A Working of Stars

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  Whatever else Zeri could do, she knew theatre.

  “Time for me to make a dramatic entrance,” she said, and headed aft.

  Len struck back, but the stranger with his face had apparently been trained as a hand-to-hand fighter. The two men fought, battered, and screamed, twisting in midair, each movement sending them to one side or another of the compartment rebounding with bruising force from the hard surfaces.

  Abruptly, the echoing roar of a slug-gun sounded, and Len was deafened. The man he was grappling jerked and went limp.

  Zeri was standing braced in the doorway, the weapon held in two hands before her.

  “What?” Len asked.

  “A girl has to protect herself these days,” Zeri said. “Herin picked it up for me on Ninglin. You just can’t be too careful.”

  “But …” Len said. “How did you know which one of us to shoot?”

  “I’d know you anywhere,” Zeri said, and kissed him.

  On board Eastward-to-Dawning, Captain Hafdorwen said to his Command-Ancillary, “Now that’s something you don’t see every day, even in space.”

  “What is it?”

  “That sus-Peledaen guardship who just showed up is shooting at his friends.”

  “I don’t know how friendly they think they are, sir,” the Command-Ancillary said. “The sus-Dariv are shooting back.”

  “Take the sus-Peledaen guardship under fire,” Hafdorwen said. “And make a signal to the sus-Dariv. Offer them temporary alliance with sus-Radal.”

  “What?” demanded the Command-Ancillary. “You want to make alliance with mutineers?”

  “Better with mutineers than with the sus-Peledaen. I’ve heard some rumors about what really happened to the sus-Dariv fleet.”

  “I’ll be damned, sir,” Command-Tertiary Yerris said to Fleet-Captain Winceyt. “The sus-Radal guardship is shooting at Cold-Heart-of-Morning”

  “I didn’t think Lord Theledau’s people would trust the sus-Peledaen for long,” Winceyt replied. “Weapons-Principal, take the Cold-Heart under fire as well.”

  “Sir!” said Garden-of-Fair-Blossoms’s communications officer. “Message coming in—the sus-Radal guardship Eastward-to-Dawning offers temporary alliance.”

  The Garden’s Pilot-Principal looked up from the sensor display. Her expression was one of fierce delight. “Fleet-Captain, the sus-Peledaen just took a hit!”

  “Whose?” Winceyt asked.

  “sus-Radal.”

  “Tell the Dawning that Garden-of-Fair-Blossoms accepts the offer. Weapons-Principal, keep the Cold-Heart under fire.”

  In a hidden room in Hanilat on Eraasi, the empty shell of Kiefen Diasul stirred and his eyes opened. His wandering self, bound to his body by a silver cord none but he could have seen, had finally returned. This body was weak, damaged by its prolonged emptiness. He raised his hand and pushed himself upright, pulling free from the tubes and lines that had fed his shell.

  Staggering—both from the weakness of this long-unused flesh and from the fight that his mind had sustained—he stood and pulled on a robe, and made it to the doorway one halting step at a time. He leaned there against the doorjamb for a minute, his breathing ragged and heavy, then stumbled on.

  “Isayana,” he said to the first aiketh that he encountered. “I need Isayana, now.”

  And so she found him that morning when she entered the laboratory. “Diasul,” she said, in shock, and he raised an emaciated hand to touch her face, flesh against flesh.

  In that same moment his mind flowed into hers, and she knew his memories as though they were her own, childhood and the love of learning and the fellowship of the Circles—and one memory more strong and bitter to her than all the others, of the night among the ruins of Demaizen Old Hall, when he had betrayed ’ekhe his Circle-mate into the hands of gunmen at the behest of Natelth sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen.

  Isa was helpless then; Kief’s will overrode her own. She was aware that he was seeing through her eyes, and that the words that she spoke, for all that the voice was hers, were his words.

  Her body bore Kief’s mind within it as she left her laboratory and returned to the sus-Peledaen town house, where her brother Na’e was finishing his breakfast and going over the morning messages from the orbital station.

  “Isa,” he said, surprised. “I thought that you were gone.”

