By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (26 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3
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“Ah-hah,” she said. “Got one. Coming high left.” She put in the course correction as she spoke.
“Maneuver independently,” Yevil was saying over the headphone link. “All units, maneuver independently.”
The
’Hammer
drove onward. Beka watched the navicomp and the PPI screen. The Mages would spot the new jump point—they had sensors and navicomps, or something that worked just as well—but did they have a ship that could move to block it?
“Not this time,” Beka muttered. “Not this time. Stand by for jump … ready …
now
!”
She pushed the realspace engines a fraction farther forward, and lit off the hyperdrives. The stars ahead blazed and vanished, then were replaced by the grey of hyperspace. She counted to ten, slowly, in Mandeynan, before dropping out.
“Right,” she said, leaning back in the pilot’s seat. “Gunners, stand easy on station.”
She turned to Yevil. “Let’s find out where we are. Then we can see about getting to your rendezvous.”
 
WARHAMMER
: HYPERSPACE TRANSIT
GYFFERAN SECTOR:
SWORD-OF-THE-DAWN
 
A
RI ROSSELIN-METADI had left RSF
Fezrisond
with only one uniform, and that one a regular shipboard coverall with the working minimum of insignia. Lacking anything better—and being, in any case, well outside the standard size range for programmed tailoring—he’d expected to get married in that uniform as well. He’d reckoned without the goodwill of the Gyfferan Local Defense Force and the fast service available in Telabryk’s garment district: when he returned to his quarters at the end of the day, he found a proper dress uniform, its transparent wrapping still warm from the fabricator, waiting for him on his bunk.
He changed into the new clothing with some trepidation.
This is turning into more of a party than I bargained for
, he thought as he sealed the front of the tunic.
I thought we could just take care of the paperwork in Vinhalyn’s office and go about our business. But people need something to take their minds off vallant and the Mages, and we’re all that’s available.
Lieutenant Vinhalyn and Ensign Cantrel were waiting for him outside the building with a hovercar. He was glad; on foot in dress uniform was no way to cross the several miles of Telabryk Field that lay between the Space Force installation and the LDF Base.
“Where’s Mistress Hyfid?” he asked. Except for Vinhalyn and Cantrel—and himself—the hovercar was empty.
“Gone on over to the officers’ club,” Cantrel said. “Everything there is all set up. The food and all that, I mean.”
“I see,” said Ari. “Thanks.”
He didn’t say anything more. Too much conversation would risk evoking all the traditional heavy-handed witticisms, even from the likes of Cantrel and the scholarly Vinhalyn.
The dress uniform was already having its usual effect on him, making him feel conspicuous and monumental, and as out of proportion among his more normally-sized surroundings as a menhir in a flower garden. At such times he tended to grow obsessed by the fear that a casual move on his part might have more speed, or more force, than he intended. In a universe filled with small breakable objects, he moved slowly, with all deliberate caution.
The sun had almost set by the time the hovercar glided into the parking area of the LDF officers’ club, and the sky to the west of Telabryk was a deep orange-red. Nearer to the zenith, where the colors shaded to blue and purple, shone a steady dot of light—the gas giant that was one of the Gyfferan system’s outer planets, and one of the brightest objects in Telabryk’s nighttime sky. The parking area itself was full of hovercars, speederbikes, and other personal vehicles, far too many for an ordinary MidWeek evening.
Ari closed his eyes briefly.
This is absurd. I never …
“Here we are,” said Vinhalyn.
They left the hovercar and went into the club. Inside, the crowd was even larger than Ari had feared.
I don’t know any of these people
, he thought unhappily.
Somebody must have decided to open up the bar for free drinks.
Somebody had also decorated the main dining area of the club with what looked like all the colored paper party streamers available for sale within a day’s trip in a fast shuttle. Fresh flowers in bowls and vases filled every niche and every flat surface, making the club look and smell like a greenhouse on a holiday. At the far end of the room was a table with a white cloth on it, flanked by more, and longer, tables holding a great deal of food—a lot of fruit, for some reason Ari supposed was deeply symbolic, as well as the usual cakes and sandwiches.
