Ari got himself a bowl of porridge, a mug of cha’a, and a mug of the sludgy local drink called
ghil.
He carried his tray over to the nearest table. Esuatec from Outpatient waved a handful of flimsies at him as soon as he sat down.
“Hey, Ari!” she said. “You made lieutenant commander.”
“I know,” Ari said. “Bors told me. Who’s got the list of billet assignments?”
“I do. I’m going to the supply depot on Agameto.”
“Not bad.”
Esuatec nodded. “Could be worse. You know what they say: ‘Why die? Go Supply! Stay in the rear and count the gear.’”
Ari drained his mug of
ghil
in one long swallow, and followed it up with a mouthful of cha’a to rinse the grit out of his teeth. As far as he was concerned,
ghil
ranked as one of Nammerin’s better contributions to the problem of breakfast—it combined the high protein of a nourishing soup with the added bite of a mild stimulant—but even native-born Nammeriners admitted that the texture required some getting used to.
“I suppose supply clerks on Agameto get sick once in a while,” he said. “And I hear the weather’s nice there. What about me?”
“You’ve got—” Esuatec flipped through the pages. “—oh, this is a good one—you’ve got a berth as head of the medical department on board RSF
Fezrisond
.”
“The
Fezzy
hasn’t gone anywhere outside the Infabede sector in years,” Ari said. “And she’s Admiral Vallant’s flagship, to boot. Formalities. Spit and polish. Inspections and visiting diplomats and dress uniforms at breakfast.”
The complaint was mostly for ritual’s sake. Ari was not at all displeased with the assignment: nothing flashy, but a good, solid promotion into a responsible position. He turned to his bowl of water-grain porridge with a sense of satisfaction and a general feeling that the day had begun on a propitious note.
A shadow fell across his tray as somebody else sat down across the table from him. He looked up. It was Llannat Hyfid in her customary unmarked uniform, with the ebony staff clipped as usual to her belt. She looked thoughtful. He watched her as she put milk and sugar into her cha’a and drank half of it before setting the mug down again on her tray.
“The orders are in,” he said finally. He didn’t suppose she would care much about the promotion list, since Adepts didn’t carry rank.
“I heard,” she said.
“Bors?”
“Who else?” Llannat sighed. “He means well. But all that boundless enthusiasm makes me feel old sometimes.”
“Wait until he’s been in the service a couple more years,” said Esuatec. “He’ll be as ancient as the rest of us.”
Ari shook his head. “No such luck. Bors will still be young and enthusiastic when he’s a hundred and two.” He turned back to Llannat. “So what did you get, anyway?”
“Didn’t Bors tell you? They love me so much here on Nammerin they’re keeping me around indefinitely.”
“Oh.” Ari took up a spoonful of porridge, looked at it for a moment, and let it fall back into the bowl. He turned the empty spoon over in his hand, then turned it bowl-up again and laid it down on the tray. “It’ll save you packing and unpacking, I suppose.”
“Yes.” She drank more cha’a. Her dark eyes seemed focused on something halfway between the far side of the table and the rim of her mug. “You have a ship tour?”
He nodded. “On
Fezrisond
.”
“That’s good.”
“I suppose it is. Or maybe not. I don’t know.” Llannat put the empty mug down without looking at it. “You were probably right the first time.”
Esuatec looked from Llannat to Ari and back again, then stood up. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “They need me early over in Outpatient this morning.”
Ari pulled his thoughts together enough to say something polite, but Esuatec was already gone. Llannat was still gazing out into the empty space over the tabletop.
“I thought you’d be glad to stay on Nammerin,” said Ari finally. “You told me one time that it reminded you of home.”
“Parts of it do,” Llannat said. “But I didn’t join the Space Force because I wanted to stay on Maraghai.”
“I guess not.” Ari thought for a moment. “You could always ask the Guild—”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t work that way. I decided to stick with the Space Force, and that means I go where the Space Force sends me. Or doesn’t send me.”
“We’re—you’re stuck, then,” Ari said. “Nammerin until further notice.”
She sighed. “I know. Think of us dirtsiders once in while when you’re out there zipping through hyperspace and touring the galaxy.”
“If the
Fezzy
makes it outside the Infabede sector while I’m on her,” Ari said, “I’ll pay you fifteen credits and buy you a drink the next time we’re on liberty in the same port.”
Llannat smiled for the first time that morning. “Make it twenty credits and dinner,” she said, “and I’ll take your bet.”
The afternoon sunlight falling across his pillow roused Owen from sleep. He lay for a moment with his eyes closed, testing his surroundings for danger. Nothing. The currents of Power flowed as they always had, their patterns undisturbed except for the constant underlying distortion that marked the presence of a working Mage-Circle.
I learned to recognize
that
on Pleyver,
he thought,
even if I didn’t accomplish much else in all the time I spent there.
He got out of bed, yawned, and stretched. From the stretch, he moved smoothly into the ShadowDance routines that the Adepts at the Retreat taught to all their students. He could have performed the ShadowDance for much longer than it took him to finish the basic sets; he enjoyed losing himself in the slow, graceful movements that needed only a small change in emphasis to become quick and deadly.
But he had things to do, and a limited time to in which to do them. When he’d finished the last set, he sponged the sweat off his body with cold water from the sink in the kitchen nook—the shower in the apartment’s tiny bathroom didn’t work any more than the lift did—then dressed in his second set of work clothes, the clean ones, and settled himself cross-legged on the bare floor to meditate.
