The entry alarm from the top of Warhammer’s ramp broke into the conversation with a loud buzz. Nannla glanced up again at Errec. “See who it is, will you? And if it’s the Free-Spacer’s Protective Agency collecting for their charity fund, tell them we gave on Innish-Kyl.”
Errec laughed under his breath and headed for the ’Hammer ’s main hatch. The ramp was down, as befitted a ship grounded for a prolonged stay in a friendly port, but the force field was up. Even through the blurring effect of the field, however, the visitor’s face was familiar.
Errec halted a few steps away from the opening. “Anije Vasari,” he said. He drew a careful breath and let it out again slowly. “Mistress Vasari, I should say.”
“Master Ransome,” said the slim woman on the other side of the force field. “Errec—may I come aboard? I need to talk with you.”
He stood for a few seconds longer without moving, then gave a sigh and hit the button to lower the field. “Come on, then. There’s cha’a in the galley, if you want some.”
“Gracious as ever,” she said with a brief smile. “I’d say you hadn’t changed a bit, but I’d be lying and you’d know it.”
He didn’t bother denying the charge, only shrugged and led the way back into the common room. Nannla and Tillijen were still playing cards; Nannla looked from him to Anije Vasari as they entered, and gathered up the cards from the table.
“I think we’d better move the game down to Engineering,” she said. “Come on, Tilly … . Errec, give a yell if you need us for anything.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”
The two gunners headed aft. Errec found a couple of mugs in the galley, filled them both with cha‘a, and gave one to Vasari. He gestured her to a chair at the common-room table and sat down opposite her with the other mug of cha’a.
“Now we can talk,” he said. “What brings you down to the port quarter, Anije?”
“Looking for you.” She gazed into the depths of her cha’a. “Everybody thought you’d died on Ilarna, you know.”
He suppressed a shudder, remembering. “I’m not surprised.”
“They wanted to mark you on the rolls as dead, but Master Otenu wouldn’t let them.”
“I remember Otenu. He always did see more than he let on.”
“If you say so.” She pushed the mug away from her and laid her hands flat on the table. “This time he says I’m supposed to bring you back home to Galcen.”
“‘Home’?” Errec shook his head. “I was never at home there, and Otenu knows it. This is home.”
“A grounded starship? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” he said. “If I’d wanted to go to Galcen, I could have shown up on Otenu’s doorstep any time during the past four years.”
“But you were busy,” she finished for him. “Fighting Mages with Jos Metadi. Who isn’t fighting the Mages anymore.”
“He will be. When the time comes.”
She looked at him, and he could sense her assessing the weight of his statement. Anije Vasari was another of those who had always seen more than they let on.
“And when the time comes,” she said slowly, “can you guarantee that he’ll be able to find them? Space is big, Errec; it takes a lot of work to find anyone out there. A lot of work, or an Adept who can tell the pilot where the target will be. Your Captain Metadi is General Metadi now, and he’s putting together a fleet—how many Adepts will he need when he’s finished? Somebody has to train them and make them ready, somebody who’s actually fought the Mages and knows how the job is done.”
“Meaning me,” he said, feeling suddenly tired. He’d seen her argument coming as soon as she began to speak, but that didn’t help much. Not when he knew that she was right.
Jos Metadi had discovered at an early age that life was full of unexpected lessons, and he’d made up his mind to appreciate the fact. Nevertheless, he hadn’t expected to find out that planetary royalty, living in a palace that was bigger than some landing fields he’d grounded the ’Hammer in, had fewer opportunities to be alone than the average free-spacer between ports of call. The nursery wing of the Summer Palace was one of the Domina’s few places of refuge: when she was there, the household staff would deny admittance to official visitors calling on routine matters of state, and provide a formal escort even for known members of her inner circle.
As far as Jos knew, besides the palace staff there were only two people for whom the high-security lockplates on the heavy doors would automatically open. One of them was Perada herself. It gave Jos a surprising amount of pleasure to know that he was the other—surprising, because he’d never figured himself to be a likely candidate for domesticity, even on such a grand level as this.
