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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: A Working of Stars
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Then the inner landscape changed, and he saw the world through a double vision: He was in the wilderness of thorns, and at the same time he was in the workroom under the glaring white of the overhead light. He saw himself rising to his feet, and heard his voice saying, “The working needs power; who will match me?”
Across the Circle, he saw his Second rise, and Giesye answered, “I will.”
The gel-vat in the center of the chalked circle impeded them for a few moments, but not for long; Giesye held her place, and Kief came around to meet her on the far side. They had scarcely come into fighting distance when he struck the first blow, coming in hard to his Second’s leg—a blow meant to bruise and weaken, to leave the other limping for the rest of the fight, while the energy of their opposition built and built.
Giesye was fast, though, as fast in movement as in speech; she caught the blow on her staff and turned it aside. Kief’s hand and arm vibrated with the impact as wood struck wood. Another heartbeat, and the Second was striking another blow. Kief’s head would have been in its way, but he slipped aside and felt the rush of air against his cheek as the staff whistled past.
In among the thorns, he pushed onward. The bushes grew thicker there, and the ground was rising. The
eiran
twined in and out among the thorny branches, hanging over the bushes like tattered lace. He could see patterns in the lace, old patterns discarded and new ones half-complete. One of them had the brightness of the Institute’s working threaded through it. Cords from that pattern led him deeper into the heart of the thorns.
He was bleeding now where the branches parted and swung back against him, or caught at him and tried to pull him down. A pain in his side … Giesye had gotten past his guard, a strong blow, ribs broken or worse. Power flowed out into the working, bright silver in all the patterns. His staff smashed against the Second’s right arm, breaking bone—the arm hung limp. Giesye switched the staff to her left hand, trailing sparks of silver with the movement, and struck out at him again.
Kief fought his way through the overgrown thornbushes, holding on to the strong cable of the Institute’s working, letting it support him as he pushed farther inward. A last ripping and tearing of the flesh, and he was there, looking down at what lay in the heart of the thorns.
Himself. Pale and unbreathing and empty.
Giesye’s blows were near to driving him down. How long had they been fighting? Minutes? Hours? He couldn’t tell. He opened himself up to the power in the
eiran
and let it fill him, then let the power out again in a last desperate strike against his partner and opponent.
As the universe wills
.
He looked down at his own body, lying on bare rock amid the thorns, and saw moving across it the wheeling shadows of carrion birds circling overhead. If he lay there much longer, the scavengers would take him.
As the universe wills
.
He did the necessary thing. This was dream and vision, and it was easy once he made the decision—slipping out of himself standing over himself, and seeing himself fade away into the patterns before the power of the
eiran
flowed into him and he stood up and walked away.
And rose from the gel-vat in the workroom, naked and cold in the sterile air. Two bodies lay on the floor, and red blood smeared the tiles beneath them. People came forward with sponges, with towels, with thick robes, washing and drying and warming him, as though his presence were something remarkable.
He stepped over to look down at the two lying on the floor. When he spoke, his voice sounded unfamiliar to his ears. “Are they dead?”
“No.” The physician? Yes. Him. “The medical
aiketen
can deal with all of their injuries. The problem is that until they wake, we don’t know which one of them—well, which one of them is
you
.”
He knelt. This body differed slightly in its proportions from the one he was used to. Reaching out to the nearer of the two lying on the floor, he turned the unconscious body over and took off its plastic hardmask. Curly hair; streaks of premature grey; earring.
“This one.”
 
