Owen grounded his staff and reached out a hand for the flimsy. “It sounds straightforward enough,” he said after looking it over. “Somebody wants you to attend a party.”
“The commodore of the Mageworlds Patrol Fleet—what’s left of the Mageworlds Patrol Fleet—wants me to attend a party.” Beka flung herself down into one of the chairs by the common-room table and frowned at the toes of her boots. “Wants me to be guest of honor at a party, which is worse. And I need to talk to him, so I can’t wiggle out of it. Damn, but I hate social occasions!”
Her brother ignored her complaints. He’d always been able to keep his thoughts to himself when she was in a bad mood—unlike Ari, who never could resist the opportunity to scold her for unseemly behavior.
This time, Owen merely raised a curious eyebrow and asked, “When is this affair of the commodore’s?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. He isn’t wasting any time.” She lifted her eyes again and glanced from Owen to Klea. “You’re invited too, you know. It says, ‘and entourage,’ which as far as I can tell means everybody on board the ’Hammer except Tarveet, and I’m not telling the commodore about him.”
Klea looked nervous. “I don’t—we didn’t have Baronets or anything like that on Nammerin. I wouldn’t fit in.”
“Yes, you would,” said Owen firmly. “An apprentice in the Guild is anybody’s equal, by definition. And the apprentice of the Master of the Guild is somewhat more than that.”
Beka couldn’t tell whether Klea believed the exhortation or not. She was too busy staring at her brother to notice.
“You told me she was your apprentice, not Master Ransome’s. So what’s this ‘Master of the Guild’ nonsense?”
“I was going to tell you, Bee.” His hazel eyes took on a shadowed expression. “When I … call it ‘found’ … Master Ransome, I was hoping to claim my staff and end my apprenticeship. He gave me the staff and mastery for the asking. He gave me the Guild as well, though I didn’t ask for that.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. Master Ransome loves the Guild so much he practically takes it into bed with him at night. Why the hell would he give it away to you?”
“For safety,” Owen said. His voice was low, almost a whisper. “When I found him, he was a prisoner somewhere among the Mages.”
“Hell. I always thought he was like Dadda—too damned sneaky for anybody to catch.” Beka felt her eyes stinging, and made haste to change the subject. “If you’re going to be convincing as the Master of the Guild, you’ll have to wear something a bit better than spacer’s coveralls.”
Owen shrugged. “We do what we can with what we’ve got.”
“Waycross has plenty of custom tailors,” she said. “They aren’t cheap, though; if you need money, take some out of Warhammer’s petty cash box.”
He shook his head. “I don’t need—”
“Yes, you do,” she said. “Trick yourselves out in the fanciest Adept rigs you can put together. This is Waycross, remember—there’s no telling who you might wind up having to impress.”
It had been too long, sus-Airaalin reflected, since he had last put on the mask and robes of his Circle. He had spent too much time, of late, in playing the Grand Admiral, and too little in the vision and meditation that were a Magelord’s proper occupation. Today, at least, would see him working to redress the oversight.
He settled the mask into position over his face, the better to free his inner sight from peripheral distractions, and strode out of his quarters. When he reached the flagship’s meditation chamber, he found three of his fellow-Mages gathered there already, kneeling around the white tiled circle in the middle of the black floor, facing inward and unmoving. He didn’t disturb them, though as First of the Circle he had the right to call upon their combined strength in time of need. Their task was too important: they labored now in the steady work of binding up the ragged traces of the present universe, in order to provide luck and guidance to the fleet.
Instead, he took a place on the periphery of the circle, closed his eyes, and sought the inner peace which came from a meditation brought to completion. The warm feeling came upon him, and he opened his mind to the flow and movement of power in the universe.
This part of space was wild and untamed; power here flowed in unruly disorder, untended by the careful Magework that made the homeworlds into places of beauty to the inner eye. The Adepts liked it so, as if the chaotic movement mirrored—or perhaps nourished—something essential that lay within their cold and solitary nature. He could feel them at work here, in this system, not so many as at Galcen, but a nest of them just the same, a danger to the pattern he and his Circle had been weaving so painstakingly and so long.
