By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (32 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3
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“Among mine also,” said Perada. “Let us begin.”
sus-Airaalin knelt and raised his hands palm to palm before him. Perada took his hands between her own.
“Do you swear,” she said, “to be my man in all things, to obey my orders and do my bidding, with your life, your fortune, and your hope?”
“My lady, do
you
swear to defend me in honor, to raise me up or cast me down according to merit, and to save my people?”
“I so swear,” Perada said.
“I so swear,” sus-Airaalin echoed.
Their voices filled Owen’s mind …
I so swear—I so swear—I so swear …
reverberating while the night grew blacker and thicker around him, until he fell back into his body and opened his eyes under the force-dome of the party on Innish-Kyl.
 
Beka Rosselin-Metadi dropped the Iron Crown onto her bunk to put away later. Nobody was going to break into her cabin aboard
Warhammer
and carry anything off. The private landing field on Adelfe Aneverian’s country estate was almost as safe as high orbit, and a good deal more convenient to the commodore’s party.
She stripped off her clothes and let them lie on the cabin deckplates. All that stuff could wait for later, too. Next the formal braids came free, and after that, a brisk session with the colorbrush changed her hair from its natural pale yellow to a rather ordinary brown. She pulled the hair into a loose queue at the nape of her neck, tied with a black velvet ribbon.
Incognito, she reflected, was a handy thing. Taking on another persona might not fool anybody, but it did allow for more open and honest discussion—especially since custom demanded that no one admit to having penetrated the disguise. If she went back to Commodore Gil’s party as Tamekep Portree, then “Captain Portree” she would remain throughout the rest of the evening, even among those who knew the truth.
Beka went over to a section of her wardrobe that hadn’t been touched since the outbreak of war. Item by item she pulled out the new garments: the ruffles and lace and red optical-plastic eye patch that changed her from the Domina of Lost Entibor into a Mandeynan gentleman of dubious ancestry and a taste for violence and low company.
She’d lived for a long time as Captain Portree. Some of his habits were probably going to be hers forever, like carrying a knife in a sheath up her sleeve and wearing a blaster in a tied-down holster on her hip. How much of the Mandeynan’s personality had been hers to start with was something she preferred not to think about for very long—but even that had its uses.
Not a pleasant person, is Tarnekep Portree, she thought. Makes a lot of people nervous. Maybe he’ll keep the commodore far enough off balance that he won’t ask for too much, or brace me enough that I don’t end up handing over everything.
Beka paused in placing the eye patch.
It never hurts, though, to get in a little practice first. And I’ve got just the person to try it on.
She put the patch in the pocket of her long-coat and drew the blaster. She left the captain’s cabin and went to the berthing compartment that had been, since lifting from Suivi, a cell for Councillor Tarveet of Pleyver. The lock was keyed to her ID; she palmed it, and the door slid aside.
Tarveet was sitting on the bottom bunk. His clothes were torn and dirty—they’d been prime examples of fashionable tailoring, Beka remembered, when he wore them to grace her execution—and he’d gone long enough without a depilatory that his loose jaw was thick with stubble. Blaster in hand, she walked in and keyed open the binders that held his wrists.
“Come on out, you,” she said. “I’ve let you slide for long enough. We’re going to have a talk.”
Without waiting for an answer, she slammed her weapon back into the holster, turned her back on him, and walked away.
If he jumps me, I can kill him. If I’m lucky, he’ll jump me
. But nothing happened except that she heard, after a few seconds, the sounds of Tarveet’s footsteps on the deckplates behind her as she made her way back to the
’Hammer
’s common room.
She took a seat there on one side of the scarred table, the same place she’d sat on the night in Waycross when Errec Ransome gave her the news of her mother’s death. She pointed at the chair opposite.
“Sit,” she said. “Or not, your choice. There’s cha’a over there in the galley if you’re thirsty, but I’m damned if I’ll get it for you.”
Tarveet moved to stand by the chair, but he didn’t sit down.
“To what do I owe the honor?”
“I want to talk to you,” Beka replied, gazing at him steadily.
