by Doyle, Debra
The woman with the flowers crossed the street and headed back in the direction of the young off-worlders. Their paths converged at the opening of the bower. The woman, feigning surprise and clumsiness, lost her grip on the bouquet, scattering white and yellow josquiths all over the pavement. At the same time, a pair of muscular gentlemen stepped from the shadows and reached out to lay violent hands on the two young men.
And then—Jens spun and kicked high, his yellow hair flying as he moved, and the point of his boot struck the nearer of the two muggers on the jaw. The man fell. At the same time, Faral grabbed the woman by her upper arms and dropped, using the momentum thus created to throw her against the second mugger. Thief and decoy collapsed together onto the grass inside the bower, entangled as if caught in the midst of some bizarre assignation.
Miza hurried forward, but before she could reach the spot, she felt herself caught, spun, and thrown against the trunk of a tree, with Jens Metadi-Jessan D’Rosselin pressing the business end of a blaster into the flesh of her throat.
I was wrong, she thought. He did have enough time to get it out.
“Are you with these people?” he asked. His blue eyes had a dangerous brightness to them. “Is there a good reason why I shouldn’t stun you now and leave you here while my cousin and I make our complaint to local security?”
Miza drew a deep breath. It wouldn’t do to have her voice squeak with fright like a Roti’s breakfast. A few feet away, she could see Faral going through the pockets of the fallen men. Both the strongarms were lying quite still, though their chests were moving. The woman had, apparently, recovered herself and fled, leaving her flowers scattered broadcast across the pavement.
“Well?” said Jens.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “I’m on your side.”
Faral made a noise of satisfaction and straightened up from his search of the unconscious men. “ID,” he said, brandishing their personal card cases triumphantly. “We were wondering where we’d find some new stuff.”
“Good,” said Jens, without looking away from Miza. “If you’re on our side—name a city within an hour’s travel of Sombrelír.”
“Nanáli. Duvize is closer, but more links go to Nanáli.”
He made the blaster vanish. “Great. Let’s go to Nanáli. You lead, we follow. Just don’t try to get to a public comm booth—I don’t want to lose you again.”
Miza gave him what she hoped was a scornful glance. “I wasn’t the one who decided to break away from the guided tour, remember?”
“Foster-brother,” Faral said to Jens in an undertone. “I think we need to leave here in a hurry. People are starting to talk.”
Miza saw that he was right. Passersby were already gathering in a knot a discreet distance away from the altercation. These two, she thought, desperately need a good courier.
“This way,” she said, and stepped over the pair of recumbent strongarms toward the back of the bower, not looking to see if Jens and Faral came after her. The front steps and doorway a private house lay on the other side of the shadowed arch of greenery. Over to one side, and conveniently invisible from the street, a wrought-iron fence marked the edge of another bower, this one cleverly planted to look like a patch of untamed woodland.
Jens looked at the fence with approval. “Very nice design.”
“We don’t admire it,” Miza said. “We climb over it. Quickly.”
“You heard the gentlelady,” Faral said. “Let’s go.”
“They’re right about off-worlders on Khesat,” Jens said, vaulting lightly over the fence. “No taste for the finer things in life. None at all.”
“This place you want me to go into,” said Mael Taleion. “I cannot.”
Klea pressed her lips together for a moment before answering. Of all the problems she had anticipated from this unwelcome alliance, she hadn’t expected to encounter a Magelord with philosophical scruples.
“Then you’ll have to camp on the street,” she said finally. “And in this district, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
She knew intellectually that Mages were only human. Just the same, she’d never liked dealing with them. All the time she’d been growing up on Nammerin, in between the first war and the second, the Magelords had been bogeys to scare small children—stock villains of a thousand holovids, requiring no motivation for the basest crimes other than the fact of their Magery.
