CHAPTER 13
Atop one of the higher peaks outside Greenscale sat a villa, similar in style to the Quist mansion but smaller, on a property enclosed by trees. The official hovercar of the Knights descended to a landing in the stone courtyard in front of the villa, and Meline, Voran, Brianne, and the Quist brothers climbed out.
The front entrance slid open at their trilling and a willowy-looking Lacertan female dressed in a simple off-white tunic greeted them. “May I help you?” she asked.
“We’re here on official business,” said Meline, the badges on her and Voran’s armor skins in plain sight. “We need to see Mr. Xorian Quist. We need to ask him some questions.”
“Mr. Quist is indisposed at the moment. I don’t believe he’s up to receiving visitors or answering questions.”
“What do you mean he’s not up to answering questions?” barked Conran. “Who in the inferno are you?”
“My name is Leticia,” said the woman. “I’m Mr. Quist’s nurse.”
In unison, Conran and Donar blinked. They traded quizzical looks with Brianne. The three of them remembered Xorian’s uninvited visit to the mansion. They silently recalled Xorian being unsteady on his feet and walking with a cane.
Firmly but gently insistent, Meline said, “We won’t take long if Mr. Quist isn’t feeling well. There’s a very important matter we need to talk to him about. If you could tell him we’re here…”
The nurse bowed slightly and nodded. “You may wait in the foyer. I’ll inform Mr. Quist that you’re here.” And she saw them all inside.
While Leticia withdrew to the upstairs of the villa, the group talked quietly among themselves.
“He’s sick?” Donar wondered aloud. “So sick he’d need a nurse who I’m guessing is living here?”
“We all saw the shape he was in when he came to the reception,” Brianne recalled. “He didn’t look as if he were faking that.”
“Well, he obviously wasn’t too sick to come to our house and cause trouble that night,” Conran frowned. “Whatever shape he’s in, he’s been up to something for sure.”
“If we can prove he was involved with the intrusion and stealing the cralowog, or at least that he knows who’s behind the androids, can you arrest him?” Donar asked the Knights.
“It might not be that simple,” answered Voran. “It depends what he says when we question him, and how well he’s covered his tracks. We can put him under suspicion, make him a person of interest. We might not be able to press charges immediately. And if he’s badly ill, it might not be possible to have him taken off the premises. Best guess, I’d say the most we might be able to do at first is put him under house arrest and monitor all communications coming from and leaving this house and put the villa under surveillance.”
“First things first,” said Meline. “And the first thing is getting some answers out of him.”
Shortly the nurse returned from upstairs and addressed the group again. “Mr. Quist has agreed to meet with you,” said Leticia. “But you must keep it brief. It will be very taxing for him in his present state.”
“Exactly what is his present state?” Meline asked.
“As his caregiver I don’t discuss specifics,” Leticia replied. You’ll see when you’re with him. If you’ll follow me…”
After some exchanges of concerned looks, the group followed the nurse back upstairs.
At the end of a long corridor lay the door to Xorian Quist’s bedchamber. Touching the sensor to slide it open, the nurse ushered the Knights, the twins, and Brianne inside the private space. Here they found a master suite that reminded Brianne of the one at the Quist mansion, only smaller.
At the middle of one end was a four-poster bed, ornately decorated with dragon carvings. In the bed, under a comforter, lay a figure drawing slow, deep breaths. Donar and Conran halted in their tracks at the sight of him. Brianne and the others stopped with them and, in spite of themselves, they stared mutely at whom and what they saw lying in the bed.
Donar stammered, “U-Uncle Xorian…?”
The man in the bed tilted his head towards them and regarded them through narrowed eyes. “Yes, boy,” he said in a hoarse and shaky voice. “It’s me.”
Tentatively they all stepped a bit closer. “What’s happened to you?” Donar asked.
“What does it look like?” the ailing old man asked back.