  Isayana didn’t answer, except to pick up a silver jelly-knife from the breakfast table and drive it through his right eye into his brain. Then, speaking aloud, she said to the part of her mind that was Kiefen Diasul and not Isayana sus-Khalgath, “I will make a new body for you to fill, a fresh replicant seeded from the wreck of your corpse, so that our work may continue.”

  Kief’s mind fled back then, to his own body, leaving Isayana alone. “I see now,” she said, “that it’s one thing to suspect the truth, and something else to know it.”

  Then she summoned the household aiketen and told them, “Lord Natelth has met with an accident; see to it that his body is dealt with according to the customs of our family.”

  23:

  SUS-RADAL ASTEROID BASE FIRE-ON-THE-HILLTOPS NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER

  You’re safe now.” The lid of the stasis box closed over Arekhon, and he struggled vainly against panic for a drawn-out, excruciating moment—he had to get out, he had to push open the box, but his body didn’t have any strength left in it and he hurt too much even to move—before a grey lassitude swept over him and he was …

  Nowhere at all.

  I am. Here. I am here. I am here I am here I am here.

  Grey mist around him. Cold.

  A place, then. This place.

  The Void.

  This was the Void, and someone, once, had shown him the way to go through it.

  Look for the marks, and go through.

  Movement now, ahead of him in the mist. Movement and light. He stood and walked forward—this was the Void, where what he willed became what was real, and if he willed himself into health and wholeness then it would be so—and found the first Void-mark, and stepped through.

  The mist vanished. Arekhon stood on the observation deck of the asteroid base, looking out at the stars as he had when he and Maraganha set the Void-marks on Ophel. The starfield beyond the half-dome of armored glass was alight with flashes of energy and sudden bursts of colored light.

  “It’s beautiful,” said a voice at his elbow. He turned, and saw Ty standing there beside him, looking up at the stars with the light of the eiran silvering his face.

  “Yes,” Arekhon said. Part of him would always be sus-Peledaen, and the sus-Peledaen were star-lords above all; the glory outside the observation deck was part of his inheritance. “So beautiful it hurts to leave.”

  “People will die out there,” said another voice. “People have died.” Narin Iyal stood at his other side, and her face was full of an old sorrow. “They’ll die out there, and their ships will be their graves, because there’s nobody left to bring them home.”

  “Their lives go into the working,” Arekhon said. “Someone will bring them home.”

  “Not if it fails for lack of tending,” Narin said. “And who can tend a working over half a thousand years?”

  The question struck him like a knife into the heart. “I would,” he said, “if there were any way that a living man could do such a thing.”

  “Do you give us your word?” Ty asked. “Your life to the working, from now until the galaxy is mended?”

  “My life to the working,” he said. “I swear it.”

  Narin smiled then, and her square plain face was beautiful in the starlight. “Then our lives will go with you and keep you through all the years of the working, until the end of it brings us home. We will keep the working, with our lives, while you are gone.”

  He embraced her, and Ty embraced him, and they stood for a long while in companionship under the roof of stars. At last Narin said, “You have to go now, and see to the working. Live in honor, ‘Rekhe, and be well. I must r
ejoin my Circle.” ’Rekhe noticed then that when she talked her mouth did not move.

  A trickle of dried blood ran down Ty’s chest. “I have my family altars to attend, with at least one memorial tablet,” he said.

  Once again, the Void-marks shone brightly in the starfield beyond the glass. Arekhon withdrew reluctantly from the closeness of his friends, and stepped through.

  Aboard Fire-on-the-Hilltops, Lenyat Irao tore the headset from his ears. “Ow, dammit! That hurt!”

  “What?” Zeri asked.

  “Major noise.” He looked at the high-frequency direction-finding sensor, and touched the maneuvering jets to swing the Fire’s nose around, so that the cockpit windows pointed to one side. The needle on the sensor swung to centerline.

  Zeri pointed at the needle. “And that—?”

  “Energy burst. And that means …”

  Outside the Fire’s bridge windows, a pinprick of light appeared, blue at the center, then white, then large, larger, then fading back through red to darkness.

