Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) Page 11

  He looked them over and couldn’t fathom why anyone would build such a thing. Which meant they had to be what he was looking for. He scooped them up, rolled them, and stuffed them into his ivory case as well. Perhaps the evening would work out after all.

  He stopped for a bouquet of enchanted parasiniums mixed with red rosebuds and a cloud of baby’s breath before returning to the TGS station near the Palace, a small, private one operated only for the nobility. He hoped the songs the parasinium blossoms sang would work nicely with the designs he’d found and a jot of wine or nine to put My Lady in the mood.

  Chapter 15

  Roberto stared out over southeastern Houston toward the water. San Jacinto Bay glittered brightly in the sun, the rusting supports of an old bridge rising from it like giant needles pushed through blue fabric. Pleasure boats stitched white threads across the water, and Roberto sighed as he thought about what might lie beneath them as they sailed leisurely along. There’d been an island there once, Alexander Island, slowly eroding over time and finally drowned when the climate changed a half millennium or so ago. If he hadn’t had his hands so full—if the Queen’s inexplicable demands that he work the Goblin Tea business “in the name of long-term security” didn’t swamp his days, and if the fact that his best friend in the world wasn’t MIA on some damn alien ship didn’t swamp his every waking thought—then he might have relished the idea of being out there on one of those boats too. Maybe throw on some diving gear and go see if he could find some prewar artifacts. He blew out another long breath. The view from his sixty-fifth-floor office suite was spectacular, but today, like the rest of the last thirteen days, the scenery couldn’t cut through his mood.

  He turned back into the room and shook his head. “It’s bullshit,” he said. “I can’t believe we are here doing this crap right now. Those bastards up on Yellow Fire, assuming they even are still on Yellow Fire, could be doing anything to Orli and Altin right now. It’s been two freaking weeks! I’m telling you, I’m having a really hard time getting my head around why Her Majesty insists this Goblin Tea empire is a priority. I’ve already got a hundred and sixteen stores open. I literally am selling every coffee bean I’ve contracted for. And she wants me to get more and do more? ‘Deal with anyone you have to,’ she said. I can’t even deal with my contractors, much less those shady bastards out of Murdoc Bay. And there’s plenty more of those kind here too. Between taxes, permitting, and bribes, I can’t get my infrastructure to grow fast enough to keep up with supply or demand.” He jerked his hand in the direction of the computer terminals at which Deeqa and Allen Greenfeld, the man he’d made CFO to help hold the business together, worked. “We’re making more money than you guys can even count on two computers, and it’s still not enough. How greedy can she possibly be?”

  “You made the deal with the devil, Captain. Best learn to like the scent of brimstone,” Deeqa said. Her smooth cheeks rounded with the ensuing smile. “But it’s not so bad when you mix in the sweet smell of our coffee. And it pays handsomely.” That last bit was why she’d signed on, after all.

  Deeqa Daar was Roberto’s copilot on the Glistening Lady, but she had rapidly become a crucial business partner too. He’d stolen her from a miserable job on a rusty old freight ship, and he considered that one of the best negotiations he’d ever made. Not only could she fly the hell out of a spaceship, she had a great mind for business and an even greater one for … navigating the decidedly cloudy spaces between right and wrong. She was as comfortable in a bar fight as a boardroom, and when it came to tax codes, Roberto figured she was at least a thousand times smarter than he was. Between her and Allen, the business was making money hand over fist. And he was fine with that.

  “Besides,” Deeqa went on, “Her Majesty said she’d talk to Director Bahri and get some people out there as soon as possible. You worry too much. Orli and Sir Altin will be fine.”

  “Yeah, that’s what she said, but ‘as soon as possible’ in Queen time doesn’t mean the same thing as it does to regular people. And I don’t like waiting.” Roberto turned back to the window and stared out again. “I swear, if anything happens to Orli … well, I’m just saying. Her Majesty better not screw around.”

  “Or what? Are you going to fly the Lady in there, guns blazing, and … what?” She shook her head, and the light from her computer screen glinted up and down the stack of gold rings that bound up a stem and bushy tuft of her hair, a Qurac, she called it, after a sacred tree of her homeland.

  “I’ll go myself if I have to. I don’t care how big that ship is or how hard that damn alien hull material is. I’ll blow that thing wide open and get them out personally. I’m only giving her a few more days. That’s it. For all I know, that’s going to be way too late. She just isn’t doing anything.”

  “We all care about Orli and Sir Altin,” Deeqa said. “But nobody in their right mind is going to fly the Lady in there solo with you against spaceships the size of damn cities.” She paused, then amended, “Okay, Chelsea and Betty-Lynn would. Probably Fatima. But nobody else will.”

  Roberto’s shoulders drooped. He turned back. “I know,” he said. “It just pisses me off. I hate feeling helpless. And I can’t give a crap about building a damn chain of Prosperion coffeehouses while my best friend is—well, I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Then don’t. Look, you have a contract to fulfill. Her Majesty said she would get some mages over there at Yellow Fire. You’ve got Altin’s old boss working on it too. Isn’t that man supposed to be some kind of superhero, raised from the dead and invincible?”

