Rift in the Races (54 page)

Chapter 37

I
lbei Spadebreaker arrived by mule at Calico Castle, as good as his word. Never one for the new-fangled fancies of an age, he eschewed homing lizards and teleportation in the same way he eschewed enchantments on his beard. A sharp knife and a handful of seconds every few weeks were just as good for controlling unruly growth as any magic was, and a knife required no maintenance fees. He always figured it strange that the wizardly types could enchant cold spells on a rock one time and it would chill food in a box for years, but a growth-inhibition enchantment on a beard required two maintenance visits a year and at the cost of a silver piece each. Besides the fact that Ilbei was not the sort of man to indulge in that kind of vanity, he was definitely not the sort to pay for it. Truth be told, he hadn’t thought about the appearance of his beard in at least thirty years. That is, he hadn’t thought about it until Kettle appeared in Calico Castle’s courtyard.

When she came striding out to meet him, Ilbei saw naught but angles of authority and ample curves, a robust and vigorous form as divinely feminine as any he could recall. She was the picture of loveliness in his eyes, straight beautiful on her own merits and wearing skirts he reckoned couldn’t be more than three years old. Fancy, but not too much. Her figure was as abundant as piled dirt from a freshly dug mine, and her bosom filled her corset like hot silver in a mold. He saw her and knew then and there that turning down that “sissy feller” selling beard enchants had been a bad idea.

He bowed low at Kettle’s approach, a stiff gesture made difficult by his bulbous gut and significantly bowed legs. He swept his hat off as he did, pouring rainwater out as he brushed the flagstones with its tattered leather brim. “My lady,” he said, purposefully addressing her far above the station he knew quite well she held. “Yer a sight like the first glitter a’ gold in a brand new pan.” He grinned at her, his eyes sparkling as if filled with precious metals of their own. He clapped his hat back on.

She fixed him with a quizzical look, then started to scold him for his impertinence, but the merry glint in his eye and the dumpling plumpness that rounded his wind-burnt cheeks stole indignation away.

“Well, ya can jus’ save that sort of thing fer the tarts at the tavern,” she said instead, hiding her good humor by the severity of her words. “If’n ya want in outta the rain, I expect ya better plan on puttin’ on yer manners when ya take off that drippin’ hat.”

“Yes, ma’am. Ya can count on it.” He winked at her, and she couldn’t stop the smile before it flashed, though she did manage to rein it back straight away. Mostly.

“Harrumph,” she said, and spun back toward the inner keep and the kitchens. That smile was as persistent in its attempts to escape as Pernie had been earlier in the day trying to go out and play in the rain. “Come along then, afore I catch a cold.”

He followed. “A right shame that, ma’am,” he said as they went along. “I’d be happier ta lose an eye than see ya suffer such.”

She rolled her eyes over her shoulder at him for that one, and both suppressed a laugh.

Once he was warm and dry, or at least drying, by the fire, Kettle brought him a cup of hot cider and a basket of bread. “Meat’s a cookin’, but this will tide ya fer an hour.”

“Grateful as a soul can be, my lady.”

“And don’t ya be mah ladyin’ me neither. Weren’t no lady and ya know it true.”

“Ya have me there, I’ll confess it,” he said. “But I’ve yet ta get my lady’s name.”

“Yer gonna get mah lady’s frying pan if’n you call me that once more,” she threatened. “Ya can call me Kettle if’n ya must call me anything at all.”

“Mistress Kettle,” he said. “I am Ilbei Spadebreaker and the wealth of my years has increased tenfold in the minutes I done spent with ya now. I reckon your husband wakes up and thanks Mercy every day just fer the sight of ya.”

“Oh, now yer just goin’ too far, ya cheeky old goat,” she said. “An’ I ain’t got no husband, neither. If I had one what waxed on half as much as all that, I’d have brained him and used his bits fer stew.”

He showed nearly all his teeth in response to that, the gold one left of center sparkling its very best. “And a lucky man he’d be fer the attention he got.”

