The creature let out another roar.
“He says he understands you well enough,” said the bartender. “But if you want him, you’d better take his partner too, the best damned hull technician in the galaxy.”
“What’s his partner? Another Selvaur?”
“No,” said a voice by Jos’s elbow. “I’m his partner.”
Jos turned toward the speaker, and found that this time he was looking at a young woman of about his own age. She was wearing the same kind of flamboyant outfit that Captain Maert and the Wandering Star’s other crew members had worn, this time with ruffled cuffs and a vest embroidered in crimson glitterthread. She carried a blaster in a cross-draw holster and what looked like a knife in her boot.
“I’m Rak Barenslee,” she said. “Hull technician. Also pilot in training, cargo appraiser, and gunner, late of the privateer ship Strahn’s Luck. Are you the captain of the Libra-class that came in a couple of weeks ago? Because if you are, Ferrda and I can help you run her the way she wants to be run.”
XXIII. GALCENIAN DATING 978 A.F.
ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 3 PERADA
AMBASSADOR OLDIGAARD had returned to the Summer Palace. Now that the hot months had come to the lowlands around An-Jemayne, bearing famine and disease on the parching wind, the palace in the remote mountains was a very pleasant place to be.
Or it would have been pleasant, he reflected, if not for the fact that every time he came to speak to the Domina, he came as a beggar with his hat in his hand. That hadn’t been what the Council had told him to expect, or what he’d expected for himself.
The Domina should have been at a disadvantage. She needed the strength of Galcen. But she delayed her decision, again and again. And as a result, he was stuck on a plague world, with precious little communication in or out, while the Galcenian fleet was allied for all practical purposes with the Entiborans.
And as long as Perada held out, saying neither yes nor no, the harder it would be to change that status quo. Not for the first time, Oldigaard regretted the loss of his Adept, the man who had promised that he could influence the Domina.
Oldigaard’s restless pacing had taken him to the Fire Room, a high and drafty place which took its name from the ornamented hearths—now empty—along two walls. Small tables, surrounded by deep chairs, and rank after rank of books, each one a priceless antique, made the chamber look like a scholar’s retreat rather than a ruler’s semipublic waiting room.
Oldigaard sat in one of the chairs, his legs stretched out before him. He looked at his chrono. An hour remained before his latest appointment with the Domina. Today he would give the Council’s ultimatum, and for better or worse he would act on the reply.
“Good morning,” Festen Aringher said. “Since I find you alone, may I have a word with you?”
Oldigaard looked up. He’d seen his fellow Galcenian from time to time, both in the palace and in An-Jemayne, but he hadn’t exchanged above a dozen words with him. He had supposed that the man was a translator on the Domina’s staff.
“A word, no more.”
“It will take a few words, but not many. To be brief: for the duration of this crisis, I am the ambassador plenipotentiary between Galcen and Entibor.”
Oldigaard sat up sputtering.
“By whose authority?”
“The same who sent you to replace poor harmless Nepa-lat. When you get your next sheaf of instructions from home, you’ll find that two things have happened: first, that the party which appointed you to the ambassadorship has left power, and second, that you have been recalled by their replacements.”
“I’ll wait until I see that message, if you don’t mind.”
“You’ll only embarrass yourself and Galcen both if you deliver the overly dramatic ultimatum which you carry in your coat pocket. So, to make the transition easier, I suggest that you look for the message.” Aringher glanced ostentatiously at his own chrono. “I’ll wait.”
“I’m afraid that I can do nothing until I return to the capital, after I’ve concluded my business here.”
“As you say.”
At that moment another figure joined them—a slender woman in black, with a long staff in one hand. “May I present my associate, Mistress Vasari?” Aringher said. “Like your late companion, an Adept from Galcen.”
“We’ve met,” the woman said. Her pleasant voice was unpleasantly familiar. “But I’m delighted to make your acquaintance again under less trying circumstances.”
“Likewise, Mistress,” Oldigaard said, his diplomatic training coming to his rescue. “You must understand that this is highly irregular.”
“We must all bend before the wind,” Vasari said. “This is an unconventional situation we find ourselves in. But you have a mission as important as ours.”
“I haven’t agreed that you have a mission at all,” Oldigaard said. He was wondering if he could somehow dash from the room, seeking other people, even servants, to be around. The isolation he had looked for by coming to this room seemed now to be a trap.
“As may be,” said Aringher. “We’ll leave you now, for the time which remains before you present yourself. I’ll see you again there. My advice would be to get your messages—read them—and use the private audience to introduce me as your replacement.”
He bowed and retreated through one of the shadowy doorways. Mistress Vasari remained.
“Are you the threat that goes with the honeyed words?” Oldigaard asked.
“Not exactly,” she said, and smiled. “There have been changes at home. One of them is that the Centrists now control the government. They plan for you to be the first Councillor from Galcen to the Republic which—if all goes smoothly—will form after the war has ended. Now I leave you to your textcomm.”
Nivome do’Evaan looked at the sheaf of messages he’d received from his field agents. The raids against the suspected Mages had gone poorly. As far as he could tell, the only suspects who’d been scooped up were also the only ones he could be certain weren’t actually guilty.
