Finally the Hastur nodded, albeit slowly and reluctantly, annoyance mixing with approval on his face. “You sound like your foster-father. And much as I hate it, I have to admit what you’re saying makes entirely too much sense. But chiya, what you suggest would take a full working circle to accomplish. The Towers are stretched so thin right now that they can barely staff the relays. Aldaran and Neskaya are empty but for the kyrri.” Now why did the Hastur’s statement sit so oddly with her?
“I know, Uncle. But don’t you think you should find out for sure before you sentence Officer Petrie to death?” You should know by now that the Terranan won’t just stand idly by and let you execute her. But maybe that’s exactly what whoever is orchestrating this disaster wants.
He sighed heavily, burying his face in his hands. For the briefest of instants, the Hastur looked very old and very weary. “I can give you until we inter Coryn Ardais to come to me with proof, Miralys. The mourning period gives me an excuse to defer an execution. But after that I’m not sure I’ll be able to stave off the Council.” He took a signet ring from a drawer in his desk and pressed it into her hand. “This will give you the authority you need to ask questions. But remember, you are working on my behalf and not for the Terranan.”
“A seven-day.”
“That’s all I can promise you, chiya. I’m sorry.”
~o0o~
All Miralys really wanted to do was to go back to her rooms, drink enough wine to forget the horrors of what had happened that night, and sleep off the pain in her skull, or maybe just die, but that wasn’t what she did.
The Hastur’s signet got Miralys access to the cell where Jennifer Petrie was being held. From the look of the woman, slumped against one age-darkened wall, the guards outside the cell really hadn’t even needed to lock the door.
Officer Petrie raised lifeless, red-rimmed eyes at the sound of Miralys’s footsteps. Miralys didn’t need the Ridenow Gift to read what the other woman was feeling. Guilt. Shame. Grief. Confusion.
“I’m sorry, Miralys. Oh God, I’m so sorry. I killed him. I killed that boy.” Her voice was colorless. She sounded like a corpse reciting a list of its crimes. “I don’t even know why I brought my sidearm with me from the Legation. It’s against regulations. I know it’s against regulations. But I did it.”
“What happened, Jennifer?” Miralys had expected to feel anger. This was Coryn Ardais’s killer, however much or little responsibility she bore for her actions. But what Miralys mostly felt was pity.
“I don’t know.” Officer Petrie spread her hands helplessly. “I don’t know. The boy tried to start a fight with me. He had a knife. He was just a kid. I know how to de-escalate a situation. I’ve had the training, you know. But I pulled my sidearm on that boy and I killed him.” Officer Petrie didn’t even try to stop the tears that ran down her cheeks, didn’t try to wipe them away. Her next words gave Miralys chills. “It was like some kind of out-of-body experience. I did it. I remember doing it. I just wish I understood why.”
~o0o~
Trade City and the Terran Zone were unnervingly empty the next morning. Most of the Darkovan-owned businesses in Trade City were shuttered, and the few whose doors were open sported hand-lettered placards in rough Standard declaring , with varying degrees of politeness, that the establishment didn’t serve Terranan. None of the Darkovan staff at the spaceport or the Legation, save Miralys, had reported for duty. The Dockworkers’ Union had called a special meeting later that afternoon to discuss their response to the situation. The Darkovans had been suspicious of the guilds and unions initially, but once they’d understood what a union was, they’d rushed to embrace them.
Whatever the Dockworkers’ Union decided was liable to cause a major headache for the Portmaster, but it would be small potatoes compared to what would happen if the situation with Officer Petrie were allowed to fester unresolved for long.
Violence.
The only real question was whether the first salvo would come from the Terranan side or from the Darkovan.
When Neemah Bell came to beard Miralys in her office, she’d been staring at the same document for the last forty-five minutes, trying to force her battered brain to parse the colorless, passionless Terranan terminology. The Interim Legate’s arrival was almost a relief, despite the deep frown on her face.
