Warlock (17 page)

“I will keep that in mind.”

She did not need the admonition. She made each trip by a different route, carefully keeping near cover, with more wariness than even Grauel demanded. She probed every foot of the way with ghosts before she traversed it.

Not once did she divine the presence of would-be assassins.

Did that mean the Serke in fact controlled their unholy alliance with the brethren — or only that all her enemies were equally intimidated?

During that, the year of silence, Marika and Bagnel sparred carefully and subtly, each gently mining the other for flecks of information. Marika often wondered if he was as conscious of her probable mission as she was of his. She suspected he was. He was quite intelligent and perceptive. For a male.

Halfway through the year Bagnel began teaching her to fly one of the brethren’s simplest trainers. His associates and hers alike were scandalized.

The visits to Bagnel relieved a growing but as yet unspoken pressure upon Marika. On returning from the Ponath she had been eligible for the final rites of silth adulthood, the passage that would admit her into full sisterhood among the Reugge. But she had not asked to be passed through the ritual. She evaded the subject however obliquely it arose, hinting that she was too busy with her duties, too involved with learning the darkship, to take out the months needed for preparation.

She did spend most of her waking time studying and practicing the methods of the silth Mistresses of the Ship, driving herself to exhaustion, trying to become in months what others achieved only after years.

II

I
t was not her darkship, of course, but she fell into the habit of thinking of it that way. It was the cloister’s oldest and smallest, its courier and trainer. There were no other trainees and few messages to be flown. Its bath were old and drained, no longer fit for prolonged flights. They were survivors of other crews broken up by time or misfortune during the struggle with the savages. They did not mesh perfectly, the way bath did after they had been together a long time, but they did so well enough to give a young Mistress-trainee a feel for what she had to learn.

Marika had the most senior’s permission to avail herself of the darkship anytime it was not employed upon cloister business. It almost never was. She had it to herself most of the time. So much so that when an occasion for a courier flight did arise, she resented having it taken from her.

She spent as much time aloft as the bath would tolerate.

They did have the right to refuse her if they felt she was using them or herself too hard. But they never did. They understood.

One day, drifting on chill winds a thousand feet above Maksche, Marika noticed a dirigible approaching. She streaked toward it, to the dismay of Grauel and Barlog, and drifted alongside, waving at the freighter’s master. He kept swinging away, disturbed by silth attention.

She thought of Bagnel, realized she had not seen him in nearly two months. She had been too engrossed in the darkship.

She followed the frieghter in to the enclave.

She dropped the darkship onto the concrete just yards from Bagnel’s office building. Tradermales surrounded her immediately, most of them astonished, many of them armed, but all of them recognizing her as their security chief’s strange silth friend.

Bagnel appeared momentarily. “Marika, I swear you’ll get yourself shot yet.” He ignored the scowls his familiarity won from Grauel and Barlog.

“What’s the matter, Bagnel? Another big secret brethren scheme afoot out here?” She taunted him so because she was convinced such schemes did exist. She hoped to garner something from his reactions.

“Marika, what am I going to do with you?”

“Take me up in a Sting. You’ve been promising for months. Do you have time? Are you too busy?”

“I’m always busy.” He scratched his head, eyed her and her huntresses and bath, all hung about with an outrageous assortment of weapons. Marika refused to leave the cloister unarmed, and even there usually carried her rifle. It was her trademark. “But, then, I’ve always got time for you. Gives me an excuse to get away from my work.”

Right, Marika thought. She grew ever more certain that she was his primary occupation. “I’ve got a better idea than the Sting. You’re always taking me up in your ships. Let me take you up on mine.”

Grauel and Barlog snapped, “Marika!”

The eldest of the bath protested, “Mistress, you forget yourself. You are speaking to a male.” She was scandalized by Marika’s use of the familiar even more than by her invitation.

“This male is my friend. This male has ridden a darkship before. He did not defile it then. He will not now. Come on, Bagnel. Do you have the courage?”

Bagnel eyed the darkship. He examined the small platform at the axis, usually shared by Grauel and Barlog. He licked his lips, frightened.

Marika said, “Grauel, Barlog, you stay here. That will give him more room.”

