A Working of Stars

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  “There were only four real sons-of-bitches in the universe,” Hafdorwen said. “Now two of them are dead, and I’m looking for the other one. I want three things to happen all at once. I want the chase-and-go-home’s message to arrive at their location, and set it to reen-cipher and retransmit, in case they have directional on it. I want us to drop out behind them at that same moment, while they’re distracted. And I want a firing solution on one of their vessels.”

  “Aim for engines?” That was the Dawning’s Weapons-Principal, who’d been listening to the conversation between Hafdorwen and the Command-Ancillary with considerable interest.

  “Negat,” Hafdorwen said. “I want a destruct solution. People who’ve been destroyed can’t shoot back. The opposition can afford to lose half of their ships better than we can afford to lose just us. And oh, yes,” he added, to the Dawning’s communications officer this time. “Prepare a message drone. Send our log back to Eraasi, so that Theledau sus-Radal will know where to start looking for us if we don’t come home.”

  Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter made her careful approach to the asteroid, to a seemingly innocent shadow that held an opening. A light force field shimmered across the cave mouth, set to allow large, slow-moving things like spaceships to enter and depart while retaining small, fast-moving things like air molecules. The scoutcraft traversed what at first looked like a cave of natural stone that opened out at last into a docking bay. Then she made a slow descent to the metal deckplates of the asteroid base and eased down onto her landing legs.

  “Wait here,” said Arekhon to Karil. “What has to be done here is a thing for the Circles, and you’ll be safer staying out of it.”

  “And what do I do if you don’t come back?”

  “Like we discussed on Ophel,” he said. “Make certain the survivors get back to Sombrelír.”

  “Take care of the survivors. Right. That’s all I’m good for? Have you ever wondered why I agreed to come along with you this time?” Her voice was quiet, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted him to hear. She looked away from him, out at the docking bay. In a louder tone she said, “In case I don’t get another chance to say it: I wish I’d never had to meet you, but since I did … good luck, ’Rekhe.”

  “Thank you.” He left the Daughter’s cockpit and made his way to the main exit hatch, where Ty and Narin and Maraganha were waiting.

  They were a ragtag excuse for a Circle, he thought—no robes, just the ordinary clothes they’d worn about their daily work. Even Maraganha the Void-walker looked less like a great Magelord than she did like a small-town schoolteacher from some country district on Eraasi or Entibor. And yet—in their hands lay the future and the continuation of the great working.

  “Let’s go,” he said to them. “Kiefen Diasul is waiting for us. It’s time to finish what we began.”

  Together, they left the ship, walking down the ramp between the landing legs. Outside, the docking bay was cold and empty of life: its echoing walls spread wide, its top lost in shadows far above. Aside from the Daughter, the only things living or nonliving visible in the huge expanse were a number of construction aiketen in various stages of repair, and a grounded fast courier displaying sus-Radal temporary colors. Deep within the bay’s recesses, a cascade of welder’s sparks sluiced down, bouncing yellow-hot on the deck before they faded to black grit. The stars burned outside of the force field that blocked up the entrance, as hard and far away as the welder’s sparks were close and soft.

  Arekhon stood shivering, looking out at the stars. In his right hand, his silver-bound staff hung loosely. A hammer, or perhaps it was a hatch, clanged behind him. Beneath his feet the station quivered with the distant thrum of machinery. Later, perhaps, it would be filled and braced, and the vibration would be damped. He feared the coming war: the loss, the betrayal that it would entail, the thousands and hundreds of thousands who would give their lives, unwilling, for the great working.

  Truly, the threads I hold are dipped tonight in blood.

  The air ducts sighed above him in the dark. A worklight glowed. A shape stepped between him and the stars. A man. Kief. And Iulan Vai beside him, with her left arm as he had seen it aboard Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter broken and bound up in a sling.

  “Iule,” he said, using the form of affection despite himself, even though he knew she preferred to brush such terms aside. But it wasn’t every day that old friends and former lovers came together from opposite sides of the interstellar gap, especially with the fate of the universe at stake. “Are you well?”

  “I’m well. Or repairable, at any rate.”

  “Good.”

