Page 4 of Skinwalker's Bane
Adam gripped the handle of the mug. Another drink should have pleased him, yet he felt vaguely hollow and uneasy and wasn’t sure he wanted the drink, either. He and the others about the table waved Noa and Haydn goodbye and returned to their conversations, which crossed over the table, flowed around it and sometimes moved over to the tables closest to them, where the other three skinwalker crew chiefs and some of their crews were sitting.
It left Adam at the corner of the long table and momentarily alone, for even Peter, on his left, had gone for another round. Adam looked around the table at the familiar faces and bleary eyes. Because he had gone through so many of these memorials, he could predict exactly how the rest of the night would go.
The established couples would eventually leave to go home. Those who were single would spend the rest of the evening finding a possible bed companion for the night. Failure would mean going home alone and they would help each other stagger there, to nurse incipient hangovers. That sort of failure was rare for skinwalkers. When just stating he was a skinwalker would bring a shine of admiration to anyone’s eyes, Adam was rarely alone if he didn’t want to be.
Tonight, he couldn’t stand the idea.
He reached for Cai’s reading pad, which was never far from his side. It was sitting right in front of him on the table. Adam turned it on. He hadn’t checked messages since around noon and sitting here reading would fend off more tiresome conversations.
There was a timed message waiting for him, the red delivery seal pulsing slowly.
He opened the delivery seal first. He had never seen a temporal seal before, although everyone knew it was possible to seal a message and delay its delivery until a specified date. He studied the details, waiting for the words to form clearly in each line, as his vision tried to compensate for the ale.
The message had been sealed nearly three years ago. Not only was it a temporal seal, it was a conditional one, too. He looked at the lines again.
Sender: Lincoln Amos
Delivery: Conditional
Conditions: Death of Sender
Adam’s chest squeezed and his throat tightened. He drank more of the ale, even though he didn’t want it. Then he broke the seal and opened the message. There was only one line.
tell Devin sorry – L.
Lincoln had set up a message three years ago, directing Adam to apologize to Devin for him…presumably for dying. That meant Lincoln’s death would have such an impact, he felt it necessary to express his regret to Devin.
Lincoln had been Adam’s closest friend, not just his deputy chief. Despite that, Adam had never heard Lincoln even mention the name before. Yet his first concern if he ever died had been to make sure Adam passed along his apology. There was not a second note to Adam himself, no reach out from the past to offer even one of Lincoln’s typically crude jests in comfort. Just this missive to find someone else.
Who the hell was Devin?
Chapter Two
It all came down to Liya Cassel, Devin decided. The wily dress designer from the Wall was the problem.
Devin paced her bright, airy sitting room, listening to birds chirping in the bushes just outside the window, while she waited for the terminal to ping a response to her urgent message. She analyzed the disaster as she paced, even though it was too warm to be so energetic.
It simply hadn’t occurred to Devin that on a ship of five thousand people, with only half of them women, it would be possible for two of those two-and-a-half-thousand women to be wearing the exact same dress at the same time, in the same location. After all, there weresomany dresses. Every year, there were more of them. Liya Cassel put out proprietary print files of all her favorites every quarter.
Which was where the problem originated. Devin couldn’t afford Liya Cassel’s personal, unique design and handcrafting services. She had money, of course, thanks to Bishan Frost’s work securing sponsors and contributors, only the expenses of running a political campaign, even a currently undeclared one, were prohibitive. Besides, her sponsors were not major players in any sense of the word. Not yet, anyway.
It meant she had to cut costs wherever she could. That included paying for Liya Cassel print files, instead of Liya Cassel herself, just as every woman who wanted her designs had to do if they weren’t rich, influential or powerful. Yet.
Devin strode over to the terminal and stabbed at the enquiry key. Still no response. Damn the woman!
The house AI chimed and an alert streamed across the screen. Bishan Frost was here.
She tapped the screen to let him in, then went over to the sofa where she had tossed the coat that matched the slim-line dress she was wearing and shook it out so it didn’t look is if she had thrown it from her in rage. Bishan was exceptionally good at interpreting physical clues. He did it all the time, usually to her advantage. This time, she would prefer he didn’t learn about her embarrassment. His version of “I told you so” never made her feel good.
He hurried into the room. Bishan always hurried. He was an incredibly thin man, who seemed to run on pure energy. He had very little hair left, a narrow chin and an affable expression when he wasn’t smiling at full wattage, trying to charm someone out of a few credits on her behalf.
“I can never get used to it being full daylight here, when it’s the middle of the night on the rest of the ship,” he complained.
“It’s only daylight every eight hours,” she replied calmly, for most non-Palatinos reacted the same way. “Sometimes itisdark here when it’s night on the ship. Just not right now.”
His sharp-eyed gaze flicked over her. “A lovely ensemble,” he declared. He judged everything about her. Her appearance was just one aspect.
“Glad you think so,” she said dryly and laid the coat down over the back of the sofa in neat folds. She kicked herself mentally for letting the sour note emerge in her voice. Bishan would not fail to hear it and interrogate her into confessing her foolishness.
