Rift in the Races (93 page)

She continued to watch him, and he assumed she was probably communicating with her cohorts telepathically. He stood up.

“If you have decided to steal my stone in the name of Anvilwrath,” he said, “then there is nothing I can do. You reinforce all the negative stereotypes of the Church, but I suppose you care little enough for that. I’ll be going now.”

He turned and moved toward the door. His spine tingled, and he waited for the command for guards to come. No such command was made.

“We can help you find her,” she said as he put his hand on the door.

“Find whom?” He spoke without looking, without removing his hand from where it was.

“The blue sun.”

He turned back to face her.

“We will help you find her. And we will help you win the Earth woman back.”

“How can you do that?”

“How do you think?”

It was Altin’s turn to feel vulnerable. He hadn’t thought about them figuring out all that. He’d been too focused on the Liquefying Stone.

“There are enough forces meddling with Orli’s heart and mind as it is,” he said, but more than a spark of hope flared to life in him.

“Do you want our help or not?” She said it in a way that made it clear she wasn’t going to ask again.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the door, considering it. He knew he should leave. Knew he was about to make the proverbial deal with the demon. But how could he say no? Without the Liquefying Stone, there was nothing he could do. His only other options were almost certain death on Kolat or to go float around at the edge of the Hostile system and hope Blue Fire would simply “find” him somehow.

And he wanted Orli back. More than anything. More than everything.

He let go a long, tired breath. Everything was always so complicated. He felt as if it always would be now. Like a life sentence. Nothing ever according to plan. Endless compromise. Caveats like thorns on the rose of life. He supposed that was how life really was. He wondered how he could ever have imagined it any differently. How he could ever have been so naïve.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Chapter 75

W
orking from images remembered from her dreams, Orli scrolled through the
Aspect’s
computer logs looking for answers to the question of Blue Fire’s dead—or missing, she kept telling herself—mate. She was convinced it was the blue star Altin had called the falling fruit in the constellation he’d drawn and shown to her when they first went searching for the Hostile world. There were scant details in the records on the solar system of the star in question, which she’d taken to calling “Fruitfall” given that the only article on it listed it as PsA 8317, which seemed not only an unwieldy designation but also far too impersonal given what she now knew.

Fruitfall was fairly new as stars went, only two billion years old, and none of the planets swinging round it in wide orbits likely held any life. However, one planet, a massive gas giant with several potential super-Earth moons, orbited the blue star in its habitable zone. Unfortunately, Fruitfall had a tendency to flare, according to the information she had, which made the habitable zone less habitable during certain theoretical periods of time. The Fruitfall article postulated that every few hundred million years, the sun would blast out waves of radiation that would have burnt off any atmospheres and boiled off any water the big planet’s moons might have had. However, if there had been life on one of them, as Blue Fire suggested in her dreams, then it had to have had time to come about.

Blue Fire’s concern for the planet Andalia, coupled with the fact that the Hostile orbs carried biological life in the form of bacteria, fungi and even viruses, told Orli that the Hostiles, whatever form of life they were, needed a planet capable of supporting life of the kind Orli was more familiar with, organic life, even if only as an ancillary part of what they were. If Blue Fire’s mate was from the Fruitfall system, then somehow biological, water-based life had gotten the time it needed to evolve. Orli decided that, for that to happen, one of those super-Earth moons must have been shielded from one or more of the solar blasts by the massive planet it was orbiting.

She brought up one of the ship’s long-range telescopes and took some readings, then had the computer model the planetary rotations around Fruitfall going back in time for the last two billion years. She did find a sequence of orbits that provided a window of nearly six hundred million years, a period in which one of its moons could have survived several scenarios of hypothetically-timed flares hidden safely in the shadow of the planet. It was a guess, she knew, but there was no other answer that she could think of. If there had ever been life in that system, it would have required that kind of luck. While seemingly a long shot, she couldn’t help recognize that the existence of any life on any planet was statistically unlikely anyway, which made the fact of her own existence proof that life got lucky sometimes, even if only for a speck of time amongst a string of six hundred million years.

