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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: A Working of Stars
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For a moment she stood there with her eyes closed, doing nothing. If she were at home in her apartment, she would be getting back from her afternoon meeting with the theatre-arts group’s finance committee, with plenty of time to take her shoes off and relax for an hour or two before dinner. But she’d sent her regrets to the finance committee days ago, and the workers and
aiketen
from the moving firm were at work in her apartment right now, putting all of her old furniture and other belongings into crates and boxes for storage. By this time next week, somebody else would be living in those rooms, and she would be sharing bed and board with Natelth sus-Peledaen.
Stop whining
, she told herself.
You made the choice, and you might as well learn to live with it.
With a sigh, she began unbuttoning the back of her gown. Then, suddenly, she felt a hand clamp over her mouth, and felt herself pulled backward against a man’s chest. She felt his warm breath next to her ear, and the faint roughness of a cheek that had gone a little too long unshaven, and lips that whispered, “Promise not to scream until after you read the letter I’m about to hand you.”
His hand was tight over her mouth. She got one of his fingers between her teeth and bit down hard, feeling the skin break and tasting the blood like hot copper in her mouth.
He swore under his breath in a language she didn’t recognize, but he didn’t let go. Then he said, somewhat breathlessly, “I’m a friend. Your cousin sent me. Herin Arayet sus-Dariv.”
“Herin is dead,” Zeri said.
He released her then, and she turned around to look at her erstwhile captor. She saw a man, not so well dressed as those she’d spent the morning with, but presentable all the same, with the yellowish-hazel eyes and sharp, fine-boned features that marked his Antipodean descent. He had his bleeding right hand pressed under his left armpit—she was pleased to note that she’d done him some real damage there, enough that the red drops had made a damp stain on the expensive blueweave carpet—while with his free hand he held out a flat envelope.
“Read this, and afterward you can scream if you like,” the man said. “My name’s Len. Help me help you.”
Zeri snatched the envelope from him and backed away, not taking her eyes from the man until she’d torn the envelope open and pulled out a flatsheet. She lifted it, looked down at it, then swiftly up again, then looked down, harder. The message said only, “Trust the man who brings this note. Do not marry sus-Peledaen. Come to me if you can. Herin.”
The note was written in Herin’s own hand, and it used the sus-Dariv private cipher. Zeri didn’t scream.
“Whoever set the bomb and attacked our fleet,” she said, “they might as easily have broken our codes if they felt like it. How do I know this isn’t from one of them?”
“Your cousin also said that I should tell you that on your twelfth birthday you and he didn’t go out to the frog pond to look at the frogs, even though that was what you told your parents afterward.”
In spite of herself and the situation, she blushed, and hoped that Herin’s sense of the ridiculous hadn’t prompted him to tell this stranger the whole embarrassing story. “He could have sent word earlier,” she said. “‘Don’t marry sus-Peledaen’ isn’t going to do me much good right now.”
“Syr Arayet says that if your legalist was doing right by you, none of the merger contracts come into force until the morning after the wedding night. There’s still time.”
“Time for what?”
“Your cousin asked me to bring you to him,” the man said. “Will you come?”
“Why did Herin send a stranger to fetch me, instead of coming himself?”
“He says that if he’s recognized he’ll be dead for real next time. Now I’m leaving, with you or without you. I delivered my message—now I’m gone.” He bowed his head. “My lady.”
Some time later, Rie and ’Yida grew concerned about their friend’s welfare, and left the banquet hall to rap on the withdrawing-room door. The door swung open under their touch—and then there was screaming enough at the wedding banquet, for the bride was gone, the window was open, and there was blood on the floor.
 
ERAASI: HANILAT ENTIBOR: AN-JEMAYNE STARPORT
 
I
sayana sus-Khalgath was overseeing the replenishment of the banquet tables when she heard the shrieking from upstairs. A moment later, almost before all heads had turned in the direction of the outcry, one of the bride’s ladies—the thin, clever-looking one—burst in through the doors of the banquet hall.
Isayana suspected that it was the plump and sentimental lady who had screamed. That one had all the marks of someone who would turn absolutely useless in a crisis. This one, however, pushed her way through the throng of sus-Peledaen family and hangers-on and went straight to Natelth. Isayana couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was speaking rapidly, her words punctuated by sharp, quick hand movements, and Na’e’s expression was growing darker and grimmer as he listened.
Another moment, and Na’e snapped an order to the fleet officer nearest him, then left the banquet hall with the bride’s lady, heading toward the sounds of hysteria coming from upstairs. The fleet officer took a little longer to pull the sus-Peledaen head of internal security out of the crowd and send him upstairs likewise. Nobody had bothered to tell Isayana what was going on, but that didn’t matter; she had her own ways of learning things.
“Stop,” she said quietly to the first
serving-aiketh
that floated past her on its counterforce unit. “Attend.”
