The Encoded Heart Read online

  Suddenly, everything about the Keep made a sickening kind of sense. The paintings in the gallery, centuries of Magisters modelling themselves on their long-dead progenitor. The pseudo-historical fashions, languid cruelty and callous disregard for life hiding behind paint and powder. The drugs, pervading all levels of Magadani society so completely that they were given out like candy. All of it stemmed from one man, one name.

  Red closed her eyes, wincing at her own stupidity. Of course, the drugs!

  Losen had drugged her.

  That touch upon her shoulder, the itch. He must have stuck her with a needle, one so fine she hadn't even felt it go in, and introduced a narcotic compound into her bloodstream. And the next thing she knew she was swanning round this ridiculous party, dressed up like a fool, thinking herself free for a night when in fact she was just as much a prisoner as before.

  She turned smoothly on her heels, and before Losen could react or cry out she had him by the lapels, swinging him over into the air and down onto the wall, halfway over the balcony. She felt a movement of air behind her and kicked out, sending the guard-sylph spinning across the marble.

  Losen was struggling, eyes wide with terror, looking down over a drop of a hundred metres or more.

  Red shook him. "You snecking son of a bitch. You even think about putting another needle in me, and I'll rip your guts out with my bare teeth."

  "I never-"

  She didn't let him finish the denial, just heaved him slightly further over the drop. "Don't try. If I ever see you again, I'll kill you. You know I'll do it, and you know I'll be smiling when I do."

  With that, she dragged him upright, planted a kiss on his clammy forehead, and threw him into the fountains.

  Vulpus was standing as if frozen. She winked at him. "Thanks for the drink, Wolfie."

  And she ran.

  Perhaps if the Grand Keep hadn't been filled to the brim with narcotics of every description, Red would have found it harder to believe that her old enemy, the Gothking, had led the people that would one day evolve into the Magadani. But now that she knew some of the history behind this place, they conformed to her memories of him perfectly.

  The Magadani's reverence for him made her smile, though. Simon D'Isis had built an empire on the sale of illicit drugs, and one toxic little planet in the middle of nowhere would be nothing to him. There must have been something he wanted from the place, back in the dim and distant past, but in all likelihood D'Isis had visited the world once when the first drugs factories were being set up, and then promptly forgotten it. If his memory was revered by the people that lived here, then more fool them; there must have been a hundred worlds that bore his mark.

  A movement ahead of her brought her back to the present with a jolt. A dozen sylphs stood in silent formation between her and the elevator doors, and every one of them was dressed in midnight blue.

  Red slowed. "Get out of the way," she growled.

  None of them moved. Red stopped where she was, unwilling to go straight through the servants without at least giving them a chance. Something about these wordless, impossibly beautiful creatures was both pathetic and deeply worrying.

  She put herself in front of the nearest, a blonde with fashion-model cheekbones beneath her empty eyes. "Look, I don't know why you serve these people, or even if you've got a choice. But I'm going into that lift. If I have to go through you to get there, I'll do it."

  The sylphs stayed where they were. Then one of them reached for her.

  She ducked the grab, slapped the hand away and heard a bone break as she connected. One sylph staggered back, and then the others were all over her.

  They were quick, much more so that she had been expecting. Her next few blows didn't even strike; the silent guards simply moved fluidly around her fists, leaping away if she got too close, reaching in and then darting out of range. Red changed tactics, kicking the legs from under one woman, knocking another cold with a blow to the back of her neck.

  Now she had the hang of it. She rolled her head around, hearing the clicks as she loosened her stance.

  She'd spent too long fighting shocktroopers, brutish men who traded speed for raw power and the protection of heavy armour. These sylphs were a different proposition entirely. One blow in the right place and they were out for the count, but actually getting a punch to land was the hard part.

  Red traded a lightning series of strikes and parries with one, then got a straight-arm into the man's sternum and sent him skidding away on his backside. Another leapt in from her left, making her duck to avoid a blow, before she swept his legs away and punched him hard on the way down. A woman came up from behind, another to her right - Red blocked their flurry of kicks with her shins and forearms, and put her steel-tipped boots to good use, breaking a kneecap, a thighbone, a hip.

