“The most interesting place in the civilized galaxy,” repeated Faral dubiously. He looked at Miza. “You wouldn’t happen to want to explain that, would you?”
Before she could reply, the cardlock buzzed a warning and the door slid open. Jens came in, looking considerably cleaner than he had a few minutes before. He wore the pair of trousers he’d gotten from Huool’s, and carried the rest of his garments slung over one arm. He had his boots in his hand, and his feet were bare.
“I took a shower,” he said before Faral could say anything. “It was faster.”
“That’s a first,” Faral said. Jens liked his hot baths; left alone, he could soak for hours. “Gentlelady Miza and I were just talking about you, by the way.”
Jens dropped his boots and his clothing onto the floor beside the lounge chair and sat down. He leaned back against the upholstery. “Oh. And what conclusions did you come to?”
“We didn’t. But she did say something about how pretty soon Khesat wasn’t going to be dull anymore.”
Jens sighed. “She’s right.”
“What’s going on, then?”
“Let me see if I can explain … two months back, Standard reckoning, the Highest of Khesat decided that sixty years and two wars were more than enough. At the next Midwinter Festival, if all proceeds according to custom, he will retire to his country estates and take up lacemaking.”
“Good for him,” said Faral. “I don’t suppose that’s the whole story, though.”
“No. After that, things get complicated.”
“What do you mean, complicated?”
“Complicated as in, nobody knows where his replacement is going to come from.”
“Why don’t they just hold an election or put in his firstborn child or something?” Faral wondered. “It works for most places.”
Miza snorted. “Catch the Khesatans doing anything so common as voting … and they don’t go by strict succession, either. You’ll never guess how they
do
go about it.”
“They all put on silly hats and play scissors-paper-stone until there’s only one of them left.”
“Funny, coz.” Jens didn’t sound amused. “But no. The process starts with a pool of candidates from all the Worthy lineages. Legally, any one of us would be acceptable.”
Faral looked at his cousin sharply. “You said ‘us’—are you actually holding a ticket in this lottery?”
“I’m afraid so,” Jens said. “My father managed to get himself declared ineligible—next time I see him I’ll have to ask how—but I’m in the running.”
“You and how many other people?”
“A few thousand. Now shut up and let me tell the rest of it. When the time comes round for the Highest to be replaced, the nobility select one from all the eligible candidates. He or she is taken at dawn to the top of the Golden Tower in Ilsefret. Down below, the plaza and the streets are filled with the populace in general. Two burly fellows present the new ruler and proclaim, ‘Behold the Highest!’ At which point the populace in general shouts either ‘Huzzah!’ or ‘Bring him low!’ If they shout ‘Huzzah!’ then the Highest is indeed the Highest, and the rest follows. But if they shout ‘Bring him low!’ then the two burly fellows toss the candidate from the top of the Golden Tower, and he falls down four hundred feet to his death.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Miza. “Elections would be a whole lot simpler.”
“But not nearly so colorful,” Jens said. “The mob is thoroughly bribed. And sometimes the guards are also bribed to be hard of hearing. You name it, and it’s probably happened. And even the candidates who descend rapidly are, for those few seconds, Highest of Khesat, and are so inscribed in all the appropriate public places.”
Faral looked up at the ceiling. It was painted blue, with glowdots set into the plaster to form patterns that he supposed were the local constellations. They didn’t look anything at all like the stars back home.
“Gentlelady Miza is an analyst,” he said. “She thinks the fact that you’re from a crazy place like Khesat is important for some reason. But she hasn’t said why.”
“I don’t
know
why,” said Miza. “But if your cousin is from one of the Worthy Lineages, then I can hazard a guess.”
“Please. Hazard away.”
“You don’t have to bother,” Jens said. He sounded resigned. “Now that everything’s gone to pieces anyway, I suppose I ought to admit the truth. The real reason I wanted to go shopping this morning was because I was planning to give you the slip on the way back to the port.”
“And head off on your own for Khesat?” Miza asked.
“That’s right.”
Faral sat up, the better to glare at his cousin. “Did you really think that Chaka and I would take off and leave you behind?”
“The timing was going to be the crucial part,” Jens said. “It had to be exactly right … but that plan’s all blown sky-high anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
“I guess not. But why in the name of everything would you want to go to Khesat?”