The huntresses surveyed the unfriendly male crowd with narrowed eyes. Unconsciously, Barlog unslung her rifle. Grauel asked, “Is that wise, Marika?”

“You’ll be all right. Bagnel will be my hostage for your safety. Come on, tradermale. You claim to be the equal of any female. Can you fly with no cushion under your tail and no canopy to keep the wind out of your whiskers?”

Bagnel licked his lips and approached the darkship.

Grauel and Barlog stepped down. Marika suggested, “Use the harness, Bagnel. Don’t try to show off the first time. First-timers have been known to get dizzy and fall if they aren’t harnessed.”

Bagnel was not too proud to harness himself. He did so carefully, under the grim gaze of the leading bath.

They were angry, those old silth. Marika expected them to resist when she tried to take the darkship up, so she lifted off before they were ready, violently, shocking them into assuming their roles for their own safety’s sake.

She made a brief flight of it, stretching her capabilities, then brought the darkship down within inches of where it had settled before.

Bagnel unfastened his harness with trembling fingers. He expelled a great breath as he stepped down to the concrete.

“You look a little frayed,” Marika teased.

“Do I, now? Ground crew! Prepare the number-two Sting. Come with me, Marika. It’s my turn.”

Grauel, Barlog, and the bath watched, perplexed, as Bagnel seated Marika in the Sting’s rear seat and strapped her in.

“What’s this?” Marika asked. She had worn no harness when they had flown in trainers.

“Parachute. In case we have to jump.”

Bagnel wriggled into the forward seat, strapped himself in. One of the ground crew spun the ship’s airscrew. The engine coughed, caught, belched smoke that stung Marika’s eyes and watered her nose. The ground crew jerked the blocks away from the ship’s wheels.

The aircraft bucked and roared with a power unlike any Marika had seen in the trainers. Its deep-throated growl swelled, swelled. When Bagnel let off the brakes, the ship raced down the airstrip, jumped into the air, climbed faster than was possible for any darkship.

Bagnel leveled off at one thousand feet. “All right, smart pup. Let’s see about your courage.”

The Sting tilted, dove. The airstrip swelled, spun. Buildings whirled dizzyingly. “You’re getting too close,” Marika said.

The ground kept coming up. Slam! It stopped spinning. Slam! Marika’s seat pressed into her back hard. Her guts sagged inside her. The ground slid away ahead. The horizon appeared momentarily, then whipped upward as Bagnel dumped another fifty feet of altitude. It reappeared and rotated as Bagnel rolled the aircraft. It seemed she could pluck the frightened growls from the lips of Grauel and Barlog as the ship roared past them.

The great engine grumbled more deeply as Bagnel demanded more of it. Clouds appeared ahead — and slid away as Bagnel took the ship over onto its back. He completed the loop, resumed the climb, reached five thousand feet, and went into a stall. The ship spun and fluttered.

Bagnel turned, said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that business in the Ponath last summer. What happened anyway? I’ve heard so many different stories...”

Marika could make no sense of what was happening outside. She clung to her courage by a thread. “Shouldn’t you be paying attention to what you’re doing?”

“No problem. I thought this would be a chance to talk without those two arfts hanging over your shoulder.”

“I ambushed a mob of nomads. It was a tough fight. Hardly anybody got out on either side. That’s all there was to it.” Her eyes grew wider as the surface drew closer.

“Really? There are so many rumors. I suppose they’re exaggerated.”

“No doubt.” He was digging. Carrying out an inquiry on instructions from his masters, she supposed. The brethren seniors would be getting nervous. They would want to know the Reugge game. That amused her mildly. She did not know the game herself. The most senior kept its strings held close to her heart.

“Looks like time to do something here,” Bagnel said. “Unless you’d like to land the hard way?”

“I’d rather not.”

“You’re a cool one, Marika.”

“I’m scared silly. But silth aren’t allowed to show fear.”

He glanced back, amused, then faced forward intently. He took control. The world stopped rocking and spinning. Then Bagnel went into a hard roll.