  She found herself hoping that wounded sylphs weren't just taken out and shot, like racing beasts.

  Perhaps the thought distracted her, or maybe Losen's drugs had slowed her up. But it was then that one of the sylphs got close enough to scratch at her.

  Red whipped aside, her hand coming up to the place on her cheek where the sylph's nail had broken her skin. There was fire in that small wound. Suddenly, all the fight was gone from her. She slumped back against the nearest wall, gasping.

  More drugs. The Grand Keep was a catalogue of toxins.

  She waited for the sylphs to press their attack, but instead they just moved aside. Only the one who had scratched her - the woman with the cheekbones - moved forward, in order to take her arm in a gentle grip. Red didn't even have the strength to pull away.

  She heard footsteps, and raised her heavy head to see who was coming. She was less than surprised to see Lord Vulpus striding purposefully down the corridor towards her.

  As he drew close, he nodded to the woman who had Red's arm. "Well done, Lise. Do make sure you clean that nail, though, won't you?"

  "Vulpus," Red slurred. "Losen was right about you bastards..."

  "He was indeed." He leaned close, and smiled. Small fangs gleamed. "In answer to your previous questions; yes, I am dangerous, and yes, you should have been careful. Oh, and Vulpus is no more a real name than Lady Nightshade."

  What was it Losen had called him? "Sorrelier..."

  "Sire Vaide Sorrelier, third dominus of the citadel of Cados. Thanks to you."

  She let her head fall forward again. It was hard to keep upright. "Me?"

  "Oh yes, Durham Red, I owe you a very great deal. You raised me two full levels, before you slipped my grasp. Oh, and just because I lost you at Biblos doesn't mean you'll escape me again." He grinned, fangs shining. "Third time lucky, eh?"

  10. TIME TO FLY

  There had been times, in the past few weeks, when Vaide Sorrelier had almost given in to despair. It was a common enough affliction among those of his kind, especially the domini, and once it took hold it was difficult to shake off. More than one Dominus had left Cados the hard and fast way - out through one of the flight harbours or observation decks, plummeting straight down to the ground far below.

  Sorrelier had never seriously considered taking his own life. He had far too many scores to settle before his time was up. But there had been nights spent lying awake in the cold darkness, with Lise at his side, when the problems of life without Durham Red had seemed almost insurmountable.

  By the Prime, anyone would think he was in love with the creature.

  He ran his tongue over the tips of his fangs and smiled to himself, sparing the mutant a sideways glance. She was a pathetic, ridiculous sight, gasping and shaking as the drug coursed along her neural pathways, only keeping upright with the help of the sylphs on either side. Without the chemical in her she could have shrugged their grasp away with ease, but the scratch on her cheek had restrained her more effectively than chains or shackles could ever do. Not for the first time, Sorrelier congratulated himself on the drug's design.

  Even her eyes were moving sluggishly in their sockets.

  Still, t
here would be time to admire his handiwork later, and in safer surroundings. The surveillance visulas in this area had suffered a fortuitous failure just a few minutes before his sylphs had assembled, but he couldn't be certain they would stay offline for much longer. It was time to be gone.

  He walked briskly to where the fight had taken place. He could see three of his servants shaking themselves awake as he approached; the mutant had knocked them senseless, but refrained from damaging them further. Three others were not so lucky. One had a broken arm, which could be dealt with later, but there were two who would require surgery if they were ever to walk again. Had they possessed voices, Sorrelier knew that the halls would be echoing with their screams, but instead they writhed in mute, shivering distress.

  He gazed down at them for a moment, deciding whether or not they were worth saving, quickly coming to the conclusion they were not. He gestured at a couple of his upright sylphs, and within moments the broken ones were being dragged away.

  At his signal, the remainder hauled Durham Red into the elevator.

  Sorrelier went in last, checking one final time to make sure they hadn't been observed. The mutant, he observed as the doors closed, had her eyes shut, and she was shaking her head violently, as if trying to clear the sluggishness from her brain.

