The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds (23 page)

Read The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Online

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
ILDAON: COUNTRY HOUSE OF ELEK GRIAT
BEYOND THE FARTHER EDGE: GARROD’S WORLD
 
Natelth sus-Khalgath had been away from home for ten days, making a formal tour of the new starships under construction in the family’s orbital yards. He hadn’t enjoyed the excursion. Travel beyond the homeworld’s atmosphere didn’t appeal to him, and he had done as little of it as possible after completing his apprentice voyage. But as head of the sus-Peledaen, Natelth was expected to visit new ships—not every vessel that was built, certainly, but any time there was a significant change in the design—and he didn’t believe in skimping on family duty out of personal dislike.
The front rooms of the town house were empty when he returned. He surrendered his impedimenta to the entryway
aiketh,
a black-and-silver model that hovered a little above the floor on its pocket-sized counterforce unit. The
aiketh
floated off toward his rooms upstairs, sagging a little under the weight of the luggage—it wasn’t really a heavy-labor unit, but an information center that Isayana had retooled for her own amusement several years before.
“Wait,” said Natelth as the
aiketh
reached the bottom of the staircase. “Where is Isa?”
Light flashed inside the
aiketh’
s shell as it communicated with the larger house-mind. “Your sister is in the kitchen,” it said. “The kitchen reports that an unscheduled meal is undergoing consumption.”
“Thank you,” said Natelth. Politeness was always worthwhile, even to quasi-organics.
The
aiketh
continued on its way upstairs, and Natelth went on to the house’s spacious and well-appointed kitchen. Isa was there as the house had said, cutting slices off of a fresh loaf of nutgrain bread and spreading them with jam.
Arekhon was with her. Natelth had heard rumors of strange goings-on at Demaizen Old Hall, and looking at ‘Rekhe, he believed them. His brother was thinner than he’d been when he came to borrow the star charts—and ’Rekhe had been lean enough already—with something about his eyes that suggested he hadn’t been getting enough sleep.
He looked cheerful, though, which filled Natelth with suspicion. Arekhon didn’t come to the house these days unless he needed something from the family.
“’Rekhe,” Natelth said. “We haven’t seen you in quite some while; if you’d come a day earlier I’d have missed you.”
Arekhon finished his slice of bread and wiped the jam off his fingers with a damp towel. “That’s why I came today. I wanted to talk with you about something important.”
Isa laughed. “Scoundrel. You told me that you came home for some fresh bread.”
“I did. Nobody at the Hall makes anything like yours, and the kitchen there isn’t teachable—it’s strictly cook-it-yourself.”
Natelth sat down at the table across from his brother. Arekhon was excited about something; that much was plain for anyone to see. With luck it wasn’t something dangerous, like being named the Third in a Void-walker’s Circle. Isa had fretted about that appointment for weeks, and worry had troubled Natelth’s own sleep as well.
“If it’s bread recipes that you came for,” Natelth said, “I can’t help you. So it must be something else.”
“You’re right. Do you remember those charts I borrowed?”
“You’ve brought them back?”
Arekhon shook his head. “They’re still at Demaizen.”
“Then why—” Natelth began, at the same time as Isa said, in reproving tones, “’Rekhe, don’t tease.”
“Because there was a working,” Arekhon said, abruptly serious again. “Garrod walked through the Void, out past all the known markers—and he found a world on the other side of the gap beyond the Edge.”
“Beyond—” Natelth found himself at a loss for further words. None of the fleet-Circles had ever dared as much. It was common knowledge, or so the sus-Peledaen Mages had always insisted, that making so long a walk would destroy both the Mage who tried it and the Circle that backed him.
“A world,” Arekhon said. “Inhabited and fit for trade. Garrod left us the marker for it.”
“A new world is all very well,” said Isa sharply. “But what has it got to do with your brother, or with the family?”
“Ships,” Natelth said at once. In spite of his better judgment, he’d begun to catch some of his younger brother’s enthusiasm. There hadn’t been a new world opened for trade in almost two decades, and the chance of making the sus-Peledaen the first family in a new part of space was enough to make anyone’s heart beat a little faster. “Isn’t that it, ’Rekhe? You can’t get to Garrod’s world without a starship, so you’ve come back home to ask for one.”
 
