Rift in the Races (28 page)

She said nothing.

“Orli. Please.” He hated the way she was just staring back at him. “We won’t be apart any longer than we already are. Even less. You have the mirror now.”

Her head began to turn, rotating sideways like a dial winding up. He expected she was about to get mad.

“Three or four days. I will be safe. I have a fast-cast amulet like before.” He fished another amulet from out of his robes, this one not near so beautiful as the last. “This one is just for my tower. I even set it to my heartbeat as a secondary release. If something happens, I’ll come back, even if I can’t cast or break this thing.”

“You think setting that thing to bring you back dead is supposed to make me feel better?”

“Orli, I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will.”

Her eyes began scanning around the sides of the mirror this time, slowly at first but almost frantically after a few moments more. He watched her lean forward, saw her hands come toward him in the watery image of his basin, as if she were reaching to him. She was looking for something, her hands probing and prodding at the edge of the mirror.

“Goddamn it,” she mumbled, but not really to him. “How do you turn this stupid thing off?”

“Orli.”

“I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”

Giving up on a way to turn it off, she got up and snatched the little, black tarwood lid off the table instead. The last thing he saw was the square of it descending toward him, and then there was only water in his basin.

Chapter 16

“M
iss Pewter,” said Thadius Thoroughgood, reaching for her hand as she stepped off the lift into Mine Shaft D. “Delightful to see you again. Your radiance fills this dark space like the light of a thousand stars.”

Orli had to try very hard to be polite. She was only here because Roberto’s twenty-minute lecture this morning got her to show up for work at all. She forced a smile and set herself to the motions of the day. “Lord Thoroughgood, it is nice to see you again. What brings you down into the mines? You’re not known for leaving the upper offices. Is there a problem?”

“I dare say, no. None of that.” His chiseled features were carved to pleasantness. “Contract obligations, Miss Pewter. My uncle’s interests and all that rot. Castles, Inc. is one of the earl’s most profitable concerns, after all. I’ve been asked to make sure our blanks are performing admirably in the service of your empire. It’s all frightfully dull, you see, but one must attend to these things in person from time to time, or the lads will just lie about idly.”

She smiled politely but made no comment. She’d heard all of that before.

“Weren’t nobody a lyin’ about on my watch, my lord,” injected the grime-encrusted Ilbei Spadebreaker from where he stood to Orli’s left. “And I reckon Ensign Pewter will be the first ta say so if’n they was.”

“I am sure you wield the whip adequately, Master Spadebreaker. Otherwise, you would not hold such a lofty post as this.” The young lord’s smile was a saccharine sort of generosity at best, given to the miner for Orli’s benefit alone. He turned to Orli then. “Miss Pewter, would you care to accompany me on my inspection and transmutations?”

“Transmutations?”

“Why, of course.” He looked indignant and made a flourish with his gold-topped cane. “Who do you think it is that solidifies these things?” He tapped the roof of the cave with the cane. Not the least bit of soil came down, despite how soft the dirt was beneath their boots. “That’s my handiwork, if I may be so contemptible as to point it out.”

Pride split his lips and showed a row of sparkling white teeth. His chest swelled briefly but deflated right after when a mumbled remark escaped the whiskered cage that normally kept Ilbei’s words locked within his mouth—at least around his superiors. Somehow that one got out, though strangled and nearly inaudible. Nearly.

“What was that, Master Spadebreaker?”

“Phlegm, your lordship,” graveled the old man, then made a show of hocking up a mouthful of mucus—an easy task for a man with so many years at the pipe. He spit it out loudly against the wall where it landed with a wet slap and ran down into the dark soil. It looked rather like a slug crawling there. “It’s the dust down here, your lordship. Gets right to a man.”

“Indeed,” said Thadius, watching the gelatinous glob slowly sink into the ground with a haughty, but disgusted, expression on his face.

Orli had to turn her head to hide a smile, but she managed to catch the wink from Ilbei before the curtain of her hair swung down to conceal her laughing eyes.