“Oh now stop,” she said. “And I mean it, now. Why don’t ya leave off all that and tell me what brung ya fer.”

He could see she meant it, and so he temporarily dropped his suit. “Actually, mistress, I come ta check on Miss Orli. Them folks up yonder asked me ta see about getting her ta send a dispatch or, well, one of them lizards or whatever method she reckons convenient. Just so she does it, is all. I promised that young feller Roberto I’d see it done.”

“Well, ya ain’t gonna see it done today,” Kettle said. “I ha’na seen a hair on neither her nor Tytamon’s heads these last two weeks. And I got no notion of where they gone neither, so no sense askin’. The master don’t bother checkin’ in with me afore he goes.”

“Well,” said Ilbei scratching at his beard, which, now that it had dried some, dropped lingering bits of Tinpoan soil into his bread. He saw Kettle’s eyes go to the mud-fall, then trace it to its origins dangling damp and scraggly from his chin. His grin tilted some, only marginally abashed, but he did lean over and shake most of the dirt off onto the floor before continuing. That decision neither lifted the eyebrow that had descended down upon her left eye, nor lowered the one that had raised above her right. He shrugged, there being only so much one man could do to impress a woman, and went back to eating. He interrupted his own thought as he chewed. “This here is right fine cookin’,” he said. “And I mean no empty flattery.”

“So that other was all a heap a’ rot, then?” she knew better but felt obliged to torment him as punishment for his forwardness.

He flustered and bumbled in the hurry to excavate a reply. “Why no, ma’am, a’ course not. Why I’d as soon as—”

She stopped him with an upraised hand, laughing and enjoying the crimson apples blushing made of his cheeks. “I’m just jerkin’ yer reins,” she said, enjoying her power over him. It had been a while.

What followed was a fine afternoon of flirting and hospitality, each exchanged to the mutual delight of the other, and it went right up to the edge of, and perhaps a step beyond, propriety. But at length, Ilbei had to go. He was a man of his word, and if Orli wasn’t here, then he had to find her in keeping with that word.

“Ya mean ta tell me ya really come all the way from Crown City just ta tell her ta send a message ta her ship?” Kettle asked as he prepared to go.

“Aye. A promise made is a promise kept. This kingdom would be a fair lot better off if’n a few more folk still clung ta that old bar.”

A wistful breath escaped her at that. “Well, yer a rare breed what would make such a journey as all of that. Why don’t ya just get yerself one of them homin’ lizards or take a teleport like normal folk?”

“I’ll dip my head in honey and stuff it in an ant hill afore I’ll get ta doin’ any of that,” he said. “They’re enchanting the fun right out of life. Kids these days just lay about letting magic do everything. And they’re all getting fat fer it, too.”

One side of Kettle’s mouth turned up, and she sent a cynical glance in the direction of his well-rounded stomach.

He objected vociferously to the implication of that look, explaining, “That there is a century of honest ale, well earned after a hard day’s toil one day after a next. I’ll pay ya twice my weight in gold if’n ya can find a lad under sixty I can’t work straight ta death.”

She relented, suspecting it was true. She smiled. “All right,” she said. “Do it the hard way, if’n that’s what yer about. But I ha’na got no clue where the two a’ them got off ta.”

“I’ll find them, mistress,” he said. “I expect she musta showed up at
Citadel
by now. I’ll make my way on out there next. If’n ya see her, have her get in touch with her people, and let me know when she done it.”

“And, how am I supposed ta do that, what with ya off wanderin’ around the countryside keepin’ trim and all?” She tried not to look at his stomach again but did a poor job of it.

“I’ll be checkin’ in at the post in Crown,” he said, sucking in his belly as best he could. He might as well have tried to hide a pumpkin in a tobacco pouch. “That’ll do well enough. But make sure ya seen her get it done, if’n ya please. So as I know it’s sure.”

“I promise,” she said, her eyes fluttering as they walked out into the rain.

