A Working of Stars

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  That he could think of it at all, Kief supposed, meant that he was not entirely sane. This possibility failed to surprise him; he sometimes thought that he hadn’t really been sane, at least as his younger self would have understood the concept of sanity, since the day the Old Hall burned.

  It didn’t matter. If he failed tonight, he would be dead, and his mental health or lack of it would soon be forgotten. And if he succeeded—

  If he succeeded, then everything would change.

  Kief unfastened the staff from his belt and held it loosely at the ready in his right hand. With his left hand, he pushed open the subbasement door.

  The door opened onto a stairwell. Light came from an amber-colored Emergency Exit sign bolted to the wall. Through the dull grey faceplate of his hardmask, Kief saw how the glowing silver threads of the eiran had followed him in here, too. He grimaced behind the hardmask.

  Soon, he told the pattern of Demaizen’s working. I’ll be rid of you soon.

  He started down the stairs. Five steps … ten steps … twelve. The door at the bottom was locked. He struck it once with his staff, lightly, and it swung open.

  The corridor on the other side, like the stairwell, was a dark space lit only by the amber glow of the Emergency Exit sign. The darkness didn’t matter; Kief had been here many times while he worked at the Institute, and he knew the way. He let memory take him past the first doorway, and the second, before stopping at the third.

  This time it was no light tap he gave it, but a full-strength blow, backed up with all the power at his command. The door ripped open and slammed against the wall on the other side.

  The room within was as he remembered it from his Institute days: black floor tiles, with a large circle of white tiles set in the middle; walls and ceiling also dead black; thick white candles burning at the compass points outside the circle; and inside the Circle, Mages kneeling in meditation.

  None of them were masked, of course. They had no need, here in their safe meeting place, of the anonymity a hardmask could provide, and their bare faces were pale white blurs inside the hoods of their robes. He spotted Esya at once, in the First’s position, and stepped across the boundary of the white circle to stand in front of her.

  “Esya,” he said.

  She hadn’t yet gone deep into the working; the sound of her own name was enough to rouse her. She lifted her head and looked at him across the ring of kneeling, black-clad figures. He could tell from her face that the hardmask wasn’t enough to conceal his identity. She’d always had a good memory for voices and postures.

  “No more names,” he said before she could speak. “We have business together first.”

  She wet her lips. Kief remembered that habit of hers, too, and knew that it masked a surge of apprehension. The Circle’s routine had been unexpectedly broken, and Esya had never dealt well with unscheduled change.

  “What kind of business?” she asked.

  “I’ve come to offer you a choice.”

  “A choice?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Either you give me your Circle, or we can make a working together, you and I, and let the eiran decide.”

  “Why should I do either one?”

  “Because you’re not strong enough to hold the Circle once they begin to doubt,” he said. “And they’re doubting you right now.”

  She didn’t answer, and he knew that she was testing the eiran and the temper of her Circle, trying to judge for herself whether he spoke the truth. Kief knew what she would see. The Institute’s Mages were barely more than dilettantes these days—maybe they’d give their lives to a working if the cause was dear enough to them, but not for the sake of Esya syn-Faredol.

  But he had liked Esya more than a little, once upon a time, and for a few moments longer he allowed himself to hope that she would take the easier way. Then she rose from her kneeling position and stepped into the middle of the Circle with her staff in her hand.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll work it out together, as the universe wills.”

  He strode forward and passed between two of the kneeling Mages to meet her in the center of the ring. “As the universe wills.”

  The Void-walker Maraganha had spoken to Arekhon in fluent—if strongly accented—Eraasian, so he had assumed, perhaps irrationally, that she could speak Entiboran as well. He discovered his mistake later that same day when he took her into the town nearest Elaeli’s summer cottage in order to purchase some locally made items of clothing. Maraganha’s voice shaped words that Arekhon didn’t understand or even recognize, and the eiran twisted like snakes in the air around her, making meaning.

  “Denli tappak, amjepin bi veppis?”

  Do you have one like this, but without the bead trim?

  The shopkeeper didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. “Are these more like what you’re looking for?”

  Maraganha looked at the indicated garments and smiled. “Ea.”

  Yes.

  Outside the shop, Arekhon said, “How did you do that?”

  “It’s a knack,” she said in Eraasian. “You could probably do it yourself if you tried. Most people don’t even notice it’s happening.”

  “Most people aren’t Mages and Adepts. What language was that?”

  “Standard Galcenian,” she said. “It’s not my birth tongue, but it’s the one I was speaking when I picked up the language trick. One bit of knowledge sticks to the other.”

  Arekhon said, “I’ve heard of Galcen.”

  “Don’t tell me that place already thinks it’s the beating heart of the civilized galaxy.”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. He thought of asking her how she had come to learn the languages of Galcen and of the homeworlds, but not of Entibor, but something in her manner suggested that he wouldn’t get an answer if he tried. He tried another line of inquiry instead. “How long from now is Galcen still thinking that?”

  “That’s not a good question to ask,” she said.

  “Because too much knowledge of the future is dangerous?”

