Traitor's Sun (33 page)

“Very well,
Dom.
”
Catch me bothering
Dom
Syrtis-Ardais! I think not!

Herm rode out of the stableyard, and hoped that the groom was trustworthy and loyal. The worry of it brought back Katherine’s stinging accusations, and he felt quietly miserable as he rode through the now silent streets of Thendara, heading for the North Gate. The groom had not exaggerated the poorness of the gelding’s gait. It was dreadful. It almost spoiled the pleasure Herm had in being on horseback again, until he adjusted his body to conform to it a little. The mare trotted along behind him, the sound of hooves on the cobblestones echoing between the buildings.

It took him less than an hour to reach his goal, but even in that short a time his thighs were protesting this unexpected exercise, and he was ready to regret his impulse. It was not cold, he knew, for the time of year, but after two decades in the heated confines of Federation buildings, he felt like he might freeze to death. The breath of the horses barely misted the air, and he told himself he would readjust soon.

He looked around. There were two fields, one on either side of the road. He saw the brightly painted wagons of the Travelers in one, and some food vendors and muleteers in the other. Several fire pits were blazing, and he saw a number of figures standing around them. There was a sense of quiet about the scene. Someone was telling a story to a fascinated audience beside one fire, and a deep voice carried through the stillness.

Finally he spotted a small figure sitting beside one fire, cloaked and hooded. There were a couple of old men sitting across from him, on stones that had been there for ages, arguing about some small matter, but they paid no attention to him. Herm dismounted and led the horses over.

“Well, nephew,” he began quietly, “I see you got here before me. I was delayed in the city.”

The head beneath the hood moved at the sound of his voice, stilled, and then lifted. “I was starting to think you had forgotten me, Uncle.”

“I would never do that. I hope you were not bored, waiting.”

“Oh, no. I just watched the performances, and got something to eat.”
Herm! You are not who I expected!

Not immediately, Nico. I promised your father I would keep you safe—he was not very pleased with you. Now, I want you to be called Tomas, and I will be Ian MacAnndra.
It occurred to him then that there was something he had missed earlier, during the discussion in the study. Herm wondered why Danilo and Lew wanted Domenic away from Comyn Castle. Then he decided they probably had good reasons and stopped worrying about it.

Damn, but the boy was quick! Herm sat down next to the young man and stretched his hands toward the fire. Then he listened intently to the voice in his mind. The tale unwound clearly, beginning with how the Travelers’ wagon had passed Comyn Castle that morning and ending with what the boy had heard later. Domenic seemed to have a good memory and an eye for detail. As he went over his story, Herm could sense that Nico was starting to relax, and even enjoying himself a bit. He asked a few questions, and discovered that Nico had never seen the men’s faces, but thought he could identify them anyhow.

At last they stood up together and got the bedrolls from the horses, spread them out beside the fire, and prepared to sleep. Herm discovered he was very tired, and that his legs ached from riding, but he was excited as well. The pleasant smells of woodsmoke and horse dung, cold air and a light breeze, refreshed him. He ignored the rocks under his bedding and thought about Katherine and the children. His spirits started to plummet, but before he could pitch himself into despair, he heard the boy again.
I think something is happening over near the Travelers.

What?

A moment later loud voices erupted in the other field. There were shouts from within the wagons to be quiet, and the noise of wooden doors being opened and closed. Everyone who was awake looked over with interest. A few of the muleteers began to wander across the road, abandoning the storyteller at the fire pit in favor of more lively entertainment.

Herm sat up and looked, and Domenic as well. Two shadowed figures were struggling in front of one wagon, fists flying and mostly missing the mark. Then several other people got out of the wagons and joined in the fray, trying to separate the combatants.

The fight was over quickly, though the loud voices continued. One man swore at everyone, and shuffled away. He vanished into a wain, and reemerged a few minutes later with a rather clumsy bundle. He started to trudge away from the encampment, and a woman screamed at him. He turned and shouted back at her.

L
yle Belfontaine stared at the stack of sheets on his desk. They were the messages he had sent during the past two days, and all of them had been returned without any reply. This was something that had never happened before, and it left him with a knot in his belly and a raging headache. It was as if the Federation had vanished from the galaxy, leaving him stranded on Cottman IV. He had not felt so helpless since his father had dismissed him over thirty years before. And he had not felt so frustrated since just before the disastrous events on Lein III, when he had tried to overthrow a planetary government against all the rules of the Federation. It gave him an anxious feeling, a roughening of the skin at the back of his neck, an almost prescient sense that he might revisit those events, and this time make them work out to his advantage. Strange—this planet must really be getting under his skin, if he was starting to think like the superstitious natives who believed in such nonsense.

