by Doyle, Debra
“There’s a catch, right?” Jens said.
“It’s at the old spaceport.”
Memories of holovid adventure programs stirred in Faral’s mind. “Isn’t the old port on Sapne supposed to be haunted?”
“Supposedly,” said Amaro. “But that’s a useful reputation to have in some quarters.”
“What fun,” said Jens. “Sapne it is, then, if the good captain agrees.”
“One-way to Sapne for three passengers,” Amaro said. “After we make planetfall, either you’re on your own or we can negotiate another deal. Done?”
Jens held out his hand. “Done.”
Kolpag and Ruhn left the Nanáli Starlight Family Hotel and walked out onto the street. The two operatives nodded as they passed to the outside men sent over from the local branch. The locals would keep on watching the hotel in case the packages returned, but Kolpag didn’t hold out much hope of that.
“Where to?” his partner asked as they unlocked their hovercar and strapped themselves into the seats.
Kolpag thought for a minute. “Let’s see if we can touch the beaky-boy. His fingerprints are all over this.”
“Do Rotis have fingerprints?” Ruhn asked curiously.
“I suppose they do … no, actually, I think I read somewhere that they’ve got distinctive quill patterns you can use to identify them by, as long as they’ve been considerate enough to shed a few feathers for you first.”
“We could arrange that.”
“Problem with Huool, though,” Kolpag said as he started the hovercar. The vehicle rose on its nullgravs and hung there, humming softly, until Kolpag pulled on its control yoke and set it to moving slowly in reverse. “He’s political. Can’t touch him too hard.”
“Politics,” said Ruhn. He sounded disgusted. “Let me tell you, I hate politics. As of right now, we don’t know if our packages were even here. Someone might have been fibbing to us, and if we can’t twist an arm on the beaky-boy we’ll never know.”
“Maybe we were working on bad assumptions,” Kolpag said. He backed the hovercar out into the deserted street and started off in the direction of Sombrelír. It was close to dawn, now, and the sky was faint pink along the distant horizon. “Before we risk messing with Huool and his patrons, let’s try getting the information by technical means instead.”
“Yeah,” Ruhn agreed. “I’ll get the division working on it, see what they come up with.”
He brought out his datapad again, and used the comm link to put through a brief, coded request. A few seconds later, the datapad blinked and beeped to let him know that the information he’d asked for had come back through the link. Ruhn scrolled through the text, reading quickly and making notes as he went. After a few minutes, he looked up.
“Hey, check this out. You remember the fighting grannies?”
Kolpag tightened his grip on the hovercar’s control yoke. “How could I forget those two? They got Freppys, and he was as good as they come.”
“I’ve got a dossier on both of them. A thorough dossier, this time … and let me tell you, the intel people really screwed this one up. You guys didn’t go into that tea shop anywhere close to heavy enough.”
“Now the man tells me.”
“No,” said Ruhn. “What this means is that the whole organization got sold out this time. The big question is, who was it that did the selling?”
Captain Amaro left his three passengers in their quarters and made his way through the cramped passageways to Dust Devil’s bridge. So far, the current business deal had been nothing out of the ordinary—he’d smuggled people as often as material goods, if not oftener—but this would be the first time he’d made a freetrading run with the Dusty’s actual owners on board.
The Gentleladies Bindweed and Blossom were already on the bridge when he arrived, safety-webbed into the auxiliary seats behind the captain’s command and control position. The Dusty’s navigator, Trav Esmet, occupied the number-two position on the captain’s right.
Amaro glanced at the main console. The telltales shone a reassuring green. “Have all the crew reported in yet?”
“Yes,” said Esmet. “All on station and correct.”
“Very well.” He turned to Blossom. “You were right, gentlelady. They went for Sapne. Esmet—do we have the navicomp data for that one fed in?”
“Fed in and ready.”
“Then let’s make transit.” Amaro picked up the handset for the Dust Devil’s external comm link and keyed it on. “Security, Security, Security,” he said aloud. “This is Freetrader Dust Devil departing high orbit. Stand by, out.”
