by Stefon Mears
Ready then, Donal began the first spell, chanting in Gaelic. His words were commanding, but the tone of his voice was soft, rising and falling like a gentle lullaby. Fionn overlaid a tune and Donal’s spell became a song.
And together, they began to sing Li Hua to sleep.
◊
Tunold wanted to run flat out through the carpeted passage past the most expensive accommodations to the bubble, heading full speed for the problem the way he would have if he were alone.
But he was not alone. He had Goldberg and a dozen ship’s watch with him. But they were fine. Might have been able to keep up. The problem was that beached whale of a ship’s mage. Machado ran about as well as Tunold cast spells.
Tunold itched to run on ahead. Just let Machado catch up when he could. Maybe even take care of the problem himself. But he knew better. Tai Shi had already taken down a dozen armed ship’s watch, which meant that even he and Goldberg together might not be able to stop her. At least, not without Machado’s help.
So Tunold had to settle for a slow jog, and tried to ignore the adrenaline boost he got from the call to battle stations echoing all around him.
At least he did not have any civilians tagging along, though that had been a near thing. Stevens and Davis wanted to witness for some kind of legal reason that Tunold had no time to figure out. Especially since his gut told him it was a business reason, not a true legal matter. They certainly lost their eagerness to debate the matter when Machado had pointed out that Tai Shi might have enchanted them with contingency plans.
Even Tunold had to admire Machado’s speed and efficiency when he cast a fast set of wards on that stateroom. It might have cost them valuable seconds, but Tunold had learned the hard way not to ignore Machado when he insisted that something was important. The man might have been arrogant and out of shape, but Tunold had never met a better ship’s mage.
They finally reached the bubble and Tunold almost died of shock on the spot: it sat waiting for them, steel cage open and everything. He dove in as though he expected it to get called away before he could board. Goldberg and his people filed in after him, Goldberg issuing quiet orders to organize how they would move when they found Tai Shi.
After what felt like half an hour, but probably only took another ten seconds, Machado huffed and puffed his way into the cage beside the others, sweat bringing out the musk in his cologne and giving his face a glossy look. Hands on his knees, he bent forward and tried to catch his breath.
“Gangplank,” said Goldberg, using the crew’s term for the formal arrival and departure deck, to tell their destination to the water sprites that carried the cage up and down the tube in its warded bubble of air.
But before the cage could begin to move, Machado said, “No ... Observation Deck.”
“Ridiculous,” said Goldberg. “She needs to escape, not take in the sights.”
“Ship ... incoming...”
“Executive override,” said Tunold to the water sprites. “Take us to the Observation Deck.” He turned back to Goldberg and saw dawning realization. “That’s right, Chief. She plans to meet her ship at the emergency hatch.”
◊
“Ship incoming,” said Grabowski. “Looks small.”
“Military?” asked Jacobs. Could be a gunboat. Could be that the Orpheus reported in enough information to draw the curiosity of the local patrols...
“Can’t tell from here, Sir. No transponder code.”
“Shall I hail them?” asked Jefferson.
“Hold off, Ms. Jefferson.”
Jacobs called up his station’s feed from the scanners. He normally avoided using it because it lacked the precision of the actual scanners station, and he would rather let his crew give him accurate information than estimate himself from an imprecise view. But a ship not sending its transponder...
Very unusual. Definitely not military or anything official. Not commercial either. Even pirates used fake transponders to lull ships into ignoring them. He looked closer at the image of the small ship, crafted to look like a flying squirrel. A runabout. Probably enough ship for a private Earth-Venus run, but not to make it as far as Mars.
But why no transponder? A ship that small could get lost in normal traffic, which would be dangerous...
“Mr. Grabowski, you said it’s coming this way?”
“Aye, Sir. Definite intercept course.”
“Sir,” said Jefferson, “I’ve got Port Authority on the line. They’re ready for us to land and feeding us the route they want us to use.”