  “Because all the Entiboran dates I’ve ever heard of are in regnal years,” she said. “I don’t know enough of your local history to match them up with anything standard. So any answer that I give you runs a big risk of being nonsense.”

  “I see.”

  “Also, too much knowledge of the future is dangerous.”

  “Then I’ll suppress my curiosity,” Arekhon promised her—he might as well be virtuous, he reflected, since Maraganha plainly had no intention of revealing anything. He changed the subject. “Are you ready to go looking for Mages, etaze?”

  “Call me Maraganha. Too much deference, and I start wanting to jump out of my own skin.”

  “Maraganha,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she answered. “Let’s go.”

  Iulan Vai waited in the rain and shadows outside the town house of Theledau sus-Radal, watching the night wind drive the raindrops slantwise in the glow of the streetlamps. The wet-season nights in Hanilat, which those local to the district found chilly, felt comfortably warm to Vai, who had come of age in Eraasi’s high subarctic forests. Nevertheless, she wore a hooded cape of unlined watertight material—not so much out of deference to the weather as to the custom of the city—as well as a half-mask in stiff black cloth. That, also, was a custom of the city these days. The wearing of masks had come into vogue during the civic unrest of a decade earlier, and while the fashion had subsided among the greater middling class of people, those who lived at the extremes of Hanilat society—street urchins as well as star-lords—still kept the practice alive.

  For Vai, the mask was also a necessity of her name and calling. It would not do for a passerby to catch a glimpse of her features and recognize one of the supposedly dead Demaizen Mages. Someone might spot her lurking masked and hooded near sus-Radal’s doorstep, but if they did, they would say nothing and hurry on. She might be a sneak thief looking for a purse to snatch in faceless anonymity, or
she might be a sus-Somebody on her way to a lovers’ tryst. These days in Hanilat, prudent people asked no questions.

  When the road was clear of loiterers and passersby, and had been so for long enough that casual watchers at the darkened windows of other houses could be presumed to have grown bored and moved away, Vai drifted—still in shadows—up to the sus-Radal’s door.

  As always, she used the private side entrance with the lock keyed only to close members of the inner family and its most trusted employees, and passed through without disturbance. The hour was late enough that most of the stairs and hallways inside were darkened. The night before, Theledau sus-Radal had entertained guests at dinner until the small hours, but not now.

  Once inside, Vai removed her mask and tucked it under one arm, then made her way unchallenged to the room at the top of the house where the attic had once been. The room answered to another purpose these days. Thel came from the same far northern district as Iulan Vai, and he followed the ritual of his native country even in subtropical Hanilat.

  To those of the north, the moon was holy, and proper worship lay in keeping watch over her movements. The upper room, its ceiling replaced by a circular dome of clear glass, was Theledau syn-Grevi sus-Radal’s temple and observatory. At this hour of the night, on this day of the lunar month, Vai could usually depend on encountering him in the moon-room—alone, most often, since those of the sus-Radal who were native-born to Hanilat had their own ways of tending the family altars.

  Vai had also been raised in the northern worship, but she had left it behind her when she came south to be Theledau’s eyes and ears in Hanilat. When Thel became head of the sus-Radal, he had rewarded Vai’s service by making her the fleet-family’s Agent-Principal. So high a promotion often brought with it an adoption into the outer family, the syn-Radal, but Thel knew better than to offer her such a thing. It would be an insult, when only the lack of their common father’s acknowledgment had kept Vai’s name from being inscribed along with Thel’s on the inner-family tablets of the sus-Radal.

  Thel was standing in the center of the darkened moon-room when Vai entered. There was no moon visible tonight to flood the room with silver; heavy clouds obscured all but the faintest of reflected city light, and the driving wind threw the rain in heavy spatters against the glass dome.

  Turning at the sound of her footsteps—she had made no effort to mute them—Thel brought up the room lights with a gesture toward the control panel on the nearby wall. The increased illumination showed her a square-built man with hair the same rusty black color as her own, though in his case the black was liberally streaked with iron-grey.

  “Vai,” he said. “What kind of trouble have you brought me tonight?”

  “‘Trouble’?” Vai feigned indignation; she might not be Thel’s Agent-Principal any longer, but their relationship was still close enough to allow for a good deal of familiarity if she chose to exercise it. “Why do you always ask me about trouble?”

  “You’re a storm-bird,” he said. He gestured at her sable garments. “These days you even dress the part.”

  She lifted one corner of her cloak and let it drop again into folds at her side. “All black and fluttering? I suppose I do. But if all I bring you is bad news, blame it on the times and not on me.”

  “From which I take it the news isn’t good this evening, either?”

  “I don’t know,” Vai said slowly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done any of your official security work; and I don’t know what your Agent-Principal may have advised—but speaking as a Mage, my lord, and one whose Circle owes you a debt: You’re right; there’s trouble coming. Tell your fleet-Circles to practice and be ready.”

  “Be ready for what?”

  She gave him a brief, rueful smile. “That’s the heart of the problem. I’m not sure. But I’m not the only one who’s noticed it. The sus-Dariv are taking an interest as well.”

