Traitor by Matthew Stover (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

than stunned—minds blasted away by black panic—to find that their siblings had also recovered their senses and their slaves in a Nursery that echoed with explosions and reeked of fresh blood, filled with terrified, cowering shapers and heavily armed warriors shivering on the edge of combat frenzy.

The one dhuryam that knew what was going on was not shocked, or stunned, or panicked. It was simply desperate, and ruthless.

Dhuryams are fundamentally pragmatic creatures. They do not understand trust, and so have no concept of betrayal. This particular dhuryam, like all the others, had long been aware that its life hung upon the outcome of the tizo’pil Yun’tchilat, and that its chances were no better than those of each of its dozen siblings.

That is: twelve to one. Against.

None of the dhuryams had ever liked those odds; this one had decided to do something about it.

It had made a deal with Jacen Solo.

When the telepathic interference from the shreeyam’tiz had suddenly vanished, the dhuryam not only knew exactly what had happened, it knew who had done it and why.

And it knew what to do next.

While echoes of the blast bug bandolier still rang within the Nursery, the dhuryam sent its slaves scrambling away from the coraltree basals, scattering toward a number of ooglith hummocks. A touch upon the nerve plexus that serves—in the shaped oogliths known as masquers—as the release caused these wild oogliths to retract similarly … but what these wild oogliths had enclosed was not their usual hollow skeleton frames of stone.

These oogliths had been coaxed to conceal stacks of crude, improvised weapons.

Certain tools had been stockpiled surreptitiously over some few days, concealed in the ooglith hummocks nearest the coraltree basals: mostly broad-bladed spade rays, long and heavy for the breaking of the ground, and armored malledillos as tall as a warrior, dense and tough enough to shatter stone with every blow.

The oogliths had also concealed a number of sacworms, filled to bursting with sparkbee honey; sparkbees were the wild baseline from which thud bugs and blast bugs had been shaped, uncounted years ago. Each sacworm’s gut had also been injected with a tiny amount of a digestive enzyme from the stomachs of vonduun crabs. By swinging a spade ray like a catapult, a slave might hurl one of these sacworms a considerable distance.

Accuracy was not a consideration. The sacworms burst on impact, spraying gelatinous honey in every direction. The enzyme-activated sparkbee honey clung to whatever it struck; on contact with the Nursery’s air, it burst into flame.

In seconds, fire was everywhere.

Warriors roasting to death within their useless armor were unable to protect themselves, and even less able to defend the shapers they had escorted. The shapers, having no experience or training for warfare, could only scramble for the nearest breath vein. Many died: splashed with flame, or crushed by blows from malledillos, or hacked by spade rays swung like vibro-axes. On the surface of the hive-lake, burning sparkbee honey spread like oil.

And all but one of the dhuryams shared a single thought: to gather to itself the slaves who were its eyes and hands. They had to pack their slaves onto the hiveisland, to surround themselves with walls of flesh. None of them had any other hope of self-defense.

Except for one.

And so when all the slaves belonging to all the other dhuryams sprinted from throughout the Nursery, whipped onward by the coral seed-webs savaging their nerves, converging upon the hive-lake to drown the double ring of warrior-guards in waves of shuddering, clutching, bleeding bodies, the slaves belonging to one particular dhuryam did not.

Instead, they fanned out in teams of five. One team clustered around Jacen Solo, and waited while he dragged himself brokenly to his feet. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, he swayed as though faint or dizzy, then moved toward the lake with the five slaves around him. The other teams raced through the smoke and flames, skipping over corpses and slipping on spilled blood, until they reached the coraltree basals.

In seconds, the coraltree basals became towering columns of flame, fueled by sparkbee honey. The slaves did not wait to see if the flames would suffice, but went to work with spade rays and malledillos and captured amphistaffs, chopping and pounding and hacking each and every coraltree basal to death.

   Nom Anor stared at the universe of bloody carnage within the viewspider’s sac with numb, uncomprehending horror.

“What—?” he murmured blankly. “What—?”

“Executor. We’re running out of time.”

“Time? What time? This—this disaster … We are dead, don’t you understand? Tsavong Lah will slaughter us.”

“Ever the optimist,” Vergere chirped. “You assume we’ll live out the hour.”

Nom Anor glared at her speechlessly.

Once again, that unexpectedly strong hand of hers clasped his arm. “Have the warriors outside this chamber escort me to the Nursery. And call your commander, if he still lives. I’ll need someone with enough authority to get me through the guards, onto the hive-island—if any of the hive guards live that long.”

“The hive-island?” Nom Anor blinked stupidly. He couldn’t get any of this to make sense. “What are you talking about?”

Vergere opened a hand at the viewspider’s optical sac. “Do you think he’s finished, Nom Anor? Does our avatar of the Twin seek only confusion and slaughter—or does he produce confusion and slaughter as a diversion?”

“Diversion? To accomplish what?” Then his good eye bulged wide—in the viewspider’s image sac he saw Jacen and the five slaves who accompanied him wade into the chest-deep murk of the hive-lake, hacking their way through the churning, struggling, bleeding tangle of slaves and warriors. One of Jacen’s companions fell, speared through the throat by a warrior’s amphistaff; another was dragged under the water by the clawing hands of unarmed slaves. The three remaining swung their spade rays wildly, trying not only to keep warriors and slaves at bay but also to splash a path through the flames that floated on the surface of the lake.

Jacen slogged grimly on, half swimming, without a glance at the slaves who defended him. Any warrior or attacking slave in his path fell to