This time he didn’t need to pay a call at the Adepts’ Guildhouse, or fine-comb the Immering tax records. Instead, he rented a hovercar under a false name—his work as Elaeli’s head of domestic security had left him almost as careful of his tracks as Iulan Vai—and drove it from the mainland shuttle hub to the An-Jemayne Spaceport Authority, where he looked up a name in the roster of certified starpilots.
His luck in this, at least, held good. Karil Estisk was still alive, and still active in her profession. Better yet, she was between voyages at the moment. He wouldn’t have to spend time waiting for her ship to make port.
Her address was a matter of record, and the pilots’ roster listed it as current. Arekhon found the apartment block without difficulty, in a moderately well-to-do neighborhood with transit connections to the spaceport. If Karil did in fact live here, she had prospered since their last meeting, or at least she had not suffered material harm from it.
The building directory inside the main entrance gave him her apartment number. He entered it into the directory’s keypad, and waited for the tone to sound.
Once … twice … on the third tone, Karil’s voice came over the speaker. “Yes? Who is it?”
She sounded irritable and distracted. Arekhon hoped he hadn’t interrupted anything he would have to feel embarrassed about later.
“Arek Peldan,” he said, more or less truthfully—he’d used that version of his given name in most of his public dealings since coming to Entibor. “On business.”
“Who? … never mind; you might as well come on up.”
Arekhon didn’t think she’d recognized his voice. He took the elevator up to the fifth floor, where Karil’s apartment was one of a half-dozen opening off of a central lobby. The door had a spy-eye set into the frame, with a soundpad underneath. He tapped the pad and waited again.
The pause this time lasted long enough for Arekhon to conclude that his face on the apartment’s security screen was more memorable than his voice alone had been, and to decide that this part of his quest had been a mistake. He was almost ready to turn away and leave when the door swung open partway and Karilen Estisk glared out at him.
The pilot was a tall woman, with a fair complexion and eyes the color of pale slate. She was wearing a faded velvet lounging robe, and had a damp towel wrapped turban-fashion around her head. That explained some of her irritability, at least, if he’d disturbed her in her bath; but he wasn’t foolish enough to think that it was the only reason.
“You’re damned lucky I didn’t call building security as soon as I saw your face,” she said before he could speak. “‘Arek Peldan’—hah!”
“It’s one of the names I go by these days,” he said. “May I come in?”
She stepped back and opened the door the rest of the way. “Why not?” she said. “If you people are determined to show up unannounced in my life and tear it into pieces for a second time, there’s probably nothing I can do to stop you anyway.”
“The Circle never intended to cause you harm,” he said as he followed her into the apartment. “For the fact that our good intentions came to naught, I can only apologize all over again.”
“Right. And are you planning to apologize for damn-near getting me invalided out of the Pilots’ Association for mental imbalance?” She turned and glared at him again, and the anger in her voice held echoes of long-past frustration and hysteria. “I tried telling people what happened—I told them about how a bunch of pirates from the far side of the galaxy took my old ship and killed everybody on it but me, and then some of the pirates kidnapped me away to their homeworld and some of the rest of them escaped with me back—and how they were still here, hiding and spying out the land—but nobody believed me.”
“I know,” he said. “And I do apologize. Making certain that no one believed you was the first working the Demaizen Circle did after coming to Entibor.”
“I knew it,” she said, and slapped him hard across the face.
He took the blow without flinching, though she had enough strength of arm that it was no light love-tap. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But we were afraid.”
“Afraid? You? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Yes,” he said. “Afraid. Your ships are faster, your weapons are more deadly, your artificial minds—”
“Comp systems.”
“—‘comp systems,’ then—are made out of sand and glass, and cheaply enough that you can throw together a dozen or a hundred of them for the cost in time and labor of a single true aiketh back at home in Hanilat.”
She looked at him and nodded slowly. “So you—how did you put it back then?—you ‘worked the luck.’ And I got screwed over.”
“All I can tell you is that we tried to do you as little harm as possible. And I know that isn’t good enough.”
“You’re damned right it isn’t good enough,” she said. “But I’m smart enough to know that it’s probably the best I’m going to get.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
“You too, eh?” Most of the anger had gone out of her face, replaced by a kind of weary amusement. She gestured toward one of the chairs in the apartment’s conversational nook, and seated herself in another. “Come on, ’Rekhe. Sit down and tell me why you decided to show up again after all these years.”
She’d used his short-name, which he hoped was a good sign. He drew a careful breath and let it out again. “I have to go back across the Gap,” he said. “And Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter needs at least two at the controls for a long transit.”
“You’re asking me to go back—my word, ’Rekhe, but you’ve got gall!”
“Will you do it, then?”
“Why should I?”
It was a fair question; but she hadn’t directly refused him, either. He took heart from that, and gave her as much of the truth as he knew himself. “For the sake of Garrod’s working.”
“That’s the big one, right?” Her expression was thoughtful, if not particularly warm. “The one your people kept fretting about all the way from here to wherever and back again.”
“Right. It isn’t finished yet.”
“I don’t suppose you have any idea when it’s going to be finished, either.”
