[Mageworlds 5] - The Long Hunt

by Debra Doyle

  "You were a whole fortnight in transit," Blossom demanded, "and you didn't even get to know your shipmates?"

  "We weren't traveling for the sake of the giddy social round." The young man paused. "Turnabout is fair play. What I want to know is how you knew how long we were in transit."

  "Because I know who you are," Blossom said. "You're Jens Metadi-Jessan D'Rosselin and the short one over mere with all the muscles is your cousin Faral Hyfid-Metadi. And you're both in a world of trouble."

  "I'd never have noticed if you hadn't mentioned it." Jens Metadi-Jessan D'Rosselin took a step backward, set his shoulders against the storeroom wall, and pulled a blaster out of his front coat pocket. His fair skin had gone much paler, Miza noted, and his blue eyes were very bright.

  "The gentlesir in the tea shop dropped this," he said. "And yes, I do know how to use it. So if you don't mind, my cousin and I will leave now. Thanks for the help and all, but we have a ship to catch."

  Huool ruffled his feathers in agitation. "My dear boy!" he exclaimed. "You have no appreciation of the seriousness of the situation. You are, how shall I say this, hunted?"

  "Think about it for a minute," Blossom added. "You need to make it to the port and get off-planet. We want you to make it to the port and get off-planet. There shouldn't be any problem working something out."

  "My mother told me that I should be careful talking to strangers," Jens said. "And I'm afraid you know more of our names than we do of yours. Nobody is working out anything until we've had some proper introductions."

  Blossom looked more amused than Miza thought quite proper for an elderly gentlelady being held at blaster-point. "When a young man with a blaster asks for my name," the tea shop owner said to Jens, "I believe in giving it to him. And as it happens, I owe a duty to your House."

  She made a deep bow, after some style of etiquette that Miza didn't recognize; not the local Ophelan mode, nor yet the generalized manner of a seasoned traveler. But her next words explained much. "I'm Tillijen Chereeve, quondam Armsmaster to House Rosselin of Entibor."

  The dark youth—Faral, it seemed his name was—growled a foreign-sounding phrase somewhere in the back of his throat. "For a planet that got blown up fifty-something years ago," he added, "there are entirely too many of you people running around."

  "My sentiments exactly, coz," said Jens. He hadn't lowered the blaster, and the note of suspicion wasn't yet gone from his voice. "One question more, Gentlelady Tillijen—if you are indeed who you say you are. Who was the Number One gunner on Warhammer back when Granda was a privateer?"

  "That was Nannla Rue," said Blossom promptly. "She and I worked the 'Hammer's guns together, with Ferrdacorr ngha-Rillikkikk in the engine room and Errec Ransome in the copilot's chair."

  Jens nodded. "Then, Gentlelady Tillijen—"

  "Call me Blossom. It's what I go by these days."

  "—Gentlelady Blossom, if what you say is true, and the attack in your shop was not merely an elaborate charade you've staged in order to gain our trust—then what would you have us do?"

  "The first thing," Blossom told him, "is to get yourselves tidied up. You can't go wandering around town looking like you've been crawling through the sewers. People will talk."

  "Easily handled," said Huool. "Miza, take our young guests upstairs and show them the washing facilities. Make them clean."

  Miza stared at him in surprise. "Me?"

  "Consider it part of your education, young one. I'll see that you get extra credit."

  In the Old Quarter of Sombrelír, the metallic wail of sirens cut through the quiet afternoon, and a smell of wood smoke drifted on the wind. Mistress Klea Santreny, her polished staff of Nammerin grrch wood firmly held in hand, strode across the open square. Ophel was a civilized planet; an Adept's staff was sufficient to win passage for her through the barricades that local fire and security forces had put up to keep out gawkers.

  Around her, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles made a disorienting jumble of garish color against a background of neatly trimmed trees and pastel shopfronts. A vertical-lift aircar with City MedServ insignia took off in a roar of heavy-duty nullgravs. The aircar hovered for an instant at rooftop level, then darted away toward where the hospitals, tall and sleek, raised their platforms above the crowded buildings of the modern city. On one side of the square, underneath a sign proclaiming the shop behind it to be the home of the finest shoes in the world, a team of medics worked over a prone body.