Nothing in her childhood, or in what came afterward, had prepared her for this: a quiet, unassuming man whose calm demeanor failed to disguise the fact that he was as dubious about their situation as she was. In spite of what she had told Mael Taleion, she knew that staying outside was not an option. The Sombrelír Guildhouse occupied an otherwise empty block in a neighborhood that had once been fashionable. Now the area was an industrial slum. The Guildhouse, with its grounds and garden, stood like a lonely sentinel amid the encroaching sterility of prefab warehouses and manufacturing bays.
“Come on,” she said. “If I can work with you, you can go in there with me. Not that this place is anything special, as Guildhouses go. I suppose Ophel is lucky to have one at all.”
Mael sighed. “For the sake of the greater good,” he said, and made a hand gesture that Klea supposed was meant to avert evil. Not only did Mages have an unconscionable belief in luck, but they were superstitious as well. Since Mael was technically Klea’s guest, she tried hard to suppress the discourteous thought.
The Magelord drew his cloak around him and settled his mask over his face. Then, with a defiant air, he took his staff and attached it to a belt clip. “Let us go in.”
“Are you sure you want to wear—”
“I will not pretend to be other than what I am.”
Even under the distorting effect of the featureless plastic mask, Klea could hear the stubborn voice of a man who has made all the concessions he has it in him to make. She abandoned the subject and pushed open the Guild-yard gate. It squeaked on its hinges. She frowned at the noise—if these people neglect the upkeep of house and grounds, what else do they neglect?—and side by side with Mael Taleion she strode up the gravel walkway to the high doors of the main house.
They hadn’t gone a dozen steps before an apprentice emerged from inside the Guildhouse and held out his hand in a minatory gesture.
“Guira dán!” he said in Ophelan—a warning of some sort, Klea supposed, from his tone and his expression.
“And good afternoon to you, too,” she replied in Galcenian. She took another step forward.
“Mistress!” the apprentice said. “You don’t want to—you can’t—he’s a Mage!” The apprentice’s voice went up about an octave, and he flung out a hand to point at Mael’s chest.
“The fact has not escaped my notice,” Klea said. “Now, either call your Masters or let me pass, but don’t just stand there gabbling.”
The door opened again, and more hurrying footsteps crunched in the gravel ahead of them. A man in the garments of an Adept was running toward them, his fat cheeks bouncing in his haste. He was trying to seal his tunic and fasten his belt at the same time, and making little progress with either.
“Are all Guildhouses thus?” Mael asked in a quiet voice. Klea couldn’t be sure, but she thought that he sounded amused.
She ignored his comment and turned to face the newcomer, now coming to a panting halt before her. “Master Evanh,” she said. “I know you, and you know me. Now, enough nonsense. I have a great need of secure communications and information banks, and this Guildhouse has both. And while you’re taking us to them, you can explain why you’ve let your guard down here. And where’s your staff?”
“Mistress,” Master Evanh said, taking a deep breath, “that man—he’s a Mage!”
“Yes,” Klea said patiently, “he’s a Mage. He is the Second of all their Circles, and he is under my protection. When he speaks you hear my voice. Do you understand?”
“Under your protection?” Mael said, while at the same time Master Evanh said, “M
istress, you forget yourself. This is my Guildhouse and I am the Master here.”
Klea shook her head. “That may not last much longer. Be aware that two of the Guild Master’s nephews are on this world, and that I am sent to guard them. If you had been at your meditations rather than asleep in the middle of the day, you would have felt the currents of Power shifting at the very moment they were lost.”
Evanh stared at her, eyes round and fishlike with incomprehension. “Lost?”
“You heard me. Reach out and test the currents yourself if you don’t believe it. And while you’re doing that, give me leave to use your communications setup. Master Owen must be kept apprised. Stand aside.”
On the southern hemisphere of Cracanth, deep in the night sector, candles flickered around the perimeter of a circle. Two had burned all the way down and guttered out. The room was painted black, with black hangings to muffle any sounds made within, and a white circle glimmered against the black-painted floor. Around the circle lay bundles of dark cloth, tossed here and there like dirty laundry. But inside each bundle was what remained of a man or a woman. Dead.
