The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 Read online

  He thought about it for a moment and added, “I hope Mamma gets to watch.”

  They left the counter and made their way to the outbound shuttle lock. One other passenger waited there, a stout and prosperous-looking man in Galcenian-style clothing.

  Jens recognized Terrel Bruhn—a distant acquaintance of his foster-parents, a trader in rarities and luxury goods who made his home in one of the domed cities on Maraghai’s moon, and visited the planetary surface from time to time. Bruhn wasn’t a full-member of any clan that Jens knew of, and if he had the “Permanent Return Allowed” stamp on his passport, he’d never bothered to claim the privilege.

  “Good morning to you,” Bruhn said. “Off chasing fame like all the other youngsters?”

  “We’re headed for Eraasi,” Faral said. “Everybody says that’s where the interesting stuff is happening these days. But if we trip over some fame along the way—”

  “Better to leave it lying where you found it,” Bruhn said, “if you get the chance.” The trader looked serious for a moment. “I fought in the war, you know, and I found out something about fame, and what it’ll buy.”

  *Thin-skins,* Chaka muttered.

  “It’s different for Selvaurs,” Bruhn told her. “But most of the famous people I knew were famous for the way they got killed, and two weeks later, no one remembered their names.”

  “We’ll bear that in mind,” Jens promised. “Because I, for one, intend to live a long time and be truly memorable.”

  Bruhn chuckled. “Watch it when you say things like that, boy. You never can tell what might be listening.”

  Then the door to the shuttle lock cycled open, and the conversation ended.

  On the far side of the sector, a chittering info-rat noted an atypical transaction in the account of one of the Worthy Lineages, and went off to report its findings. Soon the news had come to the Guildhouse on Khesat that the youngest member of the Jessani line was drawing on the family account, and that the draw-down had been enough to cover a spaceship passage for three.

  Noted, read the corresponding entry in the Guildhouse’s Private intelligence log. Under advisement.

  III. Ophel

  THE OLD Quarter in Sombrelír lay on the opposite side of the city from the spaceport. Tourists desirous of exploring the Quarter’s narrow, brick-paved streets and handkerchief-sized parks had to abandon their flivvers and hovercars for more archaic modes of transportation at the edge of the modern business district.

  A surprising number of them made the effort. Ophel—falling as it did between the Mageworlds and the rest of the civilized galaxy—presented an exotic face to travelers from both sides of the Gap. The First Magewar had seen the isolated world prosper as a trading and transshipment point for raiding ships from the Eraasian hegemony. Later, in the decades leading up to the Second War, Ophel had provided the blockaded worlds with access—however restricted—to galactic technology and culture. Through it all, the Ophelans had grown wealthy by keeping neutral.

  Twenty years of genuine, if sometimes unsettled, peace had increased Ophel’s importance as a trade and communications nexus. Merchants and bankers from all parts of the civilized galaxy met to make their trades and cut their deals in Sombrelír. Between negotiations, they refreshed themselves in the enjoyment of those unique art forms—musical, culinary, and others even more exotic—that had grown up in the tension and isolation of earlier times.

  Bindweed & Blossom’s was a tea shop near the center of the Old Quarter. The shop occupied the bottom front of one of the Quarter’s handsome stucco houses, and the proprietors occupied the rest.

  The pair of elderly but still handsome women who ran the shop had been serving tisanes and pastries to discerning guests ever since the end of the First War. Business folk from central Sombrelír came to Bindweed & Blossom’s every afternoon to drink sweetgrass tea and discuss politics. Shoppers from the smaller towns paused in midday to rest their feet and nibble on filled finger buns before heading back into the press. Even galactic travelers up from the port ventured inside to sample the local delicacies. A brass plaque beside the front door indicated that a number of languages were spoken within, and all varieties of cash accepted.

  This morning the shop opened its doors on time as usual. The Sombrelír/Port-Antipode suborbital shuttle rumbled skyward on the other side of the city, the front door of the tea shop opened, and Gentlelady Bindweed came striding down the walk to hang out the NOW SERVING sign on the wrought-iron gate.