ERAASI: HANILAT ENTIBOR: AN-JEMAYNE
NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER:
THE VOID
 
G
rif Egelt was still fuming when he returned to his office at sus-Peledaen Hanilat headquarters. The fact that Natelth sus-Khalgath couldn’t be bothered to work in the same building as everybody else in the fleet-family—which meant that Egelt had to travel halfway across the city and back again every time the head man wanted a personal report—only served to increase his dissatisfaction with the way the meeting had gone.
“What a right bastard!” Egelt snarled as soon as the doorway to the outer office closed behind him. “If I didn’t …”
“Yeah, you’d quit,” said his second-in-command. Hussav lacked Egelt’s aspirations toward outer-family status—as an out-islander, and one from common working stock at that, he knew that his chances were limited enough to be in effect nonexistent—and Lord Natelth’s moods and caprices bore less heavily on him as a result. “Other than explaining to you that he has a really big prick, what tidbits of information did our honored employer have for us?”
“He’s got a picture of the kidnapper,” Egelt said. He pulled the slide on the house-mind player, and brought up the image. Only quarter-size this time—Egelt didn’t feel the need to impress anyone, unlike some people he could name. “So, what do you think?”
Hussav walked slowly around the hovering image, looking at it from all angles before answering. “With that face, he’s not Hanilat-Eraasian, that’s for sure.”
“Not by blood, anyhow. Where he lives is another question.”
“Too true. We wouldn’t happen to know where the image came from, would we?”
Egelt shook his head. “Lady Isayana took some of the blood, but what she did with it after that … let’s say that I don’t want to know. That woman frightens me.”
“You knew going in that talking to inner family was part of the job,” said Hussav without sympathy. “And better you than me.”
“You warm my heart, Jyriom.” Egelt tapped the player, and brought up the associated data files that had accompanied the image. “What’s important right now is the information our employer has so kindly provided.”
“There’s certainly a lot of it,” Hussav said after a moment. “We can start doing match and switch with the public databases, but that’ll take a long time.”
“Look for connections,” Egelt said. “Start with family members—the closer in, the better. Lady Isayana, for starters.”
“Because she spooks you?”
“Because she stands to lose the most if His Anxiety takes a wife,” Egelt said. “Check out everybody: inner-family, outer-family, allied families, in that order.” He paused to draw himself a cup of yellow
uffa
from the office pot. The sharp, spicy smell rose up to tickle his nostrils. “And the same for all the girl’s families as well.”
“That’ll go a lot quicker,” said Hussav. “Most of them are dead.”
“So what are you waiting for? We aren’t getting paid by the hour here.” Egelt pushed a button on his desk and spoke to the outer office. “I need a secure line to Public Order and I need everything from that raid in North Hanilat, and I need them both right now.”
He drank some of the
uffa.
It was too hot and burned his lips and tongue. The pain would give him something to think about while he waited for results to come back.
“Well, I’ll be a greased rocklizard,” Hussav said, not too much later. “Chief, have you ever thought of taking up with the Circles?”
“I prefer my head clear and my bones unbroken, thank you. What is it?”
“A hit,” Hussav said. “Look. This guy here—sus-Dariv outer-family by current contract. Merchant-captain.”
Egelt walked over to look at Hussav’s results. “I don’t suppose you know where he is right now, do you?”
“Grounded here in Hanilat not long ago. Apparently hung around doing typical pilot-things afterward—looking for a cargo, mostly. Right now … I’m working on it … right now he’s at the port.”
“Get him. Get him in here, as soon as … no, I’ll go myself. Don’t let him—”
“Too late,” Hussav said. “He’s moving. His ship is heading for—hang on; let me figure it—heading for what looks like one of the smaller fields out in sus-Dariv territory. At least that’s where he said he was going.”
“Get people on him,” Egelt said at once. “And let the orbital station know. Do not harm him, do not slow him, do not let him know that we’re watching, but I want to know where he’s going before he does, and I want to arrive there first, too.”
“I can get you to the Antipodes and—Serpent Station, that’s where he’s going. By private flyer.”
“Right, get me moving. And keep a link open to me, best speed. I’ll need forces when I get there.”
“In sus-Dariv territory? Good luck.”
“Yeah, get the fleet-Circle on it, too. I’m so gone that ‘gone’ is still here in comparison.”
And with that, Egelt left the office, headed for the family’s field behind the Hanilat complex.
 
