Eclipsed (Heartstone Book 3)

  Eclipsed

  Heartstone Book Three

  Frances Pauli

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Author

  More Heartstone

  ECLIPSED

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, names and places, within are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Frances Pauli

  All rights reserved.

  For The Parsley King

  Chapter One

  The slave ship touched down in Spectre without fanfare. It landed with a hold full of the lost, the stolen, the desolate, and one former Shrouded prince. Chains rattled in the vessel’s dark interior. Lubricant leaked from pipes above the steel benches, dripping a hopeless rain over torn cloth and bare skin.

  Mofitan flicked a drop of orange fluid off of his bicep and hunched to the right to avoid the next spatter. Spectre was the last port on Eclipsis still allowing slavers to land. It was the old way’s final holdout, the last infestation of the former regime, of Kovath’s reign. He rubbed the spot on his wrist where the fat metal cuffs had worn his skin bloody and glared across the grating to the far wall.

  Slaves huddled against the ship’s side, curled together like lost cats: unwashed, bruised, and possibly flea-ridden. He couldn’t help them. That chafed him far more than his bindings did. He wouldn’t free even one of them from the life ahead, and so he scowled and rubbed his wrists, and flicked at the orange liquid like it was his enemy.

  The engines howled to a wall-shaking decibel. The floor rattled beneath his feet. Mofitan shifted with the sudden rocking, crouched and furious and ready for the next step. Once they’d locked down, blocked the ship, and offloaded the more important cargo, then it would be their turn. Then, he’d have to sell himself to the inspectors or the whole journey, all the lives around him, would be lost for nothing.

  As if to punctuate that fact, the sniffling began. Whispers hissed through the black ship’s belly, and someone toward the front began to sob. Mofitan ground his teeth together. He growled, heard the poor soul on his right scoot away from him, and reached to twist at the ring that no longer graced his finger. Damn, he’d miss that. Worse, the nervous gesture could easily give him away. He stuffed one knee between his cuffed arms and pushed, dragging the cuffs deeper into his flesh.

  The pain soothed away the urge to fight back. He’d already tested the chain enough to know he could break it. He would have to be careful not to do that before he could use it to his advantage. The next step required critical timing.

  The engine howl died. Clanking replaced it, sounding as if the hull were under assault, as if great fists beat against the walls in an attempt to crack open the ship and devour its contents. Rationally, he knew the source of those sounds. He’d worked the bays on Moon Base 14 long enough that he could identify most of them. In the dark, however, paired with the sniffling, it was easy to imagine monsters.

  Mofitan closed his eyes and pictured the procedure instead. He labeled each clank with a docking clamp, each rattle with a logical, functional source. But there were children chained in the hold. There were families, women, people who’d never stepped foot on a spaceship before, let alone a moon base.

  In the dark, Mofitan cried for them, sniffled with them, and waited for his chance to do anything at all aside from witness their misery. If he meant to help them, he’d have to see his plan through to the end. He’d have to do this right, exactly right, and he’d have to do it fast.

  Gervis Dern wouldn’t wait for him to mourn his companions. Lesser Governor Dern wouldn’t look twice at a sympathetic, sniffling slave. Mofitan sat straighter and focused the agony around him into a laser of fury. He glared at the darkness, growled, and rubbed the chains harder against his wounds for inspiration. They only had one shot at this.

  The mechanical cacophony died as suddenly as it had begun. The darkness yawned, echoed the miserable sounds of its living cargo. A knife-thin slice appeared near the ceiling, white, glowing and expanding as he watched. The cargo bay winked open. The spaceport lights burned through the widening crack, artificial, over-bright and backed by an impassive slate-colored sky.

  Mofitan lifted into a squat and tested the muscles of his thighs, how well his cramped leg would hold him. It had to look good when he made his move. It had to look desperate. That much, he supposed, he wouldn’t have to pretend. Hours hunkering in the slaver hold had driven him a good few shades past needing to get out. He breathed, twisted at a ring that no longer graced his finger, and growled even louder.

  His rumble silenced most of the whimpering. Great. Now he’d scared them as well. He raked a fingernail over the place where his princely ring should have been, wincing, hating that cowing the others had worked in his favor, that he welcomed the breath of silence. Better to have it now, to save his wits for the moment and save the people when his job was done. He used the quiet to find his center, remembering Shayd’s instructions like a chant in the back of his thoughts. Keep your head. Remember to breathe. The shield will fail if you panic. Mofitan snorted. Like he ever panicked.

  The hatch gapped enough to make out buildings, grids of light glaring against the shadowy backdrop. He flexed his knees, resisted the urge to twist at his empty finger and watched Spectre dawn at the back of the vessel. Black all over. The images he’d studied back in Wraith professed those slashes of shadow behind the city were razor-edged rock formations. Cold light made the night even darker. Steam and stray gases misted the segments of city that could be seen. The refineries here never slept. The mines in Dern’s sector fed a steady stream of product into Spectre. They kept Gervis Dern wealthy, kept his foothold secure despite the planet’s new management.

