A Passage of Stars

  Side streets led them to the plaza that fronted E Depot. It was so utterly changed a scene from the one she had just fought through that she could not help but feel that she had somehow been dislocated in time, as if she had just gone through, or was still in, a window.

  Thin streams of plastine fiber fluttered over the ground. The litter of violence lay strewn across the plaza: clothing, signs, abandoned weapons. There were no bodies. The quiet that lay over them was ominous in its intensity.

  “Have they killed everyone?” Lily whispered. “Hoy, they worked fast.”

  Kyosti’s head lifted, as if he had caught a scent and was trying to trace it to its source. He moved forward abruptly, and Lily half-tripped over a ruined motoped in her haste to follow him. He halted beside a pile of debris, knelt, and uncovered the body of a Ridani woman. Shutting his eyes, he laid a hand on the side of her face. Lily stopped behind him. The woman had been shot at least four times, once in the neck, the rest in the chest. A slow bubble of blood rose out of her partly open mouth.

  At last Kyosti removed his hand and, rising, stepped over the body and began to walk on.

  “She’s still alive,” said Lily quietly.

  He paused. “She’ll be dead within the hour, Lily.” She still hesitated. “And she can’t feel anything.”

  Lily lifted her gaze from the body to look first at Kyosti and then at the deserted square. “We’re going to be seeing a lot of this, aren’t we?”

  “Ah, Lily,” he murmured. “You’re no longer what you were when I first met you.”

  “No, I don’t suppose I am. Let’s go.”

  At the gate into Kippers the mob had vanished and the troops stood vigilant but relaxed. To get them inside, Kyosti used the simple expedient of presenting his technologist’s identification and informing the guard on the other side of the gate that there were wounded troopers he and his assistant had been called to attend. Once inside, Lily guided them to berth 5778.

  “Damn my eyes.” Jenny swung out of the cab where she had efficiently trussed and tied the troopers. “You found him. What happened to your hair, Hawk?”

  “A minor cosmetic change,” said Kyosti. “I’ll let the color grow back.”

  In the shuttle, the engines were already going. Pinto strapped in front counting down the check of his instruments. Aliasing had a hand on his shoulder; when she saw Lily, she stepped back and strapped herself in beside Pinto, at comm. Bach sang a relieved greeting, but the chair restraints prevented him from going to Lily. Behind, Jenny closed the hatch. The comm, tuned in to some underground frequency, sounded suddenly in the quiet left by the dampening of engine noise.

  “Pero is not one man, not one woman.” It was Robbie’s voice. Lily strapped herself in next to Kyosti. The shuttle shuddered and coasted forward, taxiing to the strip. “Pero is the voice of the people. Pero cannot be murdered by the oppressors.” Jenny strapped in across from Lily. Out of the window, buildings and berths cleared into the length of runway. “Pero will never die. Pero will always be resurrected. Such is our power.”

  Pinto reached out across Aliasing and flipped off the comm channel.

  Into its absence, Lia said, “What are you going to do?”

  Silence first, but for the muffled rumble of engine through the hull.

  “I don’t see we have any choice,” said Lily finally. “We’ll join Jehane.”

  “Oh,” said Lia. “After all,” she finished as Pinto responded to the go-ahead over comm and the engines arced in volume, “if Central is hunting you, he’s one person who will welcome you, and protect you.” She glanced briefly at Jenny as she said it, but Jenny was busy glaring at the screen on her lap and did not notice the comment.

  Beside Lily, Kyosti had fallen asleep, head tucked against her shoulder, one long-fingered hand resting on her thigh. Lily kissed his hair softly. “His heir will take his place,” she murmured. “It was inevitable.”

  The engines screamed and shoved and she was pressed back into her seat by the thrust of takeoff. The shuttle banked sharply to the left, lifted, leveled, and began the long ascent toward space. Lily, gazing out the window, watched Arcadia dissolve from detail into the indistinct clarity of distance. All that blue, all water—the kind of beauty that never leaves you.

  “Good-bye, Master Heredes,” she said. Bach sang,

  Ruht wohl, ihr heiligen Gebeine,

  die ich nun weiter nicht beweine;

  Ruht wohl, und bringt auch mich zur Ruh’.

