Korval's Game (27 page)

Priscilla closed her eyes briefly, opened them and considered Ren Zel’s quiet face. She remained, perforce, behind her Wall, reduced to reading the emotions of others from the shifting clues of expression and bodyline. Like most Liadens, Ren Zel was a master at keeping his emotions well away from his face.

“An announcement will be made to the entire crew within the hour,” she said, and took a breath, enough air, certainly, to force the few words out. “The ship has accepted me as captain.”

Face smooth, Ren Zel inclined his head. “Has there been—word—of Captain yos’Galan?”

Priscilla shook her head, gesturing at her screen and the diagram describing the descent of lifeboat number four. “He will make planetfall within the next few hours. After the lifeboat is stable, we’ll rig a punchbeam. For the moment, we—assume—that Captain yos’Galan is alive, but unavailable to us. Circumstances dictate that the ship be served by a full captain.” “Assume,” Ren Zel said, voice expressing interest without judgment, which was only prudent from a man reared in a culture where a judgment expressed outside of one’s proper area of concern might well result in honor-feud. Priscilla was free to ignore him, but she would have to stretch—and endanger her own melant’i—to read insult into his question.

“Assume,” she repeated, and smiled with good intent, if limited success. “Understand that I am—shielded away. Without Healer skill. There are exercises I must soon undertake so that I may serve the ship as it must be served, but for the moment, I have no more knowledge of Captain yos’Galan’s safety than what I can read from the tracking computer and from my own desires.”

Something moved in the brown eyes. She thought it might have been pity. “I understand. Forgive me. I had not intended to cause you pain.”

“You have a right to ask—to know. Shan is your captain, after all.”

“Indeed, I owe him my life,” Ren Zel murmured. “And yourself, as well.”

In lieu of being able to pay Shan directly
, Priscilla thought wryly and deliberately suppressed the shudder of anxiety. She lay her hands flat on the desktop and looked at him.

“Then perhaps you will find this proposal even more interesting,” she said and tipped her head, seeing wariness at the back of his eyes.

“You know that we are short-handed, that we have been short-handed since the
Passage
became a full-scale battlewagon.”

Ren Zel inclined his head. “And with the loss of Pilot Johnson and Captain yos’Galan we become less rich in resource.”

“Exactly. In a ship—rich in resource—the second mate would move to first, third to second, and a third mate would be chosen by the captain.”

“We do not have this luxury of personnel,” he agreed. “We are at war.”

She nodded. “The ship requires a first mate and the captain must decide who will serve the ship best. I propose yourself for first mate, unless you can think of a compelling reason why you shouldn’t be.”

Shock stripped his face naked. He sat—just sat—and stared at her for the space of three heartbeats. He closed his eyes then, and sat through two heartbeats more. He opened his eyes and they were distant, his face without expression. When he spoke, it was in High Liaden, in the mode called Outsider.

“The captain is reminded that one is clanless, with neither name nor kin nor melant’i to support one. The ship is best served by one who is alive.”

“The captain recalls most vividly that you have been reft of your birthright,” Priscilla said carefully, following him into Liaden, but only so far as Comrade mode. “The captain points out that your piloting license bears a name—Ren Zel dea’Judan. The captain fails of recalling a single instance of that name being dishonored in the several years of our association. The melant’i which you embody is pure. The ship can be no better served.”

There were tears in the medium brown eyes and she dared not unshield, even to offer comfort. Instead, she sat and waited while he mastered himself, while he thought it through, and when he rose to bow acceptance.

“Captain, I am honored. I will serve willingly, with all my heart.”

She stood from behind the desk and returned his bow, reaching into High Liaden for the ritual phrase spoken by a delm when accepting a new member into the clan.

“I see you, Ren Zel dea’Judan, First Mate. The ship rejoices.”

Tears again, hidden by a hasty bow. “Captain.”

She smiled slightly and shook her head. “First lesson,” she said in Terran.

Quickly, he looked up, brown eyes bright. “Yes?”

“My name is Priscilla,” she said, and held her hand out to him.

***

The crew,
at battle stations, accepted her ascendancy to captain and Ren Zel’s appointment as first mate with somber approval. She had detailed their mission: to take up defensive orbit about the planet and await the aid that surely must come in response to Rusty’s carefully anonymous pinbeams.

