by Doyle, Debra
Her own cup of cha’a, unfortunately, wasn’t going to last forever—and ship’s-night had come while she and Faral were together. The lights in the common room had dimmed, and the companionway leading forward to the bridge was almost completely black. She pulled her jacket around her—it was too long in the sleeves and too tight in the chest, a chance discovery in the ship’s storage locker, but it warmed her. She knew that the feeling of cold was an illusion caused by the dimming of the lights, but ship’s-night always seemed to have a greater chill to it than the artificial day.
She wasn’t eager to face the trip back through the dark, tunnel-like passage to the Light’s cockpit. Not while there was still someone to stay with here.
I’ll wait until Faral leaves, she thought. Then I’ll go.
She glanced over at Faral. He’d secured his empty cup in a bin by the table, and now his hand was floating—casually, as if his will had played no part in the decision—so close to hers that it would be a simple matter for her fingers to link with his.
She didn’t precisely will it, but when her hand floated toward his, she didn’t snatch it back. She felt the warmth of contact—casual, accidental—and then more warmth as he took her hand lightly in his, and held it as if it were a bird that would be killed by too tight a grasp.
Miza relaxed, enjoying the human contact. A ship on loan from the dead was no place to turn down the pulse of life. She leaned back into the zero gravity and closed her eyes. Soon enough she slept.
She awoke to the sound of relays clicking over in the gently brightening light of ship’s-dawn, and found herself floating in the middle of the common room with her head against Faral’s shoulder. Sometime during the night they must have moved closer together for warmth, then embraced to keep from drifting apart.
She opened her eyes and saw that Faral was awake also. Looking at him from this distance—it was no distance at all, really, with her arms wrapped around him and his around her—she noticed for the first time that he had almost absurdly beautiful eyelashes. They made a curious, touching contrast to the muscular body she was currently holding.
“Good morning,” he said. He sounded somewhat tentative, as if none of the lessons in good manners he’d learned at home had covered what to say to the person you woke up with.
On Artha, fortunately, the lessons covered everything.
“Good morning,” Miza replied, and hugged him briefly before letting go.
“You made supper last night,” she added, feeling oddly cheerful. “I’ll fix breakfast for us this morning.”
XVI. KHESAT
WE’RE ALMOST to dropout,“Jens said to Miza. The two of them currently occupied the pilot’s and copilot’s positions in the Light’s cockpit, white Faral hung weightless in the cramped space behind them. “Do you have any idea how you’re going to land this thing?”
Faral scowled at his cousin. *Take it easy, will you?*
Jens had been in a foul mood for some days now, ever since Guislen/Ransome’s departure, but in Faral’s opinion that was no reason to make their only pilot nervous. The navicomp alarm rang as he spoke.
“Stand by for dropout,” said Miza.
She cut in the Light’s realspace engines and took down the hyperdrives. Faral held his breath and hoped for the best. A Gyfferan Elevener was a long way from a light touring craft with an idiotproof navigational interface.
Stars appeared in the narrow slit of the viewscreen ahead, shifting rapidly from red to their normal color as the grey dazzle of hyperspace departed. Faral saw Miza relax a little in the cradle of her safety webbing.
“Before we talk about landing,” she said—speaking to him, he noted, and not to Jens—“let’s talk about where we are. I’m no expert on these things, even if I have read most of the tech manuals. Most of the ones in Galcenian, anyway.”
She glanced at the console in front of her, then up at the navicomp where it was welded to the bulkhead just abaft the viewport. “I think that I have to do this,” she said, and flipped a switch that looked like it might have been labeled “locate” if it hadn’t had a scrawl of Ilarnan beneath it instead.
“Now what?” said Faral.
“Now we wait until either the machine tells us that it has a fix, or it doesn’t. I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell one part of the universe from another by eye.”