  He turned to Kief. Vai had spoken truly, he saw—Kiefen Diasul had stolen another’s body, and if it hadn’t been for the unmistakable way in which the eiran of the great working twisted and warped in the air around him, Arekhon would never have recognized the man who had been his fellow-Mage in Garrod’s Circle for so many years.

  “Iulan etaze tells me you want to try the will of the universe,” Arekhon said, “for the maintenance or the destruction of the great working.”

  “Yes,” Kief said. “We’re bound into it, you and I, and neither one of us will ever be free of it while the other one lives.”

  “Is that so bad, Kief? To draw the galaxy back together?”

  Kief laughed bitterly. “It’s killing me, ’Rekhe; I’m not alive but it won’t let me die. There isn’t a working I turn my hand to that isn’t warped by what Garrod tried to do, and failed. It has to stop.”

  “Garrod began something that was too big for one person to finish,” Arekhon said. “The rest of us have to see that it goes on. If you want to fight me for it … all that remains of Demaizen is here. Let’s form the circle and begin.”

  Kief looked from Arekhon to the others, one by one, ending at Maraganha. “First tell me who this is that’s come with you. She was never a part of Demaizen.”

  The Void-walker chuckled, a surprisingly warm sound in the cold of the docking bay. “Oh, but I am. The very last of Demaizen, as it happens, with more right to be here than you’ll ever know.”

  Kief frowned at Maraganha a little longer, then seemed to cast the thought of her aside as inconsequential. “Very well,” he said to Arekhon. “Let it begin now.”

  Kief raised his staff into guard—a swift move, then into attack—while Arekhon’s staff was still at his side. Arekhon threw himself backward, out of the way of the blow, fell, rolled to his feet, and raised his staff to guard.

  Kief was nowhere in sight. Where—?

  The question was answered when the tip of Kief’s staff came whirling out of the dark to strike him a glancing blow above the eyebrow, enough to open a gash and flash a bright light behind his eyes, not enough to stun or slow him. He turned to face his attacker.

  “Isn’t it customary to say ‘As the universe wills’?” Arekhon asked, spinning again on the balls of his feet. He could feel blood trickling down the side of his face.

  “No,” Kief said. “Not as the universe wills. As I will. As you will. As Garrod willed. The universe has nothing to do with it.” He lashed out again, a combination to head and flank that made Arekhon block and fall back, all thoughts of a counterattack driven from his head by the fury of the assault.

  Kief surged in, catching Arekhon’s staff between their bodies, one arm behind Arekhon’s back, the protruding tip of his staff stabbing down and in as he drove his fist again and again onto Arekhon’s left clavicle, trying to break it, to sever the subclavian artery with fragments of bone, to destroy with pain and without hope of succor.

  Arekhon pushed against him, but Kief had a younger and stronger body now, slab-sided with hard muscle. Arekhon could not raise his knee to kick. His left arm had lost feeling after the first blow; his right was trapped.

  He smashed forward with his head into the other man’s face, then went limp and dropped as Kief gasped in pain and surprise. A moment later and Kief fell, his legs scissored from beneath him by Arekhon, lying on the deckplat
es. Then Arekhon smashed downward with his elbow into Kief’s solar plexus, making him gasp and fold at the center, shoulders and heels coming off of the deck.

  The two rolled apart, then came to their feet facing each other, almost at the same time.

  “You won’t say it, so I will,” Arekhon gasped. His staff began to take on a scarlet color, pale at first, then burning brighter. “As the universe wills.”

  Kief’s breath was also coming hard and fast. “No. I’ll see this damned working of yours stopped, ’Rekhe, if it takes me half a thousand years to do it.”

  “Half a thousand years is a long time to wait,” Arekhon said.

  “Twice a thousand years wouldn’t be too long.”

  “What we have is now,” Arekhon said. He turned his strong side toward Kief, at the guard, not yet ready to attack. His shoulder ached. Perhaps the bone was cracked. “We should make the best of it.”

  “True. Guard yourself.”

  Kief advanced, his staff glowing reddish-orange. Arekhon stood his ground, his weight equal on his feet. As the other man came into range, Arekhon stepped forward, lowering his staff and stabbing the end forward toward his opponent’s chest.

