Well of Souls Read online

  Gently, she probed the wound. As soon as she peeled the edges apart, Halak moaned.

  “No,” he said, his voice barely audible. His face had gone so pale his eyes looked like sunken, dark pits in a field of dusky chalk. “No, leave it, leave it, stop…”

  “Quiet,” Batra said. “I have to see how bad.”

  Halak subsided into silence. The small muscles along his jaw jerked and quivered as she moved her fingers over the wound. She breathed out. The wound wasn’t gaping, probably because the knife was sharp. Her eyes roved the fabric of the tunic. Its edges were not frayed, so the knife hadn’t been serrated. That was good, and in that, he’d been lucky. A serrated edge would have snagged on the way out, ripping and tearing at Halak’s flesh and causing more damage.

  Think, think, what’s there? Her mind worked over what she knew. She remembered enough basic anatomy—comparative xenozoology had been a required course for her undergraduate work—and the most vulnerable organ in the path of the knife would have been Halak’s right kidney. She didn’t think the knife had gone in that deeply, but it was sharp enough to slice through fabric without fraying the edges. It couldn’t have been a stiletto either, because the wound was a slash not a puncture. Probably curved. Her eyes ran over the wound track. And very sharp.

  She paused, her fingers poised over Halak’s skin. “I’ve got to pull the edges apart and see how deep.”

  “Go,” said Halak. His voice came out as more of a grunt, and shiny beads of perspiration sprouted along his forehead and trickled in rivulets down his cheeks. “But hu…hurry. Not sure I can…stay…stay conscious…we’ve got…we’ve got….” He broke off, panting, unable to finish.

  “I know. We’ve got to get off the street,” said Batra. She licked her lips. “Hang on.”

  She eased the cut edges of his skin apart. They came away with a slight, moist, sucking sound. As if a stopper had been pulled, dark red blood gushered out and spilled down along Halak’s side to soak into the waistband of his trousers. But, as Batra watched, the flow diminished to a thick, steady stream. Not pulsing, so no arteries had been cut. Batra’s careful eyes inspected the wound. There was a thin ridge of fat, stained orange, just beneath Halak’s skin, and she saw where the knife had sliced through muscle. She couldn’t tell, but she didn’t think the knife had hit his kidney or gone into his abdomen.

  “How…how bad?” Halak whispered.

  “Bad,” said Batra. She rolled his tunic back over the wound. “Not as bad as it could be. But we’ll need a doctor to know for sure and…”

  “No. No doctor. Dalal…not that…far….”

  “Dalal?” Batra was astonished. “Samir, you need to see a doctor!”

  “No,” said Halak. His throat worked in a painful swallow. “No, it’s not that bad. We need to get to Dalal and then get…get out…out of here.”

  Batra opened her mouth to protest but didn’t. She didn’t have a prayer of getting out of the district alone. If they’d looked like victims for the coyotes before, now she’d have to fend off the vultures. Her alert eyes darted up and down the alley then up to scour the face of the tenements. All the windows were closed, their shutters drawn, or polarizing filters—why would you need polarizing filters in a dark alley?—dialed to maximum opaqueness.

  No one peeping out to see what all the fuss is about. Probably because in a place like this, no one hears a thing.

  Then her ears pricked. She listened, hard, and heard the sound again: a slight scraping, like the edge of a box being dragged on gravel.

  Behind, and to the left. Barely breathing, she eased out the phaser tucked in her waistband with her right hand.

  The sound came again.

  The muscles of her haunches tensed, ready to spring. Batra pivoted, slowly, the phaser up, ready….

  A wave of relief flowed through her limbs, leaving her weak and shaking. The man she’d put down with her phaser blast was starting to come around. She watched as his head moved feebly from side to side, and then, as his right leg flexed, bent at the knee, and then extended, the mystery of the gravel noise was solved: his shoe, scudding along stone.

  Quickly, her eyes shifted to the one Halak had knocked out. He lay, unmoving, twins gouts of blood streaming from his nostrils.

  Well, if one was coming around, it was high time for her and Halak to get gone. Batra swiped up her discarded pouch from where the third one had dropped it and tucked the phaser inside. As she turned, she caught a glint of metal in the gutter alongside the man’s body. The knife. Quickly, she scuttled over, plucking the gored blade from a slurry of gray mud and stagnant water. She wiped the blade clean on his pantaloons then tucked it into her waistband.

