Dragon and Judge

CHAPTER 10

With a start, Alison came awake.

For a moment she lay still, trying to figure out what had disturbed her. Beyond her closed eyelids the room was still dark, so it wasn't the false dawn Frost had programmed into the ship's mood lighting system to mark the beginning of ship's day. There were no sounds of movement, either, so Taneem wasn't off on one of her midnight wanderings around the room.

Taneem.

Alison reached into the neck of her nightshirt and touched her skin. A K'da in two-dimensional form didn't have much of a feel about her. But there was some, and that feel was very definitely not there.

She opened her mouth to call, then changed her mind. Hunching her way instead to the nightstand, she switched on the bedside light.

The lamp was set on low, though to darkness-adapted eyes it still was uncomfortably bright. She squinted away from it a moment until her pupils had adjusted, then gave the room a quick scan.

Taneem was nowhere to be seen. Swinging back the blankets, Alison got out of bed. Maybe the K'da was in the bathroom.

And then her eyes fell on the air system grille. Not fastened to the duct like it was supposed to be, but casually propped up against the wall.

Apparently, Taneem had decided to go off exploring.

One of the room's chairs had an especially high back. Dragging it over, Alison leaned it against the wall beneath the opening and climbed up. Carefully, she eased her head into the duct.

Nothing was visible. "Taneem?" she called as loudly as she dared.

There was no answer. Hopping down from the chair, she went to the desk and picked up her pocket flashlight.

And paused. All her tools and disguised burglar equipment were there, right where she'd left them. But the bag she'd taken from Virgil Morgan's Semaline lockbox was gone.

She turned back to the chair, stifling a curse. So that was what had happened. Frost had sent one of his goons in to steal Morgan's papers, and Taneem had woken up and decided to give chase.

The flashlight didn't show much more than Alison's unaided eyes had seen. The duct was still empty, as far as she could see in both directions.

And with that, she had no choice but to conclude that Taneem was on her own. The ducts were too small for Alison to get through, at least not without making a lot of noise. She was actually rather surprised that Taneem had managed it, though she'd noticed that K'da seemed as compressible in some ways as Earth cats.

She would just have to sit here and wait for Taneem to come back. And pray that the K'da wouldn't get spotted along the way.

In the meantime, there was the matter of the detached grille to deal with.

An examination of the corners showed that Taneem had removed the plate by the simple method of slicing through the bolts holding it in place. The tail ends of the bolts were still there, in fact, their now headless ends poking rather forlornly from their holes.

Removing the sheared bolts would be the easy part. Alison's multitool included a small set of needle-nose pliers that would do the job quickly and easily.

The problem was going to be finding something to replace them with. Climbing off the chair again, she turned on all the lights and started a tour of her room. Somewhere, she had to find four bolts—or at least two—that would fit the grille.

Unfortunately, the sheer luxury of the room was working against her. In a freighter or even a normal passenger liner there would be exposed deck or bulkhead plates with plenty of bolts to choose from. Here, all that had been discreetly tucked away beneath softwall and thick carpets.

Fortunately, the bed had been bolted to its pedestal with exposed screws of the right size. Picking four that wouldn't affect the bed's stability, she unfastened them and got them positioned in the corners of the grille.

And with that, there really was nothing she could do but wait. Ship's morning was nearly seven hours away, with Frost probably not stirring for another half hour after that.

But Taneem didn't have nearly that long. She had just six hours from whenever she'd left Alison's skin to return.

Because if she didn't, she would go two-dimensional anyway, and vanish into nothingness, and die.

Putting her flashlight up into the duct to give the wayward K'da something to aim for, Alison turned out the rest of the room's lights and got back into bed. She would not, she suspected grimly, get much more sleep tonight.

Don't panic.

Draycos had told her that himself, Taneem remembered, amid the terror and confusion of that last mad rush through the Rho Scorvi forest. Disobeying her instructions to stay in the rear with Jack, she'd run ahead to the front of the pack, mindlessly trying to get as far away from the danger as she could.

She would have gone even farther, probably, all the way to the river and certain death. But Draycos had seen her, and come over to try to soothe her fears. Don't panic, he'd said. Panic freezes the will and darkens the mind and weakens the muscles. Remember this song.

She frowned suddenly. A song?

Yes. There had been a song, now that she thought about it. A simple little song he'd sung to her as they ran. How had that gone?

Yes, that was how it had gone. Odd that she'd forgotten about it until now. Maybe it was this fresh panic that had brought it to mind.

Maybe that was what Draycos had intended, in fact. That it would return to comfort her when it was needed.

And to her mild surprise, it had worked. Her scales, which had been starting to turn black as fear pumped extra blood into her muscles, had already faded back to their normal gray. A nice color, the odd thought ran through her mind, though not nearly as noble and distinctive as Draycos's own golden scales.

