A Working of Stars (35 page)
Read A Working of Stars Online
Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald
“What’s all this about?” Hussav asked as soon as the captain had left. “Why are we going back to Aulwikh?”
“We aren’t,” Egelt said. He pulled out the message pad, then brought up the text and extended it to Hussav for his perusal. “We’ve been recalled to Eraasi and our unlimited letter of credit has been canceled.”
“Then what in the name of the Six Fountains do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m not sure yet. But you and I are going to go down to Ninglin Spaceport and have a talk with the captain of
Once-Over-Lightly.
I have a very good idea where the blushing bride went, and I think he does, too. Now—” and here Egelt blanked the pad’s screen again, and entered a string of numbers instead “—take this codefile to the ship’s registrar and tell him it’s the accounting data he’ll need to use for paying fees and making purchases on our next jump.”
Once-Over-Lightly.
I have a very good idea where the blushing bride went, and I think he does, too. Now—” and here Egelt blanked the pad’s screen again, and entered a string of numbers instead “—take this codefile to the ship’s registrar and tell him it’s the accounting data he’ll need to use for paying fees and making purchases on our next jump.”
“And this number really is—?”
“Accounting data,” Egelt said. “For a different family ship, one that’s currently outbound in the Void. No one will notice that the
Cold-Heart’
s been accessing the wrong line of credit until that other ship makes it all the way back to Eraasi.”
Cold-Heart’
s been accessing the wrong line of credit until that other ship makes it all the way back to Eraasi.”
“You’re planning something, I can tell.”
“Let’s say I’m not quite ready to give up and head home. Even if Lord Natelth has decided to declare his lady bride dead and dispense with the morning after.”
“You’re crazy,” Hussav said. “But what the hell, I think I’m going crazy, too.” He took the pad full of numbers and departed.
Several hours later, Lenyat Irao sat at a table on the roofed-over dining porch of the Far Call Guest Home, drinking cold beer and waiting for the cook’s helper to bring him the afternoon special. They didn’t have
aiketen
to wait on tables on Ninglin, and the afternoon special was something whose name he couldn’t even read—only the prices on the menu had an Eraasian translation—but he was looking forward to the meal. Even if the main dish turned out to be broiled tree-rats on toast points (which hadn’t been all that bad, the one time he’d had them), at least it wasn’t going to be ship’s rations again.
aiketen
to wait on tables on Ninglin, and the afternoon special was something whose name he couldn’t even read—only the prices on the menu had an Eraasian translation—but he was looking forward to the meal. Even if the main dish turned out to be broiled tree-rats on toast points (which hadn’t been all that bad, the one time he’d had them), at least it wasn’t going to be ship’s rations again.
Of the
Fire’s
passengers, Zeri was the only one whose exact whereabouts he currently knew. She was upstairs in her room, having expressed the intention of standing under the waterfall in the necessarium until either she felt clean again or the water ran out, whichever came first. Cousin Herin was off lurking somewhere, or at least that’s what it had sounded like he’d been planning to do … soaking up local gossip along with, probably, a distressing amount of the local beer. And Iulan Vai had gone to try her wiles, Magish and otherwise, on the officials at the port.
Fire’s
passengers, Zeri was the only one whose exact whereabouts he currently knew. She was upstairs in her room, having expressed the intention of standing under the waterfall in the necessarium until either she felt clean again or the water ran out, whichever came first. Cousin Herin was off lurking somewhere, or at least that’s what it had sounded like he’d been planning to do … soaking up local gossip along with, probably, a distressing amount of the local beer. And Iulan Vai had gone to try her wiles, Magish and otherwise, on the officials at the port.
The guest home had other customers, of course—it apparently catered to the more respectable end of the spaceport trade, and Len wasn’t surprised to see a man dressed in business drab come up the porch steps and call out to the cook’s helper for a beer. The man’s Hanilat-Eraasian accent did make him somewhat uneasy, but most spaceport cities relied on some version of Eraasian for a common tongue.
All the same, Len reflected, it might be a good idea to give up on the afternoon special and slip off the porch before the stranger noticed him.
He had, unfortunately, arrived at his conclusion too late for it to do him any good. The man in drab had gotten his beer and was heading straight for Len’s table.
“You know, they don’t see many travelers from the Antipodes here on Ninglin,” the stranger said. He took a chair on Len’s left without waiting to be invited. “And people tend to remember it when they do. If I asked if you knew an Antipodean ship captain named Lenyat Irao, what would you say?”
“I might say that I’ve never heard of him,” Len said.
If this is a sus-Peledaen agent,
he thought,
why is he bothering to talk to me when Zeri is alone upstairs for the grabbing?
“On the other hand, I might ask why you want to know.”