He pointed at Esmet. “Stand by, run to jump.”
Esmet was in training for his own pilot’s papers, and the Ophelan system was a good place to get in the necessary practice. Ships had been coming and going out of Ophel for a long time, and the navicomps had lots of accumulated data to work with.
Amaro settled back in the command seat to watch the stars outside the Dusty’s viewscreens, all the while keeping a surreptitious eye on the comp data readout and the jump-point indicator. They lined up nicely as Esmet handled the controls. The stars shifted color, then blazed and vanished, replaced by the grey nonsubstance of hyperspace.
“Good run,” Amaro said to Esmet. “One more just as good and I’ll sign you off on that. Assuming, of course, that we arrive somewhere within shouting range of Sapne.”
Mistress Klea Santreny stood at Loading Gate 2B in the Sombrelír Port Complex, waiting for a shuttle to take her and Mael Taleion to the low-orbit transfer station where the Magelord had left his ship. A small Eraasian-built craft, not designed for atmosphere work, Mael’s Arrow-through-the-Doorway had range and speed that the cargo tubs and ground-grabbers of similar size didn’t match … or so its owner claimed. It had been assembled in orbit, and would stay that way forever.
Klea had spent the rest of the previous night working the diplomatic problems presented by their departure. Taking a privately owned vessel out of Ophelan space and into the Khesatan sphere of influence—especially when the vessel was fast, was armed, and had a point of origin in the Mageworlds—required a number of passes and permissions. She had been given to understand, early on, that gratuities of sufficient size, distributed in the proper quarters, would make everything simple. Out of principle, she had declined to make any such payments. The officials concerned would do their work, and do it promptly, because that was what the law required.
It had taken a great deal of hard work and persistence on Klea’s part, but in the end the officials had capitulated. Arrow-through-the-Doorway would be leaving Ophelan space before day’s end Sombrelír time, as Mael Taleion had asked.
And I still don’t know why the hell I agreed to help him do this, Klea thought. Except that he’s chasing shadows, and so am I.
“Are there any Mages on Khesat?” she asked aloud. “Other than the ones on the Peace and Trade Commission, I mean.”
“None on the Commission,” Mael said. “At least, not if you’re talking about Circle members. We would not be able to perform our devotions properly under such circumstances.” He gave her a speculative glance. “Why? Do you Adepts have your own members on the Commission?”
“I’m not sure,” Klea said vaguely. Inwardly she gave Mael points for his deflection of the unwelcome line of inquiry. The smoothness of his maneuver, however, argued that there might well be Mages active somewhere on Khesat.
Active in what? she thought. That is a good question. And I wish I knew the answer.
The passenger cabin on Dust Devil was a long way from the suite Faral and Jens had occupied with Chaka aboard Bright-Wind-Rising. The bunks were stacked three high along one bare metal wall—bulkhead, Faral reminded himself, they call them bulkheads—and a battery of storage lockers filled most of the available space on the side opposite. An airtight door led to the passageway outside, and at the other end of the narrow cabin a second door led to the refresher cubicle.
The bunks were fitted out with the
pads and webbing to double as acceleration couches, and a red Strap Down light glowed over the main door on the inside. Once Dust Devil had made her straight-line run to the jump point and entered hyperspace, the red light went off.
Faral unbuckled his safety webbing and climbed down from the middle bunk of the tier. “If I ever have to get smuggled off-planet in a cargo crate again,” he said, stretching out muscles still knotted and kinked from the experience, “I’m going to insist on getting the custom-fitted model.”
“I’ll make sure to put that in your file.” Miza, on the bottom level, was short enough to sit on the edge of the pad without bumping her head on the rack above. “If Huool hasn’t thrown me out of the program already for making a botch.”
Jens didn’t bother getting down from the top bunk at all; he unstrapped and propped himself up on one elbow to look at her. “We cruelly took you captive and forced you to accompany us against your will,” he said. “Gentlesir Huool would never fault you for that.”
