A Matter of Oaths (36 page)

Rallya reread the message flimsy before she handed it to
Joshim. “That came in fifteen minutes ago,” she said flatly. “The comms centre
have got a reck of it, if you think you could recognize his comms-style…”

Joshim shook his head grimly. “No.” He handed the message on
to Vidar. “If you want me to tell you whether it’s genuine or not, I can’t.” He
twisted the ring around his finger anxiously. “Even if there was some kind of
proof in there…”

He did not finish, did not need to. Rallya knew as well as
he did that nothing in the message could prove that the request was genuine,
that Rafe had not been forced to make it. Julur had had him for long enough to
strip every secret from him, every freedom of choice… And which was more
probable, Rallya asked herself: that Rafe had somehow gained the upper hand
over Julur, or that Julur was using him as bait in a trap?

“
Bhattya
is
spaceworthy,” Vidar remarked.

“I know that already,” Rallya snapped. She also knew she had
no choice. Joshim would never agree to ignore the request when there was any
possibility that it was genuine. And neither would she, she admitted. It would
be impossible to live with herself if she let Rafe down needlessly. Or if she
sacrificed
Bhattya
needlessly. Even
if it was not a trap, it was still dangerous.
Advise extreme caution
, Rafe had said, implying that he did not
have everything under control, that something could still go wrong. Something
can always go wrong, she reminded herself savagely. Gods and Emperors, she had
put her ship at risk enough times before not to funk the decision now. Just
because she could not go with them…

“What are you waiting for?” she demanded. “You’d better get
moving.”

“You aren’t coming?” Vidar queried, surprised.

“No,” Rallya said shortly. “Somebody has to stay here and
teach the Council their cursed business. Again.” She saw disbelief on both
their faces. “You’re big boys now, or you should be,” she pointed out
irritably. “I’m not a faffing good-luck charm. You can manage without me for
once.”

And the Gods-be-cursed Council could not, she added bitterly
to herself. Sometimes it seemed as if she was the only person in the faffing
Guild who did not panic at the thought of rebuilding it from the inside out. And
if that had been clear to Ayvar days ago — although she would see him in hell
before she admitted to his face that he was right — it must be clear by now to
Julur. Which meant — blood and hell! — that it was her duty to skulk safely at
Central, out of Julur’s reach. At least until the Guild could survive without
her.

“You’d better get moving,” she repeated. “I’ll have the
comms centre tell Rafe you’re on the way. And be damned careful. I don’t want
Bhattya
’s reputation ruined the first
time I let her out of my sight.”

* * *

 
[Attention Rafe. Advise
Bhattya
will jump within one hour. Please
confirm that arrival in planetary orbit has been cleared with the appropriate
authorities.]

The response, half an hour after he had sent his message,
woke Rafe from a dangerous half-doze. It was hard to fight the ache seeping
through him, the result of nerves stretched with fear, of working too hard
after too long out of the web. Gods, he thought gratefully as he monitored the
repeat of the message, they
are
coming, in spite of all the reasons why they might have decided not to… And
only an hour before they arrived in orbit — the length of time it took to
calculate the jump from Central. Two hours, maybe three, and he would be on his
way out of here.

“There’ll be a ship jumping into orbit within the hour,” he
announced, startling Julur. “You’d better give the orders to make sure that it
arrives safely. And remember, I’ll be monitoring them.”

Bluff, but it was the best weapon he had. He prayed that
nobody on Julur’s staff had any misplaced initiative…

“I’m waiting,” he said sharply when neither of his prisoners
spoke. “All planetary defenses and the sector defensive sphere deactivated. Now.”

“Do it,” Julur told Braniya abruptly.

Rafe listened to her give the orders. “Good enough,” he
conceded. “You’d better hope that everyone obeys you. Your lives depend on it.”

“They’ll obey,” Braniya said confidently. She walked across
the room to the locked web and studied him closely through the semi-transparent
hood. “I assume we are expecting
Bhattya
.
Shall I also give orders for a convenient shuttle-landing to be prepared, and
guides to bring your friends down to us?”

