1:
Year 1116 Eraasian Reckoning
ERAASI: HANILAT STARPORT DEMAIZEN OLD HALL
Ribbon-of Starlight, foremost guardship in the sus-Peledaen fleet, waited on the landing field at Hanilat like a dark, angular bird. She was the largest family ship that could actually touch the soil of Eraasi. The merchant ships she escorted were bigger--huge constructs, hold-swollen with cargo--but they never left orbit. The shuttles that would bring up the flats and bales and crates of tradeware clustered like nestlings on the burnt ground next to the Ribbon's protective bulk.
Arekhon Khreseio sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen, riding out to the guardship in the back compartment of an open land-hauler, gave the shuttles nothing more than a cursory glance. Ribbon-of-Starlight--his home for the remainder of his fleet apprenticeship--claimed the greater part of his attention. She was a new ship, no more than a couple of voyages old, but already known for a lucky one. 'Rekhe squinted at her, trying for the catch and angle of sunlight that would let him see the eiran wrapping and weaving around her.
A moment ... there ... yes. To the right eyes, Ribbon-of-Starlight was rich with luck, hung about with it in lacework so thick it looked like silvery gauze.
Arekhon himself was a slight, dark-haired youth. He'd worked with the fleet Circle in Hanilat since he was first able to count his age in two digits, but now that he was, by everyone's reckoning, old enough to make a full commitment to the Mages, his duty to the family came first. His brotherNatelth was the head of the sus-Peledaen family's senior line, and Natelth wanted 'Rekhe to go through his apprenticeship in the fleet ... so an apprentice, perforce, 'Rekhe would have to be, and the Circles could wait until later.
"Here you are."
'Rekhe blinked, and the luck-lines went away, leaving the Ribbon looming stark black as before, only much nearer. A door was open high on one curving side, and a narrow metal ladder led up to it.
"Thank you," he said politely to the driver of the land-hauler, collected his duffel, and climbed out of the back compartment onto the ground. The hauler sped off on its next errand. 'Rekhe shouldered his duffel and started climbing.
A young man in a blue work coverall was waiting for him when he reached the top of the ladder. The crimson piping and insignia on the man's coverall told 'Rekhe that he was a clerk-tertiary, not long out of his own training days.
"Arekhon sus-Khalgath?" the clerk said.
"Reporting for instruction, sir." Everyone outranked an apprentice--even when the apprentice came from the family's senior line--and 'Rekhe took pains to keep his voice respectful. Natelth had made it plain that he would not have his younger brother disgracing the family by causing trouble and discontent.
"Come with me." The clerk-tertiary led the way into the coiling three-dimensional labyrinth of the Ribbon's interior, and 'Rekhe followed.
He tried to memorize the route as they went, but in spite of his efforts he knew that he would have to spend time with the ship's map-models later. The ground-based portion of his prentice-training had given him an understanding of the basic principles of ship construction, but each ship had its own set of variations on the common design.
The clerk-tertiary halted before an airtight door like all the others they had passed by, or through, on the way inward.
"Prentice berthing," he said. "Stow your gear and report to the junior wardroom in an hour."
With that, he departed, leaving 'Rekhe to confront the door alone. Fortunately, it was merely closed, rather than dogged down tight. 'Rekhe pulled it open and stepped over the sill.
The compartment held four bunks, stacked two deep on either side of the door. Corresponding lockers filled the rest of the available space alongthe bulkheads. The bunks were rigged with the cushions and webbing to double as acceleration couches.
A girl sat cross-legged on one of the lower bunks, reading a flatbook and making notes on the margin-pad with a stylus. She wore prentice livery like 'Rekhe's own--more dark blue trimmed with crimson--and her short brown hair curled around her bent head in a loose mop. She looked up as 'Rekhe stepped into the compartment.
"It's first-come, first-served on the bunks," she said. "You might as well take the bottom one on the other side before somebody else does."
"I like the top bunks," said 'Rekhe. "Nobody steps on your face every night and morning."
The girl shrugged. "No accounting for taste. I'm Elaeli Inadi, by the way."
"Arekhon sus-Khalgath," he said, sketching a bow.
And the eiran that had hung like cobwebs around Ribbon-of-Starlight's dark metal hull began to weave themselves into a newer pattern.
On the day that the Ribbon left Eraasi for her trading voyage to Ildaon and beyond, Serazao Zulemem was at work in the outer office of the Harradi Group, a firm of legalists specializing in the financial affairs of Eraasi's middle and upper nobility. The Demaizen estate was about to pass into the hands of its final inheritor, and Serazao had drawn the work of sorting and filing all the hardcopy that the case had generated during two decades of legal contests.
Serazao's parents, Alescu and Evya, had come to Hanilat from Eraasi's antipodal subcontinent because well-trained legalists--and they were both well-trained--could prosper in the employ of the merchants and star-lords who made the city their base of operations. Her father soon achieved membership in the Harradi Group; her mother, more combative by nature, kept her own office as a court-litigant.
Serazao herself was a quiet, industrious child. From the time she was old enough to make plans for her future and have others take them seriously, she intended to become a legalist like her parents. To that end, as soon as she reached the age of employment, she worked part time--full time during the school intervals--at her father's firm.
The litigation concerning the Demaizen estate had come near to outlasting the family lines that contended for it. Serazao knew from her parents'dinner-table conversation that only the death from old age of one of the parties involved had brought the matter to a conclusion. Now the remaining heir was required to present himself at Harradi's offices to take possession ... in this case, of a portfolio full of deeds and account-books.
Nobody had bothered to mention that the last of the sus-Demaizen line was also a Mage; or if they had, they'd done it so long ago that Serazao had not been there to hear. From the length of time that the estate had been in the hands of the legalists, she assumed that its ultimate heir would be another one like the deceased claimant, whom she'd had the misfortune once to meet: Elderly, avaricious, ill-tempered, and infirm, with more money already in his possession than any one man could reasonably think to spend.
Garrod syn-Aigal was not what she'd expected at all.
Her first impression, when he came into the outer office, was that he was the heir's driver, or perhaps his bodyguard: A big man, broad in the shoulders and firmly muscled, but with none of the clumsiness that so often came with strength. He wore plain street clothes, of good quality but far from new, with a long weather-coat thrown over them. It was the middle of Hanilat's rainy season--she remembered the date ever afterward, very clearly--and both the coat and the loose-brimmed hat he wore with it shed water in puddles on the office floor.
He paused inside the door, still...
