“Prepare to evacuate the compartment,” said the shipyard director.
The lighting in the construction area began shifting back and forth between its normal spectrum and an intense, disquieting amber, and the long, repeated bellow of an alarm horn penetrated even the heavy glass of the observation booth. The alarm and the flashing lights went on for several minutes—long enough for anyone caught in the construction area by accident to find an exit and depart.
“Cycle to vacuum,” said the director.
More minutes passed as the orbital yard reclaimed its atmosphere from the sealed compartment. The director turned to Natelth.
“My lord, if you would give the words of release …”
“I would be honored.” Natelth stepped up to the voice-comm. “She is sus-Peledaen’s Rain-on-Dark-Water. Send her away.”
With a heavy, vibrating groan, the walls of the area outside the observation box parted. The Rain’s construction cradle fell away in segments like the opening petals of a gigantic metal flower, revealing black space and the stars beyond. Slowly but inexorably, the vast matte-black bulk of the explorer ship fell free of its orbital birthplace, slipping away from Natelth and the other watchers and receding into the emptiness that was her natural home.
Another moment—her engines flared crimson—and she was gone.
Over the course of the next several days, Garrod learned much—through listening and observation—about the state of political affairs on the world he had discovered. The government was fragmented into a number of geopolitical entities, ranging in size from a handful of small islands to the greater part of a continent, caught up in a web of treaties and personal agreements so complex that Garrod made no effort to untangle them. He wasn’t certain that the native Entiborans understood them, either; otherwise there wouldn’t have been so much argument on the subject.
Apparently nobody had been expecting a tricky diplomatic situation to break out into open and general war—though why it shouldn’t have done so was another thing that Garrod didn’t try to understand. He took advantage of the confusion to pick out a fictitious homeland for himself, settling on a district half the world away from his current situation, and one that had been overrun twice already by different armies. Most of the public buildings on the Immering coast had already been destroyed, and the records they’d housed were gone along with them. It wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that Master Scholar Garrod’s biographical data had also vanished. With luck—and under the circumstances, he would not hesitate to make all the luck for himself that he could—no natives of the area would turn up and start addressing him in a language he didn’t understand.
For the moment, at least, his aid to Saral and Hujerie had won him a place in the entourage of Mestra Adina Therras, as baby Minnin’s mother was formally known. The Therras family was one of several maneuvering for control of the local government—the entire area involved wasn’t as big as the Wide Hills District back on Eraasi, but that didn’t seem to have deterred anybody so far—and Mestra Adina welcomed the chance to expand her House’s roster of clients and protégées.
“Appearances,” Hujerie explained to Garrod, “are everything, especially when the world is so unsettled. For the Mestra to have taken a foreign scholar under her protection is very impressive.”
Garrod thought privately that the Mestra and her fellow petty-nobles would have done better to give up impressing each other, and concentrate instead on keeping their pocket-sized state away from destruction. But in the meantime, the Mestra’s ambition was providing him with room and board and at least temporary safety—though he kept his pack loaded and ready in case he should have to leave on short notice.
A little over a week, by Garrod’s Eraasian reckoning, from the time of his arrival at the Mestra’s villa, the Therras family gave a party to celebrate Minnin’s safe return. Saral and Hujerie were among the honored guests; and so was the newest member of the Therras household, the distinguished foreigner who had been so helpful to them.
Garrod had attended other parties where the force behind the occasion wasn’t pleasure but ambition, and he knew what was expected. His part was to wear the locally made clothing that the Mestra’s servants produced for him, and to make labored conversation with her guests in what passed for an Immering accent. It wouldn’t fool a genuine Immeringer for a moment, of course … but his luck was still holding. There was nobody at the Mestra’s party from that far away.
The evening was a tiring one: Too many people in too small a room, speaking too loud and too fast in a language he only imperfectly understood. Garrod felt washed over by waves of data-laden conversation that he would have to record and sort out later. He didn’t like the music either, though the trio of instrumentalists were clearly skilled and expensive; the scales they used had too many notes in them, and their alien harmonies put his nerves on edge. He drank Mestra Adina’s weak punch and wished he had some of Hujerie’s liquor from the road to enliven the bowl.
The liquor was not forthcoming, but Hujerie must have caught something from his expression. The Entiboran scholar came up to him and said, “You have spoken with the Mestra’s friends all evening … let me bring you someone more to your liking.”
The scholar disappeared into the press of people and emerged a few minutes later with a plain-looking man in a tunic and trousers of drab black. The man carried what appeared to be a tall walking-staff of some kind, though he had no hesitation or limp in his gait that would make him need to use one.
“Master Scholar Garrod,” said Hujerie, “it gives me pleasure to introduce Master Drey of the Cazdel Guildhouse. Drey’s studied on Galcen, but he isn’t one of the ones who’ve forgotten what world they came from in the first place.”
Garrod let the unfamiliar concepts go over him like an incoming tide … when the water receded, he would see what new information it had left behind.
“Master Drey,” he said, after Hujerie had departed. “Are you another ornament for the Mestra’s party?”
