Debra Doyle & James MacDonald - Mageworlds 02 - Starpilot's Grave

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Prologue; pleyver: flatlands
Darkness had fallen over the city. Light from the streetlamps lay in stark white circles against the
warehouse walls, with pools of blackness falling in between. Overhead, the fixed star of High
Station-Pleyver’s giant orbiting spaceport-burned down through the skyglow. No one saw Owen
Rosselin-Metadi pass by like an unheeded thought, skirting the edges of the lamplight and pausing to
catch his breath in the safety of the dark.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been running. Hours, it felt like-ever since leaving his sister back at
Florrie’s Place, in an upper room where the acrid stink of blaster fire mingled with the heavier smell of
blood. He didn’t think anybody had followed him out of there; he’d put most of his remaining energy into
staying unseen, and Beka had taken care of the rest.
Owen didn’t like the favor he’d asked from her, that she take on the risk of drawing away the
armed pursuit, and he didn’t particularly like himself for asking it. But Bee was a survivor, the kind who
could fight her way from Florrie’s to the port quarter and blast off leaving a legend behind her. He’d seen
that much clearly; far more clearly, in fact, than the outcome of his own business on Pleyver.
Nevertheless, he had lied to her.
Well, not exactly lied. But he had let her think that the datachip he’d given her, packed with
information from the locked comp-files of Flatlands Investment, Ltd., was unique. He’d never mentioned
the other datachip, the one that he’d come to Pleyver to obtain. The information on the second chip
belonged to Errec Ransome, Master of the Adepts’ Guild-or it would if Owen lived long enough to
deliver it.
Maybe I should have given it to Bee.
Owen shook his head. He’d briefly considered asking her, but the presence of her copilot had
killed that idea. The slight, grey-haired man she called the Professor gave Beka an unquestioning
loyalty-that much Owen had perceived without any difficulty-but it was a loyalty that would put Beka first
and the Adepts’ Guild a far-distant second.
No, it was better to let the two of them go their own way. From the look of things, Beka had
kept her promise to distract the ordinary hired help, the ones who did their fighting with blasters and
energy lances. Dodging the others should have been easy, if only he hadn’t been so stupid as to get
caught once already tonight . . .
Owen had shown up outside the portside branch office of Flatlands Investment, Ltd., just before
dusk. He’d hoped to get there earlier, but intercepting Beka at the spaceport and convincing her to
abandon her own designs on the company’s data banks had taken longer than he’d anticipated.
Beka wanted revenge, plain and simple: revenge on whoever had planned their mother’s
assassination and revenge on whoever had paid for it. She’d get it, too; Bee in pursuit of a goal had a
straightforward single-mindedness that made a starship’s jump-run to hyperspace look like a sightseeing
trip. But that same trait could make her dangerous to be around if your purposes and hers happened to
diverge. Owen didn’t think that the Guild’s interest in FIL was going to put him in Beka’s way, but he
didn’t want to chance it.
Besides, he reflected as he approached the grey, slab-sided FIL Building, it was easier for one
person to work unnoticed than for two. He could slip in, get enough from the files to satisfy Master
Ransome and his sister both, and slip out again before Bee was through eating dinner.
The front door of the building was secured by an electronic ID-scan. Owen palmed the lockplate
like any authorized visitor. Inside the mechanism, the electric current flowed through its appointed paths
and channels as the door made ready to reject the identification. Then, without changing his expression or
his physical posture, Owen reached out, using the skills that for more than ten years had made him Errec
Ransome’s most valued-and most valuable-apprentice.
The flow of electrons altered its course. The lock clicked quietly and the door slid open.
A stranger waited in the unlit lobby, a thin, hunched man in the plain garb of a low-level office
worker. Owen tensed, but the man didn’t make any threatening moves.
“I’ve got the password,” the worker said.
Owen paused. He hadn’t expected anyone to be here at all. But he hadn’t sensed any wrongness
as he approached the office building, and the man himself didn’t project any great amount of menace
either. He must be one of Bee’s contacts, Owen decided. He’s certainly the type-his coverall might
as well have a tag on it saying “Disaffected Employee.”
“Well?” he said aloud.
The man licked his lips. “We need to talk about the money first.”
Money . . . Owen knew he shouldn’t feel surprised. His sister was a merchant-captain, and dealt
in the purchase and sale of whatever goods might find a market. But when Owen worked, as now, in the
persona of a down-at-the-heels drifter, he carried as little cash as possible. A spaceport bum with money
was a contradiction in terms.