The three of them traveled down the long tunnel to a new branch, which had been dug overnight. Men were erecting supports using thick wooden beams brought up from Prosperion. The fleet electricians hadn’t yet run power down this far, so the only light came from oil lamps that smoked and flickered and made everyone’s shadows dance. Orli preferred this golden light to the ghostly blue-white hues that her people brought from Earth. The lamps and enchanted torches actually made the mines seem comfortable or, at the very least, natural in a way.

“Now down here,” Ilbei was saying as they moved closer to the mouth of the newest tunnel, “you can smell that titanium you Earth folks fancy so much. It has an odd smell, like smoke almost, touched with something acidic, like maybe just a hint of lime.”

“It has no scent, you buffoon,” said Thadius. “It is an ore. When you make absurd statements like that, you make our people look ridiculous in the eyes of our friends from Earth.”

“Well, I can smell it, just the same. I reckon you could too if you weren’t wearing all that fancy perfume, my lord.”

Orli laughed aloud before she realized how unfortunate that response was.

Thadius turned to her with an indulgent smile creeping up the left side of his mouth, though the narrowing of his eyes evidenced no mirth. He looked down upon Ilbei then, disdainfully. The disparity in their heights, the extreme opposition in the quality and condition of their attire, seemed to reveal by comparison the gulf of differences between them. “Do yourself a favor, old man, and mind your place.”

“Oh, he’s just having fun,” Orli said, not one to care about affluence or attire. “Come on, Lord Thoroughgood. He spends his days in a mine managing your blanks for you.” She used the term on purpose, even tried to put a derogatory inflection on it to help make her point. It worked.

“This is true. And for you, my dear Orli, I shall abide the insult in the name of local wit.”

Something snuck through the bars of Ilbei’s verbal cage again.

“Again, Master Spadebreaker? ‘This man is a’
what
? A half-what? You seem to be having trouble enunciating today. Speak up, and have the courage of your convictions at the least.” His hand rested on the pommel of his sword as he spoke.

“I said this here mass is a half width,” said the pot-bellied old miner, hiding his grin in his dusty whiskers as he tapped one of the wooden beams nearby. He made a show of running his hand up and down its length, as if inspecting it for strength and having suspicions about its size.

Orli rolled her eyes behind Thadius’ back. Another hothead. That’s all she needed in her life.

Thadius, tugging down on his doublet, which was in no need of straightening, moved past them and into the tunnel that had been recently cut. He had to stand with his legs apart a little to accommodate the low ceiling, a necessity which was made so, of course, by the broad brimmed hat he wore and the long fluffy feather adorning it, which brushed defiantly against the dirty roof. Because this new section of tunnel had not been transmuted yet, it was not completely solid, and so the sweep of the plumage caused a rain of dirt to tumble down onto Thadius’ hat brim. The audible drumming of the pebbles upon it, the staccato
thump-thump
, caused the statuesque young lord to twitch in annoyance from time to time as he shook off the irksome debris. Once again, Orli was forced to suppress laughter and hide her wide grin, which she did, but the dimples appearing on her cheeks served her as poorly as might loud and echoing guffaws.

Thadius made a show of seriousness, however, and he ignored her amusement and chose instead to set himself to a suddenly discovered desire to get to work.

He reached up and placed his bejeweled hands upon the upper surface of the tunnel. He closed his eyes and began to chant, pulling mana in through his mythothalamus and using it to meld the hard-packed soil into solid stone. It remained a deep coffee brown, appearing unchanged at first, but as his magic worked, she could see that the texture changed from rough and coarse to hard and slightly lustrous. The dull shine began where he touched the ceiling and spread outward in rapid fashion until the passage all around became nearly as smooth as marble. Orli would be dishonest were she to have said she was not impressed.

“There, you see,” Thadius announced when his work was finished. “All one piece, walls to ceiling. Solid as it can be. You are now safe to move inside.” He tipped his head sideways in something of a tilted bow, as if he’d done all of it just for Orli’s sake.