The
aiketh
paused, the crimson light in its sensorium pulsing slightly as it awaited further instruction. Isayana turned so that her voice wouldn’t carry into the crowd of agitated guests—some of whom might not, after all, be completely trustworthy—and spoke the override syllables she had given it during its first instruction. The crimson light pulsed faster for a few seconds, then returned to its normal resting beat.
“Now,” said Isayana. “Query the house-mind, and all units in contact with it. What has caused the disturbance in the upstairs equilibrium?”
“The house-mind reports a circumvention of security measures in the bride’s withdrawing-room,” the
aiketh
said. “The window remains open at this time.”
“Thank you,” Isayana said politely. Even nonsentient quasi-organics deserved courtesy, in her opinion, and it cost nothing to give. Then she spoke the syllables that revoked the override, and the
aiketh
floated on about its business as though she had never stopped and questioned it.
Barely in time, too. She saw Na’e’s security chief coming toward her through the crowd of agitated wedding guests.
“Syr Egelt,” she said as he approached her. “What’s happening?”
“Your brother desires your presence upstairs in the bride’s withdrawing-room,” Egelt said.
“By all means take me to him.”
She followed the head of internal security up the stairs to the private portion of the town house. The door at the top of the stairway opened onto the hall outside the withdrawing-room, and the hall, normally empty of all but household
aiketen
and the occasional family member, was full of people. The bride’s two ladies, their message delivered, had been shunted off to the periphery of the action; the short plump one was crying against the thin one’s neck.
Natelth stood amid a group of liveried guards, frowning and looking thunderous. Isayana felt a moment’s surprise at the sheer number of people in blue and crimson. She hadn’t thought that Na’e would bring quite so many guards with him from the orbital station—and these, she realized, had to be only a few of the ones who had come down to the surface, the ones assigned directly to the town house itself.
An army,
she thought, suppressing her reflex expression of disapproval.
We have
—
the sus-Peledaen have
—
an army.
“We’ve got searchers out on the streets already, my lord,” one of the guards was saying. “But so far, no sightings and no reports.”
Isayana moved forward. The guards recognized her and made way for her to pass. She thought that perhaps they seemed a little grateful for her appearance—she was, after all, almost Natelth’s equal in rank, and capable of standing, if need be, between them and his growing anger.
“What is going on here, Na’e?” she asked her brother. “I’ve heard shouting and rumors, but very little so far by way of an explanation.”
“Zeri sus-Dariv sus-Peledaen,” Natelth told her, “appears to be missing.”
Looking past him through the open door of the bride’s withdrawing-room, Isayana could see that it was so. The room was empty, and the window overlooking the flower garden was open. Drops of blood—red in the center but drying into brown at the edges—flecked the blueweave carpet between the door and the window. A single silver ribbon from the bridal crown lay on the floor near the window in a disconsolate curl.
“When was that window opened?” Natelth demanded of the head of internal security.
“I ordered it opened last night,” Isayana said before the man could draw down Na’e wrath by answering. “To freshen the room. The
aiketen
had instructions to close the window before morning.”
“Then we want the person or thing who opened it again.” Natelth turned to his security chief. “Find my wife and whoever took her, and bring them back. Close the spaceport if you have to.”
“I’ll question the house-mind as soon as the outcry dies down,” Isayana promised him. “But the authorities will have to be notified sooner or later. The wedding guests, I’m afraid, are gossiping already.”
“We’ll do our own search first. The city watch doesn’t have our resources.”
“People will say we’re taking on the bad luck of the sus-Dariv,” Isayana said. “Her family’s enemies could be responsible for this.”
“Whoever did this wasn’t an enemy of the sus-Dariv; they were enemies of the sus-Peledaen. This is a crime against our family—and against me.”
“If you say so,” Isayana said. She looked again at the bloodstains on the carpet, and felt the stretch and tingle of a new idea taking shape inside her mind. “Na’e … will you let me take a sample of that blood?”
“Do you think you can learn something useful from it?”
“Many things,” she told him.
And some of them I may even share with you. Some others … maybe not.
 
 
Arekhon brought his Circle to An-Jemayne spaceport in the early morning, when the low fog wisped along the ground. The two Mages and Maraganha had the rumpled clothing and disgruntled expressions of people who had spent too much time on public transit—a hoverbus from the Cazdel Guildhouse to the transit hub, a suborbital short-hop from Cazdel to An-Jemayne, and yet another hoverbus to meet Arekhon at the port. At least, he consoled himself, none of them looked reluctant or afraid.
The air at the port was thick with moisture, the sunrise a rose shade that bespoke a hot and humid day in the offing. Arekhon, who’d lost his taste for subtropical weather during the years he’d spent with Elaeli in Entibor’s Central Quarter, was glad that they wouldn’t have to endure it for very long. He’d worried that Karil might lose her nerve at the last minute, but she hadn’t let him down; the pilot was standing by the operations hut on the private side of the field, wearing an orange pressure-suit with K. ESTISK embroidered on the tape over her right breast. She carried a helmet swinging loose in one hand.
