By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  “Why her?” Beka demanded. “And why do you need Eraasian to do it?”

  “Because she’s the technician who made the replicant.”

  IV. INNISH-KYL: COUNTRY HOUSE OF ADELFE

  ANEVERIAN; WARHAMMER

  SO FAR, so good, Gil thought as he looked out across the formal garden at the motley assortment of people brought together in one place by Lieutenant Jhunnei’s guest list. Doctor syn-Tavaite was still sticking close by him—probably because he represented the security of a familiar face in a noisy and variegated crowd, and one where she was very much a stranger.

  It’s a fine party, just the same. Nobody’s drunk, and nobody’s gotten into a fight with anybody else, and the food is holding out.

  You still have to talk with the Domina, though, he reminded himself. That was your whole reason for throwing this party in the first place.

  Gil straightened his shoulders and altered course slightly, so that his apparently casual stroll about the grounds would bring him into the Domina’s orbit. He wasn’t looking forward to this conversation, or to the task of convincing the Domina that she ought to hand over the flotilla she’d gathered—by whatever means—during her sojourn on Suivi Point. Nothing in Gil’s previous encounters with Beka Rosselin-Metadi, either directly or at a distance, had given him cause to expect a smooth and rational discussion on that particular subject.

  When he came a little closer to where Beka stood, he saw that she was already halfway to losing her temper over something. Her mouth was closed hard, and her blue eyes had a dangerous glint in them. When she spoke, however, her words were unexceptional.

  “D’Rugier—how pleasant to run into you. The gardens are beautiful at this time of year.”

  Gil made a half-bow. “My lady. You provide, as always, an ornament to nature’s beauty.”

  “Thank you,” said Beka. “But we have to talk, and not just about the herbaceous borders.”

  “As it pleases you.” Gil turned to syn-Tavaite. “I’m afraid I’ll have to abandon you for a few minutes, Doctor. The Domina and I have some private matters which require discussion.”

  He drew Beka aside. Might as well go for the direct approach, he decided after a moment of intense consideration. She’s in that kind of mood anyway.

  “My lady,” he said. “I was happy to learn you were still alive and free; and when you arrived, not alone but with a small flotilla—”

  She cut him off with a sharp gesture of one hand. “Later. What’s this I hear about your tame Mageworlder switching a replicant agent for my father’s personal aide?”

  “Doctor syn-Tavaite,” Gil said, “is a prisoner of war. And to the best of my knowledge, her role in replicating Commander Quetaya was limited to the creation of a duplicate body.”

  “The story’s true, then?”

  He sighed. “The information I have—it would seem so.”

  “Hell, death, and damnation … no wonder my warning message to Galcen got held up for so long that it didn’t do any good.”

  Her voice was light, almost flippant, but Gil had seen that expression on her face before, and it promised trouble. Violent, large-scale trouble, if the past was any indication.

  “There’s also some good news, my lady,” he said, before the pause could draw out too long. “Or at least, a strong rumor of good news.”

  “I could use some good news right now. What is it?”

  “Your father is quite possibly alive and fighting. A fleet of Space Force vessels using his name in their bridge-to-bridge chatter attacked Mageworlds units on Galcen, then made a run-to-jump for somewhere in the Gyfferan sector.”

  “Now that,” said Beka, “changes everything considerably. Are you planning to link up with him?”

  “The situation remains fluid, my lady.” Gil had first learned the virtues of that particular phrase during his tour as the General’s aide; with the right shade of inflection, it could be extended to cover anything from imminent military action to next week’s menu in the officers’ mess. “But since it also appears that the Mageworlders have decided to make Gyffer their next target—”

  “I can read the answer if it’s printed large enough. You’re heading for Gyffer and you want my ships.”

  “I wish you to place them under my command … yes.”

  She looked at him for a long moment without saying anything. Then she sighed. “Commodore, I have a headache. Parties give them to me, official parties give them to me even worse, and I am in no state to discuss who’s going to give what to whom and still be polite about it.”

