“Yah, don’t expect altruism of Traders, Ulthane. They threw the word out of their dictionaries.” Helgin scratched at his dense growth of beard.
Gyll frowned. He forced his gaze away from the ippicator. “She of the Five Limbs . . . All of Neweden would curse you for a heretic for this, m’Dame Oldin. The ippicator is sacred in some way to nearly all guilded kin. This fetus is an abomination.”
“To you, also?”
“I was brought up to believe in Neweden’s gods. My true-mother was devout. She worshiped every day, praying that her jussar son would become guilded kin. My true-father—he didn’t believe; he was an offworlder. He’d scoff, and then they’d fight. . . Me, I sometimes believe, and I always must seem to do so. I believe mostly in myself and the code. But I look at this thing, and I feel disgust. Ippicators belong to the gods and the dead.”
His hands plunged into the pockets of his nightcloak. He shifted from foot to foot. “I guess it’s not easy to escape your conditioning.”
“I’ll have it destroyed, Ulthane. Helgin—”
“No!”
His own vehemence startled Gyll. He shook his head.
Calm, always calm. That’s the way of the code.
“Yes, destroy it, but wait until I’ve left. I want to look at it some more, fix it in my mind. Then send it to the Hag.”
“As you wish.”
“Trader Oldin, I had thought only to tell you that Thane Valdisa had no interest in your offer. She speaks for Hoorka.”
Kaethe leaned back. Neweden light bathed her. “And you?”
“I’ve made my life Hoorka’s.” He stared at her, suddenly the aloof Hoorka again.
“I’m much less interested in Hoorka as a whole than in the person who created them.” A muscle tugged at the edges of her mouth. “I’ll ask one thing of you, Ulthane. Repeat what I’ve said to Thane Valdisa. Ten thousand—simply for you to look at the Trading Families. We can see a time coming when we might need Hoorka. There are movements in human space, Ulthane, tides that are swelling. When these movements end, the Alliance will no longer be the way of the future.”
Helgin laughed into the silence that followed her statement. Both Kaethe and Gyll looked at the dwarf. “Nor might be the way of the Families, Kaethe. The safest way is to be a Motsognir and hide on Naglfar. But, Ulthane, you’ll find more Motsognir on Trader ships than on Alliance planets. That may tell you something.”
“Are the Traders threatening the Alliance?” Gyll asked.
“We always have, implicitly.” Oldin shrugged. “And that’s all I can say. But I’ll make you another offer, to make the original one more tangible. I’d hoped that the gift of an ippicator would please you, but I’ve misjudged Neweden on that. No matter, it will die.” Kaethe waved a hand in dismissal. “Ulthane, the tale I’ve heard is that the Hoorka lost two men on Heritage, and that another lies in Center hospital. I’ve also heard that the Regent d’Embry has refused to allow you to pursue bloodfeud.”
“That’s true enough.”
Kaethe nodded. “I will provide—as a gesture of goodwill—one Hoorka free passage to and from Heritage. What you do there is entirely up to you. The Alliance won’t know unless Hoorka tells them, or you’re not as adept as I’ve been led to believe. If you’re not, then perhaps I should reconsider the offer anyway.”
“Hoorka don’t kill without warning.”
“I know that transmissions have gone back and forth from Diplo Center here to Heritage. Guillene knows that Hoorka wanted the declaration, believe me. Bloodfeud is a Neweden custom, Ulthane. If Moache Mining thought Guillene in any real trouble, they’d pull him offworld, give him a new name and face. The man has no respect for you, or your kin wouldn’t have been slain. Moache Mining has no respect for you, or Guillene would be gone. You know what to do on Neweden—you can’t say the same anywhere else.”
Quiet. The ippicator’s tank burbled. Helgin dug at his bearded chin. Neweden performed a slow somersault in the port.
“Guillene knows what you’d like to do,” Kaethe continued. “He just doesn’t believe you capable of it.”
“I’ll tell Thane Valdisa,” Gyll replied. But he knew what he wanted. He knew that if the decision were his, he’d make the pact now. He’d never liked or trusted d’Embry and the Alliance, but they’d offered the only path for Hoorka’s growth. If he were Thane again . . .
Gyll said no more to Kaethe.
When he’d gone, Helgin came back to Kaethe’s rooms, shading his eyes against the reborn radiance of the Battier, relishing the lowered gravity. The ippicator’s tray was gone.
“He was quiet on the way down,” Helgin grumbled. “Pensive and withdrawn. You’ve confused him, Kaethe.”
