The Gathering Flame (10 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Gathering Flame
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“Do I dare to speculate?”
“If you think it’s necessary,” said Hafrey. “It should be enough to say that she is not Veratina.”
“Ah,” said the woman. She looked pleased. “I take your meaning. In
that
case, there’ll be no problem raising support. Do you know if she plans to take an official consort? That would guarantee at least one faction on our side.”
“I have hopes,” the armsmaster said. “But Her Dignity is young and headstrong—”
“
And
the Domina.”
“Yes, and the Domina. Which means that almost anything is possible, and it will be our duty to see that her person remains safe throughout. For now—return to Central, and carry on with your mission.”
After the woman had left, Ser Hafrey turned back to contemplating the racks of weapons before him. He selected one at last—an energy lance, of Gyfferan mass-manufacture but an excellent weapon nonetheless—and settled it on his shoulder. Then he too left the room, and made his way to the Royal Firing Range, where one of the late Veratina’s nonsuccessive relatives was awaiting his daily lesson in marksmanship.
 
In the Web, the space outside
Warhammer’s
viewscreens was full of swirling, glowing clouds of dust—or at least something that looked like dust to Perada’s untrained eyes. She knew that in deep space any estimation of distance and proportion was unreliable at best; the clouds, vague and insubstantial though they appeared, could be in reality the size of continents, or of entire worlds.
Some of them, it seemed, even had names: Farren’s Lurk, Longstrands, the Gulper. That last one, she suspected, had a ruder name when well-born passengers weren’t around. She kept her amused speculations to herself, though, because the Gulper was apparently also a serious hazard, and one which—if Sverje Thulmotten’s coursebook held good—had shifted its position since the last time Jos Metadi took the
’Hammer
through.
The captain sat leaning forward, one hand on the power controls and the other hovering above the steering panel. “Come on, baby,” he muttered. “Where’s the damned beacon?”
“Should bear one-five-two, plus two,” Errec said, not looking up from the coursebook. “That’s off by five point eight from last time.”
“I’m not picking up anything. Think it’s moved again?”
Errec closed his eyes and his face went blank. To Perada he looked for an instant like a painted ivory carving of himself—warm and lifelike, but empty. She glanced over at Metadi, and caught the captain watching his second-in-command with something that looked very much like concern.
Then Errec came back into himself from wherever he had gone, opened his eyes, and said, “No.”
“Damn,” said Metadi. “If Sverje rigged that coursebook, I’ll—”
“Beacon in sight,” Tillijen called over the internal link. “Bearing one-five-two, plus two.”
Some of the tension went out of Metadi’s posture. “Good eyes, Tilly. I have it on the board now. The signal’s weak, though—remind me to put in a report to Inspace when we hit Flatlands. They need to send out a repair crew.”
It was some minutes before Perada herself saw the beacon: a patch of pulsing color against the greater display of the Gulper itself. The only way she could be sure which spot of light was the beacon—and she
wasn’t
sure, not really—was that it throbbed to a regular beat, rather than drifting apart and solidifying again like the cloudy mass behind it.
“Leave the beacon to port ventral,” Errec said. “Change course to six-eight-six.”
Metadi touched the steering controls briefly. “Speed?”
“Speed’s fine. I see us on track, on time.”
“Very well.”
Perada leaned back and watched the swirls of red and blue mist outside the cockpit windows. The masses of light took on fantastic forms, like the pictures she had found in the clouds over Felshang when she was little, but at the same time they looked like rocks, hard and broken and nowhere near as pretty as clouds. And all the while the colors shifted and changed.
Once another ship passed by—a big spaceliner, seeming almost close enough to touch, although Perada knew it must be some miles distant. The vessel appeared without warning, looming up out of the ever-shifting layers of cloud, pushing its way through, long tendrils of mist flowing back along its body as it headed outward past them. And all the while Ransome kept scanning the coursebook to follow their transit, while Metadi watched the way and the two gunners called contacts.
 