“I’m just the messenger boy,” Owen said. “You can pick up your fee at the General Delivery
office.” In addition to handling electronic and hardcopy messages, local branches of the giant
communications firm made convenient, no-questions-asked cash drops for all sorts of legal and semilegal
business exchanges. “I’m not authorized to carry cash.”
He braced himself for an objection, and made ready to counter it in much the same way as he
had dealt with the door. He was mildly surprised when the man only nodded, said, “Right,” and began
fishing in the pockets of his coat.
After a few seconds, the man came up with a thin slice of plastic. “The password’s on here.”
He held out the keycard. Owen reached out a hand to take the card, and felt the first undefined
stirrings of premonition as their fingers touched.
Something’s wrong. He ought to have made a fuss about the money.
Owen looked at the man again, this time using the physical contact to enhance his perceptions.
Under that deeper scrutiny, the patterns of the office worker’s consciousness showed up like a dark and
knotted skein, with fear and duplicity and greed tangled into an unlovely network.
Now I see it. He doesn’t mind that he might not get Bee’s money. Somebody else has
already paid him more.
Owen smiled inwardly, though the face he presented to the office worker never changed. Sister
mine, it’s a good thing I came to this party instead of you. You were about to walk into a trap.
He tucked the keycard into the breast pocket of his coverall. Then, in a continuation of the same
movement, his right arm snapped forward, and he smashed the edge of his hand against the bridge of the
other man’s nose. Cartilage and bone crushed inward, and a fine spray of blood misted out.
Owen caught the man as he fell and eased him silently to the floor. On his knees beside the
unconscious man, he searched quickly and methodically through the other’s pockets, but found nothing of
interest except a second keycard, a twin to the first, equally unmarked. He pocketed it and stood up
again. He looked down for a moment at the sprawled form of the office worker. Perhaps the man
would drown in the blood draining from his crushed sinuses, or perhaps not. Owen left the worker there
for those who had hired him, and went about his own business.
He took the emergency stairs, not the lift, to the top floor, and paused briefly before the lockplate
of the office at the end of the hall. The security system here presented no more challenge than the lock on
the outside door. In a moment he was in, with the door closed and secured behind him. He’d probably
taken care of any problems by silencing the man below; if he hadn’t, whoever had set this trap for his
sister would find more in it than they’d expected.
The desk comp had a slot for the keycard. Owen paused for a moment, considering.
Without a physical card in place to complete the circuits, not even an Adept’s tricks could shunt
the electron flow to perform the task he needed. But which card to use? Owen weighed them in his hand,
assessing them as he had the office worker below. One of the cards, the one that he’d been given, felt
limited, probably crippled on purpose. He discarded it without any more thought and switched to the
card he’d taken from the office worker’s pocket.
The password worked. He had Bee’s datachip full within minutes; her need for information was
narrow and specific, and easily supplied. Errec Ransome’s chip took longer. The Master of the Guild
cast his nets wide, and in strange waters, for the welfare of the galaxy’s Adepts.
Errec Ransome had been a junior Adept in the Guildhouse on Ilarna when the Magewar broke
out. Those days had seen slaughter done all across the galaxy, but few places had suffered worse than
Ransome’s home planet. Only Sapne and Entibor had experienced more destruction than Ilarna. Sapne,
depopulated by plagues and reduced to barbarism, had no inhabitants left alive who could remember its
ruined cities in their prime; and Entibor was an orbiting slag heap with nothing living on its surface at all.
Seeing all his friends dead and the Ilarna Guildhouse smashed into rubble, Errec Ransome had
left the Adepts for a time. He had joined the privateers of Innish-Kyl in their hit-and-run war against the
Magelords, fighting other men’s battles for his own purposes. The Mageworlders had been crushed now
for twenty years and more, and Master Ransome had long since returned to the Guild; but his vigilance
never ceased.
Owen completed his second download and withdrew the keycard. And then-
Danger!
The premonition slammed into him full force. His senses clamored with the awareness of enemies
nearby, and he clutched the edge of the desk with both hands.
Danger! Too close-
He lifted his head to looked around the office, and cursed under his breath at his own arrogance
and stupidity.
What had seemed to be alternate exits-windows and an inner door-he saw now were only
illusions, holographic projections with their reality enhanced by his own willingness to believe. The trap
had closed on him in a room with no escape except by the door through which he had entered. He would
have to fight his way out.
He crossed over to the door and put his hand against it, still expecting little more than blaster
bravos and hired thugs, the sort of vermin who were his sister’s enemies. Instead . . .