  Kief shifted his own staff to push the lunge aside, and slid his staff down Arekhon’s in an attempt to smash fingers, while spinning to take advantage of his opponent’s momentum. He found himself opposing only air, as Arekhon landed a stinging blow across his lower back.

  A flurry of blows followed, faster and faster, none of them touching flesh, as the two fighters grew cautious. To Arekhon it seemed as if a woman stood far off in the shadows, watching. Vai or Maraganha, perhaps, though he didn’t dare turn enough of his attention from the struggle to make sure. The end of the world was upon him, and the memory of Elaeli filled him with longing, like the long-drawn-out autumn sunsets of home.

  He knew then that he would never return to Eraasi—but the reality of the wood seeking to crush his bones for the will of the universe and the restoration of the galaxy was too much for him, and he staggered, and in that moment, he thrust, and felt his staff go deep into soft and yielding flesh.

  “Hold!” Kief gasped, and raised his hand to call a halt.

  “For you or the universe?”

  Arekhon too was in need of breath. His lungs hurt as he sucked in the cold air of the docking bay. He saw the eiran around him, tangled, in the deep of the wild worlds beyond the interstellar gap, where no one could find safety or salvation. Beyond the force field that crossed the docking bay’s entrance the endless stars burned like ice.

  “You gave me quarter?” Kief asked quietly, and for an instant it was as if they were still young men at Demaizen Old Hall, fellow-Mages in Lord Garrod’s Circle and full of an eagerness to do great things in the world.

  “Surprised? You shouldn’t be. You spend all your strength and passion fighting without meaning. Don’t fool yourself.”

  Kief shook his head. “You’re the one who was always good at seducing other people with your words, and dragging them into all kinds of foolishness. But not any longer. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  Kief raised his staff and sketched a salute. Arekhon returned it, and they fell to the combat again. Flames crackled around them, the blazing light of air thick-charged with energy as two great Magelords strove to make manifest the power inherent in the universe. Arekhon felt himself entering the place where he could see and pull on the eiran and bring them into line, securing the pattern of the great working for all the time to come.

  Almost, almost, he could touch them—but before he could reach out across the gap he felt the strength of Kief’s resolve settling like a loop of fire around his chest, drawing him back into the world before he could touch the one cord that he needed above all others to pull.

  Interesting, thought Fleet-Captain Winceyt. The unknown contacts ahead of Garden-of-Fair-Blossoms, the recent emergences, headed out along a vector that would take them to where the unknowns, the ones that had gone cold, would also have been heading. Aloud, he said, “Something over there.”

  Then, “Mark, on the scan,” said the Pilot-Principal. “We have a signal. From the near target. Signal. We have a second signal, from … it correlates with one of the asteroids, sir.”

  It’s some kind of secret base, Winceyt realized. Iulan Vai must have been intending to get here ahead of us and arrange for safe harbor.

  Well, that plan took a blind jump into the Void a long time ago. We’ll have to do the best we can with the situation we’ve got.

  “Interrogation and answer,” he said to the Pilot-Principal. “Did you record?”

  The Garden’s communications officer answered, “Recorded.”

  “Keep it handy,” Winceyt said. He stood in the command position, on the raised walk by the big armored glass windows, and looked out over the Garden’s bridge crew. “People, I intend to fight this ship as I see fit. But if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I’d like to hear them now.”

  Before anyone could answer, the communications officer said, “Signal coming in, in the clear.”

  “On audio,” Winceyt said.

  The Garden’s bridge speakers came on with a pop and a crackle. “ … unknown vessels. You are in sus-Radal space. You are required to stop. Identify yourselves.”

  “Where’s that coming from?” Winceyt demanded. “Does it correlate with anyone we’ve identified already?”

  Command-Tertiary Yerris said, “Negative.”

  “We will not stop,” Winceyt said. “Make course for that asteroid. Something’s over there, and my guess is that it’s important to the sus-Radal. That family’s one of a kind with the sus-Peledaen, these days—building stations and warships instead of sticking with honest trade.”

