A Working of Stars Read Free Page B

current pose as a hobby-researcher for very long—it was a means of gaining entry, and little more—but he shied away from revealing his true interests quite so bluntly. “I think that whoever sent in the strike team was afraid. Those assault vehicles up there were blasted by Magecraft. They had to have been; there’s no record anywhere of the Demaizen Circle having weapons. If one of Lord Garrod’s Mages survived long enough to do something like that—”
    “—then he or she might still be alive,” said the woman. “And still angry.”
    “Yes.”
    “A good theory.”
    “I like to think so,” said Herin. “What I don’t know is who he was.”
    “Or she,” said the woman. She gave a quiet laugh. “If it will make your mind easier, I can tell you that it wasn’t me.”
    “Can you tell me who—?”
    “Delath syn-Arvedan died in the first attack,” she said. “So did Lord Garrod and Serazao Zuleimem.”
    He knew the names of the Demaizen Circle, both the ones who had stayed behind on Eraasi and the ones who had gone exploring with the sus-Peledaen across the interstellar gap; he’d made it his business to find out when he began his researches. And he could do subtraction in his head as well as any man.
    “Diasul,” he said. “Kiefen Diasul.”
     
     
    Iulan Vai stayed behind in the shadows and watched the sus-Dariv agent make his way out of the ruins and back down to the overgrown drive. He’d come to her for this meeting, not the other way around, and she wasn’t sure what that meant. She’d heard rumors that someone was asking questions about the Old Hall, and about Lord Garrod’s Circle—maybe she wasn’t the sus-Radal’s Agent-Principal anymore, but she hadn’t cut all ties with her old contacts in the shadow world of information gathering—and she had taken steps to make certain that the questioner made contact with her.
    Herin Arayet sus-Dariv had not been what she was expecting. To begin with, he wasn’t a hireling. He was a family member from one of the inner lines, and probably well-off enough in his own right that he didn’t need to work at all if he lacked the inclination to do so. She wondered what had induced him to take up his peculiar hobby. Was he moved by concern for the family good, or by the pleasure of finding out secret things—or had somebody high up in the inner family trained him for the work?
    He was suited for it, Vai conceded, at least inasmuch as nobody would take him at first glance for one of the sus-Dariv. That family ran to slightly built blonds and redheads, especially in the inner lines, and Syr Arayet was dark and wiry and at least a head taller than the average. Something about the man continued to nag at her as she withdrew from the ruins of the Old Hall and made her way back to Demaizen Town.
    She kept a rented room there, upstairs from an all-night staples-and-sundries shop. The name on the lease wasn’t hers, of course, except in the sense that she’d created the identity and used it off and on for over a decade. She’d wanted to have a bolt-hole available somewhere outside of Hanilat, and it had made sense, or so she told herself, to set one up where she could keep an eye on the Old Hall as well. The manager of the sundries shop collected the rent and watched over the place for her when she was absent.
    The cloak and hardmask Vai had worn at the Old Hall were out of sight in her daypack by the time she reached town. The staff wasn’t as easily concealed, so she didn’t bother. As far as the townspeople were concerned, her local persona claimed affiliation with a minor Circle someplace in Hanilat, the kind of Circle whose members all had day jobs and only came together for fellowship and the occasional minor working.
    She stopped in the sundries shop to buy a pack of candles and exchange greetings with the night clerk, then went on upstairs to her room. She’d told the store manager that she was a field investigator for the Wildlife Protection