Worse and worse. His enemies waited for him on the other side. His enemies, and not Beka’s at
all.
Owen paused again in the deeper shadows beside a trash bin and looked around. Still no visible
pursuit. Closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath, he centered himself and cleared his senses as best
he could.
Nobody near. I’ve lost them. I hope.
He couldn’t be certain; he didn’t have enough energy left to make certain and still keep himself
hidden. The fight at the Flatlands Investment Building had taken too much out of him-single-handed and
unarmed against too many opponents, while most of his inner resources were diverted into hiding the
datachips in his coverall pocket.
He’d lost the hand-to-hand fight, but he’d won the other struggle: he still had both datachips
concealed when his enemies dragged him off to Florrie’s Place. There was somebody at Florrie’s, they
gave him to understand, who was slated for the honor of finishing him off.
He’d never expected to find his sister Beka waiting for him at the other end of a blaster. Once he
saw her face, he thought for a few seconds that she was going to kill him after all. But she shot the guard
instead, and cut another man’s throat, and then surprised Owen even further by agreeing to draw away
the inevitable pursuit.
If Master Ransome’s datachip ever made it back home to Galcen, Owen reflected, it would be
mostly Beka’s work. For his own part, he’d been half-blind from the moment he came here.
The blindness wasn’t entirely his fault, he supposed. The enemy must have been clouding his
vision ever since he showed up on Pleyver-the old enemy, the ones who had laid siege to the planet of
Entibor for three years, and not abandoned it until Entibor was dead; who had broken every fleet the
civilized worlds had sent against them except the last; who had massacred the Adepts of Ilarna and half a
hundred other planets besides.
There were Mages on Pleyver, and not mere apprentices or self-taught dabblers in the ways of
power. The great Magelords had returned.
part one
i . nammerin: namport; space force medical station
galcen: the retreat
WHEN THE courier ship from Galcen Prime arrived on Nammerin, a light but steady rain
covered the entire Namport landing field like a fine mist. Lieutenant Ari Rosselin-Metadi ducked out
through the hatch of the courier, cast a resigned glance upward at the low grey sky, and climbed down
the steep ramp to the ground.
The metal creaked under his boots as he descended. Along with his father’s dark hair and his late
mother’s elegantly chiseled features, Ari had inherited the size and strength of some unknown ancestor on
the Metadi, or spaceport-mongrel, side of the family. As a result, he was considerably taller and heavier
than the average Space Force trooper the ramp was designed to support.
With both feet planted on the tarmac, he reached up a hand to steady the courier’s other
passenger as she emerged. It wasn’t a long stretch; his head brushed the side of the courier vessel in spite
of the landing legs that raised the ship a good seven feet off the ground. His traveling companion-a short,
brown-skinned woman with long black hair twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck-took the offered
hand and paused for a moment in the open hatch.
“Rain,” she said. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Because it always rains in Namport,” said Ari. “The Space Force ‘Welcome to Nammerin’
booklet says that this part of the planet has a wet season and a dry season, but that’s a lie. The only two
seasons I’ve ever noticed are rainy and rainier.”
The young woman laughed and jumped down to the tarmac, ignoring the ramp completely. Ari
didn’t feel her weight as she came down, even though her small, trim body carried more muscle than the
appreciative eye might suspect. She’d taken his hand as a courtesy only, and he knew it.
Like Ari, the woman wore the uniform of a member of the Space Force Medical Service, but
where he wore a lieutenant’s bars, she wore no marks of rank at all. Mistress Llannat Hyfid was an
Adept, and while the rules of her Guild allowed her to serve in the Republic’s Space Force, they barred
her from holding formal rank.
As far as anyone could ever tell, Llannat Hyfid accepted her in-between status with cheerful
equanimity. Most of the time, Ari himself almost forgot that she was anything more than a fellow-medic
and a good friend. Almost, but never quite.
He let go her hand as soon as she straightened from the slight crouch in which she had landed.
“Time to collect our baggage before it gets mixed in with the mail sacks,” he said. “Then we can see
about an aircar rental.”
They rescued their carrybags just as the Nammerin Mail hoversled pulled away from the side of
the courier. The aircar rental, though, turned out to be unnecessary. When they got to the spaceport’s
vehicle lot, they found Bors Keotkyra from the medical station waiting for them beside the Med Station
scoutcar. The stocky, fair-haired young officer was flanked by two of the hospital’s senior enlisted
personnel, wearing Ground Patrol brassards.