  I haven't seen a mess like this since the war, Klea thought. She noted on the shoemaker's wall the distinctive blast patterns of an energy lance. Looks like a near miss. A hit wouldn't have left enough for the medics to bother with.

  Across the plaza, people wearing the caps and armbands of Sombrelír's Civil Guard were talking into autoscribes and pointing hand recorders at the scene. The focus of their activity seemed to be Bindweed & Blossom's tea shop. The front of the building was stained with soot, and most of the downstairs windows were broken out. A line of scorch marks showed where somebody had swept a blaster set on "continuous fire" across the painted stucco wall.

  Klea moved nearer to the iron fence that surrounded the tea shop's trampled garden. The Guild Master's wayward nephews were not, she hoped, in this place any longer, but if she wanted to pick up their trail, this was where she would have to do it. Unobtrusively, she opened her mind to the search— and felt the hairs rise on her neck as the presence of Mage-work came to her like a bad smell on the wind.

  She looked about for the source of the unpleasant sensation, and saw a man approaching the shop from her left. Like her, he wore black and carried a staff; but his staff was the short, silver-bound rod of a Mage, and he wore a Mage's featureless black mask under the hood of his cloak.

  This is Ophel, Klea reminded herself. People here don't feel about Mages the way we do back home.

  The Mage in question strode purposefully forward, his goal apparently the same as her own—the blast-marked facade of Bindweed & Blossom's. Klea moved to intercept him, stepping up beside him and placing a hand on his sleeve.

  "Hold, friend," she said.

  He halted, and made a nodding acknowledgment of her presence. "Mistress Santreny." His accent was strong: harsh in the consonants and oddly pitched in the long, musical vowels. "I beg your pardon, but I am engaged."

  "You have the advantage of me," she said, not letting go his arm. "I'm afraid that I don't know you at all."

  The Mage swept back his hood with his free hand, and removed his mask in the same gesture. Klea saw that he was a man about a decade older than she was herself, with ordinary, unterrifying features. His thick black hair was streaked liberally with iron-grey. After a moment, Klea realized that she knew him.

  "Mael Taleion," she said. "Second of the Circles."

  "As you, too, are Second," he said. "After the Adepts' fashion. Now, please, let us go each to our own business."

  A suspicion stirred in Klea's mind. "Your business wouldn't happen to concern a pair of young men from Maraghai, would it?"

  "And if it does?"

  "Mine does as well. The Master of the Guild wants to see them kept away from danger."

  "If that's the case," Taleion said, "you appear to have had little success. But I dare not chide you for it—I have similar orders from the First of the Mage-Circles. And, like you, I tracked the young men from the spaceport to here. Where, trust me, they currently are not."

  "This part of the trail is cold," Klea said. She nodded toward the tea shop, where two members of the Civil Guard were talking with a straight-backed, grey-haired woman. A smudge of soot marked the woman's forehead where she had wiped away the sweat, and blaster-fire had scorched the gold-embroidered fabric of her vest and skirt. "We need to talk to that one over there sometime soon. Maybe she knows where our birds have flown."

  In the plush and paneled offices of the Green Sun Cooperative, a man stood at uneasy attention before the desk of Nilifer Jehavi—the son of the organization's founder,
and currently in charge of its day-to-day operations.

  "Well?" Jehavi said.

  "There were… complications," the man said. His name badge, clipped to his left breast pocket, said that his name was Kolpag Garbazon, that his serial number was 13tq49O8y, that he was an Operative First Class, and that he was cleared for Upmost-level secrets. He had over a dozen years of experience in the service of the Cooperative.

  "I know there were complications," Jehavi said. "If there hadn't been complications, we wouldn't have had to refund the deposit. You don't know how we hate doing that."

  In fact, Kolpag had a fairly good idea how much the head man—and his son—hated to give back a customer's money. Not to mention how much they hated seeing any lowering of the firm's reputation. Now, however, was not the time for a prudent man to talk about such things.

