Wedge frowned at the girl. "We don't torture for information, Cheriss.
That's not our way."
She turned innocent eyes to him. "Torture? Never. This time, General,
listen." She hauled back and kicked the man again, possibly harder than
before.
Over the man's groan, Wedge distinctly heard a clinking noise from
beneath the man's tunic.
Cautious, Wedge pulled the tail of the tunic up through the man's belt.
Beneath, attached to a second, slimmer belt, was a transparent pouch filled
with shining golden disks.
"Adumari credcoins?" Wedge asked.
"Perats," Cheriss said. "Do you see Pekaelic's face on the obverse? I see
at least twenty of them. Not a fortune, but definitely an improvement in his
estate."
Wedge nodded to Tycho, who searched the others. He found pouches of
coins, most of them about half as full as this man's, on each.
"You're saying that someone with this kind of spending money should have
better garments," Wedge said.
Cheriss nodded.
Wedge returned his attention to his prisoner. "Who paid you?"
"This money is from the last man I killed," the man said.
"Then you've killed a minister or a wealthy merchant," Cheriss said. "And
his family will be wealthy enough to prosecute you all the way to the grave.
I'll tell the Cartann Guard what you've just admitted to. Whoever the last
important man to be killed was, you'll take the blame for it."
The man opened his mouth as if to offer a denial, then shut it
stubbornly.
Cheriss caught Wedge's eye and gave him a tight shake of her head. Her
meaning was clear; the man wouldn't talk.
Hobbie came bounding up the stairs, leading a handful of men and women in
the eye-hurting livery of the building. All wore sheathed blastswords but
carried some sort of sidearms in their hands. "It's a no on our blasters,"
Hobbie said. "Until we leave the building."
"Rules," said the foremost of the liveried men, "are rules, I fear. But
you will suffer no more inconveniences while in our building. Are we here to
be witnesses to your kill, or do you wish them given over to the Cartann
Guard?"
Wedge frowned at the man, who appeared to be about twenty, very fair,
very exuberant. "Do you mean it's legal for me to just kill them?"
"Of course. You beat them fairly. Unconventionally, but fairly. And until
you kill them, release them, or hand them over, the duel is not done."
"It wasn't a duel. It was an assassination attempt." Wedge finally
remembered to turn the power off on his blastsword. "I turn them over to you
for the Cartann Guard. These men were paid to kill us; perhaps the Guard will
want to find out by whom."
"Of course," the young man said. "We will hold them if you wish to
depart."
"Yes, thank you."
"Do you wish to take trophies?"
Wedge glanced at Cheriss. She said, "What's theirs is yours; you have
won. What they carry, I mean. You cannot claim what is in their homes, at
their moneykeepers'."
"I see." Wedge glanced among his pilots. "Red Flight, arm yourselves.
Blastswords and sheaths. If we're going to have this happen again, I don't
want us to have to rely only on fists and vibroblades."
Cheriss smiled at him. "You did very well with fists and vibroblades. You
are brawlers. I like that. Cartann swordsmen are too effete."
"Thank you, Cheriss." Once he, Tycho, and Hobbie had their new blades
buckled on, Wedge led the way past the helpful building guards and down to the
street.
It had grown dark and cool outside in the hours of their dinner
appointment, and now the streets were filled with shadowy figures and the
occasionally wheeled transport. Even more rarely, a repulsorlift-equipped
transport would cruise by a few meters overhead, its complement of five or ten
passengers idly watching the pedestrian traffic below. Wedge kept his face
down, the better to keep passersby from giving him a closer look and
recognizing him.
"Cheriss, you heard his coins clinking over all the noise of the fight?"
She nodded.
"And you took out two of the enemy. That's very good work."
"Thank you, General."
"With all your talents, and your obvious respect for pilots, why aren't
you a pilot yourself?" Wedge asked. He saw a little hesitation in her
expression and added, "If it's personal, just tell me it's none of my
business. I won't be offended."
"No," she said. "It's justit's not something I feel shame over." Her
miserable expression suggested she was lying. "But I can't learn to fly. Ever.
When I go up in aircraft, even when I'm on a high balcony, I become dizzy. I
panic. I can't think."
"Vertigo," Wedge said. "So you concentrated on the blastsword instead?"
She nodded. "It is a dying art. Oh, most nobles carry blastswords in
public, and many commoners like myself. But the art as they practice it in
their schools is stylized. They train with blaster power set to shock instead
of burn, and they have rules that make some sorts of blows illegal. I, on the
other hand, researched the blastsword art of centuries ago, when it was still
very prestigious. I learned about alternative secondary weapons and using the
environment against my enemies." She brightened again. "I can tell that you
haven't trained with the blastsword... but it's obvious you know how to fight.
