The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 (9 page)

Read The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5
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“There’s one alive!”
Eiadon turned toward the voice. It was Jairen, Third of the Bareiath Ai Circle, recognizable by her slight frame even under mask and robe.
“Where?” Not in this room. All here had flown. Eiadon had checked for himself.
“On the third level. A boy.”
“Lead me.”
Together they made their way upward to the room where the boy—too young to be a member of the Circle—lay in a narrow bed. He twitched and thrashed about in his sleep, and drops of sweat beaded his forehead. Two more members of Eiadon’s Circle stood nearby, mechanical lamps in their hands.
Eiadon lifted his staff, and let it blaze as power entered him. The red glow illuminated the object of his curiosity: Lord syn-Hacaeth’s son and student in the ways of Power. Did he know that his father lay dead below? Workings requiring a death had always been rare, and now in time of peace they were rarer still.
If such a thing had been called for, Eiadon reflected, he himself would surely have known of it before now. He turned to Jairen.
“Summon medical services,” he said. “But warn them that this is a special case. No one is to touch this boy with flesh to flesh. No one.”
 
R
HAL KASANDER, Exalted of Tanavral, and a man known for his ability to tell good wine from bad even when drunk, walked out into the city of Ilsefret, where the Highest of Khesat met with his council. The sun was rising, tinting the Golden Tower with light while the rest of the city lay in darkness. No law forbade the construction of buildings higher than the Tower, but a general agreement, unspoken for more than two thousand years, held that to do so would be … unseemly.
K
asander’s head was clear, even this early—or, from his point of view, this late—and the crisp air of autumn braced him nicely as he made his way on foot through the empty streets. Vehicular traffic was prohibited in central Ilsefret, lest the sleep of the householders be disturbed by uncouth noises. A servant paced along behind him, carrying his indoor slippers in one hand and a pair of caged orfiles in the other, to provide sweet music with their singing.
The Plaza of Hope opened up before them, the Golden Tower rising high above its western side. But Kasander’s destination was on the side opposite, where a series of low buildings provided dwelling places for those fortunate enough to have inherited them. The balconies overlooking the square were enough to make the apartments valuable for the view they afforded once or twice in a generation. Perhaps even soon. Perhaps even now.
The Exalted of Tanavral walked in through one of the arches of whitewashed stone on the façade, then sat in a carved ocherwood change-chair while his servant stripped off his street shoes and replaced them with the slippers. The slippers were of red velvet sewn with rubies, accented with red carnelian to show the common touch.
“One hour,” Rhal Kasander said, addressing the air—though the message was, in fact, for his slipper-bearer. Without waiting for a response, he rose and took the circular stair to the living compartments above. He reached the upper chamber, a study with its high windows flung open to give a view of the platform at the top of the Golden Tower, at the same moment as Caridal Fere, Master of Nalensey, entered from an inner room.
“Our joy is complete now that you have returned,” Kasander said, bowing as he spoke.
“And ours,” replied Fere, bowing in turn. “Will you break your fast here?”
“With greatest pleasure.”
Fere picked up a glass bell from the table beside him and let it give forth a single sweet and piercing note. The last reverberation had not yet died when a young woman appeared on the threshold of the study, carrying a laden serving tray in both hands. She deposited the tray on the central table and withdrew, her eyes downcast the entire while.
Kasander looked over the dishes she had brought. Then he plucked a savorfruit from the glass bowl where they sat under their dusting of powdered sugar, dipped the fruit into its side dish of carent sauce, and raised it to his lips.
The sauce was cold.
He looked up sharply at his host. The time of his arrival had been arranged in advance, and he had been punctual. Someone in the kitchen would answer for this disgraceful inattention to detail. Unless—
“You failed.”
The words hung in the air, shocking in their bluntness. Caridal Fere had plainly not expected so strong a response to his indirect admission. He reddened.
“You speak to me thus in my own house.”
“I do,” said Kasander. “The crisis is here. Two days ago, unknown brigands entered Gerre Hafelsan’s house and changed all his carpets for grass matting.”
The two men considered the implications of that anonymous and wordless—but emphatic—statement.
“Hafelsan didn’t say anything about it when we spoke yesterday,” Fere said after a moment or two had passed.
“Would you have, in his position?”
“Well,” Fere admitted, “no.”
“There you have it,” said Kasander. “There are changes at work in the world, and not all for the good. For our own sakes, we must form a party, and our party must back a Worthy.” He looked at Fere sharply. “And we don’t
have
a Worthy.”
Again, Fere reddened. “We have a Worthy,” he said. “It is merely that he remains, as yet, unaware that we have him.”
 
