Rift in the Races (23 page)

“Not a word, Altin,” repeated the ancient sorcerer. It was a most feral hiss. “Do you hear me?”

Altin nodded numbly. A big secret to keep, he thought. Very big.

“Master Tytamon,” said the Queen. “You seem distressed. Have they taken something significant? Some magical artifact that I can only assume will do the realm little good were it to remain in orcish hands?”

Tytamon shot Altin one last wide-eyed glare before moving from the cover of the young sorcerer’s tall frame into full view of the Queen.

“Indeed, Your Majesty, they have.”

Air seemed to leave the lungs of everyone in the room then, an ominous evacuation of breath as the lot of them, the Queen and her men, all stood in the churning dust dreading whatever announcement was about to come.

“They got them all.”

“All what, Master Tytamon. What did they take?” She asked the question with remarkable calm.

“They got my wife’s ring,” he said. “A ring of seeking. They got my lamp of inquiry, a lute of sleeping, and, worst of all, they took Melane Montclaire’s books.”

Altin stepped back, aghast. Even he had not known what those were when last he was here. If he had, not only would he have remembered them, he would have been properly terrified twenty heartbeats ago. To think, the very notes, the very spells of the woman ultimately responsible for the destruction of the entire race of dwarves, they’d been right there below his feet every day for nearly his entire life. And now they were in the hands of the orcs.

He looked back into the now empty little room with a newfound awe, his memory cycling back through his last visit here in what had now been over two years. So much power in one tiny room. It made him wonder what value there had been in the skull, for that was gone as well.

“They took the skull as well,” he said. The words just came out, and he immediately wanted to take them back, fearing the skull might have been something that shouldn’t have been on the list shared with the Queen as well, given that Tytamon hadn’t mentioned it.

Tytamon looked back at him but didn’t appear angered by the observation.

“What power was in the skull?” asked the Queen, the wilting expression on her face suggesting she really didn’t want to know.

Tytamon’s dusty brow furrowed as he replied. “None,” he said. “It had no power at all.”

“Well, I suppose there’s good news in that,” Her Majesty said. “As if the others don’t stand for problems enough.”

Tytamon nodded, but the look he sent Altin’s way made the young magician’s skin crawl. Then Altin recalled his own Liquefying Stone, lying in a wooden bowl on a shelf in his tower, as unguarded as a loaf of bread. He made an excuse and sprinted from the room, leaving the Queen and the rest looking back and forth between themselves and Tytamon.

The old wizard was wise enough to shrug a show of ignorance.

Chapter 13

O
rli pushed the last ore sample into the crate, dropping it into a slot that looked just like the thirteen hundred and forty-six other slots she’d put samples in over the last ten months. Mineral analysis. Yet another conscription of her training. They abused her science background and ignored the fact that she was a botanist. And all in the effort to repair spaceships she had no intention of ever boarding again.

Working here on Tinpoa hadn’t been so bad before, only a few days before, really, before Asad had his little meltdown. There was something at least slightly earthy about working in the dirt of an alien moon, and it was for the purpose of saving Earth, at least in theory, and more importantly for the purpose of helping many people she counted as friends get home. That was not a terrible thing. And besides, she’d been going down to Prosperion frequently up until now. But that was over. Now they were going to stuff her onto a ship full-time again, and her only reprieve would be Tinpoa. This would be her getaway. Working the mines on a lifeless moon.

It was Asad’s way of trying to kill her. She was convinced of that. Kill her with duty. Bury her on a ship and send her back into the void. Back out
there
, where there was nothing but emptiness.

She slammed the crate shut and plunked herself down on the lid, looking morosely around the lab. She laughed when anyone called it that.
Lab
.
Hah
. It was just another plastic and aluminum box in a series of them, vacuum-packed together over a square half-mile and capping a network of mine shafts down below. Hardly any different than the shanty town they’d seen in the distance while visiting
Citadel
, the quarry site designated as “backwoods” at the time. She could hardly see any difference between the two.

She stared out the lab’s one small window and tried to appreciate the greenery outside. Everything was green beyond. But not the right kind. Not the green of life and living. This was the deadly green of churning planetary light, the gas giant Naotatica blotting out the stars and throwing its pale haze on everything, perverted hues of those things that Orli held most dear. It overwhelmed in its greenness, converting even the soulless white ambience of the lab’s LED panels into a soul-sapping glow of sickly, ever-present mint.

She hated it. Hated being here. Her first attempt at desertion had failed. She’d tried. She’d gotten Altin to agree to come get her before she’d even been taken off Prosperion. He’d agreed to take her to the Queen, to ask for asylum, but Captain Asad, as if reading her mind, put her under guard until the ship took off and brought her back up here. To Tinpoa and the goddamn mines. It hadn’t been so bad before, but now she hated it.

She didn’t care if they dug enough metals to fix the ships anymore. She didn’t care if the whole fleet just rotted away out here. Fuck the whole lot of them.

In barely a day since being returned to Tinpoa, she’d already had enough of it to bring back the funk of the last decade, the funk of hopelessness. How could she endure having no more planetary leave? Her every movement watched. Her odds of escape seemingly impossible.

It was unbearable.

The only bright spot in the darkness of this confinement was the mirror Altin had given her. That was the thing that kept her from collapse, or from total revolt, kept her from something desperate. And even the mirror was cause for stress.

