Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [14]
She would submit her young charge to a more formal debriefing after this, but for now, a walk in the garden would win her confidence and make it easier for her to talk.
“So it’s about an illness,” Uhura said carefully. “Something that resembles the Gnawing, which once killed half your people. How did your… employer… get this information?”
“Our own doctors cannot analyze this, cousin,” Taymor told Cretak, his breath coming short. “Or else they will not. You know the situation.”
“Of course,” Cretak said. “If your governor decides to spend the medical budget on new uniforms for his personal guard, he tells the people that suffering is good for the soul. In the larger scheme the Praetor buys warbirds, and our medical technology remains primitive. To suggest he do otherwise is deemed disloyal. You do not look well, cousin.”
“I am not, Kimora. Those who contract this die within days. I’m at the country house, and I’ve sent the servants away. I wanted to tell you while I was still coherent. I have already sent you the evidence, in the diplomatic pouch so it will not be scanned or irradiated. You’ll get it on the next incoming courier. It’s all I can do.”
Cretak struggled to keep her distress from showing on her face. In childhood she and Taymor had been as close as siblings. To think that she would never see him again… she placed her hand on the screen beside the image of his face, as if that would offer him comfort.
“Who else, Taymor? Kaitek, the children-?”
“So far, no. I am apparently the only one from my family so affected. Which is why I say this smacks of something unnatural. The Gnawing is legend, two thousand years old and, with what we know now, curable. But this… this is evil…” Taymor was overcome by a paroxysm of coughing. There were flecks of green on his lips when he could speak again. “All my love, cousin. Farewell…”
Cretak stared at the blank screen in despair.
“She did not tell me that, Lady,” Zetha replied, remembering her dignity and turning her face away from the sun and back toward her questioner. “Only sent me to tell you what she knows.”
“So I’m to accept her word, from your mouth, that an ancient illness which once killed almost half the Romulan people has been reawakened in a form that kills everyone it affects, and which may be artificially created?”
“Not my word, Lady,” Zetha reached her small hands inside her cloak and took a chain from around her neck, “but this.”
“Hold out your hand,” Cretak had said abruptly, holding something in both of her own.
Instinct said don’t, but Zetha did anyway. The object in question was a locket on an intricate chain, a death locket. She had seen such in the display windows of the pawn-shops on Jenorex Street when times were hard, cleverly disguised as medallions bearing a family crest, but with a secret compartment in the back to hold some relic of the deceased, most likely a lock of hair, sometimes braided like a bracelet. Some of these lockets were quite ornate, crusted with gemstones, others unadorned but intricately wrought, their value in the workmanship. This was one of the latter.
“Put it on,” Cretak instructed her in the same cool tone. “Be careful with it.”
Poisoned? Zetha wondered. Or, more likely, wired, fitted with a small transceiver that will record my every sound, every move. Nevertheless, something about the strength of this woman, her self-confidence, made her obey. Where with the Lord she had questioned everything, with Cretak she obeyed.
“It stays with you until you arrive where I am sending you. You give it to one person and one person only. No subordinates, no intermediaries, no helpful fellow travelers.