“Fame,” Jens said promptly. “Khesat doesn’t usually offer a lot of fame as the Selvaurs understand it—Khesatans don’t really care about that sort of thing—but when the rule is about to change, everything is different.”
Faral shook his head. There was something not quite right about Jens’s explanation, and it bothered him. “So you were going to Khesat because you want to take a dive from the Golden Tower?”
“No. I’m not that crazy. Besides,” Jens added, “the real fame goes to the backers of the winning candidate. All the Highest gets out of it is a lot of hard work.”
Faral shook his head. “And here I thought the most exciting thing anybody ever did on Khesat was dress up and go to the opera.”
“That too,” said Jens. “But I don’t like opera.”
The Ophelan Guildhouse turned out to be as run-down and neglected on the inside as Klea had feared. It was a large building; in its best years, she reckoned that it might have held as many as twoscore Adepts and an equal number of apprentices. Such a figure was no match for the population of the Retreat, or even for a major Guildhouse in the Central Worlds, but it was nonetheless a healthy size for a house established on the fringes of civilized space.
Peace, and normal relations with the Mage-ruled planets on the other side of the border zone, had not brought good times to the Guild on Ophel. Nothing about the building’s interior was any newer than the end of the last war, and everything, from curtains to furniture, spoke of lassitude and loss of purpose.
The Adepts here made a stand against the Mages,
Klea thought,
while most of Ophel got rich trading with the enemy. And when the war ended, their reason for being ended right along with it.
She could sympathize—the Adepts of those long-ago days deserved better of the universe than to have all their faithfulness made obsolete—but her sympathy didn’t extend to condoning laxity in their successors. By the time Master Evanh had shown his two unexpected visitors the way to the House’s comm room, her unspoken disapproval had the Ophelan sweating and visibly full of intention to reform. Which was, in Klea’s opinion, only as it should be. The man himself was hopeless, but his apprentices at the Sombrelír Guildhouse were still in a position to be of some use to the galaxy.
The communications gear, fortunately, was working. She switched on the hi-comms rig and punched in the codes that would send her text message on its way through Ophel’s orbiting links and the deep-space relay stations to the links that circled above far-distant Galcen. Owen wouldn’t be happy to get the news of his nephews’ unauthorized disappearance, but it was something that he needed to know about as soon as possible.
Let him figure out whether or not to pass the word on to that sister of his,
Klea thought.
I’ve done my part.
The comm unit beeped, letting her know that the message had reached its destination. Then, to her surprise, it beeped again—a three-tone sequence, this time, the signal that another message was coming back in reply. A strip of flimsy came curling out of a slot on the unit’s main console; she tore it off, glanced at the first couple of lines, and handed it to Mael Taleion.
“It’s for you.”
She couldn’t see his expression for the mask he wore, but she thought that Mael looked startled. “How—?”
“The Master of the Adepts’ Guild sends his greetings,” she said impatiently, “and passes along some news that came to him from someone on your side of the border. You’re supposed to take it to the First when you go see her.”
He shook his head. “I already have seen her.”
“Whoever sent Master Rosselin-Metadi the message didn’t know that. My guess is that your people sent this news out along as many different routes as they could, hoping that one of the messages would get to the right place. Read it and tell me what you think.”
“A moment.” Mael took of his mask and clipped it onto his belt next to the ebony staff. Then he smoothed out the flimsy and looked at it, frowning. His lips moved a little as he read—written Galcenian was not, it seemed, a language in which he was easily literate. His frown deepened, and she thought he grew paler.
“Well?” she said.
He folded the slip of flimsy into a square and tucked it into an inner pocket of his robe. Something about the careful deliberation of the gesture convinced her that whatever he had just read had shaken him deeply.
“There is a plague,” he said, “on Cracanth. The First of one of the local circles is appealing to the First of all the Circles for aid.”
“Plague is a medical problem,” Klea said. “Not a problem for … for whatever it is that Circles do. Your people on Cracanth would do better to talk to Health and Emergency Services on Galcen.”
Mael was shaking his head again. “No. This is not a true plague, whatever they are saying aloud on Cracanth. This is the
ekkannikh
at work … this is what I feared when I went to speak with the First on Maraghai.”
“
Ekkannikh
. Klea rolled the unfamiliar word around on her tongue. Its consonants were harsh and rasping against the back of her throat.”You’re going to tell me what that means, aren’t you? Because I haven’t got the slightest idea.”