He looked for the silver threads, and found them. They were knotted and threatened by the strain, like a tangle-flower hedge that had gone too long without the care of a gardener.
Seek deeper, urged the inner voice that had always guided his visions—sometimes it sounded to him like the voice of his old teacher, who had died in the time of the Breaking of Circles. Seek the true knowledge.
He sank further into the visionary state, letting his mind shift and turn until he saw things from a different angle, one that showed him the snarled threads as a tangle-flower hedge in sober truth, a thicket of vines taller than his head, bristling in all directions with wicked black thorns. But instead of the riotous overgrowth of red and white blossoms that should have clothed the tangle-flower’s prickly skeleton with living beauty, there was nothing except a few withered buds.
No light, he thought, no air. The flowers smothered before they were ever properly alive.
Without the correct tools, the task of making this place right would be long and hard—and doomed to failure. He needed to find a billhook to prune away the old growth and make room for the new. Still, in the presence of such maimed beauty there was nothing for it but to do what he could. Gently, sus-Airaalin began to untwist and straighten the thorns so that they no longer choked each other in their upward search for light.
The work was daunting and slow, and there were so many thorns, extending beyond his reach into the tangle and above his head. He labored without ceasing for a long time, with the sweat trickling down his back and the tangle-flower vines pricking and stabbing at his palms with their subtle poison, until he came without warning upon a place where someone had already been at work among the thorns—first putting them in order, then overlaying another pattern, so that a casual glance would see only random disarray.
He stopped.
Magework, he thought. Magework, and the hand of a Magelord.
The pattern was a deep one, extending back beyond his reach into the hedge. He looked deeper. There in the midst of the vines and stalks was a scarlet bird of an unfamiliar species, staring at him with an unblinking gaze. He stared back. There seemed to be no way that the bird could have come there, no way in or out among the long thorns.
I must grasp what I would have.
He pushed his arm into the tangle, toward the bird. The thorns tore his sleeve and pierced his skin, the scratches burning like fire. He touched the feathered creature, grasped it, and pulled it forth. But when he opened his hand, there was no bird, only the desiccated body of one. It crumbled as he held it, and the bright feathers drifted to the ground at his feet.
He looked again where the bird had been, and saw what it had hidden: a tangle-flower, blooming and fragrant, dew-sparkled.
Exhaustion claimed him, and weakness from the poison of the thorns. His eyes drifted shut on the vision of the white flower. When they opened again, he was in the meditation chamber, and Mael Taleion was waiting respectfully only a few paces away.
“My lord,” said Taleion. “Do you need my aid?”
He shook his head. “No, Mael—though the offer does me great honor.”
The Grand Admiral rose to his feet. He felt tired and weakened after the struggle with the thorns; the refreshment he had counted on finding in his meditations still eluded him.
“Tell me, my lord.”
“I felt an adversary at work in the Gyfferan system. Not an Adept, but one of our own, and it is one whom I do not know.”
On board UDC (ex-RSF) Fezrisond, Admiral Valiant frowned irritably at the brown-uniformed officer who stood beside his desk. He’d never liked the idea of having an Eraasian liaison stationed permanently aboard his ship, but his arrangement with Grand Admiral sus-Airaalin and the Mageworlds Resurgency had been specific on the matter.
He liked even less the fact that his unwelcome liaison officer had what he did not—a direct comm link through Ophel to the Mageworlds warfleet. Up to now, however, with hi-comms throughout the rest of the galaxy either down or spotty, the link had been more useful than not.
That situation, Valiant reflected, was beginning to change.
He laid down the clipboard and its slip of printout flimsy. “Suppose,” he said, “that this message never reached Infabede.”
“Admiral, Lord sus-Airaalin charged me with delivering all his messages—nothing more. I am unable to speculate.” The Eraasian paused. “The link through Ophel remains open, however.”
It would, Vallant thought sourly. I should have taken care of you and the link when I had the chance.