  Roberto nodded, his mood lightening some at the mention of Tytamon. “That’s true. And he is the guy who taught Altin everything he knows. He’s got an extra one of those magic schools on Altin too. Altin’s only got seven of them. Tytamon is an Eight. Apparently that’s super hard-core.”

  “Exactly,” said Deeqa. She smiled and gestured to the door to his private office. “So why don’t you go in there, call Brent down in reception, and have him send the next guy up. Do your job, and trust others to do theirs. We’ll get our friends back.”

  He scowled, but she was right. He just had to get the Queen her money. That’s all she cared about anymore. It was weird. And yes, it was his money too. He used to care about it. And maybe he would once Orli and Altin were safe. But now, well, having them missing sucked anything like fun out of the enterprise right now. He should be doing something for them. Earning money now felt like earning ransom … that he had to pay to his own damn ally!

  He went into his office and flopped down into the high-backed chair behind the big desk. The whole rig was replica seventeenth-century Spain, baroque and as close to authentic as he could get. At least it was real wood and not synthetic, but he was waiting for a new set to be made back on Prosperion. When that came, he could cut this stuff up for firewood. He reached out and tapped the com controls. “Brent, send in the guy from San Francisco, please.”

  A moment later the door slid open, and in walked a man wearing a business suit that could not have cost him less than twenty thousand credits. Roberto watched the fabric shimmer, then shift from a gunmetal gray to a muted brown that was the perfect complement to the colors of the office carpet and other furnishings. It was the kind of thing politicians wore. He was clean cut, of medium build, blond hair trimmed short, bright blue eyes, and a nose that was a bit too round to be pleasant looking upon his face. He carried a large tablet computer in an alligator case.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Levi,” he said as he reached out his hand to Roberto. “Or do you prefer Captain even while you are here in Houston?”

  “Captain is fine,” Roberto said. He thought he detected a hint of an accent in the man’s voice. He stood and shook the man’s hand across the desk. He found his grip to be strong and sure. “Please, take a seat, Mister ….” He let that tail off, clearly an inquiry, as he directed him to one of two replica armchairs, also made to match the desk.

  “My friends call me El Seg
ador.”

  Roberto cocked an eyebrow at that but let it pass. “Can I get you something, Mr. Segador? Water, whiskey, or Goblin Tea? I’ve got a thirty-six-year-old scotch that is so good it will make you want to play bagpipes, and, of course, my Prosperion specialty was brewed barely a half hour ago.”

  “That scotch sounds excellent. I could use the jolt after three hours on the tube,” El Segador said as he sat down.

  “It’s a long way from the Bay Area to Houston on that thing.” Roberto poured the drinks as he watched his visitor settle in.

  “Yes, it is. And NTA customs agents are not as pleasant coming this way as they are going back to Mexico.”

  Roberto delivered the scotch and then took his place behind the desk. “Yes, well, there are unsavory elements in Mexico these days.”

  The man called El Segador nodded, admitting this was true. “A sad and seemingly permanent state of events. Our poor country has been in turmoil since its very first days. So many empires have cut their way back and forth across that blood-soaked land it almost forgot what it originally was. But she is a great country, before and now, and one of the few real beneficiaries of the third world war.”

  Roberto nodded. “I always thought, as I read the history, that that was a bit ironic, calling the war that, given who rose out of it and all.”

  El Segador nodded, smiling as he sipped on his scotch. There followed a brief period of silence as he whirled the brown liquor in the glass and sniffed it as if it were a rose. “That is damn fine scotch. I thought you might have been exaggerating.”

  Roberto agreed and played a few notes on imaginary bagpipes. El Segador smiled again, tipping his glass slightly in toast toward the song in the air before taking another sip. Roberto set his glass down right after, small talk and courtesies done. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Segador? You didn’t come all this way to sip scotch and chat about ancient history. What have you got for me?”

  “I’m here to offer you distribution opportunities in Mexico,” he said. “I represent a small conglomerate interested in a partnership.”

  “I’m only just off the ground here in the NTA territories,” Roberto said. “Mexico is a whole new set of headaches.” He knew perfectly well he wanted into Mexico, as bad as every other country and corporate exo-nation on the planet. But he wasn’t going to tell this guy that.

  “Of course it is. But, as you can imagine, it is a set of headaches we are well used to, so to speak. Which is why we are suggesting a partnership. We will buy as much of your Prosperion coffee as you want to sell. Sell it to us through our licensed companies in the NTA nations, or directly to my people in Mexico, straight from your cargo bays. Either way, as you please, and either way, we’ll operate under your franchise name and preserve your global brand. We will submit to your franchise rules and inspectors, too. Contracts will specify that, and your brand will be represented pristinely throughout Mexico and its territories exactly as you intend. We, of course, will gladly make cultural suggestions if you should be interested in tailoring the business to local tastes, but that is entirely at your discretion. We simply wish to leap at the opportunity to be the first rather than a follower in the Goblin Tea industry.” He flipped open the tablet he carried and turned it on. He spun it around and pushed it across the desk toward Roberto. “That is the complete proposal. There’s even a personal message from President Domingo Rios-Muñoz himself. He would have come today, but, as you can imagine, he’s very busy. He would like to meet you someday soon.”

