A Working of Stars

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  Isayana said, “Efficiency isn’t the point. I’m not planning on mass production.”

  “I don’t think I want to hear any more about that,” the physician said hastily. “We’re getting into the realm of things that aren’t healthy for bystanders to know.”

  “You should have thought of that when you first got into this,” Kief said. “The point is, I honestly don’t know how long it will take before the Circles are ready for another working. This is research, remember—we don’t know the answers when we start out.”

  Isayana clapped her hands once, bringing the aiketen forward out of the shadows in the corners of the room. She indicated the unconscious bodies of Kief and his Second. “Take those to the specialized care units. The female should recover within a day; the male will probably require long-term life support. See to it.”

  Kief found it an odd sensation to watch his former body being carried away from him by the aiketen. His hardmask lay on the floor where he had removed it from the body a few minutes earlier. On impulse, he picked it up and put it on. Once again, the workroom was overlaid with the dazzling patterns of the eiran, and tonight they were bright and new. Garrod’s working hadn’t vanished—he wasn’t free of it yet—but his own workings were stronger now, and maybe, just maybe, he was beginning to see a way out of the tangle that Demaizen had caught him in all those years ago.

  “I’ll need a Mage’s robes,” he said. Saying so, he noticed for the first time that his feet were bare, and that the floor was cold. “Also some proper street clothing.”

  “It can be arranged,” Isayana said. “I will instruct the aiketen.”

  She went off to talk to one of the quasi-organic servitors, leaving Kief and the physician standing alone together next to the empty gel-vat.

  “What are you going to do while you wait for the Circles to regain their strength?” the physician asked after a few moments of awkward silence.

  “Watch the patterns in the universe,” Kief said. As he spoke, he thought, unaccountably, of Arekhon sus-Khalgath … there’s another one who’s caught in the web of the eiran like a spider’s dinner. The same web, the same working—and ’Rekhe’s trying to make it stronger while I’m trying to cut myself free. That’s a pattern right there, and one I don’t think I like. “See what needs to be done. And do it.”

  When Elaeli returned to her town house in An-Jemayne, she found a note from Arekhon waiting for her there. He hadn’t left one at the summer cottage. He’d risen from her bed in the pearl-grey light of early dawn and dressed without speaking, while she lay watching him from beneath half-closed lids. She was unwilling to say anything, for fear the sound would put to flight her memories of the hours that had gone before; and ’Rekhe’s face was sad. When he was done putting on his clothes, he came back to the bedside, bent down, and kissed her once on her bare shoulder where the sheet fell down and exposed her skin. Then he turned and went away, and the bedroom door swung shut behind him.

  She didn’t hear from him again after that—it was like him, she reflected, to make a clean break regardless of his own feelings on the matter—and the letter on her desk came as a surprise. He’d written it by hand on the stiff off-white stationery he’d used for the past ten years as her chief of domestic security. The address on the envelope was in Entiboran lettering, but the sheet of paper inside was covered with the flowing loops and whorls of Eraasian script. She had to concentrate to read it; the written language she had learned as a child was less familiar to her now than the writing of this alien world.

  Elaeli [he wrote]:

  This may be the last letter I’ll ever write to you. I will come back to you if I can, you have my word—but the pull of Garrod’s working is very strong, and I can’t see where it will take me before the end.

  One or two practical matters: I’m leaving you without a head of domestic security, and you’ll need to find somebody fairly soon. You can, of course, pick anyone you like; but you could do far worse than to promote your current acting head. I’ve left Venner full instructions, and if he can’t handle the work then I haven’t taught him properly.

  As Arek Peldan, I still have some money left in my local accounts. I’d be grateful if you could exert your influence to see that those funds remain available—if not in perpetuity, then for as far into the future as possible. If the working somehow allows me to return, at least that way I won’t be penniless when I arrive.