“Why?” He raised one hand in a tired-looking gesture, and let it fall. “We’re past the point where either of us has anything to offer the other.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you can tell me one thing right now for starters: why did you want me dead?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Tarveet sounded as weary as he looked. “I didn’t want you dead. I wanted Pleyver to live. You, as a person, an individual, you’re nothing. I wouldn’t spend a half-ducat on you if you weren’t a threat to Pleyver.” He turned fully toward her and leaned forward. “Do you know what a war looks like? It isn’t all pretty explosions and clean energy beams in space. It’s stinking mud and starvation and pain and blood, and it’s visited on the common people, the people who sit on the ground and try to get through one day at a time. They don’t care who they pay taxes to—they just want to be alive to pay them. Look at you, Domina of Entibor. Where is Entibor now? Where are its people? Dead and damned. All through pride. Because your mother didn’t want to lose her power. Power’s what this is all about.
“I suppose you’re going to kill me. No matter to me; everyone dies. But hundreds, thousands, millions dead before their time, all so some spoiled bitch can keep her power twenty minutes longer? That’s too high a price. And you, with your silly broadcasts and disguises, you’ll prolong a war and kill who knows how many more. A bad peace is better than a good war, my lady.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll find that cha’a that you talked about.”
Tarveet turned and walked into the galley. Beka watched him go with a skeptical expression.
“You know,” she said after he’d come back, “a few weeks ago I might have believed in your sincere desire for peace. You give a good speech, and I’ll grant you that not everybody out there thinks that standing up to the Mages is a good idea. But feeding me to the beaky-boys—you can’t tell me that idea was just good old Pleyveran boosterism at work.”
“Perhaps not, then.” There was, finally, a glint of malice in his expression as he added, “Perhaps I should have spent a little more money and taken your Consort first. With certain knowledge of his death you might have been open to reason and called off your charade.”
“Not likely. The people who killed my mother—and tried to kill my brother Ari and tried to kill me—used Pleyver for a base of operations. That’s when the war started. You must have known something was up. And you never let out a peep.”
“Does that still bother you?”
“Three guesses. The first two don’t count.”
“So,” he said. “Now we come to what I have that you want. You want to know what I know.”
“That’s right. Who else on the Republic side of things was part of the plan? There was Nivolm the Rolny and Ebenra d’Caer—but they were from the neutral worlds. There must have been people inside the Republic involved. I think you’re one of them. I want to know the names of the rest.”
“For what? Revenge? With the galaxy coming apart all around you?”
She said nothing. Suddenly Tarveet leaned back and smiled.
“If you must have answers,” he said, and paused to take a sip of cha’a, “go find the Master of the Adepts’ Guild. Ask Errec Ransome to tell you what happened to the Domina Perada.”
 
GYFFERAN NEARSPACE:
RSF VERATINA
 
“O
H, DEAR,” murmured Nyls Jessan under his breath. “I seem to have been abandoned.”
The other members of
Warhammer’s
crew were scattered by now all over the crowded lawn of Adelfe Aneverian’s country estate. Beka and Commodore Gil had gone off to discuss something; Ignaceu LeSoit had escorted the commodore’s Eraasian prisoner of war over to the buffet tables for refreshment and animated conversation; Owen Rosselin-Metadi and his apprentice had drifted away from the main area some time ago for reasons that Jessan didn’t feel qualified to guess.
He shrugged and began to stroll about the grounds in search of some temporary diversion. The diversion found him, instead, in the form of a Space Force lieutenant with an aide’s gold aiguillette and a nametag that read JHUNNEI.
“Lieutenant Commander Jessan,” she said. “I’ve been hoping for a chance to talk with you.”
“Oh, dear,” said Jessan again. “I suppose it was inevitable … . Exactly how much of my disgraceful past are you familiar with, anyway?”
“All of it, Commander. And I know who rewrote your records.”
Jessan looked at her with renewed respect. “You wouldn’t happen to be working for our friends in Intelligence?”
“Of course not,” she said promptly. “Given their success rate these days, who’d want to?”
“You have a point there, I’m afraid. In that case, you must be the commodore’s aide. My compliments on an excellent party.”
She accepted the praise without any blushing or false modesty. “Thank you, Commander. I notice you showed up in civilian persona yourself.”
“Not civilian,” he corrected her. “General of the Armies of Entibor. Since the public record still has me down as cashiered from the Space Force, I really didn’t have any choice.”
“Probably not. But we both know the truth; and you
are
still under oath and under orders.”
“Mmmh,” said Jessan. He accepted a glass of the sparkling punch from a passing waiter and turned back toward Jhunnei. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with those ships, would it?”
