by Kate Elliott
“They’re in pattern and heading sunward at the specified course. They should arrive in, let me see—damn, I’m no good with this stuff.”
“One fleet week, I believe, comrade Heredes,” the Mule interposed in a soft hiss. “Do you need more specific figures?”
“No. Let’s intercept Yehoshua and head in ourselves.”
They picked up Yehoshua’s bus just as Heart of Lion blossomed, a brief, brilliant star among untold others.
Unruli Station had adopted a practical course of stoic neutrality. Some of the malcontents from Remote had made their way here and been exiled to the Ridani sectors of Station, but none had been arrested. Faced with a large and clearly destructive vessel bearing uncounted numbers of Jehanish partisans, Station officials prudently reminded its commander of system policy: all downside shuttle trips must be cleared through their offices, or else activate automatic defense systems. They assured her that opinions on planet were not nearly as sympathetic to Jehane’s cause as they were in the out-system mines and on Station.
“They’re lying,” said Finch harshly. “At least about that automatic defense system. Bootleggers went back and forth all the time.”
“Unless they set up a system after you left,” replied Lily. “Maybe Central forced them to. In any case, Finch, don’t you think it behooves us to make the best possible impression on them? As Jehane’s representatives? To at least attempt to sway the downsiders? The House miners?”
Yehoshua looked at her curiously. “Do I scent a conversion to messianic Jehanism in you, comrade?”
“Do you know, Yehoshua, that I find that after all this time, and despite the circumstances under which I left, I would still like to protect my parents’ House from the worst of the fallout should Jehane triumph and they’re left still supporting the old government. Perhaps this is my way of helping them—try at least to make them see their way to professing neutrality.”
“What,” asked Jenny, “if Station is lying and they’re just sitting in wait to throw you in prison?”
“That’s why you’re coming with me, both of us fully armed, and we leave everyone on board except a shuttle pilot and one other soldier, so that if they do arrest us you can run for Jehane’s fleet.”
“But we need Pinto—”
“We have another shuttle pilot.” Lily tapped the com on her console. “Medical? Rainbow? I want you to meet comrade Seria in bay one, in full rig, in one half hour. Tell comrade Hawk that we need his services as well.”
The corridors of Unruli Station, rather inevitably, seemed less impressive to Lily than they had during her previous visit. An escort met them at their berth. She left Rainbow and Kyosti on the shuttle, and she and Jenny walked along the familiar corridors to Portmaster’s office.
They waited almost one hour before the Assistant Portmaster could see them, and after a long and pointless discussion, were sent on to a nicer chamber to wait for the Portmaster herself. After another hour, and just before Lily guessed they were to be shown into Portmaster’s office, Lily demanded they be given dinner.
Portmaster’s aides obligingly ushered them off to a nearby plush bar, and Portmaster arrived at the same time their food did. Jenny looked tolerably amused, but said nothing.
Lily kept the talk politely neutral until they had finished their meal. By its end she felt that she and the Portmaster understood each other fairly well. The Portmaster suggested they move to a private room in the back of the bar, and it was as they were crossing to this refuge that Lily happened to glance at the vid screen superimposed above the flask rail.
A familiar face. It took her a moment to place it, and as she paused, the voice-over and her recollection hit her at the same moment.
“—the victim was strangled and mutilated, and found less than one hour ago in corridor Q7, a little-used warehouse sector adjoining Q8, where the victim was said to habituate the string of bars well known to that sector. Security has no current leads, but all traffic in Station is now subject to search and screening. According to the latest report, the victim was last seen engaged in a fight in QuaNon’s with an unidentified assailant. The two men were pulled apart by on-lookers, and both left the establishment separately. Security is now searching for a man answering to the description of—”
Jenny had turned back and tapped a quick, unobtrusive warning touch on Lily’s elbow. “Portmaster’s waiting.”
The picture on the vid had changed, to an exterior of QuaNon’s, but Lily knew who the victim was: the asteroid miner who had, some five years ago, been her lover for however brief and insignificant a time.
