by John Daulton
Altin did remember that, and he knew that Orli was at least half-convinced the whole fight at the slave auction was an illusion meant to throw her off the truth. Altin had no way of knowing whether it had or hadn’t been, however, as he hadn’t had time to investigate. Not with everything that had happened since.
“Well, I’m not dead,” shouted the man, dangling in Deeqa’s hand like a little, four-limbed bag of anger. He thrashed for a moment, nearly twisting free as his waistcoat ripped, but Deeqa caught him by an ankle and lifted him up again. “Let me go, by the gods. I’ve never run a slave auction in all my life.” His spectacles, which had fallen off, swung pendulously from a cord around his neck, somehow giving a piteous credibility to his complaint.
“You’re a liar,” Orli spat.
“I have contracts with the marchioness,” Deeqa’s gnomish bundle argued back.
Roberto started to nod to that, his teeth tightly held together, but he didn’t know enough to get into the specifics. He also knew that his lucrative Goblin Tea enterprise was burning down with every lick of the flames flickering around the hole Orli had shot through the little man’s massive chair. “Listen, Orli, this can’t be your guy. How crazy would he have to be to get involved with slavery? He’s got connections in high places. Good ones. Too good to lose. Her Majesty sent me down here to meet with him, you know? So let’s hold off on conviction and execution at least until we can get a fair and proper trial.”
Orli let go a derisive half laugh. “In my experience, there isn’t much fair or proper about trials these days.”
“That wasn’t here,” Roberto protested, desperately trying to save the fortune he’d already made considerable plans for. He knew she was referring to the hoax of a trial she’d gotten from the NTA right after the outbreak of the war. “And the responsible parties for that one have been punished. Asad’s flying first mate on a freighter barely half the size of the one Deeqa was on. How’s that for justice? No pension, no nothing. Dude will be working a junk hauler for the rest of his life.”
Orli glared at him, her eyes narrowing, obviously aware that he was trying to distract her. “Do you actually expect me to believe there is another one? Another little asshole with a mouth like a cannon?”
“Orli, I just want you to not do something stupid that you can’t take back.”
She glared at him some more. She looked to Altin, who nodded that he agreed with Roberto. However, the fact that the ice lance still glowed brightly above his hand also made it apparent that he would do whatever she needed him to. She looked back at Roberto, one eye narrowing even more. “Fine,” she said. “But I know it was his voice on that ship.” She took her finger off the trigger of her gun.
“That’s a good girl,” Roberto said, feeling the tension in her arm release. “Now put that thing away, and let’s all play nice.”
“And put me down,” the little man demanded of Deeqa. “I’m not some child’s toy to be manhandled.”
Deeqa brought him back to the chair. She wiped out the low-burning flames with a pass of her hand and then plopped him back down where he had been when they came in. She didn’t holster the pistol, though.
“Good, good,” said Roberto, followed by a nervous laugh. “Now, hopefully, everyone can be reasonable and not do or say anything rash. There’s still a lot of money to be made, so, you know … bygones be bygones, as they used to say.”
“Don’t worry about your money, Captain,” said the little man with surprising calm as he wiped ash off the shoulders of his green waistcoat. “It’s going to be at least a year before we can get a magician safely on their world, probably more like two. So for at least that long, you’ll have the business whether your friends try to shoot me or not. I confess, in my eagerness to be about this business, to making a huge error in showing you as much courtesy as I did today. You may be certain I shall never do it again. You or the dark one. No others. Not even the Galactic Mage.”
“Like you could stop him from coming if he wanted to,” Orli sneered.
“Hey, can it. Please,” Roberto said, the first bit a command, the last nearly pleading.
“Fine,” she said. “But I think I’ll wait outside.”
“Yeah, good idea. Go keep Sami and Fatima company.”
Altin moved to accompany her, but Deeqa saw the look on Roberto’s face, and she stepped to the door instead. “Stay, Sir Altin,” she said. “I’ll go with her. He asked you to come here with us specifically for what you know about the TGS.”