“A homeless ghost,” said Mael. “An unpropitiated spirit. Surely you have them on this side of the Gap Between?”
“No.” She paused a moment, before honesty compelled her to add, “Not under that name, anyhow. And I’ve never seen one at all.”
“Count yourself lucky,” he said. “I suspect, from what I learned on Maraghai from my First, and from this communication just now, that a revenant of great power is loose—the one who in life was called by my people the Breaker of Circles.”
She knew the epithet, of course. Errec Ransome had gloried in it while he was Master of the Guild.
“Bastard,” she said. Mael blinked, and she added, “Not you—him. I have to admit, if there was ever a man likely to keep on making trouble even after he was dead …”
“You begin to understand the problem,” Mael said. “The
ekkannikh
has already taken one body, and may take more. Further, I believe that it is well away from Cracanth, in the shape of a human it controls.”
“Is that possible?”
“With such a one as Ransome, anything is possible. Even while he lived, he was not a man easily caught and confined. And now …” His voice trailed off. Then he straightened, and his resolve seemed to grow firmer. “I must find out where the
ekkannikh
is at this moment, and where it is going. I will need to meditate upon the problem.”
He paused then, and looked directly at Klea. His eyes held hers. “It would be helpful,” he continued, “if you would work with me.”
Klea took a step backward. “Are you asking me to participate in Magecraft?”
“Only in the mildest sense of the word,” he said, with a faint sigh. “But if I am expected to live and work among Adepts, surely I may expect a bit of assistance in return.”
“I don’t …” She let her voice trail away.
“Suit yourself. In the meantime—I shall carry out my needful meditations in the Guildhouse garden.”
C
HAKA LET the strange woman guide her away from the Security barrier and down a side street.
“We’re not going that way anyway,” the woman explained, with a nod toward the barrier. “Your friends are safe. They’ll be heading off-planet before much longer.”
*On the
Lav’rok
?*
“No, I don’t think so. Besides, they won’t be running under their own names.” The woman paused at a street vendor’s pushcart—a cold-and-hot wagon that could lift on light nullgravs—beneath a flickering holosign of a bottle pouring its liquid into a frosty glass. She pulled a handful of small change out of her belt pouch. “Do you want cha’a, or something different?”
*Different,* said Chaka. *What’s the point in wandering if you don’t take a chance?*
“That’s the spirit. Hot
uffa
, then.”
The woman purchased two steaming cups of bright red liquid and handed one to Chaka. The drink was sharp-flavored and faintly spicy. It didn’t have as much kick as cha’a, but it had a pleasant, lingering aftertaste.
“We saw your names on the passenger list for
Bright-Wind-Rising
,” the woman said to Chaka a few minutes later, as the two of them made their way through the Old Quarter. “Three young travelers from Maraghai … when we saw who the others were, we were a bit surprised that you didn’t show up in their company.”
*I don’t like shopping,* said Chaka. *Who’s ‘we’?*
“My partner and I—we run Bindweed and Blossom’s. I’m Blossom, by the way.”
*Chakallakak
ngha
-Chakallakak. Chaka for short.*
“Thanks for the short-name,” Blossom said. “I’m honored. Ah, here we are.”
They had reached a broad street lined with shade trees and elegant shops. One of the shops had a sign in florid Ophelan script—with HUOOL GALLERIES in small Galcenian letters underneath—on a brass plaque by the front door. The single shopwindow was a velvet-lined oval in which a jade bowl sat beside a mask woven out of feathers and sparkling multicolored grass.
Chaka stared. *What kind of place is this?*
“Expensive,” said Blossom, as they passed through the winking lights and sonic barriers of the gallery’s security system. “But that’s all right; we’re not buying anything.”
She led the way through the hushed and carpeted front rooms, where precious objects stood on display in pools of carefully directed light. Chaka followed, keeping her distance from anything that looked breakable—which in practice meant almost everything—and felt a surge of relief when they reached the EMPLOYEES ONLY door in the far back. Blossom touched the lockplate and the door slid open.
*You work here?* Chaka asked.
Blossom shook her head. “No, no. Bindweed and I are independents. But we have a certain—relationship of courtesy—with Gentlesir Huool.”
