Starbuck kneaded one fist inside the other, suddenly thrown off balance. Damn her, she wasn't going to get away with it! He was going to kill that kid, and then shed have him back in her bed again whether she wanted him or not! He struggled to force his rising, murderous anger into a straitjacket of concentration. 'Well, what's your choice?'
'The wind.' Sparks Dawntreader smiled tightly, and swept his hand around, pointing. 'We stand on the bridge there — and whoever controls the winds better will still be there when it's finished.' He took his flute slowly from his belt pouch, and held it out.
Starbuck's voice caught on a single barb of startled laughter. So the kid had imagination to match his gall ... and his stupidity. The nobles with their whistles could hold a quiet space of air around themselves while they crossed over the pit, but they couldn't manipulate two spaces at once. With his own control box, he could produce the chords and overtones that would keep him protected and still attack. If the kid thought that he was better equipped than a noble, with that shell flute of his, then he was in for the biggest surprise of his life — and the last.
Arienrhod moved back, her cape billowing like mist, like the translucent wind panels above the bridge, left the two of them alone facing one another. 'May the best man win.' Her voice was expressionless.
Without waiting for Sparks to move first, Starbuck walked past him and onto the bridge. He crossed it almost carelessly, his fingers pressing the singing sequence of buttons at his belt. Once the wind licked him and his breath caught, but he was sure no one had noticed. He stopped at last, more than halfway along the span, and turned; stood waiting with one hand on his hip and the other at his belt. He had never stood still above the abyss before; the groaning entrails of the city machinery seemed infinite beneath him, and the span on which he stood far too frail. He pressed the piercing tone buttons automatically, massaged by the fluctuations of the pressure cell around him, very carefully not looking down.
Sparks lifted his flute to his lips and stepped out onto the bridge; the fluid purity of the notes reached Starbuck clearly. He saw with some surprise that it actually worked — the music wrapped the kid like a spell, he moved in quiet air, the blaze of his hair and the green silk of his shirt unruffled. He must have spent a lot of time analyzing this place. Not that it was going to do him any good.
Starbuck pressed a second button when the boy was barely out past the brink. The bellying translucent panels shifted in the air; wind swept up from an unexpected quarter and struck like a snake at the boy's back. He staggered and went down on one knee at the lipless edge of the walkway; but his fingers never released the flute, and he countered the cross draft deftly, throwing himself back onto his feet in the center of the path. He came on, sudden ruthless anger in his face; a rush of shrill notes danced ahead of him, guarding his advance, blurring the sounds of Starbuck's own feint and parry.
Starbuck stumbled, barely managing to keep his feet as the wind struck him hard across the face. His eyes watered; he blinked frantically, trying to see when he should have been listening. The wind caught him from behind and knocked him down. On hands and knees he found the controls again, stabilized his space of air with desperate skill as he climbed to his feet. The wind panels cracked and rattled as Sparks attacked again, grinning now with mirthless concentration. It staggered him, but he managed to counter, notes clashing in the air; realizing at last that the contest was not going to be one-sided ... at least not in the way he had imagined. He had never paid enough attention to the boy's music to realize his virtuosity with that damned piece of shell. He could produce overtones with it, and his fingers were so quick that the notes came close to being chords — close enough. And the boy was playing this game as though he had prepared for the match with all the skill of his musician's ear and his would-be technician's mind.
But it was a game of death, and out of all the skills he, Starbuck, had that the boy could have chosen, manipulating the winds was the least exercised. He began to sweat; for the first time in longer than he could remember, he began to feel afraid for his own life. The wind batted him again when he thought he was safe. He struck back viciously, sending the wind in from three different quarters, heard the boy's shout of surprise as one arm of it caught him unawares and sent him reeling forward. But he stayed on the bridge and recovered his equilibrium before another sweep could finish him.
Starbuck swore under his breath. There were too many options, there was no way to predict what effect the mixing of their separate tone commands would have, even if they could outguess each other. He crouched low, started back toward Sparks across the bridge; concentrating grimly on keeping himself protected instead of on attacking. The closer they were to one another, the less the kid could afford to threaten his own stability by shifting the winds around them. If he could just get his hands on that flute and crush it, then he could still finish thisA clout of cold force knocked him flat; he sprawled sideways, flailing desperately as his feet went off one edge and head and shoulders slid out over the other. For an endless moment he looked straight down into the black-walled pit, where the dim spirals of machine lights glittered like the endless lost fire of a Black Gate's heart; and the smell of the sea and the moaning dirge were strong inside his head. In that moment he lay still, waiting, hands clutching at the narrow edge of the arcing span, hypnotized by the immediacy of death.
But the final formless blow did not fall, or rise, to tumble him over the edge; the paralysis released him and he raised his head, saw Sparks Dawntreader standing frozen like himself, unable to make the kill.
He levered himself back onto the meter-wide solidity of the span, reacting instinctively now; flung himself up and into a protective hole in the air. He ran forward, almost in reach before the boy finally reacted, lashing out at him with a double buffet of wind. He countered it easily, and at the same time brought his booted foot up with all his strength to kick the boy in the groin.
Sparks collapsed with an animal cry of agony. The flute stayed in his fist, but it was no use to him now, no danger to his rival... Starbuck backed slowly away, savoring his triumph, sorry only that the kid hurt too much to care about what was going to happen to him next. Starbuck lifted his head to look at Arienrhod, still standing on the brink, far away, like some unattainable dream. In another moment the road to her would be clear again. His hand moved at the controls on his belt; Arienrhod moved slightly where she stood.
Two discordant notes collided in the air. Astounded, he felt his own feet go out from under him as the wind struck him down. Not the boy, not the boy — himself! Falling'Arienrhod!' He screamed her name, a curse, a prayer, an accusation, as he fell; and it followed him down into darkness.
Chapter 16
The Black Gate filled the shielded viewscreen that filled the center of the wall, a flaming whorl against the amber blackness of the distant starfield. In the heart of this stellar cluster there had once been a glut of cosmic flotsam to feed a black hole's hunger; through eons it had been mostly consumed, and the deadly excrement of the hole's gravitational radiation had dimmed. But it had also captured the star the Tiamatans called the Summer Star; held it prisoner on a narrow tether, siphoning away its chromosphere. The minutiae of dust and molecules blazed up, giving off their potential energy, as they were sucked down to destruction, as this ship was being sucked down...
Elsevier felt the hunger of the Gate lick out at her, felt the first tingling of physical sensation, the slow, compulsive movement of her weightless body toward the image on the wall ... felt it too in the depths of her mind, where it probed her secret terror of dismemberment. The firmly yielding cushion of the transparent cocoon that wrapped her held her back with gentle reassurance.
She glanced down past her drifting feet toward the ship's center of mass, where the girl Moon hung in another light-catching chrysalis. Moon shifted restlessly, like a fire moth impatient for birth; her luridly pink flightsuit caught reflections from the console suspended around her. A crown of silver mesh hung useless in the air above her silver-gilt hair — the crown that Cress should have worn, the symb helmet of an astrogator. Moon looked up to find Elsevier looking down, and Elsevier saw the emotions struggle on her face.
'Moon, are you ready?'
'No...'
Elsevier stiffened, afraid of what an outburst of rebellion from the girl could do to them. She thought she had convinced Moon that this trip was no more than a brief detour in her journey to find her cousin. But if she refused to begin a Transfer now'I don't know what to do. I don't understand anything, I don't understand how —'