“In the meantime,” she said, “Captain yos’Galan’s lifeboat has entered atmosphere. We will attempt to establish a dialog via laser packet when he comes to ground and we are sure his position is stable.”

“Why not just use the radio?” That was Gordy, face tight, voice harsh with pain.

“The Yxtrang may ride our radio wave down to the planet surface and discover the location of an object we value,” Ren Zel murmured, before she could frame a reply. “They have surely marked that one pod escaped the battle, and they must wonder after its worth. A laser burst is not so easy to follow, so we may shield Captain yos’Galan while informing him of our vigilance.”

In the screen, Gordy nodded, jerkily. “I see. Thank you.”

“Other questions?” Priscilla asked, and there were none, so she released them to their duties or their rest, then turned to Ren Zel.

“First Mate, the shift is yours.”

He bowed, accepting the duty. Priscilla hesitated.

“Ren Zel.”

He looked up.

“I—there are preparations that I must make,” she said, slowly. “Preparations which are . . . of the dramliz. I will be in my cabin for the next few hours, but I will not be available to you.” She bit her lip, and added that most dangerous of Terran phrases, “I’m sorry.”

He moved his hand lightly, as if clearing the air of a faint wisp of smoke. “Necessity. I, to my duty. You, to yours.”

She smiled, then. Almost she laughed. Practical Ren Zel.

“Of course. How could I have forgotten? Good shift, my friend.”

“Good shift, Priscilla.”

***

Self-healed,
and whole once more, Priscilla drew a breath in trance slightly deeper than the one before. Her lips moved. The voice of her body whispered a word.

Weapons Hall leapt up around her, mile-thick walls breathing chill and fell purpose.

One did not seek this place lightly. Many—most—of those trained as Sintian Witches never had need to come here, though all were taught the way. It was the peculiar misfortune of those who had been born Moonhawk to know the way to Weapons Hall all too well.

Priscilla moved silently over the stone floor, her cloak pulled tight against the chill. At the end of the hall, she paused, frowning down at a blood-bright spot against the worn rock bench. Bending, she picked up a round wooden counter like those used in gaming houses, bright red in the center, but losing its paint along the rim. She smiled slightly and curled her fingers over the token, feeling it warm against her skin, and moved forward once more, to the long, weapon-hung wall.

The tale is that, for every art of healing, for every spell of joy a Witch masters, there is a weapon hung in the Hall, which is its dire opposite.

The tale is true.

Priscilla walked the long, weapon-thick wall. Three times, she put out her hand and when she lowered it, a portion of the wall stood bare. At the end of the Hall, weapons chosen, she closed her eyes and raised her arms and was gone from that place that was nowhere and nowhen.

***

In the bed
she shared with Shan, Priscilla’s body stirred. Breath and heartbeat quickened. Black eyes opened. Blinked.

She stretched, then, fully back in the body, and noticed that her right hand was clenched tight. Raising it, she carefully opened her fingers and looked in wonder at the round wooden counter, brave crimson enamel worn away around the rim.

To her newly wakened, battle-honed senses, the little token vibrated with power, with . . . presence. Carefully, she opened her thought to the artifact—and nearly cried aloud with wonder.

The wood was alive with Shan’s presence.

She held it in her hand while she dressed, loath to surrender even so tenuous and strange a link with him. When she had wriggled, one-handed, into her shirt, she slid the token into her sleeve-pocket, taking care with the seal.

It wasn’t until she had stamped into her boots and gone into the ‘fresher to splash water on her face that it occurred to her to wonder what Shan might have found awaiting his hand, in the Witches’ Hall of Weapons.

NIMBLEDRAKE:
Ending Jump

Liz punched
the third button from the top in the fourth column from the right, which probably said “tea” as plain as the nose on your face, if your nose happened to be Liaden. Since hers wasn’t, she’d memorized which buttons Nova pressed to draw what kind of rations.

She fished the cup out of the dispenser and punched the button again, then walked both cups carefully down the narrow hallway to the piloting chamber. They were due to fall out of Jump pretty soon—a way stop, not Lytaxin itself.