“I’m impressed,” said Llannat as she and Ari tossed their carrybags into the scoutcar’s cargo
compartment. “Are you people that eager to see us back?”
“The CO wants to talk to both of you,” was Keotkyra’s oblique answer. “Nobody’s sure
whether he wants to kiss you or write you up for Punitive Articles 66 through 134, inclusive.”
“How are the bets going?” asked Ari.
“Even money either way.” Keotkyra peered into the cargo compartment. “Is that all you brought
with you?”
“We left without stopping to pack,” Ari said. “I’ve got ten credits that says we’ll be in official
disgrace before dinnertime.”
“I’m not going to take your money,” said Llannat as they climbed aboard and strapped in.
“Gambling depends on luck-and I quit believing in things like that after I joined the Guild.”
The Medical Station, when they got there, looked almost deserted. At the same time, Ari felt as if
he and Llannat were the focus of a multitude of curious eyes. By the time Keotkyra and the Ground
Patrol escort had finished marching them across the compound to the CO’s office, he’d prepared himself
to face the worst.
As far as anybody at the station knew, Ari and Llannat had last been heard of as a pair of kidnap
victims, seized during an emergency medical call to the far side of the Divider Range and spirited
off-planet by a heavily armed ship with an unprecedented turn of speed. Nobody here knew the truth: the
pilot of the ship had been Ari’s sister Beka-who had already died, officially and messily, in a spaceship
crash on Artat.
Beka hadn’t bothered to ask her older brother if he’d like to join her in tracking down the men
who had planned and hired out their mother’s murder. She’d snatched him away from the Space Force
without asking anybody’s permission, least of all his own; and now that she was done with him she’d left
him on his own to straighten out the mess.
Ari paused outside the door of the office and looked over at Llannat. The Adept had a nervous,
intent expression on her face, as if she were listening for something too faint for others to hear.
“Well?” he asked. Llannat had “heard” things before, apparently pulling knowledge straight out of
the air; she’d saved his life that way at least once.
But this time she gave a helpless shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Behind them, Bors Keotkyra cleared his throat.
Ari glanced over his shoulder at their escort. “All right,” he said. “We can take a hint.”
Ari palmed the doorplate and the panels slid apart. The office looked just as it had the last time
he’d stepped across the threshold, several months before. Printout flimsies covered the desk like fallen
leaves, the CO’s pet sand snake drowsed atop the office safe, and the CO himself wore his habitual
expression of gentle regret.
He also wore his dress uniform-something that happened at the Nammerin Medical Station about
as often as a month without earthquakes. Ari snapped to attention. That settles it. They’re going to
throw the book at us.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Llannat standing at attention beside him. Her left hand
brushed the short silver-and-ebony staff clipped to her belt, and Ari felt a moment’s flash of envy. She
doesn’t have to worry; even if she gets reduced in grade all the way down to a spacer recruit,
she’s still Mistress Hyfid, and the Guild takes care of its own.
That wasn’t fair, of course. Llannat hadn’t chosen to get caught up in his sister Beka’s half-mad
quest for vengeance. The Adept had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, that was all; and if
Master Ransome could spare her any of the consequences, Ari promised himself he wouldn’t begrudge
her the good luck.
Caught up in his thoughts, he barely noticed when the CO rose and said, “Follow me.” It took a
cough from Bors to get the whole procession moving again. They left the office by the side door, and
marched back across the compound to the Main Supply Dome.
If protocol hadn’t required that Ari keep his face expressionless, he would have frowned in
puzzlement. Busting a couple of junior officers for Unauthorized Absence doesn’t need a building
big enough to park a spaceship.
Then the doors of the supply dome opened.
The crates and boxes normally held in Main Supply had been shoved aside. Where they had
been, in the center of the dome, all Ari could see was dress uniforms lined up in formation.
I don’t believe it, he thought. They’ve turned out everybody but Intensive Care and the gate
guards.The CO stepped up to a lectern facing the assembled ranks and nodded to the chief
master-at-arms.
“Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi and Mistress Hyfid,” the master-at-arms called out, “front and
center!”
This is it, Ari thought, as he and Llannat took their places in front of the lectern and came to
attention. They’re going to make a public example of us “for the good of the service.” Maybe I
should have asked Father to take care of things after all.