Jens regarded the navicomp with disapprobation. “I suppose you’ve already considered that this thing is looking for aids to navigation that may not have been maintained, and that may or may not have been changed, and that may have been relocated or drifted off course during the last sixty years, or been blown up in either of two different wars?”
“The thought was never far from my mind the whole way,” Miza said. “If I recall correctly, this part of the process could take several hours. I’m going to spend the time having lunch. When I come back, either the navicomp will have a posit waiting for us on the readout, or it won’t.”
She left the cockpit, swimming downward toward the galley and leaving Faral and Jens to watch over the console.
“You’re certainly putting yourself out to be charming this morning,” Faral told his cousin. “And you probably know even less about landing a spaceship than she does.”
“Khesat had an in-system fleet eight years ago,” Jens said. “I suppose it still has one. They kept watch for distress calls from ships in trouble.”
“Are we in distress?”
“I’ll tell you after lunch,” Jens said, and followed in the direction Miza had gone.
Faral remained behind, gazing out moodily at the brilliant stars glittering just beyond the viewscreen. A light began to blink on the main console panel, immediately below a handset.
Comm link? thought Faral, and picked the handset up.
A voice speaking in what he supposed was Khesatan came from beyond a grille in the overhead. Faral waited for the voice to go silent and the carrier wave to drop before speaking into the handset.
“This is Inner Light, last port of call Sapne. Please wait while I call the captain.”
Rhal Kasander hated leaving the planet’s surface.
He disliked the undignified nature of a shuttle ride to orbit, with its couches and webbing and uncomfortable physical effects. Zero-g was not kind to a man with a delicate stomach and a precisely calibrated sense of balance. The presence of disposal bags for dealing with the results merely sufficed to make the Exalted of Tanavral feel condescended to by those with coarser natures than his own.
The artificial gravity of Khesat Orbital Reception provided only physical relief. The builders of the planet’s main space station and manufacturing hub had followed their own governing aesthetic during its construction, and that aesthetic was not the one that ruled on the world below. Even the public and diplomatic areas were clean and spare, and stripped deliberately of ornament. They gave the eye nothing to delight in, only the gleam of polished metal and the dazzle of light on sheets of armor-glass.
Working areas like the salvage docks declined to make even those concessions. The lines in such places were those of function alone and not of art. Nevertheless, when the heavy blastproof and vacuum-tight doors of Salvage Dock Number One groaned open, Rhal Kasander—attended as always by his slipper-bearer—was there in person to greet the three young people who came out.
Politics, after all, was the art above all arts, and the Exalted of Tanavral was its most zealous practitioner. Let the others, Hafelsan and the rest, wait on the arrival of that freetrader from Sapne, even now grounding at Port of Diamond. Not there but here, Kasander was positive—based on faith and a comm call that had roused him from his bed the moment the ship entered system space—here was his Worthy.
He cast an appraising eye over the two young men and the young woman as they approached. The golden-haired youth … that would be the cadet-Jessani himself, a few years older than when Kasander had last seen him, and still more than sufficiently personable. His companions made a charming matched set in
their own right—male and female, dark and fair—undoubtedly chosen for their good looks as well as for whatever practical skills they might possess.
But the clothes! Common Galcenian-style travelers’ garb, at best, and that would have been before whatever misfortunes had added all the dirt and snags and wrinkles. Something would have to be done about that, the Exalted decided, as soon as the proper courtesies had been observed.
The cadet-Jessani and his companions were halfway across the distance from the open door of Dock Number One. Kasander hurried forward with both hands extended.
“My dear boy! My very dear boy!” He spoke in Galcenian, since who knew what languages the companions might speak, and it was unwise to alienate such people prematurely. “Forced to travel in circumstances I hesitate even to imagine … .”
The cadet-Jessani—Jens Metadi-Jessan D’Rosselin, Worthy scion of a Worthy lineage—answered him with a touch of amusement. “It was nothing, honored cousin-once-removed. I came as soon as I got word.”
