The Gathering Flame (11 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Gathering Flame
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Perada looked down at the gunner.
Of course, from her point of view it probably feels like I’m looking
up.
Unless she’s worked in zero-g so often that she doesn’t think about “up” and “down” any more
. “All right, I suppose. Gentlesir Ferrdacorr seems worried about the engines.”
“Ferrda always worries about the engines. He’s got a point, though.”
“Are the engines likely to present a serious problem?”
“Not unless we get unlucky,” Tillijen said. “But this junk out here—” She waved her free hand at the glowing masses of light outside the bubble. “—it’s hard on everything. And the engines can’t be shielded, so they take more damage than anything else.”
“If getting through the Web is so difficult,” Perada said, “I’m surprised that anyone bothers to visit here at all.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen Pleyver.” Tillijen sighed. “It’s a lovely world, almost as pretty as—well, never mind. And rich, too; lots of natural resources, and right on the route from anywhere to anywhere else. Whoever was the first one to find it, though, coming through this soup—”
The clouds of light parted, and there was the system spread out below them—the central sun and the planets, with Pleyver close at hand.
“It’s beautiful,” Perada said.
“It surely is,” Tillijen said. She keyed on the headset again. “Pleyver in sight. Numerous ships in orbit. I make two lifting.”
She turned back to Perada. “No offense, but I think you ought to take Nannla her share of the cha’a and then go strap down. Pleyver was all right the last time I was here, but things can change fast these days. If any old friends or casual acquaintances are waiting for us, things might get rough.”
 
(GALCENIAN DATING 970 A.F.; ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 34 VERATINA)
 
E
RREC WOKE abruptly, as if from a sudden noise—heart racing, breath suspended. For a minute or two he lay quiet and listened, but his ears caught nothing beyond the usual sounds of the Amalind Grange Guildhouse late on a snowy winter’s night.
His mind catalogued them all, and found them harmless. A faint rattle as the wind first gusted, then died, then gusted again: lozenges of window glass stirring in their leaded frames. Distant, muffled creaks and snaps: house timbers flexing and shifting as the building settled into the cold of the night. And underlying everything, a steady, peaceful rhythm—the breath and heartbeat of every living thing sheltered within the Grange’s wooden walls.
Why, then, had he awakened?
Not from a nightmare … he knew the feel of that too well, after his time on Galcen. Such awakenings always held as much relief as they did leftover apprehension, and there was no relief for him here. Whatever had brought him to full consciousness out of an untroubled sleep, he felt sure that it had come from a source outside his own mind.
And it was continuing. He sensed it—a thrumming in the air, a vibration along his nerve ends like the note of the lowest string on a megaviole. He sat up and looked around the bedchamber. Nothing had changed since he’d composed himself earlier and dropped off to sleep. The heat-bar, its ceramic element a dull red against the shadows, glowered at him from the hearth like a slitted, malevolent eye.
There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. He’d experienced fits of wakefulness before, and knew that there was no help for the affliction except to rise and walk it off. He pushed aside the blankets and began getting dressed: the trousers and shirt from his formal blacks, that he’d hung over the back of the bedside chair a few hours ago; a pair of warm socks; the leather boots he’d bought off-planet.
Then he reached out for his staff, and drew a sharp breath. The six-foot length of Ilarnan whitebole wood was vibrating under his touch.
He jerked his hand away. When he touched the staff again, he felt only the cool smoothness of the wood beneath his fingers. He told himself that he had imagined the brief sensation; that the illusion, and the sudden waking that had preceded it, were the products of unresolved tension—the legacy of a stay on Galcen that had not brought him the knowledge he had expected to gain.
I didn’t imagine it
, he protested to himself.
Whatever I felt, was real.
But if it had been real, why wasn’t every Master and apprentice in the Amalind Guildhouse as tense and wakeful as he was? The situation bore investigating. He picked up the staff—with some trepidation, but it continued to behave like ordinary inert wood—and stepped out of his bedchamber.