This time his meditations took a more active form. Much as he had tested the apartment and the neighborhood for trouble when he first awoke, he extended his awareness out further, taking in more and more of Namport. He was looking for Mages, which was nothing new—he’d done that every day since he first arrived on-planet—but this time he wasn’t bothering to hide his tracks.
Let the Circle notice me,
he thought.
If they get nervous, they’ll do something rash. And then I’ll have them.
Nothing happened, however. He was almost ready to end the session and get on with his normal workday when he felt the patterns alter. Someone was coming—someone was looking for him, with more than physical senses. The approaching presence brought with it something of the pattern he had learned to recognize as Magework.
I’ve found them,
he thought. And then corrected himself.
No. I’ve found
somebody—
but I don’t think it’s the Circle.
For there was no malice in the presence, and no fear. Whoever came seeking him wasn’t an enemy, as any of the Nammerin Mages certainly would be, and might even be a friend.
He waited. Before long, he heard the stairs creak, and a knock sounded on his door.
“The lock’s an easy one,” he called. “Come on in.”
He heard a click, and the door opened. The young woman who stepped across the threshold wore a Space Force uniform without insignia, but her rather plain, dark features were familiar enough. He’d known Llannat Hyfid when she was an apprentice at the Retreat on Galcen—a confused and uncertain medical-service ensign with a late-blooming sensitivity to the currents of Power.
“Mistress Hyfid,” he said, giving her the courtesy due to the title while he continued to assess the changes time and experience had brought.
She’d made progress, no question about it, steadying and strengthening more than he’d expected in the time since he’d last met her. There were other changes, too, chief among them the short, silver-trimmed ebony staff she wore clipped to her belt. The distinctive aura of Magework clung to the staff like purple fire, its patterns clearly visible to Owen’s already-sensitive perceptions.
Where did she get that thing?
he wondered.
And how can she touch it without knowing what it is?
“Owen,” she said. If she noticed his reaction to the staff, she didn’t show it. Ignoring the cot and the rickety chair, she sat down on the floor across from him. “It’s been a while—and this isn’t where I expected to see you again.”
For a moment Owen was uncertain how he should deal with his unexpected visitor. He watched her, not speaking, while he sorted through the possibilities in his head.
Does Master Ransome know what she’s carrying? Should I tell him … no. She’s Adept, not apprentice; she has the right to make her own decisions, and she doesn’t feel like a traitor.
But the staff made him uncomfortable just the same. If the local Mages could sense it, they might do—who knew what they might do? Unless the power it represented in the hands of an Adept made even them nervous.
It ought to. It makes
me
nervous.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said finally.
“Maybe you’re right,” Llannat said. “But you might as well be broadcasting yourself over all the holovid networks in Namport. You were certainly giving me headaches as far out as the Medical Station.”
“You should have taken the hint and stayed away.” He leaned forward a little, catching her gaze and holding it. “Listen to me. You being here is dangerous. For me, for you. Don’t ask why. Just go.”
She didn’t look surprised. “Not yet,” she said. “I have a question for you first. Guild business.”
“I doubt if I can answer it for you,” he said. “I’m just an apprentice, remember?”
Llannat shook her head. “You’re more than that, and every Adept in the Guild knows it. I want you to tell me what’s going on with Ari. Master Ransome sent me here to play bodyguard for him—so why is he being shipped out when I’m not?”
“I don’t know,” said Owen truthfully. Master Ransome hadn’t mentioned Ari in their discussions back at the Retreat. Even the cautionary note Owen had sent to the Medical Station had been his own idea. He and Ari had never been close—quite the opposite, in fact—but there was always the chance his brother might spot him by accident in the Namport crowd. “The orders probably have something to do with Space Force policy, whatever that is.”
“That’s what I mean,” she said. “The last time I got any orders, Master Ransome pulled strings or pushed buttons or did whatever it is he does. Next thing I knew, instead of going to Galcen South Polar and treating recruits for snow blindness, I was wading through the water-grain paddies on Nammerin with your brother. This time, though, nobody did any such thing—and I want to know how I’m supposed to be protecting Ari if he’s off on a ship somewhere and I’m stuck down here on the mud flats until further notice.”
“It could be that Master Ransome has assigned someone else to look after my brother. Or he may not need looking after any more. Who knows?”
“I think you do. Are you here to guard him?”
Owen hesitated. The question was coming too close to matters that shouldn’t be spoken of aloud—not to someone who carried a Magelord’s staff on a planet where a Mage-Circle still worked as Circles had in the old days.
“I think you ought to go now,” he said.
He saw her drawing herself together, as if gathering her resolve. Then she spoke, quietly and with a touch of reluctance. “I don’t want to do it like this,” she said. “But it’s Ari’s life we’re talking about. I’m an Adept, Owen Rosselin-Metadi, and you’re still an apprentice in the Guild. You owe me an answer. I’m waiting.”
“As you will, Mistress,” he said formally.
She really has changed. The Llannat Hyfid who left the Retreat for Nammerin would never have had the nerve to ask me like that.
“No, I didn’t come here to guard my brother.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m here because I was sent here, like you. But unless Master Ransome told you to make contact with me, please leave. You’re putting us both in danger as long as you stay.”
He didn’t wait for her reaction this time, but closed his eyes and let himself sink back into deep meditation. It was flight, pure and simple: questions he didn’t hear, nothing would oblige him to answer. Eventually, she would grow tired of waiting and go away.
When he opened his eyes again, the apartment was dim and empty, and the door was closed.