Read The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds

BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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Table of Contents
 
For Meggo and Duncan and John
 
We couldn’t have done this without the help of a lot of people: Bruce Coville and the Tuesday Evening Literature and Carbohydrate Society; Mary Frances Zambreno; Andrew Sigel and Andrew Phillips and Nancy Hanger; and especially Sherwood Smith, first-reader extraordinaire, without whose enthusiasm we might not have finished the first draft, let alone gone the distance.
 
N
IGHT HAD come to Waycross on Innish-Kyl. Night, but not darkness or quiet. Bursts of loud talk and raucous music spilled out through open doorways, and the low thrumming of heavy machinery never stopped. Beka Rosselin-Metadi—tall and thin, with pale yellow hair tied back from a face too sharply planed for prettiness—strode through the crowded spaceport with a starpilot’s fine disregard for the dirtside locals. The locals, in turn, took note of her purposeful air, and of her heavy war-surplus blaster in its worn leather holster, and let her pass.
In fact, Beka had no goal besides a cool drink and a few hours away from the ship.
Claw Hard
had been in hyperspace for two months on this latest run, plenty of time for Beka to grow tired of both the freighter and her crew. This stop at Waycross was Beka’s first chance to get off-ship since Cashel; the layover at Raffa, the only other port on this run, had been too brief to allow the crew members any liberty.
Osa’s probably afraid he’ll lose the whole lot of us if he lets us out on the town
, she decided as she stepped through the door of the Blue Sun Cantina. If her own duties as copilot/navigator hadn’t ended when
Claw Hard
settled into the docking bay, she wouldn’t be here either—she’d be off-loading and on-loading cargo with the rest of the freighter’s crew. But except for Osa himself she had the only deep-space pilot’s license on board, and
Claw Hard’s
captain was getting too fat and lazy to do his own ship handling.
Beka smiled thinly to herself.
If Osa wants to keep his
copilot, she thought,
he can damn well let me off the ship for a couple of hours.
The door slid shut behind her, and she made her way through the crowd to the bar. The regulars at the Blue Sun weren’t exactly the sort of people Beka had grown up with. Innish-Kyl was a frontier planet near the Mageworlds border zone, and Waycross had started out as a privateers’ port during the worst years of the late war. Most of the cantina’s patrons probably hadn’t seen a respectable woman more than once or twice in their lives, and wouldn’t know what to say to one if she showed up.
Luckily, Beka’s much-mended coverall and worn leather boots—and the blaster—were enough to spare her the burden of respectability in this crowd. She found a place at the bar and pulled a ten-credit chit out of her pocket.
“Beer,” she said in Galcenian. “Whatever you have on tap.”
The bartender looked at her without speaking.
Beka sighed.
I wonder if it’s my accent.
She didn’t suppose the Blue Sun got many customers who spoke the universal tongue of the spacelanes as it sounded on the Mother of Worlds—but even seven years away from Galcen hadn’t been enough to wipe all traces of home from Beka’s voice.
It never fails,
she thought with resignation.
A few hours without sleep, and I start talking like I’m just out of finishing school. Oh, well. Try again.
“Beer,” she said, enunciating clearly. “Tap.”
The bartender blinked. “Yes, Domina.”
Oh, damn. It
wasn’t
the accent.
Beka exhaled slowly through clenched teeth. It wasn’t the bartender’s fault that random genetic factors had made her into a taller, thinner, plainer version of the civilized galaxy’s most famous stateswoman.
But what anybody could think Mother was doing in a place like. this—or maybe they haven’t forgotten that she did come to Waycross once, when she needed the kind of help that no other place could give.
She drew a long breath. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not the Domina. I’m not even a gentlelady. I’m a thirsty starpilot, and I’d like some brew.”
The bartender gave her another strange look, then shrugged and turned away. He drew a mug of beer from the console behind the bar and slid the mug across the counter without speaking. Beka reached out to pick it up, but before her fingers reached the frosted glass she felt a touch on her shoulder.
She whirled, dropping her hand to the grip of the blaster. Then she saw who stood there—a slight, dark-haired man in dusty black, a plain wooden staff slung across his back on a leather thong. Her blue eyes widened with recognition, and she let her hand relax.
“Master Ransome,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” the man answered. “You’re wanted down at the docking bays.”
Beka raised an eyebrow. “Somehow I can’t see the Master of the Adepts’ Guild running errands for the likes of Captain Osa.”
“I’m not,” Ransome said. “Your father is here.”
So you’re running errands for Dadda instead … which means Mother has to be mixed up in this somehow.
Beka felt the old, familiar anger stir to life at the thought.
Seven years. It’s been seven years, and she still thinks I’m going to change my mind and come home. Or maybe Master Ransome is supposed to drag me back to Galcen whether I want to go or not.
She gave the Adept a wary look. “I thought the Space Force stayed away from Innish-Kyl.”
“The Space Force has nothing to do with it.
Warhammer
is in docking bay sixty-two-D.”
Beka took a long, deep drink from her mug. So her father had finally brought his old ship back to the port that had made her famous.
After all the times I asked him to take me to Waycross, back when I was a kid, and he said no, he didn’t want to see the place again … and now he’s here.
She set down the beer and pushed herself away from the bar. “All right,” she said. “I can take a hint. Let’s go.”
She followed the Adept through the crowded room and out onto the street. The rest of the Blue Sun’s customers drew aside to let them pass—not out of any regard for her, she knew, but out of well-founded respect for anyone who carried an Adept’s staff.