But the time for that would have been at the start of the grand operation, while the Mageworlders were still making their push toward Galcen, and he’d been busy then with problems of his own. An unexpected mutiny by the fighter pilots aboard his own flagship had been easily quashed, but it had taken away his attention at a crucial moment.
“Tell your admiral,” he said to the liaison, “that since the Gyfferans are proving too much for him, and since he has asked me, as one ally to another, to provide assistance, I will be glad to do so.”
The Eraasian bowed. “Admiral, I will convey your message to Lord sus-Airaalin with all dispatch,” he said, and left the office. Admiral Valiant, still frowning, watched him go, then signaled for his aide.
“Did you get all that?” Vallant asked the aide as soon as that officer appeared.
“The whole thing. Per your instructions.”
“Good. Then you know where we’re going next.”
“The timing’s not so good,” the aide said. “But the target’s a good one—Gyffer was on the list anyway.”
“I don’t like having to tackle it with the damned Mages already there. Let sus-Airaalin get one good look at the Gyfferan system and he’ll decide that it’s exactly what he needs to complete his own collection.”
“We could get lucky,” the aide said. “The Magish commander wants us to do the farspace work, and something like that isn’t too strenuous if it’s done right. Our people will still be fresh when Gyffer and the Eraasians have finished mauling each other into a state of exhaustion.”
“Luck’s damned undependable,” said Vallant. “If we want everything to work out in our favor, it’s going to take something more than that.”
III. INNISH-KYL: COUNTRY HOUSE OF ADELFE ANEVERIAN
GYFFER: NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER
COMMODORE GIL had to admit that this time, Lieutenant Jhunnei had outdone herself. He’d always known that Adelfe Aneverian, Hereditary Chairman of Perpayne, had a vacation estate on the seacoast of Innish-Kyl’s southern temperate zone. But he’d never thought that the Hereditary Chairman—in his role as one of the silent partners in Gil’s privateering enterprise—might lend the fleet his summertime getaway in order to impress Domina Beka Rosselin-Metadi.
Jhunnei had not only thought about it, she’d asked; and as a result the vast acres of manicured lawns and artfully natural woods and thickets were decked out as if for a summer fair. The thick, greenish-blue ground cover crunched faintly underneath Gil’s booted feet, and its bruised leaves gave out a subtle spicy odor. Ornamental lanterns, some in colored paper and others in glass and metal, hung from the wide-spreading tree limbs that overshadowed the garden paths.
The glow cubes inside the lanterns gave, as yet, only enough illumination to point up the delicate structures that contained them. The sun had not yet sunk below the seaward horizon, and the sky beyond the force field was a smooth, powdery blue.
Gil had seen the controls for that force field, housed in one of the gardener’s sheds along with the pruning shears and the soil-testing kits. He’d recognized the model as a civilian version of one of the Space Force’s heavy-duty setups, capable of going within a nanosecond from a screen against light rain and small annoying insects to the functional equivalent of a starship’s shields. Adelfe Aneverian, it was clear, believed in safety even more fervently than he believed in gracious living.
The guests had been arriving since late afternoon. All of them wore formal dress—although given Lieutenant Jhunnei’s final guest list, “formal” tonight meant anything from Space Force full dress blues to a Waycross free-spacer’s gaudiest spidersilk and velvet. Or no clothing at all: Merrolakk the Selvaur had shown up wearing a total-body paint job, its multicolored loops and whorls accented with glittering faceted stones and patches of gold and silver leaf.
Gil, for his part, wore his Ovredisan court-formal garb, with the live-steel sword and dagger made for him by the ’Pavo’s machine shop. The original set, of light metal without a functional edge, seemed inappropriate these days. After all, some of his more distant ancestors had been robber barons in truth, back before Ovredis had grown up and turned respectable.
He’d given the other live-steel pair—along with an outfit of best-quality free-spacer’s gear from one of the local custom tailors—to his guest for the evening, Doctor Inesi syn-Tavaite. Lieutenant Jhunnei and the ’Pavo’s chief master-at-arms had made nervous noises about security, but Gil had silenced them both, saying, “I told her she had a place here, and I want her to believe it. Besides—where the hell is she going to run to, half a hemisphere away from the spaceport?”