  I owe you apologies, too many of them. I can’t say that I’m sorry for loving you, but I am sorry that I was too selfish to let go of you once I went to Demaizen. You deserved—you have always deserved—far better of the universe than a lover whose loyalty could never be undivided; and if I had done then what was right, Garrod would not have been able to make you into a tool for the great working.

  And I’m sorry I left you without saying good-bye. I wanted too much to say all the things that I knew I shouldn’t—that I wouldn’t go, that I would always come back, that the sundered galaxy could stay in two halves forever, so long as the two of us were on the same side of it—and out of fear I chose to say nothing at all. By the time you read this, however, I’ll be safely beyond temptation. I love you—have loved you—will love you, and the length and breadth and height of the galaxy make no difference to it.

  Live in happiness, beloved, and be well.

  Arekhon Khreseio sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen.

  Galley storage aboard Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter was a cramped, closetlike space full of boxes and canisters strapped into place with cargo webbing. Ty and Narin had a list of the supplies taken on board for the Daughter’s previous journey across the interstellar gap—a thick bundle of printouts, all annotated in ’Rekhe’s careful handwriting—and the two Mages were trying to match up all the remaining items with entries on the list.

  “Freeze-dried neiath fruit, fifty-seven sealed foil packets,” Narin said.

  Ty consulted the printout. “There should be a hundred and twenty-three of them.”

  “Not in this compartment. And I don’t think we’re going to find them tucked under ’Rekhe’s mattress along with his collection of filthy pictures, either.”

  “No,” said Ty. “They just aren’t here. And neither is anything else—at least not as much of it as we’re going to need. I don’t think anybody bothered to restock the galley after we crossed the gap the last time.”

  “’Rekhe never planned on going back,” Narin said. “My guess is, he only kept the ship because in his heart he’s still sus-Peledaen, and those people never let ships go if they can help it.”

  “Maybe ’Rekhe thinks he’s still sus-Peledaen, but I don’t believe anyone back on Eraasi does—not after his brother sent armed men out to kill him. Most people probably think that he’s dead.”

  “You know that’s not going to make a difference as far as ’Rekhe’s concerned.” Narin checked the label on the next box. “Powdered eggs. Twenty-five … fifty … a hundred and fifty-two single-serving pouches.”

  “Out of the hundred and sixty that we had to start with. We didn’t like the eggs very much.” Ty made a note on the printout. “What do you think is going to happen when we get to Eraasi?”

  “I don’t know. Something to do with the working—it has to be that, if it’s pulling ’Rekhe back like this, and us with him.”

  “And Maraganha,” said Ty. “It brought her, too.” He set the printout aside, and lowered his voice even though he and Narin were alone. “What do you make of that one … is she what Arekhon claims she is?”

  “You can read the eiran as well as I can,” Narin said sharply. “She’s a Void-walker and a great Magelord—and she was strong enough to find me in the Void and pull me out again, without even a proper Circle behind her. As to where she comes from, maybe Arekhon knows.”

  “If he does know,” Ty pointed out, “he isn’t telling.”

  “’Rekhe’s always been closemouthed. Nothing new there.”

  “I’m not sure I like the way she looks at us some
times,” Ty said.

  “At me and you, that is. Like she’s wondering if she already knows us from somewhere.”

  Narin shrugged. “She’s a Void-walker. Maybe she does.”

  “You don’t sound very worried about it.”

  “There’s no point in worrying,” Narin said. “It’s all part of the working—that much we can both see—and when it’s time for us to know the answer, we will. Meanwhile—”

  “Yes?”

  “Meanwhile, we need to find ’Rekhe and let him know we’ll have to make a port call somewhere and take on supplies if he plans on making it back across the Gap.”

  Iulan Vai had sent Herin down to Serpent Station ahead of her.

  “I can manage things in Hanilat alone,” she’d told him. “But the job down below doesn’t need a highly trained Mage; it needs a family member, and you’re the one we’ve got.”