But he’d never in his career asked for favors because he was General Jos Metadi’s oldest son,
and his father had never insulted him by making such an offer. Jos Metadi had begun his climb to rank
and respectability as a privateer-some of his enemies said as an out-and-out pirate-and his ethics
remained, to say the least, flexible; but on that subject father and son were in agreement. Ari squared his
shoulders and prepared to take what was coming to him.
If they throw us out, he thought, I can always see if the Quincunx needs a couple of
representatives back on Maraghai.
Ari’s honorary membership in the civilized galaxy’s largest criminal guild-an unintended
byproduct of the Med Station’s need to obtain a supply of tholovine faster than normal Supply channels
could operate-was a secret he devoutly hoped his superiors in the Space Force didn’t share. When a
simple business deal involving the exchange of cash for a perfectly legal but hard-to-obtain drug had
degenerated into arson and armed pursuit, Ari had expended considerable creative thought on keeping
the Brotherhood’s role out of the official reports. He’d never expected that the Quincunx would be
grateful, or that their gratitude might come in handy later.
The CO glanced down at a sheet of heavy paper resting on the lectern, then looked back at Ari
and Llannat.
“Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi, Mistress Hyfid, it is my extremely pleasant duty to inform you that
you have both been awarded the Space Force Achievement Medal.”
Ari heard Llannat’s breath catch and become irregular as she fought the urge to laugh. The
Achievement Medal was the smallest award the Space Force had the power to bestow, ranking even
below the Good Conduct Badge. It meant only that the recipient had completed four satisfactory years of
active duty. It also implied, to the initiated, that the officer giving the award was mildly surprised that this
should be so.
For his own part, Ari felt a perverse indignation. If they’re not going to break us, he
wondered, why are they going out of their way to insult us?
The CO looked down at the lectern again for a moment, and then went on. “The citation for this
award,” he said, “cannot be read aloud at this time, because it is classified. It is, in fact, classified at such
a high level that I myself am not cleared to read it. The name of the classification level is also classified.”
He paused, and looked out over the assembly before going on. “I am allowed, however, to say
that the award was signed by none other than the Head of the Grand Council.”
I should have known Father would do something whether I asked him to or not, thought
Ari, as the CO stepped in front of the lectern to shake first his hand and then Llannat’s. He must have
called in some debts from a long way back to get this-there’s no way he could have told anyone
the truth.
A bellowed command from the master-at-arms signaled the end of the official part of the
festivities. The dress-uniformed ranks broke up, revealing a loaded buffet table behind them. The
half-melted ice sculpture in the center of the table could have been either a spaceship or a shooting star,
but the trays and plates spread out around it were unmistakably food.
“Broiled groundgrubs,” Ari heard Llannat murmuring in the dreamy tones of one who has been
too long on space rations. “Tusker-ox riblets. Pickled gubbstucker.”
“Go ahead,” said the CO. “Help yourselves. After all, you’re the guests of honor.”
Several minutes later, Ari had a heaping plate of Nammerinish delicacies in one hand and a glass
of the locally distilled purple aqua vitae in the other. He made his way through groups of well-wishers to
the stacks of boxes at the edge of the cleared area. Llannat was already there, working on a dish of the
broiled groundgrubs. A bottle of Tree Frog beer rested on a packing crate near her hand, and most of
the station’s junior officers clustered around her.
Bors Keotkyra lifted his bottle in a toast as Ari approached. “Here’s to the returning heroes,” he
said. “Whatever you did, it must have been exciting.”
Ari exchanged glances with Llannat. He was no Adept like his brother Owen, who could see
another’s ideas almost before they took shape, but it didn’t take any particular gift to know that the
thoughts behind the young woman’s dark eyes were echoes of his own-memories of blood and death
and treachery, of his sister Beka reborn as the one-eyed starpilot Tarnekep Portree, of black smoke
rising from the Citadel on Darvell.
He blinked hard to clear the images away, and took a long swallow of the aqua vitae.
“Yes,” he said to Bors, as the astringent fumes of the liquor chased the last of the pictures back
where they belonged. “It was more exciting than it strictly needed to be.”
The Adepts’ Retreat on Galcen stood on an outcrop of grey rock in the mountains of the planet’s
northern hemisphere. Over the centuries the massive, high-walled structure had been fortress and
storehouse and hermitage by turns, and even among the Adepts, not many knew its true age. Other
planets had their Guildhouses, where Adepts could live and study and go about their tasks-but the
Retreat on Galcen was the heart of it all.