Based on her inquiries and the computer model, she thought she should at least communicate her hypothesis to Altin. She wished she still had her mirror. She cursed the thought of Black Sander and hoped that the Queen’s assassin had tracked him down and cut him into tiny bits by now. That idea was followed by the realization that, given her current standing with Her Majesty, the elf probably wasn’t even looking anymore. Regardless, she needed to speak to Altin, and the loss of the mirror made doing so a great deal more difficult.

Thinking of Altin made her melancholy. She knew she didn’t deserve a gift as spectacular as the mirror now, not after what she’d done. She knew she’d broken his heart, but what could she do? She could not control her feelings from being what they were. Perhaps losing the mirror was token of it, the price fate exacted for what she’d done to him, to them. She wondered in that semi-superstitious moment if, somehow, the universe had known she would betray his faith in her. Blue Fire certainly thought of it that way. But what was she to do? She only knew what was in her heart. She couldn’t pretend her feelings weren’t as they were. She loved Thadius.

And it was to Thadius that she must go for help. He would contact Altin telepathically. He must. He must tell Altin what she had learned. Even though it wasn’t certain, she knew that a solar flare was a more likely explanation for the death of Blue Fire’s mate than its having been the Andalians who killed him. The Andalians hadn’t fully mastered space warp techniques before they were killed. They couldn’t have gotten that far. Which meant the solar flares made far better sense. If she could get the information to Altin, and if he could find a way to contact Blue Fire, it might be enough to get her to believe that Orli had not lied, that humanity did not want to kill her—even though it did.

The attacks could still be stopped. If they acted fast enough.

When she arrived in the weapons bay, Thadius and Annison were standing six feet apart, with the stooped and weary-looking Conduit Galefrey between them and a few feet in front. The conduit’s gnarled old hands were placed upon yet another of the
Aspect
’s missiles, in the process of carefully enchanting the anti-magic spell around it. Even with the new modifications Peppercorn had devised to simplify the spell, the combined strength of Thadius’ G-class enchanting powers and Annison’s E only barely enabled the conduit to carry off the spell, and each missile took over two hours to enchant. Orli sat on a crate nearby and watched them, waiting for the spell to be complete. She knew better than to interrupt. She resisted the urge to do it anyway, just to break the spell. She wanted them to fail. Every moment spent as they were was a moment that brought Blue Fire closer to death.

Orli had interrupted them on purpose several times in recent days, drawing curses from Thadius and Annison. The old conduit only smiled. He seemed to understand, perhaps even shared her point of view, but he simply shrugged, resigned to it. He had a job to do, and on orders from the Queen.

But Orli wanted something important this time, so she elected not to interrupt on this occasion, though it would not prevent her from once again pleading for him to stop enchanting them at all when he was done. There could never be enough attempts at preventing this insanity.

“Thadius, please,” she pressed him as he came out of the spell. He looked tired. This was the eighth missile of the day. “Won’t you stop, just for a while? I’ve got new information now. I think I know what happened to Blue Fire’s mate. There’s still time to stop and be reasonable. Please. I beg you, for my sake, don’t enchant anymore. I need you to help me get a message to her. I need you to send a message to Altin for me.”

He turned a look of derision upon her, his eyes narrowed as if she’d just spoken to him of the devil, but he did not speak.

“Thadius, please,” she begged. “Just one simple message. Or at least let me use your homing lizard. Just that will be enough.”

He ignored her, directing his companions to the next missile in the line. Bitterness draped over him like a cloak of concrete.

“Thadius, what is wrong with you? Why are you treating me like this?”

The exiled lord prepared to go into the trance required for the next spell, as did Annison, but the desperation in her voice moved the elderly conduit enough to glance back at her. He gave her a grandfatherly look, glanced over at the mages and, seeing that they were already beginning to channel mana, reached into his pocket and pulled out a homing lizard of his own. He whispered her name and tossed it to the floor, then turned and went back to work.

