Read A Working of Stars Online
Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald
A Working of Stars (17 page)
So far, Zeri had seen no living guests or servants at all. Somewhere out of sight, without doubt, more guardsmen watched over her safety as she passed from the sus-Dariv into the sus-Peledaen, but they were neither friends nor family and it was not their place to be visible at their work.
The doors swung apart at a touch from the
aiketh.
Syr Treosi slipped his arm from hers and stepped away; Rie and ’Yida let the ribbons fall loose from their hands; and Zeri stepped over the threshold into the sus-Peledaen hall of remembrance.
aiketh.
Syr Treosi slipped his arm from hers and stepped away; Rie and ’Yida let the ribbons fall loose from their hands; and Zeri stepped over the threshold into the sus-Peledaen hall of remembrance.
Her first thought was that she was alone. The closing doors had left her friends and Syr Treosi behind on the other side. A moment longer, and she knew that she was not alone at all. The room was full of the sus-Peledaen, outer-family and inner-family both. The blue and crimson of fleet-livery was everywhere, in bright splashes against the more sober colors of the other witnesses. But no green and yellow anywhere—among all the sus-Dariv witnesses, from the outer family and the junior lines, there was nobody at all from the fleet. Even from the handful of ships that had survived, nobody had come.
To either side and in front of her, family tablets of wood and slate and bronze lined the paneled walls, reminders of the presence here of all the generations of the sus-Peledaen. Scented candles burned on the offering ledges beneath the tablets, enough of them that they left the pale air streaked with a blue-grey haze. Natelth sus-Khalgath stood before the oldest tablet of all, a heavy slab of stone painted over with glyphs in soot and red ochre. There was one unlit candle on the offering ledge beneath.
Nobody spoke. The sus-Peledaen were one of those families who believed in conducting their observances in silence. Zeri took the splint of burning wood that Natelth handed her, and brought its flame next to the wick of the unlit candle.
With a faint hiss and sparkle, the wick caught fire, and the candle burned.
The room filled with shouts and cheers. The doors opened to admit Treosi and the rest of the bridal party. Natelth stepped forward and gave her the formal embrace of welcome.
“Now you are sus-Peledaen,” he said. He was taller and broader in the chest and shoulders than she remembered from the wedding negotiations, and his voice was deeper. “Our luck is your luck, and our strength, your strength, as long as the blood shall run.”
Early the next morning, before his resolve could falter, Arekhon left Elaeli asleep at Rosselin Cottage and went back to An-Jemayne. If he was going to take the remnants of the Demaizen Circle home to Eraasi, he had one more person left to find.
This time he didn’t need to pay a call at the Adepts’ Guildhouse, or fine-comb the Immering tax records. Instead, he rented a hovercar under a false name—his work as Elaeli’s head of domestic security had left him almost as careful of his tracks as Iulan Vai—and drove it from the mainland shuttle hub to the An-Jemayne Spaceport Authority, where he looked up a name in the roster of certified starpilots.
His luck in this, at least, held good. Karil Estisk was still alive, and still active in her profession. Better yet, she was between voyages at the moment. He wouldn’t have to spend time waiting for her ship to make port.
Her address was a matter of record, and the pilots’ roster listed it as current. Arekhon found the apartment block without difficulty, in a moderately well-to-do neighborhood with transit connections to the spaceport. If Karil did in fact live here, she had prospered since their last meeting, or at least she had not suffered material harm from it.
The building directory inside the main entrance gave him her apartment number. He entered it into the directory’s keypad, and waited for the tone to sound.
Once … twice … on the third tone, Karil’s voice came over the speaker. “Yes? Who is it?”
She sounded irritable and distracted. Arekhon hoped he hadn’t interrupted anything he would have to feel embarrassed about later.
“Arek Peldan,” he said, more or less truthfully—he’d used that version of his given name in most of his public dealings since coming to Entibor. “On business.”
“Who? … never mind; you might as well come on up.”