Xorian’s skin was splotched and streaked with patches of morphed skin, as if his human skin had split open in places, revealing the scaly dragon skin beneath. His horns were partly grown on his forehead; his nose and lips were partly transformed. His ears were partly receded into tympanic membranes. He was weak and barely able to sit up with his pillows against the headboard. He looked at his nephews and coughed.
“Don’t strain yourself too much,” Leticia cautioned.
“Feh! It’s no strain for me to deal with these two,” Xorian rasped. “And they’ve brought other company with them, I see.”
Conran addressed the nurse, as much guessing the diagnosis as asking what it was. “Senescent genetic syndrome?”
“Yes,” Leticia confirmed. “It’s entering its advanced stages now.”
This was grim news indeed. Every Lacertan, for his own health, needed to swim or bathe periodically in bodies of water with high concentrations of Draconite to restore his genetic stability. Without such baths or swims, a Lacertan’s genetic structure would break down, potentially to a fatal degree. In aging or elderly Lacertans, the genetic breakdown sometimes occurred regardless of the vital immersions. The condition was irreversible—and terminal.
“How long have you been sick, Uncle?” asked Conran.
“Does it matter to you?” Xorian replied bitterly. “Long enough. I’ve been out of your sight and out of your mind since I fell out with the nest. After losing my position in the family, this is my last indignity.”
“We’re sorry, Uncle,” said Donar.
“Feh!” Xorian reacted again, more sharply this time. “Spare me your feigned concern and compassion. Where were they when I needed them? And don’t appeal to me after everything that ‘we’re still family,’ which is where I predict you were about to go. Family made no difference before; it makes no difference now. What is, is. After tonight I expect we’ll never darken one another’s threshold again.”
“We are not happy to see you this way,” Conran protested.
“I’ll warrant you’re not happy to see me at all, nor I you,” the old man growled.
Meline cut in. “Mr. Quist, we don’t want to take too much or your time or stress you too much. But there are some things we need to know about something that’s happened at your family’s estate…”
“‘My family…,’” Xorian groused.
Meline continued, “There are some things we need to ask you, some questions we need you to answer.”
“Are there now?” responded the old man, cocking an eyebrow.
“Yes, there are,” said Meline. “Earlier this evening, there was an intrusion on the Quist estate, both at the mansion proper and on the adjacent property, specifically the conservatory where Dr. Heatherton’s project with the alien wildlife specimen was being kept. The security and communications on the property were compromised. Apparently, a group of androids broke and entered. They stunned Dr. Heatherton’s assistants. They disintegrated the entrance to the conservatory and a section of the habitat dome. And they captured and took the animal. If you know anything about this intrusion—assault, property damage, and theft—you need to tell us now. Do you know who was responsible? Who sent the androids?”
Xorian frowned, “Why do you assume I know anything about it?”
Conran pointedly interjected, “It’s a logical assumption, Uncle, after you…”
Voran interrupted him. “Please, Mr. Quist, you have to let us conduct the questioning.” To Xorian, he went on, “Mr. Quist, we’re aware of an earlier incident at the reception for Dr. Heatherton. There was a heated confrontation that night between you and your nephews. That’s made you a person of interest in our investigation.”
“So,” said Xorian, in an almost taunting tone, “because I had words with my nephews then, you connect me with this crime on the family property now. The trail leads to me, is that it?” He settled back on his pillows and gave a wheezing, rasping chortle.
“The fact is,” said Meline, “you were angry at your nephews, and your brother and his wife, for disowning you and your sons after they intervened for you with the law when you were brought up on other very serious charges of interplanetary poaching, charges that could have incurred dungeon sentences for all of you.”
“If not for us, you’d be deteriorating in a dungeon right now,” Conran cut in.
The Knights gave a warning glance at Conran not to interrupt again before Meline addressed the old man again. “You need to tell us anything you know about what happened tonight.”
“What would I know?” asked Xorian. “As you can see, I’m old and I’m sick. I’ve already become an invalid in the short time since I last saw my nephews. My condition has closed in on me quickly. I’m on my last wings. Am I in a position to have masterminded a heist of this sort? What would it profit me now?”