18 Dinner at Ransome House
SHE IGNORED JENNY. IT took her a moment to trigger her wrist-com; she had not meant to use it while in Station. Another moment to sort out the voice replying from the general hubbub of the bar.
“Rainbow? Is that you?”
“Rainbow reporting, min Heredes. I be at ya com.”
“Where’s Hawk?”
A pause. “I bain’t ya certain, min.” Even over the com-link, Lily could hear the apprehension in Rainbow’s voice. “I told him we were meant to stay on ya boat, but he were certain sure he meant just tae stretch his legs, so he said, min. Nay, he said he meant tae take ya flavor of ya air. And ya sudden come he back again and tells me tae stay on com, and off he goes again. I knew it be ya wrong, but what could I do tae stop him?”
“Nothing, Rainbow,” said Lily dully. “You’ve done fine. Stay at your post.”
“I reckon he were ya tired o’ shipboard, min. It sure be true that—” Rainbow broke off. “Wait. That be min Hawk at ya lock now, min. Be you wishing tae talk to him?”
“No.” Through the sharpness of her voice, Lily became aware for the first time that Jenny, the Portmaster, and her aide were watching her speculatively. “No, Rainbow. That’s what I wanted to know. We should be done fairly soon. Heredes out.”
“What was that all about?” asked Jenny in a carefully loud voice. “I couldn’t hear the crewman.”
“Just checking the shuttle’s status. They relayed that the Forlorn Hope is maintaining orbit.” Lily spoke as she walked up beside Portmaster, knowing that the elderly woman would be listening.
“The Forlorn Hope? But surely that’s the name of the old ghost ship of legend—”
Lily changed the details but not the essentials of the story, and with a ruthlessness she had not previously realized she possessed, she altered the course and tone of the conversation so that it took fifteen minutes and not one hour. She and Jenny left with full clearance from a bemused Portmaster for shuttle access downside.
“Damn my eyes,” said Jenny as she and Lily outdistanced the cautious escort. “You made minced cable out of her, Lily-hae. What brought that on—”
“Jenny,” interrupted Lily sharply. “Let’s just get out of here.”
She keyed into their berth, locked and sealed it behind them. In the cabin, she at first saw only Rainbow, seated forward.
“Where is—” But now she saw him, stretched out on a row of seats, asleep. She simply stared at him for a moment. He was deeply asleep, relaxed, breathing evenly. There was no evidence on his clothing, his hands, anywhere on his person.
“Did I believe there would be?” she said aloud.
“That there would be what?” asked Jenny, trying to make sense of Lily’s humor and only growing more bewildered.
“How long?” Lily asked Rainbow.
The Ridani soldier shrugged. “He came in when I be talking to you, min. He be in ya sleep sure as soon as he come in.” She looked perplexed.
“Wait a minute,” began Jenny. “I thought you were both on board the entire time.”
“What the Hells am I going to do?” cried Lily in horrified frustration.
Kyosti opened his eyes. He found Lily immediately, but he did not immediately sit up. When he did, into a sudden and lengthening silence, he did so slowly, as if he was not so much tired as aching and ill.
“I’m sorry, Lily,” he
mumbled. “I’m sorry.” His tongue seemed to trip over the words. He got to his feet cautiously and stumbled forward to the pilot’s seat, sank into it unsteadily, fumbled at the straps. Rainbow, looking shocked, had to help him fasten the straps; he shrank from her touch as she did so.
“Damn my eyes,” breathed Jenny in an undertone that only Lily could hear. “Is he a secret ambergloss addict? Hawk? I just can’t believe it.”
“That’s right.” Lily flung herself at this fiction as at a safety line—the only one in sight in a void of empty space. Even were she inclined to prove his guilt, she knew that hanging proof on the Hawk who had once saved Master Heredes from death, whose name was evidently still a minor legend among those folk who ran the highroad in regions remote from the Reft, in League space and wherever else privateers of La Belle’s and Yi’s ilk roamed, would be virtually impossible, no matter how impulsively he had acted. And were it proved, and he imprisoned: she did not doubt that it would be the work of a moment to escape whatever prison the Reft might devise for him.