Today Perada was sitting in a high-backed wing chair by the tall windows, her feet propped up on a cushioned hassock, feeding young Ari his late-afternoon meal. The baby’s wispy dark curls looked like faint sable brushstrokes against the white skin of her breast. The boy had a robust appetite—he’d been born large, and showed all signs of continuing that way—and he had what everybody assured Jos was a calm and good-natured disposition. Jos wasn’t sure how they could tell.
“I’m going to have to go back to the Palace Major sometime within the next month or so.” Perada was leaning her head back against the chair cushions. Her eyes were closed, and her voice sounded weary. “There’s no help for it.”
“Who’s making you?” Jos inquired. He was sitting in a matching wing chair a little more than comfortable conversation distance away. He’d more than once tried moving the heavy chair a foot or so closer to its partner, but when on each succeeding visit he found the chair carefully replaced in its customary position, he’d finally given up. “Is there some part of running Entibor that you can only do in an overdecorated warehouse?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s been over a year since I’ve held a formal court—”
Jos frowned. “You mean to tell me that spending every other Fifth-Day down in the Great Hall listening to anybody who wants to come in and bend your ear with a long-winded complaint isn’t the same as holding court?”
“No. Those are informal audiences.”
“If you say so.” Jos was silent for a while, thinking about the prospect of changing residences. “Moving back won’t make things any harder for me—easier, maybe, since Fleet Central HQ isn’t all that far from An-Jemayne—but you shouldn’t have to put up with living someplace you don’t like. Didn’t your mother’s branch of the family have a town house in the capital or something?”
Perada nodded without opening her eyes. “And a manor in Felshang, and a winter retreat in the Immering Isles and a country cottage in Yestery Lea. But whenever I’m in one of those places, I’m plain Perada Rosselin, and I can’t speak or act as the Domina at all.” She sighed. “Living here is as close to that life as I can get without bringing the whole government to a screeching halt, and I’ve indulged myself outrageously by staying this long.”
“Somebody’s been going on at you about it.” Jos felt a momentary flash of anger, mixed with a by now familiar sense of frustration at the lack of a target. Palace routine and royal custom couldn’t be argued with; he’d learned that much early on. He couldn’t help adding, “If you want me to tell whoever it is to back off a bit, I’ll be happy to play the bad-mannered Gyfferan for as long as it takes to get the message across.”
She opened her eyes—checking out his expression, Jos supposed, to gauge whether he was serious or not—and smiled. “It’s kind of you to offer, and if it were somebody like Lord Gelerec talking I might even take you up on it. Gelerec goes on forever and stays in the same place. But Nivome do’Evaan is another matter.”
Jos had to admit, reluctantly, that she was right. Reluctantly, because he didn’t much care for the big, heavyset Rolnian who was Entibor’s Minister of Internal Security—the man radiated ambition so strongly he probably glowed in the dark, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing except that nobody i
n the Fleet cared for Nivome very much either, and Perada herself seemed edgy whenever he was around. He was some kind of legacy from Domina Veratina, and he’d put his roots down too deep for the new ruler to pull him loose.
Errec doesn’t like him either, Jos thought. And Errec hasn’t been wrong about anybody yet. Maybe he and I should put our heads together about our buddy Nivome … see if we can work something out.
“What else did Nivome have to say?” he asked.
“Not much. He tried to sound me out about insuring the succession—”
“Having another kid, you mean.”
“An heir.” She looked down at Ari, where the baby had fallen asleep against her breast. “If House tradition didn’t rule out a quick trip to a good biolab, I could stop that sort of questioning. But custom is custom.”
The hell with custom, Jos wanted to say, but he knew better. He wished he knew what murky historical precedent kept the head of the Ruling House of Entibor from making use of the same technology as an ordinary citizen. Someday, he decided, he’d have to get Tilly drunk and ask her for the real story.
“So what did you tell Nivome?” he asked.
“Not to rush things, more or less. But that’s another reason for going back to the Palace Major, if I can’t legitimately plead family matters any longer. And fond as I am of this little one—” She smiled down at the sleeping baby. “—I’m not quite ready to go through all that again. We have plenty of time.”