“Only for a bit. He’ll do it, Helgin. If he has the will I think he has, he’ll find a way.”
“No matter what it costs him? Kaethe-dear, you sound as if you’re gaining respect for the man—that’s unlike you. I don’t think you enjoy the idea of what Renard is doing to Neweden, either. Gods, woman, are you growing a conscience?”
Kaethe smiled benignly. “If I am, Grandsire’ll rip it out by the roots when we get back.”
• • •
Gyll could see the tension in Valdisa from the moment he entered her room. She stood before her desk, a pile of flimsies behind her, an apprentice in front. She dismissed the boy with uncharacteristic gruffness as Gyll came in; when she looked at him, he saw that her face was drawn and haggard, the skin pale.
“You haven’t slept,” he said.
“It shows, neh?” Valdisa managed a wan smile and collapsed onto her bedfield with a sigh. Sitting, legs dangling, she rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I couldn’t seem to rest much last night. I kept seeing Aldhelm, that terrible wound; Sartas, too. I didn’t want to take a pill, so I just kept tossing until I got up and went to the Cavern of the Dead—made sure the apprentices were doing everything right. Looked at the body for a while. Then I came back here and went over the records—we’re not broke yet. You?”
“I managed to sleep. Not too well, though, and not long.”
“You don’t look so bad. Did you talk with Oldin?”
“Kaethe? Yah.”
“Kaethe?” Valdisa repeated. “So you’re on a first name basis with her. Is she attractive, Gyll?”
“The Traders like their women chunkier than Neweden.”
“You’ve never had an offworlder, have you? Have you asked her yet?” Valdisa seemed to find his discomfiture amusing. Her eyes—drawn in lines of blood—laughed at him. Gyll leaned against the wall, watching. “I’m sorry, Gyll,” she said at last. “I couldn’t resist teasing you a bit. What did Oldin have to say?”
“I told her that you weren’t interested in her offer. She asked us to reconsider. She wants one of us to go with her for a third-standard, and she said she’d pay ten thousand for that, with no other obligations.” Gyll was careful, slow. Cloth whispered against stone as he shifted.
“Ten thousand just to see the Trader society?”
“To see them, decide whether Hoorka could work with them, and to give them advice on their training.”
Valdisa lay back slowly, sighing. She closed her eyes. “Ten thousand is a lot. But there’s nothing to reconsider, Gyll. Not in my opinion. Neweden belongs to the Alliance, and Hoorka to Neweden. It’s
your
dream we’re chasing, after all. You should be more vehement about it than me.” The eyes opened, found him. “You should know better than any of us that we can’t go with the Traders, no matter what they offer.”
“She’ll ferry a Hoorka to Heritage. With no restrictions, without the Alliance knowing.”
“Gyll”—wearily.
“No, Valdisa.” He levered himself away from the wall, striding over to the bedfield and sitting beside her. He took her hand in his, forcing enthusiasm into his voice. He was surprised at how easily it came. “The Alliance won’t know. The Hoorka can go to Heritage, do what’s necessary to avenge Sartas and McWilms, and return. The Alliance won’t be able to prove that it was us, and we send company to Hag Death for Sartas. The kin already talk, Valdisa. You’ve heard them, and I’ve been told that it was partially the source of contention between Aldhelm and d’Mannberg. You can settle the dispute. You can also enhance your standing with the kin, especially if
you
are the one that goes.”
“If I go?” Her hand moved away from Gyll’s, touched his shoulder and trailed down his back. “Gyll, they all know that you were the one talking to Oldin. It’ll simply say to them that Ulthane Gyll is still guiding the Hoorka, making sure that Thane Valdisa does what’s right.”
Gyll could hear the pleading in her voice, the cry for his understanding. She wanted him to drop the subject before it created a rift between them. But he couldn’t. It had inflamed him since he’d left Oldin. He wanted, and he wouldn’t let Hoorka go without it.
“She had an ippicator,” he said. “Alive.”
“What?” Surprise lanced her voice, dragged her upright on the bedfield. “No ippicators have been seen—”
“A clone, Valdisa. Oldin brought it out to show me that the leading Families were on Neweden long before our ancestors. Some subtle point in her argument, yah? She thinks it demonstrates how the Alliance is just a fleeting organization in comparison to the Families.”