To study at the Retreat was a privilege granted to very few, to teach there, an honor granted to
even fewer. For Owen Rosselin-Metadi, who had done both, the Retreat was home. The longer he had
been away, the more its high grey walls seemed to beckon to him on his return, promising shelter and the
company of friends and a chance to let go of the everlasting watchfulness that his work demanded.
This time, as always, he left his rented aircar in the valley below and went the rest of the way on
foot. He could have stayed in town and called for someone to come get him-the Retreat had excellent
aircar and comm link connections, and the hike up from Treslin was an all-day proposition-but he
preferred not to advertise his comings and goings.
The apprentice Adept who stopped him at the gate was new since Owen had left for Pleyver,
and painfully young-looking. The boy can’t be a day over sixteen, Owen thought, forgetting for the
moment that he had come to the Retreat himself when he was even younger. Master Ransome is really
robbing the cradle these days.
The apprentice couldn’t have been long on gate duty, either. He stumbled over the traditional
greeting. “Welcome, friend. What is your name, and have you-have you-”
“ ‘-have you come to seek instruction?’ ” Owen finished for him. “My name’s Owen, and I’m an
apprentice in the Guild already. Could you tell Master Ransome that I’ve come back?”
The youth stared at him for a moment. Owen wasn’t particularly surprised by the reaction. It
wasn’t often that an apprentice showed up at the Retreat looking like an out-of-work day laborer and
asking for the Master of the Guild by name.
“Uh-right,” said the boy after a pause. “You wait here and-I mean, let me call somebody to take
you to him.”
Owen waited patiently while the apprentice spoke over a comm link to an unfamiliar voice farther
inside the Retreat. In time another, somewhat older apprentice showed up. Owen didn’t remember her,
either. He let her lead the way through the stone-walled passages to the room that served Master
Ransome as an office. Like everything else about the Retreat, the room was immeasurably old-so old that
its tall, narrow windows had no panes, not even glass ones. In the wintertime, a force field kept out the
driving wind and snow, and a ceramic heat bar glowed on the granite hearth. But this was summer; the
hearth was bare, and a cool breeze blew through the chamber unimpeded.
A slight, dark-haired man dressed in tunic and trousers of dull black stood at one of the
windows, looking out. The apprentice cleared her throat.
“Master Ransome. An apprentice calling himself Owen is here to-”
She got no further than the name before the man turned. At the sight of Owen, Ransome’s face
broke into a smile of delight that made him look twenty years younger. He strode forward and clasped
Owen tightly by the shoulders.
“It’s good to see you home,” he said.
Owen returned the hug. “Believe me, sir, it’s good to be here.”
The apprentice spoke up again, somewhat diffidently. “Will you need anything else?”
“Not at the moment,” Ransome told her.
As soon as she had left, the Master of the Guild drew Owen over to a pair of chairs beside the
empty hearth. The momentary happiness that had passed across Ransome’s features was already fading,
leaving his face as somber and weary as before.
Owen saw the change come and go, and felt a chill, like the feather of some dark bird drawn
across the back of his neck. Errec Ransome was a good ten years younger than Owen’s father, but there
was something about him these days that made him look all of General Metadi’s years and more.
“I’d almost given you up for dead this time,” Ransome said as soon as they both were seated.
“And Jos was starting to ask some awkward questions.”
All trace of welcome was gone now. If Owen hadn’t seen the Guild Master’s momentary change
of expression and felt the strength of his embrace, he would have stiffened himself to endure a spectacular
tongue-lashing, as befitted an apprentice who’d fallen below his expected standard.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I almost got caught.”
He looked away for a moment at the bare stone of the hearth-some of the memories from
Pleyver were still vivid enough to be painful-then turned his head back to meet Ransome’s dark, inquiring
gaze. “I did get caught, in fact. My own stupid fault, and if Beka hadn’t been in town I’d never have
gotten away. I couldn’t make it off-planet, though; I had to hide out dirtside until everybody forgot about
me. It took a while.”
Ransome smiled, a quirk of the mouth that scarcely touched his eyes. “That’s an
understatement,” he said. “We have apprentices at the Retreat who’ve never seen your face-two
seasons’ worth of them at least.”
“I know; I met a couple of them just now. A bit young, aren’t they?”
“No more than the usual,” Ransome told him. “You, of course, are about to grow a long grey
beard.” Owen gave a short laugh. “After the last few months, I feel like it.”
He paused, hating to destroy the Guild Master’s good humor, however faint-but it had to be
done. He drew a breath and went on. “They were Magelords, you know, on Pleyver.”