  Something of a mystery, was Bindweed. The lean, elegant woman with the mop of iron-grey curls had answered to what was clearly an alias for as long as the inhabitants of the Old Quarter had known her. Where she had come from, and what she had done with her life before settling down, “in retirement,” as she put it, to sell penny nutcakes and other dainty nibble-bits, she had never bothered to say.

  In point of fact, Bindweed was Ophelan born and bred—although the same couldn’t be said of her partner, whose voice carried traces of Lost Entibor. The two were nearly inseparable, however, and were well known to the merchants in the fresh-goods markets of the Quarter, who supplied the tea shop with all of its perishable supplies.

  This morning, with the sign duly put in place, Bindweed returned to the interior of the shop. The main room was bright and fresh, with white tablecloths and crisp starched curtains, and the odors of yeast and spices added piquancy to the air. She straightened the tablecloth on the nearest table, more out of habit than actual need, and repositioned the bowl of flowers in the center. Then she continued into the tea shop’s kitchen, a homey place half-visible through the arched doorway from the tables outside. Blossom—a small, thin woman whose efficient bearing contrasted oddly with her chosen by-name—was already taking the first tray of sweet biscuits out of the big stove.

  Bindweed went over to the gleaming steel urn on the counter and poured herself a first-of-the-morning ration of strong black cha’a in a delicate bone cup. The shop had a menu of teas and tisanes longer than the wine lists of some local restaurants, but no one had ever seen Bindweed drink any of them.

  “What’s the news?” she asked her partner.

  Blossom glanced over at the readout screen set into the kitchen wall, where it couldn’t be seen from the main dining room. The display showed a list of portside shipping schedules. “Liberty’s End is due in this morning. Do we have anything on her?”

  “A five-percenter. Nothing that’s going to make us rich.”

  “Enough of them, and they’ll add up,” Blossom said. “There’s three other merchantmen due in, too, and a passenger liner making connections for Eraasi. A good day for travelers, maybe.”

  “We’ll put on an extra tray of buns,” Bindweed decided. “Something sweet. Parchants, do you think?”

  “Only if we serve them with sugared berry-root. Shall I start a bit going?”

  Before Bindweed could answer, the chimes above the front door rang to announce an arrival: Gentlesir Thalban, most likely, stopping by on the way to his shop across the square. He liked to arrive before any of his employees, and he liked a steamed fouma to eat beforehand. Bindweed picked one up from its warmer on the stove and hastened out into the main room to meet their first customer of the morning.

  Faral Hyfid-Metadi stood with his cousin Jens on the observation deck of the passenger liner Bright-Wind-Rising, watching the world of Ophel swing beneath them. The huge blue and green planet filled the viewport, its glittering, cloud-streaked surface brilliant in the light of the local sun, and dark like black velvet on the side of the globe beyond the sunset line.

  So this is where Granda’s privateers caught the Mageworlds treasure-fleet.

  He almost said as much aloud, but thought better of the idea. Simply because the Ophelan run had made Jos Metadi’s name ring out from Galcen to Maraghai didn’t mean the folks down below at the time had approved of it. The data files in main ship’s memory—or, at any rate, in those parts of ship’s memory available to the text readers in the p
assenger cabins—didn’t say whether the subject was one to avoid or not.

  Faral had checked, just in case. He knew that he couldn’t help being an off-worlder, but he didn’t want to make things worse by acting like a boor. If he couldn’t match Jens at High Khesatan elegance, he could at least put forward the impression of being an experienced traveler. The data files had helped some, but not enough.

  “Are you and your cousin planning to go dirtside while the Wind is in port?”

  The speaker was another of the passengers on the observation deck, a youngish, dark-haired man in dusty black. Faral didn’t remember seeing the man before today, but the Wind carried so many people on board that he wasn’t surprised he hadn’t yet encountered them all. The phrase “planning to go dirtside” marked him out as a spacer—Aunt Bee talked that way, too, using the same word no matter whether the world in question was a barely civilized outplanet or Galcen itself—so Faral thought the man in black might not be a passenger at all, but part of the ship’s crew.

