Moro's Price Page 3

  Four

  VAL TOOK A deep, cleansing breath. He’d been channeling sexual frustration for six years.

  “Don’t make excuses for me, Cama. You knocked me out before I could go puppetmaster on two very stoned little aristos. Normal people should never want to control and hurt their lovers. Best I just avoid the problem completely.”

  “Avoidance is flirting with Mati and coming this close to an arena rape-fight? You need to face your desires sooner or later, Valier.”

  “Camalians won’t help me, and humans can’t,” Val said.

  “There’s always the Sonta. They have no fear of me or you.”

  Val swallowed around a lust so private he didn’t dare give it real form, even in fantasy. Everyone knew the reclusive alien Sonta were amoral predators.

  “Only to their own kind. You might learn something from them, Valier. Liatana’s Alys did.”

  Val didn’t answer her.

  Leaving the cantina, Val crossed the pedestrian walkway to a taxi island. Around him loomed the tall black skyscrapers of Vaclav Sector, their bulk remarkable only when one didn’t know about the bigger buildings a hundred miles north in the city center. Far overhead, clouds reflected a pink-amber glow.

  Ready to hail a cab for the long slog back up to the university, Val caught a glimpse of two large figures thirty meters behind him. He stopped, pretending to admire a tacky gilt facade.

  The men stopped. When he moved again, they followed after letting a little more distance build ahead of them.

  Fear and anger, bloodlust and arousal sparked along Val’s nerves. “Wonderful. Can this day get better? Human goons. What do you want to do with them, Cama?”

  Her sudden terror flared through him as she completely ignored the big humans. “Look up! Now!”

  Val glimpsed a sudden brilliant purple flash from the top of one black roof.

  Cama got her emotions under control, asking far too casually, “What’s that building?”

  Val looked for its streetside number. “Vaclav 18. Why?”

  “Because someone really dangerous just came to Cedar-Saba. I may need you to do something incredibly stupid.”

  “I’m your man.”

  “I know, darling. Look around, I need to use your eyes again.” The symbiont almost managed to conceal her overwhelming urge to glance up at the vast buildings. “You know, Liatana’s Alys has been trying to call you for the last three hours.”

  “I turned my com off. Did you tell her where I was?”

  “No. Somebody else will.”

  The men ambled closer. “Goons,” Val reminded.

  “Go over the next walkway. Avoid the bridge back to Vaclav 17, but pick the next one. Take the nearest public access elevator up to the top of Vaclav 18. I may need you to be my ambassador.”

  “To what?” Any number of horrible things could be on the roof after that purple flash.

  The goons still followed him. Val had never doubted his patrona before.

  “To someone who probably won’t mean you as much harm as those humans.”

  Val sent skeptical derision back along their link. “To someone who scares you. You, Cama, the Scourge of Terra Prima, the Leveler of the Holy—”

  “That was ages ago. I’m mostly a myth now to these people. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Walking by yet another crowded bar, Val heard startled shouts from the customers.

  Judging from the comments he understood, the playbill for the Golden Cage had dropped one name and added several others. He was too far away to read the substitutions or hear the announced contestants over the sudden noise. People surged out of the streetbars and restaurants, hurrying for the entrance to the hundred-story casino tower.

  Val put the crowd between himself and his stalkers, but he knew the two men had marked the elevator he’d taken. Once in the elevator car Val asked, “Who am I ambassadoring today?”

  “I don’t know yet. It might be a Sonta.”

  Val startled away from his casual slouch against the wall. “What!”

  “Or it might not be. I need information. You have legs and eyes. Use them, darling. I’ll do my best to keep you safe. Haven’t I always?”

  Patrona Cama had always been there for him, from Val’s earliest memories. The only person he knew who accepted his faults as a part of him. She rarely asked for more than sharing the ride.

  Val really hadn’t anything better to do tonight.

  Five

  HE MIGHT NOT turn his com on for Aunt Alys, but Mateo was another matter. There was some chance the DaSilva student might circle back to the bar, possibly with the Leopard in tow. Just to make Val’s wretchedness complete.