“I’m supposed to be clever enough not to get caught,” she said. Faral thought he heard a catch in her voice, and decided that he didn’t blame her; it had been a long and trying day, and the hour or so of sleep at the Nanáli Starlight Family Hotel hadn’t lasted nearly long enough.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “You said you were training to be an analyst, not some kind of field person. Nobody expects their in-house people to be any good at this sort of thing.”
She snorted. “Nobody expects a pair of tourists to be any good at that sort of thing either. Who taught you?”
“The wrinkleskins back on Maraghai,” Faral said. “And my father. I don’t know who taught my cousin how to snag blasters off of corpses, though.”
Jens sketched a nod and a one-handed flourish. “One of the many skills I learned at my mother’s knee and other low joints.”
The chime of the door signal interrupted him. Faral went over to palm the lockplate and admit the newcomer—but the door was already sliding open.
So the cabin doors are keyed to external controls, he thought as the airtight seal broke and the metal leaves parted. I wonder which side has the override.
When the door had slid all the way open, Captain Amaro stepped into the cabin. He looked brisk and businesslike, as if he smuggled off-worlders every time he left port.
“I see that you made the translation to hyperspace without any trouble,” he said. “Now that we’re in, the three of you can take your meals with me if you like. I’m afraid, though, that you won’t be able to meet the rest of the crew. Safer for them that way, and safer for you.”
“You’ve carried nondocumented passengers before?” Jens asked.
Amaro glanced up at the top bunk. “You really expect an answer to such a question?”
Jens shrugged. “I was going to ask about the mechanics of changing names, and I thought you might know.”
“A minor thing,” Amaro said. He sounded flattered. “You have a name picked out that you like?”
“I have an alias that I want to get rid of,” said Jens, “and a pressing need to arrive on Khesat under my own name.”
“Sapne,” Amaro said at once. “Everything you need is there. Mind you, a Sapnean ID is a hasty remedy, and not something to stand up under any kind of deep scan.”
“All I need is the right name,” Jens told him. “Sapne sounds like it will serve admirably.”
“Then we’re all set. The dinner gong goes off at fifteen-thirty ship’s-time; I’ll see you gentles then.”
Amaro left. The airtight door slid closed behind him. After a few seconds, Faral went over to the door and thumbed the Open switch. The door didn’t budge.
“So that’s how it is,” said Faral. He tried the switch a second time to make sure, then turned to look at Jens and Miza. “We’d better work hard on staying friendly … because otherwise we aren’t going to enjoy this hyperspace transit at all.”
In his private office at the Retreat, the Master of the Adepts’ Guild regarded the day’s schedule with resignation. In the morning, he had conferences with the senior masters about food and laundry for the new apprentices and about ongoing repairs to the Retreat’s physical structures. In the afternoon, he had a meeting with the Guild’s treasurer, Master Adan, to discuss whether the Guild’s privately held funds should remain on Galcen or be transferred to one of the financial institutions on Suivi Point. And at a late-evening hour that was the only time even remotely convenient for half a dozen people on as many different planets, he had a hyperspace comm conference with the heads of the Guild branches in Khesatan and adjacent space.
Work and more work. And boring work at that.
Once, some years before, Owen Rosselin-Metadi had declared himself ready to defeat the invading Magelords and restore the Guild to its accustomed place in galactic affairs. He’d expected the task to be difficult and dangerous, but that prospect had never swayed him. He’d spent years as the previous Guild Master’s personal apprentice and trusted right hand, and the work he’d done in those days had been by no means light and easy.
The civilized galaxy, he thought, is damned lucky that nobody ever bothered to tell me the job of saving it came with two decades of ongoing administrative follow-up.
The incoming-message light on his desktop blinked at him. Owen touched the sensor dot that activated the status display: coded compressed-text, keyed to his ID, point of origin Ophel. He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. His own former apprentice and trusted right hand, that would be, with a report on the troublesome situation involving his two scapegrace nephews.
