The Gathering Flame Read online

  “I never thought for a minute that it might be.”

  “Go on.”

  Aringher put away the bottle of antiseptic and pulled on a fresh shirt. “Anyway, somebody else wanted the deal to go through—so they arranged an attack, in order to make the Domina and Captain Metadi allies by sharing a common danger. But not, mind you, too much danger. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe that the whole purpose of the exercise was to separate the Domina from her escort, and to throw her into the company of Jos Metadi.”

  “Tricky, tricky,” Vasari said, in approving tones. “Who was it?”

  “My question precisely.” He slipped on his jacket and began doing up the buttons. “And I believe that the answer can be found on Entibor.”

  The Armsmaster of House Rosselin was still sitting in the courier ship’s command chair when Nivome returned.

  “So there you are,” the Rolnian said. “Asleep.”

  Hafrey opened his eyes and turned them toward the Minister of Internal Security. “Not sleeping,” he said. “Thinking. A practice I would recommend to you.”

  “This isn’t the time for sarcasm,” said Nivome. “There was violence at the Double Moon—the Domina is missing, perhaps even dead.”

  Hafrey regarded the dark, heavyset Rolnian dispassionately. “I think I can ease your mind somewhat concerning Her Dignity’s whereabouts. If you would accompany me?”

  “Of course,” Nivome said. “Lead the way.”

  The two men left the ship, retracing Ser Hafrey’s course to the shadows outside the docking bay where Warhammer had rested not long before. The worklights along the top of the privacy walls were dark, and the blast doors were shut. The dockworkers and their skipsleds had gone on to another ship and another cargo, leaving silence behind.

  “It’s empty,” said Nivome. “They’ve already lifted and gone to orbit.”

  “True enough.” Hafrey let the implied complaint go unanswered. “If you would be patient a while longer—”

  He busied himself at the juncture of the wall and the blast door. After a few minutes he gave a brief nod of satisfaction, and stepped back. In one hand he held a small black cube, scarcely a thumbnail’s length on a side. He offered the cube to Nivome.

  “You may examine the record, if you like.”

  Nivome picked up the spy-eye, but didn’t bother to look at it. “You’re too sure of yourself. What have you arranged for me to see?”

  “I? Nothing. But if you watch, you will see Her Dignity enter the ship in company with Captain Metadi.”

  The Rolnian clenched his fist around the black cube. “You’re her guardian, and you approve of this?”

  “She is the Domina,” Hafrey pointed out. “And Entibor is most decidedly not Rolny. It is not for us to approve or disapprove.”

  The armsmaster paused to allow the reproof time to sink in. Nivome do’Evaan had a good deal of native shrewdness and physical courage, along with vaulting ambition and a high opinion of his own worth—a mixture of qualities that had made him useful to Veratina in her later years. Domina Perada, Hafrey was relieved to note, was proving herself less easily impressed by his talents—physical and otherwise—than her predecessor had been.

  “In any case,” Ser Hafrey added, “so long as the Domina reaches Entibor in good time, no one will care what happened on Innish-Kyl.”

  “Metadi’s copilot knows about it. If he knows, so will the whole ship’s crew, and half the port.”

  “Ah, yes; the Ilarnan. An interesting fellow, that one. But I don’t think he’ll talk.” Hafrey stepped away from the sealed blast doors and the empty bay. “Enough chatter. Are you satisfied?”

  Nivome remained unmollified. “I still want to check out the Double Moon.”

  “If you like,” replied Hafrey, unperturbed.

  They turned to go. But in that moment three men emerged from the shadows before them—portside bully-boys, from their clothing. All three of them had blasters ready.

  “Ah,” Ser Hafrey said. “Good evening, gentles all.”

  “Hands up,” said the biggest and tallest member of the trio. He lifted his blaster by way of emphasis. “You’re coming with us.”

  Nivome made a grab for his jacket pocket and one of the gunmen shot him down. He collapsed, holding his belly and gasping in pain. Hafrey glanced in his direction and raised his hands.

  “Search them,” ordered the man who had spoken before.