Nevertheless—there were still Mages on Entibor, and they still went about their workings. Nivome frowned in the direction of the Domina’s apartments. The woman was proving more headstrong than he’d thought likely, even in his most pessimistic moods, and not at all amenable to influence. His efforts to locate the gene-sire of the unborn child, as a possible source of persuasion, had so far proved fruitless.
Well, if that was the way of it, he’d have to find a new Domina. The old one, Veratina, when she’d finally shown herself to be unreliable, had died, despite Hafrey’s snooping. Now that Hafrey was gone, this latest Domina would follow her great-aunt. Perhaps a mishap at the birthing. After that, a struggle—no female heir was readily apparent. But with the Mages still active, and with the population greatly reduced by plague and forcible relocation off-planet, maybe the emergence of a strong Lord Protector would be possible. Why settle for Consort when more could be his?
He allowed himself a moment to contemplate the vision of a renewed and orderly Entibor, feared by its enemies and strong in the politics of the civilized galaxy. It could be done, if a man were willing to take the necessary steps … .
A messenger knocked on his door. “My lord minister, her Dignity requests that you attend her.”
Nivome got to his feet. “Attend her. That I shall.”
Mistress Vasari stood outside the door to the Fire Room. A feeling of something left undone oppressed her. The niggling memory of bad dreams, perhaps. She should have rejected the feeling, but was unable to do so. What was it?
Perhaps Magework. Errec Ransome had never had any problem finding Mages. And there had been the day of the coup at the Palace Major, when she’d found Mages herself. But there was no such odor here in the Summer Palace. Why not?
Best not to ignore dreams. She cast her mind back to the nightmare that had kept her tossing in her bed the night before. A dream of a dark place, lit on its horizon all the way around, by a light impossibly bright for th
e blackness that surrounded it. And there had been a voice, speaking to her in a language she didn’t understand.
Time passed, and she looked up, surprised. Her aimless wanderings while deep in thought, puzzling over the mystery, had taken her to the Hall of Statues. Why could she find no Mages in the Summer Palace?
There were mages in the Summer Palace. That much seemed obvious. They had to be here, if they were anywhere. But these would be the strong ones, the ones with powerful wards, guards, and shields. The ones fighting in the shadows to bring about the victory.
“Nothing by chance,” Vasari muttered, an article of faith among the Adepts. “Nothing by chance.”
And the Mages insured that their victories were not by chance. She closed her eyes, and stretched out with her other senses. Why am I here? she asked. Why am I in this room rather than some other?
And the answer came back. To find death.
What had Errec said the Mages did? They created their power to alter the universe through the deaths of their members. The Mages on Entibor would welcome the plagues, the bombing raids. If they were killed by their own side, it added to the strength of their ultimate working.
A whiff of Magecraft made her wrinkle her nose. She opened her eyes again. Around her stood a group of black-robed and masked figures.
“Welcome,” said one.
Vasari raised her staff before her.
“Let me pass,” she said.
“No,” said the one who had spoken before. “But you do have a choice. Will you fight me alone, or all of us together? There is more honor in a single combat … .”
Before he could finish speaking, Vasari swept out to the side with her staff, its butt spearing toward the belly of the Mage closest to her right. That one dropped his own shorter staff with a clatter and bent forward, retching sounds coming from behind his mask.
Vasari didn’t watch him, or hesitate, but continued to sweep her staff toward the man in front of her who had been speaking. He blocked the blow with his staff, then lifted it up and over to launch a counterblow toward her left arm.
As she parried, Vasari opened herself to the Power of the universe, and let it flow through her. Her staff blazed with a blue light. But the staves of her opponents were blazing too.
She didn’t allow herself the luxury of thought, but instead fought on, grimly and silently, as the Hall of Statues filled with twisting shadows and the clatter of staves meeting and springing apart.
Oldigaard was waiting outside the private audience chamber a minute before his appointment. He’d had the chance to use his textcomm, and had found messages—brought by courier from Galcen, undoubtedly, and sent to him during the flight up to the provinces. The messages confirmed what Aringher had told him. How the man had known … but of course. If he was an ambassador, he had a textcomm of his own.
Deep-cover ambassadors prepositioned on other planets. Who would have thought it? But here came the man himself.
“Well,” Oldigaard said, when Aringher had come within speaking range, “I suppose I should offer you congratulations; all I can muster, however, is sympathy.”
“Thank you,” Aringher replied.
The doors opened and both men walked in.
There was the Domina, sitting in her chair of state, her mouth drawn tight. As this was a private audience, she wore a loose gown instead of the heavy state robes. She looked unwell, Oldigaard thought; the strenuous regime of immunizations that attempted to ward off the rapidly mutating plagues could not have been easy on a woman in her condition. Tillijen, the armsmaster, stood at the Domina’s left shoulder, one hand on her blaster.
Nivome, the Minister of Internal Security, stood on the Domina’s right. He, too, seemed unhappy. To Oldigaard it looked as if their arrival had interrupted an argument. Only Tillijen’s face registered no expression.
“Your Dignity,” Oldigaard began, “I believe you are acquainted with Gentlesir Aringher.”