“I heard what you did last night, Miralys,” she said. “Talking to Officer Petrie. I appreciate your loyalty, but I don’t need you playing girl detective on my behalf.” I have enough problems as it is. Miralys had tried to avoid reading Neemah Bell’s mind, but her surface thoughts were so clear she might have shouted them from the top of Comyn Castle.
Miralys buried her aching head in her hands. “I know. I’m sorry. I thought I could find out something we didn’t already know.”
“Did you?”
“No.” At least not that I can tell you. I’m sorry. Never before had the promise—the blood oath—she’d made to old Keeper Ruanna felt like such a burden. Neemah Bell deserved to know that someone might be wielding laran against her.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the Interim Legate misread Miralys’s expression. “Don’t think me ungrateful, Miralys. I can’t imagine what this must be like for you, caught betwixt and between like this. That you would even think to help us—did you know Coryn Ardais well?”
“Hardly at all. I’d seen him once or twice at Comyn Castle. He would have been a small boy when I left Darkover for Vainwal.” She took a deep, steadying breath, shoving the image of Coryn lying dead on the cobbles to the back of her mind. “It’s just that I have this gut feeling that there must be more to this story than we’re seeing.” It wasn’t a violation of her oath to say that much.
“Be that as it may, this is a matter for Legation Security and whatever investigators the Sector Field Office decides to send.”
By the time they get here, Jennifer Petrie may well be dead. What Miralys said aloud was, “The friends who were with Coryn Ardais last night won’t talk to a Terranan security officer. But they might be willing to talk to me.”
~o0o~
Coryn Ardais’s friends were easy enough to find. With the closure of the tavern across from Miralys’s hostel, they’d decamped to the Rabbit-horn and Barrel in Old City to drown their grief for their friend in endless tankards of beer. Miralys knew their type: younger sons with far more money and time than purpose and good sense.
The two boys were uncomfortable at the thought of talking to an unaccompanied woman, and warier still about Miralys’s association with the Terranan, but the signet the Hastur had given her two nights before gained her their reluctant cooperation.
The story they told was much like Officer Petrie’s. Coryn had no real love for the Terranan, but he was no revolutionary and he certainly wasn’t violent. He hadn’t been deep in his cups on the night he’d been killed. And yet, halfway through a game of cards, he’d suddenly pulled his belt knife and jumped to his feet to confront a Terranan security officer.
“I know this sounds mad, domna,” the younger of the two said into his beer, refusing to meet her eyes, “but it was like those old stories, the ones where the leroni used their gifts to control people.”
The older one nodded. “The look on Coryn’s face gave me chills. It was almost like he wasn’t even there in his body.”
It was at that moment that the Hastur’s words came back to her: “Aldaran and Neskaya are empty but for the kyrri.” But Amalie said Byrna Castamir had stayed behind at Neskaya.
Byrna Castamir had the Alton Gift of forced rapport, and she knew well how to use the strength of the circle—and Miralys’s Ridenow Gift in particular—to amplify it. In the days when Miralys had still been at Neskaya, the circle had used that knack to alter the memory of a particularly troublesome Terranan.
But they couldn’t possibly use me that way without my knowledge or consent.
Could they?
She remembered those strange moments of blurred vision, that unnerving sense of someo
ne else looking out from behind her eyes. With Kyro Aillard. With Jennifer Petrie. She remembered suffocating sense of wrongness that had awakened her from a sound sleep and drawn her down to the street the night Coryn Ardais was killed.
She remembered the vision she’d had of Coryn and Officer Petrie as marionettes dangling from strings. Perhaps Coryn and Officer Petrie hadn’t been the only puppets in this little drama.
What was it she’d heard Donal say when he thought she was still unconscious? ‘She wasn’t supposed to get hurt.’
The splitting headache she’d nursed for the last two days could as easily be a reaction-headache as a concussion.
But surely this couldn’t be any more than crazy speculation. Even if Byrna Castamir were in Thendara, for the remnant of the Neskaya Circle to have planned anything like this, Byrna and Amalie and Donal would have had to have known Miralys was coming home to Darkover.
