“I must confess,” Elek said after a sip of wine, “that I have never heard of the League of Unallied Shippers.”
Seyo laughed. “They’re my own invention. And empty, at the moment. But I have one family of star-lords who will be the core of the movement, and another who will join. More families will come later, and faults will develop in their cozy system. Suspicion will grow from there until the first atrocity will make everyone call for blood.”
Jaf looked at Seyo dubiously. “Who guarantees that we’ll get an atrocity when we need one?”
“Such things can be arranged,” said Seyo. “I’ve talked with a fleet-family pensioner or two, and I have all the details of their little games. A ship will vanish, and its crew with it—the work of outlaw raiders, undoubtedly, the sort of rascals that the fleet-families hunt down themselves whenever they get the chance. Another ship, from another family, will arrive shortly after with the missing cargo, and not be able to explain how they got it. The rest—” Seyo shrugged. “It’s all in the play of the hand.”
“A clever plan,” Elek conceded. “But how do you intend to implement it?”
“Two faked cargoes,” Seyo explained. “Observe. A family—sus-Peledaen for example—accepts and transports a load. It is all serial-marked material, and a copy of the manifest stays at their offices. But that cargo—manifested, noted, inventoried, and logged though it may be—never actually goes aboard. What does go on that sus-Peledaen ship in those boxes is a bomb, timed to remove that ship without a trace during its transit through the Void.”
Elek began to smile. “I see. And I take it that the cargo that should have gone aboard the sus-Peledaen ship is actually aboard the craft of one of the families in your League of Unallied Shippers?”
“Exactly,” said Seyo. “They take off with it, all unknowing. When they arrive at their destination, they have with them the cargo they loaded aboard—but the firm they contracted to deliver it to has gone out of business! They follow customary practice and sell that cargo to the highest bidder, at which time the serial numbers are revealed. The sus-Peledaen find out—how could they not, since we’ll be ready to tell them if necessary? —and the Unallied Shipper’s logs are examined. They do not bear the signatures for incidents of piracy and boarding. In fact, the ship’s captain and crew deny having seen the other craft, far less stealing from them.”
“Tricky,” said Jaf approvingly.
“It gets better,” Seyo assured him. “The fleet-families will have started building warships by then, and they’ll be eager to use them. Once one family loses a ship to another—or thinks it does—they’ll feel honor-bound to fight.”
The vee-craft and the armed flyer had come from the west, or at least had returned in that direction after ambushing the ground vehicles. Garrod considered the possibilities for a while, and turned his footsteps east. He hiked parallel to the road, keeping it in sight but being careful to stay off of it, as the days stretched into a week.
One night, a red glow suffused the sky to the east. To Garrod, it looked like a distant city burning. The road wasn’t deserted after that. Vehicles remained few, but there was a steady flow of foot traffic—people, young and old, carrying all that they possessed, walking with a trudging hopelessness, their eyes fixed on the road ahead of them.
Refugees, Garrod thought. Eraasi had not experienced the phenomenon during his lifetime, but he had seen pictures and had read the historical accounts.
He pondered the situation for some time. The way of caution would be to return at once through the Void to Eraasi—he had already made enough observations to prove his point about the existence of living worlds on the far side of the interstellar gap. But he had not yet gained all the information he needed to make return navigation sure. Nor had he broken his family altars in order to be cautious.
That evening after dark, he buried most of his gear beneath a pile of stones a little distance off the road, and approached a small group of refugees. He hoped that in the general confusion his lack of language skills wouldn’t work against him. If he approached someone sufficiently downhearted, he would not himself be in great physical danger.
He chose to approach a group of three—a woman carrying an infant child, and an older man, perhaps the woman’s father—as they camped, ragged and dirty, beside a stone wall near the roadside. He observed them from a distance first, sizing them up as he waited outside the circle of light from their fire.
He was close enough to hear them talking. He didn’t recognize the language, which was unsurprising; nevertheless, he derived a certain gratification from noting that all the sounds they produced fell within the known capabilities of the human vocal apparatus. He was considering how to approach their camp without seeming vulnerable or worth robbing, but at the same time without appearing threatening, when matters moved beyond his control.
A younger man entered the camp from the direction of the road. He wore clean clothing in a single color—livery of some sort, Garrod suspected, like that worn in the fleet-families—and held an object in his right hand that Garrod considered likely to be a weapon. He spoke sharply, in a loud tone of voice, and gestured with the weapon-object.
The young woman screamed, then began to cry softly, cuddling her baby. The older man spoke in reply, hands clasped in front of him, eyes on the ground.
The young man stepped up beside the older one, and placed the weapon against the other’s head. He repeated his command, loudly but briefly. The older man began to speak again, a soft, tumbling rush of words. To Garrod it seemed that he was begging for mercy, or perhaps praying to an unseen deity.
There comes a time to observe, Garrod thought, and another to act.
He stepped forward and smashed his staff against the young man’s back, parallel to the ground, about the level where the fellow’s kidneys would be if he were human. The young man flung his arms wide, his head back, and grunted with pain. Garrod put his staff in front of the other’s neck, and pulled backward.
