Aringher smiled a little to himself as he drew one of his personal cards from his jacket pocket and wrote a note on the back: “One whom you helped to tie up with curtain cords requests the honor of your ear for five minutes’ time.”
He tucked the note inside the folded cloth. Now to see if the young Domina in fact had the mischievous sense of humor he thought he’d glimpsed in her that night in Waycross. He’d been wrong about people’s characters before, but not often—with luck, he hadn’t lost the knack.
The hovercab bumped to a stop and settled to the ground. Aringher rapped with his knuckles on the panel separating him from the driver.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Don’t know. Traffic’s stopped.”
Aringher craned his neck to look beyond the grounded cabs and buses lined up ahead of them. He didn’t like what he saw. From the direction of the Palace Major, itself out of sight beyond the tall buildings close by, something that looked like a column of smoke was drifting lazily skyward.
He popped open the hovercab door and stood on the mounting step for a better view. It was smoke, all right—and unless he’d lost his eye for distance completely, the bottom of the cloud was somewhere close to the palace itself.
Then he heard on the wind, from somewhere off to the right, the sound of blasters firing.
“What do you know,” he muttered. “My mother did raise a fool.”
He stripped off a twelve-octime note and tossed it to the driver, and sprinted toward the sound of the guns.
PERADA ROSSELIN: ENTIBORAN CROWN COURIER CRYSTAL WORLD
(GALCENIAN DATING 967 A.F.; ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 31 VERATINA)
THE ARMSMASTER, Ser Hafrey, was an elderly man—almost as old as Zeri Delaven. Perada hadn’t met him before. She supposed that Felshang Province hadn’t been important enough for someone from the Palace to bother with. She hadn’t been important enough, not until now.
The library at school had genealogies and tables of succession for every planetary monarchy in the civilized galaxy. In the years between her mother’s death and now, Perada had studied the ones for Entibor over and over again. House Rosselin … House Chereeve … House Lachiel … Whenever somebody died, the pattern changed. But she’d never expected to find herself Domina-in-Waiting; there were too many people left alive to get in the way.
Something must have happened, she thought. But what?
As soon as the courier ship reached hyperspace and the “danger” light over her stateroom door quit flashing red, she went in search of Ser Hafrey to ask him questions.
The armsmaster wasn’t in any of the staterooms, nor in the dining salon, nor on the observation deck, where curving walls of armor-glass made windows onto a field of stars. A year or two ago, Perada would have thought the stars were real; now she was old enough to know better. There wasn’t anything visible in hyper—“just funny-looking grey stuff all over the place,” Garen had said—so the view of deep space outside the glass walls of the observation deck must be a holovid.
An iron staircase led in a tight spiral down from the observation deck to the deck below. Keeping a firm hold on the railing, she descended. There was a force field at the bottom of the staircase, probably to keep idle passengers from disturbing Crystal World’s crew. An abstract holovid that looked like a colored waterfall hid whatever parts of the ship lay beyond that point.
Perada halted on the second step from the bottom. “Ser Hafrey?”
“A moment, my lady,” came the armsmaster’s voice from beyond the shifting colors of the holovid. “If you will be so good as to wait for me on the observation deck …”
Perada felt disappointed—she’d hoped for a chance to see what the working part of a starship looked like—but she said, “Yes, Armsmaster,” and went back up the steps. She sat and watched the imitation starfield until the sound of footsteps on metal told her that Ser Hafrey was coming up the iron stair.
He came onto the observation deck and bowed to her, a very deep bow, the way the majordomo at home had always bowed to her mother. Perada wasn’t certain she liked it. Nobody at school bowed to anybody else; it was one of Zeri Delaven’s rules, like always packing your own bags.
“You wished to speak with me, my lady?”
“Yes,” she said. “Ser Hafrey, why am I the Domina-in-Waiting?”
“It pleased the Domina Veratina to make you so,” the armsmaster said. “She has the right to name whomever she chooses, since she has no heir of her body.”
“I know about that,” Perada said impatiently. “They even talked about it at school.”
