"Join you, sir?"
Teldin looked up into Hectate's thin, serious face. He nodded, and the navigator set his well-laden plate down on the table and took the chair across from Teldin. "I see you approve of our new cook," Teldin said dryly.
Taking in Teldin's rueful expression, the half-elf asked, "Having second thoughts, sir?"
"Always," Teldin acknowledged with a touch of sadness. He could ill afford to trust even those who seemed trustworthy, and the gypsy "king" hardly qualified as that.
"Rumor has it that Rozloom has started a batch of ale brewing," Hectate said, dangling Teldin's favorite indulgence before him. "He couldn't be all bad, sir."
Teldin winced-imperceptibly, he hoped-and returned the half-elfs smile with a fleeting one of his own. Teldin's attitude toward elves had been soured by a series of bad experiences, and for some reason Hectate's features took on a decidedly elven tinge whenever he smiled. Thank the gods that he didn't do it very often, Teldin thought wryly.
"Rozloom seems likable enough," Teldin said cautiously, surprised to find that he could in fact like a man who was so blatantly self-serving.
"But… ?"
Teldin shrugged, struggling to form his reservations into words. "The man seems to have no convictions," he began. "Most people, for good or bad, have some set of principles that guide their actions. From what I've seen so far, I'd have to say that Rozloom runs on pure self-interest. How can you sail with someone who'll follow the prevailing wind, no matter what?"
The half-elfs smile disappeared, and his eyes dropped. For a long moment he sat in silence, his meal forgotten.
"What is it, Hectate?" Teldin asked at length.
"Sometimes, sir, staying a chosen course despite the winds can be dangerous. There's such a thing as holding too strongly to convictions," the navigator said softly. Without explanation, he rose to his feet and walked out of the galley, leaving Teldin staring blankly after him.
Chapter Three
Tekura leaned farther into the dome of the port window, drawn by the austere beauty of the world below her, set in wildspace like a vast opal against a black velvet cloth. The swirling pattern of white streaks on the orb's surface charmed her even though it probably indicated that a numbing blizzard awaited them. Intending to share the beauty, the elflike woman glanced back at the three ship's officers.
Zeddop, their lamentable wizard, was slumped in the thronelike helm, his eyes glazed as he poured magical power into the ship, and his short silvery hair sticking up in random spikes around his pointed ears. Behind him stood the captain and the navigator, huddling together over a stolen star chart and completely absorbed with the challenge of charting their course. Sadness touched Tekura as she studied her adopted kin: Wynlar, a quiet scholar forced into a role of war leader, and his niece Soona, who possessed an exotic, flame-haired beauty reminiscent of elven royalty, as well as a reluctant talent for seduction. Soona had employed both gifts to learn of the secret gateway into the ice planet's atmosphere.
As part of a centuries-old pact, a magical network enveloped the planet and alerted elven patrol ships whenever a craft entered or left the planet's atmosphere. A long-ago elven admiral had created a randomly shifting gate to allow elven spy ships to slip through the net. Eventually the admiral's overzealous activities were detected by the Imperial Fleet. The elves had supposedly reprimanded him, but they kept the gate open and secret. Tekura would bet her left hand that they weren't above using it either.
"Merciful Ptah!" the captain swore in a dull whisper. His gaze was fixed on the starboard window, and the star chart he had been studying a moment before dropped unheeded to the floor.
Soona and Tekura stared into the velvet blackness, squinting as they tried to make out the danger their sharp-eyed captain perceived. "Over there, near Vesta," Wynlar directed them, pointing toward the domed windows that were set like eyes on either side of the forecastle. Each window yielded a view of Vesta, one of the three large moons of the ice planet Armistice.
A shadow touched the edge of the pale violet disk. The small group watched with horrified fascination as the shadow grew, slowly metamorphosing into the silhouette of a huge, twisted butterfly.
"Man-o-war," murmured the captain, stating what they all knew. An elven man-o-war was one of the most powerful and feared ships of wildspace. Their shrike ship was a sleek, birdlike vessel that could dart and maneuver like a spacebound sparrow, but in battle it would present little challenge to the elven ship. If the stolen cloaking device did not hide the shrike ship from the elves, their illegal cargo would not reach Armistice and their dream of revenge would die with them.
"It's coming straight at us," Soona reported in a voice tight with fear.
And coming fast, Tekura noted silently. The man-o-war had changed its course and was growing larger with frightening speed. Within moments they could see plainly both the ship and the dark purple shadow it cast back upon the moon.
"Tell me, Tekura, is your plan worth tackling that?" demanded Zeddop, nodding toward the approaching ship.
A small, hard smile twitched the young woman's lips, but her gaze never left the man-o-war. "If the cloaking device works, Zeddop, we won't have to fight," she replied, absently tucking a strand of silvery hair behind one pointed ear.
It has to work, Tekura thought fiercely, as if the force of her will could strengthen the magic cloaking device. The price she'd paid to obtain it was simply too high for her to accept the possibility of failure. The cloaking device already had cost years of her life, years spent pretending to be everything she abhorred. Passing as an elf, she had worked as a technician on one spelljamming vessel after another until her reputation earned her a post with the Imperial Fleet. Finally, her mission had required her to kill. The ironic justice of this did not escape her-after all, the elves had designed her kind as living weapons-but the necessary act had bruised and sullied her spirit. Whenever the burden grew too heavy, Tekura remembered the look on those elves' faces when she had gone into the Change: first shock, then terror incongruously mixed with disgust. They had disdained her even as she had cut them down.
The man-o-war came on, pushing aside Tekura's memories. Soon they would have to either run or fight. Tekura shot a glance at the captain. As she expected, Wynlar's angular face was contorted by powerfully conflicting emotions. Although their mission depended on getting past the elven patrol ship, every instinct urged the captain toward battle. It was a compulsion Tekura knew too well, a compulsion she read upon every face in the room. To their race, running from a fight was not only unthinkable, but almost impossible. They were, after all, living weapons.
Tekura gritted her teeth, fighting the gathering battle-lust that threatened to overwhelm her every thought and sinew.
Her hands yearned for the feel of a weapon, and she rubbed her palms against her thighs as if the pebbly fabric of her uniform could quiet the itching, insistent desire to fight. She forced herself to ignore the weapons that the officers kept close at hand-the enormous swords and the two-pointed halberds that they could barely lift until battle brought the Change upon them. Tekura knew that, throughout the shrike ship, every member of the crew had similar weapons at hand. Perhaps some already had succumbed to the Change.
The man-o-war moved steadily closer, and throughout the shrike ship there was not a word, barely a breath. The sensitive bodies of the space-bred race could feel the first persuasive tugs of the large ship's approaching gravity field. If the shrike ship continued on its carefully charted course, the man-o-war's atmosphere would engulf it even if the stolen cloaking device did work.