The morning in Wippeldon was bright and clear, rainwashed and sun-dried. Gentlesir Festen Aringher and his friend Mistress Vasari stood at the rail of the portsled carrying them away from the spaceliner’s grounded shuttle and looked about.
“Entibor at last,” Aringher said. “Entibor after a full night’s sleep, which is even better.”
“Do you suppose that
The Milliner’s Daughter
is any good?” Mistress Vasari asked, with a nod toward the row of advertising flats that ran down the center of the portsled. “I could use some entertainment.”
“Something advertised to new arrivals? I have my doubts. But I’m sure a bit of searching will reveal rare delights of entertainment.”
“Something advertised to off-worlders would suit me fine.”
“Where is your sense of adventure?”
“Packed in the bottom of my suitcase.”
“The younger generation. I despair.”
“‘Younger generation,’ hah. You’re the same age as I am.”
“I,” he informed her, “am wise beyond my years. But now, I fear, it’s time for us to depart.”
They descended from the portsled and made their way through the open doors of the main concourse toward the luggage recovery point. Aringher took Mistress Vasari’s hand as they walked, and squeezed it gently.
“I hope that Customs isn’t too punctilious,” he said, as his fingers moved in the rhythmic patterns of the pressure-code.
Trouble here. Look how many slots there are on the logboard, how few in and out ships posted.
Vasari laughed at him. “What have you got to worry about? This isn’t some dreary outplanet where everything’s illegal.”
Maybe it’s a slow day,
her hand replied against his.
I don’t think so
. “I don’t know how you feel about some total stranger pawing through your good socks, but I don’t like it.”
I think there’s a problem.
“Poor dear.”
What kind?
“You mock me. But see how you feel when it’s
your
frilly underthings spread out across the table.”
Too early to tell. But keep close and keep your eyes open.
“Always such concern,” Vasari said aloud. “Let’s go straight to the hotel as soon as we’re checked through. I want to freshen up before I look around Wippeldon.”
Customs proved strict but courteous. When the inspection was over, Vasari and Aringher collected their baggage, summoned a hovercab, and entered the bustle of spaceport traffic. They were bound for lodgings on the slopes of Mount Kelpen, a little to the local south of the spaceport—a remote spot, yet one from which they could watch the activity at the port.
“Might as well hang ‘we’re spying’ signs around our necks,” Vasari had complained to Aringher when she first learned where they would be staying.
“No,” he’d replied, “the thing is, we
aren’t
spying. So anyone who thinks that we are is plainly mistaken. But from little mistakes—well, I grieve to see my fellow-creatures make mistakes, but they’re all instructive, don’t you agree?”
“Instructive,” Vasari had muttered at the time.
And “Instructive” she muttered again now that they were here, threading through the outskirts of Wippeldon and onto a narrow road leading up into the foothills. They went straight to the lodge on Mount Kelpen, in case someone was following or taking interest in a pair of well-to-do visitors from Galcen. When they arrived, their accommodations proved luxurious enough to raise Vasari’s eyebrows.
“Who’s paying for this?” she asked, once they were ensconced in a double suite on the most exclusive floor of the best wing.
“I am, my dear. Don’t you recall my granduncle’s legacy?”
“I didn’t even know that you had a granduncle.”
“I was devastated, I assure you, to learn of his untimely death. But enough about such sorrowful matters—we have work to do.”
Vasari shook her head and wandered off to unpack. In the meantime, Aringher opened the doors onto the balcony. He sat there. sipping a room-service mixed drink and looking out over the valley with a pair of binoculars set to Record All. When Vasari emerged from her rooms, Aringher rose, and offered her a clone of his own drink.
“Thank you,” she said, and downed it at a gulp.
“You never were such a hard-drinking woman before,” Aringher said. “What happened?”
“I never traveled with you for this long before,” Vasari replied. “Shall we go?”
“Certainly.” He held out his arm, she took it, and together they ambled from the suite and down to the lobby below.
“It occurs to me,” Vasari said a while later, as they walked through the streets of Wippeldon, “that if we linger on Entibor for very long, at some point the Domina may see us.”
“Quite likely,” Aringher said. He fed a coin into a news kiosk and waited for the printout, then flipped through the pages of flimsy as they walked. “Why should I be concerned if the Domina sees us?”
“Because she might recognize you.”
“I doubt it. I’m not wearing the same clothes. But even if she does—what could she possibly say?”
“Nothing,” Vasari admitted. “If you’re not worried, we might as well move on to the capital.”
“Whatever for?”
Vasari raised her eyebrows. “Why
did
you decide to come to this planet?”
“To attend the annual chamber-music festival,” said Aringher with a straight face. “And you?”
“As it happens,” she said, “I have letters of introduction to some of the very best people. My relatives back on Galcen are most anxious that I should pay the proper courtesy calls.”
“The rooms at the lodge are booked for a week. No refunds.”
“Let your great-uncle’s legacy worry about the bill,” Vasari said. “We don’t want to miss the accession ceremonies. You can stare at the scenery later, if that’s what amuses you.”
“Since you put it that way—”
“I do. And I must admit, a chance to go shopping in the capital would be nice.”
Aringher nodded. “I wouldn’t mind that myself. To An-Jemayne, then; and we’ll see what happens once we’re there.”
 
After several hours of watching the shifting colors of the Pleyveran Web through the
‘Hammer’s
viewscreens, Perada grew restless and went back into the body of the ship. The lights were out in the common room, and the gravity was off. Part of saving power, she supposed. She made her way to the galley, pulling herself along with the ladder rails set in the overhead. Then she made cha’a, transferred it to a zero-g flask according to the helpful instructions on the side of the pot, and took the flask back with her to the
’Ham
mer’s
cockpit along with a handful of drinking bulbs.
She arrived in time to hear a perturbed rumble coming up on the comm link from the engineering spaces.
“I know, Ferrda,” the captain replied. “Just hold them together for two more hours. That’s all I need.” He glanced over his shoulder at Perada. “Thanks … I could use a mug of cha’a.”
Perada filled two of the drinking bulbs and passed them to the captain and Errec Ransome. “Should I take some to the others, too?”
He nodded. “Tilly and Nannla, anyhow. Ferrda’s not going to want anything until we get through.”
Perada went back through the common room to the access tubes for the gun bubbles. She went down first—or the direction that would have been down, had there been gravity. Tillijen was there, looking out through the curved armor-glass walls of her bubble, spinning in the gimbal-mounted seat.
As Perada came through the hatch, the number-two gunner keyed on her headset.
“Beacon coming up—one-two-one occulting, green. Bearing zero-niner-zero.”
She clicked off and spun around so that she looked upward into the tube. “Cha’a,” she said, extending an arm for a drinking bulb. “Your Dignity, you’re a lifesaver.”
Perada blinked.
She must be tired. That’s the first time she’s slipped and used proper form
. Aloud, she said only, “My dignity isn’t quite up to managing zero-g in skirts, but it’ll survive.”
The gunner leaned back in her seat and took a long pull of the bulb of cha’a. “How’s everyone else holding up?”

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