Read A Working of Stars Online
Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald
A Working of Stars (37 page)
“Relax,” Len said. “They’re here to talk friendly.”
“We can sort that out later.” Herin sat down where he could watch both men. His expression didn’t change. “Right now we have another problem.”
“What is it?”
“Gossip from the port—I went out looking for some.”
“I remember,” Len said.
“Well, the last place I stopped, I found it. Nice and fresh. Somebody shot Iulan
etaze
in the alley back of the Hanilat Lounge, then dragged her off to the landing field.”
etaze
in the alley back of the Hanilat Lounge, then dragged her off to the landing field.”
“‘Somebody’?” The question came from the man Herin had named Egelt. “You mean you didn’t try to get anything better than that?”
Herin gave the man what clearly would have been a scornful look if he hadn’t been so distressed. “Of course I tried. The witnesses said the shooter was an off-worlder with yellow eyes.”
Everybody looked at Len, who shrugged helplessly. “I’ve got an alibi.” He gestured at the plate of food and the bottle of beer on the table in front of him. “Ask the cook’s helper if you don’t believe me.”
“We believe you,” said the man called Hussav. “But that does explain how we could get a message saying an individual matching your description had been spotted leaving Eraasi, right after we’d gotten through having our tails twisted by you at Aulwikh.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a twin somewhere, would you?” Egelt asked.
“I don’t even look that much like my own cousins, Syr Egelt,” Len said impatiently. “And my mother would have told me if I had a twin.”
“Peace, peace—it’s always best to eliminate the improbabilities as soon as possible.” Egelt turned to Herin. “Did your sources at the port say anything else?”
“That a ship lifted what would have been a few minutes later.”
“Which ship?” asked Len. If the
Fire
were stolen …
Fire
were stolen …
“A chartered contract-courier in from Eraasi,” Herin said. “It had been waiting on the landing field for almost a week, local, and it left without filing a destination.”
“That’s not good,” Len said.
Egelt shrugged. “Pay a contract-captain enough, and he’ll forget to file and pay the fine later.”
Len stiffened. “I have
never—”
never—”
“Len.” It was Zeri’s voice, from the shadows inside the guest-home door. She came out onto the dining porch looking proud and imperious—by now Len knew her well enough to tell that she was scared to death. “He didn’t mean to give you insult.”
Len swallowed a cutting remark about the general trustworthiness of spies. “I’m sure he didn’t. How long have you been listening, my lady?”
“The whole time.” She gave him a faint smile. “I heard you say that I wouldn’t be coming down if I saw these men here … so I stayed inside out of sight. Herin—”
“Yes, cousin?”
“I’m sorry that your friend is in trouble. But you have to tell us—is there any more news from the port that we need to know?”
That’s a good guess,
Len thought. Herin was nodding, his face still pale.
Len thought. Herin was nodding, his face still pale.
“Yes. The sus-Peledaen guardship—”
“What
sus-Peledaen guardship?” demanded Zeri. “Nobody mentioned one of those when we landed.”
sus-Peledaen guardship?” demanded Zeri. “Nobody mentioned one of those when we landed.”
“That’ll be the ship these two came in on,” Len said, indicating Egelt and Hussav. “And probably the same one we got away from over by Aulwikh.”
“I’m sure of it.” Herin wasn’t looking any better. “The port said it pulled out of high orbit as soon as the contract-courier lifted, and followed the courier’s projected arc of transit into the Void.”
“Damn,” said Egelt. “I hate smart ship captains.”
Hussav gave a gloomy nod. “I don’t think he believed that fake accounting data.”
“On the good side, now we know he doesn’t decrypt private messages. He thinks that the chase is still on.”
Zeri glared at the two operatives. “Would you
mind—”
mind—”
“Right,” said Egelt. “Sorry. What happened was that the courier dropped off a chase-and-go-home when it entered the Void.”
“’Chase-and-go-home’?” Len asked.
Egelt nodded. “New tech—military stuff. A message drone that can latch on to a ship-mind and pull stuff out of it. We couldn’t get away with using them on Eraasi—but as soon as we’d beaten you to Ninglin, we handed over a whole cargo container of them to some cooperative port workers, and they’ve slapped a chaser on to the hull of every ship that’s come in since.”
“You put one of those things onto
Fire-on-the-Hilltops?
Onto
my
ship?”
