more non-Unity Standard aspects of my personality well-hidden or at least, well under control. I become reacquainted with my uncles, aunts and cousins, all very welcoming, and pleasantly surprised how wonderfully I had turned out after such an unpromising start. Mother offered to take me into the family business, but given my trade, I did not want to tarnish my other family's reputation should my career become known, so I declined, with the promise of perhaps some day joining the family concern as a second career. Unlike my father, I decided to take the low orbit to access my targets - as a servant or tradesman, mostly as a cook or caterer. During my time in the Amdia worlds I was given small, unimportant jobs to test me. I was usually subcontracted out to some planetary crime syndicates with whom we were allied with, mostly to steal or infiltrate their rivals, since I was an unknown outsider.
'Most of these criminal syndicates are based on the various moons rather than the highly monitored planets for ease of operation, and ease of disappearing when needed. And though their operations extend to the planets, they rarely extend outside of the spaceports' quarters and certain industries. So I spent my first two years of field work working in relative safety - operating against targets that could not go to the authorities if I happened to slip up and having bolt holes close at hand. Once I felt comfortable working in the Unity I reported to the assigned chapter house in the Azminn system and began my career of stealing the secrets, shifting the credit balances and replacing the priceless treasures of the wealthy houses of Calissant, Pinelea, Quildondra, and Rigtania, with faux priceless treasures. For 15 years I plied my trade, no job too challenging to defeat me... Until one early spring day on Calissant when I happened to be between jobs and was free to supervise a subcontracted out assassination.'
I must confess my heart had been skipping a beat or two. I'd always assumed that Cin was a stealth specializing in assassinations. The idea that I was attracted to a cold-blooded killer - and it's fair to say there's nothing in her sometimes cold and cruel grey eyes, or the way she dispatched the Despar legionnaires who were attempting to kill us which would've made me question that assumption - well, gave me pause to wonder where my wits lay. Not anywhere near enough pause, I'll readily admit, but some pause. I blamed it on my St Bleyth heritage. So, discovering that she was merely a thief, well, to my Unity Standard shame, my heart skipped those beats.
'As you may've gathered, old Max was an idiot. Based on Lontria, he was too accustomed to having bolt holes handy to dive into after doing a job. I agreed to do all the prelim intelligence work. He was to handle arranging things with the wharf rat pack and to do the actual job. The rat pack was told to just beat Min up, a revenge beating for some sort of betrayal. Once she was unconscious, the wharf rats would scurry away and Max would finish the job. However, his casual handling of that end of the operation inspired no confidence in his ability to pull it off without tipping the authorities. He seemed likely to get caught and mind probed and the jig would be up. With the yacht our only escape, I decided it was safer to stash him aboard the yacht on the night of the attack and do the job myself. Which I proceeded to botch, though without tipping the authorities, mind you. At the time, everything seemed to have gone down just as planned, save for having to eliminate a witness. We made our escape and were spending the window of security surveillance lying low on Lontria when we heard of your encounter with the Last Striker, and all bets seemed to be off. A check of our agents on Calissant told us not a peep had been heard about a double murder on the Yacht Club grounds. This was not exactly unexpected - it would've been well covered up - but the fact that you survived it seemed to suggest that Min had survived as well or the alarm would have been raised. The only other possibility was that Min had a different companion with her when she left the restaurant. Unlikely.
'And then you showed up, landing the whole mess right in our laps...'
'It was rather careless to use the same yacht for both assassinations,' I pointed out. 'Min had no doubt that the boat crash that killed her parents was no accident, so not only did she take precautions like wearing layers of armored clothing, but she was able to search the anchorage records to identify the Azure Night as the only ship in orbit present for both occasions that had no apparent reason for being there. She hitched a ride on her old ship and followed the Azure Night to Lontria, though we were heading for Sanre-tay in any event to sail for the drifts.'
'The boat crash wasn't a project of mine. Someone else had the bad luck of not quite killing Min. Bungling the assassination on Calissant, however, was mine, all the more so because I was a Cin. It pretty much decided my fate, with the failure on Lontria sealing it. All they needed was one more failure to discharge me, which I provided for them on Despar. It didn't matter that I arrived too late. The last of the Cins had failed and the dream of my father was as dead as he was.'
I searched for words to say, seeing that I was alive precisely because she had failed. 'Well, you succeeded in your Honor Mission, so that the last true Cin ended her career in honor.'
'Oh, no doubt they'll find a way to disallow that too. The Cins will end in disgrace.'
'You can hardly be blamed for the ill repute of a dozen generations of bad Cins. Given the family's reputation, would they ever have given you any credit no matter how good you were? Very likely they were just waiting for something to pin on you and put an end to the family.'
She said nothing.
'Perhaps it's now time to embrace your other family.'
She shook her head. 'I'm a Cin, a Cin with a full measure of all our dark traits. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because I can be pleasant, I'm a pleasant person.'
'Oh, you have their dark traits. But I don't think they define you. I think you're more your mother's daughter than you'd like to think. And I think that is what your father wanted. He hoped in you to soften and mitigate the darker Cin traits that had slowly become too extreme.'