The maneuver with the banister, Major Janson's use of the cloak, Colonel
Celchu's skill with his fistsI would love to learn what you know."
"We'll trade, then. Teach us what you can, in the time we're here, of the
use of the blastsword, and I'll let my merry band of reprobates teach you
about the back-alley maneuvers they've learned."
He turned to catch the eyes of the other pilots, to make sure none of
them had an objection, and saw that Janson was glum. "What's wrong, Wes?"
Janson sighed. "My cloak is all burned up," he said. "I liked that cloak.
"
"We'll find you one even more garish," Wedge prom - ised. "Now, Cheriss,
I hope you'll understand, but I have to be very rude to you for a minute."
"You want me to walk on ahead again," she said.
He nodded. She offered him what he took to be an understanding smile,
then increased her pace.
"I'm going to leave you now," Wedge told his pilots. He checked the
chrono from his pocket. As with most people who did a lot of travel from
planet to planet, his chrono showed both ship's time and local time, and the
local time indicated it was less than a half hour of midnight.
"You can't see her now," Hobbie said, his face grave.
"Why not?"
"You're all sweaty from the fight."
"He's right," Janson said. "You stink of sweat, and smoke, and the wine
the minister spilled on you"
"He missed me."
"I don't think so. Anyway, you're not fit for a liaison tonight." Janson
put on a long-suffering face. "I'll go in your place. I'm ready for this
assignment, sir." He saluted.
"This isn't a liai" Wedge shut up and turned to Tycho. "If he keeps this
up, Hobbie gets to choose his clothes for
the next three days."
"Oh, good," Hobbie said.
Tycho nodded. "Keep your eyes open tonight, Wedge. We can be pretty sure
the Imps put those assassins on us... but we can't be sure there aren't
duelists out there who want to kill you honorably."
Wedge waited until Cheriss turned a corner ahead. He whipped off his
cloak and reversed it so its dark interior color was now on the outside, and
turned to join the pedestrian traffic heading the other way.
At this time of night, with no events taking place, the plaza where he'd
made first landfall on Adumar was nearly empty. Though not illuminated by
artificial lights, it was still bright enough under the shine of two moons,
one of them full and quite large in the sky.
The temporary stand where Wedge had made his speech was gone, though the
four poles with their speakers were still there. The spot where the X-wings
had landed was empty, Wedge and his pilots having transferred their
snubfighters to their balcony early that day.
But despite its echoing emptiness compared to the previous day, the plaza
was not lifeless. Near where the X-wings had landed, a circle of men and women
watched a blastsword duel; even at this distance Wedge could see the lines of
green and violet color twirling through the air, hear the snap as a blastsword
not have found flesh, but moments later he heard a second blast followed by a
quick shriek. Then a third blast, and applause.
Another life lost to no good purpose. Wedge shook his head.
Ahead, there was a slender silhouette waiting beneath the shortest of the
dark display panels. When he was a dozen meters away, he slowed, sure that he
should not call Iella's true name, but not certain as to what sort of greeting
was appropriate. Finally he said, "May I approach?"
"You may." It was Iella's voice. She lowered the hood of her cloak as he
reached her, and moonlight fell full on her face. She extended her hands.
He took them, then stood at a loss for words.
She laughed. "You were more eloquent yesterday."
"I do that sort of thing more often." He caught sight of another
silhouette, big, probably male, deep within the shadow cast by the nearest
building. "Friend of yours?
"My bodyguard," she said. "Here, anyone with a marginally profitable job
can afford bodyguards for situations like these. Do you have one?"
"Not with me, no. She's already killed a man for me tonight." Wedge shook
his head, willing away the distraction of the night's events.
"Killedwere you attacked?"
"All of us. Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie, too. We came out of it unhurt." He
gestured as if thrusting with a blastsword. "Four visiting blades, cutting
down assassins. Something more for the court to talk about." Iella seemed to
have caught her breath and grown paler. Wedge leaned in closer. "Are you all
right?"
"I'm fine. I'm not the one in danger, Wedge. You need to be careful.
These peoples' affection for duels, for picking up honor coupons by killing
each other, could get you murdered."
Wedge waved her objections away. "How have you been?"
Her expression remained cheerless. "Well enough. I've been working hard.
Mixing fieldwork with analysis. It never gets boring."
"That doesn't sound as though you've found any one thing that you want to
devote yourself to."
She shrugged, and he could sense even more distance between them. "I
guess I'm not like you, that way. Listen, Wedge, I can be here, but not
forever. What do you need?"
He sighed. "Duty first. I need to know what's really going on here on
Adumar. I'm effectively ambassador here for the time being, and I'm in
completely over my head. How long has the New Republic really been aware of
Adumar?"