The central table, though, was empty, except for a plain black-lacquered tray holding a ceramic pitcher, two cups, and a loaf of flat bread. Llannat Hyfid stood near the table, looking small and quiet in the midst of the noisy, cheerful crowd. She wore an Adept’s formal black, with her staff at her belt, but it didn’t look like anybody had come down from the local Guildhouse to share the celebration.
When she saw Ari, she smiled. The change of expression gave her plain, dark features a beauty that transcended mere ordinary good looks. Ari thought he would happily endure almost anything if she would only smile that way at him forever.
He took her hands in his. “Believe me,” he said, “I didn’t expect any of this … this stuff.”
“Neither did I,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. They only want to wish us good luck. And themselves good luck, too, but there’s no way to do that.”
Behind him, Lieutenant Vinhalyn cleared his throat gently. Ari became aware that the whole room had fallen silent, leaving him standing with Llannat and Vinhalyn in the midst of a circle of watchers. The acting Space Force CO pulled a small bundle of folded printout flimsies out of his tunic pocket and laid them on the stiff white tablecloth.
“The final copies of the domestic partnership forms,” Vinhalyn said. He smoothed out the wrinkled flimsies and weighted down the stack with a standard-issue stylus. “If you could both sign in all the marked spaces …”
Reluctantly, Ari let go of Llannat’s hands and picked up the stylus. It felt even smaller and clumsier in his fingers than such implements usually did, and there were a lot of marked spaces. He made himself write carefully, so that the characters didn’t go sprawling and wavering all over the empty blocks.
When he was done he handed the stylus to Llannat. She took it and began signing her name in turn—the same firm, unhesitant lettering he’d seen every day back on Nammerin, on forms and reports and requisitions. She signed the last page, and handed the flimsies and the stylus back to Vinhalyn.
Ari had been expecting the room to break out in conversation and the clink of glassware as soon as she finished, but nobody spoke. The room stayed quiet, and the trays of food waited untouched on the side tables. He felt painfully awkward and outsized, standing there in the center of things, and he cast a desperate glance toward Lieutenant Vinhalyn.
The acting CO nodded toward the pitcher and cups, and the loaf of flat bread. “That’s it as far as Space Force is concerned,” he said, “but we’re on Gyffer now, so we ought to follow Gyfferan custom. You’re supposed to pour wine for each other, and break off pieces of the bread.”
Ari nodded. “All right,” he said. Somewhere in the back of his mind a memory surfaced, of his father saying,
“It was space biscuit and Innish-Kyl firewater, but that was good enough … .”
He let the recollection slip back into the depths, and watched Llannat Hyfid pouring wine from the pitcher into the cup nearest to him. When she was done, she handed him the pitcher; it was fuller than he’d expected, and he had to concentrate on not letting it slide out of his grip. He filled her cup and set the pitcher back down on the tray.
The bread was dark and rough-textured. The piece he broke off and gave to Llannat shed brown crumbs on the tabletop like rain. Llannat broke off a piece in turn and gave it to him; the taste was rich and nutlike, with sweet bits of whole grain in it.
She was already sipping at her wine. At a nudge from Vinhalyn, Ari picked up his own cup, looked down uncertainly for a moment at the golden-tawny liquid, then tilted it back and drained it in a single swallow.
The silence broke then—in cheers and whistles and a few ribald comments that made his ears burn—and the strong native wine went straight to his head. Llannat Hyfid was grinning at him in pure amusement.
“So here we are,” she said, under the noise of resumed conversation and the general rush toward drinks and sandwiches. “Married and everything. You do realize that since we’re the guests of honor, none of these nice people can go anywhere until after we’ve left?”
Ari set his empty cup back down on the table. “In that case, we should probably leave here as soon as possible. Would now be a good time, do you think?”
“Now would be wonderful,” she said.
 
For Klea Santreny, the lift-off from Suivi Point was the worst part. The fight at the execution studio had been vicious but exciting—the sort of thing she suspected she ought not to start liking too much—and the retreat through the portside warrens had gone too fast for her to become frightened. Then had come strapping herself into the padded bunk in crew berthing, and waiting for the pressure of acceleration to ease.