Arekhon didn’t think she’d recognized his voice. He took the elevator up to the fifth floor, where Karil’s apartment was one of a half-dozen opening off of a central lobby. The door had a spy-eye set into the frame, with a soundpad underneath. He tapped the pad and waited again.
The pause this time lasted long enough for Arekhon to conclude that his face on the apartment’s security screen was more memorable than his voice alone had been, and to decide that this part of his quest had been a mistake. He was almost ready to turn away and leave when the door swung open partway and Karilen Estisk glared out at him.
The pilot was a tall woman, with a fair complexion and eyes the color of pale slate. She was wearing a faded velvet lounging robe, and had a damp towel wrapped turban-fashion around her head. That explained some of her irritability, at least, if he’d disturbed her in her bath; but he wasn’t foolish enough to think that it was the only reason.
“You’re damned lucky I didn’t call building security as soon as I saw your face,” she said before he could speak. “‘Arek Peldan’—hah!”
“It’s one of the names I go by these days,” he said. “May I come in?”
She stepped back and opened the door the rest of the way. “Why not?” she said. “If you people are determined to show up unannounced in my life and tear it into pieces for a second time, there’s probably nothing I can do to stop you anyway.”
“The Circle never intended to cause you harm,” he said as he followed her into the apartment. “For the fact that our good intentions came to naught, I can only apologize all over again.”
“Right. And are you planning to apologize for damn-near getting me invalided out of the Pilots’ Association for mental imbalance?” She turned and glared at him again, and the anger in her voice held echoes of long-past frustration and hysteria. “I tried telling people what happened—I told them about how a bunch of pirates from the far side of the galaxy took my old ship and killed everybody on it but me, and then some of the pirates kidnapped me away to their homeworld and some of the rest of them escaped with me back—and how they were still here, hiding and spying out the land—but nobody believed me.”
“I know,” he said. “And I do apologize. Making certain that no one believed you was the first working the Demaizen Circle did after coming to Entibor.”
“I
knew
it,” she said, and slapped him hard across the face.
knew
it,” she said, and slapped him hard across the face.
He took the blow without flinching, though she had enough strength of arm that it was no light love-tap. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But we were afraid.”
“Afraid? You? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Yes,” he said. “Afraid. Your ships are faster, your weapons are more deadly, your artificial minds—”
“Comp systems.”
“—‘comp systems,’ then—are made out of sand and glass, and cheaply enough that you can throw together a dozen or a hundred of them for the cost in time and labor of a single true
aiketh
back at home in Hanilat.”
aiketh
back at home in Hanilat.”
She looked at him and nodded slowly. “So you—how did you put it back then?—you ‘worked the luck.’ And I got screwed over.”
“All I can tell you is that we tried to do you as little harm as possible. And I know that isn’t good enough.”
“You’re damned right it isn’t good enough,” she said. “But I’m smart enough to know that it’s probably the best I’m going to get.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
“You too, eh?” Most of the anger had gone out of her face, replaced by a kind of weary amusement. She gestured toward one of the chairs in the apartment’s conversational nook, and seated herself in another. “Come on, ’Rekhe. Sit down and tell me why you decided to show up again after all these years.”
She’d used his short-name, which he hoped was a good sign. He drew a careful breath and let it out again. “I have to go back across the Gap,” he said. “And
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
needs at least two at the controls for a long transit.”
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
needs at least two at the controls for a long transit.”
“You’re asking me to go
back
—my word, ’Rekhe, but you’ve got gall!”
back
—my word, ’Rekhe, but you’ve got gall!”
“Will you do it, then?”
“Why should I?”
It was a fair question; but she hadn’t directly refused him, either. He took heart from that, and gave her as much of the truth as he knew himself. “For the sake of Garrod’s working.”
“That’s the big one, right?” Her expression was thoughtful, if not particularly warm. “The one your people kept fretting about all the way from here to wherever and back again.”
“Right. It isn’t finished yet.”
“I don’t suppose you have any idea when it’s going to
be
finished, either.”
be
finished, either.”