Or they could have brought me home.
Miralys muttered what she hoped was a coherent excuse to the boys and got to her feet.
As soon as she reached the street, she broke into a run.
~o0o~
Miralys barged into the Interim Legate’s office without ceremony and in violation of all protocol, Neemah Bell’s secretary trailing behind her shouting useless and probably meaningless threats. Finally the man leapt in front of Miralys and tried to block the door. “You can’t just go in there!”
“Watch me.” Miralys pushed him aside and walked past, putting a just a touch of laran into the shove.
Fortunately Neemah Bell was alone. Miralys wasn’t sure what she would have done had the Interim Legate been in a meeting.
“Miralys!” Neemah Bell studied Miralys’s face and frowned. Miralys wondered what the other woman saw there. “Are you all right? We’re not supposed to meet until tomorrow morning...”
“Am I all right? Yes. No. I’m not sure. But there’s something I need to know. Why did you bring me here from Idyllwild?”
The other woman’s brow furrowed with consternation. “I told you that day at the spaceport. Your qualifications—”
“No.” Miralys knew her voice was too loud, knew she must sound half-mad, could ‘hear’ the worry mixed with fear in Neemah Bell’s surface thoughts. The Interim Legate moved to put her polished wood desk between herself and Miralys. “I didn’t apply for the post, and you had plenty of possible candidates right here on Darkover. Hell, Domenic MacAran was Legate Hamilton’s translator for twenty years, and I’m sure he would have happily stayed on.”
“Domenic MacAran doesn’t have your academic background. Miralys, why don’t you calm down? Have a seat. I’ll make you some tea. We can talk about this later.” Neemah Bell was an inch from summoning Security. Miralys could feel it. It didn’t matter.
“Domenic MacAran knows a lot more about the political situation here than I do. He’s lived it. For the last twelve years I’ve only read about it from the comfort of various places off-world. And Domenic wouldn’t have been a political liability the way I am.”
The Interim Legate just stared at her.
“Neemah, I’m a woman. You’re too savvy not to recognize the implications of that here on Darkover. It doesn’t matter what degrees I do or don’t have. You’d have been far better off walking into the Comyn Castle with a man at your side—any man, even if he was low-class and stupid—and you must know that. So I ask you again: why me?”
Neemah Bell seemed to shake herself. “I—I saw your file in the Cultural Reconciliation database and it was...I guess it was a gut feeling.” She sat down hard in her desk chair, blinking like someone emerging from a dream. “I don’t know—”
Miralys didn’t hear the rest of that sentence because that was when her vision blurred.
“No,” she snarled, slamming down her psychic barriers and forcing herself to look away from the Interim Legate. Her neck muscles cramped with the effort “Not today. Not this time.”
Even through her shields Miralys could feel the howling, killing rage on the other end of that psychic connection.
Miralys dared to follow that connection with a tendril of thought. The person at the other end slammed down her own barriers, but not quite fast enough.
Miralys knew where they were.
~o0o~
Legend had it that Ashara’s Tower had stood for centuries before the founding of the city of Thendara itself, that Comyn Castle had been built around the Tower and not the other way around. Legend also had it that—among other things—Ashara’s Tower was cursed. Perhaps that was why the small circle working in Thendara chose to use what everyone referred to as the new New Tower, leaving Ashara’s tower to the kyrri and the birds that nested in the rafters.
And, it seemed now, to a renegade circle hell-bent on destroying what fragile relationship the Darkovans and the Terranan had managed to build over the years.
The corridors in this part of Comyn Castle were empty, and Miralys passed easily enough through the shields guarding the threshold to the Tower. She’d long ago learned the knack of it at Neskaya.
The stone walls of the tower were dark with age, and the tapestries and furnishings of the Tower time-faded and clearly centuries old, but the Tower did not look unoccupied. On the contrary, the floors were freshly swept, and someone had thrown a still-damp cloak across a chair.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, Miralys mounted the stairs to the Tower’s Working Room. She wished she could believe that she didn’t already know what she would find there.