  "I know there were complications," Jehavi repeated, more quietly, and in a kinder tone. "You had orders that the packages were not to be damaged in any way, and you walked into an ambush."

  He paused a moment. Then: "Please, sit down."

  Kolpag sat, and tried not to show his relief. The young boss wasn't as dangerous or as unpredictable as his father had been, but he still wasn't a man whose wrath anyone could take lightly.

  Jehavi leaned back in his chair and looked at Kolpag. "Well, then," he said. "You are still my best field operative, regardless of what our recent contractors expressed to me in some exceedingly colorful language just now. Leaving all that aside—you lost your partner. Will you be able to work?"

  "Yes," Kolpag said. For a simple snatch-and-go on a couple of tourists, this afternoon had turned into a complete disaster. He knew intellectually that Freppys wouldn't be waiting in the employees' lounge cracking jokes when he walked out of Jehavi's office, but the emotional reality hadn't yet sunk in.

  "Good. These are your new orders. You are still to pick up the packages. Previous rules of engagement remain in effect: the packages are not to be harmed in any way. The difference is that this time, instead of delivering the packages anywhere else, you are to bring them here to me. Clear?"

  "Clear." Kolpag allowed himself to wonder, briefly, what new enterprise Jehavi had in mind. Then he laid the question aside: he was an employee, not an executive, and the Green Sun did not pay him to think about such things.

  "Excellent," said Jehavi. "And if, in the course of your efforts, you learn who set up the ambush this afternoon—and why—I would be delighted to learn of it. Where that matter is concerned, survivors among the opposition are neither necessary nor desired. Clear?"

  Kolpag nodded. "Clear," he said again. He didn't add, because it was not a matter for the boss's concern, that with the death of Freppys, finding out who'd arranged the ambush in the Old Quarter had ceased to be merely a business obligation.

  "Excellent. Let us move on to the next item." One thing, at least, Jehavi had in common with his more notorious father: whenever he was in a room, he commanded the attention of everyone else present through the sheer force of his personality. When he gestured at a chair over against the wall to his right, Kolpag noticed for the first time that another man had been sitting there all along. "This is Ruhn," Jehavi said. "He's your new partner." Ruhn was a short man with close-cropped red hair. He nodded once, politely, at Kolpag, and Kolpag returned the nod without enthusiasm. He didn't need to waste time right now settling into a new partnership… but it was against Green Sun policy for operatives to work alone.

  Both men turned back to Jehavi. "Right," the boss said. "My gut tells me that the packages are on-planet, but not for long. The two of you know your jobs. Do them." Kolpag pushed back his chair and stood up. "Expenses?"

  "Draw them from the accounting office," Jehavi said. He turned back to his desk. "That's all, gentlesirs. You can go."

  Faral glanced over at his cousin. Jens hadn't yet put down the blaster, and everybody else in the crowded storeroom— Gentlelady Tillijen, the Roti named Huool who apparently owned the place, and the girl Miza who worked there—was waiting to see what he would do with it.

  "Come on," Faral said. "I think we can trust these people." In Trade-talk, he added, *If it turns out we can't, you can always shoot them later anyhow.*

  The girl stepped out from behind her worktable and gestured at a door on the far side of the room. "This way," she said. "Upstairs."

  The staircase was narrow and steep, as well as being heavily soundproofed. Red glowdots set at intervals into the paneling gave a murky crimson light.

  Miza led the way up the carpeted steps. She wore snug green trousers—Faral had an excellent view from the stairs behind her—and she had a thick brush of bright red hair that bobbed against her shoulder blades as she walked. If Jens's blaster frightened her, she was doing a good job of not showing it.

  Faral moved a bit closer to his cousin. "What exactly are you planning to do with that thing?"

  "Protect us from snakes and strange men," Jens said. "I think we've fallen into a den of thieves. Right now I just want to get to the port and get out of here."

  "So do I. Chaka's going to laugh her head off, though." He switched back to Trade-talk. *Is there something else going on that you know about and I don't?*

  *Maybe,* Jens said. *We'll talk about it later.*

  They reached the top of the stairs and followed Miza down a narrow passage. The walls, paneled in dark wood like the stairway, hemmed them in on either side. Light panels overhead provided enough illumination to show that the carpet underfoot was dark green, patterned with a convoluted design of golden serpents. The deep nap muffled the sound of their footsteps. No outsider in the rooms below would know if someone came or went on the upper level.

