—What ‘s the matter?—
—Between Radi’s room and yours. Come.—
The message was not cut off. It trailed away in a manic that was more frightening than if it had abruptly stopped.
—I’m coming,—she said, and shot from her cover, straight across the center of the cavern. The pens themselves afforded her some cover, though her flashing red pants were bound to attract attention from the men feeding the mbuzim. She saw no one. Her luck held all the way through the mbuzi pens and into the narrow defile that led to the barns.
A guard was blocking the way, facing outward. He turned around, his mouth open in surprise, his hand hesitating near his laser hand gun.
“Let me pass,” Deza said, flinging her head. “I have a message for the Tycoon.”
“You’re dead,” the soldier blurted.
“No,” Deza said imperiously. “I am here. Let me through.”
“I’ll conduct you to the Tycoon,” he said, turning slightly as if he were confused.
Deza took advantage of his confusion. “You are not a very good guard. I hope you can guard the compound better than you guard this passage. I came into the pens without you seeing me and now I nearly passed you again. Like a whisper. Like a ghost. You will not conduct me anywhere. I know the way. You alert the guard at the gate. I came from the desert, where the danger is. Hurry.”
She was not sure she had buffaloed him into heading for the outer edges of the compound. If she had, she would have succeeded at least in putting the attention of the guards where it would least hinder her. If not, she had implanted the idea of her being a ghost, which was surely easier for the guard to take than the idea that she had appeared out of solid rock, and it might give the Tycoon a few minutes’ uneasiness before he realized she had to be alive.
As soon as she was out of sight of the guard, Deza took the back stair. Halfway up, she stopped where she had heard the faint noise before and felt for the familiar slipspace device. It was there, and just in time. She heard hurrying footsteps and the soldier’s voice talking about the girl who had passed through his body like air.
“You’re crazy,” another voice said. “She came this way, you say. We’ll catch her on the stairs. The Tycoon has them closed off at the top.”
“That won’t stop her.”
Indeed it won’t, thought Deza, then she stepped back and let the darkness of the slipspace swallow her. She was sorry for a moment that she had left her carbide lantern back in the dungeons with Radi and Edvar, but the darkness was so like that of the caves she felt herself relax and her excellent sense of direction take over. Even without any water to witch, she was very good at finding her way in the dark, and she moved ahead quickly down the slightly slanting slipspace, visualizing the rooms she was passing—the kitchens, the servants’ rooms, a slight slant up, the priest’s room. She felt with her hand for the connection up to her own room. Her hand passed into emptiness, and she pulled herself up into the steep familiar passage between their rooms.
—Father, I’m here.—
She heard a faint sound that she thought might be a poor connection with her father, and then realized it was the even hum of Machinery from somewhere close. Her own room. Radi had said Sheria had brought her terminals and was operating them from Deza’s room.
Deza felt her way almost to the door of her room, where the sound was definitely coming from, then retraced her steps. Halfway down she found what she thought was a connecting slipspace and the key to her father’s disappearance, but it ended after only a few feet. The mbuzi was not here.
The door to Deza’s room opened, glaring light into the slipspace, and Harubiki’s voice said, “I’ll check the slipspaces again. There’s one that connects to the stair.”
A voice said something Deza could not hear, and the light went out. Deza pressed back against the wall of the dead-end, wishing she had some kind of weapon, and tried to still her breathing for the sound of Harubiki in the slipspace.
There was no sound, and after a few moments, Deza heard two voices from the room, both muffled, but one unmistakably Harubiki ‘s. Whoever had spoken, he or she had stopped Harubiki from exploring the slipspace that led to the back stair. The soldier had gotten the word out fast, and Harubiki was not buying the ghost story.
Deza tried calling her father, but there was no answer. She had not expected any. Harubiki’s familiarity with all the slipspaces meant that they had been through here many times before, and except for this little cul-de-sac, which they had surely stumbled into as Deza had, thinking it was a passage, there was no place for the helpless mbuzi to hide. Her father could not be here. Then why had he told her he was? No matter. Harubiki was in that room up there, and perhaps the Tycoon and Sheria with her. Deza could have her revenge on all of them.
—And then what?—her father said drily.—All those murders will take a week, especially since you’ll have to do them with your bare hands, and personally I don’t think you’re much of a match for Harubiki or the Tycoon. By that time the Red City will be full of fish and not much else. You will make a fine princess then, ruler of the cretins and the feather-fish.—
—Where are you?—she demanded.—Are you all right?—
—I’m in the pens,—her father said placidly.—You went flying past me. The last pen on the right. I saw your little business with the guard. Not bad, but not too well thought out either. He is bound to have told the Tycoon.—
—Why did you send me up here to the slipspace? I thought you said there was no time to waste.—
—I had an idea it might do you good to hear what is going on in your room. A great deal has gone on in your room, but nothing like this.—
—I have no intention…—
—They’re all there. Sheria and the Tycoon and Harubiki. If you so choose, you can go tearing in and crack their heads together, but I’d suggest you listen at the door first. Only a fool would not take advantage of such an opportunity to eavesdrop.—
Deza cut her father off sharply and dropped to her hands and knees. She thought she had kicked something when she first came into the cul-de-sac, and she wanted to find it now. She crept toward the main tunnel, hoping the stick or broom or whatever it was was something she could wedge the door with. She was not about to be caught with an opening door, a glare of light, and Harubiki looking down at her. The whole idea was to catch them.
