Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [63]
To what? Start a Force storm that would kill some other innocent old woman under the care of a Healer two hundred kilometers away?
He grabbed a rake from the tools along the fence, vaulted over the wall where he could hear the least of the shouting, and made a break for the wider streets and more open field of vision among the Newcomer houses. Dust and pebbles smote him and cut his face. Three Oldtimers appeared in front of him across the width of the street, including the man with the blaster. Luke dove sideways, slipped past a spear that jabbed down on him from the roof of a shed, rolled to his feet, and set his back to the wall as more came running.
“Here, now, what’s all this?” bellowed a voice.
The Oldtimers skidded to a halt, milled for a moment, then began to back away.
A weedy-looking eight-foot Ithorian and a fat, slovenly, dark-haired human male, both in the blue uniforms of the Hweg Shul municipal police, came walking down the alley.
“Shame on the lot of you,” warbled the Hammerhead in its soft voice. “What do you think you are, piranha-beetles? Nafen?”
There was a muttering among the Oldtimers. One dropped a rock she’d had in hand to throw. Someone else said something about “the Evil One.”
“Him?” The human jerked a thumb at Luke. His greasy black forelock flipped in the wind. No one replied. He turned to Luke. “You the Evil One, pilgrim?”
“Everyone is evil to someone.” Luke dusted his sleeve, where a rock had nearly broken his arm.
The man chuckled. “Well, my ex-wife would agree with you there.” He turned to the Hammerhead. “What about it, Snaplaunce? There anything in the City Statute about being evil?”
“Not to my knowledge, Grupp.”
“You hear that?” Grupp the policeman turned back to the mob, only about a third of whom remained. “What’s the guy done besides being evil?” He glanced sidelong at Luke, measuring him with a dark eye that was far from stupid.
“Evil is as evil does,” yelled the girl who’d tried to brain Luke with a club.
“Yeah, well, mobbing a man who didn’t even fire that blaster he’s carrying sounds like Evil Does to me, sugar.” Grupp gestured like a man shooing flies. “Get out of here, the bunch of you, before I run you all in for disturbing the peace. You okay?” He turned his back on the Oldtimers to speak to Luke, though Luke was pretty sure he was watching them still. They dispersed, muttering, in their eyes the anger at seeing Newcomers rescuing a Newcomer, not lawmen helping a man innocently attacked.
“I’m fine.”
“Crazy Therans.”
“Not Therans,” warbled the Ithorian. “I know the Therans. These are the ones who have attacked Master Ashgad’s house, four or five times since I have been here. I suspect they’re the ones who killed the last of his human servants early this year, though I can prove nothing. I know it was they who kidnapped that young woman at about the same time.”
“Young woman?” Luke felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest.
The Ithorian regarded him for a moment, speculation in its golden eyes.
“The tall woman who came in on one of the Durren planet-hoppers. She called herself Cray, but forgot on a number of occasions to answer when spoken to by that name. These ragged ones—the remains, I am told, of one of the old gangs that fought for control of this city between the crime-boss Beldorion and another, a woman, many years ago—surrounded and dragged her away one night, but before I could find where they took her I encountered her in the street. She said they were her friends.” The sweet, low voice was dry—Ithorians have an astonishing range of emotional shadings to their words.
“When—when was this?” asked Luke, through dry lips. “Is she still in the city? Have you seen her?”
Grupp and the Ithorian exchanged a look. Not speculative,