  “ … someone isn’t coming home,” Len finished.

  “What—who—was on that bearing?” Zeri asked.

  Len checked back through the ship-mind’s sensor readouts. “sus-Peledaen guardship Cold-Heart-of-Morning,” he said finally. “No going home for anyone now.”

  “I promised Arekhon that I would see the survivors back to safety on Ophel.” Karilen Estisk’s voice was courteous, but her expression was immovably stubborn. “And what I promised him, that I will do.”

  The sus-Radal asteroid base was an artificial construct. It had conference rooms, engineering spaces where power and life support were maintained, machine shops, and berthing compartments, as well as the infirmary. It was still unstocked and unmanned, nor were most services on-line, but what they had was good enough—in the aftermath of the space battle, a conference turned out to be sorely needed, and one of the upper rooms, adjacent to the observation deck, was finished and furnished.

  Representatives from the sus-Radal and sus-Dariv fleet elements, as well as the remnants of the Demaizen Circle and the leader of the sus-Radal construction team, had all gathered there for discussion and negotiations. An aiketh supplied uffa from the general mess, in cups with sus-Radal house crests. Len sat beside Zeri, his hand resting over hers on top of the table, between the sus-Radal and sus-Dariv sides, opposite Ty and Narin. Herin leaned against the wall, behind the remnants of the Demaizen Circle, and Maraganha stood beside him.

  Iulan Vai still sat on the sus-Radal side of the table, though from the way Captain Hafdorwen regarded her, Vai didn’t think she would be enjoying that honor for long after she returned to Hanilat. Stealing family charts and handing them over to the sus-Dariv was not something that Hafdorwen—nor, she suspected, Theledau himself—would take lightly.

  It doesn’t matter, Vai thought. I’m not planning to wait around for fleet-family justice anyhow. As soon as I hand over ’Rekhe’s stasis box to a really good medical center, Zeri’s cousin Herin and I are going to be long gone—to our own Circle and our own workings, somewhere a long way away from the great Magelords in the big city.

  At the moment, however, that resolve still left Vai with the problem of Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter. The black wing-shaped craft had been given to her by Theledau, and no one here, she resolved, had the authority to take it away from her. She needed the craft for the purpose of taking ’Rekhe home, and now she said as much.

  “He may be sus-Peledaen,” she said, “but he’s also Demaizen, and he’s never played anyone false.”

  “He’s Natelth sus-Peledaen’s own brother,” Winceyt said. “And that family is no friend to anybody here. There isn’t a person in this room who hasn’t lost family, friends, or livelihood to them.”

  “I’m as much sus-Dariv as you are,” Herin reminded him. “I’ve lost as much to the sus-Peledaen as anyone who wears the fleet-livery.

  But this man himself has done us no wrong. From what I’ve heard, he left his family altars years ago.”

  “Taking him to Eraasi, any one of us, would expose us to more danger,” Len said. “Why there? Aren’t there a hundred other worlds where he could be healed?”

  “My understanding is that there were promises given,” Herin said. “And isn’t it true, Syr Vai, that you yourself have urgent business there?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “Family business?” Fleet-Captain Hafdorwen asked. He was the spokesman for the sus-Radal, and had been watching Vai narrowly since the conference began.

  “Yes.”

  Fleet-Captain Hafdorwen sat back, and sipped his uffa. “That this base’s existence is compromised is due to you. I say that taking the lot of you back to Eraasi is the proper thing to do, all right—aboard my ship, to be turned directly over to house security.”

  “No, let her go,” Herin said. “She’s a Mage, like Arekhon sus-Peledaen, and they do their own work—so why not give the whole ship to the Mages? Who would risk their luck to do anything else?”

  “That’s not your decision to make,” said the sus-Radal construction boss. “It’s a family ship, and I say we should put our own crew on it and take it back to the family.”

  “Captain Estisk, syr.” Zeri sus-Dariv was far more polite than Vai had thought of being. Of course, Vai added to herself, she’s still fresh and well groomed by comparison with some of us in here—I look like I’ve been mud-wrestling with a mortgaunt. “Can you answer a question for me?”

