35 - I Have One Trick

Dukir, worn to a thin shadow of himself, paced back and forth in the hall outside the throneroom.  Inside, the lot of them lay, unconscious, unmoving, barely breathing. The boy’s ferret lay curled under his chin, also locked away somewhere. The bees hovered, dove on them, then hovered again. It looked like one of the old folk tales where a sleeping curse had been laid across the kingdom.

The Dry was on the edge of ending, the last, desperate gasp of heat where everything was down to dregs of moisture and desiccated; hardened and mummified with a kernel of moisture left in its centre.

Dukir had killed a warbird getting here so quickly, and very nearly killed himself, as if his physical presence could actually help, sending another of his out to the edge to try and pick up his operatives in Xanadu, to support them if they should need it.  Dammit young man, you are a good Radiance.  My old friend threw great children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren... why did you have to go and do something so stupid as to get yourself lost in the owner’s country? The empty wind blew across the open galleries, moaning, as he paced.

He rubbed a finger over the mark the temporary nose-ring he’d worn as a warbird racer, to cover his story getting back to the city so quickly. They were all crazy enough to race... and were paid to race even in the Dry.

“An endarkened, fakkin’ ferret can get in and I can’t?  I want to go in and haul them all out by their collective ears and loincloths!”

“Da, you taught me that an intelligence officer who talks to himself is on the edge of retirement,” Shashi’s voice was fond as she stepped through the security door to the hallway, the Rasheem standing well back out of the range of the veil of bees over the door.  The Great Hive had been upset and no one dared cross a single bee right now. Her daughter peeked under her armpit from the baby sling.

“Silly of me, I know.”  The look he gave her as she pressed a glass into his hand and a roll into the other, was partly annoyed.  “I’m not hungry and I don’t need –“

“Stop it.  You’re going to try and go in.  I know.  Even if all you can do is storm around the edges and raise a ruckus then that is what you’ll do.”

Child of mine.  If a ferret can get in, I will most certainly get in.  Even if I have to follow the ferret down the rat hole.  Which is actually what I intend to do.

“Eat,” she continued.  “We have to get them out soon or we might lose Ilax first.  He’s the least use to coding in that state.”

“But he’s a mander warrior so he’s probably got a lot more fight in him than you give the man credit for.” Dukir ate the roll in three bites, hardly tasting it, chased it with the drink, glad to not taste it.  He’d never gotten the taste for the bitter propolis mix.  He handed her the glass.  “You’re right though.  I’ll have water and then we’ll see if I enter from here, with the rest of them.”

Her smile was solid, though he could see the fear she hid from everyone else.  One by one we go in, and we don’t come out.  It could be Perrin’s security doing it, but I don’t think so.  I think it’s loss of line and sources.  Stack us all up like cord-wood... like code wood.  Hah.  I’m going to go in and really see what’s going on.  I have a single trick that Diryish left me that I might use.