“That’s right,” she echoed weakly. “It happens sometimes.” She sank down onto a seat, belted herself in automatically, and let Jenny take her astonishment and her questions elsewhere.
It was a rough ride back to the Forlorn Hope. Hawk managed to dock them, barely, and more by force of will than by skill. Lily let Jenny and Rainbow leave the shuttle before she unbelted and rose. And took one step toward the silent, slumped figure still strapped into the pilot’s seat.
“Leave me alone,” he said harshly.
“Did you?” she asked, sick to be asking. “I didn’t really believe—I didn’t want to believe—that you would kill someone. Tell me the truth, Kyosti.”
“You know the truth,” he replied in a low, bitter voice. He rested his head in the cradle of his hands, a gesture so typically human that for a moment she thought it strange, in him.
“If I turned you in?”
“No.” The overhead lights flicked off abruptly, leaving his head haloed by the soft glow of the lights illuminating the shuttle’s controls. His shadowed figure was bent in the age-old pose of true suffering. Instinct told her that it was not feigned.
“No.” His voice came stronger on the second negative, although he did not lift his head. “Even if they could prove it, which they can’t, I will never let anyone put me in a cell again. Never.”
She found she had squeezed the cushioning of the seat back under her hand until it gave no further. The fabric seemed rougher than she recalled. She had gambled, and she had gambled wrong. Certainly, Finch was safe. But someone else had paid the price for her indulgence, and for Kyosti’s—what else could she call it?—Kyosti’s obsession. “Void bless,” she murmured. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Leave me alone,” he repeated, but this time it was less threat and more plea.
She turned and left him. Went to the bridge. Arranged for a message to be relayed to the Ransome House comm. Arranged for shuttle and crew and scheduled departure: herself, Pinto to pilot, Jenny and Yehoshua for escort. Went to her cabin and cleaned up. Showered twice. Cleaned her clothes again. On her return from the washing cubicle, she found Bach floating just about the bed she usually shared with Kyosti. He merely blinked lights at her, but strangely enough did not sing.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “You ought to come with me as well. But rekey the lock before we go. Manual. To admit you and me only.”
His affirmative was subdued and monochromatic. After a moment, he began to sing a pensive aria.
Ach, mein Sinn,
Wo willst du endlich hin,
Wo soll ich mich erquicken?
Bleib’ ich hier,
Oder wünsch ich mir
Berg und Hügel auf dem Rücken?
Bei der Welt ist gar kein Rat,
Und im Herzen
Stehen die Schmerzen
Meiner Missetat,
Weil der Knecht den Herr verleugnet hat.
Ah, my troubled mind,
where shall I find comfort?
Shall I stay here,
or hide beyond the hills and mountains?
In the world there is no counsel
and in my heart
stands the pain
of my shameful deed,
because the servant has broken faith with his Lord.
She knew that she would have to go eventually, but she waited passively, expecting that sooner or later Jenny would come and prod her into action. For once, she could not find the impetus within herself. It had never occurred to her before now that not only was she truly out of her depth—not with Kyosti perhaps, but with Hawk—but that she had now locked herself into an impossible situation.
Her thoughts wound pointlessly on in this manner until the door chimed an “enter” request. She accepted it automatically and was surprised to see Paisley.
“Min Heredes.” Paisley examined her thoughtfully, astute in the way only a child grown to adolescence on harsh streets can be. “You be heart tired, min. I reckoned I ought to tell you that min Hawk be right sore ill. It were only ’cause I and Pinto helped him that he even got to ya Medical.” She paused and waited for Lily’s reaction.
Lily sighed and stood up. “Is Pinto ready to leave?”
Paisley said nothing for a moment, frowning, and then shrugged. “Sure, min Heredes.” She turned and left the cabin.
Lily followed her, Bach coasting along behind in her wake. Someone had refueled and cleaned the shuttle. Lily boarded in silence, sat without speaking as the others came on board. Once they detached from the Forlorn Hope, she slept, waking only as the tearing winds of Unruli shook the shuttle as Pinto brought them in for landing on the Apron Port strip.
