Dragon's Honor - Kij Johnson [90]
Candlelight flickered up ahead. Worf’s eyes, accustomed to the faint green glow of the tunnels, blinked against the sudden brightness, which seemed to be coming from just around the next corner. Worf’s grip tightened on his phaser. Crouched over to form a smaller target, he stalked forward as quietly and stealthily as he could. A small white mouse scampered out of his way, squeaking loudly. Worf could have gladly bit its head off.
A shadow of roughly humanoid proportions fell across the light on the wall, then vanished in a flash. All of Worf’s senses went on alert. He crept to a point mere centimeters away from where the tunnel took a sharp turn to the left. Straining his ears to their limit, he thought he heard the sound of controlled breathing. He sniffed the musty air; above the omnipresent reek of decay, he scented the unmistakable tang of fear. Someone was waiting in ambush just around the corner, someone who desperately did not want to be found.
Worf dived around the corner, feeling something whoosh through the air where his head should have been. He hit the ground rolling and was halfway up, one knee resting on the dusty floor, before another heartbeat had passed. “Freeze!” he barked, drawing his phaser on a young male Pai standing by the curve in the tunnel. A woman screamed behind him, followed by the sound of soft footsteps charging toward his back. The woman, whoever she was, was no warrior; without even turning his head, he grabbed hold of her outstretched arm and flipped her over his shoulder onto the floor. His phaser, held tight in his other hand, never wavered; it remained pointed at the Pai youth, who held on tightly to what looked like a solid gold statuette in shape of a monkey. That was what the youth tried to hit him with? Worf felt embarrassed that he had actually bothered to duck such a ludicrous weapon.
Rising to his feet, Worf quickly surveyed his surroundings. He was in a cavernous basement approximately the size of the High Hall of Ceremonial Grandeur. A number of lighted candles, resting upon ancient casks and crates, illuminated the chamber; the smoke from the candles rose and disappeared in the shadows concealing a high, vaulted ceiling. Looking around, Worf was not surprised to find the missing wedding gifts.
They made an impressive pile. Instead of being neatly laid out as they had been when Worf first viewed them, they were jumbled together, with smaller objects tucked into or teetering atop larger objects. The elephant had an entire range of thick golden cables hung across its back. Worf wondered whether they had managed to move all the gifts at the same time or if the theft had required multiple trips. How long had Atherton and the rest of the security team been knocked out?
He kept one eye on his prisoners. The young man still stood by the entrance to this underground vault. His golden robes, although wrinkled and smudged with dirt, looked as though they had been expensive once. Surprise gave way to anger on the boy’s face. He was handsome by human standards, Worf judged, although somewhat lacking in character. The Green Pearl’s secret lover? Worf suspected as much. “Drop the monkey,” he said. It fell from the Pai’s hands, striking the rough brick floor with a metallic clank.
Her breath knocked out of her, the girl lay motionless for a moment or so, then stirred and sat up. The minute she opened her brilliant chartreuse eyes, Worf knew he had found the Green Pearl of Lu Tung. Her tiny slippers matched the footprints he’d found earlier in the tunnels. “Who are you?” she asked, staring wide-eyed at Worf’s inhuman visage. “What are you?”
Worf ignored her query, his gaze searching the dimly lit corners of the vault. “Where are the others?” he asked. These two alone could not have possibly carried all the gifts through the tunnels, not in a dozen nights.
“Dismissed,” the youth said. “That is, I allowed them to return to their quarters.”
“And who are you?” Worf demanded. He had never seen this particular Pai before.
Despite the phaser aimed at him by a ferocious-looking Klingon,