Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) (37 page)

“I do,” he said. “I’ll need some time to get the mechs and pilots together.”

Roberto nodded and looked to Tytamon. “You can send me, then send the general and whoever he can round up when they are ready, and when it’s done, send me the harbor stone too. And if you can’t get it done before we could use it, well, we will just up and get the hell out of there the old-fashioned way, and that’s how it will be. The
Lady
is fast enough.”

“And if you run into a problem before you have that opportunity?” Tytamon asked.

“Sometimes you just have to improvise, Tytamon, trust your instincts. Those are my friends up there, and I don’t have time for … for the crystal ball treatment. No offense. This shit is on, you know?”

Tytamon sighed and nodded. “It is. I agree. I worry about how we will communicate. You have no mages on your ship. You must have a way to communicate telepathically at least. You have other crewmembers to think of.”

“Do you have anyone you can recommend?”

“Her Majesty has tapped the entire nation, I’m afraid. With the losses from the war, the TGS efforts, and whatever Her Majesty is up to, there’s hardly a B-class illusionist to be found for the start of summer festivals.”

“Then I’ll get one of those homing lizards you guys use. How many have you got around here?”

Tytamon huffed at that. “None. The world teeters on the brink of something spectacular—or terrible—and an entire generation of blanks wastes the first magical access those creatures gave them in sending short notes and silly drawings back and forth. I abstain on principle.”

Roberto turned to see if the doctor had a homing lizard to spare, but the old fellow was nodding right along with Tytamon. Roberto shook his head. Old people. Always crapping on change. Some things never changed.

“Fine,” he said. “Where can I get one this late at night? Is there someplace close? In Leekant?”

“Murdoc Bay,” Tytamon and Doctor Leopold said together. Tytamon continued, “Everything in Leekant will be closed, but down there, well, they shutter more businesses during the day.”

Roberto nodded. Not his first choice, but any spaceport is better than none in a meteor storm. “Fine. I’ll go after dinner. You happen to know the name of any shops?”

“I don’t. Be careful if you go. It’s not a safe place during the day, and the danger there multiplies the longer the sun has been gone.”

“I know. I’ll bring my people,” Roberto said. “We’ve done that run before.”

“After dark?”

“No.”

“You’ll be better off with less of you, not more. And I’d cover those Earth weapons of yours.”

“I’m a big boy, Tytamon. And Deeqa grew up in a place that makes Murdoc Bay look like a pirate-themed kiddie park.”

Tytamon nodded. “Very well. I’ll send you along before the doctor and I start the divination. Sooner is better. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“We’ll take ourselves,” Roberto said. He jammed the last of the duck into his mouth as he stood. He scooped up a fork load of the lightning root and stuffed that in as well, then snatched the uncut half of a loaf of Kettle’s now galaxy-famous bread. “I’ll go now.” He didn’t have to say anything and Deeqa was pushing out her chair, the rest of his crew only a few movements behind. He nearly made it to the doors, then came back and wrapped up the rest of the root on his plate in the napkin he’d dropped beside it when he got up. “Damn,” he mouthed around the food he was still working on getting down. “That’s freaking amazing.” He grinned so wide that his stuffed cheeks nearly closed his eyes. “I love this planet. I really do. Can’t wait until we can cut the crap and just get to having fun.” Then he was off after the rest of them. A couple of homing lizards from Murdoc Bay and then he was going back to Yellow Fire to get Orli and Altin. Her Majesty had had her chance. Way more chance than he should have given her. Now was the time for action.

Chapter 37

B
lack Sander watched through the window as the poplars beyond Galbrun Hall’s eastern garden wall swayed in the night breeze. The uppermost branches, black silhouettes, swept lazily across the sky, masking and unmasking the star that sailors called Hope. He watched it blinking in and out as the black clouds of the leafy poplar limbs blew over it, on and off, over and over again. There was hope, and there was not. Hope was a coin toss, about the same odds Jefe was looking at in his suit to get the royal armor from the marchioness as a prize.

Black Sander glanced to the water clock on a table in the corner and saw that they’d been waiting for almost an hour. He knew she was doing it on purpose. He looked to where Jefe sat, a pleasant smile on his face as if he were some young boy about to watch an enchanted puppet show. That was good. Black Sander didn’t want to be in the room if two colossal egos were going to collide.

As if reading his thoughts, El Segador, seated next to his boss, looked to the clock as well. Black Sander could tell the Earth man didn’t know how to read it. El Segador’s gaze slid to Black Sander. He gave the slightest movement of one shoulder and even less movement in the tilting of his head, a question. Black Sander made no movement, nothing at all to serve as response.

When a full hour had passed and one minute more, the door opened to the marchioness’ sitting room. The Earl of Vorvington stuck his fat face out and announced, “My Lady will see you now.”

Jefe sprang up with youthful energy and strode right in. El Segador and Black Sander followed less eagerly.

“Buenas noches, Mi Señora. I am—” he began, addressing the marchioness with utmost courtesy.

“I know who you are,” she cut him off. “Do you think I am an idiot?” She did not look at him. She stared into the mirror instead.

Black Sander cringed and started running through his mental list of contacts back on Earth. It wasn’t a long list, but he’d likely have to start working it now. They were going to be back to square one.

“Do you see here?” the marchioness said, stepping back from the mirror enough to grant the others in the room a look. “The aliens are moving them now. It’s most interesting.”

Shockingly, she looked to Black Sander as she pointed to the mirror. He knew why she was doing it. She wanted Jefe to understand his place. She would address her own kind, those with magic in particular, first.

Black Sander went to the mirror and looked into it. The image that had been there for weeks was different now. There were long, ropy things, grayish-white strands, dangling around the Galactic Mage and his bride, and they were moving, although Black Sander could not say how. There was a bright light shining on them, and they seemed to be traveling through mist.