“Acknowledge, Ms. Jefferson, and send that route to my station too.”
What could that runabout want?
The answer occurred to Jacobs almost as soon as he asked himself the question: Tai Shi. That boat had to be her escape hatch.
“Mr. Burke, evasive maneuvers. Looks like you’ll have a fun landing.”
◊
Donal did not need to have Fionn seek out Li Hua to know his spell failed. He felt it in the sink of his heart as he knelt in the middle of his cell. He had done all the stages properly, built his power the way he needed to, focused on his objective, even worked through the link in his head to get it as precise as possible.
But his spell failed. Probably never even reached her. If she noticed it at all, Donal suspected that Li Hua shrugged it off with a twitch of her shoulders.
All the steps had been perfect, but thaumaturgy demanded more of the magician than the ability to follow the steps of a formula. Even alchemy required more of the alchemist than rote repetition, and thaumaturgy settled for nothing less than the complete dedication of the magician.
Donal had failed because on some level he had fought himself. Even though he had locked away the pain of his injuries and forced himself to dedicate as much will as he could muster to stopping Li Hua’s heinous plan, on some level he had been unwilling to work against her.
Donal held his head in his hands, rubbed his temples with his thumbs, pressed his palms against his closed eyes. He heard the soft padding of his spirit deerhound approaching across the ceramic cell floor.
“Any magician may fail a spell. You only become a failure if you give up.”
“How?” Donal heard his voice break on that word, but pushed more words out anyway, confident that his familiar would interpret the broken sounds. “This is all my fault. I should have seen it months ago. And I have to stop it. And I don’t see how.”
“Admit the truth.”
“That I’m a blind idiot?”
“Some have said as much, though I have not. You know what truth you must admit.”
“But I don’t—”
“You must understand power to call it. And you must understand yourself to direct power. Your spell was fine, but it did not strike Tai Shi Li Hua. Tell me why.”
“Well,” started Donal as though answering a professor. His hands were on his knees now, and though he still knelt on the floor, the mere act of answering a theory question helped him recover some of himself. “My mental sketch of her seemed thorough in its detail—”
“Tell. Me. Why.” The cú sidhe pressed its nose against Donal’s. The courage blazing in its emerald eyes commanded Donal to tell the truth.
In that moment, Donal understood what he had hidden from himself for months, what he had been unable to face because he knew that, logically and logistically, it was wrong. But what he faced had nothing to do with logic and logistics. It had to do with her smile, the playful tone she used just for Donal, the fiery way she debated thaumaturgy with him, and the quiet way she welcomed him after a long day.
“I love her.”
“Yes. You do. Now can you let her go?”
Donal’s nostrils flared in a deep breath. “I don’t want to.”
“But can you?”
Donal thought about everything he had learned about Li Hua in the last twenty-four hours, about the details that showed truth about her that she had concealed from him. Donal centered himself with three words.
�
�Yes. I can.”
“Excellent,” said Fionn, and Donal thought he heard relief in his familiar’s voice. “Let us begin again.”
◊
The Horizon Cusp rolled and twisted, but Jacobs managed a wolfish smile as his chart indicated that Burke stayed within two degrees of his designated approach pattern. Great flying.
That runabout stayed with them, though. Its pilot clearly had experience with its smaller size and knew how to take advantage of its maneuverability.
Jacobs leaned over the rail to look at Jefferson, who had her fingers in the snarl of links. “Any luck hailing our little pest?”
“Not yet, Sir, though Port Authority wants to know, and I quote, just what the hell you’re doing?”
“Primitive setup probably can’t see a ship the size of that flying squirrel.” Jacobs shook his head. “Tell Port Authority that I’m testing my pilot to see if he’s ready to handle the landing himself.” He turned to the helm and said, “My apologies for that, Mr. Burke.” He turned back to the communications station. “And if the runabout won’t talk to us, just send it this message: we’ve got its description. We’ve got a good idea about its range and ports of call. And we will interpret any attempt to reach us as attempting to aid a fugitive from justice and endangering a ship attempting to dock.”