  Getting to Serpent was easy, in spite of the fact that Herin didn’t speak or read the Antipodean language. The signs along the route from the jumpshuttle port to the sus-Dariv base were clearly marked in Hanilat-Eraasian for the benefit of travelers from the main continent. It wasn’t surprising, Herin decided, that Lenyat Irao had gone first to the sus-Dariv when he was looking for contracts. The family might not have mixed with the locals through intermarriage or adoption, but they’d put enough money into the subcontinent’s economy over the years to count as some sort of connection.

  Herin wondered now if that connection would be enough. They should have started bringing people like Len into the outer family years ago—with a firm Antipodean power base, Zeri wouldn’t have needed to go begging to the sus-Peledaen when the world fell apart. Now it lacked only the wedding night, and the sus-Peledaen would own everything.

  Don’t let him find you, Zeri. Trust us. We have another plan.

  We hope we have another plan.

  Getting inside the station perimeter had been easy; Serpent wasn’t a high-security base. Once past the gate, Herin looked about him with a Mage’s eyes, remembering Vai teaching him, giving him quick instructions in a bare apartment back in Hanilat: Look for the patterns in the eiran. They won’t lie to you, even if everything else is a fake and a setup and a trap.

  Keeping her admonition in mind, he catalogued the ships on the field. Two partial hulks, being disassembled for scrap and parts—no help there, with the eiran fading into transparency around them. A courier, grounded. A couple of planet-to-orbit shuttles, likewise. Base insignia on one, but ship’s insignia on the other: Garden-of-Fair-Blossoms And the eiran covered the Garden’s shuttle like silver curtains of knotwork and lace.

  Yes.

  Herin had not forgotten Lenyat Irao’s story. He would investigate the shuttle, he thought, before speaking to anyone at Serpent Station. What he did after that might well depend on what he found inside.

  He moved quietly across the hard-baked earth of the landing field. He already knew the physical tricks of not being seen; now he used the eiran as well, threading his way among the cords in such fashion as to make an observer—if there was one—look at every place and every thing except him. When he reached the shuttle, he saw that its outer hatch stood open. Still hidden and obscured, he drifted inside.

  The shuttle was, on first glance, empty—nothing in the cockpit, nothing in the passenger compartment. He ventured onward, into the cargo bay. There he found a large oblong container, waist-high, its heavy lid gaping open on massive hinges. He recognized the object as a stasis box, a new development for transporting high-value perishable cargo, still in the testing phase aboard selected sus-Dariv vessels. All the versions he’d ever heard or read about were energy-hungry to an extreme degree; the question in the family’s collective mind had been whether any cargoes existed that were simultaneously small enough, short-lived enough, and wanted enough to be worth the expense of running the box.

  Garden-of-Fair-Blossoms, it appeared, had found something after all. The ship-mind had apparently directed the vessel’s aiketen to put the lone survivor of the sus-Peledaen attack into the stasis box and had brought her home.

  Herin felt a certain amount of guilty relief at the thought. If the Garden’s survivor had passed through, or remained at, Serpent Station, his present task would be a great deal easier.

  He left the shuttle and followed the brightest strand of the eiran across the field to a low, stucco-covered building with blocky environmental control units on top of its flat roof. The thick glass door had a keycard lock. Herin pulled a card out of the inner pocket of his lightweight jacket—even that much extra clothing had him sweltering in the baking heat of Serpent Station, but he preferred looking like an out-of-place main-continent tourist to forgoing the storage and concealment opportunities the jacket offered him.

  The card was a general-purpose family keycard, but one with levels of access that would have surprised a number of people, had they happened to still be alive. With luck—and he’d been making an effort, these past few weeks, to tend to his luck and treat it properly—Serpent Station had been dragging its collective feet about changing over to the sus-Peledaen codes.

  They don’t technically have to do it until the wedding’s finished. Here’s hoping they’re holding out until the last possible minute.

  He slid the keycard into the lock.