"You don't know?"
"No. I thought it had been a matter of days or weeks. Your presence, your
cover, sugg ests it's been longer than that."
"Five or six months," she said. "Intelligence discovered that someone was
recruiting computer slicers for hire to do interfaces between a new set of
computer protocols and New Republic and Imperial standards. Intelligence got
interested, put together an identity for me as a Corellian slicer, and dropped
me on one of the worlds where they were hiring. It's the sort of mission we
call a blind jump. When I got here, I set things up for the arrival of a team.
"
"What's your name here, by the way?"
She managed a faint smile. "Fiana Novarr."
"I'm sort of surprised that a hired code-slicer would be invited to an
affair like last night's dinner, with the perator and all."
"I went in on the arm of a minister. That's not important, Wedge."
"I suppose not. So what's all this about a mapping ship finding Adumar,
and suddenly they want our pilots as diplomats?"
"That's all true, but it's only part of the story. I was here for a few
weeksa temporary prisoner in theory, since I couldn't communicate offworld
until actual relations were opened with outside worlds, though I did anyway
and figured out that Adumari scout ships had gotten far enough out to discover
human-occupied worlds. They'd figured out that there were two big power hubs,
the New Republic and the Empire. And they wanted to learn everything they
could before getting in contact with either one. They wanted to have the
leisure to decide which one, if any, to side with. But the mapping ship
incident did happen, and it sort of accelerated their plans."
"Thus the invitation to me and Turr Phennir."
She nodded.
"They're pretty sneaky people," she said. "Convoluted politics and
secrecy are a way of life for them."
"Well, here's an important one. What sort of arrangements am I going to
be able to make with them if they're not a united world? I can't do much more
than open up diplomatic relations and persuade them that the Imps are bad."
"That's exactly what you're supposed to do. Other forces are working on
the perator of Cartann to persuade him to enter into a world government."
"So all the hard mental work is taken care of. I just need to stand
around, pose, look pretty for the holocams..."
She managed a brief smile. "That's it."
"IeFiana, I'm not sure I like this place. They don't put a very high
value on human life. What do you think?"
"You're right." She shrugged, a clear sign that this was something out of
her hands. "It's different in other Adumari nations. Their mania for pilots is
not quite as high. Dueling is not the fad it is here. Another reason for
Cartann to join in a world government. It might acquire some more civilized
characteristics."
"Who's your superior?"
"I can't tell you that. That's on a need-to-know basis."
"Well, I'm talking about a need-to-punch basis. Your immediate superior
and General Cracken didn't give me a full briefing before I got here, and
consequently I've been floundering around like an idiot. I need to know which
of them to punch."
She smiled, got it under control. "Wedge, is that it? I need to get back
to my quarters. It would probably do Fiana's reputation some good for her to
be seen with Wedge Antilles... but it would also put me under scrutiny I don't
want."
"I suppose so." Then a wave of something like doubt hit him. "No, that's
not it. Listen, I haven't seen you in months. And now that we've talked, I
still feel as though I haven't seen you. What's going on?"
"Nothing." She presented him with a serene expression. For all he could
read in it, she could have been all the way across the plaza.
"I don't believe you."
"I can't help you with that, Wedge."
"Iella, have we stopped being friends?"
She was silent a long moment. "I suppose we have."
Wedge felt his breath catch. It took him a moment to recover it. "When
did that happen? How did it happen?"
"It's not you, Wedge. It's me." Her mask of serenity slipped, leaving her
expression tired, even dismayed. "I just had another direction to go. You're
not there."
"That's not an answer. That's Intelligence gibberish covering up an
answer." It surprised Wedge, how hurt his tone sounded.
"I have to go."
"Every time we've ever spoken, I've been straight with you. I want an
answer from you."
She put her hood up. Suddenly he could no longer see her features. "I
have to go," she said, and turned away.
As she moved off into the darkness, her bodyguard detached himself from
the building's shadow and followed.
Wedge stood there and watched her fade into the darkness of the plaza's
shadowy edges. It occurred to him that this departure was just the image, the
reflection of something that must have happened long ago. He just didn't
remember when, and the mystery of it was like a little, stony knot of pain
next to his heart.
5
That pain hadn't subsided by morning. He thought about the situation with
Iella, could come to no hypothesis that covered all the facts, and set it
aside for the time being. He set aside thinking about it, anyway; the ache
stubbornly refused to be set aside.
By the time breakfast was done, his datapad had still received no word
from Tomer about appointments with the perator for the purposes of diplomacy.
Nor was there news on the men who had attacked them last night. Once again the
day was his.