Tarona Rusk
Auxiliary Services
Messages began flowing the moment her ship hit normal space. Tarona Rusk scanned them, but the expected damage reports were not among the incoming. There was one memorandum—one!—forwarded by Commander of Agents herself, indicating that several dramliz had of a sudden fallen ill. The Commander directed her to look into it, but not in any such terms that might indicate . . . alarm, or even very great concern.
Tarona Rusk considered this memorandum closely. No deaths? That could not be accurate. The Lucks and the Brights to whom she had been linked were fragile. No matter the care the Little Healer had taken to be gentle, the separation must have been traumatic in the extreme. Some would have died; it was inevitable.
Frowning, she sorted through the rest of the incoming mail, finding another odd lack.
There was no summary report, nor greeting, from her department sub-chief. She had sent ahead, allowing him to know that she was returning; that she would want him, with full reports in hand, the moment she was arrived. There had been no acknowledgment of that communication, which was not like his efficiency. Unless . . . was it possible that Fel Pin had succumbed to separation trauma? But, no; that she would have marked—no matter what else had occupied her.
She reached to the comm and sent a brief message, that she was on approach, and that she desired he meet her in her office at the twenty-seventh hour.
* * *
She felt his presence through the door; his determination, and his intent—and smiled as she placed her palm against the reader. The instant the light came green, she extended her will and pushed the door back on its track, ignoring the scream of the abused mechanism, and swung through the opening.
Her shields turned the first strike; she parried the second, even as she threw a bolt of her own, shattering his defenses and taking control of his autonomous systems. She squeezed his lungs, just a little, to get his attention; saw his eyes widen, and tasted his fear.
“Fel Pin, well met,” she said pleasantly. “I offer you revenge. Look deeply—am I lying? Am I ensorcelled?”
She allowed him more air, opened her shields—enough; felt the familiar sweep of his scrutiny—once. Twice.
“How?” he gasped.
“I will tell the tale to my ally,” she answered. “If you cannot accommodate yourself, I will, with reluctance, kill you now. I have work that I must see finished and, I fear, a shrinking window. I cannot allow myself to be distracted by the need to continually guard myself against assassination.”
“Give me revenge and I am yours in all things,” he told her, truth ringing so brightly that it nearly deafened her outer ears.
“We are in agreement,” she said, and released her hold on him, stepping farther into her office.
“Sit,” she told him. “Tend to yourself. I will make tea.”
He dropped into the chair he so often occupied, rubbing his chest, a web of healing energies taking shape around him.
“So,” she murmured, moving to the buffet and the teapot, “I have been Healed, Fel Pin, is it not diverting? In the process, my Healer severed my links with—all of the network.”
“The moment reverberated . . . strongly,” he said. “Who was the Healer? Not—yos’Galan?”
“Indeed, yos’Galan,” she said, and smiled at the flicker of his disbelief.
Well, and who would not disbelieve it? Shan yos’Galan—the gentle Korval; soft-hearted and foolish; a mere Healer, and no threat to the Department. The very Department which had taken him at face value, failing to recall that a master trader cannot be a fool, and Korval’s master trader least of all.
“The half-breed fool has placed one—now two—potent weapons into the Department’s very core, which the Scouts, for all their cleverness, have not been able to do. As I said—diverting.”
“Ah,” said Fel Pin flatly.
She considered him on every level available to her. Trust had no place in the Department of the Interior, where control was everything. She had controlled Fel Pin, but they were also dramliz, and therefore she knew him in ways which were simply unavailable to those who lacked their gifts.
“There is news?” she asked him now.
He moved his shoulders.
“Not news. I only recall that Val Con yos’Phelium was a Scout, and that the Scouts did not protest his recruitment.”
The kettle whistled; she poured tea into cups and brought them to her desk.
“You believe that the Scouts placed all their tokens on one square?”
“I think it not impossible, and find it . . . amusing to dwell upon the data, which show us that the Plan had been proceeding with few setbacks . . . until Agent of Change yos’Phelium was placed into the field.”
He took his cup with a small, seated bow.
“I will forward my study set, if you have an interest.”
“Thank you,” she said, and sat down.
They sipped tea, and Fel Pin lowered his cup.
“Returning to your topic,” he said, “I fear that you have not the full count of our current knives. We hold many more than two.”
She froze in the act of putting her cup down, and brought her gaze to his face.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. He took a deep drink of tea, and leaned to put the cup on her desk.
“Zaylana, who had been stationed at the Ozpart Quick Strike Center, killed her section chief and ten of the strike team before she was neutralized. Veesha, who had been on-station to assist in retraining, influenced the surviving eight of the team to report a Scout attack which had been turned aside, though at cost. She is continuing to influence the survivors, awaiting, as she has it, orders.”
“Orders?”
“From yourself,” he said. “She—when the separation occurred, it was accompanied by a feeling that it had been you who had . . . liberated us. Veesha awaits your plan.”
“You did not think that I had a plan?”
“I—” He met her eyes. “I did not wish to be enslaved again.”
Truth once more, from the very core of him.
She inclined her head. “Well enough. What else?”