  Das Grab, so euch bestimmet ist

  und ferner keine Not umschliesst,

  Macht mir den Himmel auf

  und schliesst die Hölle zu.

  “Rest well, you holy remains,

  which I shall no longer mourn;

  Rest well, and bring me also to rest.

  The grave, that is destined for you,

  and holds no further suffering,

  opens Heaven to me

  and closes the gates of Hell.”

  The shuttle continued to climb, a steady curve lengthening into the infinite expanse of sky.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Highroad Trilogy

  Will ye gang tae the Hielands

  my bonnie, bonnie lass

  Will ye gang tae the Hielands

  wi’ Geordie?

  And I’ll tak’ the high road

  and ye’ll tak’ the low

  And I’ll be in the Hielands

  afore ye.

  1 Virtue’s Reward

  OBSESSIONS ARE DANGEROUS IN proportion to the amount of fear they breed in their possessors: the closer the possessor to loss of control, the greater the fear.

  Kyosti Bitterleaf Hakoni, professionally known as Hawk, had three obsessions. The first was his work as a physician, work denied him for almost twenty-five years but now restored. The second was his lover. But last, and encompassing the first two, he was obsessed with a fear that someday his past—not even the past people knew him for, the one that had made him and his compatriots both heroes and criminals—would catch up with him.

  Of course it would. And, of course, in the way he most feared.

  But at this moment Hawk sat against the sheen of one wall of his cabin, an arm, half-obscured by the riot of his pale hair, hooked behind his head. With a concentration that directly recalled his namesake, he watched his lover as she slept. His eyes seemed hooded in their intensity, as if he feared that the full force of his stare might obliterate her, flesh and soul.

  She did not stir.

  He watched her for a long while, silent, and finally a series of chimes, the change of watch, rang through the ship and she shifted beneath the blanket and her eyes opened.

  At first she glanced around the room, recalling where she was, but when her gaze found Hawk she relaxed, and yawned and stretched. He watched her.

  “Kyosti,” she said when she had finished, “what were we doing when we went through the last window?” Her voice still held the slight hoarseness of awakening, lending it an unwittingly passionate quality.

  Hawk smiled.

  “That’s what I thought. Hoy.” She sat up, her covers slipping off her to reveal the light curve of her skin and the medallion—five interlinked circles pierced by a spear—that Heredes had given her. It hung now, just as it always did, just below the hollow of her throat. She shivered, as if the memory of what they had been doing brought her both pleasure and anticipation, and rested her head on her hands, palms covering her eyes. “I could become addicted to that.”

  His eyes had not lost their intensity, giving his smile a disturbing blend of amorous warmth and that complete instability brought on by unquenchable thirst. Then she looked up, and his expression changed abruptly to something much more innocuous.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” she said. “And don’t even try to kiss me. I need something to drink.” He stood up. “Yes,” she added. “You can get it for me, please.”

  He left, the door sliding to behind him. For an instant his presence sti
ll seemed to be with her, and then that feeling dispelled.

  “Hoy,” she said again, but with more emphasis, and she lay back down. Above her on the bunk, the intercom buzzed and she reached up to flip it on. “You’re through.”

  “Lily?” A woman’s voice, tight and controlled. “Get up to the bridge. Fast. Your pilot—”

  “I’m coming.” Lily dressed and left the cabin before Hawk returned.

  The corridor of the Easy Virtue stretched out in dimness before her: evidently Captain Bolyai had chosen to spare as much power as possible. Lily padded double-time to the elevator that gave access to the bridge. She punched an unlit button with one finger and felt the lift shudder and rise beneath her feet. Its low hum sighed to a halt and the door shunted aside to reveal the glare of the bridge.

  “—and I don’t care if your tupping grandmother was a saint of the Lotus Way, Tobias, you heard the radio traffic—there’s a general alert on in this system and we haven’t got the clearances to get past a close check. So sit down at your damned station.”