Miles Granfell walked into the office without announcement, his face sober, but his eyes gleaming with surpressed emotion. His boots were soiled, as if he had been walking on dirt, and his usually tidy hair was wind-tossed. Without a word, he took the chair on the other side of the desk and stretched his long legs forward.

“What is it?” Lyle growled the words, glaring at the stack of returned messages, aggrieved and almost eager to take it out on his underling. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, ‘walking to and fro upon the earth.’ ” Belfontaine recognized this as some sort of quotation. The last thing he wanted to do was play literature with Granfell, but he decided he had to be patient. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Granfell grinned and crossed his ankles. “I have some good news. Regis Hastur is dead.”

Belfontaine found himself angry at the man’s words rather than pleased. Surely he should have known about this before his subordinate! With an effort, he mastered his emotions and asked only, “Are you sure?”

“Vancof is, which will have to do for now.”

“I see. Well, that is news indeed,” he conceded with as much grace as he could muster. When he did not say anything further, the other man shifted in the chair, as if trying to gauge Lyle’s mood.

After a minute of silence, Granfell asked, “What’s all that clutter? I’ve never seen so much paper on your desk in all the years you have been here.”

Lyle eyed the other man with thinly masked dislike. Granfell’s tone bordered on insolence. Then he dismissed his feelings—it was just Miles’ way, after all. “It is every message I have sent out in the past thirty-six hours. Regional Headquarters seems to have . . . vanished.”

Granfell came to attention abruptly. “Is there some problem with the relay station?”

“I don’t know. Our transmitter appears to be functioning perfectly, but whatever I send out just bounces.” He did not need to add that the transmitter for Cottman IV was ancient by Federation standards, that all the equipment at Headquarters had been there for ten or even twenty years without replacement. Fortunately, most of it still worked, but recently they had had to scavenge parts from some mechanisms to keep others going—all because of the austerity measures that had spread across the Federation.

“This is serious, Lyle.”

“I am well aware of that,” he answered as icily as he could. “It makes your concerns that we might be abandoned here take on a whole new dimension.”

“Precisely. And I think we should . . .” Miles’ voice faltered, and he looked around the office slowly. “It makes planning anything very difficult,” he said at last.

Belfontaine looked at him dumbly for a moment, until he realized that Granfell had something he wanted to say that he did not want to have heard or recorded. Even the chance that they were going to be stuck on Cottman instead of removed did not relieve him of the fear of being suspected of working against the Federation. There were automatic devices in the walls of the room which heard everything, and he had no control over them, even though he was part of the Security Forces. If Lyle had been able to, he would have turned off the listeners long since. And just because the Federation was out of touch at present did not mean it would remain so. They had to proceed with caution.

“My head feels like I have been on a three-day drunk. Let’s take a walk, and consider our options,” he replied after a moment.

“The hangover without the pleasure of the booze, you mean?” The words were spoken casually as Granfell unfolded his long body from the chair, smiling without humor.

“Precisely.”

Belfontaine picked his all-weather cloak off the hook beside the door. They walked out of the office together, down the corridor, and took the lift to the ground floor without speaking again. Then they exited the building, coming into a chilly night, the sky overcast as usual, and the wind brisk. They moved across the tarmac in silence, until they were well away from everything, and had some assurance of not being overheard.

“So Regis Hastur is dead. And I never even got to meet him.”

“Yes. And if the Federation has left us behind, we have our own lives to think about. Vancof told me that Regis’ heir is Mikhail Hastur, and we know even less about him than we did about Regis. What I do know is that they are going to take the body up to some place near Lake Hali, some religious site.”

“Who is?”

“All of them, the entire Comyn Council, is my understanding, with their wives and children, and who knows how many else.”

“You mean that the Castle is going to be . . .”

“I’m not sure if it will be empty, but I suspect that it would be comparatively easy pickings. But that is just a building. The real power here is in the Domains.” After stating this obvious fact, Miles paused for several seconds, as if experiencing dificulty in continuing.

Belfontaine waited as patiently as he could, sensing the tension in his subordinate. “And?”

“What I think you should do is . . . arrange for this funeral train to be attacked along the road somewhere.” The words came in a rush, as if Granfell wanted to release them as fast as possible. When Belfontaine did not react, he went on. “I told Vancof to scout out a likely ambush site—which he did not like very much. But if a substantial part of the ruling class were removed, there would be no obstacle to Federation rule—assuming that there still is a Federation in a few weeks. I confess that this sudden silence makes me very uneasy. What do you think is going on out there?”