The air in the hall was chilly and unmoving, unstirred by drafts. The only light came from a blue low-power glow-cube set above the stairwell. Errec considered for a moment, then ducked back into his room and took down his dark woolen night-robe from the hook on the back of the door. He belted on the robe over his shirt and trousers and, feeling somewhat warmer, continued his explorations.
All the doors up and down the central top-floor hall were shut. He eased the nearest one open. A gentle snoring met his ears. He took a step forward, calling a faint light into his staff. The sleeper turned over restlessly—even that much change in the flow of Power was enough to disrupt the slumber of a sensitive Adept. Errec recognized Allorie Sandevan, the youngest daughter of a banking family from the southern continent. She’d been a senior apprentice when he left for Galcen, and living in the long dormitory instead of the main house. He remembered Allorie as being one of the best students in her year; it was inconceivable that the menace he had felt—if it had been real—would leave her asleep.
For a moment he debated waking her, but in the end he stepped back into the hall and closed the door, leaving her undisturbed. There was no point in forcing anyone else to share his midnight prowling. He moved off quietly down the hall.
Thick black velvet curtains hung across the end of the hallway opposite the stairwell. Errec knew that they masked a small, windowed alcove—in warmer weather, a good place for solitary meditation, or for looking out over the fields and outbuildings. He let the faint glow from his staff die away, and slipped in between the velvet folds.
Outside the windows, heavy, silent flakes of snow fell onto the rolling hills of the Amalind district. And as quietly as the snow, but vastly more ponderous, the wing-shaped black raiding ships were lowering themselves to the ground on glowing nullgravs.
 
ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 38 VERATINA
 
J
OS METADI brought
Warhammer
down into the secured landing area near Flatlands Portcity. The final approach to Pleyver had gone without a hitch. Nobody had jumped him on the way out of the Web, or demanded that he submit to boarding and inspection, or any of the other bad things that could happen to a more or less law-abiding privateer outside his normal range of operations. Flatlands looked like a safe port, at least for now; Errec and the others could finish up their interrupted dirtside liberty while he kept an eye on the Domina.
“She’ll need help,” he said to Errec. They were in the
’Hammer’s
cockpit, shutting down the systems after an uneventful touchdown. “Flatlands may be safe, but that doesn’t mean it’s the sort of town she ought to be running around in all by herself.”
“You think so?”
Jos didn’t know whether to call Errec’s expression amused or not. A lot of Errec’s reactions were like that—off-center, somehow—and it didn’t do any good to try and figure them out, because you couldn’t.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. She hasn’t been out of school long enough to dry off behind the ears.”
Errec shrugged. “Don’t underestimate her, is all.”
“You sound like you don’t trust the lady very much.”
“It’s not a matter of trust. She’ll keep her bargains. But—”
“But what?”
“She wants something from you. She came to Waycross on purpose, trying to get it, and she won’t have forgotten about it just because the two of you have been sharing a bed ever since we lifted from Innish-Kyl.”
Jos looked at his copilot thoughtfully. Such blunt speaking wasn’t like Errec. Most of the time the Ilarnan was reserved about such matters, especially compared to Ferrda and the two gunners. “You think I’m making a mistake, going along with her like this?”
“I can’t tell.” Errec sounded doubtful, not evasive. “All I know is that there’s pain and trouble in it for somebody, somewhere along the line.”
“I suppose you think I ought to drop her as soon as we get to Entibor.”
Jos wasn’t surprised to find himself disliking the idea. Perada Rosselin was a warm armful, and good company no matter how many star systems she happened to own.
Errec shook his head. “Nothing so easy. There’s pain and trouble that way, too.”
“Fine,” said Jos. “Then I’ll do what I please and to hell with the omens.”
“Not omens,” Errec said. “Patterns. Currents. The universe moves, and sometimes the path is visible.”
“Whatever,” said Jos. He’d given up trying to follow Errec’s explanations a long time ago. “Come on, let’s go tell the others they can get ready for a good time portside.”
Perada was already waiting in the common room. It looked like she was planning to go incognito again: she didn’t have the velvet mask anymore, but she’d improvised something almost as effective with a sheer black scarf and one of Nannla’s hats. She wasn’t wearing braids, not even the two long schoolgirl plaits; instead her unbound hair flowed down past her belt in a long, pale waterfall.