  The man had dug into Eclipsis like a Shevran tick.

  Inside the ship, the port’s lighting cast the slaves in a ghoulish image. Hollowed-out faces stared out from the walls. Sunken eyes, dimmed by their fate, watched the door sinking to the landing platform with no hope reflecting back. Mofitan grabbed the chain between his cuff and the man on his left’s. He looped the metal through his fist so that his jerking would not tear at his fellow when the time came. He secured the other side similarly, trying not to look at either of the slaves he’d been shackled between.

  You must stay calm. The shield will keep them out if you are properly in your head.

  Mofitan inhaled, caught the new tang of whatever gases poisoned Spectre’s air this evening. He blinked at the bright swath in the ship’s rear, at the silhouettes now passing like moths across the opening. Slavers. Cargo inspectors, port officials, and possibly, if he had gambled his life correctly, at least one of Gervis Dern’s men.

  A door in the cargo hold’s foremost wall opened, dwarfed by the hatch and emitting only one foul individual in possession of the insi
dious slaver’s data pad, the device that tracked, cataloged, and erased lives with the flick of the weasel’s stylus. Mofitan had been duly notated, as all of the other slaves had when shackled and boarded. Now, the man who might have been burly or intimidating beside anyone except a Shrouded prince stalked between his chained cargo with his broad shoulders back and his head held like a rooster’s. He even tutted like a chicken. Puffed up and full of his position, the slaver noted each devastated face and, instead of cringing away from them, the bastard grinned at each one.

  He did not, however, smile for Mofitan.

  When he passed, the narrow eyes averted to the far wall, the nasty grin wavered. Mofitan growled and the man jumped in place, hurried his feet toward the rear all the while making his flicked notations. Consigning every slave in the hold to a future of servitude. This guy ran a gauntlet made up of the faces of his victims, and he did it with a smarmy grin on his face.

  Mofitan tested the rings between his wrist cuffs and heard the metal whine. The hatch fell into the fully open position, a gong clanking against the port pavement. Men in dark uniforms filled the opening. Most passed back and forth between vessels, but at least six stout guards lined up on either flank of their exit ramp. One man wore a different sort of garment. Still a uniform, Mofitan guessed, but one that singled him out as something different. It was to this suit that the slaver brought his manifest of sadness, and it was this asshole who gave the signal for the slaves to be dragged out into the light for inspection.

  They stood together, hands of strangers helping any who were too weak. No one in the hold wanted those chains tugged again. They moved before the pull could come, shuffling in twin lines down the wall and into the light. Mofitan hunched forward while he walked, doing his best to hide the odd angle of his wrists, the way his chains looped. He shuffled his feet with the rest of them, turned his body slightly toward the wall, and kept his eyes fixed on the man the slaver spoke with.

  When the time comes, you’ll only have one chance.

  This guy had to be from Dern’s lot. His whole posture suggested authority and derision for the rest of the universe. He frowned at the slaver’s data, sneaked disinterested peeks at the slaves filing past, and tapped one boot against the pavement. Mofitan watched the toe beat out the man’s irritation. Tap. Tap. The slave in front of him nearly reached the pool of light, and the boot said this guy wasn’t even paying attention to them.

  He just has to see you.

  Inhale. Shuffle forward. Mofitan’s chain buddy passed into illumination, and the official flicked a glance out and back. Not good enough. They needed him looking, paying very close attention. Mofitan let his rumble have full rein this time. He growled with all his breath, for all he was worth. The slave ahead hurried his feet. The guards’ heads swiveled toward the hold. Mofitan growled like a shadow cat on steroids and stepped, fully upright, into the light.

  The slaver emitted a girlish scream and backed into the port official. The cargo manifest, so carefully checked and rechecked, fell to the ground with a sharp, expensive-sounding crack. Mofitan kept his eyes on his target, on the thin, well-dressed man who definitely paid attention now. He met those calculating eyes with his own, flashed a grin for the man’s benefit, and then held his chains up between them and flexed once.

  Metal snapped. The cuffs came free of one another, and it took only one good jerk of his fists to separate the looped chains, to free the other slaves from the futile and blatantly stupid thing he was about to do next. A rain of links rattled against the open hatch. Mofitan growled over the sound, winked at the man he’d bet belonged to Gervis Dern, and then bolted straight into the nearest line of guards.

  They should have been fired for how easy they made it. Mofitan never would have hired anyone so incompetent in the first place. But Spectre’s protection fell away in the face of the lavender giant. They parted courteously and let Mofitan slip right between them. Damn. If he got away the whole wretched ruse would be for nothing. If the idiots in the port couldn’t catch a rampaging Shrouded prince, why had he come in the first place?

  He slowed his feet after passing them, growled in real frustration now, and heard, at last, a thin voice shouting orders. Mofitan pretended to flee while avoiding anything truly helpful. He leaped over a motorized cargo sled, ran past at least three dark alleys, and kept himself in the light, visible, as obvious as a man of his size and color could possibly be.