She’d tried to reach Altin yesterday, but the magic mirror didn’t work. She’d done everything he said, but nothing happened when she’d put her com badge in the slot. She feared it might not really work but convinced herself that she’d probably done it wrong. It had to be that. She couldn’t bear to think it was something else. That something had happened to him in the fight to take Calico Castle back.

She would try again after this shift. A quick mess, a shower, and then as much time as she could get with Altin. Surely he was fine. She’d seen how many men they had on horses. How many magicians everywhere. He was definitely safe. How could he not be with that much military might around him?

So she would speak to him tonight. He’d know what to do, how to help her defect. Maybe he’d just come up here and whisk her away. What could the fleet really do, when it came down to it? They’d hardly go to war over her. And he would do it too. She knew he would. He was no more fond of fleet protocol than she was. And Queen Karroll would understand. She enjoyed their romance more than anyone else, more so than Roberto or even Orli’s father, who, despite his gruff exterior display, was happy for her, or at least happy that she was happy. He was still noncommittal when it came to Altin personally.

So Altin simply needed to be alive. As long as Altin was all right, she could hold out up here until they figured out a plan. At least that long.

“He’s fine,” she said aloud as she thought it. She repeated it a second time, making sure she had convinced herself.

“Who’s fine?” asked Roberto from behind her.

She spun and saw the stocky Spaniard leaning in the doorway.

“I assume you are talking about me,” he said. “And, I’ll be honest, I agree. I’ll admit the term is a bit archaic, but it does fit.
Gorgeous
is probably better. Or
dreamy
. I kind of like that one best. It has a quality that I think most adequately conveys how women feel when they see me, like they’re in a dream, you know?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be working? Flying a ship or something?”

“Technically, I am working,” he said. “They’re loading me up. You’re the one sitting on your ass.”

“I could give a crap about my work,” she said.

“You need to work on your attitude.” He tempered the words with the obvious affection in his voice, that and the ever-present devil’s grin.

“I want my own life now. I don’t care about any of this. I don’t even care about the stupid Hostile war anymore.”

His grimace made sad faces of the dimples on his cheeks. “You can’t
not
care. Even if you try to ignore it, they’re just going to show up here someday. Then what?”

“Prosperion magic will mop the floor with them.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe. You saw what Altin can do. Imagine fifty thousand of him. Fifty million.”

“Well, I’m not sure the whole race is like him. I’m sort of gathering that they are not all, you know, as alphabetically well endowed in the magic department, if you know what I’m saying.” He winked and gyrated his hips, hoping to get at least a smile from her.

He did not.

“Close enough,” she said, leaving the innuendo to die unappreciated while allowing the underlying truth. “You saw
Citadel
. You saw how many wizards they will have in there, all of them heading out to save Altin’s home. I’m not worried about the Hostiles. They are nothing now.”

“But what about your dad? What about Earth? What about all the people on the other bases just like this one scattered all over the place? And what about me? Imagine a universe without me.”

“You’ll be fine. I don’t care about everyone else. And my father has always done exactly what he wants to do. For once, I plan to do the same. Altin will help me. And before you say it, I don’t care about alliances or diplomatic realities either.”

“You don’t, but other people do.” He gave up on humor. He might as well be trying to cool a reactor core with a popsicle.

“Look, are you going to lecture me, or are you going to be my friend?”

“Hey, easy. I am your friend. Sometimes lectures come with the package.”

“Well that sometime isn’t right now. Okay?”

He relented. “Okay. I’m sorry. I know the last couple of days have been tough.”

She started to tell him it was only for a little while longer, only until she defected and took asylum under the protection of the Queen, but she suspected everything she said was recorded these days. So she did not mention that to him specifically, friend or no.

A single tone came from Roberto’s com badge, a summons. “Shit, I’m full already. I have to go run a load of titanium plates up to the
California
.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “These Prosperion blanks are some working fools. They may not have any magic, but they get shit done like crazy. They never give a guy time to screw around.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

“You gonna meet me for dinner later or just gonna pout in your room and stare into that mirror hoping your boy calls?”

“Pout and stare,” she said.

“Aw, come on. He’s only a blink away. You need to stop. I don’t want to go through all of this again with you. You know I have always felt it’s wrong to hit a girl, but I’m starting to think a wicked slap might be totally called for here.” Mischief glinted in his eyes again.

No reaction.

He sighed, the smoky breath of humor snuffed out again. “Orli, you can’t just curl up in a ball every time shit goes wrong. It’s like, where is the chick I pulled out of that firefight back at Calico Castle? That was one tough, scary bitch down there, not this wimpy-ass depression crap I see right now.”

She had to smile at that, half a smile anyway. It was true. Doctor Singh had told her often enough she had a tendency for depressive thoughts, negativity that starts the spiral. “It’s your demon,” he’d told her. “You have to watch for the signs.” These were the signs.

She looked back at her friend. He was watching her with no judgment in his eyes, no condemnation in his expression. Only concern and love for her as deep as any brother of her own blood could have had.

“I know,” she said at length. “You’re right.” She straightened and said it again, sounding more confident. “You’re right.”

“That’s my girl.” He reached out a strong hand and placed it on the side of her face. “It will work out, I promise. Let’s fix the galaxy first, though? That way, when you start spitting out magic babies, they’ll have someplace safe to grow up.”

Finally she laughed. What a wonderful idea. Magic babies. How incredible that would be. “You’re right,” she said again.

“Of course I’m right. I’m always right. So get to work. Find us more metal. Make your reports. Let’s fix this shit and kick some Hostile ass. Then you can get to breeding!”