“Oh, that’s the surface side,” Yerris said. “This is ships’ operations. You asked about a ship?”
“Yes, I did. But the one I’m looking for would have come point-to-point surface. Maybe we should ask at surface control.”
“Of course, sir, you’re quite right. Let me call them.” Yerris left the room, and the door swung shut behind him.
Egelt waited. A few seconds later, the air around him and the floor beneath him rumbled and vibrated, and the windows on the side of the building away from the port lit up with the glaring orange of reflected light. Someone out there was lifting ship—Egelt turned, and pushed on the door. Locked.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and Yerris stood there, still looking frowsy and misbuttoned and shaking his head. “I’m sorry, sir; no ship arrived from Hanilat last night.”
“You know that we’ll be able to track the arrivals and departures,” Egelt said. “What was that launch just now?”
Yerris blinked. “Launch, sir? An engine test over in the yards.”
“Really?” Egelt had decided when he saw the orange flare of liftoff that Yerris couldn’t possibly be as stupid as he was acting, not and remain in a fleet-family’s employ. “If what you’ve said isn’t true, things will go hard with you people now that you’re sus-Peledaen.”
“We aren’t sus-Peledaen until after the wedding night,” Yerris said. “That hasn’t happened yet, has it? We’d have had word.”
Definitely not as stupid as he’s acting, Egelt thought. And he knows entirely too much.
But all he said was “Thank you for your time. I suppose it wouldn’t be helpful for me to show you some pictures and ask if you’d seen certain people?”
“My time is yours. I’d be happy to look at the pictures.”
“At some future point,” Egelt said, feeling certain that if Yerris was that willing to look at his pictures, the pictures weren’t likely to do any good. “Right now it’s time for me to leave.”
“You won’t be staying for breakfast? Port-Captain Winceyt will be disappointed. We so seldom get visitors from Hanilat.”
“My compliments to the captain,” Egelt said. “And please inform him that he’ll certainly be my guest in Hanilat, soon.”
Yerris gave no sign of noticing the veiled threat. “Of course, sir. Will there be anything else?”
“Nothing, for now,” Egelt said. “I’ll find my own way back to my flyer.”
As soon as he was in the air, he contacted Hussav again at the Hanilat office. “Anything happen while I was out of range?”
“I got in contact with the fleet. No guardships in place around the south. But listen to this: I’ve gotten a report from the orbiters that there was a launch from down there, a few minutes ago.”
“I know. I saw it. Has he headed for a jump point?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out. Get the fleet to board him if they can. And while you’re doing that, get a guardship assigned to us, and get us an unlimited letter of credit, and pack a bag. We’re going traveling.”
“Traveling?”
“When Lord Natelth finds out that we’ve let his bride slip off to space, I want to be a long way away and already on the job of tracking her down. Pack a bag for me, too, and be at the spaceport when I get there.”
Egelt settled back into his seat again, while the sky to his right went pink, then bright and blue. Try as he might, he still couldn’t get to sleep.
Kief attracted little notice as he made his way home from Isayana’s workplace. Mages were no oddity in Hanilat, even Mages robed for a working, and masks were all the fashion these days. His own building always had Mages coming and going at odd hours, since his Circle did most of its ordinary workings there; the neighbors were used to it, and one more Mage, as they might see it, wouldn’t matter.
His new body, now that he had dressed it properly in street clothes, robes, and a hardmask, felt much less alien. The world still looked odd; this body was slightly taller than the old one, and the angles on things were different. Sounds were different also, sharper and more distinct, and he realized that this body had better hearing as well.
The door to his apartment had a cipher lock. He laughed under his breath as he entered the keycode. It was a good thing he hadn’t wasted money on one of the new blood-and-thumbprint high-security models. He could force one of those, if he had to, but he preferred not to do it for his own apartment. If he did, he’d probably break the lock anyway.