Fleet Admiral Galaret Lachiel still hadn’t gotten used to her new office. She’d had all of Pallit’s awards and memorabilia packed up and sent to his retirement address in Cazdel Province, and the newly promoted captain-of-frigates who was running the show these days in the Parezulan sector had shipped Gala’s own stuff to Entibor via courier, but even after almost two years her life at Central seemed unreal. Something about “easy come, easy go,” maybe, as if a part of her remained waiting in that bottom-floor holding room.
She stood now by the holochart of Entiboran space, talking to the man who had thrown the job of fleet admiral at her with no more warning than she’d have gotten in a game of twiddleball. Jos Metadi dressed these days like a respectable Gyfferan merchant-spacer, except for the blaster and the boots. He still stood out like a marker beacon among the glittering nobility—some of the restive young sprigs, the ones with Centrist leanings, had taken to imitating his style—but she doubted if he cared, or if he even noticed.
The gossips at court might believe that Perada had brought Metadi home to Entibor for his good looks, but nobody in the Fleet had been that foolish for quite a while now. Gala had seen to it that the intelligence reports on Metadi’s earlier privateering raids made it into the open files. Most of the eager young junior officers, she suspected, would have given up a year’s pay and a chance at promotion to have been along for any one of them.
She touched the controls for the holochart, changing the diagram of Entibor’s sphere of influence to a display graphing the war’s progress in terms of known losses both to the raiders and to the fleet.
“You see how it’s going,” she said. “We’re losing ships; they’re losing ships. What good it’s all doing I can’t begin to tell you—but I do know that sooner or later we’re going to run out of ships.”
“That’s not good,” said Metadi. “Admiral, you’ve worked with these people longer than I have—is there some reason I’m not aware of why we’re not building more ships?”
“Lord Pelencath was in here this morning,” Gala said. “I’m sure you recall the man—ties to the bankers, ties to the sillyweed cartel, ties to everyone. He spent a stimulating two hours explaining to me in some detail how an increase in shipbuilding would ruin the economy.”
Metadi shook his head. “And Mage raids don’t? That does it; I’ll never make it as an economist.”
“Neither will I, if it’s any consolation. Actually, I think it’s Pelencath’s own private economy he’s worried about.” She grimaced. “Unfortunately for us, the man deeply and sincerely believes that whatever’s good for him has to be good for Entibor.”
“There’s nothing like befuddled self-interest, is there?” Metadi paced from one side of the office to the other, then halted abruptly and turned to face her. “Stop me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but it all belongs to the Domina anyway, right? If she decides that from now on all the bread will be brancakes, then that’s the way it is.”
“In theory, yes,” said Gala. “Until someone produces a new heir with some claim to the Iron Crown, and there’s another succession crisis, in which case absolutely nothing gets done for five or six years while the Great Houses concentrate on poisoning each other’s cha’a in the mornings.”
“We can’t have that. The raiders would be all over us.” Gala nodded. “Pelencath wasn’t crude enough to suggest anything directly, as far as disputing the succession goes—but he made implications.”
“Damn.” Metadi made another restless circuit of the office. “Is there anybody else who’s up to making a claim?”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” she said. “But I’ll be frank with you, General. I joined the fleet to stay out of court politics. Someone from Internal Security would know more about stuff like that than I would—and rumor even at my level says that the minister is not well received at court … .”
She allowed her voice to trail off. Judging by Metadi’s expression, he hadn’t thought about that aspect of the problem before now, and he wasn’t much liking it. After a while, though, he seemed to put the succession problem aside, and turned back to the holochart.
“I’ll let Perada worry about how she handles the dandified hangers-on,” he said. “You tell me about the Mages.”
“They’re out there,” Gala said. “I’ve noticed a slight decrease in the frequency of their raids.”
“That’s good.”
“Well, yes … except that it’s counterbalanced by an increase in Mage activity in sectors not belonging to Entibor. The raiders may have done nothing more than switch their area of operations, and they may have done even that for reasons which have nothing to do with anything we’ve tried so far.”