“You got—?” Kasander began before catching himself. “Oh, yes, of course. I’ve prepared a place for you in my own house, while we await the Day of Change.”
The cadet-Jessani nodded as if he’d expected nothing less. He gestured toward his companions. “And my staff?”
“The same, of course.”
“My thanks for your consideration,” the young man said. “It’s a pleasure to see you again after all these years. But now, shall we repair to the surface … perhaps, even, to the shops? As you can see, we were forced to abandon our luggage, and have become far too well acquainted with our present garments.”
“My own tailors stand ready,” Kasander said, turning to escort them back through the far locks and through the diplomatic sections to the yacht slips. The Exalted’s slipper-bearer stood silent as they passed, then followed.
“I wonder what all this is in honor of?” Blossom said. She looked down onto the landing field at Port of Diamond from her position at the Dusty’s guns. “Flute players, flower girls, and a gentlesir in a morning-robe that I wouldn’t have believed in even if you’d described it to me twice … I haven’t seen a reception committee like this one since Jos took ’Rada home to Entibor.”
“We’ll probably find out about everything soon enough,” Bindweed replied over intraship comms from the other gunnery station. “Amaro—Errec—has gone down with Trav to meet the natives.”
“Trav knows he’s supposed to keep an eye on the captain, right?”
“Right. I just hope he remembers.”
Blossom heard the sound of the Dusty’s ramp sighing open, then the noise of footsteps on metal as Trav Esmet and the captain walked down. She could just see the two men at the edge of her gunnery station’s viewscreen.
The gentlesir in the amazing morning-robe stepped forward to speak with the captain and the navigator. There was a brief colloquy at the foot of the ramp. Then the gentlesir turned aside and made a tiny hand gesture. The flower girls began to drift away with their baskets of white and lavender petals, and the flute players started putting their instruments back into their cases.
“Looks like trouble,” Bindweed said.
“I guess we didn’t have the right cargo,” Blossom replied. “Since up until Sapne our cargo was just three young people that nobody was supposed to know were here—”
“—I’d say we need to look more closely at the situation.” Blossom leaned forward suddenly. She’d spotted an unexpected flurry of movement at the edge of her screen. “Wait a moment. The game’s not over yet. The gent in the morning-robe is going off with our captain.”
“Strange are the ways of Khesat,” Bindweed said. “But unless I’m awfully mistaken, this isn’t the sort of greeting every random merchant gets, even here.”
Blossom switched the intraship comm to the engineering spaces. “Chaka? If you’re not occupied, come up and meet us in the common room. It’s time we had a serious talk.”
The town house of Jens’s cousin-once-removed was like nothing Faral had ever seen, except in holovids and in the illustrations of adventure books about the days before the Magewars. The private entrance hall into which the Exalted of Tanavral first escorted his guests had walls paneled in carved ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Heavy brocade curtains with deep valances covered the windows. The ceiling had chandeliers and allegorical frescoes, and the floor had parquetry and Ilarnan millefleur carpets.
Miza, wide-eyed, had identified all those things to Faral, and had given him an estimate of their worth that made his breath catch in his throat. The two of them hadn’t had long to talk—a few minutes only, while Rhal Kasander spoke urgently with his personal tailor at the other end of the long chamber. Then the tailor’s attendants, both male and female, had descended upon Jens and his companions, and hurried them off separately for measurings and fittings and the presentation to each of them, in less time than Faral had believed possible, of an elegant new wardrobe.
Now the cousins were back together for the first time in several hours, in the upstairs reception room where they had been taken to await the return of Miza. Jens, newly resplendent in the High Khesatan mode, wore a full-sleeved day coat of black moiré spidersilk lined throughout in lapis lazuli, with a string of opals braided into his long yellow hair. Around his neck, plainly visible against the pure white of his shirtfront, he still wore the leather cord strung with bits of bone that the oracle on Sapne had given him for luck. Combined with the opals, the effect was one of perverse, and somehow entirely Khesatan, distinction.