Inside the apartment, everything was bare and dusty as always. He’d never been a man to care about personal possessions, not since the Old Hall burned, and having none to speak of gave him less to worry about.
He hung up his robe and hardmask on their customary peg, and went into the kitchen. He knew that he should be hungry after such a working, but he wasn’t, and a sudden flash of insight told him why: His new body had been nourished until scarcely two hours ago in Isayana’s gel-vat, needing nothing.
The image and the realization together sickened him. He gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles white—breathe in; breathe out—willing down the unexpected nausea. After what felt like a long time, the ringing in his ears subsided and the dots that swirled in his field of vision like angry insects faded and went away.
With the waning of the sickness, however, came knowledge: If he didn’t eat something right now, and force himself to become accustomed to taking ordinary nourishment, he would keep on avoiding the very thought of it. And this body—his body—would waste and die.
Lady Isayana needs to know that there is a chance of this, he thought; that it must be guarded against.
The preserving-cupboard in the kitchen held bread and sliced meat. He took out a quarter-portion of each, and forced himself to eat them slowly. He found no pleasure in the meal; eating it was like chewing and swallowing pulped paper. At least he was able to finish the bread and meat without his body turning against him, and the next time would be easier.
With the unwanted food lying heavy in his stomach, he went to bed. He stretched out fully clothed on top of the covers and lay staring up at the ceiling. Mind and spirit were both exhausted, but his body refused to take the offered rest. Too tired to meditate, too spent to put his intention behind anything at all, he drifted.
The silver cords of the eiran shifted and changed against the shadows above him, and he made no effort to touch them. He only watched. He saw his own working, and Garrod’s working, and all the myriad lesser workings of a galaxy filled with Circles. They shifted and spun and connected and parted again, and he felt himself being pulled inexorably from his place of rest into the dance of the patterns.
Somebody’s out there, he thought. Somebody was working the luck, and something about the working had called to him, had drawn him out of even this strange exhausted stupor. He could almost believe that the Mage was someone from the old days at Demaizen—no other Circle had ever held him as strongly, for good or ill, not even his own—except that all of Demaizen’s Mages were dead or exiled. He would have to investigate—so strong a tie was dangerous—but not now, he was too tired—and the voice comm was shrilling on the bedstand by his ear.
Coming fully back to consciousness was like surfacing from deep water. He fumbled for the handset. “Diasul.”
“Kiefen etaze.” It was Isayana’s voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this late hour—”
Late? he thought groggily, and looked over at the windows. It was dark outside; he must have slept after all. “It’s all right.”
“That’s good. I need you to come back here for a little while, etaze, to make a proper report on the filling process while it’s fresh in your mind. I should have thought of it earlier and asked you to stay—but frankly, I was so head-in-the-clouds over the fact that everything had actually worked that I simply forgot.”
“I understand.” Though he didn’t, not really. Isayana had struck him at their first meeting as the kind of person who never forgot anything. Of co
urse, he’d never before seen her on a day when she had accomplished something new in the universe. “I’ll come.”
“There’s no need to trouble yourself with riding the public transport at this hour,” Isayana said. “Wait where you are, and I’ll send one of the family’s groundcars over with a driver.”
He closed the connection and sat on the edge of the bed, deep in thought. He remembered that he didn’t know Isayana, not well—but one of the things he did remember about her was that she was capable of working against someone who had every natural reason to expect her loyalty.
Also, she was Arekhon’s sister—and face it, Kief said to himself, ’Rekhe could talk rocks and stones into behaving unwisely if it suited his purpose.
Thoughts of betrayal made him remember another day, long ago now, when armored vehicles came growling up the road to Demaizen Old Hall, and armed men poured out of them to kill Garrod and Del and Serazao. Only luck had saved him then, and he suspected—he believed—that it was time for him to make his own luck now.
He rose from the bed, put back on his robes and mask, and slipped out into the dark.