Another touch on the desktop, this time to feed in his ID scan and lock it into the message. The text poured into the display space.
Mistress Klea Santreny to Owen Rosselin-Metadi, Master of the Adepts’ Guild, sends greeting.
Both of your nephews, I’m certain, are dutiful and well-brought-up young men. This leaves us with the question of exactly who taught them to shed pursuit like a pair of professionals. They are no longer on Ophel. Nor does anybody on Ophel seem to know where they have gone, though the members of at least one sublegal organization are apparently searching for them with great diligence.
If it’s any consolation to you, your sister-in-law on Maraghai also seems to be worried about possible developments. She has sent out her Second to look for Jens and Faral—and he, in his turn, believes that their voluntary disappearance is tied in somehow with events scheduled to occur on Khesat. He speaks also of a revenant, a “homeless one” in his language, coming out of the Mageworlds on a quest for some kind of vengeance; he references in particular the message forwarded by courtesy from the Circles on Cracanth.
I confess that I do not entirely follow, nor entirely trust, his line of reasoning. However, I’m forced to admit that if he is correct about the Cracanthan matter, we could all be in serious trouble. You most particularly—since the name he gives to the revenant is Errec Ransome.
We are preparing now to take ship for Khesat, on what may possibly be a fool’s errand—but having found nothing but dead ends on Ophel, I am reduced to following a Magelord’s intuitions.
If you could send me your best information on what is happening on Khesat these days, I would rest easier during the transit.
Her identification code followed the message, along with her name. Owen smiled a little as he closed the message, in spite of the gravity of its contents. Mistress Santreny had been one of the better things to happen to the Guild, back in the bad times during the Second Magewar.
Then the smile faded. If the Guild’s former Master had reason to pursue his onetime apprentice even after death, then Klea herself, though she didn’t say so, was equally a target.
She was there, out in the Void. All of us were, when we had to—
—when we killed him. This is what comes of doing a thing, and then not thinking of it for twenty years. The consequences of it rise up while our faces are turned away, and the dead come back to haunt us.
Owen was tempted to summon Mistress Santreny back to the Retreat and let Llannat Hyfid’s tame Magelord keep up the chase alone. But Klea had asked him for information, not for protection—she appeared to have her work well in hand, in spite of her protestations of bafflement, and would not appreciate being called away from the pursuit.
The Green Sun’s operations center in Sombrelír was brightly lit, although at this hour only one comptech was on duty. An open box of take-out sausage buns beside her elbow said that she wasn’t leaving her console, but the smell of hnann in the air suggested that maybe she hadn’t been concentrating solely on her job before the field ops arrived.
Kolpag and Ruhn weren’t interested in either fact. They had transcripts and files called up all over the central worktable, and their cups of uffa had dwindled to red-ocher dregs as they looked through the files and ran the databases.
“Well, well, well,” said Kolpag suddenly. “Look what we’ve got here. Comm conference, twenty-one thirty-one decimal five hours. Someone inbound to Huool’s. Duration of contact under two minutes.”
“Got a transcript?” asked Ruhn.
Kolpag indicated a screen’s worth of gibberish on the worktable. “Scrambled. But let’s look at this another way. Our boys must have had help. Huool is expensive. So who’s paying the bills?”
“Got that one. Huool.”
Kolpag felt like smacking his new partner. “No, no, not that letter-of-credit thing. Who paid Huool enough for him to provide it?”
Ruhn shrugged. “I can’t think of anything smaller than planetary royalty who could come up with that kind of cash in a hurry.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Kolpag turned to the comptech, who was finishing off the last of the sausage buns. “Time to earn your pay. A little traffic analysis. Calls from Nanáli to Sombrelír, no more specific origin, within one half-hour prior to twenty-one thirty. Cross-ref to call from same location to anywhere within Sombrelír, same time period. Go.”