His breath caught at the shimmering beauty of it, and at the memory of what it felt like, falling down around his face in a silken curtain. He forced his mind back to practical matters with some difficulty.
It’s part of the incognito, he reminded himself. She’s taking it a lot more seriously this time
.
He found his voice. “You’re going to make contact in Flatlands with your old school chum?”
“That’s right,” she said. “All I need to do is find a public comm-link kiosk. Garen can arrange everything once I get in touch.”
“Garen?”
“Garen Tarveet. He left school a half-year before I did.”
“Tarveet … if the newsreaders don’t lie, your pal’s family owns half of Pleyver. Maybe more than half, by now.”
“I suppose so,” she said. “That’s not what I need to talk to him about, though.”
Jos hazarded a guess. “Politics?”
“And long-range plans. He used to have some good ideas; now it’s time to see if he believes in them.”
Plans
, Jos told himself.
Remember what Errec said, hotshot—this one has plans.
Maybe so. That doesn’t mean she ought to be out on her own in Flatlands without somebody to look out for her
.
“If you’re going to wait around the transport hub for a pickup,” he said, “you’ll need to have somebody with you.”
He half expected her to protest. She didn’t, though; just looked at him through the concealing swathe of gauzy scarf. “Do you really think so?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. You may come with me.”
“‘May’?” He felt his skin redden. “What do you mean,
‘may’
?”
“If you like.” Her smile under the veil had a mischievous quality. “Wear plain clothing and don’t talk to anyone. They’ll think you’re my bodyguard.”
Jos considered several different replies and gave up on all of them. “Right,” he said finally, and ducked into his cabin to change into one of his talking-to-bankers outfits. He’d had the jackets on those cut to hide a small blaster up the sleeve or in a shoulder holster—tailors in Waycross were used to requests like that—but this time he decided to be obviously armed instead, going with his familiar Mark VI heavy, belted low and tied to his thigh.
“Excellent,” was all the Domina said when he returned. “Shall we go now, or wait for the others?”
“No point in hanging around,” he said. “Let’s go.”
There was a comm-link kiosk at the edge of the landing zone. The slot called for three Galcenian decimal-credits, or two Pleyveran tiles, or one Mandeynan tenthmark. Jos wasn’t surprised to find out that the Domina didn’t have any one of those. A quick search through his own pockets produced a handful of Innish-Kyllan cash-tacs and a crumpled Galcenian twenty-credit chit.
“We need to find a money changer,” Jos said. “Usually I keep enough local currency on hand to get off-port wherever the
’Hammer’s
docked, but Pleyver’s not one of my normal stops.”
The exchange. booth turned out to be some distance away. Perada didn’t complain, in spite of the hot sun. What Jos could see of her face behind the concealing veil looked thoughtful. She didn’t comment on anything until the Pleyveran Guaranty Trust logo on top of the currency-exchange booth came into view.
Then she said, “People shouldn’t have to go through this every time they come into port.”
“Changing money isn’t that big a problem,” he said. “You learn to deal with it.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But
everything’s
like that. All the worlds have their own coins and their own languages and their own fleets. Any time two systems want to work together on something—like fighting off the raiders, for example—the project dies because they can’t agree on whose things to use.”
“Lords of Life,” he said, half amused and half disbelieving. “The Domina of Entibor is a Centrist.”
“I am
not
!” she said. “But something needs to be done before the civilized galaxy gets carried off to the Mageworlds piece by piece.”
Jos couldn’t deny the truth of her last statement, especially since he’d caught himself thinking the same thing more than once over the past few years. His home world of Gyffer had a strong fleet, built up and kept ready to protect the planet’s orbiting shipyards and the factories below; but was that fleet strong enough to hold off the raiders if they attacked full-force?
Once he’d changed the twenty-chit, things got easier. The Guaranty Trust booth had a public comm-link, so they didn’t have to hike back before Perada could make her call. She had the call-code memorized, too, which made him wonder exactly how well she’d known this Garen Tarveet before he left school.
