That’s wartime for you, he thought. Training that should take years given months, and the new-made master left on her own to live or die.
The stranger approached closer, and Owen felt a shock of recognition: the face, the eyes; this was himself, only younger, as he had been when he worked for Master Ransome. But he’d kept himself an apprentice all that time, for the Guild’s sake, and this one plainly had not; whatever else the stranger might be, he was also a full Adept and his own master.
“Owen Rosselin-Metadi,” the stranger said. “Come with me. You’ve wasted too much time.”
“Klea—” Owen began.
“Yes,” she said. “I hear him too.”
“Both of you,” the other said. “Come on. We have to find a quiet place.”
Together the three walked apart from the main crush of the party, into the wilder depths of the vast garden, away from the sight of the manor house and the noise of the sea.
“What shall I call you?” Owen said.
“My name isn’t important,” the other man said. He seemed amused by the question. “Call me one who wishes you well. My home’s long gone, and I travel about.”
“All right,” Owen said. “Where are we going?”
“Just a little farther, to where there is peace. Tell me, apprentice,” the stranger said to Klea, “can you guard us?”
“I’ll try.”
“Not given to prophecy, eh? But you have the gift of seeing, I can tell.” He halted. “Here’s a good spot, I think.”
They had removed to a small glade, away from the gravel paths, where the ground cover was thick and soft. The noises of the party faded away into the background.
“Lie here beside me,” the stranger said. He stretched himself out on the plushy blue-green lawn. Owen hesitated briefly, then lay down next to him, still holding his staff. No sooner had he done so, it seemed to Owen, than the stranger was standing above him and offering a hand up. Owen looked down, and saw both himself and the other man still lying on the ground side by side. A few feet away, Klea stood guard, her staff grounded on the springy turf.
“Where are we going?” Owen asked.
“Where you went once before.”
“Where I—?”
“Think!” snapped the other, sounding almost angry. “You went out of body, once, seeking across the galaxy for Master Ransome, and you came to a place you did not expect. Come there again.”
“So much,” Beka muttered under her breath, “for the idea of having a small private conference. I haven’t been at a party with this many people since the first time we saw Ebenra D’Caer.”
“Smile,” advised Jessan. “Dazzle them with your charisma and convince them that you’re really alive.”
“I am smiling,” Beka said. “And who the hell besides the Domina of Entibor would want to wear this damned tiara? It’s giving me a headache again.”
“There’s a lesson in that, as the Professor would have said, if you care to dig it out,” Jessan commented. He snagged a glass of punch from a passing waiter and presented it to her with a flourish. “Here. Try this.”
“It’s good for headaches?”
“No, but it’ll help make you feel at home.”
Beka tasted the punch, and smiled—properly, no canine teeth showing—at a passing Selvaur in flamboyant scale-paint and body-enamel. “I ran away from home. Parties like this were part of the reason why.”
“I can see your point,” put in LeSoit. “I think I’ll go check out some of the buffet tables and listen to what D’Rugier’s free-spacers have to say.”
“Good idea,” Beka said. “Have fun. Anything interesting comes up, let me know.”
She felt a twinge of envy as Warhammer’s number-two gunner strolled off into the crowd of guests. “If there’s any fun going on here tonight,” she commented to Jessan, “Ignac’s heading to where it’s going to be. Free-spacers know how to enjoy life while they’ve got it.”
“Not, alas, one of the luxuries afforded to royalty,” said Jessan. “I found the Space Force more to my liking … speaking of which, it’s time to circulate, and hope that eventually we come, as if by accident, to our host.”
“Duty before pleasure,” Beka said. “Let’s wander.”
They started across the lawn toward the area where Commodore Gil walked next to a stocky, dark-haired woman. There were more lanterns hanging from the trees along the way, and dense bushes clipped into fantastic shapes at once wild and artificial.
“This is certainly a spectacular piece of real estate,” Beka commented in an undertone. “It’s a long way from Waycross.”
“In several senses of the word,” said Jessan. “Generally speaking, the sort of people who can afford to live like this don’t much care for rough company.”
“I wonder where the commodore got the use of it from, then.”
“Diplomatic connections, probably. Wealth on Ovredis migrated out of the old nobility generations ago.”
Beka raised her eyebrows. “You mean he joined the Space Force to get a regular paycheck, just like everybody else?”
“That’s my guess.”
“Good,” she said. “I hate public-spirited dilettantes.”
Jessan put his hand over his heart in a theatrical gesture. “My lady, you wound me to the quick!”
She stopped and looked at him with a sober expression. “Sorry, Nyls … what was it, the ‘public-spirited’ bit?”
He shrugged. “People say that Khesat’s the only planet in the civilized galaxy where the natives don’t have secret vices. But if they did, ‘public spirit’ would probably be one of them.”
“Mmm. And is it yours?”
“Not even a little,” he said, with transparent insincerity. “I’m doing this for the simpleminded amusement it affords me—and for Baronet D’Rugier’s excellent buffet tables. Lots of spun-sugar fripperies: always a good sign.”
