by Debra Doyle
"Ah, good, you found her," he said in heavily accented Galcenian. Then, to Chaka, he said, "I am Huool, and it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance."
Chaka bowed. Blossom nodded toward the glyphs on the surface of the workdesk and asked, "Confirmation that the boys are away?"
Huool made a clicking noise with his beak. Chaka couldn't tell whether it was meant to indicate agreement, dismay, or something else completely unreadable.
"Nothing," he said. "And this disturbs me. Miza is a very sweet girl, and if anything had gone wrong, I'm certain her first action would have been to contact me. And the same, if the young men were safe and her mission accomplished."
Blossom shrugged. "She's a good-looking girl, they're good-looking boys—maybe they're in a rental room right now having a party."
"The ways of your species," Huool said. He made a chittering noise that Chaka presumed was intended to convey amusement. "I suppose you know them best. But—there is another matter."
"Holding out on me, eh?"
"Never," said Huool. "See here." He pointed to the workdesk, and both Blossom and Chaka leaned forward to look. "They were supplied with much credit. I tracked the credit, and found that they had used it already—not for passage off-planet, mind you, but in a common exchange shop."
"Barapan's," Blossom said, in tones of disgust. "Whose bright idea was that, I want to know? Your guide—"
"You do my teaching injustice. Miza opposed it, I'm certain—she knows of Barapan's artifices." Huool tapped another glyph on the surface of the desk. The patterns shifted, and a text entry appeared. "But see here: only a few minutes after the transaction, we have a security report from Deládier Row. An assault in which two men and a woman were attacked. The two men were left behind unconscious while the woman fled."
"If Barapan's put our boys in the hospital, I'll—"
Huool made the clicking noise again. "No need, no need. The woman was unhurt, and if it had been Miza—"
"She would have contacted you by now."
"Just so. I think it much more likely that our three young people surprised Barapan's accomplices, much as the Green Sun was surprised earlier. But why they may have felt it needful to vanish afterward when help was so readily available here…" Huool didn't shrug—Chaka doubted he had the joints for it—but the flick of his feathery brow-tufts was clearly equivalent.
Blossom turned to Chaka. "You know the boys. What do you think?"
Chaka considered the problem for a minute. She thought about Faral, coming back blooded from a Long Hunt the elders had never planned on asking him to make; and Jens, sent home in disgrace from Khesat for doing something, nobody ever said what, that apparently even the Khesatan wrinkleskins had never thought of to do. Those two would have plans of their own right now, of that she was sure; and while Chaka could guess at their intentions, she didn't think it right to speculate aloud. Merely because the one called Blossom had spoken in Trade-talk did not prove she was a friend, and her interest in Chaka's agemates might not be benign.
*I think they don't want to be found,* she said after a moment, *and asking for help is not in their natures.*
Another possibility that had come to mind—that Faral and Jens had stuffed Huool's guide in a trash disposal and lost the pursuit completely—she decided not to mention. Let her friends keep their plans, and their lead, if they had one.
"So we wait," Blossom said. "Once Bindweed gets clear of Security paperwork, she'll join us and we can see what develops. Meanwhile—" She pulled a well-used deck of cards out of her hip pocket. "—I learned years ago that time passes quicker when you've got something else to think about. Do either of you know how to play kingnote?" *No.*
"That's okay, I'll teach you. How about you, Huool?" The gallery's proprietor gave his cluttering laugh. "With your cards? I'd need to have run mad." He opened a drawer in the workdesk and withdrew an equally well-used deck.
"Here, use mine."
The last of the afternoon sunlight filtered past the closed louvers in the dim room to make bars of light against the far wall. Kolpag Garbazon looked over at his newly assigned partner. Ruhn was taking off his gloves, a disgusted look on his face.
The man sitting in the chair in front of Kolpag and Ruhn remained upright only because he was tied there. His ankles were bound to the chair's legs, his chest to the chair's back. His arms were tied to his sides. The man's head lolled, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth to stain the shirt below.
