The Forlorn(43)

* * *

She hated all of them. Especially that stupid boy. How dare he behave like that. Ignoring her all the time. And he was always hanging around that big slut, like a bee around sugar water. Couldn't he see he was making an absolute idiot of himself? Yet . . . he'd not given her away, when he'd been caught . . .

As for that Morkth-man, creeping to her sleeping place without any trousers on! She blushed thinking about it. She had thought it was Keilin, and had called him closer.

Then there was the big ape-bear. He kept making rude jokes at her. And worse still, he could cook food which was better than the decorated and prettied dishes of her father's court. Of course she thought, loyally, his food wasn't as good as Mamma Mae's solid farm meals, but it was different.

Naturally, you had to treat Cap with respect. He was authority, and she was used to living in its shadow. But the rest of them! And now she was going to be involved in a jewel theft from Amphir, of all places. She didn't believe Cap's story about saving the human race from the Morkth, but there were some strange elements of truth in it. Some things he shouldn't have known, secrets only the royal family knew. Still, if she could have distracted Keilin from panting around that bitch-in-permanent-heat, she'd have run. He would be able to get them away, but she didn't think she could do it alone.

* * *

Amphir. Fabled Amphir, jewel of the plains gap. Place of a thousand exotic smells, many of them unpleasant. The gem trade capital of the world, the city straddled the north-south caravan route and had the only open trail to the eastern coast, too. It was the banking and gem trade capital of the world for one other reason besides its position: its security. As Beywulf pointed out disgustedly, it was so policed that you couldn't even fart without some flatfoot investigating your bowels with a potent laxative. Inevitably, a few jewels had been stolen from there. But Amphir's council, the richest in the world, had a policy. They followed up. They would follow, no matter where or for how long, and extract ten times the weight of any gem from the thief's body. They got to choose just which bit of body they took it from. Sometimes they made a considerable hole in getting to that part.

Keilin stared at the great city with its white onion domes gleaming above the red walls. At some time in its geological history the land had been wrenched and torn here. The red cliffline marched east to west for hundreds of miles. Once there had been a gap in front of them. Now the cliff wall loomed continuous, with Amphir's walls blocking the gap. If you wanted to go through you had to march your caravan through the toll passage. The toll was small. Merely a token payment. Although one that added up, with the numbers that came through it. If the toll had been more than trivial, merchants would have found it worth evading. That would have spelt disaster to the real income of Amphir. With the trade of a whole continent funnelled through it, a vast amount of wealth came through the city. Inevitably, quite a bit of it stayed there. The visible result of this accumulation was huge and imposing to the street-kid-turned-desert-rat. There was a measure of awe in his voice as he asked, "Where is the place we have to rob?"

"We don't exactly know." Cap was matter of fact about it. "And we'll only steal it if we can't buy it."

"What do mean you don't know where it is, you idiots? How do you know there are core sections here at all?" demanded Shael, forgetting respect for a minute. "I mean . . ." she floundered.

"You mean you spoke without thinking," said Cap coolly. Cap expected respect. It was plain he did not find its disappearance pleasant. "How I organize this search is my business. I am the commander. Don't ever forget that."

As if anyone could, thought Keilin. But the girl was adroit at talking her way out of the difficult situations her too-quick temper got her into. "Yes, I did speak without thinking. I'm sorry. I wasn't referring to you of course, Cap. Could you explain, please?"

Cap snorted. However, she had gauged his ego correctly. "We use the core sections to track other core sections. There is a resonance between them. They are partially self-aware complex computing systems, and they retain contact with central computing. Unfortunately only psis can communicate with them, so I've had to rely on the Morkth-man. Even S'kith can't communicate directly, but he can tell how far, and in what direction the sections lie. He also `sees' a core section's eye view of the place. That's how we know this section is in Amphir. The red walls and white minarets are very characteristic." He looked at them with sudden intensity. "Come to think of it, you two brats should be able to do the same. Maybe we can get more clues."

He produced a thin-bladed knife. "Wet contact is best. Saliva works to an extent, but blood seems more effective." Next to Keilin, Kim shrank back. Stupid girl. Yes, for a minute he'd thought Cap would bend him over a handy rock and cut his throat. But they were too valuable for that. And S'kith was still alive, wasn't he?