  "I wouldn't bother," he told her. "It's a neural inhibitor. The production of acetylcholine along your neural pathways is being modified. Not blocked, obviously. I wouldn't want your heart to stop now, would I?"

  "Obviously," she snarled, the word slurring from her lips. She opened her eyes and glared at him. "How long?"

  "Oh, until I give you the antidote." He turned briefly to the elevator's control panel, setting the controls to take them down several strata, towards the eastern flight harbour. "If I decide to. I must admit, you're far less trouble now."

  There was a pause. The mutant must have been searching for something clever to say, but she'd lost the knack of it. A muffled "Bollocks," was all she could muster.

  Sorrelier couldn't help but chuckle. "You know, I'm sure that's just what you said to me the first time we met. Not that you'd remember that, of course."

  During the time Durham Red had been held by the Osculem Cruentus she had been a source of exquisite product. The drugs fashioned from her distilled spinal fluids had been of a quality almost unheard of in the Grand Keep; not since the days of the Prime himself had such chemicals been available. Stimulants, calmers, sexual enhancers, even poisons of sublime subtlety, Sorrelier had fashioned them all from what the Osculem sent him, and the money and prestige they brought him had raised him two entire rungs up the ladder of dominance.

  That was when Sorrelier's taste for power had truly become a hunger. When Red had escaped the Osculem Cruentus - a mistake that their high-priest had paid for dearly - that hunger had almost overcome him. Now she was back in his power, it might finally be sated.

  Suitably restrained, and regularly milked, she would provide him with the means to rise higher and faster than any Dominus in Magadani history. His great plan, placed on hold ever since the cultists had let her slip away, would be back on track within a month.

  And as for any remaining debt, he'd not even had to pay that incompetent Ketta. She had vanished while following Losen's ship, and had never made it through the gate. It was bad news for her, very good for Sorrelier. And Saleph Losen, the cocksure little snake, had done all Sorrelier's work for him.

  The elevator shivered to a halt. The doors slid apart, letting in cool air, and the smell of fuel.

  Sorrelier stepped out, looking left and right, then motioned for the sylphs to follow quickly. Like most of the areas beneath the five towers, the flight harbours were open to Magadani of any citadel, but the sight of a Cadosi Dominus and his entourage carting a drugged mutant around would draw attention anywhere. Sorrelier was anxious to avoid that kind of curiosity.

  He took a linker from his robes, and spoke quietly into its pickup. "Rimail?"

  "Here, sire." He had left Rimail to ready Pinnacle, his personal schooner. "Do we have a cargo to transport?"

  "We do. And slightly less in the way of passengers, more's the pity."

  "Think of the saving on fuel, sire."

  Sorrelier grinned, and shut the linker off. Pinnacle was docked close by, on one of the lower deck levels.

  It wasn't a long walk to the schooner. He set off briskly, knowing that Lise would keep the mutant and the other sylphs close by him.

  The flight harbour was a stark, functional place, little more than a maze of decks and launch-cradles, ramps and stairways. It was home, however, to some of the most advanced pieces of technology Magadan could muster; all manner of vessels rested here, from short-ranged fliers to massive harvester gunships, and each was a thing of elegance and perfection.

  Dozens of technicians worked on the decks, along with hundreds of sylphs. Despite his growing impatience, Sorrelier took a circuitous route from the elevator to Pinnacle that avoided most of the Trawden artisans. Losen would have his own sylphs out looking for the mutant, and Sorrelier had no intention of advertising his new acquisition just yet. The time would come for that, once the milking had begun.

  He reached a balcony, overlooking several schooner-class berths. The closest one was occupied, the glass-nosed torpedo of Pinnacle filling it from end to end. The schooner's wings were folded back into its sleek hull, and the refuelling ducts were already retracted. Rimail had played his part; as soon as the passengers and cargo were aboard, Pinnacle could be out of the launch tube in moments.