No matter what Radi said, the time and place to stop them was now. All thoughts of revenge aside, it was still the most practical way to put an end to the threat to the Red City. Once on their way to the Red City, she and Radi would have no way to control what was happening here. The Tycoon and Sheria might take a notion to flood the very caverns they were passing through or to blow the City to smithereens. Radi might have some silly idea of erupting out of the earth with a full-blown army, but Sheria would still be sitting at the computer. She could manage to push the crucial buttons before they killed her, of that Deza was certain. Still, she was not about to barge in with no idea of the situation on the other side of the door.
Her hand touched a length of wood and followed it to its tip. A pole, no, a spear. Just what she needed, and don’t think about who had waited outside her door with such a weapon. She crept to the end of the slipspace and inserted the end of the spear in the depression next to the door’s opening mechanism. The metal would break the contact and keep the door from opening. She wedged the blunt wooden end firmly in the corner. Only then did she put her ear to the door and listen.
“I thought you said she was dead,” Harubiki said.
My, my, Father, word travels fast. If you hadn’t pulled that stunt about being in the slipspace, Father, nobody would have seen me. Now the whole world knows I’m back.—
“I heard her fall,” the Tycoon answered her angrily.
“But did you hear her hit?” Harubiki again. “She’s a tricky little bitch. Maybe she managed to hang onto the edge and didn’t fall at all.”
“She was unconscious,” th
e Tycoon said. “She may already have been dead when I threw her in. And how could she have gotten into the pens without passing the guard? The stables are locked.”
“Perhaps she had an accomplice,” Harubiki said, and added slyly, “as the priest Radi did. A helper. A guide.”
“No.” That was a new voice, imperious and used to making statements that were never questioned. Sheria. “No accomplice. I had the little servant girl who attended her killed.”
There was a silence. Deza leaned her forehead against the door. Oh, Radi, even you would want revenge for this. The servant girl did nothing. How many others has she killed or tried to kill? Father, you, Edvar, and her father before her murdered Vira and tried to murder me.
“This Deza person is dead. The servants are making up ghost stories to frighten themselves with,” the voice went on. “Or are you, Tycoon? To distract me? To delay delivering your part of the bargain? There will be no water for your precious mbuzim until I get my shipment of arms.”
“I will show you where they are just as soon as we talk,” said the Tycoon.
“About what?” Sheria said, too sweetly. Like a singing snake would sound before it took a chunk out of you. Radi, really, your taste in women is hardly flattering.
“About my son Edvar,” the Tycoon said, his old manner returning. “I want him out of that dungeon.”
“I suppose you want to release Radi, too. You’re a very forgiving person.”
“Edvar is my son. I do not know what you intend to do with them.”
“Nothing,” Sheria said.
“Nothing?” The Tycoon’s voice rose on a note of hope, and then dropped suspiciously. “You don’t mean just leave them there to starve?”
“Starvation is too cruel a way for even traitors to die, and they are not traitors, only… obstacles.”
Deza could hear the Tycoon’s sigh of relief. “Then you’ll leave them there until our purpose is accomplished and then let them go?”
“I’ll leave them there until our purpose is accomplished.” There was another silence, accompanied by slight sounds of movement and then the slam of the outside door to Deza’s room. The machinery hum became louder, muffling the voices.
Sheria said something Deza did not catch, and then Harubiki said, “How long will it take?”
“Half an hour at the most,” Sheria said. “The dungeons are well below the level of the sluices. They’ll fill like a cup.”
“It won’t give the Tycoon his water, will it?”
“No, that’s why I waited till now, to get a simulation on the grids of what effect the localized flooding will have. The dungeon is porous sandstone. All the water will soak back to the level of the water table before the Tycoon can trap it. But it won’t soak in fast enough to save our friends. ‘Edvar is my son,’ indeed.”
Deza stood up with such speed that she knocked the spear’s tip to the edge of the depression. She paid no attention. Her mind was operating at high speed. She raced down the slipspace to the pens, calling to her father and finding him where he had said, wobbling onto his spindly legs to greet her. There was not a soul in the pens. They were either guarding against the danger from the desert or frightened of Deza’s ghost.
She skidded down the steep stairs to the dungeons, grabbing up the waterskins where she had thrown them, unlocking Radi and Edvar with such urgency that they followed her without a word into the darkness. She stopped a few feet into the rock, the heavy pack on her back and the carbide lantern dangling from her hand, reading her own private grids at almost the speed of Sheria’s computer. It was not enough to get them out. She had to get them up, above the level of the sluices that were being released, before the water poured across their route. She switched the lantern on.