Eiadon sus-Gefael, First of the Circle of Bareiath Ai, looked down on them. He had seen the twisting of the cords, and had come as quickly as he could. Other members of his Circle, roused from their beds to accompany him, were searching the rest of the house. Outside, the domestic security forces waited until he had declared the house fit for them to enter, in case this turned out to be a material crime. He rather doubted that it was.
“There’s one alive!”
Eiadon turned toward the voice. It was Jairen, Third of the Bareiath Ai Circle, recognizable by her slight frame even under mask and robe.
“Where?” Not in this room. All here had flown. Eiadon had checked for himself.
“On the third level. A boy.”
“Lead me.”
Together they made their way upward to the room where the boy—too young to be a member of the Circle—lay in a narrow bed. He twitched and thrashed about in his sleep, and drops of sweat beaded his forehead. Two more members of Eiadon’s Circle stood nearby, mechanical lamps in their hands.
Eiadon lifted his staff, and let it blaze as power entered him. The red glow illuminated the object of his curiosity: Lord syn-Hacaeth’s son and student in the ways of Power. Did he know that his father lay dead below? Workings requiring a death had always been rare, and now in time of peace they were rarer still.
If such a thing had been called for, Eiadon reflected, he himself would surely have known of it before now. He turned to Jairen.
“Summon medical services,” he said. “But warn them that this is a special case. No one is to touch this boy with flesh to flesh. No one.”
VI. KHESAT; OPHEL
RHAL KASANDER, Exalted of Tanavral, and a man known for his ability to tell good wine from bad even when drunk, walked out into the city of Ilsefret, where the Highest of Khesat met with his council. The sun was rising, tinting the Golden Tower with light while the rest of the city lay in darkness. No law forbade the construction of buildings higher than the Tower, but a general agreement, unspoken for more than two thousand years, held that to do so would be … unseemly.
Kasander’s head was clear, even this early—or, from his point of view, this late—and the crisp air of autumn braced him nicely as he made his way on foot through the empty streets. Vehicular traffic was prohibited in central Ilsefret, lest the sleep of the householders be disturbed by uncouth noises. A servant paced along behind him, carrying his indoor slippers in one hand and a pair of caged orfiles in the other, to provide sweet music with their singing.
The Plaza of Hope opened up before them, the Golden Tower rising high above its western side. But Kasander’s destination was on the side opposite, where a series of low buildings provided dwelling places for those fortunate enough to have inherited them. The balconies overlooking the square were enough to make the apartments valuable for the view they afforded once or twice in a generation. Perhaps even soon. Perhaps even now.
The Exalted of Tanavral walked in through one of the arches of whitewashed stone on the façade, then sat in a carved ocherwood change-chair while his servant stripped off his street shoes and replaced them with the slippers. The slippers were of red velvet sewn with rubies, accented with red carnelian to show the common touch.
“One hour,” Rhal Kasander said, addressing the air—though the message was, in fact, for his slipper-bearer. Without waiting for a response, he rose and took the circular stair to the living compartments above. He reached the upper chamber, a study with its high windows flung open to give a view of the platform at the top of the Golden Tower, at the same moment as Caridal Fere, Master of Nalensey, entered from an inner room.
“Our joy is complete now that you have returned,” Kasander said, bowing as he spoke.
“And ours,” replied Fere, bowing in turn. “Will you break your fast here?”
“With greatest pleasure.”
Fere picked up a glass bell from the table beside him and let it give forth a single sweet and piercing note. The last reverberation had not yet died when a young woman appeared on the threshold of the study, carrying a laden serving tray in both hands. She deposited the tray on the central table and withdrew, her eyes downcast the entire while.
Kasander looked over the dishes she had brought. Then he plucked a savorfruit from the glass bowl where they sat under their dusting of powdered sugar, dipped the fruit into its side dish of carent sauce, and raised it to his lips.