As noble and distinctive as Draycos himself. She could only bless her good fortune to have him as a friend.

She took a deep breath, exhaling away the last of the fear. Panic darkens the mind. Thanks to Alison and Draycos and Jack, she now had a perfectly good mind.

It was time she started using it.

Silently, she backed away from the food preparation area, stretching out with all her senses. Sight was of limited use to her right now, but she hadn't lost her sense of touch or hearing or smell. Somewhere in this root-tangle of ducts were the clues she needed to get her back to Alison.

And suddenly she had it. The low rumble of the ship's engines had been behind her as she left their room. She could sense that same rumble now, much softer than it had been then.

But instead of being in front of her, as it should be, it was coming from her left. Somehow, on her way back, she must have made a wrong turn to her right.

She also hadn't yet passed through the extra-warm area she'd noticed on her way out. She needed to find a left-hand turn, then possibly backtrack a little until she found that spot.

It was still a little scary. But at least now she had a plan. Easing past the food preparation room, she headed toward the next turning spot.

The plan worked. Three turns and four ducts later she was back on track. She knew she was back, because now that she was concentrating she found she could smell Alison's scent on the breeze moving across her snout.

Five minutes later, she turned one final corner to see a small flashlight illuminating the duct and the open space where a grille should be.

Thirty seconds later, she was home.

She had expected Alison to be furious with her, especially after spending so much time being lost. To her relief, her host turned out to be mostly just glad she was back safely.

Though Taneem could tell she was a little angry.

"For starters, someone might have seen you," Alison told Taneem as she fastened the grille back in place. "There are also a lot of very unpleasant things that could have happened to you in there."

"It seemed safe enough," Taneem said.

"That's because everything was running smoothly," Alison said. "If, say, there'd been a drop in air pressure—for any reason—there are a whole set of hidden sealant doors that would have kicked in across the ducts, cutting the whole system into a bunch of small pieces. You'd have been trapped in one of them until they'd fixed whatever the problem was."

She eyed Taneem over her shoulder. "That's assuming you weren't unlucky enough to have been in the way of one of the doors when they slammed shut," she added. "In that case, you'd probably have been cut in half. You understand?"

"Yes," Taneem said. In truth, she only understood about half of what Alison had just said. But she got the idea. "I won't go off like that again. I'm sorry."

"I just don't want you getting hurt," Alison said in a gentler tone. Finishing with the last bolt, she hopped down from the chair and ran her hand along the side of Taneem's neck. "If for no other reason than that Draycos would kill me if you did."

"He wouldn't do such a thing," Taneem insisted. A shiver ran through her. "Though even if he wished to, he might never have the chance," she added quietly. "What I heard just now—"

"Hold that thought," Alison interrupted. Picking up the chair, she lugged it back to its usual place and then put her tools away. "Let's get back under the blankets," she said, holding out her hand toward Taneem as she headed back to the bed. "Then you can tell me all about it."

Alison listened in silence as Taneem described the conversation she'd overheard between Frost and Neverlin. "Okay," she said when Taneem had finished. "So they're going to test me. No big deal."

"Yet it worries me," Taneem said. "They have had over four months to open the safes, yet they're still searching for someone to do the job. Are you truly better than all the others who do this sort of thing?"

Alison grimaced. "Not even close," she admitted. "Even Jack's better at it than I am."

"What will they do if you fail?"

Alison had been trying hard not to think about that possibility. "I won't fail," she said firmly. "For one thing, my father trained me himself, and he is one of the best in the business."

"The business of theft."

"Everyone has to make a living," Alison said. "Besides, none of the people he targets will even miss what he takes." Which was not, of course, strictly true. In fact, even non-strictly it wasn't true. But there was no reason to burden Taneem with any more truth than she was already stuck with. "Besides, I have a secret weapon," she said instead. "You."

"Me?"

"Exactly," Alison said. "You and that K'da trick where you lean off your host's back and look through a wall."

"Over a wall," Taneem murmured.

"Whatever," Alison said. "The point is that you'll be able to get a look at the actual lock mechanism, which is something none of the other safecrackers will have had."

"But I know nothing of such mechanisms."

"That won't matter," Alison said, frowning in the darkness. "Well, no, actually you're right. You'll be able to draw me a better picture if you know at least the basics."

"We have only four days," Taneem reminded her.

"No problem," Alison assured her, trying to hide her own misgivings. It had taken her two whole years to learn these skills.

But then, Taneem wasn't going to have to actually open the safe. "First thing tomorrow, we start your lessons," she told the K'da. "In the meantime—" She yawned wide enough to hear her jaw crack. "I'm going back to sleep. Pleasant dreams."

"Yes," Taneem murmured. "And to you."