She shrugged but said nothing.
'I can understand, to some small degree, the struggle within you. I also share a mixed heritage. I believe I've mentioned I've grandparents from the drifts. For the most part my drifteer heritage remains under the radar. It perhaps explains my being a spaceer instead of working downside on Faelrain in my parent's export business. But then, too, they were spaceers themselves in their youth... But I do know that my drifteer heritage comes to the fore in a crisis. I'm alive today because I can call on it when the orbits get hot. But only in a crisis.
'So, based on my experiences, I believe that your darker traits may well have served you as a stealth, but with a new life - and I believe we are living a new life, no matter how our plans turn out - your darker nature will lie dormant, until, of course, when you're saving my life yet again,' I added with a laugh.
'Actually, Litang, you are right in one respect. I can and have kept my darker nature at bay. All my anger with you, the Order, my fall and fate, I've kept them at bay. For now. But we Cins cherish our revenge and dish it out with relish. Only the fact that I need your expertise has kept you alive, and that need is fast dwindling.'
Her old tune again. Was it worth challenging?
'I don't believe that, Naylea. I think you're less of a Cin than you would have me believe...'
'You think wrong.'
'I know that you can be hard and cruel, but I've seen you lift beetles out of the way of the plasma cutter when you could've just as easily vaporized them. I've not seen you do one single cruel act these past weeks to suggest that you are any more sadistic than what is needed to do your job.' A bit of wishful thinking, perhaps, given my painful experiences with her, but they could all have been justified by the demands of her mission. 'And, well, I think my ultimate proof is lounging on top of you at this moment. Siss doesn't have to rely on observatio
ns and a great deal of positive thinking. I'm sure she knows how you think. Given her affection for you, I can't see you the monster you'd like me to believe you are.'
'She wants her Neb-blasted feathers preened, and isn't fussy.'
Siss hissed softly, following our conversation with a slight movement of her head.
'She's your friend, and you know it.'
'She's also a merciless predator. We're alike in that regard. Two of a kind.'
'She's also my friend, and as for a predator, she may be the terror of the island's mice population (a low menacing hiss from Siss), but she is also a carefree, fun loving dragon, who's been accidentally on purpose letting her tail twitch across your face this whole time...'
'And I'm about to wring her neck for it,' Cin snapped.
'Which is my point exactly - she knows you won't. So why should I take your threats any more seriously?'
'Because I like her more than you?'
I smiled. 'Perhaps. But I'll still take my chances.'
Cin sighed. 'The only reason you're so confident is that I'm a well-trained stealth. Though illegal, mind probes are widely used by the wealthy and criminal classes to protect their treasures and secrets. And while they do not extract the detailed mind-readings that the probes used by the Unity Judicial generate, they can detect angry, discontent thoughts, and dishonest intents. Thus, any stealth entering a targeted establishment, either on a one-time mission or for long term employment on a more elaborate one, must be able to hide his or her intentions from these mind probes. We're trained to bury our dangerous memories and intentions deep under our conscious mind, leaving only a very unemotional and disguised outline of the mission to guide our actions towards its completion. I'm using this technique now. Though instead of hiding my purpose and plans, I've locked away my anger to insure your continued survival right up to the end of your usefulness. The fact that Siss has no notion of my ultimate intent, simply shows how adept I am at this technique. So, if I were you, I'd not count on her as your barometer of my character.'
Siss gave a sleepy, dismissive hiss.
Oh, it was plausible, I'd give her that. But I wasn't only relying on Siss's approval for my unconcern. I was relying on my own reading of her character. And the fact that she was, like me, of mixed heritage, made my judgment only that much stronger. So I said, 'You're far better than a decadent Cin. I would be dead on the flagship deck if you were fully a Cin, since there was no real reason to spare my life. An excuse, perhaps, but no real operational reason. I'll trust my judgment. There's a lot of good in you Naylea.'
'It's your death.'
We lay in our hammocks in the dim lit compartment for a time in silence. It came to me that I had once experienced a similar circumstance, with Min in the Ghost right after the first assassination attempt. She had shared her history and opened her thoughts to me that evening. And just recently, subjectively anyway, she had hinted that if I had been bolder, perhaps things would've turned out differently for us. While I had mixed emotions on whether things could've ever been right, I had to wonder if I was making a similar mistake once again. Perhaps more than talk was called for. My St Bleyth ancestors would give me no clues. I was on my own.
'It seems as if the wind has died down. I'll take a look,' I said and swung to my feet. I then took two steps over to Cin's side. She (and Siss) watched me and for once, her icy eyes gave nothing away.
'Naylea, I care for you. More than anyone else. Perhaps I could say more, but I'll not risk your scorn, so I'll only say that I am your friend. I hope that you'll find it in your heart to be mine as well. For a start.' And if there had been any softening of her icy eyes, I would've kissed her. But there wasn't. She just watched me. I shrugged. 'At least you didn't threaten to kill me, so I'm making progress,' adding, 'I don't know about you, but I'm getting hungry.'
'Push a button,' but without venom. Progress.