  Hafrey submitted to the search calmly. Nivome, however, came close to choking as the other two thugs hauled him upright and went through his clothing piece by piece. They removed both the spy-eye and the needler he’d kept hidden inside his jacket, then dropped him onto the pavement.

  The leader glanced over at Ser Hafrey. “Come on, you.”

  “Of course,” said Hafrey mildly. “Those of us who are professionals understand such things.”

  He took a step forward. At a nod from their leader, the two gunmen who had been searching Nivome fell in like guards, one to either side of the armsmaster. A heartbeat later, the one to Hafrey’s right dropped his blaster.

  The heavy-duty Gyfferan Special fell to the concrete with a metallic clatter, loud in the silence of late-night portside. The man looked startled and opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out except a gush of foamy, bright-red blood. He collapsed to his knees, then toppled forward onto his face, blood pooling under his head.

  Ser Hafrey reached out and tapped the number-one thug on the shoulder. The man sat down heavily, his arms and legs splayed out like the limbs of a rag doll. Now only the gunman to Hafrey’s left remained standing. He held a blaster in one hand, but he wasn’t moving, and his eyes were large and dark with fear. Hafrey’s left hand rested against the man’s neck.

  “Did you know,” the armsmaster said conversationally to the man sitting helpless on the pavement, “that there are over two hundred pressure points on the human body—points which, properly manipulated, can cause anything from paralysis of half-a-minute’s duration to symptomless death eight hours later? In your case, your arms and legs will remain useless to you for a bit, although your eyes and ears will serve you well enough. In the case of your comrade—” Ser Hafrey nodded at the man who stood sweating beside him. “—I am not going to use pressure points at all. Rather, this is a mechanical.”

  This was something metallic and glittering, barely visible for an instant between Hafrey’s fingers.

  “Now,” said the armsmaster to the man beside him, “I want you to place your blaster underneath your chin, pointing up toward the top of your head.”

  The man was pale and shivering, but his arm responded, lifting the weapon and pushing the muzzle into the soft skin under his jaw.

  “I don’t approve of people who attempt violence toward me or my associates,” Hafrey said. His tone was, if possible, even milder than before. “I want you to press the firing stud.”

  There was a wash of crimson light—the close-range aura of a blaster firing on full power—and the man’s head exploded outward and back, leaving a gory crater where the dome of the skull had been. A shiny metal wire protruded from the top of the curdled, blackened mass inside.

  Incredibly, the man still stood, his blaster pressed up against his chin and a thin curl of smoke drifting away from the entry burn.

  “Steam explosion,” Ser Hafrey explained. “Very messy.”

  He withdrew his hand from the neck of the standing man, taking with it a long metal object that had been buried point upward in the man’s neck. As he did so, the bit of wire disappeared from above the dead man’s ruined skull, and the lifeless body crumpled to the pavement.

  Hafrey made the metal spike disappear. “You’ll notice that you are beginning to regain feeling in your hands,” he said to the third man, who remained sprawling half-paralyzed on the ground. “Please signal this by releasing your weapon.”

  The man’s right hand twitched, and the blaster hit the ground.

  “Excellent. Now I wa
nt you to stand up.”

  The man stood, not looking at either of his former companions. Hafrey nodded approvingly.

  “Very good. Now go home. Don’t come back, and don’t signal or talk to anyone along the way. If you do, I’ll see that you regret it. I assume I have made myself clear?”

  The man nodded.

  “Then go,” Hafrey said.

  The man left. Hafrey waited until he was out of sight, then turned his attention to Nivome. The Rolnian was still curled around himself on the pavement, his eyes tight shut and his breath coming in shallow gasps. Hafrey regarded him without emotion.

  “Get up,” the armsmaster said.

  Nivome shook his head without rising. “I need a medic.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hafrey said. “Professionals don’t bother with using low power unless they want the target to stay healthy. You’ve only been stung, not hurt.”

  “I might have known,” grumbled Nivome, as he rolled up onto his knees—and stared, wide-eyed, at the carnage around him. “Lords of Life! What happened?”