*I see.* Chaka wasn’t sure if she saw or not. She let Blossom lead the way into the back room, where a feathered biped sat behind an Eraasian-style workdesk. He rotated his head to face them as they came in, a birdlike movement that didn’t change the orientation of his shoulders, and looked at them out of staring yellow eyes.
“Ah, good, you found her,” he said in heavily accented Galcenian. Then, to Chaka, he said, “I am Huool, and it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Chaka bowed. Blossom nodded toward the glyphs on the surface of the workdesk and asked, “Confirmation that the boys are away?”
Huool made a clicking noise with his beak. Chaka couldn’t tell whether it was meant to indicate agreement, dismay, or something else completely unreadable.
“Nothing,” he said. “And this disturbs me. Miza is a very sweet girl, and if anything had gone wrong, I’m certain her first action would have been to contact me. And the same, if the young men were safe and her mission accomplished.”
Blossom shrugged. “She’s a good-looking girl, they’re good-looking boys—maybe they’re in a rental room right now having a party.”
“The ways of your species,” Huool said. He made a chittering noise that Chaka presumed was intended to convey amusement. “I suppose you know them best. But—there is another matter.”
“Holding out on me, eh?”
“Never,” said Huool. “See here.” He pointed to the workdesk, and both Blossom and Chaka leaned forward to look. “They were supplied with much credit. I tracked the credit, and found that they had used it already—not for passage off-planet, mind you, but in a common exchange shop.”
“Barapan’s,” Blossom said, in tones of disgust. “Whose bright idea was that, I want to know? Your guide—”
“You do my teaching injustice. Miza opposed it, I’m certain—she knows of Barapan’s artifices.” Huool tapped another glyph on the surface of the desk. The patterns shifted, and a text entry appeared. “But see here: only a few minutes after the transaction, we have a security report from Deládier Row. An assault in which two men and a woman were attacked. The two men were left behind unconscious while the woman fled.”
“If Barapan’s put our boys in the hospital, I’ll—”
Huool made the clicking noise again. “No need, no need. The woman was unhurt, and if it had been Miza—”
“She would have contacted you by now.”
“Just so. I think it much more likely that our three young people surprised Barapan’s accomplices, much as the Green Sun was surprised earlier. But why they may have felt it needful to vanish afterward when help was so readily available here …” Huool didn’t shrug—Chaka doubted he had the joints for it—but the flick of his feathery brow-tufts was clearly equivalent.
Blossom turned to Chaka. “You know the boys. What do you think?”
Chaka considered the problem for a minute. She thought about Faral, coming back blooded from a Long Hunt the elders had never planned on asking him to make; and Jens, sent home in disgrace from Khesat for doing something, nobody ever said what, that apparently even the Khesatan wrinkleskins had never thought of to do. Those two would have plans of their own right now, of that she was sure; and while Chaka could guess at their intentions, she didn’t think it right to speculate aloud. Merely because the one called Blossom had spoken in Trade-talk did not prove she was a friend, and her interest in Chaka’s agemates might not be benign.
*I think they don’t want to be found,* she said after a moment, *and asking for help is not in their natures.*
Another possibility that had come to mind—that Faral and Jens had stuffed Huool’s guide in a trash disposal and lost the pursuit completely—she decided not to mention. Let her friends keep their plans, and their lead, if they had one.
“So we wait,” Blossom said. “Once Bindweed gets clear of Security paperwork, she’ll join us and we can see what develops. Meanwhile—” She pulled a well-used deck of cards out of her hip pocket. “—I learned years ago that time passes quicker when you’ve got something else to think about. Do either of you know how to play kingnote?”
*No.*
“That’s okay, I’ll teach you. How about you, Huool?”
The gallery’s proprietor gave his chittering laugh. “With your cards? I’d need to have run mad.” He opened a drawer in the workdesk and withdrew an equally well-used deck. “Here, use mine.”
The last of the afternoon sunlight filtered past the closed louvers in the dim room to make bars of light against the far wall. Kolpag Garbazon looked over at his newly assigned partner. Ruhn was taking off his gloves, a disgusted look on his face.
The man sitting in the chair in front of Kolpag and Ruhn remained upright only because he was tied there. His ankles were bound to the chair’s legs, his chest to the chair’s back. His arms were tied to his sides. The man’s head lolled, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth to stain the shirt below.
“I believe this one doesn’t know anything about our packages,” Ruhn said.
