Winter rain was pouring down, setting the mountainside streams to rushing, white-frothed torrents. Musashi was climbing the pass under Mount Murou, a plain wooden staff in each hand. A bitterly cold wind howled, nipping at his face, etching white streaks on the wolf-skin he wore as a cape. The old blind man clinging to his back was cursing endlessly, complaining about every jounce and jolt in the road as the swordsman climbed, step by step, his feet bleeding in the straw sandals, towards the summit of the pass. If he missed a step, the old man would strike the side of Musashi’s head with a begging bowl and shout-“donkey!”-over the hiss of the wind.
De Molay slumped into Hadeishi’s hammock with a relieved groan. Her face was very pale, her skin waxy. Mitsuharu pulled one of the bottles of Mayahuel from his leg pockets and popped the cap. The old woman drank noisily, but seemed a bit revived when he took the empty away.
The main engineering console had been shorted out, which Hadeishi found a crude but effective way to prevent its use, but the secondary panels were still active. He retrieved his stylus from a corner and keyed up the interface. “ Kyo, what code should I use?” he asked, looking to De Molay.
“Hierusalem,” she said, and then spelled out the Latinate word for him. The panel quickened to life, showing a wholly different interface than he’d ever had access to before. Both of Hadeishi’s eyebrows rose in surprise, then he quickly navigated through the sensor options to find the transit display.
At the summit of the pass, where Toudai temple had once stood, there was a ring of shattered pillars and broken stones. Here the icy wind was howling like a demon, and the chill cut through Musashi’s cloak like a knife. Arrayed across the road, their own furs white and almost invisible against the blowing snow, stood a line of men with drawn blades. In his ear, Musashi heard the blind man sniff once, then twice. “Ah, idiot donkey-why have you angered the shugenja? Now we shall be late…”
The engineering panel was not equipped to generate a full-up threatwell display, but Hadeishi could read the swarm of glyphs and icons as well as any Fleet officer. De Molay opened one eye, peering at him from the hammock. “Well, engineer’s mate, where are we going?”
“That, I cannot tell. But we have found company… two dozen Khaid warships, I would judge-some of them larger than I’ve ever seen under their colors before-and we are all on the same heading.”
He stepped away from the console, thinking. “I’m going to have to find a place to hide you, Sencho. The Khaid prize crew will come around soon enough.”
NEAR THE PINHOLE
Anderssen woke abruptly, finding herself in near-darkness, and for a moment she was certain the roof above was formed of bronze-colored metal, metal which gleamed and flickered with the light of constantly moving streams of flame. Something like wraiths, or fiery shadows, which moved throughout the tower around her, which tenanted the streets below, and darted through sullen, amber-colored skies above.
Her mouth was filled with a hard, metallic taste and she tried to muster enough spit to clear her palate. Gods, what did I drink last night? She could not remember drinking anything harder than tea.
Sitting in the darkness, Gretchen flexed her fingers, tied back her hair, and groped around for her comm band. She found the bracelet by touch and turned the device over. The cool blue glow of the readouts steadied her and the last of the flickering, flame-tenanted shadows faded from the edges of her vision.
“I see,” she said aloud, suddenly wishing she’d brought Malakar along to watch over her while she slept. Or Parker, or Magdalena! Where are my friends, my team? In the old days I would never have hared off like this without them. The thought brought her up short and Anderssen realized-with a chill shock-that she had placed herself in a very precarious position. I am out here, in the middle of nowhere, with a crazy old sorcerer and a crew of religious fanatics, looking for… something… which by all rights ought be left well enough alone. Holy Mary of the Roses, what was I thinking? Magdalena would give me such a cuffing!
Then she decided that Hummingbird had jobbed her again with his measly five hundred thousand quills. And why did he pay that out? she wondered. He must be desperate for… for a washed-up, out-of-work, out-of-her mind xenoarchaeologist. He could rent a graduate student from the Company for almost nothing!
The obvious reason was disturbing. He knows about my talent, and how it’s grown. He’s expecting me to be able to find all of the pieces of some puzzle that would elude everyone else, even him. This is not going to be pleasant.
She clipped on her medband and comm bracelet, swung out of the tiny bunk, and found her jacket, comp, and other tools. The Moulins had been poking along in the dark, following an uneven, zigzag course for several days. But now, she had a sense the ship had stopped moving. Have we arrived? she wondered. “Time to find out.”
After a detour by the mess deck to fill her mug with hot, weak kaffe -the dispenser seemed programmed to produce the most wretched version of anything requested-Gretchen climbed the gangway to the control spaces. Captain Locke, the pilot, and Hummingbird were sitting, watching the navigational displays with varying degrees of boredom. The screens showing the exterior view of the Moulins were filled with gorgeous, glowing dust clouds in every shade of red, violet, and viridian. Streamers of iridescent material arced across the field of view. Embedded in the murk-were they distant pulsars, or stars almost swallowed by this wrack?-were hot points of light.
Anderssen slipped into the creaking, cracked-leather chair beside the old nauallis and strapped herself in.
“What’s happening?”
Hummingbird turned slightly, his weathered old face impassive. “We’ve found what seems to be an Imperial battle-group. Most of the ships are stationary, but some are working patrol patterns around this whole area.”
“But we’re waiting?” She felt itchy, knowing that the artifact-her life’s work if she could but touch it-might only be light-minutes away. “What for?”
“The right ship. And the right commander.” His voice was very low, only barely audible to her, even sitting in the adjacent seat.
“So, we’re thinking weeks parked here in the dark, watching the pretty lights?” Her light tone did not move him.
Instead, he nodded minutely. “If need be.”
A chime sounded from one of the console panels and a series of glyphs strobed on the main board. The pilot leaned over, interested. His stylus circled a moving icon on the display and the view focused in. Velocity and heading figures appeared in a sidebar.
“Reckless idiot!” Locke shook his head in dismay, and then eyed Hummingbird. “This the one you’re waiting for?”
“Target’s v is pushing the limit for this particle density.” The pilot sounded impressed. “It’s big and must be packing a serious set of deflector generators! I wonder if-”
Locke snorted, saying: “I don’t think he can see any better in this than-”
“Go dark!” Hummingbird’s voice was sharp as a knife and filled with an unmistakable tone of command. Without even thinking, the pilot jerked around in his seat, both hands busy on the controls. The level of ambient noise in the control space suddenly dropped and every light shaded down to a dull red, or turned off entirely. The sound of the air circulators ceased and the constant, low-level vibration in the decking stuttered and then died.