“And for the crowd outside the door to move away,” Rafe
agreed. “All fifteen of them.”

“Of course.” She did not react to his accurate knowledge. “Immediately?”

“Immediately,” Rafe agreed.

He faded out his body control before she spoke again. There
was a message to send to Central, and…

The cramp hit him without warning, flooding signal circuits
and control circuits, rendering him blind and deaf and dumb and helpless. As if
acid was running along his nerves and spilling out into the web. He disengaged
from the web before he could prevent himself, struggled desperately to
re-engage before Braniya found a way to take advantage of the spasm. He must
have passed out; when he could think and feel and see again, both Julur and
Braniya were pulling furiously at the hood of the web, hoping that the lock had
failed. It was a miracle that it had not, he thought shakily.

“Nothing so easy,” he lied to them, blinking the tears out
of his eyes and hoping he sounded better then he felt. “None of it depends on
my even being alive.” He grinned, although he did not feel like grinning. “You’d
better hope I don’t die in here. You’d starve to death before anybody worked
out how to free you. Or can’t immortals starve to death?” he added maliciously.
“You can die from lack of air — we’ve already established that. What other ways
are there of killing you? Are you really immortal, or are you just better than
the rest of us at fighting off disease and old age?”

He was talking to hide the important things he was doing:
cautiously re-entering the web, exploring his web-control, checking that the
spasm had not done any damage that needed to be repaired, had not weakened his
hold on Julur and Braniya. All of the locks had held; he offered a silent
prayer of gratitude to the web’s long-dead constructor. The diagram of his own
web had several alarm signals pulsing, but told him nothing he did not already
know. He realized suddenly that there might be a safety cut-out on the locks;
if he lost consciousness for a prolonged period of time — or withdrew from the
web to conserve his strength — the locks might open to give access to him. It
was an unpleasant thought…

“You had some more instructions to carry out,” he reminded
Braniya, determined that they would not see how weak the spasm had left him. He
could send a message to Central — he did it — and he could monitor his
immediate surroundings, but to try anything more was to invite another attack. He
had to save his strength until
Bhattya
arrived, until he had to assure the safe arrival of those coming through the
palace to fetch him. Two hours, maybe three…

* * *

 
[Outward jump
calculated and set in,] Vidar sent. [Return jump calculated and set in.]

[Acknowledged,] Joshim sent back, suppressing a wave of
undisciplined relief that the interminable calculations were complete. [All
teams report readiness. Jump in five minutes.]

This was worse than when the fleet jumped to Central, he
reflected as he received the reports from around the web. The defensive sphere
that Julur had thrown around Old Imperial was reputed to be impenetrable; two
hundred years since the last attempt was made, and that had been as fatally
unsuccessful as all its predecessors. True, they had Rafe’s assurance that
Julur had given the right orders. If it was Rafe on the far end of that comms
channel. And if he was not acting under duress. And if Julur’s orders were
obeyed.

Joshim could not think of any way in which Rafe could have
freed himself, put himself in a position to call for help, to propose removing
the Old Emperor from his palace. He had said as much when he had asked for
volunteers to crew
Bhattya
on this
trip, and the idiots had still volunteered en masse, not one of the web-room
agreeing to stay behind. He let his renewed gratitude at their decision seep
into the web, wanting them to know how he felt, reckoning that it would do more
good than harm.

[Four minutes,] Vidar sent. [Quit worrying and concentrate.]
That was on a private channel. [Rallya will have our hides on her office wall
if we foul up. And so will her successor.]

[Acknowledged.] Obediently, Joshim focussed tightly on the
jump and what they expected to find when they emerged. [Query status Rafe’s
comms channel,] he sent to Lilimya.

[Silent.]

[Acknowledged.] It had been silent since the message about
the defensive sphere. But that did not mean that anything had gone wrong,
Joshim told himself firmly. Only that Rafe had nothing new to tell them.