“Short of asking ’em in person, there’s no way to tell.” Metadi frowned at the graph currently filling the holo-display. “Do we have anything on where they’ve been working lately?”
“Only from confidential agents—no one besides us would show enough weakness to broadcast their troubles.” Gala touched the chart controls again, bringing up a star map to replace the graph and illuminating the key points in bright red. “But what data we have puts the Mages working near Utagriet, mostly, with side trips to Artha and Bexevan.”
“Artha belongs to Khesat, and Bexevan is a Miosan holding, right?” Metadi used the controls to add more colors to the map—blue for points in the Khesatan hegemony and yellow for the Miosan worlds. Then he added a third set of colored lights, this time bright green. “And all the volume around Utagriet—”
“—is claimed by Maraghai. Right.” Gala studied the pattern the colors had revealed. It wasn’t encouraging. “You know, General—I suppose I ought to be glad we’ve shoved off Entibor’s Mage problem onto somebody else, but somehow I’m not.”
Metadi grinned briefly. “If you don’t watch it, the newsreaders are going to start calling you a Centrist. Speaking of which, are we offering information and assistance to other Mage targets?”
“Backdoored through Suivi Point in the case of Miosa,” she said, “but yes, we’re offering. And the responses range from none, to an accusation of complicity with the Mages, to twelve pages of tiny script in the most frivolous language imaginable, to the effect of ‘no.’”
“That was Khesat, right?”
“Right. It came”—Gala shuddered—“with a musical score.”
“I’m glad to see they’re keeping amused over there. Did you remind them what happened to Sapne?”
Gala nodded. “Miosa accused us of starting the plagues ourselves and making it look lik
e the Mages. And Khesat—in their reply, Khesat rhymed ‘Sapne’ with ‘winemelon.’”
“But ‘Sapne’ and ‘winemelon’ don’t rhyme.”
“Apparently in Khesatan they do.”
Metadi was silent for a while, looking at the star map. Gala couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but she didn’t believe he was pondering the oddities of Khesatan musical theater. Finally he said, “You haven’t mentioned Maraghai. Is that the world which didn’t respond?”
“Yes—but that’s no surprise. Those people don’t respond to anyone.”
“The Selvaurs? They wouldn’t.” He paused and glanced at her sharply. “You didn’t happen to imply that this was a problem they couldn’t handle by themselves, did you?”
“I don’t think that I did.”
“If you did we’re buggered. They’re sensitive about their honor. Still—” Metadi looked thoughtfully at the green lights in the star map, and began to smile. “I have an idea. Let’s take a trip to Maraghai. I want to have the Selvaurs tell me face-to-face that they won’t go into a mutual defense pact.”
“They won’t talk to you.”
“I think they will,” he said. “Come on, Admiral. I’ve been stuck on-planet for months. Let’s go.”
JOS METADI: SAPNE
(GALCENIAN DATING 966 A.F.; ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 30 VERATINA)
EMANA MARKET on Sapne had never been a good port for free-spacers. The powerful merchant combines that handled most of the off-world trade preferred to deal with the shipping lines running out of Gyffer or Mandeyn. Independent carriers like Meritorious Reward—whose pilot/apprentice was a hazel-eyed youth giving his name, truthfully, as Jos Metadi and his age, somewhat less truthfully, as twenty years Galcenian—had to make do with onetime deals, mostly stuff either too small or too irregular for the big firms to handle.
Sometimes, if rarely, an independent could make a high profit carrying material that was risky to work with or that needed emergency delivery. The Merry had picked up one such cargo on Kiin-Aloq, a load of self-replicating antiviral agents in sealed metal crates, each crate stenciled with a fearsome list of handling instructions and a warning: IF NOT USED BY—a Kiin-Aloqan date in the perilously near future—DESTROY UNOPENED. To Meritorious Reward’s captain and crew, the bonus paid for a successful delivery in half the usual time more than offset the danger involved in making a high-speed run with hazardous cargo.
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