Altin nodded. This visit was something of a trade, a service on his part in exchange for Roberto’s having agreed to help with the science team. Altin was about to get farmed for information that only he had access to as an extremely high-ranking member of the Teleporters Guild.
He looked to Orli, who nodded that she was fine, then she and Deeqa went back through the office and out onto the street. When he heard the outer office door close, Roberto went straight to work.
“So, you said you’d drop the price if I could get you some information about when the visas are going to start happening.”
The little man, Master Tenderthrift, nodded and laced his fingers together patiently, as mellow as if he’d not nearly had his head blown clean off of his neck a few moments before. It was as if that was not the first time someone had directed a weapon at the man. “Go on,” he said.
“Well, visas are coming slower than you hoped, because the Northern Trade Alliance is an even bigger bureaucratic nightmare than the Transportation Guild Service is. Director Bahri is all for letting Prosperions come to Earth, and so is the Queen—at least that’s what they all say—but both agree that there have to be policies in place first. And if you want the God’s honest truth, most of those people at the NTA are scared crapless by the thought of having sorcerers suddenly coming to town. When we first got here, everyone back home was all for it, but that’s because these guys”—he paused and tapped Altin on the arm as an example of what he was talking about—“were just stories being sent back in data packet videos. But now that it’s actually going to happen, suddenly the idea of having a bunch of little Merlins running around has everyone privately freaking out. You should have seen the guy at the NTA Reserve Bank get all fidgety when I told him what I wanted to do. He couldn’t care less about what he would have made off me on the ship loan. All he cared about was guys like Altin here jumping into his vaults and stealing everything. They’re all doing it. The military guys think the Prosperions are going to steal secrets. The big corporate players do too—and those guys are all about taking risks and making money. The fact that they aren’t falling all over themselves to help connect the two planets says a lot. The simple truth is that everyone on Earth with money is working nonstop to gum up the gears. Nobody wants you guys there.”
Trader Tenderthrift, as he was most commonly known, let go a long, low hum, a rumbling thing that would have better fit in a dragon’s chest than in one as diminutive as his own. He straightened the spectacles on his nose and looked to Altin for his opinion in that regard. “Is that how you hear it, Sir Altin? Do your fiancée’s people fear you so soon after the romantic promises of Her Majesty’s great speech at the Fire Fountain that day, all that rot about trust and reciprocity?”
“I could not say if they do or don’t fear us,” Altin said. “But I do know that the TGS council is furious with the NTA about being denied permission to look for a place to set up offices on Earth. So I would say that might align with Captain Levi’s news.”
“So where are the offices, then? I hear that you, Captain Levi, have already managed to get a spaceship here to Prosperion. A new one, just purchased from a shipwright on Earth, as I understand. Clearly some mechanisms for trade with us have been put in place by your people.”
Roberto raised an eyebrow at that. “You heard that already? We came straight here.”
The little man pointed to a cage on the lamp table across the room. There were four small lizards lying contentedly and still, basking i
n the warmth beneath the lamp’s steady flame. Homing lizards. Roberto should have known his contact would have people in the streets. And that had been a pretty large crowd gawking at his ship.
“Well, we do have three NTA-TGS co-ops going up. But none on Earth. They’re putting one up for ships on Amphitrite, but only ships is what I heard. No setup for moving people, just the big black platforms that the TGS wizards will turn into those giant boxes they started teleporting ships with.”
“And how far is this Amfit-tight from Earth?”
“Amphitrite. It’s a moon around Neptune. About as far away from Earth as you can get without leaving the solar system or setting up shop on an ice cube.”
“Could a single seer get a seeing spell pushed that far, from that moon to Earth?” This was directed once more to Altin.
“I’ve not seen this base, Master Tenderthrift. But if it’s an outer world, then no, not really, not without a conduit and a proper concert of magicians to help. I could do it, but there aren’t any others who could that I am familiar with. Well, perhaps Guildmaster Alfonde of the Seers Guild could, but I suspect he and I are about it.”
