Rift in the Races (63 page)

She collapsed to her knees, exhausted and weeping, still trapped in a cage. She peeled the hoopskirt back, threw it over her head, but her arm slipped through one of the rents in the petticoats and caught, which tangled her up even more in the messy web of frayed fabric. Still she thrashed about trying to free herself, blinded by the mesh of the dress and by a surge of frustration, which her fury continued to make worse.

Finally, a full minute later, she gave up, spent. She collapsed on the floor, weeping beneath the heap of decimated finery, a mound of ruined silk and broken thread. Still alone, and still so far from anyplace she could call home.

When she awoke, she was back in the soft bed. From the gray light in the window, the sun was making its way down from its hiding place behind the clouds. The sound of rustling fabric drew her attention to the chambermaid who had just risen from a chair near the door and slipped out through it, closing it behind her with a click.

Orli sat up and looked around. The fading daylight was already giving way to flickering shadows on the floor and ceiling of the bedroom, the motion put there by candles on a table in the corner of the room. Someone had lit them while she slept. She lay silently for a time, watching them. Watching the shadows as they steadily grew longer, gyrating upon the flat surfaces of the room like ghosts in some tribal dance, their movements giving birth to others, who, as a mob, slowly drove the sunlight out, back through the window and to where it had come from. She watched it retreat with dark thoughts of her own, thinking back to her actions of a few hours before, to the fit she’d thrown. The dress she’d destroyed.

She felt foolish. He’d said he’d go to the authorities. The rest was just Thadius Thoroughgood being who he was. And he
had
rescued her. He deserved more gratitude than that. More respect than the destruction of an expensive gown. She knew enough of this society to know that dress was worth a fortune, far more even than the fortune in velvet and gold thread above her head. Perhaps more than the fortune in everything around her in the room.

She let go a breath so long it seemed as if she must have been holding it in for years. Stress. She knew it was stress. The chambermaid had been right. Such an ordeal.

She lay back and allowed herself to reflect on what had befallen her. The capture, the murder of Tytamon. The long journey by land and the shorter one—or so it seemed to her—by sea. She wondered how long she’d been sick. How close had she come to death? She could have died and been tossed overboard. If the fleet didn’t think to look for her, if they never came back, she could have simply just been gone for good. Vanished.

She still might be. What if the fleet didn’t come back? What if the hostiles destroyed them? Altin was on those ships. So was her father. Roberto. Doctor Singh. Everyone she loved.

They would come back, she told herself. They had to. She forced herself to drive the negative thoughts out of her head. They would come back.

After a time, she realized it was true. She was panicking.
Get it together, Pewter
, she told herself once again. It was almost funny. She could hardly believe she was lamenting the absence of the fleet. She could hardly fathom the irony of it, of her lying here in a rich princess bed, surrounded by the finest fairytale splendor, and she actually wanted to be back on her ship. Safe with her friends.

They would come back. They would find her. She was micro-chipped like all the rest. A matter of a moment, and they’d know right where she was. They would have rescued her from slavery—or whatever else those people had had in mind. It might have been a long, miserable while, but they would have come.

Which reminded her of the debt of gratitude she had to pay Thadius. As fond of himself as he was, the man had saved her. In fact, he’d not only saved her, he’d done it at considerable risk to himself, and to his men. Which brought to mind the memory of the deed. She was fairly sure she recalled one of his men, the man in the black armor, had gone down during the fight. She had no idea if they’d been able to get him out when they left. She’d been too afraid to even think of it. She certainly hoped they had.

She made a promise to herself that she would find out, that she would ask about the man, and that she would find and thank the magician who helped in her rescue as well. The three of them might have died doing that. She thought on that for quite a while. Wondered if she deserved that kind of sacrifice.

She really hoped that man in the black armor was all right.

She promised she’d be kinder to Lord Thoroughgood. To Thadius. To Thad. He didn’t have to come after her. Frankly, he had no reason to. Why should he? And yet he had. She thought about it more and more, and the longer she thought about it, the more ashamed she became of the way she’d acted this morning when he came to check on her.

She promised herself she would do better next time. She promised she would give him a second chance. She had to admit, he’d never been anything but polite to her. And, if she were completely honest with herself, Altin had rather poisoned her opinion of him in the days that followed the Royal Earth Ball. At the time she’d thought it flattering jealousy, but now it seemed a bit unfair. Class rivalry, perhaps. Maybe insecurity.

She swung her feet out of bed and stood up. Resolved to be a better guest. She noticed that stacked on a chair near her bed were folded a pair of riding breeches and a white silk blouse. Hanging from the back of the chair was a sharply cut, burgundy colored hunting coat of plush velvet, and set on the floor beside it all stood a pair of polished black riding boots that reflected the candlelight as perfectly as if they were a matched set of onyx mirrors.

She breathed out what remained of her mistrust and smiled. It must have galled that poor chambermaid to place those there, she thought. The woman had worked so hard to make Orli look the part of a proper lady.

She debated going out and asking the woman for another dress, as a way to say that she was sorry, to show that she was willing to make some effort to be polite and follow household conventions, but she pulled that impulse back. She wasn’t
that
sorry. Those tent-pole dresses were not going to be part of the deal. At least not today. She was truly grateful, but she was not somebody’s dress-up doll. If she were going to wear one of those, it was going to be when she was in the mood. And today, she was not.

She set herself to getting dressed—on her own.

Chapter 45

C
onduit Huzzledorf leapt from the captain’s chair with a great “Huzzah!” He turned, chest puffed, to Captain Asad and, with majestic flourish, unfurled his arm to point at the main monitor, which was completely blank—shut down given that the just-finished teleport had cut power to it. He proudly pronounced, “There you are, good Captain, your ‘quarter light year out,’ just as you asked. The obvious advantage of a concert over a single mage.”

