Rift in the Races (71 page)

That’s when it occurred to her she hadn’t seen the other one. The third horse. Suddenly she knew why she’d recognized the bay earlier: it was the horse the magician had ridden on the night of her rescue. The huge white strider was obviously Thadius’ mount, the bay the mage’s, and yet there was no black one. The black one that the oddly named Prevus Prendertook had ridden during the rescue. She immediately went back and looked into all the stalls again. There was no black horse anywhere. Not one in the whole stable. It seemed unlikely to her that a commoner and a blank, as Thadius had been so careful to point out, would have need of a regal warhorse like that in his retirement, and it seemed even less likely that Thadius Thoroughgood, of all people, would have given such an animal away. Especially out of gratitude.

She knew something was going on. She could feel it in every ounce of her being, but she still wasn’t sure what. She felt like a detective on the trail of something but not able to piece together the clues. She wished she had a real detective she could ask. Which was a thought that struck her like a gong.

Where were the detectives? There had not been a single one.

Chapter 52

“T
here it is,” said Roberto confirming what Ensign Nguyen had just pointed to on his monitor. “Captain, we got them. A Goldilocks planet, just like we thought.”

He tapped up the video feed from one of the probes they’d sent into the Hostile system before taking the ship to a safe distance, far enough away for the magicians on board to be able to cast. Just as they’d assumed, the Hostile home world was the fourth planet from the sun, a huge Earth-like planet, a “Goldilocks” world, albeit largely volcanic, with very little water and even less life, and that mainly at the poles. The visual feed showed Hostile orbs coming up out of the planet’s atmosphere toward the probe just before it was destroyed. They looked like little bubbles rising from the gray-brown landscape of a continental pot about to boil. They came up one or two at a time from various features of the still-distant geography, appearing out of craggy canyons and the shadowy parts of barren mountain ranges, where they joined together like a gathering flock called to defend their world. They rushed up at the probe as it shot through the atmosphere, one of them seeming to swell as it neared the probe’s camera eye. The video feed cut off in a blink of static and went dark. But that was enough. They had confirmed unquestionably where the Hostiles came from. The rest was planning and execution.

“Get that data sent to every ship in the fleet before something happens to us,” Captain Asad commanded immediately after they’d watched the probe’s last moments in the Hostile atmosphere. He’d seen enough misfortune to be unwilling to take any chances. Victory was in their grasp.

The course of the next few days was fraught with tension and nervous excitement as each ship in turn was teleported by the fleet’s resident magicians to the
Aspect
’s location. Everyone knew they were only a week and a half away from the fulfillment of their mission, from victory at last, and finally they could go home. Not just home, not home with their heads hung in shame, but a glorious return. Flags and ticker tape. The war won.

At the end of a week, all the ships were assembled and in combat formation. In addition, each had mounted to the back of the captain’s chair a small box in which lay a fist-sized gemstone—either emerald, topaz or ruby—and a short iron mallet with which to break it. Fast-cast amulets or, as these particular versions were deemed, harbor stones. Breaking the stone would put the ship in orbit above Tinpoa. Each stone had been enchanted to its specific ship and charged with enough mana to accommodate a distance estimated to be twice that separating the fleet where it sat outside the Hostile system and the Tinpoan base or, in fleet parlance, something approaching forty light years. More than a few fleet personnel were skeptical about that, but none said so where a Prosperion could hear.

With the assurances of the magicians that the stones would work and the additional revelation that mages on Kurr had been assigned to monitor the space above Tinpoa and would be prepared to send help or evacuate ships appearing there if necessary, everyone was pretty keyed up for victory. “Get in, get it done and get out.” That was the plan. And after a flurry of material activity and round-the-clock repairs, every ship was up and running well enough to fight, the fleet as close to fully operational as it could get. And so, it was go-time.

“All ships,” commanded the admiral on the fleet-wide band. “Operation Dust Cloud is a go. Commence to rendezvous positions at point Goldilocks. We don’t know if they are listening, so keep radio silence if at all possible until the attack is fully underway. And let me be clear: continue missile launch into your assigned grids until my command. We may only get one chance at this, so let’s not worry about how much it’s going to cost.”

Every ship signaled they were ready to go.

“Do it,” he commanded. And off they went, the whole fleet, full speed toward the Hostile world they’d named Goldilocks. No magician-made motion from here. Just hellfire pent up in the bowels of forty-nine ships, every last crewmember ready to do or die.

Chapter 53

O
rli arrived at dinner the night of her discovery of the missing black horse with subdued rage replacing the anxiety that had marked her previous encounters with Thadius in the spacious dining room. She was positive Thadius was lying to her, and she was damn sure going to find out why. She’d tried nice, she’d tried tactful, but the artful aristocrat had managed to dodge and parry her inquiries for days. But her hackles were up now, and she was not going to feel like a prisoner any longer. Never again. She would die first, and take whoever had it coming with her if she could.

She entered the dining hall as she had before, calmly, even with a polite smile, but the moment the servants were all out of the room, she pounced.

“Why are you lying to me,
Thad
?” The use of the familiar name was flagrantly pejorative. He didn’t look the least bit startled by her aggressive opening, however, which immediately took some of the edge off her confidence.

He raised his eyes to her casually, smiling even, and asked as calmly as if she’d inquired about the weather or time of day, “Why, Miss Pewter, whatever do you mean?”

“Don’t whatever-do-I-mean me,” she hissed. “You’re lying. This whole thing is some kind of game. And I want to know why you brought me here. Where are the cops to ask me questions? Where are the detectives? The … the diviners. Where are they, Thad, all of them? The greatest magician in your country’s history is dead, and nobody has come to talk to me.”

