• • •
The lungs were shallow-breathing, now, but that was all right. There was little clearance in the ventilator conduits, but that was all right, too. Jory did not know exactly where he was going, but he knew — approximately — where he wanted to go. Haste was impossible, lethargy was gone. His rate was slow, but steady.
Officers’ country … The guards … Was Blaise so afraid of most of his crew that he needed to hide? Not likely — in fact, most unlikely. Why, then, the guards? If not to keep anyone out, then … to keep someone in?
He slithered around corners like a snake, he hung by his heels like a bat, he climbed like a monkey. He peered, he squinted, at each opening he came to. Twice, he came to dead ends, and had to go back. Most of the rooms were empty and dead. Aysil Stone he saw, mooning and muttering over his carafe of greenruin. Second Officer Toms Tarkington’s room was still as it had been when he had rushed out to his death — book fallen open on the floor, bed somewhat rumpled where he had been lying on it. Another room looked familiar; he had passed it by before he realized it was his own. And he looked down on Blaise Darnley’s and Brend Wace’s heads.
“When?” the younger man was demanding. “When?”
And Blaise said, his tones flat, calm, inhuman, mad, “Soon. Soon.”
And so, at length and at last, he saw what he had been looking for. He had never seen it from this angle before, probably no one ever had. But he recognized it at once — the dyed hair, the stiff posture unbent by imprisonment. The figure sitting as still and as straight as when he had first seen it being borne along in its white palanquin.
• • •
“Greetings, Dame Hanna, and peace and blessings from the Holy Court,” he said, through the vent.
She did not move nor stir. But he heard her say, “Since when has the Holy Court sent greetings and blessings by the mouths of warlocks? And what peace can there be, so long as you and your fellows are here?”
Aware that there was really no answer, Jory refrained from attempting any. His fingers felt about in the darkness, darkness not much dispelled by the spots of light coming from the vent, until he found the studs which fastened it to the main overhead. In theory every stud in the ship should have been tightened regularly to take care of the loosening caused by the pounding and vibration of the engines. This had obviously not been done lately.
“Listen to me, Dame Hanna — ”
“Deceiver of Moha, subverter of Mukanahan, warlock invisible, have I a choice?”
“There is a saying, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ ” He paused. She said nothing. She did not really move, but something subtly altered in her manner. A moment in which he might have spoken passed while he considered this, and then the door was open. Brend Wace stood there, thumb of one hand in a gun-loop, other hand on his gaudy dagger. Jory wondered at what point in the young man’s life fantasy had overmastered fact, dragging him from present truth to ancient romance.
Wace bowed. The gesture was grotesque, but not insincere. “Your Highness,” he said.
From the Dame, stiff and upright in her golden armor, came no reply.
“His Imperial Divinity has sent me to inquire if you have agreed to his offer.”
No reply.
“Your refusal does credit to your pride,” Wace declaimed, “but not to your sensibility. Don’t you consider the welfare of your people? Don’t you want to stop this needless sacrifice? You have to realize that the Imperial and Divine Blaise must and will triumph eventually, not just over this one country and continent, but over your entire world. Why should you be his prisoner when you can be his Divine Empress?”
Still she made neither motion nor reply. Jory, concealed in the cramped darkness, felt that he now understood so much which had been obscure. This was why Blaise Darnley was waiting and biding his time. This was the other way he had determined on, when it became clear that his crewmen were not the stuff of which conquistadores were made. Tactically, it was a brilliant notion. The person of the High Keeper was the source of all actual power in the Great North Land. Blaise now had her person, but the person was in effect inert. Could he but make her part of his own person, the whole land would be his, to build what he wanted and as he wanted upon the ancient and traditional power structure. Conquest by marriage! Yes, it was a brilliant conception.
The only flaw was that it did not seem to be working.
Wace declaimed on. “Resistance is futile. Prolonged suffering to no purpose is worse than futile. Accept my master’s noble offer, set an example for your other amazons which I and the elite guard will proudly follow, and together we will breed a new race and, using this planet as our base, sooner or later take over the stars and all the planets which — ”
And Jory, having removed all the studs, and having silently lifted out the vent, jumped.
His feet struck both Wace’s shoulders with all force. The man’s mouth opened in a grotesque grimace and on a scream so high and so strained as to be almost inaudible. He fell in upon himself and collapsed in a twisted heap. He gave a spasmodic movement. Hanna struck once, struck twice. Wace lay quite still.
Then she faced Jory. “The enemy of my enemy is not my friend,” she said, “if he was my enemy to begin with. There is still no peace.”
“Truce?”
No emotion moved on the surface of that stony face, but after a moment she nodded. “Until we leave here, warlock.”
Jory shook his head. “In your absence, the septs have met in council and issued a directive. Let all things remain as before. I want you to confirm this … for at least a week’s time.” Perhaps in that period he would be able to talk her into some acceptance of the fact that her purpose and his own were now the same.
Still expressionless, she nodded. “For one week, then … And now — how do we leave? By that?” She pointed to the open vent above them.
“No,” he said. “There is a better way.”