15:
ERAASI ORBIT: SUS-PELEDAEN COURIER SHIP LAST-DAY -OF-SUMMER ERAASI: HANILAT OPHEL: SOMBRELÍR
The sus-Peledaen courier ship Last-Day-of-Summer hung in high orbit over Eraasi, awaiting the signal to depart. The Summerday was a small runner, set for light and fast cargoes, designed to travel without a large fleet escort. It was cramped, at least compared to the large merches, but comfortable enough.
Under normal circumstances—which these were not—the Summerday would be used for security and for message carrying, not for passenger transport. The pilot had been articulate on the subject, to say the least, and more than a little disgruntled when the pair of high-level operatives from family security answered his complaints with an equally high-level authorization chit.
Egelt and Hussav didn’t care about the pilot’s opinion one way or the other. They had problems of their own, and they had to come up with solutions for them soon. They stood on the Summerday’s cramped bridge and spoke to each other in a tense undertone.
“Well,” Hussav said, “our boy definitely made his Void-translation and took the lady with him. So what are we going to do now?”
“What we’ve been doing. Follow him.”
“The boss won’t be happy—finding out that he can say ‘Shut the spaceports!’ all he likes, but not everybody is going to listen.”
Egelt grimaced. “That’s one reason I like the idea of being under way.”
“What if he recalls you, wants you to give your report?”
“I’ll tell him that I don’t want to lose the momentum of the case, and that he should hang tight.”
“That’ll go over well.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a beachcomber anyway,” Egelt said. He took a step forward to look out of the forward bridge window, even though the pilothouse was so small that it hardly rated the title of “bridge.” There wasn’t anything outside the window but black space and stars—Eraasi wasn’t visible from this angle. The view helped Egelt to think clearly, though, and to make plans that weren’t shadowed by worry about the whims and the temper of Lord Natelth sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen.
“Give me a minute,” he said, looking out at the distant stars. “Let’s see. Our boy’s probably going to Aulwikh. Main port is Firreka. Nice place, big enough to get lost in, no sus-Dariv interests to draw our attention. It’s on his arc So we’ll go to Aulwikh. But in case he’s pulling a fast one, I’m going to get some help. Messenger drone to every system, house cipher, with pictures of the malefactor—the one Lady Isa generated, and the matching images our people pulled out of port security—a description of his ship, a description of the happy bride, and a request to send replies to me at Firreka on Aulwikh.”
“The boss won’t like having his shame discussed on all of the settled planets, not to mention most of the unsettled ones.”
“The idea you’re groping for is ‘apoplexy,’” Egelt said. “As in, if he drops dead of one, his sister will succeed, and she’s reasonable. But if Lord Natelth truly wants his new-wed lady back—well, when we show up in his office with her, he’ll be so grateful that he’ll kiss us, and never mind the methods we used to do it.”
“You hope.”
“I hope. So, anyway, let me get busy. I want the messages away before we jump, and I want to jump for Aulwikh soon. The longer we delay, the colder the trail will get.”
It was still night outside when Kief left the apartment. He kept to the shadows—his working robes were dark, and should suffice to keep him obscured from watching eyes. He didn’t want to expend energy on hiding himself from view if he didn’t have to, not when he remained exhausted in mind and spirit from the rigors of the working.
He supposed it was possible that Isayana had been telling him the truth—that Arekhon’s sister had only wanted to get his report on the filling process, and not to capture and detain him indefinitely. But Kief was neither optimistic nor trusting, and hadn’t been for years. As far as he was concerned, his best course of action was to make certain he was elsewhere when the sus-Peledaen groundcar arrived.
But which elsewhere? He couldn’t run to his own Mages for help. Kief was the First of their Circle; it was his responsibility to take care of the unranked Mages, not the other way around. And the sus-Peledaen enforcers would be certain to check the Circles before they looked anywhere else. Nevertheless, he had to find a place, somewhere he could go to ground for a few hours until he either figured out a long-term plan of escape or decided that Isayana sus-Khalgath wasn’t a threat.
