Dark Matters_ Shadow of Heaven (Book 3) - Christie Golden [11]
She swallowed the bite, then took another. If that were so, then she would turn the tables on them. She would take their test and make it work for her. She imagined their faces, one day finding her cell empty, and realizing that they had unwittingly helped her to flee.
Or it could be true. Though Verrak had been as false as it was possible for one to be, she never had learned the identity of the mysterious friend who had sent messages to her in her quarters that night when she had been attacked by Sharibor. This person could be very high placed-high placed enough so that he or she could help Jekri without attracting attention.
With sudden determination, Jekri realized that the only way her enemies would win would be if she gave up. She finished the pathetic excuse for a meal and lay down on the rags, secreting the precious part of a tool deep in the dusty center.
She would escape, and she would mete out justice, both to those who had aided her and those who would see her dead: It was a thought as sweet as a ripe quaeri in season, and this fruit would be plucked soon enough.
INTERLUDE
THE VlDIIAN DOCTOR WENT BY THE NAME OF DANARA PEL.
The Entity knew her. Not of her, but knew her, the way it had known Maj Culluh. It did not understand how it came by this knowing, but merely accepted this fact.
For over two thousand years, the Vidiians had battled a dreadful disease they called the Phage. Their desperate drive to stay alive as a race had prompted them to do terrible things. Often, they killed innocent aliens and harvested their organs. Skin grafts were necessary to replenish flesh as it died and sloughed off. They ought not to have survived, but they had, and their medical knowledge was almost unsurpassed in this quadrant.
As was the hate and fear they engendered.
The Entity had a deep connection to the Vidiians. What was it? It had lost something, had given it up.
Had it once been a flesh-being, and had its organs harvested? That was close, but it was not quite right. There was a nobility about the Entity's loss, a sense of yielding that transcended victimization. What was it, what was it?
The thought went away as it regarded Danara Pel. She still bore the scars of the illness that had ravaged her body, but was no longer a macabre patchwork of other beings' parts. She was cured of the Phage.
And imprisoned.
When the Phage had been cured, it had seemed like such a blessing at first. Kuros and his group of mercenary intellectuals had offered a cure in exchange for Vidiian medical knowledge. It had seemed so little to ask. But as with so many things, there was a dark side to the request. In earlier times, the Vidiians were known as educators, artists, explorers. Once the Phage had been cured, many raced to embrace these neglected passions, looking forward to the chance to contribute to, instead of prey upon, the other aliens in the quadrant. But others had gotten used to the casual brutality of a mind-set that rationalized murdering fellow sentient beings and using their organs.
Dark matter, floating through this system, had escalated the conflicts. Civil war had erupted. At a time when the species ought to be rejoicing in its deliverance, they were fighting one another. The Sodality had imploded and the Vidiians were easy prey for a variety of alien races desirous of revenge.
So it was that Danara Pel, compassionate doctor who had never wanted anything more than to help her people, was a slave. She was forced to use her knowledge to perform experimental surgeries and vivisections to appease cruel masters. At least the Vidiians
had done what they had to survive. This alien species, the Charasin, merely wanted conquest.
They, too, were infested with dark matter, sensed the Entity. Their commander, one Pektar Sirumal, was