He liked how the water looked as it beaded up on her ruddy cheeks. “A right fine woman such as yerself ought ta have a man,” he said audaciously.

“And a right old gentleman as yerself ought know better than ta say such a thing aloud.”

He donned his hat, nodding in the same motion so as not to have officially agreed.

“G’day ta ya,” he said, then added, “my lady,” just before he turned away.

She was still smiling when she pulled the next loaf of bread out of the oven, a full half hour after he was gone.

Chapter 38

P
ractice proved that teleportation of starships was viable. Not perfect, but definitely a workable solution for getting materials to the belabored ships and getting the fleet in a position to actually win the war with the Hostiles. After six more test teleports, the
Aspect
had its restarts down to less than fifteen hours, and over the course of twelve days, the rest of the ships had done as well or better. Fleet physicists still boggled at how large the distances were—well over a half light year, instantly achieved. The teleporters were confident they could manage more, far more, and they were doing considerably well learning the nature of the distances involved. They had Altin’s notes, which were making more and more sense the longer they worked at teleporting seeing stones—seeing diamonds, technically—and then teleporting ships. Lingering questions about distance, in particular the distance to the Hostile system, would be answered in another ten weeks when Altin was finally extracted from the amniotic tank. He could simply teleport one of the diamond seeing stones to the farthest distance he knew, and the rest of them could find that distance from the stone, and simple as a few thoughts, they could have the whole fleet parked and ready for war almost all at once. But even without Altin, the concert had been blind casting seeing stones with increasingly distant success for well over two weeks since the first test on the
Aspect
. Progress was moving along at a rapid and inspiring pace for the people of both worlds.

All that was left now was to find the other ships and reassemble the fleet in its entirety—an easy thing to do on a star map, not quite so easy to do with a handful of teleporters and diviners who had no way of making anything but marginally academic sense of fleet charts or computer graphic displays, and even less sense of them in any meaningful magical way.

“Yes, I can see the flashy marks on the wall,” said Conduit Huzzledorf staring at just such a display on the
Aspect’s
main bridge monitor, a sector map showing the location of the ten ships that had been in orbit above Tinpoa in relationship to the rest of the fleet. “I can see them just fine. But you do realize that this contraption is not a
place
. It’s just a … well, it’s not even an enchanted mirror. I have no idea what it is, but it’s less than no help at all. I might as well be looking at flies on the arse-end of a plow horse.”

“Well,” suggested Roberto from his place at the navigation controls, “what if I could show you where we were last time, when you blinked us over here, and where we are now? If I could do that, maybe show a trajectory, could you guys kind of work it through from there?”

The conduit exchanged glances with a few of his magicians, some seated in chairs that had been ordered along the bulkhead as out of the way as they could get for now, others standing near the display.

“First off,
Lieutenant
,” the conduit said, emphasizing the rank to remind Roberto that since his “disrespectful” attitude at the conclusion of the first test, the conduit no longer held him in high esteem, “since you people are so quick to correct our diction and syntax when we speak of your technologies, at least make an attempt to use the proper terminology for ours. A blink is a short cast, in the category of hopping spells. They are not teleports; they are teleport enchantments of limited distance and semi-arbitrary outcome. Teleportation is specific and accurate. Try to keep it straight, as there may come a time when not knowing the difference could cost people their lives.”

Roberto frowned and shot a glance to Ensign Nguyen at his side. The young man shrugged and tried not to snort. He wasn’t particularly fond of the conduit either, but he was glad not to be caught in the man’s sights like Roberto had become.

“Conduit, the question is a fair one,” interjected Captain Asad, already weary of the red-clad man and his relentless exercise of trying to irritate the
Aspect’s
weapons officer. “Answer it. Please.” The last bit, the “please,” came out so reluctantly it sounded as if the captain had had to jam it through a length of pipe with a steel rod. But still, he’d said it, which pleased the conduit.

“Perhaps, Captain. I’d have to see what your man there was yammering on about.”