  “I am the Armsmaster to House Rosselin,” Hafrey said. His voice was cold. “Did you think it was merely a customary title? I tell you now, do not play tricks like this with me again. Try it on Entibor, and it won’t be your hirelings that suffer.”

  JOS METADI: GYFFER

  (GALCENIAN DATING 959 A.F.; ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 23 VERATINA)

  SUNSETS OVER Telabryk Spaceport were always a dirty red from the smoke and debris that the belching jets threw high in the atmosphere, and the twilights sparkled with more than stars as the orbiting dockyards and constructories caught the last of the falling sun. Josteddr Metadi, age twelve and newly enrolled in local politics as a ward heeler’s apprentice, didn’t have the time or the inclination to appreciate the harsh beauty of the Gyfferan sky-scape. Jos had responsibilities to consider: passing out flyers in the neighborhood elections; putting up stickers and posters on walls, utility posts, and recycling bins; tearing down or covering up similar posters for the political opponents of Rorin Gatt.

  Jos considered himself lucky to be employed, not caring that his job existed only because under Gyfferan law a minor couldn’t be forced to give testimony in court. He didn’t need the work—the Citizen-Assembly wouldn’t allow a legal resident of Gyffer to starve or freeze or go homeless—but the Citizen-Assembly made no effort to keep anyone from getting bored, either. And even at the age of twelve, Jos Metadi found boredom intolerable.

  Running errands for Gatt provided more than enough novelty to keep anyone happy and occupied. Today Jos’s route took him to the shuttle platforms of Cronin Ogilvid, where he would scout out locations for one of Gatt’s cronies to give a speech and organize the shuttleboppers.

  Jos stood outside the automatic gate of the shuttle platform and wondered how to get inside without an authorization. He looked up at the gate—no, that wasn’t any good. Too many ID scanners and spy-eyes for Jos’s comfort. He circled the platform, checking the perimeter fence line in hopes that the barrier might turn out to be more symbolic than real.

  This fence, though, looked tight all the way around, probably to keep Ogilvid Enterprises from being sued right down to its socks if an unauthorized visitor happened to get fried in the exhaust from a shuttle’s engines.

  Jos went back to the front entrance and took a second look at the autogate. Maybe he didn’t have the right ID-scan to get through, but that didn’t matter. He knew lots of ways to beat an ID lock. Which trick he used would depend on what sort of traffic went through the gate.

  He could watch for someone to show up with a day pass, then steal the pass—but that risked detection and capture and a prolonged social-development session in the hands of Telabryk’s Underage Client Services Department. Or he could wait until the gate opened for somebody legit, then duck through before it closed; that way was safer, but likely to require more than one try before he achieved success. Safest and easiest was to make friends with someone who would let him in … .

  “Here now, lad,” came a voice. “What are you doing here?”

  The accent wasn’t local—not Telabryk dockside, or Telabryk District, or even the smoothed-out speech of the politicians and holovid news announcers.

  Off-worlder, Jos thought, and smiled up at his ticket through the gate. “Please, my daddy works in there, and I have to take him a message. Will you help me look for him?”

  The worst the man could do was say no. But if he said yes, Jos was in, and free to fade from sight a moment later, then scout the place out and slip away.

  “Yes,” the man said. He had to be a spacer, Jos thought—the local dockhands and mechanics wore the same kind of loose, drab-colored coverall, but all of them talked straight Gyfferan. “I think you should look for your daddy. Come with me.”

  The man palmed the lockplate and the gate swung open. Jos stuck close as they walked through. Give it a twenty-count, he decided; then run. He’d reached “eighteen” when the man’s hand came down on his shoulder and caught him in a tight grip.

  “Come with me,” the man said. “If you don’t yell you won’t get hurt.”

  Jos tried to pull away, but the man’s grip was too tight. Another fractional amount of pressure, and the bony fingers would meet under his collarbone.

  He’s got to let go soon, Jos thought. But he didn’t. The cruel pressure never let up, forcing Jos into a half-run to match the man’s longer stride.