But this time the red Danger light over the cabin door had kept on burning. There had been strange shudders and rattlings in the frame of the ship, and a steady percussive noise that seemed at once too high for her ears to pick up all the notes, and too low. The sound vibrated in her teeth and bones like a repeated chord from a madman’s orchestra, causing her to cry out in sudden fear.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
Owen spoke from the other couch. His voice was tense but steady. “The
’Hammer
is firing her guns.”
“We’re in a battle?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“Not here,” said Owen. “Not now. Wait.”
She had waited. In time—a short time, by the bulkhead chronometer, but it seemed long—she felt the queasiness that marked a jump into hyperspace, and the noises stopped.
A few minutes later, the green Safety light came on. They unbuckled the webbing that anchored them to their couches, and Owen said, “Well, we’re here.”
Klea stood, unsteadily, and stretched. She reached for her staff where she’d strapped it down on the couch beside her.
‘Where’s ’here,’ though?“she said.
Owen shrugged. “Hyperspace somewhere, at a guess. Whoever was trying to stop us, didn’t. Bee’s a good shiphandler.”
“‘Bee’?”
“Beka. My sister.”
Klea thought for a moment about the yellow-haired woman who had so nearly gone to her death wearing the Iron Crown. “I thought you said she was the Domina.”
“She is.” He sighed. “But she wasn’t, for a long time, except for the name. She’s flown starships for a living since she was seventeen.”
“Your family let her do that?”
“Well … no. But she did it anyhow.”
She ran away,
Klea translated mentally.
I’m glad somebody got a better deal out of that than I did.
But this didn’t seem like the time to pursue the question further.
The wave of queasiness that marked a hyperspace dropout came; shortly afterward, the ship jumped to hyper again.
They left the berthing compartment and went into the starship’s common room. The compartment was still empty when they came in, but it didn’t stay empty long. Klea was still looking about uncertainty—there hadn’t been time to get her bearings before lift-off—when the door leading to the cockpit snicked open. Beka Rosselin-Metadi stepped into the common room, followed by an older woman in Space Force uniform.
Owen’s sister was still wearing the long green dress she’d had on for the execution; it was ripped at one shoulder, where a badly set-in sleeve hadn’t withstood the scramble of their escape, and the full skirt was ragged and charred along the hem. Her face was pale except for a flush of bright red at the cheekbones, and shadows like bruises underneath her eyes.
Beka looked at Owen for a moment without saying anything, then turned her unnerving blue gaze onto Klea. “And what the hell are you?” she asked without preamble.
Klea relaxed a little. She’d been asked that question more than once aboard
Claw Hard
on the run to Suivi Point, and the words came easily by now. “Master Rosselin-Metadi’s apprentice. Klea Santreny, from Nammerin.”
“Apprentice, eh?”
“You have her to thank for my being here,” Owen said. “She saw a blue-eyed, fair-haired woman being protected by an elderly gentleman, but needing more help. You’re the only blonde I know, and the man sounded like your old copilot, the dead one. Since he’s not around, I decided to check on you.”
“Thanks, I suppose.”
Klea wasn’t sure what an apprentice Adept was supposed to call a Domina, and compromised by leaving off the formal address entirely. “You’re welcome,” she said.
Owen’s sister didn’t appear to take offense—or maybe, Klea thought, she had enough things to be offended at already. Before anybody else could say anything, however, footsteps sounded on the deckplates. Nyls Jessan and the dark man Beka had called Ignac’ came into the common room together.
“That was good shooting, you two,” said Beka as they entered. “Thanks.”
Jessan bowed—an exaggeratedly formal gesture that made Owen’s sister smile in spite of her obvious exhaustion. “We aim to please. We also aim. Occasionally.”
“Idiot,” Beka said, but there was a note of affectionate laughter in her voice, and the jangling, sharp-edged tension that was so much a part of her nonphysical presence eased off somewhat. “Is there any cha’a?”

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