She had forgotten what it was like, and when she stepped outside, she realized that she had never truly appreciated it.
Unruli had a terrible beauty: the wind raged and tore at her clothing, almost knocking her over until she remembered to balance for it. One of the ways Master Heredes had taught her stance was to send her outside into the worst gales until she could stay upright and relaxed against them. A riot of colors filled the air, shading up and down the spectrum in a wild kaleidoscope, a pattern as busy as that covering the skins of Ridanis.
Jenny and Yehoshua came out after her, struggling. Both lost their footing more than once, although only Yehoshua actually fell to his knees, knocked sideways by a furious gust of wind.
Jenny tugged at her breathing plug and pulled on Lily’s arm. “Isn’t there an inside?” she shouted.
Pinto had parked the shuttle on the far edge of Apron Port’s berthing field, and now Lily stood staring at the sheer cliffs that sheltered the port, at the glittering whir of the wind generators, powering the town, and at the faint, far flash of beacons marking in the wilderness of Unruli’s turbulent surface that safety could be found here.
“Look,” she breathed, unaware of the growing apprehension of her two companions. “Look!” She froze, slightly crouched for wind balance, and stared at an apparition scudding down the near cliff face, thrown in scattering sheets in front of the wind. “I’ve never seen one so close to built-up areas before. See. There. It’s blowing this way.”
“What—that—it looks like white filaments woven together?” asked Jenny.
“It’s a ghost.” Lily gazed, mesmerized, as the white being drifted closer, and closer yet. “There’s an old legend that the souls of people lost in storm become absorbed by them.” She gasped as a sudden sharp gust brought the ghost past her. Jenny and Yehoshua both took quick steps back.
A thin, sticky filament brushed across the back of Lily’s hand, like a gesture, or a fleeting wisp of affection, and then wind caught it and it streamed upward, pulled into the maelstrom of cloud above.
“Hiro,” Lily said, to no one.
“Cursed to the Seven Hells.” Jenny stared up at the turbulence above. “What did you say?”
Lily shook herself. “Nothing. I just thought of my cousin Hiro.
I don’t know why. We never got along—always fought. I didn’t really like him. In fact, it was some story he told that made me go that night, the night I left Ransome House for good—” She broke off. “Let’s go. Where is Bach?”
On the ramp, behind, Bach was still valiantly trying to adjust his equilibrium to compensate for the force of the gale. She waited. They set off together.
Harbormaster’s office was expecting them, but had cautiously not sent an escort. Lily did not know the young woman at the desk. She did not ask after Finch’s father. After registering and paying the berth tax, one quick call ascertained that the Sar had already sent an ore train in on the tunnel to pick her up and transport her to Ransome House.
“I seem to be coming home in rather better style than I left,” she murmured, more to herself than to her companions.
As in all ore trains, the passenger compartment was cramped and crude. They sat out the rough, noisy ride from Apron Port to Ransome House without more comment than the occasional question from Yehoshua concerning House protocol and the low singing of Bach: Wie soll ich dich empfangen? (How shall I receive thee?), which was mostly drowned out by the rattle and hum of the train.
At last they slowed and bumped to a halt in the loading breaches of the House mines. Lily eased open the compartment door and found herself face-to-face with her father. Her first, and most damning, impression was that he looked old. Old, worn, and yet, when he saw her, took in her actual physical presence, lit suddenly from within by a rejuvenating energy. He waited alone on the broad platform.
“Lilyaka.” His voice had the same neutral cast she remembered, but his hand, lined and veined with age, trembled slightly as he reached out to greet her. “I was sure you must be dead. I am—” He hesitated, whether out of deference for her reserve or simply out of emotion. “I am very happy to know you are not.”
“I’m sorry, for the way I left.” She reached out and took his hand, feeling as if she were meeting a stranger in a familiar guise. His skin was cool and damp, but his clasp on her hand was firm. “I didn’t think—” Suddenly she chuckled, and as if that released something in him, he let go of her hand and ventured his characteristic, calm smile—indicative not so much of humor as of approval.