  They were heading for a shuttle, an ugly, battered craft. Jos made one last effort to twist away before he was forced inside, but it didn’t do any good. The grip on Jos’s shoulder tightened so fiercely that tears of pain started in his eyes; then the man half-marched, half-pulled him up the shuttle ramp into the craft’s dark, evil-smelling interior.

  Jos had seen enough and read enough, in his sporadic and eccentric self-education, to know that the padded bedlike thing the spacer strapped him onto was an acceleration couch. He heard the man speaking over a comm link to somebody called Gyfferan Inspace Control. Then an enormous roaring sound filled the shuttle, and a vast weight pushed him down onto the couch.

  After a long time the weight lifted, and he felt another, different kind of sensation, as though he were infinitely light and not connected to anything. If this was what spacers meant when they talked about breaking loose from dirtside gravity, he wasn’t surprised that they seemed to like it so much. He’d have enjoyed the feeling himself, if he hadn’t been so worried about what was going to happen next.

  He heard the man speaking over the comm link to a merchant ship called the Quorum. They were talking in spacer-talk—whatever the language was that gave the man his distinctive accent—but it sounded enough like dockside Gyfferan that Jos could pick out some of the words. Or maybe dockside lingo was half spacer-talk already, since everybody else on Gyffer made a big deal out of not being able to understand it.

  The shuttle docked with Quorum, and the man unstrapped Jos and took him aboard the merchant ship. The ship had gravity, but not much. Jos kept taking steps that were too big or too forceful, so that only the man’s pincer grip kept him from floating up and colliding with the ceiling. The grip hurt more than it helped, and it made him angry as much as it hurt: what was the point of it, now that he had nowhere to run?

  Another man was waiting for them on board the ship. This man looked Jos over, then spoke rapidly to his captor in spacer-talk—too rapidly for Jos to follow, this time. Then he turned back to Jos.

  “You listen, boy,” he said in badly accented Gyfferan. “You do what we say, you get along. I’m selling you to a good master somewhere else and you’re doing fine. You don’t, you remember: food on my ship belongs to me, water on my ship belongs to me, air on my ship belongs to me. You want me to take ’em away, you piss me off. Once is all it takes.”

  III. GALCENIAN DATING 974 A.F.

  ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 38 VERATINA

  THE HEAVY push of acceleration eased off at last. Perada felt a momentary sense of dislocat
ion, a kind of sliding sideways without any physical motion, and recognized it as the privateer ship’s translation into hyper- space. The pilot had gone straight from boost to orbit to a jump without pausing. She drew a deep breath, unstrapped her safety webbing, and sat up on the acceleration couch.

  Hafrey, she thought, would be pleased. The side journey to Innish-Kyl hadn’t gone entirely according to the plan she had worked out soon after leaving Galcen—she was forming the distinct impression that other people’s plans didn’t work too well once Captain Metadi became involved—but her situation was already better in several respects than it had been a few weeks before.

  “Matters are approaching a crisis,” she remembered Hafrey saying after he told her that Great-Aunt Veratina had died. “You may find that presenting yourself as the late Domina’s acknowledged heir is not enough. The people of Entibor must be convinced that you are capable of taking active measures.”

  “Well,” she muttered as she swung her legs down to the metal deckplates, “I’ve certainly made a decent beginning.”

  She stood for a moment with her feet apart, getting her bearings in the ’Hammer’s common room. The air in the ship smelled recycled—the same faint, persistent odor of sweat and grime that she’d noticed aboard Ser Hafrey’s courier, but stronger here. Scratches and dings marred what she could see of the dull-grey bulkheads. The glow of the overhead light panels failed to penetrate into all the corners—or where the corners would have been, if the room hadn’t been circular.

  Perada was, for the moment, alone: Captain Metadi and his second had left the compartment as soon as she’d strapped herself in, heading through the forward passageway to what she supposed must be the bridge. Similar exits led away to aft, port, and starboard along the starship’s horizontal plane, and an opening in the bulkhead near the acceleration couches gave access to a fifth, vertical passage. Two more openings—one with a door, one without—pierced the bulkhead between the forward and the starboard exits. Ladderlike handholds for zero-g work ran along the tops and sides of the passageways.