  Like a vein of heartstone in a basalt matrix.

  Mofitan glowed against the night. He shouted and feigned a stumble. A web of darts landed against his bare back. Electricity fired from the studs, lanced through his body, and curved his spine backwards. Pain, lightning through his veins. He howled it out, let his muscle spasms feed Shayd’s mind shield, let it keep his thoughts genuine. Pain and freedom. Shit that hurt.

  He fell forward, not pretending now. The electric web embedded in his back zapped his spine again and turned his limbs to jelly. They had a remote on it. The ground slapped against him and he lay on it, twitching and imagining what sort of weapon fired a unit like that. Useful. A good non-lethal option. He might look into picking some up if he survived this shit.

  They gave him another jolt after he was down. Probably to keep him there. It blazed through already raw nerves and, possibly, made him drool a little. Then again, the ground might have been wet before he whacked it. Still, something sticky clung to his face and his body registered the impact of the fall as a dull background to the fire of pain from the dart net.

  Perfect really. When they rolled him over, he burbled something he’d meant to be an argument. It came out in bubbles that might have contained blood. Possibly, he’d done his job a little too well. The men glaring down at him didn’t look amused. They shuffled aside for their boss, but someone triggered a jolt again, just to be sure.

  Mofitan screamed. His back arched, lifting his considerable bulk from the pavement until only his shoulders and heels touched down. He saw stars outside and inside, and he heard the enemy for the first time, the soft chuckle of a man who he prayed actually did work for Gervis Dern. The stars winked and began to fade. Dark, dark, and more dark. A voice snapped like the metal whips of the net in his back.

  “Well now. Isn’t this just something.”

  Chapter Two

  Corah pulled her vest down in front, adjusted the high-collared blouse until it covered her throat, and frowned at the gesture. Gervis had mentioned it the last time she’d seen him. He liked a woman with an elegant neck. She tugged the collar higher and loosed the pin holding her hair up. Red tresses avalanched to just past her shoulders. She yanked them straight, twisted them into a knot so tight her eyebrows stretched, and then rewound the bun lower on her neck.

  She jabbed the pin back through the whole affair, imagining Gervis Dern’s throat as she did and catching herself too late. Who knew where Gervis’s psychics, his other psychics, might be mentally lurking, noting thoughts, recording dissidents. She knew better than to let an off-handed mental comment spoil her control. Most likely, the bastard hadn’t meant a thing by the comment. Absolutely no reason to worry.

  But with Gervis…she just really never knew.

  His shields had been woven by too many minds, hers included. The lesser governor wore his paranoia like a teenager wore aftershave—the heavier the better. He’d brought in psychics from six systems, put them all through rigorous cross-examination, and then threw half of them back as unacceptable risks. The fact that she’d made it through the process was a testament to her own training not, as Gervis would believe, in psychism, but in a baser art that was far too unprofitable for a man like Gervis Dern to suspect.

  Corah had learned to be mentally invisible out of no desire to serve her leader. She’d learned it to survive, to save her life, and if luck were with her, to end his.

  Eventually.

  The pin tugged at some of her hair, pulling the bun into a painful reminder of her mission. Not today, Gervis. Lucky for you. Her orders remained a
nnoyingly passive, and she wished her boss would do the same. If he continued with the compliment routine, with the less than subtle innuendos that had sprouted over the long course of their working relationship, she just might have to blow her cover and kill the bastard a little early.

  Thought, Corah! Control.

  The clothing they’d given her was too tight. They knew Gervis, of course, had planned it that way so that Corah would be certain to catch the governor’s attention. Rot. She’d strangle Niels when she got through this. The jerk had a file on Gervis with so much data in it their computers could barely run it. Not that they were exactly working with top-of-the-line equipment. Still, Corah bet her next meal Niels knew Gervis Dern liked elegant necks a long time before she did. The little shit had set her up.

  She sighed and adjusted the pin until the pain subsided. She had a job to do. If it included turning on the rat bastard who’d sold her parents into a long and deadly servitude, Corah would do what had to be done. She’d cut his throat out just as readily, just as surely. Until the order came down for that, however, her thoughts belonged to the lesser governor.

  A man of substance, of character and charm, destined to rule all of Eclipsis.

  She fired a dart at the lurking psychics and kept her fury in the cage she’d crafted for it on the streets as a child. No shield required. Corah’s mind had pockets. Just so long as she kept the right information in the right place, she could avoid almost any probing. It was this skill, the demonstration of it at a young age, that had landed her a place with Niels’s resistance. They’d spent the bulk of her formative years training, planning, watching for any opening in the network of slithering bastards that ran things on Eclipsis.

  But it wasn’t until Kovath fell that Niels had seen a chance for success. Then he’d moved his people in all over the ports, and she’d volunteered for Spectre before the announcement was even made. Niels knew why, but he didn’t stop her from taking the job. Either he trusted her to follow orders and wait, or he was using what he knew about Gervis to push her into killing the bastard on her own, to keep his resistance out of it completely.