“The network is not intact. There are quiet zones; operatives who have yet to report. I have not sent out a general inquiry, fearing this might call attention from the shadows. An unusual number of attacks by Scouts has been reported, which, in turn, were unusually effective. One supposes from this that Zaylana was not the only one to have slaughtered those in her care, merely the only one who did so in the presence of a colleague who was moved to stop her.”
Tarona Rusk forced herself to pick up the cup, to sip tea; to remain serene, despite the excitement roiling in her blood.
“We have reports, through normal channels, that various of the . . . more vulnerable succumbed to separation trauma,” Fel Pin continued. “There may be one Luck left to us—or it may simply be that his team has not yet noticed his absence. We fare little better in our inventory of those talents who had been contributing their energies to the common core. The dormitory here was blighted, though the majority of our high-level talents survived the trauma with little more than a headache, accompanied by a fracture, which quickly healed itself.”
The higher levels would of course have had the ability to Heal themselves—in many of the higher talents, the ability was innate. But—
“You say the majority,” she said to Fel Pin.
He bowed his head.
“We lost two: Aei Vin and Sondi.”
Tarona Rusk frowned.
Aei Vin had been the first she had recruited to the Department’s cause; a Healer, but not strong. The ties that bound them had been close; yos’Galan’s Healing would have acted upon him as powerfully as it had upon her. It was entirely possible that the trauma had overcome him. Indeed, he must have dropped where he stood, never knowing that he had been struck.
This other loss, however . . .
“Sondi succumbed to separation trauma?” she asked, hearing disbelief in her voice. In terms of talent, and sheer power, Sondi had been very nearly her equal. That had been why Tarona had been so very careful to bind her, and with all of the strongest cords: passion, sex.
Love.
Fel Pin reached for his cup, keeping his eyes averted, and drank the tea to the dregs. She could feel his distress. Distress. Those in her network had not been so cold as the operatives in their care. They could not be and do what the Department required of them. But it had been a very long time since any of them had been . . . distressed.
“She . . . ”
Fel Pin met her eyes.
“She survived the trauma, Mistress. She survived the break, and Healed herself. What she did not survive was her memory.”
Tarona Rusk closed her eyes.
After a moment, Fel Pin cleared his throat. “She left a message, Mistress.”
“Did she? What was it?”
“‘You lied to me, Tarona.’”
It was said in all of Sondi’s voice, mimicry being one of Fel Pin’s lesser talents, and it stabbed her through the heart. Oh, yes, she had lied; she had rewoven reality and perception; she had made the bonds sweet, and tight.
And there was never a Healing or a linkage made that did not bind both.
“She killed herself, then.”
“Mistress, she did.”
She took a deep breath, shuddering, and deliberately put the pain aside. She was the author of a thousand and more betrayals, and what she had done to bind Sondi had not been the greatest of them.
“So then,” she said, straightening, “we move on. The Commander forwards a report concerning the sudden illness of dramliz corresponding with the shattering of the network. She suspects nothing?”
“Commander of Agents has given complete responsibility for the dramliz into the care of this department,” Fel Pin said slowly. “She is fully occupied in mobilizing an invasion. Also . . . ”
She considered him with interest.
“Go on.”
“The . . . current Commander has been experiencing some difficulty maintaining the transfer. She has called a Healer to her on several occasions.”
She stared at him.
“A Healer.”
“Just so.” Fel Pin returned her stare with a smile. “She has been very careful to ensure the loyalty of the Healer, and has not called the same twice. However, the Healer she had with her soon after the separation deemed it prudent that the Commander not take too much interest in the business of dramliz, and was able to influence her to be very busy with the invasion, and even more invested in Korval’s destruction.”
“She was able to do that? The Commander Template . . . ”
“ . . . made it, as I understood the message, very difficult to plant the suggestion, and the Healer was constrained to build onto a passion already in place. This she was able to do, however, and so we are, for the moment at least, beneath the Commander’s notice.”
“Where is she now, this Healer?” Tarona Rusk demanded. “I must see her, understand what she has learned. If we can subvert the Commander—”
But Fel Pin was holding up his hands, palms out.
“The Healer—Hosilee ver’Fonat—was of course put to death after the Commander was done with her. She happened also to be a match-telepath, so was able to transmit to her partner before she died.”
Of course, she thought. The new Commander might be troubled, undertrained, and unable to manage the download, but she would not be so foolish as to ignore basic security protocols.
She drew a breath.
“I see. I will wish to speak with Healer ver’Fonat’s partner, as soon as it may be safely arranged. What news of our teams sent to Colemeno?”
“No news, Mistress. I think we must assume that they did not survive.”
“Hah.” She closed her eyes briefly.
“Very well,” she said, after a moment. “We must ascertain how many we are, and where we are situated. I want reports from all dramliz in the network, including their condition, the condition of those under their care, and their operating plans, if any. If we attract shadows, we shall not hesitate to use extreme measures.
“It would seem, from the information in hand, that the larger enclaves of techs and support personnel, as well as the rest of the lightly conditioned, are in our hands. The agents and field operatives remain a challenge, but let us consolidate our victories first.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Fel Pin rose, bowed, and left her, the door closing smoothly behind him.
Alone, she leaned back in her chair, hearing Sondi’s voice once more:
You lied to me, Tarona.