Jhunnei didn’t blink. “The commodore needs them. You’re staff corps, not a line officer; and the Domina isn’t space-command qualified any more than you are.”
“True enough,” he said. “But there are some things that it’s a good idea to ask for politely rather than to demand. The ships are, after all, hers—to give you or not as she pleases.”
“Not exactly a realistic position.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Jessan sipped at his punch. “The commodore’s not running a pure Space Force operation here. A lot of his people haven’t sworn oaths to anybody—they’re a bunch of heavily armed civilians who’ve thrown in with him based on a little sentiment and a lot of self-interest. If the Baronet D’Rugier starts commandeering people’s ships and claiming to outrank the Domina of Lost Entibor, he’s going to lose them.”
“You approve of that idea, Commander?”
He shook his head. “Nobody, I think, is going to deny that the Space Force can make more use of the Domina’s flotilla than she can, acting alone.”
“Then what was that speech in honor of?”
“It’s advice, Lieutenant,” he said. “From somebody who knows Beka Rosselin-Metadi rather well. If the commodore wants those ships, he’ll need to go about it carefully—and if the Domina asks him for something in exchange, he’d better be ready to give it to her.”
 
Klea Santreny stood leaning on her staff and waiting. At her feet lay Owen Rosselin-Metadi—that part of him not traveling out of the body somewhere in the vastness of space and time—and beside Owen the shadowy form of the other. Or at least, shadowy to her eyes, as if he were somehow both visible and obscured. How Owen had perceived the stranger she couldn’t begin to guess.
“You have good eyes,” said a voice beside her.
She turned her head, and saw the stranger standing there.
If I look back around, she wondered, will I see him where he was before?
She didn’t look.
“Tell me who you really are,” she said. “He thinks you look like him—I could feel him thinking it—but you don’t.”
“Names aren’t important. I gave mine away long ago.”
The stranger’s accent wasn’t like Owen’s, either; wherever he came from, it wasn’t Galcen. Wherever he came from—she shivered. Her grandmother had told her about creatures who looked like men, who didn’t have names and weren’t there when you looked at them, creatures who arrived after sunset and departed before dawn, taking
things
with them.
She clutched her staff so tightly that her knuckles hurt. “What do you want?”
“Only to help. There was something else, once … but I lost it when I lost my name, and it doesn’t matter any longer.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “If this is helping, I don’t see much use for it.”
“There are some things that no one can tell the Master of the Guild. Some things he can only learn for himself. Or never learn.”
I don’t know what you are,
Klea thought. B
ut you sound crazy.
She didn’t say it, and by the time she’d thought of something else to say instead, he was gone. She went back to watching over Owen’s motionless body. The twilight deepened; the garden was lit by the warm yellow glow of the lanterns hanging in the trees. She kept on watching.
I like it better here anyway. There’s too many people out there, and they think too loudly. And that aide person, Lieutenant Jhunnei … I could feel her listening to me think.
Footsteps crunched on the turf, breaking into her reverie. She looked toward the noise, half-expecting to see the stranger coming back again, but this time the newcomer was clearly real and fully present. With his elegant ruffled shirt and glittering red eye patch, and the black velvet long-coat over it all, he looked like one of Baronet D’Rugier’s free-spacers—half merchant, half pirate, and completely dangerous.
Klea held herself stiffly, hoping that the privateer wasn’t in a mood to cause trouble. He stopped a few feet away, and glanced from her face down to Owen’s motionless body.
“Taking good care of him, are you?”
The voice was familiar and the accent unmistakable. Klea risked looking deeper, and caught her breath.
“Domina Beka?”
The young man’s mouth quirked up in a tight smile. “So much for trying to fool the Adepts around here.”
“I don’t understand,” said Klea. She supposed she ought to be more formal—this was, after all, the first time she’d spoken with the Domina alone—but it didn’t seem to matter.
The privateer shrugged. “Why would anybody want to be the Domina of Entibor for one second longer than they had to?”
Klea recognized sincerity when she heard it, even in disguise.
I didn’t
think it was possible for somebody else to hate anything as much as I hated working for Freling … but this comes close
. “What should I call you, then?”
“Tarnekep Portree. Merchant captain. And other things.”
“Captain Portree.”
“That’s right.” He looked down again at Owen. “How long has he been out like that?”
“Since dark.”
“I hope he knows what the hell he’s doing.”
Klea weighed her answers, and decided that honesty was the best after all. “So do I.”