His legs hurt; this new body wasn’t yet accustomed to traveling long distances on foot. He glanced around, and saw that he’d walked all the way from his apartment to the grounds of the Hanilat Institute while he was lost in thought.
Kief had been a Mage too long to ignore the obvious. There was at least one place on the Institute’s campus that would welcome him. He’d been there—had it been only a day ago now? It seemed much longer. Shaking off the urge to ponder the relationship between time and experience, he headed for the Institute Towers, and within minutes was tapping the code for Ayil syn-Arvedan’s apartment into the front-door pad.
After a short wait, he heard a sleepy but familiar voice come over the annunciator. “Who’s there?”
“Ayil? It’s me. Kief.”
“Again? I thought you’d gone back to wherever it is you’re living these days.”
“Things—happened. Can you put me up for the night?”
“Of course.” She sounded puzzled but agreeable. “Come on up.”
The front door opened, and shut again behind him. He took the elevator up to Ayil’s apartment, and pressed the entry-button. The apartment door opened and showed him Ayil standing there in a night-robe, yawning and hair all awry.
“Come in; come in,” she said. He entered, and she closed the door again behind him, saying as she did so, “You could have stayed here overnight in the first place, you know. I’d have lent you a key.”
“I’d have asked, believe me, if I’d expected to need it. There was a working, and—” he shrugged “—like I said, things happened.”
He knew that the next part couldn’t be put off any longer; she was already regarding his masked face with a puzzled expression. The Institute apartments, as he recollected from his student days, were reasonably soundproof. He took off his hardmask and threw back the hood of his robe.
She didn’t scream, only caught her breath quickly and followed up that slight gasp with a long, long stare, looking him up and down. He should have expected that; but it was always easy to forget that under Ayil’s mild and innocuous surface lay a first-class mind.
“Kiefen Diasul,” she said finally.
“Yes. Despite appearances.”
“If it’s really you—tell me what I was thinking about working on before I decided that studying interstellar gas clouds would actually result in
more useful data and less unproductive theory?”
“The sundering of the galaxy,” he said. “Root and proximate causes.”
It was a good question. Ayil had played with the topic over a period of about six months, but she’d never taken it past the talking-in-the-office stage—too much mysticism and not enough fact, she’d said at the time.
He smiled in spite of himself. “You told me that the Teleological and Cosmological Studies Departments had their hooks in the topic and weren’t going to let it go.”
“It is you, then.” Her eyes weren’t sleepy any longer; instead, they were suddenly bright with curiosity. “Come, sit down—I’ll make us a pot of uffa. And we can talk.”
Arekhon had always known that there were more habitable—and inhabited—planets on this side of the Gap Between than there were among the homeworlds, but he’d never seen any of them except for Entibor. Making a new life for himself on Elaeli’s world had been hard enough work without making the task more complex with visits to other, and equally alien, places. Now, with Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter grounded on Ophel for the first time and probably the last, he found himself wishing that once or twice he’d taken the chance. At least a few of those other worlds might have been as restful and pleasant to the eye as this one.
He sat in a wicker chair on the terrace of a seaside hotel in the city of Sombrelír, sharing a late luncheon with the other members of the Daughter’s crew. Other tables, some occupied and some not, dotted the black-and-white tessellated pavement. On the far side of the bay a fishing boat set out to sea, down the crystal-sparkling channel. The sky overhead was an even blue without a trace of cloud, but the air was only pleasantly warm.
The local inhabitants had seemed unsurprised when a spacecraft as clearly alien as Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter landed at the Sombrelír spaceport. The port, such as it was, lay on the high ground outside the city, an hour’s ride away by wheeled jitney and even longer by draftbeast-carriage. Already during their stay here, Arekhon had noted that hovercars, so common on Entibor, were rare items on Ophel—the few that he’d seen were import items, and certainly not cheap enough to be used for public transit.
A Working of Stars Page 23