 
The workroom smelled of sweat, and the chemicals in the gel-vat, and blood. Environmental controls labored noisily to bring the air back down to a proper laboratory coolness and sterility, but so far they’d had little success. Kief’s Mages still maintained their positions around the perimeter of the white circle, but the working no longer held them in its grip. They were bone-tired and fearful, and needed only the word of dismissal to send them home.
Two black-clad bodies lay, scarcely breathing, in the center of the circle next to the gel-vat. Kief stood over them, wrapped in the absorbent robe that Isayana and her tame physician had given to his replicant body when he first stepped naked from the vat. He bent down—still learning the reactions and dimensions of this new form—and picked up the Mage-staff from what had been his own hand only a few minutes ago.
His new hand found the smooth black wood unfamiliar to the touch, but his mind recognized the sensation of grasping it, and of moving it through the basic positions. The hands of this new body were narrower than the ones before, and not so heavy-boned in the wrists and knuckles, but they were strong and sinewy, with a good grip to them. The body itself felt tough and well coordinated; it didn’t yet have the long-trained skills and reflexes of his old one, but—given time and work—it could learn.
He looked at his Circle-Mages. They’d seen him pick up his staff; they’d heard him name his old body as the one emptied out to fill Isayana’s replicant. Now to see if they would acknowledge his authority in this form as well.
“You’ve done good work tonight,” he said to them. “Go home now and rest.”
The senior Mage under Giesye—perhaps he should be named Third, Kief thought, if the Circle was going to do more workings of this magnitude—stood up, a little unsteady on his feet. “Will you be well,
etaze?”
“I will be well, Chei.” Kief allowed himself to smile. The expression felt different on his new face. “Both of me, and Giesye as well. Be proud, all of you—our Circle has done a new thing tonight, and done it splendidly.”
One by one, the Mages stood up and left the circle, moving stiffly and wearily after the long time spent kneeling. When they were gone, Kief went back to where Isayana and her physician stood. They also looked tired and worn, as if they had kept a long vigil, but with a profound satisfaction underlying their fatigue.
He caught Isayana’s eye with some difficulty—he didn’t think she quite thought of this new form as human yet—and gestured toward the two bodies lying at his feet. “Do you have a place here to care for them?”
“Yes,” said Isayana. “I made certain to put in a full setup when I began this project. But—both of them? You aren’t going to go back in?”
“I couldn’t go back now even if I wanted to,” he told her. “The working is over.”
The physician was frowning at him. “Making the transfer nearly killed you and the other Mage—”
“Giesye. My Second.”
“—and you’re saying it’s going to take the same thing to put you back?”
“Not the same thing.” Kief shook his head, impatient at the other man’s lack of basic understanding. For the first time in years, the movement didn’t bring with it a touch of metal against his neck and jaw; his new body didn’t have an earring to swing and tickle against his skin. “Every working is different.”
“If you say so.” The physician was frowning like a man who’s discovered an ugly worm coiled up inside a favored fruit. “I don’t think we have an efficient process here.”
Isayana said, “Efficiency isn’t the point. I’m not planning on mass production.”
“I don’t think I want to hear any more about that,” the physician said hastily. “We’re getting into the realm of things that aren’t healthy for bystanders to know.”
“You should have thought of that when you first got into this,” Kief said. “The point is, I honestly don’t know how long it will take before the Circles are ready for another working. This is research, remember—we don’t know the answers when we start out.”
Isayana clapped her hands once, bringing the
aiketen
forward out of the shadows in the corners of the room. She indicated the unconscious bodies of Kief and his Second. “Take those to the specialized care units. The female should recover within a day; the male will probably require long-term life support. See to it.”
Kief found it an odd sensation to watch his former body being carried away from him by the
aiketen.
His hardmask lay on the floor where he had removed it from the body a few minutes earlier. On impulse, he picked it up and put it on. Once again, the workroom was overlaid with the dazzling patterns of the
eiran,
and tonight they were bright and new. Garrod’s working hadn’t vanished—he wasn’t free of it yet—but his own workings were stronger now, and maybe, just maybe, he was beginning to see a way out of the tangle that Demaizen had caught him in all those years ago.
“I’ll need a Mage’s robes,” he said. Saying so, he noticed for the first time that his feet were bare, and that the floor was cold. “Also some proper street clothing.”
“It can be arranged,” Isayana said. “I will instruct the
aiketen.”
She went off to talk to one of the quasi-organic servitors, leaving Kief and the physician standing alone together next to the empty gel-vat.
“What are you going to do while you wait for the Circles to regain their strength?” the physician asked after a few moments of awkward silence.
“Watch the patterns in the universe,” Kief said. As he spoke, he thought, unaccountably, of Arekhon sus-Khalgath …
there’s another one who’s caught in the web of the eiran like a spider’s dinner. The same web, the same working—and ’Rekhe’s trying to make it stronger while I’m trying to cut myself free. That’s a pattern right there, and one I don’t think I like.
“See what needs to be done. And do it.”
 
 
When Elaeli returned to her town house in An-Jemayne, she found a note from Arekhon waiting for her there. He hadn’t left one at the summer cottage. He’d risen from her bed in the pearl-grey light of early dawn and dressed without speaking, while she lay watching him from beneath half-closed lids. She was unwilling to say anything, for fear the sound would put to flight her memories of the hours that had gone before; and ’Rekhe’s face was sad. When he was done putting on his clothes, he came back to the bedside, bent down, and kissed her once on her bare shoulder where the sheet fell down and exposed her skin. Then he turned and went away, and the bedroom door swung shut behind him.
She didn’t hear from him again after that—it was like him, she reflected, to make a clean break regardless of his own feelings on the matter—and the letter on her desk came as a surprise. He’d written it by hand on the stiff off-white stationery he’d used for the past ten years as her chief of domestic security. The address on the envelope was in Entiboran lettering, but the sheet of paper inside was covered with the flowing loops and whorls of Eraasian script. She had to concentrate to read it; the written language she had learned as a child was less familiar to her now than the writing of this alien world.
Elaeli [he wrote]:
This may be the last letter I’ll ever write to you. I
will
come back to you if I can, you have my word—but the pull of Garrod’s working is very strong, and I can’t see where it will take me before the end.
One or two practical matters: I’m leaving you without a head of domestic security, and you’ll need to find somebody fairly soon. You can, of course, pick anyone you like; but you could do far worse than to promote your current acting head. I’ve left Venner full instructions, and if he can’t handle the work then I haven’t taught him properly.
As Arek Peldan, I still have some money left in my local accounts. I’d be grateful if you could exert your influence to see that those funds remain available—if not in perpetuity, then for as far into the future as possible. If the working somehow allows me to return, at least that way I won’t be penniless when I arrive.
I owe you apologies, too many of them. I can’t say that I’m sorry for loving you, but I
am
sorry that I was too selfish to let go of you once I went to Demaizen. You deserved—you have always deserved—far better of the universe than a lover whose loyalty could never be undivided; and if I had done then what was right, Garrod would not have been able to make you into a tool for the great working.
And I’m sorry I left you without saying good-bye. I wanted too much to say all the things that I knew I shouldn’t—that I wouldn’t go, that I would always come back, that the sundered galaxy could stay in two halves forever, so long as the two of us were on the same side of it—and out of fear I chose to say nothing at all. By the time you read this, however, I’ll be safely beyond temptation. I love you—have loved you—will love you, and the length and breadth and height of the galaxy make no difference to it.
 
 
Live in happiness, beloved, and be well.
Arekhon Khreseio sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen.

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