He shook his head. “Or how much it will cost. All workings need energy to power them, but the great ones can take blood and lives as well. This one … we wanted to remake the galaxy.”
The corners of her mouth turned up a little—only faint amusement, and at his expense, but better than anger. “You never wondered if maybe you hadn’t taken on a bit more than you could handle?”
“We were young, most of us,” he said, “and prouder of our strength than we should have been. And Garrod was a man who could ask for wonders.”
“I can see that.” Curiosity flickered in her pale eyes. “Why again now, and not last year, or a decade ago?”
“I don’t know. I thought I was done with Eraasi, working or no working. Lately, though—” he shrugged “—lately, I’ve had dreams.”
“My brother used to have dreams,” she said. “But Lenset was always half-mad.”
“And so am I, you think?”
“No. You’re reckless and high-handed and any number of other things—most of which I could cheerfully have killed you for at one point or another—but you aren’t mad.”
As a statement of trust, Arekhon reflected, it was something less than enthusiastic. On the other hand, she hadn’t refused him. Maybe his luck was greater than he deserved, and Karilen Estisk also remained bound into the great working.
“Then will you come with me?” he asked.
She looked down at her hands. “I’m a senior pilot for InterWorlds Shipping—they took me on when the Swift Passage people let me go, and I can’t leave them now.”
“That,” he said, “won’t be a problem. All that’s needed is for some plausible organization to contract with InterWorlds for your extended services for an open-ended period of time.”
“‘All’
?” Her voice sounded a bit strangled. “’Rekhe, do you have any idea how much money that would take?”
“Money’s not going to be a problem. If I can arrange for it, will you come?”
“Going crazy must run in my family,” she said. “Yes. I’ll come.”
One by one Zeri exchanged formal embraces with the assembled representatives of the sus-Peledaen, starting with Natelth’s sister Isayana—whose touch was distant and stiff—and finishing with a bashful fleet-apprentice in blue and crimson livery. Then the doors of the hall of remembrance swung open, and Natelth took Zeri by the hand, so that they could be the first to leave the room.
Fas Treosi was waiting for her outside with Rieny and Lyida. Tradition said that at this point a bride’s friends should rush forward to hug her and claim lucky kisses from the new-made husband, with much laughter and joyful tears all around; but Zeri’s husband was Natelth sus-Peledaen, after all, and Rie and ’Yida were stiff and formal in his presence. They gave her careful, tentative hugs, as though they were afraid to wrinkle her gown, and scarcely brushed their lips against Natelth’s before drawing away.
The household aiketh that had earlier opened the door of the town house floated forward out of the shadows. “If the Lady Zeri wishes to change clothes for the banquet, the bride’s withdrawing-room is ready for her now.”
Suddenly Zeri wanted nothing else in the world as badly as she wanted to strip the crown and ribbons from her head, and kick away the flame-colored slippers. “Yes, please,” she said.
The aiketh floated up the stairs on its counterforce unit, with Zeri barely a step or two behind. Rie and ’Yida gathered up the ends of her trailing ribbons and followed close. Outside the closed door of the withdrawing-room, Zeri stopped.
“Lord Natelth isn’t here,” she told her friends. “You can hug me for real now.”
This time they did, and wept as well. Then she slipped out of their embrace, saying, “Go on down to the banquet, please. I can change my own clothes, and I need a few minutes by myself to think.”
They made a couple of token protests—tradition again dictated that the bride’s friends should assist her with disrobing as well as robing herself for the day—but soon let themselves be persuaded. Zeri waited until they were out of sight around the turn of the stairway, then entered the private withdrawing-room and closed the door behind her.
For a moment she stood there with her eyes closed, doing nothing. If she were at home in her apartment, she would be getting back from her afternoon meeting with the theatre-arts group’s finance committee, with plenty of time to take her shoes off and relax for an hour or two before dinner. But she’d sent her regrets to the finance committee days ago, and the workers and aiketen from the moving firm were at work in her apartment right now, putting all of her old furniture and other belongings into crates and boxes for storage. By this time next week, somebody else would be living in those rooms, and she would be sharing bed and board with Natelth sus-Peledaen.
Stop whining, she told herself. You made the choice, and you might as well learn to live with it.
With a sigh, she began unbuttoning the back of her gown. Then, suddenly, she felt a hand clamp over her mouth, and felt herself pulled backward against a man’s chest. She felt his warm breath next to her ear, and the faint roughness of a cheek that had gone a little too long unshaven, and lips that whispered, “Promise not to scream until after you read the letter I’m about to hand you.”
His hand was tight over her mouth. She got one of his fingers between her teeth and bit down hard, feeling the skin break and tasting the blood like hot copper in her mouth.
He swore under his breath in a language she didn’t recognize, but he didn’t let go. Then he said, somewhat breathlessly, “I’m a friend. Your cousin sent me. Herin Arayet sus-Dariv.”
“Herin is dead,” Zeri said.