The sauce was cold.
He looked up sharply at his host. The time of his arrival had been arranged in advance, and he had been punctual. Someone in the kitchen would answer for this disgraceful inattention to detail. Unless—
“You failed.”
The words hung in the air, shocking in their bluntness. Caridal Fere had plainly not expected so strong a response to his indirect admission. He reddened.
“You speak to me thus in my own house.”
“I do,” said Kasander. “The crisis is here. Two days ago, unknown brigands entered Gerre Hafelsan’s house and changed all his carpets for grass matting.”
The two men considered the implications of that anonymous and wordless—but emphatic—statement.
“Hafelsan didn’t say anything about it when we spoke yesterday,” Fere said after a moment or two had passed.
“Would you have, in his position?”
“Well,” Fere admitted, “no.”
“There you have it,” said Kasander. “There are changes at work in the world, and not all for the good. For our own sakes, we must form a party, and our party must back a Worthy.” He looked at Fere sharply. “And we don’t have a Worthy.”
Again, Fere reddened. “We have a Worthy,” he said. “It is merely that he remains, as yet, unaware that we have him.”
“What a day, foster-brother.” Faral flung himself onto his bed in their newly acquired hotel room with a tired sigh. “What a day.”
“No kidding.” Jens tossed the carrybag full of money into one corner and collapsed onto the lounge chair. He extended his arms overhead in a bone-cracking stretch. “When Granda told us stories, he never once warned us about buying tea and parchants from sweet little old ladies.”
“Somebody should have.” Faral pulled off his boots, using nothing but his feet, and let them thump one at a time onto the floor at the foot of the bed. “Next time we stick with the sleazy bars and the cheap booze.”
The room—two beds, a chair, a table, an entertainment wall, and a rudimentary comm setup—was one of many similar at a midclass hotel in Nanáli. The multicolored glowsign on the roof advertised “family rates,” and the clerk at the front desk had accepted Faral’s cash and his stolen ID. In return, Faral had pocketed the key wafer without bothering to mention that there were two more people planning to use the room, one of them female. Brisk, redheaded Miza-from-Huool’s wasn’t somebody whom he had felt, at that moment, capable of explaining.
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She still wasn’t. She stood, arms folded, inside the locked door of the hotel room, and regarded him and his cousin with a challenging air.
“What are you two planning on now?”
“A bath or a shower, I should think,” Jens said. “The washrag in Huool’s storeroom was better than nothing—but judging from the looks we got on the hoverbus, it wasn’t good enough.”
“Bathrooms are down the hall,” Faral said, without moving from his place on the bed. “You go first.”
“Thanks. Any idea how we’re going to manage the sleeping arrangements?”
“There’s a scratch pad over by the comm. We can draw slips to see who doubles up with our guest.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Miza said promptly. “All three of us draw, and the loser takes the lounge chair.”
“Some people,” said Jens, “have no sense of adventure.” He stood up and stretched again. “I’m off to make my ablutions. Keep an eye on the gentlelady while I’m gone.”
“I’ll do that. And you keep an eye out, too … I didn’t want to mention it earlier, but I spotted a familiar face back on the bus.”
“Oh?” Jen’s voice didn’t change, but his eyes brightened. “Who?”
“Remember the man on Bright-Wind-Rising?”
Plainly, Jens did. “The one who recommended we shop at Thalban’s? Him?”
“Him. I think we lost him, but you never can tell.”
“No, you never can … this puts a new complexion on things.” Jens stepped past Miza and unlocked the door. “But nothing that’s going to keep me away from a tub full of hot water. I’m going to be dreaming of raw sewage for the next week as it is.”
Jens left, and the door snicked shut again behind him. Miza seemed to relax a little—perhaps, Faral reflected, she had taken Jen’s threats concerning the blaster more seriously than the situation warranted. She walked across the room to the entertainment wall, where a tiny cold-unit held a selection of drinks and fruit juices.