  “We haven’t decided,” he said. It didn’t take reading the cautions in the data files to know that volunteering one’s itinerary in public was a bad idea.

  “Ah,” said the stranger. “If you like sightseeing, there’s always the Old Quarter. Beautiful architecture there, and nice shops if you want to pick up something besides the usual cheap souvenirs.”

  Jens turned away from the viewport to join the conversation. For a moment, Faral thought that his cousin had already met the man in black—recognition or something like it flickered briefly in his eyes—but he only asked, with the same well-bred blandness he always used around strangers, “Is there some place in particular that you’d recommend?”

  The stranger considered for a moment. “Almost any place in the Quarter is good … but if you’re after small objects of artistic value, Thalban’s is probably the best.”

  Before Faral or Jens could say anything in reply, a bell sounded throughout Bright-Wind-Rising, and a soft alto voice came over the observation deck’s comm system.

  “All passengers are required to return to their cabins for atmospheric entry,” the voice said. It spoke Standard Galcenian with a faint Eraasian lilt. “All passengers are required to return to their cabins for atmospheric entry.”

  The voice switched languages—to Ophelan, Faral supposed, or one of the languages from beyond the Gap—and kept on speaking. At the same time, the SIT DOWN AND STRAP IN glyph began to flash above the viewport, and there was no more time to talk.

  Faral and Jens made their way back to the triple suite they shared with Chaka. The Selvaur was already there and strapped down onto her deceleration couch.

  *About time you showed up.*

  Faral took one of the two remaining couches and began fastening the safety webbing. A sharp jolt ran through the ship as he hurried to get the last of the buckles snapped. Chaka gave a rumbling laugh.

  *Like I was saying … *

  “It’s a reminder,” said Jens—though Faral noted that his cousin hadn’t delayed getting his own webbing into place. “To hurry along the stragglers.”

  Another jolt shook the cabin, and the deckplates beneath the couches began to vibrate.

  “I don’t know,” said Faral. “That feels like the real thing to me.”

  Chaka hooted in agreement. *Read your tickets. These guys don’t guarantee anything—not even that there’ll always be air for us to breathe. And not a word about holding up landing waiting for everyone to get webbed.*

  The back room at Huool Galleries in Sombrelír was windowless, dim, and climate-controlled. Shelves and cabinets and stasis boxes lined the walls and occupied most of the floor space. Gentlesir Huool specialized in the acquisition and disposition of precious objects, and not all of his stock in trade could risk public display. Some of the cloistered items, like the woven gemgrass funerary ornaments from Miosa Mainworld, depended upon preservation technology for their continued existence; others, more simply, had no legal business being in the gallery at all.

  Mizady Lyftingil, Huool’s work-study intern, had grown accustomed to spending most of her time surrounded by the rare, the valuable, and the highly sought-after. Miza found the back room a good place to work in if the weather was bad outside, though somewhat confining on pleasant days. Today was hot and humid enough that she hadn’t even gone out for lunch, but had eaten her bread and cheese and fruit without leaving her worktable.

  She crumpled up her empty lunch bag and tossed it into the mouth of the recycling chute, then turned back to the status display glowing on the table’s surface. The Atelier Provéc, one of Huool’s closest competitors, was having an auction today, and there was something about the bidding patterns …

  On the far side of the room, a door slid open and snicked shut again. Miza glanced up, saw that it was only Huool coming back from his own, more private, lunch hour, and kept on working. Huool was a Roti, and sensitive to giving offense; he couldn’t do anything about the fact that his digestive system demanded live—or at any rate fresh-killed—meat, but he did make a practice of eating his noontime ration of locally bred foodmice in a side room where his human assistant didn’t have to watch.

  The display on Miza’s worktable shifted and shifted again, as bidding continued across town in the Atelier Provéc. She frowned. Something was going on, she knew it … she could see the ripples of it on the surface, in the changing patterns of the bids.