  “Perhaps,” Karil said. “Or not—I have no answers for some things.”

  “Did you promise Lord Arekhon that you would take the Daughter back, and call her by name in the promise?”

  “I told you. I promised to take care of the survivors.”

  “Not people by name? Just ‘survivors’?”

  A reluctant half-growl. “No names.”

  “Then, if you’re willing, you can keep your promise by sharing your Ophelan charts and Void-marks with us. We’re all that’s left of the unbroken sus-Dariv, and we need a place where we can settle and carry out business, away from the grip of the sus-Peledaen.”

  “Arekhon would approve,” Maraganha added in her low-pitched, lightly accented voice. “Having the sus-Dariv on this side of the interstellar gap is one more thing to further the great working.”

  “Always the working,” said Karil. “I am sick to death and beyond of this working. It sucks the life out of everyone who touches it.” She sighed. “Very well—I will guide the sus-Dariv to Ophel. And you can bring who you like with you, your ships and your people, even those two that sit to one side and say nothing.”

  “Syr Egelt and Syr Hussav,” Zeri said. “They were in sus-Peledaen employ, but that’s no shame—they did their work honestly, and left it when the sus-Peledaen stopped working honestly with them.”

  “I will return to Eraasi,” Herin said. “Iulan etaze is returning, and I’m a Mage in her Circle now.”

  “That’s done, then,” said Vai. “If Captain Hafdorwen will provide a pilot for the Daughter for courtesy’s sake—and because I’m only qualified to handle a ship’s controls in normal space—then I think we part ways here, sus-Dariv and sus-Radal, for Ophel and Eraasi.”

  “The pilot will be mine,” Hafdorwen said. “And that makes the ship mine, and so honor is satisfied. Lord Arekhon will heal in the house of sus-Radal, and afterward Theledau sus-Radal himself can judge what should be done with him.”

  The sus-Dariv fleet was gone in the morning, with Karil Estisk acting as Pilot-Principal for them all. Vai watched their departure from the asteroid base’s control room. Then came time to load the stasis box into Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter as she sat in the landing bay. But when the construction workers arrived in the infirmary with a portable generator at the ready to maintain stasis until the box was hooked to ship’s power, they found the lid open and the box empty.

  “Didn’t anyone bother to stand watch?” Vai asked.

  “Apparently not,” Narin said. She was stoic as
always. “The best of plans can fail when the eiran pull them strongly enough awry, and the eiran pull strongly on ’Rehke.”

  “He’s gone to Ophel with Karil, most likely,” Ty said. “Then back to Entibor. His lover is still there, and if he told her that he would come back, he would do a great deal to keep his promise.”

  Narin turned, and walked back to Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter without a word. Vai followed a moment later.

  Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter departed later that same day, but without a stasis box on board. Captain Hafdorwen had indeed supplied a pilot, and the transit, while long, was unremarkable.

  Once across the interstellar gap, Vai, Herin, and Hafdorwen’s pilot took the Daughter’s own shuttle to Eastward-to-Dawning, as she orbited Eraasi near the sus-Radal shipyards.

  “I have to settle accounts with Thel somehow if I’m going to live on Eraasi and make myself a new Circle,” Vai said to Maraganha Hyfid before departing. “He’s going to have to build another asteroid base now that the old one is compromised, and that’s all my fault. On the other hand, Natelth sus-Peledaen and his most powerful Magelord are both dead, and the sus-Dariv are going to need a homeworlds trading partner once they’ve set up shop on Ophel, so with any luck he’ll think that the family’s gained more than it’s lost from what I’ve done.”

  “You’re a Magelord yourself,” Maraganha said. “You’ll have the luck.”

  Vai hoped that Maraganha was right. Thel had wasted no time in asking for his accounting, as it turned out; representatives of sus-Radal groundside security were waiting for Vai aboard Eastward-to-Dawning with instructions to convey her directly to the planet’s surface and thence to an interview with Theledau himself.