"I believe this one doesn't know anything about our packages," Ruhn said.
Kolpag nodded. "You're probably right. He's told us everything else."
He raised his blaster and shot the man once in the head. The man jerked convulsively in his bonds, then sagged and was still.
Kolpag and Ruhn left the cheap rented room and walked down the outside stairway to the street. Their hovercar waited for them by the sidewalk. Ruhn slid into the passenger side and Kolpag took the controls.
"We've still got too many questions," said Ruhn, as the hovercar's nullgravs lifted it above the cracked and potholed pavement. "The names they're using right now. Who helped them. Where they are."
Kolpag brought the hovercar out of the seedy downtown neighborhood and into the main traffic stream. "There's no report of anybody close to their description leaving the space-port," he said. "Let's assume that they're a smart couple of lads—we know they were smart enough to spot Barapan's purse-lifters and take care of them without yelling for help. So. Where would a smart person be right now?"
"Holed up somewhere," Ruhn said at once. "Waiting for the surveillance to relax and go away."
"That's what I think too. Our boys won't make their move off-planet for a week, maybe longer."
"The boss won't like having to wait that long."
"Yeah. I know." Kolpag maneuvered the hovercar into a gap between a green-and-yellow jitney and a crowded short-mover coming up from the spaceport. "We'll have to work another angle… What genders did our late friend say his partners were?"
"One male, one female."
"Right. And our two packages have apparently picked up a female escort, a special courier from Huool Galleries. So now they're also two males and a female." He turned onto the main traffic artery leading from downtown Sombrelír to the suburbs, pushed forward on the yoke to bring the hovercar up to speed, and continued, "Did you notice that our late acquaintance wasn't carrying any ID?"
"I did," said Ruhn. "Are you thinking that the boys may have lifted the papers of their assailants?"
"That's right."
"Definitely not your average tourists." Ruhn brought out his datapad, full of material from the active interrogation session, and punched in a link through the hovercar's comm rig. "Set out full data-group search on the following three names. Best fit, eliminate duplicates. Mauris Fant, Brix Gorlees, Keyíla Danit."
The grounds of the Sombrelír Guildhouse were as rundown and untended as the rooms within. The flowers and the ornamental shrubs had long since overgrown their beds, and the lawn had not been mowed for some weeks. Even the kitchen garden made a poor show, with straggling weeds mixed in among the rows of anemic herbs and vegetables.
I might have done better to remain inside, thought Mael Taleion. But generations of Adepts had imbued the wood and stone of the Guildhouse with the unmistakable stink of their workings. If he attempted anything, his efforts would be wrenched out of the true patterns by the malign influence. Outdoors was safer—the Great Magelord who had trained him, years ago now, had preferred the open sky for that reason among others, and Mael still honored his teacher's memory.
He found a clear area in the garden and scratched out a rough circle in the dirt with his staff. Then he settled his mask once more into place, knelt, and set his mind adrift on the currents of the universe. An Adept might have been content to float so, letting the surges and ripples of Power carry him where they would, but that was not the way of the Circles. Somewhere out beyond this untended bit of
ground, the eiran—the silver cords of life and luck—waited to fall under Mael's hand.
At first the cords evaded his touch. The overwhelming feel of Adeptry distracted him and made him clumsy. He remained patient. The eiran drew closer, almost within reach, and he saw them as he had seen them before on Maraghai, their lines of bright silver all tarnished and broken, with a threat of darkness twisted in. Their intertwinings made no true pattern— only a botch, like the ruined garden around him.
Where a pattern has grown awry, the work of the Circle is to make it right.
Mael's teacher had died long ago, giving his life to the Great Working that had ended the last war, but his voice spoke clearly to his student now. Mael took hold of one of the tarnished threads.
Find where it comes front, find where it leads.
He began tracing the path of the darkened eir. Once he had found out its origin, he could untangle the clump of disorderly Adept-work that knotted around it and see what could be done.