Ser Hafrey looked disapproving. “The matter is scarcely fit gossip for schoolgirls, my lady.”
“It wasn’t me,” she said. “It was a class in the upper division. ‘The Entiboran Succession Crisis,’ they called it. Because people kept dying.”
Mother too, she thought, but didn’t say. And Dadda. And the baby.
She’d figured that much out for herself already, from listening to the upper-division students and from reading the archived newsfiles and holos in the school library. Zeri Delaven had never spoken to Perada of how her family had died, but the newsfiles had told her more than enough. Maybe aircars did explode by accident sometimes—but Perada didn’t think so.
“Exactly, my lady,” said Ser Hafrey. “The Domina named you as the heir to put a stop to talk like that.”
Perada frowned. The armsmaster was being stupid, not understanding what she was trying to say politely, the way Zeri Delaven said that people should talk. And she didn’t think the armsmaster was a stupid man, which meant that he was doing it on purpose. I don’t like that, she thought, and decided not to bother with being polite anymore.
“She wanted to stop people killing each other, didn’t she?”
Hafrey looked at her for a moment, up and down. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Yes, my lady,” he said. “When quarrels among the Great Houses disturb the citizens and become casual gossip in schoolrooms across the galaxy, a Domina must take action.”
“But why did Great-Aunt ’Tina pick me?” she demanded. “There’s lots of other people she could have named instead.”
“None of the others are Shaja Rosselin’s child.”
As answers went, it was no answer, and Perada knew it. She also knew—the charts at school had made a lot of things clear to her—that she was the only candidate with no family, except for Veratina, living.
So she doesn’t have to worry about Mother, or Dadda, or little Beka. Only about me.
Perada nodded. Let Ser Hafrey think she was agreeing with him; she was really agreeing with herself.
“But what if the other people don’t want me to be Domina-in-Waiting?” she asked. “Won’t they try to kill me, too?”
The armsmaster smiled faintly, for the first time.
“No, my lady,” he said. “I am charged with your safety. Regardless of what the rivals among the Great Houses might wish, none of them are likely to dare an attempt.”
XVI. GALCENIAN DATING 976 A.F
ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 3 PERADA
MY LADY! My lady!”
The words had a strong Galcenian accent, the kind that made the syllables sound like they’d been measured out evenly and cut to length with scissors. Perada stopped and turned, frowning a little as Ser Hafrey moved to place himself between her and the speaker. She craned her neck a little for a clear view and saw a well-dressed man of middle years trotting up the street toward them. He held a scrap of black cloth in one hand.
“My lady,” the man repeated as he came nearer, “I believe you dropped this.”
“’Rada, do you know this person?” Garen muttered in her ear.
“We’ve met once or twice,” she said.
Once, at least. She clearly recalled seeing the man lying trussed with curtain cords on the floor of the Double Moon. And the scrap of cloth he was holding was the half-mask she’d worn as part of her incognito on Innish-Kyl, for
a tête-a-tête that had ended with blast beams in a darkened alley. Another day of blaster fire, and here he was again.
Garen took the mask and handed it to her. She glanced at it. Masks were anonymous by definition, but this one was thick velvet lined with satin, as hers had been, with double-sewn tabs and a stiff interlining to give it shape—good quality, and either her own mask or its near-twin. A square of white pasteboard slid out from between the folds.
There was writing on he back on the card, in Galcenian script: “One whom you helped to tie up with curtain cords requests the honor of your ear for five minutes’ time.”
She tucked the card into the pocket of her gown, then lifted the mask to put it on. Hafrey looked dubious.
“My lady, I’m not certain it’s safe. You don’t know this man—”
“Oh, but I do. And I’d like to know him a good deal better. In fact, I think I want to know everything about him.” Masked now, she turned back to smile at the man from the Double Moon. “Absolutely everything.”
The man lost none of his aplomb. “I blush to admit,” he said, “that our previous meeting was both informal and hurried. How should I address your ladyship today?”
Perada strove to match his air of unconcern—a hard thing to do, with her pulse still racing from the ambush, but she managed. “I am Gentlelady Wherret of Arenvel, and this”—she nodded toward Garen—“is Lord Meteun.”