  Halak was still hunched, almost doubled over. She dropped to a crouch alongside. “Samir,” she said, her tone urgent, “we have to go. Can you stand?”

  He nodded. She moved around to his right side, planted her left shoulder into his right armpit, and helped him to his feet. He sagged; his tunic was clammy with sweat, and her skin crawled at the sticky feel of fresh blood oozing from the wound in his side.

  “Samir,” she said, working to keep her voice calm, “Samir, which way? How far?”

  For a moment, she thought he’d passed out, and she had to repeat the question twice before he answered. Then his eyelids fluttered.

  “That way,” he managed to say, lifting his chin in the general direction in which they’d been heading. “Halfway down…on the le…left.” He stammered out the number of the tenement.

  They headed out, Batra staggering under Halak’s weight that seemed to grow heavier with every step. Please. Her breath came in gasps, and she had a hard time keeping her footing on the slick stones. She wasn’t a religious woman, but she found herself offering up a prayer to whatever god might be watching over them now. Please, just let Halak live and please, just get us to this woman Dalal, and then we’ll do the rest, that’s all I ask.

  She had no idea what that rest would be. At the moment, she didn’t think it mattered.

  Chapter 6

  Staring into the blank screen that had held his mother’s face moments before, Jase Garrett wasn’t sure what to do next. Part of him wanted to scream. Sure, he’d met a couple of her crew and they were nice, but maybe that was because he was the captain’s kid. But when his mother started getting all reasonable, when she acted so grown-up and like she had to go take care of all these adults who were acting like kids, he just wanted to haul off and yell and scream and stamp his feet: I’m more important! I don’t care what you have to do, I don’t care how important you are because you should love me more than you love them, because I’m your kid, not them !

  He didn’t say any of that, of course, and his mother wasn’t a telepath, like his dad and his Nan, the one on Betazed. So that was kind of a relief because that meant he could scream in his head as much as he wanted and not have to worry about making his mother upset. But he meant what he’d said to her now. His dad was really angry, because his dad was really sad, just like him, and so part of him wanted to cry, too. Jase drew in a deep, tremulous breath, and felt that peculiar, itchy sting in his nose that warned him he’d do just that if he weren’t careful. He was twelve, nearly a man, and men didn’t cry, or miss their mothers. He had to be brave and pretend that these little things like his mother missing his birthday, or not calling for weeks, sometimes months at a time didn’t matter. The way his dad pretended. So crying wouldn’t be good for anybody. He lived with his dad now, all the time, and he didn’t want to make it hard for his dad because then his dad might not let him come with him on digs and stuff. His dad needed him to be brave….

  “It’s hard,” said Ven Kaldarren. His tone was gentle. “Sometimes being brave is acknowledging that you’re not.”

  Jase looked over at his father, who was still standing just off to one side, opposite the viewscreen so Jase’s mother hadn’t been able to see him. “What?”

  “Being brave isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

&
nbsp; “I don’t understand.” Jase balled a fist against one eye and scrubbed hard, but his fist came away wet. “Is that what happened with you and Mom?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, did you decide that you couldn’t be brave anymore?”

  “In what way?”

  Jase chewed on the inside of his lower lip. Words were so hard sometimes. He wished he could just think what he wanted, pretend that there was an invisible link between his brain and his father’s mind, the way a computer downloaded information.

  “Well, waiting, I guess,” said Jase, and then it was as if an invisible spigot in his mind had turned on and the words came pouring out, like water. “Waiting for Mom to come home, I mean. It was, like, you could keep pretending that having her around didn’t matter, and so that’s how you were playing at being brave when what was really braver was being able to tell her that you couldn’t wait around anymore. It was braver to tell her you were sad and angry than it was to keep pretending it didn’t matter that she loved Starfleet more than she loved you.”

  Jase saw Kaldarren’s eyes change and turn inward, as if his father were staring into a deep well somewhere inside. Jase felt a hitch in his chest.