Drey laughed. “You have good eyes for a foreigner, Master Garrod. We’re both decorations, here to give solidity to an ambitious House. Adina likes to think she has the Guild behind her. Or likes others to think so, at least.”
“Hujerie said you studied on Galcen.”
“For a while, yes,” said Drey.
“What was it like? I myself never had the good luck, you understand, to study anywhere but Immering.”
“Galcen would go hard with you, then,” said Drey. “They never speak of luck there at all, even as a joke, in case speaking about the flow of the universe should pull it out of its true course. A bit extreme, in my opinion, but good for discipline if you don’t take it too far.”
“We certainly don’t want to do that,” agreed Garrod. He filled his glass again with the Mestra’s punch and drained it off in one long swallow, to disguise the fact that his mind was still struggling to make sense of what Drey had said.
No luck … they don’t believe in luck. How does their world manage to exist at all, if there’s no one willing to work the eiran for it?
27:
Year 1126 E. R.
ERAASI: HANILAT STARPORT
THE INTERSTELLAR GAP: SUS-PELEDAEN SHIP
RAIN-ON-DARK-WATER
Unlike some of his rivals in the game of interstellar trade, Theledau syn-Grevi preferred to make a distinction, whenever such a distinction was possible, between his home and the working world. The head of the sus-Radal fleet-family ran its business affairs from a downtown building, not from the town house he had only reluctantly consented to occupy.
In the time just before dawn, Hanilat had not yet put on its mid-day grubbiness, and the tall, many-windowed buildings of the central metropolis had the appearance of polished crystals under the slanting light of early morning. The clean, spare elegance of the deserted urban landscape was one of the reasons Thel preferred coming in at this hour, before the crowds and traffic claimed the city for another day.
Away to the south the vapor trail of a lifting ship turned pink as the rising sun caught its passage. That would be Swiftly-Through-Starlight, carrying house-mind sub-units to Ruisi in the hopes of trading them for offworld spices and organic medicinals—a long trip, but a good profit if no mischance intervened. One ship running alone wasn’t as safe as a convoy, but the gain in speed was worth the risk for a perishable cargo.
The desk behind him chimed. “Yes?” he said without turning.
“One comes,” said the desk. “A representative of Hanilat and Eraasi, to speak with the head of the sus-Radal.”
Thel abandoned the view of the city and faced the office door. Musing on beauty and profit brought no one closer to either. Sooner or later, it was necessary to act.
“Let him enter.”
The door opened to admit a stout, well-groomed man in an expensively tailored rambling-jacket. Thel recognized him at once as Kerin Feyal of the Hanilat Feyals. Feyal was dressed for a friendly meeting rather than for an occasion of business; Thel supposed that the early hour would lend verisimilitude to the fiction that one of the city’s most active political go-betweens had merely stopped by the sus-Radal office tower on his way to a day in the country.
Not that Thel believed it himself for a moment. “Syr Feyal,” he said, after he had waved his guest to a chair beside the window and taken one for himself nearby. “What brings you here on such a fine morning?”
“Lord sus-Radal,” Feyal said. His manner was full of warm sincerity with a touch of deference, and Thel didn’t believe that for a moment either.
Feyal was a legalist by training, from one of Hanilat’s oldest families—too proud of their city roots and long respectability, some said, to feel the need for a noble prefix before their name. Theledau suspected that the Feyals viewed the sus-Radal as upstarts, and Thel’s own syn-Grevi line as mere provincial interlopers. “The turning of the seasons reminded me that it had been too long since I’d last had the pleasure of your company. And since I chanced to be passing by your offices when the thought struck me—”
“Get to the point, Ker,” said Thel. He wasn’t on short-name terms with his visitor, strictly speaking, but it wouldn’t hurt to jar Feyal a little. “There’s no one here to fool but me, and I know you better than that.”
Feyal remained unruffled. “So you do. Let’s talk of business, then. The matter that concerns me—that concerns all of us—is the piracy that increasingly disrupts Eraasian commerce on certain trade lines. You have suffered yourself, I believe, from the attacks of these deep-space bandits.”
“On occasion,” Thel said. Feyal hadn’t seen fit to mention what everyone knew: That most of the bandits wore the colors of respectable fleet-families. Deep space belongs to no one, or so the proverb ran, and trade went to whoever was bold enough to take it. Thel knew of at least one family that had gotten its start by raiding the established fleets, and he would bet good money that they were among the loudest complainers now. “We all suffer losses now and again.”
“True. What would you say, then, to making the sus-Radal part of a coalition of traders and shipowners organized to counter the threat?”
Thel gazed out the window for a moment. The sun was hitting the upper ledges and cornices of the buildings now, where the glass and metal trim glittered like ice. “I might say yes,” he said, after a suitable interval had passed. He looked back at Feyal before the man could say anything in reply, and added, “Or I might not. How many people have already joined this coalition of yours?”
“Natelth sus-Khalgath, for one. Also syn-Veru and syn-Kaseget—”
“If the head of the sus-Peledaen wants to stop his share of piracy,” Thel said, “all he needs to do is pass the word on to his captains.”
