The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds (12 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds
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Year 1123 E. R.
 
ERAASI: HANILAT STARPORT
 
N
atelth sus-Khalgath, senior in the sus-Peledaen line, waited in his study to receive his last caller of the afternoon. His darkwood armchair, and the guest chair that complemented it, occupied the bay window at the front of his study. On the low table between the chairs, a polished copper pot stood on tripod legs, a lump of solid alcohol burning in its lower tray. A pair of crystal glasses waited for Natelth to fill them with the fresh-brewed drink.
There was a knock at the outer door. Natelth raised his voice enough to carry through the thick wood. “Come in.”
The door swung open, and his brother entered.
Arekhon had changed in the time since he had left the fleet for the Demaizen Circle. He’d abandoned the family colors for plain black and white, and wore his dark hair long after the country fashion. Even the short staff clipped to his belt was nothing more than a cubit and a half of polished wood, chastely ornamented with silver wire. Some things remained the same, however: As usual, ’Rekhe had delayed his courtesy visit until near the end of the working day, but not past it, a calibration too precise to be anything but deliberate.
Typical of him,
Natelth thought as he gestured his brother into the empty chair.
Squeezing the family into the thinnest possible slip between daylight business and his own pleasure.
For a moment Natelth considered inviting Arekhon to join the household at dinner, purely for the sake of throwing his sibling’s plans for the evening into disarray, but discarded the idea as unworthy of the head of the sus-Peledaen.
“’Rekhe,” he said. “We haven’t seen you in Hanilat for quite a while. Isayana worries that sus-Demaizen holds you on too short a leash.”
“We keep ourselves busy, I’m afraid,” Arekhon said. “Isa frets too much.” The implied rebuke had not escaped him; Natelth watched the awareness of it show briefly in his eyes like a spark from grey flint, and felt pleased.
Natelth waved a hand toward the copper pot. “Will you join me in a glass of red?”
“Of course.” Arekhon’s pleasure seemed genuine. “There’s never anything but pale at the Hall, for some reason.”
“I’ll have the kitchen make you up a package of decent leaf before you go.
“I do well enough with the yellow,” Arekhon said. He picked up the glass that Natelth had filled for him, and sipped at it. Fragrant steam curled up from the hot liquid; he inhaled it and let out a contented sigh. “But if it makes Isa happy, I’ll take some of the house mix back with me to Demaizen.”
Again, Natelth raised his voice. “Kitchen, do you hear?”
The voice of the kitchen replied over the household command circuit. “I hear.”
“There; it’s done.” Natelth turned back to his brother. “What brings you into Hanilat this time—more errands for sus-Demaizen?”
“Not precisely.” Arekhon was looking pleased about something; pleased and excited. “I had business of my own to set in order.”
The phrasing, coupled with his brother’s expression, made Natelth uneasy. He frowned. “Is something going on at the Hall?”
Arekhon gave a fractional shrug. “Only the usual.” His tone was unconvincing. After a moment’s pause, he added, “Garrod’s decided to name a Third for the Circle.”
“A Third,” Natelth said. That would explain much. He turned a sharper eye on his brother. “You?”
“Yes.”
“Isayana will be proud.”
Their sister would also, Natelth thought, come close to worrying herself sick. Not all Circles with a named Third did dangerous work—sometimes the honor was merely a way to spread out the drudgery of administration—but Garrod syn-Aigal sus-Demaizen had kept his Circle with only a Second for as long as Natelth had known of its existence.
Something momentous, then, was going on at Demaizen Old Hall. Natelth wasn’t sure what to think about that. Hard enough to look at Arekhon and see an ordinary Circle-Mage: ’Rekhe was too young, almost a generation younger than Natelth or Isayana, and he possessed not the least vestige of seriousness. To see him as one of the ranking Mages of a Circle, with all that such a name implied, was something that Natelth found almost impossible.
A rush of questions pressed against his closed mouth. He swallowed all of those which it would have been undignified for him to ask, and which Arekhon—being a Mage, and therefore no longer under his family’s authority—had no obligation to answer, and said only, “Other than leaf, is there anything you require by way of foodstuffs?”
“We are quite well supplied with all we need,” Arekhon said, a bit stiffly, as if sus-Demaizen’s ability to provide for his Circle had been called into question—as indeed it had been. “I should be going.”
“Sit, sit,” Natelth said, half afraid that his brother would rise and depart without further ceremony. The Mages were an odd lot, and not bound by the usual rules of courtesy. He leaned back in his chair and regarded the younger man patiently for a moment before speaking again.
“You know that all of our family’s resources lie beneath your hand. Surely there is something?”
“Perhaps one thing,” Arekhon said.
“Name it. It is yours.”
“The charts. All the stars, all the worlds. I want to take copies back to the Old Hall.”
At that moment, Natelth was aware that he had been maneuvered into the offer. Not dishonorably, not by trickery or force, but maneuvered all the same.
He did not allow his face to show any change. “You have them,” he said. “And now, come join me for dinner. You must; the family will wish to see you.”
At least,
Natelth thought, not allowing his lips to curve either up or down,
I have paid him back in small part. Whatever plans he has for the evening are now disrupted.
 