“I want him with me when I talk to the commodore,” Portree said. “I’ll stay here until he comes back.”
Klea didn’t say anything. They waited: Klea leaning on her staff, Portree with his back to a tree and his arms folded across his chest. At last Owen stirred, opened his eyes, and sat up.
“Where—?” he muttered. Then his gaze landed on Tarnekep Portree, still watching impassively. Recognition was instant.
“Bee?”
“Tarnekep Portree.”
Owen looked at the privateer and shook his head. “You’re not planning to talk to the commodore like that, are you?”
“As a matter of fact, I am.” Portree glanced from Owen’s face to Klea’s. “Let’s go collect the rest of
Warhammer’s
merry band of misfits, so we can corner the baronet and have ourselves a serious discussion.”
 
Aboard RSF
Veratina,
a dull midwatch was half-over. In the Combat Information Center, the sensor technicians on duty watched their screens while the comptechs ran internal maintenance checks. The Tactical Action Officer leaned back in his chair, watching the empty battle tank and sipping at a cup of lukewarm cha’a that had steeped far too long in the pot.
One of the sensor techs bent forward to look more closely at her screen. “Wait a minute. I’m tracking some motion out here. New stuff.”
“Put it up in the tank,” the TAO ordered.
The tank lit up with the by now familiar diagram of the Gyfferan system. A mass of blue dots was expanding outward from the home planet like bubbles in sparkling wine.
“Ships rising,” said the sensor tech. “Too many for an accurate count at this range without going active.”
“Shrink it for the display.”
“Shrinking it, aye.”
The blue effervescence coalesced into a single bright blue dot, still moving outward from Gyffer.
“That’s better,” said the TAO. “Looks like we’ve got everyone who can boost leaving orbit there. Things could get interesting.”
“Shall I inform the General, sir?”
“The General already knows,” said Metadi, from near the entrance to the CIC.
“Ah, there you are, sir. I didn’t see you come in.”
Metadi came farther into the CIC. Commander Quetaya, trim and efficient as usual, was with him, ever-present clipboard in hand. “Learn to keep your eyes open,” Metadi said to the TAO. “You won’t always find your enemies on the other side of a glass screen.”
The TAO looked abashed. “Yes, sir.”
“Right, then.” Metadi gazed at the display in the battle tank. “Looks like the LDF’s gone out hunting for Mages. I’ll need a set of contingency battle plans based on the assumption that they find what they’re looking for—and at least one other set assuming that the Mages start their attack before the LDF can make contact. Records from the last Space Force/Local Defense joint exercise are probably in the
’Tina
’s main memory somewhere; use them for an idea of how a big fleet would go about attacking Gyffer and what kind of resistance the Gyfferans would put up.”
“When do you need them, sir?”
“Yesterday,” said Metadi, “but as soon as possible will do.”
Quetaya stepped forward and proffered her clipboard. “I have a set of preliminary plans prepared, General. Would you care to review them?”
Metadi took the clipboard. “Just out of idle curiosity, Commander, when did you start drawing these up?”
“When you announced our destination, sir,” she said. “Given two knowns, our strength and our location, there weren’t a whole lot of branches on the decision tree.”
He looked at her. “And where do you see those branches taking us?”
“Frankly, sir—barring wild luck or divine intervention—they fall into two main groups: either we run like hell or we all die.”
“Wild luck is nobody’s friend,” said Metadi. “And we aren’t so all-around virtuous that some deity is going to pull us out of the soup from sheer admiration. And running isn’t an option.”
Quetaya looked resigned. “That leaves us with the plans in the ‘we all die’ subgroup, then.”
“Right. Tell me more about that one. Do you have any branches where we accomplish our mission before we all die?”
“Without being a mind reader or a fortune-teller? Nothing’s certain. But some of them have a better shot than others.”
“Very well, Commander,” Metadi said. “I want two of your sets of plans for review at the head of the queue. The branches in which we gain victory, any way at all—and the ones where we lose the quickest. I’ll be looking for the gambits of both of them.”
“Yes sir,” said Quetaya.
“I’m commandeering the TAO’s chair for this one.” Metadi suited the action to the words. The displaced officer moved over to stand near the bulkhead, while Metadi turned back to Commander Quetaya. “You can start your presentation any time you want. Plug your clipboard into the tank console and display it up there.”
The commander looked dubious. “Sir, a lot of this material is classified at quite a high level—”

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