A pair of the teleporters on the bridge frowned at that, but none said anything aloud.

“Can I assume that means you think you’ve finally pulled it off, Conduit?” said the captain, peering through the dim red glow of the emergency lights at the conduit, who continued to point at the blank screen as if somehow it gave the evidence for his claim.

“
Finally
, Captain? You say that as if you do not appreciate the magnitude of the accomplishment. It took our planet’s only Z-class teleporter two years and some heap of silver to do a fraction of what we have just done. And, if we’re being honest, I understand it took your people something on the order of twelve years. I should think you’d be properly impressed.”

“I’ll be impressed if we don’t die while firing the ship back up. That’s when I’ll be impressed. Now stand aside.” The captain’s posture was all radiant impatience.

The conduit, despite his bluster, was not a fool. He made a great show of indignation, fussing about ingratitude and ignorance, but he did move immediately aside and lavished most of his emotive convulsions on his fellow magicians. He knew full well—if realized a moment or two belatedly—that they were, all of them, now, once again, sitting ducks should the Hostiles arrive in too great a force.

They’d come very far this time, in theory somewhere between ten light days and a quarter light year from the Hostile solar system if the conduit’s guess and grasp of Earth measurements were anywhere approaching marginally accurate. It was close, but not too close, and the hope was that the Hostiles would not find them before the ship’s systems were back online. They felt the chances were very high that the Hostiles would not—space presented a lot of possible locations for a seeking Hostile to look—but everyone understood it was a risk. The Hostile’s magic factor was an obvious potential problem, but one they were willing to take. They were prepared. They had magicians of their own this time.

Unlike the teleports that had brought the ships from the Prosperion system out to the rest of the fleet, this time the concert mages did not move their chairs off to the side of the bridge. This time they stayed put. This was enemy territory. Captain Asad’s desire to be an example of courage to the fleet, combined with the conduit’s pride and ambition, was once again behind the
Aspect
’s selection as advance scout. They were out here alone for now. Which meant the mages needed to stay where they were and be prepared to defend the ship or take it back to the fleet while the crew restarted everything. And it was in his need to direct those restart activities that Captain Asad retook his command chair, forcing the conduit to move.

Conduit Huzzledorf stalked off, still blustering. He ordered the young Envette from her seat instead, leaving her to stand while he plopped into it and mopped at his dry brow with a handkerchief as if he’d just run up the side of a mountain.

“A new epoch is upon us, young teleporter,” he told her. “All the old ways will change now. All of them.”

Envette nodded, her red hair now the color of blood in the glow of the emergency lights. “I agree, Conduit. How can they not? We are no longer alone on our little world. It’s very exciting. And humbling too.”

“I think humbling is a bit strong, my dear. I should think it’s the universe being humbled now. Its children are besting it finally, as is always the case in time. I think this is a time to be proud.”

“Pride goeth before destruction,” Roberto said from his post, leaning back in his seat and waiting for his com to light back up.

“A fine bit of philosophy, Commander, but there is a considerable difference between pride and being proud. One is arrogance, the other is satisfaction and confidence.” Since Roberto’s promotion to lieutenant commander after the wildly successful fight with the Hostiles—Roberto having been the one who, once again, discovered the tactic that made victory possible—the conduit had taken to showing Roberto a greater degree of respect. In essence, they were back to where they had begun.

“That distinction often gets lost by the practitioner,” said the captain, surprising most of them. “And the rest of that proverb has to do with how the haughty will fall. Something to keep in mind, Conduit. Now, please let us focus on our work.”

“Work? You’re not doing anything but waiting for the lights to come back on. I should hardly think we’re any bother at all.”

Roberto laughed, but the captain did not, instead directing a salvo of unkind thoughts at Roberto, though the swarthy Spaniard pretended he didn’t notice in the quasi-dark.

Roberto was more concerned with keeping the mood light while they sat helplessly in space at what had to be a nothing’s distance for the Hostiles to traverse if they discovered the ship was there. If he didn’t keep it light, he was going to slowly give in to fear. He hated this part of the teleport. No shields. No weapons. No nothing. He didn’t even like to breathe, fearing to use too much oxygen, and despite the fact that he knew the engineers would have shields and life support up first thing after the reactor relight. But for now, they had to wait.

“Conduit,” said the captain. “Rather than harass my crew, why don’t you and your magicians do what you do and see if the Hostiles are hovering right outside. Don’t you think that would be time better spent?”

Conduit Huzzledorf rolled his eyes and ticked with his tongue against the roof of his mouth like an adolescent that’s been asked to do the most basic household task, but despite the indignation, he nodded in the direction of Mason and Pingermash to get to it.

The two magicians immediately set to work casting, closing their eyes and muttering the words that would take their vision out through the ship’s hull and into space for a look around. Roberto knew what they were doing because he’d seen them do it often enough in recent days, and he’d seen Altin do it as well. He watched them anxiously, hoping not to see them come out of the spell with looks of fear and weird Prosperion exclamations like “fairy farts” or “dragon snorts” or anything else they could come up with. Nothing that would announce that the ship was under attack. When this spell went right, all these people did was sit there mumbling. So that’s what Roberto wanted to see. Mumbling.

For the first several moments, he got his wish, and their chants were subdued, almost bored in tone. But then the pace picked up, in volume and urgency. The words of both men came faster and louder, as if they were talking to the others in the room rather than murmuring into some invisible magic place. That was disquieting for Roberto because he’d never seen any seer doing that before. Granted, he hadn’t seen a lot of seeing in progress, but somehow he knew this didn’t sound right. The conduit noticed it as well. So did the other mages on the bridge. Everyone turned to watch, brows low over all eyes.