Fire-on-the-Hilltops?
Onto
my
ship?”
“Well … yes,” said Hussav. He looked a bit embarrassed. “But we were going to tell you about it, once we’d officially switched sides.”
“Anyway,” said Egelt, “it’s the one on the courier that’s the problem now. It would have given the guardship captain an exact course to follow—”
“No blind jumps,” Hussav contributed.
“—including the projected dropout point. So unless the courier’s pilot changes plans in mid-transit, the guardship is on him start to finish.”
“And Iulan
etaze
falls out of the hands of someone who shot and kidnapped her,” said Herin, “and into the hands of the sus-Peledaen.”
etaze
falls out of the hands of someone who shot and kidnapped her,” said Herin, “and into the hands of the sus-Peledaen.”
Zeri’s cousin looked shaken, and pale around the mouth.
He’s taking it hard,
Len thought. Then he remembered that Vai and Herin were Mages together, and not just fellow-operatives in the shadowy world of fleet-family security, which meant there were bonds at work that he didn’t even pretend to understand.
He’s taking it hard,
Len thought. Then he remembered that Vai and Herin were Mages together, and not just fellow-operatives in the shadowy world of fleet-family security, which meant there were bonds at work that he didn’t even pretend to understand.
“This is not acceptable.” Herin was talking again. “We have to do something.”
“We can’t.” Zeri had gone all straight-backed and firm-voiced, like she’d been at Serpent Station, and Lenyat Irao realized that he was hearing the head of the sus-Dariv declaring someone to be a casualty of war. “We don’t know who has Iulan
etaze,
or where she’s gone, and we don’t have the means of finding out the answer. But we do have a rendezvous to make, and a plan to carry through—and she was the one who set them both up for us. We go on.”
etaze,
or where she’s gone, and we don’t have the means of finding out the answer. But we do have a rendezvous to make, and a plan to carry through—and she was the one who set them both up for us. We go on.”
Vai lay on the pads in the hold of Kiefen Diasul’s ship, in pain and drifting.
It occurred to her that she had absolutely no idea how long the transit to the sus-Radal asteroid base was going to take. She knew that the base was supposed to be on the far side of the Gap somewhere, and she recalled that the first transit of the Gap had taken months to complete.
But that was a first transit, when they had nothing to guide them but Garrod’s Void-mark. ’Rekhe knew ships, and he’d explained to her once about how initial transits always took so much longer.
She missed Arekhon. Ten years since she’d last seen him, and she’d been firm with herself about not thinking of him except as the Mage who’d brought her into the Demaizen Circle and changed her life. Friend and teacher. Respect and admiration. That was it. Nothing more.
Only now it wasn’t working. She couldn’t move, and she was hurting, and Kiefen Diasul had gone insane. She’d been afraid for years that she’d be the one who would lose it—a Mage without a Circle was by definition half-mad—but the universe had a sick sense of humor and in the end she wasn’t the one who had snapped.
Kief’s made up his mind to look for you, ’Rekhe. And when he doesn’t find you at the asteroid base, he isn’t going to stop. He’ll keep right on going, unless somebody kills him.
And nobody
would
kill him—not even the sus-Dariv, when they showed up at the rendezvous point and she didn’t—because when he wasn’t talking about finding Arekhon sus-Khalgath and tearing apart the great working, he looked and sounded sane. Sort of sane, anyhow. More or less sane. Sane enough to convince the sus-Dariv, which was the only thing that would count.
would
kill him—not even the sus-Dariv, when they showed up at the rendezvous point and she didn’t—because when he wasn’t talking about finding Arekhon sus-Khalgath and tearing apart the great working, he looked and sounded sane. Sort of sane, anyhow. More or less sane. Sane enough to convince the sus-Dariv, which was the only thing that would count.
So he’d get away, probably. And—because he
was
a Mage, after all—he’d keep on working the luck to get closer and closer to Arekhon. Until eventually, someday, it worked.
was
a Mage, after all—he’d keep on working the luck to get closer and closer to Arekhon. Until eventually, someday, it worked.
Somebody would have to warn ’Rekhe. And tied down and hurting as she was, there remained only one way to do it. Vai closed her eyes against the bright lights overhead, relaxed as much as she could under the pain and the safety webbing, and let herself fall into the meditative trance.