Jacobs sat back in his seat, mumbling, “That should at least give the bastards some pause.”
He tapped the security section of his miniature gryphon display, but the reports had not changed in the last five minutes.
That meant that Tai Shi was still at large.
◊
Tunold ripped open the cage door the moment he saw the open space of the Observation Deck. The ride had seemed to take forever, long enough that even that fat ship’s mage recovered his breath, though he wasted it now mumbling to the air.
But they had reached the Observation Deck. A whole deck wasted because some tourists might want to look through the transparent ceramic hull in several directions and pretend they stood among the stars themselves.
At least the deck would come in handy this time. Wide open spaces with no tourists about meant plenty of room to fight. Plenty of room to rush Tai Shi all at once with a dozen ship’s watch. Plus Goldberg and himself leading the way while Machado hung back and did whatever it was that Machado did.
With any luck, Tunold himself would get to throw the knockout punch.
The moment his boots hit that ceramic bulkhead, Tunold’s eyes spotted Tai Shi. Aft, port side, near the hatch. Waiting for what looked like a giant flying squirrel to catch the gryphon’s belly and let her escape.
Tunold roared and charged. All around him a dozen voices echoed him while more than two dozen boots followed him, sounding like an avalanche.
Tai Shi spun to face them, dressed as though for a casual day at the office: slack and a scoop neck sweater with high heels. But her stance looked balanced and ready, as though she knew those clothes would not impede her. In her right hand she held the handle of a combat knife, its blade waiting along her forearm. In her left hand she held a small, silver bauble.
Let Machado worry about the bauble. Tunold worried about the knife.
“Tell me, Magister,” she called in a taunting voice, “do you have the confidence to stand by while I dispatch your friends? Do you have the courage to give a mere Journeyman a fair fight?”
Rage burned through Tunold at her obvious disregard. As though only a magician could possibly stop her. He used his momentum to dive at her, trying to drive his shoulder through her midsection, confident that Goldberg, on Tunold’s left, would adjust and deliver the knockout blow if Tunold failed to land it himself.
Tai Shi dropped to the floor as Tunold’s dive took him over her and into the bulkhead. Pain jolted through his shoulder and back, but he broke his fall well enough to avoid serious injury.
He turned and saw Tai Shi, standing again, throw a kick that took Goldberg in the jaw.
The chief had the wherewithal to grab for that foot, but it was already gone, so he threw a left. She tried to block it with her knife, but Goldberg adjusted enough to avoid the blade.
Tunold was on his feet again and coming at her from behind. The chief moved to flank, ready to make her fight two directions at once while the rest of the ship’s watch moved in...
But she just slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“Damn it, Machado,” yelled Tunold. “We had her!”
“Don’t look at me,” said Machado, raising his hands. “Hadn’t finished my spell.” Then the portly mage blinked. “Cuthbert. Saravá, vai!”
Tunold shook his head. Those last two words had been addressed to mid-air for all he could see.
◊
The moment Donal completed his spell, he knew it had gone better. Even standing in the center of his cell in the ship’s brig with only Fionn for company, he knew. He could not explain how he knew. He could not feel it in the warm, little-moved air. He could not smell it in pine scent lingering from the cell’s last cleaning. He had no real sensory cues at all that his spell had performed one way or the other.
And yet, he knew he had done it right this time.
Donal believed that the nature of a solid link allowed for just enough communication that a caster could intuit the effect he had on his target. But this was hotly debated in scholarly circles.
All Donal knew for certain was that he had fired off a much better spell than his previous effort. Which meant that the way likely now stood open for his second spell. Or at least it was as open a shot as he would ever get.
He drew a cleansing breath and turned to his waiting familiar.
