Chelen City: Chapter Twelve, Part One

 Notes: Diving right back into the intrigue!

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Twelve, Part One

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Chapter Twelve, Part One

 

Elanus blew out a breath. “All right. What do you know about the reason Deysan took off from Chelen City?”

Caria narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Very little. He did contact me, asking me to assist in covering his exit, which I declined to do.”

That was surprising. “Why decline?”

“Because he refused to be honest with me.” She smiled thinly. “I value honesty extremely highly, as I’m sure you know. Whatever my boy was up to, if he couldn’t see fit to share it with me, then I couldn’t go out of my way to erase his tracks.”

“And that didn’t seem worthy of an alarm or two?” he pressed. “A moment of introspection, a chance for you to think, ‘Hey, if he’s not willing to talk to me about this, what else is he hiding from me?’”

“I’m old enough to know that everyone is entitled to a few secrets,” Caria said, then sighed. “It was only after you went haring off to catch him that I began to think something was really amiss. The two of you haven’t been on proper terms for years, and nothing I could do ever bridged the gap.”

She’d tried, early on. Gotten them together at parties, set up meetings through their secretaries, bought into contracts with riders that stated that the two of them had to work together in order for her to pay up fully. It had never worked. Each of them had been determined to avoid the other, Deysan because he couldn’t stand to realize he’d been overshadowed by his protégé, and Elanus because he realized his former mentor had used him for years. There was no chance of a reconciliation.

Definitely not after the theft. “He stole something from me,” Elanus said after a moment’s consideration.

“One of your AI ships.”

“My newest prototype, yes.”

“That must have hurt.” Oh, she had no idea. “But was it really a big enough blow that you had to chase him halfway across the galaxy and into an asteroid field? Surely you kept enough notes to be able to replicate your process!”

There’s no replicating Catie. Lizzie was a perfect example of that—a nearly identical operating system, and yet she’d turned out wildly different personality-wise. “Some of the components of this ship are literally irreplaceable,” Elanus replied. “And beyond that, I couldn’t trust that he would respect any sort of Federation law with regards to ownership of the technology. I’m sure I couldn’t, in fact, since he was headed for the Fringe with a deal in place that would make him a sick amount of money at my expense.”

“So he planned to sell your work to the highest bidder.” Caria spread her hands. “It’s not nice, and it’s certainly not the way a friend or mentor should treat someone they’re close to, but that’s business on Gania, Elanus. Corporate espionage is a time-honored tradition here. You could have interpreted this as a moment to be flattered that Deysan was going to such lengths to secure your brilliance, rather than condemning him for not treating you like the prince you want to be treated as.”

“It isn’t wrong for me to expect him to obey the law,” Elanus snapped.

“It is on Gania. If you want meek little law-abiders, make your ships on another planet.”

Well, if it was a question of dismissing the law to her, then Elanus could work with that. “You know, I understand that perspective,” he said, wishing he had a drink in his hand. It was always easier to dissemble when he had a glass in his hands. Where had Kieron gotten off to? “And I even agree with it. That’s why I decided to make it my personal goal to hunt him down and make him pay.”

Caria’s lofty expression flickered. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

“No, it’s exactly what you meant,” he said. “If being stolen from is a compliment, than going after the thief in person is just returning the favor. Deysan stole something of incredible value to me. I wasn’t going to hire a few assassins to go after him when I could get so much more satisfaction out of doing the job myself.”

“You intended to kill him from the start, then?” Caria asked coldly.

“I wasn’t going to drag him back to Gania where he could be wrapped in your useless ‘laws’ and hidden behind so many doors that not even I could open them all.” There was no way. “He might have survived,” he said after a moment of dramatic consideration, “if he hadn’t chosen to hide in one of the most dangerous places in the universe. Seriously, he chose to put himself in the middle of an asteroid field next to a quasar in the hopes that I couldn’t figure out a way around the levels of radiation. He was in a ship of my making,” Elanus emphasized, “and he thought I couldn’t get around the puzzle he thought he’d solved.”

“But you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Caria frowned. “But you just said—”

“I know. But in all honesty? He chose a great place to hide,” Elanus confessed. “I couldn’t have gotten him alone.”

“Ah. This is where your lover comes in.”

Why deny it? She already knew about Kieron—everybody knew about him after Elanus lost all his sense of composure with Fritz. “He wasn’t my lover at the time, but yes. He figured out where Deysan was and how to get the ship back from him, at considerable risk to himself.”

“All that, before you even began sleeping with him? My my.” Caria fanned herself with one hand. “Whatever did you promise him for such an effort?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar,” she snapped. “Every action has its price. What was his?”

Wow. We are so deeply fucked up as a society. “I thought you wanted to know how he died,” Elanus deflected.

“I do.”

“He tried to escape.” Elanus smiled. “Freed himself from where he was being held, got back to what his ship, escaped into space.” He leaned forward slightly. “Only none of that’s quite right. In reality, we let him free himself, we allowed him to steal a ship that looked like mine but had none of its protections, and once he escaped into space…well, we didn’t have to do anything to him. The radiation took care of the rest.”

Her eyes were wet. “You let him die.”

“I let him kill himself, yeah.”

“You let him—”

Elanus hit the table between them, making Caria jump slightly. “He lost the game,” Elanus said, slow and deliberate. “The game that you encouraged him to play. The game he taught me to play. He did his best to screw me over, I retaliated, and he lost, Caria. That’s on him, not on me. It’s not on you, either,” he added with more generosity than he really felt. “He went hard. I just went harder.”

“Well,” she said after a moment. “I hope that brings you some comfort.”

“More than you’ll ever know.”

“Good. And I suppose I should congratulate you on getting what you wanted. But—”

[DADDY!]

Elanus almost doubled over with the force of Catie’s scream. “What is it?” he barked, knowing he ought to be projecting his voice internally but unable to concentrate enough in the moment to do it. Catie didn’t reply. “Catie? Baby?” Still nothing—he could feel her panic, but he couldn’t break through the barrier that had come up between them.

Elanus escaped Caria’s bubble of silence and was immediately grabbed from behind. He spun, one hand raised—

“Come on,” Kieron said grimly. “We have to get home, now.”