  Miza stopped at a door on the right-hand side of the passage. It slid open, not swinging on hinges the way most of the doors in the Old Quarter had done, and revealed a small, windowless room lined with shelves and cabinets. A bank of comps and repro units filled most of the remaining space.

  "All right," Miza said. Her Galcenian sounded as idiomatic as Faral's own—maybe more so, without the Forest accent to get in the way. "Hand over your identification plates. I'll need them to create new personas for you. And take off your clothes."

  Faral blinked. "What?"

  He was grateful that his skin didn't show a blush easily. Jens might have heard stranger requests every day while he was living on Khesat, but life under the Big Trees was more sedate. Miza didn't seem to notice his reaction, however, except as a request to explain further.

  "Dump your old things in the recycler and put on clean outfits from the stuff over there." She pointed at the far wall, where piles of folded cloth in assorted colors and textures lay on shelves next to racks of boots and shoes.

  "With you in the room?" Faral asked.

  She looked at him impatiently. "Where else am I supposed to be? I've got to get your documents ready, and this is where I do it."

  Faral looked at Jens. His cousin still held the blaster at the ready, but he'd already removed his ID case from his jacket with his left hand. If Miza's request had startled him, it wasn't showing. Faral shrugged—Mamma always said things were different out here in the big galaxy—and pulled out his own ID case.

  The girl took both sets of ID without comment and carried them over to the comp setup. Turning her back on the rest of the room, she began feeding their datacards and flatpix into the reader. She ignored Jens's blaster completely, as if it had been a younger brother's water toy.

  "Now what?" Faral muttered to his cousin. "Am I supposed to go first, or you?"

  Jens looked at Miza's back. She was hunched over the comp, her hands busy on its input panel. The repro unit next to her hummed and blinked and spat out hard copy.

  "Here, take this," he said, handing Faral the blaster. "Essence of Sewage isn't my favorite perfume, and there's no point in walking around Sombrelír in this condition if we can reasonably avoid it."

  The weapon felt heavier than Faral had expected. "How am I supposed to—"
/>   "The safety's off. If you need to shoot, the firing stud is that red button there by your thumb."

  Faral held the blaster gingerly, keeping his grip well clear of the firing stud. "I'll try to remember. Foster-brother… if it isn't too much to ask, what do you think you're doing?"

  "Changing clothes." Jens already had his boots off and was peeling away his socks.

  There were times, Faral reflected, when his cousin became almost too Khesatan to put up with. "I know that. But why pull a blaster on someone who's helping us out of trouble? Are you expecting—?"

  "—treachery? No." Jens pulled a clean white shirt off the nearest shelf and held it up for a critical inspection. "But it doesn't hurt to be careful."

  "You were never this suspicious before you went off to visit Khesat," Faral complained. "What did they do to you back there, anyway?"

  "They told me to think of it as a learning experience," Jens said. "I learned a lot."

  As soon as he'd finished changing, he stuffed his old clothes into the recycling bin and held out his hand for the blaster. Faral handed the weapon over with relief. It didn't take him long to shuck out of his mud-stained garments and put on new ones—as long as the size was approximately correct, he didn't care about the finer points of style and color. He'd just gotten the shirt over his head and had started tugging on the collar laces to tighten them when the repro unit beeped.

  Miza gathered up the stacks of items from the unit's various output trays and sorted the lot into a pair of leather credit cases. She turned around and held the cases out to Faral and Jens.

  "Here," she said. "Take these. The best fake ID that money can buy. And it's yours for free."

  Was the timing on that just good luck, Faral wondered, or did she keep her back turned in order to spare our feelings?

  He took the case she offered him, uncertain whether having his feelings spared was a good thing or not. A quick glance inside the case showed him that he was Ilwyn Fane, of Therabek, and that he had a more-than-respectable line of credit with the banking firm of Dahl&Dahl on Suivi Point. He slid the case into his pocket.