The man made a quick bow after the Galcenian manner. “Your servant, my lady. I am Festen Aringher, late of Galcen, sometime of Suivi Point, and now a roving philosopher.”
“I see.” Perada considered him for a moment. “Gentlesir Aringher, you are most convenient in your arrival. As it happens, we’re on our way to pay a call on one of your fellow-citizens … if you would be so good as to come with us?”
Ser Hafrey had been listening to the conversation with a growing air of extreme disapproval. “Gentlelady,” he said in his most severe tones, “we must proceed before the opportunity is lost. Surely you can issue this gentlesir an invitation to attend you later, at court?”
“No, I can’t,” Perada said. “After our last meeting I lost track of him, and I don’t want to misplace him a second time.”
Garen was frowning at Aringher. “Weren’t you at the formal reception after the old Domina’s public burning?” he asked. “You had a holorecorder, and I thought you were some kind of news collector.”
“Holovids?” Perada wrinkled her nose, grateful for the mask that hid her involuntary grimace. “Did you make one the other time, too?”
“Unfortunately,” said the Galcenian, “no. I had no intimation that the spectacle to come would be so entertaining.”
“Indeed? Then there are limits to your philosophy.”
“Gentlelady,” Hafrey said again, “this is neither the time nor the place for miscellaneous pleasantries. We must bid the gentlesir a good day, and be about our business.”
“Lead on, then,” she told him. “But Gentlesir Aringher comes with us.”
Hafrey sighed. “As you will, my lady. As you will.”
They walked on in silence for another block. Hafrey set a quick pace; Aringher for his part kept up without trouble, and seemed unaffected by either the armsmaster’s suspicion or Garen Tarveet’s hostility. Perada found the lack of conversation oppressive—but since the situation was at least partly her doing she didn’t feel she had the right to complain.
Garen spoke first, which wasn’t surprising. Ser Hafrey was capable of remaining silent forever if he wanted to, and Gentlesir Festen Aringher appeared serenely unaware of the chilly atmosphere.
“There aren’t a lot of people on the street,” Garen said.
Perada glanced about. She saw one or two other people, well off in the middle distance, but not the crowds she would have expected on a midday street near the center of An-Jemayne.
“You’re right,” she said. “There aren’t. Maybe the explosion and the shooting scared them off.”
“I don’t think so. By now we should have people coming out to see what the commotion was all about.”
Gentlesir Aringher cleared his throat. “If you’ll look over to the left,” he said diffidently, “you can see something that looks like smoke rising from the palace. Perhaps the crowds are there.”
“We have to hurry,” Ser Hafrey said. “If there’s trouble at the palace we don’t have much time.”
They hastened their footsteps.
“I’m not familiar with this part of the city,” Perada said. “How much farther do we need to go?”
“The Orgilan Guesthouse isn’t far,” Hafrey said. “Once we’re there, you can transact your business and be done.”
Aringher regarded him with curiosity. “We haven’t been introduced,” he said. “But if I may be so bold as to ask—what exactly is your function in the government of this planet?”
“I have no function in the government,” said Hafrey. “I am the armsmaster. I teach the use of weapons to members of the Ruling House, and maintain their collections of armaments.”
“How fascinating.”
“It is that,” Hafrey said. “For example, I recently completed the restoration of a tabletop agonizer dating from the reign of Marfa the Second. Perhaps you’d like to see it put to use?”
“I’d be delighted,” Aringher said. “My days are spent in the pursuit of knowledge.”
“Days like the ones you spent recently at the Mount Kelpen Lodge overlooking the Wippeldon spaceport—until the very moment a Galcenian courier landed there, whereupon you departed for An-Jemayne as rapidly as transport could be bought?”
Aringher raised his eyebrows. “My goodness—you certainly are observant.”
“Like you, I’m a student of human nature.”
“Gentles,” Perada said, “I hate to interrupt such a pleasant conversation, but the street is emptier than it was a few minutes ago. If this goes on, I’m going to start feeling conspicuous.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Hafrey. “We have arrived.”