Nova was at the board, which was where Nova mostly was, except for an odd hour of sleep, or a short stroll down to the canteen to draw tea or food—that she ate and drank while sitting watch over her board.

“Here you go, Goldie.” Liz slid one cup into the holder of the arm of the pilot’s chair, and, juggling the other cup, got herself into the cramped co-pilot’s seat.

“My thanks,” Nova said absently, busy with some figuring on a tiny work screen set off to the side of the main board.

“No problem,” Liz said, anchoring her cup and pulling the webbing across. Not that Nova was likely to give them a thrill breaking Jump—she’d shown herself far too able a pilot for that. But, in Liz’s experience, accidents did happen, and the ones who were prepared were the ones least likely to get hurt.

“Planning on making a long stop?” she asked. “Or just using the revolving door?”

Nova looked up, golden brows pulled tight. “Revolving?” The frown cleared in the next instant. “Ah. I see. We shall pause long enough to hear the news, then move on. If the luck smiles, we will be dining with Erob twenty hours hence.”

“Terrific,” Liz said, without emphasis. She had a careful sip of her tea. “You got a pretty good handle on Terran,” she said. “Haven’t managed to really stump you yet.”

“Were you trying?” Astonishingly, Nova looked amused. “But you might consider my handle to be not quite what it should be, when you learn that my mother was Terran.”

Liz managed not to choke on her tea. “She was?”

“Indeed, and a scholar of linguistics besides.” There was a muted chime in the cabin and Nova turned back to the screens.

“You will excuse me. We approach Jump end.”

Liz settled her cup in the slot and eased back as well as she could in the chair, so of course they phased into normal space with no more happenstance than the usual snap of transition.

Nova was busy with the board. Liz picked up the plug she’d been given, as she thought, to keep her quiet during just such periods of pilot concentration, she slipped it in her ear, doodling with the one dial of the dozens decorating the board that she was allowed, even encouraged, to touch.

For a while there was nothing much. The usual traffic talk and between-ship chatter you’d get any time you broke system. Then there was something else. Liz froze, holding the setting steady, and pulled the plug out of her ear.

“Nova.”

A flash of violet eyes none too pleased. Liz held out the earplug.

“Gotta hear this. Priority One. I picked it up on the shipping channel.”

One slim hand moved, sideways to what it had been doing, slapped a toggle and the speaker came live.

“Repeat. All vessels shipping to or through Lytaxin space are warned that Clan Danut is invoking the war-impaired shipping clause of all contracts and will not carry, deliver, or receive goods bound for Lytaxin, based on reliable information. This by order of Delm Danut.”

In the pilot’s chair, Nova took a deep quiet breath. Liz looked at her.

“You know them?”

“Clan Danut,” Nova said, still staring at the board. “They are a small clan; their principal warehouse is on planet here. If they were not certain, they would not speak.” She moved then, hands dancing along the controls.

***

“We shall check
another source, Commander Lizardi, for if one trader announces such news, another has information a little fresher!”

Liz watched as Nova’s hands touched this comm-panel and that, heard what might have been a Liaden cuss word as a loud monotone note sounded, then saw hands busy again.

“It would be good of you to fetch more tea for me, and some of the board-biscuits—sixth key on the right side of the warmer.”

Liz noted the half-cup of tea still locked to Nova’s chair, but figured she could tell when she should be elsewhere for a moment.

As fast as Liz rushed for the vittles, whatever secrets the Liaden woman wanted hidden were still her own when she got back.

“Strap in this time, Commander,” said Nova, hands busy on the board yet again. “We Jump as soon as our orientation and speed are correct.”

“Whoa!” Liz started to reach out and get hold of a wrist, then thought better of it. “Where you putting out for?”

No answer.

“Answer me, Goldie, I got a right to know.”

“Indeed you do,” Nova said, her voice a calm and shocking counterpoint to her busy fingers. “We are going to Fendor, Angela Lizardi.”

“Merc Headquarters?” She blinked. “What’re you gonna do? Hire yourself an army?”

“If necessary. Jump phase in 20 seconds. Erob is Korval’s ally. We owe assistance in peril. And I have evidence from a pinbeam bounce that my brother and his lifemate are on Lytaxin as we speak.”