  She heard a faint rustle of body feathers as Huool drew closer and looked at the display over her shoulder.

  “You see something, young one?” he asked. His Standard Galcenian had the distinctive Rotish accent, all breath and clicking beak, but the words were kind.

  She gestured at the display. “Look here.”

  Huool’s eyes were bright yellow and perfectly round, with tufted, astonished-looking brows. But Miza had learned by now not to judge the Roti’s state of mind by his expression, which never changed much anyway. The soft clatter of his beak as he looked at the table display told her that he’d spotted the same anomalies that she had.

  “The patterns,” he said. “What do you make of them?”

  She wanted to ask what Huool made of them, since his experience in the field surpassed hers, but she knew better. The Roti wasn’t a hard taskmaster—he was, if anything, softhearted to a fault—but neither was he one to let misplaced benevolence interfere with the proper training of those students whom the Arthan Technological Institute gave into his charge.

  “Somebody’s looking for something,” she said.

  “Yes. That much is plain. But does Provéc have it?”

  “I don’t think so.” She frowned at the patterns again. “I’m not even sure the big fish is bidding. But all the other fish are nervous … you can see it, the way they scatter and regroup, as if something hungry and large is swimming in the waters beneath them.”

  Huool gave a brief chitter of amusement. “You grow poetic … but I believe you may be right. You have a gift for judging the flow of data, young one; perhaps the Guild should be training you, not I.” “Oh, no.” Miza threw up her hand in the gesture her grandmother back on Artha had always used to avert an evil omen. Not that she believed in such things, but one couldn’t be too careful. “I come from a respectable family. And I don’t want anything to do with those people, thank you very much.”

  Huool chittered again. “Their loss, then, and not yours. But let us consider the data once more. What do you think this big fish of yours is seeking?”

  “Hard to say. We’re dealing with proxies, agents, that sort of thing; whoever’s behind it isn’t acting directly at all. Something of value—”

  “Of course, young one. Whatever is wanted has value.”

  She gave an impatient snort. “I already know the basics, Huool. What I was going to say is, I don’t think our hungry fish is looking for the sort of thing that gets displayed out in the front gallery. Either here or at Provéc.”

  “No,” Huool agreed. “And this is your
lesson for today. I believe that what is being sought is not an object that can be held in the hands at all. Rather, someone seeks to hire a surprising service. Watch and learn.”

  “Sombrelír at last,” Jens said. “And in the morning on a business day, at that. I say we take the advice of our acquaintance from the observation deck and go sightseeing.”

  The two cousins stood in the Grand Concourse of the main spaceport complex. Faral was trying hard not to gawk at the crowds. The port building back home on Maraghai was almost the same size as the Ophelan Concourse, but much emptier. The civilized galaxy in general, he was close to deciding, had too many people in it. He should have stuck with Chaka—the Selvaur had stayed on board Bright-Wind-Rising to oversee the transfer of their luggage onto a ship for Eraasi.

  “If you ask me,” Faral said, “there’s plenty of stuff to see right here in the Concourse. Look over there.” He nodded toward a full-size holodisplay in a nearby window. “‘Personal Comforts for the Weary Traveler’—you sure can’t find anything like that in Ernalghan.”

  Jens glanced over at the window and gave a dismissive shrug. It’s nothing compared to Khesat, the gesture seemed to say—and for all Faral knew, he might be right. “Father says that sticking to the portside strip is a good way to lose your health and your money both. I’ve checked the maps. We can make it across town and back with plenty of time in the middle to look around.”

  Faral gave up the argument. He followed his cousin out through a high archway marked GROUND TRANSPORT: SOMBRELÍR, NANÁLI, DUVIZE. Outside, hoverbuses and wheeled jitneys waited in ranks under the great portico. Jens had already picked out one of the jitneys. It was painted bright green, for some reason, with darker-green vines and purple flowers twining all over it.

  “You’re joking, right?” Faral said.

  Jens raised an eyebrow. “Of course not. We’re appreciating the local art forms, and this is one of them.”