Feyal looked amused. “I’ve heard the same thing from other sources. But the names were different … . and one of the names was yours.”
It was time, Thel decided, to take offense. “I have trouble believing that you showed up at this hour just to play games with me. What do you really want, Ker?”
“Only to speak the truth,” said Feyal, all good will and transparent candor. As Thel expected, his next sentence had the hook in it. “They do say, in some quarters, that your captains cross well over the line of what is acceptable. What better way to prove that the raiders aren’t yours, than by helping to curb them?”
What better way, indeed? Theledau thought. I wonder who thought up this scheme—an old family that doesn’t need to take cargoes any longer, or a new family that doesn’t have the resources to seize ships and protect them at the same time?
Aloud, he said, “Such things aren’t done by talk alone. Who’s going to command this agency of correction?”
“That,” said Feyal, “is something that remains unsettled until we know for certain which of the families have pledged their support. But even those who mistrust the sus-Radal admit that your fleet is well-officered.”
First the hook, Thel noted without surprise, and then the bait. “I could say the same in return about half a dozen others,” he said. “This ‘support’ that you mentioned … what form are you expecting it to take? My name on a list, my voice in debate, money—?”
“Ships and crews.”
“When?”
“As soon as they can be built for the purpose.”
Theledau forced himself to lean back in his chair as if he were considering an ordinary business proposition, and not a proposal so radical that its originators—whoever they might be—had managed to keep its development secret even from the fleet-families themselves.
Maybe it didn’t start with one of us after all, he thought. We like things the way they are, mostly; this comes from someone whose interest lies in forcing a change.
“You’re talking,” he said, after a moment spent in deliberate contemplation of the sky outside the window, “about starships designed from the cradle for offensive operations.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“My ships carry cargo,” Theledau said after another long pause. “Or they protect the ships that carry cargo. A ship built to do nothing but hunt other ships has no place in a merchant fleet.”
“Then you are unwilling to support the coalition?”
“The last time anybody built warships on Eraasi,” Theledau said, “they sailed on blue water. We should leave the things of the past where they belong, and not bring them forward without cause.”
Feyal gave a faint sigh, and stood. “I won’t make myself tedious by pressuring you to act against your will. The morning draws on, I’m afraid, and I have an engagement to keep. Do keep our conversation in mind, however, in case you reconsider your position.”
“I certainly shall,” Theledau said, rising also.
He escorted Syr Feyal to the door and made the necessary polite farewells. Then, as soon as the door was shut again and Feyal was safely away, he went back to his desk and pressed the button that would summon his primary assistant.
“Summon the family’s best designers and engineers,” he said as soon as the assistant appeared in the doorway. “Tell them to make us warships. Secretly, but quickly.”
Rain-on-Dark-Water had been in the Void for a long time.
First transits were always lengthy ones, as the ship drove through nothingness toward a point that existed only as a Mage’s marker in the featureless Void. Arekhon knew that the ship’s crew on such a transit looked to the Mages aboard for signals that all was well, and he was glad that the members of his half-Circle remained steady.
Ty was young enough to find the experience of space travel entertaining all by itself, and to form casual friendships among the apprentices and the junior crew. Narin spent most of her time in practice and meditation, and the rest of it in trading stories with the repair crews and the cargo-handlers. And Vai … as far as Arekhon could tell, nothing ever knocked Iulan Vai off-center.
Like the rest of the Circle-Mages, Vai bunked with the Rain’s regular crew. Arekhon, as the acting First, found his
separate cabin to be a lonely one. He understood her reasoning—the crewmembers weren’t likely to understand that in the Circles, distinctions of rank meant something other than what they were used to. He’d even been ready, more or less, for Vai’s apparent desertion.
He hadn’t expected that Elaeli would do the same.
She had explained herself to him, half-apologetically, in the last hour together they had made for themselves before the Rain’s departure. He was sus-Peledaen, as well as the acting First of the ship’s Circle; she was known to have come into the outer family under his sponsorship. It would not look good—it would look very bad, in fact—if the two of them were seen to be lovers as well.
“On a trading voyage it might not matter,” she’d said. “But this is going to be different.”
“It’s all right,” he said untruthfully. “I understand.”
His cabin was cold during the night watches, and the transit seemed to go on forever. He worried about the rest of the Circle, back home on Eraasi, and slept uneasily.
When Captain sus-Mevyan sent word that the acting First was wanted for emergence from the void, Arekhon was ready. The call came during ship’s night, when temperatures were lowered and lighting dimmed, and the Rain kept a minimal crew on station. On the bridge, the illusory grey mists of the void swirled beyond the armored windows. Captain sus-Mevyan waited at the nearest, and beckoned for Arekhon to join her.
“It’s time,” she said. “Now we see if our calculations were any good.”
Arekhon nodded. This was always the tricky point on a blind voyage. The distance to a new system couldn’t be determined exactly from the marker on a star-chart … only inferred, based on comparison with known distances on the same chart, and on the stargazers’ uncertain measurements.
The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Page 23