If this is a sus-Peledaen agent,
he thought,
why is he bothering to talk to me when Zeri is alone upstairs for the grabbing?
“On the other hand, I might ask why you want to know.”
“‘Why do you want to know?’ is definitely the wiser option,” said the man in drab. “Because it turns out that Captain Irao has made some very powerful enemies.”
“He was afraid something like that might happen,” Len said. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything more specific about those powerful enemies, would you?”
“I know that Lord Natelth sus-Khalgath wants Lenyat Irao dead, and that he sent a couple of top sus-Peledaen operatives all the way from Eraasi to make sure.”
“That’s old news,” Len said. He took a pull of his beer. “Captain Irao would tell you he’s been dodging sus-Peledaen operatives ever since leaving Hanilat.”
The man in drab gave him a tight smile. “In that case, the captain might be interested to know that Lord Natelth has called back his operatives and cut off their credit.”
“That’s a star-lord for you,” Len said. “No patience, and no gratitude, either. If I were one of those operatives, I’d be worrying right now about whether I’d have a job when I got home.”
“The operatives have been worried about that for some time,” said the man in drab. “And they’ve concluded that they don’t want to operate on Lord Natelth’s behalf any longer.”
“Risky,” Len said. “Natelth sounds like the kind of guy who thinks a bullet in the back of the head makes good severance pay.”
“That possibility has also crossed their minds,” the man said. “That’s why they’re going to tell Captain Irao they want to jump ship and join his team, so they can help him make a clean getaway.”
“All that helpfulness might be a ruse,” Len said. “They could be trying to get him to tell them where he’s got the girl stashed—everyone knows about the girl, too—and it could be that he’s already made a clean getaway and doesn’t need any help.”
“It could be,” agreed the man in drab. He picked up the beer with his right hand, sipped, then put it down using his left hand.
Across the street, Jyriom Hussav was watching.
That’s the signal,
he thought, and headed over to join Grif Egelt and Captain Irao.
That’s the signal,
he thought, and headed over to join Grif Egelt and Captain Irao.
Iulan Vai regarded the main street of Ninglin Spaceport with the jaundiced eye of someone who has just spent several hours on a profitless errand. The hike from the Far Call Guest Home out to the landing field and back had left her boots splotched with slippery grey mud, and likewise her clothing below the knee. The muddiness irritated her. Unrelieved black could be unobtrusive or intimidating, depending upon necessity and her mood; all-black with pale grey mud stains, on the other hand … maybe the guest home had a laundry.
Her visit with the Ninglinese port officials hadn’t yielded much by way of useful information. The disguised
Fire-on-the-Hilltops
excepted, Ninglin Spaceport had only one Eraasian ship on the field, a contract carrier nominally working for the sus-Radal. Without more data, there was no way to tell whether or not the ship represented a threat. It could well be legit; the sus-Radal fleet-family had maintained regular trade ties with Ninglin ever since the planet’s reunion with the heartworlds.
Fire-on-the-Hilltops
excepted, Ninglin Spaceport had only one Eraasian ship on the field, a contract carrier nominally working for the sus-Radal. Without more data, there was no way to tell whether or not the ship represented a threat. It could well be legit; the sus-Radal fleet-family had maintained regular trade ties with Ninglin ever since the planet’s reunion with the heartworlds.
If we’re still here when they lift
, she thought,
then we’re probably safe. At the very worst, they’ll have come here looking for us and gone home empty.
, she thought,
then we’re probably safe. At the very worst, they’ll have come here looking for us and gone home empty.
The port officials had been a great deal more closemouthed than she’d liked, and she’d been afraid to try outright bribery. She didn’t have an infinite amount of ready cash, for one thing; more to the point, a bribe in the amount necessary to break down a port official’s reticence would draw unwanted attention.
Just the same … they were hiding something. She remembered the sus-Peledaen guardship that had been waiting in ambush for
Fire-on-the-Hilltops
over Aulwikh. Somebody on board that ship knew how to think more than one move ahead, and a guardship was faster in the Void than an obsolete sus-Radal-built cargo hauler.
Fire-on-the-Hilltops
over Aulwikh. Somebody on board that ship knew how to think more than one move ahead, and a guardship was faster in the Void than an obsolete sus-Radal-built cargo hauler.
If I had a guardship, and Natelth sus-Khalgath’s money to spend and Natelth sus-Khalgath’s authority to back me up, where would I be right now?
Lurking in orbit, that’s where I’d be. Maybe using something straightforwardly sneaky, like a false ID. Or maybe something complicated and flashy, because I’m sus-Peledaen and that means I can.