  They were alone on the balcony. Sorrelier stopped at the rail, and drew Lise aside. "Make sure she's secured as soon as we get her aboard," he told her. "This is going to be a short flight, but a swift one. I don't want her blundering about in the cabin and hurting herself-"

  There was a noise behind him, a sudden, meaty impact. It cut him off mid-sentence, and made him turn, just in time to see the sylph to Durham Red's left sliding bonelessly to the ground.

  Sorrelier tried to shout a warning, but before the words were out of his throat the mutant had torn herself free of the other sylph holding her, swinging the unfortunate slave about before felling him with the least cultured, yet most effective headbutt Sorrelier had ever seen. Blood spattered high into their air as their skulls met.

  There had been nothing sluggish about those actions, nothing remotely like the moves of a woman whose nervous system was doused with neural inhibitors. Impossibly, the mutant was free of the drug, and she was free of the sylphs, too. The one she had butted had gone down like an empty sack. Sorrelier didn't even have time to avoid the gush of blood from the man's shattered face before she was on him.

  He saw Lise flung aside, and raised an arm to protect himself, but it was only halfway up when the mutant struck him a sweeping blow that thrust him, with agonising force, into the handrail. He rebounded, too shocked by the pain even to cry out, and slammed down onto the mesh. The mutant drew back a foot and kicked him under the rail.

  He rolled with the kick, off the balcony and into space.

  A deck came up and hit him, hard, in the side. The impact tore a cry from him, and he turned over, expecting the mutant to be leaping down on top of him. Instead he saw her slender shape darting away, barrelling down a ramp to one of the centre decks and out of sight.

  He groaned, and spat blood. There was a fire in his chest, along his ribs. He wondered if any had been broken by the impact of the handrail, or the kick that followed it.

  Sorrelier was aware that Durham Red was quite capable, in normal circumstances, of kicking his head clean off his shoulders. The very fact that he was alive meant that either the mutant was still weakened by the drug, or she had restrained her blows.

  Had Vaide Sorreilier been a betting man, he would definitely have laid money on the former.

  He cursed, and struggled into a sitting position. As he did so, Lise landed on the mesh next to him, dropping into a crouch. She reached for him, but he waved her away, and p
ulled the linker from his robes. "Rimail, she's running. Do you see her?"

  "Sire, are you-"

  "By the Prime, tell me you see her!"

  "I have her on visula, sire."

  Sorrelier raised a hand, and Lise took it, helping him to his feet. "Good. Keep her there. I'm coming aboard."

  The deck where he had fallen was much closer to Pinnacle's entrance hatch than the balcony; Durham Red had done him that small favour, it seemed. Sorrelier and Lise were inside the schooner in moments, locking the hatch behind them.

  Sorrelier left Lise and stumbled forward, along the main corridor and into the cockpit. "Our cargo is more resilient than I'd anticipated, Rimail. Where is she?"

  Rimail spared him a concerned glance as he entered, but quickly returned his attention to the visula screens. He knew better than to fuss at such a time. "She's heading for the skiffs, sire. Some artisans tried to stop her, but she went through them without slowing."

  "I share their pain." Sorrelier glared at a technician until the man got out of his seat, then dropped into it. "Show me."

  Rimail angled a screen towards him. There, clear on the visula disc, was Durham Red, stalking between rows of gravity skiffs. "What's the bitch doing?"

  "Choosing one she likes, I think."

  Sure enough, she was reaching down to the cockpit cover of a golden airboat, sliding it back. Sorrelier watched her jump inside it, and groaned. No one had told her how they worked. "That lethal idiot is actually going to try and fly out of here, isn't she?"

  "It looks that way, sire."

  "Inform the harbour master. Tell him to get the tubes locked down, or I'll be eating my evening meal out of his brainpan."

  Rimail's eyebrows went up under the peak of his cap. "Sire?"

  "Yes, I know it's stupid! Tell him anyway - if she gets out of the tube we'll be lucky to get her back in pieces."

  With that, Sorrelier sat back in the technician's seat and put a hand to his face, probing the bruises that flowered there, despair welling up in him once more. He'd been so close. The bitch had actually been in his grasp - as had the future, however briefly.