“Simpleminded, hah.” She smiled at him in spite of herself. “You’re as naturally twisty as a back road, and you’ve been eyeing Jervas Gil ever since we got here. I’ll bet you five Mandeynan marks you’ve got something on your mind right now besides canapes and small talk.”
“Caught in my little white lies,” Jessan said. “Is there no end to the shame I bring on my family? I want to get a closer look at the lady who’s standing there with him.”
“The nervous-looking one?”
“That’s her. She’s the only person here who doesn’t look like either a Space Forcer or an interstellar hard case.”
“Oh. And what does that make me, then?”
“Domina of Entibor,” he said. “And excellent company.”
They live well in the Adept-worlds, Ignaceu LeSoit thought. He surveyed the buffet table and selected two slices of chilled winemelon and a cup of berries and cream. Even when they’re losing.
The winemelon was crisp and purple-fleshed. Its heady fragrance and tart-sweet taste reminded him of summer neiath fruit, back home on Eraasi. LeSoit ate it slowly, savoring the memories as much as the present flavor. The year before sus-Airaalin and the Resurgency had claimed him, he and his cousins had picked neiath in a highland orchard all during the long, hazy hot-weather days—eating the ripest ones, the ones too heavy with juice to survive even a little while in the close quarters of a woven basket, and packing up the rest for market.
“Captain LeSoit?”
He came back from the daydream in an unsettling rush, and looked up to see a woman in Space Force uniform standing a foot or so away. She wore a lieutenant’s insignia, plus a loop of gold braid around one shoulder—she was somebody’s aide, then, and probably more important than she looked. There was a speculative expression in her mild grey eyes that made LeSoit uneasy; he thought that she must have been watching him for some time before she spoke.
“Lieutenant—?” he said.
“Jhunnei. Flag Aide to Commodore Gil. That’s Baronet D’Rugier, as you civilians say.” She paused. “Captain LeSoit, I have a favor to ask
of you.”
“If I can help,” he said. The mention of favors put him on edge, but there was no graceful way out—and his own need for information was strong enough to keep him talking.
“You speak Eraasian.”
Her statement came unexpectedly, sounding flat enough by itself to compel belief. LeSoit blinked and tried hard to look monolingual.
“I don’t think—” he began.
“Our records on you are sketchy,” she said, “especially with the Central DataNet down hard and bleeding after the fall of Galcen. But I’ve managed to correlate a few bits and pieces. For one thing, you weren’t part of the Warhammer’s crew when she passed through the Net. You were, it seems, gainfully employed on the other side of the border. On Eraasi.”
“Legal stuff,” he said. “Bodyguard work. I got homesick, though, so when Warhammer came into port I picked up a free-spacer’s berth.”
“You do speak Eraasian, then.” She didn’t wait for him to explain that he’d gotten along by using sign language. She wouldn’t have believed him, anyway. “Can you read it as well?”
No point in lying any longer, he thought. If I say yes, I’ve at least got a chance at seeing whatever’s making her look for an interpreter.
“Some,” he admitted. “What have you got?”
“Captured documents.” She glanced over at the shorter, darker-haired woman who was standing by Commodore Gil. “We’ve got a native speaker on tap already, but I’d like to get a cross-check from another party. Safety first and all that.”
“And all that,” he said. “Are you saying you want me to look at them right now?”
“I have copies waiting,” she said. “In Aneverian’s library. If you could come with me?”
Magework and the hand of a Magelord.
The accusation lingered in Llannat’s mind all the way back from LDF main headquarters to Telabryk Field, making her silent and restless. When she got out of the hovercar, she didn’t go into the Space Force building, but stood outside, undecided, for several minutes.
I need to talk with Ari about this, she thought.
But Ari was on duty right now—well, so was she, technically, but nobody on Gyffer seemed to know what to do with an Adept outside of the occasions when they were asking for miracles on short notice. She couldn’t very well haul Ari away from whatever he was working on, just because she needed something solid to lean against until her legs quit shaking.
He’s a human being, not some kind of stone wall. He deserves a better job in life than spending all his time propping up the rest of us.
She hesitated a moment longer. Then she wandered off along the perimeter of the Space Force installation, skirting the still mostly deserted buildings until she came to where Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter rested on the field. She went up the Daughter’s ramp and through the passageways to the cockpit. As usual, all the Deathwing’s locks and security checkpoints answered to Llannat’s ID without question. She and the Space Force might not consider the vessel hers, but the Daughter clearly had its own opinion.
When she reached the cockpit she sat down in the pilot’s seat. The bodies of the pilot and the copilot had long since been removed from the compartment, of course, and the message on the viewscreen—alien characters inscribed in blood—had been scrubbed away without a trace. The images, though, remained fixed in her mind, as did the words themselves:
“‘Find the Domina,’” she quoted. “‘Tell her what thou hast seen.’ Good idea. Really good idea. Except everybody knows that the Domina is dead.”
She’d thought so, too—for her, as for most citizens of the Republic, “the Domina” had meant Perada Rosselin, the last ruler of living Entibor. She’d forgotten that the title was a hereditary one, passed down from antiquity in the maternal line. And in spite of what most of the galaxy had for a long time believed, Perada’s only daughter was a long way from being dead.