  “My lady,” said Gil, “I deeply regret the necessity—”

  “I deeply regret your regret. Look, I have to get out of here before the Iron Crown pinches the top of my skull off. Let me make a nice official guest-of-honor-type departure and then slip back in again incognito. It’ll make talking business a whole lot easier.”

  LeSoit waited until Beka and Commodore Gil were out of earshot before turning to the Eraasian woman Gil had addressed as Doctor syn-Tavaite.

  “They’ll be talking for a while,” he said. “Let me show you around the buffet tables. Some of the stuff is a bit strange-looking if you haven’t traveled much on this side of the Net. But the winemelon is very good.”

  She accompanied him without protest. Nyls Jessan raised a curious eyebrow at being thus abandoned—How much, Lesoit wondered, does our Khesatan friend suspect?—but said nothing. LeSoit and syn-Tavaite made their way over to the buffet tables.

  “Doctor,” LeSoit said, as soon as talking became safe. He spoke in Eraasian. “Are you being treated well?”

  “The baronet treats me with all honor,” she replied in the same language. “But you—who are you, and why do you ask?”

  “Iekkenat Lisaiet. A friend, and one of those who wish for peace.”

  syn-Tavaite laughed; a bit regretfully, LeSoit thought. “Then you’re a man in the wrong time and the wrong place, Lisaiet. There’s no peace left in the galaxy.”

  “The pattern may not be finished yet,” he said. “Do you know Lord sus-Airaalin?”

  “The Grand Admiral? I’ve heard of him. Everyone has.”

  “Some of us are bound to him.” LeSoit paused. “Where do you stand, Doctor syn-Tavaite?”

  She seemed to draw away a little. “It doesn’t matter any longer,” she said. “I am combat-sworn to Baronet D’Rugier.”

  “Damn,” said LeSoit, in Galcenian. He’d lost the knack of profanity in his birth-tongue years ago, from lack of practice. “Somebody gave him some good advice, then.”

  “I do not know,” she said, in the same language. “But we fought in the old style, and I was defeated.”

  LeSoit frowned. That’s the nobility for you, right down to the bone. She and the baronet must get along like a pair of long-lost cousins. He switched back to Eraasian. “Couldn’t you at least manage to get yourself honorably killed?”

  “No,” she replied. “I couldn’t.”

  “You went out of body across the galaxy, seeking Master Ransome, and you came to a place you did not expect. Go there again.”

  Owen Rosselin-Metadi stood looking at the stranger. Not far away, his physical body lay outstretched on the ground beside that of the other, and Klea Santreny kept watch over them both.

  “How?” Owen asked. He understood all too well what the other man was talking about: his out-of-body search for the master of the Guild. He’d found Errec Ransome before he was done, but not before going astray in time as well as space. “It was an accident the first time.”

  “This time it will not be. You were there before; seek yourself, and the others.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “As far as I may,” said the other. “In ways that I can.”

  “Then I’ll try it.”

  Owen allowed his mind to go blank and still, as he had done that night on Nammerin—a long time ago, it felt like, though he knew better—and plucked from out of the stillness the point of light that had called to h
im once before. He took the dot of light and added another to it, and another and another, until a picture emerged, and from the picture, a whole world, and a single place in that world.

  Home.

  He stood on a flat surface open to the stars, full of shadowy leaves and pale waxy flowers giving up their fragrance to the night: the rooftop terrace of his family’s house in the Galcenian Uplands. Only his own point of vantage had changed, putting him at the south end of the terrace near the herbs and salad greens of the kitchen garden. The Domina, his mother, stood waiting among the flowers as before. And in a moment, her patience was rewarded.

  At the other end of the garden, near the low parapet looking out to the north, the darkness thickened and seemed for a moment to become solid. A figure stepped forward out of the darkness, a muscular man somewhat under the medium height, with curly dark hair going to grey.

  “My lady,” he said. His Galcenian was fluent, but strongly accented. “It is good of you to meet with me.”

  Owen’s mother smiled. “I gave up hoping for goodness long ago,” she said. “I thought that justice would serve me well enough instead. But since it hasn’t—my lord sus-Airaalin, let us talk.”