For centuries the galaxy’s Adepts had kept to themselves, living apart from those who distrusted their power to sense and manipulate the patterns of the universe. Then strange, wing-shaped scoutships began appearing above the outplanets. A few years later the raiding parties followed, first on the frontier and then in the heart of the galaxy itself. And in the opening skirmishes of what became the Magewar, the once-distrusted Adepts became humanity’s chief defenders against the power of the Mageworlds.
Now Beka Rosselin-Metadi glanced over at Master Ransome as they walked through Waycross’s narrow streets. “Mother’s up to something,” she said, “and I don’t like it. Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or not?”
Ransome shook his head. “The docking bay isn’t far.”
She bit her lip and said nothing. A few minutes later they reached the low-walled, roofless enclosure where
Warhammer
’s flattened disk shape loomed against the white glow of the dock lights. Beka paused in the entrance to the bay.
“Damn, but she’s still a pretty ship,” she said, more to herself than to her companion. “Makes
Claw Hard
look like a flying rock. Did Dadda bring her in alone?”
“Not quite,” said Ransome. “I was copilot.”
“Just like old times,” said Beka, as they crossed the open bay toward the ship. In her fighting days, the ‘
Hammer
had carried a full crew: pilot, copilot, engineer, and a pair of gunners. But Jos Metadi had flown
Warhammer
solo after the long conflict had ended, and had taught all three of his children to do the same.
Beka smiled a little in spite of herself.
Ari and Owen never loved it like I did, though—and I could fly rings around them both from the moment I was old enough to start learning.
The smile faded as quickly as it had come.
I wonder if Dadda would have taught me, if he’d known what I was going to do with all those lessons?
She hesitated at the foot of the lowered ramp, and looked at her father’s onetime copilot and oldest friend.
“Master Ransome, can you tell me what he wants?”
The Adept shook his head. In the shadow of
Warhammer’
s bulk, she couldn’t make out his expression. She shrugged, and went on up the ramp.
The ship’s door was open, and the faint glow of a force field stretched across the gap. Master Ransome reached out one hand toward it, and the light faded. He gestured at her to go ahead. She stepped through with Master Ransome following a staff-length behind. The air brightened again behind them.
Beka made her way forward to the ‘
Hammer’
s dimly lit common room. A lean, dark-clad figure half-lounged in a chair at the mess table: Jos Metadi, once captain of the privateer ship
Warhammer
, now Commanding General of the Republic’s Space Force. Marriage to Perada Rosselin had given him the rank—in the old days before the Magewar, “General of the Armies” had been one of the honorifics granted by custom to the consort of the Domina of Entibor—but Metadi’s own formidable talents had made the courtesy title into a powerful reality.
His chair spun round as the first footstep sounded on the common-room floor, and a small but deadly blaster appeared in the General’s hand. After a moment the blaster disappeared again into its hidden grav-clip up Metadi’s sleeve.
“Sorry,” he said. “Old habits die hard.”
Beka nodded, unsurprised. Innish-Kyl has that effect on people. She’d almost gone for her blaster herself back in the cantina, and she was nothing like the old hand that her father was. Behind her, she heard Errec Ransome half-laugh.
“You could get a bodyguard from the Guild any time you wanted,” the Adept said. “Will you take one?”
“I’ll take a bodyguard when I run into somebody who’s even fonder of keeping my hide in one piece than I am,” Metadi said. “And I don’t think the creature exists.” He turned back to Beka. “Sit down, girl. We have to talk.”
Beka took a chair on the other side of the mess table and braced herself for a struggle. She hadn’t written or spoken to anyone on Galcen—except, once in a great while, to her brother Owen—since that last, bitter quarrel the night she left home. She wondered what twist in galactic politics had convinced the Domina to send for the family’s runaway daughter.
It must really be bad
, she thought. The realization stiffened her resolve.
If Mother wants me to come back again, she’s going to have to take me on my own terms, not hers.
There was a long pause. Finally her father said, “You look like you’ve done well enough for yourself.”
“I’m piloting for Frizzt Osa on
Claw Hard
,” she said. “The ship’s a pile of junk, and Osa’s a bastard, but it’s a job.”
Metadi nodded. There was another pause. Finally Beka said, “I never expected to see you here.”
“I never expected to come back,” said the General. “The town’s gone downhill since the old days—the Magelords turned Entibor into an orbiting slag heap, but that’s nothing next to what peace and prosperity can do to a place.” He gave Beka an appraising look. “That blaster you’ve got—are you willing to use it?”
“I already have once,” she said.
“Good,” said Metadi.
Once again, conversation lapsed.
Warhammer
’s environmental systems kept up their low, almost subliminal hum. Beka looked from her father to Master Ransome, who had made himself inconspicuous after an Adept’s fashion, leaning against the wall in a shadowed corner.
The Adept’s face was hidden, and her father’s was unreadable. Neither man seemed ready to break the silence. She drew a deep breath.
“How did you know I was going to be in Waycross tonight?”
The answer came quickly. It wasn’t, she thought, the question they’d been expecting.
“Owen told us you were on
Claw Hard
,” Master Ransome said. “Learning your next port of call wasn’t hard after that.”
“Owen,” said Beka slowly. She’d kept in touch, over the years, with the younger of her two brothers, certain that the ally and co-conspirator of her childhood would never betray any secret she confided to him. If he’d come out with her ship’s name of his own accord …
“Whatever Mother needs me for has got to be more than just family politics. Now, is somebody going to tell me about it, or are we going to sit here and make small talk until I have to get back to
Claw Hard
for lift-off?”
Her father looked at Master Ransome.
The Adept sighed, and came over to take a seat at the table. He glanced down for a moment at the tabletop, rubbing his finger lightly over decades-old scratch marks in the grey plastic, and then lifted his head again. “The Domina of Entibor is dead.”
For a moment, the words meant nothing. Then Beka heard a voice that had to be hers, although she didn’t recognize it.
BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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