• • •
Wace, had he been alive, would have admired the classical simplicity of the trick; it figured, certainly, in enough 3-D costume dramas, many of them set in the ancient pre-Technic period. He took Wace’s ridiculous dagger from its ornate sheath. It was sharp, razor sharp. How many hours must the poor posturing fool have spent in honing it?
— And he cut Hanna’s hair.
He helped her remove her armor, and, together, they stripped Wace of his uniform. The golden mail was not a good fit, but at least and at last they got it on. Jory could imagine the loathing and disgust which she must feel in seeing her outfit so misused … profaned. But she said nothing, and, once again, he owned his respect for her. They laid Wace in the bed, face to the bulkhead, and covered his own mousy hair with the long, dyed-red tresses cut from Hanna’s own. It would not deceive anyone for long. But the whole operation was working on leases of briefly numbered hours — or minutes.
“His clothes will fit me,” she observed, calmly — and proceeded to dress herself in them. “But red hair is too uncommon among your people. How shall we conceal that?” They concealed it with the grease and the dust of the ventilator, Jory thankful that Darnley had not kept a clean ship. Then, waving her truce-mate back and out of sight, she simply opened the door and looked out. Her look was brief; she retreated, but didn’t close it.
A voice asked, “That you, Lieutenant-Commander? You want me?” By the sound of the voice, Jory calculated its distance, and when the man walked through the door, Jory shot him through the head from the side. The laser-beam was as thin as a needle. He could see the tiny, black-rimmed hole it had left in the upper part of the ear.
The cabin’s communicator said, “Well, Commander?” — It was Darnley.
Jory thought swiftly; then, imitating Wace’s rather nasal tones, he said, in quick and please-don’t-bother-me-now InterGal, “Progress, I think.” There was a short silence. Then —
“Progress, I hope. Succeed, and we will overlook the disrespect of your manner to us.”
Hanna ma
de no comment on his use of InterGal, though she might have been justified in being suspicious. She said, now, only, “There is no one in the next room. And this one’s clothes will fit you.”
He changed rapidly from his blue robe into the dead guard’s uniform. A slight bulge in the pocket … he drew out a flask of greensleeve. He rinsed his mouth with the bittersweet distillate which generations of discipline had not been able to prevent spacemen from making, spat it out. “Do the same,” he urged her. “I’ll explain later.”
While she complied, grimacing at the strong and unfamiliar taste, he took stock of their situation. This had been the commodore’s cabin, empty on this as on most voyages. There were two doors in the next room, besides the one leading to the corridor. And one of these two was locked. Jory handed her one of the lasser-guns. “You point it, so. Think of it as a crossbow shooting invisible bullets. To fire, press — here.” She nodded. “Cover me,” he said — and opened the other door.
And found himself face to face with Aysil Stone.
• • •
The Leading Officer showed no surprise. After a moment he said, “You’re trying to make the breaks … I tried it … didn’t work. I’d been better off, beachcomber. Too late …”
His cabin stank of drink and of his own unwashed self. Jory said, “Help us to get out. You’ve got nothing to lose.”
Stone considered this. “ ‘s right … nothing to lose … nothing to gain … might’s well. What the hell?” He gave a half-shrug, pointed to a narrow door. “Makes all the stops up and all the stops down. Sugges’ the latter. My bes’ to Marrus. Tell him … tell him, ‘Sorry’ …” His face twisted. He turned it away.
“The dumbwaiter,” it was called, in ships’ slang — and only the commanding and leading officers had private elevators in their cabins. Jory stopped the small cage between decks, reflected. There was certainly no point in going up. But … how far down? He looked at the studs. After Main they bore only letters, and he could only guess — as the lower studs were in three banks, and of different sizes — what they meant, where they would lead. Go back and ask Aysil Stone?
No.
He pressed the lowermost one on the right-hand side. BD. Brig Deck? Baggage Deck? Back Deck? In a moment they would see.
ten
JORY HAD EXPECTED TO FIND GUARDS, NO MATTER where they wound up. He had been counting on the slacker discipline below decks to allow them, somehow, to slip through. What he had not counted on was no guards at all. For a moment they stood there, having gotten out of the elevator, and Jory’s arms cautiously held back Hanna. Then realization of their location hit him, and, with that, the awareness that he had unwittingly picked the one place on the ship where there would be no guards at all.
The boat dock.
There was nothing left to guard.
He had last seen it packed with hooting, jeering mutineers as he, Rond, and the loyal crewmen were sent aboard the pettyboat. Now there was no one but himself and Hanna. They could move as they wished … but he had now to figure out where they wished to move. Hugging the bulkhead and beckoning her to follow, he moved along. The great trolleys along which the pettyboat had rolled into its spacelock hung empty, and the lock itself was now open. They came, finally, to the edge and looked out and down.
The day was almost over. Shadows swung long upon the ground far below. The great circle of light which had lit up the ship and its area when he had been taken aboard last time must soon go on again. If the elevator went no farther, and the ramp was under guard — as it must be, slack discipline or no — how were they to get down?