“All right, Fionn. Now this one will be complex. I’ll need you to hold parts of the illusion as I assemble it and check my work to see that the seams will fit together without any gaps her mind might catch.” Donal rubbed his hands together. “First, we’ll—”
Donal stopped speaking as the gray misty spirit panther Saravá melted through the cell’s floor to hover before him. Machado’s familiar. Donal began to hang his head. He had taken too long. The Magister had caught him.
“Donal Cuthbert, my master wishes you to cease your workings. Your first spell was sufficient to bring down Tai Shi Li Hua, and he bids you to rest now and leave her to the ship’s watch. You will soon be able to safely leave this cell.”
“What?” said Donal. “I’m not under arrest? Then why am I in the anti-caster cell?”
“I did try to tell you earlier,” said Fionn. “The cell has been tuned against the magic of Tai Shi Li Hua, not to inhibit your spellcasting.”
“I knew they hadn’t tuned it for me, but... So, the Magister got my message?”
“That is correct,” said the spirit panther. “As did Donatello Michelangelo Mancuso, whom Ronaldo Machado has now proven to be under the control you warned against. The day is won. You may rest.”
Fionn turned and began to confer quickly with Saravá in that language that only familiars seem to understand. As they did, Donal allowed that information to seep in. He had done it. He had stopped Li Hua, and proven that she was the one behind the conspiracy bin Zuka had warned of.
Donal dropped back to sit on the rough cot, sighing out his tension and letting himself relax. Unfortunately, when he did, all his pains came screaming back, all the worse for Donal’s movements and spellcasting that had not taken their warnings into account. Donal felt as though fire burned through his ribs, his neck, his shoulders and the back of his head.
Donal cried out and tried to squirm for comfort on the cot, unable to focus on anything but his excruciating pain.
Suddenly Fionn was in his thoughts, the image of the fae deerhound’s face drawing Donal’s attention, forcing Donal to regard him.
Donal saw Fionn standing beside him, face scant centimeters above his own as he lay on the cot.
“Saravá has gone to fetch Doctor Ramirez. You will have help soon.”
◊
“Sir,” said Grabowski, “the
runabout’s breaking off.”
“Let it go,” said Jacobs with a weary shake of his head. “It never latched on, so Tai Shi can’t be getting away. Though if you can get me any updates, Ms. Jefferson, I would greatly appreciate them.”
“Trying, Sir, but all I’ve been able to get so far is that Cuthbert needs a doctor... Wait. Tunold is on the link for you.”
“Finally. Link it through to my station, please.” He turned to the helm. “Mr. Burke, think you can set her down without any more aerobatics?”
“I was thinking of throwing in a few for your entertainment, Sir,” said Burke in a tight voice as he nudged the ship back onto the precise requested route to bring the ship into the atmosphere and down toward the planet. “But if you’d prefer...”
“I would.” Jacobs turned to the floating head of his executive officer. “Status?”
“Tai Shi has been secured. Mash says Cuthbert brought her down.” Tunold grimaced. “Timing was terrible, too. Saul and I had her on the ropes.”
“You’ll have to tell me all about it later, but if everything is under control I have a ship to land.”
“Nothing pressing, Captain.”
“Then bridge out.”
Jacobs stood and hurried down the stairs from his station to the walkway surrounding the bridge. He got to the very front as fast as he could without actually running, out of a desire to maintain at least a modicum of decorum.
From that spot he could enjoy, for the first time, the growing sight of Venus before him: a great yellowish-white ball that seemed to glow of its own accord. Jacobs knew from the charts that much of its land was split into two great continents, but only one — Istar Terra — was settled. From where he stood, Jacobs could see mountains and canyons, craters and ... a bright yellow column of light. Canary yellow, almost like...
Of course. Gilgamesh had erected a barrier, just as the cities on Mars had done. Jacobs knew that within he would find an environment conducive to human life and comfort, while life outside the barrier, though possible, he understood, would prove ... less accommodating.