He shook his head. “Or how much it will cost. All workings need energy to power them, but the great ones can take blood and lives as well. This one … we wanted to remake the galaxy.”
The corners of her mouth turned up a little—only faint amusement, and at his expense, but better than anger. “You never wondered if maybe you hadn’t taken on a bit more than you could handle?”
“We were young, most of us,” he said, “and prouder of our strength than we should have been. And Garrod was a man who could ask for wonders.”
“I can see that.” Curiosity flickered in her pale eyes. “Why again now, and not last year, or a decade ago?”
“I don’t know. I thought I was done with Eraasi, working or no working. Lately, though—” he shrugged “—lately, I’ve had dreams.”
“My brother used to have dreams,” she said. “But Lenset was always half-mad.”
“And so am I, you think?”
“No. You’re reckless and high-handed and any number of other things—most of which I could cheerfully have killed you for at one point or another—but you aren’t mad.”
As a statement of trust, Arekhon reflected, it was something less than enthusiastic. On the other hand, she hadn’t refused him. Maybe his luck was greater than he deserved, and Karilen Estisk also remained bound into the great working.
“Then will you come with me?” he asked.
She looked down at her hands. “I’m a senior pilot for InterWorlds Shipping—they took me on when the Swift Passage people let me go, and I can’t leave them now.”
“That,” he said, “won’t be a problem. All that’s needed is for some plausible organization to contract with InterWorlds for your extended services for an open-ended period of time.”
“‘All’?” Her voice sounded a bit strangled. “’Rekhe, do you have any
idea
how much money that would take?”
idea
how much money that would take?”
“Money’s not going to be a problem. If I can arrange for it, will you come?”
“Going crazy must run in my family,” she said. “Yes. I’ll come.”
One by one Zeri exchanged formal embraces with the assembled representatives of the sus-Peledaen, starting with Natelth’s sister Isayana—whose touch was distant and stiff—and finishing with a bashful fleet-apprentice in blue and crimson livery. Then the doors of the hall of remembrance swung open, and Natelth took Zeri by the hand, so that they could be the first to leave the room.
Fas Treosi was waiting for her outside with Rieny and Lyida. Tradition said that at this point a bride’s friends should rush forward to hug her and claim lucky kisses from the new-made husband, with much laughter and joyful tears all around; but Zeri’s husband was Natelth sus-Peledaen, after all, and Rie and ’Yida were stiff and formal in his presence. They gave her careful, tentative hugs, as though they were afraid to wrinkle her gown, and scarcely brushed their lips against Natelth’s before drawing away.
The household
aiketh
that had earlier opened the door of the town house floated forward out of the shadows. “If the Lady Zeri wishes to change clothes for the banquet, the bride’s withdrawing-room is ready for her now.”
aiketh
that had earlier opened the door of the town house floated forward out of the shadows. “If the Lady Zeri wishes to change clothes for the banquet, the bride’s withdrawing-room is ready for her now.”
Suddenly Zeri wanted nothing else in the world as badly as she wanted to strip the crown and ribbons from her head, and kick away the flame-colored slippers. “Yes, please,” she said.
The
aiketh
floated up the stairs on its counterforce unit, with Zeri barely a step or two behind. Rie and ’Yida gathered up the ends of her trailing ribbons and followed close. Outside the closed door of the withdrawing-room, Zeri stopped.
aiketh
floated up the stairs on its counterforce unit, with Zeri barely a step or two behind. Rie and ’Yida gathered up the ends of her trailing ribbons and followed close. Outside the closed door of the withdrawing-room, Zeri stopped.
“Lord Natelth isn’t here,” she told her friends. “You can hug me for real now.”
This time they did, and wept as well. Then she slipped out of their embrace, saying, “Go on down to the banquet, please. I can change my own clothes, and I need a few minutes by myself to think.”
They made a couple of token protests—tradition again dictated that the bride’s friends should assist her with disrobing as well as robing herself for the day—but soon let themselves be persuaded. Zeri waited until they were out of sight around the turn of the stairway, then entered the private withdrawing-room and closed the door behind her.
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