  “We’re being watched.”

  “No, this place is secure.”

  “I think not.”

  The stranger began to walk away from where Owen stood watching, toward another spot. He looked down, then suddenly laughed. He reached and pulled up the furry shape of a tiny long-nosed kwoufer. Uncle Hairy, Owen thought with relief and amusement as he recognized the family pet. He’d lived so long away from his childhood home—first at the Retreat, and then all over the galaxy—that he’d forgotten the little creature’s fondness for nocturnal wanderings.

  A moment later, Perada laughed as well. “You don’t need to worry about Uncle Hairy. He’ll keep our secrets.”

  “So he shall,” sus-Airaalin replied, still chuckling as he set the kwoufer loose again. “So he shall.”

  “To business, then,” Perada said. “I will speak frankly, my lord sus-Airaalin: my foremost desire is to avoid another war. The last one was bad enough.”

  “There, we are in agreement,” sus-Airaalin said. “But I want something other than a lack of war. We have had that for too long already. Now I want peace.”

  “Peace comes in many forms.”

  “And well I know it, my lady!” sus-Airaalin paused, seemingly to master his temper, then went on. “If your Adepts have their way, the only peace they will grant to my people is the peace of the grave.”

  Perada nodded gravely. “That thought has occurred to me as well. And if it had pleased me, I would not be talking with you now. Explain, then, my lord: what is this peace you want?”

  “I want my people to live their own lives, free of occupation and alien governors,” sus-Airaalin said at once. “I want the Mage-Circles to practice according to the old ways. And I want the merchants on the Eraasian side of the Gap Between to join as full partners in the commerce of the galaxy.”

  “That much seems reasonable,” Perada said. “More to the point, enough time has passed that it may even be possible.”

  “I hope you are right, my lady,” said sus-Airaalin. “Already, there are divisions—factions, if you will—among my people. Advocates of peace, as I have described it to you, and others whose despair has already led them elsewhere. In essence, a war party. They have a great deal of power in the homeworlds, since their goal is one that even the unsophisticated can see and understand.”

  “You want my help to keep them at bay, then.”

  “Yes. I ask you to use your influence to lift the sanctions on the homeworlds, so that a ruinous war won’t be our only choice. Give us by vote what we would otherwise take by force.”

  Perada looked at him—her expression at that moment reminded Owen very much of his sister Beka. “Threats, my lord?”

  sus-Airaalin spread out empty hands. “Not from me. I tell only what I fear to be true.”

  “I have to act in the best interest of the Republic,” Perada said. “My own preferences come, if anything, a distant second.”

  “Nothing I ask will do your worlds any harm. Only let the vanquished in this last great war become members of the Republic. We will live by your law if we can live as your equals.”

  There was a long pause; then the Domina seemed to let out a long sigh. “I will do it, my lord sus-Airaalin. On one condition: I want you to swear yourself to me, personally. I want the assurance that you are my man.”

  sus-Airaalin laughed briefly. “We have common goals. There’s no need for an oath.”

  “Nevertheless,” said the Domina. “Swear to me.”

  “I come as a beggar to the rich man’s door,” sus-Airaalin said. “I have no choice but to swear. But if I swear, you must swear also. Among my people, such oaths go both ways.”

  “Among mine also,” said Perada. “Let us begin.”

  sus-Airaalin knelt and raised his hands palm to palm before him. Perada took his hands between her own.

  “Do you swear,” she said, “to be my man in all things, to obey my orders and do my bidding, with your life, your fortune, and your hope?”

  “My lady, do you swear to defend me in honor, to raise me up or cast me down according to merit, and to save my people?”

  “I so swear,” Perada said.

  “I so swear,” sus-Airaalin echoed.

  Their voices filled Owen’s mind … I so swear—I so swear—I so swear … reverberating while the night grew blacker and thicker around him, until he fell back into his body and opened his eyes under the force-dome of the party on Innish-Kyl.

  Beka Rosselin-Metadi dropped the Iron Crown onto her bunk to put away later. Nobody was going to break into her cabin aboard Warhammer and carry anything off. The private landing field on Adelfe Aneverian’s country estate was almost as safe as high orbit, and a good deal more convenient to the commodore’s party.