“I am,” Perada said. “Surely you did not request this audience just to perform an introduction.”
“Only in a sense,” Oldigaard replied. “It is my honor to introduce him as the new ambassador from Galcen to Your Dignity’s court.”
With that, he bowed low, then stepped back to give a clear field to his replacement.
“Your Dignity,” Aringher began, and got no further.
A clatter rose from behind them. The doors swung open, and a figure collapsed forward into the audience chamber, wooden staff falling to the floor with an echoing rattle. It was Mistress Vasari. Blood flowed freely from her body, and her clothes were torn and ragged.
Vasari raised herself on her hands, and turned her bruised face to Perada. “Mages,” she said. “In the palace. A working … .”
Jos took the ’Hammer back to Entibor at speed. Reports of conditions on the home world hadn’t been good—plagues and crop failures and repeated harassing attacks by the Mages—and word of a major victory in the Web was likely to be the first positive news people there had heard for months.
“First thing after we report,” he promised Nannla, “we’ll see about getting Tilly back on board.”
It was late in the ship’s night, midway through the hyperspace transit. The three remaining members of Warhammer ’s original crew were sitting around the mess table in the darkened common room, drinking purple aqua vitae by the pale blue light of the safety glows.
The number-one gunner downed her glass. “If she’ll come.”
“What do you mean?”
“The last word I got, Tilly was being armsmaster to Her Dignity. That’s not the sort of job you walk away from.”
“Don’t worry about Tilly,” Errec said. The copilot had been quieter even than usual for most of the evening, and this was the first time he’d spoken in some minutes. “She’ll come back if you ask her to.”
Nannla brightened. “You really think so?”
“Some predictions are easy.”
Jos poured himself another shot of the aqua vitae and wished that the same could be said about his own reception on Entibor. He hoped that the news he carried would at least win him a fair hearing. The planet’s current troubles had proved him right about taking Ari to Maraghai—but being right had never made anyone better loved.
“What I want,” he said slowly, “is to take ’Rada off planet before the plagues get so out of control that nobody’s safe.”
“Won’t work,” Nannla said. “Tilly told me, once—the Domina never leaves Entibor. Custom.”
“Hang custom.”
“You’ll never get a trueborn Entiboran to agree with you on that,” Errec said. “Custom is life and death to them.”
“We’ll see,” Jos said. “I’m going to try my best, anyway.”
“What’ll you do if it doesn’t work?” Nannla asked.
“Then I’ll stick to fighting the Mages,” Jos said. He tossed back his shot of aqua vitae. “What about you guys?”
“I’m with you, boss. One of these days I’m going to retire and use my share of the loot to open up a tea shop in Sombrelír, but not just yet.”
“Errec?”
The copilot shook his head. “I can’t. I have to go back to Galcen.”
“To the Guild, you mean,” said Jos, unsurprised. He’d been expecting something like this for a while now—ever since Errec had taken to wearing Adept’s blacks. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, you know. They can’t make you.”
Ransome gave a faint laugh. “I know. They don’t have to. But I know that I need to go.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” Jos said. “We’ve only got this run to finish first.”
“Mages in the palace.” Mistress Vasari’s voice was only a thread of sound, and blood bubbled from her mouth when she breathed. “I found the Mages,” she said. She choked, and more blood ran from her mouth, thick and dark. “I know what they’re doing.”
“Don’t try to talk,” said Perada. Somewhere behind her, she could hear Tillijen speaking ur
gently over one of the room’s hidden comm links, trying to summon help. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“No,” Vasari said. She moved her head from side to side—a fraction of an inch, a visible agony of effort—and said, “They’re trying to tear away the skin of the planet.”
Perada’s breath caught. She felt the child inside her kick, hard and low, as if the sudden surge of adrenaline had jolted it. “How—?”
“A working. Volcanoes. Mountains. The oceans boiling … the sky in flame … .”
“Massive geothermal upheavals,” Perada heard Aringher murmur under his breath. “At a guess, they’re aiming for total devastation in the shortest time possible.”
“But they can’t!” Perada protested. “They’ll all die too!”
“They don’t … care.” Vasari was struggling to form the words. Her breath choked and gurgled. Another rush of blood came up, soaking the carpet under her mouth. “Mages gain strength … from death. The more who … die … the greater the …”
The Adept’s voice stopped altogether. Perada looked away.
She’s dead. We’ll all be dead, soon.
Aringher was speaking in an undertone to Garen Tarveet and to Ambassador—to Gentlesir—Oldigaard. “Take an aircar to the nearest landing field with an operational courier ship. I need you to carry the word to Galcen. I intend to remain on Entibor and render what assistance I can in this extremity.”
“Then I ought to stay here, too.” Garen sounded terrified but stubborn. Perada knew the combination well from their days together at the Delaven Academy—nothing Aringher could say was going to persuade him.
She stood up, pushing herself awkwardly to her feet with her hands on the arms of the chair of state, and stood face-to-face with Garen. “You need to go,” she said. “Somebody has to finish carrying out the plans we made, and I won’t be able to.”
“What do you mean?” Garen’s question came out in a squeak.
The Gathering Flame Page 40