Kolpag nodded. “You’re probably right. He’s told us everything else.”
He raised his blaster and shot the man once in the head. The man jerked convulsively in his bonds, then sagged and was still.
Kolpag and Ruhn left the cheap rented room and walked down the outside stairway to the street. Their hovercar waited for them by the sidewalk. Ruhn slid into the passenger side and Kolpag took the controls.
“We’ve still got too many questions,” said Ruhn, as the hovercar’s nullgravs lifted it above the cracked and potholed pavement. “The names they’re using right now. Who helped them. Where they are.”
Kolpag brought the hovercar out of the seedy downtown neighborhood and into the main traffic stream. “There’s no report of anybody close to their description leaving the spaceport,” he said. “Let’s assume that they’re a smart couple of lads—we know they were smart enough to spot Barapan’s purse-lifters and take care of them without yelling for help. So. Where would a smart person be right now?”
“Holed up somewhere,” Ruhn said at once. “Waiting for the surveillance to relax and go away.”
“That’s what I think too. Our boys won’t make their move off-planet for a week, maybe longer.”
“The boss won’t like having to wait that long.”
“Yeah. I know.” Kolpag maneuvered the hovercar into a gap between a green-and-yellow jitney and a crowded short-mover coming up from the spaceport. “We’ll have to work another angle … . What genders did our late friend say his partners were?”
“One male, one female.”
“Right. And our two packages have apparently picked up a female escort, a special courier from Huool Galleries. So now they’re also two males and a female.” He turned onto the main traffic artery leading from downtown Sombrelír to the suburbs, pushed forward on the yoke to bring the hovercar up to speed, and continued, “Did you notice that our late acquaintance wasn’t carrying any ID?”
“I did,” said Ruhn. “Are you thinking that the boys may have lifted the papers of their assailants?”
“That’s right.”
“Definitely not your average tourists.” Ruhn brought out his datapad, full of material from the active interrogation session, and punched in a link through the hovercar’s comm rig. “Set out full data-group search on the following three names. Best fit, eliminate duplicates. Mauris Fant, Brix Gorlees, Keyíla Danít.”
The grounds of the Sombrelír Guildhouse were as run-down and untended as the rooms within. The flowers and the ornamental shrubs had long since overgrown their beds, and the lawn had not been mowed for some weeks. Even the kitchen garden made a poor show, with straggling weeds mixed in among the rows of anemic herbs and vegetables.
I might have done better to remain inside
, thought Mael Taleion. But generations of Adepts had imbued the wood and stone of the Guildhouse with the unmistakable stink of their workings. If he attempted anything, his efforts would be wrenched out of the true patterns by the malign influence. Outdoors was safer—the Great Magelord who had trained him, years ago now, had preferred the open sky for that reason among others, and Mael still honored his teacher’s memory.
He found a clear area in the garden and scratched out a rough circle in the dirt with his staff. Then he settled his mask once more into place, knelt, and set his mind adrift on the currents of the universe. An Adept might have been content to float so, letting the surges and ripples of Power carry him where they would, but that was not the way of the Circles. Somewhere out beyond this untended bit of ground, the
eiran
—the silver cords of life and luck—waited to fall under Mael’s hand.
At first the cords evaded his touch. The overwhelming feel of Adeptry distracted him and made him clumsy. He remained patient. The
eiran
drew closer, almost within reach, and he saw them as he had seen them before on Maraghai, their lines of bright silver all tarnished and broken, with a threat of darkness twisted in. Their intertwinings made no true pattern—only a botch, like the ruined garden around him.
Where a pattern has grown awry, the work of the Circle is to make it right.
Mael’s teacher had died long ago, giving his life to the Great Working that had ended the last war, but his voice spoke clearly to his student now. Mael took hold of one of the tarnished threads.
Find where it comes from, find where it leads.
He began tracing the path of the darkened
eir
. Once he had found out its origin, he could untangle the clump of disorderly Adept-work that knotted around it and see what could be done.
The problem turned out to be worse than he had thought. Wherever the tarnished thread lay across a clean one, the unblemished thread had also darkened. He laid his hands on the nearest of the
eiran
and pulled on it, trying to work it free of the tarnished strands. The effort did him no good. The cords were stuck together at the point where they touched, like a bundle of wires that had rusted into one.