Donar spoke up: “Revenge is a payoff.”
Meline reprimanded him. “If you continue this, we’re going to have to ask you and your brother to wait outside.”
Donar quieted down, fuming, Brianne putting a hand on his arm and giving him a cautioning look.
Again to Xorian, Meline asked, “Is that what this is about? Revenge on your family?”
“I have no use for revenge, young Dame,” said Xorian, sounding as weary as he was defensive. “Revenge is no good to a dying dragon.”
“Then what about your sons?” asked Voran. “Are they still on Lacerta? If they’re not, where have they gone?”
“You should be able to determine well enough if Xhondor and Kalum are still on Lacerta,” answered the old dragon. “As to where they might have gone…how am I to know? After we were all disowned, they went their own way. They took their part of what money was left to us, and they left. They’re on their own now.” He shut his eyes. “My boys are on their own. They may not see me again until after the end has come.”
“So, you’re saying you had nothing to do with what happened on the estate tonight?” asked Meline. “You had no part in taking the cralowog?”
“What could I have done?” Xorian shook his head. “With just enough money to keep this property, engage my nurse, and see me out of this world, what could I have done? You’re looking in the wrong place, you Knights. There are no answers for you here.”
“Not even about the present whereabouts of Xhondor and Kalum?” Meline pressed.
“My sons are grown dragons,” said Xorian, prying open his eyes to glare at the Knights. “They go where they please. And may they make a better lot for themselves after I’m gone.”
Xorian shut his eyes again and took deep, rumbling breaths. Leticia crossed round the other side of the bed from where the Knights and the others were standing. She put a hand above one of his wrists and touched her sleeve. A display of his vital signs leapt into the air. She studied it for a moment, then said to the visitors, “Mr. Quist can’t help you anymore. I’m going to have to ask you to leave now and let him rest.”
The Knights accepted the nurse’s decision and let her lead the group back to the foyer, where she invited them to see themselves out, then returned upstairs to her duties yet again. Brianne, the twins, and the Knights paused in the foyer to talk a moment more before leaving.
“What do you think?” Brianne asked Meline.
Pursing her lips thoughtfully, the dragon Dame said, “I’m not completely convinced that he had nothing to do with the intrusion tonight, or that his sons aren’t behind it. Being sick and bedridden needn’t necessarily have stopped him from helping to plan and engineer the crime.”
“I agree,” said Voran.
“So, what do we do about it?” asked Brianne.
“The first thing we do,” replied Meline, “we put a discreet surveillance on this villa. We can monitor all comings and goings from this property and all inbound and outbound transmissions without Mr. Quist or his nurse knowing we’re doing it. That will cover him well enough.”
“What about his sons?” Brianne pressed.
“The next thing we do,” Meline continued, “we find them. And the best way to find them, I think, is to find your cralowog.”
Brianne said, “We have a way of doing that. It’s something that no one without specialized knowledge would have thought of.”
“What’s that?” Donar asked.
Brianne explained, “One of the things we set up to monitor Damara’s condition was a device to let us know the minute she conceived after successfully mating with the male specimen we were going to have brought in. We planted an intrauterine sensor and monitor that won’t interfere with mating, conception, or gestation, but would send a signal immediately when she became pregnant. The transponder in that unit gives off a coded signal that only Sondra, Burton, or I can identify. We can use the transponder to track Damara anywhere she’s been taken.”
Meline was pleased. “That’s good; that’s very good. You’ll have to share that signal code with us. We’ll get it out to the whole Knighthood and the Dragon Corps if we have to. If necessary, we’ll have every dragon in uniform looking for your cralowog all over known space. Whoever took her—or had the androids come to take her—won’t get away.”
“Let’s get back to your lab now,” said Conran, to Brianne and everyone.
Quickly, the five of them exited the villa of Xorian Quist.