 
Two of the guests at Elek Griat’s breakfast meeting, Oska and Tinau, departed that same morning, but Jaf Otnal remained at the country house. So—to his chagrin, for he had hoped to spend the rest of his extended leave of absence enjoying his friend’s company in solitude—did the Eraasian conspirator, Diasul. Elek played the contra-cithara for hours at a time, while Diasul and Jaf walked about the grounds during the day and read the information text-channels in the evenings. Diasul talked about his life on Eraasi, his ambitions as head of a flourishing mercantile house, and his desire to influence planetary politics. Jaf found it all exquisitely boring.
One evening he took Elek aside. “Is there some reason why that man is still here? You never speak to him, and the Oldest knows I don’t want to.”
“Diasul is clearing his mind before he speaks with his brother,” Elek replied. “The Mages can’t read minds that I know of, but a talented one can tell if you’re lying about something—and where family is concerned, even a little talented could be enough. You’re also providing a distraction to cover the activities of our two other friends, who’ve been setting things in motion elsewhere. You’ve been under daily surveillance, in case you didn’t know.”
Jaf hadn’t. “How?” he asked. He’d thought that the country house was too remote for eavesdroppers—had suspected Elek of choosing it for that reason.
“From above. Anywhere there’s a sky, the star-lords can look down to observe and record, if they think they’ve got a reason. You haven’t written anything about this matter and left it lying by a window in daylight, have you?”
“No,” said Jaf. Elek was joking, he decided, but there was enough truth in the jest to make him uncomfortable. “There’s nothing in writing at all.”
Several days later, near the end of Jaf’s visit, the conspirator named Oska returned, this time bringing with him another, younger man. Dinner that night—Jaf’s last evening at the country house—was a formal affair, at which Oska introduced his companion, Syr Seyo Hannet of the League of Unallied Shippers.
“I must confess,” Elek said after a sip of wine, “that I have never heard of the League of Unallied Shippers.”
Seyo laughed. “They’re my own invention. And empty, at the moment. But I have one family of star-lords who will be the core of the movement, and another who will join. More families will come later, and faults will develop in their cozy system. Suspicion will grow from there until the first atrocity will make everyone call for blood.”
Jaf looked at Seyo dubiously. “Who guarantees that we’ll get an atrocity when we need one?”
“Such things can be arranged,” said Seyo. “I’ve talked with a fleet-family pensioner or two, and I have all the details of their little games. A ship will vanish, and its crew with it—the work of outlaw raiders, undoubtedly, the sort of rascals that the fleet-families hunt down themselves whenever they get the chance. Another ship, from another family, will arrive shortly after with the missing cargo, and not be able to explain how they got it. The rest—” Seyo shrugged. “It’s all in the play of the hand.”
“A clever plan,” Elek conceded. “But how do you intend to implement it?”
“Two faked cargoes,” Seyo explained. “Observe. A family—sus-Peledaen for example—accepts and transports a load. It is all serial-marked material, and a copy of the manifest stays at their offices. But that cargo—manifested, noted, inventoried, and logged though it may be—never actually goes aboard. What does go on that sus-Peledaen ship in those boxes is a bomb, timed to remove that ship without a trace during its transit through the Void.”
Elek began to smile. “I see. And I take it that the cargo that should have gone aboard the sus-Peledaen ship is actually aboard the craft of one of the families in your League of Unallied Shippers?”
“Exactly,” said Seyo. “They take off with it, all unknowing. When they arrive at their destination, they have with them the cargo they loaded aboard—but the firm they contracted to deliver it to has gone out of business! They follow customary practice and sell that cargo to the highest bidder, at which time the serial numbers are revealed. The sus-Peledaen find out—how could they not, since we’ll be ready to tell them if necessary? —and the Unallied Shipper’s logs are examined. They do not bear the signatures for incidents of piracy and boarding. In fact, the ship’s captain and crew deny having seen the other craft, far less stealing from them.”
“Tricky,” said Jaf approvingly.
“It gets better,” Seyo assured him. “The fleet-families will have started building warships by then, and they’ll be eager to use them. Once one family loses a ship to another—or thinks it does—they’ll feel honor-bound to fight.”
 
 
The vee-craft and the armed flyer had come from the west, or at least had returned in that direction after ambushing the ground vehicles. Garrod considered the possibilities for a while, and turned his footsteps east. He hiked parallel to the road, keeping it in sight but being careful to stay off of it, as the days stretched into a week.
One night, a red glow suffused the sky to the east. To Garrod, it looked like a distant city burning. The road wasn’t deserted after that. Vehicles remained few, but there was a steady flow of foot traffic—people, young and old, carrying all that they possessed, walking with a trudging hopelessness, their eyes fixed on the road ahead of them.
Refugees,
Garrod thought. Eraasi had not experienced the phenomenon during his lifetime, but he had seen pictures and had read the historical accounts.
He pondered the situation for some time. The way of caution would be to return at once through the Void to Eraasi—he had already made enough observations to prove his point about the existence of living worlds on the far side of the interstellar gap. But he had not yet gained all the information he needed to make return navigation sure. Nor had he broken his family altars in order to be cautious.
That evening after dark, he buried most of his gear beneath a pile of stones a little distance off the road, and approached a small group of refugees. He hoped that in the general confusion his lack of language skills wouldn’t work against him. If he approached someone sufficiently downhearted, he would not himself be in great physical danger.
He chose to approach a group of three—a woman carrying an infant child, and an older man, perhaps the woman’s father—as they camped, ragged and dirty, beside a stone wall near the roadside. He observed them from a distance first, sizing them up as he waited outside the circle of light from their fire.
He was close enough to hear them talking. He didn’t recognize the language, which was unsurprising; nevertheless, he derived a certain gratification from noting that all the sounds they produced fell within the known capabilities of the human vocal apparatus. He was considering how to approach their camp without seeming vulnerable or worth robbing, but at the same time without appearing threatening, when matters moved beyond his control.
A younger man entered the camp from the direction of the road. He wore clean clothing in a single color—livery of some sort, Garrod suspected, like that worn in the fleet-families—and held an object in his right hand that Garrod considered likely to be a weapon. He spoke sharply, in a loud tone of voice, and gestured with the weapon-object.
The young woman screamed, then began to cry softly, cuddling her baby. The older man spoke in reply, hands clasped in front of him, eyes on the ground.
The young man stepped up beside the older one, and placed the weapon against the other’s head. He repeated his command, loudly but briefly. The older man began to speak again, a soft, tumbling rush of words. To Garrod it seemed that he was begging for mercy, or perhaps praying to an unseen deity.
There comes a time to observe,
Garrod thought,
and another to act.
He stepped forward and smashed his staff against the young man’s back, parallel to the ground, about the level where the fellow’s kidneys would be if he were human. The young man flung his arms wide, his head back, and grunted with pain. Garrod put his staff in front of the other’s neck, and pulled backward.
The weapon in the man’s hand fired a beam of greenish light. Grass and brush smouldered where the line of light touched. Garrod continued to pull. The man went limp. The weapon stopped glowing and dropped from his hand.

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