“You left the ends soft, right, my lord?” said the bowlegged Ilbei as he toyed with a few of the long hairs growing from his left ear.

“Of course I left the ends soft. Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Just checkin’, lordship.”

“Indeed.”

Thadius glanced down the tunnel to the end, then turned back. “My inspection is complete. You may continue, Master Spadebreaker.”

“Lordship,” repeated Ilbei, knowing when to leave well enough alone.

“Miss Pewter,” said Thadius then, “might I have a word with you alone?” He reached out as he spoke and gently touched her arm. “A moment, only.”

She shot a glance at Ilbei, who pretended not to notice. The old man pulled the pickaxe off his shoulder and headed down to the end of the shaft, past the frustrated-looking men who were now stacking the remaining beams against the newly hardened wall, the beams they’d been told were needed to reinforce this part of the mine since the young Lord Thadius was not scheduled to be there for another week. He was several days and several hundred spans of tunnel ahead of schedule—as early this time as he had been late the last.

“Miss Pewter,” Thadius said as they retreated some distance up the newly solidified passage. He stopped and seemed to interrupt himself as he turned to look at her. “I think I should have preferred they conferred those titles upon you permanently. I think ‘My Lady’ suits you better.”

“What do you want, Lord Thoroughgood? I have work to do.”

“Miss Pewter. I happen to know you do not enjoy this ...,” the word trailed off, sibilant, as he looked up and let the circular motion of his head encompass everything about the mine, “this life. In addition, I know that you have no real inclination for all that cavorting about in space your people do.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“My people have ways of finding things out.”

“Apparently.”

“My lady, if I may be so bold. I am prepared to provide you with an estate. Come live with me, on my lands. You shall have free reign over acres and acres of woods and meadows and rolling hills. A stable filled with the fastest horses on Kurr. I shall even arrange for the capture of one of the pegasi if you’d like. I am something of a collector of rare breeds, and your presence would make that particular enterprise finally worth the considerable risk and expense.”

Orli actually stepped back, shocked by such an unexpected offer from the strapping, six-foot-five nobleman. “Lord Thoroughgood, that is a very kind offer. And very sweet. But I—.”

“Don’t answer right now,” he said, cutting her off, and catching the scent of victory. “I am aware that you have duties and loyalty to planet Earth. But I also know what you really want. And that is something I am willing to provide. I offer you a way out of your present and conflicted circumstance. I ask only that you let my offer percolate. Think of it, flying through the air on a winged stallion. No one has ridden one in six hundred years.”

“Yes, it must be just like flying on a dragon. I’m sure I would love it.”

His enthusiasm drained like wine from a broken bottle at that. He released her arm and once again tugged at his untroubled doublet.

“Consider the offer, Miss Pewter.” His voice was as smooth as the stone he’d just transmuted and equally emotionless. Then he turned and left. Orli watched him walk off and realized she’d said something wrong. She hadn’t meant to, and she wasn’t quite sure what. Tall and handsome as the man was, he seemed to go out of his way to be unlikeable sometimes.

That said, the offer
was
extraordinary. And remarkably timed. And he hadn’t mentioned any conditions that might be troubling. Could her problems really be solved as easily as that? Could the dashing young lord really make it happen? What would Altin say?

She already knew the answer to that one.

Chapter 17

F
or the first time in over a year and a half, Altin teleported himself and his tower well beyond the edge of the solar system. One cast, and there he was, away from it all. Away from the orcs, the politics, the bickering … and the teaching! No words that he possessed could express how glad he was to be away from that. It was time to
do
something. Action, not words. And to start, he needed to find the Earth ships. Before he could feel good about going in search of the Hostiles themselves, he needed to verify that those forty-three ships coming back this way were as safe as their sensors said they were. By their own admission, the fleet people could not be completely sure there were no orbs in pursuit. Their sensors had maximum range. So, Altin felt the right thing to do was to verify they were safe.