Master Ransome’s features grew very still, and his dark eyes seemed to focus on something long
ago and far away. “So,” he said. “It begins again.”
“I’m afraid so,” Owen said. “We’re not dealing with half-trained agents smuggled through the
Net to do a bit of spying, or with a few talented locals who’ve put together a Mage-Circle out of what
they’ve seen in the holovids. At least one of them on Pleyver was a Great Magelord in the old style-as
strong by himself as any Adept I’ve ever known, even without the power of the others to back him.”
“The First of their Circle, he would have been,” said Ransome. “If they’re working as they did in
the old days.” His voice sounded as though he had tasted something bitter. “How did you slip past?”
Owen shook his head. “I didn’t. I spent the past two seasons on Pleyver working as a cargo
handler down at the spacedocks. Eventually the First gave up looking for me, and the rest of them
weren’t strong enough to give me any trouble.”
“The First gave up looking for you,” Ransome said. “Do you have any idea what happened to
make him stop?”
“No,” Owen said. “But the whole time he was looking for me I could feel it, even in my sleep.
Once or twice he backed off a bit, trying to fool me into making a run for the port, but he was too strong
to be very good at hiding. Then one day he just wasn’t around anymore.”
“Off-planet?”
Owen sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe. But Pleyver wasn’t a total loss, anyway. I still have this.”
He pulled the datachip out of the breast pocket of his coverall and handed it to Master Ransome.
“I thought about smuggling it out to you,” he said, “but I couldn’t think of any way safer than
carrying it myself.”
Ransome’s hand closed over the coin-sized slice of plastic. Another time, Owen thought, he
would have looked pleased; but now he barely seemed to notice that he held it. “Is the information still
good?” “Most of it, I think.” Owen leaned back in his chair and gave a tired sigh. The datachip had
weighed on him more than he’d known. This was the first time in months that he didn’t have it
somewhere on his person, and its absence left him feeling almost light-headed. “There’s a lot of trade and
economic data-it looks like we’ve got stuff crossing the border zone into the Mageworlds that would give
the Grand Council fits if they knew about it-plus a bunch of encrypted files I didn’t have time to break.”
He paused. “There were some other files that had to do with what happened to Mother. I gave
those to Beka.”
“Was that wise?” Ransome asked. “Your sister is headstrong, to say the least. The rumors I’ve
been hearing say a good deal more than that.”
“She’s also Domina of Entibor now that Mother is dead-whether she wants the title or not. If
anybody has a right to those files, it’s Bee.”
Owen studied Ransome’s dubious expression for a minute and then added, “If she hadn’t drawn
off the armed pursuit, you probably wouldn’t have your data right now. And the fact that all those files
were taken while she was on planet may have sown some useful doubts about exactly who was looking
for what in FIL’s data banks.”
Ransome nodded slowly and tucked the datachip into an inside pocket of his black tunic. “A
persuasive argument,” he said. “And I am grateful, both to her and to you. But I need you to go out again
as soon as possible . . . we have another situation that needs attention.”
Owen’s heart sank. He could feel his longed-for time of quiet safety receding before him like a
wave drawing back from the beach. But he was Master Ransome’s apprentice, and had promised long
ago that he would serve.
“How soon?” he asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“I was hoping to stay here through the fall and winter at least,” Owen protested. “Teaching a bit,
maybe, and meditating. After all those months hiding out on Pleyver, I’m so jumpy I twitch whenever the
wind changes.”
“We don’t have that kind of time left, I’m afraid,” said Ransome. His voice was firm, in spite of
the regret and weariness in his dark eyes. “The wind has changed already, and the storm is coming
sooner than anyone thinks.”
Ari had been back at the Med Station for over a week before he remembered to drop by the
station post office and pick up his accumulated mail. Being himself a dutiful, rather than an enthusiastic,
correspondent, he didn’t expect to find anything of particular interest waiting there for him.
The crew member on duty had been at the awards ceremony with everyone else. He handed Ari
a mixed bundle of printout flimsies and sealed envelopes with nothing more than a half-apologetic
“You’ve been gone awhile, so the junk messages had a chance to pile up.”
Ari glanced at the top item in the stack-a four-color 3-D flyer announcing a special bargain rate
on the purchase of ten or more cases of Tree Frog beer.
“They certainly have,” he said, tossing the flyer into the trash-disposal unit. He hadn’t felt the
same about Tree Frog beer since the affair with the Quincunx, when somebody had tried to poison him
by slipping mescalomide into a bottle of Export Dark. The gaudy little advertisement made an unpleasant
reminder of a night that had begun with fire and attempted murder, and had ended with Llannat Hyfid
fighting a black-masked Mage assassin for Ari’s life.