  Best to call now and head that off. Mateo didn’t need to be anywhere near these goons, either. Val switched on his com, ignored the six more alerts from Alys, and saw three new messages from Mateo. The student had turned off image function to save data fees, so they were only voice calls:

  “Val! You’re missing the match of the century up here, you sad person.”

  Then a few minutes later: “Shit, Val, this could go real bad real fast. Call me back!”

  Then, “Mara damn, Val, thank you! Call me when you can, we’re at Our Lady of Portrenna Hospital.”

  We? What had Mateo run into now? Val’s fingers fumbled as he entered his privately safeguarded, prepaid, call-anywhere-anytime number for Mateo. He was a little insulted when it didn’t connect on the first beep.

  “Oh great gods and angels, Valier! Thank you! You just saved his fucking life!”

  “I what? Whose? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Jace’s life! He’s been taking jinvar, and I didn’t know it, so when he crashed tonight it was real bad. Not helped by that demon of Kott’s, crippling Jace and taking a sixty-thousand win fee. How we gonna make that up now? So afterward, Kott said he’d lend me medicos, since Jace wasn’t paying those either, but Kott asked for ten thousand…and there you were, sending me fifteen at that moment. Your Patrona tell you to do it? Say thank you for us…”

  Out of all that, Val focused on one critical fact. “The Diamond was there tonight and he fought the Leopard? That’s bad. That’s unshielded fission levels of bad. How’s Jace doing now?”

  “Stabilizing. He’s in surgery now. I called my folks. They’re catching a shuttle over from east Saba. The fight? Lasted about twenty seconds, until Jace lost his mind and surrendered. Kott put them up to it. Told the Diamond to kill Jace, but the Diamond wouldn’t do it. He broke Jace’s arms and thigh almost as easy as breathing. Last I heard, Kott was throwing every challenger at the Diamond, just to be pissy. Wait. Does this mean you actually read all those pamphlets?”

  Over Cama’s sudden alarm, Val made a fast decision. Mateo needed to know some things, for his own safety. “Every goddamn one, and more. I’ve been following the arena circuit since three months after I came to Cedar-Saba. You were right about me, Mateo, for the wrong reasons. I’m…I’m not safe to be around, not to those I love.”

  Val heard Mateo’s ragged breathing and then some punched codes. Mateo’s com sent a slightly distorted image of him too close to the sensors. “You love me?” Mateo said in a quiet, stunned voice. “Why are you dangerous? Beyond being Camalian? How can you be dangerous? You barely come up to my nose.”

  In Val’s elevator, the travel screen showed the car halfway up the hundred-story building. Cama was absolutely silent in his mind. To Mateo, he said, “Yes. I love you like the brother I never had. Think, Mati. All the stupid things we did together, all the stunts and bar fights, all your instincts about why I might enjoy the arena. What are they telling you?”

  “You like pain? Feeling it?”

  “Sometimes. But mostly dealing it.”

  “Oh. Oh. That’s kind of bad, for a Camalian, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Mati, it is. It’s bad enough that if I slip out of line again, Cama or Alys might put me down, and Lia will have to create another heir. They shipped me off Camonde for a reason beyon
d diplomacy.”

  “What did you do, hermano?”

  “I came real close to ignoring true consent. Almost forced someone. A couple of someones at the same time. They wouldn’t have known it wasn’t their idea because I was in their heads first, through Cama. I was controlling Cama.”

  Mateo’s thoughtful silence lasted twenty seconds. “Did you stop yourself, or did someone else stop you?”

  This was the single worst admission Val had ever had to make, even worse than the incident itself. “Someone else broke my hold. Then Cama stopped me. I stopped trying to be with anyone, because I cannot risk that, ever again.”

  “Whew. Heavy stuff. Why tell me now?” Mateo’s expression sharpened. “Getting shipped off? Or you’re in trouble?”

  “A little bit of the latter. Pretty sure Cama and I can handle it. But until I know for sure, stay away for a while. I can’t protect you and my gorgeous ass at the same time. Be with Jace.”

  “As soon as he’s out of surgery, they’ll let me stay with him…”

  “No, Mati. Be with Jace. I know you’re gone on him, and if he has any sense left from the jinvar and the damn Diamond, he’ll feel the same way about you.”