A sound of trampling feet made him spin around. There was one of the crewmen, holding a woman by the hand. By her costume she was a peasant, by her slack-faced witless grin and uncertain step she was drunk. Her companion caught sight of them, pulled her back, faced them truculently.
“Shove off!” he said. “This one’s mine — I won her in a crap game and I ain’t sharing!”
Jory, keeping into the shadows said, cajolingly, “Ah, come on, fellow, don’t make a fuss, or you’ll have everybody down here on us.”
The man grunted. “Well, shove off, then — ”
Jory grinned, made a deliberate show of leaning forward, noisily blowing out his breath. The crewman sniffed. “Hey. Greenruin. Give’s a snort, huh?”
“Sure. All’s we want to do is get out and find us some women of our own. I don’t want to use the ramp, I owe what’s-his-name, on duty there — ”
The crewman, impatient, said, “Look, there’s the aft ladder behind you. Now — give ‘s a snort and get going.”
Jory tossed him the flask, watched it caught in midair, opened in a second. He turned for the pool of shadow which was the aft ladder, suddenly remembered something. “Hey — what’s the password today?”
The bottle, gurgling, was lowered for a moment. “Password? Um … Great is Blaise Darnley … ain’t that a — ?” Words failed him, he tilted the bottle again, groped for the woman. Jory and Hanna silently vanished down the naked and spiraling stair. Presently the spiral straightened into a long oblique inclination which seemed to go on forever down inside the vane. Then, without warning, there was the ground beneath their feet. Faintly, a rim of sun showed on the horizon. Faintly, a hum of voices sounded from the escalator on the ramp. He took Hanna by the hand and moved out and away.
The lights should have been on by now. Probably the Illuminator’s Mate who had the duty — or whatever passed for duty on Persephone these days — was boozing or wenching or lounging or just listlessly roaming around, thinking dim and wistful thoughts of treasure or the gold-plated beaches of the Cluster; and wondering why, when, and how the mutiny which was to fulfill his dreams had gone sour.
They were some distance from the ship when the great circle burst into light. And, simultaneously, the alarm burst into horrible clamor. Jory’s mouth cried, “Down! Down! Flat!” And his mind cried, He’s just found out about Wace….
Faces pressed into the grass which grew there; outside the scorched area of the set-down, they crawled on. Suddenly the warning buzzing of the nodes sounded. “Great is Blaise Darnley!” Jory said. “Great is Blaise Darnley …”
But not till they were into the shelter of the trees did he feel it was safe to rise. Behind and below and above them, Persephone was a tower of light. And all the while she rang out the fear, the alarm, and perhaps even the grief of the madman who now held her in captivity.
• • •
Jory’s plan was to lure Blaise from the ship with a massive delegation pretending to announce the overthrow of the Dame and the acknowledgment of the divinity of Blaise Darnley. Let the ambush be planned for any time or place, it could hardly fail. “The man is absolutely insane,” he said, and urged the near-certainty of the Bosun’s swallowing any lie so long as it led down the fever-lit passageways of his own mania.
“No,” said Dame Hanna.
“Loss of life among your forces seems inevitable, but by sheer weight of numbers you could crush him and any guard he has with him.”
“No,” she repeated. They had stopped for the night at a side-road hamlet in the Dales of Lan. The old man in whose hut they were sheltering crouched in his corner, almost overcome with awe by the presence of both the Dame herself and one of the Great Men under his rough roof.
“It hardly matters, even, how many men are left aboard the ship. Without Blaise, they won’t be able to hair. Jory’s scheme ran right in the face of the herediact together against us, and, in all probability, they’d take the ship and go.”
But Hanna would not yield by the breadth of a tan’s tary code of warrior honor, a code both incredibly involved and brutally simple. And she, the Dame, the High Keeper of the King’s Castles, and head of Sept Sartissa, was the epitome of that code. To all Jory’s urging and entreaty, she continued to say, “No.”
All next day, as they circled the Dales, he kept up his persuasion. But he could not persuade her by an ell. Word of their coming h
ad preceded them; they were met, at last, by her white palanquin — not the same in which she had been captured, but another — and a corps of warriors. While they stayed, prostrate, in the dust of the road, she turned to Jory.
“Warlock,” she said, “you are not without courage of your own. I am not without gratitude. I wish there were some way … But you are men, and men of a strange people. While you are here the land can know no rest. It would be best if you made your escape from this world while I, who am and must be your enemy, am engaged against this other warlock who is both your enemy and mine.”
She mounted to her seat. He took hold of a corner of it. “There is still truce between us for the balance of the week,” he reminded her.
She nodded. She had covered her cropped hair with her battle-mask, thrown back. Once again she sat, as he had first seen her, erect and expressionless. “Your coming has caused a disruption in the proper order of things which may not be set right for a hundred years. The balance of the week remains for our truce. And when it is over — warlock, beware.”
The bearers swung the great palanquin to their shoulders. The corps of warriors rose from the dust. The procession swung off. Jory did not remain to watch them out of sight. His craft, his scheme, his venture into the enemy’s camp, his rescue of the native leader most hostile to him — all, seemingly, had come to naught — or worse. It now remained to be seen how much he could do with the little time that was left.
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