"I'm going to kill you," Targyn said. "Before this is all over, I'm going to kill you. There's a certain justice here, you know. I think you're the one the Council would have sent after me. Nervous fools. I'll use you for target practice. I've never killed another Shield. Should be interesting for both of us." He took another swallow of ale and chuckled. "Rakken wants to keep you alive for a while. He thinks we may need you. He's afraid I'll lose control of the prisma and detonate it accidentally if I don't have backup.
But I'm a lot stronger than he thinks. When this is all over I'm going to get rid of you both. He's been useful up until now, but I don't need a banker for what I have in mind for the future."
"What do you have in mind?" Gryph crossed the room with painful slowness and finally dropped down onto the oddly contoured bench. His last movement was a little too quick and the twist locked for a few seconds. Gryph set his teeth against the obvious pain and waited until the straps loosened slightly.
Sariana hurried over to the cabinet and picked up the ale bottle Rakken had opened earlier for his prisoner. She brought it over to the low table and set it down in front of Gryph. She sensed the way he was focusing on Targyn and wondered at it. Gryph was concentrating much too hard on the other Shield, even though he was trying to hide the tense surveillance.
Sariana didn't pick up a sense of fear emanating from Gryph. It was more like a battle-ready tension. He clearly considered Targyn a dangerous opponent.
It came to Sariana in that moment that Targyn was somehow the source of that potentially lethal blast of light that had brought her awake in the early hours of the morning. And then she knew for certain that Gryph had been the target of that fireball. She shivered as she sat down near him. It didn't require any great intuitive powers to know Gryph had nearly been killed; that he still might be killed.
"What do I have in mind?" Targyn repeated as he lounged against the wall. "I'll tell you what I have in mind. I'm going to take control of the western provinces, Chas-syn. I'm going to have access to all the potential Shield-mates I want and I'm going to produce sons who will someday run the eastern provinces as well as the west. I'm going to create a dynasty of Shields who will take their rightful place on this backwater world."
"The First Generation Pact establishes our role on this planet," Gryph pointed out calmly. He slowly and cautiously picked up the bottle of ale. "Nobody signed anything that puts us in charge."
"The First Generation Pact is an abomination. The Pact was made by sniveling cowards who thought they had to make an alliance with a bunch of stupid colonists who should have died in a lightstonn in the first place." Targyn moved away from the metal wall and waved his ale bottle in a gesture that took in the whole room. "Our brave forefathers were nothing but a herd of nervous keenshees, Chassyn. We got stranded on this planet with a bunch of fools who were involved in some sort of social experiment. We should have taken charge right from the beginning."
"There wasn't much point," Gryph observed mildly. "Once they realized they were stranded here, the Shields assumed there wouldn't be a second generation. It was a fluke that a handful of empathic females survived the crash and even more of a break that they were willing to mate with our ancestors."
Targyn swung around, his scarred face a taut mask of fury. "Those first Shields were cowards. They never assumed their rightful role. They were the strong ones. They should have dominated this continent. All of its resources should have been theirs. They should have ruled. Where are we instead? Living in isolated frontier towns, practicing the old ways of working prisma just in case a stray crystal ship shows up. In the meantime we earn our keep rooting out bandits and doing odd jobs for people who don't want to get their hands dirty. And each generation holds its breath hoping its sons will find a few usable females and that those females will be available under the terms of the damned Pact. Fools, idiots, cowards!" Targyn hurled his empty bottle against the wall. It shattered and fell onto the metal floor.
At that moment the door slid open. Etion Rakken walked in, ignoring the broken ale bottle as if nothing at all were out of the ordinary.
"Miscroft will bring us our meal in a few minutes. Another glass of wine, Sariana?" His gracious manner was intact.
"Yes," Sariana managed to get out in what she hoped was a reasonably calm voice. "I think I could use it."
Targyn glared at all of them. "I have no interest in this pretense of proper social behavior you all feel obliged to engage in. I've got more important things to do." He strode toward the door, indicating Gryph with his chin as he went out. "Watch him, Rakken. If he gets out of control it'll be your problem, not mine. If I find him running loose around here, I'll just kill him now and be done with it."
The door slid shut behind him.
Silence reigned for a short moment in the room. Then Gryph took a long swallow of his ale.
"He's insane, you know. Crazier than a keenshee in heat." "I know," Rakken said calmly. "That's why I need you."
Sariana put her hands flat on the table. "Do you know what Targyn's planning to do?" Rakken smiled grimly. "The man has delusions of grandeur."
"What about your delusions?" Gryph asked.
"Mine," Etion explained calmly, "are a lot more realistic. The biggest single find of prisma that has ever been made is sitting in a metal room not far from here. My plan was to use Targyn to neutralize it and then cut it up into marketable pieces. All of it. You see, unlike Targyn, I know what real power is and how it's achieved. One does not own a continent with weapons, although they may be useful as a threat from time to time." He smiled at Sariana. "I am an easterner at heart. I know that there is only one true source of power."
"Great wealth," Sariana concluded for him. She was awed in spite of herself at what he was proposing. "Precisely, my dear." Rakken raised his glass of wine. "To a future filled with prisma."
Chapter 17
SUPPOSE you give this to us in a straight line from the beginning, Rakken." Gryph examined the food being set in front of him as he spoke and decided his host probably wasn't going to poison him or Sariana. Not yet at any rate. He automatically reached for one of the eating implements left behind by the silent Miscroft and got his wrist jerked by the twist strap. It took a lot of effort to move with the slow deliberation required by the device. It was like having one's reflexes chained.
