The Gathering Flame (6 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Gathering Flame
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“I’m not certain that I do want to go to Entibor,” she said. “There’s another place I need to stop at first.”
The glance Metadi gave her was sharp and alert. “Where?”
“Have you heard of a world called Pleyver?”
“Yes. Tricky place to get in and out of. There’s a field around it that blocks hyperspace engines, and realspace navigation through the local system is obscured by gases and such. I don’t go there unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Ah,” she said. “Does knowing that there’s money involved have anything to do with making it absolutely necessary?”
He gave a short laugh. “Almost everything.”
“Good. Because there’s money on Pleyver.”
“Yours or somebody else’s?”
“Somebody else’s,” she said. “An old school friend of mine lives on Pleyver. The money belongs to him—or at least, to his family.”
Ferrda hooted softly and growled something under his breath. Jos glared at the big saurian. Tillijen and Nannla both laughed, though, and even Ransome smiled. Perada raised her eyebrows at Tillijen.
“He wants to know if you’re planning to borrow the money or steal it,” the gunner explained.
“Well … what I really need to get on Pleyver is advice.”
“Don’t sit with your back to the door,” Nannla said promptly. “Never volunteer. When in doubt, wear your good clothes.”
Perada stifled a giggle. Ser Hafrey had warned her that showing amusement at the wrong moment could be dangerous—and Great-Aunt Veratina had never smiled once in all the times Perada had seen her.
Or maybe Aunt ’Tina never thought anything was funny. I hope I don’t get like that.
“Political advice,” she said. “The situation with the Mageworlds isn’t getting any better, you know.”
“We’d noticed,” Metadi said.
“You already know what I want to do about it,” she said. “The offer stands.”
Ferrda made a rumbling noise that Perada didn’t have any trouble interpreting as one of curiosity. The captain reddened.
“I’ll explain later,” he said hastily. “Meanwhile—anybody have an objection to Pleyver?”
Nannla and Tillijen shook their heads, and Ferrda gave an almost human shrug. Metadi looked at his copilot.
“Errec?”
“Will it help us kill Mages?”
“I was hoping you could tell me about that.”
The copilot shook his head. “It’s up to you this time—I can’t see anything one way or the other.”
“Fine.” Metadi set down his empty mug and stood up. “Then we’re going to Pleyver. All of you get to your places and strap in. I’m going to drop out and change course.”
Perada glanced over at the acceleration couch she’d left only a short while before, and started to rise. Metadi put out a hand to stop her.
“I thought I’d let you use my cabin,” he said. “The transit to Pleyver’s long enough that you’ll need someplace better to sleep than in here.”
“What about you?”
He shrugged. “There’s a spare bunk in number-two crew berthing. Errec snores, but I can live with it.”
“If you’re sure—”
“I’m sure.” He strode over to the door beside the galley nook and hit the control button on the lockplate. “I’m clearing the lock for you—as soon as the door gets your palm-scan you’ll be the only one who can open it. My cabin, and everything in it, is at your disposal. Places, everyone!”
With that he turned on his heel—rather too quickly, Perada thought—and strode off toward the bridge.
“You heard the captain,” said Errec. Ferrdacorr headed aft, and the two gunners looked at each other, stood, and made for the vertical passageway. Nannla began climbing the ladder upward, and Tillijen swung into the shaft leading down.
So Captain Metadi makes all his jumps and dropouts fully armed
, Perada thought. She understood a little bit about the way such things worked—enough to know that the extra power drain would call for expert shiphandling on the captain’s part, and to appreciate what the choice said about Metadi himself.
He trusts a lot in his own skill … and he counts on the universe to give him nothing but unpleasant surprises.
Of the
’Hammer’s
crew, now only Errec Ransome remained in the common room. “Will you require help getting strapped in, my lady?” he asked. Like everyone else in the privateer’s crew, he spoke Standard Galcenian with a strong planetary accent.
And all of them different, thought Perada. I have to get Jos Metadi—anyone who can make a crew out of four foreigners and a scaly green whatever-he-calls-himself can make a unified fleet for the civilized galaxy.
“I think I can get myself ready this time,” Perada said. She paused. “If it isn’t too personal a question—may I ask where you come from?”
“Ilarna, my lady.”
Ilarna,
Perada thought.
The Mages captured Ilarna four years back. The rumors were very bad.
She looked over at the copilot. Errec had gathered up the empty cups from the mess table and carried them to the galley. His expression told her nothing.
“Can I help you with those?” she said.
“No, thank you.”