  “Sorry,” said Jase, quickly, wanting to make things better. He was so stupid. No wonder his parents got divorced, with such a dumb kid. Jase knew: He was the reason they fought. Before they divorced, they fought all the time over him, and after, they’d fought over where he was supposed to live. Not that it made any sense: There was no place on his mom’s ship for a kid. But Jase didn’t understand why his mom fought so hard about having him go live with her family on Earth instead of his dad’s on Betazed. She didn’t even like her family. Well—Jase picked at a cuticle on his thumb—she didn’t like her mother. Actually, neither did Jase. Every time his mom’s mom looked at him, he figured he’d done something wrong, because her mouth was always so pinched and tight, like she’d been sucking lemons.

  A shadow crossed Kaldarren’s face. “Sorry. What are you sorry about?”

  Jase hunched one shoulder. “I dunno. Stupid stuff.”

  “No, stop that. You’re not stupid.” Kaldarren walked over to the boy and put his hand on Jase’s shoulder. Jase felt his father’s hand tremble a little, and he wondered if maybe his father would cry after all.

  “You’re not stupid,” said Kaldarren, his voice firm even if his hand was not. “Don’t ever say that about yourself. And don’t apologize for how you feel. Your feelings are yours, Jase, and they’re as important as anyone else’s. Your mother’s, mine,” he ran his thumb along the soft down on Jase’s cheek, “just as important. Both of us want what’s best for you.”

  “If that’s true,” said Jase, “then why did you and Mom divorce? If you and Mom care so much about me, why aren’t you still married?” It was a question that had no answer. Jase knew it, but he asked anyway.

  To his credit, Kaldarren didn’t try to provide a definitive answer. “We just aren’t, Jase. Things do change, and I know that sounds trite, but it’s true. It’s like growing up and realizing that you like a certain vegetable you hated when you were a child. Things change. People change. In the best of all possible worlds, people should be able to change and adapt to each other. That’s what marriage is supposed to be about.”

  “Then how come you didn’t?”

  Kaldarren inhaled a deep breath then let it out in a long sigh. “I wish I knew. I guess the best answer I can come up with is that, somewhere along the way, your mother and I lost sight of each other. You know that old Earth saying, out of sight, out of mind? It’s supposed to mean that when something’s not right in front of you all the time, you tend to forget about it. In a marriage, even when two people are apart, they should still be able to hold a picture of the other person in their head, so that the other person is always in sight, someone to be aware of and know is there.”

  “So who lost sight of who?”

  “Whom,” Kaldarren corrected, absently, then moved his hand to riffle his son’s black hair. “Sorry. Parents can be pretty annoying.”

  Especially when all your problems are because of their problems. Quickly, Jase clamped down on that thought; he didn’t think his dad would read his mind, but he wasn’t quite sure. There had been times on Betazed, before the divorce, when he’d heard his dad’s voice in his head, only faintly like a dying echo. (Like the time Jase had come downstairs because he was certain his parents were fighting, only he found them sitting in the dark, at the kitchen table, the air alive with silent shouts in that terrible, black stillness. And the way Jase had peered around the doorjamb, his panicked thoughts—no, no, no, no, this is my fault, they wouldn’t fight if it weren’t for me!—tumbling like rocks down a mountain in an avalanche. Only then his father had peered through the gloom, as if he’d known Jase was there, and Jase remembered hearing his father’s voice in his head, quite distinctly: No, son, don’t do that to yourself; this isn’t your fault.)

  Now, Jase shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  Kaldarren’s left eyebrow twitched with skepticism. “Well, anyway, I guess you’d say we lost sight of each other. I don’t know who did it first, but the point is that it happened, and we’ve tried to learn from it and not lose sight of you. That’s why I was angry with your mother just now, because I think she slipped a little.”

  She slipped a lot, thought Jase. A lot a lot.

  Kaldarren cocked his head to one side and fixed Jase with those eyes of his. “And I’m working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” he continued. “But I’m sorry we’ve hurt you. I’m sorry for all the times you’ve been hurt and for all the times to come, in life, when you will be hurt, by us or someone else. But I can’t pad the world’s corners for you, Jase. I wish I could, but I can’t. But we’ll…I’ll do my best not to let that happen again, but…I’m sorry, son.”

  “Yeah,” said Jase, his lips wobbling. Now the tears did come. “Me, too.”