The problem turned out to be worse than he had thought.
Wherever the tarnished thread lay across a clean one, the unblemished thread had also darkened. He laid his hands on the nearest of the eiran and pulled on it, trying to work it free of the tarnished strands. The effort did him no good. The cords were stuck together at the point where they touched, like a bundle of wires that had rusted into one.
Mael drew his hand through the threads like a comb, trying to break them apart by force. He failed. The silver cords were strong, and sharp as the edges of knives. When he took his hand away, the blood from his cut fingers ran down in red streaks across his palm.
Ignoring the pain, he wrapped the cords around his hand to gain leverage and tugged more sharply. His efforts brought a hint of order to the tangle—not so much that a casual observer could have found it, but enough that someone who knew what to look for could see the beginnings of the true design.
His hand was still bleeding when the stinging in his cut fingers was matched by a sudden, sharper pain in his left shoulder. He tried to grasp the dark cord that ran through the tangle and pull it out, but the eiran were fading before him, and the solid lines that wrapped his hands were turning into mist.
The pain in his shoulder stayed with him, matched by a pain in his knees that had not been there a few moments before. Mael opened his eyes to the world of physical reality. The sky had grown dark in the time since he had commenced his meditations, and he was no longer in the Guildhouse garden. He was in a narrow, trash-filled alley, with stone walls rising to either side and a dead end facing him. Close at hand lay the chunk of stone—half of a red clay brick—that had taken him on the shoulder and driven him to his knees.
"Look at what we've got," said a voice behind him—a young man's voice, speaking Standard Galcenian strongly flavored with the local dialect. They wouldn't speak their own patois, Mael thought, not when there was a chance their victim wouldn't understand them.
"What do you think he's doing here?" Another voice.
"Doesn't belong. Think he's got money?" A third.
Mael rose to his feet, and turned slowly. His staff had been in his hands when the meditation began. Where was it now? His hands were empty, and so was the clip on his belt. He was alone and unarmed, and a hot trickle under his robes told him that the half-brick had drawn blood—even as his fingers, cut on the eiran, also still bled.
When Faral Hyfid-Metadi left home to seek his fortune, he'd cherished—privately, of course—certain daydreams about the wild nightlife available to galactic travelers in exotic ports of call. His fantasies, though weak on specific detail, had glittered brightly in his imagination during the transit from Maraghai. Not a single one of them had involved watching zero-g cageball on the holovid sports channel in a family hotel.
He and his cousin and Gentlesir Huool's courier had made a skimpy dinner out of the canned drinks and highly salted snacks in the room's cold-unit. Given the chance that somebody's blaster-packing goons were on their trail, they hadn't dared leave the hotel to buy proper food. An economy-minded establishment like this one didn't provide room service; and even if it had, Faral wouldn't have felt safe opening the door to strangers.
Miza lay napping, stretched out fully clothed on one of the room's two beds. Faral and Jens sat on the other bed and the lounge chair, respectively, watching the cagers from Nanáli and Irique chase each other around the nullgrav playing cube. According to the running score at the bottom of the holovid tank, Nanáli was ahead twenty-three points to seventeen. Faral couldn't remember whether the local team wore the black jerseys or the yellow ones, and didn't particularly care.
Jens looked even less interested, if possible. Catching Faral's eye, he gestured in the direction of the tank. "Is there a reason we're watching this?"
"News clips," Faral said. "I want to see if our fight this morning made it into the evening edition. The announcers might give us some idea who it is we're up against."
"I certainly hope so," Jens said. "Once we know that, we can make plans. You have no idea, coz, how much I dislike sitting here and doing nothing."
"Considering that we almost weren't here to do anything, I feel lucky."
"I suppose." Jens finished his can of Varney's Pre-Sweetened Uffa and tossed the empty container into the waste recycler before nodding toward the other bed. Miza was snoring faintly. "What are we going to do about her when we leave here?"