He began stowing the cups in the washer. A moment later, Jos Metadi’s voice came over the common-room audio link: “Everyone strap in and strap down. Errec, get on up here.”
“I have to go,” Errec said, coming out of the galley. “And you’d better do what Jos says. Transitions can be rough.”
Perada palmed the lockplate of the captain’s cabin. The black plastic pad clicked and flashed, and the door slid open briefly before sighing closed again behind her. She didn’t put a lot of faith in Metadi’s assurance that from now on it would only open for her. The captain could probably get in with an emergency override any time he wanted to. But the gesture had been a kind one all the same.
The cabin held an acceleration couch—the fastenings were simple, almost rudimentary, and she strapped in quickly. She doubted that Captain Metadi had ever used it; she couldn’t imagine him staying locked up in his cabin while the ship was maneuvering. Once she was strapped down, she glanced about the cabin, looking for more indications of Metadi’s character.
There wasn’t much. The forward bulkhead of the compartment was lined with locking drawers from deck to overhead. To the right, the outer bulkhead held closet doors. And that was it. Other than a holocube and a reading light in a niche by the bed, the cabin was a simple, unadorned bit of cubic.
The only extravagance, if you could call it that, was the bed itself—neatly made, and wide enough for two. The wall nearest the bed held a set of monitor screens. As far as Perada could tell from the numbers and letters scrolling up them, they echoed the bridge and engineering readouts.
So Jos Metadi doesn’t like to do without information, Perada thought, even when he isn’t on watch. Ser Hafrey says that the captain has a reputation for being lucky; if he does, it’s because he makes his own luck.
As she watched, the lines of type on the monitors slowed down, and one of the screens began to blink. A wave of nausea swept over her. The whole ship vibrated, and somewhere outside in the common room something fell over with a
whump
. Another line of monitors lit up with what looked like status lights. Most of the lights glowed a reassuring green, but one red light kept blinking on and off and sounding a persistent bell-tone with each blink.
She didn’t know what that meant—other than nothing good—but she did know all the standard starship general-alarm signals, and this one wasn’t any of those, which meant it was probably safe to get out of the webbing. She unstrapped and stood up—in time for a sudden thrust to knock her staggering. She grabbed the back of the couch for support, biting back a less-than-ladylike remark as she did so. The red light changed to green and the bell-note stopped.
Perada got her balance again—keeping a hand near the bulkhead to catch herself if she needed to—and moved over to the closet doors in the outer bulkhead. The captain had put the whole cabin at her disposal, and she couldn’t wear her current garments all the way to Pleyver; with any luck, there’d be something in the captain’s locker that she could wear instead. She pulled open one of the closets, and discovered that it wasn’t a closet at all, but a refresher cubicle.
Even better
, she thought, and began unbuttoning the bodice of her torn and mud-stained gown.
First a bath, and then something clean to wear.
The ’fresher turned out to hold the only other touches of luxury in the cabin, a freshwater shower hookup and a bulkhead dispenser for what looked like real soap. Perada looked at them both wistfully, but opted for the sonics instead; she wasn’t sure if her free hand in the captain’s cabin extended to wasting the ship’s water. Sonics were good enough, anyway—she’d known a few people at school who actually preferred them—and they had the added virtue of speed.
She hit the On switch and stepped into the shower compartment, feeling the dirt and grime of her excursion into the back alleys of Waycross fall away from her as the vibrations excited the grease and soil molecules. She unbraided her hair and fanned it out with her fingers to release any dirt that might linger there as well. One of the sonic projectors was slightly out of balance; it made her teeth on the left side hurt a little.
Once she was clean and her hair was back up in braids again—simple plaits this time, no point in formality here—she checked the other closets. Most of the clothes hanging in them were plain and dark, like the wardrobe of a sober Gyfferan man of business rather than an Innish-Kyl privateer, and all of them were far too large. She eventually settled for a bathrobe of nubbly brown cloth over a loose white shirt that came down to her knees. The combination wasn’t especially becoming, but it would do until she could get some clothes of her own.
She opened the cabin door and padded barefoot into the common room. The deckplates felt cold underfoot, but that couldn’t be helped; her slippers had mud inside them as well as out, and she didn’t want to put them back on. The common room turned out to be empty except for Tillijen, who took one look at Perada and shook her head.
“Oh, dear,” said the number-two gunner. “Jos didn’t tell us you came aboard without any luggage. You come with me. We’ll go through the slop chest and see about getting you outfitted like a real spacer.”
“Where is everyone else?” Perada asked. “Still at their stations?”