“It started twenty minutes ago,” the marchioness said. “Those tendrils came down and pulled one of the tubes out of the amber. Then the light came on. They’ve been moving along like this since.”

Black Sander leaned forward and looked into the faces of each, Altin, then Orli, in turn. They were still in the gelatinous ochre material, and it was hard to make out if they were moving inside of their spacesuits. “I still can’t tell if they are alive.”

“We may be on the brink of finding out. Perhaps they have been in cold storage all this time, little more than slabs of meat on ice.”

“It would explain the mist. It’s likely frost, though it looks a little heavy in this view.”

She nodded, and they stood watching for a time.

“She’ll be right with you,” the earl muttered to Jefe and El Segador nervously. Black Sander knew how badly the nobleman wanted to get the mechs. The idea had surprised him at first, but the earl knew an advantage when he saw one. His palpable eagerness was going to up the cost.

Black Sander was himself a bit uncomfortable with standing there as long as they did. It was rude, and grossly so, and with each minute that passed, he became more aware of it. He could not look away, however, for this was the marchioness’ game to play now. She’d not been happy to have her hand forced like it had been.

“What’s that?” she said, more to herself than to Black Sander.

Two of the tendrils that waved around Altin and Orli in their amber cocoons swung up and out of view, and shortly after, the edge of a platform came into view. The two newlyweds were lifted up over it and placed on a wide beam. The beam was so long it disappeared into the distance with no end in sight. There were others like it nearby, some in parallel, others running crosswise at even intervals, all together like latticework, albeit a very great one. Large, shadowy things loomed in the distance, shrouded by darkness and blowing mist, frost perhaps, as the marchioness had suggested.

The two of them were placed upon the beam together, Orli slightly ahead of Altin. The tendrils released them both and then seemed to simply float away. Soon after, there was little more to see, Altin and Orli, once again, just sitting there. Black Sander almost turned away to look at Jefe and El Segador, compelled to by the audacity of their wait, but then Lady Meade blinked.

The marchioness saw it too, for she said, “Well, there we have it. She’s not dead.” She turned from the mirror then as if that had been the signal she was waiting for. “Now, you,” she said, gazing down her nose at Jefe. “What is this about the royal armor?”

Black Sander finally turned, relieved that the wait was over and curious to see how much damage she had done. But the expression on Jefe’s face was just as sanguine as it had been when he was out in the waiting room. Black Sander let out a silent breath. He had to give the man credit: he was good at what he did.

Beyond good. A half hour later, Jefe and Vorvington were laughing like old friends over a bottle of elven wine, and the Earth man was making promises to deliver, in exchange for a case of the fine libation, a case of another fine libation from his homeland called “tequila,” which he promised was the very nectar of Earth. The marchioness, while hardly so convivial as those two, had actually deigned to let everyone sit down. Everyone but the “minions.”

Black Sander and El Segador were dismissed like children soon after the wine was poured, with Vorvington even calling after, “Take him into the city and show him around.” It was a suggestion to which Jefe had boisterously agreed, acting tipsier than he could possibly be.

Black Sander gritted his teeth, but nodded that he would comply. If his part in securing the mechs required that he play tour guide, then that was how it had to be.

“Let’s get you into something less conspicuous,” he said, looking El Segador up and down. “There’s no sense shouting to every blank on Prosperion that you are here.”

Chapter 38

R
oberto and Deeqa Daar left the
Glistening Lady
not far off the road, a quarter mile west of the Decline. They’d come in slow and set down quietly and with lights off. As soon as they were off, the ship turned on its camouflage, vanishing into the night.

As it had been last night when they’d met with Vorvington, the wind whipped around them, whipping the folds of their cloaks, garments that Kettle had forced on them after having chased them down as they left Calico Castle’s front gate.

They bent into the wind and made their way onto the road, and soon after, they were winding their way down the Decline. Despite Tytamon’s comment about businesses in the city shutting down during the day rather than at night, there were scant few of them lit up as they went down. There was a candle shop with lights on as they passed, but not invitingly so. Deeqa commented that it had the same name as the warehouse through which they contracted several of their Goblin Tea suppliers: Gevender’s.

“Yeah, I think that sneaky little bastard Tenderthrift has his stubby fingers in everything, probably on all sides,” Roberto replied. “And frankly, I’ll be perfectly happy to buy homing lizards from him too if he’s got a shop somewhere up ahead. At this point, I don’t really care where they come from.”

Two men fell in behind them as they rounded the first of the steep hairpin turns that bent the Decline back on itself as it cut its way down the cliff. Roberto and Deeqa both saw them. The tail was still with them after they passed through a better-lit stretch where four businesses in a row were open—none of which promised homing lizards inside.

As the lights were fading behind them, Roberto glanced to Deeqa, who nodded. They stopped and turned around, Roberto throwing back his hood as he spoke. “You got a half second to back off, or we’re going to drop you both where you stand,” he said. The barrels of both Deeqa’s nine-millimeter pistols pushed pointedly in the direction of the men from beneath her cloak, revealing the source of the menace if not the nature of it. “Actually, she’s going to do it,” he amended. “I’m just going to laugh.”

The taller of the two men glared out from beneath his own hood, but saw something in the aspect of his intended victims that turned him and his companion around. Roberto watched them go until they were beyond the light, heading back to the hairpin. He shook his head and grinned at Deeqa, who shrugged. They set off again.

They made their way down the rest of the Decline without event, and without homing lizards, and moved into the city, where the lights grew brighter and more frequent the closer they got to the harbor.

They turned down this way and that, expecting at any point to find something promising, but nothing stood out.