"She's got the local knowledge," Faral pointed out. "And we don't."
"That's going to change as soon as we reach high orbit."
Faral considered the problem. "She's also pretty."
"Now we see what comes of being brought up on the South Continent a day's hard walking from anywhere," Jens said. "You've gone and fallen in love with the first human female you've ever met who wasn't also a blood relation."
"Only the fact that we're stranded together on a hostile world, surrounded by dozens, maybe hundreds, of possible foes, prevents me from pounding you into the carpet for that remark. I am not in love with her."
Jens gave him a skeptical glance. "If you say so."
"I say so. But we don't know how long we may need to keep her around—and we can't leave her behind for the rockhogs to pull down afterward."
"I suppose you're right. It would be ungracious."
"And we don't want that," Faral said. "What would the Worthies on Khesat say if they ever found out?"
"An octet in rhyming couplets," Jens said, "to the effect of 'Stuff a sock in your mouth, coz.' "
"You, too, foster-brother."
The conversation lapsed into silence. In the holovid tank, a eager in a black jersey slammed the ball against the target. The announcer interviewed somebody else in the arena who seemed excited by the feat—since neither the sports enthusiast nor the announcer spoke Galcenian, Faral never did learn why.
Eventually regular play commenced again in the cube. As it did so Faral said to his cousin, "So tell me. What are you planning to do once we get off-planet?"
"Go to Khesat," Jens said. "And continue my plan to become wealthy and famous by means of influence peddling."
"Isn't that dangerous?"
"Frightfully." Jens's blue eyes had the bright, sharp-edged expression that usually meant he was looking for trouble. "But it should be amusing."
"In that case, I'm going with you."
He had been running, running, most of the night. His side hurt, and his breath came in racking sobs. He wore the orange and grey of a Cracanthan peace enforcer, and knew when he looked at himself that such was what he was, but it all seemed so unimportant now. What was important was to find…
He didn't know what he wanted to find. He pushed his legs on, moving them through sheer force of will.
Just keep going, and I'll know what it is when I find it.
A light above the corner ahead threw a pool of blinding white down beneath it, making the rest of the night darker by contrast. His breath steamed a bit in the cool night air. In the light was a kios
k, which announced that this was a place of transportation. That one of the places served was a spaceport.
He was certain that he didn't know the language in which the writings were made, but equally certain that he understood them. His foot splashed in a puddle. He had run once before, and it was important to get to the spaceport: another hint of his task.
Yes, get to the spaceport, and then…
He would know what it was he had to do when the time came.
In the brick alley, Mael turned to face his attackers. He knew the type—city-bred troublemakers, all of them, resentful of outsiders and willing to commit assault to make their opinion clear. The streets of Ruisi Spaceport had been full of such people, back in the days of the Republic's occupation. Fear and poverty bred them, and helplessness nourished them. Mael remembered the feelings well.
He almost felt sorry for the bullies who confronted him. The street fighters of his youth had known that they could blame the Republic and its Adepts for their troubles. Some of them had been lucky enough to find the Resurgency—or the fellowship of the Circles—before their bitterness turned inward and they died in pointless battle over a fancied insult or a bit of illegal trade.
These three would not be so fortunate. His staff was gone, but those who had been trained in the Circles had other resources to aid them.
The street thugs had not spoken since he turned around. They had attacked him from behind, seeing only a cloaked and unfamiliar figure. Perhaps they had not expected to find a Mage. Still, they had not retreated.
"You wish me to fight you because I am in your territory?" Mael asked. "That is easily remedied. Come to mine."
He stepped… sideways… and drew the three along with him into the Void.
It was at once the simplest thing that the Mage-trained could do, and the hardest to learn. Not everyone who came to the Circles could attain the level of true sight that showed the path away from reality, into that place where Power was not, but where fact and illusion became one. But once seen, the road was an easy one—garaeth sus-etazein, the Circles called it, the Great Lords' Way.