“What a day, foster-brother.” Faral flung himself onto his bed in their newly acquired hotel room with a tired sigh. “What a day.”
“No kidding.” Jens tossed the carrybag full of money into one corner and collapsed onto the lounge chair. He extended his arms overhead in a bone-cracking stretch. “When Granda told us stories, he never once warned us about buying tea and parchants from sweet little old ladies.”
“
Somebody
should have.” Faral pulled off his boots, using nothing but his feet, and let them thump one at a time onto the floor at the foot of the bed. “Next time we stick with the sleazy bars and the cheap booze.”
The room—two beds, a chair, a table, an entertainment wall, and a rudimentary comm setup—was one of many similar at a midclass hotel in Nanáli. The multicolored glowsign on the roof advertised “family rates,” and the clerk at the front desk had accepted Faral’s cash and his stolen ID. In return, Faral had pocketed the key wafer without bothering to mention that there were two more people planning to use the room, one of them female. Brisk, redheaded Miza-from-Huool’s wasn’t somebody whom he had felt, at that moment, capable of explaining.
She still wasn’t. She stood, arms folded, inside the locked door of the hotel room, and regarded him and his cousin with a challenging air.
“What are you two planning on now?”
“A bath or a shower, I should think,” Jens said. “The washrag in Huool’s storeroom was better than nothing—but judging from the looks we got on the hoverbus, it wasn’t good enough.”
“Bathrooms are down the hall,” Faral said, without moving from his place on the bed. “You go first.”
“Thanks. Any idea how we’re going to manage the sleeping arrangements?”
“There’s a scratch pad over by the comm. We can draw slips to see who doubles up with our guest.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Miza said promptly. “All three of us draw, and the loser takes the lounge chair.”
“Some people,” said Jens, “have no sense of adventure.” He stood up and stretched again. “I’m off to make my ablutions. Keep an eye on the gentlelady while I’m gone.”
“I’ll do that. And you keep an eye out, too … I didn’t want to mention it earlier, but I spotted a familiar face back on the bus.”
“Oh?” Jen’s voice didn’t change, but his eyes brightened. “Who?”
“Remember the man on
Bright-Wind-Rising
?”
Plainly, Jens did. “The one who recommended we shop at Thalban’s? Him?”
“Him. I think we lost him, but you never can tell.”
“No, you never can … this puts a new complexion on things.” Jens stepped past Miza and unlocked the door. “But nothing that’s going to keep me away from a tub full of hot water. I’m going to be dreaming of raw sewage for the next week as it is.”
Jens left, and the door snicked shut again behind him. Miza seemed to relax a little—perhaps, Faral reflected, she had taken Jen’s threats concerning the blaster more seriously than the situation warranted. She walked across the room to the entertainment wall, where a tiny cold-unit held a selection of drinks and fruit juices.
“These things cost like a weekend of sin,” she said, taking out a bottle of something bright red, “but I figure a big spender like you can spare the charges.”
Faral propped himself up on his elbows and watched her drink. “You know, Gentlelady Miza, in all the excitement I don’t think we ever got properly introduced.”
She lowered the bottle and regarded him suspiciously over its rim. “I already know who you are. I had to read your old ID cards if I was going to fix you new ones.”
“Then you have the advantage of us. Who are you?”
For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said, “I’m Mizady Lyftingil of the Podsen Lyftingils, from Artha, and I’m doing a work-study internship with Gentlesir Huool.”
“Internship in what?”
“Information tracking and analysis,” she said. Frowning, she added, “Desk work, mostly. And a few simple errands. Which is what this was supposed to be.”
“Sorry,” said Faral. He let his eyes close as he lay back on the pillow. “You’re an analyst—”
“In training.”
“—in training. So what do you make of our situation?”
“A formal analysis would need better gear than we’ve got in this room.” Faral opened his eyes in time to see her gesture at the entertainment wall and the comm setup before she continued. “But for starters … your cousin is Khesatan, right?”
He thought about the question for a while. As far as the wrinkleskins back home on Maraghai were concerned, Jens counted as the thin-skin fosterling of a blooded-and-returned full-member of an old and famous clan. But it was barely possible that not everyone in the galaxy fully understood the implications of such a relationship.
“Sort of,” Faral said. “He claims it’s a boring place.”
“I’m sure he does.” Miza’s voice was tart. “But let me tell you something that maybe he didn’t mention. Any day now, Khesat is going to become the most exciting place to be in the entire civilized galaxy.”
 