That particular enemy was long dead, but Llannat herself had said once that the Mages preferred
to work in groups . . . Ari growled an oath deep in his throat, and distracted himself by sorting through
the rest of his mail at the counter instead of taking it to his quarters.
He recycled five more advertising flyers and the catalog of a firm dealing in exotic herbs; scanned
the printout flimsies notifying him of private messages in the electronic files (three from his father and one
from Beka’s old school chum Jilly Oldigaard, all six months out of date); and set aside for later reading
an equally outdated but probably still amusing letter from his friend Nyls Jessan, formerly of the
Nammerin Medical Station and last officially heard from at the Space Force Clinic and Recruitment
Center on Pleyver.
That left the newest item in the stack, a plain envelope with a local postmark and no return
address-just his own name and Space Force directing codes, written in a light, even hand.
Ari worked at the sealed envelope with his thumbnail. Namport’s moist equatorial climate had
already weakened the adhesive; after only a little urging the flap peeled back and he was able to extract
the square of cheap paper inside.
The letter had no salutation and no signature, and only three neatly lettered sentences:
If you think you see me, you’re mistaken. It’s somebody else; I’m not here. Stick with Mistress
Hyfid and stay out of trouble.
Even if the handwriting hadn’t been familiar, Ari thought, the elliptical style would have been a
dead giveaway. Out of the entire population of the civilized galaxy, only his brother Owen habitually
addressed him with that kind of half-condescending obscurity.
Frowning, Ari tore the envelope and the note into confetti-sized pieces, then dropped the scraps
into the trash disposal unit. “Stick with Mistress Hyfid and stay out of trouble,” he quoted glumly to
himself. Good advice . . . but I don’t think it’s going to help me very much.
ii. the net: warhammer; mageworlds border zone: rsf karipavo
“CAPTAIN.”
“Mmh?” Beka didn’t look up from the comp console. Damned Space Force paper pushers;
this checklist is longer than all of Councilor Tarveet’s speeches pasted together.
“Captain, it’s late.”
She nodded absently and flipped to the next screen. “Mm-hm.”
“Captain-”
The change in tone caught her attention. She blinked, wiped a hand across eyes gone bleary from
too long at the console, and leaned back in her chair to look at the speaker for the first time.
Warhammer’s gunner/copilot looked back at her in mild concern. Nyls Jessan-lean and
fair-haired, with light grey eyes and pleasant if unremarkable features-had the appearance of a small-time
free spacer in a dangerous part of the galaxy, all the way down to the war-surplus blaster.
But appearances could be deceiving, especially where Jessan was concerned. Her partner spoke
Standard Galcenian with an upper-class Khesatan accent; he played cards and handled weapons like a
professional; and he’d abandoned a perfectly good career in the Space Force Medical Service to join
Beka on Warhammer after her old copilot had died in the fighting on Darvell.
A man of many talents, is our Jessan, she thought, and smiled in spite of herself. “Now I’m
listening. What’s the problem?”
“You,” he said. “You’ve been working over that checklist since 0400, and Warhammer’s not
going to get any cleaner than she already is. It’s time you got some sleep.”
“Is that what you had in mind . . . sleep?”
“Absolutely,” Jessan assured her, straight-faced.
She hesitated a moment, watching him, and then shook her head with a faint sigh. “We can’t
afford to fail our blockade inspection just because some busybody in a Space Force uniform decides that
I haven’t done my paperwork right.”
“Let me handle it,” he offered. “I’m used to the style.”
“No. If I’m going to sign for something, I want to make all the mistakes myself.”
He shrugged and stretched out on the padded acceleration couch on the other side of the
common room. “Fine, then. I’ll stay up and keep you company.”
“Your choice,” she said.
She turned back to the screen and worked diligently for a few minutes until a faint snore broke
the silence behind her. She glanced over at the couch. Jessan’s head had fallen back against the cushions
and his eyes were closed.
摘要：

Prologue;pleyver:flatlandsDarknesshadfallenoverthecity.Lightfromthestreetlampslayinstarkwhitecirclesagainstthewarehousewalls,withpoolsofblacknessfallinginbetween.Overhead,thefixedstarofHighStation-Pleyver’sgiantorbitingspaceport-burneddownthroughtheskyglow.NoonesawOwenRosselin-Metadipassbylikeanunhe...

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