Cloaking, say. The technology had been in development among the fleet-families for over a decade; the lamented
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
now long gone across the Gap, had been outfitted with one of the sus-Radal prototypes. The device at that stage had been small-scope, cranky, and only good in short bursts, but Vai was not so foolish as to think that the sus-Peledaen hadn’t built themselves a better one by now … and being sus-Peledaen, they’d have built it big enough and powerful enough to hide a guardship the whole time a little vessel like the
Fire
was inside sensor range.
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
now long gone across the Gap, had been outfitted with one of the sus-Radal prototypes. The device at that stage had been small-scope, cranky, and only good in short bursts, but Vai was not so foolish as to think that the sus-Peledaen hadn’t built themselves a better one by now … and being sus-Peledaen, they’d have built it big enough and powerful enough to hide a guardship the whole time a little vessel like the
Fire
was inside sensor range.
There was no way to prove any of that, of course, but Vai was morally certain it was true. The certainty, however, didn’t change her projected course of action for the
Fire
and its ragtag crew: Become one with the local ground, and don’t move until the big predators go somewhere else.
Fire
and its ragtag crew: Become one with the local ground, and don’t move until the big predators go somewhere else.
The wall-high sign of the Hanilat Lounge flashed and dazzled its way into view on the corner ahead, and Vai’s mouth quirked into a smile in spite of her bad mood. She hadn’t seen a place that unashamedly tacky and whorish since the days when she worked full-time for Theledau sus-Radal.
Even better, the Hanilat Lounge looked like the sort of all-day, all-night dive that would attract a ship’s crew on liberty. People in there might be more willing to talk than the port officials had been, or at least cheaper to bribe; she could find out if anybody else had been poking around asking questions, and whether or not there had been any sus-Peledaen crews coming into town on liberty.
As soon as she entered the lounge, she was hit by a combined blast of bad music and bad air. Environmental control was apparently not a well-developed local technology, and the lounge atmosphere was a mixed funk of old cooking oil, unwashed bodies, stale beer, and sex. Vai made her way inside, blinking in the sudden dimness, and found the bar.
Eventually the bartender noticed her presence. “What’re you having?”
“Beer.”
“Tap?”
She shook her head. “Bottle.”
The barkeep slid a bottle of something local across the bar, along with a glass. She ignored the glass in favor of drinking straight from the bottle—even in the low light the bottle looked cleaner—and put down a couple of Eraasian banknotes on the bar next to the empty glass.
The formalities having been observed, she commented, “Business looks a bit slow.”
“Bad season for it.”
“Nobody in town?”
“Couple of small ships, not big party types from the looks of them.” The bartender eyed her up and down, in a way that made it clear he’d noticed and catalogued her off-planet clothes and her Eraasian speech. “You’d know about that.”
Vai shrugged. “Some people are stingy. Working for them’s a pain, but you take what you can get, sometimes.” She glanced around the barroom. “I take it the rest of these guys are local?”
“Short-hoppers, mostly,” said the bartender. “In from the lunar mines and the asteroids.”
“Down at the port, they said there was a sus-Peledaen guardship up in orbit somewhere, come all the way from Eraasi. You’d think those guys at least would be ready to have fun and spend some money.”
“If they’re up there, they sure haven’t come in here.”
His replies earlier had been evasive, but this one, Vai thought, held a note of genuine grievance.
Conclusion—there
is
a guardship in orbit, and the whole port knows it.
Conclusion—there
is
a guardship in orbit, and the whole port knows it.
She finished her beer, added another couple of Eraasian banknotes to the stack on the bar—“for your time”—and turned to go.
And there was Len. She’d thought he was staying back at the guest home, sticking close to Zeri sus-Dariv … it looked like there might be a bit of something developing there, and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Under normal circumstances, high inner-family was a long way above an Antipodean contract-captain; circumstances for the sus-Dariv weren’t normal anymore, though, and they might not ever be normal again.
Zeri sus-Dariv or not,
she thought,
it looks like a spacer’s a spacer when it comes to the joys of a portside strip.
she thought,
it looks like a spacer’s a spacer when it comes to the joys of a portside strip.
“I see you decided to check out the local action after all,” she said to the contract-captain.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been here awhile, watching people come and go. Then I saw you.”
He sounded a bit off, and she wondered how many drinks he’d had while he was people-watching. Maybe he’d cherished thoughts of making a night of it—he looked like he’d broken out his port-liberty clothes for the occasion, Hanilat-tailored shirt and trousers and a good loose coat.
Vai wished she had a coat like that herself; then she wouldn’t have all the extra work and headaches of making sure that nobody noticed her Mage-staff who wasn’t supposed to. Literal headaches, sometimes. The necessary constant subliminal awareness of the
eiran
caused a disquieting flicker at the edges of her vision—
eiran
caused a disquieting flicker at the edges of her vision—
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