Not that Doctor syn-Tavaite showed any sign of trying to run. She kept close to Gil, taking an occasional sip from her long-stemmed glass of weak punch and watching the other guests with wide, nervous eyes.
“There are Adepts here,” she muttered over the rim of her glass. “You didn’t say anything about Adepts.”
Gil followed her gaze across the expanse of blue-green lawn to the young man and woman in unadorned formal black.
“The Master of the Guild and his apprentice,” he said. “They’re with the Domina.”
And how she got them, he added mentally, is an interesting question. Especially since the last time I saw Owen Rosselin-Metadi he was still an apprentice on Galcen.
syn-Tavaite didn’t seem calmed by the information. “You don’t think this is a coincidence, do you, my lord?”
“Call me Commodore,” said Gil absently. “Or Jervas. It’s my name … . No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I have an aide who keeps on telling me there’s no such thing as luck or coincidence, and I’m starting to believe her.”
“Do you mind if I stay away from them?”
“Whatever you like, Doctor. You’re here to enjoy yourself—though I wouldn’t mind hearing your impression of this affair after it’s over. A fresh perspective can be useful sometimes.”
“Thank you, Commodore.” syn-Tavaite looked about the crowded grounds. “But where is the Domina? I don’t see her.”
Gil craned his neck a little. “There. By that big tree with the silver-gilt lanterns. She’s the one with the tiara.”
He wasn’t surprised that syn-Tavaite had missed Beka Rosselin-Metadi the first time she’d looked in that direction. For reasons that Gil couldn’t begin to figure out, the Domina had come to the party dressed in simple if exquisitely tailored free-spacer’s gear—shirt, jacket, trousers, and boots—combined with formal braids and Entibor’s Iron Crown. The two men with her also wore free-spacer’s garb, though Nyls Jessan had chosen to replace the usual jacket with a wide-sleeved Khesatan dinner robe of coppery brocade lined in cream-colored satin. All three of
them, after the free-spacer fashion, had shown up armed with blasters.
“That man,” said syn-Tavaite. “Next to the Domina. Who is he?”
“The tall blond? That, believe it or not, is the General of the Armies of Entibor—Consort to the Domina. And trust me, Doctor, he’s not nearly as harmless as it pleases him to look.”
Tavaite was shaking her head. “No, no, Commodore. The other one.”
Gil looked again at the dark, muscular man in the plain clothes. “Ah. According to the guest list, he’s the acting captain of Warhammer. Ignaceu LeSoit.”
“LeSoit,” said syn-Tavaite, pronouncing the word as if it didn’t fit her mouth properly. Her accent, with the strange diphthongs and elongated vowels, seemed stronger than ever. “Ignaceu LeSoit.”
Owen Rosselin-Metadi, Master of the Adepts’ Guild, stood under the cool leaves of a spreading gnarlybark tree, his apprentice by his side, looking out over the grounds of Adelfe Aneverian’s vacation estate and the people gathered there. No one had walked up to them to make introductions, and Owen had not approached anyone on his own.
They fear the Adepts, Owen thought bitterly, and they blame us, too. “We trusted you to protect us from the Mages, and see, now the Mages are come.” He looked at the glass of pale pink liquid in his hand as if someone else were holding it. They’re right about that. I did everything I could to save them, for almost ten years of my life, but everything wasn’t quite enough.
Then, through the crowd, Owen saw someone at last moving toward them: a young man, his plain clothing oddly conspicuous among the glitter and braid of Space Force dress uniforms and the free-spacers’ high-spirited finery. He wore the drab coverall of a working spacer, and carried an Adept’s staff in his hand.
“Do you see him?” Owen asked Klea.
“Yes,” she said. Like Owen, she was dressed in formal blacks, the best that the custom tailors of Waycross could fabricate on short notice. The formal garments weren’t often given to an apprentice—so many never finished the full path—but Klea was progressing well, and Owen expected that he would be giving her the choice of mastery soon enough.
By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 Page 24