  Jenny Seria stood gripping the tunic of a nondescript man whose chief feature was a grimace of pure hatred directed at the wild tattoos covering the pilot Pinto’s face and bare arms. Jenny herself bore a look of disgust tempered by the exasperated glance she cast over her shoulder at Lily’s entrance.

  “And I told you,” hissed Tobias, “that I won’t ship with any cursed tattoo.” As he spoke, Lily noticed that his left eye was beginning to swell, mottled with a deep bruise, and that Captain Bolyai, bearing a harassed look and worried frown at the same time, had a tight but tenuous grip on Pinto’s right arm. “I’ll rot along with the cursed ghost fleet and all the corpses on Gravewood before I’ll touch the same board as that whore’s get—”

  Pinto broke free from Bolyai and lunged for Tobias.

  Lily met Pinto halfway, bracing herself, and stopped him dead in his tracks. He began to fight against her, realized who she was, and froze into a posture stiff with fury.

  “I’ll kill him,” Pinto muttered, but despite the rage in his voice he did not attempt to break past Lily.

  Lily looked at Captain Bolyai. “Isn’t there someone else who can man that station?”

  Bolyai shook his head. His eyes examined Lily with the look usually reserved for a once-trusted pet who has brought something truly disgusting in off the streets. “Th’other just went off-shift. Tobias hadn’t been up before—”

  “Cursed right I hadn’t,” began Tobias. “And if you think I’d’ve stayed on this boat knowing you let such filth aboard—”

  Pinto jerked forward, caught in Lily’s grasp, but Tobias responded to the movement by flinging himself gleefully toward Pinto. Only to be thrown hard to the ground by Jenny. The mercenary knelt over him and twisted his arm up behind his back until he cried out in pain.

  “Captain!” This from the man at comm. “Military scan. One cruiser, one cutter entering oct quadrant.”

  Bolyai flushed. “Put it through.”

  “—request that you identify yourselves. Repeat, this is Heart of Lion. We are in control of this system. We are impounding all vessels without Central clearance. Identify yourselves.”

  For a long space the only sound on the bridge was the crackle of static as Heart of Lion waited for a reply, mixed with Tobias’s gasping breaths as Jenny let up on his arm.

  “Tupping idiot,” she muttered, jerking him up to his feet and shoving him into his chair.

  Bolyai went from pale to mottled red as he recovered from the first shock. He took three swift steps to stand behind the navigator’s chair. “Get us out of here.” His voice shook.

  There was a second moment of silence as all attention focused on the nav chair’s occupant. Maned with a glistening crest, the seated sta shook her head and hissed inaudible words to herself as her six-fingered hands tapped calculations into ship’s computer. She sighed, like water flowing downhill.

  “The last fix I received from the station here leads into a narrow vector. At our present course, our shift would narrow both our velocity window and our angle—no room for error. None.”

  The comm came to life again. “This is the Heart of Lion. We are under orders to fire on all hostile vessels. We repeat: identify yourselves.”

  Pinto tugged at Lily’s arm, and she released him. He too went to stand by the nav bank, studying the three-dimensional chart that came up on the screen.

  “I can do it,” he said.

  The sta glanced up at him, scale-rimmed eyes blinking once, slowly, before she turned her gaze to Bolyai.

  He had by this time broken out in a sweat. “I’ll lose my ship,” he whispered.

  “I can do it,” Pinto repeated.

  “You’re not going to let that whore of a tattoo put his filthy hands on—” Tobias’s words cut off as Jenny tightened her grip on him.

  “Shut up.” She looked at Lily. “He got us this far, after all.”

  Bolyai looked at Lily.

  Lily nodded. “Trust him.”

  “Go,” murmured Bolyai, as if by speaking softly he could negate the responsibility for the command.

  “This is the Heart of Lion. We will fire if you do not—”

  “And turn that tupping noise off,” shouted Bolyai, gaining strength of purpose in anger.

  The sta had already entered the coordinates and began to read out the numbers.

  “I won’t—” began Tobias.

  “You will,” said Jenny.

  He hesitated, and she drew a pistol, laser light red, from her belt. He began to transfer coordinates through engineering.

  For perhaps ten seconds all proceeded in silence. Then the sta’s crest raised slightly, and she hissed out a long, nervous breath.