But Beka wasn’t using the title … I didn’t see how “the Domina” could possibly mean her, but now she’s turned up on the holovid news using the title, Iron Crown and all.
So what am I supposed to do? Easy, right: find her and tell her—I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell her. The Professor never said.
Thinking about the problem made Llannat’s head ache. Trying to solve it was too much like what she’d done with the silver threads, back at LDF headquarters: so many things to be pulled together and tied up properly before the pattern could be completed and the universe made whole.
“Damn the Professor, anyway,” she muttered aloud. “It was his project. Let him come back and fix it.”
Not even the Professor, however, could manage something like that. Instead, he’d done the best that anyone could, and found a student who could carry on the work.
Which means you. Llannat Hyfid, Adept. Or whatever it is that you currently are.
Llannat sighed and pushed back tendrils of loose hair from around her forehead with the heels of her hands. She’d wasted too much time already on chewing her fingernails and wondering what to do. It was time to act. Find the Domina first—go to Suivi Point herself if need be—then see what other surprises had been left to her in the Professor’s unwritten will.
She stood up; but before she could leave the cockpit to go in search of Lieutenant Vinhalyn, Vinhalyn found her instead.
“Ah, Mistress Hyfid,” he said. “There you are. I was about to send out search parties. We have orders. We’re going to be part of a task force out in Gyfferan farspace.”
“I was about to go looking for you, too. We need to leave here before the fighting gets any worse: I have to find the Domina on Suivi Point.”
Vinhalyn shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid not. We’re all under oath to the LDF, and we’ll be launching as soon as we’ve gotten the crew together and been briefed. But don’t think your work today wasn’t useful, or that it wasn’t appreciated. It was through your location that we’ve gotten our primary search zone.”
Llannat didn’t say anything. She was waiting for the sensation of overriding urgency that more than once in the past had impelled her to leave one place for another without waiting for formal orders.
Nothing, so far. Maybe the universe wants me in Gyffer farspace after all.
At least for a while.
Beka and Jessan ran into Captain Yevil before they could—accidentally, of course——encounter Commodore Gil. The Space Force captain was standing near the buffet tables, finishing a glass of the sparkling pink punch and gazing intently across the lawn at Adelfe Aneverian’s manor house. As the others approached, she shrugged and turned to face them instead.
“I don’t know where they get this stuff,” she said, indicating the glass of punch. “But everybody from one side of the galaxy to the other serves it at parties. If I’d wanted to drink water I’d have brought some of my own.”
“Treat yourself to a night in the port after this is over,” Beka advised. “What you can’t buy over the counter in Waycross probably can’t be drunk.” She glanced toward the manor house. “What’s going on in there? Ghosts at the upstairs windows?”
Yevil shook her head. “Not that I can see. But the commodore’s aide went inside with Captain LeSoit about half an hour ago.”
“Damnation,” said Beka. “He knows better than that. How did she manage to reel him in?”
“I didn’t catch most of it,” Yevil said. “But there was something about him joining Warhammer’s crew on Eraasi, and helping her out with something or other. Ignac’ didn’t look all that pleased with the idea, but he went along anyway.”
“Hell and damnation. If the bitch thinks she can get away with blackmailing my people—”
“Gently,” murmured Nyls Jessan. “Gently, all. She’s probably just fishing for local intelligence about what ships he saw in port before he left, the political sentiments of the average Eraasian working stiff, and so forth and so on.”
Beka’s lips tightened. “If she wants to debrief anybody off one of my
ships, she can damned well go through me.”
“We can take it up with the commodore later,” Jessan said. “In the meantime, since she already has Gentlesir LeSoit—”
“No she doesn’t,” Yevil cut in. “There they come back out.”
Beka looked over at the manor house in time to see LeSoit and Jhunnei stepping down from the portico onto the graveled drive. Jhunnei’s manner, as she abandoned LeSoit and faded away into the crowd, was bland and unreadable. LeSoit stood looking after her and frowning.
He was still frowning a minute or two later, when he approached the trio waiting by the buffet tables.
“Captain,” he said to Beka. “If I could speak with you in private for a moment—?”
“No problem,” she said, and allowed herself to be drawn away out of earshot. “What’s up, Ignac’?”
“There is something you must know. Before the war began, the Mages used replicant technology to put at least one hidden agent in place in the Republic.”
“Go on.”
“The agent was your father’s aide.”
“Gil?”
“No. His successor.”
“Son of a bitch. If I find him—”
“Her.”
“—her, she’s dead meat. But I can’t do anything about it now. What else?”
“I need you and your friend Jessan to go have a little chat with Baronet D’Rugier.”
“We were moving that way anyhow,” Beka said. “Tell me what you’re up to and I’ll think about heading there a little faster.”
“I don’t know if—”
“Tell, Ignac’.”
He sighed. “All right. Lieutenant Jhunnei asked me to come with her because she thought I might be able to help with some captured documents written in Eraasian. I can read the language, more or less—I lived there quite a while when I was working for D’Caer—and now I want to see if I speak it well enough to ask Commodore Gil’s lady friend a couple of questions.”
By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 Page 25