  “He’s my cousin.”

  “‘Third, fifth, something. It’s a big family,’” Val quoted back, grinning a little foolishly. “You have a nice family. The Taverna’s a better place for Jace than the arena. Besides, can you imagine him in one of those fancy bullfighter outfits they put the weekend waiters in?”

  Mateo groaned, obviously remembering having to wear the glittering gold and green costume himself. Val had witnessed it. At the time he’d been merciless in his mockery. While noticing that Mateo was growing into someone handsome, honorable in his own weird way, and very much off-limits.

  Now Val offered, “Just think how many customers he’d bring in?”

  From Mateo’s expression, that calculation had some nice big numbers in it. Then he looked doubtful. “My family might not go for it. My papa was pretty against Jace being a fighting-whore in the first place. Jace might not want to work at the Taverna.”

  “Tell Jace a man who takes jinvar and gets fucked in an arena for money can make no complaint about being a Saturday night waiter at a famous restaurant. And move away from the sensors, Mati, ugh. I can see your nose hairs.”

  His face bright with hope and possibility, Mateo laughed and signed off. A few seconds later, one last script message played on Val’s com: “Whatever you’re up to, survive it and come see us, hermano.”

  Six

  “I CAN STILL remember how your skin tasted, the last time I had you,” Bazo gloated as the two fighters grappled.

  The Diamond ignored the taunt. He spared a moment to think: Jace will be safe. From Shemua, Kott, the arena, and the Diamond himself. He owed DaSilva that much.

  Worth it, to not see Jace’s face gone red and intent with the lust for subjugation, all pretense at honorable fighting discarded. It was a horrible look even on Bazo the Bastard.

  “Throw the fight, songbird. Let me win again,” the Diamond’s heavily muscled opponent whispered. Their spiked arm bracers clashed and locked together. Their spiked boots slid and clanged on the bloody steel floor.

  “Yield, damn you!” Bazilio Malkovski got as far as touching the cartilage scars atop the Diamond’s right ear, but he couldn’t reach the loop at the back of the black collar.

  Shuddering, the Diamond bashed away Bazo’s straining fingertips. While Bazo hissed and pulled back, his prey ducked four feet away.

  “N-n-no,” the Diamond said, hating his conditioned stammer and the tremors rocking his whole body as he fought to speak. Every fighter knew the Diamond shuddered when he tried to speak. Most of them goaded him into it.

  “Might as well.” Bazo drew close again, grinning through the black tattoos masking his lower face, and shook back his rust-red braids. “Win or lose, I paid Kott to put me on the playbill. He’s given you to me for the rest of the night. Hurt me now, and I’ll make you sorry for it after I’m healed. You know I can be nice too. Let’s talk about it, sweetheart?”

  Breaking free once more, the Diamond shook his head silently.

  Bazo’s idea of “nice” wasn’t anything he cared to repeat. The Diamond hunched his shoulders at just the memory. Memory became resolve. Enough.

  Seeing Jace again today had jarred the Diamond out of his usual patterns of existence.

  The one man who had been kind, in nearly ten years! The Diamond felt a vague affection for him.

  Bazo relaxed, thinking he’d won. He turned toward the crowd, waving his arms and pumping his hips triumphantly. Beyond the tattooed demonmask, Bazo wore only boots, bracers, and a pair of violently green silk shorts, their front placket left open. He’d been half-erect during the whole match. Now his red, dripping cock strained eagerly out of the silk.

  He and the crowd knew what would happen when he finally caught the Diamond’s collar.

  Somewhere above the cage roof, an audio tech softened the drumming martial music to a slinky, suggestive beat, as Bazo turned back from the crowd.

  The Diamond swallowed sudden bile as his stomach roiled. Bazo already paid Kott. Even before Kott had forced the match with DaSilva? An obedient bondslave would let Bazo win. A well-trained one would pretend to welcome it. The Diamond didn’t even have the solace of denial. The collar would force him to enjoy whatever Bazo did to him. It wouldn’t be like the night with the smitten, generous Leopard!

  “Diamond” was only one of Kott’s hateful nicknames for him. “Dogleash” had been another, a private gloating joke too close to the bondslave’s real identity for Kott to use in public.