  The door opened; he retrieved his keycard and stepped inside. The room was dark and shadowy after the glare of the outside, and full of cool—no, cold—air. The personnel at Serpent Station had apparently taken to heart the notorious Antipodean belief that environmental controls weren’t doing their job properly unless you could shiver in midsummer and sweat in the winter. As Herin’s eyes adjusted to the lower light, he began making out objects in the dimness: cabinets, chairs, a desk, a nameplate.

  AELBEN WINCEYT SYN-DARIV. PORT-CAPTAIN, SERPENT STATION.

  Outer-family, Herin thought. But not senior enough to rate an invitation to the annual meeting, or he wouldn’t still be here.

  Well, he’s senior now.

  The door to a back room opened, and an officer emerged—probably the Port-Captain, from the piping on his livery. Before the door swung closed again, Herin caught a glimpse of more fleet-livery and heard muffled voices in what sounded like tense argument, and for an instant there was a bright unexpected flare of silver around the edges of everything. Ride the luck, he thought, and took a wild guess.

  “Plotting mutiny, Port-Captain?”

  He heard the outer door opening again behind him, and knew without turning that there was somebody at his back with a weapon.

  He didn’t bother to look around. The person he needed to talk to was standing in front of him: a sandy-haired man in youngish middle age, with worried lines on his face. Herin wondered what twist of fate had given Aelben Winceyt outer-family status and then relegated him to an isolated ground command. Was he a failure left here to rot, or was he an up-and-comer stashed in an undemanding billet while greater things were being prepared for him? A great deal might depend on the answer in the next few hours.

  “I think you’d better explain what exactly you mean by that,” the Port-Captain said. “Quickly. Your name?”

  “Herin Arayet sus-Dariv. You can take a fingerprint and blood and match me against the family database if you like. Of course,” he added, “it’ll probably say that I’m dead, but you can see how that might be convenient under the circumstances.”

  “Yerris!” the Port-Captain called out. “Fetch the ID kit!” He turned back to Herin. “I’m inclined to believe you, but—under the circumstances, as you say—it’s probably best to be sure.”

  “I quite understand.”

  The door to the back room opened again, and a young man in fleet-livery—presumably Yerris—brought forward the ID kit and linked it to the Port-Captain’s desk. Herin waited out the process in silence—the thumb-pad, the pinprick, the flashing telltales as the kit and the databases synchronized—the eiran in this place were bright and steady, and he was fairly certain this meant
he was doing the right thing.

  I suppose I’ll get used to making decisions this way eventually.

  Winceyt smiled. “Syr Arayet. Allow me to congratulate you on not being dead, in spite of what the ID kit wants us to believe.” The Port-Captain nodded toward the unseen person with a weapon standing at Herin’s back, and the sensation of being in the line of fire faded away. “I don’t suppose I need to bother updating the database with a correction.”

  “No. The longer I’m officially a casualty of the Court of Two Colors disaster, the better for everybody concerned.”

  “You’re still working in the family’s interest, then.”

  “I do the best I can. And you—I believe I asked you a question a few minutes ago. About mutiny.”

  “Talk,” said Winceyt. “Lots of talk, especially since the Garden showed up with nothing but the ship-mind in charge. We sent up a shuttle, and found the Garden’s own boat already loaded and waiting for us with that damned stasis box aboard.”

  “Survivors?” Herin knew the answer, but he asked anyway—they wouldn’t expect him to know, and besides, they might have information he didn’t.

  “Just the one, and she’s still rocky.” The Port-Captain’s expression changed to one of frustrated anger. “But when she named the sus-Peledaen as killers outright, we knew we couldn’t give them our ships, no matter what kind of marriage-bargain Lady Zeri’s made for us.”

  “Have you got anything planned yet?”

  Winceyt shrugged. “There aren’t all that many options, unfortunately. We’ve been arguing ourselves into torching the groundside structures, then putting everything into orbit that will lift and setting the self-destruct charges.”

  “What if I told you there was a better way out of this than a display of wedding fireworks?”