Mercifully, the tailor had not attempted a similar transformation with Faral, contenting himself with providing a plain suit of well-fitted garments in the basic Galcenian style. Faral supposed that the difference in clothing implied all sorts of things about rank and status to the eyes of Khesatan observers, but he didn’t care. What counted at the moment was that for the first time in some hours he had an opportunity to talk with Jens alone.
*What are we really doing here, foster-brother?* he asked urgently. *And when do we get something to eat?*
He spoke in Trade-talk for privacy’s sake, and because the shared language was still a link between them. To his relief, Jens answered him in the same tongue.
*If you’re asking for a hearty serving of rare meat and blood sauce, you won’t get it any time soon. Late afternoon is for small pale sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off.*
*I can hardly wait,* said Faral. *And you didn’t answer my first question.*
*I’m here for reasons of my own,* Jens said. *And you’re here because you stuck to me like a wool-burr from the moment we left Maraghai—*
*I stuck to … !* Faral’s indignation left him briefly speechless.
*—and I’m damned if I know why your friend Miza is still with us at all.*
Faral regained his voice again with some difficulty. *That “reasons of my own” line is getting thin, foster-brother. Time for me to speak plainly, I think.*
*If you must.*
*All right. It was important for you to get to Khesat, I could see that. So I went along. You mentioned danger and intrigue and backing the winning candidate. That didn’t sound like your usual style, but I didn’t argue with it because the other choice was calling you a liar. But things are happening now that I don’t understand even a little, and I think you ought to tell me the truth.*
Jens let out his breath and sat down abruptly on one of the carved wooden chairs. All of a sudden he looked much more like his usual self, in spite of the moire spidersilk and the string of opals. *I got a message,* he said, *the night you were going to leave Maraghai with Chaka and go off wandering. *
*What kind of message?*
*My father was with Space Force Intelligence for a long time,* Jens said. *Maybe he still is, I don’t know. Anyway, he arranged things so that if anything bad ever happened to my mother or to him, I’d be sure to get word of it whether he could make contact himself or not. That kind of message.*
*Did it say what
was going on?* Faral tried to imagine how trouble that bad could possibly have befallen his aunt and uncle. He’d always thought of them as dazzling and somehow invincible, living an exciting life in some place very far away, like people in a holovid. *Did they ask you for help?*
Jens shook his head. The opals glittered. *Nothing that clear and obvious. But I’m worried that both Dadda and Mamma are being held incommunicado by someone on Khesat who wants to use them in setting up a new Highest. If I want to learn anything more, I’ll have to play the game as if I intend to be a candidate for the office myself. Is everything clear enough for you now?*
Faral couldn’t think of an answer that wouldn’t sound either rude or stupid. Finally he gave up. *Shouldn’t you call Public Security to report a kidnapping first?*
*So far, nothing illegal has happened. But you can go a long way on Khesat and stay inside the boundaries of the law
… especially if you’re a Worthy and confine yourself to dealing with others of similar rank.*
*I can see why your father joined the Space Force and left the planet,* said Faral after a moment.
*Not yet you can’t,* Jens told him. *But you will.*
“Well,” Blossom said. “That was certainly an unusual reception.”
Along with Bindweed, Chaka, and Trav Esmet, she was sitting at the table in Dust Devil‘s common room. She poured herself some cha’a, hot and bitter, and swirled it around in the cup before looking over at her partner. “Have you ever seen the like?”
“No,” said Bindweed, “but I’ve never been to Khesat before, either.”
“Granted. Trav, did you happen to catch who that gentlesir in the morning-robe might have been?”
“Hafelsan,” the navigator replied. “Gerre somebody somebody Hafelsan.”
“You must improve your memory for names,” Bindweed told him. “Such things may be important someday when you’ve got a ship of your own.”