  “Velocity out of phase,” she said, almost singing in fluid nervousness. “I need a correction. Immediately. I need seven point seven eight degrees at three forty-seven, current vector.”

  Pinto slipped into the pilot’s chair, twisting the stillstrap around his body. “Call them in.” He adjusted the viewers to his eyes.

  “Vector clearance,” began the sta. “Window at one point five, neg three point eight, forty-two.”

  “That’s tight,” muttered the comm man.

  “We’re all dead,” cursed Tobias in an undertone meant to carry across the bridge.

  “Homing to six ought fifty-seven degrees. Three twenty-two bits.”

  “Shifting vector,” said Pinto. The minute movements of his hands could not be seen under the stillstrap.

  The sta read off her numbers, calculating as the ship shifted placement. “Six ought sixty-seven. Six ought eight five. Seven ought one. Seven ought four. Reverse.” Tension invaded her fluid voice. “Cancel seven ought seven point eight. Add seven ought eight point one at three forty-eight bits.”

  “Check,” said Pinto.

  Bolyai’s hands trembled as he gripped the back of the navigator’s chair. Tobias cursed fluently.

  “Oh, tup yourself, Tobias,” said Jenny genially. “They say if you vector wrong you end up in Paradise. What are you worried about? It’s the only way you’ll ever get there.”

  “Captain!” The comm man gasped. “Cruiser is banking for fire.”

  “Seven ought six. Seven ought seven point eight. Three forty-six bits. Three forty-seven. Three forty-seven.”

  “I’ve got surges,” swore the man at comm. “They’ve fired. We’ll never make it.”

  “Three forty-seven. Closing imperative. Seven ought eight point one. Three forty-eight. Break.”

  “We will,” breathed Lily.

  They went through.

  Behind, the hunter trailed her by scent, inexorable, nearing. However far she fled, however faint her trail grew, it would pursue, until at last she would turn to see its face.

  And came out.

  “Perfect,” hissed the sta.

  Lily turned. The lift door slid open to reveal Kyosti. He stared directly at her, almost as if he had been watching her even through the metal of
the door. She shuddered, shaking off the vision, but as it faded she remembered with greater clarity their last trip on the Easy Virtue, when he had moved across a cabin inside a window.

  An impossible act, and in time she had let herself believe she had imagined it. Except that now—surely he had been in the mess, or in their cabin. Could he possibly move so far in a space that lasted no more than an instant for everyone else? What if he had reached her before they had come out of the window?

  He did not move out of the lift.

  “I have Jungfrau beacon,” said the man at comm. “Holy Void. That’s the tightest vector I’ve ever shipped. We skipped Joch system completely.” He turned disbelieving eyes on the sta navigator. “Did you know this window would skip us so far?”

  The sta merely unfurled her crest so that it glittered, bronze, in the glare of the lights. “Yes,” she breathed, sibilant. “I saw the Ridani’s touch on the first vector we rode through. It was our only chance, but I believed.” She rose, uncurling her great height, and flattened her crest as she faced Pinto. “You are a master.” The gesture embodied formal respect.

  Pinto unstrapped and laid a delicate hand on the softly humming board. “Thank you,” he murmured.

  Tobias flung himself out of his chair and shouldered past Kyosti, who was in his turn forced to step out onto the bridge as Tobias commandeered the lift and vanished from sight.

  Captain Bolyai sat down in the vacant chair. He had gone pale again, and his hands were slick with perspiration. “I’ve never had to run before,” he whispered. His breathing came ragged. “Not like that. Circumspection is all one needs.” He swiveled to glare at Jenny. “I want you all off my ship. I said no troublemaking on this boat, and I meant it. No attracting attention. All of you off.”

  Lily glanced at Jenny, but the mercenary had fallen silent, quiet, as if only by not speaking could she keep her anger in check. “This system is no more than a beacon,” Lily countered, meeting Bolyai’s gaze. “With a rotating crew. They don’t even have life support for so many.”

  Bolyai dropped his eyes to examine the boards. Pinto was smiling, a look of mocking cynicism. The sta sighed and sat back down at her station, beginning calculations anew.