  Thel frowned. “The sus-Dariv aren’t a threat—they stay out of politics and stick to trade, and believe me when I say that I wish that the sus-Radal could do the same. What about the sus-Peledaen?”

  “You and I both know,” Vai said, “that the sus-Peledaen don’t take an interest in the problem because the sus-Peledaen are the problem.”

  “You never used to be that blunt when you worked for me.”

  “I never used to be a Mage, either, when I worked for you. I’ve seen the eiran, Thel, and they’re changing. The patterns are different now, and the Circles and the fleet-families and all of Eraasi are being drawn into them like fish into a net.”

  “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Do what you’re doing now,” she said. “Whatever it is that’s keeping the eiran around you moving. Keep the sus-Radal free as long as you can.”

  He nodded slowly. “You don’t really think we’ll be able to stay out of it, do you?”

  “Not this time,” Vai said. “Something new is beginning, and it isn’t good.”

  Ayil syn-Arvedan snapped shut her mail-reader and sat for a while frowning at the closed cover. She had studied the stargazers’ disciplines at the Hanilat Institute for almost two decades, and had taught them as well: a quiet life, and one much to her liking. She’d seen what too much passionate involvement did to people. Going to the Mages had killed one of her brothers years ago, and—if this latest angry communication from her older brother Inadal was any clue—the current round of city-versus-country, star-lords-versus-everybody politics was fast eating away at the other one.

  The old land-families didn’t have the influence they used to—well, they hadn’t had that for a couple of centuries, but now the urban bankers and merchants who’d made common cause with them were losing power as well. Her brother thought that outside trade alliances would strengthen the mercantile party against the fleet-families. Ayil considered that idea to be foolish optimism: a few off-planet traders might make big talk about their independence, but none of them had crossed an Eraasian fleet-family in years—not since sus-Peledaen warships had left a space-bombed scar across the heart of a rival world’s largest continent.

  She would write to her brother, she decided, and tell him what she thought. In the morning, after she’d had a chance to sleep on it first. This was a wild and rainy night, with a strong wind for the season and the barometric pressure heading steadily downward. Not a good night for composing a tactful letter to the head of the family, asking him to back away from a losing fight.

  A gust of wind drove the rain hard against the windows of her Institute Towers apartment. She was three floors up, on a level with the swaying treetops. Light from the streetlamps and from the watch-out glows embedded in the sidewalks didn’t make it up this far, except for the occasional glimpse through tossing branches.

  She was looking out of the window when the door-tone sounded: the low, gong-like note of the outside building directory, rather than the light chime of her own apartment’s sounding-pad. Somebody had come to the Institute Towers in this weather, and at this hour, to call at her address. Another lost drunk, she thought, reluctant to answer the summons. Or some kind of student prank.

  On the other hand, she did give out her home number and address to those students whom she was advising directly. If one of them needed help badly enough to come asking for it in person—

  “House-mind,” she said. “Answer.”

  “Answering,” said the apartment’s house-mind, and she heard the click of the voice connection opening as the gong-tone sounded for a second time.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  At first she heard nothing in reply except what sounded like ragged breathing. Then—“Ayil?”

  Not a student. A student would never call her by her personal name, not if he—the speaker was male, she thought—not if he had come here needing a favor. A prankster, maybe, using the unwanted familiarity to frighten her.

  “Who is it?” she demanded again, more sharply.

  “Ayil … it’s me. Diasul.”

&nb
sp; “Kief?”

  “Yes. Let me come up?”

  She knew the voice by now, the name and the accent together bringing back memories of earlier days. She’d shared office space for a while with Kiefen Diasul, back before he’d left the Institute to join a Void-walker’s Circle—her late brother Del’s Circle, in fact, which she supposed gave Kief at least as much claim on her late-night attention as one of her wayward students.

  “Are you all right, Kief?” she asked. “Do you need me to call someone for help?”

  “No.” Too fast, too firm—something was wrong, she thought, no matter what he said. “I don’t need help. I just need … I don’t know. Someplace to rest for a while. It’s been a … it’s raining sheets and buckets outside tonight, Ayil. I’m soaked with it.”

  “Come on up, then. House-mind: Open exterior.”

  She heard the noise of the downstairs door opening. Then the voice connection clicked shut, and she had to wait uneasily for the sound of the elevator, and footsteps in the hallway outside her own apartment. At least, she reflected, if she was going to have an unexpected visitor from the past, the luck had brought him to her on a night when everything was fairly tidy. She had books and papers strewn all over the place, of course, but Kief had been a scholar once himself; he’d be used to that.

  The sounding-pad chimed. “Open,” she said to the house-mind, then raised her voice as the door swung open. “Come in.”

  Kiefen Diasul stepped over the threshold into the entryway. He hadn’t changed much since the last time she’d seen him—he was older, of course, but his early-greying brown hair still hung in loose curls down to his shoulders, and he still wore the same pendant earring of rock crystal and twisted wire that he had affected during their officemate days. He was wearing the black garments of a working Mage, and he hadn’t lied when he said the rain was coming down in sheets; the heavy fabric of his robe looked sodden with it. He moved carefully, as though his joints and muscles protested the effort, and his face was grey and exhausted.