  When Jace had called him “Starlight,” the name had felt clean and almost reverent.

  Nothing came close to the name the Diamond had lost to his Black-Band sentence and the hellish year that had come before it.

  I’m Moro, he told himself as he dodged Bazo again.

  I’m Moro Dalgleish of Ventana, and my sentence is a lie. What was Kott thinking? I wasn’t even supposed to be fighting tonight! Bazo’s never touching me again. So here goes another thirty thousand credits toward freedom!

  Moro sank back into hazy memory where it was safe.

  The Diamond pivoted on one toespike, tucking his long body into a tighter spin. As Bazo turned back toward him, the Diamond uncoiled. His boot tip caught the other man just under his tattooed chin, ripping across Bazo’s bare throat in three deep cuts.

  Blood sprayed. A thousand onlookers howled. Bazo still reached toward the Diamond, his hips shaking as his prick emptied in a death climax. Bazo fell forward into his own spunk.

  The music stopped.

  The Diamond edged away from those twitching fingers. Then, nodding to the referees outside the golden cage, the Diamond pivoted again and kicked his bloody toe spikes into the back of Bazo’s skull. It crunched. He twisted his foot. Bazo’s skull made a squelching noise. The brain inside couldn’t be repaired now, even by the best high-tech medical wizardry.

  “Five, four, three, two, one! Malkovski down and forfeited!” roared the female referee as if Bazo, who’d boasted about his savage one-life preferences, would be getting up in this life.

  Without mind-scan backup, Bazo the Bastard was done.

  “Thirty-thousand-credit unreasonable-force penalty to the Diamond,” the referee added, grinning.

  Outside the gold-plated steel scrollwork, the crowd erupted, shouting cheers, curses, and offers to Kott. The nearest ones tossed fresh flowers, jewelry, candy, showers of opaline plastic glitter, and hard-credit chips at the open mesh cage. The smaller offerings rained down around the Diamond, who looked only at Kott and the referee.

  Kott had an odd, blank expression as if the Diamond had grown wings or breathed fire.

  The referee shrugged. It wasn’t murder. Freeborn Bazilio Malkovski had signed a waiver. Whether he lived or died in the cage had been his own problem, and now his heirs’. If he had any.

  Brown-c
lad medics ducked through the opening gate, shook their heads at Bazo’s corpse, and silently gathered around the Diamond. He felt stimulant spray’s cold kisses healing minor injuries on his thigh, upper arm, right jaw, and back. Free men like Bazo sometimes chose to keep their arena scars. Bondslaves must keep their looks as long as possible.

  One of the medics came too close to the back of the Diamond’s neck. The fighter bared his teeth and stepped away, balancing gracefully on the four spikes on each boot sole.

  Michol Kott stomped through the gate. A huge man, still fit and roughly handsome at sixty-some years, he saluted the crowd with his hat. With the other hand he snatched a piece of thrown candy out of the air. A former fighter himself, his cyber-enhanced reflexes and strength were remarkable.

  Kott gave the Diamond a grin and a thumbs-up sign. One massive hand grabbed the fighter’s right wrist between spiked half glove and bracer, dragging the young gladiator’s arm upward in victory.

  “Here’s to my brave boy,” Kott shouted. “Pretty as a girl and lethal as a panther. You’ve seen how he guards his virtue!”

  Bazo’s corpse was gone, leaving a trail of blood and muck. The sensual music started again. Kott still stood beside him. The Diamond saw the spectators settle back into their seats.

  Then he knew what Kott had been planning from the moment the Diamond’s name had been added to the roster. These people had come for the chance to see him fucked senseless.

  With Bazo dead, Kott meant to do it himself.

  Seven

  THE DIAMOND SWALLOWED his dull anger. For freeborn or bonder, the cage rules were supposed to be the same. Win, and choose your prize in money or sex. Lose, and be robbed of your hard-won credits or have your body taken ruthlessly in the arena.

  He’d won.

  Still, the fighting was over. He’d had nine years of dealing with Kott. The man hadn’t lied to Jace; he was as addicted as any other conqueror had been. A patient victim could channel that kind of obsession. The Diamond forced himself to relax.