Something popped in the right wing. Marika watched a strut tear away, dragging fabric and wire. The ship staggered. The fragment spun behind, whipping at the end of a wire, threatening to pull more wing with it. “I think we might have trouble, Bagnel.”

“I think you might be right. Hang on. I’ll take us down.”

His landing was as stately and smooth as any he had made in a trainer. He brought the wounded ship to a halt just yards from his ground crew, killed the engine. “What did you think, Marika?”

The roar in her ears began to fade. “I think you got even. Let’s don’t do that to each other anymore.”

“Right.” He unbuckled, climbed out, and dropped from the lower wing to the concrete. Marika followed. When he finished briefing the ground crew about the strut, he told Marika, “You’d better leave now. My masters won’t be happy as it is.”

“Why not?”

“You dropped in unannounced. Better give warning from now on. Every time.”

Marika glanced at the freighter. She wondered if it really had brought in something the tradermales did not want seen by silth eyes. “All right. Whatever you say. Oh. I wanted to tell you. The most senior says it’s all right if you want to visit me at the cloister. If you have time off and have nothing better to do. My time isn’t as tight as it once was. I spend most of it learning the darkship. Maybe we could try another flight on one.”

News of that permission had scandalized the older sisters. Already they considered her friendship with Bagnel a filthy reflection upon the cloister, a degradation, though there was nothing even a little scandalous in the relationship. When her periodic estrus threatened, Marika was scrupulous about sinter, the self-isolation of silth who had not yet completed the Toghar ceremonies leading to full sisterhood. The pressure remained silent, but it was mounting. Her resistance was becoming more conscious.

III

Marika learned to manipulate a darkship as well as any Mistress of the Ship assigned to the Maksche cloister. And she did so in months instead of years.

She was not accepted within the select group of Mistresses, in their separate and sumptuous cloister within a cloister, though they did condescend to speak with her and give her advice when she asked it. No more was she accepted by the bath, who, in their way, formed a subCommunity even more exclusive than that of the Mistresses. They, like everyone else, had become frightened of the talent she showed.

There was nothing more she could learn from them anyway. She told herself she did not hurt for lack of their society. She had become the best again.

She received a summons to Gradwohl’s presence. She believed her accomplishments were the reason for it, and felt vindicated in her belief when, after the amenities and obeisances, Gradwohl said, “If you belonged to a major Community, Marika, you would be destined for the big darkships. For the stars. There are moments when I hurt because the Reugge are too small for you. Yet, there is tomorrow.”

In private Gradwohl seemed partial to such cryptic remarks. “Tomorrow, mistress?”

“You once asked why we do not build our own darkships anymore. When the brethren announced that they would no longer replace darkships lost by the Reugge, I started looking into that. I located sisters willing to soil their paws on the Community’s behalf. I found more of them than I expected. We are not as far gone in sloth and self-importance as one like yourself might think. I have them hidden away now, with a good crew of workers to help them. They have begun to report modest successes. Extracting the titanium is more difficult than we expected.

“But there are several golden-fleet groves within the Reugge territories. Those most immediately threatened by the advancing ice I have ordered harvested. Old shipwrights with the ancient skills promise me that we do not need to be fancy, and that wood can be substituted many places even in the brethren designs.

“So we will no longer be dependent. May a curse fall upon all male houses. If this works out the way I expect, we may even be able to build our own void darkships.”

Marika arrayed her face in a carefully neutral expression. Now she understood the additional, intensified silth exercises she had been assigned on her return from the Ponath.

There was little more she could learn from teachers available at Maksche. Indeed, she seemed to have exhausted the Reugge educational resources. Her responsibilities as a councillor took up very little time. She was free to pursue private studies and to expand her silth capacities. Gradwohl insisted she do the latter, feeling she was especially weak in her grasp of the far touch.

The far touch was a talent increasingly rare because the use of telecommunications was so much easier. One side of Marika was lazy enough to want to ignore the talent — just as that lazy side throughout the Reugge Community was responsible for the talent’s diminution. She rebelled against that laziness, hammered away at learning. And at times was very amused at herself. She, the outsider, the cynic about silthdom’s traditional values, seemed to be the Community’s most determined conservator of old ways and skills.