A kyrri descending the stairs gave her a look that was more hostile than curious when it passed her, but it made no move to bar Miralys’s way.
~o0o~
The Working Room in Ashara’s Tower was much like its sister at Neskaya. The thick rugs, the matrix screens, the wide circular bench in the center of the room. For just a moment, despite her anger and her terror, Miralys felt a stab of homesickness so intense she thought her knees might buckle. Funny to be homesick right here at home. She had to work to suppress a bubble of hysterical laughter.
She’d hoped without really hoping that the circular bench would be unoccupied, but it wasn’t. She’d hoped the forms occupying the bench would be unfamiliar, but they weren’t.
Amalie. Donal. Byrna Castamir, thinner and grayer than Miralys remembered her, and with skin like worn parchment. Miralys could feel the rapport linking them as though it were a physical thing. It called to her like a river to a single drop of water, falling.
Byrna Castamir opened faded blue eyes. “Chiya,” she said. “You’ve come home.” Whether she’d spoken mentally or aloud, Miralys couldn’t have said. Byrna’s words seemed to resonate in her bones. Byrna held out her hands.
“Did you do this? Are you the ones who orchestrated Coryn Ardais’s death? Are you trying to turn the Council against the Terranan?” Miralys spoke aloud, trying to close her mind to the irresistible pull of the circle’s rapport. It had been so long since she’d felt that kind of acceptance, that kind of unconditional love. “Have you been using my Gift all this time without my knowledge?”
She remembered Jennifer Petrie’s face, that night in the cell. She remembered Coryn Ardais, falling to the cobblestoned street, dead. Both of them no more than puppets in a play.
His death is a tragedy. That was Amalie, her mental “voice” like cool water, just as it had always been in the days Miralys had worked as part of the Neskaya Circle. But it was necessary. As necessary as a soldier’s death in war.
All Miralys could get out around the tears crowding her throat was a single word. “Why?”
The images came in a torrent. Miralys gasped for air, as though she were drowning in water and not in thought.
Terranan tourists, descending like locusts, wearing their contempt for anyone with eyes to see. The Towers, empty, tapestries crumbling into dust on their walls.
Miralys herself, on the day she left Neskaya. A tall, thin girl with a head full of red curls, with a Terranan-style pack over one shoulder. Holdin
g herself determinedly erect, with her hands clenched together so they wouldn’t shake.
Give the Terranan another century here and there won’t be anything left of us to call Darkovan. Was it Byrna or Amalie or Donal who spoke?
Tears pricked the corners of her eyes in the here-and-now. Miralys pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “You used me,” Miralys shouted aloud. “You manipulated Neemah Bell into bringing me home and you used my Gift to do this!” And then another horrible thought occurred to her. Legates aren’t supposed to drop dead while playing cards on a restday afternoon. “Legate Hamilton. Did you—did the circle kill him?” It would have been as nothing for a trained monitor to simply stop his heart.
We are fighting for our survival, Amalie said, all sternness now. There will be a few casualties.
When Miralys met Byrna’s faded eyes, Byrna looked away. Legate Hamilton was an old man. Older even than the Hastur.
The Terranan have no right to seduce our children! That was Donal, rough edges with a core of solid stone, just as she remembered him. They lured you away into that Empire of theirs, you and so many others. How long until there are no more Keepers left to bind the circles together?
They didn’t take me. And oh, it had been years, since Miralys had ‘spoken’ this way, years since she’d fallen headlong into the acceptance of a circle’s rapport. It felt like coming home, and she almost hated them for it. They didn’t even lure me. I chose.
Into the circle’s rapport, she cast the memory of how suffocated she’d felt at Neskaya, the memory of how desperate she’d been for the privacy of her own mind. The relief, when she’d stepped onto the Terranan shuttle that took her away from Darkover for the first time in her life, had been so profound Miralys had nearly wept.
Miralys felt Byrna’s horror but Amalie and Donal stood firm. Without the Terranan, you would have been happy with us.
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