Orli took the creature from her shoulder and held it in her hands fighting back the tears Thadius’ cruelty exacted from her. She watched through the blur in her eyes as the trio began the enchantment on the next missile, the next swipe of the blade upon the whetstone, the sharpening of the assassin’s knife. Their chanting sung the song of Blue Fire’s demise. One note at a time, one enchantment at a time, one hour at a time, at an exhausting pace for the mages, but a sure one. The same surety that could be found on every ship in the fleet as the
Citadel
enchanters had spread themselves like the carriers of a plague, distributing their power as evenly as possible, and begun their work of death enchanting every missile in the fleet.

Nearly a week had passed, and there were only a handful of missiles left in need of the enchantments. The higher ranked mages were being shuffled from ship to ship to catch the lower ones up. An O-ranked mage was on the other side of the hangar bay even now, helping to finish the last of the
Aspect’s
arsenal. They would all be done today. Then the trip back to the Hostile system would begin and the war could finally be won.

Orli watched the three of them work, and while she felt the need to cry, to cry for herself and Thadius’ fickle love, to cry for Blue Fire, for loneliness, for misery, she just couldn’t find the tears. They were gone. She felt like she’d been crying for years now. Crying her way to Prosperion; crying her way through capture; crying her way through dreams; crying for the friend she’d found and lost in them; and last, crying for Thadius who looked at her with such contempt now, as if he hated her, ever since they’d come aboard the ship. It was certainly enough to cry about. She knew she should, even wanted to, but she felt all dried up inside.

And besides, Thadius loved her, she knew. He was so strong and handsome standing there casting the spells as he was. He was trying to do what he thought was right. Trying to earn Captain Asad’s trust. She couldn’t blame him. Poor, brave man without a home, without a world. Of course he had to fit in, and he had to do it fast, for Captain Asad was none too happy about having him on board.

“Why should I take him?” the captain had asked that day back on
Citadel
.

“Because your ship needs the crew,” came the answer from Admiral Jefferies.

“You already know I don’t trust
them
.” He said it right in front of the Queen and her entourage. She did not dignify the remark with one of her own, but she held her head in a manner that made her opinion of Captain Asad obvious.

“Your ship gave up an officer to Her Majesty’s service. You are getting one in return. It’s already been decided.”

“Then I’ll take my officer back,” Captain Asad said. That had shocked everyone. “They can keep the magician. I’d rather have Pewter.”

Colonel Pewter, present at the time, had looked as if he wanted to punch Captain Asad for that, but he did not.

“You may have her,” said the Queen, adding to the pile of mounting surprises that day. “I am done with her.” She looked as if she’d given him little more than the charity of a copper piece in saying it.

“You see, Captain,” said Admiral Jefferies, “you’ve just increased your depleted crew by two.”

“Three,” said the Queen. “He’s bringing his man with him as well. Another mage. So you see, quite a windfall, Captain.”

Captain Asad did need people, but the way he saw it, Orli was incompetent, and he had no use for a mage, certainly not two. He didn’t like being manipulated either. He said as much aloud, which ended with Admiral Jefferies having made an order of it.

Orli had thought Captain Asad was going to have a fit, but he didn’t. He controlled himself with obvious effort. Captain Asad was nothing if not a believer in the chain of command, but the way his jaw worked suggested he was already devising a way to fix it in time. He did not care for the way the admiral seemed so ready to uphold every last suggestion of the Queen. Rather than argue, however, he turned to Thadius and said, “I’ll burn you down the first time you look like you’re up to something. You or your ‘man.’” He leaned so close to Thadius their noses nearly touched. “Ask your buddy Altin if I won’t.” He’d then looked to Orli, glared at her with such loathing in his dark eyes, the memories of her insubordination burning behind them. To the admiral he said simply, “Yes, sir.”