Tenderthrift rubbed his little chin as he thought about it, but there was little else he could do. Or else there was little else he wanted to talk about. He looked up at them and, as if seeing them for the first time, said, “Well then, I suppose it’s for the best that I’ve got my friend Captain Levi here to help.” His mood was so altered then, so bright, that Altin couldn’t help but frown, though Roberto didn’t seem to care. Trader Tenderthrift was all courtesy and respect after, and it was barely a half hour later that Roberto had a map and a signed release entitling him, to quote directly: “to fill his holds to the top at the price of twenty gold crowns per bag-weight,” which was, to Roberto’s considerable dismay, a full five gold pieces higher than it had been the last time he and the Murdoc Bay trader had talked.
The little man, smiling as he explained the price increase, said simply, “Ah, yes. Well, the good captain might consider asking his pretty little hotheaded friend to make up the difference.” There wasn’t much Roberto could say to that.
Chapter 13
Shadows deepened on the forest floor as the lines of light coming through the canopy grew frail. Pernie was anxious, expecting the elves to find her at any moment now. She knew that they would arrive and discover her trying to stand on the back of her many-legged bug, which she had named Knot due to the tangle of legs it became each time it rolled into a ball—which it did a lot, as in, every single time she had to discipline it. She knew they would find her and her bug, and then they would take it away. Or worse, they would thrust one of their spears right through it, and her whole day’s work would be lost. So she had to hurry.
Her little body was bruised all over, and blood ran from cuts and scratches everywhere. But Pernie wasn’t the only one showing signs of wear. The bug suffered for its part, and Pernie had been less and less willing to heal its injuries as time went on. Now, there was a stretch of broken limbs down a length of its body, on both sides of its trunk, mangled angles where several legs jutted out in tangled clumps of uselessness, snapped, bent, or broken either by the rope or by Pernie’s simply mashing them with her crooked stick. She found that the creature reacted best to pain, and she did think it was slowly beginning to recognize the advantages of moving away from the pressure Pernie put upon its body, whether with her heels or the stick. Between the yank of her rope, the stomp of her feet, and the mash of her stick—all accompanied by thoughts she put into its mind—she was gaining some measure of control.
She found that simple thoughts worked best, and the sooner she’d stopped trying to communicate with it in the way she’d often heard Altin talk about speaking telepathically to his dragon, the sooner she’d started making progress with her bug. Simple thoughts, like pressure points in the mind, worked best. The creature seemed to think in the most basic of ways. It was either afraid or it was not. It was either hungry or not. And by not, it was a matter of total absence. It did not plan to be hungry later, nor did it look to Pernie expecting to be afraid. It simply became afraid. Or hungry. Or in pain. But this also made guiding it easier too. For she found she could put simple suggestions into its head by working its opposite. If she wanted it to go left, she would project pain on the right. Just the thought of pain, remembered pain, pain she’d sensed from it.
This discovery had led her to learn how to guide it fairly well, and she’d spent the bulk of the afternoon breaking its various legs on either side, and locating how that wound felt to it by listening to its mind, which at its most active seemed a sort of background noise. But, like memorizing the keys on a harpsichord perhaps, she’d kicked and smashed her way up and down its length and had a pretty sound repertoire of its particular agonies.
And now, at the point of having just worked most of that out, she was ready to give it another go. Her last attempt to ride it had gotten her nearly forty spans across a broad, flat moss bed, but when the bug ran up and over the great bulk of a rotting fallen tree, Pernie had tumbled right off and nearly lost her grip on the rope.
But now, she had retied her rope to her wrist, and she had a plan for how to stay on the creature even while moving vertically. With a quick glance at the dying light, she climbed onto its back again. “Go,” she said, and in saying so, sent it guiding thoughts, as she’d begun to do almost reflexively by then, a little tap of pain in its rearmost extremities, and off it went.