  “Are we going to reply to the signal?” Yerris asked him.

  “Give them a minute,” Winceyt said. “Better to let them wonder if we’re friend or foe, than to answer and remove all doubt.”

  “Captain, look at this,” the Pilot-Principal said. She pointed to a graph on the display console, two lines overlaid, one in red, one in light brown. “Those two who were talking to each other before. The signals were on different frequencies, and they came from different positions, but look at this. There’s a beat frequency in both of them that looks a lot like they’re using identical antennae, with an identical power source. See, here?” She poked a finger at a jagged set of lines near the right side of the display. “I’d be willing to bet my pay against yours, sir, that these two signals came from the same physical pieces of metal.”

  “They were on entirely different bearings,” Winceyt said.

  “Yes, sir, but look at this.” She laid in two more graphs. “These are Dopplers on the carrier frequencies. Both of those ships were engaged in one-hundred-eighty-degree turns at near-jump speeds. Not just once, but every time they were talking.”

  “Two ships?”

  “One, sir. Talking to itself. I’m sure of it.”

  “That means—”

  An alarm started wheeping before Winceyt could finish. “Sir!” Command-Tertiary Yerris exclaimed at the same time. “Someone’s lighting us up with fire control!”

  The sus-Peledaen guardship Cold-Heart-of-Morning stood by to drop out of the Void. The Cold-Heart’s captain paced the bridge. If the chase-and-go-home had done its job, this was where that fleeing courier ship had been heading, and this was where Zeri sus-Dariv was going to be.

  Egelt and Hussav, damn their eyes, had tried to put him off the trail and keep the honor of bringing home Lord Natelth’s missing lady all to themselves. Forged accounting data, indeed. Do they think I was born yesterday? But now he was here, and the two civilian operatives were cooling their heels back in muddy, exciting Ninglin Spaceport.

  “On three,” said the Cold-Heart’s Pilot-Principal. “Two, one, mark. Drop out.”

  “What do you have?” the captain asked the Command-Tertiary once the blackness of deep space had replaced the swirling grey pseudosubstance o
f the Void in the Cold-Heart’s bridge windows.

  “Asteroid field,” the Command-Tertiary replied. “And I’m seeing power sources in use. Five, no, six ships.”

  The Cold-Heart’s captain felt a pang of apprehension, and suppressed it. “Emissions?”

  “Picking something up. Clear transmission, identifying the transmitting station as … sus-Dariv, sir!”

  Damn. Egelt and Hussav are turncoats, and we’ve been had.

  “That’s the mutineers from Serpent Station, damn and blast them,” the captain said. “Let them know that we’re here and that we mean business. Range them with fire control. Communications, give me all-frequencies. Max gain. Family cipher, the share-with-the-sus-Dariv version.”

  “You have it, sir.”

  The Cold-Heart’s captain keyed on the ship-to-ship audio. “Unknown sus-Dariv craft. This is sus-Peledaen guardship Cold-Heart-of-Morning You are under our command and control. Stop your engines; switch on your locator beacons. Send us your crew lists. Prepare to be boarded.”

  22:

  SUS-RADAL ASTEROID BASE SUS-DARIV GUARDSHIP GARDEN-OF-FAIR -BLOSSOMS; SUS-RADAL GUARDSHIP EASTWARD-TO-DAWNING SUS-PELEDAEN GUARDSHIP COLD-HEART-OF-MORNING FIRE-ON-THE-HILLTOPS: SUS-RADAL ASTEROID BASE NEARSPACE NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER: ERAASIAN FARSPACE

  Vai knelt on the deckplates of the docking bay with the other members of Arekhon’s Circle—Narin and Ty, and the stranger who had named herself the very last of Demaizen. The cold air of the bay made her injured arm ache bitterly, distracting her from proper meditation; she thought with longing of the infirmary back at the Old Hall, and its first-class medical aiketen. The sus-Radal base didn’t have anything nearly as good, only a basic care setup and a stasis box for transporting home anything worse. The ships would have better gear than the station did.

  Of course, the people who usually work here spend most of their time trying not to get hurt … in the Circle, it’s different.