… she was alone somewhere, standing in an empty wilderness—not the stony place of the great working to repair the galaxy, but a high rolling landscape like the Wide Hills District back on Eraasi. It wasn’t Eraasi, though, not even in dream. The ground cover underfoot was the wrong shade of green, and the sky overhead was the wrong shade of blue, and the trees that grew here and there in the folds of the hills were the wrong kind of trees.
She wondered if this was Arekhon’s new world. Or was this only the way that she, who never saw it, had created it in her mind? It didn’t matter, really—it was enough that it existed to show her where Arekhon was, and to help bring her to him.
It was a cold place, this landscape of her mind; she was glad that she’d had the forethought to bring her jacket along with her when she started walking. But where should she go?
Vai remembered the Wildlife Protection League’s safety pamphlets on how to stay alive in the woods: going downhill was almost always a good move when you were lost. Downhill would put you on the way to finding things like water, and roads, and people. She headed downhill.
She walked for a long time, and still didn’t see anybody. She didn’t see any sight or sound of wildlife, either, which would have made her uneasy if she hadn’t known that none of this was real. It was a long hike down to the low ground—she felt like she’d been walking all afternoon, although she didn’t get hungry and she didn’t feel the sun getting warm on the back of her neck.
After a while she came to a grove of the not-quite-right trees, with a jumbled pile of boulders in the middle of the grove. The pile had been there for quite a while, from the look of things; grass grew on top of it, and more grass was growing out of the cracks in between the boulders.
Something about the place made the small hairs along her arms and the back of her neck stand up and vibrate. She circled the pile of boulders. She wasn’t surprised, not really, to find an opening on the other side, with two standing stones topped crosswise by a third to make a door.
I love it when my mind sends me invitations I can’t turn down.
She went in. Her nostrils were full of the smells of damp loam and cold air. The ground underfoot sloped steeply downhill; soon the light from the mound entrance faded, and she was in the dark.
Vai thought about calling light to her staff, but rejected the idea as too pretentious. She’d done it once to impress Herin, back in the basement of Demaizen Old Hall, but there was nobody to impress in this tunnel but her. She carried a perfectly good mini-light in the vest pocket of her jacket, and it would do the job.
The incandescent beam lit her way farther downward. The tunnel was a single path, with no turnings—she supposed that her mind was telling her that the journey was urgent, and that she couldn’t afford any distractions from her goal—and it coiled and spiraled ever inward and became narrower as it went.
Tighter and tighter it grew, and the ceiling grew lower. She could stretch out her hands to either side and touch the dirt walls, reach up and touch the weight of the earth over her head.
She went on. The tunnel kept on getting narrower. She didn’t even have to lift her arms to touch the sides; all she needed to do was flex her wrists, and her fingernails scraped against the dirt. She had to bow her head to keep from grinding the earth into her scalp.
Then the light in her hand went out.
She stood there, wrapped up in absolute, utter darkness, and felt its pressure so intensely that she couldn’t breathe. Then the paralysis lifted. She drew a loud, shuddering gasp—the air in here smelled ghastly, like something dead for so long it had gone past rotting—and took a step to turn and back away.
Only she couldn’t. The tunnel had narrowed behind her as well as before, and she was trapped in the dark.
She forced herself to breathe deeply.
Calm. Never mind what the air smells like, take a good breath. Remember, you asked to be here. You won’t have left yourself without a way out.
Calm. Never mind what the air smells like, take a good breath. Remember, you asked to be here. You won’t have left yourself without a way out.
No.
Understanding came; this was something new she was teaching herself, under the pressure of her need.
Not out. Through.
She stepped forward, and the dirt walls fell away from her and the light came on.
Understanding came; this was something new she was teaching herself, under the pressure of her need.
Not out. Through.
She stepped forward, and the dirt walls fell away from her and the light came on.
She was in a corridor, a familiar unmystical passageway built out of steel and glass and plastic and paint, and she knew at last where she was. Over a decade had gone by since she’d last stood on the deckplates of
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter,
but she hadn’t forgotten. She felt a brief surge of triumph
—’Rekhe is here; I’ve done it!—and
reminded herself that she hadn’t yet done it all. She had to find Arekhon and give him her warning.
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter,
but she hadn’t forgotten. She felt a brief surge of triumph
—’Rekhe is here; I’ve done it!—and
reminded herself that she hadn’t yet done it all. She had to find Arekhon and give him her warning.
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