The Orgilan Guesthouse was a brick building with marble steps and an ornamented pediment, after the style of a previous century. Perada started up the steps. Garen followed; but before Aringher could do likewise the armsmaster stepped in front of him.
“Gentlesir, I must insist that you remain outside.”
The Galcenian shrugged and fell back.
Perada said, “No. Gentlesir Aringher comes with us.”
“Gentlelady,” Hafrey said, “this is most improper.”
“You forget yourself, Armsmaster,” she told him. “I’m the one who says what’s proper and what isn’t. It’s not for you to decide.”
Hafrey bowed. “I serve,” he said, and she thought she heard him sigh. He stepped out of Aringher’s way, and the four of them entered the building together.
Inside, the Orgilan was sedate but luxurious. Heavy curtains in the downstairs windows blocked out the noises and distractions of the city outside, and thick carpet hushed their footsteps. The walls, paneled in slabs of cut stone in swirling patterns of green and grey and shimmering metal, reminded Perada of the visual artifacts that filled the Pleyveran Web. The memory unsettled her—there had been people shooting at her that day, too.
I wish Jos were here, she thought. This is Fleet territory, and he knows how to talk to the Fleet.
They climbed the stairs in silence to the second floor. A single officer waited outside the closed door of one of the rooms. At a word from Ser Hafrey, he touched the lockplate and the door slid open. Perada let the armsmaster go first over the threshold, according to custom, and entered the room herself when he gave the nod. Garen Tarveet and Gentlesir Aringher trailed along behind.
The room was a sitting room like any one of a hundred others in An-Jemayne: chairs, a settee, a low table, autumnal flowers in porcelain vases, an old-style fireplace retrofitted with a ceramic heat-bar. A vaguely familiar man in clothing of Galcenian style and cut rose from one of the chairs and bowed poli
tely as she came into the room.
“Greeting, Gentlelady,” he said in fluent, if accented, Entiboran. “I am Vannell Oldigaard, empowered to speak for the Galcenian Council.”
Oldigaard, Perada thought. That explains why he looks like somebody I ought to know—he’s one of Elli’s uncles or cousins or whatever.
“Be welcome, Gentlesir Oldigaard,” she replied in Galcenian. “I am Gentlelady Wherret. The Domina sends her greetings, and asks me to make you acquainted with Ser Hafrey, a member of her household, and with Lord Meteun, her economic advisor.”
Oldigaard bowed again. “Ser Hafrey, Lord Meteun.”
“They have the Domina’s ear,” Perada said. “And if I may speak for a moment on my own behalf—please greet, also, a compatriot of yours, Gentlesir. Festen Aringher.”
The Galcenian envoy favored Aringher with a stiff nod and turned to Perada. “If I may introduce my own associate—”
“Please do.” Perada became aware, somewhat belatedly, of another man standing behind Gentlesir Oldigaard. Where was he a moment ago? she wondered. How could he do that?
Then she took in the man’s austere black trousers and tunic, and the long staff of polished wood that he carried in his right hand. Her question was answered: Vannell Oldigaard had brought an Adept with him from Galcen.
“My advisor on matters of strategy and security,” Oldigaard was saying. “Master Guislen.”
Fleet Admiral Galaret Lachiel woke up with a pounding headache. She opened one eye and winced at the yellow sunlight that poured down through the row of windows high up along one wall. From where she lay, she had a view of rough-hewn wooden roof beams and part of a massive doorframe. The posts of the door were stripped and polished tree trunks, half again the height of a tall man, and the skull of something large and carnivorous grinned down at her from the rustic lintel.
We’re still on Maraghai.
She closed both eyes again, feeling relieved in spite of the physical discomfort. Selvauran parties weren’t easy on the thin-skinned guests, and she was glad General Metadi hadn’t taken literally his determination to leave as soon as possible. Even with the help of soberups, she hadn’t been fit to lift ship when the celebration ended, and neither had anyone else in the ’Hammer’s crew.
The Gathering Flame Page 27