The Gathering Flame (4 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Gathering Flame
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Nothing else happened. The hall was deserted.
“Do you know how silly I feel lying here?” he asked, after a little while.
“I have my suspicions,” she said. “Shall we away?”
Aringher pushed himself back up onto his feet. “Your place or mine?”
“Yours is closer.”
“Then let’s go.”
A short walk later, the two of them were safely ensconced in Festen Aringher’s apartment overlooking the Strip. Monitors and projectors flashed against three of the four walls in the main room, filling the place with a babble of images and sounds. Aringher had stripped off his jacket and shirt and was busy applying antiseptic to his cuts. Mistress Vasari sat curled up on the divan watching him.
“Time for a talk,” she said. “What brought you to the Double Moon, and how did you end up in such an undignified position?”
“You see before you,” Aringher said, “a martyr to the cause of a more equitable galactic polity. I came to the Double Moon because I had heard that Captain Metadi made Waycross his usual port of call, and the Double Moon his usual site of recreation, after a successful voyage. As it happens, I desired speech with the good captain on a certain subject.”
“Dare I ask?”
“My unending search for truth, beauty, peace, wisdom—”
“Money.”
“There is that,” he admitted. “But we never spoke, Captain Metadi and I, except informally in passing. Before I could arrange a meeting, I heard that someone of considerable importance was already in the building in search of the good captain, and an interview between them was to commence in mere minutes. As I soon discovered, that someone was the Domina of Entibor herself.”
“Veratina?” Vasari looked surprised. “I know the old lady has an eye for well-set-up young men, but—”
“Your gossip is sadly out of date, my dear. Veratina’s dead, and the new Dómina is a schoolgirl fresh out of the Delaven Academy on Galcen.”
“She’s not wasting any time, then, is she?”
“Indeed not,” said Aringher. “Which stirred my curiosity a great deal, let me tell you. ‘Why,’ I asked myself, ‘should this person be seeking that person?’ Motives interest me, so I decided to find out—and what I learned is that an innocent, beautiful …”
“Rich.”
“ … rich young woman desired to contract an alliance with an old, deceitful—”
“Spare me. Jos Metadi is younger than you are.”
“Details, details. What counts is that the new Domina appeared to have reached the same conclusion I had, of the need for this particular man in that particular job at this very time. Not only that, she had learned, as had I, the best place to find him—and while I had determined to wait until he was finished with other business before pressing my case, she was bolder. In short, the sly minx outmaneuvered me.”
Vasari smothered a laugh. “That has to be a first.”
“Regrettably, it isn’t.” Aringher sighed theatrically. “Yet while I couldn’t be the earliest person to open negotiations with Captain Metadi, I was admirably positioned to become the best-informed. And what I learned is that neither Metadi nor the young woman really wanted to make the bargain. I was mentally rehearsing my own presentation to the captain, setting forth our cause in terms based on my new knowledge, when … well, I’ve seen people be manipulated before …”
“You’ve done your own share of manipulating.”
“True, I confess,” said Aringher. He shrugged, grimacing a little as the motion tugged at the cuts along his shoulder blades. “At any rate, just as it appeared that no agreement could be reached between the two of them, another party decided to take a hand in the proceedings. Subsequently I was discovered. The rest you know.”
“‘Another party’?” Mistress Vasari’s eyes gleamed with a businesslike curiosity. “Mages, do you think?”
“I doubt it, my dear. The captain and the young lady are still alive, and the Double Moon is still standing. Considering the magnitude of the grudge the Mages must hold against Jos Metadi, any attempt at revenge would involve considerably more than a locked door and, from the sound of it, a few poorly aimed blaster bolts in a dark alley.”
“Well, it wasn’t me, I assure you.”
“I never thought for a minute that it might be.”
“Go on.”
Aringher put away the bottle of antiseptic and pulled on a fresh shirt. “Anyway, somebody else wanted the deal to go through—so they arranged an attack, in order to make the Domina and Captain Metadi allies by sharing a common danger. But not, mind you, too
much
danger. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe that the whole purpose of the exercise was to separate the Domina from her escort, and to throw her into the company of Jos Metadi.”
“Tricky, tricky,” Vasari said, in approving tones. “Who was it?”
“My question precisely.” He slipped on his jacket and began doing up the buttons. “And I believe that the answer can be found on Entibor.”
 
The Armsmaster of House Rosselin was still sitting in the courier ship’s command chair when Nivome returned.
“So there you are,” the Rolnian said. “Asleep.”
Hafrey opened his eyes and turned them toward the Minister of Internal Security. “Not sleeping,” he said. “Thinking. A practice I would recommend to you.”
“This isn’t the time for sarcasm,” said Nivome. “There was violence at the Double Moon—the Domina is missing, perhaps even dead.”
Hafrey regarded the dark, heavyset Rolnian dispassionately. “I think I can ease your mind somewhat concerning Her Dignity’s whereabouts. If you would accompany me?”
“Of course,” Nivome said. “Lead the way.”
The two men left the ship, retracing Ser Hafrey’s course to the shadows outside the docking bay where
Warhammer
had rested not long before. The worklights along the top of the privacy walls were dark, and the blast doors were shut. The dockworkers and their skipsleds had gone on to another ship and another cargo, leaving silence behind.
“It’s empty,” said Nivome. “They’ve already lifted and gone to orbit.”
“True enough.” Hafrey let the implied complaint go unanswered. “If you would be patient a while longer—”
He busied himself at the juncture of the wall and the blast door. After a few minutes he gave a brief nod of satisfaction, and stepped back. In one hand he held a small black cube, scarcely a thumbnail’s length on a side. He offered the cube to Nivome.