She kept the hush screen turned on, so he couldn’t hear what she said over the link, but when the screen went off she came out smiling. “It’s all arranged,” she said. “A driver from the estate will meet us here in half an hour.”
“Local or Standard?”
She frowned slightly. “He didn’t say … I suppose we’ll find out when the driver gets here.”
“Unless your friend’s a spacer,” Jos said, “I’ll bet he meant local.”
Free-spacers all over the civilized galaxy used Galcenian time for the same reason they used the language of the Mother of Worlds: there’d be no doing business otherwise. He was no Centrist himself—not many Gyfferans were—but he could see why some people found the concept attractive.
The hovercar showed up in a little under half an hour by the local-time clock on the wall of the currency exchange. A liveried driver got out and gave the Domina a respectful bow.
“Gentlelady Wherret?” he said.
“Yes,” said Perada.
“The young gentlesir regrets that he could not meet you himself. He awaits you at the estate.”
“Very well.”
The driver opened the door of the hovercar and looked at Jos expectantly. So, after a moment, did Perada.
Right. You’re the bodyguard; you’re supposed to check things out for her first.
Feeling a trifle absurd, he stepped up to the open door and peered inside. As far as he could tell, he was looking at an ordinary unthreatening hovercar—except for the luxury, which was enough to make a poor boy from the Gyfferan dockyards nervous all by itself. He stepped back and nodded to Perada. She gave him a polite but distant smile in return and got into the plushly upholstered passenger compartment. He decided that bodyguards were supposed to stick close to the body they were guarding, and followed.
That was apparently the right move; the driver swung the door shut without comment, and Perada was smiling. There was armor-glass an inch thick between the passenger compartment and the driver’s seat, but Jos didn’t trust it for an instant.
“Gentlelady Wherret,” he said. He let a faint hint of disbelief tinge his voice, but nothing more.
Her blue eyes danced with mischief behind the veil. “Yes.”
He wanted to say
How did you come up with that for an incognito?,
but he didn’t dare.
“Be careful,” he said instead.
They both fell silent. The ride from the aptly named Flatlands Portcity to the Tarveet estate took over an hour, leaving the open plain and following a broad river westward into rolling hill country. Jos decided that the driver must have been ordered to take the scenic route. Either that, or they were in trouble—
I
’ll
give him another fifteen minutes to get us anyplace, and then we’re getting out of here if I have to shoot the door open.
Such drastic measures turned out to be unnecessary. Five minutes later, local time, the hovercar passed through a pair of elaborate wrought-metal gates and started down a long driveway lined with tall, fan-shaped flowering trees. A large manor house of pale grey stone stood at the end of the drive.
The hovercar settled onto the combed sand with the faintest of crunching noises—the sound of fine particles compacting under the car’s weight—and the driver got out and swung open the passenger door. Cool air scented with flowers rolled in from outside. Night had fallen while they were making their way from the port, and the sky burned with the colored streamers of an auroral display.
Perada looked at Jos. He took the hint
—Time for the bodyguard to go first and draw enemy fire if there is any—
and got out of the hovercar. Perada followed, emerging onto the driveway in time for a lanky youth in dark blue velvet to come running down the broad steps of the manor house and throw his arms around her.
“’Rada!” he exclaimed. “I never expected—how
wonderful
to see you again!”
The Domina had pulled off her veil and was hugging him back. “You haven’t changed a bit, Garen. I’m glad to see you, too. I need your help.”
The young man let her go and stepped away—not very far away, though, and he was looking only at her. Jos and the driver might as well have been part of the landscape.
Skinny twerp,
Jos thought.
Whatever she wants him for, it can’t be his looks.
Garen Tarveet was only about a year older than Perada, if that; his thin frame had some of the lingering gawkiness of late adolescence. His limp brown hair fell down across his brow and got in the way of his eyes—which were themselves a watery and unattractive grey. He wet his lips in a nervous gesture.
“I’ll help you however I can, ’Rada—you know that—but I have to know what’s going on first.”

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