“That’s right,” said Tillijen approvingly. “I’m off right now—we dropped out of hyper in a quiet sector, so the captain’s only keeping one gunner on duty, and Nannla’s got it. As for Jos and Errec, they’re hard at work plotting the course to Pleyver, and Ferrda hardly ever leaves engineering.”
“Really?”
Tillijen nodded. “Really. I was amazed when I saw him a bit ago. He couldn’t wait to see you, I expect.”
“I’m that odd?” Perada frowned. “Or is he one of those people who have a fetish about gawking at anybody who comes from a ruling House?”
“A Selvaur care about thin-skin royalty? Not likely. No, it’s … oh, never mind. Come along. I believe we have some clothes that might fit you.” Tillijen paused. “If you’re going to dress like a member of this ship’s crew, you’ll want guns. I think I have something that I can lend you until we get to Pleyver, but you’ll probably want to buy your own once we’re there.”
“My own what?”
“Your own blaster. You can’t be a free-spacer without one.” The
’Hammer’s
number-two gunner chuckled. “Nannla has a song about it, of course. In the meantime, come along.”
Perada shook her head uncertainly. “I’m the Domina of Entibor. I don’t need guns.”
“Everyone is someone,” Tillijen said. “And at the moment you’re a spacer. Come along.”
They went.
 
(GALCENIAN DATING 970 A.F.; ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 34 VERATINA)
 
I
T WAS good to be home.
A year at the Retreat on Galcen was supposed to be an honor and a privilege, but Errec Ransome hadn’t enjoyed the time he’d spent away. Like any true Ilarnan, he preferred his own world and his own place, and he’d never grown accustomed to the stony bleakness of the Guild’s main citadel, hidden away in the northern mountains of Galcen’s emptiest continent. Even in midsummer the stone walls of the Retreat—ten yards thick at the base, and not much thinner above—drained the heat out of anything living; and in winter, when the north wind shrieked around the ancient fortress like a lost soul, nothing in the galaxy could make it warm.
The never-ending chill had seeped into his bones, settling there so deeply that he thought at the time the cold had gone away.
I was wrong, he thought sleepily. I grew accustomed, that’s all. It took coming home to feel the difference.
Amalind Grange had never been a fortress like the Retreat. Ilarna had always treated its Adepts kindly, and the Grange had been a manor house and farm before a local squire had given it to the Guild as thanks for aid in some long-forgotten difficulty. The outbuildings had been converted into dormitories and guesthouses, and the manor house itself was given over to Guild business from root cellar to attic, but the Grange remained as it had been built, a place of comfort and solid prosperity. Even in the darkest part of winter, with snow lying thick on the rolling countryside all around, and a cold wind as biting as any on Galcen whistling outside the leaded glass of the windows, Amalind made a cozy shelter for those within.
Snow was falling, a steady quiet hiss against the curtained windowpanes. The bedchamber—one of many such little rooms in the uppermost story of the Guildhouse—had a small fireplace against one wall. A ceramic heat-bar glowed a dull red against the stone. Errec could see it from the bed. The room wasn’t as large as the guest chamber he’d lived in for a year on Galcen, but the size of the room didn’t matter. He would have traded the Retreat’s massive austerity for this snug corner of Amalind Grange on any one of the days he’d spent away.
For home
, he thought, stretching out luxuriously under the rough wool blankets.
And a chance to sleep without having bad dreams.
The Guildhouse had sent him to Galcen to study. The senior Masters said that he had a talent for advising rulers, and that it should be trained. He’d found out for himself that Power and the government on Galcen were not always in harmonious accord. The help that Galcenian Adepts stood ready to provide to the civil authority often served a double purpose.
“Thus,
” he remembered one of Galcen’s Adepts saying, in the course of a long discussion,
“favors are owed, and respect is maintained.
”
“
It’s not respect,”
he’d said. “
It’s fear.”
The other had made a dismissive gesture. “
They come to the same thing.”
He’d let the subject drop, though not without wondering what use the senior Masters on Ilarna intended to make of his hard-learned skills. He wondered even more, now that he was home. In the refectory at dinner, the long tables where the apprentices and junior Masters sat had buzzed with rumor. Some said that the Master of the Ilarnan House was even now working out an arrangement with the government … there was a threat of raiders from the outplanets, people said, and the Adepts were needed to help counter it.
I’ll find out what’s going on tomorrow,
he thought, and turned over onto his left side, away from the glow of the heat-bar. He slept deeply and without dreams.

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