“You may examine the record, if you like.”
Nivome picked up the spy-eye, but didn’t bother to look at it. “You’re too sure of yourself. What have you arranged for me to see?”
“I? Nothing. But if you watch, you will see Her Dignity enter the ship in company with Captain Metadi.”
The Rolnian clenched his fist around the black cube. “You’re her guardian, and you approve of this?”
“She is the Domina,” Hafrey pointed out. “And Entibor is most decidedly not Rolny. It is not for us to approve or disapprove.”
The armsmaster paused to allow the reproof time to sink in. Nivome do’Evaan had a good deal of native shrewdness and physical courage, along with vaulting ambition and a high opinion of his own worth—a mixture of qualities that had made him useful to Veratina in her later years. Domina Perada, Hafrey was relieved to note, was proving herself less easily impressed by his talents—physical and otherwise—than her predecessor had been.
“In any case,” Ser Hafrey added, “so long as the Domina reaches Entibor in good time, no one will care what happened on Innish-Kyl.”
“Metadi’s copilot knows about it. If
he
knows, so will the whole ship’s crew, and half the port.”
“Ah, yes; the Ilarnan. An interesting fellow, that one. But I don’t think he’ll talk.” Hafrey stepped away from the sealed blast doors and the empty bay. “Enough chatter. Are you satisfied?”
Nivome remained unmollified. “I still want to check out the Double Moon.”
“If you like,” replied Hafrey, unperturbed.
They turned to go. But in that moment three men emerged from the shadows before them—portside bully-boys, from their clothing. All three of them had blasters ready.
“Ah,” Ser Hafrey said. “Good evening, gentles all.”
“Hands up,” said the biggest and tallest member of the trio. He lifted his blaster by way of emphasis. “You’re coming with us.”
Nivome made a grab for his jacket pocket and one of the gunmen shot him down. He collapsed, holding his belly and gasping in pain. Hafrey glanced in his direction and raised his hands.
“Search them,” ordered the man who had spoken before.
Hafrey submitted to the search calmly. Nivome, however, came close to choking as the other two thugs hauled him upright and went through his clothing piece by piece. They removed both the spy-eye and the needler he’d kept hidden inside his jacket, then dropped him onto the pavement.
The leader glanced over at Ser Hafrey. “Come on, you.”
“Of course,” said Hafrey mildly. “Those of us who are professionals understand such things.”
He took a step forward. At a nod from their leader, the two gunmen who had been searching Nivome fell in like guards, one to either side of the armsmaster. A heartbeat later, the one to Hafrey’s right dropped his blaster.
The heavy-duty Gyfferan Special fell to the concrete with a metallic clatter, loud in the silence of late-night portside. The man looked startled and opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out except a gush of foamy, bright-red blood. He collapsed to his knees, then toppled forward onto his face, blood pooling under his head.
Ser Hafrey reached out and tapped the number-one thug on the shoulder. The man sat down heavily, his arms and legs splayed out like the limbs of a rag doll. Now only the gunman to Hafrey’s left remained standing. He held a blaster in one hand, but he wasn’t moving, and his eyes were large and dark with fear. Hafrey’s left hand rested against the man’s neck.
“Did you know,” the armsmaster said conversationally to the man sitting helpless on the pavement, “that there are over two hundred pressure points on the human body—points which, properly manipulated, can cause anything from paralysis of half-a-minute’s duration to symptomless death eight hours later? In your case, your arms and legs will remain useless to you for a bit, although your eyes and ears will serve you well enough. In the case of your comrade—” Ser Hafrey nodded at the man who stood sweating beside him. “—I am not going to use pressure points at all. Rather, this is a mechanical.”
This
was something metallic and glittering, barely visible for an instant between Hafrey’s fingers.
“Now,” said the armsmaster to the man beside him, “I want you to place your blaster underneath your chin, pointing up toward the top of your head.”
The man was pale and shivering, but his arm responded, lifting the weapon and pushing the muzzle into the soft skin under his jaw.
“I don’t approve of people who attempt violence toward me or my associates,” Hafrey said. His tone was, if possible, even milder than before. “I want you to press the firing stud.”
There was a wash of crimson light—the close-range aura of a blaster firing on full power—and the man’s head exploded outward and back, leaving a gory crater where the dome of the skull had been. A shiny metal wire protruded from the top of the curdled, blackened mass inside.
Incredibly, the man still stood, his blaster pressed up against his chin and a thin curl of smoke drifting away from the entry burn.
“Steam explosion,” Ser Hafrey explained. “Very messy.”
He withdrew his hand from the neck of the standing man, taking with it a long metal object that had been buried point upward in the man’s neck. As he did so, the bit of wire disappeared from above the dead man’s ruined skull, and the lifeless body crumpled to the pavement.
Hafrey made the metal spike disappear. “You’ll notice that you are beginning to regain feeling in your hands,” he said to the third man, who remained sprawling half-paralyzed on the ground. “Please signal this by releasing your weapon.”
The man’s right hand twitched, and the blaster hit the ground.
“Excellent. Now I want you to stand up.”
The man stood, not looking at either of his former companions. Hafrey nodded approvingly.
“Very good. Now go home. Don’t come back, and don’t signal or talk to anyone along the way. If you do, I’ll see that you regret it. I assume I have made myself clear?”
The man nodded.
“Then go,” Hafrey said.
The man left. Hafrey waited until he was out of sight, then turned his attention to Nivome. The Rolnian was still curled around himself on the pavement, his eyes tight shut and his breath coming in shallow gasps. Hafrey regarded him without emotion.
“Get up,” the armsmaster said.
Nivome shook his head without rising. “I need a medic.”

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