The weapon in the man’s hand fired a beam of greenish light. Grass and brush smouldered where the line of light touched. Garrod continued to pull. The man went limp. The weapon stopped glowing and dropped from his hand.
Garrod waited another slow count to make sure the man was dead, then released him. The body slumped to the ground. Then Garrod stopped, picked up the weapon, and slid it into his belt. The front end was hot to the touch.
The older man was still standing before him, eyes closed, continuing his prayer. Garrod spoke, in slow, careful Eraasian, putting all the strength of his personality behind the words, so that his intent might carry even if the words did not make sense:
“You are safe,” he said. “I am a friend.”
The older man stopped talking, and looked up. He saw Garrod standing, staff in hand, and the body on the ground. The man spoke, but Garrod didn’t understand him.
The Magelord reached slowly into his pocket and pulled out a stick of trail-candy—the high-energy kind with plenty of nuts and fruit in it. He peeled back the silvery wrapping and broke the stick in half, offering one part to the man. Then he raised his own half to his lips, took a bite, chewed, and swallowed, to show that it was food and not poisonous.
Or I assume not, Garrod thought. These people are like me. The Sundering divided us, but they have not changed so much since then to look at—how much could they have changed internally, and still not have it show?
The man tasted Garrod’s offering, tentatively. Then his face lit with a smile. He called out softly, one word. Garrod assumed it was the woman’s name.
The woman—no more than a girl, really—appeared from the shadows, the child in her arms, and accepted the bar of trail-candy from the older man. She looked down at where their late assailant lay. Then she walked over and spat in his face.
The man turned to Garrod. He spoke. Garrod put on his best puzzled expression and cocked his head to one side, hoping that the man would take his meaning. He said, “I’m sorry, but I don’
t speak your language.”
“Ah,” the man said. He made a drinking gesture with his hand, and pantomimed taking a pull from a bottle.
Garrod echoed his gesture. The man took a bottle from his coat pocket and handed it across to Garrod. The Magelord opened it, tilted it back, and drank.
It wasn’t water. This was a potent liquor. It burned. Garrod sputtered, his eyes streaming tears, and handed the bottle back. The man laughed, and put an arm around the Mage’s shoulders.
“I think,” said Garrod, as soon as his head had cleared, “that we’ve found a basis for communication.”
Later that night he helped bury the young man’s body in the woods. By morning, the four of them were walking on together, and Garrod was making his first progress at learning their language. He knew their names—the man was called Hujerie and the woman Saral, and the baby answered to the name, or perhaps the endearment, of Minnin—and they knew his, though their pronunciation was odd.
No odder than my pronunciation of theirs, Garrod thought.
They were going to a place called Raske, he learned, and the land around them was called Tulbith.
The world, so he understood the man to say, was called Entibor.
23:
Year 1124 E. R.
ERAASIAN SPACE: SUS-PELEDAEN SHIP RAIN-ON-DARK-WATER
ERAASI: HANILAT
The guardship Rain-on-Dark-Water loomed up, mountain-high, in her construction cradle at the sus-Peledaen orbital yard. Elaeli stood on the cradle’s embarkation platform, taking in the pleasing sight. She’d been the Rain’s Pilot-Principal for almost a month now, since returning to Eraasi with syn-Evarat and Wind-on-the-Mountain, and she was eager to see the sleek and powerful vessel come out of the construction phase for good.
Pilot-Principal on a new-built ship was a prize in itself, an assignment that marked her out as one of the family’s up-and-comers. She contemplated the long upward slope of the Rain’s matte-black side, and allowed herself to imagine her future career.
From Pilot-Principal to Command-Tertiary was a gap that no more than a few in each generation would cross; she could serve the family in her present rank for three decades or more, and be counted among those who’d had a good career in the fleet. But if she ever did achieve that first level of command, then all the others became possible as well: Captain, Convoy-Captain—even, someday, Fleet-Captain, with authority subordinate only to Natelth sus-Peledaen himself.
Natelth’s younger brother, to whom she owed her present good fortune, was the reason she was waiting here on the embarkation platform. The lifter-shuttle that climbed like a cog railway up the mountain of the ship’s side had delivered two carloads of personnel to the Rain‘s main hatch already. ’Rekhe was, not surprisingly, late.
The door on the far side of the docking platform slid open. Elaeli turned her head quickly in the direction of the noise. Yes, it was Arekhon, dressed in the plain black and white that he had affected ever since leaving the fleet to join Garrod’s Circle.
She saw at once that he had changed since their farewell at the Court of Two Colors. His hair was the same sleek black as it had always been, with no trace yet of the early silver that sometimes came with Magework, but clearly something had happened during her absence. He looked older, and the hint of mischief that had always lurked in his grey eyes was muted.
He smiled when he saw her—the smile was the same, at least—and took both her hands in his.
“Ela,” he said. He glanced at her insignia and cocked an eyebrow. “Pilot-Principal … that’s new.”
“It came with my transfer to the Rain,” she said. “Syn-Evarat pushed for it, but I think it was your recommendation for adoption that finished the job.”
“Syn-Evarat’s a good man.” Arekhon paused. “What’s the Rain’s captain like?”