  You hypocrite. Kaldarren stared at his reflection in the blank viewscreen, and he saw his lips curl with self-loathing. You’re a damned hypocrite.

  Ven Kaldarren sat, alone. His son had left: to go for a walk, Jase said. Kaldarren let him escape. The ship (no name, no registry, the better to disappear with, my dear) was small, but Jase liked walking, and he’d done a lot of it when they lived on Betazed. Kaldarren remembered that when he and Rachel fought, Jason would leave and circle around a small lake close by the house. Kaldarren knew this lake—more of a large pond, really—and it had very blue water, alive with skating water bugs and fish that leapt after insects flitting over the water. In the center of the lake was an island carpeted with katarian emerald grass and feathered with tall rushes and frilled tassels. There were also trees on this very tiny island—Betazoid weeping willows, and strombolian firs that vibrated in the wind and produced a clear, clean melody, like bells.

  Kaldarren suspected Jase enjoyed the lake because of a pair of flanarian birds that had staked out the island. The flanarians were a little like Earth’s Canadian geese, except their feathers were cobalt-blue, their faces starkly white like bald eagles, and their feet a bright ibis-orange. Flanarian birds, like geese and Vulcan mah-tor-pahlahs, mated for life, and this particular pair produced a new brood every year. Kaldarren had often sat on shore and watched as the parents tended their troublesome young, circling around in the water to pick up a straggler, or waiting for any that lagged behind.

  “No one left behind,” Kaldarren whispered now. He sighed and felt his heart twist with remorse. “I’m sorry, Jase.”

  Touching the boy while the air had been so charged with emotion had been a mistake, and a blessing. He’d felt Jase’s hurt flood through him like a sudden gush of scalding water. How sad his son was. Kaldarren’s heart tugged with pity. Physical contact always enhanced his telepathic abilities, and he knew what Jase did not: The boy’s empathic abilities were getting stronger. Eerie, sometimes, how on the mark the boy was, could be. What Jase had said to his mo
ther, about Kaldarren’s anger and sorrow—it was uncannily accurate.

  Have to watch that. He’s still just a little boy, and it’s up to me to protect him.

  The thought made his stomach sour. What a self-serving hypocrite he was. If protecting Jase was his first priority, what was he doing with the boy on this ship?

  No. Kaldarren walled off those thoughts, practiced a mental exercise of visualizing an airlock, in vacuum, and then shoving his secret thoughts in there: Telepathic Privacy 101. He couldn’t afford to think about these things around Jase. Jase might not be a telepath (or was he, could he be?), but Kaldarren worried that his secrets might leak around the edges for his son to pick up.

  Or Rachel. She used to be very good at reading you, once, and you encouraged that, didn’t you? Much more intimate that way. Of course, such intimacy was normal between mates, and more so when one of them was a telepath, as if close proximity revealed new talents the nontelepathic partner had never been aware of. (How else to explain how long-term mates could finish each other’s sentences?) But seeing Garrett, even at a remove, always upset him. So many memories and feelings, and things past tangled with things in the present, like some crazy spider’s web. He wanted to hate her, just hate her, because pure, unadulterated hate would be so much simpler.

  But you didn’t catch her in bed with another man. She was faithful in her way. You just figured out she was more in love with a thing than with you.

  And even if he had found her with a lover, would things have been different? Maybe: The idea of her body in another man’s arms made him ill. Yes, he’d hate her if that had happened, but he would love her still and so he did now. She was the only woman whose neck he’d love to break and whose lips he longed to press to his.

  So why had he called? Just to torture himself? Her? Kaldarren rejected both, but he wondered all the same. Maybe it had been a mistake to call—look what that stirred up, threatening to drag her back to court—and, at the same time, he thought that perhaps he’d called because he wanted her to ask questions, maybe even stop him from following the course he was now. Rachel Garrett’s common sense was a universal constant, like the speed of light, and he could always count on her honesty in this, if not in everything else. (Except her emotions: She’d never been very good at staring her own emotions in the face, but Kaldarren allowed that everyone had a blind spot.) She was—what was that Earth expression?—sharp as a tack when it came to flaying an argument apart bit by bit. So maybe he’d called because he wanted her to talk him out of it; maybe he was hoping she’d ask why he was aboard an unregistered ship and just where was he going anyway….