He released her then, and she turned around to look at her erstwhile captor. She saw a man, not so well dressed as those she’d spent the morning with, but presentable all the same, with the yellowish-hazel eyes and sharp, fine-boned features that marked his Antipodean descent. He had his bleeding right hand pressed under his left armpit—she was pleased to note that she’d done him some real damage there, enough that the red drops had made a damp stain on the expensive blueweave carpet—while with his free hand he held out a flat envelope.
“Read this, and afterward you can scream if you like,” the man said. “My name’s Len. Help me help you.”
Zeri snatched the envelope from him and backed away, not taking her eyes from the man until she’d torn the envelope open and pulled out a flatsheet. She lifted it, looked down at it, then swiftly up again, then looked down, harder. The message said only, “Trust the man who brings this note. Do not marry sus-Peledaen. Come to me if you can. Herin.”
The note was written in Herin’s own hand, and it used the sus-Dariv private cipher. Zeri didn’t scream.
“Whoever set the bomb and attacked our fleet,” she said, “they might as easily have broken our codes if they felt like it. How do I know this isn’t from one of them?”
“Your cousin also said that I should tell you that on your twelfth birthday you and he didn’t go out to the frog pond to look at the frogs, even though that was what you told your parents afterward.”
In spite of herself and the situation, she blushed, and hoped that Herin’s sense of the ridiculous hadn’t prompted him to tell this stranger the whole embarrassing story. “He could have sent word earlier,” she said. “‘Don’t marry sus-Peledaen’ isn’t going to do me much good right now.”
“Syr Arayet says that if your legalist was doing right by you, none of the merger contracts come into force until the morning after the wedding night. There’s still time.”
“Time for what?”
“Your cousin asked me to bring you to him,” the man said. “Will you come?”
“Why did Herin send a stranger to fetch me, instead of coming himself?”
“He says that if he’s recognized he’ll be dead for real next time. Now I’m leaving, with you or without you. I delivered my message—now I’m gone.” He bowed his head. “My lady.”
Some time later, Rie and ’Yida grew concerned about their friend’s welfare, and left the banquet hall to rap on the withdrawing-room door. The door swung open under their touch—and then there was screaming enough at the wedding banquet, for the bride was gone, the window was open, and there was blood on the floor.
10:
ERAASI: HANILAT ENTIBOR: AN-JEMAYNE STARPORT
Isayana sus-Khalgath was overseeing the replenishment of the banquet tables when she heard the shrieking from upstairs. A moment later, almost before all heads had turned in the direction of the outcry, one of the bride’s ladies—the thin, clever-looking one—burst in through the doors of the banquet hall.
Isayana suspected that it was the plump and sentimental lady who had screamed. That one had all the marks of someone who would turn absolutely useless in a crisis. This one, however, pushed her way through the throng of sus-Peledaen family and hangers-on and went straight to Natelth. Isayana couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was speaking rapidly, her words punctuated by sharp, quick hand movements, and Na’e’s expression was growing darker and grimmer as he listened.
Another moment, and Na’e snapped an order to the fleet officer nearest him, then left the banquet hall with the bride’s lady, heading toward the sounds of hysteria coming from upstairs. The fleet officer took a little longer to pull the sus-Peledaen head of internal security out of the crowd and send him upstairs likewise. Nobody had bothered to tell Isayana what was going on, but that didn’t matter; she had her own ways of learning things.
“Stop,” she said quietly to the first serving-aiketh that floated past her on its counterforce unit. “Attend.”
The aiketh paused, the crimson light in its sensorium pulsing slightly as it awaited further instruction. Isayana turned so that her voice wouldn’t carry into the
crowd of agitated guests—some of whom might not, after all, be completely trustworthy—and spoke the override syllables she had given it during its first instruction. The crimson light pulsed faster for a few seconds, then returned to its normal resting beat.
“Now,” said Isayana. “Query the house-mind, and all units in contact with it. What has caused the disturbance in the upstairs equilibrium?”
“The house-mind reports a circumvention of security measures in the bride’s withdrawing-room,” the aiketh said. “The window remains open at this time.”
“Thank you,” Isayana said politely. Even nonsentient quasi-organics deserved courtesy, in her opinion, and it cost nothing to give. Then she spoke the syllables that revoked the override, and the aiketh floated on about its business as though she had never stopped and questioned it.
Barely in time, too. She saw Na’e’s security chief coming toward her through the crowd of agitated wedding guests.
“Syr Egelt,” she said as he approached her. “What’s happening?”
“Your brother desires your presence upstairs in the bride’s withdrawing-room,” Egelt said.
“By all means take me to him.”
She followed the head of internal security up the stairs to the private portion of the town house. The door at the top of the stairway opened onto the hall outside the withdrawing-room, and the hall, normally empty of all but household aiketen and the occasional family member, was full of people. The bride’s two ladies, their message delivered, had been shunted off to the periphery of the action; the short plump one was crying against the thin one’s neck.
Natelth stood amid a group of liveried guards, frowning and looking thunderous. Isayana felt a moment’s surprise at the sheer number of people in blue and crimson. She hadn’t thought that Na’e would bring quite so many guards with him from the orbital station—and these, she realized, had to be only a few of the ones who had come down to the surface, the ones assigned directly to the town house itself.
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