She thought for a moment. “I haven’t worked with her for more than a couple of weeks, and we’re still in the cradle. But I’d say—steady. I don’t know anything more than that.”
“Steadiness is what we need,” he said.
She glanced at him sharply. “Need for what?”
“That’s why I came here. Are your quarters safe to talk in?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“Then let’s go there,” he said.
“And talk?”
Arekhon smiled again, and this time the mischief came back to his eyes. He lifted both her hands to his mouth and kissed them. “That too.”
For Theledau syn-Grevi it was the hour of observance.
He went to the moonroom as usual, but as soon as he stepped through the door he became convinced that he was not alone. He stepped no farther in than the threshold, but reached out and tapped the switch on the wall beside him. A dim silver light began to glow from recessed sources dispersed around the circular room.
He half-expected to find a burglar hiding there, or a spy from one of the fleet-families with reason to dislike the sus-Radal. As befitted half an expectation, he was half right. Iulan Vai was waiting for him, curled up on one of the watching-benches, wearing plain black garments and balancing a stick—no, not a stick, a Mage’s staff—across her knees.
“Good evening, my lord.” Vai rose to her feet and knelt to him as politely as ever, then resumed her seated posture. “I thought it was time I should report to you in person.”
“More than time,” Thel said. “You’ve been running your operations from Demaizen for long enough.”
She accepted the implied reproof without changing expression. “My people are well trained. Did you ever lack for anything that they could have supplied?”
“Not that I know of. But if I didn’t have it I wouldn’t know about it, would I?”
She smiled as if he had made a pleasing joke. “That’s the way it always is,” she agreed. “It’s the things you don’t know you’re missing that’ll get you every time. My lord, I stayed at Demaizen because of one of those things. As I told you at the time, matters were in train there which required my close personal observation.”
“And have these matters finally reached some kind of conclusion?”
“Oh, yes.” She paused—whether it was for effect, or to marshal her words properly, Thel couldn’t say. “Garrod syn-Aigal has found a hospitable world on the far side of the interstellar gap. I anticipate that the sus-Peledaen will be sending out an explorer ship before very long; Lord Arekhon’s in town and talking with his brother now.”
Thel scowled. “That is information you could have given me earlier.”
“To what end? Our fleet has no ships capable of making so long a transit. Better that the sus-Peledaen should take the risk of the first voyage … after all, you’ll be getting copies of all their data from your agent on board.”
“You?” he asked.
She nodded. “Demaizen will provide the ship’s Circle, and I’m a part of Demaizen now. You’ll have to appoint my current Agent-in-Charge to Agent-Principal in my place, of course.”
“Of course,” Thel said drily. Vai had always been high-handed where her operations were concerned, and he had tolerated it because she provided him with excellent results. She had not previously been accustomed to use that same high-handedness with Theledau himself. “You do realize, that’s not an appointment I can make, then take away again?”
“I know.” She lifted the ebony staff briefly from her knees, then balanced it again across them. “I have another place to come back to, if I come back at all.”
“I understand,” he said with some regret, since Vai’s Second, however competent, was not likely to prove her equal. “Satisfy my curiosity, if you would: How in the world did you manage to convince Garrod syn-Aigal—whom nobody has ever called a fool—that you were a Mage?”
Vai’s smile had a rueful twist to it. “In the only way I could, as it turned out afterward.”
“You’ve actually become one of them?”
“I have.” Her face took on a distant expression. “Like I said, it’s the things you don
’t know you’re missing … it wasn’t a development I anticipated, but it’s done. If you want to release me from your employ altogether, I’ll make no objection. But speaking as your Agent-Principal, you’d be foolish not to get one of your people onto that sus-Peledaen ship.”
She was right, as usual. “Make whatever arrangements you need to for transmitting reports,” he said. “And, Syr Vai—”
“My lord?”
“You’ve done well.”
After Vai had left, Thel darkened the moonroom again, and sat in thought for a long time below the clear glass dome. He came to the conclusion that he envied Iulan Vai. If he were younger, and free of the ties that bound him in service to his family, he would be half-tempted to hire on with the sus-Peledaen as common crew, just for the chance to take part himself in this venture beyond the Edge.
But he was who he was, and nothing about that could be changed. He would do as much as he could through Iulan Vai, and the sus-Radal—as always—would reap the profit.
Arekhon had wanted to speak with Elaeli alone about the news, and not merely for the opportunity to renew their friendship in the sweetest way possible. In a venture as audacious as the one proposed for Rain-on-Dark-Water, having the Pilot-Principal’s firm backing was essential. If she took against it, or even expressed strong reservations, the always-delicate balance between a ship’s Circle and its captain would take on a distinctly fleetward tilt—and such a tilt, when the First of the Circle was not the First at all, but only a jumped-up Second, could prove impossible to overcome.
To his dismay, however, the Rain’s captain was waiting for them inside the ship’s main hatch. Captain sus-Mevyan was a lean, grey-haired woman with strong bones and a dour expression; Arekhon suspected, from her name, that her family had been far-island nobility before turning starward and throwing in their lot with the sus-Peledaen.
The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Page 20