[Three minutes.]

If they were fired on, they had the return jump already set
in; they could be safely back at Central within a few seconds. Rafe would not
expect — would not want anybody’s life put at risk when there was visibly no
chance of success. If they were allowed into orbit unopposed… They would have
to play it as they found it. An armed landing party, Rafe had specified, and
again, extreme caution.

[Two minutes.]

Rallya had chosen a good time to send
Bhattya
off without her, he thought resentfully. The damned Council
could surely manage without her for a few hours. Unless she thought this was
too dangerous, that she was now too precious to risk… No, if she believed that,
she would have locked them up rather than let them try it. Or kept Rafe’s
message secret; she was perfectly capable of that. What she was not capable of
was giving in against her better judgement. She had sent
Bhattya
to fetch Rafe. Therefore it was possible.

[One minute.]

Rallya’s successor, Vidar had called Rafe. If he wanted the
berth… Even if he chose to continue webbing, he might not want to do it in
Bhattya
’s web-room. Not with Joshim,
when there was still the tangle around Ayvar to unravel. Anyway, Rallya might
not agree to step aside, might still find a way out of the Guild leadership. Although
she was no longer struggling as hard as she might… Gods and Emperors, just two
messages from Rafe — supposedly from Rafe, he reminded himself sternly — and he
was reviving all the possibilities that he had promised himself to forget until
he knew that Rafe was safe. And Rafe would never be safe if he did not
concentrate on the web.

[Activating jump.]

* * *

 
“Your friends have
arrived in orbit,” Braniya said smoothly. “But you don’t need me to tell you
that, do you?”

“You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?” Rafe
countered, squirting a hasty query along his comms channel and receiving a
prompt affirmative. “They’re waiting for your clearance to land a shuttle.”

“I’ll have it transmitted,” Braniya promised.

She walked to the intercomm. Rafe did not watch her, did not
listen to her speak. He would only hear what she wanted him to hear, not the
hidden messages in her choice of words.

[Trust nobody,] he sent to
Bhattya
, not caring that Rallya would laugh at the warning. It was
such a long way through the palace to fetch him and there were so many traps
that Braniya could set…

Odd that Braniya was the one who worried him most, that
Julur seemed to have conceded defeat. If Ayvar had been in the same situation,
he would have been the one at the intercomm, the one scheming to regain
control. Or would he? Would the threat of death reduce him to the same mute
acquiescence? Was that the price of being immortal, the sacrifice of everything
that made you human to a desperate obsession with living forever?

Rafe shuddered uncontrollably. How must it feel, to live so
long that there was nothing new left to experience? To share that empty
existence with just one other man, until love and hatred were meaningless words
for what you felt about them. To be caught between the temptation to take the
crazy risks that Rafe had seen Ayvar take and the desire to shut yourself away
from danger in a paranoiac cocoon. And — surely — always to know the fear that
you were not truly immortal. The possibility that there was some disease to
which you were not immune, some degree of damage that was too great to survive,
some day on which you would start growing old. The fear that, in the end, you
would
die like everybody else.

[Shuttle on its way down.]

The message from
Bhattya
dragged Rafe out of his reverie. It was fatally easy to lose concentration; to
feel the growing sickness in the pit of his stomach; to give in to the
gathering light-headedness as his blood-sugar dropped and fatigue claimed him. To
lose track of what was going on.

Shuttle on its way
down
. That meant it would be thirty minutes before they landed. Another
hour making their way through the labyrinth of the palace. Could he last that
long? He could not ask them to hurry, could not warn them how shaky his control
of the situation was. Not when Braniya’s people must be monitoring his comms. He
had to maintain his bluff. Not only for his own sake now, but for
Bhattya
’s sake too.

* * *

 
“In here,” the
guard said sullenly, unlocking the riser. “You’ll be met at the bottom.”

“I’ll bet we will,” Vidar said, exchanging a wary glance
with Joshim before stepping into the riser.