It took off as it always did, like a greyhound at a race, but she was well used to it, and she spread her feet wide along its length and braced with her back leg. Leaning into the direction of its speed, she stayed right with it this time, and they were off like an elf-thrown spear.
With subtle thoughts of discomfort and gentle tugs on the rope, she guided the creature around obstacles and under low-hanging limbs. They rushed around the outside edge of the fern meadow where the creature lived, covering the distance in a matter of seconds. Pernie thrilled at the speed of the creature as the wind blew back her hair and whistled in her ears.
She dared a long, sweeping turn back around to her left, through which she had to lean back into the momentum of the turn, but she’d gotten better and better at that as she’d practiced throughout the afternoon. She only had to tap the crooked stick on the ground once as she came near to overbalancing midway through that time.
It was time to test her climbing theory, so she guided the lengthy creature back toward the great lumpy mass of the old rotting tree. As it approached, at seemingly meteoric speed, she crept closer and closer to the insect’s head, so far up that her left foot was placed between its eyestalks as it ran.
Careful not to stand on them or pinch them beneath her boot, she waited until just before the bug got to the log, then slid her foot over the curving bit of shell that covered its face, the hard wedge she’d noticed earlier when she’d cast the first healing spell.
She shifted all her weight to that front foot as the bug went vertical and climbed straight up the mossy wall of the rotting tree. She balanced there upon its plated face, and then, as it crested the top of the tree, she stepped back onto its back and scooted to the tail end. She repeated the process going down the far side of the tree by standing on its armored rump, if it could be argued that it had such a thing.
The descent was a bit trickier, and Pernie nearly slipped off, but the bug was back on level ground so quickly that Pernie simply hopped forward just before she fell and came to land on its back again even as it began to move away. It wasn’t perfect, but it had worked, and with practice, she’d surely get it down.
She ran the bug around for quite some time after that, and by the time she had it climbing up and down the trees, twilight was settling toward evening.
She didn’t know the jungle at nighttime at all, and there was still no sign of the elves, so she decided to go back to the cave on her own. She knew the way well enough by now.
She turned the bug toward the
cave that was her home for now, and off they went at great speed through the trees. Twice she tried to guide it through spaces that were too thick with limbs and vines, and both times she was knocked right off the creature’s back. She had a great welt over one eye after the second strike, where she hit a low branch so hard little spots swam in her vision for a time. But she got right back on the moment they went away.
She was just approaching the root-covered rise where the mantis’ body lay when she caught up with the hunt. She hadn’t even heard them, they moved so silently, but suddenly there they were, all twenty of them, running naturally together as easily as they pleased. It would have been impossible to say who was more surprised by the encounter, Pernie or the elves. For Pernie, she found herself among them so unexpectedly it seemed as if they’d jumped out at her from shadows and the trees. But for them, it was as if they’d just seen some new type of monster appear. Sandew actually had his spear up and was in the motion of the throw when another of the elves caught him by the wrist just in time.
Seawind began to laugh.
It was the first time Pernie had ever seen an elf laugh. All of the others began to laugh as well. All but Sandew, who was still staring at Pernie standing there on her bug.
He saw the admiration in his companions’ eyes, but shook his head, saying, “No.” He walked right up to Seawind and said it twice more. “No, no. This does not count. Djoveeve and Belletelemew ran with the hunt themselves. This is not the same.”
“Of course it is the same. Djoveeve ran as a jaguar on her second day. Belletelemew as a hummingbird in nine. But the young Sava does not have the power to transmute. She had to find another way.”
“Then she is the lesser of them by far. This is the work of twenty-four days, and it’s not even her own weak human magic helping her. How can this be the lifewatch of the High Seat?”
“What you condemn her for, I applaud.” He turned briefly and smiled at Pernie, genuine and warm. He turned back to Sandew. “Don’t you see? This human runs with elves using no magic at all. She will be the greatest of the three.”