Valdisa moved on the bedfield, leaning away from Gyll and his fervor. “If Neweden learns that an ippicator has been cloned, then by all our gods, there’ll be a jihad—both among the guilds who hold it sacred and toward all offworlders. That’s a rank insult to our beliefs, a vile desecration—the ippicators belong to the afterlife. How could Oldin think—”
“She had it killed, after. I watched them put it in the vaporizing field. She also promised that the tissue sample would be destroyed.”
“And you trust her?”
“Would it do any good if I didn’t?”
“Still . . .”
“She simply wanted it as an example. Something to shock us out of complacency. You have to admit that it does that. She meant no insult.”
Valdisa stood, the bedfield rippling behind her. Gyll got to his feet a moment later. He reached out to touch her, but she drew back, shaking her head.
“Gyll, I love you,” she said, “because I like the way you’ve pursued your dreams and tried to turn them into reality. Because you were so damned sure of yourself. And because when you thought you might have hurt Hoorka, when Aldhelm failed the contract on Gunnar and you had to stop him from breaking the code—well, then you took yourself away from leadership rather than risk harming your dream, your organization. Now you scare me, Gyll.”
Light from the room’s hoverlamp threw shadows over her face as she looked down at the floor, then up to Gyll. “Why are you suddenly so insistent? Don’t you trust me to follow the guild’s code? Don’t you think that I want what you want—for Hoorka to become stronger and grow? You want to see Hoorka move offworld; it was
your
idea to contact the Alliance to pursue that goal. This damned Trader woman comes, fills your head with more dreams, and suddenly you want to abandon the route you’ve taken. Gyll, why in hell do you think you can trust her? Why do you think it’s worth losing the ground we’ve gained?”
“I know it is, that’s all.” He frowned, angered by her anger. “Valdisa, she’s extending an offer, nothing more. It doesn’t interfere with what we have with the Alliance, not yet. We lost nothing. All she asks now is for someone to look at the Trader structure, to bring information back to Hoorka so we can make a judgment. As for the Heritage offer, that’s just to indicate the seriousness of her interest, and it’s a better offer than you’ve gotten from d’Embry. The Alliance has done nothing to Guillene. What makes you think we can trust
them?
”
Valdisa looked as if she were about to retort. Then the fire seemed to die in her. Her shoulders slumped; she stared down at the hard-packed dirt of the floor.
“Valdisa,” Gyll said. “I don’t want to fight with you.” He reached out to pull her to him, but she pushed aside his hands.
She went to her desk and fiddled with the flimsies there before swiveling in her floater to look back at him.
Her chin was up, defiant. Her mouth was a slash of tight lips.
“I’m Thane, Gyll. That tide’s supposed to give me the authority to control Hoorka’s actions.” Down, the chin. The lips flexed in a frown. “But the kin still see you as the real leader, despite that. You could undermine my authority in a moment. The kin would back you, almost every one of them—especially now that Sartas and Aldhelm are gone. Do this thing on Heritage if you must, Gyll. I won’t try to use the shadow-thanedom you gave me to stop you. I can see the uselessness of that gesture.”
She stopped, leaning back. She rubbed her eyes with thumb and forefinger, wearily. “Gyll, you’re a frigging selfish person. You only care about yourself. You—made—Hoorka.” Valdisa lowered her voice in a parody of Gyll’s tone. “That’s your cry whenever something threatens. You may even be right in this. But I think you’re just tired of the inactivity, maybe even tired of being Hoorka and all the killing and death that it brings with it—surely your last contracts have indicated that.” She stopped and almost smiled. “You’d rather nurse that damned wort back to health than kill on contract, wouldn’t you? You’re tired of the slowness of the Alliance, and bored because you’ve removed yourself from the thaneship.”
“That’s not true, Valdisa.” Even to himself, the statement lacked conviction. He said it too softly, too slowly.
“It’s not?” Valdisa cocked her head. An idle hand rustled sheets on her desk. “This Trader woman’s offered you a new challenge, and you’re eager to take it—it’s something new, another creation for you, neh?”
“I want to avenge Sartas. That’s as far ahead as I’m thinking.”
“You’re sure of that? Then go ahead and do it, because I can’t stop you.”
“Valdisa, if you don’t want this, I won’t go.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t, Gyll. Not this time, at least.” She yawned suddenly, stretching. “Gods, I’m tired. Gyll, the day would come when you’d find another thing so important to you that you’d do it over my objections. It might as well be now. Go and tell Oldin that you’ll go to Heritage. The rest . . . I’ll think about it. But remember, Gyll,
you’re
the one that will kill Guillene. I’ll send no one else. If you don’t want to kill, then tell Oldin no.”