“Oh, I assure you, they have all they need. Diviners have amazing powers, especially the good ones. I’m sure they’ve already sifted through your brain.” His smile dripped with condescension to match his tone, suggesting he didn’t think that last bit had been much work for the diviners at all.

“That’s bullshit, and we both know it. I may be from Earth, but I’m not an idiot. What’s going on
Lord
Thoroughgood?” This time the title came off somehow more insulting than the familiar name had.

“Miss Pewter …” he began, his voice rising, but trailing off immediately as the steward came in and handed him a packet of papers. He took them and waited for the man to go. “I think you would do well to speak more decorously in my house, and in my presence. This is not a barracks, and I’ve only got so much patience left for you.”

“So much
patience
?” She blinked across the table at him, filling with indignation. “Patience, with
me
? You and that so-called rescue of yours brought me from that slave auction to this place, to your … your personal zoo, where you keep me in the dark about what’s going on for more than a week and then you want to sit there and act like
you
are the one who needs patience?”

“Miss Pewter—”

“Don’t Miss Pewter me,” she shouted, leaping up so violently she actually tipped the giant chair over. It fell on its back with a thunderous crash. Servants came running in, but Orli no longer cared.

“I want to see the Queen right now. And I want to be taken to
Citadel
. I need to contact my ship. This is bullshit, Thadius, and I’m done with it.”

In the presence of his servants, Thadius needed to maintain some level of control. “Miss Pewter. If you would like to see the Queen so badly, I will take you there in the morning. Please, sit down.” He waved to the servants to right her chair.

“I want to go now. Take me
right
now.”

“Miss Pewter, please. Sit down. It’s late. Far too late to venture a ride in the dark. The night creatures in these parts are rather nasty without a proper escort.”

“Get one. You’re rich. Make it happen. Why not get your friend Prevus Prendertook to escort us. He was quite the warrior. Where is he?”

“I already told you, he’s moved on. Bought a house. Retirement. Domesticity and all that rot.”

“Then why did you give him a warhorse?”

“A what?”

“If he’s retired, why did you give him a warhorse?”

“I never said I gave him a warhorse. I said I paid him very well. In gold.”

“Then where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“The black horse? Prendertook’s black warhorse. The one he rode when you rescued me.”

A look of dawning came upon him, but he quickly pushed past it. “I had it killed. It was wounded. A sad loss. It was a fine mount.”

“What was its name?”

He paused, as if thinking, but then stopped. His lower jaw thrust forward and anger lit in his eyes like a tinder-dry forest struck by lightning. He stood and looked to the steward who stood near her chair. “Get Sart and Maygor.” The steward ran out of the room.

Thadius approached Orli slowly, his eyes narrow, the line of his mouth tight, even as he spoke. He spoke in a measured tone, his voice low yet laden with menace. “I have tried everything I could to be hospitable to you. I have been kind to you, even courted you beyond anything your common blood deserves. You are blank, for Mercy’s sake, and yet you cannot find the slightest bit of gratitude. You speak with the tongue of a sailor and hold a view of yourself and your rights that are so far above your station it’s impossible to conceive where such delusions might have been acquired. But that time has come to an end. I have tried, Miss Pewter. I have tried, and now I have had enough. The game, as you say, is off.”

Orli wanted to fire something back at him, but the look in his eyes was something so close to evil it chilled her to silence. He moved toward her with predatory grace, though he did not so much as raise a hand.

She backed away from him, bumping into the heavy chair again, this time barely causing it to scrape across the floor. That look in his eyes terrified her. It was betrayal. It was a look so much like the one she’d seen on Black Sander’s face it stole the air from her lungs.

Two armed men came into the dining hall. Orli recognized them as the men who’d been standing guard outside her room.

“Take her down and put her with the rest of the collection.”

Once again, nobody seemed to care how loudly she screamed.

Chapter 54

I
lbei was in no mood to visit with Kettle when he rode back past Calico Castle a pair of days after leaving the Daggerspine pass. He had no good news for her, and the news he did have would do nothing but cause distress. He was, however, even more determined to find out what had really happened to Orli and Tytamon. Which is why he decided it was a good idea to make his way to the last place he knew of where anyone remembered seeing them: the camp outside the walls at Calico.

It didn’t take him any time at all to find his old friend and drinking mate, Sergeant Haft. The two exchanged greetings like long-lost brothers and within moments were as familiar with one another as if they’d never been apart. They laughed as Haft told Ilbei the story of the laser-shot dog and Orli’s upbraiding of the man who’d done it, but eventually, Ilbei got to the purpose of his visit.

“She’s a good lass, I tell ya, Haft,” Ilbei said at length. “And she’s run afoul a’ somethin’ what ain’t quite what it seems.”

“I expect yer right,” agreed the weathered old soldier. “They was lookin’ fer some yellow stone, as I recollect. And I told young missy about Black Sander was in town, what with the bounty some a’ these boys was takin’ after Sir Altin’s tower crashed.”

Ilbei knew precisely what that meant, even if he hadn’t heard the name Black Sander before.

“Ya haven’t heard a’ Black Sander?” scoffed the sergeant. “Ya been buried too long in them holes of yers, scratchin’ in the grit. Was a time a mind like yers kept up.”

“Well, I can’t lie, I have been chasin’ the shiny bits these last decades, that’s a fact, but I’m here now, and much obliged ta have ya catch me up.”

The sergeant hoisted his cup. “Any time, old friend. Know it true.”

They shared a few more pints and as much information as the sergeant had, and then Ilbei was on his way again, despite the winking disclosure regarding a wagonload of prostitutes who were being brought in that very night.