Chaka halted briefly at the entrance to the main concourse. If she left the spaceport now, with time so short, her luggage would go on to Eraasi without her. But if Jens and Faral had gotten themselves in trouble, then pulling the two of them out of whatever bramble-pit they’d fallen into would be an adventure in itself.
Where had they said they were going—the Old Quarter? That would be the first place to look.
Fortunately, most of the signs in the concourse were in Standard Galcenian as well as two or three of the local languages. Chaka could read Galcenian, though she couldn’t get her throat and her vocal cords around the high piping noises that passed for the spoken version.
She followed the arrows to Ground Transport, and located a short-mover stop with connections to central Sombrelír and the Old Quarter. The mover had not yet arrived, so Chaka took her place in the queue and waited.
The late-afternoon sun was hot, and the wind was dry and dusty. The delay didn’t help Chaka’s nerves. The thin-skins sharing the stop with her took notice of her agitation and either moved away or remembered business elsewhere. After a longer while than she would have wanted, the short-mover arrived. It was a wide platform with grab bars, mounted on low-tech rollers—a much cheaper form of transportation than either the hoverbuses or the wheeled flivvers, but slower and more crowded than either one.
The short-mover eased away from the stop, and headed off toward the center of town at roughly double a walking pace. Chaka had plenty of time to gaze about and get herself oriented. Most of the public signage in Sombrelír was written in two or more languages—usually Galcenian, either above or below what Chaka assumed were the same words in Ophelan script—but the advertisements and most of the smaller signs used only the local scrawl.
The Old Quarter, fortunately, seemed to be a popular tourist destination. She took note when the smooth modern pavement changed to brick, and jumped down at the next stop. The short-mover rolled off toward the banking district, and Chaka stood sniffing the air for a hint at where to go next.
The news stories on the vids had shown something burning. The air here smelled abominably of chemical exhausts and too many thin-skins, but a sharpness in her nostrils told of a wood fire somewhere not too far distant. She headed in that direction. If it wasn’t somebody’s trash barrel …
It wasn’t. A local security barricade stretched across the road ahead, guarded by a thin-skin in uniform, with a drawn weapon in hand.
Chaka scowled. *Oh, damn.*
*What’s the problem?* The words were in Trade-talk, not the true Forest Speech, but either one was unexpected enough, here in the heart of the Old Quarter to make Chaka hoot with astonishment and turn toward the bystander who had spoken.
*Who’s asking?*
“Me.” The speaker had switched back to Galcenian now. “When a couple of lads from under the Great Trees run into trouble, and a Forest Lord shows up not long afterward …
somebody
has a problem whether they know it or not.”
Chaka looked at the speaker curiously. She was a small woman, with the grey hair and lined features that marked the old ones among the thin-skins. She wore a plain shirt and dark trousers, and to Chaka’s sensitive nostrils she smelled unmistakably of sewage.
“My partner’s still in there,” the woman said, nodding at the barrier. “But your two friends are well away. Now we have to figure out how best to help them—that
was
what you were thinking, wasn’t it?”
*Something like that.*
“Then let me buy you a drink,” said the woman, “and we’ll think about what to do next.”

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