“Come on,” she said sharply, taking in everything at once, Edvar’s reluctant sullenness, Radi’s dried skin and stiff gait, the chasm beyond already half-full of water, her conscious mind clicking along at super-speed, while in another part of her mind, moving in slow motion, she saw the metal-tipped spear fall and fall, slowly, slowly, till it clattered down the slipspace with a noise Harubiki would hear.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Deza, Deshenaza, true princess of the City in the Red Cave had led Edvar and Radi from captivity. She had seemed like a flame, red and gold, standing there with the key. Her commands had been quick, urgent, and once he was free of the chains, somehow he’d forced his clumsy feet to follow Deshenaza. On the upgrade, she had taken his hand to pull him along faster, walking, nearly trotting while balancing the mbuzi and the pack until Edvar had wrested him away from her.
She had let Edvar take over helping Radi, but only long enough for her to run ahead a few steps to a split in the passageway. She lifted her arm to let the lantern fill the passage and, trancelike, seemed to peer far beyond its light, looking first to the left and then to the right. Then she returned to Radi and Edvar to lead them up the righthand passage, up, ever upward.
Radi’s knees quivered and he stumbled heavily against Edvar. Deza looked at him worriedly and pulled harder at his hand. Radi wanted to tell her to stop and rest for a moment, but he couldn’t summon the extra strength needed to speak.
The peketa poison level was high again, for he’d been without liquids too long. Deshenaza was carrying water in her pack, of that Radi was certain. He could hear the water like a roar in his ears. A drink of it would begin to help him within minutes. If there was enough, he could be feeling quite well in just a few hours. But he would not ask for the water. In the garbled depths of his mind was the single clear thought that Deshenaza would need the water for herself to make it through the caves to the City. Less clear was the hope that if she could make it there in time, if she could find his friends, if she could convince them that treachery had taken place, if… Radi’s right foot refused to move, then his left, and he would have fallen onto the limestone cave floor were it not for Edvar’s strong grip.
“Go,” Radi said. “Leave me. Save the City.”
“Put him down,” Deza said to Edvar as she unslung the pack. “Drink, Radi. We’ll rest a few minutes and then you must try to walk.” Her hands were cool on his feverish skin. The rustle of her silken blouse sounded like water in a fast-rushing stream.
He tried to push away the waterskin. “Save the City. Keep the water for… long way.”
“Drink,” she said. “What do you think will happen if I arrive at the City with the Tycoon’s son and no one else to substantiate my claim to the throne? By the time they find out it’s true, it will be too late.”
“We may never make it at all with me along,” Radi said.
“Drink,” Deza said again. “The fever’s clouding your thinking. Trust me. I know what I’m doing. If I can’t witch water out of these rocks, nobody can.”
She did not speak in the imperious tone Sheria always used, yet he obeyed. He emptied the waterskin. He imagined that his parched and poisoned innards leached moisture from the new reservoir just as quickly as he filled it, and he wished for more. Strange how his mind kept hearing that which he desired.
“It has started,” Deza said, pressing her fingers against her cheekbones and smoothing a line to her temples.
“What has?” Edvar said, an edge of curiosity in his voice overcoming the gruffness Radi was certain he intended. The boy had followed along only because he didn’t know what else to do, of that Radi was certain. Deza seemed unaware that she’d hurt Edvar with her open display of affection for Radi.
“Sheria has opened some of the ancient sluice gates. She means to fill your father’s reservoirs. She knows she’ll flood these lower caverns in the process. The computer will have told her that much, I’m sure.” She looked to Radi for confirmation.
He nodded. “This part of the karstlands is thoroughly surveyed. Supplying water here along the coast in exchange for tithes is the City’s lifeblood.”
“And the witches like my mother and father had plotted all the grid levels around the City and put the informa
tion into the computers for all to use,” Deza said. “But that which lies inland…” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head. “I’m the only one who knows, aren’t I?” Again she looked at Radi.
“There’s nothing between,” Radi said. He sat up, surprised and pleased that he could do so. “A few caves left where the Maundifu used to run, but mostly it’s solid metamorphic rock.”
Deza shook her head. “That’s all they can see, the marble caves, the schist riverbed. But there are places where the mountains are still soft shales and clays and salt. Oh, there’s lots and lots of salt, all porous and half-dissolved from the City’s sending water this way and that to places where water shouldn’t be.”
While Radi and Edvar looked on, Deshenaza pressed her temples with her fingertips until her hands turned white. She swayed, and the mbuzi on her shoulders bawled softly. It was not a trance, Radi knew. It was the strange empathy that water witches had with the waters of the world. She was fighting to keep it from overpowering her, and he had not seen anyone struggle in that way since he was a boy. The water’s power was strong in Deshenaza, she who was the only child of the City’s most powerful water witches. Her fingers trembled, and she breathed deeply as she fought against the flow in her mind. The pattern of the grids there would be more complete than if the surveyors of the City fed data into the computer for another hundred years. Radi had heard that the powers of the water could drive a person mad if the individual were not witch enough to stay in control. He believed that was true, for the number of witches had declined to a mere handful by the time he was born. The power was a dominant trait, but many who had the power never lived long enough to pass along the genes.
Finally Deshenaza took her hands away from her face, and it was Deza, looking pale and frightened, standing before him again. “We have to hurry,” she said, her voice sounding shaky. “The water is rising quickly. Too quickly.