  She stripped off her clothes and let them lie on the cabin deckplates. All that stuff could wait for later, too. Next the formal braids came free, and after that, a brisk session with the colorbrush changed her hair from its natural pale yellow to a rather ordinary brown. She pulled the hair into a loose queue at the nape of her neck, tied with a black velvet ribbon.

  Incognito, she reflected, was a handy thing. Taking on another persona might not fool anybody, but it did allow for more open and honest discussion—especially since custom demanded that no one admit to having penetrated the disguise. If she went back to Commodore Gil’s party as Tamekep Portree, then “Captain Portree” she would remain throughout the rest of the evening, even among those who knew the truth.

  Beka went over to a section of her wardrobe that hadn’t been touched since the outbreak of war. Item by item she pulled out the new garments: the ruffles and lace and red optical-plastic eye patch that changed her from the Domina of Lost Entibor into a Mandeynan gentleman of dubious ancestry and a taste for violence and low company.

  She’d lived for a long time as Captain Portree. Some of his habits were probably going to be hers forever, like carrying a knife in a sheath up her sleeve and wearing a blaster in a tied-down holster on her hip. How much of the Mandeynan’s personality had been hers to start with was something she preferred not to think about for very long—but even that had its uses.

  Not a pleasant person, is Tarnekep Portree, she thought. Makes a lot of people nervous. Maybe he’ll keep the commodore far enough off balance that he won’t ask for too much, or brace me enough that I don’t end up handing over everything.

  Beka paused in placing the eye patch.

  It never hurts, though, to get in a little practice first. And I’ve got just the person to try it on.

  She put the patch in the pocket of her long-coat and drew the blaster. She left the captain’s cabin and went to the berthing compartment that had been, since lifting from Suivi, a cell for Councillor Tarveet of Pleyver. The lock was keyed to her ID; she palmed it, and the door
slid aside.

  Tarveet was sitting on the bottom bunk. His clothes were torn and dirty—they’d been prime examples of fashionable tailoring, Beka remembered, when he wore them to grace her execution—and he’d gone long enough without a depilatory that his loose jaw was thick with stubble. Blaster in hand, she walked in and keyed open the binders that held his wrists.

  “Come on out, you,” she said. “I’ve let you slide for long enough. We’re going to have a talk.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she slammed her weapon back into the holster, turned her back on him, and walked away. If he jumps me, I can kill him. If I’m lucky, he’ll jump me. But nothing happened except that she heard, after a few seconds, the sounds of Tarveet’s footsteps on the deckplates behind her as she made her way back to the ’Hammer’s common room.

  She took a seat there on one side of the scarred table, the same place she’d sat on the night in Waycross when Errec Ransome gave her the news of her mother’s death. She pointed at the chair opposite.

  “Sit,” she said. “Or not, your choice. There’s cha’a over there in the galley if you’re thirsty, but I’m damned if I’ll get it for you.”

  Tarveet moved to stand by the chair, but he didn’t sit down.

  “To what do I owe the honor?”

  “I want to talk to you,” Beka replied, gazing at him steadily.

  “Why?” He raised one hand in a tired-looking gesture, and let it fall. “We’re past the point where either of us has anything to offer the other.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But you can tell me one thing right now for starters: why did you want me dead?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” Tarveet sounded as weary as he looked. “I didn’t want you dead. I wanted Pleyver to live. You, as a person, an individual, you’re nothing. I wouldn’t spend a half-ducat on you if you weren’t a threat to Pleyver.” He turned fully toward her and leaned forward. “Do you know what a war looks like? It isn’t all pretty explosions and clean energy beams in space. It’s stinking mud and starvation and pain and blood, and it’s visited on the common people, the people who sit on the ground and try to get through one day at a time. They don’t care who they pay taxes to—they just want to be alive to pay them. Look at you, Domina of Entibor. Where is Entibor now? Where are its people? Dead and damned. All through pride. Because your mother didn’t want to lose her power. Power’s what this is all about.