 
Elaeli Inadi paused at the entrance to the Court of Two Colors. Night had fallen outside; within, dozens of lamps on tall wrought-iron poles reflected like stars off the crystal dome of the Court. The waters of the central fountain rose skyward and fell again to their hidden sources, mingling and interlacing in the air above the pool, and throwing back the lamplight in a glitter of refraction.
A discreet scan of the room reassured Elaeli that she had come dressed appropriately for the place and the occasion, in a tailored outer-dress over satin leggings, all in dark blue piped and lined with crimson. Not a fleet uniform, but near enough that the garments felt comfortable to somebody who had worn the sus-Peledaen livery since her apprentice days. That the colors also looked well with her fair skin and her loose, light-brown curls was a pleasing bonus.
One of the Court’s servitor-constructs glided toward Elaeli across the black and white tiles that gave the establishment its name. The
aiketh’
s counterforce unit kept it hovering a handspan above the floor in spite of its mass. A red light glowed inside its smoky black housing as it spoke.
“Be welcome, honored one. Are you awaited here?”
“Arekhon sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen,” she said. “He reserved a table earlier.”
The
aiketh
hummed and nickered—communicating with the Court’s main intelligence, Elaeli supposed. The makers of the Court’s aiketen had done their work well; when this one spoke again, its artificial voice held a carefully-constructed note of polite regret.
“Lord sus-Khalgath begs that you will take your ease at the chosen table and await his coming,” it said. “Matters at the house of his brother force him to delay.”
Elaeli suppressed a smile.
So Natelth got you for dinner after all. I told you he would.
“I’ll wait,” she said.
The
aiketh
led her to a table near the fountain. Clear water, fed by the Court’s own spring, fell plashing into the basin and filled the air with a cool mist. Green and blue ferns in tile planters muted the sounds of the Court and gave the illusion of a private grotto.
True privacy could also be had here, for those who desired it, but for now Elaeli had no objection to being seen. Arekhon might have left his family altars—such as they were, Natelth never having struck her as especially pious—and gone off to the Mages, but there was no estrangement. Word would get back to the sus-Peledaen fleet that Pilot-Ancillary Inadi, daughter of a greengrocer and a physician’s assistant, nevertheless dined at the Court of Two Colors with a member of the family’s senior line, and those who might have opposed her future promotion would speak a bit more civilly to her thereafter.
You’re a clever man, ’Rekhe,
she thought,
and a good friend to boot. Whatever you’ve got in mind this time, I’ll help you if I can.
The
aiketh
brought her a crystal goblet of woodflower cordial and a bowl of candied fruit, and she disposed herself to wait. The Court was a pleasant place to wait in, which was fortunate; almost an hour went past before Arekhon sus-Khalgath came into the area beneath the crystal dome. He was dressed as he must have been for the visit to his brother: In plain black and white, with nothing to mark his calling but the staff at his belt, and nothing to mark his rank except his unstated assumption that anyone in Hanilat who needed to know him probably already did.
Elaeli smiled. ’Rekhe had a prideful streak in him, but it was buried deep—far deeper than her own ambition, about which she had no illusions at all.
He smiled back at her as he sat down in the chair opposite. “Ela! I’m glad you waited. Natelth trapped me, exactly like you said he would. I was barely able to snatch a moment free to send word to the Court.”
“How could I not wait?” she said. “It’s been a long time since we shared a table—they keep you busy at Demaizen.”
“Not that busy.” He beckoned to the aiketh and continued, “Circle work and ship work keep their own seasons, and the fleet was out-system the last time I came to Hanilat.”
The inorganic servitor glided up to the table in response to Arekhon’s summons, and took his request for a glass of the woodflower cordial and a platter of hot and cold foresters’ delicacies. The bits of game, some fresh off the grill and others preserved in smokes and pickles, would serve two people quite well for dinner if one of them had eaten a full meal already.
They spoke of inconsequential things until the platter arrived. Elaeli regarded its heaped and garnished bounty with admiration for a moment, then speared a curl of shaved meat on the twin tines of her fork. “The fleet mess is nothing like this, let me tell you … . I see you survived your dinner with Natelth and Isa.”
“Natelth isn’t so bad,” said Arekhon. He sounded pleased, and Elaeli knew what that meant.
“Put one over on him this time, did you?”
’Rekhe had been contending with his older brother—half in jest and entirely in earnest—for as long as she had known him. Elaeli, who had no siblings of her own, found the relationship both inexplicable and fascinating.
“I came away with what I needed,” Arekhon said.
“And that was—?”
“A packet of fresh leaf. Nobody at Demaizen drinks it red besides me.”
Elaeli shook her head. “Red leaf. Only you, ’Rekhe … only you.”
He was laughing now, the mischief sparkling in his grey eyes. “It’s true.”
“It and what else?”
“Nothing.”
“Hah. Get better at lying, ’Rekhe.”
“Nothing yet,” he amended.
She looked at him over the rim of her glass of cordial, and realized that more than amusement was underlying his current mood. “Is something going on at the Hall?”
“Garrod’s named me Third for the Circle.”
“‘No profit without risk,’” she said, quoting the Ribbon’s old prentice-master to cover her own moment of dismay. “But if it isn’t breaking any oaths to speak of the matter to outsiders … exactly how profitable are things likely to get?”
“Demaizen isn’t the fleet,” he said. “We could go for years without seeing any trouble.”
“And Garrod went for years without naming a Third, too. ’Rekhe—”
He met her eyes, but didn’t answer her question. “That was the other thing. I spoke to the fleet legalist before I paid my duty call at home, and had him put you down on the list for outer-family adoption.”
“You had him—” For a moment the news pushed aside even her concern over Arekhon’s elevation to Third.
Me … Pilot-Ancillary Elaeli Inadi syn-Peledaen!
By tradition, no one rose to the highest ranks of the sus-Peledaen fleet who wasn’t already a member of the family. That made adoption one of the traditional rewards for a promising young officer, as well as a reliable source of new blood for the inner line. Elaeli had hoped to earn such an honor for herself—who wouldn’t?—but she’d never expected it to come so soon.

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