“Had the snowfall not been so heavy the savages might have been intimidated by their losses. But they could not see those. It came to hand-to-hand fighting in our camp before I managed to slay the last silth protecting them. And then I did not have the strength to finish them. All I could do was lie there while my huntresses died around me.
“Mistress, I must take responsibility for this disaster. I have betrayed you. Through my inattention I turned victory into defeat.”
“What defeat, Marika? It was costly, yes. I will miss Dorteka. But you broke the Serke back. You saved the Ponath. They will not try anything like this again.”
“Mistress, I...”
“Yes?”
“I lost my command. I lost Dorteka. I lost many valuable novices. I lost everything. This is not a thing to celebrate.”
“You won a triumph, pup. You were the only one to stand her ground. Your seniors lost heart and fled before the battle was joined. And I am certain the Serke did not make it easy for you. Or you would not be in the state you are now.”
“There was one of their great ones with them,” Marika reiterated. “I bested her only through trickery.”
Gradwohl ignored her remarks. Her voice took on a flint-knife hardness. “Educan is going to rue her male cowardice. The tall tales she told when she reached Maksche will cost her every privilege she has.” A glint of humor appeared in the most senior’s eye. “You would have appreciated her expression when the news came that you had saved Akard. That the garrison she abandoned there never saw hair of the invaders.”
“Mistress, I fear what might happen if news of this gets out to other Communities.”
“I am two steps ahead, pup. Let the villains quake and quiver. Let them wonder. What happened is not going to leave the circle of those who know now. We will let the snows devour the evidence.”
Marika sighed.
“We are not ready for the upheaval going public would cause. We have years yet to go.”
Marika was puzzled by what Gradwohl said. She told herself not to underestimate the most senior. That female had a labyrinthine mind. She was but a little animal being run through its maze, hoping she could keep her head well enough to use as much as she was used. “Yes, mistress. I was about to suggest that.” Let the snows devour the evidence.
“I think we will have less trouble with the Serke now. Do you agree? Yes. They will walk carefully for a while, now. Come back to Maksche, Marika. I need you here.”
Marika could think of nothing to say. Her mind refused to function efficiently.
“You flew the darkship blind, untrained, with but one bath to support you. I am impressed and pleased. You give me hope.”
“Mistress?”
“It is time your education moved into new, more practical areas.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“That is all for the moment, Marika. We will examine this more closely after you return. When you are more fully recovered. A darkship will come for you soon.”
“Thank you, mistress.”
The most senior stepped off pickup. Braydic reappeared for a moment, made an encouraging gesture. Then the screen blanked.
“You ducked that one, didn’t you?” Grauel asked. When Marika glanced her way, she found the huntress’s back turned.
The most senior turned out the cloister in Marika’s honor. Because only a very few knew the whole story, the older sisters acclaimed her only grudgingly.
“What do they want of me?” Marika asked Grauel. “No matter what I accomplish, they resent it.” She was surprised that, after all these years facing the disdain of the Reugge Wise, she could still be hurt by their attitudes.
“I do not know, Marika.” Grauel’s voice was tired, cold, remote. “You are a heroine now. Your future is assured. Is that not enough?” She would not criticize, but censure choked her body language.
For a very long time she and Barlog would speak to Marika only when the course of everyday business required it.
Chapter Twenty-one
I
For a year the Reugge were free from outside pressures. The Serke Community assumed a posture of retrenchment that baffled the silth world. They seemed to be digging in quietly in anticipation of some great fury while overtly shifting more of their energies into offworld ventures. But nothing happened.
Some who watched the brethren closely noted that they, too, sought a lower profile. Some of the constituent bonds, especially those strongest politically within the brotherhood, also seemed to anticipate some great terror. But nothing happened.
Except that Most Senior Gradwohl of the Reugge gathered legates of the Communities at the Reugge complex in TelleRai to formally announce a major victory over the savages plaguing the Reugge northern provinces. She declared those territories officially pacified.
The savages had come to concern several other Communities whose lands bounded the Reugge and would have been threatened had the Reugge campaign been unsuccessful. Those Communities were pleased by Gradwohl’s declaration.
Gradwohl publicly announced that a young Reugge sister named Marika had engineered the end of the savages’ tale.
Privately, Marika did not believe the threat to be extinct. She thought it only dormant, a weapon the Serke would unsheathe again if that seemed profitable.
TelleRai, where many silth Communities maintained their senior cloisters, simmered with speculations. What was the truth behind this bland bit of Reugge folkloring? Who was this deadly Marika, of whom there had been rumors before? Why was Gradwohl taking so little genuine note of what in fact amounted to a withering defeat for Serke intrigues? What was the Reugge game?
Already Gradwohl was a shadowy, almost sinister figure to the silth of TelleRai, known by reputation rather than by person. Her intensity and determination on behalf of a relatively minor, splinter Community, while she herself remained an enigma, were making of her an intimidating legend, large beyond her actual strength. Her spending most of her time away from TelleRai only strengthened the aura of mystery surrounding her.
Was the legend striving toward some goal greater than plain Reugge survival? Her plots were intricate, complex, though always woven within the law... She made more than the Serke ruling council uncomfortable.
Once a month, on no set day, Marika left the Maksche cloister and walked to the brethren enclave. The only escort she accepted consisted of Grauel and Barlog.
“I will not be loaded down with a mob of useless meth,” she insisted the first time after her return from the north. “The more I drag along, the more I have to worry about protecting.”
It had become customary for a silth sister daring the streets to surround herself with a score of armed guards. Invariably there would be at least one sniping incident.
Marika wanted to get the measure of the rogue infestation. In the back of her mind something had begun to see them as potentially useful, though she had as yet formulated nothing consciously.
Silth learned to listen to their subconscious even when not hearing it clearly.
The rogues did not bother her once, though she presented an inviting target.
Grauel and Barlog invariably chided her. “Why are you doing this? It’s foolish.” They said it a dozen ways, one or the other, every time.
“I’m proving something.”
“Such as?”
“That there is a connection between the rogue problem and the nomad problem.”
“That has been the suspicion for years.”
“Yes. But the Serke always get blamed for all our troubles. This is more in the nature of a practical experiment. If they feel I really burned their paws in the Ponath, maybe they’ll be afraid to risk troubling me here. I want to be satisfied that the same strategists are behind both troubles.”
She had other suspicions that she did not voice.
More than once Barlog admonished, “Do not become too self-important, Marika. The fact that we do not draw fire in the street may have nothing to do with it being you t
hat is out there.”
“I know. But I think if we are ignored often enough, it would be safe to say it’s purposeful. Especially if everybody else still gets shot at. Right?”
Reluctantly, both huntresses admitted that that might be true. But Grauel added, “The Serke will now think that they have a blood debt to balance. They will want your life.”
“I might stoop to murder to achieve my ends,” Marika admitted. “But the Serke will not. That’s more a male way of doing things, don’t you think?”
Grauel and Barlog looked thoughtful.
Marika continued, “The Serke are too tradition-bound to eliminate an important enemy that way.” She did not add that others with, perhaps, an equal interest in her death would not be bound by silth customs. Let the huntresses figure that out for themselves.
Those untraditional meth might be the ones who controlled the rogues tactically.
“You’re in charge, Marika,” Grauel said. “You know what you are doing, and you know the ways of those witches. But that city out there is wild country, for all its pretense to civilization. The wise huntress remains always alert when she is on the stalk.”
“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.