“I don’t know what kind of strings you pulled to do it,” she said to Arekhon as soon as he came within speaking distance, “but you’ve got me hired from InterWorlds Shipping on an open-ended contract. I have to warn you, those deals don’t come cheap.”
“I’m not worried about the money,” he said. “It comes from having relatively few expensive vices.”
She smiled. “And I have the current flight plan already filed like you said: test flight; auto-return clicked in, signed for, and ready. You say this trip is supposed to be in-system only?”
“That’s the story,” he said.
“As in ‘the story is a damned lie’?”
“Something like that.”
“Right,” Karil said. “We have the extra EVA suits on board. They’re military surplus, but they’ve been checked and graded and they’re all service-ready.” The deep rumble of nullgravs overrode her speech, the sound of a nearby sludge barge tilting itself nose-upward and launching for orbit. After the noise had abated, she continued, “I’m assuming you guys are ready, because we’re on minus minutes now. I have a skipsled. You have any supplies you’re taking?”
Arekhon shook his head. “Only what you see. I don’t want to make it obvious that we’re heading out on a long voyage.”
“Obvious to whom?” asked Ty. It was the first time he had spoken since getting off the hoverbus and greeting Arekhon by the landing-field gate.
“Spies,” said Karil. “Pirates. Other bad guys.” She looked over at Arekhon. “Am I right?”
“Yes,” he said. “No disrespect to your world, Karilen, but there are people in it I would just as soon not have follow me home.”
“I thought so. Let’s load up the skipsled and get going.”
The pilot walked over to the other side of the hut, where the nullgrav-mounted cargo carrier—an open sled twice as long as she was tall—waited. She stepped aboard and stood at the control pylon, playing her hands across the keypad. A moment later the vehicle floated upward, so that it was bobbing gently on a cushion of air. “Come on up if you’re coming.”
Arekhon and the others of the group stepped on, and the sled trembled slightly as they added their weight.
“Hold on,” Karil said, and they pushed away, skimming over the ground. A couple of minutes later, they arrived at their destination, an in-system surface-to-space transfer shuttle resting on stubby landing legs.
She waved a hand at the bulbous-nosed craft. “This is it for getting us into orbit. Not as good as what I’d like to be flying, but hey, it’s what was available.”
Maraganha stepped off the sled and walked around the base of the shuttle, taking it in. She laid one hand on the metal, closed her eyes briefly, then nodded and rejoined the group. None of them needed to ask what she’d been doing: there was more than one way to look for the
eiran,
after all, and if Arekhon’s Void-walker wanted to do it by touch rather than by sight, that was her business.
“Climb inside and strap in,” Karil said. Once they’d all dismounted from the skipsled, she twisted the safety catch on the control pylon and set the sled’s autodrive to “return.” The sled departed at little over walking speed, going back in the direction of the ops shed.
One by one, Arekhon and the others climbed the ladder into the main part of the cargo shuttle, a large open room filled with passenger acceleration couches. Another ladder led up and forward out of the main passenger cabin.
Karil paused at the foot and gestured at the row of couches. “Your home from here to high orbit. Pick out a place you like and secure yourselves for liftoff.”
“I’ll come up front with you, if you don’t mind,” Arekhon said. “If there’s room.”
“There’s room, but I don’t see the point.”
He shrugged. “I want to watch the departure. Call it sentiment.”
“You—sentimental?” Karil shook her head. “You’re the most cold-blooded son of a bitch I’ve ever known, and that’s saying something.”
Arekhon wanted to protest, but decided, upon quick reflection, that he didn’t have the right. Demaizen’s great working had not been kind to Karilen Estisk, and he was the working’s personification in her eyes, the chief agent of her worst misfortunes. If she’d agreed to join the Circle on this venture, it could only have been out of a conviction that trying to refuse him wouldn’t have done her any good.
Which was a thought with more truth in it than Arekhon cared to dwell on at the moment. He followed Karil up the ladder to the control bridge, and didn’t say anything.
The pilot swung into the acceleration seat on the right, leaving the left seat for Arekhon. She strapped herself into the safety webbing and began examining the gauges that dotted the panel in front of her.
“Ready for this?” she asked, as soon as her inspection was done. “I have the clearance I need, and it’s coming up.”
“I’m ready.” He glanced at the telltales on the panel. “And it looks like the others are all properly strapped in.”
“Then here we go,” Karil said, and slid down the launch sequencer switch.
A tone sounded, mind-numbingly loud—the launch alarm. Then the alarm fell silent, and instead an even louder roaring noise filled Arekhon’s ears, to be replaced in turn by a trembling sensation. The squares of light that were the windows of the shuttle’s control bridge danced a crazy jig in his field of view, and he felt himself pressed down into his seat. Karil had been right, he thought muzzily; this shuttle definitely wasn’t the best ride at An-Jemayne spaceport.

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