  Roberto prevented his eyebrow from rising at that last bit. The Mexican president wanted in on the action too? But then, why should that surprise him? Roberto was partnered with the Queen of one world and working under the extremely unusual permissions of Director Bahri and the NTA. Of course the Mexican president sent a private message. Hell, he probably really did want to meet with him someday.

  Roberto skimmed it over. Everything seemed to be as El Segador had said. He tapped in the code to the main office network and, with a flick of his finger, copied the proposal into his own system.

  “All right, Mr. Segador, I’ve got a copy. I’ll have my people look it over and get back to you. You’ll understand that I have obligations to the Queen, and there are some rules in my contract with the NTA that I haven’t gotten around to reading yet. I don’t have to tell you how slick those guys are when it comes to finding ways to force exclusivity.”

  “No, you don’t. They are slick, without doubt. They didn’t take control of half a planet’s wealth by accident.”

  “They damn sure didn’t,” Roberto agreed.

  “And if there are rules that bind you,” El Segador added, “there are other opportunities besides Goblin Tea that might not have been taken off the table by the NTA lawyers.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, it’s not my intent to pry, but I can’t help wondering what your cargo holds are filled with on your return trips to Prosperion? It would be a shame to think you go back empty.” Again came that easy smile, and with it a hungry narrowing of the eyes.

  Roberto laughed. “No way, man. Do you have any idea how sticky all this is? My deal with the Queen to do this is a lot weirder than you can possibly imagine, and it gets weirder every day. There was a short little window to get this going before all the cockblocks got set up. And even now, the TGS is furious that I have my own set of friends who teleport my ship back and forth sometimes.” He grimaced inwardly as he thought of Altin’s plight, but he kept up his poker face. “So is the NTA. They watch my ship like a hawk the moment I’m anywhere in range. But the TGS is going to end up being the worst of the two in my opinion. It’s only a matter of time before they control everything shipping. If they had enough teleporters, they’d cut out freighter ships and trucking entirely and just teleport direct. Who is to say they won’t in time? That’s how big they think they are going to get. You watch.”

  El Segador laughed. “Yes. That’s how we see it too. But for now, the situation is as it is. I understand that magicians are in short supply after the war, so you don’t need to make any decisions immediately. Just keep the suggestion in mind.”

  Roberto wondered who the man had been talking to, but he kept that thought to himself. He’d probably already said more than he should have—Orli and Altin missing was messing with his head. He smiled instead. “I will. Thanks.” He polished off his scotch. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No,” said the man, taking the dismissive cue without the least blemish to the congenial expression upon his face. “I look forward to hearing from you.” He tossed back the last of the scotch as well. “And thank you for that,” he said as he placed the empty glass on the desk. “That alone was worth the trip.”

  Roberto smiled, almost laughed, and shook the man’s hand. “Thanks for coming. I’ll be in touch.”

  The man left as efficiently as he came in, and Roberto joined his two companions once more in the outer offices of the suite.

  “There’s something about him,” Deeqa said as soon as he was gone.

  “Were you listening?” he asked, nodding toward her computer on the table nearby. He already knew.

  “Of course.”

  “So why do you say that?”

  “Who has he been talking to?”

  “About what?”

  “About the mages.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How does he know that mages are in short supply after the war?”

  “It stands to reason. Everyone knows the casualties on both sides were staggering. They show images of Crown City under siege all the time on the net.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. It’s just … something. And what does El Segador mean? That is Spanish, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It means someone who harvests stuff, like someone who picks crops or gathers fields. Literally it translates to: ‘the harvester.’”

  Deeqa thought about that for a time, her jaw working. Then she shook her head. “D
o you know what a harvester is, Captain?”

  He shrugged, quirking an eyebrow.

  “Someone who reaps. And if there is but one of them, as in the harvester, then there is, well, but one who reaps.”

  Roberto nodded, in a “no-shit” sort of way, but there was something in her expression that made him rotate his hand in front of him impatiently, urging her to get on with her point.

  “He is not just a reaper. He is The Reaper.”

  That put a frown on Roberto’s face.

  Chapter 16

  The little alien—little by comparison to the one that held Altin in its grasp—suction-cupped its way up the hull to the window. Altin hadn’t realized how big the window was until he saw the strange creature crawl across it with its hooked back end and its three twitching mustache tentacles at the front.

  The larger alien reached a tentacle out and took the spacesuit helmet from the hook on the smaller alien’s rump, at which point the little one scurried away back down the wall.

  The tentacle snaked up and set the helmet back on Altin’s head. The sinuous limb wrapped around him, head and shoulders, and he could see through the helmet glass the discs on the tentacle writhing and working. Click, click, click, click went the locks on the helmet. The tentacle coiled farther down. Things were thudding against his back. The lights came on inside of his suit. He heard a brief click of static. “Orli!” he called out.